Someone named Saleh Zaytoun, who heads an organization called "Reporters for Al Quds," wrote an op-ed in Huffington Post in Arabic where he showed that his organization is just another propaganda outfit - and that "reporters" in the Arab world are often nothing of the sort.
The article describes the horrible things Jews are supposedly doing to Jerusalem - like living there. But then he describes the burning of the 1969 Al Aqsa Mosque by a deranged Australian Christian in these terms:
All this paved the way for the creation of an extremist generation to demolish Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock in the person of the Australian settler, Michael Dennis Rohan, who carried out his crime on August 21 1969 ...
Sons of Al Quds tried to extinguish the fire and waited for Israeli firetrucks to reach the scene, but they did not come quickly, which confirms the complicity of the occupation with the attack. They also cut off water for the region surrounding the mosque on the same day the fire, prompting Jerusalemites to get firefighters from neighboring cities of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, to fight the fire and prevent the spread to all parts of the mosque.
Israel arrested the perpetrator, claimed that he was crazy, and deported him to Australia, where he still lives without any trace of insanity.
He actually stayed in an Israeli mental institution for five years, then transferred to one in Australia where he died in 1995. And he was quite insane.
Official PA media has repeated the lies about Israel supposedly cutting off the water supply and letting the mosque burn.
Today, 47 years after the crime the issue of Jerusalem is no longer ranked first on the agenda of the Arab and Islamic summits, the issue of Jerusalem no longer receives the media attention it requires in the midst of concerns of Arab infighting which gives Israel the golden opportunity to take over the holy land.
We in the "Reporters for Al Quds Initiative" are counting on the Arab media to give this issue the attention it deserves so the upcoming generations do not forget the importance of Jerusalem in the Arab and Muslim conscience, and we all hope that loyal journalists will contribute in traditional or in social media to confirm their steadfastness and their attachment to Jerusalem
In 2007, Islamist Sheikh Raed Salah also started an initiative called "Reporters for Al Quds" with a very similar mandate intended to get journalists to write lies like these. It is unclear if this is the same organization.
Does the Huffington Post care that it is publishing easily proven lies?
Has it ever?
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
A recent film clip showing ex-Israeli academic Ilan Pappé has raised eyebrows. Asked whether it was Palestinians who launched the BDS campaign in 2005 Pappé conceded, “Not really, but yes. OK. For historical records, yes.” Both Israel supporters and Israel haters have been taken aback by this forthright statement, from a leading Israel hater, that Palestinians did not create this now iconic movement.
What are the BDS movement’s origins? The question is, at one level, an historical curiosity. The movement exists, it is forging ever-deeper links with the far left and the ‘progressive’ movement, and is a force to be reckoned with. At another level, however, the history of the BDS movement is emblematic of Palestinian political history, and the recent development global antisemitism, as a whole.
Two trends are immediately evident in the history of BDS, the role of Palestinian political factions and professional Palestinians from the diaspora, which have led Palestinians toward rejectionism.
It is easy to dismiss the movement’s own origins story, the 2005 call from Palestinian ‘civil society’ organizations. The call for boycotting Israel was in explicit opposition to the Palestinian Authority (which, indeed, rejected it) and may well have originated with a rejectionist PLO faction. Indeed, many of the ‘grassroots’ organizations that signed the document cannot be traced. They were likely organs of political factions or just fabrications.
The message was simple: the “representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.”
It was during the perusal of this usually apolitical source of news -- it is not uncommon for nine out of 10 headlines to include polar bears in some form or other -- that my husband jumped from his chair, pointing to the computer screen in horror. I looked at the headline, which said, "Boycott Israel!"
So there it was: the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement had made its way to the northernmost inhabited place on earth. The text was a letter to the editor, written last summer by a local priest, Leif Magne Helgesen, in which he was peddling the most outlandish claims, including that Israel is "a military regime" and encouraging his fellow Longyearbyen residents to boycott Israel. The priest had spent his summer vacation in a Palestinian Arab village and had returned a full-fledged BDS warrior, ready to go against Israel, which he continued throughout his lengthy diatribe to describe as a "regime."
There is something deeply ironic, tragicomically so, about a priest who does his business in the northernmost spot on earth, surrounded only by the Creator's beauty and the occasional scare from a polar bear, isolated from the rest of the world and certainly from the issues of the Middle East, venting his anti-Semitic fury and rage at a country that could not possibly be further removed from him than Israel. It is also telling that this man is, of all things, a priest.
Unfortunately, it should not surprise us. Svalbard belongs to Norway, which according to a recent report by watchdog group NGO Monitor, has recently joined Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and the Netherlands in contributing funds to an organization funding NGOs that promote a boycott of Israel. According to the Norwegian Foreign Ministry's website, 5 million Norwegian kroner (over $600,000) was allocated to the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (HR/IHL) Secretariat in the second half of 2016. According to the NGO Monitor report, the "HR/IHL Secretariat is an intermediary that distributes funds to nongovernmental organizations ... active in BDS ... campaigns and other forms of demonization against Israel. It is managed by the Institute of Law at Birzeit University (IoL-BZU) in Ramallah and the NIRAS consulting firm, based in Sweden."
I just came across a new paper that describes in much more detail why under US law, boycotting Israel is not protected by the First Amendment, as the boycotters keep claiming.
The most compelling part of the argument comes from an incident that occurred in the 1980s:
In International Longshoremen’s Association, AFL-CIO v Allied International, Inc., 17 a case that was decided little more than a month after oral arguments in Claiborne, the Supreme Court found that boycotts impeding United States commerce that are political protests intended to punish foreign nations for their offshore conduct may be limited by the government.
The Longshoremen case is illustrative as it includes two important and distinct legal elements: a federal law that prohibits boycott activity (which also exists in the case of BDS Movement boycotts, in the form of the Export Administration Act) and a determination of the permissibility of such prohibition under the First Amendment.
The Longshoremen case was couched in facts strikingly similar to that of the illegal BDS Movement boycotts of Israel.18 At the time, the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan. In response, the United States undertook a series of boycott and embargo actions including prohibitions on the sale of certain goods to the Soviet Union.19 As part of that embargo, however, the United States explicitly exempted certain goods, including those that were to be loaded and unloaded by the union in Longshoremen.
Notwithstanding the government’s directives on the scope of the embargo, the union unilaterally expanded the embargo and instituted a blanket boycott on the handling of any and all cargo from the Soviet Union.21 The president of the union, Thomas Gleason, explained that the union felt compelled to act in contravention of the government’s foreign relations policy because “[p]eople are upset and they refuse to continue the business as usual policy as long as the Russians insist on being international bully boys.”
As a result, the union refused to handle the cargo of a company that dealt in wood products from the Soviet Union (which products were explicitly exempted from the government’s embargo).23 The boycotted company registered a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that the union was engaging in an unlawful boycott under section 8(b)(4) of the National Labor Relations Act24 and also filed suit against the union in federal court (the suit was filed under the Labor Management Relations Act, which provided for a private right of action for victims of unlawful boycotts).25 When the Supreme Court took up the case, it decided that the applicable provisions of the National Labor Relations Act did not infringe the union’s First Amendment rights. In so finding, the Court explained:
Application of [the prohibition on boycotts] to the [union’s] activity in this case will not infringe upon the First Amendment rights of the [union] and its members. We have consistently rejected the claim that secondary picketing by labor unions in violation of [the prohibition on boycotts] is protected activity under the First Amendment. It would seem even clearer that conduct designed not to communicate but to coerce merits still less consideration under the First Amendment. . . . There are many ways in which a union and its individual members may express their opposition to Russian foreign policy without infringing upon the rights of others.26
A boycott is not speech, it is coercion.
In Longshoremen, the Supreme Court had to determine whether federal law...could restrict boycott activity in the United States without violating the First Amendment rights of the actors. It is from this general legal question that an unambiguous rule emanates: where a federal law regulates boycott activity and the purpose of that law is a legitimate expression of national policy in the realm of foreign relations and commerce, and the law does not relate to the suppression of speech on substantive matters subject to constitutional protections, the First Amendment does not protect the boycott activity.
(h/t EK)
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
How do you characterize a population as a people? Most of us would say that a people has some combination of language, religion, culture, place of origin, and genetic makeup, and that its members identify with a historical narrative that describes how they came to be.
The Jewish people is a paradigmatic case of a people, with a unique language and religion, a definite origin, clearly distinguishable genetics, and a historical narrative spanning thousands of years that is probably the most powerful story in much of the civilized world. This is why it is so typically chutzpadik for Palestinians to argue that there is only a Jewish religion and not a Jewish people.
The Palestinians do not have a unique religion, language, genetic identity, or place of origin – unless you count having an ancestor who lived in Mandate Palestine for at least two years as establishing rootedness there. But they have a historical narrative with which they very strongly identify.
It is a relatively new narrative, having originated in the mid-20th century as a reaction to the establishment of the Jewish state. It is to a great extent false – there is no long-term ‘Palestinian’ presence in the land of Israel (claims going back to biblical times are ludicrous, and few ‘Palestinians’ can trace their lineage in the land prior to about 1830; most are descended from 20th century migrants). Their story about their dispossession by the Zionists is also to a great extent false and self-serving. But none of this matters.
What does matter is that virtually all Palestinians believe the narrative, and it is perfectly designed to combine with the features of the Arab and Muslim culture of the Palestinians in such a way as to create endless, insoluble conflict with the Jewish state.
The narrative tells of a proud culture rooted in the land, dispossessed by foreign invaders who have no connection with it. It tells about humiliation of the Palestinian people, their wealth and property taken from them. It tells about a Muslim land being ruled by infidels, or almost worse, by Jews, Mohammad’s historic enemies whose inferior role is demanded by the Qur’an. It tells about Arab manhood being insulted by repeated military defeats by the children of pigs and monkeys.
The narrative tells about an intolerable condition, and its collision with Arab culture and Islam can’t be resolved by a compromise which permits the continuation of Jewish sovereignty in any real sense. Any solution acceptable to the Palestinians must include the return of their ‘property’ – that is, the ‘return’ of the descendents of Arab refugees to ‘their homes’. For Muslims, there is also the fact that the entire land, having been ruled at one time by Muslims, is a part of dar al islam and must return to Muslim rule. And of course, no situation in which a Jew is superior to a Muslim in any way is acceptable.
Worse, Arab honor, which was stolen by military defeat and which continues to be taken by the daily humiliations of Israeli security measures, must be regained. This requires equal humiliation and violence against the Jews.
But why can’t the Jews make a similar argument on the grounds that the rights of the Jewish people were abrogated by the Arab conquest of the 7th century? The Palestinians take this threat quite seriously, which is why they insist that there is a Jewish religion but no Jewish people. And it is why they make ridiculous statements like “Palestinians are descended from ancient Canaanites,” “There was no Jewish Temple in Jerusalem,” or “Jesus was a Palestinian.” It is why they are working assiduously to get UNESCO to declare all Jewish historical sites to be Arab or Muslim.
As long as the Palestinian narrative is believed there will be no peaceful two-state solution or any other compromise that allows a Jewish state to continue existing. And as long as Arabs understand that their lost honor needs to be regained there will be no end to murderous outbursts of violence against Jews by Arabs.
These are not things that are in our power to change. There is no way we can educate the Arabs to stop believing their narrative and to start believing ours. No matter how kind we are, how conciliatory, how fair, how just, how many concessions we make, how much economic opportunity we provide, the fundamental problem remains. If you think I’m exaggerating, read this about Palestinians in general, and this about Arab citizens of Israel. If anything, as time goes by, the narrative gets embedded more firmly in the Palestinian psyche.
So does this imply that there is no hope?
Not exactly. There is no hope for a peaceful compromise, true. But there are other ways a conflict between peoples – yes, I think their narrative makes them a people, if not an ancient one – can end. One side or other can prevail, can overpower its enemy to the extent that it gives up the idea that it can win, and stops fighting.
The usual example of this is WWII in which the losers were crushed so badly that they gave up, accepted occupation, and even changed their ways of thinking so as to reject militarism and ultimately became allies of their erstwhile enemies. But there is another example that is much closer to home and might provide a model for a solution that requires somewhat less death and devastation than that wrought by the bombing of Dresden or Hiroshima.
That is the example of the Arab citizens of Israel.
They are not any less committed to the Palestinian narrative. But most of them have come to understand that they are not capable of overthrowing the Jewish state. They lived under military rule from 1948-68, but since then have had the same rights (if not responsibilities) of Israel’s Jewish citizens. The combination of the perception of an overwhelming imbalance of power plus the availability of economic options has not canceled the Palestinian narrative, but has made it possible for them to live peacefully in a Jewish state. What other country in the world can say that it has a 20% Muslim minority that is not a source of violent instability?
The continued docility of our Arab citizens isn’t guaranteed. In order for it to continue, there are several things that are important: they must continue to understand that they will not obtain national rights in the Jewish state, either by violence or political means, although their civil rights will be protected. Israel will remain a Jewish state, not a binational one. The flag and national anthem will not be changed, and there will always be a Jewish right of return, and never an Arab one. The overwhelming imbalance of power must be maintained. But at the same time their rights to equal treatment under the law and their economic opportunities must not be foreclosed.
The same principles apply to the Arabs of the territories, although it is probably not a good idea to suddenly grant them citizenship and hope that they will behave like the Arab citizens from 1948. But we are presently far from establishing the necessary imbalance of power as long as the Fatah and Hamas organizations are operating. They and similar enemies of Israel must be defeated and destroyed as a first step. We wouldn’t tolerate Fatah operating in Tel Aviv, so we should not tolerate it in Ramallah either.
The strategic geography of the land of Israel implies that we cannot give up control of Judea and Samaria and still be capable of defending our nation. That in turn means that we have to deal somehow with its Arab inhabitants. Their dedication to the pernicious Palestinian narrative precludes a Western-style compromise, but if we can decisively end their ability to make war, then maybe their only remaining option – as in the case of the Arab citizens of Israel – will be to live in peace.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Fatah to terrorist Alyan: "Glory kneels before you" Palestinian terrorists Baha Alyan and Bilal Ghanem boarded a bus in Jerusalem this past October with a gun and a knife and murdered Haviv Haim (78) and Alon Govberg (51), and Richard Lakin (76). Alyan was shot and killed by an Israeli security guard at the scene and Ghanem was captured and is serving 3 life sentences.
Early this morning Israel gave over the body of terrorist Alyan for burial. WAFA, the official PA news service, honored the terrorist writing that:
"Martyr Baha Alyan ascended to Heaven last Oct. 13 [2015], after he carried out a stabbing and shooting operation together with prisoner Bilal Ghanem on an Israeli bus." [WAFA, the official PA news agency, Sept. 1, 2016] Significantly, the PA news agency assumes that stabbing Israeli civilians on a Jerusalem bus makes Alyan worthy of "ascending to Heaven."
Fatah posted on its Facebook page the picture of the terrorist, calling him a "heroic Martyr": "May Allah have mercy on Baha and all of our heroic Martyrs. Glory kneels before you." [Official Fatah Facebook page, Sept. 1, 2016]
Early this morning, the Israeli army closed Radio Sanabel, an independent Palestinian radio station in Hebron, due to its incitement.
Although the Israeli army did not specify the nature of the incitement, Palestinian Media Watch has examined the Radio Sanabel Facebook page which is still functioning and found the following: Sanabel recently posted on its Facebook page a threat by Hamas, including a picture of two masked Hamas terrorists, who issued the following warning to Israelis:
“Al-Qassam Brigades (i.e., Hamas’ military wing) Spokesman Abu Ubeida: ‘We warn the enemy against continuing its tyrannical steps against our captives. It should know that its captives with us will receive the same treatment that our captives receive in its prisons.’” [Facebook page of Radio Sanabel, independent Palestinian station, Aug. 21, 2016] A few days before, Radio Sanabel publicized another Hamas warning, implying that it will be kidnapping and holding Israelis as prisoners:
The Syrian war has caused a crises in some circles, pitting regime supporters and apologists against former friends and colleagues. This happened in the 1930s as well when the Communist party began to persecute its own and those in the West such as George Orwell began to have a jaundiced and nuanced view of what was happening in the USSR. In some ways the Syrian war has burst a bubble in relation to the pro-Palestinian movement, separating those who primarily only care about Israel and Palestine, some of whom don’t even really support Palestine but merely dislike Israel, from those who support more global norms of human rights. It has separated those such as Judith Butler and their claims that Hezbollah is part of the “global left”, from a more authentic left that doesn’t see theocratic militias with their militarism and chauvinism as “left.” The debates are still grounded in the old slanders of “imperialist” and “fascist” but the issue is confused by the question of who is really an imperialist and a fascist. Is Assad a kind of Nazi or the Jihadists? Is Russia the imperialist or America?
Some on the right relish in watching their ideological opponents fight eachother, just as they relish watching Shia militias hack to death Sunni groups. But their relish is misplaced because the war in Syria is not a positive thing. Their relish is misplaced because it’s not altogether clear that the extreme pro-Assad “left” is actually part of the left, and it may be that it is actually part of the right. When Iran champions the “war on terror” and the right champions the “war on terror” and both celebrate bombing, they are both on the right. But there is another part of the historical right in the West that is more liberal and libertarian and whose natural affinity is for global human rights, like those who oppose Assad.
In the question of ‘what is to be done’, that Lenin and Thomas Paine both asked, there is a universal value of human rights and the right to life, the right not to be barrel bombed. When the cynics and pragmatists say “work with Assad” and “we don’t want chaos,” one might ask what they would have said of the American Revolution or the French Revolution. Yes, there can be chaos, but it can also be good for human rights. On that, the pro-Assad voices have sold out humanity.
Israel’s ambitious project to construct a canal linking the Red Sea to the shrinking Dead Sea will also see the transfer of 30 million cubic meters of water to the Palestinian Authority, under an agreement signed Wednesday at a global water conference in Stockholm.
The agreement, signed at the annual The World Water Week, was backed by Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states, but sparked an angry outburst by the Palestinian representative against Israel’s water policies.
Likud MK Ayoub Kara, who represented Israel at the annual conference, said the transfer would begin within the next month.
“We brought up the creative idea for the transfer of 30 million cubic meters of water to the Palestinians next month within the framework of the canal project, and the initiative was praised by members of the council,” he told Israel Radio on Thursday.
“This praise for the initiative pressured the Palestinian representative, who took to the stage and was shouting like you’ve never seen, prompting security to remove him from the stage,” Kara added.
I cannot find confirmation of Palestinian water minister Mazen Ghoneim being removed, but his speech was a rant against Israel that did not seem to acknowledge Israel's actions.
The important part of the story is that the optics for Palestinian leadership had been extraordinarily bad lately in the Arab world.
The gap between how Arab states are praising this agreement and how Palestinians are responding to it is most telling. It is more evidence that the Arab world is sick of the Palestinian issue - and the reason is because the Palestinian leadership itself shows little interest in solving the problem, choosing instead to publicly bash Israel even when Israel is trying to help them.
When there is more overt cooperation between Israel and major Muslim countries than with Palestinians, you know that the Palestinians are on the outs. Yet years of anti-Israel rhetoric has painted them in a corner of their own devising where they must keep their own cooperation with Israel as hidden as possible.
Local elections are coming up in the territories - elections that may show Hamas to be more popular than Fatah. Mahmoud Abbas is panicking. There are reports that Mahmoud Abbas is attempting to reconnect with his bitter rival, former Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan who now lives in exile, and who still remains popular.
The Palestinian Authority is being pressured by its own people, by Hamas, and by the Arab world. If it would have been preparing its people for peace with Israel instead of incitement it would be in much better shape. Now it is viewed as too intransigent for the Gulf states and too moderate for its own people.
Things will come to a head for the PA sooner rather than later.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Human Rights Voices and the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust have released a major new report about a little-mentioned issue: NGOs, accredited by the UN, that violate its charter by promoting hate.
The introduction to the paper explains the importance of the matter:
The United Nations was founded as a global pact among states, but over the decades – in the name of transparency and openness, and in order to further the aim of globalization – the UN has opened its doors to non-governmental organizations. More than 6,150 NGOs have been invited to participate on a year round basis in UN activities, and have thus been handed a coveted global megaphone. An examination of these NGOs, however, reveals that both by design and gross negligence on the part of UN member states, the NGOs’ ranks include bigots, antisemites, and terrorist advocates who are now spreading hatred and inciting violence from the world stage.
Democratic states, led by the United States, control the purse strings of the United Nations either from within the UN bureaucracy or through domestic policy. Getting serious about combating the spread of intolerance and violent extremism means putting an immediate stop to the use and abuse of the United Nations to broadcast and support xenophobia and its lethal consequences.
In theory, the UN has processes for accreditation that share a common requirement: respect for the purposes and principles of the UN itself. In order to qualify for accreditation or association, NGOs must operate in conformity with, or promote, the UN Charter. They must affirm “faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.”
In practice, accredited non-governmental organizations have been allowed to flaunt the core of the UN mission by advocating terror and intolerance. At the same time, they have been permitted to draw closer to the world of international diplomacy and gain access to the international media platforms associated with it.
Most striking for an organization founded on the ashes of the Holocaust, the UN enables its accredited NGOs to play a central role in promoting modern antisemitism. Although the preamble of the UN Charter promises the equal rights of nations large and small, UN-accredited NGOs foster the destruction of the UN member state of Israel.
The benefits of UN accreditation for NGOs are tangible and significant. UN-accredited NGOs are able to secure meeting space within UN buildings to sponsor speakers, mount exhibits, and screen films, all within immediate proximity to the world’s press. Major media organizations from across the planet have in-house office space at UN headquarters in New York and Geneva. NGOs can speak at important UN meetings and have their words translated and broadcast globally via UN webcasts, which are then archived for the public, researchers, and students from elementary schools to college campuses. UN-accredited NGOs can submit written statements to UN bodies that are assigned official UN symbol numbers, posted on UN websites, and archived in searchable formats for the global community. More recently, UN websites have started linking directly to NGO websites, greatly enhancing traffic to the NGO websites and the promulgation of the NGOs’ messages. UN-accredited NGOs are also invited to attend negotiating sessions and decision-making forums, thereby gaining access to the world’s diplomatic corps, with the attendant opportunities for influence.
The links between UN-accredited NGOs and the promotion of terrorism and hatred – including, in particular, antisemitism – violates the terms and conditions of these NGOs’ accreditation. In some cases, these NGOs were originally accredited by UN bodies in spite of these links. In other cases, while these links may have developed after the original accreditation processes, UN bodies – despite conducting mandatory periodic review processes – permit such NGOs to retain their UN status while violating the fundamental principles of the institution.
Generally, UN accreditation or association is done either through the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) or the Department of Public Information (DPI). In the case of Israeli-related matters, it can also be acquired through the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP). The qualifier for UN-NGO accreditation is that “the aims and purposes of the organization shall be in conformity with the spirit, purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations” - in the case of ECOSOC accreditation; “support and respect the principles of the Charter of the United Nations” - in the case of DPI association; and “support the Charter of the United Nations” - in the case of accreditation by the CEIRPP.
There are thousands of UN-accredited NGOs and the report enumerates a large number of statements by these organizations that are antisemitic, incite to violence and hate: “The media is under the control of Zionist organisations…My question is: which is stronger, is it the law or the Zionist project?” - from Meezaan Center for Human Rights, Accredited with Special Consultative Status by ECOSOC,
-from Islamic Human Rights Commission, Accredited with Special Consultative Status by ECOSOC and accredited by CEIRPP.
[T]here are certainly some aspects of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians that bear a clear resemblance to the Nazis’ oppression…“Genocide” -- defined by the UN Convention as the intention “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group” -- most aptly describes Israel’s efforts, akin to the Nazis’, to erase an entire people. - from Women for Palestine - Australians for Palestine, Accredited by CEIRPP
“[T]he world that Zionists made, according to their ideal of Jewish sovereignty… is a world of segregation, with Jews on top.” from Friends of Al-Aqsa, Accredited by CEIRPP
- from Palestine Solidarity Campaign – Thailand, Accredited by CEIRPP
There are hundreds of such examples, and essentially any anti-Israel NGO can get accredited by the UN. Even NGOs that are acknowledged to be antisemitic by other NGOs, like "If Americans Knew", are accredited by the CEIRPP, and which has written “The Talmud states that...two contrary types of souls exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from the Satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness...” This is a hugely important report that identifies how the UN is actively promoting terror, hate and antisemitism - and how it is violating its own principles and rules by doing so. The only way to stop this is for the US to withhold funding from the UN unless it revamps its NGO-accreditation system from scratch.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Mia Khalifa is the pseudonym for a recently retired Lebanese porn star. She attracted controversy and death threats when she wore a hijab in one of her adult movies while engaging in various NSFW acts.
Khalifa is coming to Israel...
...at the invitation of Naftali Bennett...
..the "minister of the economy...
...because they are having an affair."
All four of those are false. (Bennett is Education Minister, although he used to head the economy ministry.)
Other rumors connected her with the Mossad in order to help destroy Arab morals or claimed that she converted to Judaism.
Al Masdar, an Arabic site that was originally associated with The Israel Project, has fun demolishing all these rumors and making fun of Arab media for publishing and then embellishing the story.
Naftali Bennett...has called for a search for a star in the Jewish State after pictures and tweets of Middle Eastern porn star Mia Khalifa, born in neighbouring Lebanon, briefly topped social media searches last week.
Speaking to The Mideast Beast a spokesman for Bennett’s office stated, “having seen this travesty the minister is well aware of the economic damage that could be caused by people thinking that the hottest chicks come from Lebanon. Everybody knows the sweetest bodies in the Levant are to be found in Israel, and that Tel Aviv is party central here in the region,” he continued.
In order to reinforce this message the minister is launching a search for an Israeli porn star to rival Khalifa. “We are looking for a young professional who can outdo, outstretch, out-everything, this poor Lebanese imitation,” the spokesman stated. “Ideally they will be in the IDF because chicks with guns are always hot. They should also be extremely flexible and have an all-over tan,” he added.
It is a stretch to get from that article to the current rumor, but there has been a long time for it to form and spread.
(h/t YM)
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
After misogyny it is arguably the world's oldest hatred and, as the late Conor Cruise O'Brien noted, anti-Semitism is a "light sleeper".
O'Brien contended that it is found barely beneath the surface even in literature from Shakespeare to Wilde; in public discourse even in societies with tiny or non-existent Jewish populations, and is infectious in its pervasive paranoia throughout the entire Arab and Islamic world. The 'beast' also raises its head at times when it is least expected, as it did in west Belfast with the desecration of Jewish graves in the City Cemetery.
Politicians and religious leaders have united to condemn the vandalism, which some tried to portray as mindless drink and drug-fuelled behaviour - but now appears to have been something more organised, more targeted, more pointed. After all, the vandals used hammers and blocks to break up the headstones while a larger mob looked on encouraging their actions. There is clear evidence here of forward-planning; the graves targeted being exclusively Jewish, some dating back to the 1870s.
One theory knocking around is that the latest flare-up of anti-Semitism in Belfast is somehow related to the controversy over Celtic being fined by Uefa after their fans displayed Palestinian flags at Parkhead during a European Champions League qualifier this month against an Israeli side. Whatever the motivation, or even the rights and wrongs of the Israel-Palestine question, it is undoubtedly the case that the desecration was motivated by anti-Jew hatred.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL REPORT
Our ground-breaking report exposes the shocking antisemitism and incitement to violence that is occurring at the United Nations by means of UN-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The UN is enabling groups to spread hatred, encourage terrorism, and promote the destruction of the Jewish state from the world stage.
Democratic states, led by the United States, control the purse strings of the United Nations either from within the UN bureaucracy or through domestic policy. Getting serious about combating gross intolerance and violent extremism means putting an immediate stop to the use and abuse of the United Nations to broadcast and support antisemitism, bigotry and their lethal consequences.
I know right off the bat some of you were upset, and whether you understand it or not, that was the point. You see the question I am most often asked is why do people hate Jews so much? Shortly followed by why do people hate Indians so much? The sad and funny part is that it’s exactly the same reason. Because it’s easy. But why is it so damn easy?
You see it is really easy to hate someone you don’t know, and it is even easier when they are different from you. I am fond of saying that it’s easy to hate an abstract concept, but it’s hard to hate a person. It is very easy to lie or believe lies about someone you know nothing about. If you have zero attachment at best you will not get involved at all; at worst you will actively get involved with demonizing and delegitimizing the “other.”
Jews have dealt with this a long time. Basically your very existence rubs a lot of people the wrong way because you remind them of things they want to forget. Nobody likes the idea that they or their ancestors were ever the bad guy, and no good guys ever woke up saying “Hey today I think I will try to kill all the Jews.” Therefore, for some people, their ancestors were in fact the bad guys. Sometimes those who are on the pointy end of hate have a tough time understanding; they cannot see the forest for the trees. They try even harder to be liked, and the end result is they come off looking weak or conciliatory when that is the very last thing they need to appear. It is as if they are fighting the perception they are the “bad thing.”
So many people complained to me about this one, I lost count. Sarah Tuttle-Singer, Social Media Director of the Times of Israel, shared an article about Avigdor Liberman, Israel's new Defense Minister. In her accompanying text, Tuttle-Singer insinuated that Liberman doesn't want IDF soldiers held accountable for their behavior in the field and doesn't see morality on the battlefield as a priority.
She wrote:
"Well it seems our defence [sic]minister Corporal Liberman feels that demanding our soldiers be accountable and behave as morally as humanly possible is actually a problem."
The article itself refers to comments made by Liberman in a press conference held on Monday, August 29, “I would expect the Israeli press to work hard to strengthen the Israeli deterrent capability against our enemies — not to deter Israeli soldiers from fighting terrorists and fighting terror,” said Liberman. "I want a free press, not a press that deters IDF soldiers."
These comments are a clear reference to 1) Elor Azaria, who is currently standing trial for manslaughter, for shooting a terrorist who was already down, and 2) an as-yet-unnamed soldier who shot an unarmed Arab who approached a guard post in a suspicious manner at Ofra on Friday. Many Israelis feel these soldiers are being tried in the court of public opinion and presumed guilty, aided by a left-leaning media. It is a worrisome phenomenon, if true, considering that the vast number of Israelis serve in the IDF. Parents feel that an example is being made of these soldiers, these sons, and that this could happen to their own soldier sons, as well.
As a parent of a soldier, I can tell you: it's frightening. Soldiers are basically children with guns, put in dangerous situations, who will often need to make quick decisions. You want to know that the army will back your child for doing his best calculations and making split-second decisions about terrorists.
But Azaria was tried in the press the very day the deed went down with help from the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and then Defense Minister, Moshe Yaalon. The Prime Minister said that the incident does not "represent the values of the IDF," while Yaalon, since replaced, said, “We must not allow, even at a time that our blood boils, this loss of control. This incident will be dealt with the utmost severity.”
Netanyahu and Yaalon said these things because a damning video of the event had surfaced. The anti-Israel "human rights" organization B'Tselem hands out cameras and phones to Arabs who live in hotspots like Hebron, where the shooting occurred. B'Tselem does this hoping to get juicy footage to use against Israel. That is exactly what happened here. The amateurish film shows the terrorist already down and then there is another shot, and the terrorist is now definitely dead.
With sound muted and without context it looks bad, this film. Because even though the terrorist had every expectation of dying a martyr, Israel's rules of engagement call for treating a wounded "neutralized" terrorist. The terrorist was already down, thus, the second shot was judged unnecessary, that is, if this information was all one had to go on.
But as time went on, more information came out. The very next day, another clip, this time with better sound, has a civilian paramedic shouting that the terrorist might be wearing a bomb. One can see that the terrorist is dressed unseasonably warm in a thick jacket, and might have been getting ready to self-detonate. That was one piece of the puzzle with still other pieces coming to light as the trial drags on.
The general impression of the public is that a head had to roll, no matter the facts, because of the film: because of how it looked. And the head that had to roll was Azaria's. And no one much cared about due process. Especially not Sarah Tuttle-Singer.
The day it happened, Tuttle-Singer tweeted this:
#idf soldier who shot a prone Palestinian assailant should be punished to the full extent of the law. He committed a heinous crime.
But even this prejudgment was moderate compared to an earlier Facebook status suggesting that Azaria should rot in jail. Her followers took her to task for, excuse the pun, jumping the gun, and so she modified that earlier post, too, saying:
"Earlier today, I wrote that an IDF soldier should rot in jail for shooting a Palestinian assailant AFTER the assailant was disarmed and lying prone on the ground.
People jumped on me hard and fast and said the soldier should have his day in court first.
Yes he should. Absolutely.
And the Palestinian assailant should have had HIS day in court, too."
Those of us who pay attention to these tweets and posts wonder why Ms. Tuttle-Singer is eager to judge and sentence a Jewish boy, charged with the defense of his people, to rot in jail, absent full knowledge of facts of this case. Meantime, she remains anxious for justice to be done for an Arab terrorist who stabbed one of her own and fully expected to die in the attempt. Her concern is for the terrorist. Her hatred is reserved for her own, a Jew and a defender of the Jewish people.
Perhaps, in the interest of fairness, and of balance, it would be too much to expect her to take the Jew's side over the terrorist's side. But to damn the Jew and plead for the terrorist? One must wonder: WTF?
Well, a lot has gone down since that time. We continue to watch the trial from our safe distance. We watch as this young boy's life is ruined, his trust in his superiors betrayed, his parents distraught (his father was hospitalized with a suspected mild stroke), all because one more bullet hit a TERRORIST who intended to die, a terrorist who stabbed a defender of our people, a soldier and Azaria's friend.
And we watch our soldiers grow afraid to do their job. They are afraid to go after terrorists. They fear they will become the next Elor Azaria.
Then on Friday, the press smelled fresh blood when they heard a soldier had shot an unarmed terrorist just outside Ofra. The terrorist rushed a guard post, and so he got shot. The soldier didn't stop to ascertain whether or not the terrorist was armed. Because the terrorist rushed his guard post.
And got shot dead by a soldier charged with the defense of the Jews of Ofra.
Like Azaria, that soldier was doing his job.
This time, you won't have Yaalon shooting off his mouth. Instead you have Avigdor Liberman, his tough-talking replacement. And Liberman has cautioned the press that they are hampering the soldiers, making them too afraid to do their job: the job of defending the Jewish people.
For insisting the press be held accountable for what it reports, Sarah Tuttle-Singer accuses Liberman of being deficient in his ethics and in his strongly-held standards for IDF behavior. She implies Liberman is amoral, for not wanting the soldiers so frightened they'll be tried in court they can't do their jobs. Tuttle-Singer implies the new defense minister is full of braggadocio and swagger and cares not a fig for human life. She implies he cares about Jews and not about Arabs.
And the article she shared is just as bad. Here's a quote from that article:
"Though he has not been formally charged, the as-yet unnamed Netzah Yehuda soldier has been questioned by Military Police 'in connection with the killing,' an army official told The Times of Israel on Monday."
"Killing??" Seriously?
It did not pass the smell test that an army official would refer to what happened outside of Ofra as a "killing." As if the motives of the soldier (again without due process) were in question, as if this soldier shot a man simply because he was lusting for Arab blood, and not because this presumed Arab terrorist had rushed a guard post in a place where rushing a guard post usually spells t-e-r-r-o-r a-t-t-a-c-k.
But the text was linked, so I went to the original article quoting the unnamed army official. And low and behold, the word "killing" was not used there. Instead, the linked piece said, “'He was investigated in connection with the death on Friday,' an official said." (emphasis mine)
"The death" as distinct from "the killing."
That's a whole different can of worms.
Now I am not naive. I know that there are the people like me who love and defend Israel, and then there are Jews who put Arabs first and foremost, even if (or perhaps especially if) they are terrorists, out of some misplaced sense of(social) justice. But in a case like this, where a direct quote is altered so its entire meaning changes, and for the purpose of hurting your own kind, well that's just stomach turning.
This isn't about justice. This is about the opposite of justice. This is about Jews hurting Jews to show the world they aren't like other Jews. It's about Jews hurting Jews to prove they love Arabs. It's about Jewish human sacrifices, sacrificed by Jews, to slake the world's thirst for Jewish blood.
And it's the ugliest thing I've ever seen in all my 55 years here on God's green earth.
(h/t to Dov and to Yonatan and thanks to Natan for digging up the clips for me)
UPDATE: Reader AreaMan took the initiative to contact Times of Israel writer Judah Ari Gross about the change of wording of a quote from an "army official" which escalated "the death" to "the killing." In response, Gross changed the later quote to "the death." Closing the barn door after the horses escape, in my humble opinion, since so many readers saw and were affected by the original.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Jerusalem, August 31 - A member of the Joint List alliance of Arab parties in the Knesset has demanded that the State show consistency in its treatment of the Arab minority, and allow him to vote multiple times on a single piece of legislation, as it apparently allows him to maintain multiple wives, and he must therefore be more than one person.
Taleb Abu Arar, elected to the Joint List delegation in 2015, has two wives, a common practice in the Bedouin community. Polygamy is officially illegal in Israel, but its ban is seldom enforced. Abu Arar argued today in an interview that if the State is willing to condone his adherence to certain norms of Bedouin society at odds with modern or international modes of behavior, there is no reason it cannot similarly refuse to enforce the prohibition on voting multiple times.
"If, as the authorities have stated, it is a matter of deference to existing cultural standards in the Bedouin community, that means as a man, I am granted privileges that my non-Bedouin countrymen are not," he explained. "I can marry as many women as I desire, even if those marriages are not officially recorded by the Ministry of the Interior. The various welfare institutions such as the National Insurance Institute have ways of shoehorning polygamous families into the monthly allowance system. The Knesset should, by the same token, count my votes many times, since I am performing the role of multiple men." It certainly should not penalize him, since he has suffered no consequences to having his name revealed as part of the Ashley Madison subscriber database last year.
"In fact," he continued, "the same privilege should apply to all members of the Bedouin community, who have the potential to take many wives and father many children through them. If something as severe as raping one's wife is never acted on by the police, let alone prosecuted, then it should not take much to indulge us in behavior that does far less direct physical and emotional damage. Let each Bedouin man vote several times in local and national elections." Abu Arar said such a policy would help boost the Bedouin's political, and thus economic, clout, and help combat the poverty afflicting much of that demographic, especially in the Negev.
"Of course economic prosperity can bring with it all sorts of unpleasant side effects, such as women's empowerment, and we must take care to avoid such a phenomenon," he warned. "So we will have to engineer all the economic benefits in ways that reinforce patriarchy rather than diminish it. It would be an assault on our native culture. Even the police understand that, so the rest of the State apparatus should have no problem."
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Nearly 3,500 Palestinians have been killed in Syria since 2011. But because these Palestinians were killed by Arabs, and not Israelis, this fact is not news in the mainstream media or of interest to "human rights" forums.
How many Western journalists have cared to inquire about the thirsty Palestinians of Yarmouk refugee camp, in Syria? Does anyone know that this camp has been without water supply for more than 720 days, and without electricity for the past three years? In June 2002, 112,000 Palestinians lived in Yarmouk. By the end of 2014, the population was down to less than 20,000.
Nor is the alarm bell struck concerning the more than 12,000 Palestinians languishing in Syrian prisons, including 765 children and 543 women. According to Palestinian sources, some 503 Palestinian prisoners have died under torture in recent years, and some female prisoners have been raped by interrogators and guards. When Western journalists lavish time on Palestinians delayed at Israeli checkpoints, and ignore bombs dropped by the Syrian military on residential areas, one might start to wonder they are really about.
Once again, Hamas has launched a series of rocket attacks against Israeli civilian targets, including schools and kindergartens. Again, too, Israel has responded, as it must, with tactically suitable and law-enforcing retaliations. Nonetheless, and in predictably short order, the Palestinian side will surely allege a variety of Israeli violations, including the always manipulable charge of “disproportionality.”
In this connection, unassailably, the fact that the rule of proportionality under the law of war has nothing to do with equivalence will be very conveniently swept under the rug.
Significantly, recurrent Israeli resorts to force in Gaza are never gratuitous or contrived. Why should they be? Unlike their Hamas terrorist foes, Israelis deeply regret each and every resort to arms. Starkly unlike their bitterly recalcitrant enemies, Israelis receive no inherent joy from the organized killing of other human beings.
In the presumptively endless Palestinian war against Israel, every sham is carefully glossed over with a shimmering patina. To begin, Hamas always takes calculated steps to ensure that Israeli reprisals will kill or injure Palestinian noncombatants. Again and again, by systematically placing elderly women and young children in exactly those same areas from which rockets are intentionally launched into Israeli homes, hospitals and schools, Hamas openly violates the most elementary expectations of the law of war. The almost ritualistic Hamas practice of “human shields” – the very same practice originally championed by Hezbollah in Lebanon – is more than an expression of “mere” immorality or cowardice. It also represents a very specific crime under international law. The technically correct name for this egregious crime is “perfidy.”
As violent and unstable swaths of the Middle East may be, there are also unintended, positive consequences of the administration’s blunders. “The conclusion is clear: today a broader regional approach to Arab-Israeli peacemaking, rather than a strictly bilateral Israeli-Palestinian one, offers somewhat better prospects of success — whether at the official, elite, media, or even popular levels,” Pollock writes. “Normalization with Israel remains controversial in Arab circles, but it is no longer taboo. For an increasing number of Arabs, the Israeli ‘enemy of my enemy’ may not be a friend, but could become a partner. The next U.S. Administration would do well to ponder this unaccustomed situation, and to adjust its policies accordingly.”
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority remains mired in corruption and ineptitude. Former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams writes: “Municipal elections are scheduled for October 8th in the West Bank and Gaza. … The unpopularity of the Palestinian Authority and the ruling Fatah Party due to corruption, incompetence, and growing repression helps explain why West Bank voters might choose Hamas.” As in 2006, the avowed terrorist group Hamas may prevail. The difference, Abrams notes, is that since 2006 “[Mahmoud] Abbas is ten years older and his time in office is closer to its end. Until succession issues are dealt with the notion of serious Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is completely unrealistic — whatever happens at the United Nations, whatever the French suggest or the Russians try, and whatever the Obama administration or its successor believe.”
So where does that leaves everyone? The administration that continually mouthed the platitude that the “status quo is unsustainable” between Israel and the Palestinians is proving the opposite. Israel thrives economically and is embraced by new Arab friends. The Palestinians still suffer from lack of honest, democratic and competent leadership. Until the latter changes, the status quo will suit Israel just fine.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
The Jewish Cordoba
-
I have blogged multiple times here on what I see as a parallel between the
conflict between Catholics and Moslems over the Cordoba Cathedral and that
of ...
Hamas in America
-
[image: Dry Bones cartoon, Biden, Pro-Palestinian demonstrations, Hamas,
Bibi, Jewish, Israel, Oct 7, Jews, Israel, Rafah, Gaza,]
We should have seen it c...
Jonathan Sacks – Faith After the Holocaust
-
Jonathan Sacks – Faith After the Holocaust IsraelSeen.com
Jonathan Sacks – Faith After the Holocaust Faith After the Holocaust Rabbi
Sacks responds to the ...
Yom Hashoah 5784 – 2024
-
Israel’s Yom Hashoah began at sundown this evening with the annual ceremony
at Yad Vashem with torches lit in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of
the...
The Palestinian “Two-State” Plan: Duping the West
-
One of the great unsolved mysteries of the 21st century is why, given what
a catastrophe it proved to be, anyone, much less a whole phalanx of
politicians,...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
-
With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
-
Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...
Thursday, September 01, 2016
Elder of Ziyon
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
