Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, October 14, 2016

Anti-Abbas Facebook group has over a million members

The Arabic Facebook group "Mahmoud Abbas does not represent me" now has over a million "Likes." It gains another 5000 members every week.

The page uses photos of Yasir Arafat in its header.

The group has revealed a number of cases of corruption by Abbas and his cronies.

But the main criticism of Abbas is that he is not militant enough for the Palestinian Arabs.

While it is impossible to know how many of the million actually live in the territories, this is yet more evidence that Abbas has little support among his own people.

An article with the same name, "Abbas Does Not Represent Me," was written in the wake of his attending Shimon Peres' funeral. None of the commenters disagreed with the author's contention that Abbas is little more than an Israeli lackey.

(h/t Georgia)

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At The Hill, a remarkable op-ed from Salman Al-Ansari, Founder and President of the DC-based Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee (SAPRAC). Here is the bulk of the article:

How Israel can contribute to Saudi's vision 2030

The topic of establishing a relationship between Saudi Arabia and Israel raises many theories, assumptions, and emotionally charged arguments. Some of these arguments have merit, while others amount to nothing more than poorly formulated conjecture. These strongly held positions are especially interesting because they are put forward despite the current lack of an existing relationship between the two countries.

However, the prevailing political discourse might not only indicate that it is in the interest of both countries to form a collaborative alliance, but in the interest of the greater Middle East and their global allies as well.

In fact, there are some opinions suggesting that having a common enemy in Iran will help accelerate any sort of rapprochement between two of the Middle East’s most powerful nations. While that could be partially true, a more solid foundation for establishing deep-rooted ties between the two countries could manifest in the context of a mutually beneficial economic partnership.

[I]t is common knowledge that Saudi Arabia and Israel have committed to rational and balanced foreign policies over the past 70 years, never seeking any provocative or hostile actions against each other. It’s also important to note that there are hundreds of Jews hailing from many corners of the world who are currently working in Saudi Arabia, contributing to its financial, infrastructure, and energy projects.

As a matter of fact, Saudi Arabia is going through its biggest economic transition in its history, of which Israel is the most capable of contributing to. The architect of this transition, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, is also viewed by political observers as a pragmatic and progressive personality, with all indicators showing that he is prepared and willing to develop real, enduring ties with Israel. With the goals of this transition outlined in a recently announced “National Transformation Plan,” one of its most important strategies focuses on diversifying income sources and mining for more natural resources.

The latter represents a rare, golden opportunity for Israel to participate in and help bolster the Saudi economy. After all, Israel has a reputation as one of the most sophisticated and technologically advanced countries in the field of mining, with a robust, globally recognized diamond industry. Keeping in mind that Saudi Arabia is the largest country in the world without any source of flowing water, Israel is also a world leader in the water engineering industry, which makes it extraordinarily qualified to help Saudi Arabia with its ambitious desalination plans, which are a crucial part of the Deputy Crown Prince’s blueprint for Saudi’s economic reform, “Vision 2030.”

Of course, such an economic partnership cannot be established without addressing security concerns, as the trust factor between the two Middle Eastern countries still needs positive reinforcement. However, most of these concerns are mutual, as both countries are facing constant threats from extremist groups that are directly supported by the totalitarian government of Iran, which is classified internationally as a global sponsor of terrorism, providing a safe haven for most of the world’s most dangerous and well-known terrorist organizations.

Any form of normalization between the two countries is also an Arabic and Muslim normalization towards Israel, which will undoubtedly promote security and weaken extremism in the region. ...

Impeding collaboration in any way would inevitably stifle an historic opportunity for both countries to grow, develop and solidify the mutual goal of not only ensuring the success of this vital relationship, but bringing the Middle East into a new era of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

SAPRAC is Saudi Arabia's version of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. It was launched earlier this year.

While SAPRAC is ostensibly independent and receives no official funding from Saudi Arabia, it would never deviate its messaging from what the Saudi government desires. Most of Al-Ansari's Twitter feed is dedicated to pushing the Saudi agenda, whether it is to fight the JASTA bill or to defend Saudi actions in Yemen.

In other words, there is no way that Saudi Arabia doesn't approve and support this message of cooperation with Israel.

Israel has to tread carefully; Saudi Arabia has had historic ties to international terrorism as well as to funding Palestinian terrorism, although it seems unlikely that the level of support to either is what it used to be.

Saudi Arabia's human rights record is terrible. Although that doesn't seem to be a problem for any other state, Israel would be expected by its so-called "friends" to have a much higher standard than the US or European nations which happily cooperate with the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia only explicitly allowed Jewish workers to enter the country in 2014.

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Interesting choice of detail on UNESCO's interactive maps

Sprinkled throughout UNESCO's website are interactive maps where you can zoom in to various parts of the world.

Obviously Israel is a small country and it cannot be easily seen or labeled on a map of all of Asia, Africa and Europe:

But the Gaza Strip is labeled even on this map.

Zooming in, we see:

Cyprus and Lebanon, both smaller than Israel, make the cut in this view. Jordan and Syria don't. Gaza remains named.

Next level in:

Every country in the region is labeled, and two non-countries: "Palestine" and the Gaza Strip are labeled as well. Only one country, Israel is missing. (actually, Saudi Arabia loses its name which was visible in an in-between map I did not reproduce. That looks like a bug.)

You need to zoom in one more level to see Israel:

Also interesting is when you zoom in all the way, it labels the Green Line accurately as "armistice demarcation lines" - and even shows the no-man's land between Jordanian-occupied territory and Israel from 1949-1967. It doesn't mention the year of the armistice.

The no-man's land means that this is a map of Israel and its pre-1967 boundary with Jordan. But the labels show that section as being between Israel and something called "Palestine" implying that Palestine was a state before 1967.

All of these decisions of what to show are clearly not made by a computer. (Note how the "Gaza Strip" label disappears and it becomes part of "Palestine" at larger zooms. A computer wouldn't do that.)

A human decided what labels would be visible at which levels and what text would show up at certain points. And Israel was considered so distasteful that it would not appear until there was no choice.

It isn't paranoia when they are really out to get you.

(h/t Simon)

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10/13 Links Pt2: Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize for Literature; YouTube Blacklists Dennis Prager

From Ian:

Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition," the Swedish Academy said on Thursday in awarding the 8 million Swedish crown ($927,740) prize.
Literature was the last of this year's Nobel prizes to be awarded. The prize is named after dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel and has been awarded since 1901 for achievements in science, literature and peace in accordance with his will.
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman and raised Jewish in Wisconsin, Dylan has maintained Israel ties throughout his life. He visited the country several times in the late 1960s and 1970s and even took steps toward joining a kibbutz. He played three shows in Israel in 1987, 1993 and 2011. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement pressed him to cancel his most recent performance — to no avail.
Even more recently, Israelis can thank Dylan for the 2014 Rolling Stones concert in Tel Aviv, the band’s first visit to the country. According to Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, Dylan gave them the idea.

YouTube Blacklists Dennis Prager

Another Progressive machine decides to limit free speech by denying easy access to the educational videos of Prager University: YouTube.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. YouTube has decided that 21 Prager University videos need to be placed on “restricted mode,” a category meant for inappropriate and objectionable adult and sexual content. The videos all run only five minutes or less.
Dennis Prager filed a formal complain to try to stop this censorship (which YouTube insists is not censorship), but Prager finally felt he had no option but to go public.
The YouTube video series, known as Prager University, has enjoyed wide success and for good reason. In each video, a noted academic, media personality, or other well known person, addresses a particular issue in a practical and straightforward way, usually in five minutes or less.
There is nothing controversial about the videos, certainly nothing that requires an age rating for viewing so it’s very strange that YouTube would restrict them in any way.
Included in the list are:
Why Don’t Feminists Fight for Muslim Women?
What ISIS Wants
Why Are There Still Palestinian Refugees?
Islamic Terror: What Muslim Americans Can Do
Did Bush Lie About Iraq?
Israel: The World’s Most Moral Army
Radical Islam: The Most Dangerous Ideology
Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists?
Israel’s Legal Founding
Pakistan: Can Sharia and Freedom Coexist?

IsraellyCool: Know Your History: Farid Kassab, First Arab To Use Term “Palestinian”, Praised Zionists

A series where I bring to you news from the newspaper archives and historical documents to debunk common misconceptions about the Middle East conflict.
I am currently reading a great book – Semites & Anti-Semites by Bernard Lewis.
At one point in the book, when discussing antisemitism in the late Ottoman period, Lewis mentions an antisemitic piece by an antisemitic Maronite Christian called Negib Azoury. Azoury is described as “one of the first to see in Zionism a serious threat to the emergent Arab nation.”
Two important phenomena, of the same nature but opposed, which have still not drawn anyone’s attention, are emerging at this moment in Asiatic Turkey. They are the awakening of the Arab nation, and the latent effort of the Jews to reconstitute on a very large-scale the ancient kingdom of Israel. Both these movements are destined to fight continually until one of them wins. The fate of the entire world will depend on the final result between these two peoples representing two contrary principles”
Note how despite being an antisemite and anti-Zionist, Azoury is acknowledging an ancient kingdom of Israel. He does not write “supposed” or “mythical.”
But even more interesting, in my mind, is Farid Kassab, a Greek Orthodox Arab from Beirut, who responded to Azoury’s piece with a pamphlet that supported the Ottoman Empire and Jewish settlement in Palestine while rejecting Azoury’s idea of an Arab nation.

Amnesty, HRW, Al Haq to gang up on Israel next week at UN (evergreen article)

Next week:

Briefing on the human rights situation in the OPT including use of excessive force by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, Al Haq - UNHQ 18 October 2016

Finally! The UN will look at use of excessive force by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty and Al Haq!

The Working Group of CEIRPP will organise a briefing on Tuesday, 18 October 2016 on the current human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including the use of excessive force by Israeli security forces, and the need for accountability.

Aw. It was just a dangling participle.

The invited speakers will be Ms. Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director of the MENA Division, Human Rights Watch; Amnesty International, Ms. Marya Farah and Ms. Aseil Abu-Baker, Legal Research and Advocacy Officers, Al Haq. The briefing will be followed by a Q&A session. The briefing will be held in the ECOSOC Chamber, at United Nations Headquarters in New York between 11 am and 12 pm.

Apparently, these "human rights" groups will not mention for a moment that Jews have been, and are still being, slaughtered by Palestinians.

Because shooting grandmothers, as happened this week, is apparently not "excessive force." they deserve it if they are guilty of the crime of being Jewish in "Palestine."

If you are planning to attend, kindly RSVP online by 14 October at: http://goo.gl/forms/d3sey8q7qq

I'd love to attend, but by sheer coincidence, it occurs during a Jewish holiday next week. But maybe some f you would like to attend as an EoZ correspondent.

By the way, the CEIRPP is the "Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People" which has held 377 internal UN meetings and has had hundreds of external meetings as well over the past 41 years.

And that's just one of the many anti-Israel committees at the UN.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Two Israelis – a beloved grandmother and a young policeman, married only a few months – were murdered and six wounded in Jerusalem on Sunday, by a Palestinian terrorist. This isn’t surprising, since 42 Israelis have been killed and some 500 wounded in similar attacks over the past year. Jerusalem has been the focus of many of these attacks, only exceeded by Judea and Samaria.

For some reason, this particular attack made us furious. People have had enough, not that murder is ever acceptable. That’s it, we are saying, we won’t take it anymore. It must not be that Jews can’t walk the streets of our cities without fearing that they will be shot, stabbed or run down. We want something done, something more than just placing more police and soldiers on the street.

Meir Turgeman, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem spoke for many:

“We have reached the moment of truth. Let's put all the cards on the table: the people in eastern Jerusalem want to kill us and destroy us. Why should we give them yet another opportunity?" Turgeman said in an interview with Radio Jerusalem, calling on Jerusalem Arabs to take responsibility.

“We lived under the false hopes that these people would change their animal-like behavior if we help them. But it turns out that nothing helps. Why do people have to die in Jerusalem? Where is that written? Who said it?” he added.

“We need to take responsibility here. And I'm going to set an example. I removed all construction plans in eastern Jerusalem from the agenda [of the planning and building committee]. I cancelled all the plans. They say stick and carrot, but there are no more carrots, only sticks,” Turgeman said.

Mayor Nir Barkat said that he hadn’t been consulted and that the statement didn’t represent city policy, but my guess is that the Jewish population of Jerusalem overwhelmingly agrees with Turgeman.

One of the key aspects of the wave of terrorism is the degree of support for it by the Palestinian leadership and the population, both in the territories and in Jerusalem:

Hamas referred to the terrorist as its “son” who “died a martyr.” The group called the attack “heroic” and “a normal reply to the crimes of the Israeli occupation.” In a Facebook post, Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, also praised Abu Sbeih: “The one who carried out the operation today in Jerusalem is a pilgrim [to Mecca] martyr, one of the most prominent people in Jerusalem and the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and a released prisoner.” The Jerusalem branch of Fatah called for a general strike “in Jerusalem in memory of the souls of the martyrs of Palestine and this morning’s martyr.” Abu Sbeih’s teenage daughter said in a video, “We deem my father as martyr…I am proud of what my father did. We’re very happy and proud of our father.” Hamas handed out candy and baklava in celebration of the attack and sweets were passed out in East Jerusalem as well.

Incitement to violence by the Palestinian leadership has driven an ongoing wave of terrorism for the past year, which has killed 42 Israelis and wounded more than 500. Fatah boasted in August that it has “killed 11,000 Israelis.” Abbas praised a Jordanian who was shot while attempting to stab Israeli Border Police officers as a “martyr” in a condolence letter to his family last month. He has consistently refused to condemn acts of terrorism. A senior adviser to Abbas stated this past June, “Wherever you find an Israeli, slit his throat.” When a Palestinian terrorist went on a stabbing spree in Jaffa that killed American army veteran Taylor Force in March, the PA’s official TV news station called the terrorist responsible a “martyr” and on Twitter, Abbas’s Fatah party hailed him as a “martyr” and a “hero.” Last February, Abbas met with families of terrorists who carried out attacks against Israelis, telling them: “Your sons are martyrs.

Social media is even more aggressive and insistent with its incitement. In fact, Sunday’s terrorist (who, I am happy to report, died in the firefight with police he provoked) had been imprisoned for inciting murder on Facebook.

The PA also does its part by paying large salaries to the families of jailed terrorists. Bomb-maker Abdallah Barghouti, serving 67 life sentences for the bombing of the Sbarro pizza restaurant and others, has received about $150,000. Amjad Awad, one of the cousins who slaughtered the Fogel family, received $23,000. This has become such a scandal that even the usually supportive government of the UK is having second thoughts about continuing to fund the PA.

So what to do? Deputy Mayor Turgeman had some ideas, including deporting supporters of terrorism to Gaza and unilaterally divesting of some of the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan says that the social networks must do more to remove inciting posts. Others have suggested blocking social media in the PA and Arab neighborhoods (I don’t know if this is technically feasible).

It seems to me that before anything else, the educational and media system set up by Yasser Arafat that produces generation after generation of Palestinians who are little more than walking, protoplasmic containers for the most vicious anger and hatred – e.g., Abu Sbeih’s daughter or any of the several 13-year olds that have tried to murder Israelis – must be ended. The PA has promised to stop incitement on several occasions since the Oslo accords created it, but they have never done anything, since they understand that “popular resistance” – murder carried out by ordinary citizens with no centralized control – is one of their best weapons. Perhaps this will require ending the reigns of the PA and Hamas.

In the face of this, the Israeli Left, as personified by the Ha’aretz newspaper, displays its remarkable, even psychotic, disconnect with reality. “Instead of understanding that only bold moves to end the occupation are likely to reduce the violence, Netanyahu is turning Israel into a hopeless place that endangers the lives of its people,” they write, in an editorial published Monday. It continues,

The government’s consistent blocking of any option for a diplomatic process, at the end of which a glimmer of hope for an agreement might emerge, is what’s causing the feelings of suffocation and frustration, and later the barbaric acts like Sunday’s attack.

If you ask them, the Palestinians will tell you that what suffocates and frustrates them is the presence of Jews between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Nothing makes this clearer than their refusal to accept offers of almost all the land outside of the Green Line for a sovereign state, while they refuse to admit that even the pre-1967 Israel belongs to the Jewish people, and demand to flood it with Arab ‘refugees’. Anyone who doubts this need only look at their maps of ‘Palestine’, pay attention to what their leaders say in Arabic, or the Palestinian in the street tells pollsters. What would an “agreement,” as Ha’aretz demands, with these people be worth?

This should have been obvious to everyone since the terror attacks of the mid-1990’s, and if not then, from the Second Intifada, and if not then, from the Hamas takeover of Gaza and consequent rocket attacks, and if not then, from the currently ongoing “popular resistance.” But for Ha’aretz and its ilk, all the violence just means that we havn’t been bold enough in our concessions, even though every concession has brought more violence.

I don’t know precisely what the solution is, but I can say for certain that it won’t be found in trying to make things better for the Palestinians or giving them hope, because what they hope for is our destruction. The answer lies in the opposite direction, in “bold moves” to increase, not decrease, our control of the land of Israel, and to reduce its Arab population.

As far as ending terrorism is concerned, Turgeman had the right idea: no more carrots, only sticks.

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10/13 Links Pt1: UNESCO votes: No connection between Temple Mount and Judaism; Obama’s Temptation—and Abbas’s Enabling

From Ian:

UNESCO votes: No connection between Temple Mount and Judaism

In a 26-6 vote, UNESCO on Thursday gave its preliminary approval to a preliminary approval to a resolution that ignores Jewish ties to its most holy religious sites: the Temple Mount and the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Another 24 nations abstained and two were absent all together.
Those countries who voted in support of Israel were: the United States, Great Britain, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Germany and Estonia.
The vote was taken by UNESCO’s 58-member Programme and External Relations Commission in advance of its ratification next Monday or Tuesday, by UNESCO Executive Board, made up of the same member states.
In advance of that vote, Israel’s Mission to UNESCO in Paris had given board members and international diplomats a brochure detailing the deep historical connections Judaism has to those sites, which are also holy to Christianity and Islam.
In the draft of the Executive Board resolution dated September 2016 that was shown to The Jerusalem Post, the Western Wall was mentioned twice in quotes. Otherwise it was referenced in the text by its Muslim name of the Buraq Plaza.
The text, however, does state that Jerusalem and its Old City walls is important to all three religions.

JPost Editorial: UNESCO on the Temple Mount

The sun rotates around the world. The world is flat.
There was never a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount.
When people make foolish declarations with conviction they are usually motivated by a political agenda or religion or both.
The ongoing Palestinian campaign to erase Jewish ties to the holy places of Jerusalem falls under this category. Last October, the Palestinian Authority failed in its attempt to garner enough support in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for a resolution that ignores Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and that mentions only Muslim ties to the site.
This October it will try again.
In April, UNESCO’s 58-member Executive Board met in Paris and adopted a resolution that spoke solely of Muslim ties to the Temple Mount.

Lapid: Israeli Radical Left working with antisemites on UNESCO Jewish history denial vote

The radical left gave Zionism a bill of divorce by cooperating with an Arria Formula Meeting of the United Nations Security Council on ‘Illegal Israeli Settlement" slated for Oct 14 at the United Nations, Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid said Thursday.
Lapid railed against far-left human rights organization B’Tselem and Peace Now, who are scheduled to speak at the forum later this month.
“They’re not even pretending that their goal is to influence the Israeli public,” Lapid said. “Instead, they decided to work with antisemitic BDS [boycott, divest and sanction] organizations to try to force Israel’s hand from the outside.”
The Yesh Atid chairman said the efforts will not succeed and Israel will not give up.
“Israel will decide its own fate. That’s why we established an independent state that is strong and secure. No one will dictate to us how to run our lives, certainly not transient organizations that are unwilling to accept the fact that Israeli society stopped listening to them,” he added.

From Press TV; the story is widespread in Arab media:

A Palestinian boy has been shot and killed by Israeli forces in the town of Qararah near Khan Yunis, says a Palestinian official.

"Abdullah al-Naseef, 10, was killed by (Israeli) occupation fire close to his house in the Qararah municipality, near Khan Yunis," said Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in the besieged Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

According to eyewitness, the Israeli forces shot the child from a military base.

Only one problem: it is a lie. COGAT writes:

Abdallah Abu Nadif, 13-year-old boy from Alcarara in Gaza, was found dead yesterday evening as a result of a shooting that took place at a wedding in the area. The Palestinians are blaming Israel for this incident, but the truth is that the shooting did not come from the Israeli side. We send our condolences to the family for this unfortunate incident.

There have been lots of deaths and injuries from celebratory wedding gunfire over the years.

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The perfect microcosm of the Israeli Arab conflict - from soccer

Haaretz reports:

The head of the Palestinian Football Association has threatened that if FIFA, the governing body of international soccer, doesn’t decide to suspend six Israeli teams from West Bank settlements, he’ll petition the Court of Arbitration for Sport for a ruling on the issue.

FIFA’s president has been trying to broker a solution to the issue through agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. But such a petition would make this effort impossible.

Jibril Rajoub, who heads the Palestinian association, told a press conference that allowing the settlement teams to play is a gross violation of both FIFA’s bylaws and those of the Union of European Football Associations, of which Israel is a member.

What a perfect microcosm of how Palestinian Arabs view Israel as a whole.

They push international bodies to misinterpret international law (or, in this case, sports statutes) and create new laws that apply only to Israel.

As Eugene Kontorovich wrote:

[T]here is simply no support in international law for prohibiting business [like sports teams - EoZ] in occupied territories, as British and French courts have recently affirmed.

Indeed, Morocco maintains a team, part of its national football federation, in occupied Western Sahara. Yet the HRW completely fails to mention this fact in its report. The human rights abuses in Western Sahara — where the majority of the population are Moroccan settlers and the indigenous population has been heavily displaced — are too vast to recount. No one — including the HRW and the Parliament members — has suggested expelling Morocco on account of its team, based deep in land taken from the Sahrawi.

The football-as-human rights-violation arguments against Israel are tendentious and prove too much. So those campaigning against Israel rely principally on a lawyerly claim about FIFA’s rules: The clubs “clearly violate FIFA’s statutes, according to which clubs from one member association cannot play on the territory of another member association without its and FIFA’s consent,” the members claim.

The problem is nothing in the FIFA statutes that equates “territory” with sovereign territory. Indeed, that would be impossible, since many FIFA members are not sovereign states at all. Instead, territory, as is often the case in international texts, means jurisdiction.

This is because the FIFA is not a border demarcation body. That is why FIFA clearly separates any question of sovereign statehood and territory from FIFA membership by not requiring that member federations be recognized states (i.e. Hong Kong, American Samoa, Faroe Islands, Northern Ireland, etc.). The claim that the acceptance of the Palestinian soccer federation into FIFA constituted a recognition of Palestine as a state and a recognition of its maximal border claims is unsupportable. FIFA membership does not imply statehood, nor has FIFA ever taken a position on preexisting border disputes.

Indeed, FIFA practice makes clear that it never gets involved when teams of one federation play on territory that is the subject of sovereign claims by the state of another member.

Another clear parallel between sports and the real world is that the Palestinians show that they have no interest in negotiations or compromise. If they don't get their way - they threaten anyone who stands in their way.

Including FIFA.

Palestinians are hijacking every international body that they join and turning them into anti-Israel weapons to the detriment of their otherwise laudable goals. They did it with various UN bodies (like UNESCO) and they are trying to do it with FIFA.

Yet another analogy: Palestinians rip off what Israelis do, as Jibril Rajoub used a Bibi-style prop when speaking to FIFA:

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From Haaretz:

The 58 members of UNESCO are expected to vote Thursday on an anti-Israeli resolution that disregards Judaism’s historic connection to the Temple Mount and casts doubt on the link between Judaism and the Western Wall. The resolution is expected to pass by a large majority.
Israel has made efforts to block the resolution or at least soften it, but succeeded only in swaying the positions of a few member states.

The resolution proposal, which condemns Israel on several issues regarding Jerusalem and its holy sites, was advanced by the Palestinians alongside Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar and Sudan. The draft resolution, a copy of which was obtained by Haaretz, asserts that Jerusalem is holy to the three monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. However, it includes a special section dealing with the Temple Mount, which says the site is sacred only to Muslims and fails to mention that it is sacred to the Jews as well. In fact, it mentions neither the Hebrew term for the site – Har HaBayit – nor its English equivalent, the Temple Mount. The site is referred to only by its Muslim names – Al-Aqsa Mosque and Haram al-Sharif.

Also, the resolution calls the Western Wall plaza by the Arab-Muslim name al-Buraq plaza. Only afterward does the Hebrew-Jewish name “Hakotel Hama’aravi” appear in quotation marks.

The resolution is even worse than Haaretz notes.

First of all, the draft doesn't even say "Kotel." It says

Further deplores the Israeli ... project of the elevator in Al-Buraq Plaza "Western Wall Plaza"...

UNESCO is saying that the primary name of the plaza in front of the Kotel is "Al Buraq Plaza," a name that simply didn't exist historically - since there was no plaza there under Muslim rule.

For this reason alone, UNESCO has proven itself to be a sham.

But it goes way beyond this.

It indeed denies any Jewish ties to the Temple Mount:

Strongly condemns the Israeli escalating aggressions and illegal measures against the Awqaf Department and its personnel, and against the freedom of worship and Muslims’ access to their Holy Site Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al Sharif,

In fact it doesn't use the words "Temple Mount" anywhere in the resolution that mentions the site name as Haram al-Sharif/Al Aqsa Mosque 18 times.

There is a very good reason why UNESCO will never admit any Jewish ties to what is unquestioningly Judaism's holiest site: because if it admits it, then not only do Jews have the right to visit, they have the right to pray there under international law. But the resolution deplores Jews merely peacefully visiting their holiest site.

Firmly deplores the continuous storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif by the Israeli rightwing extremists and uniformed forces, and urges Israel, the Occupying Power, to take necessary measures to prevent provocative abuses that violate the sanctity and integrity of Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif;

UNESCO is complicit in denying history for the express purpose of denying the human rights of Jews. Which means that UNESCO is, by definition, an antisemitic organization.

The resolution also deplores the Palestinian Arab spree of stabbings, car rammings and shootings of Jews.

Oh, I'm sorry: it deplores Jewish "settlers" and "extremists" from being "aggressive" and doesn't mention any Arab culpability at all:

Deeply deplores the new cycle of violence, going on since October 2015, in the context of the constant aggressions by the Israeli settlers and other extremist groups against Palestinian residents including schoolchildren.

This resolution proves beyond any doubt that UNESCO is a worthless and meaningless organization that has been thoroughly divested of any value by its decision to admit "Palestine" as a member.

Here's the full resolution:

Anti-Israel UNESCO resolution (draft) by Eldad Tzioni on Scribd

UPDATE: UNESCO once barely acknowledged that there was a point in time called the "Temple periods." I wonder where they think those Temples were:

Jerusalem between these hills, forms a unique witness to the cultural cradle of the Western monotheistic religions, including Jewish sites identified during,the Temple periods, including the City of David Christian sites identified by Queen Helena including Gethsemane, the Church of the Ascension, Bethany, and the site of the Last Supper, and Islamic sites of the Night Journey of Mohammed.

In fact, this was written by Israel (h/t David B) so UNESCO really doesn't acknowledge basic history in its hate of Jews.

UPDATE 2: It passed, 24-6 with 26 abstentions.A senior source said that the efforts of Israeli diplomats significantly changed the votes of European states, none of which supported the motion. Israeli efforts, he said, succeeded in swaying France, Sweden, Slovenia, Argentina, Togo and India to abstain from the vote.

When it is considered a victory to get Western nations to abstain from a vote on Jew-hate, things are not looking positive for the future of Jews in the world.

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Those Israeli "traffic jams" on Yom Kippur (update)

Yanai Cohen on Twitter notices that Google Maps was showing many of Israel's main highways jammed on Yom Kippur - when practically no one drives:

The reason? Because (non-religious) Israelis with cell phones were walking or bicycling on the nearly empty major roads and Google saw that they were traveling very slowly (compared to normal car speeds.)

(h/t Yenta Press)

UPDATE: Video:

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10/12 Links: On Yom Kippur, we examine our sins, but defending Israel isn’t one of them.

From Ian:

On Yom Kippur, we examine our sins, but defending Israel isn’t one of them.

As we approach Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, we highly recommend a thoughtful meditation on the Jewish culture of self-criticism by Ruth Wisse recently published in the Wall St. Journal.
Here’s an excerpt:
Jews rightly take pride in their culture of self-accountability—before the Ultimate Judge and justly established human authorities. This culture has created and sustained a remarkably resilient people. Lamenting the excesses of the current American electoral cycle, the columnist Ira Stoll imagines how much richer the country’s politics would be if “this spirit of self-examination were exported from the Jewish religion into the rest of American culture.” If democracy requires the patient improvement of life in a community, nothing furthers that goal better than the practice of individual and collective self-scrutiny.
But the millennial-long history of Jewish self-restraint also stands as a warning. It is all very well to focus on overcoming your failings. Yet the search for moral perfection can also render individuals, and nations, prey to those who believe in conquest rather than self-conquest and who join in holding you accountable for their misdeeds. The same confessional posture, praiseworthy when standing before the Perfect Judge, becomes blameworthy when adopted before an enemy that has you before a rigged tribunal.
In the 20th century, some modern European thinkers and political leaders began singling out the Jews for their alleged racial or religious or social culpabilities. Many Jews felt obliged to answer apologetically for these supposed failings, instead of exposing the evil ideology that had chosen them for its target. Jewish Marxists, for example, blamed Jewish capitalists and bourgeoisie, even though defamation was leveled equally at Jewish professionals, artisans, journalists and paupers.
No sooner had the politics of Jew-blame reached its genocidal apotheosis in Europe than it was taken up in the Middle East. Rather than accepting the principle of co-existence and concentrating on improving the lives of their own subjects, Arab leaders refused Jews the right to their homeland in a war that they, the Arab leaders, had initiated. Forcing almost a million Jews from their ancient communities in Arab lands, the same leaders blamed Israel for Arab refugees whom they themselves refused to resettle.
This calumny is by now the basis of political coalitions not only at the United Nations and in Europe but on campuses here in the U.S. So ingrained are the assumptions of Jew-blame that newspapers will often devote more coverage to the shooting of one Palestinian Arab by an Israeli, often unintentionally or in self-defense, than to the murders of Jewish civilians by Arab and Muslim terrorists. What such belligerents do with the aim of eliminating the Jewish state, friends sometimes do in the name of holding Jews to “a higher moral standard.” And, as previously, some Jews join the blame-shifting ranks, castigating the Jewish state for engaging in self-defense rather than apology.

Cruz, Ros-Lehtinen protest that UN resolution would 'delegitimize Israel'

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., sent a letter this week to the Executive Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization protesting a resolution the U.S. lawmakers say is part of a wider effort to delegitimize Israel.
"The United Nations' obsessive hostility towards Israel will be on display yet again this week as UNESCO considers another blatantly biased resolution that unjustly singles out our close ally Israel with false accusations and criticism, and attempts to erase the specific deep-rooted, historical connection of Jews and Christians to Jerusalem, Israel's eternal capital," Cruz's office said Tuesday.
The Texas senator and Florida congresswoman were joined in their letter by 39 of their congressional colleagues.
"For thousands of years, Jerusalm [sic] has played a defining, central role in the history and identity of the Jewish people," Cruz's office said. "For Christians, Jerusalem is a seminal spiritual site. This resolution flies in the face of, among other things, science as recent archeological excavations, notably in the City of David, have revealed incontrovertible, physical evidence that reaffirms Jewish and Christian ties to the holy city of Jerusalem. Members of the UNESCO Executive Board should vote against this intentional campaign to deny these historical truths, rewrite the history of Jerusalem, and delegitimize Israel."
Ros-Lehtinen's office added Tuesday that the proposed U.N. resolution's "ill intent" is clear
"[T]o deny the historical record of the Jewish peoples' connections to their holiest city and to imply that Jerusalem is inconsequential to Jews and Christians, with the intent of laying the groundwork for additional UN efforts to delegitimize Israel and undermine its status as the capital of the Jewish State," he office said.
"Furthermore, this irresponsible and reprehensible resolution falsely lays the blame for the violence on Israel since last October while ignoring the acts of terror and violence that are being incited by the Palestinian Authority and Abu Mazen. UNESCO was created to build intercultural understanding yet, as is the case across the entire UN system, intolerance and intentionally corrosive behavior on the part of many of the organization's members has undermined its original mission and only further underscores the need for drastic reform throughout the entire UN system," they added.

Palestinian soccer team honors Jerusalem shooter who killed two Israelis

And anti-Israel activists want Israel kicked out of FIFA!
On Sunday, October 9, 2016, we reported how Palestinians celebrate murder of two Israelis in Jerusalem shooting attack.
Video has been released of the “heroic” drive by shooting being celebrated:
Those celebrations included approval and encouragement of further attacks from both Fatah and Hamas news outlets, a phone call of congratulations from the political head of Hamas to the killer’s family, dancing outside the home of the killer, and the killer’s 14-year old daughter praising the attack.
Israeli police closed the candy store owned by the killer’s family, so I guess they’ll have to find another source of goodies to hand out.
And now this, a Palestinian soccer team holding a banner honoring the killer.
Oh, by the way, the Palestinians and anti-Israel activists want Israel kicked out of FIFA because security checks of Palestinian soccer teams disrupt their ability to play. Let’s see, soccer team honors terrorist killer who conducted shooting spree that killed two Israelis — certainly no security concerns with those fine young men.