Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 09, 2018

A pretty accurate political cartoon about Gaza from a Hamas newspaper

Felesteen, a Hamas mouthpiece, has this cartoon showing a rifle in the shape of Gaza surrounded by barbed wire:

The cartoonist views all of Gaza as a weapon pointing at Israel.

To the West, Palestinians would show the inside of Gaza as being filled with suffering women and children imprisoned by Israel. But to their own audience, they regard Gaza is simply - a weapon aimed at killing Jews.

Why wouldn't Israel want to protect itself from something like that?

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“But why does he have to make provocations with these declarations of his?!”

I was shocked to hear this sentence come out of the mouths of my Jewish American relatives. Yes, they were referring to Trump (who they hate) and to the Jerusalem declaration.

I love my relatives but they live in a completely different universe than I do.

Slowly, carefully, I explained that a declaration does not “provoke” violence. It can be an excuse for violent people to unleash violence but a statement doesn’t actually create violence.
Would anyone accept the statement that Kristallnacht was a result of Jewish provocation? Of course not! Kristallnacht was a result of Antisemitic propaganda and the government condoned environment, sending the message that violence against Jews was perfectly acceptable, even desirable… There is no difference between that and the Arab “Days of Rage”.

To state otherwise is both Jew-hating and racist against Arabs. It excuses violence against Jews, as if it is a legitimate response, only to be expected AND it implies that Arabs are sub-human, incapable of deciding for themselves when and where to rage, as if they have none of the ability to think rationally or control their impulses that are expected of every other people on the face of the earth.

My, oh my.

“But what good does it do to state that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel? It is so why does he have to say it?”

Again, different planets. Obviously, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Jerusalem has been the heart of Zion for 3000 years, not just the last 70, since the re-establishment of the Jewish State. It is a ridiculous and (though I don’t use this word lightly) evil game played by nations that are ambivalent about the existence of the Jewish people, as if pretending our capital is not our capital might result in the Jewish people realizing that we are considered illegitimate and should therefore do the world a favor and simply disappear.

Declaring that “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and is the eternal capital of the Jewish people” is, in actuality, a statement that: “the Jewish people are here to stay. The Jews are not going away.” When the superpower of the world says this to the other nations on the planet, it matters.

For some reason my dear relatives keep telling me about the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville and how horrible it was to see people march with torches and scream “Jews will not replace us!” The fact that anyone would consider it reasonable to openly chant such slogans are indicative of the disturbing trend of open antisemitism becoming socially acceptable HOWEVER this pales in comparison to the actual attacks on the Jewish nation and the undermining of Jewish legitimacy and sovereignty in our own land, in the capital of our own country.

The votes against Israel in the UN, declarations that Jerusalem has nothing to do with Jews, that the Temple Mount and Hevron are not Jewish, matter a lot more than even a few hundred screaming tiki-torch marchers, scary as they may be.

Feeling threatened is not the same as an actual attack.

While I understand the revulsion many feel towards President Trump, he is the President of the United States, the declaration about Jerusalem actually came out of his mouth and the declaration itself is important – not only to the Jewish people but to the entire world.

A shifting is happening. My American relatives don’t seem to realize how profound the change already is.

Iranians have taken to the streets to demand that their government invest their money in them, rather than the war in Syria or in Hamas in Gaza. They want food, jobs and hope. The war on the Jews is no longer interesting in comparison.

For the first time, Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia are openly asking: “Why should we invest ourselves in the Palestinian problem? Let’s see how we can better our own lives.”

Do you really think the shift in American policy has nothing to do with this?

As an American citizen, I was raised to believe that America is a force for good in the world. As an Israeli I have felt betrayed by the land of my birth, by the policies of it’s elected politicians who have put my life and that of my friends and family in danger.

For many years America has been on the wrong side of history, not just in regard to Israel but in regard to foreign policy around the world. Here are just a few examples:

• Ousting Mubarak to support the Mursi Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt.
• Telling the people of Egypt, who did not want Islamic rule, that they have no right to demonstrate against the Mursi government.
• Telling Sisi that bombing ISIS terrorists who had slaughtered Egyptian Christians, was wrong
• Remaining silent when the people of Iran demanded freedom and were murdered in the streets by their own government. Justifying this silence with the statement: “we don’t want to meddle in the internal affairs of other countries.”
• The Iran nuclear deal. (If Saudi Arabia and Israel agree that something is bad, you know it’s bad)
• Creating a vacuum that enabled the rise of ISIS
• Destabilizing Libya. Running guns. Benghazi. Ignoring the human trafficking and slave trade.
• Abandoning the Kurds
• The war in Syria and Iraq – thousands of people in Syria and Iraq have been tortured and murdered, millions have been displaced, the genocide of the Yazidis, the sex slave trade…
• Yemen
• Nigeria
• Crimea
The list goes on and on (and that is without mentioning policies that directly effect Israel and put our lives in danger) …

My relatives are not the only Jews I have seen commenting about how horrible Trump is and pining for the dignity and eloquence of the politicians who came before him. I read a statement in a progressive Jewish group about how “we must disconnect ourselves from Trump or it will end up causing us (the Jewish community) enormous damage.”

Again, different planets.

In my world, enormous damage is the thousands who have been tortured and murdered in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The millions who have been displaced and the resulting migrant crisis.

In my world, enormous damage is the Persians who wished to be free from the ayatollahs of Iran and were gunned down in the streets because then, (unlike now thank God) America stayed silent.

In my world, enormous damage is Israel being forced into ceasefires while under attack by Hamas. The bodies of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul held hostage by Hamas just to torture their parents. Iran on our borders. Iran arming Hezbollah and Hamas in preparation to go to war against the only Jewish State…

But that’s just me.

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01/09 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Israel thwarted 'major' terror attacks in Europe involving planes; Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Israel thwarted 'major' terror attacks in Europe involving planes

Israeli intelligence has thwarted mass terrorist attacks in Europe that “involve civil aviation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, in a possible reference to September 11-type attacks planned against European targets using hijacked aircraft.

Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem to ambassadors of NATO countries, said that the world is threatened by radical Sunni groups, initially led by al-Qaeda, but now by Islamic State, and radical Shi'ites led by Iran.

“When we talk about ISIS, it's important to understand that Israel helps Europe in two fundamental ways,” Netanyahu said.

“The first is that we have, through our intelligence services, provided information that has stopped several dozen major terrorist attacks, many of them in European countries. Some of these could have been mass attacks, of the worst kind that you have experienced on the soil of Europe and even worse, because they involve civil aviation. Israel has prevented that, and thereby helped save many European lives.”

He did not elaborate. Netanyahu has said numerous times in the past that Israeli intelligence has helped thwart numerous terrorist attacks in Europe.

JPost Editorial: Shut down UNRWA

The US under the leadership of President Donald Trump is rightly reconsidering the logic of funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine – at least as it operates presently.

Some $125 million, which makes up about a third of the United States’ annual support for the organization, has already been frozen.

Judging from a tweet by Trump that preceded the decision to freeze aid, it seems the US president wants to make funding conditional upon Palestinian cooperation in helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump’s concern is legitimate. UNRWA, which has been around since 1949, was supposed to be a temporary solution, until the “Palestinian refugee problem” was sorted out. But with the Palestinian Authority refusing to cooperate with the US in solving the problem, there is little reason for the US to continue footing the bill for the agency indefinitely.

We can think of a few additional reasons why UNRWA – which employs 11,500 employees in Gaza alone – should be radically revamped, if not disbanded altogether.

The first problem is that UNRWA perpetuates the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. While the original Palestinian refugees from 1948 – both those who left their homes willingly and those who were forced – might legitimately have deserved refugee status, why should their grandchildren or great-grandchildren share that status? Most other refugees are cared for by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, and their status is not passed on to grandchildren or great-grandchildren. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have their own agency.

This leaves millions of Palestinians in a state of limbo. Instead of getting on with their lives, the Palestinians in places like Gaza continue to grasp a false dream of one day returning to Jaffa, Haifa or Jerusalem. This also allows the kind of apartheid that takes place in Lebanon, where more than one million Palestinians live without official status. They do not have Lebanese citizenship and are confined to dismal refugee camps where terrorism and crime thrive. But because they are refugees, the Lebanese government can wash its hands of having to integrate them into society.

All this can change if UNRWA is reformed or shut down. While UNRWA is an organization that nominally is dedicated to transforming refugees into fully self-sufficient individuals, it has allowed the myth of the “right of return” to persist. Within UNRWA it is heretical to say that repatriation to Israel is unrealistic.

Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017

The Palestinian Authority paid terrorists and their families over $347 million last year, according to its own records, the Defense Ministry reported to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday.

The average income of a Palestinian is $580 per month, which is what the PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to three to five years in prison.

The PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to 20 years or more in prison – in other words, those who committed more severe crimes, and likely were involved in killing Israelis – five times that each month for the rest of their lives.

Terrorists who are Israeli citizens receive a $145 bonus, which, when added to the amount PA pays for the most severe crimes, comes to over $2,900, more than the average Israeli income of around $2,700 per month. There are also increases in pay for being married and for each child a terrorist has.

Palestinian terrorists' income per month. (JPOST STAFF)Palestinian terrorists' income per month. (JPOST STAFF)

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said, “The PA pays over a billion shekels a year to terrorists and their families, thus encouraging and perpetuating terror.”

“The minute the amount of the payment is decided according to the severity of the crime and the length of the sentence – in other words, whoever murders and is sentenced to life in prison gets much more – that is funding terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. There is nothing that better illustrates the PA’s support for terror. We must stop this,” Liberman said.

Defense Ministry drafts bill to cut PA funds over terrorist stipends

The Defense Ministry on Tuesday publicized a draft bill that would deduct welfare payments paid out by the Palestinian Authority to Palestinian prisoners and their families from the tax revenues Israel transfers annually to the PA.

“The Palestinian Authority pays over a billion shekels a year to terrorists and their relatives, thereby encouraging and perpetuating terrorism,” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said in a statement. “The moment the payments are set based on the severity of the crime and the prison sentence, namely that those who murder and are sentenced to life receive a lot more, this is [tantamount to] funding terror attacks against Israelis.”

The bill, which targets cash payments by the PA to jailed or injured terrorists and their relatives, will also apply to Palestinians who committed other crimes for which they are being compensated by the PA, the ministry said in a statement.

The Palestine Liberation Organization gives monthly payments to all Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel, no matter the reason for their incarceration, and also to families of so-called “martyrs” — a term used by the PLO to refer to anyone killed by an Israeli, whether the person was killed attacking Israelis or an innocent bystander.

The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: 'Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,' except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews."
From Hamas Charter, as recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim

It is no secret that there are Palestinian Arab imams preaching hate against Israel and against Jews.

It is not even surprising that this preaching of hatred has expanded to outside the Middle East, and has found a home in Europe, where the favorite Hadith of Hamas can be heard, promising the death of Jews.

What is surprising is that last year Muslim Antisemitism, with all its vitriolic hatred, has found its way into the US. It is not as if antisemitism did not already exist. It's just that generally it has not been as out in the open nor expressed as violently as we have seen it elsewhere.

After all, year after year we read the polls in the US showing much stronger support for Israel than for the Palestinian Arabs who seek the destruction of the Jewish state. We have gotten used to the idea that life for Jews in the US is different than what it is like in Europe.

Or maybe we have just gotten complacent.

Looking back, 2017 brought with it something that we are not used to. At the same time, the media, which started off 2017 acting as if it was on the lookout for any case of antisemitism, soon proved that it was only interested in cases of antisemitism that could be traced to Trump.

By the end of the year, we didn't realize what hit us around the country.

For example, on July 21, Imam Ammar Shahin delivered a sermon at the Islamic Center of Davis, northern California -- inciting hatred against Jews:

The Prophet Muhammad said: 'Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah...' The Prophet Muhammad says that the time will come, the Last Hour will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews... When that war breaks out, they will run and hide behind every rock, and house, and wall, and trees. The house, the wall, and the trees will call upon the Muslims. It will say: ...Oh Muslim. Muslim. When Muslims come back... 'Come, there is someone behind me

Shahin quoted from the Hadith, leaving out that the trees will call out to the Muslims to come kill the Jew hiding behind it -- but his audience knew what he meant.

On that same day, Imam Mahmoud Harmoush was also nciting hatred - in Riverside, California:

The Jews were coming from Germany, Poland, Italy, and everywhere else, and [the Muslims] would give them rooms, shelter them, and help them out, not knowing that there was a plan. Within the thirty years between the two incidents, until 1948 and the British occupation, everything was plotted to take over that beautiful land, in the way that we all know – with killing, crime, and massacres..."One brother sent me a video, showing a naked woman walking into the holy mosque under the occupation forces, just to insult more and more the psyche, honor, and dignity of the Muslims.

On July 24, the Islamic Center of Tennessee, in Antioch, Tennessee, posted a video on their YouTube channel. It is a Friday sermon delivered by Somali-American Imam AhmedulHadi Sharif. He told his congregants that "the Zionists" are the "number one terrorists in the world," who had "kidnapped" the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Sharif went so far as to say that "if we lose Jerusalem - know that it is not going to stop there... The enemies of Allah will come and try to destroy the Kaaba."

On Friday, December 8, 2017 Imam Abdullah Khadra delivered an antisemitic sermon in a mosque in the Raleigh, NC area. Khadra recites the entire Hadith at 2:37, making clear that Muslims will kill Jews.

Here is Imam Raed Saleh Al Rousan on December 8, also quoting what apparently is an imam's favorite Hadith:

If Al Rousan makes you feel ill at ease -- don't worry. He later apologized for making you feel uncomfortable with his quoting the Hadith about how Muslims will kill the Jews:

Feel better now?

On December 8, during a sermon in Jersey City, NJ, among other things, Imam Aymen Elkasaby told his congreganats that the Al Aqsa mosque was "under the feet of the apes and the pigs, in reference to Israel.

The good news about Elkasaby is that he is going into "rehab":

Ahmed Shedeed said that Sheikh Aymen Elkasaby, imam of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, would be meeting with “interfaith scholars” who would “consult with and retrain him,” following sermons in which Elkasaby called for the murder of Jews and attacked the west for having made Muslims the “tail-end of all nations.”
“This is like sending someone to rehab,” Shedeed, the Islamic Center’s president, told The Algemeiner when asked whether Elkasaby would be dismissed from the imam’s position...“There are extremists in the Jewish, Christian and Buddhist religions and everything can be taken in the wrong way,” Shedeed said.

Even with popular backlash, these imams were able to escape serious consequences for their actions.

We can expect more of these kinds of sermons in 2018.

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Palestinian Authority cabinet rejects idea of defunding UNRWA, preferring to keep its own people in camps

In 1950, UNRWA offered to help both Jewish and Arab refugees from the war inside Israel. Here is how UNRWA reported on Israel's reaction:

REFUGEES IN ISRAEL
30. In Israel, the Agency has provided relief to two types of refugees, Jews who fled inside the borders of Israel during the fighting, and Arabs in most instances displaced from one area in Palestine to another. Jewish refugees at first numbered 17,000 but, during the current summer, all but 3,000 of these have been absorbed into the economic life of the new State. Arabs on relief were first numbered at 31,000 but many have been placed in circumstances in which they are self-supporting, so that it was possible to reduce the number to 24,000 at the end of August 1950.
31. Recent discussions with the Israel Government indicate that the idea of relief distribution is repugnant to it, and the Agency was informed that already many of the 24,000 remaining refugees were employed and that all able-bodied refugees desiring employment could be absorbed on works projects if they would register at the government registry offices for that purpose. It was stated that they all have status as citizens of Israel and are entitled to treatment as such. It was claimed that after cessation of relief, aged and infirm refugees would be cared for under the normal social welfare machinery of Israel. The Agency was requested to share financially in a programme of re-establishment of displaced Arabs now within the boundaries of Israel.

Israel, a newly sovereign nation with crippling debts, felt that the idea of having a UN agency in its borders doing the job of the state in taking care of its citizens was "repugnant." It created a plan to integrate all refugees, Jewish and Arab, into the state. It would accept monetary aid but not a parallel social infrastructure.

The contrast between 2 year old Israel and a 20-odd year old Palestinian Authority could not be more striking.

Wafa reports:

The Council of Ministers considered the decision of the United States to freeze the funding allocated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), unacceptable blackmail and illegal action that undermines the rights of Palestinian refugees and increases the suffering and crises of refugee camps, endangering the lives of refugees who depend on the health, education and humanitarian services provided by the Agency for decades

So the United States, by deciding where to best spend its money and saying that it won't throw its money away, is engaging in "blackmail" and "illegal actions."

Any normal state would want to take care of their own people in their own borders. But the Palestinian Authority doesn't want to take care of its own people.

What kind of a state demands that their people remain in camps inside their own borders paid for by the rest of the world?

A real nation would at least demand that the cash that was going to a UN agency to do the job of the state -taking care of its people - should be redirected to its own budget so they could give equal rights to "refugees" as their other citizens.

Like Israel did.

But no one demands that the Palestinians act like a real nation when dealing with their own people. And when the expectations are so low, the results will be equally dismal.

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From Palestine News Network:

Hundreds of Palestinians unable to travel staged a protest in front of the Rafah Border Crossing calling upon the Palestinian Authority and Egypt to open the crossing, at least for students and humanitarian cases.

“We came here to send a message to the Palestinian government of national accord, as well as the Egyptian authorities, that it is necessary to open the Rafah Crossing for emergency humanitarian cases and students,” explained student Mohammed Nabil.

Protesters raised placards calling for the crossing to be opened before they take the issue into their own hands and storm through the gates.

Nabil, who is a postgraduate student, said that he is unable to attend his classes due to the Rafah closure. He pointed out that the protesters are planning to erect a tent for a permanent protest in front of the crossing gates.

According to the Palestinian Interior Ministry, there are more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza who need to travel as a matter of urgency.

On 12 October last year, Egypt brokered a Palestinian internal reconciliation deal and pledged to open the Rafah Crossing permanently, but it has not done so yet.

Egypt is just as reluctant to open the crossings for the Palestinian Authority as it was for Hamas.

Perhaps they know that Fatah and Hamas are two sides of the same coin?

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01/08 Links Pt2: A new twist for academic Holocaust distorters; West Bank: Ancient sites destroyed 'as ISIS did in Syria and Iran'; Judith Butler Plans a Stealth MLA Presidency

From Ian:

David Harris: Ten Ways That Israel Is Treated Differently

The recent focus on the Jerusalem issue is a telling reminder that Israel is treated according to a totally different standard than other countries in the international system.

Of course, Israel deserves attention and scrutiny — as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment — nothing more, and nothing less.

Yet here are ten ways that Israel is constantly treated differently from all other countries on earth.

First, Israel is the only state whose capital city, Jerusalem — with which the Jewish people have been umbilically linked for more than 3,000 years — is not recognized by almost all other countries.

Imagine the absurdity of this. Foreign diplomats live in Tel Aviv, while conducting virtually all of their business in Jerusalem, where the prime minister’s office, the Knesset, the Supreme Court, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are located.

In fact, look at the listings of world cities, including places of birth in passports, and you’ll see something striking — Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; Pretoria, South Africa; Lima, Peru; and Jerusalem, sans country — orphaned, if you will.

Second, Israel is the only UN member state whose very right to exist is under constant challenge.

Notwithstanding the fact that Israel embodies an age-old connection with the Jewish people, as repeatedly cited in the most widely read book in the world, the Bible; that it was reborn based on the 1947 recommendation of the UN; and that it has been a member of the world body since 1949, there’s a relentless chorus denying Israel’s very political legitimacy.

Cary Nelson: Judith Butler Plans a Stealth MLA Presidency

Although half the hour was spent challenging and berating me, the core strategy Butler and the other senior member there, David Palumbo-Lio of Stanford, were using was nonetheless clear. After more than a decade of debating anti-Israel resolutions, MLA members had their fill. In June 2017 they voted by a 2-1 margin to bar further academic boycott resolutions. MLA’s Executive Director Rosemary Feal immediately pointed out that nothing prevented a vote on a resolution to overturn the 2017 vote, but the BDSers preferred to ignore this option, as it was clear they would lose such a contest. Unwilling to see themselves as a radical fringe group indulging in sour grapes complaints, they were left with one way to explain their loss: as they asserted repeatedly this evening, they were cheated.

“All we wanted was a level playing field,” Palumbo-Liu declared, “but we didn’t get one.” Incredibly, he revived his 2014 accusation that MLA Members for Scholar’s Rights had obtained outside Zionist funding to copy the email addresses of 20,000 MLA members. He was well aware of my public reply at the time because he responded to it: I had paid a student $650 to gather the emails. I didn’t need to contact Baron Rothschild for funds through a seance. But now he lied and complained I never answered him, even though he answered my reply, just as he lied recently in claiming he had run for the MLA Executive Council on an explicit BDS platform. In fact he had run on a stealth platform claiming he was seeking to help grad students and never mentioned Israel.

Members had only received pro-boycott materials, and we wanted them to hear our case. The MLA refused to distribute our anti-boycott dossier. We used the same emails once more in 2017. Palumbo-Liu and Butler both insisted this was unethical, despite MLA assuring members we had followed the rules. Butler incredibly added that the 2017 resolution violated the US Constitution by supposedly restricting speech. Of course speech in 800 MLA sessions was unrestricted, as was anything else anyone wanted to say from sea to shining sea. Members had democratically voted to stop squabbling about Israel and instead focus on humanities disciplines in crisis and exploited academic labor. But for a BDS disciple like Palumbo-Liu that was a cowardly distraction. Seeing it as the only hope for a newspaper headline he resigned from MLA’s Executive Council in January, absurdly protesting that his academic freedom had been violated.

What Butler and Palumbo-Liu managed to do this evening was to convince a group of young faculty and students that only a corrupt conspiracy could have defeated them in their effort to demonize the Jewish state. Their opponents were unethical and unscrupulous. At the end, Butler turned and pointed to me to conclude: “We need to overcome those who are dedicated to making the fight unfair.”

West Bank: Ancient sites destroyed 'as ISIS did in Syria and Iran'

Numerous archaeological sites throughout the West Bank are being destroyed and robbed by Palestinians and according to an Israel News Company report, this is a common phenomenon. Hebrew University archaeology doctoral student Haggai Cohen Klonymus described to the Israel News Company how tractors and bulldozers arrived at an archaeological site where the ancient city of Archelaus once stood, digging away at the ancient site.

The Palestinian assailants completely level the compound in order to locate hidden archaeological treasures to sell in the antiquities market. “It was flat and in a very short period of time, they lifted the entire area with tractors,” Bar Ilan University archaeology doctoral student Assaf Avraham told the Israel News Company. Other sites are deserted and filled with holes and trash after the wreckage.

Klonymus explained the deteriorating situation of the historical sites in the report, stating that a complaint was filed, but that there is only one inspector for all of the West Bank’s archaeological sites, who is responsible for the antiquities robbery and destruction issue. “Just as ISIS destroyed sites in Iran and Syria that were thousands of years old, the same situation is occurring here,” Klonymus said to the Israel News Company. “This is a deliberate and systematic destruction of an archaeological site without anyone responding to it. It’s just a tragedy.”

Jordan says it foiled massive terror plot

From Ammon News:

The General Intelligence Department foiled a massive terrorist scheme after it conducted an intensive and accurate follow-up operation and a preemptive effort, planned by a Daesh-backed cell during Nov. 2017.

The said cell arranged to carry out a trove of terrorist operations synchronously aimed to tamper with national security and ignite havoc and intimation among citizens.

The early intelligence follow-up endeavors led to the apprehension of 17 plotters involved in this heinous operation and seized rifles and other materials prepared to be used in the hideous plan.

No details are given, but it shows that even Jordan has bigger problems than to worry about the Palestinian issue - except to make sure that it is solved somehow for the kingdom's own stability.

But Jerusalem is a distraction, not the core issue.

Objectively speaking, a Palestinian capital in Ramallah while Jordan has a say on the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem would be King Abdullah's ideal situation.

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This piece in The Guardian by Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III is the is almost too absurd to believe:

Christians have lived a history in the Holy Land that spans more than two millennia. We have survived countless invasions, and have flourished under many different forms of government. We know that our survival has depended on the principle that the holy places must be shared by and be accessible to all. For it is the holy places that have given meaning to the region for both inhabitants and conquerors of all faiths. The protection and accessibility of the holy places are understood through a set of rules called the “status quo”, which has been followed by all religious and governmental authorities of the region through the ages....
Now various sides want to claim the Holy Land, including Jerusalem, as the exclusive possession of only one people. This treats with contempt the mechanism that has maintained peace and our multi-religious landscape for generations.

I've rarely seen a straw man this big. Which Jews are trying to make Jerusalem an exclusively Jewish city, with no rights for any other groups?

One of the foremost threats to Christians in the Holy Land is the unacceptable activities of radical settler groups, which are attempting to establish control over properties around the Jaffa gate. The properties in question are in the heart of Jerusalem’s Christian quarter, the seat of all the patriarchates and headquarters of the churches, and less than 500m from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The Patriarchate has lodged an appeal with the Israeli high court of justice, but if our efforts prove unsuccessful the result would be immensely damaging to the integrity of the Old City. If the settler groups were to gain control of the properties, they would be able to pursue their aggressive campaign of removing non-Jews from the City and from these strategic centres at the heart of the Christian quarter, threatening the very presence of Christians in the Holy Land.

Jews have always lived in all the quarters of the Old City. The quarters were never exclusive to one group. The idea that Jews cannot legally purchase buildings in any part of the city is, to be blunt, antisemitic. The "status quo" doesn't mean that the Old City must look exactly as it did in 1967 or 1167.

The idea that Jews purchasing buildings is a threat to all Christians in the Holy Land is an insult, plai and simple. And so is the slander that Jews are attempting to make Jerusalem exclusively Jewish.

I don't recall the Greek Orthodox Church complaining about the "status quo" when Jordan ensured that no Jews could even visit the Old City.

Of course, it is Muslims who are threatening Christians throughout the Middle East, including in Palestinian Arab areas.

Despite this high profile paean to dhimmitude, Theophilos was attacked by Palestinians yesterday exactly for his church selling the land to Jews.

Palestinian Christians on Saturday pummeled the car of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem during a visit to the occupied West Bank in protest against the church’s decision to sell land to Jewish groups.
Hundreds of Palestinians blocked Patriarch Theophilos III’s convoy as he drove to a church in Bethlehem to attend an Orthodox Christmas mass.
Protestors threw stones and water bottles and pounded his car with their fists, chanting “traitor, traitor,” before Palestinian security forces pushed them away. Three cars in the convoy, but not the Patriarch’s vehicle, had their windows smashed.

Maybe the Patriarch should choose his friends better.

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01/08 Links Pt1: UNICEF Being Fed False Info By Anti-Israel Hate Groups To Target IDF; PA TV uses music to incite murder; Terror victims: Deduct terrorists' salaries from PA tax funds

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: UNICEF and its NGO Working Group: The Campaign to Blacklist the IDF

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
UNICEF spearheads a campaign to have Israel included on a UN blacklist of “grave” vio-lators of children’s rights.The list appears as an annex to the UN Secretary-General’s annual report on Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC). This political agenda is a primary facet of UNICEF’s activities relating to Israel, completely inconsistent with its mandate of “child protection” and from its guidelines for neutrality and impartiality.

UNICEF-oPt’s partners (“working group”) for this campaign are radical advocacy non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These anti-Israel NGOs play an integral role in carrying out UNICEF’s campaign and receive substantial funding from UNICEF to do so.

The UN blacklist consists almost entirely of terror groups and militias from failed states. In essence, by pushing for the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) inclusion on the list, UNICEF and its NGO partners are claiming that Israel’s army is equivalent to ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda.

Several of the Palestinian groups – including Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), which plays a leading role in this campaign – have reported links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – listed as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. UNICEF-oPt states, “UNICEF has a clear policy that is does not fund support (sic) organizations which are listed as terrorist organizations by the United Nations” – a list that excludes Hamas, the PFLP, and Islamic Jihad.

Several UNICEF-oPt NGO partners recommended inclusion of the IDF on the UN blacklist, but absurdly claimed they lacked sufficient evidence to recommend inclusion of the PFLP or Hamas.

A key component of the UN’s Children and Armed Conflict campaign is to end the exploi-tation and use of children as combatants and child soldiers. Although Palestinian armed groups routinely use children in this way, there is little evidence that UNICEF-oPt funding is devoted towards exposing or ending this practice. In fact, a UNICEF Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) bulletin admits that “In Gaza, the Working Group was not in a position to document cases of child recruitment and use of children in armed conflict owing to a number of factors, including security and protection risks related to collecting comprehensive and detailed information” (emphasis added). This admission of an inability to carry out the core mission of its UN mandate in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza calls into question the necessity and utility of continued funding for the agency in the region.

Other UNICEF-oPt partners are NGOs that seek to marginalize Israel through BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) initiatives. One such contributor is the World Council of Churches’ EAPPI program, which is heavily involved in church-based BDS and whose non-professional volunteers purport to collect data for a UNICEF database.

UNICEF-oPt’s NGO partners publish misleading and false reports on the treatment of Palestinian minors involved in attacks and arrested by the IDF, rife with distortions and in-accuracies and devoid of necessary context. These same erroneous and unverified claims are then laundered through a UNICEF database to a variety of UN publications, lending them legitimacy and prominence.

Click to Read Full Report in PDF Version

UNICEF acting to add IDF to list of 'grave violators of children's rights'

The NGO Monitor report further shows how UNICEF opted to ignore violations of children's rights by Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip, when it admitted "the working group was not in a position to document cases of child recruitment and use of children in armed conflict owing to a number of factors, including security and protection risks related to collecting comprehensive and detailed information."

The anti-Israel organizations behind the UNICEF working group have in recent years published false and misleading reports on the IDF's arrest and purported abuse of Palestinian minors involved in attacks which were later entered into a UNICEF database, lending them legitimacy.

A number of these organizations, including the Defense for Children International- Palestine, have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has been recognized as a terrorist organization by Israel, Canada, the EU and the U.S.

In response to a query from NGO Monitor, UNICEF Palestine did not deny that the organization had ties to terrorist groups.

"UNICEF has a clear policy that it does not fund … organizations which are listed as terrorist organizations by the United Nations."

Among those organizations excluded from the world body's terrorist list are Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Other organizations involved in efforts to include the IDF in the U.N. blacklist actively promote the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

UNICEF Being Fed False Info By Anti-Israel Hate Groups To Target IDF

NGO Monitor states, “UNICEF’s role in this process includes giving legitimacy to false and distorted claims made by the NGOs, which are fed through a UNICEF database to a variety of U.N. publications.” NGO Monitor notes that three groups passing information to the working group are linked to The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Those groups allegedly include Addameer, which NGO Monitor states is an affiliate of the PFLP; the Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), which had a board member who helped launch grenade attacks against Israeli civilians in 1968, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose founder was imprisoned by Israel for membership in the PFLP.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, (R-FL), stated that Israel is a “staunch defender of human rights,” and warned the U.N. there might be financial consequences if the IDF was blacklisted. He added, “For the United Nations to even consider such action following their condemnation of President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is further proof of the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias. ... The United States should take any punitive action against Israel into consideration when determining who is deserving of foreign assistance.”

Groups already on the blacklist include ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Interestingly, one of the violations listed by the U.N. is “recruitment or use of children as soldiers.” One wonders why the U.N. has not seen fit to list the Palestinians and Hamas, who have used children as human shields and suicide bombers.

For Immediate Release

The worldwide movement to isolate the Apartheid Palestinian Authority and Hamas regimes gained significant momentum over the last year, as hundreds of artists and performers visiting Israel continued to avoid performing in territories ruled by human-rights abusing Palestinian governments whose very existence violates international law.

Meanwhile, in the years since the murder of Italian journalist Vittorio Arrigoni at Palestinian hands, many international journalists refuse to work in Hamas-run Gaza, especially after a series of kidnappings and threats have made it nearly impossible to report from the Strip objectively.

World governments have also stepped up sanctions activities against the Iran-backed, fundamentalist Gaza regime in light of Hamas' continued support of terror and well-documented record of human rights abuses directed at women, gays and religious minorities.

In recent years, the international watchdog group Human Rights Watch condemned the government in Gaza for war crimes related to their behavior during conflicts with Israel. “Palestinian armed groups made clear in their statements that harming civilians was their aim,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “There is simply no legal justification for launching rockets at populated areas.”

HRW and other respected human rights organizations also demanded an investigation into Palestinian Authority's role in the torture and murder of 18-year-old Haitham Amer, one of many human rights violations attributed to the Palestinian Authority rule.

Meanwhile members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have strongly condemned Palestinian acts of terrorist incitement which may ultimately lead to an increase in global sanctions against Apartheid Palestine.

These and other divestment, sanctions and boycott successes too numerous to list continue to demonstrate the ongoing strength of the DSB movement!

Consider the mock press release above as a thought experiment.

Before this experiment begins, notice how this release has all the hallmarks of a genuine BDS "Year in Review" news story or hyperventilating blog post.

First, there are the trademark ambiguous accusations (such as "Apartheid" or "violation of international law") presented as unquestionably true facts. Then, you've got specific political motivations (ones shared by the BDSers) attributed to individuals (performers, journalists) or organizations (governments) with no evidence demonstrating why we must accept these motivations over equally plausible alternatives.

Finally, you've got the juxtaposition of events, statements and quotes meant to give the impression that they are all part of a single coherent story, even though these components may have nothing to do with one another.

For instance, I just strung together the Human Rights Watch and Security Council stories and hitched them to my other two stories (of performers and journalists allegedly boycotting "Apartheid Palestine") to give the impression that they were all part of the same narrative, in this case of the success of my fictitious "DSB movement." And my use of (outdated) quotes from Human Rights Watch glosses over the fact that this organization is far more critical of Israel than of the Palestinians (a background I purposefully ignored in order to give the impression that HRW condemnations of the PA and Hamas are far more typical than they actually are).

Oh, and also notice how each of the tricks I use provides just enough wiggle room to worm out of accusation of manipulativeness if ever I'm cornered. For instance, the aforementioned quote from Human Rights Watch is genuine, so why should it be my fault if you choose to incorrectly interpret it in a way that suits my purposes?

OK, so given what we know of this type of propaganda tool, two questions we should ask ourselves include:

(1) If this is so easy to do, why don't Israel's supporter play this game too? and…

(2) Given that this type of manipulativeness is so blindingly transparent, why do so many people (including many of us) continue to fall for or respond to it?

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.

In 2014:

Israel’s retaliatory air strikes on Gaza have been “deliberately disproportionate” and amount to “collective punishment”, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said on Thursday, in unusually robust criticism of a close British ally
“I really do think now the Israeli response appears to be deliberately disproportionate, it is amounting now to a disproportionate form of collective punishment,” Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the country’s coalition, told Britain’s LBC radio station.
“I really would now call on the Israel Government to stop. They’ve proved their point,” he said. He said he respected Israel’s right to defend itself.

Now compare how Clegg and other British politicians criticized Israel in Gaza with how they act towards their Iraqi targets.

From The Guardian:

More than 15,000 civilians were killed by explosive weapons in 2017, a jump of 42% in a year, according to a global survey seen by the Guardian.

The rise – driven by airstrikes, which killed almost double the number of civilians in 2017 compared with the previous year – coincided with US-led military operations to reclaim the Islamic State strongholds of Mosul, in Iraq, and Raqqa, in Syria.

MPs said the figures were “deeply concerning” and raised questions over the transparency of legal criteria used by the Ministry of Defence to determine whether an individual is an Isis combatant.

The UK has said it has no credible evidence of its airstrikes resulting in civilian deaths, while the US military has revealed it unintentionally killed at least 801 civilians in Syria and Iraq.

The global survey, compiled by Action on Armed Violence, an organisation that highlights civilian harm from explosive weapons, suggests the civilian death toll from air-launched explosives rose by 82%, from 4,902 in 2016, to 8,932 in 2017.

The worst impacted countries were Syria, where civilian deaths increased by 55% to 8,051, Iraq, where there was a 50% increase, to 3,271, and Afghanistan, where 994 non-combatants died.

During the last three Gaza wars, Israel released detailed statistics on the deaths, enumerating how many were civilian and how many terrorist, and its numbers of total killed tracked closely with the numbers provided by independent researchers (who typically undercounted the number of terrorists killed significantly.)

In addition, Israel would publish results of investigations in many specific examples of airstrikes describing exactly its intelligence, who was targeted and killed, and everything it did to ensure a minimum of civilian deaths and to adhere to international law.

In comparison, there is next to no transparency by British and US forces in their airstrike campaigns. The British insistence that they have no evidence they have killed a single civilian is risible:

Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence, said the data threw doubts upon the MoD’s claim that it had no evidence of its airstrikes killing civilians in Iraq and Syria.

“In an attempt to combat terrorism, forces are using air weapons against groups they consider a threat and, in doing so, they are killing an awful lot of civilians,” Overton said. “It raises fundamental questions about the Royal Air Force’s claims that there is no evidence civilians are killed in its operations.”

Overton blamed a “very nasty and bloody” year on increased airstrikes and the continued use of improvised explosive devices by terrorists. The latter killed 3,874 civilians in 2017, a similar number to those killed the previous year.

“This is about urban warfare and that’s why we are getting crazy numbers,” said Airwars director Chris Woods.

“War is moving into cities. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Russia or the US-led coalition or ground forces leading the assault, the outcome for civilians under attack is always dire.

“There seems to be no interest from the coalition or the Iraqi government in properly understanding the level of civilian deaths. We’re becoming too complacent about urban warfare, and militaries and governments are downplaying the effects.

In response to calls to reveal how enemy combatants are identified, a spokesman for the MOD said it does not comment on rules of engagement. He added: “We’ve not seen any evidence that we have caused civilian casualties. We do everything we can to minimise the risk to civilian life from UK strikes through our rigorous targeting processes and the professionalism of the RAF crews. Reports of civilian casualties are and will continue to be taken very seriously and we will investigate all credible claims.”

The British are completely opaque in their terms of engagement, in their intelligence gathering, in how they determine the number of casualties, and indeed their denials of killing any civilians in urban warfare are ludicrous. Yet they have the audacity to criticize Israel for its much more limited air campaigns that are meticulously documented.

Notice also that the NGO, Action on Armed Violence, describes how difficult urban warfare is and how it inevitably will lead to massive civilian casualties. I did not see a single Gaza NGO that was fair enough to mention that obvious fact in 2014 or earlier Gaza wars.

Israel is expected to adhere not only to higher standards than any Western nation, but to adhere to impossible standards. Meanwhile, even those who are most critical of the far more deadly western air campaigns in the Middle East acknowledge the difficulty of targeting only terrorists when they hide among civilians, like Hamas and other Gaza terror groups do.

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.