Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

07/20 Links Pt1: Glick: Who speaks for America’s Jews?; Pipes: I rooted for the Turkish coup

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Who speaks for America’s Jews?

Last Friday, Peter Beinart and a few dozen Jewish anti-Zionists had a marvelous time in Hebron.
They wore funny blue T-shirts and sang about “tikkun olam” (repairing the world) in two languages.
They pretended they were civil rights activists.
They videotaped themselves being brave. They got shown to the door by security forces after wrecking a Palestinian farmer’s grazing land while supposedly defending him.
Five dual Israeli-American citizens got arrested.
And the rest ate a late lunch.
All in all, it was a great experience.
The sight of Beinart and his comrades locking hands and singing Debbie Friedman songs in Hebron was so absurd it was funny. But there was a menacing aspect to their solipsistic showmanship.
Beinart told the JTA reporter who joined them for the protest party, “I feel like I’m seeing the emergence of a new leadership.... People will try to write these guys off as lefties that don’t have any connection to the Jewish community. But... these kids actually come from the bosom of the Jewish community.
A lot of them are affiliated.”
No doubt they are. But to what? According to JTA, “Many belong to left-wing Israel advocacy groups such as J Street and the New Israel Fund, and others to groups that more deeply divide the pro-Israel community, including Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, and IfNotNow, which holds its own sit-ins at US Jewish groups.”

Daniel Pipes: I rooted for the Turkish coup

Every major government condemned the coup attempt in Turkey, as did all four of the parties with representatives in the Turkish parliament. So did even Fethullah Gulen, the religious figure accused of being behind the would-be takeover. All this condemnation leaves me feeling a little lonely, having tweeted on Friday, just after the revolt began: "#Erdogan stole the most recent election in #Turkey and rules despotically. He deserves to ousted by a military coup. I hope it succeeds."
Having this nearly minority-of-one stance suggests that an explanation longer than 140 characters is in order. Three reasons account for my supporting the ouster of the apparently democratically elected and democratically ruling president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, by what are apparently the forces of reaction:
1. Erdogan stole the election. Erdogan is an Islamist who initially made his mark, both as mayor of Istanbul and as prime minister of Turkey, by playing by the rules. As time wore on, however, he grew disdainful of those rules, specifically the electoral ones. He monopolized state media, tacitly encouraged physical attacks on opposition members and stole votes. In particular, the most recent national election, held on Nov. 1, 2015, showed many signs of manipulation.
2. Erdogan rules despotically. Erdogan has taken control of one institution after another, even in the two years since he became president, a constitutionally and historically nonpolitical position. The result? An ever-growing portion of Turks are working directly under his control or that of his minions: the prime minister, the cabinet, judges, police, educators, bankers, media owners and business leaders, among others. The military leadership acquiesces to Erdogan's will, but, as the weekend's coup attempt confirmed, the officer corps has remained the one institution still outside his direct control.
Erdogan uses his despotic powers to sinister ends, waging what amounts to a civil war against the Kurds of southeastern Turkey, helping the Islamic State group, aggressing against neighbors and promoting Sunni Islamism.

Why doesn't anyone take up my offer?

The Palestinian Authority (PA) which is an extension of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) has now decided to convert their use of the words in Article Two of their 1968 amended 1964 Charter: "Palestine, with its boundaries at the time of the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit."
Palestine has now become an Islamic "Waqf." It is forbidden to relinquish a single grain of soil (of it)" (an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law).
I suggest that Secretary of State Kerry, the Prime Ministers of Europe, and J Street, et al, ask Abbas to comment on the Waqf assertions, and ask how could the PA negotiate with Israel, if Israel is not entitled to one grain of soil?
I have stated on many occasions that not one word of the 1968 amended 1964 Charter to destroy Israel has ever been specifically changed. Article 33 of the 1968 Charter clearly states that no changes can occur in the charter unless two-thirds of the PNC membership votes for a change.
I repeat my offer of a $250,000 Wells Fargo check to the first person who comes forth with a two-thirds PNC membership voted resolution which annuls the twelve Arafat alleged charter annulments, and the new language of the sixteen partially annulled Arafat charter articles.

EoZTV: #HasbyAwards Part 10: Father Naddaf and Leora Eisenberg

The final section of the Hasby Awards.

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EoZTV: The location of the Al Aqsa Mosque shows the derision early Muslims had to Jerusalem

I spoke recently with Middle East scholar and expert on Islam, Harold Rhode. The entire interview is fascinating but this section particularly so.

Rhode describes how Jerusalem was not important in early Islam, and relates a story of Ka'ab al Ahbar, an early Jewish convert to Islam, and Caliph Umar who conquered Jerusalem.

Ka'ab al Ahbar accompanied Umar to the Temple Mount, which was a trash heap, and the question came up of where would be the best place to pray from. Al Ahbar suggested the north side of the Mount, because that way they could be praying in the directions of both the Jewish temple and Mecca.

Umar bristled at this suggestion, saying that Ahbar is still acting like a Jew and accusing him of trying to Judaize Islam. Instead, Umar said, the proper place for prayer would be the southern end, where when they bow down they would deliberately show their backsides to Judaism's holiest spot.

Rhode goes on to say that one of the most important early Islamic scholars (who is particularly important to Wahhabi Islam today) Ibn Taymiyyah, who lived in the 12th century, considered Jerusalem to be Jewish and not Muslim at all, and hated Jerusalem for what it represented, saying that Muslims who venerated Jerusalem were following a corrupt, Judaized version of Islam.

So why do the Saudis, who are Wahhabis, consider Jerusalem important today? Because, as a Saudi diplomat told a friend of Rhode, they are frightened of Palestinian terrorism themselves.

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Haaretz reported last week:

Israel is working secretly to obtain the return of Jewish property in Arab countries, Social Equality Ministry Director-General Avi Cohen said Wednesday, adding that millions of shekels have been allocated to the process.

Speaking to a Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee hearing on restitution, Cohen said, “There is classified activity in conjunction with the Foreign Ministry in which we will invest millions to restore property belonging to Arab and Iranian Jewry, which will come to fruition within a month to a month-and-half. I cannot elaborate further.”

Though numbers aren't exact, it is believed that nearly a million Jews resided in Arab countries and in Iran on the eve of the War of Independence in 1948. After Israel was established, around 600,000 of them immigrated to Israel over the next three decades in waves that continued in 1956 and 1967 and after the Iranian revolution in 1979. A State Comptroller report published 2014 blasted the state for neglecting the issue, and put the combined value of the lost assets at “a few billion dollars.”

There has been great interest, and anger, in Arab media about this story.

Al-Ain says that Jewish refugees from Arab countries are a myth, just like the historic Land of Israel and the Jewish people altogether. One of his "proofs" is that UN resolution 181 does not mention Jewish refugees. They meant UN resolution 194, not 181, and it does not mention Arab refugees either - it just talks about "refugees."

Dr. Ahmed Hammad, Professor of Israel Studies at Ain Shams University, described the initiative as "a joke," saying that Israel knows very well that they have no rights to property in Egypt or the Arab states. He says that since the Jews who lived in Egypt were not Israeli citizens then Israel has no rights to claim any compensation on their behalf.

Hammad added that Egyptians can demand compensation from Israel because, he says, the Torah says that Jews "robbed the Egyptians of their gold" during the Exodus from Egypt. (It says no such thing.)

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07/19 Links Pt2: The effort to blame Israel for U.S. police shootings; Remembering the 1994 AMIA Bombing

From Ian:

Exposed: Years-long effort to blame Israel for U.S. police shootings of blacks

A group calling itself Atlanta is Ready (#ATLisREADY), aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement, recently issued a set of demands to the Mayor of Atlanta, including:

We demand a termination to APD’s involvement in the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program, that trains our officers in Apartheid Israel
The Mayor rejected the demand, finding that counter-terrorism training benefits the Atlanta Police Department’s ability to protect Americans:
You could chalk this incident up to just some isolated ploy by local activists, but that would be a mistake.
Rather, there has been a multi-year effort by left-wing and Islamist anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and openly anti-Semitic activists to hijack racial tensions in the United States and redirect that anger towards Israel.
That effort has been on overdrive since the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and is accomplished through a combination of false and misleading statements regarding the militarization of domestic U.S. police departments and U.S. police training in Israel.
The intellectual rubric is “intersectionality,” by which anti-Israel activists try to forge links with minority (particularly black) activists by holding out Israel as the key link to oppression around the globe.
Sometimes the results are truly twisted, such as at Columbia University, How student activists turned anti-rape group into an anti-Israel group.

Atlanta mayor shuts down Israel boycotters

Responding at a press conference to a journalist who asked why he rejected the list of demands, Reed said bluntly:
"There was a demand that I stop allowing the Atlanta Police Department to train with the Israeli police department.
"I'm not going to do that; I happen to believe that the Israeli police department has some of the best counterterrorism techniques in the world, and it benefits our police department from that longstanding relationship."
Leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement met with Mayor Reed for two hours on Sunday.
The city has seen a number of protests over the killings of black Americans by police in the US, though the Atlanta rallies have been largely peaceful.

Barry Shaw: Fighting anti-Israel hate

There is room for stating Israel’s historic and legal rights to a Jewish homeland in a reasonable manner, but this does not seem to be making much progress in projecting Israel as a normal country with the same system and values of regular democratic countries.
Indeed, it is these democratic countries that outrageous demonstrations based on lies and intimidation are being allowed to be perpetrated with increasingly hostile actions against Israel.
The reason we are not making headway is because we have considered it impolite to be as rude and forceful in our arguments as our detractors are. We don’t want to appear as aggressive as the intimidators that trash us 24/7. And so we lose the fight for the broad middle ground by conceding without a fight or, even worse, by adopting parts of our enemy’s narrative just to appear reasonable.
It’s time for a change.
The streets, the campuses and the media have become the battlegrounds that are under the control of the radical anti-Israel voice posing as human rights activists on behalf of the Palestinian people. This high moral tone perfumes the stench of the lies and hypocrisy of their tainted message. There real intent, admitted in rare moments of honesty, is to see an end to Israel and they justify this aim by drowning out the Israeli voice under a choking tsunami of disproportionate accusations and imagery.
It’s time to take to the streets and the campuses by adopting the same tactics the anti-Israel provocateurs are using so successfully. It’s working for them. It will work for us.
Enough already! The soft reasoning approach is losing us the ability to state our case against their shrill hatred that closes down our message.

The New York Times has a "Room for Debate" section where different people give brief arguments on a topic. The topic earlier this week was "Can we just 'live with' terrorism?"

Academic fraud Noura Erakat, whom I have proven has no problem with lying and then justifying her lies for the sake of her "narrative," spends a few paragraphs pretending that there is no difference between Western armies and terrorists killing civilians, and makes sure (as a person of Palestinian ancestry) that Israel is exhibit A:

To eradicate terrorism, we need a much more honest discussion about what terrorism actually is. If it means the use of force against civilians to achieve a political goal, than that should include all such attacks on civilians, and not merely the ones launched by nonstate actors. In practice, we limit the term to include only nonstate actors.

The victims of state-led attacks are considered collateral damage, or unfortunate but necessary killings. This framework effectively diminishes the value of their lives making it much easier for the world to tolerate excruciatingly high death tolls and absolve the states that caused them.

This paradox is not lost on most of the thinking world, especially where those losses are highest, on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, in southern Yemen and in the Gaza Strip.

Erakat is saying that Western armies and Israel attack civilians to achieve political goals - meaning that they purposefully attack civilians. Then after stating her slander as fact, she implies that the idea that the civilian deaths are collateral damage is simply a cover-up for the real desire to murder civilians.

There is a glaring omission in her "highest losses" list is what proves that her polemic is meant to deceive, not enlighten.

Syria.

Everyone sees quite clearly that Syria has been using its state armed forces to directly attack civilians. No one is justifying it. And the loss of life from the Syrian civil war dwarfs that of Yemen or Gaza.

Erakat's definition of terrorism is absolutely correct. Her assertion that the word "terrorism" does not apply to state actors such as Syria is a straw man, because it is obvious that Syria is targeting civilians and is therefore guilty of state terrorism. Practically every Arab state has been equally guilty of directly attacking civilians in recent decades.

Yet Erakat wants to make the reader think that there is no difference between how Western armies act - with clear and specific rules of engagement that are compliant with the Geneva Conventions - and how her fellow Arabs act, state and non-state actors alike.

There is a huge difference. The difference is the target. Terrorists target civilians, moral armies target military targets and sometimes civilians unfortunately die, often because the targets purposefully hide among the civilians themselves.

And while Erakat and Amnesty and HRW and other "human rights" frauds like to claim that Israel and the US and European armies target Arabs, the simplest counterproof to that is the fact that the casualties are not in the tens of millions. In fact, if Erakat knew the least amount about modern Western militaries, she would know that more money and time is spent on avoiding killing civilians than on targeting valid military targets.

That is certainly not the case with her own Palestinian brethren, nor with her fellow Arabs.

Erakat knows very well that international law depends on intent, specifically how a reasonable military expert would react given available information, before labeling an action to be a war crime. She wants to hide that basic fact.

That is why Noura Erakat is an academic fraud, preferring advocacy to the truth.

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The Arab world has an empathy problem.

Yes. I said it.

Don't jump on me, hear me out. This is not about being derogatory to an entire culture, this is about a little discussed but very dangerous trend that is effecting the entire world.

Yes. This is a generalization. Again - this is NOT about individuals, it's about a culture.

To clarify (because many people find this confusing):
Not all Arabs are Muslim, there are Arab Christians too. In addition, not all Muslims are Arabs; for example the Muslims in Iran, Indonesia and Africa (who are converts to Islam). Arab culture stems from Islamic domination but is not consigned only to people of Muslim faith. There is an empathy problem in the Arab world. People of Arab decent raised in Western cultures will have more difficulty identifying with what I am writing. Looking to the Middle East (and ideology exported from the Middle East) things become more clear.

Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. To be moved by the joy of another, to feel someone else's pain. A word seldom used, an idea seldom discussed... where does empathy come from? What happens when it is missing?

Nature abhors a vacuum. Where there is a lack of empathy, something else will enter the void and take its place.

In recent years it has become impossible to ignore the violence that seems to permeate the Arab world. 9/11, 7/7 and an ever increasing list of terror attacks have brought Arab violence in to focus: violence against women, animals, gays and the handicapped – violence against anyone weak. 'Honor killings,' fathers killing their own daughters, sons killing their own mothers in the name of 'honor'. Violence against Christians, Jews… Muslims killing Muslims that are not the right kind of Muslim. Muslims killing Muslims, killing their own neighbors. Trading in slaves. Terrorism: Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS, Jabat Al Nusra, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, Hezbollah, Hizbut Tahrir… Did I miss anyone?

Even the most politically correct amongst us have difficulty explaining it away: "its workplace violence," "because poverty," "because Israel." None of these often postulated "reasons" stand up under scrutiny. Others, knowing there is no excusing the inexcusable, often go to the other extreme, saying that the solution is to ban all Arabs (i.e. all Muslims). There are those who add all kinds of unhelpful descriptions, the most popular being "monsters" and "in-human animals".

None of this does any good. In fact it is exactly the opposite: BOTH attitudes create a lot of damage. Turning a blind eye to atrocities does not make them go away. Defining people as monsters is equally damaging. Monsters can only be expected to behave in a monstrous fashion.

The true horror is that we are talking about people. It is people that are hurting other people (and animals) in atrocious, sickening ways.

The real question is: how can people commit acts of unspeakable violence and cruelty?

And the very politically incorrect but oh so crucial question: Why are atrocious acts so common in Arab society?

How could 17 year old, Muhammad Tarayra, sneak in to Hallel Yaffa Ariel's bedroom, look at the sleeping 13 year old and think it reasonable, even honorable, to slit her throat? How could his mother declare that she is proud that her son is a murderer?

How? Why?

It is not enough to say: "hatred flamed by incitement". There is something sacred about the life of a person. It takes an enormous void, a deep darkness inside to get to the point where it feels right to take the life of a child. Something is terribly wrong with the mother that rejoices in the death of her son, rejoices that he ripped away the life of someone else's child.

Neither saw Hallel as a person. To them, no life is sacred. Not hers or their own. There is no horror in slaughtering a child in her own bed. That was only a means to an end and thus both justifiable and praiseworthy.

This is not the existence of hatred for hatred burns itself out. Hatred can be transformed in to love – both are strong emotions, passions that are flipsides of the same coin. This is the lack of emotion, the inability to identify with emotions – not Hallel's, nor those of the people who loved her or even their own.

Empathy starts with small things. Early in life.

I have Arab friends (does that surprise you?). They are good, decent people. They aren't terrorist or violent, they are just normal people trying to live normal lives. With all that, it was in their home that I recognized the empathy problem.

A small incident connected the dots for me, something most people would probably overlook. It happened when they were playing with their grandson.

Their first grandson, a boy named after the grandfather, is a source of extreme pride and joy. They love the boy very much, spoil him rotten and would do practically anything for him.

I watched the grandmother take the grandson, a toddler about one year old, lift him high in the air and then roll him down her chest in a kind of summersault. The grandmother was laughing at the game she invented. The baby, frightened by the height and being turned upside-down began to cry. She knew it was just a game, nothing bad would happen so she continued – up in the air, flip upside-down, laughing while he cried.

The grandmother, did not feel the fear of her beloved grandson. A woman who would never purposely hurt this child in any way, scared him and laughed while he cried. She could not feel his pain. She had no empathy for him.

This is just a tiny incident but it is one amongst countless incidents in a life. A message from the people closest to this child, the people who will be the most influential in forming his personality.

If the people closest to him do not recognize his pain, if they laugh when he cries, what will he learn?

If, when he grows a bit older, he hurts an animal and it cries out in pain, will it be so strange for him to respond by laughing? (This too, I have seen far too many times.)

When he grows up and gets married, if he hurts his wife, emotionally or physically and she cries, how will he respond? Will it be strange if he does not see a reason to reach out in compassion?

Remember, this is a good family. A kind and decent family. What happens in families that are cruel and violent? In families that pro-actively support violent activities?

Most people are focusing on the manifestations of violence. I think we should take a good hard look at their source. Understanding the cause is the beginning of the solution.

It's all about empathy.

It begins with small incidents, very early in life. The void created by the lack of empathy is an open door, beckoning for violence to enter. The problem begins small but it is like a vacuum in space that pulls everything in to it. Light does not shine in the vacuum, everything implodes inwards.

The Arab world has an empathy problem. A big problem. And we are all suffering from the consequences.

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07/19 Links Pt1: Israel’s Counterterrorism Lessons for Europe; ISIS, Nazism and Iraq destruction

From Ian:

Ron Prosor: Israel’s Counterterrorism Lessons for Europe

As the terrorist threat evolves, so, too, must our response. In Nice, the use of a truck as the murder weapon shows how terrorism is constantly developing new ways to inflict mass casualties.
Israel has bitter experience of this. The method of attack is painfully familiar. Since October, 44 terrorist attacks have used motor vehicles as a weapon against Israelis.
In recent months, a new generation of terrorists radicalized on social media has launched more than 300 attacks in Israel using knives, guns and vehicles. Palestinian social media, and sometimes even official media, have published a flood of material glorifying the knife and the car as a weapon. The same is true of the jihadist groups murdering civilians in France and elsewhere around the world.
In this digital age, terror cannot be met with an analog response. We need to keep up, and Israel has experience and expertise to share.
Critics complain that such defensive actions compromise civil liberties and feed an atmosphere of fear. Yet the threat cannot be wished away, not when the ultimate civil liberty—the right to life without fear of death—is under attack. Preserving these freedoms and civil liberties while responding to terror is a challenge for any country, especially a democracy.
In an age when the internet has turned yesterday’s disturbed loner into today’s radicalized sleeper cell, social-media companies must also take responsibility and play a role.
Muslim, Christian and Jew must be engaged in the defeat of terrorism. Cooperation already takes place under the radar between Israel, Western countries and Arab states. In a fight that is as much a war of propaganda as it is of weapons, the open involvement of Arab and Muslim countries would send a powerful and timely message.

ISIS, Nazism and Iraq destruction

There was a clear progression in intolerance and mass murder leading to ISIS in Iraq. This is similar to how everyday anti-semitism and hatred of Jews helped lay the foundations for mass society accepting Nazism. The ability of many in places like Mosul to turn their backs on persecutions of their neighbors in 2014, is also similar to the way many people were quiet collaborators with Nazism.
There is also quiet collaboration in Western countries.
When I posted a video over the weekend of a peshmerga firing a sniper rifle at ISIS positions, one American intellectual commented that it was “imperialism.” Imperialism to defend against ISIS? To defend minorities, women, to fight against intolerance? There has been a quiescence in almost all wealthy western states to the mass murder and cleansing of minorities in northern Iraq. There are no student movements protesting for these minorities, not one protest, or college-student-led campaign to aid the victims. More than 5,000 Europeans are estimated to have traveled to join ISIS, which is more than ever protested against ISIS. Perhaps that reminds us of so many who willingly joined the Nazis as collaborators in the war, and the few who took up arms as partisans.
It is marvelous that Kurds were able to blunt the ISIS blitzkrieg in 2014. But it is an enduring tragedy that Iraq has been permanently altered and its diverse fabric destroyed in these two short years.
It is unlikely it will recover, even if some minorities return. There is no humanitarian plan for aiding these people, rebuilding their villages, restoring their temples and monuments. It illustrates that while you can defeat genocidal groups, such as what happened in Rwanda or Cambodia, you can never return what was lost.

On Lebanon war anniversary, PM vows ‘iron fist’ response to attacks

Israel will offer a “powerful response” if it is attacked by terror groups Hezbollah or Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday at a ceremony marking 10 years since the Second Lebanon War.
Netanyahu described the 2006 war as “a clash between an extremist terror organization with an Islamist ideology and a free democratic Israel.”
“We are in a global battle. We are aware of the nature of the threats we face, and are preparing for any scenario,” he said at a ceremony at the Mount Herzl military cemetery.
Hezbollah and Hamas, he said, “have established forward bases of Iran on our border. Everything that has happened in the Middle East in recent years is part of the same trend: radical Islamic terror that seeks to shatter liberty and culture with its sword thrusts.
“This terror strikes not only Sarona or Otniel — it strikes in Paris and Nice, Brussels and Orlando. We are in a global campaign. Just as we are well aware of the character of the threats, so we are preparing for every contingency.”

Oxfam cooks the books, credits Palestinians for hosting 2,000,000 refugees

Oxfam has a new report on how Western nations aren't doing enough to address the worldwide refugee crisis.

The responsibility for providing refugees with shelter, food and health care, as well as jobs and education, is falling disproportionately on poorer countries, which are often struggling to meet the needs of their own people or are at risk of compromising their own stability.

The world’s six richest countries, which make up more than half the global economy, host just 8.88 percent of the world’s refugees and asylum seekers. Among these countries Germany alone hosts over 736,000 people, while the US, UK, France, China and Japan are hosting the remaining 1.4 million between them.

In sharp contrast, half the world’s refugees and asylum seekers – almost 12 million people – are hosted by Jordan, Turkey, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Pakistan, Lebanon and South Africa, whose economies collectively account for less than two percent of the world’s total.

Here are the numbers they give:

These numbers are completely distorted by the addition of Palestinian "refugees."

The "refugees" in the West Bank and Gaza are not refugees by any sane definition, since they are living in the same land from which they are supposedly refugees from.

The vast majority of the "refugees" in Jordan - over two million - are Palestinian citizens of Jordan!

200,000 of the Palestinian refugees supposedly in Lebanon do not exist, and the rest are descendants of refugees - although Lebanon treats them exceptionally poorly.

Oxfam had some reason to fudge the numbers to include refugees who aren't refugees. If you would remove the 5 million fake Palestinian refugees from the calculations, then the number of refugees hosted by these six poor states (and quasi-states) goes down from nearly 12 million to around 7 million,

This doesn't really explain Oxfam's decision to include Palestinian "refugees" in the report, though.

The latest UNHCR trends report, from mid-2015, already lists the top host countries of real refugees - and they are mostly still poor countries: (note how the numbers in Jordan and Lebanon compare with Oxfam's numbers:)

Oxfam could have made its point about poor countries bearing the brunt of hosting the bulk of refugees without adding the fake UNRWA refugees.

Apparently, Oxfam wants to build a halo around Palestinians and act as if they are some kind of humanitarian powerhouse for being so magnanimous in allowing their own people to live in their land until they figure out a way to destroy Israel.

Using UNHCR's figures, the percentage of refugees hosted by the six richest countries goes from 9% to 14%. They could have made the point they wanted to make with the real numbers but the fake Palestinian "refugees" juice up their statistics.

At the very least, this exposes how NGOs are more than willing to fudge statistics, knowing full well that the news media will blindly accept their figures.

(h/t Gastwirt)

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The EU Observer reports:

EU states, in an internal report drafted last year, have said the outbreak of Palestinian knife and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in Jerusalem is due, in large part, to Israel’s occupation.

The report, drafted and endorsed in December 2015 by all the EU countries that have embassies in Jerusalem and Ramallah, said the Temple Mount developments were the “proximate cause” for the upsurge in violence that began after summer last year.

But it said the “heart of the matter” was “the Israeli occupation since 1967 and a long-standing policy of political, economic and social marginalisation of Palestinians in Jerusalem”.

Both the "proximate cause" and the "heart of the matter" are utter rubbish.

There had been no changes whatsoever on the Temple Mount and no plans at all for any changes.

The Jerusalem municipality has been pouring money into the Arab sectors of the town - housing, schools and infrastructure - for years.

However, the idea that Jews are responsible for Arabs deciding to murder Jews is just too attractive for supposedly sophisticated Europeans to pass up. After all, any "objective" inquiry must ask the Arabs why they are discontented, and they will always get a long list of perceived injustices that justify murdering Jews.

The fatal assumption is that this list has a basis in truth.

If you look at history, however, you can see many excuses given for Arab violence by similar committees.

In 1921 in Jaffa, "Arab men bearing clubs, knives, swords, and some pistols broke into Jewish buildings and murdered their inhabitants, while women followed to loot. They attacked Jewish pedestrians and destroyed Jewish homes and stores. They beat and killed Jews in their homes, including children, and in some cases split open the victims' skulls."

The Haycraft Commission of Inquiry report on the riots said "The fundamental cause of the Jaffa riots and the subsequent acts of violence was a feeling among the Arabs of discontent with, and hostility to, the Jews, due to political and economic causes, and connected with Jewish immigration, and with their conception of Zionist policy as derived from Jewish exponents."

British High Commissioner Herbert Samuel Samuel declared shortly afterwards that Jewish immigration to the region would be allowed "only to the extent that it did not burden the economy." In other words, Jews had to pay the price for being murdered.

In 1929, Arabs again massacred Jewish men, women and children throughout Israel in the most gruesome ways. The Shaw Commission went beyond the Haycraft Commission in blaming Jews for both the "fundamental" and (some of) the "immediate" causes:

The fundamental cause, without which in our opinion disturbances either would not occurred or would not have been little more than a local riot, is the Arab feeling of animosity and hostility towards the Jews consequent upon the disappointment of their political and national aspirations and fear for their economic future. ... The feeling as it exists today is based on the twofold fear of the Arabs that by Jewish immigration and land purchases they may be deprived of their livelihood and in time pass under the political domination of the Jews.

In our opinion the immediate causes of the outbreak were:-
-The long series of incidents connected with the Wailing Wall... These must be regarded as a whole, but the incident among them which in our view contributed most to the outbreak was the Jewish demonstration at the Wailing Wall on 15 August 1929.

Again, the recommendations were to penalize the Jews by limiting both immigration and land purchases, eventually resulting in the disastrous White Paper that sealed the fate of hundreds of thousands of European Jews who had no place to go to save their lives - thanks to Europeans accepting Arab excuses for murdering Jews.

When seen in this context, the secret EU report is part of a century-long European tendency to blame the Jewish victim for having the audacity of wanting to live in a Jewish state. The common denominator is the Arab demand to keep Jews away from having any political power. The Arabs will use any convenient event to justify the outbreak of violence - but the net conclusion by these pompous Europeans in their reports is that Jews must give away all of their political rights, their land and ultimately their right to self-determnation in order to appease the Arabs.

There is no desire by these commissions to go beyond taking Arab complaints at face value. There is no desire to learn from history and see that there is a consistent pattern that is much more expansive than the identified pseudo-root causes.

Above all, there is no desire to tie the Arab demands for Jewish second-class citizenship with the Islamic demand that Jews be always considered humiliated, second-class citizens. "Dhimmis."

Islamic supremacist ideology, combined with traditional Palestinian Christian antisemitism, is the fundamental cause for Arabs wanting to massacre proud, unapologetic Jews, whether it is by sword, dagger, gun or rocket. It is the "heart of the matter." Blaming the "occupation" or "settlements" or the Jewish desire to visit holy places or the placement of a movable partition in the Western Wall on Yom Kippur in 1928 are simply excuses created by Arabs in the service of taking away Jewish human rights. And the Europeans are more than happy to accept their myriad excuses for terror at face value.

All the proof you need to know that "occupation" is not the "heart of the matter" is to read the many pre-1967 British reports recommending that the Jews knuckle under to Arab demands. It didn't appease the Arabs then and it wouldn't appease them now, because the Western world simply does not want to look at the real root cause of Islamic supremacism.

That willful blindness not only affects the Jewish state, but the entire world.

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Hanan Ashrawi's hypocrisy, illustrated

Here is what Hanan Ashrawi said about the terror attacks in Nice:

“The Palestinian leadership and people stand in solidarity with France and remain committed to nonviolence; we are opposed to any acts of extremism or terror targeting innocent civilians.”

Yet Ashrawi's Miftah organization praises suicide bombers:

Palestinian women have also participated in the resistance. As the conflict grew more intense and young men were recruited to carry out military operations against Israeli targets, several young women also decided to join the ranks of the resistance movement. In January 2002, 28-year-old nurse Wafa Idrees, detonated a bomb in Jerusalem’s Jaffa Street, killing one Israeli and injuring 150 others. She was also killed in the blast.

This marked the beginning of a string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives for the cause. Over the next two years, seven other women carried out similar operations, the most deadly of which was carried out by Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old attorney from Jenin. Hanadi detonated explosives strapped to her body in a busy Haifa restaurant, killing 19 Israelis and injuring 50 others.

Miftah also published on its website, without any caveat, a report on the "General Arab Conference to Support the Resistance" which extols suicide bombers by referring to the "Blessed Al Aqsa Intifada."

Miftah condones terror today (cached here):

Resistance in all forms against the armed colonial settlers and the army of occupation is a legitimate form of the struggle for freedom...Suicide bombing is the ultimate cry of help....

13-year old Hillel Yaffe Ariel, murdered in her bedroom, was one of those "armed colonial settlers" Miftah is referring to.

Miftah has also published an article calling terror attacks "a moral duty" - an article that is still on its website today as well: (cache)

Many of our efforts to defy the arbitrary rules of the occupier are reflexively dismissed as “terrorism,” and we are always expected to apologize for and condemn Palestinian resistance—despite the lack of agreement on a definition of terrorism, and the fact that the right to self-determination by armed struggle is permissible under the United Nations Charter’s Article 51, concerning self-defense.

There also is a trend among those who oppose Palestinian resistance to use the term “jihad” as a synonym for terrorism. In doing so, they reduce the meaning of jihad to mere death. Jihad is a rich concept which includes struggling against one’s lesser self, the effort to do good deeds, actively opposing injustice, and being patient in times of hardship. It is not about violence against God’s creatures, or not fearing death in defending the rights of God’s creations. Violence can, however, be a rational human’s means of defense. When a woman reacts violently when threatened with rape, that is a form of jihad.

Moreover, jihad is an Islamic value—and not all Palestinian fighters are Muslims. The reason why young, sincere altruistic Palestinians blow themselves up is a secret they take with them to the grave. Perhaps it is the strange fruit of revenge growing in the fertile soil of oppression and occupation, or their profound protest against merciless cruelty; or a desperate attempt at attaining equality with Israelis in death, since it is impossible for them in life.

Blowing oneself up to kill Jews is poetry.

Even though Miftah says that of course they are against killing innocent civilians, their website sure seems to bend over backwards to make those who do that seem as wonderful as possible.

And this is Hanan Ashrawi's organization, still including these paeans to terrorism on its website three years after I first exposed them.

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EoZTV: Hasby Awards Part 9: William Daroff presents to Alexandra (Lex) Markus

Best Young Defender of Israel award (part 1)

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