Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, May 05, 2016

05/05 Links Pt2: In Their Own Words: An Invented Palestinian Nation; The erosion of Holocaust memory

From Ian:

The Case for Israeli Sovereignty on the Golan

The purpose of international law is to protect the international order, one in which states exist within secure and recognized borders. When the law provides no clear answers, it should be interpreted in the spirit of bolstering this international order. If the international community wishes to do this, nothing can legally stop it. The only way to bolster this international order and resolve the open question of the Golan is to recognize Israeli control over the territory.
From the Israeli perspective, this is obvious. Realistically speaking, there is no longer any incentive for Israel to return the Heights to Damascus. Until recently, some in Israel hoped to offer the Golan in order to seduce Syria away from the Iranian axis, a bold gamble to thwart Tehran’s push for regional hegemony. But with Iran emboldened by the recent nuclear deal and Syria now firmly under its domination, that possibility is foreclosed.
The process by which the world might recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Heights, however, will not be easy. The world needs not wait until the official collapse of Syria, but these scenarios may still be a way off, as the world powers resist recognizing the inevitable. Iran and Russia have every interest in maximizing Assad’s control over Syria, and would only write off the country as an absolute last resort. Recognizing breakaway states would raise uncomfortable questions about what is to be done about ISIS. And the current areas of control by various parties to the Syrian civil war do not neatly divide into separate, coherent entities that could be viable states.
But as surrounding states collapse further into a war of all against all, international recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan would be a bold statement in defense of the international order. Should the world fail to make such a statement, the Middle East could yet pay a heavy price for the world’s failure to let an anachronistic policy fall into desuetude.

Matti Friedman: The Peculiar Language of Soldiers

“We have two flowers and one oleander. We need a thistle.” Listening to the Israeli military frequencies when I was an infantryman nearly two decades ago, it was (and still is) possible to hear sentences like these, the bewildering cousins of sentences familiar to anyone following America’s present-day wars. “Vegas is in a TIC,” says a U.S. infantryman in Afghanistan in Sebastian Junger’s book War. What does it all mean?
Anyone seeking to understand the world needs to understand soldiers, but the language of soldiers tends to be bizarre and opaque, an apt symbol for the impossibility of communicating their experiences to people safe at home. The language isn’t nonsense—it means something to the soldiers, of course, but it also has something to say about the army and society to which they belong, and about the shared experience of military service anywhere. The soldiers’ vernacular must provide words for things that civilians don’t need to describe, like grades of officers and kinds of weapons. But it has deeper purposes too.
I was drafted into the Israeli army in 1997, when I was 19, having moved to Israel from Canada a few years before. I served until 2000. In those years Israel controlled a strip of Lebanese land along the Israeli border and fought a long war there with guerrillas from Hezbollah—a war which involved IEDs, videotaped hit-and-run attacks, and the wearing down of a modern military by Muslim guerrillas operating in a failed state. It was thus a prologue of sorts to the kind of warfare Americans have seen in the 21st century. (I just spent a few years writing a book about it.) When I happened to land in this conflict after high school, I found a hazardous reality described not just with the usual acronyms and numbers—“APC,” “81 mm”—and with the energetic obscenities one would expect, but with a language that seemed drawn from a horticultural handbook.

In Their Own Words: An Invented Palestinian Nation

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will begin issuing “State of Palestine” passports this year. The made-up “Palestinians” now have a made-up people and a made-up state, fly a made-up flag, and carry passports confirming the ruse.
To promote the fiction of a uniquely Palestinian indigenous population, Abbas pursues a simple strategy begun by Yasser Arafat. Disregarding Biblical, archeological and other well-substantiated facts, the Arabs have rewritten the past to deny the 3,000-year-old connection of Jews to the Land of Israel, supplanting it with a fabricated “Palestinian” narrative. They learned the Nazi lesson well — if you tell big lies and repeat them often enough, people start to believe you. You steal Jewish history and then inherit their homeland.
To promote its goal of eliminating Israel, the PA portrays modern Israelis as lacking any connections to the ancient Hebrews.
“Zionism is the invention of robbers who stole Palestine from its inhabitants… whose lies are not supported by any archeological remnants…. Israel has no right to exist…. The stories of Jewish prophets are a sick invention,” reported the PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, recently. In that same official PA newspaper, columnist Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul remarked, “Religious, historical, and even biblical facts deny any connection between the Jews and Jerusalem” or to “historic Palestine.” Fatah Commissioner Nabil Shaath stated in January, Israel is “a ‎colonialist project on our land.”
The widely accepted Jewish connection to Palestine is substantiated by the Old and New Testaments, the Quran, academic scholarship, archeological evidence, historical records and genetic genealogical research. Jews have a distinct ancient language, culture, and religion that are inextricably linked to the area. There have always been Jews in Jerusalem, a place mentioned in the Bible more than 400 times. The Quran makes no reference either to “Palestinians” or to Jerusalem.
The fabricated “Palestinian” narrative makes claims of Canaanite descent. There is neither genealogical nor genetic evidence connecting Arabs to these peoples, who ceased to exist 2,800 years ago.
There are no ancient Palestinian archaeological sites, monuments, literature, heroes, or coins and no Palestinian language. Most of the newly minted “Palestinians” are descended from Arabs migrating to the area in the early 20th century for economic reasons. Their ethnicity is common with their origins: Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese, and Saudi. As Hamas Minister Fathi Hammad recently admitted, “Brothers, half of the Palestinians are Egyptians and the other half are Saudis.”

From Middle East Eye:

Tom and Jerry cartoons and video games are behind a rising tide of violence in the Middle East, Egypt’s top intelligence agency said on Tuesday.

“[The cartoon] portrays violence in a funny manner, and gives the impression that, yes, I can hit him, and I can blow him up with explosives,” Salan Abdel Sadeq told the audience at a conference titled “The Media and the Culture of Violence,” at Cairo University.

Tom and Jerry, a popular US children’s cartoon from the 1940s, depicts a long-running slapstick battle between a cat and a mouse during which each uses increasingly outlandish methods to defeat one another.

Foreign Policy adds:

Following Sadek’s speech, Egypt’s privately owned Youm7 newspaper outlined why Tom and Jerry causes terrorism: allegedly, it acclimatizes children to bad habits, including smoking, drinking alcohol, and stealing; shows a lopsided concept of justice in which the mouse is always right; plants ideas for “sinister plans” into the impressionable minds of children; and spreads violence through its depictions of knife and ax attacks.

Don't laugh! This is not the first time that Tom and Jerry have been implicated in Middle East terror!

After all, the father (and possibly mother) of all modern terrorism, Yasir Arafat, was a big Tom and Jerry fan.

Maybe there is something to this theory.

On the other hand, over ten years ago, an Iranian professor said on Iran's official TV:

There is a cartoon that children like. They like it very much, and so do adults - Tom and Jerry.

Some say that this creation by Walt Disney will be remembered forever. The Jewish Walt Disney Company gained international fame with this cartoon. It is still shown throughout the world. This cartoon maintains its status because of the cute antics of the cat and mouse – especially the mouse.

Some say that the main reason for making this very appealing cartoon was to erase a certain derogatory term that was prevalent in Europe....Watch Schindler's List. Every Jew was forced to wear a yellow star on his clothing. The Jews were degraded and termed "dirty mice." Tom and Jerry was made in order to change the Europeans' perception of mice. One of terms used was "dirty mice."

I'd like to tell you that... It should be noted that mice are very cunning...and dirty.

No ethnic group or people operates in such a clandestine manner as the Jews.

Read the history of the Jews in Europe. This ultimately led to Hitler's hatred and resentment. As it turns out, Hitler had behind-the-scene connections with the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion].

Tom and Jerry was made in order to display the exact opposite image. If you happen to watch this cartoon tomorrow, bear in mind the points I have just raised, and watch it from this perspective. The mouse is very clever and smart. Everything he does is so cute. He kicks the poor cat's ass. Yet this cruelty does not make you despise the mouse. He looks so nice, and he is so clever... This is exactly why some say it was meant to erase this image of mice from the minds of European children, and to show that the mouse is not dirty and has these traits.

This alternate Tom and Jerry Jewish conspiracy theory was repeated by a Saudi cleric a few years later.

So how to resolve these competing theories of Tom and Jerry?

The answer is that this is just more proof that Jews must be behind ISIS, another popular Muslim theme.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Hamas continues to prepare for war. It’s a matter of when, not if.

In the news this week was a report that Israel foiled an attempt to smuggle tons of ammonium chloride into Gaza. It can be used for rockets (in the production of ammonium perchlorate, an oxidizer used in rocket fuel), but it also might be used to make explosive materials for warheads, suicide belts, and more.

It’s also speculated that Israel’s recent breakthrough in tunnel detection technology might cause Hamas to accelerate its timetable and strike soon, in order to use the already-built tunnels before they are uncovered and lost.

All this makes me think about the overall problem of Hamas and how to deal with it. The simplest approach, crushing it with military force, has the major disadvantage of placing Israel in the position of needing to govern and provide services for the hostile population on the day after. The IDF would need to dedicate a great deal of manpower to creating a true army of occupation, which doubtless would immediately be faced with a violent insurgency.

The operation would also cause a great number of civilian deaths and destruction of property in Gaza, as well as casualties to IDF troops and danger to our own population in Hamas’ increasingly expanding rocket range. It would be spun as yet another ‘disproportionate’ act.

On the other hand, the present alternative of ‘mowing the grass’ every few years has similar risks, along with the possibility of a coordinated attack from Hamas and Hezbollah and a multi-front war.

But there is another strategy that we might adopt which could achieve the desired objective of eliminating the threat with few or zero civilian or military casualties, and without the need to take control of the population. Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that Israel will choose it, and the reason is instructive.

So here is the strategy: Israel informs Hamas that if it does not turn over all of its weapons and ammunition with the exception of small arms needed for normal police operations, disband its army, provide a complete map of its tunnel system and the locations of its rocket launchers and command and control centers, we will impose a real siege on Gaza (as opposed to the limitations on military-use imports they call a siege).

We will turn off electricity, water, internet and phone service, and close the border crossings to the trucks that bring supplies.

All Hamas would need do to end the siege would be to demonstrate adherence to a timetable for meeting our demands that we will provide. It can keep its war-criminal leaders and control of the territory. In fact, if it did follow the timetable, many restrictions that are now in place (like on building materials) could be lifted.

If Hamas agrees, nobody in Gaza needs to miss one meal or one episode of Arab Idol. If it does not agree, then any resultant suffering will be entirely its fault.

This is a completely peaceful way of ending the dispute. It is a program to improve the lives of Gazans (and Israelis), and increase stability in the region. Not only that, but there is no intention to interfere with Palestinian self-rule, just to stop their aggression.

Given the fact that Israel has the military capability to turn Gaza into a depopulated wasteland, this peaceful alternative to war should be welcomed in the halls of the UN, the EU and the White House, where peace is worshipped above all.

But if we were to do this there would be howls of protest from the ‘civilized’ world (and also the less civilized part). “Collective punishment! What about the children?” And so on. Ban Ki Moon and Barack Obama would demand an immediate end to the barbaric policy. The pages of Ha’aretz would be splashed with the furious words of Amira Hass and Gideon Levy.

The 1907 Hague regulations state that “No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible.” A good argument can be made that the residents of Gaza, who overwhelmingly voted for Hamas in the last Palestinian election, are “jointly and severally responsible.”

Sieges have been a part of warfare since ancient times, although usually the results of a successful one have been tragic for the losers. In 1948, Arab forces, including the British-commanded Arab Legion, blockaded Jerusalem, cutting off supplies of food and ultimately water. The Jews of the Old City were under siege (and sniper fire) for months, until they surrendered on May 29 and were expelled from their homes. They would have been massacred by local Arabs if the Legion’s British officers hadn’t prevented it. During the 19-year illegal occupation that followed, the Jordanians repurposed synagogues as stables and desecrated Jewish graves, using headstones to pave urinals. There were no war crimes prosecutions against the Arabs.

Since then moral sensibilities have changed even further, in such a way as to empower those defined as ‘oppressed’ to violate accepted laws of war (such as the prohibition on deliberate attacks on civilians and the use of human shields), while forcing supposed ‘oppressors’ to hew to ever more strict standards of behavior. The playing field has been tilted against the West in favor of those who assume the mantle of the colonized, oppressed, “people of color.”

No group has done this better than the “Palestinians.” Nowhere has this phenomenon been more striking than in relation to Israel’s repetitive wars against terrorist militias. So it is hard to imagine that the hypocrites of the West would sit still for Israel’s use of the siege tactic against Hamas. The next round of warfare with Hamas seems unavoidable.

It’s ironic that a system intended to reduce the suffering of noncombatants in war will have the effect of making it worse.

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Bibi's Speech at Yad Vashem (text)

Last night, commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, translated to English: (Hebrew video)

Distinguished President, Reuven Rivlin, and his wife,

Distinguished guests, and first and foremost our brothers and sisters, the Holocaust survivors who lit the torches of remembrance and hope,

You moved me. My wife and I met with you in my office yesterday. You spoke from your hearts; you told us how you maintained your humanity in the most inhuman conditions; you told us how you held on to life; and how you created a new life here in Israel. It is our duty to ensure that you and all of the Holocaust survivors continue to live your lives in comfort and dignity.

Mr. President, what you said is true. We did not do enough over the years, but in the last few years we have added resources for this and we will continue to do so for one simple reason – because you deserve it. It is your right, not an act of charity. It is a debt owed to you by the State of Israel, and we will pay this debt.

A distinct message came up in our meeting. The tragedy that befell our people must never happen again. Today, in our eternal capital Jerusalem, I reiterate the commitment: There will never be another Holocaust.

What paved the way for the Holocaust? What oiled the wheels of the Nazi death machine? The answer is the lie. Nazi propaganda portrayed the Jews as the source of all evil in the world, poisoners of wells, parasites, the enemies of humanity. The defamation preceded the extermination. The Nazi regime in Germany was defeated 71 years ago, yet anti-Semitism and the lies did not die along with Hitler in his bunker. Because today, millions of people in the Muslim world read and hear horrendous fabrications about the Jewish people. They are told that Jews are the offspring of apes and pigs. They are told that Jews – and I quote – “drink the blood of their enemies in goblets.” These and other lies are spreading in social media, through means of dissemination that Hitler and Goebbels could not have even imagined.

This incitement stems from radical Islam and the Arab world, but in recent years it is joined by no less venomous incitement from the Western world. British members of parliament, Swedish high-ranking officials, French public opinion makers. I have to say that anti-Semitism today is a peculiar matchmaker –the elites who supposedly represent human progress have joined forces with the most sinister, barbaric fanatics on earth who behead people, oppress women, persecute LGBTs, destroy cultural treasures. They have teamed up to propagate the anti-Semitic virus against one target – us, against the State of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East which upholds values of progress and human dignity.

Their hostility towards Israel has long exceeded legitimate criticism, if that ever existed. This is the total rejection of a state for the Jewish people. While throughout history the anti-Semites depicted Jews as the enemies of humanity, they now present the Jewish state as the enemy of humanity. This lie has no limits.

Only two weeks ago, the UN’s UNESCO agency – and you have to hear this to believe that these things were said – the UNESCO agency resolved that the Temple Mount, Mount Moriah, is in no way linked to the Jewish people. Pay attention to what is happening here. A global organization responsible for preserving history is offhandedly rewriting a basic fact of human history. This is willful ignorance. Even worse – it is an addiction to a lie and its dissemination around the world until it is accepted as fact. This is precisely how Jew haters have acted throughout the ages.

Today they cloak the root cause of the conflict between us and the Palestinian – the refusal to recognize the State of Israel in any borders. They justify the worst violence against us. They say we are responsible for the terrorist attack in Paris. They perceive the victim as the aggressor and the aggressor as the victim.

The Nazis said that the Jews were to blame for everything. Present-day anti-Semites say that Israel is to blame for everything. Many of the fathers of Zionism believed that the source of this perverse hatred of the Jews is our people’s unique circumstance whereby we were homeless and dispersed among the nations. They hoped, and many of them believed, that if the Jews had a state of their own, this hatred towards them would pass from the world.

Distinguished guests, regrettably reality demonstrates that this optimistic assumption of the fathers of Zionism was clearly mistaken. There were those who once thought that Zionism was the cure for anti-Semitism, and today there are those who believe that Zionism is the reason for anti-Semitism. They are also wrong.

The hatred of Jews draws on many and ancient sources, and it will not pass from the world easily. We must do three things to fight it: fight the lie, boost our strength and build our country. There is only one way to fight a lie, and that is to disprove the falsehood and spread the truth. Truth means insisting on historical facts starting with the deep attachment of our people to our country. Truth means denunciating the double standard applied to the State of Israel and only to the State of Israel. We must mobilize to spread the truth with the same fervor as our enemies mobilize to spread the lie.

We must all join this battle. And here is another fact: in today’s virtual world, it is easy to use the most advanced technology to spread the most ancient hatred. But the same technology can be used to spread the truth too, and this technology can be found in the pockets of each and every one of you. All of you have the electronic device needed to spread the truth in your pockets and in your homes. Many Jews are already doing this in Israel and around the world, and I call on you, members of modern humanity, to join us in our efforts to ward off the lies. Because, as Herzl predicted and as the rise of Nazism proved, anti-Semitism is disastrous for the Jews, but will eventually wreak havoc on all humanity, and therefore we must all fight it.

While we fight for the truth, we must also continue to build our defenses. Because even if we cannot eradicate this hatred of the Jews, we can curb the murderous attacks on us, and to this end we are diligently enhancing our military might. For many generations we were like a driven leaf, powerless, defenseless, but that is no longer the case.

The IDF is one of the strongest armies in the world, not only because of the tanks, planes, submarines and cyber, but largely because of the courage of our soldiers. Here they stand before us, and with them, standing shoulder to shoulder are all of our defense forces – the police, the Shin Bet, Mossad. They are inspired by the Jews who fought the Nazis in the allied forces, in the ghettoes, the camps and the woods.

We have learned the lesson. We do not ignore those who call for our destruction and we are not deterred by them. There are those who choose to overlook the intentions of Iran, who etches on its missiles “Israel must be wiped out,” and holds Holocaust-denial contests. These days they have a Holocaust-denial cartoon competition. Is there anything more depraved than that? We do not ignore this. Some are willing to accept Iran having nuclear weapons, but we do not and will not. Anyone planning our annihilation should know that the State of Israel is very strong. We have strong defense, offence and deterrence capabilities. The bitter enemy will no longer dwell securely; Yehudah will now dwell securely. In addition to refuting the lies and augmenting our strength we must continue to build our country, and we continue to develop Israel by leaps and bounds.

In the 68 years of Israel’s independence, Israel’s population has multiplied by ten and its economy by one hundred. We have absorbed millions of immigrants from 70 Diaspora communities. We are laying foundations, putting down tracks, breaking new frontiers in science, technology, culture, art, in every field. Israel is the definitive testament to the creative spirit and the life that beats in the hearts of the Jews. We all draw inspiration from this spirit that exists in you, the Holocaust survivors. You, who witnessed the Nazi horrors, are living testaments of the light that broke through the cracks of the darkness of death. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren walk among us tall and proud, and like you, contribute to the country’s security, development and prosperity.

The prophet Isaiah promised to give unto the mourners of Zion splendor instead of ashes. And that is the essence of Israel’s rebirth – splendor instead of ashes. More than anything else, the flourishing State of Israel signifies the triumph of light over darkness, life over death and truth over lies.

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05/05 Links Pt1: PA: Jews persecuted, deceived, and attacked Jesus; Like It Or Not, The U.S. Is At War

From Ian:

PA Antisemitism: Jews persecuted, deceived, and attacked Jesus

Antisemitism is an integral part of PA ideology. PA anti-Jewish hate speech includes demonizing Jews as enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs, representing satans and devils, and being an evil force in all countries where Jews have lived.
In addition, the PA maligns Jews as the killers of Jesus. In an interview this week on official PA TV, the PA Mufti of Bethlehem defamed Jews as "the group who persecuted, deceived and attacked Jesus," stating that the group is doing the same things to Palestinians today:
Mufti of Bethlehem Abd Al-Majid Amraneh: "Here in Bethlehem and Palestine, we are still suffering from the agony of those days, as almost the same group [Jews] that persecuted Jesus, the same group that wanted to deceive Jesus and attack him, is still attacking Palestine, Palestine's people, and Palestine's young men and women." [Official PA TV, May 2, 2016]

Mufti: “The same group [Jews] that wanted to deceive Jesus... is still attacking Palestine”

Israel arrested Hamas tunnel expert, Shin Bet reveals

Israeli authorities arrested a Hamas member last month who provided a trove of information about the Gaza-based terror group’s tunnel activities, the Shin Bet security agency revealed on Thursday.
Mahmoud Atawnah, 29, from the city of Jabalia in the Palestinian enclave, was arrested at the beginning of April after crossing the border fence into Israel armed with two knives, the Shin Bet said in a statement, adding that he disclosed during interrogation that he intended to kill the first Israeli — soldier or civilian — he encountered.
As a member of Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Atawnah provided the Shin Bet with information on tunnel routes in northern Gaza, the group’s use of private homes and institutions to hide tunnel entries and transfer weapons, and details about the materials Hamas uses in excavations.
The security agency further said Atawneh described a sophisticated network of tunnels which includes break rooms, showers and dining tables, and divulged a number of names of Hamas members who fought alongside him in the northern branch of the eastern brigade in Hamas’s armed wing.

IDF uncovers new Hamas attack tunnel

The IDF uncovered a cross-border Hamas attack tunnel stretching from southern Gaza into Israel on Thursday.
A senior security source said that by Thursday morning, "We understood that we had located a tunnel. We are working in all areas, and have a number of focal points. In accordance with technological, operational, and intelligence efforts, we are improving all of the time. This has led us to focus in on certain areas, near the perimeter."
The source, describing the search process, added, "In places we understood that the focal points were incorrect, we left. In other areas, we thought we needed to continue. A number of hours ago, we found the tunnel." The IDF estimates the tunnel to be around 30 meters deep underground.
The IDF source said it did not know if the tunnel was dug before 2014's Operation Protective Edge or after it. The source said the tunnel is in "reasonable condition," adding that sections of it may have been added after 2014. "We will investigate it and then destroy it," he stated.

Tlemcen synagogue

Algerian news site El Khabar reports that the government is not allowing French Jews to come on an annual pilgrimage to visit the gravesite of a 15th century rabbi.

Rabbi Ephraim ben Israel Alnaqua was a legendary spiritual leader and physician who escaped Spain (according to legend) and settled in Tlemcen, Algeria. The synagogue he established there was still there as of 1906, according to the Jewish Encyclopedia.

Since Algerian independence there have been a number of visits by Jews to the Jewish cemetery in Tlemcen (the rabbi is buried nearby). Some of the visits have been done under the radar but some publicly, including a 250-strong delegation in 2005.

These pilgrims are not from Israel. They are French Jews whose ancestors lived in Algeria. But the Algerian government is banning them from visiting.

I'm sure it is because of "occupation."

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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From OurPassports.com:

By early 1940 Europe was in war: Poland has been conquered, and Germany with Russia where jointly controlling the country. Anyone who did not manage to escape east, into Romania, Hungary or the Baltic states was caught. No way out was seen. Hope was gone.

By this time, there were those who were lucky enough to have done just that: thousands found refuge in neighboring Bucharest and Budapest and also far up north, in Lithuania, Kaunas. This was the location of a very rich and traditional old Jewish community and now, a refuge for hundreds and even several thousand refugees, the lucky ones who managed to cross the border before it was shut tight.

As the days went by it was becoming clearer that the situation would not remain safe for long. With both German and Russian soldiers massing up on the borders of the tiny small country, all feared the worst. All began to anticipate the inevitable: the possibility of conquest and invasion into still safe Kaunas. And this was the case: On June 15th the Soviet army invaded. They were trapped.

During this year, several diplomats who were stationed in the city did the unthinkable and went even against the orders of their superiors: they issued life saving visas to hundreds and several thousand Jews and other refugees. Such actions even put their own life at risk, yet, they did so without thinking twice: Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara and Dutch representative Jan Zwartendijk.

Some though managed to obtain other means to flee occupied Lithuania as the holder of this set of documents here did: JOEL BLUMENCWAJG, a young man, obtained the rare “War Refugee Certificate” from the Lithuanian Ministry of Interior, the” Commissioner for War refugees”. The document was translated into French by the well-known Lithuanian dignitary Vladas Daumantas, then acting Kaunas County Court jury translator, who had a rich contribution to the founding of the country after World War One. The certificate was obtained prior to the occupation but put into use afterwards. Young Joel, who found refuge in the small town of Tauragė, transited through Moscow, Turkey & Syria to arrive safely into British Palestine on March 15th, 1941, after crossing the border checkpoint at Nakoura.

Not many where as lucky as he was. Following operation Barbarossa on June 1941, thousands upon thousands were shot in make shift ditches and graves throughout the Baltic States, what would later be the beginning of the end for European Jews: the mass execution of complete communities began following the invasion of the Soviet Union and would not stop until 1945.

Now, on Holocaust Memorial Day, Fatah reproduces this document to delegitimize the Jewish state by saying "This important document proves that the British colonized the land of historical Palestine."

It is a variant of a stupid argument that we have seen (and made fun of) before, that any mention of Palestine before 1948 proves that it was an Arab state of sorts, when in fact the vast majority of mentions of the term in historic literature refers to Jewish history in the area.

And it proves that nothing is beneath the terrorists of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party.

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"Women in Parliaments" complicit in excluding Israel from forum in Jordan

Yesterday I wrote about how the Women in Parliaments Global Forum is being held in Amman, Jordan - and Israel has been banned from attending because of Jordanian bigotry.

I wondered how involved the Women in Parliaments Forum was in this, and it appears that they were fully complicit.

Here's one of their posters advertising the event from a month ago:

Even then, Israel was not included on the map:

What makes this all the more remarkable, and repugnant, is that Israel has been a big booster of the WIP.

I mentioned that in 2013, Israel won an award from WIP, and Israeli Chief Justice Daphne Barak-Erez gave a speech.

In 2015, another of WIP's conferences was held in Jerusalem, Israel.

Their Leadership webpage features a quote from Binyamin Netanyahu.

But this year these women, who pretend to be working for noble causes, allowed themselves to be complicit in excluding an entire nation because Jordan's bigotry.

The idea that a group of people who have been historically marginalized was so quick to do the same to another group of historically marginalized people is simply sickening.

An apparent attendee sent me this ironic tweet:

Now discussing "women as active agents of peace" and "bringing everyone to the table" #wipsummit2016 @elderofziyon https://t.co/bEYtINNLiu
— Charlotte Burow (@charlotteburow) May 5, 2016

This was corroborated by other tweeters at the summit:

Why are we only inviting those who hold the guns? we need to invite #women to the table in #peace negotiations @AUBinetaDiop #resolution1325
— OECD Livestream (@OECDlive) May 5, 2016

Write to the sponsors of the event - including Microsoft, Merck, Salesforce, Facebook and E&Y - and ask them whether they support excluding Israel from this forum.

Some links to get you started:

Microsoft rrt@we-worldwide.com
Merck media.relations@emdgroup.com
EY contact page, also on Twitter @EY_GovtPublic @EY_MENA and @EY_Jordan

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05/04 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: Hatred of Israel and Jews can’t be separated; The Holocaust Without Jews

From Ian:

Netanyahu vows: There will not be a second Holocaust

Each year, Israel stops for one day to remember the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and to tell the stories of the survivors.
On Wednesday, the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, there will be a state memorial ceremony at Warsaw Ghetto Square at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. President Reuven Rivlin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will both speak at the ceremony, where Holocaust survivors will light six torches as part of the memorial service.
A Knesset memorial ceremony titled "Every Person Has a Name" is set for Thursday. During the ceremony, which will be held in the Chagall Lounge, Knesset members will read out the names of the Jews who were killed in the Holocaust. Rivlin, Netanyahu, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein and Supreme Court President Justice Miriam Naor will all be present for the ceremony.

The Holocaust Without Jews

On Thursday, Israel will mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom HaShoah. As has been the custom for over six decades, a 2-minute air raid siren will be blared across the entire country and citizens from all walks of life will interrupt their daily routines for a moment of solemn reflection. Jan. 27 of this year also marked the decade anniversary of the United Nations-designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which member states are encouraged to commemorate. Though an Israeli initiative, International Holocaust Remembrance Day has gradually been subjected to the universalizing prescriptions of those who would water down the particularly Jewish aspect of the Nazi extermination of the Jews.
The evolution of two different days of Holocaust commemoration and the ways they increasingly run counter to each other are symptomatic of the seizure of Jewish history and suffering for ulterior purposes. This victim displacement appropriates the most traumatic experience in Jewish history, pointedly erases the specificity of the events supposedly being commemorated, and then harshly chides Jews for inserting their own particularistic concerns into the discussion. At a certain point, these phenomena become a continuation of a specific form of oppression and erasure rather an antidote to “hatred.”
Imagine a remembrance of slavery that did not acknowledge the suffering of African-Americans—or a commemoration of the AIDS epidemic omitting the experiences of gay men. Such acts of dissociation would be inconceivable, the subjects of rightful denunciations and outraged protests. Yet in recent years, that is precisely what has been going on with regard to the Holocaust and its chief victims, the Jews. Last month, Britain’s National Union of Students (NUS)—which claims to represent some 7 million students across 600 campuses—debated whether it should even commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day. That this was a subject for argument is absurd enough; the actual proceedings were scandalous. “Of course there shouldn’t be anti-Semitism,” said a student speaking against the measure, offering the sort of throat-clearing assertion from which anti-Semitism almost inevitably follows. “But it’s not about one set of people.”

How Holocaust Denial Shaped Mahmoud Abbas’ Worldview

Global leaders hope that the longtime president of the Palestinian Authority can reach a peace agreement with the Jewish state. But his historical beliefs about Israel’s founding—and the Zionist movement’s alleged complicity in the murder of millions of Jews—may call that into question.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry posted a video on YouTube last December in which it accused the Palestinian Authority of using Nazi propaganda against Israel. The video shows racist caricatures created by Goebbels and Hitler in the 1930s and ‘40s that are now used by the Palestinians to incite terrorism against Jews and attack the legitimacy of the state of Israel.
The images presented in the video are horrifying, but this is by no means the first time the Palestinians have used Nazi propaganda against Jews and Israel. Palestinian and Arab media in general are saturated with anti-Semitic images, conspiracy theories, and libels. The Palestinians regularly downplay the significance of the Holocaust and sometimes deny it ever happened at all. When they do admit it, they blame it on the Jews themselves.
This anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial comes from the top. Although it is either unknown or denied in the West, PA President Mahmoud Abbas is profoundly fascinated by Nazi propaganda and has employed it in his own writings, particularly in his doctoral dissertation on the subject of the Holocaust, “The Other Face: The Secret Connections Between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement,” which he wrote in Moscow in 1982. Two years later, Abbas published a book based on his dissertation. It is written in Arabic and, tellingly, has never been translated into any other language.
There is a reason for this: The book is inspired by and based on the work of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust. While he was a fugitive in Argentina, Eichmann formulated and disseminated Nazi propaganda according to which the Holocaust was a Jewish-Nazi conspiracy that sacrificed Jewish lives in order to create a Jewish state in Palestine. In his book, Abbas adopts this worldview wholesale, and the result is the subject of this article, which is, I believe, the first in-depth examination of the book to appear in English.

Nazi Propaganda returns in Palestinian incitement

El Bashayar of Egypt has an article that starts out asking, "Many Arabs and Muslims from around the world are talking about the control by the Jews on the world economy and their control of major countries' policies. Is this talk about the physical reality of the evidence, or just conspiracy theories to justify the defeat of the Arabs and Muslims in today's time?"

Very quickly its readers learn the answer: Of course Jews control the world! The Rothschilds are worth as much as $500 trillion, seven times the budgets of the nations of the world combined! They were behind the Kennedy - and Lincoln! - assassinations!

And it isn't only the Rothschilds. Look at Sergei Brin and Andy Grove (who just passed away) and Larry Ellison and Michael Dell! Look at the heads of all the major media organizations!

Good to know that they could prove definitively that their own inadequacies are not the reason that Arab nations are backward and far behind the West in every important metric. They can safely blame the Jews and go on with their lives.

Thank Allah for giving them such a great scapegoat.

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Iran To Let Women Choose How Many Men Gang-Rape Them To Death (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tehran, May 4 - In a move aimed at making the country and society more progressive, the government of Iran announced this morning it would implement new sentencing guidelines for women convicted of capital crimes such as marital infidelity, and henceforth would allow those women to select the specific number of men who would perform the mandated fatal gang-rape.

In a ruling issued by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, since normal, progressive countries naturally have positions with such a title, the government decreed today that as of Wednesday at 1 PM local time, any capital punishment meted out against women would be preceded by a procedure in which the woman chooses a number between fifteen and thirty. That number will then determine the number of court-appointed men who will repeatedly force themselves upon her and beat her until she expires.

Representatives of the Ayatollah touted the progressive nature of the new procedure. "No other nation in the region allows a convicted criminal to choose the method of punishment," boasted Saad Isti. "Not even the supposedly enlightened, liberal countries of Europe have a law such as this one. It is yet another demonstration that when it comes to actual progressiveness and openness, the West is all talk and no action." He added that Israel, ostensibly a bastion of morality in a sea of backwardness, would never dream of instituting such a liberal policy.

Legal experts explained the range of gang-rapist/executioner numbers in practical terms. "Ideally, the condemned woman would be able to pick any number, but beyond the obvious logistical and space considerations, there's simple efficacy," said Shau Vinisti, who writes about legal affairs for the Tehran Times. "Pick too low a number and the executioners will wear themselves out before the criminal is dead. Too high a number and, aside from crowding, some of the men will be unfairly left out. The new procedure as it is, I think, strikes an elegant balance between giving the condemned some freedom of choice and ensuring the mandated outcome."

Isti said that if the program shows promise, other capital criminals will similarly be permitted to make choices regarding the specifics of their punishment. Homosexuals, for example, instead of simply being hanged from cranes, will be given the choice of what crane manufacturer will have the honor of providing the equipment. Additionally, the Jewish community in Iran will be allowed to choose between the ever-present threat of persecution if the slightest hint of Zionism creeps into their behavior and the ever-present threat of government-sanctioned massacres for any reason whatsoever.

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05/04 Links Pt1: The West’s Blind Eye to Abbas’ Corrupt Dictatorship; How Western ideology empowers the jihad

From Ian:

PMW: Abbas confirms that the PA is still paying salaries to terrorists

Last week, during a debate in Norwegian parliament about the implications of Palestinian Media Watch's report "The PA's Billion Dollar Fraud," the Norwegian Foreign Minister promised to put pressure on Mahmoud Abbas at their meeting this week to stop paying salaries to terrorists. PMW's report shows that despite assurances that it had stopped paying salaries to terrorists, the PA continues to pay them, just by a circuitous route via the PLO.
In the Norwegian minister's meeting with Abbas today, according to the Norwegian daily Dagen, when Abbas was confronted with PMW's charge that the PA was still paying salaries to terrorists in prison, Abbas did not deny that the PA still funds salary payments to prisoners. Rather he confirmed that the salaries are still being paid, when he assured the Norwegian Foreign Minister that these salaries are just not paid with Norwegian money.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Brende:
"'In the meeting, I emphasized that this support program in which financial payments are increased the [longer] the prisoners serve time [in prison], is unacceptable and should be abolished. I emphasized that with the political and economic challenges that Palestinians now face, it is in their own best interest to abolish this program,' says [FM] Brende.
Abbas responded by repeating assurances that Norwegian funds are not going to finance the program." [Dagen (Norway), May 4, 2016]
PMW's new report exposes that the PA has been lying to donor countries since 2014 when they claimed that the PLO took over paying terrorists' salaries with money that did not come from the donor-supported PA budget. Today's confirmation by Abbas that the salaries continue to be paid - just not with Norwegian money - is a confirmation of PMW's main charge in the report that Abbas created the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs solely for the purpose of deceiving the donor countries, and that the salaries are still financed by the PA. Were it not so, Abbas would simply have denied that the PA is connected in any way to the terrorist salaries.

PMW salary report leads Congressman to condemn PA salary rewards to terrorists

Congressman Ed Royce: "The donor community is helping the PA basically pay people to slay other people. So here is my point. I want us to use our considerable leverage to end that practice. And second, I would really like the European community in our dialogue with them to fully comprehend what's going on in this process of the [PA’s] inducements of paying people to get them to go out and slay other human beings. Can you do that? ..."
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Anne Patterson: "None of our money goes to this. It's not fungible in that respect. Our money goes essentially to pay PA debts to Israel and to other creditors. So the budget reliefs, the budget support [from the US] that you see in the budget, goes to creditors and cannot be diverted to these stipends."
Congressman Ed Royce: "But the reality is that the donor community is coming together internationally to fund the PA... Since the donor community is putting money into that pot in order - in one way or the other - to help the Palestinian people - regardless how we perceive it - we have to use our leverage to cut this out. And now is the time to do it..."
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Anne Patterson: "Mr. Chairman, rest assured that this will be a subject of discussion with the rest of the donor community. We see Europeans and other donors all the time and rest assured your points will be conveyed with our full concurrence."[House Foreign Affairs Committe YouTube Channel, April 13, 2016]

Expert: West’s Blind Eye to Abbas’ Corrupt Dictatorship is Undermining Palestinian Statehood

The West’s refusal to challenge the growing corruption and autocratic rule of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas “could have a devastating effect on the long- prospects for a viable Palestinian state,” Grant Rumley, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote Monday in Newsweek.
As long as Abbas continues security cooperation with Israel and “pay[s] lip service to the moribund peace process,” Western leaders will not pressure him to change, Rumley observed. He added Abbas “has tested the limits of Western leniency” since the end of the American-sponsored talks two years ago, which Abbas himself torpedoed.
Rumley raised concerns that Abbas, who is in the 11th year of a four-year term, is becoming increasingly dictatorial. Last month, Abbas established a new constitutional court, all of whose members are picked by Abbas, “that would, naturally, confirm his own presidential decrees,” Rumley wrote. When a Palestinian legislator accused an Abbas ally of corruption in March, Abbas issued a warrant for her arrest.
When teachers launched an unprecedented strike over the PA’s broken promises to raise their wages, the PA set up roadblocks to prevent the teachers from marching on Ramallah, arrested the leaders of the teachers’ union, and threatened legal action unless they returned to work. The crackdown prompted one Palestinian journalist to write that the PA “really should not continue to exist.” And a recent report from a Palestinian NGO found that in 2015, 60 percent of the nearly 200 violations of press freedom in Palestinian territories occurred in the PA-governed West Bank, with only 40 percent occurring in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Vic Rosenthal: How Western ideology empowers the jihad

In recent years, although the great power struggle between Russia and the West remains in an attenuated form, a new source of conflict has appeared: the decentralized Islamic jihad, aimed to expand dar al Islam at the expense of the rest of the world.
Much has been written about possible reasons for the newfound aggressiveness of Muslims in confronting the West. But the explanation is not to be found in any new Islamic doctrines.
Islam was always expansionist and confrontational. What has changed is us. In the past, the West didn’t hesitate to employ its vast military superiority when confronting a less-capable adversary. This was understood by everyone. The forces of jihad were deterred from attacking us.
But now, like Israel, the West finds itself concerned that using our power would abrogate the essential human rights of its adversaries – defined as People of Color – while ‘white’ nations have no rights. We are allowed to protect individuals, but not nations or cultures. Defined as the ‘racist oppressor’, we have no right to object to their racism, while they are permitted to ‘resist oppression’ with violence.
As a result, the jihad continues to press forward on multiple fronts and the West retreats, paralyzed by its ideology and unable to use its power.