Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, May 29, 2016

05/29 Links: WHO condemnation of Israel based on blatant PA lies; Israel and the Palestinians: What the media won't report

From Ian:

Palestinian Health Ministry Passes Off Fauxtography to WHO

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) decision last week harshly critical of Israel for "Health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory, including in east Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan" prompted Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid to describe it as antisemitic.
In preparation for WHO's publication of the decision, the Palestinian Ministry of Health submitted a report to the international organization. Apart from the usual allegations propagated by various NGOs, the official Palestinian submission also includes the following outrageous charges:
• Israel is damaging prisoners' health by "Holding prisoners in polluted areas, such as in the vicinity of the Dimona reactor or near areas in which waste from that reactor has been buried" (page 29).
• "In April 2013 the Russian newspaper Pravda accused Israel of injecting a number of Palestinian prisoners who were approaching their release date with cancer-causing viruses. Despite Israel’s rejection of the accusations made by the newspaper, the question remains: is it true that Israel is injecting prisoners with viruses?" (page 29)
• A Palestinian doctor contends that the Israeli practice of freezing terrorists' bodies and insistence that they will only be returned to Palestinians if they are buried immediately "makes it impossible to ascertain whether the deceased individual’s organs have been stolen" (page 49).
When it comes to the summer 2014 Operation Protective Edge, the Palestinian Ministry of Health delves into science fiction. This picture on page is accompanied by the following caption: "Photograph taken during the Israeli war on Gaza, 2014":
This image, with its primitive Photoshop makeover, was making the rounds in the summer of 2014, and Israellycool exposed it as a hoax at the time. The original picture was published on a blog to illustrate a story on how Israel might attack Iran's nuclear reactors:

Israel and the Palestinians: What the media won't report

Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and an expert on Middle East conflicts, discusses what the Palestinian leadership really wants.

Watch: Activist not happy at 'Zionists' monitoring Muslim media

"As part of the Zionist movement's cultural infiltration (into American society), it has managed to convince a large part of American public opinion that the two countries share the circumstances of their establishment," Osama Abu Irshaid, the national director of the Chicago-based American Muslims for Palestine organization, stated in a May 18 broadcast on Al-Jazeera. "In fact, there is some truth to it. (In both countries), it was a process of ethnic cleansing."
Abu Irshaid noted the racist term 'American Indian,' and noted both Americans and Jews say they 'discovered' their lands uninhabited before establishing their respective countries.
"(The Zionists) managed to convince the (Americans) of the following: 'We came to two undeveloped countries, and managed to establish two successful states.'," he said. "This is one aspect of infiltrating American consciousness."
Abu Irshaid then discussed MEMRI.
"The cultural infiltration also includes the Zionist influence in the media," he said. "They have a significant impact on the media, as well as on Hollywood. They have managed to endear Israeli and the Jews upon American public opinion."

Danny Brenner, in Israel Hayom writes:

Toby Cohen, the IDF's first female Nigerian officer

The Israel Defense Forces, more than any other organization, represents Israeli society. It is a melting pot that includes soldiers from all ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds, men and women, but even this human collage always has something new. For example, Israel's first female Nigerian officer, Lieutenant Toby Cohen, 21, who was born in Nigeria to a Nigerian mother and Israeli father. Her parents and 8-year-old sister live in the town of Kanu in northern Nigeria, while she immigrated to Israel on her own at the age of 17. Cohen serves in the Homefront Command.

In truth, however, it does not really matter how diverse Israel is or how liberal it is, the western-left will always spit poison at it because it is the lone, sole Jewish country. The Arabs learned long ago that whatever hate-filled and false accusations that they fling at the Jews in Israel, those accusations will be eagerly gobbled up by westerners who pride themselves on "social justice" and "anti-racism."

One of the main problems is that so many diaspora Jews have come to accept The Palestinian Narrative of Perfect Victimhood, which I have referred to as The Palestinian Colonization of the Jewish Mind.

This is particularly true of progressive-left Jews when they believe that the Jews of Israel are illegally occupying Judea. If you start from the position that Jews are "illegally occupying the West Bank" then you have no case. It does not matter if Israelis discover a cure for cancer, send the first lesbian to Mars, or irrigate the entirety of Africa.

If those Jews have stolen Arab land in Judea - as so many diaspora Jews seem to believe - then Israel deserves every bit of contempt so joyously dished out by her Arab-Muslim and progressive-left tormentors. However, if we acknowledge the historical truth that the land from the River to the Sea is the homeland of the Jewish people, and that the Jewish people are the indigenous people of that land - which we are - then the Muslims and their progressive-left friends have no case.

Cognitive War

Those of us who care about the Jewish people and, therefore, about the well-being of the Jewish State of Israel, are engaged, against our will, in a cognitive / propaganda aggression launched by the Arabs since, at least, 1967. They cannot beat the Jews with conventional warfare because - despite the fact that they outnumber us by a factor of 60 or 70 to 1 in the region - they are too weak. This weakness, of course, is not essential, but self-inflicted. If they insist on gazing upon the seventh-century mirage of Muhammad then their culture and abilities will reflect that interest.

If they would, instead, gaze upon Isaac Newton, and all that implies, their chances of slaughtering us would be greatly enhanced.

But since they cannot defeat us militarily they turn to propaganda which they are, in fact, very good at. They may not know much about science or technology, but they definitely know a thing or two about how to turn western-left heads, which they learned, in part, at the feet of their Soviet advisers. The Arabs were told, "Look, you cannot go screaming for blood and demanding that the Jews get pushed into the sea if you expect western sympathies. What you need to do is frame your blood-lust and theocratic hatred toward Jews as a matter of "social justice" and "national liberation" and then you will have the West eating out of your hand."

And that is precisely what they did.

They may not know much about technology, but their propagandists certainly know how to lie and they lie very well.

When some 19 year old Jewish kid at UC Irvine or San Francisco State University holds up a fist and calls for "intifada" in solidarity with his brothers and sisters "of color" he is denying his own indigeneity to the Land of Israel, while quite literally calling for the murder of his Jewish relatives on that land.

The only way that such a kid could do so is because he was steeped in the Big Lie for too many years.

The Big Lie, of course, is that the Land of Israel is Arab land and that the Jews are usurpers.

History, as an academic field of knowledge, tells us otherwise.

Israeli Diversity and Western-Left Hypocrisy

Israel is the most ethnically and ideologically diverse country throughout that entire part of the world and, far and away, the most democratic. This is why western-left contempt for Israel is, itself, heinously contemptible. It reveals, in glaring relief, the enormous hypocrisy of a political movement that claims to stand for social justice and anti-racism, yet does no such thing.

Calls for justice among Democrats and "progressives" (regressives?) are mired in a form of racism that is almost universal among them and, yet, so ephemeral that they cannot perceive it within themselves. Humanitarian racism has run amok within the western-left. They conceive of Arabs and Africans as lesser human beings who, much like children, are not really responsible for their own behavior. Instead it is the fault of the parents and, in the progressive imagination, that means white people.

It is in this way that they turn their own value-system upside-down.

In the name of "resistance against colonialism" they end up supporting the most regressive political movements in the world today. They gladly throw garbage at Israel, but are reluctant to breathe a word against ISIS or Hamas. They have turned the word "Zionist" into an epithet even as they coddle regimes and admire cultures that consign women to the condition of chattel, throw Gay people from tall buildings or hang them from cranes, burn down thousands of Christian churches while persecuting and murdering adherents to that faith and teaching their children that Jews are descendants of orangutans and swine.

And they do this even as Israel welcomes Toby Cohen into the IDF as its first female Nigerian officer.

The progressive-left hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance around Israel is profound.


Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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Just another example of the sterling quality of Haaretz' columnists. From Gideon Levy:

The Oxford Union’s Thursday Debate discusses the Middle East a great deal, certainly more than any Israeli student union does. Just over a week ago, a proposal was raised at this venerable and prestigious student organization that the two-state solution is no longer viable. It wasn’t only the strict dress code (black tie), ceremonial trappings and traditional photograph that were foreign to Israelis – so too was the very fact of debating such a fateful question about Israel’s future.

The question before this closed debating club, founded in 1823 – and where four U.S. presidents and 12 British prime ministers have appeared, including Winston Churchill – was: “This House Believes A Two-State Solution in the Middle East is Unattainable.”

Unfortunately, a majority of “this House” rejected the proposition, perhaps because most of the members of the union are wealthy, white conservatives and its president is Jewish. The vote is taken at the doors: Those leaving by the right-hand door are for the proposal, those leaving by the left-hand one are against it. (The Ayes were 37 percent, the Nos 63 percent.)

I spoke for the proposition and exited using the right-hand door. Unusually for me, I was in favor of something. But it did not help.

Somehow, Levy assuming that all Jews are Zionist is not considered racist to his progressive audience that consists largely of Jews who are anything but Zionist.

It certainly doesn't occur to Levy that he himself turned the audience against him by spouting out absurd sound-bites that are meant an audience of people who already hate Israel a priori, not for a serious debate (Prop4 is Levy):

Prop4: The state in power now, is one of the most tyrannical, cruel and horrific regimes in the world. This is an Apartheid.
— Oxford Union (@OxfordUnion) May 19, 2016

(h/t Yenta)

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Elder gets results, apparently (NYT scare quotes edition)

On Friday, I wrote about how the New York Times caved to Israel-haters like Glenn Greenwald, Salon magazine and later Mondoweiss who accused it of "pro-Israel bias" because it put the word "occupation" in scare quotes here:

Two of the senator’s appointees to the party’s platform drafting committee, Cornel West and James Zogby, on Wednesday denounced Israel’s "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza and said they believed that rank-and-file Democrats no longer hewed to the party’s staunch support of the Israeli government.

The scare quotes were entirely appropriate, I pointed out, because Gaza cannot be considered occupied by any reasonable interpretation of international law. (I could argue about Judea and Samaria as well, but one has to choose one's battles.)

After I wrote my critique of the NYT's silent removal of the scare quotes, it removed the words "and Gaza" from the article and added a correction:

This is still a cop-out. West and Zogby clearly said that Gaza was occupied as fact, and the New York Times decided that the record should show that they wouldn't say anything like that by calling inclusion of Gaza an "editing error."

Moreover, the Times didn't come close to explaining how fanatically anti-Israel these two are. It mentioned that West considers Netanyahu to be a "war criminal," which is something that New York Times apparently feels is a defensible position. But it didn't mention that West has called President Obama a war criminal as well for US support of Israel, something that most Democrats would not quite agree with and which starkly indicates how extreme Sanders' picks are. (West also said "There is no doubt that Gaza is not just a 'kind of' concentration camp, it is the hood on steroids.")

To say that the New York Times is pro-Israel based on this article is the height of absurdity, but the haters know that when they loudly complain about things that are accurate like the NYT's original reporting, they create an impression in the newsroom that "both sides are against our coverage so we must be doing something right."

(h/t Simon)

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05/28 Links: Liberals’ Shameful Attacks on Israel; The U.N. Goes Beyond the Pale—Again

From Ian:

Jewish Leader Blasts Guggenheim Museum for Website Post Accusing ‘Racist’ Israel of Censorship, Oppressing Palestinians

Foxman said that if the Guggenheim “wants to become a platform to discuss art and censorship, this is legitimate. However, to the best of my knowledge, Tamir’s article seems to be the only one about Israel, which is a blatant distortion on what is happening in Israel.”
According to pro-Israel blogger Elder of Ziyon, since 2006 the Guggenheim has been attempting to build a museum in Abu Dhabi, UAE, which “routinely engages in real censorship of art. Not the false ‘withholding funds’ definition that idiot artists like Chen Tamir whine about where a government doesn’t want to support someone publicly defecating on their flag, but honest-to Allah censorship of art.”
“When an artist or a museum sees an opportunity for self advancement, suddenly censorship is not so big a deal,” he wrote. “The Guggenheim, by publishing an article about the horrors of nonexistent Israeli censorship, has no problem with partnering with a country where art censorship is normal and explicit. The double standards to which Israel is subject by these supposed defenders of art and freedom of expression is stunning, and their hypocrisy is blatant.”
In response to The Algemeiner’s request for clarification as to why the Guggenheim would promote on its website an article demonizing Israel, a spokesman for the museum said, “As an arts institution, the Guggenheim welcomes a multitude of voices and perspectives on topics of interest to the wider artistic and cultural community. The views expressed are those of the writer, a curator who lives and works in Israel, not necessarily those of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation.”

Liberals’ Shameful Attacks on Israel

What explains this troubling trend? A friend of mine puts it this way: The Left thinks in terms of oppressor and oppressed, and in those terms it’s much easier for them to see the Palestinians as the oppressed than the Israelis, and arguments about who is at fault or who refuses to come to the table don’t change the basic power relations of a powerful, wealthy, successful society facing a weak, poor, failed one. It suggests the Left’s entire oppressor/oppressed framework often is misguided, but that’s just how liberals tend to think.
What’s wrong with this progressive construct is that it is morally offensive and empirically insane. One can sympathize with the suffering of individual Palestinians while also recognizing that Palestinians, not Israel, have brought these miseries upon themselves.
To quickly review the historical record: For those who blame the so-called “Israeli occupation” for Palestinian hostilities, it needs to be pointed out yet again that the PLO, an organization committed to the destruction of Israel, was founded in 1964, three years before Israel controlled the West Bank or Gaza. The entire Palestinian movement, from its inception to this day, is based on vanquishing the Jewish state.
This was evident in August 1967 when Israel’s offer to return all the land it had captured during the 1967 war in exchange for peace and normal relations, was rejected out of hand by Arab leaders meeting in Khartoum.
It was evident on the day Yasir Arafat signed the Oslo accords in 1993 when he addressed the Palestinian people and justified his action as the first step “in the 1974 plan,” referring to a phased plan whose goal was the ultimate eradication of Israel.
It was evident at Camp David in 2000, in Taba in 2001, and again in 2008 when enormously generous offers – Palestinian statehood, the division of Jerusalem, the return of the West Bank and Gaza – were rejected by the Palestinians, often followed by an intifada.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise, Spielberg warns in Harvard speech

Acclaimed director Steven Spielberg admitted he was “wrong” to think as a child that anti-Semitism “was fading,” telling Harvard’s graduating class that President Barack Obama was right when he warned that “anti-Semitism is on the rise.”
Spielberg, whose 99-year-old father Arnold sat in one of the first rows at his address before the Ivy League university’s class of 2016, told the graduates Thursday that the world “is full of monsters” espousing “racism, homophobia, ethnic hatred, class hatred” and “religious hatred.”
The Oscar winner also offered veiled criticism of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, known for his anti-migrant rhetoric. “We are a nation of immigrants — at least for now,” Spielberg said, and urged the graduates to vote in the upcoming election.
“As a kid, I was bullied — for being Jewish,” Spielberg recalled in his speech. “This was upsetting, but compared to what my parents and grandparents had faced, it felt tame. Because we truly believed that anti-Semitism was fading. And we were wrong. Over the last two years, nearly 20,000 Jews have left Europe to find higher ground. And earlier this year, I was at the Israeli embassy when President Obama stated the sad truth. He said: ‘We must confront the reality that around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it.’”

05/27 Links Pt2: Let’s Take BDS to Court; J Street: For sale to the highest bidder; Tariq Ramadan, Islam’s Goebbels

From Ian:

Shmuley Boteach: J Street: For sale to the highest bidder

While never monolithic, the pro-Israel community has been mostly unified since Israel became independent. That has all changed since the emergence of J Street as a lobby that explicitly set out to challenge the establishment. The group claims it is pro-Israel, but it is fundamentally divisive and philosophically more in tune with the Arab lobby than the pro-Israel lobby.
This was most recently apparent when J Street decided to support President Obama’s catastrophic nuclear deal with Iran despite the opposition of both the Netanyahu government, the opposition Labor Party, and, according to the polls, approximately 80 percent of both the Israeli and American population.
Now we learn that its campaign to mislead Congress and the American public about the Iran deal was paid for by the Ploughshares Fund. Ironically, Ploughshares seeks to eliminate the world’s nuclear stockpiles and yet supported an agreement that encourages nuclear proliferation. The Fund paid J Street an astounding $576,500 – the equivalent of nearly one-third of the lobby’s entire 2014 budget — to help the Obama administration undermine Israel’s security.
According to deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, the Ploughshares Fund was a key partner in the campaign to recruit nongovernmental organizations, proliferation experts and “friendly” reporters to create an “echo chamber” to support the Iran deal. J Street’s executive director Jeremy Ben-Ami had numerous meetings with White House officials, including Rhodes, and the organization created a website, Iran Deal Facts, to echo the administration’s talking points. Blogger Elder of Zion described J Street succinctly as “nothing but a paid shill for the White House to split the U.S. Jewish community and put it at odds with how Israelis feel.”
The Iran case is just one example, however, of J Street’s malevolent influence.

Tariq Ramadan, Islam’s Goebbels

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with Georges Bensoussan, one of France’s most important scholars of the Holocaust. He told me that “Tariq Ramadan’s request for French nationality is a political provocation of the same nature as that used and abused by the Nazis against the Weimar democracy. It is the Islamist version of Nazi tactics of 1930-1932 years, when Goebbels said that the Weimar Republic had given the Nazis the weapons of its own defeat.”
Tariq Ramadan is Islam’s Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. This Nazi official punctually arrived late at his own rallies: “It increases the tension”, Goebbels said. And to those who reproached him because he used a taxi, Goebbels replied: “You have no idea of what is propaganda. I would have to get two taxis, one for me and one for my bag.”
It was Goebbels’ idea to launch the Nazi appeal to the heart in order to manipulate public opinion. “The art of propaganda” he said, “consists precisely in the ability to solicit the public’s imagination with an appeal to the feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will attract attention and will touch the hearts of the masses of the nation.”
Joseph Goebbels was frail, slender, with a large head and a hollow face, a beautiful voice. People flocked to hear him, because he was able to instill in the public different feelings such as hysteria, hatred, enthusiasm. He knew how to use every means: books and films, radio and music, media and tourism. He conquered writers, philosophers, scientists, intellectuals. “It is nice to exercise power with guns, but wonderful is gaining power over the hearts and the brains,” Goebbels said.
This is exactly what Mr. Ramadan and other Islamists are doing today in Europe: the ferocious appeal to the Muslim masses, the manipulation of hatred and emotions through mosques and schools, the conquest of brains and hearts through televisions and rallies.
Dr. Goebbels and Dr. Ramadan also share the same goal: the submission of Europe. Yesterday to the Aryan race, today to Islam.

Sweden Choosing to Lose War against Middle East Antisemitism?

Who invited this "Salafist megastar," who denies the Holocaust and is known for making anti-Semitic statements, to visit Malmö? What do you do when anti-Semitism in Malmö, Sweden's third-largest city, is so normalized that children in a public school can endorse a conference with anti-Semitic elements?
Anti-Semitism is such a gigantic problem in Malmö that even senior city officials cannot understand how it became so normalized. They seem to dismiss it as part of a non-Swedish culture that, in a multicultural society, must be tolerated, even accommodated.
If there are children in Swedish public schools today who are promoting an anti-Semitic conference, what will these children do in the future?
Is Sweden really turning into a country where Jews are no longer welcome, someday to become a country without Jews? And if that happens, what does that say about Sweden? And who will come next after the Jews?

Moroccans refuse to play Israel in wheelchair tennis

From the Jerusalem Post:

Politics reared its ugly head in sports once more on Thursday, this time at the World Team Cup wheelchair tennis event at the Ariake Colosseum in Tokyo.

Israel was scheduled to face Morocco in a Men's World Group 2 tie for positions 5-8, but the Moroccans never showed up, being ordered to forfeit by their local paralympic committee.

"This is a sad day for sports, and an even sadder day for paralympic sports," said Israel coach Nimrod Bichler. "Politics have mixed with sports in the past, but paralympic sports were always different." Israel's team, which includes Amir Levi, Adam Berdichevsky and Asi Stokol, was awarded a default 3-0 victory.

...The ITF told The Jerusalem Post in response to Thursday's incident.

"The ITF was established to, among other things, preserve the integrity and independence of tennis as a sport, and to do so without unfair discrimination on the grounds of color, race, nationality, ethnic or national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or religion. In light of the report that the Moroccan team failed to play a scheduled match against Israel in Men’s World Group II of the ITF Wheelchair World Team Cup, we will contact the Moroccan Tennis Federation as a matter of urgency to establish the facts of this situation, and we will follow the relevant ITF Wheelchair regulations and the ITF Constitution, as necessary, to determine the appropriate action."

As this photo shows, the Malaysian team did play Israel - and posed with them:

Malaysia won.

It will be interesting to see if the Moroccan team is praised or vilified in Morocco's media. Sofar, I didn't see any stories about this there.

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The New York Times reported on Wednesday:

A bitter divide over the Middle East could threaten Democratic Party unity as representatives of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont vowed to upend what they see as the party’s lopsided support of Israel.

Two of the senator’s appointees to the party’s platform drafting committee, Cornel West and James Zogby, on Wednesday denounced Israel’s "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza and said they believed that rank-and-file Democrats no longer hewed to the party’s staunch support of the Israeli government.

Israel haters immediately freaked out over the use of scare quotes for the word "occupation." Glenn Greenwald wrote a long article about how American media are so frightened of the mighty Israel lobby, all because of the scare quotes.

Salon picked up on it and found lots of tweeters complaining about the scary scare quotes.

And then the NYT silently took them away.

Yet to say that Israel occupies Gaza as a fact is simply a lie. The definition of occupation always included "boots on the ground" and the only people who still claim that Israel occupies Gaza in the legal definition of the term are liars.

I have a fairly comprehensive post with links that shows that Gaza is not occupied by any standards besides the ones that were made up out of thin air for Israel, and only for Israel. I've shown how Amnesy has one definition for Israel and another for everyone else. I also show that the ICRC changed its definition of "occupation" deliberately for Israel, and only Israel.

The European Court for Human Rights, when not talking about Israel, gives the accurate definition:

The Court notes that under international law (in particular Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations) a territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of a hostile army, “actual authority” being widely considered as translating to effective control and requiring such elements as presence of foreign troops, which are in a position to exercise effective control without the consent of the sovereign (see paragraph 94 above). On the basis of all the material before it and having regard to the above establishment of facts, the Court finds that Gulistan is not occupied by or under the effective control of foreign forces as this would require a presence of foreign troops in Gulistan.

Finally, when the UN was asked about why it refers to Gaza as "occupied," it didn't reply with any legal arguments. It simply said that Gaza and the West Bank are considered one territory so, for nomenclature reasons, they refer to both as Occupied Palestinian Territories. This is even though the definition of "occupation" is explicitly not all-or-nothing, if you bother to read the only definition that exists in international law, from the Hague in 1907.

If the legal definition of occupation has been extended the way Israel haters believe, then why didn't the UN answer with a legal argument instead of a semantic one?

Because it is laughable.

Greenwald points to what he regards as an "outstanding two-minute video" as proof that Gaza is still legally occupied. It is a sarcastic video from Al Jazeera that does not quote a single scrap of international law or a single legal scholar for its "proof."

Even if you discount the Israeli position that the West Bank is not occupied, but disputed - for which there is plenty of evidence when you look at the facts and don't try to shoe-horn definitions after the fact - it is inaccurate for the NYT to say flatly that Gaza is occupied. Teh scare quotes were entirely appropriate and necessary in this context.

By caving to the haters, the NYT shows that accuracy is not as important as making its desired audience happy.

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05/27 Links Pt1: UN demands Israel pay for 1996 shelling of Lebanon; The dream museum of the Palestinians

From Ian:

Some Help That Israel Doesn’t Need

When it comes to reinventing the wheel, some people just never tire of the exercise. That’s the only way to view a new Middle East peace initiative that its sponsors are touting as the proposal that the world has been waiting for that will finally solve the problem that has resisted every previous initiative. But in this case, the solution isn’t coming from unfriendly outsiders like the European Union, the United Nations, or even the Obama administration. It’s a group of American Jews who not only believe they are acting in the best interests of Israel but are pushing their ideas forward in cooperation with an organization of retired Israeli military and security officials as well as a Washington security think tank. Buoyed by the bad press that the current Israeli government has been getting, these people think now is just the moment to push forward a peace plan that will help prepare the way for change despite the opposition of the elected leaders of the Jewish state.
But even if we were to concede that their motives are pure, what they are doing is not only a waste of time, it is also actually counter-productive.
The group in question is the Israel Policy Forum, an organization supported and staffed by people with records of support for the Jewish state but which has been out of the news for a long time. Created at the behest of the late Yitzhak Rabin in 1994, the IPF’s original intent was to serve as a counterweight to AIPAC because the prime minister thought it was insufficiently enthusiastic about the Oslo Accords. Supported by heavyweight American Jewish donors, the group had a big initial splash, but its backers didn’t have the stomach to compete with the umbrella pro-Israel lobby. It was also soon outpaced by events as the Oslo process unraveled and was ultimately discredited in the eyes of the Israeli public by the deceit of Yasir Arafat and the horror of the Palestinian terrorism that he unleashed in the years that followed.
Since then, the IPF has been eclipsed among liberals by J Street, a group that didn’t shrink from seeking to support the Obama administration’s policy of pressure and more “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel as well as backing an Iranian nuclear deal that was opposed by Israelis across the political spectrum from left to right. Indeed, for many on the Jewish left here even J Street isn’t radical enough since it still puts itself forward as a “pro-Israel” group and opposes the BDS movement that aims at waging economic war on the Jewish state even as it supports those who practice more selective boycotts. But the IPF has just gotten fresh blood in the form of faithful Obama loyalist, apologist and funder Alan Solow and other liberal big shots. Yet though this effort is aimed at a more mainstream audience, the IPF initiative is based on the same bogus notion that Israel needs to be saved from itself and forced to make concessions to the Palestinians in order to preserve it as a Jewish state.

The dream museum of the Palestinians

There’s no better example of this then the French peace conference planned to proceed without any Israeli or Palestinian participation, a virtual diplomatic equivalent of the empty museum at Bir Zeit, all showy exterior with no underlying substance.
With the fading Abbas nearing the end of his futile tenure, the PA’s foreign funders in the US and Europe would make better use of their leverage at this time to apply real pressure on the Palestinians to usher in a younger, more dynamic, less corrupt, and genuinely moderate leadership – one that perhaps that will dedicate itself to laying the foundations of a viable Palestinian nation ready to live in real peace beside a Jewish state, and to offer its own people more than just yet another failed Arab nation.
Before the world expends even more efforts on the Palestinian national project – and asks Israelis to take real risks in allowing that to happen – it’s time to first demand exactly what will be the content of that still empty Palestinian museum.
Or, as scholar Foud Ajami put it in The Dream Palace of the Arabs, his intellectual study of the faltering dreams of modern Arab nationalism across the Middle East: “As the world batters the modern Arab inheritance, the rhetorical need for anti-Zionism grows. But there rises, too, the recognition that it is time for the imagination to steal away from Israel and to look at the Arab reality, to behold its own view of the kind of the world the Arabs want for themselves.”

Caroline Glick: Liberman’s first challenge

As for Hamas, in formulating a strategy for cutting the terrorist regime down to size, Israel should take a lesson from Syria. There are a half dozen Islamic State-like militias operating along the border on the Golan Heights. But they are too busy fighting one another to attack Israel.
Such militias operate in Gaza as well and are already engaged in an internecine battle with Hamas.
Israel should constantly check and diminish Hamas’s military capabilities to prevent it from rebuilding its arsenals and offensive capabilities.
It should also help to destabilize it as a coherent fighting group. The presence of other jihadist militia in Gaza facilitates the accomplishment of this goal.
Finally, Israel needs to realize that there is unlikely to be a clear-cut resolution of this struggle, at least in the next generation.
With the traditional Arab regimes still in place fighting for their survival, and Iran ascendant, Israel needs to assume that more terrorist regimes like Hezbollah, ISIS and Hamas will be formed from the wreckage of the Arab state system in the future. Instability, then, can be expected to remain a chronic condition of the Arab world.
The good news is that Israel has the capacity to adapt and forge constructive strategies for weakening and dividing our enemies. The bad news is that so long as we insist on obsessing over ourselves, we are unlikely to do so.

New Zealand foreign minister refuses to call murdering Israeli civilians "terrorism"

From Shalom Kiwi:

While Prime Minister Key “stands with Belgium in the fight against terrorism”, and Foreign Minister McCully “stand[s] with the people and Government of Turkey in their fight against terrorism”, neither can bring themselves to stand with Israel against their fight against terror.

This double standard was brought into sharp focus again at an event last week, where Minister McCully said he makes “no apology for calling it as it is” when it comes to Israeli settlement building yet could not bring himself to use the word “terrorism” to describe the Palestinian attacks against Israelis in recent times.

A leader of the Islamic Council of New Zealand has previously indicated that he thinks Israelis attacked by Palestinians are not considered innocent victims nor their attackers terrorists but for a member of the New Zealand government to do similar is concerning.

Here's the video.

(h/t David C)

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EoZ featured in Zman Magazine article on media watchdogs

Zman Magazine is a monthly publication for the religious Jewish community that includes in-depth articles on topics that you will not see in the mainstream media.

This month they feature media watchdogs for Israel. (The article is not yet online at their website.)

Ian gets a shout-out too.

And over five pages of the article feature EoZ, after sections on Honest reporting and CAMERA.

Here are the first two pages about me:

And their conclusion:

This might be a good time for me to ask for donations...

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Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

Yesterday I wrote about a disgusting article written on the official Guggenheim Museum blog which falsely accused Israel of racism and of censorship of art.

The museum's social media director seemed already a little embarrassed about the article. Instead of tweeting the article title, which is "Censorship in Israel," the tweeter only highlighted a side point it mentioned:

Israel's infrastructure for art is weak, says @CCATelAviv curator Chen Tamir: https://t.co/Q2OiQGBfYE #GuggUBSMAP pic.twitter.com/FjgPeM7BUz
— Guggenheim Museum (@Guggenheim) May 20, 2016

Yet the Guggenheim is guilty of more that just publishing a slanderous article filled with lies and half-truths.

You see, the Guggenheim has been trying since 2006 to build a huge museum in Abu Dhabi, UAE.

And the UAE routinely engages in real censorship of art. Not the false "withholding funds" definition that idiot artists like Chen Tamir whine about where a government doesn't want to support someone publicly defecating on their flag, but honest-to-Allah censorship of art.

The last editions of both Art Dubai in 2012 and the Sharjah Biennial in 2011 saw works removed because of objections to their content.

In Sharjah, accusations of blasphemy leveled at a work by the Algerian artist Mustapha Benfodil resulted not only in the removal of the work, but also in the dismissal of the biennial’s director, Jack Persekian.

Mr. Benfodil’s installation, “It Has No Importance,” placed two teams of mannequins in soccer uniforms in a public courtyard, with sexually graphic comments scrawled in Arabic on their shirts.

In the words of the 2011 biennial’s curators, Rasha Salti and Haig Aivazian, the graffiti “borrowed the voice of the victims of rape at the hands of religious extremists in Algeria.”

Sheika Hoor al-Qasimi, the 33-year-old director of the Sharjah Art Foundation, who is overseeing this year’s biennial, said that the management team that had permitted the 2011 installation — and others deemed offensive — had erred. “It was an oversight by the entire team,” she said. “It was not censorship. It was illegal. The U.A.E.’s laws clearly forbid nudity and blasphemy and you cannot break the law.”

Arsalan Mohammad, editor of the Middle East edition of Harper’s Bazaar Art, commented: “In my experience here, what gets called censorship in an artistic context is explained as upholding public standards of decency, avoiding blasphemy and offense to the nation’s rulers. The two terms are interchangeable.”

Yet instead of railing against explicit censorship of art in the UAE, artists find ways to find the silver lining, as artist Jime Reyes Gonzalez wrote in 2013, ending up implying that censorship is a good thing for art in the end

Coming to the UAE was an instant shock for me. As opposed to the self-service approach, art and media here are more visibly regulated. As part of an academic institution in the UAE, most of us have a fairly good idea of what kinds of things are allowed. We know not to criticize the government, politics, the royal family or Islam. We know to avoid delicate topics such as homosexuality and gender roles.

As students and artists, we should be concerned with how much we can express. We enjoy a considerable amount of freedom within NYU Abu Dhabi to express ourselves freely on these topics, and are even encouraged to do so, but if we want our work to be shown anywhere outside of the school community, we have to adhere to the laws of our host country.

At first, I was deeply disturbed by this censorship. As a film major, I found it more than slightly disconcerting to pursue filmmaking in a place where films in the cinema are blatantly cut and edited to fit the local standards. I did not come here with a particularly strong desire to make offensive paintings of Sheikh Mohammed or a film that criticizes homophobic tendencies within Islam but the fact that I couldn’t was still annoying. I struggled with trying to understand what the “you can do anything, as long as it is respectful” framework meant exactly.

As I gained more experience actually creating art here and watching my peers do the same, I was surprised by what I discovered. The fact that we have to work under relatively dense limitations sparks an interesting alternative to blunt expression. I watched my friends craft beautiful capstone pieces dealing with the sensitive topics mentioned above without ever stating the topic at all. I watched and learned that there are other ways to say what you want through art that is not so in-your-face. I have found that the restrictions in place do not necessarily mean that we cannot talk about certain things, but rather that we have to think harder about how we talk about these things.

As an art student, I have finally chosen to take it all as, in the words of Professor Savio, “an opportunity, rather than a constraint – a chance to be creative and imaginative in a way [you] never thought possible … Everywhere there are rules and restrictions that must be adhered to. No reason for the artist to go into a box, close the lid, and resent the limitation. Use restriction to set your ideas free.”

There you have it. When an artist or a museum sees an opportunity for self advancement, suddenly censorship is not so big a deal. And while there is controversy over whether the Guggenheim would be allowed to show nudes, for instance, it is obvious that the types of shows it creates when the museum is finally completed will be informed by a desire to not upset its Arab hosts. There will be no Arab version of "Piss Christ."

The Guggenheim, by publishing an article about the horrors of nonexistent Israeli censorship, has no problem with partnering with a country where art censorship is normal and explicit. The double standards to which Israel is subject by these supposed defenders of art and freedom of expression is stunning, and their hypocrisy is blatant.

(h/t califlefty)

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.@UNRWA issues propaganda video that contradicts its accusations against Israel

Here is a propaganda video from a UNRWA that was posted this week:

It shows a teenager, Waed Abu Rajab, describing how difficult it is for him to get from his house to his UNRWA school in Hebron.

As he describes his ordeal, the camera follows him going to school.

He describes how he is often stopped at two separate checkpoints. The video shows him walking right through them.

He describes how it can take him a half hour to go to school. No delays are seen.

He says that the guards always ask him intrusive questions, like where he is going. No one asked him anything.

He says he is scared. He doesn't look scared at all.

He says that if the soldiers don't harass him, settlers will. No settlers are visible in the video.

He says that sometimes the soldiers shoot tear gas for no reason, and they don't mind because they always wear gas masks. None of the Israeli security forces there are wearing gas masks.

Not a single claim of his is corroborated by the video, and most of them are contradicted.

Of course, the video doesn't mention that the reason the checkpoints are there is because people who are Waed's age were stabbing every Jew they could find in Hebron only a few months ago..

No, that doesn't fit UNRWA's propaganda story.

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05/26 Links Pt2: Dershowitz: Sanders is an Ignoramus; Lumish: Israel is Insane; Caught in a web of hate

From Ian:

Dershowitz: Not Surprising ‘Ignoramus’ Bernie Sanders Tapped ‘Professional Israel-Hater’ for Democratic Policy Committee (INTERVIEW)

The Palestinian activist appointed by presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders to the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee is a “professional Israel-hater,” internationally acclaimed legal mind Alan Dershowitz told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.
Dershowitz, a fierce defender of Israel and avowed supporter of the Democratic Party, was referring to Arab American Institute (AAI) President James Zogby, whom Sanders tapped on Monday to help draft party policy.
Dershowitz, who said he’s debated Zogby on numerous occasions, explained why he is “not surprised” that the senator from Vermont contending for the Democratic nomination picked him to fill such an influential position. “Bernie Sanders is an ignoramus when it comes to the Middle East, and he is very strongly biased against Israel. He gets his information from hard-Left, anti-Israel sources, and he doesn’t think for himself,” he said.
Regarding another of Sanders’ anti-Israel appointees to the committee — philosopher Cornel West, a BDS proponent who wrote that the crimes of Hamas “pale in the face of the US-supported Israeli slaughter of innocent civilians,” and accused President Obama of being “most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want”– Dershowitz said, “Putting two Israel-bashers on the committee risks dividing the Democratic Party over an issue on which they’ve always been united.”

Michael Lumish: Israel is Insane

If there is one issue that genuinely pisses me off it is Israeli policy concerning the Temple Mount. How is it possible that someone like Moshe Dayan could be so naive as to think that handing over the holiest site of the Jewish people to Arabs would somehow placate them?
It did the exact opposite as should have been entirely predictable.
Instead of being grateful to the Jewish people for their generosity, the Arabs use the Temple Mount as a club and Israel allows this despite the fact that it need not do so.
They have even made it a rule that no member of the Knesset shall be allowed to go up there.
I do not know what to say. The stupidity is just breathtaking.
By preventing non-Muslims from praying on the Temple Mount Israel sends a message to the world that Jerusalem is not really a Jewish town. Maintaining the "status quo" is the same as maintaining the idea that Jerusalem actually belongs to the Arabs and, therefore, Jews are nothing more than land thieves.
The problem that Jews have with the Temple Mount is the same problem that Jews have with the notion of "Israeli Occupation of the West Bank." If Israel is illegally occupying someone else's land, including the Temple Mount, and thus Jerusalem, in general, then we might as well pack it in and say goodbye.
If Jewish people think that we stole land from others and if they think that we should not even be allowed to pray at the site of the Temples then what is the point of Israel? I understand that much of the rabbinate, for theological reasons, believe that Jews should not go up to the Holy of Holies, period, but that is not the point.
The point is the question of Jewish sovereignty.

Caught in a web of hate

An undercover investigation by Jewish News this week sheds light on the anti-Semitic “lynch mob” active online, and details the extraordinary ease with which pro-Palestinian activists can descend into a world of hate.
Our reporter, who created fake anti-Israel internet profiles to gain access to secret groups, reveals how anti-Semites connect with one another and feed off group members’ anger, in a self-reinforcing “spiral of extremism”.
Crucially, our investigation also outlines how the technology and algorithms underpinning social media tilt and “taint” search results towards the perceived political persuasion of the user, showing how hate builds on hate.
Moreover, it reveals how savvy bloggers manipulate this technology, with a “correlation between the level of venom and the likes/shares they receive”.
Describing this murky and “truly frightening” cyber Twilight Zone, ‘Mr X’ reveals the anti-Semites’ source of “news” on Israel, the legal loopholes they exploit and the use of ‘memes’ – images edited to affect emotion or ridicule.
Brace yourselves for a cold, hard look at those no longer able or willing to hear cold, hard facts about the Jewish people and the democratic State of Israel – and the mind-warping processes that assist them. (h/t Alexi)

UN passes resolution singling out Israel for violating health of Palestinians

From UN Watch:

The UK, France, Germany and other EU states voted today for a UN resolution, co-sponsored by the Arab group of states and the Palestinian delegation, that singled out Israel at the annual assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) as the only violator of “mental, physical and environmental health,” and commissioned a WHO delegation to investigate and report on “the health conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory” and in “the occupied Syrian Golan,” and to place it on the agenda again at next year’s meeting.

By contrast, the UN assembly did not address Syrian hospitals being bombed by Syrian and Russian warplanes, or millions of Yemenis denied access to food and water by the Saudi-led bombings and blockade, nor did it pass a resolution on any other country in the world. Out of 24 items on the meeting’s agenda, only one, Item No. 19 against Israel, focused on a specific country.

“The UN reached new heights of absurdity today,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer, “by enacting a resolution which accuses Israel of violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan, even as in reality Israeli hospitals continue their life-saving treatment for Syrians fleeing to the Golan from the Assad regime’s barbaric attacks.”

How the UN manages to be so consistently outrageous is remarkable. And France, saying they want to sponsor a peace summit, enthusiastically supports such egreguous examples of hate against Israel.

While researching something else I recently came across an obscure 1984 article in Public Health Review. Written by three members of Israel's department of public health for Gaza, it explains how Israeli doctors dramatically reduced the infant mortality rate in the sector between 1973 and 1982.

[...]

What Israel did to save Gaza children was nothing short of miraculous. To cut infant mortality by two thirds in a decade is amazing.

But propagandists are louder than truth-tellers and Israel haters are much more motivated than ordinary people who know better.

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