Here is a poster going around Palestinian media of students who were mowed down in the prime of their lives by evil Israelis so they couldn't attend final exams.
One Gazan translated this propaganda to English:
Every single one of these students were associated with terror groups.
The student on the left is Bilal Badeir Hussein al-Ashram, who was a Fatah operative according to his Fatah branch in Gaza. Here's their martyr poster for him:
The middle photo is of Ibrahim Ahmad al-Zarqa, 18, who spoke often of his desire to become a martyr and who was active in Hamas' media bureau. Here's another photo of him:
The last student, Muhannad Bakr Abu Tahoun, 21, succumbed to his wounds last Thursday in a Hebron hospital (yes, Israel allowed him to leave Gaza to be treated in Hebron.) He was also linked to Fatah and he was buried in a Fatah flag, as uniformed Fatah militants kissed him:
Three high school seniors killed. Every single one associated with terror groups.
The coincidences keep piling up.
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Tickets for an Israel-Argentina friendly in Jerusalem next month with Barcelona star Lionel Messi expected in the line-up sold out within 20 minutes, the Israeli company handling sales said. The Le'an agency said on its website that nearly 100,000 fans applied for 20,000 tickets when they went on general sale Sunday evening. "No sporting event has ever caused such hysteria in Israel," it wrote. Prices ranged from 44 shekels (about $12, 10 euros) for children and soldiers to 825 shekels in the VIP area. Another 5,000 places went to supporters of the Israeli national team in a pre-sale reserved for them and over 4,000 tickets were to be distributed to children from needy families. The game will take place on June 9 at the Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem which has a capacity of 31,733 seats.
Palestinians, predictably, are freaking out, especially since the game is being played in Jerusalem.
The Fatah movement called on the Argentine government and people to cancel their friendly match with the team of the occupying state in Jerusalem, saying that conducting this match in the occupation state and in Jerusalem specifically is an attack on the rights of the Palestinian people, meant to mislead international public opinion, and exploit the sport and this game in particular in order to break the law and international legitimacy for the oppression and oppression of the Palestinian people. A member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and its official spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi said in a press statement that Israel is exploiting a noble sport. One of [football]'s goals is to build bridges of love, peace and communication among the peoples of the earth, but Israel is turning it into racist political goals and to persecute others and create hatred. In Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state, we are recalling that the blood of our children, our young men and women in Gaza whose blood has not yet dried up as a result of Israeli bullets, backed by an unjust American decision to consider Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Sure Teddy Stadium is inside the 1949 partition lines, but apparently the Palestinians don't care about that any more. Anything that happens in Jerusalem is illegal unless they approve.
What really upsets them is that the entire idea of going to Israel came from star player Lionel Messi for good luck in the World Cup:
:If Argentina win the World Cup this summer, Israel can take some of the credit. The Argentinian players — Lionel Messi, Sergio Aguero et al — are due in Jerusalem on June 9 to play a friendly match in the Teddy Stadium, seven days before they kick off in their first match in the World Cup finals against Iceland in Moscow. Many of the players are devout Catholics who believe that the opportunity to pray in Jerusalem will boost their World Cup chances. Pope Francis, an enthusiastic fan of the Argentinean team, will reportedly send a personal emissary to conduct a special mass for the team in Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Messi, the team captain, is in no doubt about how important the trip could be. He said: “I really want to visit the Holy Land and for Argentina this will be an important professional and spiritual journey and I’m convinced that coming to Israel ahead of the World Cup will do us good.”
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From the Facebook page of Rima Najjar, an American-educated retired professor of English literature at Al-Quds University now living in Bloomington, Indiana.
Can't you feel the love?
This is the kind of peace that the BDSers and "moderate" Palestinians want. A desire for all Jews in Israel to rot in hell.
And, no, she isn't antisemitic in the least. She just believes that every other people can have a state but the Jews.
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Along with several other European countries, France has strongly opposed America’s decision to relocate its embassy to Israel’s capital. To support its position, Paris has claimed, on the basis of various UN resolutions, that international law militates against recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state. These legal claims, writes Michel Gurfinkiel, are muddled—at best:
Both France and the EU claim that the 1949 cease-fire lines between Israel and Jordan in the Jerusalem area (the “Green Line”) are an international border. If this were indeed the case, those sectors in Jerusalem held by Israel [following the cease-fire] would be internationally recognized Israeli territory; accordingly, Israel would have every right to turn them into its capital, and the United States, or any other country, to locate its embassy there.
Likewise, France and the EU countries [already] recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s de-facto capital, since they routinely visit the Israeli government or the Israeli parliament there. Under international law, a de-facto recognition is as valid as a de-jure recognition. . . .
Paris and Brussels [therefore] point to Security Council Resolution 470, passed on August 20, 1980, which condemned the enactment by Israel’s parliament of a constitutionally binding law enshrining Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and called upon the governments that had already established embassies in that city to withdraw them. Resolution 470 was largely based on the . . . General Assembly’s Resolution 303 of December 9, 1949.
However, Gurfinkiel argues, France refuses to apply the same logic to itself, as evidenced by the case of the island of Mayotte. Mayotte had been a French colony along with the other Comoros Islands, but when the Comoros became independent, its populace repeatedly voted to remain part of France, which to this day treats the island as its own:
With President Donald Trump’s fulfillment of his campaign promise to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, his moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, his subsequent refusal to ratify the Obama administration’s Iran Nuclear Deal, and official statements from the White House twitter account such as:
"The U.S. condemns the Iranian regime’s provocative rocket attacks from Syria against Israeli citizens, and we strongly support Israel’s right to act in self-defense." – @WhiteHouse, May 10, 2018
(and all of this in just one year!), Trump has set the foundations for what could be the most stalwartly pro-Israel American foreign policy since Israel’s birth in 1947.
With religiously anti-Trump pundits (see here, or here) insisting that Trump’s policies and rhetoric are actually damaging to Israel and somehow worse than those of his predecessors, it’s worth taking a stroll down memory lane to see how past presidents perceived Israel, and how they conducted their foreign policies.
Barack Obama (Democrat) (January 20, 2009 – January 20, 2017)
Barak Obama made strong statements in his campaign for the oval office, marketing himself as an ostensibly pro-Israel candidate. He even called Jerusalem the capital of Israel: "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided. I have no illusions that this will be easy."
When speaking with Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy bewailed Israel’s PM saying, "I can’t stand Netanyahu; he is a coward and a liar." Rather than defend Netanyahu, Obama replied, "You can’t stand him? I have to deal with him more than you."
Obama also signed 38-billion-dollars in aid to Israel. The 10-year foreign aid package came on the heels of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal which Israel warned would only further empower Iran and do nothing to mitigate its funding of terrorist organizations or pursuit of nuclear weapons. Moreover, under a provision of the deal called, the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), Israel is barred from receiving any additional funds with the notable exception of wartime.
As one of his final actions as US president, Obama refused to exercise the United States’s veto power in the United Nations, allowing a virulently anti-Israel resolution calling for a halt to Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem (a region Obama previously stated was without question part of Israel’s undivided capital).
One of dozens of rockets launched Tuesday by terrorists from the Gaza Strip hit facilities supplying electricity to the Gaza Strip.
Due to the damage to the facilities, three lines supplying electricity to the southern Gaza Strip were stopped.
The electricity company said it would take several days to repair the equipment for a regular supply of electricity.
Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz instructed the Israel Electricity Company (IEC) not to endanger its employees and to repair the problem only after a lull.
The article says that "a group of rabbis and settlers" took a group of Chinese tourists through the Temple Mount area, describing where the Temple stood.
According to the article, "this is the first time that a foreign delegation has participated in breaking into the Aqsa Mosque." Obviously there are foreign tourists at the site all the time, but only when Jews walk around the periphery is it called "breaking into Al Aqsa Mosque."
It is a great idea for Jews to show Christians and other tourists the truth about the Temple Mount.
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Activists Monday laid out 4,500 pairs of shoes in front of the Council of the European Union in Brussels to represent every person killed in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict over the last decade.
Members of the activist group Avaaz covered Jean Rey Square with shoes, donated by citizens across Europe over the last week.
It was part of what the group said was a "growing call for EU governments to protect Palestinian lives by reining in Israel’s government violence".
"Citizens across Europe have one clear message for our governments: Palestinian lives matter to us and they need to matter to you," said Avaaz Campaign Director Christoph Schott.
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After preparations which lasted for about two months, mass riots began to take place every Friday near the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. The declared purpose of these demonstrations and riots, organized and orchestrated by Hamas, was to break through the border fence and have masses of people enter into Israeli territory. According to the Palestinians, this should symbolically realize what the Palestinians refer to as the “right of return” of the Palestinian refugees (i.e., the destruction of the State of Israel). Another objective was to bring the severe economic situation of the Gaza Strip into public awareness and exert pressure to “break the siege.” The demonstrations and riots still haven’t ended. Hamas intends to pursue them also during the forthcoming weeks, even at the cost of more fatalities.
Hamas aspired to mobilize hundreds of thousands of Gaza Strip residents to participate in these events. However, eventually, the number of participants did not exceed several tens of thousands. In the two peak events, on March 30, 2018 (Land Day, the opening events) and on May 14, 2018 (the day on which the US Embassy was relocated to Jerusalem), about 40,000 residents took part in the demonstrations and riots. On other Fridays, Hamas could not mobilize that many residents. During the rest of the week days, several thousands of people took part in the riots and there were also a number of attempts to carry out terrorist attacks.
The riots culminated in the events of May 14, 2018, with attempts, halted by IDF soldiers, to penetrate en masse into Israeli territory. The attempts to break into Israeli territory were accompanied by intentionally increased violence, throwing pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails at IDF soldiers; attempting to cut the fence; and sending Molotov kites, which set fire to fields in Israeli communities adjacent to the Gaza Strip. As a result of the increase in the number of rioters and the extensive violence on their part (which was unusual compared to previous incidents), the number of fatalities reached its height. Those fatalities consist of Palestinians who were in the front line of the rioters, most of them Hamas operatives.
Emphasizing the message to Palestinians that “sacrificing” oneself for “Palestine” and dying as a “Martyr” while carrying out a terror attack against Israelis is an admirable act, the Bethlehem branch of Abbas’ Fatah Movement lauded the female suicide bomber Andalib Takatka, who murdered 6 when she carried out a suicide bombing in 2002.
Fatah stated that the suicide bomber hurried and carried out her attack a few days before her birthday because she “preferred” celebrating in Paradise, and that “her desire to take revenge against the Jews” was stronger than her desire to blow out birthday candles: Posted text: "Sixteen years ago, on April 12, 2002, heroic self-sacrificing fighter Andalib Takatka carried out a self-sacrificing operation in occupied Jerusalem that led to the death of 6 Zionists and the wounding of another 85...
It was a deeply moving sight to see Andalib read her will... while holding Allah's book and saying: 'This life is fleeting, pointless, and worthless, and the best thing man seeks is a dignified life in Paradise.' ... Andalib carried out the April 12, 2002 self-sacrificing operation, and did not wait until Sunday, April 14, in order to celebrate her 20th birthday. This was because she preferred to celebrate it in a different place and a different manner, and she hurried to extinguish the flame of her desire to take revenge against the Jews instead ofextinguishing her 20th candle in her father's house...
We all bow in admiration and appreciation before the soul of heroic Martyrdom (Shahada) seeker Andalib Takatka."
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Bethlehem Branch, April 12, 2018]
On Tuesday, Hamas fired an enormous wave of mortars into Israel, striking an Israeli kindergarten but causing no injuries. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis were forced to bunkers to weather the attack. That wave of mortars followed an attempt over the weekend by Islamic Jihad terrorists to cut through the Gaza border in order to murder Israelis in their beds; during the chase, terrorists fired at Israeli troops. One terrorist was killed, and another injured. The Israeli Defense Forces also announced that several days ago, Hamas attempted to fly a drone loaded with explosives over the border.
Israel has retaliated with targeted strikes against Islamic Jihad positions in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted out:
The IDF will respond with great force to these attacks. Israel will exact a heavy price from anyone who tries to attack it, and we view Hamas as responsible for preventing such attacks against us.
The media coverage of Hamas’ and Islamic Jihad’s latest acts of terrorism has been skimpy at best, even though just two weeks ago, the media went full-coverage over terrorist-organized riots on the Gaza border during the US’ Jerusalem embassy move. During those riots, Hamas announced that the vast majority of Palestinians killed had been Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, and stated openly that they were attempting to use protests at the border as a cover for paramilitary action. Nonetheless, the American and European media insisted that Israel was firing indiscriminately at peaceful protesters, and that the Jerusalem embassy move had been the cause of the violence.
On January 31, 1961, Yaacov Herzog - the Israeli ambassador to Canada at the time - debated the historian Arnold Toynbee at the B’nai B’rith Hillel House in Montreal. He was responding to a lecture Toynbee gave just a few days earlier at McGill University, where Toynbee questioned the right of the Jewish People to even have a state. In his writings, Toynbee characterized the Jews as a “fossil” civilization.
An Olympic aircraft lands at Athens airport - and one of the passengers is Socrates.
Since ancient Greek is not the same as modern Greek, a translator is needed.
Socrates wants to see the Acropolis - but it is in ruins.
So is the Temple of Zeus.
No Neptune, Mars, Aphrodite, or Helen. Only Christianity.
There are no longer countries under Greek rule.
The only thing modern Greece has in common with the Greece of Aristotle or Plato is geography.
Meanwhile, an Alitalia flight stops at an airport near Rome - and Julius Caesar gets off the plane.
Latin and Italian are different, so a translator is needed.
Caesar wants to go to the Temple of Jupiter.
They offer instead to take him to the Vatican.
The current Pope is from Argentina, before that from Germany and before that from Poland. Not Italian
No Jupiter. No Colosseum either.
And no Roman Empire.
Here is the rest of the story in full:
At Ben Gurion airport, a customs officer welcomes an elderly man with a white beard: “Shalom Aleichem!”
The man answers, “Aleichem Shalom. My name is Moshe.”
“Really? I’m also Moshe! I was born in Tbilisi, Georgia.”
“And I was born in Egypt.”
“Did you visit Israel before?”
“Unfortunately never.”
“So it’s not your homeland.”
“This is my homeland. I personally know of the Divine promise. Are you Jewish?”
“Of course I’m Jewish. Ani Mosheke m’Gruzia.”
“I’d like to sightsee, but I didn’t take along Tefillin. Do you perhaps know where I can get tefillin?”
“Tefillin? I’ll give you mine.”
“You have tefillin?”
“Of course I have tefillin. I davened Shacharis an hour ago.”
“You also have a tallis with tzitzis?”
“Of course!”
“Do you have a quiet place for me to pray?”
“Sure! We have shuls here in the terminal. Sefard and Ashkenaz.”
“And what Nusach is your Torah scroll?”
“Nusach???!!! We all have the same Torah, each word carefully transcribed back to Moshe Rabenu!”
Same religion. Same language. Same homeland. Same commandments. Same faith. If this is not a nation, what is? [emphasis added]
About that language, Hebrew.
Hebrew has been reestablished as our language, just as Israel itself has been reestablished as our land.
And like the land and the people, Hebrew is also special.
In 2007 on the 150th birthday of Eliezer Ben-Yehudah, David Hazony wrote about one aspect of the uniqueness of Hebrew, about how compact it is (the word "is" does not even exist in Hebrew). Hebrew also you to say in just a few words what can require sentences to say in English. The long history of Hebrew as the language of the Prophets is an unending source of idioms and ideas.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda working on his dictionary. Public domain
Hazony describes how Hebrew has grown from a restricted language, comparable to Latin. It was used in the synagogue, to understand texts and in conversation only when Jews from different countries needed to bridge the language gap.
Yet today the State of Israel thrives on that same ancient -- and not so ancient -- tongue.
The density of meaning in Hebrew is a writer’s dream. Nearly anyone can imbue a seemingly simple sentence with multiple, generally complementary meanings simply by choosing a specific verb, verb form, noun or adjective. These double, triple and even quadruple meanings of one word are a source of unbounded joy for a writer. To take just one example, the Hebrew word “shevet” means returning and it also means sitting. And it is also a homonym for club – as in billy club – and for tribe.
In 2005, the IDF named the operation expelling the Israeli residents of Gaza and Northern Samaria “Shevet Achim,” or returning or sitting with brothers. But it also sounded like it was making a distinction between tribesmen and brothers. And it also sounded like “clubbing brothers.”
As this one example demonstrates, one joyful consequence of the unique density of the Hebrew language is that satirical irony comes easily to even the most dour and unpoetic writers.
And discussing Hebrew, of course, brings Glick back too to talking about Israel:
But the experience of speaking in Hebrew and of living in Hebrew is incomplete when it is not experienced in Israel. It is one thing to pray in a synagogue in Hebrew or even to speak regular Hebrew outside of Israel. The former is a spiritual duty and a communal experience. The latter is a social or educational experience. But speaking Hebrew in Israel is a complete experience. Hebrew localizes Jewishness, Judaism and Jews. It anchors us to the Land of Israel. Taken together, the Hebrew language and the Land of Israel stabilize a tradition and make the Jewish people whole.
Hebrew is alive and well. At least in the Arab and Druze communities. For students from those sectors, the Hebrew language has become the new business administration - a social and professional catapult to get ahead and succeed in life. The sticklers add Hebrew literature, too. It's a triumph of practicality over ideology. The traditional attitude that language is part of national identity and that to study Hebrew is to cross the line, has given way to the quiet conquest of the Hebrew Language Department - at the University of Haifa by Arabs from the north and at Ben-Gurion University by Bedouin from the south. The graduates are almost always assured of a teaching job, which brings with it a livelihood, honor and prestige, relatively speaking. Hebrew is obligatory in every Arab and Bedouin elementary and high school, and good teachers are in high demand.
But ironically, if Hebrew can be a tool for the unity of Jews and Arabs in Israel, it may also illustrate the disunity among Jews in Israel and those in the Diaspora.
The change came towards the end of the 19th century. In 1896, Ahad Ha'am started publishing his review Hashiloah, he did it in Hebrew.
Ahad Ha'am (Asher Ginsberg). Public domain
He considered it the natural language of the Jews - in any other language, the periodical would be understood by Jews in some countries, but not in others.
Ahad Ha’am’s confidence, however, was misplaced. By the time Hashiloah was founded, Hebrew as an international language was steeply on the decline, and the journal folded after several years—the very years, it so happened, in which the spoken Hebrew revival was taking root in Palestine. As for American Jewry, by the time Ahad Ha’am died in 1927 it had its own literary review, the Menorah Journal, which would have embodied Ahad Ha’am’s editorial vision almost entirely were it not for the fact that it was in English. Most of its readers could not read Hebrew at all. They were the first of the new audience of American Jews for whose benefit the great Hebrew-English translation enterprise of the last 50 years has taken place.
Here, then, is a great historical irony. As long as Hebrew was the first language of no educated Jew in the world, it was the second language of every educated Jew; now that it has become the mother tongue of millions of Jews in the state of Israel, it has largely ceased to be studied by Jews elsewhere. It has in effect been demoted to a Judeo-Israeli, a new Jewish regional speech. In both relative and absolute numbers, far more Israeli and Palestinian Arabs now have a working command of it than do American Jews. [emphasis added]
If an Eldad the Danite were to turn up today, Hebrew would not get him very far. It is in English that Jewish travelers speak to Jews in foreign countries; in English that Jewish scientists in Russia e-mail to their Jewish colleagues in France and Jewish professionals in Argentina write to Jewish counterparts in Great Britain; and in English that our contemporary Eldads—peoples in remote regions making claims to ancient Israelite roots—enter into contact with the world’s Jews.
Rabbi Lau's story would have gone differently if Moshe had gotten off the plane in the US instead of in Israel.
At the same time that Hebrew has become the spoken language of Jews (and Arabs) in Israel, it has become a foreign language among Jews outside of Israel, in a way that it was not before.
Many do not speak it.
Do not understand it.
And some may not even recognize it.
Also writing 10 years ago in The Forward, Philologos writes about the possibility that the slow adoption of Hebrew by the Arabs could lead, in a generation or two, to the integration of Arabs within Israel.
But the bigger question remains.
What will the Jewish community outside of Israel, in the US and elsewhere, look like in 2 generations?
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BDS is taking credit for what they claim is Shakira's decision not to play in Israel.
Israeli media had reported earlier this month that Shakira would play in Tel Aviv's Yarkon Park on July 9. But I cannot find any mention of this on any ticket or concert sites.
LiveNation tweeted this yesterday:
The media has incorrectly reported that Shakira will be performing in Tel Aviv this summer. While no dates this summer will work, Shakira and Live Nation hope to bring a show to her fans in Israel in the future.
Looking at Shakira's tour schedule, she usually plays every other day during her European tour. There is nothing scheduled for July 9, but there is for July 7 (Barcelona) and July 11 (Istanbul) and July 13 (Beirut.)
It seems likely that her people had put in a placeholder for a possible Israel show and that there were negotiations She wouldn't have traveled from Israel to Lebanon directly, so Istanbul would be the logical place for her to perform in between. But while tickets are available for every other stop on her tour through the summer in Europe and the US, at no point were any tickets put on sale in for a show in Israel. Certainly nothing was officially scheduled.
So what happened? Did Live Nation leak the story to gauge BDS opposition? That seems unlikely. Probably the deal fell through for other reasons and the show was leaked too early.
At any rate, the tweet does not say a word about any political motive, and saying that she wants to play in Israel is hardly an endorsement for BDS.
It is worth noting that no one seems to be concerned that Shakira is playing in Lebanon on July 13, when Lebanon has treated Palestinians worse than dirt for decades.
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More than two dozen mortar shells were fired at southern Israel in at least three separate barrages Tuesday morning as sirens blared throughout the area, the army said, amid heightened tensions along the Gaza border.
One person was lightly injured by shrapnel in his shoulder and was being treated at the Soroka medical center in Beersheba. There were no reports of significant material damage. One shell hit a tree in the yard of a kindergarten shortly before children were due to arrive.
The shellings appeared to be the largest attack from the Gaza Strip since the 2014 war, known in Israel as Operation Protective Edge.
The head of the Eshkol region told Channel 10 news that the army told him the attack was carried out by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group, as revenge for the Israel Defense Forces killing three of its members in a cross-border exchange earlier in the week.
The Iran-backed Islamic Jihad did not immediately take responsibility for the mortar attacks, but its spokesperson praised them, saying “the blood of our people is not so cheap that the terrorists (Israel) can do what they want without deterrence.”
Islamic Jihad and Hamas media are reporting on the mortar attacks and praising them, but for the past few years terror groups have not been as interested in taking responsibility for them.
The reason is that they don't want Israel to target them.
But Hamas is responsible in the end, and Hamas has stopped many rocket and mortar attacks in the past because it cannot afford a war.
This seems to be a tactical blunder on Hamas' part, as it has been successful in convincing the world that the Gaza riots were "peaceful protests" and it is hard to portray mortars as peaceful. Indeed, the EU and UN condemned this attack, but only condemned Israel for its response to the Gaza riot.
Terror media are showing photos of missiles fired from Gaza but they do not appear to be from this morning's attack, rather old file photos.
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Deir Yassin is one of the founding myths of the Palestinian narrative, according to which Israelis murdered 254 people, committed rapes, and other gender-oriented atrocities in a peaceful 1948 Palestinian village. For the past five years, I have carried out an in-depth research into the affair, learned to know the village, who lived there and where, their names, and above all, the exact circumstances of death of each of the people killed there. The results were astounding, but clear. There was no massacre in Deir Yassin. No rapes. Lots of unfounded Palestinian propaganda.
On 9 April 1948, combined forces of the Jewish Etzel and Lehi underground organizations attacked Deir Yassin, an Arab village west of Jerusalem. It was four months after the eruption of hostilities between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, and about a month before the termination of the British mandate and the establishment of the State of Israel. The nature of this attack became one of the most controversial issues in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, serving the Palestinians as a proof for Israeli inhumanity. For almost seven decades, an anti-Israeli biased literature described it as an intentional and deliberate massacre of defenseless Arab villagers, accompanied by rapes and other atrocities.
What really happened in Deir Yassin? Contrary to what one could expect, I found that the testimonies of the Jewish attackers on the one hand, and the Arab survivors on the other hand, were surprisingly similar, at times almost identical. My methodology, therefore, was to integrate the testimonies of both parties involved, Jews and Arabs, into one story. I relied on a vast number of testimonies and records from 21 archives (including Israeli, Palestinian, British, American, UN and Red Cross), many of them yet unreleased to the public, and hundreds of other sources. My findings were basically two: no massacre took place in Deir Yassin, but on the other hand, the false rumors spread by the Palestinian leadership about a massacre, rapes and other atrocities, drove the Palestinian population to leave their homes and run away, becoming a major incentive for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem.
No Massacre
Deir Yassin was not the peaceful village many later claimed it to be, but a fortified village with scores of armed combatants. Its relations with the adjacent Jewish neighborhoods were troubled for decades and the Jews believed it to endanger the only road from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, thus constituting part of the Arab siege of Jewish Jerusalem. Therefore, although later denying it for political reasons, the Jewish main militia in 1948, the Haganah, sanctioned the attack and later took part in it by means of its striking force, the Palmach.
On May 14 more than 60 people in Gaza were killed during protests that were the culmination of the “Great Return March” organized by Hamas. Two days later a group of 50 Jewish activists, some affiliated with well known groups, attended a Jewish prayer event at Parliament Square in London to, in the words of one attendee “express grief and anger in the most Jewish way possible.”
Have 50 Jews from different groups in the UK, or anywhere else, ever held a mass Kaddish for other groups? Have they ever held a Kaddish for the dead in the Rwandan genocide? Or Rohingya refugees? Or thousands of Yazidis machine-gunned to death by Islamic State? Or for hundreds of Israelis killed during the Second Intifada? Or for Jewish victims of antisemitism, whether in the AMIA Jewish Community Center bombing in 1994 or the murder of Ilan Halimi in 2006?
It doesn’t seem so. Only one group has received such a Kaddish, and only once, in a public place for all to see.
Palestinians didn’t ask for Kaddish to be said for them. They didn’t ask to become part of a Jewish mourning ritual. They had their own mourning tents in Gaza, their own prayers. But no one who said Kaddish for them in Parliament Square seemed particularly interested in Islamic mourning, or in live-streaming a mourning tent from Gaza. They wanted to say Kaddish – they wanted to colonize the dead in Gaza for a kind of theater in London.
I read two accounts of the Kaddish prayer in London, by two participants. One uses the word “Jew” or “Jewish” 10 times, the other five times. One uses the term “Gazans” once and the other uses the term “Palestinian” once. This incredible imbalance between self-references and references to the other – the group supposedly being prayed for – illustrates that the event wasn’t about Palestinians, it was about Jews.
As the news became public, social media comments were filled with the anger of many in the Jewish community. Some of these comments were indeed outrageous. Why people make comments such as ‘I hope you commit suicide‘ is totally beyond me. But as awful as this may be, this isn’t news that is specific to this event. We know social media comments are full of hate. I personally receive ‘hate mail’ almost daily. Focusing on this element, rather than the fact that Jewish groups are creating extremists, was a matter of choice. It became a successful exercise in deflection.
Jewish News published a blog written by someone who had said Kaddish for terrorists.
Jewish News extremists blog
It wasn’t the blogger who chose to use the word ‘murder’ in the headline, it was the Jewish News editorial team (the Jewish News later changed the disgraceful headline). The blogger merely whines her way to the conclusion that Israel ‘does not value human life’. In any event, a party of forty-five extremists had been given a voice in the Jewish News.
How about giving Kahanist views airtime? Or does the paper’s pandering to more extreme views only reach out in one direction?
Forty-five people and one blog. Enough, right? Wrong. One hour later there was another one.
The second blog ran with an identical tune. Like the first it misled readers by suggesting the Kaddish group came from a ‘diverse’ range of opinions. Like the first it suggests the author is the one with a superior moral code that the rest of us need to aspire to. Just like the first it whines its way to the conclusion that outside of this band of extremists, Jewish people do not respect Jewish life.
Two is enough right? Wrong. The Rabbi who led the Kaddish also wrote a blog. That too was published. Forty five people – three blogs. But we are not finished.
An op-ed in Arab News by Dr. Majid Rafizadeh describes why Iranian antisemitism and anti-Israel positions are strategic.
To begin with, the clerics did not view their power and revolution as limited to Iran’s borders. One of the vital parts of the regime’s pursuit of regional domination is expanding its influence in the Levant, which has considerable strategic importance in the region. Having a presence in the Levant ensures Iran’s access to the Mediterranean Sea and grants the mullahs a significant edge over the Arab world. Competing with, outdoing, outperforming, and dominating powerful Arab states is one of Iran’s regional aims.
To achieve such an objective, the most effective way was to create an enemy. Which enemy is better than a powerful state such as Israel? From the mullahs’ perspective, having such a strong enemy would justify Tehran’s intensive military adventurism and expansionist policies in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine.
It would also justify Iran’s efforts to advance its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and allocate a significant part of its budget to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its elite branch, the Quds Force, which is in charge of clandestine and extraterritorial military operations.
Secondly, projecting an obsessive hostility toward Israel paves the way for the Iranian leaders to defend establishing “resistance” groups, such as Hezbollah. In truth, these so-called resistance groups act on behalf of the Iranian regime, advancing its interest in the region, and assist Tehran in interfering in the domestic affairs of Arab nations.
Third, having Israel as an enemy helps the mullahs to repress domestic opposition. One of the charges commonly used to silence dissidents and opponents is being a “Zionist spy.” The penalty can range from long imprisonment to death.
Finally, the Islamic Republic is a revolutionary regime that sits on the bedrock of its extremist founders’ ideology. One of the core revolutionary principals of Khomeini and his gilded circle was anchored in anti-Semitism. The execution in May 1979 of Habib Elghanian, the head of the Jewish community, a businessman, and a philanthropist — after a 20-minute trial on trumped-up charges — was the regime’s first robust anti-Semitic message to Jewish communities and the rest of the world.
Threats to annihilate Israel, Holocaust denial by senior officials such as former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and hosting anti-Semitic events such the annual Holocaust Cartoon Competition are common practices within the clerical establishment, and are further examples of the regime’s anti-Semitic stance.
The mullahs’ obsession with Israel has nothing to do with defending and advancing the cause of the oppressed Palestinian people. It is for strategic and ideological reasons; to export the ruling clerics’ extremist ideology, to dominate and expand its influence in the Levant, to justify its military adventurism, and to more easily suppress domestic opposition and dissent.
The analysis seems pretty solid, and the fact that Arab News published it is significant - it means that traditionally antisemitic Arabs are starting to viewing hating Jews as a bad thing, under some circumstances.
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Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
