Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, April 14, 2017

04/14 Links Pt2: PBS Islamic Lesson Plan Encourages Students to Identify with Radical Jihadists; Tuvia Tenenbom's American Jewish ‘Nightmare’ After Visiting Synagogues Across US

From Ian:

PBS Islamic Lesson Plan Encourages Students to Identify with Radical Jihadists

A new lesson from PBS teaches your kids the glory of martyrdom.
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is home to Big Bird, Frontline, and other “programing made possible by viewers like you,” including lesson plans instructing teachers how to show kids to be more sympathetic to radical Islamic suicide bombers in Palestine.
“Dying to be a Martyr.” That’s the name of a lesson plan offered to students and teachers at no cost by the Public Broadcasting Service, a taxpayer-funded nonprofit, and some of the material seems to encourage students to learn to sympathize with radical Islamic terrorists.
The “Dying to be a Martyr” lesson plan is offered through PBS’ LearningMedia website, “a media-on-demand service offering educators access to the best of public media and delivers research-based, classroom-ready digital learning experiences,” according to the PBS website.
The stated “objectives” for the lesson plan, which is designed for use by students in grades nine through 12, include analyzing “why the Middle East conflict began and continues today,” discussing “how religions can unite or divide people” and explaining “why individuals and groups sometimes turn to tactics of terrorism, and evaluate how terrorism affects the world we live in.”

Seth Frantzman: Whaaaa – The NYT just published a column supporting ISIS in Syria?!

The New York Times just published a column by Thomas Friedman (‘Why is Trump fighting ISIS in Syria’) that argues for supporting ISIS in Syria. Surely that can’t be, you say? Well, the sick and twisted column really does say “In Syria, Trump should let ISIS be Assad’s, Iran’s, Hezbollah’s and Russia’s headache.” Friedman argues for treating the Nazi-like Islamist extremist group that carried out genocide of Yazidis and still holds thousands of Yazidi women as slaves, “the same way we encouraged the mujahedeen fighters to bleed Russia in Afghanistan.” A reminder: The US spent hundreds of millions supporting the mujahedeen.
You need to read the Friedman piece to believe it.
He starts out by asking “Why should our goal right now be to defeat the Islamic State in Syria? Of course, ISIS is detestable and needs to be eradicated. But is it really in our interest to be focusing solely on defeating ISIS in Syria right now?”
Friedman claims that ISIS “controls pockets in western Iraq and larger sectors of Syria. Its goal is to defeat Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria — plus its Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies — and to defeat the pro-Iranian Shiite regime in Iraq, replacing both with a caliphate.”
What evidence is there that ISIS has spent its main resources fighting Assad? It has spent most of its resources fighting the Kurds in Syria and persecuting minorities, blowing up religious shrines and historical sites and committing crimes against humanity. ISIS has also undermined the Syrian rebellion through fighting other Syrian rebel groups. On April 9th ISIS attacked a Syrian rebel base near Jordan. If you want to know what ISIS has been doing since 2014 read the accounts of Yazidi women sold into slavery and raped by the group. See the photos and videos of ISIS mass graves.

More Evidence The Anne Frank Center Misrepresented Itself

Yesterday, I asked the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect some questions, relating to some inconsistent stories relating to their founding and relationship with Otto Frank and the Anne Frank Fonds.
They did not respond.
Someone who did respond was writer Daniel Greenfield, who drew my attention to a piece he wrote on them over a month ago, exposing them as frauds.
He’s right. Anne Frank Fonds did sue the Anne Frank House in 2013, and made clear they are the only representatives of Anne Frank’s legacy.
What is interesting is, as I posted yesterday, the Anne Frank Center’s website at the time linked itself to Anne Frank House…
Founded in 1977 by Anne’s father Otto, The Anne Frank Center USA, a partner of the Anne Frank House…
But in 2016, changed the description to this..
In 1959, Otto Frank, Anne’s father, founded our organization as the Anne Frank Foundation, the American partner of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Fonds in Basel.
In other words, well after the court case which made it clear Anne Frank Fonds is the sole legitimate organization established by Otto Frank, the Anne Frank Center amended their description to add a supposed connection to Anne Frank Fonds. It seems to me this was a deliberate move to make themselves sound more legitimate (even though still mentioning Anne Frank Foundation in the same breath seems like a dumb move).
Given this further information and the Center’s silence in the face of my genuine questions, I believe they are frauds co-opting Anne Frank’s name and playing up a relationship with Anne Frank Fonds that simply does not exist.

Portland to lose $4.5 million a year to avoid dealing with BDSers and other social justice warriors

From The Oregonian:

Portland is getting out of corporate investing altogether. The Portland City Council voted unanimously on Wednesday to end the practice following pressure from activists to withdraw from companies that are problematic for the environment, human rights or government.

The city has $539 million invested in corporations this year, City Treasurer Jennifer Cooperman said.

Activists for months have urged the Portland City Council to divest from controversial companies. They pleaded with them in December to withdraw from Wells Fargo due to its investments in the Dakota Access Pipeline and from Caterpillar, a company that makes trucks and bulldozers, some of which they say are used to harm Palestinians in the Israel Palestine conflict.

Instead, commissioners decided not to invest it in any corporations period, in part to avoid the trouble of having to perpetually decide which corporations the city considers bad actors.

Cooperman estimated divesting could cost the city a minimum $4.5 million or more this year and even more the following year. The mayor estimated that amounts to more than 200 affordable housing units or more than 600 new shelter beds based on current costs.

"I think the hit is too hard," Wheeler said. "I'm erring on the side of doing what I was elected to do."

Commissioner Dan Saltzman told the activists that he based his decision on having limited time that he'd rather spend addressing the city's housing crisis and potholes than regularly evaluating which companies belong on the do-not-buy list.

"I fully respect and appreciate what you're saying, but I think it's the wiser course to get out of the business altogether because I don't want to do this every year," Saltzman said.

BDSers were among the groups that were trying to get Portland to divest from various companies.

The city had the choice of losing millions of dollars from all corporate investments or losing hundreds of hours of time listening to activists whining about their pet causes.

They chose to lose the millions of dollars.

The subtext is that BDSers and other "social justice warriors" are really disliked even in the most liberal cities in the US.

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Arab terror supporters admit Israeli police only retaliate when provoked

This item from Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today site is very informative, but not in the ways it intended.

Dozens of people banned from the Al-Aqsa Mosque led Friday prayers in the Lions Gate area after the occupation forces prevented them from praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Dozens of known provocateurs were stopped from causing trouble. How many people managed to get past the Israeli cordon?

About 30 thousand worshipers were allowed by the occupation to enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque, after imposing a security cordon on the West Bank (for Passover.)

In an article about how Israel limits Muslims from worshipping, it says that 30,000 people still came. This is far, far more Muslims visiting the Temple Mount in a single day than Jews who visit in a year.

But the next section is even more telling:

After finishing Friday prayers, some young men tried a threw stones at Israeli soldiers stationed at the Mughrabi Gate, but the Al-Aqsa Mosque guards and worshipers prevented them from doing it so as not to goad occupation soldiers to break into the mosque.

From listening to the huge number of complaints given in the Arab media about Israeli soldiers wantonly "storming" the "Al Aqsa Mosque" one would think that they do it without any provocation. But here we see that everyone knows - the Muslims who worship in the area, the Waqf guards, everyone - knows very well that the Israeli police only go there when they need to.

Which means also that when there are riots on the Temple Mount, they are always instigated by Arabs. Always. And in those cases, they want the Israeli police to show up in order to rile up the population for some political reason.

Furthermore, the fact that the Al Aqsa guards are stopping stone throwers means that Israeli police actions in the past have accomplished what they were meant to - stone throwing and rioting are being deterred (except, again, when the political leaders feel that it is in their interest to stir things up.

Yes, you can learn a lot from Arab media that you wouldn't know otherwise.

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04/14 Links Pt1: Phillips: The West’s ideological quagmire; Your neighbor's house is on fire, but he hates you. Do you help? That's Israel's Syria dilemma.

From Ian:

US charges 2 terrorists for 2010 murder of American tourist in Israel

Charges were filed in the United States Thursday against two Palestinian terrorists jailed in Israel for the 2010 murder of a US citizen who was visiting the Jewish state.
Ayad Fatafta and Kifah Ghanimat face federal charges for murdering Kristine Luken on December 18, 2010, in a stabbing attack in the Jerusalem Forest that also seriously wounded Kay Wilson, a British-born Israeli citizen.
The two terrorists, both residents of a village near Hebron — which is under the control of the Palestinian Authority — are currently serving prison sentences in Israel. Arrest warrants were issued against them in the US on Thursday.
In 2012, Fatafta was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 20 years, and Ghanimat was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment and a further 60 years, for the lethal stabbing attack as well as another crime.
According to the US affidavit, Fatafta and Ghanimat stabbed Luken — a 44-year-old US national — to death while she was hiking near an archaeological site on a visit to Israel. She died at the scene.
According to the US Justice Department, “the maximum penalty for a person convicted of murdering a US national outside the US is a lifetime term of incarceration or death.”

Melanie Phillips: The West’s ideological quagmire

Officials like Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster are from the school of pragmatic realism. This views politics through the prism of state power and underplays the titanic civilizational issues now pitted against each other.
Which is why such figures tend not to understand the particular threat posed by Islamic religious fanaticism. It is also why they fail to grasp that the Middle East impasse is not a dispute over land boundaries between Israelis and Palestinians but an Islamic war of extermination against the Jewish homeland.
Trump’s great strength is that he is not an ideologue. The downside, however, is that he is therefore not governed by a strong, coherent view of the world. So he tends to be blown hither and yon by those who do have a strong worldview, depending upon who impresses him at any one moment.
Reportedly he has become exasperated by the vicious turf wars within his administration. As a result, it’s being said that his strategic genius Steve Bannon, who is driven by his own perception of the West’s suicidal civilizational decline, has lost out.
Those who believe Bannon is the ideologue driving America into disaster will sigh with relief that Trump appears to be reverting to traditional type.
Those who think pragmatic realpolitik was previously leading America off the civilizational precipice will be aghast.
This presidency is a work in progress. Donald Trump is on a steep learning curve. Whether he will learn the correct lessons is something on which we must all still hold our breath.

Your neighbor's house is on fire, but he hates you. Do you help? That's Israel's Syria dilemma.

Israel has spent most of the Syrian civil war watching from the sidelines rather than becoming mired in a sectarian conflict in which neither of the sides looked particularly appealing as an ally.
Last week’s sarin gas attack, apparently by Syrian air forces, has intensified a long running debate about whether the government should be doing more to alleviate humanitarian suffering just beyond its northern border and act militarily to weaken President Bashar Assad.
Despite a state of war that exists between the neighbors, a growing number of Israelis are calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to do more to assist Syrian civilians, arguing that Jewish history of displacement imparts a moral obligation on Israel to help wounded Syrian civilians.
At a security cabinet meeting on Sunday, ministers mulled proposals to accept Syrian children injured in the gas attack — beyond a 4-year-old policy to take in Syrians from rebel areas near the border for temporary medical treatment — but made no final decision. A similar proposal that got consideration in the wake of the siege of Aleppo has yet to be implemented
“As Israelis and Jews, the use of gas takes us back [in time],’’ said Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz, alluding to the Holocaust, during the cabinet meeting. “Our obligation as Jews and Israelis is to offer aid to the victims of the gas attack. There are many children and the elderly…. We must not stand idly by.”
The angst points to a tug of war between two schools of thought on how to grapple with Syria, a dilemma that former National Security Advisor Giora Eiland described in an interview with Israel Radio as a “struggle between the Jewish heart and mind.’’

On Wednesday, April 12, the Twitter account of Terrorist Ahlam Tamimi was suspended.

Tamimi is the mastermind behind the 2001 Sbarro massacre, where a suicide bomber entered the restaurant and murdered 15 people, half of them children, among 145 casualties. She was tried and sent to prison in Israel until 2011, when she was among the terrorists released in exchange for Hamas hostage Gilad Shalit, and went to live in Jordan.

Last month, the United States unsealed a criminal indictment against Tamimi and sought to have her extradited to the US to face charges for the murder of a US citizen who was killed in that bombing.

Jordan has refused to extradite Tamimi, falsely claim that there was no extradition treaty between the US and Jordan. She has been enjoying the use of a Twitter feed, which is popular among her many fans.

What is it about Twitter?

Time magazine has suggested an answer as to Why Terrorists Love Twitter:

Twitter is something of a digital town square—a free megaphone to reach a mass audience, easily accessible on smartphones and largely unmonitored.

Suspending accounts on Twitter has been controversial:

There is the issue of the difficulty of tracking down and removing the accounts
There is the issue of new accounts popping up elsewhere on Twitter
There is the issue of whether allowing terrorist accounts on Twitter enable agencies to keep tabs on the terrorists

These issues do not apply to Ahlam Tamimi.

She would not be hard to track down on Twitter since she thrives on the publicity -- she needs her admirers to be able to find her easily so she can spread her message.

That's because besides having carried out terrorist attacks against Israel in the past, Tamimi now praises and encourages terrorism against Israel as well.

MEMRI, which has been tracking her on Twitter, notes that Tamimi shares photos of the bombing she facilitated and lauds Hamas leaders:

Her tweets have included videos and photos of the scene at the 2001 Jerusalem bombing that she facilitated, including one marking the 14th anniversary of the attack and praising the bomber; a model of a bombed-out Israeli bus against a mural of Jerusalem featuring Al-Aqsa; promotion of her program "Breeze of the Free Men" on the Al-Quds satellite channel; and images, photos, and poems on Palestinian topics, including photos of Yasser Arafat, Hamas bombmaker Yahyah Ayyash aka "The Engineer, Hamas cofounder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, Hamas cofounder Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi, and imprisoned Hamas commander Abdallah Al-Barghouthi.

...On April 28, 2016, she tweeted a photo evidently sent to her from Gaza, showing a model of a bombed-out Israeli bus on display against the backdrop of a mural of Jerusalem, featuring Al-Aqsa. In the photo someone holds up a sign with a message addressed to her, saying: "Ahlam Al-Tamimi, Gaza misses you." In the tweet she responds to the message, saying "Peace be upon you, Oh Gaza [city of] peace."

On April 15, 2016, Al-Tamimi tweeted a map of Palestine composed of photos of prominent Palestinians, including Yasser Arafat, Abd Al-Aziz Al-Rantisi, Osama bin Laden mentor Abdallah Azzam, and Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, with a poem: "Palestine unites us/ Hugs us/ Gathers us/ Embraces us/ Be angry with us/ Forgive us/ She is our mother."

...On August 9, 2015, the 14th anniversary of the 2001 Sbarro bombing that she facilitated, she tweeted a photo of the scene of the bombing that included a photo of the bomber Izz Al-Din Shuheil Al-Masri prior to the attack, along with a poem referencing the guitar in which he concealed the bomb: "When the melody becomes destructive/ Then we would enjoy listening to music/ Oh guitarists, your time has passed/ Only your memory is left."

Ahlam Tamimi is a wanted terrorist who admitted to her part in the Sbarro massacre. The fact that she was tried and imprisoned in jail before being released in exchange for the release of an Israeli hostage held by Hamas terrorists does not create an issue of double jeopardy. Tamimi was not pardoned. She was released conditionally, based her ceasing from any further terrorism herself or encouraging it among others.

Tamimi has clearly violated the conditions of her release.

Twitter had no need to get involved in any fine legal points here -- the fact remains that Ahlam Tamimi is a fugitive terrorist, wanted by the US, who continues to encourage terrorism.

Suspending Tamimi's Twitter account was the first step.
The next step is to extradite her to the US where justice can be meted out.

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.

From YNet:

A 23-year-old British student was killed after being stabbed multiple times in the chest in a terror attack at IDF Square on Jerusalem’s light rail on Friday afternoon.

The terrorist was arrested after a number of police officers managed to gain control over him. He was later identified as 57-year-old Jamil Tamimi from the Palestinian neighborhood of Ras al-Amud.

Magen David Adom (MDA) paramedics arrived at the scene to find the woman lying on the ground unconscious after having suffered multiple stab wounds.

The Shin Bet later reported that the terrorist attempted to commit suicide this year by swallowing a razor blade while in hospital. In 2011, he was convicted of sexually assaulting his daughter.

“This is another incident of many in which a Palestinian suffering from mental health or personal issues has chosen to carry out an attack as a way out of his problems,” the Shin Bet statement said.

A mentally ill and probably disgraced member of the "peaceful" Tamimi family wants to kill himself. What better way to rehabilitate his image and get likely killed than to murder an innocent woman in a public place?

This story is not only about a mentally ill murderer. It is yet another indictment of a Palestinian society that glorifies terrorists and turns their shame into honor.

The murder is already being called heroic by Palestine Today.

The official Wafa news agency is not yet sure whether the person arrested is the stabber, saying that a Palestinian was arrested on the pretext of being involved in a terror attack.

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Jordan says that the Muslim right not to be offended is more important than human rights of Jews

Jordan signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1976. This covenant says

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching.

This covenant indicates pretty clearly that Jews have the right to practice their religion on the spot that is the undisputed holiest place in Judaism.

But Jordan has again engaged in a rhetorical attack on Jews who peacefully visit their holiest site:

The Jordanian government on Thursday condemned the "storming of Jewish extremists" of the Temple Mount under the protection of Israeli police so they wouldn't be lynched.
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The Minister for Media Affairs, government spokesman Mohammad Momanim, said in a press release that Jordan "strongly condemns these provocative acts that offend the sanctity of the holy place and the feelings of Muslims all over the world and we call on the Israeli authorities to stop it immediately."

So the "feelings of Muslims" are more important than Jews having the basic human right to visit their holiest spot - let alone pray there.

Momani urged the international community to pressure Israel to adhere to fictional obligations to keep Jews off the Mount.

He condemned and rejected the actions of "Jewish extremists" and said that their quiet strolls are a "mockery of the importance of continued calm and an abuse of international efforts to re-launch serious negotiations between the Israeli occupation and the Palestinians."

Here you can see those terrible "Jewish extremists" doing their storming this week. Prepare to be shocked at how provocative they are.

At the same time, Muslims erected a banner celebrating the founder of Hamas Sheikh Yassin on the Temple Mount.

No one condemned that.

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04/13 Links Pt2: Quantifying the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; Turkey, where are your Jews?

From Ian:

Camera: Quantifying the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict's Importance to Middle East Turmoil

For decades, attention has been lavished on the Palestinians, bestowing upon this small segment of the Arab world an exaggerated importance. As a result, in media, academic and diplomatic circles, addressing Palestinian grievances was elevated to the status of the most urgent political and humanitarian cause in the Middle East.
At the United Nations, Muslim and European blocs apply a harsh and unfair double standard to the actions and policies of the Jewish state. In 2016, the Human Rights Council (HRC), over which some of the worst human rights abusers preside, passed 20 anti-Israel resolutions and only 6 against all other countries (UN Watch), even as mass atrocities –including the use of chemical weapons - continue unabated just north of Israel's border, in Syria. This lopsided record in 2016 is typical for the HRC. Taking their cue from the Council's agenda, compromised human rights watchdogs, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and numerous media and academics that cite reports produced by these groups, raise a clamor whenever Israel vigorously responds to cross-border attacks by terrorist organizations.
The upheavals that shook the Arab world from one end to the other starting in 2010 should have discredited the erroneous perception of the central role of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the region's problems. Yet, for many observers, events of the past six years have not altered their priorities.
In 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was determined to make restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process the signature achievement of his Middle East policy. In December 2016, after three years of fruitless effort, a frustrated Kerry and President Barack Obama, helped shepherd the United Nations Security Council into passing a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal in what many saw as a parting shot at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Wildly distorted perceptions of the magnitude of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict prevail even among those who should know better, like foreign policy officials of the EU and its constituent states. Ron Dermer, Israel's ambassador to the United States, in a speech to the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) in April 2016, recounted his dismay to discover that some of his fellow European ambassadors believed the conflict to have cost millions of Palestinian lives, orders of magnitude greater than the actual toll which he estimated at 20,000.

Turkey, where are your Jews?

The Turkish newspaper Milliyet published a news report on March 20 entitled “Synagogues from the era of Byzantium are about to disappear forever!”
“Among the historical and cultural heritage of Istanbul that is on the verge of extinction are Byzantine synagogues which belong to the Turkish Jewish community,” said the report. “Most of the historic synagogues which numbered in dozens in the early 20th century are located in the Balat and Hasköy areas. Many run the risk of disappearing forever”.
“A lot of historic monuments belonging to the Jewish community and built during the Byzantine era are in ruins,” said Mois Gabay, a columnist for the Jewish weekly Salom, and a professional tourist guide. Gabay added that Turkish Jews who lived in the region of Golden Horn, also known by its Turkish name as Haliç "left Turkey a long time ago”.
When there are no more Jewish congregants, it becomes almost impossible to preserve synagogues.
Jews in Turkey are mostly known for being the descendants of the immigrants who moved to the Ottoman Empire after being expelled from Spain. However, Jews have been living in Asia Minor since antiquity. Professor Franklin Hugh Adler explains: “Jews, in fact, had inhabited this land long before the birth of Mohammed and the Islamic conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries, or for that matter, the arrival and conquests of the Turks, beginning in the eleventh century. On the eve of the birth of Islam, most of world Jewry lived under Byzantine or Persian rule in the lands of the Mediterranean basin.
“At the beginning of the Turkish Republic, in 1923, the Jewish population was 81,454. In Istanbul alone there were 47,035 Jews, roughly thirteen percent of a city that then numbered 373,124.”
Today, there are fewer than 15,000 Jews in Turkey, whose entire population is almost 80 million. What happened?

Sean Spicer’s Holocaust Boo-Boo Was Stupid. Obama’s Foreign Policy Promoted A New Holocaust. Guess Which One The Media Cared About.

The furor over Spicer’s comments is even dumber when we consider that President Trump’s predecessor actively forwarded the most genocidal anti-Semitic regime on earth in their goal of wiping Jews off the planet. President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal resulted in billions of dollars flowing into a regime that openly calls for the annihilation of the Jews – dollars that the Obama administration itself recognized could be used for terrorism. The Iran deal also left most of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in place, got rid of sanctions on the state, ensured the growth of malignant anti-Semitic radical Islam across the Middle East, and openly embraced a nuclear Iran within a decade. The mullahs have made clear that their big problem with Hitler was that he didn’t go far enough.
Yet the media ran point for Obama on the Iran nuclear deal.
The media also covered for Obama’s lies about Syrian weapons of mass destruction. Obama handed control over the WMD issue in Syria over to the Russians, claiming that the problem of WMD had been solved by doing so. Then Assad gassed his own people. Again.
So before we throw Sean Spicer to the wolves as some sort of covert neo-Nazi, let’s remember: Spicer works for the most pro-Israel president in recent history, he was clearly not trying to undermine the importance of the Holocaust, and the media cheered Trump’s predecessor as he paved the way for a new Holocaust.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

In September of this year, Israel plans to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the liberation of Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan heights. The main event will be held at Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, in the Gush Etzion area of Judea, south and slightly west of Jerusalem.

Zahava Galon, the leader of the Meretz party, which represents approximately 4% of Israeli voters with its 5 Knesset seats, and Chemi Shalev, writing in the left-wing Ha’aretz newspaper expressed their outrage that anyone would celebrate what they consider an oppressive and evil occupation of “Palestinian” land, and that Israel would add insult to injury by holding the ceremony in what they insist on calling the “West Bank.”

I know it’s a little thing and that most of my readers already know this, but I can’t say it too often: it was called Judea and Samaria from biblical times until 1948 when Jordan occupied it, ethnically cleansed it of Jews, and renamed it the “West Bank.” We really ought to stop calling it that.

Let’s talk a little about the Gush Etzion area, and specifically Kibbutz Kfar Etzion. Here is a summary of its early years by Ami Isseroff, z”l:

The Etzion Bloc, or Gush Etzion as it is called in Hebrew, is located on the main road from the south to Jerusalem, northwest of Hebron. The Etzion bloc was settled and resettled three times, on land purchased by the Jews, beginning in 1927. Each time, residents were forced to abandon their homes in the face of Arab violence. The final saga of the Etzion bloc included two separate massacres and a prolonged and stubborn defense against hopeless odds. The bloc was finally overrun by soldiers of the British armed and officered Jordan Legion, who were responsible for the final massacre of surrendered defenders, a war crime.

The first settlement in this area was called Migdal Eder, built on land purchased from local Arabs by the Zichron David Company. It was founded in 1927. The pioneers included orthodox Yemenite Jews. During the Arab riots of 1929, Migdal Eder settlers were evacuated to the Russian Orthodox monastery and thence to the Arab village of Beit Umar, from which they were evacuated to Jerusalem by British mandate police. The British made no attempt to guard the settlement or safeguard property, and it was completely destroyed.

Additional lands were purchased by the El Hahar Company, which founded a kibbutz called Kfar Etzion in 1934. Like Migdal Eder, Kfar Etzion was abandoned during the Arab violence of 1936-1939 and destroyed by the Palestinian Arabs.

A third settlement attempt was made beginning in 1942 under the auspices of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemet). Kfar Etzion was re-founded in the Spring of 1943. In October 1945, a second kibbutz, Massuot Yitzchak, was added. Its members were Holocaust survivors from Eastern and Central Europe. A third Kibbutz, Ein Tzurim, was founded in 1946 by Israeli members of the Bnei Akiva religious Zionist movement. All three kibbutzim belonged to the religious Zionist movement, but in February 1947, a fourth kibbutz, Revadim, was established by the Marxist Hashomer Hatzair Youth Movement.

On May 13, 1948, the area was overrun by the Jordanian army. The remaining defenders of Kfar Etzion surrendered to the Jordanian Legion, who together with Arab irregulars, massacred some 128 (all but five) of them. The defenders of the other three kibbutzim surrendered in the presence of the International Red Cross, and were taken to Jordan as prisoners of war.

After Israel liberated the Gush in 1967, Kfar Etzion was rebuilt yet again. The other three, Revadim, Ein Tzurim and Massuot Yitzchak were reestablished within the Green Line shortly after the original kibbutzim were destroyed. I lived in Revadim in 1980-82 and worked in the musach (garage), where my boss told me about being forced to repair Jordanian military vehicles as a war prisoner.

There are many stories of heroism around the area, including the “lamed hay” (thirty-five), members of the Palmach (an elite force part of the Hagana) who were massacred trying to bring supplies through hostile Arab villages to the kibbutzim of the Gush.

So the complaints about holding a celebration in the “Palestinian West Bank” ring false to me. The land upon which Kfar Etzion stands was purchased dearly, with Jewish money and not a little Jewish blood.

It is true, as the kapos of +972 Magazine write, that the area of today’s Gush Etzion Regional Council is larger than that of the original land purchased in the 1920s and 30s. But they accept – as they did in the case of the settlement of Amona – the fanciful ownership claims of Arabs without verification, and do not accept Israel’s right to adjudicate land as state land.

Their uncritical acceptance of Arab claims is why they object to any celebration of the liberation of Judea and Samaria (they are quiet about the Golan and about Gaza, for different reasons), no matter where it is held. They believe that all land outside of the 1949 lines belongs to the Palestinians, simply because the Palestinians and their supporters say so, and despite the fact that the armistice agreements explicitly declare that the Green Line is not a political boundary.

They will tell you over and over that it is forbidden to acquire territory by war, as Israel did in 1967, but apparently do not object to Jordan’s conquest and annexation of Judea and Samaria in 1948 – areas that had been designated in the Mandate as the site of a future Jewish national home.

They will ignore the geostrategic imperative that says that our state cannot be defended without the high ground and the Jordan Valley. They will forget or ignore the fact that the hills and deserts of Judea and Samaria are the place where our people became a people. They will talk about the need of the newly-created “Palestinian people” for self-determination, but abandon the Jewish people.

Legal and political arguments may go on forever, but what will ultimately determine the ownership of the land will be who lives in it – who settles it and controls it. The original settlers of Gush Etzion, who put their bodies on the line for the land understood that.

The strategic and spiritual value of these lands is more important today than ever. Celebrating their liberation is appropriate, because they both make our country defensible and give us something important to defend, the historical heartland of the Jewish people.

And what better place to celebrate it than Kfar Etzion?

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04/13 Links Pt1: PA suspends ties with UNRWA; Dershowitz: Spicer's Mistake and the Democrat's Over-Reaction;

From Ian:

PA suspends ties with UNRWA over planned curriculum reform

The Palestinian Authority Education Ministry on Thursday announced it was suspending ties with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) over plans by the international agency to reform its curriculum.
The Palestinian ministry, in a statement published on its official website, called the possible revisions to the curriculum an “affront to the Palestinian people, its history and struggles,” and said the suspension would continue until the UN agency’s “positions are corrected.”
UNRWA has over 312,000 students in its schools across the West Bank and East Jerusalem (together, 50,000) and the Gaza Strip (262,000).
The UN agency has not formally published any plans to alter its curriculum, but leaks to the Arab press of possible changes have led to outrage over recent weeks in Gaza and the West Bank.
The changes, according to Arab media reports, include revisions to maps of Palestine to exclude references to cities inside Israel as Palestinian cities, a practice that numerous studies of Palestinian textbooks have labeled as “incitement.” Other changes were reportedly planned to tone down praise for Palestinian prisoners and improve Israel’s image.

Palestinian School Textbooks Poison Minds

The PA’s willingness to come to terms with Israel through diplomatic means, however, is belied by its counter-productive policy of exposing Palestinian students in its West Bank schools to inflammatory textbooks.
According to a report released recently by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, an organization headquartered in Jerusalem, the latest textbooks approved by the PA for first to fourth grade students demonize Israel, reject its existence, glorify “martyrdom” and uphold the notion of an exclusively Palestinian homeland.
These texts, containing maps of the Middle East that exclude Israel and describe Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv, Haifa and Ashkelon as Palestinian, are a fundamental source of incitement. They inspire a philosophy of rejectionism toward Israel and drive terrorism, which Palestinians have often resorted to since the beginning of serious Arab-Jewish tensions in the early 1920s in Mandate Palestine.
In general, Palestinian texts engender anger, resentment and hostility rather than promote and nurture a climate and culture of coexistence and peace. This is especially true in the Gaza Strip, which has been controlled by Hamas for the past decade.

UNRWA does not have any intention of changing their school textbooks

UNRWA is now running a campaign in which it shows itself demanding specific changes in the textbooks used in UNRWA schools, as circulated by some pro-Israel organizations, even though UNRWA cannot make any changes in their school books.
Yet UNRWA has contracted its schools in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza to require these schools to only use the school books given to the schools by the Palestinian Authority, which means that UNRWA cannot unilaterally mandate or direct any changes in UNRWA school books used for 492,000 school children in its schools in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza
However, UNRWA is being praised by Israeli gov’t officials for their intentions, even though UNRWA cannot make any changes in their school books.
At no time does UNRWA say that they will remove members of terror groups from payroll of UNRWA in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza.
Nor is anyone currently asking UNRWA to remove terrorists from their schools.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech to a meeting of PLO ambassadors in Bahrain on Wednesday.

One part of his speech is very telling:

What is even more important is that Israel stops the settlements. The demand to stop the settlements does not mean that (Israel) can legalize what has already been built – all settlement ever since 1967 is void. We know that when they signed a peace agreement with Egypt, they uprooted a number of settlements, and when Ariel Sharon got out of Gaza, they uprooted 18 settlements.

Abbas is telling his diplomats that he will demand that Israel dismantle the homes of hundreds of thousands of people, without compromise. And he is confident that Israel will do that because Israel uprooted a few thousand Jews from the Sinai and from Gaza, leaving none behind.

Abbas is saying that the official PLO line is that there will never be any compromise with Israel on borders or people. "Palestine" would not consider having Jews living inside, even though there are hundreds of Arab villages in Israel.

And the reason Abbas believes he has no reason to negotiate over this is because Israel has shown in the past that it will make hard choices for peace. Israel's desire for peace has made Abbas less interested in working on a solution, and more confident that Israel is weak and will give up without a fight. His entire strategy of refusing to negotiate and instead use international pressure on Israel is based on his assumption of Israeli political weakness that he perceives in Yamit and Gaza.

It is another manifestation of how Arabs respect strength and show contempt for compromise. They play a zero-sum game while Israelis try to find win-win solutions.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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PLO politicizing Easter to make Christians hate Israel

The PLO released a paper called "Celebrating Easter: 50 Years of Israel’s Colonization of Occupied East Jerusalem."

As can be expected, it is filled with half-truths in order to turn the world's Christians against Israel.

The paper has three sections: a timeline of Jerusalem, the Palestinian position on the political status of Jerusalem, and "case studies" of how awfully Arab Christians are supposedly being treated by Israel.

In the timeline, because it cannot find too many anti-Christian activities done by Israel, it makes up a few and adds Muslim complaints to make it sound like the Old City is less open to all religions than it used to be.

So for 1948 it claims " Most of the Christian population of Jerusalem is forced to leave the city by Zionist gangs." While it is true that the Christian population of Jerusalem went down by more than 50% from 1948 to 1967, most of them fled under Jordanian rule in the 1950s.

For 1969, "Destruction of the ancient Minbar (prayer platform) of Salah ad-Deen al Ayyubi and interior al Al-Qibli Mosque in Al Aqsa Mosque / Haram Al Sharif Compound." as if that was done by Israel. Of course, it was done by a Christian.

The timeline doesn't say a word about how Jews were ethnically cleansed from Jerusalem under Arab rule from 1948-1967. Nor does it mention the many other cases of Muslim persecution of Christians in the region.

In the second section, the PLO asserts, without any evidence, " It is pivotal to establish East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Without this, there can be no viable Palestinian state, and without a viable Palestinian state, there will be no lasting peace in the Middle East on the basis of the two-state solution." This is a veiled threat, not a statement of fact.

The PLO also claims every inch of "east Jerusalem" saying "all Jewish, Christian and Muslim
sites that lie within Palestine’s territory are under Palestinian sovereignty and protection." Yet in the map of "settlements" provided in the paper, the entire Jewish Quarter is considered an illegal Jewish settlement.

Finally, the "case studies" are filled with unverifiable and likely false assertions, like "there have been many cases where Israeli soldiers simply deny entry to the children [coming to Jerusalem for Easter] under the pretext of having no permit. This means the whole family is forced to turn around and go back.”

Or “When it comes to Jewish celebrations, the Israeli authorities make sure that every single Jewish
person can reach the Old City. But when it comes to Christian or Muslim celebrations, it is totally
the opposite: They treat us like strangers in our own city, to the extent of disrupting a religious
celebration that we have held for centuries”.

In fact, there are far more Christian pilgrims visiting Jerusalem today for Easter than there were under Arab rule. It isn't even close. And Arabs are discouraging Arab Christians from visiting Jerusalem, not Israelis.

This is yet another piece of hateful propaganda that the PLO freely publishes, knowing that the media will not call them on it. In this case it subtly plays on latent Christian antisemitism as well in order to make it look like Jews are anti-Christian while Muslims are tolerant - the exact opposite of the truth.

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