Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, May 06, 2016

05/06 Links Pt2: Collier: Israel. The two-stage solution; Videos from Mark Regev and Pat Condell!

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: More than is absolutely necessary

Corbyn’s moves to discipline Shah, Livingstone and an additional 50 party members for their expressions of anti-Jewish bigotry also indicate that he has no intention of fighting anti-Semitism.
Corbyn suspended their party membership. He didn’t expel them from the party. He didn’t bar them from serving in leadership positions in the future. The duration of their suspensions is undefined.
And there is little reason to believe that it will extend beyond the headlines. Once this story is forgotten, they will likely be reinstated.
When London residents set out to vote for their next mayor on Thursday morning, it worked out that polling places in north London, home to the largest concentration of Jews in the city, were sent the wrong voter lists. As a result, hundreds of people, including Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his wife, Valerie, were prohibited from voting.
All the relevant authorities insisted that it was simply a technical mistake. Two-and-a-half hours later, the proper voter rolls arrived and residents were permitted to vote.
Maybe they were telling the truth.
But with Britain’s second largest party, the largest party in London, embracing Jew-hatred and deliberately undermining the ability of British Jewry to freely defend its Zionist values, there is no reason to take their statements at face value.

Pat Condell: I Vote Against You - Israel 3:10 - (h/t Yenta Press)

Anne Bayefsky: The UN on Holocaust Remembrance Day: Where's the 'never' in the 'never again'?

Thursday, May 5 is Holocaust Remembrance Day or “Yom Hashoah,” an occasion to remember and mourn the unique horror that resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews including one million children – unfathomable numbers that still shock the conscience of humankind. Except at the United Nations. Though the UN was built on the ashes of the Jewish people, in our time this organization plays a disturbing role in advancing antisemitism.
Antisemitism works in many ways. Devotees deny or minimize its very existence. Instead, they appropriate the suffering of their targets and invert the genuine victim and the actual perpetrator. The U.N. of the 21st century does all of this.
On April 27, 2016, the Palestinian’s UN representative Riyadh Mansour, held a press conference at UN headquarters in New York.
He said: “If you throw a stone…if you throw it at a moving car of the army or the terrorist settlers, they send you to jail for 20 years, and yet their representative in the Security Council…he paints them as terrorists. Guess what. All colonizers, all occupiers including those who suppressed the Warsaw uprising labelled those who were resisting them as terrorists.”
Jewish victims of Palestinian rock-throwers have been maimed for life with catastrophic brain injuries or have died as their cars careened out of control. According to the Palestinian spokesman, however, Israelis are like Nazis and Palestinians are their victims.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has been asked to condemn Mansour’s comments and to remove them from the UN website where they are now broadcast around the world 24/7 – because, for starters, these comments contradict the essence of the U.N. Charter. But the Secretary-General has refused to do so.

The beginning and ending of a story in the Egyptian Vetogate news site:

Israel is currently celebrating the anniversary of the alleged "Holocaust", and as is the case every year Tel Aviv exploits this occasion for the prosecution of anti-Semitism to justify the crimes that violate the right of unarmed Palestinians. ...The Holocaust, according to the Israeli claim, is the memory of the six million Jews killed in World War II by the Nazis and their collaborators. Israel has exploited this lie on a large scale as a means of blackmail, political and material gain, and they inflate and dramatize the subject, using the most despicable types of intellectual and physical terrorism against those who counter their myths and historical lies.

...Seventy years have passed while Israel uses the Holocaust, relying on lies, to convince the world that Jews were burned in the gas chambers at the hands of "Adolf Hitler", so that they may gain international sympathy to bring them more gains.

Vetogate is the 14th most popular site in Egypt, and in the top 1000 websites in the world, with an estimated 1.2 million views daily.

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 tweeted this week:

In #Lebanon, our Legal Aid Unit provides services to help improve the situation of #Palestine #refugees. pic.twitter.com/7VWzK1VYEk
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) April 30, 2016

It is certainly true that Palestinians in Lebanon are living in squalor and treated like dirt by the government. Plus they are exposed to regular outbreaks of violence between various factions in the camps. They cannot move away from the overcrowded camps and they cannot build new buildings within the camps.

There are only two ways out for them.

One is to leave and go to Europe or Gulf states - and over 200,000 of them have done exactly that, even though UNRWA still counts them as being "registered" in Lebanon so they can raise more money. (UNRWA doesn't have a way to un-register Palestinians.)

The other chance is for them to become Lebanese citizens so they can gain full rights.

If a Palestinian can prove that his or her paternal ancestors were Lebanese citizens in 1921, and then further prove that they are not a danger to Lebanon (and Lebanon suspects all Palestinians of being dangerous), then they can become citizens.

This is a very difficult task. Even though many of them are descendants of people who lived in Lebanon a hundred years ago (the reason so many fled in 1948 to Lebanon is because their families were still there) it takes time and money to prove that one is really Lebanese to the satisfaction of the Lebanese authorities.

To do this, Palestinians in Lebanon need lawyers.

But does UNRWA provide legal services for that purpose?

Of course not. Because UNRWA doesn't exist to actually help so-called "refugees" become citizens of their host countries, but to keep them and their descendants refugees forever, or until Israel is destroyed, whichever comes first.

UNRWA indeed provides legal services that are needed by Palestinians whose few rights in Lebanon are always being reduced, to the absolute silence of the Arab world and Palestinian leadership. But the one service that could solve the problems of thousands of these so-called "refugees" whose great-grandfathers lived in Lebanon is not provided.

Imagine what a great investment it would be to provide those legal services. For probably the cost of feeding and housing a Palestinian for a couple of years, they could get off the dole and have jobs and rights. Everyone would win.

Except for UNRWA and the many others who are vested in the idea of keeping Palestinians miserable and teaching them it is all Israel's fault.

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.

05/06 Links Pt1: UNESCO Temple Mount Resolution Worse Than Holocaust Denial; In Whose Name Does Hamas Dig?

From Ian:

Christian Zionist Leader: UNESCO Temple Mount Resolution Worse Than Holocaust Denial

In honor of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, leading pro-Israeli Christian groups are heading to the United Nations to condemn UNESCO’s effort to deny Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, calling it “tantamount to Holocaust denial.”
Laurie Cardoza-Moore, Special UN Envoy for the World Council of Independent Christian Churches (WCICC) and President of Proclaiming Justice to The Nations (PJTN), slammed UNESCO for only recognizing the Temple Mount -Judaism’s holiest site – as a Muslim holy site.
“Denying the Jewish people’s connection to the Temple Mount is tantamount to denying the existence of the Jewish people and is therefore even more grave than Holocaust denial,” Cardoza-Moore said.
The controversial resolution refers to what is arguably the most contested spot in the Middle East only by it’s Arabic name, Haram al-Sharif.
Cardoza-Moore, whose organization represents more than 40 million Evangelical Christians worldwide, called on UNESCO to condemn the Jordanian Waqf’s strategic and deliberate destruction of ancient Jewish artifacts on the Temple Mount for the past decade for what she avers is a blatant attempt to erase Jewish history.
“This message is particularly important on Holocaust Remembrance Day, because we cannot afford to standby as Jewish history is publicly denied by an organization of the United Nations,” she said.
Cardoza-Moore also warned that by denying the connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount, UNESCO is undermining its own stated mission which is “to contribute to the building of peace,” as its denial increases violence and violates the human rights of Jews and Christians who support the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and all Israel.
UNESCO’s denial of Jewish heritage also breaches its obligations to promote religious tolerance, she added.
“Christians recognize the historic Jewish connection to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and all of the ancient biblical sites in Israel. Christians also recognize that if we do not defend Israel’s biblical and historic connection to the Land, Christians will ultimately lose their historic connection as well,” said Cardoza-Moore.

Douglas Murray: How Recep Erdogan became the most powerful man in Europe

Update: Since this article was published Ahmet Davutoglu has resigned as Turkey’s Prime Minister. Reports suggest this comes as a result of a rift with President Erdogan caused by the increasingly ‘Presidential’ nature of Turkey’s politics.
Is Turkey part of Europe? For most of our civilisation’s history, to have even asked such a question would have been to invite derision. The Ottomans were kept out of Europe not by some early-onset prejudice, but by the armies of Europe having to beat back their repeated invasions. The question became slightly more plausible a century ago with the rise of Ataturk and the modern Turkish state (one of the only successful efforts to reconcile the Islamic religion with state power). For a brief period around the turn of the millennium, some serious people (including the British government) supported Turkey joining the EU.
But today, the question has become academic — first because Turkey’s liberal trajectory long ago halted and began rolling backwards. And secondly because the country is now coming into Europe anyway. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, has persuaded the EU to grant visa-free travel to his 75 million countrymen inside Europe’s passport-free Schengen area. In so doing, he has made more progress than any of his predecessors. Using a combination of intimidation, threats and blackmail, he has succeeded in opening wide the doors of Europe.
Erdogan’s success matters, because it says much about the EU — and the idea that it exerts ‘soft power’. This was the theory in 1999 when the EU declared Turkey to be ‘a candidate State, destined to join the Union’ so long as it fulfilled the standard criteria for membership. Its state should have ‘achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities’. Four years later, the EU announced that Turkey had ‘taken important steps’ to ensure effective implementation, particularly in allowing Turkish citizens to ‘enjoy fundamental freedoms and human rights in line with European standards’.

Turkish PM’s Resignation Casts Shadow on Israel Reconciliation

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday announced that he will resign from his post, opening up the possibility for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to solidify and consolidate his power, and placing a question mark on a possible reconciliation between Turkey and Israel.
“We thought that we would have a four-year relationship,” Davutoglu said. “That this lasted shorter is, rest assured, not of my choosing, but because of necessities that have emerged.”
The upheaval in Turkey’s government seems to be the result of a failure of the two highest ranking leaders to resolve ongoing disputes, which has culminated in intense “crisis talks” on Wednesday. Haaretz reported that Davutoglu has not strongly supported the presidential system that Erdogan wants in order to strengthen his power in lieu of the current parliamentary system. Erdogan has also opposed resuming reconciliation talks with Kurdish rebels in Turkey, while the prime minister was open to the idea if the rebels were willing to withdraw fighters from Turkey.
Davutoglu, who was known as Erdogan’s more moderate counterpart, recently also announced that the reconciliation process with Israel had advanced greatly, saying an agreement would be reached if Israel agreed to resolve the electricity and water crises in Gaza. With his exit the future of the reconciliation is not clear. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will hold an emergency convention later this month to choose a new party leader who will replace the prime minister, likely someone loyal to Erdogan who wants to centralize government control.

Another lie by "academic" Noura Erakat (UPDATE)

It's been less than a week since we saw an absolute lie from Noura Erakat, who teaches law at George Mason University and has taught at Georgetown and Temple U as well, according to her webpage.

Here's her latest:

While her last lie came from her quoting a thoroughly unreliable source, this one she made up from scratch.

Literally no one, even the most vehement anti-Israel sources, claim that Israel killed 100 members of the Samouni family in the 2008-2009 Gaza war.

The event she is referring to happened in January 2009. For reasons that are unclear, Israel bombed a house with over 20 members of the Samouni family after they were told to go there by Israeli forces.

One of the Samouni "civilians" killed

Several members of the Samouni family were Islamic Jihad Al Quds Force members, and Arabic sources at the time of the battle in Zaytoun bragged that their fighters barricaded themselves in civilian houses before attacking Israeli soldiers.

It seems unlikely that the Israelis who ordered the airstrike were aware of the number of civilians in the house; UAV images indicated that there were armed fighters in the house and the order was given to bomb it but there doesn't seem to have been proper communications with the ground forces who gathered the family into the house to begin with. There was active fighting in the neighborhood at the time.

Regardless, Erakat is wrong on the date, overtly lying about the casualties, and ignoring the fact that there were valid military targets in the house.

If she lies so easily in public where she can be fact-checked, imagine how much she lies to her students in private!

UPDATE: In response to my calling her out on her lies, Erakat tweeted

As a critical thinker/scholar I create space for the narrative of the oppressed & scrutinize the history written by the powerful #Gaza
— Noura Erakat (@4noura) May 6, 2016

And then tweeted (twice)

Tho the lives of marginalized communities are fit 4 fiction, our truth speaks 4 itself. We see u & ourselves w/o blinders. #PrivilegeBubbles
— Noura Erakat (@4noura) May 6, 2016

It's really funny how things that might sound intelligent in the university environment look so stupid when taken out of that bubble.

Of course there are different ways of looking at events, but Erakat is justifying making up facts to "create space for the narrative of the oppressed."

And if she needs to lie to support her narrative, it is probably because the truth doesn't do a good enough job for her purposes.

Which means that what she calls "narrative" is more accurately characterized as "propaganda."

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.

An attendee at the Women in Parliament Global Forum in Amman, Jordan, reported to me some details from within after reading my posts about how Jordan banned any Israeli participation - and how the organizers were complicit with this discrimination.

One of the welcoming speeches came from the head of the Jordanian House of Representatives, Atef Tarawneh, the person who bragged to the Arabic media to begin with that Israel was forbidden to attend the summit held at his parliament. In his speech he discussed his country's challenges, saying that Jordan is facing terrorists at all borders: in Syria in the north, Iraq in the East and "Zionist terrorists who occupied Palestine" in the West. The translator, however, changed his words and just said something like "and Israel to the West." (That speech is unfortunately not archived at the WIP Facebook page.)

Delegates at the conference had no idea that Israel was banned from attending and were surprised by its absence. (The US did not attend but I don't think it has ever participated.)

The Palestinian representative tried to give a speech against Israel during a Q&A on the first day, but was cut off by the moderator and was not allowed to speak on the second day.

My correspondent asked Alexandra Rosen, the head of WIP, about the Israel ban. She said that she couldn't comment but the communications manager would get back to her. So far, there has been no word, and it seems likely that she was blowing her off.

The project manager for the event, when asked about the ban, said that he was not aware of it.

One of the sessions at the event that banned Israel was called "Promise of peace: women's role in conflict prevention, peacekeeping and finding solutions."

Yesterday, Israel lodged an official protest against Jordan for Tarawneh's earlier comments on banning Israel from the forum, where he said "We will not allow those who kill our youth and our daughters and who usurped our land to enter the Dome of the Jordanian Parliament." But as far as I can tell there has been no Israeli reaction to the banning of Israel from the conference itself.

I tweeted to a number of Israeli female MKs to comment on the ban but did not hear anything back.

I have a guess that Israel made a deal with WIP to tacitly allow this ban in exchange for a major meeting that the organization held in Israel last year. WIP badly wanted to hold a conference in an Arab country to make a statement. But that is only a guess, and that is the only way I can understand Israel's complete official silence on this matter.

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.

Gigantic nude women and Hamas tunnels

(Yes, the title is clickbait.)

From New York Racked, February 24:

There Are Super-Naked Supermodels Superimposed on Fifth Avenue Right Now

If you've strolled down Fifth Avenue lately, you may have noticed some impressively large signage. Just before you hit 54th Street, Coach's massive wraparound advertisement designates its future flagship at 685 Fifth Avenue, signaling the brand's aim to be viewed as more upscale. The ad starts on Fifth Avenue and stretches to the middle of 54th Street, advising passersby of its fall 2016 opening.

But no one's going to blame you for missing all of this because you're too busy looking back at the three super-naked supermodels right next door (shown above). Gigi Hadid, Lily Aldridge, and Joan Smalls are fronting the construction facade of the future Stuart Weitzman at 675 Fifth Avenue, which dedicated fashion fans will recognize this as the brand's spring 2016 statuesque ad campaign titled "Nearly Nude."

Sorry, I pixelated the good parts. But the original link is above.

Gigi Hadid's father is Palestinian Arab - but that is not why I am bringing this up.

The signs are about 4 stories tall, which is about 40 feet (12 meters.)

The two Hamas tunnels that Israel discovered in recent weeks are about 30 meters deep.

So imagine two and a half sets of these super-nude supermodels, stacked up one above the other - the height of a ten story building.

That's how deep these Hamas terror tunnels are.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.