Thursday, March 03, 2016

In @AliAbunimah's world, photos of smiling Arabs are hate speech and Pinocchio is antisemitic

Electronic Intifada has an article that is so stupid, so inane, and so laughably false that the article alone should discredit the site forever.

Written by Ali Abunimah himself, its headline is "Students say pro-Israel group spreads hate at Columbia University."

And more:

Most of the article is spent trying to draw lines between pro-Israel students at Columbia and a variety of imagined crimes, like supporting Jabotinsky's Zionism, singing while in the IDF or having photos taken with Sheldon Adelson. That's stupid enough, but let's just look at what these specific Columbia students (and one professor), not to mention Ali Abunimah himself, calls "hate" and "racist" and, unbelievably, "anti-Semitic."

Shezza Abboushi Dallal, a member of Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), told The Electronic Intifada that her group wrote to Melinda Aquino, the associate dean for multicultural affairs, to express concern at Students Supporting Israel’s display of “heavily racist and reductive imagery” in a prominent campus location.

“This is not free exercise of political speech, but blatant incitement – not only against Palestinians, but Arabs and Muslims,” Abboushi Dallal, a fourth-year student at Barnard College, Columbia’s sister institution, added.

OK...let's see what she is referring to.

Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad saw the Students Supporting Israel displays on Tuesday and described them to The Electronic Intifada.

“As I was walking to class, I spotted two large placards on College Walk facing Columbia’s Low Library – the university’s administration building where the president’s and the provost’s offices are located,” Massad said.

“One had the headline ‘Jewish Refugees’ printed on it in large letters with a large picture under it showing what appeared to be Jewish refugees from the mid or late 1940s, and next to it another placard with the heading ‘Palestinians’ under which appeared two hooded men getting ready to execute a third.”

“I was shocked by these racist depictions,” Massad stated. “There seemed to be other smaller script and smaller photographs below the large pictures on both placards, but I could not make them out.”

Massad believes the juxtaposed displays were supposed to send a message that Jews are always only sympathetic victims while Palestinians are murderous savages.

“Imagine if a pro-Palestinian group on campus would put up a poster with the heading ‘Jews’ and under it would show two Israeli soldiers killing, torturing and beating up Palestinian children, as the only visible picture and text from a distance,” Massad said.

“Such a poster would be rightfully condemned as an outright anti-Semitic picture of Jews who would be reduced to the criminal Israeli soldiers in the picture,” he added. “I am shocked that such racism can be depicted on campus by pro-Israel groups without a swift official response.”

Here are the placards Massad was talking about.

There is a large photo on top of the "Palestinians" poster that Massad could not possibly have missed - showing Palestinian kids smiling and happy! And it says "Palestinians deserve better from their leadership."

Then again, Joseph Massad is known to be a liar. Which makes him a great person for Ali Abunimah to quote for the article - even though a photo of the same "Palestinians" poster is shown on the top of the EI article with the smiling children clearly visible!

I bet Massad did read signs and chose to criticize how they supposedly look from a distance just to find something negative to say. The truth is that the sign was not in the least anti-Palestinian - it was pro-Palestinian.

Oh, and Ali Abunimah knows this. Because his photo of the Zionist display that heads his article came from the same source that my photo above came from.

OK, what's next?

This photo and caption:

Smiling Israeli soldiers are hate speech, according to Electronic Intifada!

There must be more though, right?

Massad said that as he walked – at a distance – past the other side of the Students Supporting Israel stand, he could see many other smaller placards and another large one, headlined “Israeli Arabs.”

It depicted “a large picture of an old Palestinian peasant man with his keffiyeh [traditional checkered scarf] on his head grinning, which immediately brought to my mind racist depictions of happy African American slaves in pro-Ku Klux Klan propaganda.”

Not only are smiling Israelis hate speech, but smiling Arabs are hate speech as well!

One can only imagine the pain that BDSers were forced to endure to see such examples of happy Israelis of all colors and backgrounds!

One of the posters compares Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionism, the most violent and radical school of Zionism, today followed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, with Eldridge Cleaver, an early leader of the Black Panther Party.

Not an analogy I would make, but this isn't hate speech, except in the bizarre minds of people whose entire existence is based on hate.

Any other examples of hate spread by the evil Zionists?

Ah, one more:

The largest and perhaps most bizarre element of the Students Supporting Israel display was a large blow-up doll of Pinocchio.

Massad said that the doll “struck me as most odd given the anti-Semitic echoes of the Pinocchio figure.”

“As a Jewish person I’ve been brought up with the idea that Pinocchio is an anti-Semitic trope,” JVP’s Kalikoff said.

“This idea of a character whose nose grows with the lies he speaks uses an anti-Semitic caricature,” she added, noting that anti-Semitic propaganda has historically depicted Jews as liars with grotesquely large noses. “I would say it’s an explicitly and overtly anti-Semitic image to parade on College Walk.”

As a Jewish person who is sensitive to antisemitism, a friendly and naive marionette whose nose grows when he tells a lie does not strike me as antisemitic.

I actually looked this up to see if any major writer seriously considered Pinocchio to be an antisemitic stereotype. No one does. However, the character of Stromboli, who captures Pinocchio - money hungry, big nose, and evil - is often assumed to be a caricature of a Jew.

Joseph Massad needs to say this because he actually claims that Zionists are antisemites. Which is rich coming from someone who equates Jewish nationalism - and only Jewish nationalism - with racism.

Which is de facto antisemitic.

There were other placards there like this one, but they weren't mentioned in the article:

Awful, I know.

To sum it up, here is every example of "racism" and "hate" that the Electronic Intifada crowd found at Columbia's Zionist display:

A large sign that has a prominent, impossible-to-miss photo of happy Palestinian kids that says they deserve better than having leaders like Hamas.
Photos of happy Israeli citizens, including soldiers.
Photos of happy Israeli Arab citizens.

And Pinocchio is antisemitic, so their objection to his presence was to protect the poor defenseless Jews from hate speech by the evil Zionists.

This is on a site that gets quoted by the media as if it has an ounce of credibility.

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.

03/03 Links Pt2: What is a ‘pro Palestinian’?; The Leftist Fascists Take Over College Campuses

From Ian:

David Collier: What is a ‘pro Palestinian’?

Pro Palestinian?
So what is ‘pro-Palestinian’ and what is the ‘Palestinian cause’? Is being ‘pro-Palestinian’ and supporting the ‘Palestinian cause’ the same thing? Given the current ‘Palestinian’ strategy is to internationalise the conflict and more importantly engage activists on university campuses throughout the west, isn’t it critical that we understand just what people mean when they say ‘pro-Palestinian’?
To address this, I think it only proper to start with Bassem Eid. Bassem is a Palestinian who spent his life fighting human rights abuses, working for B’tselem, and eventually setting up his own human rights movement. As someone who cares deeply about human rights abuses against Palestinians, Bassem is shouted down by activists for highlighting the BDS movement as ‘harming’ Palestinians. Only last week he cancelled a lecture in Chicago following a threat of disruption. This clearly indicates that the two issues are not the same. The pushing of the ‘Palestinian cause’ and wanting human rights for Palestinians can be (and perhaps almost always are) opposing forces.
Next I will move on to Norman Finkelstein. Finkelstein has been at the forefront of ‘pro-Palestinian’ commentary for decades. Because of his position and as recognition of his influence as an ‘anti-Israeli’,, he was banned from entering Israel for 10 years. He is highly critical of BDS and calls ita cult that will not succeed because it is trying to deceive the public about its true aims. He points out those aims are clearly to destroy Israel.

Ben Shapiro: The Leftist Fascists Take Over College Campuses

When the speech ended, I asked security if I, along with the other students, could go out to confront the protesters. The campus police told me they couldn't guarantee my safety or that of any of those listening to me if we chose to walk outside. Instead, they'd have to spirit me away through a separate building with a large coterie of armed and uniformed police, stuff me into the back of a van, and then escort me from campus with motorcycles flashing their lights.
This is America in 2016, on a state-funded university campus.
And it shouldn't be surprising.
We have spent two generations turning college campuses from places to learn job skills to places to indoctrinate leftism and inculcate an intolerant view of the world that insists on silencing opposition. We have made campuses a fascist "safe space" on behalf of the left. Anyone who disagrees must be shut down, or threatened or hurt.
It's not just college campuses, either. We've entered an era of politics in which baseless feelings count more than facts, in which political correctness means firing those with different viewpoints, in which government actors insist that they can police negative thoughts. We're on the edge of freedom's end, and many Americans don't even see it.
They would have had they been at CSULA that day. And they will soon enough if they don't stand up for their rights today.

MEMRI: Jordanian Writer: The Arabs Lag Behind In All Areas – As The World Moves Forward

On January 6, 2016, Jordanian journalist, writer, and political analyst Jihad Al-Mansi wrote in the Jordanian daily Al-Ghad, under the title "Careful, The Car Is In Reverse!", about what he termed Arab society's position at the bottom of global rankings in science, culture, human and women's rights, and the war on corruption. He added that it lags behind the rest of the quickly advancing world which "has overtaken us by centuries, perhaps millennia."
Calling on the Arabs to wake up, take responsibility for their situation and stop blaming others for their problems, he said that instead they should invest their financial and human resources in advancing future generations, because it is no longer possible to rectify the situation of the current generation.
Following are excerpts from his article:
"The world is developing, in the philosophical, scientific, social, creative, educational, and cultural sense; it is on the verge of breaking free of backward gender-driven thinking...
"This is taking place in countries far from our Arab region. There, they are developing scientifically and culturally, competing for the top position in all human indices. At the same time, we, in this region of the world, remain at the bottom of these indices – and some of our countries are absent from them altogether.

Another @UNRWAUSA worker shows her hate for Israel (before hiding it) (UPDATE)

Yesterday, I reported that UNRWA-USA communications director Laila Mokhiber took down her Twitter account after it was found to have anti-Israel posts that violate UNRWA's standards.

It appears that nearly all of UNRWA-USA workers have now made their Twitter feeds private, frightened by what others would have discovered that would embarrass their already embarrassing agency.

But not before I took some screenshots from the feed of one of them.

Nada El-Eryan, grants officer at UNRWA USA, is another UNRWA worker in America who proudly shows how anti-Israel she is.

Tweeting under the handle "nadabrain" she has written or retweeted:

Nada does not mention UNRWA as her employer on Twitter, and she says that what she tweets are not the views of her unnamed employer.

But she does describe herself as a "Palestinian American activist" which pretty much shows how she cannot be considered objective.

Her timeline also makes it clear she works for UNRWA even if she doesn't want to say so explicitly.

My coworkers celebrate birthdays in the best ways ever! I ❤️ Pierre Krahenbuhl! Thank you to everyone… https://t.co/h7wW95lifW
— Nada E. (@nadabrain) July 20, 2015

If Laila Mokhiber was forced to close her Twitter account by supporting "Israeli Apartheid Week," then Nada El-Eryan has shown that she is equally partisan while celebrating her association with UNRWA on Twitter. And this is directly against UNRWA's stated mandate.

By the way, UNRWA-USA 's Twitter account has a public list of 74 (!) Twitter accounts for chapters of the anti-Israel "Students for Justice in Palestine."

A very strong indication of where UNRWA's sympathies lie.

(h/t JethroSteve)

UPDATE: Bob Knot did his Facebook magic again on Nada El-Eryan. Check out all of these anti-Israel groups and events she supports:

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.

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column:

We complain a lot about Israel’s continuing defeats in the information arena. Why is it that a country that is so good at technology and commerce, a people that gave birth to two great religions, a culture that enjoys perhaps the world’s best ratio of happiness to adversity, can lose over and over in the battle for hearts and minds, especially those of young people?

Why does almost the entire world agree that ‘settlements are illegal’ and expect us to pick up and leave? How can there even be an organization called “Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism?” Why do Israel-hating professors indoctrinate students to believe that we are monsters? Why is the al-Dura libel still believed? Why is the phony ‘Palestinian’ narrative becoming the conventional wisdom about the establishment of our state? Why does Israel come in second only to North Korea as the country that most UK residents “feel especially unfavourable towards?”

Why, when Israel fights a defensive war, are we invariably accused of war crimes despite the fact that military experts consistently say that the IDF does more than any other army in history to protect the civilian population? Why is Arab terrorism against us minimized in the media, while negative stories are amplified? Why is social media suffused with anti-Israel content?

Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate” has been replicated in “Israel apartheid week” observances in universities around the world, with the Jew of Nations replacing the Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein, and in various UN-sponsored Hates throughout the year.

Yes, there are lots of reasons for the above – Jew hatred, and oil money are two of them – and there are also some bright spots, but the sheer volume of negative feelings toward us is remarkable, and we are making very little headway in opposing it. And the reason is simple: we don’t have a clue about influencing opinion.

We just don’t get it, which is why we often do exactly the opposite of what we should.

Humans are driven by emotions, not reason, although they often come up with rational arguments to justify their emotional decisions. It is also the case that the emotional drivers may sometimes seem perverse. But they are what they are, created by evolutionary forces in the history of the human race (see Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion).

If we want to get people on our side, to identify with us emotionally – and that’s what we want, not abstract ‘justice’ or any other rational concept – then we need to pull the right strings. The Arabs and their friends have been doing it for years, which is why they are so far ahead today.

One of the most important drivers is – as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump understand – that folks want to go with the winner. The rational mind thinks that ‘how you play the game’ matters, but the subconscious driver agrees with Vince Lombardi: winning is theonly thing.

So what have we done? We’ve engaged in Holocaust education, which often consists of talking about how we let the Germans stuff us into gas chambers. The object seems to be to make people feel sorry for us, the ultimate losers. But it doesn’t make people want to be on our side; it makes them want to get as far away from us as possible. For our enemies, it gives them ideas and serves as ‘snuff porn’.

What we should emphasize about the Holocaust are such things as the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, hanging Eichmann and even ‘morally wrong’ behaviors like Jewish terrorism against Germans after the war. We shouldn’t dwell on our pain, but rather stress that anyone who hurts our people will pay a price; our response will be disproportionate, even brutal.

Golda Meir did the right thing when she ordered the Mossad to kill everyone connected with the Munich massacre. Displaying weakness is asking for more abuse; strength is both a deterrent and attractive. We want to be admired for our strength, toughness and success, not pitied.

Which brings us to Gaza. We fought the last few wars (this in itself is a problem) trying our best to avoid hurting civilians. Some say the next war will see every combat soldier accompanied by a lawyer to ensure that we are not charged with war crimes. There has been criticism that our concern impairs the fighting efficiency of the IDF. Indeed it does, but that’s not the only problem: it projects weakness. And they’ll charge us with war crimes anyway. So next time, let’s just concentrate on crushing Hamas.

The same applies to fighting terrorism. It seems to me that someone like Saadi Ali Abu Hammad, who viciously attacked a security guard at the Ma’ale Adumim mall last week, should be killed on the spot, not imprisoned. Such a statement may seem shocking, because it goes against our commitment to a rule of law. But even if there weren’t practical considerations – do we want the terrorist to collect a salary from the PA until he is freed as ransom for a kidnap victim? – there are the psychological implications. Our message should be that trying to murder Jews is intolerable, not something for teenagers to do after school, like shoplifting.

On the political level, PM Netanyahu continues to say that “Israel desires peace.” Of course it does, but emphasizing this projects weakness. Who begs for peace? The side losing the war. What the PM should be saying is that we intend to protect the Land of Israel and all its inhabitants, and anyone who threatens us will be destroyed. Not just defeated, but crushed. Wiped off the map. Erased from memory like Amalek.

But wait, don’t the Arabs try to make themselves out to be victims? Don’t they accuse us of brutality? Yes they do, but at the same time they strike out at us – they claim to be striking back – with extreme savagery. This savagery is the vehicle for message that they are sending to the world, which is that they are strong, they are so committed to their cause that they are prepared to die for it, and ultimately they will win. And our response is to tell them that we will sit down and negotiate with them at any time, even while they are stabbing us! No. We should respond to terrorism with expulsions and expropriation of land.

We need to change our messaging and also our behavior. This won’t be easy for us, accustomed as we are to trying to put on a polite, Western mask. Our Prime Minister, who courageously faced live fire as a soldier, nevertheless has trouble facing a hostile American president.

We don’t need to tell the world that we have beautiful women, nice beaches, lots of tech companies and gay pride parades (there actually was such a campaign). That will have zero effect. Rather, with our actions and words, we should pursue respect, project strength, even provoke fear – and certainly not pity.

Thanks to the paradoxical nature of the human brain, it may get us friendship and understanding in the end.

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.

03/03 Links Pt1: What a Palestinian State Looks Like; Israel’s ‘Ghost Warriors’ Combating Terror

From Ian:

What a Palestinian State Looks Like

When European nations and even some American Jews proclaim their support for Palestinian statehood, one must always ask which state are they talking about? Is it the demilitarized one that is prepared to live in peace with Israel that everyone fantasizes about? Or will it resemble the only Palestinian Arab state that has ever existed — the one that has transformed Gaza into an Islamist tyranny in which even the leaders of the group can be purged with impunity.
We may not have much sympathy for Mahmoud Ishtiwi, whose secret private life might have been revealed because of charges of embezzlement. But, like others who refused to conform to Hamas theocratic dictates, there was only one fate possible for him in the Palestinian state. The nature of Palestinian society may not justify Israel holding onto territory that might be traded for peace if an end to the conflict was possible, which is unfortunately not the case with either Fatah or Hamas. But so long as Palestinians are oppressed by theocrats whose priority is a terrorist war to destroy Israel, more Israeli withdrawals are out of the question.
Yet far from being tangential to the question of theoretical land-for-peace deals, there is very little chance of the Palestinians ever embracing coexistence and ending their century-long war against Zionism so long as they are lead by the sort of group that would execute a gay man for the crime of being gay.
As a lively and free democratic country, Israel’s reputation doesn’t need to be pinkwashed because of the freedom that gays enjoy there. But those crying for Palestinian freedom should start by campaigning to free the Palestinian people from their gay-killing Hamas tyrants before worrying about Israel’s actions. Until they do, those claiming that human rights are only an issue if the topic can be used against Israel should be labeled as hypocrites and liars.

JCPA: Palestinian Authority Funding to Terrorists and their Families

Blood Money Incitement
The Palestinian Authority (PA) is responsible for one more nefarious form of incitement to attack Jews – paying large bounties to the attackers and their families. An attacker can go out to commit murder assured that if he is arrested he will receive a monthly salary; if he is killed, his family will receive a monthly pension; and if his family home is destroyed, the family will receive a very generous award to rebuild their home.
Rather than being deterred by the harsh consequence of their terrorist attack at Israel’s hand, the perpetrators are actually encouraged and incentivized by the Palestinian leadership. According to one study published by the Gatestone Institute, “Terrorists in prison receive higher average salary than PA civil servants and military personnel.”
An Israeli government 2014 memorandum, citing official PA budgetary reports, noted that $75.5 million had been paid out in stipends to convicted terrorists and their families in 2012.
The instructions for compensation payments come from the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority, according to the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed website in February 2014: “The Jerusalem Martyrs’ families and the National ‎Campaign to Return the Bodies of the ‎Martyrs confirmed that ‎President Mahmoud Abbas promised to ‎compensate the Jerusalem Martyrs’ ‎families for their homes, which the ‎occupation forces demolished or ‎damaged.”

Guy Bechor: Meanwhile in Syria, the pseudo-ceasefire

The Americans are not talking about any violations of the 'cessation of hostilities' in Syria, because to them, there aren't any. Europe pays the price of Washington's failed foreign policies, while Israel stands firm.
The Americans' delusional foreign policy is not just in Syria but also in Iraq. Just recently, Obama was boasting that ISIS was retreating and had weakened. So how come ISIS managed to commit a serious attack 10 kilometers from the international airport in Baghdad, the lifeline of the Shiite Iraqi regime? Not to mention the way ISIS is fooling Iraqi soldiers in Ramadi and other cities, succeefully killing hundreds of people every month in attacks. The Iraqi army hesitates to directly fight ISIS, which continues to grow in strength and draw Sunnis into its fold.
Where were the Americans in the battles on Sunday? According to Iraqi reports (which were also sort of delusional) ISIS retreated, but it is also remains everywhere in the western and northern part of the country. Even the US understands that its bombings don’t really help. Will Obama put American boots on the ground? I doubt it. That is why the Americans are stuck with no way out in Iraq as well, despite their many attempts.
They overthrew Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Qaddafi, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and Ali Abdullah Saleh because of their delusions. Took down the leaders and caused a storm.
And they didn't just do this in Syria and Iraq, but also in Libya, Yemen, Egypt and Tunis, and among the Sunnis in the land of Israel (who used to be called "Palestinians"). Was it not John Kerry who tried to reach a peace agreement here two years ago and failed? Then, like today, this was a policy of delusions.
Just like there can be no arrangement with the mass murderer Assad, there can be no arrangement with Abbas' gang, and now it's Europe’s turn to pay the price of this foreign policy. The only country that remains with its feet firmly on the ground and did not capitulate to the imaginary reality produced by the West - was Israel.

From Al Jazeera:

Member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, known as the GCC, have classified Lebanese movement Hezbollah as a "terrorist" organisation, citing "hostile actions" by the armed group.

GCC Secretary General Abdullatif al-Zayani said on Wednesday that the six Gulf monarchies undertook the move because "the [Hezbollah] militia recruited young people [from the Gulf] for terrorist acts".

Hezbollah, a Shia political organisation with an armed wing, fights in neighbouring Syria to support the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Sunni-dominated GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Gulf nations have taken a series of measures against Hezbollah since Saudi Arabia last month halted a $4bn programme funding French military supplies to Beirut.

But the EU only considers Hizballah's "military wing" to be terrorist, not the entire organization as the GCC apparently does.

The Sunnis know what the EU refuses to believe - that there is no difference between Hizballah's "military" and "political" wings. And it is past time for the EU to act on that fact.

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.

ISIL in Jordan, Egypt and...Israel

From Ammon News:

Jordan's General Intelligent Department (GID), Wednesday said its personnel foiled a terror plot planned by Daesh affiliates to carry out attacks on civil and military targets in the Kingdom.

During the clashes, Captain Rashed Zyoud was killed and five other security personnel as well two civilians were injured .

A statement by the GID revealed that following thorough intelligence , security personnel were able to identify the location of the terrorists, who were hiding in a residential building in the northern city of Irbid.

After they refused to surrender and opened fire from their automatic weapons, a special force dealt with the incident and killed 7 of the armed terrorists, who were wearing explosives belts, and arrested 13 member of the group, the statement added.

Irbid is not far at all from Israel.

From JPost:

An Egyptian military effort to recruit and arm tribal fighters to take on Islamic State militants in the Sinai is failing, according to security sources, Sinai residents and tribal figures.

The military launched the program with much fanfare last year and tribal leaders pledged to provide hundreds of fighters. But the number of fighters in the field is no more than 35, security sources say. The scheme has been hampered by the military's reluctance to provide weapons to local fighters and by attacks by Islamic State, which are scaring off would-be tribal troops.

Also from JPost:

The Shin Bet and the Israel Police in a joint operation recently arrested two Arab-Israeli men who allegedly supported the Islamic State and who are suspected in connection with the execution of a terrorist attack.

The two men, Bahaa Aldin Ziad a 19-year-old man from Yafia and Ahmed Nabil Ahmed Ahmed 21-year-old man from Nazareth were arrested in January and February.

The Shin Bet investigation revealed that in the past months the two prayed at the al-Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem every week. The two decided that on one of their journeys to the mosque they would open fire on Israeli security forces as an act of identification with Islamic State and the desire to carry out jihad in the group's name.

Now, imagine how successful Daesh would be in a Palestinian state that cannot even decide who should run it.

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.

If Abbas is against terrorism...

This morning there was a march by the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigades in the Balata camp, Nablus to show support for Mahmoud Abbas and PA prime minister Rami Hamdallah.

Which brings up the question:

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.

UNRWA-USA communications director tweets hate for Israel (UPDATE)

(See update below)

Remember how UNRWA pretends to be non-partisan?

UNRWA-USA communications director Laila Mokhiber sent out this tweets showing her support for "Israeli Apartheid Week:"

Not exactly objective, is it?

As soon as Avi Mayer tweeted about it, she protected her account from being seen publicly:

And soon thereafter, it was gone!

And this is a communications director who openly supports hate for Israel! Even though she no longer tweets under her name, she still has her hate and she still has her job.

How long is UNRWA going to keep pretending that it is non-partisan?

UPDATE: Mokhiber's Facebook presence is still online at the moment and it shows plenty of other anti-Israel activity and support for terrorists:

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.

03/02 Links Pt2: Denying Israel and Judaism’s Collective Memory; BDS Still Targets SodaStream

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: Denying Israel and Judaism’s Collective Memory

The Guardian features a lengthy read by author David Rieff who asks:
What if collective historical memory, as it is actually employed by communities and nations, has led far too often to war rather than peace, to rancour and resentment rather than reconciliation, and the determination to exact revenge for injuries both real and imagined, rather than to commit to the hard work of forgiveness?
What follows is an intellectual discussion on the merits or otherwise of the role of collective historical memory as used by various states and regimes throughout history. Eventually, the example of Israel appears:
Israel offers a florid illustration of how disastrously collective memory can deform a society. The settler movement routinely appeals to a version of biblical history that is as great a distortion of that history as the Islamist fantasy about the supposed continuities between the medieval kingdom of Jerusalem and the modern state of Israel. At the entrance to the settler outpost of Givat Assaf on the West Bank, a placard reads: “We have come back home.” In an interview, Benny Gal, one of the settlement’s leaders, insisted: “On this exact spot, 3,800 years ago, the land of Israel was promised to the Hebrew people.” Shani Simkovitz, the head of the settlement movement’s Gush Etzion Foundation, echoed Gal’s claim: “More than 3,000 years ago, our fathers gave us a land, which is not Rome, it is not New York, but this: the Jewish land.”
Even when it is secular, mainstream Zionist collective memory is often as mystical and as much of a manipulation of history as these views. Consider the simultaneous mythologising and politicisation of archaeology in Israel that has now reached the point where scholarship and state-building have come to seem like two sides of the same coin. Writing in 1981, the Israeli intellectual Amos Elon observed that Israeli archaeologists were “not merely digging for knowledge and objects, but for the reassurance of roots, which they find in the ancient Israelite remains scattered throughout the country”. He added: “The student of nationalism and archaeology will be tempted to take note of the apparent cathartic effects of both disciplines.”
On the contrary, it is Judaism’s extensive collective historical memory that has enabled the Jewish people to survive over thousands of years. Collective memory has not deformed society but enabled the modern state of Israel to thrive and survive precisely due to the strong national identity of its people.

Why are Palestinian Christians Fleeing?

The Palestinian Authority—the government created by the PLO to manage the West Bank and Gaza—is, by its own constitution, an Islamic state that embodies the principles of shari’a. Christians living under the PA are “accorded sanctity and respect,” but, as is the case under all shari’a-based systems, Christians are relegated to the status of second class citizens. Of course, it is illegal to convert from Islam to Christianity. Let’s not even mention the fact that sale of land to Jews is a crime punishable by death.
Discrimination against Christians under the Palestinian Authority isn’t just legal—it’s also social. Living as a Christian, one is constantly reminded that he or she is not a member of the majority culture.
Shortly after taking power in the West Bank, Yasser Arafat ensured that Bethlehem and a few other cities would always have Christian mayors. However, he also pursued policies that encouraged Muslim immigration into those same cities and thereby changed the demography from the bottom up.
I’ve spoken to numerous Palestinian Christians who describe how Muslim terrorists would commandeer Christian homes and use them to direct sniper fire on Israeli soldiers. Others speak of systematic discrimination in hiring, housing, and education. Of course, all of these conversations take place in private meetings and hushed tones. Christians in Bethlehem rarely interact with Muslims beyond the marketplace, and are, in fact, very much afraid. But in public, Palestinian Christians speak like Hanan Nasrallah—equating their situation with their Muslim neighbors and lauding the happy coexistence between the two groups.
They don’t have a choice. They are hostages inside their own city.
[The Jesuit magazine] America would have us believe that Israel is forcing Palestinian Christians to flee Bethlehem because of the wall it built to stop terrorism. In reality, Christians are fleeing for the same reason they are fleeing Iraq, Egypt, and Syria: the rise of Islamic intolerance and violence against anyone who denies the revelation of Muhammad.
Palestinian Christians don’t like the wall, it’s true. But their main problem is that they are stuck living on the wrong side of it. It is not surprising that many Palestinian Christians call for a “one state solution” that will tear down the wall and reintegrate them with the Jewish state. Until that happens, however, many are choosing to leave.
America didn’t go far enough in its analysis, stopping—like most news outlets—just soon enough to blame Israel for everything. American Christians who want to know the truth need to dig deeper, especially if they are truly concerned about the fate of their Palestinian brothers and sisters.

Hillary Emails: How to Demote AIPAC to its Proper Place

The previously secret emails of former U.S. secretary of state and current favorite to be the Democratic contender for the U.S. president Hillary Rodham Clinton are a bonanza for those seeking to discern her non-public face and those of her closest advisers with respect to Israel.
With more than 30,000 emails released, drip, drip, drip since December, 2014, there’s a lot to plow through.
But one omnipresent correspondent of Clinton’s, her former advisor Sidney Blumenthal, stands out as he harps away at two issues close to his heart: one, Israel, the object of deep hostility, and the other, his son Max, a source of immense pride. That one’s son is a source of pride to a father is neither surprising nor shameful. But most of what Blumenthal promotes about his son Max is the never-ending fusillade of hate screeds written by the son in frequently obscure outlets which are directed at the other Blumenthal obsession: Israel.
In the batch released over the weekend, several Blumenthal emails attacks on Israel stand out in particular. One offers advice to Clinton on how to make both the Jewish State and the largest American pro-Israel organization, AIPAC, bend to her will.

From DW:

It's Friday morning. In about an hour, the Boucherie de l'Argonne will be closed. The Muslims working here will head to afternoon prayers. The Jews will prepare for Shabbat. A practical accommodation for staff sharing similar roots and cultural references.

"We work well together," says Philippe Zribi, a Tunisian-born Jew whose family runs the butcher's store.

The Zribis have installed a prayer room for their Muslim employees. They sometimes lunch together. Conversations are sprinkled with the Arabic from their homelands.

In a city still recovering from last year's deadly Islamist attacks, where national news is regularly peppered with reports of anti-Semitism, the Argonne store tucked next to an abandoned railroad track offers another, more positive face of interfaith relations.

It also reflects the melting pot that defines the 19th arrondissement of northeastern Paris, whose 200,000 residents represent no less than 120 nationalities, local officials say. A district where streets are lined with Chinese grocery stores, African restaurants and Turkish carry-outs; where Pakistanis and Egyptians hawk French carrots and Tunisian oranges at outdoor markets.

With an estimated 30,000-40,000 Jews living in the 19th - France has no official figures based on ethnicity or religion - the district is also one of the largest Jewish neighborhoods in Europe, according to local Deputy Mayor Mahor Chiche. It also hosts a sizeable Muslim population that mostly hails from North and sub-Saharan Africa. "We have a real mix, a patchwork of communities," said Chiche, who is in charge of community relations in the 19th.

Other French have reached bleaker conclusions. Across the country, anti-Muslim acts tripled last year from 2014 to nearly 400, while anti-Jewish acts were double that number, according to Interior Ministry statistics. Since a Kurdish teen attacked a kippa-wearing teacher in Marseille last month, some Jews have opted to remove their skullcap and keep a low profile.

"I remain pretty pessimistic," said Sammy Ghozlan, who heads the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, a watchdog group near Paris. Like many others, he blames the attacks on young Muslims and, to a lesser degree, the far right.

The Argonne butchery offers another example of relations that work. The store's kosher certification also draws Muslims, butcher Zribi says. "Their biggest concern is for the meat to be properly drained of the blood," he says of a custom that is also observed under Halal butchery practices.

A native of Sfax, in southern Tunisia, Zribi moved to Paris as a toddler in the 1960s, his family joining the waves of North African Jews leaving their homelands after independence. In the 1980s, his father opened the story which Zribi helps to run with a brother.

For butcher Mostafa Makhoukh, a Muslim from Oujda, Morocco, the Argonne store where he has worked for 18 years is now "family."

"Working with Jews isn't a problem," agrees another Muslim butcher, Abdel Haq, who also comes from Oujda. "We lived with Jews in Morocco." They join Zribi in blaming today's tensions on a generation growing up in France without the strict upbringing of their childhood.

The butchers are seeing the fallout. Increasingly, Jewish customers are dropping by to say goodbye, joining the thousands of French Jews who have headed to Israel in recent years. "They don't feel secure here anymore," says Zribi, who is staying put.

Yet if anything, last year's terrorist attacks, especially November's indiscriminate assault on Paris nightspots, has drawn Argonne's staff closer together.

Zribi lost two Italian friends. Haq, the Muslim butcher, says he lost nobody, but remains shaken by the killings.

"The only lesson I can offer is not to be afraid of the other person," he said. "If I find myself next to a Jew at a cafe, we'll talk. We have to go toward the other."

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.

Inexplicably, Those Who Vowed To Leave If Bibi Elected Still Here (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Tel Aviv, March 2 - A survey of personalities who proclaimed their solemn intention to depart from Israel and take up residence elsewhere in the event that incumbent Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu won reelection last March found that nearly one year later, those individuals have yet to make arrangements for departure.

Several prominent media figures on the political left and numerous less well known Israelis of similar political leanings made a dramatic show of declaring plans to leave the country if the electorate again made what they called the suicidal mistake of returning Netanyahu for another term as premier. Netanyahu won a convincing victory last March 17, defying polls and frustrating the left for the third time since 2009. As the anniversary of the episode approaches, reporters embarked on an assignment to determine where the various righteous leftists had moved. They have so far failed to find evidence that any have departed as vowed, and journalists are at a loss to account for the gap between the pronouncements and the reality.

"I could understand if some of the people who made that declaration were simply being melodramatic," said political journalist Hanan Crystal. "But the group included such figures of integrity and honesty as [Haaretz columnist] Rogel Alpher, and he hasn't so much as looked at apartment rental postings in Europe. There's something going on here, but we haven't figured out what just yet. Is it the crumbling economy - Bibi's fault, of course - preventing people from moving elsewhere? That's backwards. A bad economy should accelerate emigration. Is it the supposedly creeping fascism? Also backwards. We're missing something here."

Crystal said the dichotomy between the pronouncements and the subsequent behavior has had an impact beyond mere puzzlement. "There were actual economic consequences to this," he continued. "If all the people who vowed to leave if Netanyahu got reelected had actually made good on that promise, we could have gone a long way toward remedying the ongoing housing crisis. We're talking a large number of residences suddenly opening up primarily in the Tel Aviv area, which is where all the jobs are, but where young families can't afford to live. These people not leaving the country as they declared they would is proving to be irresponsible in more ways than one."

All the individuals contacted by PreOccupied Territory who had made such pronouncements on Facebook declined to offer substantive comment, explaining that they were not in the habit of justifying themselves to the Stasi.

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.