Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, June 05, 2016

The hysteria versus the reality on the Temple Mount

Ma'an, the Western-funded news agency, reports in Arabic:

Dozens of extremist settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday morning, in memory of the "naksa," the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, to coincide with the tours and provocative marches on the doors of the mosque and in the streets of Jerusalem's Old City under Israeli police protection.

The director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Omar Kiswani said that 208 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque through the Mughrabi Gate, in small groups, tightly guarded by Israeli police and special forces.

Al-Kiswani said the Israelis started their tour at the Moroccan gate, before moving on to the al-Qibli and al-Marwani mosques on the compound, and then to Bab al-Rahma area. Some of them attempted to perform religious rituals but were prevented from doing so by guards.

Sheikh Kiswani stressed that the settlers have no right to storm Al-Aqsa, blaming the Israeli government and the Israeli police responsibility tense situation in the Far eve of the holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic Waqf denounced the provocative practices that took place by the settlers in the Aqsa Mosque.

Jews peacefully visiting the Temple Mount is the top story in Ma'an today in both English (where the rhetoric is toned down) and Arabic.

This hysteria is published day in and day out in Arabic media worldwide.

But last year secular Israeli journalist Shlomo Eldar decided to visit the holy spot to see what the fuss was all about. He published the truth in Al Monitor:

I did not visit the Temple Mount for religious, political or ideological reasons. Rather, I came as a journalist wishing to know what the commotion is all about. I wanted to find out firsthand whether the Palestinian allegations that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger are founded. Has Israel really changed the sanctified status quo at the Temple Mount or is it — as Israeli officials claim — the unbridled and deliberate incitement by the northern chapter of the Islamic movement in Israel and by Palestinian Authority (PA) officials that sparked the current wave of terror?

Visiting the compound is possible only through organized groups or those that get organized on the spot. That’s why I asked to join a tour of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation headed by right-wing activist Yehuda Glick, who heads the LIBA Initiative for Jewish Freedom on the Temple Mount. To my surprise, however, I discovered that I was the only tourist in the initiative, which is why I was privileged to have a private tour guide who gave me a detailed overview of the history of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Orna — a certified tour guide and a secular woman — volunteers once a month, as do many other tour guides, to provide a free-of-charge professional tour “without religious, political and ideological agendas,” for anyone who wants to see the site and be informed.

When we arrived at the entrance gate another surprise awaited me: Hundreds of tourists from around the world were lining up, waiting patiently for the visiting hours. Buses packed with tourists parked close to the Western Wall parking lot. Column after column of visitors from different countries joined the long meandering line that sprawled all the way from the entrance to the Old City's Dung Gate. Naively, I thought that only a handful of people, mainly from right-wing Israeli groups that insist on changing the existing order, would come to visit this hot spot.

As it turns out, tourists have a priority accessing the compound. When a group of Jews gets organized, it has the last priority to enter. Jews wishing to visit the Temple Mount are assigned police officers, border police soldiers and Waqf security guards who make sure they bring no Jewish ritual objects whatsoever. They are also forbidden from praying, bowing, sitting down, quietly reciting prayers, bringing a prayer book, a photo of the compound or a Star of David. They are allowed to bring nothing that could potentially upset Muslim worshipers and stir up more tension. Before going in, Orna carefully stashed all the photos, drawings and maps she was carrying under the stairwell so as to meet the stringent visiting restrictions. Standing next to the long line of tourists were five Jews wearing skullcaps. Once organized as a group, they waited for the instructions of the security guards to let them in. After going through a rigorous security check at the entrance gate, they were assigned border police soldiers as well as Waqf security guards that surrounded them throughout the visit. As soon as they set foot in the plaza, the women of the Mourabitat (organized Muslim activists) started shrieking in loud voices: “Allahu akbar.” This was the first time I saw from up close the women who have been recruited by the northern faction of the Islamic movement in Israel and who receive pay for participating in the mission to “defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

At the farther perimeters of the entrance, some 20 women in a religious study group were sitting down in a circle and reading the Quran. On a knoll across from there, outside the structure, were the Mourabitoun — the men — who were also having a Quran class. When they noticed the religious Jewish men they, too, started shouting in loud voices — which blended in with the yelping of the women — “Allahu akbar.”

Unflustered by those chants, the small Jewish group continued to walk slowly along the plaza all the way to the entrance to the mosque, which is marked by a strip on the ground. That’s where they stopped for fear that they would cross into an area that is prohibited. From there they proceeded to take another round along the plaza. Then they left the compound escorted by the guards and the Allahu akbar yelling.

I drew closer to the group of Mourabitoun men. I pulled out my cell phone and took their picture. All of a sudden a few Waqf guards showed up, demanding that I hand over my device, claiming that I had taken a photo of a sight that cannot be photographed.

“I have no objection deleting the forbidden photo,” I told one of the guards, who made sure I deleted all the photos showing the Mourabitoun and Mourabitat at the Temple Mount as well as photos of the Waqf security guards around the mosque. However, they did let me keep a photo of myself against the backdrop of the mosque. But then another group of Waqf security guards showed up with their commander (which is what I inferred from the tone of his voice and the orders he bossed around to his subordinates.) They demanded that I be removed from the Temple Mount because, according to them, I had violated the rules. “Nobody told me I couldn’t take photos of the worshipers,” I tried to explain. To support my argument, I added that I had taken the photos openly and in the presence of the security guards. “If I had known that you can’t take pictures of the Mourabitoun, would I have done so in front of your own eyes?” I wondered out loud.

Raising his voice, the commander of the Waqf detail said forcefully, “Get him out right now. Khalas! [That’s enough!] Out.” As they started escorting me to the exit gate, a border police soldier stationed at one of the security posts showed up where the altercation was taking place. At that point an argument about sovereignty at the Temple Mount ensued. “You have no right to remove any visitors from the plaza,” the soldier told his Waqf counterparts, who insisted on removing the “rogue tourist.”

One of the Waqf officials turned to me in English and said, “Here, we make the decisions. Here, we call the shots. Here, we are kings — the rulers.” He kept repeating the word “king” over and over. “Nobody can dispute what we say,” he argued. “We determine who comes in and who goes out and what they can or can’t do. We are the sovereigns at Al-Aqsa Mosque.” The border police soldier tried to calm him down, telling him that those were not the procedures and that decisions have to be made jointly. Yet, the Waqf guard insisted that they were the sovereign and that they had been explicitly ordered to banish me.

This ended my visit to the Temple Mount, from which I learned that if Waqf officials have the authority and ability to decide who gets to visit the compound and who fails to meet the threshold criteria, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is therefore not in danger.

Knesset member Ghattas alleged that Israel was deepening its control and occupation, yet I don’t understand what he saw. The Waqf security guards are densely deployed at the Temple Mount compound, going to great lengths to make sure that only small groups of Jews get to visit the site compared to the thousands of tourists that are allowed to visit almost uninterruptedly. While keeping order and security at the Temple Mount and at Al-Aqsa Mosque is shared jointly by Israel and the Waqf, the tension awards the Palestinian almost total control of who is allowed into the Temple Mount and who isn’t. This, of course, stands in total contrast to the Palestinian allegations that Israel has changed the status quo and that Al-Aqsa is in danger.

Even an Israeli journalist had believed the hysteria without question, until he decided to look at the situation first-hand.

The reality is that Jews are peacefully visiting the Temple Mount and are subject to rigorous restrictions that secular tourists and Muslims are not. And every time they visit the Muslims make a big deal out of it in order to create a situation where Jews would be banned altogether.

And to a large extent, the strategy has already worked.

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From the NYT:

“Mr. President!” a woman called out to Waad Qannam at a rally last week in East Jerusalem. “We want you to represent us!” The crowd cheered passionately, even though Mr. Qannam was actually running for president on a reality television show.

In the United States, a reality television star is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. For Palestinians, it’s the other way around: A candidate chosen on a television show is the closest they have come to an elected leader in more than 10 years.

“This is just a show,” acknowledged Mr. Qannam, one of three contestants who made it to Thursday night’s finale of “The President.” “But people are hungry for a leader.”

The show, now in its second season, began with 24 contestants culled from more than 1,200 applicants who had to take a series of exams on Palestinian politics, international law, development and gender equality. Each week, contestants shadowed a Palestinian minister or business person, then told a panel of judges what they had learned and how they would improve on the job.

On Thursday night, the three finalists all had similar platforms: Boycott Israel. Designate East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Bring about a reconciliation for the bitterly divided Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza. (Six of the candidates in the round of 24 were from Gaza, though none made it to the final round.)

“The President” — broadcast on the Maan satellite network to large audiences in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere in the Arab world — was funded mostly by a State Department grant to Search for Common Ground, a nongovernmental group that focuses on conflict resolution.

AP adds:

The prospects of reaching peace with Israel rarely came up, and when the topic was mentioned, contestants tended to take strong positions against Israel.

Qannam said Israel was responsible for the current wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence and said he wouldn't call on Palestinians to stop stabbing attacks.

Why does the US fund a reality TV show in the PA? They have other TV series that seem to be able to pay for themselves without outside help.

And why is the State Department paying for a TV show that not only urges the audience to boycott Israel and tacitly condones stabbing Israeli civilians?

American tax dollars are paying for anti-Israel incitement that is far more popular than the total of all of the "peace" initiatives that the State Department has ever sponsored in the territories.

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06/04 Links: Incitement rife in Palestinian textbooks; 35 years on: mission to bomb Saddam’s nuke reactor

From Ian:

Incitement rife in Palestinian textbooks

In almost every study conducted by researchers looking into incitement in Palestinian textbooks, materials have been found which breach the Palestinian Authority's pledges to halt anti-Israel incitement in schools.
Researchers have been surveying Palestinian school textbooks frequently over the past few decades to see if they have inciting material, such as the non-recognition of Israel as a sovereign state or the glorification of terror attacks and terrorists.
The schools researched in the various surveys are all public schools under the control of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Ministry of Education.
It turns out that in the vast majority of Palestinian textbooks, Israel isn't on any maps in any form. Israeli cities within the 1967 Green Line - such as Acre, Haifa, Nazareth, Jaffa, and others – are presented as being Palestinian cities. There are only a few schools which use textbooks that show a difference between PA controlled areas and Israel.
The IMPACT-se group looks into the issue of what governments teach their children and put in their textbooks worldwide in an attempt to determine how peaceful and tolerant a society is. They also looked into the school curriculums in the PA.
According to Chairman Marcus Sheff, "we looked for characteristics of peace and tolerance. We investigate education systems all over the world. We search using objective criteria written by UNESCO, and use these criteria to rank the peace and tolerance in children and in the society itself. There is a definite and clear correlation between the level and peace and tolerance and political violence in a society."

PHOTOS: PA President Abbas’ Dedication Of Street In His Name Backfires

A West Bank municipality’s decision to name a street after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has backfired, with street signs vandalized and a great deal of abuse on social media.
Abbas dedicated the street in the town of Bir Zeit last week with pomp and circumstance.
The naming of the street was “a token of appreciation for [Abbas’] efforts to better the lives of the Palestinian people and his efforts to realize the dream of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the municipality said in a statement.
Less than a week later, the sign was vandalized and Abbas’ name erased from it. The official media ignored the incident, but it went viral on social media, accompanied by many comments ridiculing the President, some of them accompanied by a picture of the tweeters raising their middle finger.
“The youth of Bir Zeit couldn’t stand that sign for more than a week,” Beesan wrote.
“We congratulate our great leader, the liberator of Jerusalem and the crusher of the Jews, Mahmoud Abbas, for the naming of a street in Bir Zeit after him,” Dr. Khalil Awadi wrote ironically.

06/03 Links Pt2: BDS: A new face on an old hate; Jeremy Corbyn on Israel; Mekonen – Journey Of An African Jew

From Ian:

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: This bigoted radical does not deserve a "feminist artist" award

[Angela] Davis experienced her first visit to “Palestine” (with other “scholars of color”) as a “nightmare . . . the wall, the concrete, the razor wire everywhere conveyed the impression that we were in prison.” Deftly, she compares the jailing of black Americans with the jailing of Palestinian . . . terrorists. She tells her audiences that if they support BDS, “Palestine will be free.”
In the guise of anti-racism, Davis is a bigot — an activist Jew-hater. In her lectures, she doesn’t condemn Jordan or Egypt for their anti-Palestinian actions, nor does she fault the many Arab and Muslim countries that have systematically refused citizenship and even employment to Arab Palestinians.
Davis doesn’t talk about the anti-black racism of Arabs or about the practice of real gender and religious apartheid in Muslim countries. She doesn’t even fault the Palestinian leadership for torturing and executing its gays and dissidents or for forcibly veiling and subordinating Palestinian women. A real feminist would do so.
Real feminists wouldn’t be honoring such a figure.
In early May, 100 activists and artists staged a protest at the Brooklyn Museum about “displacement both in Brooklyn and Palestine.” This demonstration was organized by the Decolonial Cultural Front and Movement to Protect the People.
No one mentioned the relentless Palestinian terrorism against Israeli Jewish civilians — or the enormous “displacement” and murder of Christians by Arab Muslims, or the “displacement” brought about by indigenous civil wars among Muslim Afghans, Libyans, Iraqis and Syrians, a “displacement” that threatens the stability and viability of the Western world.
I doubt they will demonstrate against Angela Davis.

BDS: A new face on an old hate

BDS- boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the world’s only Jewish State are nothing new, and are not related to the "occupation"- but against the very existence of Israel, within any borders.
From the Saturday Evening Post, Dec 27 1947 spoken by Salel Jabur, Prime Minister of Iraq
“What is it”, he asked me, that Americans want?” If it is a safe home for the Jews, that cannot be found in Palestine for Palestine is in the heart of the Arab world. We surround it. How shall a Jewish state live there?”
We will boycott it, give it no foods or raw materials, buy nothing from it. We will squeeze it in a ring of steel until it dies and our heart is ours again”

Fatah media reports that Hamas arrested five members of the Presidential Guard for "collaborating" with Palestinian Authority that it claims it is unified with.

On Wednesday morning, Hamas reportedly arrested Mohammed Ghazi Khitab, Isaac Ibrahim Abdullah Hussein, Shadi Alslol, Hatem Yousef Mohammed Hasanat, and Mohammed Abdul Rahman Ibrahim Mattar.

The story goes on to accuse Hamas of building secret, underground prisons specifically for political opponents, where they routinely engage in torture. Some are in the basements of mosques which are soundproofed so that the residents nearby don't hear the screams.

Fatah media is even less trustworthy than Hamas media, but the arrests and charges of torture are probably true.

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Hundreds attend funeral of Holocaust survivor they didn't know

From Miriam Goodman on Facebook:

Now this is Israel...and her people!

Following an announcement that there was no minyan (quorum) to accompany Holocaust survivor Fernand Pavel Klitz, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, hundreds of people came to his funeral. They came from all over the country . Secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox. Old and young. School children
The burial society motorcycles escorted the procession and the coffin was carried by IDF officers and soldiers who came on their own initiative.

While this is impressive, it also points to a problem: people should worry more about these incredible survivors while they are still alive. so they wouldn't die alone.

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06/03 Links Pt1: Israel Criticized for Declining Invitation to National Suicide; Iran’s chess board

From Ian:

Charles Krauthammer: Israel Criticized for Declining Invitation to National Suicide

This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israel’s response in the 2014 Gaza war “disproportionate” and said “we cannot continue to be one-sided.” But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter — i.e., weaken — the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel, which has been close and supportive since Harry Truman recognized the world’s only Jewish state when it declared independence in May 1948.
[Cornel] West doesn’t even pretend, as do some left-wing “peace” groups, to be opposing Israeli policy in order to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa — anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. The Sanders appointees wish to bend the Democratic platform to encourage such diminishment unless Israel redeems itself by liberating Palestine.
This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did in fact follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war.
Israel is now being asked — pressured — to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the very heart of Israel — Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide.
It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders’ ideological roots. He is old left — not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union — not such fashionably cool communist paradises as Sandinista Nicaragua where Bill de Blasio went to work for the cause or Castro’s Cuba where de Blasio honeymooned. (Do lefties all use the same wedding planner?)
For the old left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe (which remains Sanders’ ideological lodestar), holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement.

Caroline Glick: Iran’s chess board

Strategic thinking has always been Israel’s Achilles’ heel. As a small state bereft of regional ambitions, so long as regional realities remained more or less static, Israel had little reason to be concerned about the great game of the Middle East.
But the ground is shifting in the lands around us. The Arab state system, which ensured the strategic status quo for decades, has collapsed.
So for the first time in four generations, strategy is again the dominant force shaping events that will impact Israel for generations to come.
To understand why, consider two events of the past week.
Early this week it was reported that after a two-year hiatus, Iran is restoring its financial support for Islamic Jihad. Iran will give the group, which is largely a creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, $70 million.
On Wednesday Iranian media were the first to report on the arrest of a “reporter” for Iran’s Al-Alam news service. Bassam Safadi was arrested by Israel police in his home in Majdal Shams, the Druse village closest to the border with Syria on the Golan Heights. Safadi is suspected of inciting terrorism.
That is, he is suspected of being an Iranian agent.

BDS leaders whine about left wing peace groups and Arabs as foreign investment in Israel skyrockets (update)

From MEMRI:

Palestinian BDS Operatives: Activities of US Peace Groups Are Destroying Anti-Normalization Efforts

Gaza BDS activist Haidar Eid said that there was resentment among BDS activists toward Palestinian authorities for allowing American peace groups such as One Voice, Seeds of Peace, and the Peace Alliance, to operate in the West Bank and Gaza. "Allowing such groups to operate in the Gaza Strip destroys the boycott campaign," he said.

BDS activist Omar Barghouti said that the Right of Return was "the most important of the three rights upon which we are insisting."

They were speaking on the Lebanese channel Palestine Today TV on April 10, 2016.

Barghouti (who, remember, went to Tel Aviv University while saying that all normalization with Israel by everyone else is absolutely prohibited) gives a nice list of BDS fails in the Arab world:

- Israeli security delegations in Saudi Arabia
- Israeli sports delegations in Qatar
- Israeli trade delegations in the UAE
- Other Israeli delegations in Bahrain, Morocco and elsewhere.

Barghouti laments how poorly the BDS movement is doing among his Arab brethren at the same time he tells Bloomberg News that even though Israel's foreign investment has tripled since he started the BDS movement, "BDS is not just working. It is working far better and spreading into the mainstream much faster than we had anticipated."

Bloomberg notes:

Despite the appreciating shekel -- a sign of foreign investor confidence -- Israeli startups raised $3.76 billion last year from non-Israeli investors, the highest annual amount in a decade, according to data collected by IVC Research Center. Foreigners, who are responsible for at least 50 percent of total yearly investment in Israeli startups, spent an additional $5.89 billion acquiring them. Chinese buyout firm XIO Group’s $510 million purchase of Lumenis Ltd. led high-tech mergers and acquisitions followed by a U.S. private equity firm’s $438 million buyout of ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. (Acquisitions aren’t captured as part of foreign investment in startups.)

UPDATE: Transcript of the interview:

Omar Baghouti: "The BDS movement embraces international law, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is intrinsic to our movement, not something alien to it. Ever since we established the movement, we insisted that it would not be exclusionary, and would include anybody who abides by international law and human rights, and who believes in the rights of the Palestinian people – the entire Palestinian people, in the homeland and in the diaspora. We are talking about putting an end to the occupation, and to apartheid – Israel's racist system of segregation – and about the need for the return of the refugees, the most important of the three rights upon which we are insisting, because some 68% of the Palestinians, in Palestine and the diaspora, are refugees."
[...]
Haidar Eid: "To be honest, I embrace this opportunity to point out that there is resentment among the BDS activists in Palestine, both in the 1948 and the 1967 borders, at all the normalization projects, which are allowed to operate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – especially in the West Bank."
[...]
Host: "Are you saying that normalization activities are taking place in Gaza?"
Haidar Eid: "I would not call this 'normalization activities,' but rather, the undoing of the standards of the boycott in the Gaza Strip, by authorizing pro-normalization American organizations, such as One Voice, Seeds of Peace, or the Peace Alliance, which was established after the Geneva Accord, which gave up the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees, even though approximately 75% of Gaza's residents are refugees, to whom international law has guaranteed the Right of Return. Allowing such organizations to operate in the Gaza Strip destroys the boycott campaign."
[...]
Omar Baghouti: "Unfortunately, the official Arab and even Palestinian normalization is on the rise. We hold the official Palestinian circles primarily responsible for this, because they are the gateway to Arab-Israeli normalization. If official Palestinian normalization had not reached this level, nobody would have dared to host Israeli delegations in Saudi Arabia, sports delegations in Qatar, trade delegations in the UAE, and delegations in Bahrain, Morocco, and so on. Official Arab normalization has reached critical proportions. In light of the oppression of Arab liberties and civil society, our allies and BDS activists in the Arab world oppose this normalization, but with great difficulty. They are in need of help, but the litmus test is, first and foremost, putting an end to Palestinian normalization."

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One of the cartoons winning an award in Iran's Holocaust cartoon contest

There was a joke that Jews told each other during the Holocaust:

An antisemite claimed that the Jews had caused the war; the reply was: Yes, the Jews and the bicyclists. Why the bicyclists? Asks the one? Why the Jews? asks the other.

I was reminded of this by the announcement of the latest Iranian antisemitic cartoon contest, coming on the heels of the Holocaust cartoon contest:

An Iranian museum on Tuesday kicked off a “Zionist caliphate” cartoon contest, with “Zionism, terrorism and racism” and “ISIL terrorism and genocide in the name of religion and to the benefit of the Zionists” the designated themes.

The contest by Iranian Cultural-Art Masaf Institute will offer one $5,000 award for best cartoon, $1,000 for best caricature and four $500 awards to the other top entries, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

In its portrait session, participants are asked to focus on Theodor Herzl and Queen Elizabeth. The competition is dedicated to the “Nakba,” or displacement of Palestinians in 1948 with the establishment of the State of Israel, according to the report.

Why Queen Elizabeth?

The answer is probably because they are using her as a representative for responsibility for the Balfour Declaration, but my point is that hate against Jews remains as arbitrary and deadly now as it was during the coining of the first joke. But hating Israel is now considered as considered "obvious" as hating Jews was a couple of generations ago, because Israel in the 21st century has become the proxy for Jews as they were looked upon in the 1940s.

(UPDATE: See L_King in the comments for a probably better reason why Queen Elizabeth is singled out.)

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Daniel Seidemann is a left-wing expert on Jerusalem who heads Terrestrial Jerusalem, an NGO that (in partnership with Peace Now) documents everything that happens in the holy city that could, in its view, jeopardize the peace process.

Seidemann was upset at Bibi Netanyahu saying that Jerusalem will remain under Jewish control.

Netanyahu yesterday: I support 2 state solution. Netanyahu today:: Jerusalem is ours and will be ours. Translation: I oppose 2 states. QED.
— Daniel Seidemann (@DanielSeidemann) June 2, 2016

QED is the abbreviation for quod erat demonstrandum, a Latin phrase that he slightly misuses as it is meant to say that the initial proposition has been proven by the (usually mathematical) proof that follows, ending in a restatement of the original statement. In this case, Seidemann claims that Bibi's saying that Jerusalem will remain under Israeli sovereignty is proof that he isn't interested in a two-state solution.

I responded with a simple question:

.@DanielSeidemann Why, exactly, is Jerusalem a prerequisite for a Pal state, outside of "they insist on it"?
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) June 2, 2016

Even though this question was tweeted to him a dozen times, he refused to answer.

Because there is no answer. The reason that Jerusalem is considered an integral part of any Palestinian state is only because the Arabs insist on it, not because the state could not exist without Jerusalem as its capital.

Somehow, 190 other nations manage to exist without Jerusalem as their capitals.

In reality, there is no relationship between two states and Israel having control of Jerusalem. The link between "Palestine" and Jerusalem is artificial and was created after 1967. No one demanded a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital before Israel redeemed the city in 1967.

In the West, people say that a Palestinian state is necessary to end the demographic threat to Israel, to allow Palestinians to no longer be stateless, to end the conflict permanently, and a host of other reasons. But what is the real reason why Palestinians insist that Jerusalem must be part of their state? After all, all of the other issues would be solved at least as well, and in fact much easier, if that demand is not met. The more one cares about a two-state solution, the more one should want to pressure Palestinians to drop their demand for Jerusalem.

In fact, there is another demand that Palestinians insist on just as adamantly as a precondition for statehood, the so-called "right of return." The West pooh-poohs that demand but in Arabic it is considered as critical as land and Jerusalem and the other conditions Abbas places on any negotiations.

If Palestinians are so desperate for a state, then how come they are in a position to demand things like Jerusalem and "return" that have nothing to do with statehood?

Moreover, why is the Arab demand for the holy sites in Jerusalem considered sacrosanct and the Jewish demand to keep those sites - which by any measure is much stronger, historically and religiously as well as practically - considered a blow to peace?

The Arabs want Jerusalem not because of their historic ties to the city (which they largely ignored when Muslims controlled it) but because they know that Israel without Jerusalem is just another secular state, and they want to sever Israel's ties to its Jewish history. Jerusalem (and to a lesser extent Hebron and Bethlehem and Bet El and other towns) is what proves Jews have historic, religious and cultural ties to the region and have had those ties for thousands of years. Arabs want those ties to be cut.

That is why they demand Jerusalem as a prerequisite to "peace" - it is really a prerequisite to the next stage of the destruction of the Jewish state.

That is why there is nothing inconsistent between everything Abbas is doing and Yasir Arafat's "phased" plan to destroy Israel in stages. This is why Mahmoud Abbas publishes on his website, today, his book that says

Zionism began as an alien thing and it will end as an alien thing. It seemed to us (i.e. Palestinians) as a predestined matter, and its end has become a predestined matter. Both the Jews and us are its victims. We and the Jews will guarantee its destruction, so we will live after it as we have lived before it in a wide homeland full of resources which are enough for everyone and grants everyone wellness, love and equality.

Arabs aren't afraid of Jews like Seidemann who say they want to give up Jerusalem for peace. They are afraid of Jews - even secular Jews like Netanyahu - who would rather die than lose the Old City.

Beggars can't be choosers, yet Palestinians who are supposedly living in stateless misery are making preconditions for a state that have nothing to do with statehood.

Because their goal isn't the creation of a state but the destruction of one.

And the proof is because they insist, without a shred of proof, that there can be no Palestinian state without Jerusalem.

QED.

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06/02 Links Pt2: Lord Sacks: 'Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism'; UK Labour leader pushed for bans, boycotts of Israel,

From Ian:

Lord Jonathan Sacks: 'Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism'

The former Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, is the winner of this year's Templeton Prize. For decades he has been lecturing and writing on themes of faith, tolerance and peace. Evan Davis began by asking him a simple question - does religion cause war? (h/t Ha Meshuga)

UK Labour leader pushed for bans, boycotts of Israel, letters show

Before his election as UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn pressed for a boycott of Israel and called on the British foreign secretary at the time to ban Israeli politicians from entering the country, newly released letters from 2010-2015 show.
The letters, sent to then-foreign secretary William Hague, were published following a Freedom of Information request to the government.
Writing to Hague in February 2012 about East Jerusalem, in particular house demolitions in the Silwan neighborhood, Corbyn, who was a backbench MP for Islington North at the time, urged trade sanctions against Israel.
“Israel’s current actions and victimisation of the people of East Jerusalem is an abomination that is totally illegal,” he wrote. “Surely the only logical way forward here is to take concrete action to penalise Israel via the most obvious method.”
“There is clearly no time to lose to take actions via the EU-Israel Association Trade Agreement. Let the suffering of the Palestinian people no longer be so familiar to us that all we do is ‘make representations’ when there are tools at our disposal that our government and other governments are choosing to ignore,” he wrote. (h/t Think of England)

Corbyn pans UK Jewish journalist for coverage of anti-Semitism claims

UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn takes aim at top British Jewish journalist Jonathan Freedland in a new fly-on-the-wall documentary aired Wednesday, accusing the veteran Guardian columnist of “subliminal nastiness” in his coverage of the claims of widespread anti-Semitism in the party.
Corbyn said on film that Freedland is “kind of obsessed” with him, basing his claim on a column piece in which the journalist accuses Labour of having an anti-Semitism problem.
In a phone call with his director of strategy Seumas Milne, Corbyn accused Freeland of “utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness” over the March opinion piece entitled “Labour and the left have an anti-Semitism problem.”
“He’s not a good guy at all. He seems kind of obsessed with me,” Corbyn says of Freedland.
The dispute over anti-Semitism in Labour has been simmering for months — since Corbyn was elected party leader by grassroots supporters, despite opposition from many MPs — with a stream of party officials shown to have made anti-Semitic statements.

Livingstone blames ’embittered MPs’ for his suspension over Hitler remarks

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has blamed “embittered MPs” for branding him a Nazi apologist over his controversial statements about Hitler.
Speaking at the Oxford Union, he refused to apologise for the comments and claimed Jeremy Corbyn “had no say” in his suspension from the Labour party.
In an appearance dominated by questions about anti-Semitism, Mr Livingstone stuck by his remarks that Hitler supported Zionism as “historical fact”.
He told members of the famous debating society that the furore was being used to deflect attention away from the Labour leader’s policies.
“I think this has been largely manufactured by people trying to undermine Jeremy Corbyn,” he said.
“If someone says something anti-Semitic they will be expelled but you can’t expel someone for telling the truth.”

I have been talking about Ali Gad's series of articles at Al Ahram, Egypt's most highly circulated newspaper. He is pretending to prove that Jews have been plotting to take over the world since Talmudic times.

Part 4 was published last week, and Ali Gad said that Jews orchestrated World War II and other wars for economic reasons.

In part 5, published today, Gad says

[Jews] seek to demolish the governments in all countries, and replace them with Jewish autocratic governments, and create the environment for this, including: the temptation of kings and rulers against persecuted peoples, and the lure of the peoples to rebel against them, using the principles of liberty, equality and the like, with a particular interpretation meant to hurt both sides, and trying to keep all of government power and strength against the hostile people, and to keep both of them in the permanent fear of the other, and the corruption of government and leaders of the people... The most important elements of control are throwing the seeds of discord and unrest in all countries by secret political, religious, artistic and sports associations and Masonic lodges and clubs of different activities, and move the nations of tolerance to political and religious extremism...all this with a stick to keep the Jewish nation above the fray, according to the protocols, making people into herds of cattle, while international leaders are only pawns in the hands of Jews...

This is what is being published in mainstream Egyptian media. Today and every week. From a country that gets billions of dollars in international aid.

But this is not newsworthy, apparently.

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