Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 16, 2018

BDS and International Law - 1 (Divest This!)

Champions of legislation in Ireland calling for a boycott against Israel (and Israel alone) for the crime of “Occupation” struggled to craft a measure that would define “occupation” so narrowly as to exclude every other dispute in the world (from China’s domination of Tibet to Turkey’s conquest of half of Cyprus) where one nation is in control of another’s territory.

While the legal response to Ireland’s boycott legislation has interesting ramifications, the attempt to create law specifically to punish one nation for an alleged crime that could easily be directed at many others, and justify this injustice using the language of “international law,” got me thinking about whether the concept of international law truly exists.

In previous postings, I’ve written about how BDS supporters would like to turn the Middle East conflict from a political dispute to a legal one since political disputes can only be solved via compromise (which they’re not interested in) while legal ones require no such compromise but simply the demand that anyone acting illegally stop doing so.

But to get beyond the politics to the core of the matter, we must look first not at international law, but at law itself. And the first thing we need to recognize is that rule of law rests on two critical principles: consent and enforcement.

As Hobbes pointed out centuries ago in his Leviathan, agreeing to live under the rule of law requires one to give up a certain amount of freedom in exchange for important benefits (such as the ability to live free from anarchy). And given the anarchy of the religious wars in Europe that Hobbes was living through, he felt it necessary to give up nearly all individual freedoms to live under a state that could keep the law of the jungle at bay.

We seem to have reached a point in history when the freedoms we must relinquish to live at peace are not so all-encompassing. But they are our freedoms, which is why members of a society must consent to live together under a set of rules (laws) for a law-based society to function. Now one can make the case that a child born into a society of laws doesn’t get the chance to make such a choice him or herself. But the pact described above is a multi-generational one in which citizens agree not just to live by certain laws but to raise their children believing that living under these laws is the right thing to do.

Enforcement is the other requirement for the rule of law to function, specifically the existence of an entity with a monopoly on the right to use violence to enforce the law as well as sufficient power to exercise this monopoly. Absent an entity to take on this role as sole enforcer of the law, you end up back with the aforementioned anarchy (or, at best, a society where the blood feud becomes the means of seeking legal redress).

Despite various historical attempts to prove otherwise, one cannot have a law-based society based solely on consent without an enforcing power. Attempts at creating such consent-based societies (such as various communal experiments) either degenerated into violent struggles for power (i.e., the law of the jungle), petered out over time, or existed (and may even continue to exist) as novelties under the protective umbrella of the state.

Interestingly, one can have a law-based society based only on enforcement (not on consent). But these tend to be tyrannies where the rules that are harshly enforced originate from the caprice of the rulers (be they kings or Politburo members), rather than by consent of members of the state.

I mentioned states in the last two paragraphs since, in our modern age, the only institutions that have been able to effectively implement the rule of law are nation states. In democratic societies, both consent and enforcement exist together, while in totalitarian states the rule of law is implemented by enforcement alone. But outside of a cohesive political entity within defined borders and a citizenry that understands themselves to be members of a society within those borders, how one defines the rule of law becomes much less clear.

This becomes particularly apparent when you start to discuss international law which neither emerges from the consent of the governed nor exercises (or even possesses) the kind of enforcement mechanism needed to implement its judgments.

So in an era when nation states are still the primary political actors on the world stage, what are the origins and what is the significance of what we call international law?

To be continued…

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The Carter Center recently published a 128-page book called "Countering the Islamophobia Industry: Toward More Effective Strategies."

The title itself reeks of bias. While there are indeed plenty of anti-Muslim people and some groups in the US, it is hardly an "industry" that is endangering Muslims in America.

Jimmy Carter himself wrote the forward.

The most problematic article was written by Rabab Abdulhadi, the San Francisco State University professor who said that Zionists should not be welcomed on campus, and who bitterly complained when SFSU's president disagreed.

This was one of the people that the Carter Center chose as qualified to write about Islamophobia, and she did not disappoint.

Her abstract:

This policy paper reflects on the structural character and history of Islamophobia arguing that the Islamophobia industry corresponds to and overlaps with a powerful Israel lobby industry, a network of Zionist groups that is well-funded and politically well-connected. The goal of this Islamophobia/ Israel lobby industry is to utilize racism and fearmongering relying on their powerful funders and political connections to silence, intimidate and bully scholars, educators and advocates for justice in/for Palestine in McCarthyist-style attacks against dissenting voices.

Drawing on my scholarship in Arab, Muslim, and Palestine studies and critical race theory and my lived experience as Director and Senior Scholar of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies program at San Francisco State University,7 I offer here an anatomy of this industry, its connections and funding, as well as its goals. I do so to illustrate that this Israel lobby industry is not a grass-roots movement but rather a well-planned, well-connected, and powerful force that intentionally utilizes multiple forms in its racist and xenophobic arsenal to weaponize attacks against Muslims and Arabs, including Palestinians. I then focus on the Islamophobic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian framing that grounds this industry and highlight in particular the gendered and sexualized Orientalist imagery enlisted by this industry to promote its agenda.

To say that the "Israel Lobby" (which she purposefully conflates with any pro-Israel organization) is inherently Islamophobic is scurrilous and false.

Abdulhadi also conflates anti-Palestinian speech with Islamophobia.

So throughout her essay she uses the phrase "Islamophobia/Israel lobby industries" dozens of times, a classic method of propaganda where the reader automatically associates the two together no matter how tendentious her arguments. And her arguments are absurd, taking as a given that someone like Daniel Pipes is an Islamophobe (he is most certainly not, and I once went through dozens of "examples" of his supposed Islamophobia sent to me by a Muslim correspondent and showed that literally every one was taken out of context.)

She shows supposed links between people like Pipes and any pro-Israel organization to smear literally every Zionist organization in America, and to imply that these Islamophobes are highly connected in the government. This one paragraph shows how her entire "research" is to find tenuous connections that have nothing to do with any actual Islamophobic positions.

This structure of the industry also makes clear the overlapping network of Islamophobia and Israel lobby industries. This network is made up of a small number of individuals who sit on each other’s boards and rotate positions. For example, Daniel Pipes, named as a leading Islamophobe by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), sat on the board of Scholars of Middle East Peace. The co-founders of AMCHA also served on that board. Pipes was connected to the Clarion Project, on whose board Frank Gaffney served. Pipes acted as an intermediary, parsing out funding while receiving funds from eight of the 11 major donors cited by the IJAN Report. While the Islamophobia and Israel lobby industries cannot be classified as a grass-roots movement, the resources placed at these industries’ disposal makes their impact quite devastating in their campaigns to destroy careers and create a chilling effect among academics and campus advocates. In addition to their funding, the Islamophobia and Israel lobby industries are well connected politically to the highest echelons of the U.S. government. For example, Shelden [sic] Adelson is a major donor to the Israel lobby industry to the tune of $50 million and was the largest individual donor to the Donald Trump presidential campaign to the tune of $100 million. During the 2017 presidential inauguration, Adelson sat a few feet away from Donald Trump. Trump has appointed several supporters of Israeli settlements and right-wing government to his administration, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman; and his special representative to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, Jason Greenblatt.

This is tin-foil hat level conspiracy theory, that should be enough by itself to cause SFSU to consider whether they want to employ someone with so little regard for actual research.

And she is only getting started. She accuses the liberal, politically correct New York Times of Islamophobia as well:

The coverage, including that of the New York Times, the main U.S. paper of record, of the execution-style murder of three Arab Muslim youths — Deah Barakat, a Syrian, and two Palestinian women, Yusor Abu Salha and Razan Abu Salha — in Chapel Hill, N.C., in February 2015, presented the killer, Craig Stephen Hicks, as a forward-thinking man who supported abortion rights and as an advocate of gay and women’s liberation. The implicit subtext was that of a renaissance man who could not be perceived as a white supremacist killer. Combined with the news reporting that the killing was a result of a parking dispute, the media message directs readers toward empathy with Hicks and away from seeing him as an Islamophobic killer or from understanding Islamophobia as a structural societal context that allows such crimes to occur.

The New York Times article did no such thing. It quoted his wife about his support for liberal causes, and it quoted Muslims about how he was a cold blooded bigot. It also quoted the police as saying that it appeared to be a parking dispute. Perhaps new facts were uncovered after that article, but at the time there was nothing wrong in its coverage - yet the Carter Center is happy publishing that the New York Times is Islamophobic, when not one NYT editor would ever consider publishing anything close to that.

As mentioned, this is only the most egregious example of poor scholarship in this publication. But it shows how little The Carter Center, and by extension Jimmy Carter, cares about truth or fairness.

(h/t Mitchell)

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Palestine Today published video of a teen, Osman Rami Halas, being shot and killed by an IDF sniper.

The video shows that while there were a number of protesters at the fence, Halas was the only one who actually tried to climb the fence - and he was shot within seconds of his attempt.

The IDF issued a statement that during violent riots, "forces identified an attempt to breach the security fence and infiltrate into Israel from the northern Gaza Strip and fired to stop the attempt."

It is clear that the others in the area knew the unwritten rule that they can approach but not climb the fence. While the others make noises and wave flags next to the fence, only Halas purposefully strides to the fence. At 0:25, a friend seems to warn him and tries to pull him away from the fence, but Halas insists while the friend runs away, as do most of the others, apparently because of warning shots. Halas then approaches the fence again at 0:40 and attempts to climb it, and the adults in the area do not try to stop him. He is shot within two seconds.

The leaders of the Gaza protest movement have one weapon - public relations. A dead minor is what they need to get any news coverage, since the riots are now routine. They tacitly, and possibly overtly, encourage teens to approach the fence and get shot. They know that some hotheaded teens like Halas will want to become martyrs.

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The Jewish Fire Engine Conspiracy

This is MEMRI's clip number 6666, which seems appropriate for someone who is saying Jews are Satan.

Palestinian Sheikh Khaled Al-Maghrabi at Al-Aqsa Mosque: Why Did the Jews Invent the First Fire Engine? pic.twitter.com/QBhmE7wVbL
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 15, 2018

Here's the funny part: The story is true, except for the Jewish part.

From Wikipedia:

The first ever Roman fire brigade of which we have any substantial history was created by Marcus Licinius Crassus. Marcus Licinius Crassus was born into a wealthy Roman family around the year 115 BC, and acquired an enormous fortune through (in the words of Plutarch) "fire and rapine." One of his most lucrative schemes took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department. Crassus filled this void by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the fire fighters did nothing while their employer bargained over the price of their services with the distressed property owner. If Crassus could not negotiate a satisfactory price, his men simply let the structure burn to the ground, after which he offered to purchase it for a fraction of its value.

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07/15 Links: IDF levels Hamas training facility sitting on tunnel network; Collier: The anti-Trump demonstration, spreading poison on London’s streets; Hague ICC Soliciting for Complaints

From Ian:

IDF says it leveled Hamas training facility sitting on tunnel network

The Israel Defense Forces on Sunday released detailed information on a five-story building it destroyed in one of its retaliatory airstrikes in the Gaza Strip the previous day, in response to repeated mortar and rocket attacks from the coastal enclave that have pummeled southern Israel.

According to the army, the building was being used as a training facility by Hamas and sat atop a tunnel that fed into a “massive” underground network.

On Saturday afternoon, following dozens of attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups, Israeli Air Force jets dropped a number of bombs on a five-story building in the Shati refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip.

The initial bombs were meant to scare away those in the area, before the subsequent projectiles razed the building to the ground, the army said.

In addition, the IDF distributed “before and after” aerial photographs of another target, a Hamas battalion headquarters in the city of Beit Lahiya, also in northern Gaza, which was hit earlier in the day.

The photographs show that the facility’s buildings were reduced to rubble in the airstrike. The military said the compound was made up of: a training ground, a weapons manunfacturing and storage facility, two commanders’ offices and a logistics shed.

IAF Strike on Hamas Terror Tunnel

IDF deploys more Iron Dome batteries to south and Tel Aviv area

The military on Sunday announced that it will be deploying additional Iron Dome missile defense batteries in southern Israel and in the greater Tel Aviv area, following large-scale clashes with the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip over the weekend.

Reservists from air defense units were also called up to provide additional manpower for these batteries, the Israel Defense Forces said.

“The IDF is determined to continue to defend citizens of Israel and is prepared for a variety of scenarios that may intensify,” the army said.

The air defense reinforcements were a precautionary measure, as the potential remained for renewed violence despite a ceasefire reached on Saturday night that largely appeared to be holding.

The Israeli military said it would take harsh action in response to any attack from the coastal enclave, including in the form of incendiary kites and balloons, and was bracing for possible retaliation by Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.

On Sunday, the security cabinet ordered the IDF to respond forcefully to any case of Palestinians flying incendiary kites and balloons into southern Israel.

As of 5:45 p.m. Sunday, the military said its aircraft had fired shots at three such cells. Injuries were reported in at least two cases.

Despite the more aggressive stance by the IDF, multiple fires were reported in southern Israel on Sunday due to incendiary devices flown over the fence, with firefighters and local security officers working to contain them.

Over the course of approximately 24 hours on Saturday and into Sunday, southern Israel and the Gaza Strip saw one of the largest exchanges of fire since the 2014 Gaza war.

Moroccan in Israel tells his mother not to worry, Jerusalem is safe

Mimoune Oumelaid, the Moroccan whom I've written about before his trip to Israel, is in Israel now, and has so far written eight articles about his experience.

Oumelaid, who appears to be Muslim, has been seeing lots of Moroccan Jews on his trip who have been showing him around.

Today he mentions that he didn't tell his mother about the trip, and finally he called her from a bus in Jerusalem as he was on his way to look at the significant collection of Moroccan books and papers at Israel's National Library.

On my way to the National Library of Israel, I thought of calling my mother, and telling her where I was. On the last time I called, the plane was about to take off from Mohammed V airport in Casablanca towards Paris. I told her I was going outside the country, without saying Israel.

"Mom, if I do not call you after two or three days, do not worry, only a matter of time and circumstances." Then the call ended. I am going to Israel, and if I told her that, I would increase [my diabetic mom's] blood sugar.

On the bus I called her and told her that I was in Jerusalem. She asked me in fear if I was safe from bullets.

I assure her that I am in the city of peace, where the minarets, churches and temples converge, and that everyone lives next to everyone in safety here in Jerusalem, at least here and now.

"But I see in television every day the exchange of fire, the dead and the wounded," says my mother, and I felt she was crying for fear of me.

The bus was equipped with Wifi, and next to each seat was a place to charge the phone, so I ran my phone camera and showed her the streets of the city where there is no war and no exchange of fire.

"Look, there is no exchange of fire, no children stoning, no war, it may be somewhere else, but here, the world is pure and the sky is clear."

I showed her the sights through the window and the streets of the city on the way to Kiryat Edmund and I described the buildings of the city, its gardens, basements, great infrastructure, and people, and swear to her that I am in complete security.

I tell her about what I have seen here. I assure her every time that the city is very safe and that the war, if ever, has ended at least here. I did not hang up until the bus stopped near the Israeli National Library.

Oumelaid attended a workshop on Jews from Arab countries, and met professors and scholars of Moroccan origin.

Many Jews of Moroccan origin were found inside the library. They were there for an educational workshop in "Al-Arabiya al-Yahud" with a university professor born in Fez.

I do not know if this workshop is repeated periodically, in this library, but many Moroccan Jews attended, and came to learn and read Moroccan proverbs and ancient poems written by their ancestors in Morocco about the Jews and their situation.

Mr. Ahmed, who speaks Arabic fluently, tells us about the contents of this library and its history. He said that the library dates back to 1892 and contains more than 5 million books, 100,000 Arabic, Persian and Turkish volumes on the Middle East and 200,000 volumes on Islam. Literature and the study of the Middle East, and 3 thousand manuscripts in Arabic, and 8 reading rooms.

Here is a photo of a hand-written miniature Koran from the 10th century that is among the many Muslim artifacts preserved in the library of the Jewish state.

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On Friday night, at a wedding in Amman, Jordan, a popular Yemeni music artist performed together with an Israeli singer - and the photos of the duo is causing great upset in the Arab world.

Yemeni artist Hussein Moheb played along with Israeli artist and singer, Zion Golan, originally from an immigrant Jewish Yemenite family.

According to reports, this happened during the wedding of Mohammed Saleh Maqsa, the son of a relative of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, at a luxury hotel in Amman, Jordan.

Social media response was swift.

Yemeni activist Mona Safwan wrote on her Facebook page. "The Yemeni or Arab Jew is an Arab citizen. The Israeli of any origin remains Israeli and serves Israel, especially if he was born there. This is normalization with Israelis and not with Arab Jews. A party like this, for example, is seen by Israel as a wonderful normalization

Yemeni blogger Nabil Ahmed wrote to Hussein Moheb, "Art is outside religions, but not now, not with Jews from Israel, even if they are of Yemeni origin."

Writer Akram al-Fahad considered called this horrible spectacle "full normalization."

Remember, this is an Israeli artist at a private wedding in a country at peace with Israel.

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Work accident! Gaza rocket expert kills himself, his son

From Times of Israel:

The head of the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades missile unit was killed in a mysterious blast that rocked central Gaza on Sunday morning, Palestinian media reported.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry reported two Gazans were killed in an explosion in Gaza City. They were named in media reports as Ahmad Husan and his 13-year-old son Louay Husan.

Ahmad Husan was the head of the missile unit of the Ayman Jawda Group of the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, according to the Ma’an news website.

Here's the poor victim:

It is a shame that the Fatah-aligned Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades cannot afford uniforms, and its leaders are forced to do their weapons poses in their street clothes.

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Gazans complain about Israel damaging a mosque. But they are shooting rockets from next to mosques!

Palestine Today quotes the Gaza Minister of Awqaf as condemning Israel for damaging a mosque in its retaliatory fire for over 170 Gaza rockets and mortars.

But here are three photos, showing rocket fire that sure seems to be coming from the base of a mosque's minaret in Gaza City:

From what I can tell, the rockets are being launched from either the mosque's grounds or very nearby.

That is not a coincidence.

(h/t Ghilmeini)

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07/14 Links: Three Israelis wounded as rockets from Gaza hit house, synagogue in Sderot; As dozens of rockets hit Israel, IDF pounds Gaza in heaviest strikes since 2014

From Ian:

Three Israelis wounded as rockets from Gaza hit house, synagogue in Sderot

Palestinians in Gaza fired a salvo of rockets at the border town of Sderot on Saturday evening, with two of the rockets hitting a home and a synagogue. Three Israelis were moderately wounded.

The Magen David Adom rescue service said the three wounded were a 52-year-old man with a chest injury due to shrapnel, and two girls, aged 14 and 15, with limb injuries.

They were evacuated to Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon for emergency medical treatment.

The rocket that injured them landed on the roof of a home in the town. It hit a reinforced bomb shelter in the building, limiting the damage. The second rocket hit a synagogue that was empty at the time.

Several other rockets were intercepted by Iron Dome.

A 45-year-old Israeli woman who suffered from anxiety was also evacuated to the hospital.

'We sat in the living room, suddenly we were filled with blood'

Aharon Buchris, the father whose family was wounded when a Gazan rocket hit their home on Saturday, described the incident from his hospital bed.

"We were sitting in the living room, and the glass fell on us," Buchris, 50, said. "The entire house was filled with smoke, and we were filled with blood. We got shrapnel in us, my daughters were also injured. We were shocked."

Buchris' wife, 45, suffered shrapnel wounds to her legs. Their 15-year-old daughter suffered wounds to her face, their 14-year-old sister suffered wounds to her legs.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said, "Our loved ones, who live near the Gaza border, are protecting Israel. This Shabbat (Sabbath), too, we were with you. We tense up at every siren, we support our forces when they return from every mission. These days are not simple, and we will not allow them to become routine."

"Your strong stance and your strength are amazing. They are an inspiration for all of us. Even when the sirens go off and the ground is burning, you continue plowing, working, walking the paths of your beloved land where you live. We will continue to hit those who seek our demise, and we will not stop until quiet is returned to the south.

"All of us give our deepest thanks to the IDF and to the firefighting and rescue forces, which are standing guard at this time. You are our protective wall."

As dozens of rockets hit Israel, IDF pounds Gaza in heaviest strikes since 2014

Israeli aircraft on Saturday attacked more than 40 targets in the Gaza Strip in the most extensive daytime assault since 2014’s Operation Protective Edge as Palestinian terror groups fired repeated salvos of rockets and mortar shells into Israel.

Three Israelis were moderately wounded when a rocket hit a house in Sderot. Palestinians said two teens were killed and 14 injured in the Israeli strikes.

The surge in violence intensified after midnight Friday-Saturday as the Israel Defense Forces hit an attack tunnel and Hamas training bases in Gaza in response to the moderate wounding of an IDF officer by a hand-grenade thrown during a border riot on Friday.

During the night, Palestinians fired more than 30 projectiles into Israel and kept up the attacks on Saturday, firing a further 100 rockets and mortar shells. Residents of Israeli border communities spent the night in bomb shelters and were cautioned to remain close to the shelters during the day.

In the evening, several rockets were fired toward the town of Sderot. Iron Dome intercepted several of them. Two rockets fell in the town, hitting a house and an empty synagogue. Three people were moderately wounded by shrapnel and evacuated to the hospital, the Magen David Adom rescue service said.

This is our reality: 90 rockets and mortar shells fired at Israel in less than 24 hours pic.twitter.com/tMZAeEgj75
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 14, 2018

07/13 Links Pt2: The Roots of BDS and the Campaign to Delegitimize Israel; Anti-Semitism is the West's self-destruction; NASA will consider sending another Israeli astronaut into space

From Ian:

JCPA: The Spider’s Web: The Roots of BDS and the Campaign to Delegitimize Israel

Summary of the Main Findings

For almost two decades, Israel has been subjected to an international campaign of political subversion – known as the “Delegitimization Campaign” – aimed at undermining its existence as the sovereign nation state of the Jewish people. The campaign operates in the political, legal, academic, cultural, religious, and economic fields, and also includes “direct action” activities such as flotillas or pre-coordinated demonstrations and marches around the world.

Various organizations follow, map, analyze, and examine the central groups and their EU sources of funding. At the Jerusalem Center we have also been following and mapping the main groups that take part in the campaign. Yet, comprehensive and in-depth research is still missing; such research should isolate the main players – their structures and working methods, inner struggles and dynamics within the campaign, as well as the attempts to convey their message in Western liberal language. In this paper, which is part of our ongoing research, we aim to assist in the filling of this gap. This time, we will map strategically significant European countries, each having its own specific weight, as well as the United States. This mapping exercise also reveals that in spite of the unique geo-political structures in each country, when looking at the main players in the Delegitimization Campaign, the picture is very similar.

The move toward Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) on Israeli products, which comprises most of the economic aspects of the campaign, has probably gained most of the attention among the other fields of the campaign. BDS has many overlapping features with other fields of this campaign, yet also has its unique structures. In common with other fields of this campaign, BDS is presented as a Palestinian “grassroots,” “civil society” initiative; implementing “nonviolent” means to resist the occupation. Yet the reality is markedly different and highlights the main tactics of the main players in the whole campaign:

Yair Lapid: The U.N. and antisemitism: 10-year report card

Between 2006 and 2016 the United Nations Human Rights Council passed 67 resolutions condemning human rights violations around the world: against the massacre of half a million people in Syria, the genocide in Darfur, the execution of lesbian, gay and bisexual people in Iran. A long, bloody and tragic list of horrors.

In that same decade the same Human Rights Council passed 68 resolutions condemning Israel. The council condemned Israel, a law-abiding democracy fighting for its life against murderous terror organizations, more times than the rest of the world combined.

And it’s not just the Human Rights Council.

It’s the biased approach, the disgraceful discrimination of UN bodies when it comes to Jews.

Navi Pillay, who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (a different body from the Human Rights Council), condemned the anti-Muslim caricatures published in the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Caricatures looked to her like a violation of human rights. The same high commissioner remained silent when a terrorist murdered a teacher and three children in a Jewish school in Toulouse. That didn’t strike her as a human rights violation.

The situation hasn’t improved since then. The current high commissioner, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, consistently ignores every attack and terror attack against Jews and Israel. The other UN bodies are no better.

Haaretz [click on twitter link]: The Jewish Israeli Living in Iraq and Helping ISIS Victims Rebuild Their Lives

The Jewish Israeli living in Iraq and helping ISIS victims rebuild their lives https://t.co/5CgeaG3h5F
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) July 12, 2018

Talking to: Lisa Miara, lives in Jerusalem and northern Iraq, founder of Springs of Hope Foundation.

How a Jerusalem resident ended in up in Iraq, working with Yazidi child soldiers and women who were tortured, raped and brainwashed in ISIS captivity

We’re familiar with the stories of women who were kidnapped by ISIS and became handmaids. That’s certainly not the whole picture. What do you hear, firsthand, from women who have escaped?

The kidnapped women are forced to give up their Yazidi name and take a Muslim name instead. Naturally, they also undergo coercive conversion to Islam and must take on all the Islamic precepts. Not a few women were simply thrown off high buildings because they refused to pray or bow. There are women who weren’t raped but were stuck in a prison three stories underground, without light or air, without food and water. They weighed 20 kilos [44 pounds] when they were rescued, had no hair on their heads and were suffering from terrible diseases. They said that ISIS gave them one dish of rice for 30 women, once a week. That they were urinated on and were made to drink the urine.

These are stories that no one is taking the trouble to publish. Nor is anyone talking about the insane brainwashing that the Yazidis undergo in captivity. We have an 11-year-old boy who was taken to the hospital in Mosul, where by chance he met his sister, who had been missing for three years and whose fate was unknown. She spat on him and called him a heretic. Of course she refused to go back to her family. Another girl, who was located by the Iraqi army, refused to leave because she thought that the whole world was already under ISIS rule and that there was no point leaving Mosul. And there are, of course, the children. Children who served as soldiers in every respect. On the front. (h/t Zvi)

To Life: How Israeli Volunteers Are Changing the World [featuring Lisa Miara]

To Life is a look at five Israeli organizations dedicated to helping people across the globe. This is a story about Israel you won't see in the news. In keeping with the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam ("repairing the world"), Israel has been at the forefront of humanitarian and disaster relief work since the 1950s, less than a decade after becoming a nation. Since then, the Jewish state has provided humanitarian aid to millions of people in 140 countries around the world. Featuring stunning cinematography and moving interviews, To Life follows Israeli volunteers in Uganda, Nepal, Greece, Kurdistan, and the Palestinian territories to find out how and why, with so many security challenges of their own, they reach out so effectively to help other nations.

Full Documentary

Seen in Israel: Moroccan sardines being sold in stores

Sent to me, seen on an Israeli supermarket shelf:

Only a tiny amount of the tens of millions in trade between the two countries.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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