Monday, November 26, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
Monday, November 26, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Divest This
The tech company will operate anywhere and serve anyone—except Jews in the West Bank.Click Twitter link for the full article:
Two very different organizations took action last week against Jews owning property in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority sentenced two Palestinians to 15 years hard labor for selling land to Jews. And Airbnb, the tech behemoth and online marketplace for lodging, announced it would no longer serve Jewish communities in the West Bank. The two actions differ in brutality but are based on the same idea: Jews should have no home in the West Bank.
Under Airbnb’s policy, an American Jew with a rental property in the West Bank is barred from listing it for rent on the website. But an American Arab is welcome to list his home a few hundred meters away, even though the Palestinian law forbidding real-estate deals with Jews carries a maximum penalty of death. That openly racist policy doesn’t trigger Airbnb’s delisting policy.
Airbnb admits the West Bank is the site of complicated “historical disputes.” Until 1948, the West Bank was part of the League of Nations’ 1922 British Mandate for Palestine, created to become a “national home” for the Jewish people. In 1947, the U.N. General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution suggesting the territory be divided into Arab and Jewish states, an idea the Arabs immediately shot down. Indeed, when the mandate ended and Israel declared independence in 1948, all its Arab neighbors invaded immediately. Jordan occupied the West Bank and massacred or expelled every Jew in the area, took their homes and destroyed their synagogues. Israel only regained the West Bank after Jordan foolishly attacked again in 1967. Many Jews then returned, including to lands Jews had purchased before Israeli independence.
Since then, the dispute has narrowed. Israel signed the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian leadership in 1993, leaving all settlements—the new and returning Jewish communities—under complete Israeli control. Jordan and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1994. To be sure, the Palestinians still demand the removal of Jews from the entire West Bank. But Airbnb’s policy applies only to the Israeli—primarily Jewish—communities in the disputed territories.
Israeli cities in the West Bank are open to any lawful resident of Israel, including Arabs. By contrast, any Jew who enters the West Bank’s Palestinian towns risks his life.
Very important piece from @evkontorovich on @airbnb bigotry.
— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) November 26, 2018
https://t.co/us9VesdXzy via @WSJOpinion
An NGO published a report on Monday charging hypocrisy against boycotts of Israel in the aftermath of Airbnb’s boycott of Jewish West Bank settlements and with the UN Human Rights Council close to publishing a blacklist of companies that still do business there.The New Israel Fund encouraged the Airbnb boycott of Israel
The report by Professor Eugene Kontorovich of the Kohelet Policy Forum said that “major American and European companies like Airbnb, Coca Cola, Ford and Caterpillar continue to legally do business in occupied territories worldwide without hinderance. That is because - except when `Israel is involved - no one believes such business is actually illegal.”
Regarding Airbnb, Kontorovich said that the company was now trying to get itself off of the UNHRC blacklist by boycotting Jewish West Bank settlements and there was a danger that other companies could follow suit. He added that it was unclear whether Airbnb would even succeed in getting itself taken off the list since it was not boycotting disputed areas of Jerusalem.
Deputy Minister of Diplomacy in the Prime Minister's Office, Michael Oren commended the “Who Else Profits II” report, stating, "This treatment isn't being handed out to any other country in the world, which means its inherently anti-semitic."
A past similar report by Kontorovich in summer 2017 alleged that the UN Human Rights Council was turning a blind eye to more than 40 European companies that operate in four other areas deemed occupied territory by the UN.
The other occupied areas listed by the reports are: Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and Russian-occupied portions of Ukraine.
The extremist American Jewish non-profit organization, The New Israel Fund (NIF) is yet again part and parcel of boycott efforts against the State of Israel. Along with its stated policy of endorsing a boycott against Israel, non-profit organizations financed by the NIF were integral to influencing Airbnb’s decision to remove listings for homes in “Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank.”
As a report by NGO Watch noted, “This change in policy was a clear result of a coordinated and well-financed campaign targeting the company by NGOs involved in BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) campaigns against Israel, led by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), in concert with the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), at least three Israeli groups, and the Palestinian Authority. The funders responsible for this campaign include a number of European governments as well as the US-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund.”
Who are these Israeli non-profits?
Kerem Navot co-authored a November 2018 report with Human Rights Watch, entitled “Bed and Breakfast on Stolen Land:
Tourist Rental Listings in West Bank Settlements” which alleges that that Airbnb (and Booking.com) “facilitat[e] Israel’s unlawful transfer of its citizens to the settlements.” Kerem Navot is funded by NIF, and the organizations leaders come from NIF backed organizations.
Who Profits posted a profile of Airbnb, listing its owners, investors, contact information, and details on “listings on Airbnb’s website …in … illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories.”
Airbnb was also featured in the NGO’s October 2017 report and accompanying political campaign, “Touring Israeli Settlements Business and Pleasure for the Economy of Occupation.”
A media outlet financed by NIF, +972 published an article “Airbnb lets you vacation in illegal West Bank Settlements,” which claimed discrimination alleging “thinly veiled discrimination along ethnic or national lines.”
Airbnb was wrong and its decision is racist and Anti-semitic.
Monday, November 26, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Reservation made on accession:
Accession by Jordan does not compel it to conclude with Israel any of the arrangements mentioned in the Protocol. Jordan commits itself to the respect of the obligations contained in the Protocol towards States which do likewise. Jordan undertakes no commitment toward States whose regular or irregular armed forces do not observe the provisions of the Protocol.
Monday, November 26, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Monday, November 26, 2018Elder of Ziyon
The United States Agency for International Development announced that half of its employees in the West Bank and Gaza will be let go in the coming weeks and by early 2019, the operations will be completely shut down.
The humanitarian agency is one of the largest and most important in the region.
The U.S. State Department informed USAID last week that by next month the agency would have to present a list of 60 percent of its employees to be dismissed as the first step in the shutdown that will be finalized by 2019.
The USAID chapter in the West Bank and Gaza began operating in 1994, focusing mainly on economic issues including water, infrastructure, education and health. USAID has invested about $5.5 billion in the West Bank and Gaza in the construction of roads, schools, clinics and community centers.
USAID also buys medical equipment, provides humanitarian assistance to those in need of medical care and teaches lifesaving techniques to doctors from Gaza and the West Bank via Israel and other countries. In recent years USAID has conducted in-service education for teachers, built schools and worked on projects to keep young Palestinians in the education system.
The purpose of foreign aid should be ending the need for its existence, and we provide development assistance to help partner countries on their own development journey to self-reliance – looking at ways to help lift lives, build communities, and establish self-sufficiency.By those standards, has USAID been successful in the territories?
Our efforts are both from and for the American people.
USAID demonstrates America’s good will around the world; increases global stability by addressing the root causes of violence; opens new markets and generates opportunity for trade; creates innovative solutions for once unsolvable development challenges; saves lives; and advances democracy, governance, and peace.
“Suppose the Exodus from Egypt had never occurred. Suppose the Romans never exiled the Jews. Suppose also that there had been no Jews in antiquity. Even then, the justification for establishing their nationhood in Israel would be valid along the lines I tried to explain in my article “From rabid Zionism to egalitarian Zionism” (November 9, 2018).For the full article click via twitter:
Shlomo Sand’s response to my arguments (“The twisted logic of the Jewish historic right to Israel,” November 16, 2018), misses that central point. In this sense he’s like Naftali Bennett. The education minister carries an ancient coin in his pocket in order to prove Jewish ownership of the land since antiquity. Sand’s understandable revulsion at the Jewish-national implications of Bennett’s version of nationalism, based on that coin, leads him to reject Zionism in its entirety.
The justification I tried to provide for this ideology frees us both from Bennett’s coin and from Sand’s contentions against it. It’s anchored not in the history of the Jews in antiquity, but rather in two pivotal facts regarding their history in modernity.
Fact 1: A major component of the Jews’ social profile in modernity, in their own eyes, and in the eyes of their surroundings, is that of group originating in Palestine in antiquity. It doesn’t take a historian to recognize this fact. Suffice it to read the Passover Haggadah, be a tourist in Florence or listen to the “Passions,” preferably Bach’s.” (h/t dov)
Israel is important as an embodiment of Jewish self-rule not only for its own Jews, but for world Jewry as a whole | Opinionhttps://t.co/6deq5zCZad
— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) November 24, 2018
Monday is the tenth anniversary of the Mumbai terror attacks, and the event is being marked with a renaming ceremony at the Chabad center that was one of the targets.France gave 'sensitive' intel to Palestinians during Second Intifada
On November 26, 2008, ten terrorists from the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group entered Mumbai by sea and launched a coordinated gun-and-bomb assault on multiple sites in India’s most populous metropolis, killing 166 people — including six Jews at the Nariman House.
A decade after the carnage, the Chabad center is being renovated, and the fifth floor — where the murdered Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg lived with their two-year-old son Moshe (who survived the attack, thanks to the heroism of his nanny, Sandra Samuel) — is to be named the “Nariman Lighthouse” and serve as a memorial to the victims of the Mumbai attacks.
“We hope that viewing this will teach visitors the power of adding light,” Rabbi Israel Kozlovsky — the current head of the Nariman House — told Lubavitch.com. “We want to create waves of good that will spread until the whole world is filled with it.”
Former intelligence officer slams France’s “short-termist” policy to help militant groups for immediate securi
France worked closely with Palestinian Authority during the late 1990's and 2000's, including during the Second Intifada ("uprising") against Israel, providing training and delivering "sensitive intelligence" to the PA's security services, a former officer in the French secret service told i24NEWS on Wednesday.
Speaking with i24NEWS defense correspondent Mattias Inbar on his French-language weekly Defense program, Pierre Martinet said that “France, via its secret service, trained Palestinian agents in France” and that the French government delivered “sensitive materials to the Palestinian administration via the diplomatic bag”.
The diplomatic bag is an expression to describe a physical package that is used by a diplomatic mission to exchange correspondences with its home country. It cannot be officially scrutinized by another country’s border protection agencies and benefits from the same kind of diplomatic immunity as its owners.
The ‘bag’ can be anything, but is most often an actual suitcase.
"Unofficially we have collaborated with different [foreign] services, more notably with Palestine at different times. We worked with them on training and delivery of certain materials....through back-channel diplomacy," Martinet said.
Sunday, November 25, 2018Elder of ZiyonAcademic fraud, hamasThis article sheds light on poetry written by two of the most prominent leaders of Hamas, assassinated by Israel in 2003 and 2004, respectively: Ibrahim al-Maqadmah and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. Both leaders took part in the creation of Hamas and propagated its ideology in political, cultural and other fields. Poetry, being the premier form of artistic expression in the Arab world, is used by the leaders of Hamas to present their experiences in Israeli prisons, and their vision and involvement in the Palestinian struggle. The sentiments that their poetry expresses, reveal deep and nuanced cultural, political and philosophical dimensions. The poetry of Hamas can be characterized as one of commitment, suffering, pain, longing, defiance, and certainty.
Al-Rantisi became the movement’s leader following the assassination of founder Ahmad Yasin by Israel in 2004, and was himself assassinated by Israel later that year. Ibrahim al-Maqadmah was also assassinated by Israel in 2003. Both had similar life experiences, and ultimately shared the same cruel fate, like many other Palestinian intellectuals.
In these lines, al-Rantisi shows an existential paradox, wherein Palestinian lives have been disrupted and deprived of normality: on the one hand, there is the desire to live in peace and to see fulfillment of one’s needs and desires, and on the other, there are the forces which have rendered impossible the fulfillment of these needs and desires. Confronted by this dilemma, al-Rantisi chooses to resist injustice."Justice," of course, is the destruction of Israel.
Better to die than to live as a coward… here you are rotting in a prison with no price/ tomorrow you die, and you will be buried/ O, pity on me, to whom you would leave your sons/ and the wife you will leave behind to wolves…I fear that you would be exiled tomorrow/ you would leave your house derelict; complain over the ruins/ you search for a trusted friend/ to cry for you or share the suffering with you…I forewarn you my son not to bow to an idol, not to return the sword to the sheath/ go in life as you like; I would not be satisfied with such a life without struggle.
This is a moving poem, clouded by paradoxes and occasional mysteries, such as when he fears that his wife would be left to wolves if he dies. Wolves are depicted as representing the ultimate danger; he understandably is racked with worry over the state of his wife and his sons if he is not to be with them. Here, the poet depicts himself as ‘the man, guardian, of the house’ who ensures the safety and security of his family. But finally, Al-Rantisi beckons his son not to give up: what is at stake deserves sacrifices; not doing so would be tantamount to surrendering to the forces that deny Palestinians a life of dignity and peace.
poetry , Hamas , Arabic literature, Islamic poetry, prison, commitment, pain, defiance, hope and optimism
[W]ithin the grand scheme of Hamas’ ideology, an independent Palestinian state is only a stepping stone towards the realization of a larger Islamic polity that would encapsulate territories larger than Palestine, and ultimately culminates in an Islamic caliphate.This guy is teaching swooning college students how wonderful Hamas is.
Sunday, November 25, 2018Elder of Ziyon
It is not surprising that the Zionist racists are rooting and renewing their terrible crimes, ready to re-establish their criminal history, against the so-called "goyim," Christians and Muslims in particular. But the silence the world on all of this, this terrible racist crime, represented by the Israeli occupation of Palestine and its criminal practices, is surprising and insulting and condemnable.
And "Bibi", located in the center of the celebration, participating in the anniversary of the end of the Great World War. For this occasion he celebrated the Nakba of innocent Palestinian Arab blood, to drink there...The Zionist racists are celebrating their religious feasts, where they make their unleavened bread on the high holidays, thoroughly soaked in the blood of the Goyim. The terrible incident that took place in the "Bab Touma" neighborhood of Damascus, is still in memory. On February 6, 1840, Eid al-Fitr, two innocent human members of the "Goyim = the Gentiles" Padre Tomasso, a Christian cleric and pharmacist, followed by Ibrahim Amara, were massacred by the people of the Bibi Netanyahu...On the evening of the festive day, on Sunday 11/11/2018 (Bibi celebrated) with the blood of "Goyim = Gentiles" of Muslims in the Gaza Strip, Mohammed Baraka, and the Mujahideen al-Qassam Brigades: Muhammad Majid al-Qara, Alaa al-Din Fawzi Vseifis, Mahmoud Attallah Musbah, Mustafa Hassan Abu Odeh, Omar Naji Abu Khater and Khaled Muhammad Qweider from the Salah al-Din Brigades.In a column last month Ursan describes "Zionists" (obviously meaning Jews) by saying "they have chosen to lie down in the ladder of human decay by disguising themselves as a common human being......They are racist killers, spoilers in the land through history..."
Sunday, November 25, 2018Elder of Ziyon
The president of Chad, Idriss Déby, will visit Israel this week, an unprecedented trip for the leader of the Muslim-majority nation in Central Africa, which does not have diplomatic relations with the Jewish state.
His arrival was confirmed Sunday by state-owned media in Chad.
Under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem has in recent years intensified its contacts with various Muslim states in Africa, including Mali and Somalia.
Senior Israeli officials have recently traveled to N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, to prepare Déby’s visit to Israel and to prepare the ground for a possible renewal of diplomatic relations.
Credible sources say Idriss Déby will pay an official visit to Israel on Sunday, November 25, 2018. This will be first official visit since his coming to power, and the first since the break-up of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1968.The presence of an advance team from Israel was noted in one other newspaper and greeted with suspicion:
Israel has always been at the heart of the MPS security system... One can still recall the close cooperation in terms of listening and intelligence between technicians from the Jewish state and the ANS team at the time. Chad's political police (ANS) had benefited from sophisticated intelligence equipment to deal with Sudan and rebellions that coveted the presidential chair. Many observers still remember having heard on the Chadian radio exchanges between the current chief of intelligence Sudan Salah Gosh and officials of the Chadian rebellion. This interception of the communications was made thanks to the technical tools of the Israelis.
In addition, RAM armored vehicles and some of the current equipment of the presidential guard also come from Israel.
Today in the current context, many observers of the Chadian policy analyze this trip in relation to the current security situation in the country.
... Let's hope Déby does not say that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel to attract the good graces of Zionism ...
About twenty Israeli citizens have been staying in Chad for a month; their arrival and stay are directly managed by Deby in person, even the ANS is not involved. With the direct involvement of Deby, speculation is high on their exact role; some think they would be in charge of Deby's personal safety, others argue they assist with wiretapping. The fact remains that Chadians have the right to know their true status... aid workers, or even mercenaries like the pilots of fighter jets paid for by the Chadian taxpayer?This is yet another breathtaking diplomatic breakthrough by Netanyahu. Muslim-majority nations can no longer be expected to automatically adhere to the boycotting of Israel that occurred after 1967.
Saturday, November 24, 2018IanAbbas was similarly blindsided by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to Oman, and Minister of Culture and Sports Miri Regev’s visit to Abu Dhabi for the world judo championships.Top Historian Simon Schama: Remember the Expulsion of Jews From Arab Countries
The recent almost-war with Hamas taught us a lot about the terror regime. It also taught us a lot about Hamas’s rival, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority it controls in Ramallah. Israel’s most urgent task is to understand the implications of what we now know.
The first thing we learned about Hamas is that its control over Gaza is all encompassing.
This week, the media published the communications between Hamas forces during their battle with IDF Special Forces in Gaza on November 11. From those communications we learned that Hamas forces detected the vehicle carrying the Israeli forces very quickly. While they didn’t know who was in the vehicle, they knew the vehicle was suspicious and dispatched a force to intercept it.
Hamas’s ability to detect the vehicle and act swiftly to intercept it demonstrated the terror regime’s ability to use both technological and physical assets to maintain its control over Gaza in a manner reminiscent of the Stasi in East Germany.
THE ALMOST-WAR with Hamas last week also taught us that contrary to the longstanding assessment of the IDF’s General Staff, Hamas is not at all interested in reaching a long-term ceasefire with Israel and therefore there is no point in trying to negotiate one.
For the past several months, various experts inside the Israeli government and military and in foreign countries have claimed that Hamas’s leadership in Gaza is split between two factions.
Prominent historian Simon Schama on Friday called for commemorating the expulsion of over 800,000 Jews from Arab countries that followed the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
“This is so important — 800,000 Jewish refugees — When exactly next week is the day of commemoration of THEIR naqba?” Schama asked, using the Arabic word for “catastrophe” commonly used to describe the experience of Arab refugees during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.
Schama’s acclaimed recent book and TV series, “A History of the Jews,” includes a detailed account of the uprooting of Jewish communities from North Africa to Yemen, in which he contrasts the silence around this question with the attention given to the Palestinian issue.
November 30 — a week from today — is marked in Israel as an official commemoration of the expulsion of the Jews from the Arab countries and, later, from Iran. It falls, symbolically, one day after the anniversary of the UN resolution in favor of partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, which is officially commemorated by the UN as an “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”
The November 30 commemoration in Israel has been held since 2014, when it was formally established in legislation passed by the Knesset.
Many Jewish organizations in the US and around the world also remember the expulsions on the same day.
Jewish leaders are calling for new editions of the Bible and Koran to carry warning messages which highlight anti-Semitic passages in the holy texts.
The recommendations have been made in a new document called ‘An End to Antisemitism! A Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism’.
It was produced following an international conference organised by the European Jewish Congress, at which academics gathered to discuss how prejudice and discrimination can be tackled.
Among the policies mentioned in the document was the idea of warning messages in holy texts, a topic discussed in a chapter entitled 'recommendations regarding Religious Groups and Institutions'.
The document reads: 'Translations of the New Testament, the Qur’an and other Christian or Muslim literatures need marginal glosses, and introductions that emphasize continuity with Jewish heritage of both Christianity and Islam and warn readers about antisemitic passages in them.
'While some efforts have been made in this direction in the case of Christianity, these efforts need to be extended and made consistent in both religions.' (h/t jzaik)
Saturday, November 24, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
