Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, May 29, 2017

A food truck in Portland is the latest Arab target for "appropriating" falafel

There is a highly amusing article in Al Khaleej Online sputtering against the success of IDF Arab spokesperson Avichay Adreaee, who has over a million followers in the Arab world.

Adraee has wished his Muslim fans a happy Ramadan, and has discussed various Ramadan TC programs on his Facebook page. He also showed this photo of Israeli Arab soldiers in one of his Ramadan posts.

All of this is Israeli propaganda falsely portraying Israel's respect for diversity, the article sputters, saying that everyone knows that Israel is anti-Muslim and massacres Palestinians.

"It seems that Avichay Adraee represents a new type of Israeli propaganda that is more professional and sophisticated, especially with its publications on social networking sites with pictures and videos that have been professionally produced, by experts, all considered part of modern psychological warfare" complains the newspaper.

Then the article goes off on a tangent, first complaining that Adraee encourages his readers to eat Middle Eastern foods like falafel and hummus, and then saying that Israelis have stolen these dishes.

And then, it gives an example: Gonzo's food truck in Portland, Oregon.

I don't think there is a truck anymore; Gonzo's Israeli owner, Tal Caspi, has now gone more mainstream.

But his webpage doesn't say the word "Israel" at all! He positions his foods as "Middle Eastern." One of his menu items is called a "Kibbuts Egg." That's it.

It is entirely possible that Caspi deliberately downplays the Israeli part of his food because of the leftist, anti-Israel atmosphere of Portland. But it is clear that the animosity that the Arab world has towards a tiny food truck in Portland has nothing to do with its "cultural appropriation" and everything to do with the fact that the very politically correct owner of the enterprise is Israeli.

His food is not certified kosher, unfortunately.

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From Haaretz:

The cabinet on Sunday approved a plan to financially induce Arab East Jerusalem schools to switch from the Palestinian curriculum to the Israeli one, as proposed by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Jerusalem Affairs and Heritage Minister Zeev Elkin.
“The purpose of this five-year plan is to improve the quality of education in East Jerusalem, with an emphasis on encouraging the study of the Israeli curriculum in the schools,” the Education Ministry statement said. “This is part of an effort to improve the quality of life and the environment in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem, and to enhance the ability of East Jerusalem residents to integrate into the Israeli economy and society, and thus strengthen the economic and social resilience of the entire capital.”

A source involved in the plan in the Education Ministry said, “The Israeli curriculum and the Israeli bagrut is a choice, it’s not required. Anyone who isn’t interested won’t join up. Whoever does join the Israeli curriculum, whether it’s an elementary school or a high school, will get economic incentives like extra teaching hours and curricular hours, an educational envelope, without undermining what was already there. Whoever was teaching the Palestinian curriculum and received X amount of funding will continue to receive it, with the additional budget that will be allocated to the Israeli curriculum.”

Meaning that if Arab schools choose not to adhere to the new curriculum, they don't have to.

But that's not how the PA is reporting this.

Here is their hysterical, lying, over-the-top reaction :

The [Palestinian] Ministry of Education and Higher Education voiced extreme disapproval and rejection of "Israel"s attempt to impose a project aimed at the Judaization of educational curricula in Jerusalem, especially after the announcement of the funding of a five-year "Israeli" government plan under the pretext of improving the quality of education in Jerusalem, which reveals Israelization plans and attempts to attack the elements of the Palestinian national identity.

The Ministry warned, in a statement on Sunday, of the repercussions and risks of these plans, which demonstrates once again the occupation mentality and policies of the oppressive and racist violation of all international laws and humanitarian norms, notably those related to education, stressing that it will employ all the possibilities to thwart these plans in order to preserve the national identity of education in Jerusalem.

The Ministry called on all human rights, humanitarian and media organizations to expose these schemes affecting education in Jerusalem, stressing the need to devote all efforts to protect education in Jerusalem and address the Israeli attempts to fight national identity in the holy city.

It also called this voluntary plan to give more money and resources to Arab schools a "heinous crime." The media called it "a declaration of war."

This is instructive. It shows that when the PA goes equally crazy at other stuff, it is just as likely to be exaggerating, lying and using its ability to implicitly threaten violence if it doesn't get its way as leverage towards Western NGOs and governments.

Truth isn't the issue in an honor/shame society. Appearances are. And if they appear to be so upset, well, in the Western view, there must be a logical reason, right?

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"50 year occupation of Palestinian territories"?

This article by William Booth of the Washington Post is only one of many being published this week with variants of the same meme:

The Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip began 50 years ago in June.

When did Judea and Samaria become known as "Palestinian territories?"

Certainly not in 1967. News articles routinely referred (erroneously) to the West Bank as "Israeli-occupied Jordan" through at least 1968.

The New York Times continued to refer to Judea and Samaria as "occupied Jordan" into the 1970s:

And here in 1976:

TEL AVIV, Aug. 2—Israeli forces blocked an attempt by more than 50 Jewish militants to set up an unauthorized settlement near Jericho in occupied Jordanian territory today,

Slowly, Judea and Samaria morphed from Jordanian into simply the "West Bank," a new political entity that never existed before, as in this 1977 article - which still had to spell out "West Bank of the Jordan" because the phrase "West Bank" was even then not ubiquitous enough to be understood:

The widespread use of the word "Palestinian territories" took many more years to take root. That was mostly because the UN started using that term in the late 1970s in anti-Israel resolutions - the phrase "Palestinian territories" is the only reason Jimmy Carter's government abstained from an anti-Israel resolution in 1977 rather than vote for it:

The United States was known to have tried strenously without success to induce Egypt to drop a reference in the resolution to the “Palestinian” territories, which the Americans objected would prejudge the decisions to be taken in Geneva.
The United States was said to have ‘told Arab countries two days ago that without such a change it could not vote for the text even though it had supported the language of the resolution in a number of other texts.
Privately, Arab representatives complained that the United States had delayed asking for the changes until was too late, and they suggested that the Americans had yielded to pressure from the pro‐Israeli lobby in deciding not to support the text but rather to abstain.

Either way, very few people outside the UN and Palestinian Arabs themselves referred to the territories as "Palestinian" until decades after 1967 and that is simply the results of a huge, extended propaganda campaign to change the territories from "Arab" to "Palestinian" - to convert Israel from David to Goliath.

Jordan did not officially claim not to have jurisdiction over the West Bank until 1988.

So how can it be that "Palestinian territories" have been "occupied" for 50 years when you cannot find a single person in 1967 referring to them as such? And, more importantly: what was the exact date that these territories, promised to the Jewish people by the League of Nations and illegally seized by Jordan in 1948, become "Palestinian?"

It seems that such a date must exist, perhaps somewhere between 1977 and 1992. But no one can point to such a date.

The term "Palestinian territories" is not factual - it is propaganda that has taken root as fact.

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Weeds on the Temple Mount in 1967

This photo of the Temple Mount from 1967 was published this week in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Jerusalem:

The "third-holiest site in Islam," while under Muslim control, was filled with - weeds.

No one visited. No one cared.

I had already documented the phenomenon of weeds on the Temple Mount under Ottoman rule (and made a video.)

I also have some other photos of the Temple Mount under Jordanian rule showing how few people actually visited as opposed to the thousands of Muslims that come every day now.

Mid 1950s:

1960:

The only time Muslims care about Jerusalem is when Jews (or Christians) control it.

When Muslims controlled it, there are next to no pilgrimages. The entire complex was mostly empty and decrepit.

Muslims never venerated their "third holiest site" or "first qibla". And these photos prove it.

(h/t Josh)

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05/28 Links: Corbyn honored Munich massacre terrorist; Europe Fights Back with Candles and Teddy Bears

From Ian:

Corbyn honored PLO official believed behind Munich massacre

Amid an uproar over Jeremy Corbyn’s recent remarks on jihadist terrorism in the UK, a British newspaper has revealed the Labour Party leader attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the grave of a senior Palestinian official believed to have been involved in the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
In October 2014, Corbyn, in an article published in the radical left-wing website Morning Star, recalled a recent visit to Tunisia where he marked the anniversary of Israel’s 1985 attack on the Palestine Liberation Organization’s headquarters there, laying wreaths at a cemetery commemorating Palestinians said killed by Israeli forces in various incidents.
“After wreaths were laid at the graves of those who died on that day [at Sabra and Shatila] and on the graves of others killed by Mossad agents in Paris in 1991, we moved to the poignant statue in the main avenue of the coastal town of Ben Arous, which was festooned with Palestinian and Tunisian flags,” Corbyn wrote.
It seems he was talking about the grave of PLO official Atef Bseiso, PLO’s head of intelligence, thought to have been a key planner of the Munich massacre
There is no record of Israel’s spy agency carrying out an assassination in the French capital around that time, but the June 1992 killing of Bseiso in Paris has been blamed on Israel.
Israel denied any role in the killing, suggesting Bseiso’s death was the result of internal rivalries within the PLO.
Israeli officials did note, however, that as the PLO’s head of intelligence, Bseiso was likely involved in planning the 1972 massacre.

Europe Fights Back with Candles and Teddy Bears

The sad truth is that Europe has never had the political will to wage a total war against ISIS and the other jihadist groups. Otherwise, Raqaa and Mosul would already have been neutralized. Instead, Islamists have been taking over Molenbeek in Belgium, the French suburbs and large swaths of Britain. We now should be celebrating the liberation of Mosul and the return of Christians to their homes; instead we are mourning 22 people murdered and 64 wounded by an Islamic suicide-bomber in Manchester, and 29 Christians killed in Egypt this week alone.
Serious fighting would require massive bombing to eliminate as many Islamists as possible. But we are apparently not ready to abandon our masochistic rules of engagement, which privilege the enemy's people over our own. Europe also never demanded that its Muslim communities disavow jihadism and Islamic law, sharia. This silence is what helps Islamists shut the mouths of brave Muslim dissidents. Meanwhile, Europe's armies are getting smaller by the day, as if we already consider this game done.
After every attack, Europe's leaders recycle the same empty slogans: "Carry on"; "We are stronger"; "Business as usual". The Muslim Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, tells us that we must get used to daily carnage! He says he believes that the threat of terror attacks is "part and parcel of living in a big city", and that major cities around the world "have got to be prepared for these sorts of things". Does he seriously mean that we are supposed to get used to the massacre of our own children in the Manchester Arena? Islamic terror has now become part of the landscape of so many major European cities: Paris, Copenhagen, Nice, Toulouse, Berlin....
Instead of concentrating on jihad and radical Islam, Europe's leaders continue to talk about the "Russian threat". It would indeed be a mistake to neglect Russian expansionism. But did Vladimir Putin's troops attack Westminster? Did Russian agents blow themselves up, taking the lives of children at a Manchester concert? Did a former Soviet spy massacre Swedes walking in Stockholm? For Europe's leaders, talking about Putin appears a welcome distraction from the real enemies.

Salman Abedi reported teacher at his secondary school for being an Islamophobe because he condemned suicide bombers

The Manchester attacker – who slaughtered 22 people at a concert by pop-star Ariana Grande on Monday – studied at Burnage Academy for Boys between 2009 and 2011.
Abedi was part of an Arabic-speaking “clique” during his time at the school, The Times reports.
He is believed to have been part of a group of teens that became upset when one of their teachers brought up the topic of suicide attacks.
The teacher “asked what they thought of someone who would strap on a bomb and blow people up”, according to a source quoted by the paper.
The source said the boys then went to their RE teacher and lodged a complaint, telling them it was “Islamophobic”.

Arab media reports that many Gulf royals are getting medical treatment in Israel

Al Resalah quotes an investigation by another Arabic news outlet saying that increasing numbers of prominent Gulf Arabs - princes and princesses and officials - are stealthily coming to Israel for medical treatment.

According to the investigation journalist Asaf Jaipur, there is growing medical tourism from the Gulf to Israel, as well as more moves to allow the Gulf to open its markets to Israeli companies.

Members of the royal families and wealthy people are seeking medical treatment in Israel, flying to Cyprus and from there to Tel Aviv.

There are specialist in the Gulf whose jobs are to coordinate travel to Israel and arrange their transfer to hospitals.

They are arranging transportation directly from Ben Gurion Airport to Israeli hospitals.

The princess of the royal family in Bahrain recently arrived in Cyprus, and from there to Ben Gurion Airport, where she was transferred to the Rambam hospital in Haifa. The 50 year old princess underwent surgery and then returned to Bahrain.

A large number of princes and princesses from the Gulf arrive in Israel to receive treatment; because of the reputation Israel enjoys for top-notch medicine.

In addition, the investigation showed that Israeli companies are operating in the Gulf markets freely through partnerships set up by the American companies.

He stressed that Israeli companies are an integral part of the global American companies operating in the Gulf markets segment, noting that the GCC authorities are turning a blind eye to the activities of these companies, although they recognized Israeli companies.

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Once again, Palestinians lose and declare victory (update)

Times of Israel reports:

Hours after Palestinian security prisoners called off a 40-day hunger strike, Israeli officials denied Palestinian claims that Israel negotiated with the inmates to end the mass protest or conceded to any of the prisoner’s demands.

Senior Israeli officials told Channel 2 that Israel did not so much as consider the prisoners’ demands. They also said the deal was brokered between the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Palestinian Authority, and was not the result of US pressure.

The deal announced Saturday morning will apparently see just one of the prisoners’ demands met: that their monthly visits from family members be brought back from one to two per month.

However, the issue of visitation is not an Israeli one. Family visits to Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli jails are administered solely by the Red Cross. Last year, the organization reduced the number of visits it coordinated, citing a lack of funds and little family interest in the initiative.

Prison officials told Channel 2 that hunger strike leader Marwan Barghouti negotiated the additional monthly visit in a phone conversation with PA Minister of Civil Affairs Hussein al-Sheikh. They said officials at Ashkelon’s Shikma Prison allowed Barghouti to speak with al-Sheikh and meet with other leading prisoners in an effort to end the hunger strike before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

According to the Israeli officials, Barghouti and the other prisoners agreed to call off the strike after the PA promised to pay for the additional visits, at an estimated cost of $6 million per year.

Islamic Jihad's Palestine Today claims that the specific demands that were met will be published in the future.

The only specific other demand it mentioned was that punishments that the the prisoners received for engaging in the hunger strike, like solitary confinement,

Other Arab media flatly declared victory.

None of the major demands are even being mentioned.

Israel won, just as it won in all the previous prisoner hunger strikes.

UPDATE: Ma'an reports on specific issues that were supposedly resolved, including kitchens. It is difficult to know the exact parameters of what happened. (h/t Andrew)

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05/27 Links: What is the West Bank's real legal status?; Why Aren’t Muslim Countries Helping the Palestinians?

From Ian:

50 years since 1967: What is the West Bank's real legal status?

ACCORDING TO former Hebrew University Law School dean and Israel Democracy Institute Fellow Yuval Shany, the starting point for the discussion was Shamgar and Israel’s acceptance of the 1907 Hague Regulations applying to the West Bank.
This means Israeli control over the West Bank falls into the category of “belligerent occupation.”
In less fancy language, it means that Israel has not annexed the land and is holding it temporarily. Further, it means that Israel has certain obligations not to change the face of the land or harm the rights of the local people already there – the Palestinians.
Shany said that agreeing to apply the Hague principles “was the only possible decision since there was no political decision to annex the West Bank.”
He noted that Israel could have decided to extend Israeli law to the West Bank, as was done in east Jerusalem, “but the government did not want to make that political decision. All governments since also did not make this decision,” so accepting the international law obligations and limits of the Hague Regulations was “the only option.”
In contrast to the Hague Regulations, Shany said there has always been a debate about the application of the Geneva Conventions to the West Bank.

50 Years after the Six-Day War, We Shouldn't Lament Israel's Power to Protect Itself

In May 1967, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt, who had joined in a military alliance with Syrian President Hafez el Assad, daily promised to "drive Israel into the sea." Jews around the world were anxious beyond belief. It was scant more than twenty years since the liberation of the death camps in Europe and the odds were overwhelming that the next cataclysm against our people was soon to begin. In a stunning six-day victory, Israel defeated the combined Arab armies, reunited Jerusalem, took the Golan Heights and made its way to the Suez Canal.
It is difficult for Israel to extricate itself from the obligation of having to send its young people to the territories in uniform to oversee other people's lives. Israel uprooted 8,000 long-time inhabitants of Gaza to make the territory Jew-free with the hope that without an occupation Gaza could transform itself into a Singapore. We know from history that this was a terrible mistake which has exacted an enormous cost on Palestinians and Israelis in terms of suffering, treasure and death.
Some opinion-makers have opined that the Six-Day War was a catastrophe. I cannot agree. It is far better that Israel won the war decisively than were it to have lost the war entirely. It is not hard to imagine the nature of the bloodbath that would have occurred on the streets of an Arab-occupied Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.
Israel's adversaries refuse to accept its existence and the existence of Jews living in the Land of Israel. That is the root of the problem, going back more than a hundred years. Once that is solved, everything else will fall into place.
To be honest, there is something crazy about lamenting the fact that we Jews have the power to protect ourselves and that we will no longer be subject to the bullies and murderers who have tormented us. I would rather live with the moral struggle of the past 50 years than die the good death of a martyr to another round of anti-Jewish hatred and violence.

A false narrative about Israel has hijacked progressive minds. We must call people out for their selective social conscience

Simon Wiesenthal was a man of action. Not content to let complacent governments deal with the butchers of the Holocaust, he hunted them and forced them to face justice. In so doing, he announced to the world that from now on, there is a high price to pay for harming Jews.
With his help, the Mossad captured the mass murderer Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. I was then attending school in neighbouring Uruguay, where Israel’s covert operation caused massive outrage. It was a tense time to be the only Jew in my school. But I felt proud. For the first time in two thousand years, the world understood that if you mess with us, there are consequences. That Jews can — and will — deal with those who intend to harm them. That Jews are no longer at the mercy of their tormentors. That Jews fight back.
I was born in Hungary, where Jew hatred has a long and blood-drenched history. A country whose Jews took comfort in being the most assimilated in Europe. They were convinced that their social status and achievements made them untouchable. Yet, the majority of the Jewish population was massacred in a matter of weeks.
We must learn from the lessons of history, so that our children and their children never face the horrors that my parents witnessed. Today, Jews face two wars. The permanent armed struggle in defence of Israel, a battle that Israel can never afford to lose. And the war of words, throughout the diaspora — and right here in Canada.
Words matter. They are powerful weapons. Words can legitimize the criminal and vilify the just. Words can provide the fuel for hate and the alibi for persecution and violence. Libelous fabrications, like “Israel Apartheid” and “Zionist aggression,” are the pretext for the BDS movement, whose stated objective is the destruction of the Jewish State. Their false narrative has hijacked progressive hearts and minds and become gospel in politically correct circles. It feeds the new wave of Jew hatred sweeping across Europe, where, in many countries, synagogues and Jewish institutions can now only function under military protection. The false narrative thrives on our own campuses, where we must expose its lies and confront it with the most powerful weapon at our disposal, namely, the truth. Because as we know, and as Barbara Kay has written, “what ends in law, often begins in academia.”

05/26 Links Pt2: Manchester, Abbas and evil losers; Phillips: Denial still flows over Londonistan

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Manchester, Abbas and evil losers

Whether the tragic irony was lost on Trump is not clear; his true thoughts about the Islamist tyrants on whom his powerful speech was wasted remain somewhat of a conundrum. While in Bethlehem two days later, however, he did praise Abbas for having "joined the summit and committed to taking firm but necessary steps to fight terrorism and confront its hateful ideology."
This is beyond laughable. Abbas can hardly be counted on to combat a practice he embraces and encourages among his people. Indeed, the Palestinian leader not only promotes stabbings, rammings and bombings targeting Israelis, he pays salaries to the families of perpetrators killed "in action." He also gives his clerics and educators free rein to spread hatred, particularly against Israel.
For instance, as a Middle East Media Research Institute report revealed this week, a mere four days before Abbas welcomed the U.S. president in Bethlehem, a prominent Palestinian imam at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque prayed to Allah to "annihilate Trump and the conspirators," and to "annihilate all the Jews."
The genocidal content of Palestinian sermons is nothing new. Nor is the fact that Abbas holds terrorism dear. According to Palestinian Media Watch, during the month ahead of Trump's Mideast and European "tolerance tour" alone, Abbas, his Fatah faction and the PA glorified 12 terrorists -- 10 of whom murdered 95 people -- and named a street after one of them. Abbas' deputy honored five terrorists responsible for the murder of 38 people. The PA commended the mother of four terrorists, each of whom is serving multiple life sentences. The PA named public squares after two terrorists who kidnapped and murdered an Israeli, with Abbas sending greetings of 'honor and pride' to them. Fatah's youth movement exalted four infamous terrorists in a music video, and the list goes on.
President Trump, beware. Your description of jihadis as "evil losers" fits Abbas and the members of his apparatus to a tee.

Melanie Phillips: Denial still flows over Londonistan

In the wake of the jihadi human bomb attack in Manchester, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May said: “We struggle to comprehend the warped and twisted mind that sees a room packed with young children not as a scene to cherish but an opportunity for carnage.”
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “ It is unbelievable that somebody has used a joyful pop concert to kill or seriously injure so many people.”
A headline in the Washington Post read: “In suburban Manchester, a search for what might have motivated the attacker”.
“Struggle to comprehend”? “Unbelievable”? “What might have motivated the attacker”? Really??
In 2006 I published my book Londonistan which analysed the supine response of the British political, legal and religious establishment to Islamic jihadi terrorism and the Islamisation of Britain. What follows below is the concluding chapter of that book. As the army patrols the streets of Britain to guard against further expected terrorist attacks, my warning about the deadly failure to face up to the true nature of the threat facing the west is surely even more urgent today.

Douglas Murray - The Strange Death of Europe [Delingpole]
Douglas Murray on Delingpole's podcast (recorded before the Manchester attack).

Dalia Mogahed is a former Obama administration advisor who directs research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding "focused on empowering the American Muslim Community." She's pretty much what Linda Sarsour has become in recent months - an articulate female defender of Islam using liberal phraseology.

In an op-ed today, Mogahed pretty much says that anyone who asks Muslims to condemn terrorism is an Islamophobe:

There isn’t a mode of communication through which Muslims have not tried to communicate to the world their disgust with terrorism in their name.

But is this a reasonable expectation?

Asking Muslims if they condemn terrorism carried out by a Muslim may seem legitimate to many Americans: “People carry out acts of targeted violence in the name of Islam and as a follower of said religion, how are we to know you don’t agree? We will suspect you until and unless you sufficiently convince us otherwise.”

The question is an accusation of monstrosity — cheering for the literal murder of children — for no other reason than the faith I practice and the way I look.

Imagine if white folks were collectively suspected of condoning the actions of Dylann Roof, who walked into that black church in Charleston and shot and killed African Americans in supposed defense of the white race. Or Anders Behring Breivik, who slaughtered 77 people, mostly children, in Norway in defense of white Christian Europe against brown and black Muslims.

When Robert Lewis Dear Jr. shot and killed three people in a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, I didn’t ask my neighbor, a vocal pro-life evangelical Christian, if she condemned it. I assumed she did — because anyone with the most basic human decency would abhor the murder of innocent people.

Yet this basic assumption of innocence is often denied Americans who are Muslim.

...[S]uspecting someone of something as despicable as condoning the murder of children because of their ethnicity or faith is the definition of bigotry.

It is very interesting that Mogahed makes this argument.

In 2008, Mogahed co-wrote a book with John Esposito called "Who Speaks for Islam?" where she argued, like here, that only a small percentage of Muslims support terror. Using a very strange methodology, they found that only 7% of Muslims worldwide according to Gallup polls were considered "extremist" and the rest were "moderate."

However, when one dug into the numbers - numbers that they did not publish in the book! - it was seen that they defined "extremist" as people who found 9/11 completely justified and hated the US.

If you included the numbers who found the 9/11 attacks to be "mostly" justified (6.5%) or "somewhat" justified (23.1%) then at the time fully 36.6% of Muslims could find some justification for the terror attack in the US on September 11.

Do 36% of whites support Dylann Roof or Anders Breivik? The question is absurd. But Mogahed herself knows that (as of 2007 or so) 36.6% of Muslims supported the most heinous terror attack to some extent.

Mogahed doesn't want you to know this. That's why she wrote an entire book claiming Muslims were moderate based on polling data without including the polling data.

In 2007 a Pew poll found that about one-quarter of young American Muslims believe to some extent that suicide bombings can be justified to defend Islam.

Mogahed knows this statistic as well. She doesn't want you to know.

So, yes, most American Muslims are law abiding citizens and most do not support most terror attacks. But these numbers do not exactly make non-Muslim Americans feel safe.

And I would love to see a poll that asks Muslims worldwide, as well as in the US, whether they consider Palestinian suicide bombers to be "martyrs." I am willing to bet that the number is very close to 50% if not more in the US, and nearly unanimous in the Middle East and Europe. Meaning that suspecting Muslims of condoning the murder of Israeli Jewish kids is not at all bigoted - it is very possibly entirely accurate.

After all, every Arabic language newspaper, even the most moderate, refers to such people as "martyrs." Meaning that they have raised themselves spiritually by getting killed while murdering Jews.

That isn't exactly moderate. Mogahed might even share that opinion.

Mogahed is trying to say that anyone who is frightened of possible Muslim terror attacks is a racist. But she won't tell you that it is a far more rational position than she claims.

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05/26 Links Pt1: Phillips: Trump reframes the Middle East war zone; Krauthammer: Why Middle East Peace Starts in Saudi Arabia

From Ian:

Newsweek Gives Op-Ed To Wife Of Palestinian Terrorist Lamenting Her Husband’s Hunger Strike. He Got Caught Eating Cookies.

In a slap in the face to the Jewish victims of Palestinian terrorism, Newsweek has given a platform to the wife of a convicted murderer. On Thursday, the American news outlet published an op-ed by Fadwa Barghouti, the spouse of Marwan Barghouti, who “was convicted on five counts of murder for the deaths of four Israelis and a Greek monk, as well as attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, and membership of a terrorist organization,” according to the BBC.
While Newsweek has yet to publish sympathetic editorials by the friends, family, and loved ones of like-minded "freedom fighters" Ted Bundy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, or the Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, the publication chose to honor Fadwa Barghouti with a piece entitled, “My Husband Is Starving In An Israeli Jail – We’ll Be Reunited When Palestine Is Free.”
If you take the op-ed at face-value, it comes off as an emotional, nearly elegiac plea to her supposedly heroic husband’s inhumane Israeli captors. To say that Fadwa’s article is grossly misleading would be a profound understatement.
The op-ed is riddled with fabrications and omissions of truth.
First of all, Fadwa’s husband, Marwan, isn’t starving. Far from it. In fact, he’s munching on cookies and candy even as he claims to be carrying out a hunger strike.
As The Daily Wire reported earlier this month, “Israel … released a video allegedly showing [Marwan Barghouti] the leader of an internationally-publicized Palestinian hunger strike, eating cookies and candy in his prison cell.”

Melanie Phillips: Trump reframes the Middle East war zone

The Palestinians will also have got the message loud and clear. Trump called for a resolution of the Palestinian issue, not for a Palestinian state. Standing next to Abbas, Trump linked Palestinian behavior to the Islamic terrorist attack in Manchester this week.
“Peace can never take root,” he said, “in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded.”
In other words, while pointedly commending Abbas for working toward peace “in good faith,” Trump has now set him a bar so high – renouncing the war against Israel – that Abbas will never clear it.
Abbas understands Trump is taking the ground from beneath his feet. The conflict, he claimed, was not about religion but occupation. Put aside the fact that, for Abbas, the whole of Israel is “occupied” land. He knows that reframing the Palestinian issue as a religious war is deadly to that cause.
A few speeches, of course, don’t make a policy. How Trump now acts in the Middle East, and particularly toward Iran, remains to be seen. His presidency itself could crash and burn either from his temperamental flaws or the rolling coup being mounted against him in Washington. And his team contains individuals who are clearly not on the same foreign policy page.
Trump has stamped his authority abroad. Now he has to save his presidency at home and overcome his personal frailties to become the statesman of which his trip has given us the first real signs.

Anne Bayefsky: A Council America Shouldn't Keep

On Thursday a U.S. Senate subcommittee will meet to 'assess' the Human Rights Council. Reconsidering U.S. membership and walking away-now-is the right choice. Successive White Houses have tried and failed to correct the entrenched anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias of the council (and commission) for decades Simply put, the Lilliputians have more votes.
The council has condemned Israel more than any of the other 192 U.N. states, notwithstanding 500,000 dead in Syria, starvation and mass torture in North Korea, and systematic, deadly oppression in Iran. Saudi Arabia and China have used their seats on the council to avoid condemnation altogether. Under a sanctions resolution adopted in March 2016, the council is creating a database of companies that 'directly or indirectly' do business with Israeli settlements. The blacklist is intended to be expansive: Even an ATM in Arab-claimed territory could be enough to land a bank and its business associates on this database. The blacklist threatens to tarnish business reputations, make companies targets for lawfare in European and U.S. courts, and provide fuel for the boycott-and-divestment machinery on college campuses and elsewhere. Meanwhile, the council has no boycott policy for the world's most ruthless regimes.
When Donald Trump became president, the U.S. did not promptly resign from the council but instead attended the March 2017 session. During this meeting, the resolution creating the Israel blacklist was reconfirmed over American objection. Then the U.S. was outvoted on 12 of 15 resolutions and backed into joining the consensus on various other resolutions, including one on 'cultural diversity' cosponsored by the likes of North Korea.
As the Senate subcommittee meets, it will hear the familiar refrain echoed whenever American blank checks to the U.N. are questioned: fight the good fight from the inside; don't cede the territory to enemies; the sole alternative is self-defeating isolationism.
But the answer is straightforward. Belonging to, and paying for, the U.N. Human Rights Council legitimizes those fighting to delegitimize Israel. Equal rights for some cannot be built on unequal rights for Jews. Reform from the inside has failed. America should choose its own partners and methods for making the world a better place. That's real leadership."

The head of the Palestinian Authority Prisoners Affairs, Issa Qaraqe, said today that the hunger strikers in Israeli jails want to be officially considered prisoners of war, which presumably would give them more legal rights, and they also demand to be transferred to prisons inside the territories, a demand that Amnesty has made but that the prisoners have never made before.

The Geneva Conventions are quite clear as to who is entitled to be considered a prisoner of war, and people who are not part of a regular army and who attack civilians without a uniform are clearly not prisoners of war. They get none of the protections that soldiers get.

Also, the terorrists should be careful what they ask for: prisoners of war can be held indefinitely until the conflict is over. They do not have to have a trial to be placed in POW camps. In fact, they are not allowed to be put on trial to begin with except for war crimes. They would lose many of the luxuries they enjoy now like education.

This is another attempt to find an excuse to get the hunger strikers into the world headlines, and the world really doesn't care, just as the world ignored the many previous hunger strikes to get the exact same absurd demands.

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