Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Elder gets results (I think)

On Friday, I wrote about a French medical advice site that erased Israel from the map and said that travel to Israel was less safe than Syria.

EoZ readers wrote to the site to complain, and Alyssa Cohen Kaplan received this reply:

There is no willingness on our part to take a position for or against anyone . Some of our country sheets certainly require revision . We have company. Thank you for pointing out some inconsistencies.

They changed the maps for both Israel and "Palestine" to this one:

It is a start.

I don't know if anyone wrote to them from the stories about the topic in The New Antisemite and Dreuz.Info but since Alyssa received the reply, it looks like we did get results.

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The 25th anniversary of the "naqba" you never hear about

25 years ago, in 1991, Kuwait expelled over 350,000 Palestinians.

And no one mentions this anniversary.

Many of the Palestinians in Kuwait had lived there for over a generation. Entire families were raised there.

But after the PLO embraced Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, the Palestinian residents became targets. There were four fatal bomb attacks in Palestinian neighborhoods in late 1990. Kuwaiti forces

Here is a description of what happened 25 years ago in Kuwait:

The terror campaign after the war started as early as the arrival of the Kuwaiti forces on February 26, 1991. Kuwaiti militants were quoted saying that they would shoot suspected Palestinians when they found them in their apartments. Four main militia groups and two state institutions participated in a concerted effort to terrorize and persecute Palestinians in Kuwait. Two of the militias were headed by the state security officers Adel Al-Gallaf and Hussain Al-Dishti. The third was headed by Amin Al-Hindi, a gangster who specialized in rape, torture, stealing, and killing. The fourth was the group known as August 2nd, which specialized in psychological warfare against Palestinians. The army and the police forces represented the two state institutions that were involved in this terror campaign.[24]

Two Palestinians were shot dead near a traffic circle, on February 27.[25] On March 2, Kuwaiti tanks and soldiers rolled into Palestinian communities, mainly Hawalli. House-to-house searches for weapons and alleged collaborators resulted in the arrest of hundreds of Palestinians.[26] People were also arrested at checkpoints for no reason other than being Palestinians. Typically, they were beaten instantly then taken to police and detention centers where they were tortured for confessions.

Despite the military censorship, newspapers began to report a dramatic rise in the number of injured Palestinians in Mubarak Hospital.[27] Scores of people were treated from severe beating and torture. Six Palestinians were brought to the Hospital shot dead in the head, execution style.[28] By the third week of March, hundreds of people were treated from torture injuries and thousands stayed in detention centers for interrogation.[29] Amnesty International reported that the torture of Palestinians was continuing in Kuwait by the third week of April. A 24-year-old Palestinian had been beaten for hours, had acid thrown over him, and had been subjected to electric shock torture.[30]

The terror campaign continued throughout 1991 achieving its main objective: terrorizing Palestinians enough so that they would leave the country. To expedite the process, the government took several other measures to evict those who did not leave. First, Palestinians working for the government were fired or not rehired. Second, Palestinian children were kicked out of public schools and subsidies for their education in private schools were stopped. Third, new fees became required for health services. Fourth, housing rents increased and people were asked by Kuwaiti landlords to pay rent for the entire crisis-period.[31]

More important were the feelings of injustice and insecurity Palestinians began to experience as a result of the terror campaign. It became unsafe to walk in streets or to stay at home. Rape stories functioned as a decisive pushing factor for the remaining Palestinian families. The "censored" Western media rarely reported on this part of the campaign. The CNN TV network covered one of these rape stories. Lubbadah[32] told the same story together with many others. The Middle East Watch group also told several stories of rape.[33]

On May 27, 1991, several members of a Kuwaiti militia group entered the apartment of a newly married Palestinian couple. They divided themselves into two groups. One group took the twenty-six year old bride, Najah Yusuf As'ad, to one room where they raped her one after the other then they shot her with nine bullets in the head. The other group took the thirty-year old groom, Muhammed Musa Mahmood Mustafa, to another room where they also raped him one after the other then they shot him with four bullets in his spine. When they finished committing their crimes, they sat in the apartment, drank tea, then called the bride's family several times telling them what happened to their daughter. Another story was about A.M.M., an eighteen-year old Palestinian girl. She was kidnapped and gang-raped for two days then was brought to Mubarak Hospital on May 25, 1991. Her family said that she was kidnapped in front of her house by Kuwaiti young men. A third story was about S.M.A.D., a twelve-year old Palestinian girl, who was also kidnapped in front of her house in Al-Rumaithiyah, on June 6, 1991. She was also gang-raped for two days by a group of Kuwaitis. A fourth story was about F.M.A.F, a fifteen-years old Palestinian girl, who was kidnapped in front of her house in Al-Farwaniyah, on June 4, 1991. She was raped for two days then was brought to Al-Adan Hospital. Finally, a Palestinian woman in her fifties was kidnapped and raped by a group of Kuwaiti men about the same age. A Kuwaiti man approached her offering help. He gave her an address where she can receive social assistance. When she went to the address, she was kidnapped and raped for a week by several Kuwaiti men who then left her in a deserted area.[34]

The government also intensified its efforts to evict the remaining Palestinians directly through deportation. Between the middle of June and the first week of July 1991, about 10,000 Palestinians were deported to the Iraqi border.[35] On July 8, the Minister of Interior Affairs, Ahmed Hamoud Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, announced that there were about 1,000 more Palestinians in detention camps waiting for deportation.[36] Actually, these deportations forced tens of thousands of other Palestinians to leave, mainly family members, because they could not practically stay when the head of the household or the main bread winner was deported.

The deportees were dumped at the Iraqi border near Safwan. Gradually, it became known as the Safwan Refugee Camp. Many of the deportees to this camp were tortured and brutally beaten by Kuwaiti troops. In most cases people were simply "dumped" there without any legal deportation procedures.[37] Typically, people were arrested at checkpoints, then beaten and tortured to admit that they were collaborators. If they did not admit, they would be deported to Safwan Camp.[38] One of the Camp deportees was Fayiz Nadir, a 23-year-old Palestinian. He was burned 10 times with an iron on his arms, feet, and head. Another one was Abdul Qadir, a 30-year-old Algerian. He was arrested together with Fayiz Nadir for two weeks. He saw 109 men in the detention center with their hands tied behind their backs, often blindfolded. When the men were brought to the interrogation, they were kicked and jabbed with gun butts. Electrical wires were put on their fingers and temples. They were given water twice a day and food once every four days.[39] A Sudanese truck driver, Mustafa Hamzah, was arrested and blindfolded for two weeks in the Salmiya Girls' Secondary School. He named the Kuwaiti 1st Lt. Abdul Latif Al-Anzi as the person who was in charge of that detention center. A Palestinian deportee told the New York Human Rights Group that he was tortured in that school. They burned him with a cattle brand, beat him, then dumped him by a roadside.[40]

Torture, assassinations, rape, and the planned and public ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

Why aren't Palestinians marking this anniversary? Why isn't any "pro-Palestinian" group talking about this "naqba?"

You know why. The entire reason people pretend to be "pro-Palestinian" has nothing to do with their love for Palestinians but because of their hate for another group.

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05/21 Links: J-Street and Ploughshares were paid to promote Iran deal; The Mirage of BDS Momentum

From Ian:

J-Street was paid by Obama administration to promote Iran deal

J-Street received more than half a million dollars to advocate for the Obama administration's controversial nuclear deal with Iran, it has been revealed.
The liberal Jewish group, which bills itself as "pro-Israel and pro-peace" but which critics say takes solely anti-Israel stances, was paid the money by the White House's main surrogate organization for selling the deal.
The Ploughshares Fund was named in an explosive New York Times profile of Obama aid Ben Rhodes, in which the President's chief spin doctor listed the central groups responsible for creating an "echo chamber" in order to promote the deal, even when the White House's official line didn't jibe with the facts.
According to Associated Press, the group's 2015 annual report details several organizations which received substantial funds to peddle the official White House line on the nuclear deal. Among them was National Public Radio (NPR), which received a $100,000 grant to promote "national security reporting that emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy and budgets, Iran's nuclear program, international nuclear security topics and U.S. policy toward nuclear security."
Other grantees included: The Arms Control Association ($282,500); the Brookings Institution ($225,000); and the Atlantic Council ($182,500), who "received money for Iran-related analysis, briefings and media outreach, and non-Iran nuclear work," according to AP. (h/t Yenta Press)

Rhodes' Echo Chamber' Group Paid NPR To Cover Iran Deal

In a disturbing revelation of how much the Obama Administration’s plans to sell the Iran nuclear deal involved the corruption of the media, AP reports that The Ploughshares Fund [funded by Soros], a group identified by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes as one of the groups that helped build an “echo chamber” to promulgate the administration’s narrative, gave National Public Radio $100,000 last year to report on the deal and ancillary issues.
The Ploughshares Fund's mission is to ostensibly "build a safe, secure world by developing and investing in initiatives to reduce and ultimately eliminate the world's nuclear stockpiles," but as Rhodes revealed in an article in The New York Times Magazine, the fund was one of a group of nongovernmental organizations that worked to engender support for the deal. Rhodes said brazenly, "We created an echo chamber.”
The GOP had slammed the deal as being a product of White House spin.
Ploughshares’ 2015 annual report stated that the grant to NPR supported "national security reporting that emphasizes the themes of U.S. nuclear weapons policy and budgets, Iran's nuclear program, international nuclear security topics and U.S. policy toward nuclear security.” Board chairwoman Mary Lloyd Estrin bragged in the report that the success of the Iran deal was "driven by the fearless leadership of the Obama administration and supporters in Congress, less known is the absolutely critical role that civil society played in tipping the scales towards this extraordinary policy victory."
Ploughshares spokeswoman Jennifer Abrahamson protested to AP, "It is common practice for foundations to fund media coverage of underreported stories,” adding that funding "does not influence the editorial content of their coverage in any way, nor would we want it to." NPR admitted that Ploughshares has funded NPR's coverage of national security since 2005; every grant descriptions since 2010 mentions Iran. (h/t Yenta Press)

Media-Darling Muslim Selfie Girl: ‘Hitler Left Some Jews So We’d Know Why He Killed Them’

A Muslim girl who took a “defiant” selfie at an anti-Islam protest in Belgium allegedly posted anti-Semitic comments on her Twitter, Facebook, and Ask.fm accounts, according to a Belgian former soldier and a leading Dutch website.
Zakia Belkhiri, 22, was lauded as an “inspiration” by the media as her picture next to Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) protesters went viral.
But web sleuths have now claimed that Ms. Belkhiri’s “peace sign” in the picture is perhaps out of character for her. They claim she tweeted in 2012: “Hitler didnt kill all the jews, he left some. So we [would] know why he was killing them”.
The tweet, seen in these screengrabs, appears to have been sent on the 29th December 2012, is now circulating social media as people attempt to draw attention to Ms. Belkhiri’s alleged racist views. As Ms. Belkhiri has now deleted her account it is not possible to verify these tweets.
Shortly before she deleted her accounts, Ms. Belkhiri tweeted: “I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST JEWS THOSE TWEETS ARE FAKE THEY ARE PHOTOSHOPPED BUT if you don’t believe me that’s your choice people”.
But social media users are also claiming her Ask.fm account allegedly read: “f#ck that Jewish language” when she was asked if she wanted to learn Hebrew while critics claim her Facebook account expressed her hatred for Jews.

05/20 Links Pt2: The Israel That Arabs Don’t Know; A week of ordinary French anti-Semitism

From Ian:

IDF-critiquing NGO faces court debate on revealing its sources

The State Prosecutor’s Office has demanded that Breaking the Silence name its sources, saying anonymous witnesses allow potential lies to spread and make it impossible to investigate alleged abuses.
According to Israeli media reports earlier this year, the army is demanding testimonies that primarily relate to evidence of alleged war crimes and compliance by IDF troops with illegal orders. The State Prosecutor’s Office — officially acting on behalf of the army as the matter pertains to a civilian organization — presented the petition to the court.
Breaking the Silence co-founder Yehuda Shaul said the hearings were aimed at closing down the NGO, and insisted the group is determined to protect the identities of its sources.
The NGO provides a platform for military veterans to describe what they say were disturbing aspects of their service in the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip and in operations in the West Bank.
It has faced increased political pressure in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presides over one of the most right-wing governments in the country’s history.
In March, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who on Friday morning announced his resignation, accused the NGO of “treason” by asking discharged soldiers to reveal classified information, a charge denied by the group.
The Military Police have also demanded the names of the NGO’s sources — a request it refused.

The Israel That Arabs Don’t Know

On my flight from Rome to Tel Aviv on Israel’s El Al airlines, I thought about what awaited me and what I would see. Although I had an idea of what Israel was like and friends who have told me of their experiences working there, memories of the accumulated assumptions about the place that I had gained throughout my childhood in Egypt presented a conflicting counter narrative. I wondered which was the truth: what I now knew, or what had been instilled in us Egyptians as children. Do the “Jews” in Israel actually hate Arabs? If they found out I was Egyptian, would treat me poorly? Would I be verbally or physically abused if Israelis heard me speaking Arabic?
Halting my train of thought, a man sitting next to me with his wife asked me something in Hebrew. In English, I explained that I didn’t understand the language. The man then apologized and asked in English, “Where are you from?” When I answered that I was from Egypt, he and his wife smiled genuinely and welcomingly. These were not the fake smiles our schools, society, television, and film had attributed to Israelis and Jews.
When I arrived in Israel’s financial capital, Tel Aviv, the airport’s clean atmosphere and facilities left me wondering whether I had left Europe. Its modernity left little doubt that I had entered a developed country.
On the road from the Ben Gurion Airport to Jerusalem (al-Quds)–Israel’s political capital–I saw wide, clean roads, filled with trees and captivating natural scenery. I took notes on everything, in line with my mission to relay the truth of life inside Israel. Once I had arrived in the political capital, I visited the Ministry of Exterior, the Knesset, and the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.
I met with both Arabs and Jews of Arab origin, and they recounted their memories of life in Iraq, Egypt, and the other countries from which they had come. I listened to how they had left those countries after bitter experiences of incitement and hatred. Life had brought them to a place where they peacefully coexisted. Unfortunately, the truth of coexistence has been muddled with the help of many media organizations. (h/t IsraellyCool)

A week of ordinary French anti-Semitism

September 1972, Munich’s Olympic Village, “31” block. Some of the Israeli athletes were Holocaust survivors. The Black September Palestinian terrorists took them hostage demanding the release of 234 terrorists in the Israeli jails. But Black September was not there for an exchange or negotiation, what they wanted the killing of Jews, the young representatives of the Israeli people hosted by the nation which once planned the Holocaust.
The Olympic Village was located a few kilometers from Dachau.
The Cannes Film Festival has now hosted “Munich: A Palestinian Story” by the Lebanese filmmaker of Palestinian origin Narsi Hajjaj. Ilana Romano, widow of Yossef Romano, who was murdered in the massacre, has refused to cooperate with this film because the director insisted on defining as “freedom fighters” the Black September terrorists who killed her husband, while the murdered Israelis are called “representatives of an occupying country”.
A year ago, it emerged that at least one of the athletes, Yossef Romano, was castrated bythe Palestinian kidnappers in front of his companions. Hajjaj, however, called the massacre not a terrorist act, but an “international incident”.
Roger Cukierman, president of the Council of Jewish Organizations in France, voiced “anxiety and deep concern” over the viewing in a letter to Cannes Film Festival President Pierre Lescure and French Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay.
Resoundingly ghastly is the fact that the Cannes Festival agreed to host and commercialize this anti-Semitic movie.
But this has been a week of ordinary French anti-Semitism.

From the PLO "Department of Culture and Information" website:

[PLO Executive Committee Member Dr. Hanan] Ashrawi commented on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Avigdor Lieberman as the defense minister: “Such a decision is extremely dangerous—Lieberman, who has called for the beheading of Palestinians and for their transfer outside the state of Israel, is a serious threat to peace and stability, and his appointment will generate a culture of lawlessness, extremism, violence, and hate in Israel.”

In 2011, Ashrawi went on CNN to defend Hamas terrorists joining the Palestinian government.

Hypocritical much?

By the way, despite all the hysterics that we are reading today about Lieberman painting him as an ultra-right extremist, he supports a two-state solution. He supports (under the right conditions) Israel dismantling some settlements.

For a decade now, Avigdor Lieberman has taken on the mantle of Ariel Sharon before him - a crazed ultra-right nationalist who wants to kill all Palestinians. As with Sharon, the reality is not close to the rhetoric. Yes, Lieberman says some outrageous things, but when he calls to "behead" those Israelis who actively act against the state he is obviously not speaking literally, even though it is in the interests of many to pretend that he is. (He also doesn't call for "transfer." He calls to redraw the borders so Jewish sections outside the Green Line become part of Israel and Arab sections inside become part of a Palestinian state. It will never happen, but redrawing borders is not "transfer.")

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...And here's the final proof that Prashad is an academic fraud.

There are two ways of proving that someone is an academic fraud.

One is to prove that he or she knowingly lies.

Yesterday I proved with a high degree of probability that popular Trinity College professor Vijay Prashad lied, by claiming that Hamas does not deny the right of Israel to exist. He quoted selectively from a 2009 New York Times article and used Khaled Meshal's words to pretend that he accepted Israel's existence, but he didn't bother to mention that the article itself said explicitly that Meshal refused to accept Israel's existence.

I then brought a much stronger proof using Meshal's own words, on video, that leave absolutely no doubt about his opinion.

But perhaps Prashad was just being sloppy, and he didn't notice the part of the NYT article where Meshal was shown to hold the opposite view. Or maybe he read about it secondhand. And perhaps this Middle East scholar was unaware of the many other statements in Arabic by Hamas that explicitly denies Israel's right to exist.

That possibility, that Prashad is just a sloppy professor and not a malicious liar, was put to rest when he sarcastically responded to my tweet about his article:

This means that he read my post and decided that proof that pushing anti-Israel propaganda is more important than truth. The Alternet article he wrote remains unaltered; he did not issue a correction or change the words.

Any person who claims to be a scholar, who works in academia, and yet who consciously decides to lie is simply a propagandist and should not be allowed to work at any self-respecting institution of higher education.

Unfortunately, today's colleges think that free speech includes the right to teach lies.

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05/20 Links Pt1: Poking a gaping hole in the Palestinian narrative; Has the UN Human Rights Council become Frankenstein?

From Ian:

IDF Blog: ISIS threatens to wipe out Israel. Here’s why we’re taking them seriously.

Facts at a glance:
- ISIS in Egypt started out targeting Israeli targets, such as Israeli pipelines carrying gas between Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.
- The most dominant terrorist organizations in the Sinai have ties to Hamas. ISIS fighters train in Gaza before returning to the Sinai. Hamas helps with training, medical care, transferring funds, and assisting with communications.
- In 2012, the Egyptian Army started Operation Sinai to destroy tunnels between Hamas in Gaza and militants in Sinai. These same tunnels were used to smuggle weapons into Gaza to attack Israel.
- Top ISIS leaders have repeatedly threatened major attacks against Israel. We take their threats seriously.
Israel’s border with Egypt has long been volatile, with terror groups shaking the stability in Northern Sinai. Our newest threat in the region is an offshoot of a deadly international terror organization: ISIS in the Sinai. The terror capabilities of ISIS’s Sinai branch are cannot be ignored. Their shootings, bombings, projectiles, and other attacks have killed both civilians and soldiers. Israel has always been a primary target of the group from its inception. Ansar Bait al-Maqdis (ABM) and their anti-Israel rhetoric has only increased since their incorporation into the Islamic State.
The situation in the Sinai has undergone serious changes over the last five years. Here are some key points in the evolution of the ISIS threat in the Sinai:

ISIS threatens global war with Israel

Islamic State threatens Israel in an article in its weekly newsletter this week, saying that unlike Hamas, the “war on Israel will not be limited by geographical boundaries or by international norms.”
According to the article in the Al-Naba newsletter identified by the Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor of MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) and shared with The Jerusalem Post, Israel feels threatened by ISIS because of the “collapse” of neighboring states and the Sunni terrorist group’s advance toward the borders of the Jewish state.
For this reason, Israel has started to fight against Islamic State in Sinai and Syria, it says, adding that the entire world is now an arena for the fight against all the “polytheist combatants, including the Jews,” who are legitimate targets. Israel is using jets to attack Islamic State in Sinai, the article claims.
“The collapse of the Sykes-Picot statelets, which were tasked with protecting the Jewish state; the approach of ISIS mujahideen toward its borders; [Israel’s] fear of the spread of its [ISIS’s] methodology among the oppressed Muslims inside those borders [i.e. fear that ISIS ideology is spreading among Israeli Arabs]; and the manifest failure of the Crusader states who protect the Jews to win the battle against it [ISIS] – all these are factors that caused the Jewish state to not sit idly by in face of this danger,” it says.

Poking a gaping hole in the Palestinian narrative

Most people have never heard of the Eshkol plan, and you might be wondering why.
The answer is really very simple: it pokes a gaping hole in the narrative put forward by the Palestinians and their supporters, who assert that the root of all Israeli-Palestinian discord lies in the events of 1967, rather than in the long-standing and deep-seated Arab desire to wipe Israel off the map.
The fact is that had the Arabs and the Palestinians sincerely accepted Eshkol’s proposal, regional peace in the Middle East would be entering its sixth decade already and the so-called Palestinian question would have been resolved long ago.
Going back still further, if they had come to terms with Israel’s establishment in 1948 rather than choosing war, the entire region might have flourished.
At this point, there is no turning back the clock, and in light of subsequent developments, Eshkol’s plan is as unworkable now as it might have been sensible back then.
But even after so many decades, it is worth recalling his audacious proposal, if only to highlight where the underlying fault truly lies for the ongoing conflict: with the Palestinians and their defenders.
So next time you hear someone blathering about how the “occupation” is the cause of all our troubles, just think back to the grandfatherly figure of Levi Eshkol, the peace he offered to make in 1965, the Arab hatred and enmity with which it was greeted and just how different things could have been.

Egyptian paper: "These ten Jews control the world economy"

I always wondered who they were, and now popular Egyptian newspaper Vetogate lists for us the ten Jews who run the world economy.

Haim Saban

Haim Saban
Patrick Drahi
Yitzhak Tshuva
Shari Arison
Idan Ofer
Ronald Lauder
Rupert Murdoch (who is not Jewish)
Sheldon Adelson
Irving Moskowitz
Bernard-Henri Lévy

Now you know!

(corrected headline from "world "to "world economy," h/t Oren K)

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A popular French health website, DocteurClic, has a section on the dangers of traveling to other countries.

Here is the map it uses to travel to "Palestine":

In general, it is safe to travel to "Palestine" which is entirely occupied, although from the map it is unclear exactly who is occupying it. Perhaps Great Britain.

It does have a section on traveling to Israel, which is apparently a state in two sections somewhere on the Mediterranean:

For Israel, it says that it is very dangerous to travel:

The troubled political climate, lack of stability in the region and the situation on the ground makes it dangerous country for travelers.

In addition, the low level of health does not allow the traveler to ensure optimum safety in terms of the management of health problems. Health infrastructure is poor or very degraded.

Precautions are needed to avoid many worries or to compromise a part of your stay.

It is in any essential way to know the safety rules to be respected during trips.

Who knew Israel's health system was so primitive?

It has similar rules for "Palestine," but it adds for Israel:

Travel is not recommended in this country, except for imperative professional reasons.

Due to the increase in suicide bombings and their random and unpredictable, visitors should exercise extreme caution.

In all major Israeli population centers:

avoid places and rush hour: market squares, pedestrian streets, shopping centers, restaurants located on major streets, cafés, clubs, gatherings of any kind on the highway;
refrain from using public transport (buses, taxis, trains)
Do not participate in any event,
rent a mobile phone and tell the number to friends or acquaintances, or even the French official representations.

These instructions apply especially to pilgrims planning to visit Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but also in Galilee (Nazareth Christian sites near the Sea of Galilee: Taghba, Capernaum, Cana, Mount of Beatitudes, Mount Tabor ...) .

While Israel is rated amber for travel, Egypt is considered green. So is Jordan.

And so is Syria, which is green in every single category.

Travelers to Israel are warned about respiratory diseases in the dry air but not for Jordan or Syria.

(h/t The New Antisemite)

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UC Irvine is officially an anti-Israel campus

From Campus Reform:

An event held by a Jewish student group at the University of California, Irvine was disrupted Wednesday night by a crowd of Muslim students chanting anti-Semitic and anti-police slogans.

Ariana Rowlands, president of the College Republicans club at UCI, told Campus Reform that her group had just wrapped up its weekly meeting Wednesday night, and were gathered outside the building preparing to hang posters advertising an upcoming appearance by Milo Yiannopoulos when they heard a commotion nearby.

Wandering over to investigate, the CR members encountered a large group of students—Rowlands estimated there were perhaps 50 in total—holding signs and screaming in unison to protest a movie screening being held by Students Supporting Israel (SSI).

Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member who was on campus to address the CR meeting, posted a video on Facebook depicting a portion of the demonstration.

“Intifada, Intifada/long live the Intifada,” the protesters shout at the start of the video, following that up with a call-and-response chant of “displacing people since ‘48/there’s nothing here to celebrate!”

Kevin Brum, Vice President of SSI, told Campus Reform that the demonstrators were members of the Muslim Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine groups, who were apparently incensed that two former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers were planning to meet with attendees at the screening.

“The film was Beneath the Helmet, a film about IDF soldiers with personal interviews that sort of humanizes them,” he explained. “One of the campus advisers for Hillel is an Israeli citizen who served in the IDF, so she has former IDF friends, and two of them stopped by. Someone posted that information on Facebook, and SJP and MSU got wind of it.”

Here's video:

SJP bragged about violating free speech of people who support Israel:

Today we successfully demonstrated against the presence of IDF soldiers on campus. ...The presence of IDF and police threatened our coalition of Arab, black, undocumented, trans, and the greater activist community. Thank you to all that came out and bravely spoke out against injustice. ‪#‎UCIntifada‬

SSI says that the police stopped the event for the safety of the Zionist students being threatened by the Israel-hating thugs:

Tonight one of our events was disrupted by certain student organizations. They were in violation of UC Regents Hate Speech policy and were shouting various anti-Semitic statements. The police had to escort attendees out of the event for their own safety. While it saddens us that there exist individuals who are more interested in shutting our Peace Week down, we at SSI want to assure you all that we are not backing down in the slightest. We are not going to give in to their intimidation tactics and anti-Semitic rhetoric. ‪#‎UCIsrael2016‬ ‪#‎WeStandUnited‬ ‪#‎NeverGiveUp‬ ‪#‎StudentsAgainstHate‬ ‪#‎StudentsForPeace‬ ‪#‎PeaceWeek‬

Only two weeks ago SJP, JVP and MSU at UCI hosted "anti-Zionism week" on campus. An entire week dedicated to destroying the Jewish state and denying the Jewish right to self-determination. No attempt was made to shut it down.

Imagine a campus allowing an "Anti-Palestinian Week" or indeed a week dedicated against any country's very existence. It could never happen.

But at UCI, a week dedicated to hate against the Jewish state is protected, while an event that celebrates Israel is in danger of being shut down because of the violence of the haters.

There is something seriously wrong on campus when hate speech is celebrated and people supporting peace cannot speak without being threatened.

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.

05/19 Links Pt2: How to Destroy Israel; 90% of Israeli Jews call themselves Zionists

From Ian:

The Top Five Most Hilarious Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories

Last week, the British Labour party suspended Musabbir Ali, a former campaign official, for making anti-Semitic statements on social media. He joined an ignominious cast of characters punished for similar offenses, including a former mayor of London and a current parliament member. But Ali distinguished himself with his particularly creative brand of anti-Semitism.
On Twitter, among other bigoted bromides, he shared a link to a post claiming that the Jews had “financed Oliver Cromwell’s overthrowing and beheading of Stuart King Charles I after he refused them control of England’s finances.” This extraordinary assertion overlooked one minor detail: Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and could not legally return until 1657, years after Cromwell came to power.
Ali’s ahistorical absurdity highlighted an underappreciated aspect of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: In addition to being hateful and ignorant, they are often hilarious.
In that spirit, I’d like to pay tribute to the most ridiculous anti-Jewish fulminations I’ve come across in my years covering them. These eruptions of inspired idiocy span centuries and continents, from America to Europe to the Middle East. They implicate the Jews and the Jewish state, as well as Monica Lewinsky and the animal kingdom, in their nefarious plots. And they frequently interchange “Zionist” for “Jew” in comically inept attempts to obscure their bigotry.
In other words, it’s a collection that should satisfy any connoisseur of fine anti-Semitism.

Marc Goldberg: How to Destroy Israel

In a twist of fate, the state of Israel lives and thrives (certainly in comparison with her neighbors) because of antisemitism not in spite of it.
Would a tiny country have been able to fight the Sinai Campaign in 1956 or win the Six Day War if its population hadn’t more than doubled in size?
I doubt it. But Israel haters please note that once again Jews fled when they had no choice, not because a million of them simply, collectively, woke up one morning and thought moving to Israel would be a fun thing to do.
A million Jews made it to Israel once the Iron Curtain collapsed. The most academically diverse, educated aliyah Israel had yet experienced made Israel the hi-tech powerhouse it is today. Israel hater think about that. Jews had been oppressed under the Czars, providing the forge within which Zionism was molded. Then the communists took over with an entirely different ideology and world view. And oppressed the Jews. Then decades later a million Jews moved to Israel.
Think about that. Antisemitism at work.
And now the French aliyah. Thousands more well educated and in many cases wealthy Jews from France are packing their bags and going anywhere they can. Including to Israel.
Antisemitism at work.
Israel is the solution to antisemitism not the cause of it. Some people who hate Israel hate Jews. Everyone who hates Jews hates Israel. Ending antisemitism would end Israel.
The former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone recently ranted that “Hitler was a Zionist”. He wasn’t. Clearly. He simply proved just how important, just how righteous, how necessary Zionism is.
Antisemitism at work.
Think about that.

Khaled Abu Toameh: How Terrorists and Dictators Silence Arab Journalists

That is the sad state of journalism in the Arab world: "If you're not with us, then you must be against us and that is why we need to shut your mouth." A journalist who does not agree to serve as a governmental mouthpiece is denounced as a "traitor."
Hamas shut the Gaza offices of Al-Arabiya in July 2013, under the pretext that the station broadcasted "incorrect news" about the situation in the Gaza Strip. The closure did not receive much attention from the international community and human rights organizations. Had the office been closed by Israel, there would have been an international outcry, with journalists screaming about Israeli "assaults on freedom of the media."
Al-Arabiya, like many other Arab TV stations, has a bureau in Israel, and its reporters enjoy more freedom reporting out of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv than they do in the Arab world. Today, the only free and independent Arabic newspapers in the Middle East can be found inside Israel.

The University of Turin is holding a conference about the Middle East called "From Caliphate to Caliphate: The Middle East from the Sykes-Picot Treaty to violent jihadism."

The third session of the conference was dedicated to Palestinian issues, and the only people who presented were known anti-Israel activists.

Diana Carminati, former professor of European Studies at the University of Turin, spoke on "The Contemporary Israeli project of settler-colonialism and the destruction of the Palestinian economy." She mentioned the tunnels being used to smuggle goods, but not a word about weapons.

Enrico Bartolomei of the University of Macerata spoke. He is also a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and has written of "Israeli apartheid" and is against any peace process, saying, "Any political solution must aim at decolonization of historic Palestine, rather than a supposed (peace process) or the construction of statehood or national authorities."

Two other known anti-Israel, pro-BDS professors speaking were Marzia Casolari and Michelguglielmo Towers, who has said that Hamas has a "high degree of pragmatism."

Literature at the conference included materials calling Gaza an "open air prison" and describing Operation Protective Edge as a" macabre spectacle of death and destruction on a large scale." Very scientific.

Conference organizer Marzia Casolari, Professor of History at the university, emphasized that the rabid pro-Palestinian positions of the speakers would not affect the "scientific rigor" of the seminar. Rector Gianmaria Ajani defended the conference and said any criticism was "specious", say that a conference is "not a talk show where they offer a seat to any political position."

I am told by someone who attended that there were also accusations of Jews raping Arabs in 1948 mentioned at the conference.

The good news is that only 25 people - including media.

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