The Israel in Arabic Facebook and Twitter pages showed this photo with the caption "Differences in religion and belief in one God. #Israel Pluralism and freedom of worship. "
Pretty innocuous, right?
Wrong.
The Twitter responses in Arabic for a picture showing coexistence were really, really angry. There are angry responses to every post by @IsraelInArabic but these were especially vitriolic.
One person even responded with a photo of Hitler saying "We rejoice in killing you."
The Arab media picked up on this, with this article calling it "propaganda" and saying that Israel is guilty of religious and ethnic cleansing.
The responses on the Facebook page were not nearly as bad. Many were supportive of the image. The article claims that Israel is censoring the negative comments, but there are still some that joke about Jews going to ovens.
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Explicit antisemitism continues in Arabic language media.
Felesteen.ps, which is associated with Hamas, has an article about how Jews have always been punished by Allah for their terrible traits, and those traits are immutable.
Allah has always known that the Jews will continue to do the same behaviors in the same way as their predecessors, and will continue towards the deviation and the stubbornness and the disbelief of their parents, not taking into account their fate and punishment, without attempting to alter their own debauchery and tyranny inherited from their ancestors; Therefore, Allah has ruled that punishments should be imposed on them until the day of resurrection, in order to punish them for encroaching on their borders, and for overcoming their orders.
The article notes that the Jews were punished through the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians and Romans, and claims that Mohammed's massacres and ethnic cleansing of Jews were similarly part of Allah's will:
In the era of prophecy the corruption of the Jews was punished by the prophet (peace be upon him), the Jews of Beni al-Naqr and Bani Qayqaa were killed, and the Jews of Beni Qaraidha and the Jews of Khyber were besieged until they surrendered and left the Arabian Peninsula.
For some reason, though, the "Nakba" and repeated defeat of Arab armies by Israel are not considered to be Divine will.
On the contrary; this article tells us that the Jews are the ones who are losing today, not the Arabs in Gaza that this article represents:
In our times, we are witnessing the sowing of corruption by Jews, as they occupy the land of Palestine, and kill its people, jail them, or treat them with injustice.
It may look to some people as if this (divine) threat (of retribution) against the Jews is suspended, because of the state and the power that they have, but we believe that this is not so, because mujahideen and people waging ribat (voluntary defense of Islam) from among the "triumphant group" are still on the battlefields of jihad, confronting this Jewish enemy with all the power they have. The strikes of the Mujahideen still hurt this enemy and shake its entity, hurt its soldiers, and the enemy lives in fear and anxiety, and it doesn't enjoy peace and quiet. This is the continuation of the promise Allah made, and on its path towards the destruction of the state of the Jews, and then the Believers will rejoice at Allah's bringing them victory.
There has been an uptick in explicitly antisemitic articles in Arabic media recently. My guess is that this is a frustrated reaction to the diplomatic gains Israel is making in the Arab world whose opponents must go back to the tried and true methods to incite hate as they attempt to disrupt those ties.
(h/t Ibn Boutros)
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Nine out of 10 of the Democratic presidential contenders in the first debate raised their hands when asked if they would return to the JCPOA, the nuclear deal with Iran that Donald Trump removed the US from in May.
At more or less the same time, there was an announcement of the creation of a new “think tank” called the Quincy Institute (after John Quincy Adams, who said that America “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy”). The organization received pledges of half a million dollars each from George Soros on the left, and Charles Koch on the right. Apparently these politically diverse billionaires agree with Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian-American Council and one of the founders of the institute, that the Iranian revolutionary Islamic regime is not a monster that the US should destroy.
Another voice calling for a return to “engagement” with Iran as opposed to the policy of economic sanctions followed by the Trump administration is National Security Action (NSA), the foreign policy lobby of the former Obama Administration. NSA is co-chaired by Ben Rhodes, one of the architects of “engagement” (which in practice meant payoffs, appeasement, and a guaranteed path to nuclear weapons).
One of the pillars of the Rhodes policy, which was detailed in the 2006 Iraq Study Group proposal of which he was one of the authors (my 2006 analysis is here), is the trading of Israel’s security for concessions from Syria and Iran. At that time, Syria was facilitating the transit of insurgents and Iranian weapons, including advanced roadside bombs that were killing US soldiers, across its border with Iraq. The idea was that the US would force Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria (as well as create a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria), and in return, Syria would close its border with Iraq.
Although Israel’s worst (or second-worst) Prime Minister ever, Ehud Olmert, made an overture to Syria in 2007, almost certainly at US prompting. But Bashar al-Assad wasn’t interested, preferring his alliance with Iran.
The idea of trading Israel’s security for the friendship of Iran continued through the Obama Administration. The Iranians reacted cynically, taking what they could get while still chanting “death to America.” Obama’s Defense Department applied pressure to the Israeli defense establishment in 2012 to scuttle a plan to bomb the centers of Iranian nuclear development, at a time when the window of opportunity to seriously set back the program was significantly wider than it is today.
It’s unfortunate to see that the policy of appeasement, reversed by President Trump when he re-imposed sanctions on Iran, is still championed by the Democratic opposition. But I suppose that “opposition” means opposition to everything Trump does and says, regardless of its merit. And it fits with the anti-Israel wind blowing from the left in America, where the Iranian threat is seen as an Israeli problem, not an American one. Indeed, one sees a congruence of the isolationist right and anti-American left – as illustrated by the supporters of the Quincy Institute – who find it useful to blame Israel for dragging the US into conflicts that it could otherwise avoid.
I’m convinced that most of those who want the US to rejoin the JCPOA – at least those who have given it serious thought and have the background to understand the situation, which excludes most of the democratic candidates – understand that it will lead to Iran building nuclear weapons. This is because the agreement has a sunset date for its restrictions, and compliance with some of the most important of them, like the prohibition of research into military applications, is impossible to verify (the Iranians refuse to permit inspection of military sites). All the JCPOA really does is protect Iran while it finishes developing its weapons. But people think, “So what? Even Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and the US has a massive nuclear deterrent.”
This is a mistake. Unlike Pakistan, Iran is aggressively proceeding with a plan whose first stage is to eliminate American influence in the Middle East, seize control of approximately one-third of the world’s petrochemical resources, establish a Shiite caliphate across the region, and eliminate Israel. Iran already effectively controls Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and is on the verge of establishing a land bridge to the Mediterranean. If it is allowed to succeed, it will become a threat to the West unmatched since the Soviet Union.
Today, according to Michael Doran in the Wall St. Journal (paywalled article here), Iran’s in-your-face violation of JCPOA requirements as well as sabotage of tankers and pipelines, and its downing of a US military drone, are intended to pressure the Europeans (who are seriously affected by disruptions in the oil supply). Iran wants them to lobby the US to re-establish waivers, removed by Trump, that allow Iranian-European cooperation on supposedly “peaceful” nuclear projects. Great.
The Iranian regime thinks it can survive economic sanctions, at least until the end of the Trump Administration. It controls the allocation of resources in Iran, and will brutally suppress popular attempts at regime change. It also believes that it can hold Israel hostage, as shown by its recent threat that Israel would live only half an hour after an American attack like the one that Trump ordered – and then recalled – after the drone incident. It believes that that ultimately the view that a nuclear-armed Iran is preferable to the alternatives will prevail in the US and Europe.
It might, in the US. It is not possible in Israel, where it is understood that a nuclear Iran will have the ability to destroy the country, either with nuclear weapons or with conventional ones under a nuclear umbrella. And there is absolutely no doubt that destroying Israel is one of Iran’s major objectives. The fact that Israel has a protected retaliatory capability gives us some comfort, but not enough to justify inaction.
It could happen that the sanctions will cause Iran to end its program (but this is unlikely). It could happen that the US will bomb the Iranian nuclear installations (even more unlikely). Or, I suppose a meteor could land on Tehran and wipe out the regime (the most unlikely). But, as long as something is possible short of war, Israel will wait – until the last moment, the moment before Iran builds its bombs. Once this point is reached, there will be no alternative. Netanyahu and Gantz are agreed on this, if on little else.
The Saudi king once said that the only way to end the conflicts in the Middle East was to cut off the head of the snake, meaning Iran. He was right. When time runs out, the snake will lose its head.
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A groundbreaking new study of DNA taken from the bones of ancient residents of the coastal city of Ashkelon has put to rest a centuries-old debate surrounding the origins of the Kingdom of Israel’s most reviled foes, the Philistines. According to a paper published Wednesday in Science Advances, the ancestors of Goliath of Gath emigrated from Southern Europe.
In “Ancient DNA sheds light on the genetic origins of early Iron Age Philistines,” an interdisciplinary team of scholars from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the Leon Levy Expedition Ashkelon proves that coinciding with the arrival of the Philistines in Ashkelon in the 12th century BCE, there was an influx of Southern European genetic material in the local population.
DNA analysis was completed on samples from three periods within the Bronze and Iron ages (~3,600-2,800 years ago) from remains of Canaanites and early and late Philistines, which were taken from three sites: a Philistine cemetery discovered in 2016, graves discovered in the 1990s, and infant burials uncovered under Philistine homes.
Through analysis of ten ancient individuals’ DNA, the study suggests that Philistines reached Ashkelon from Europe by the early Iron Age. After two centuries, however, the European genetic markers were dwarfed by the Levantine gene pool, suggesting intensive intermarriage. The Philistine culture and peoplehood remained distinct from other local communities for six centuries.
“With this study we finally have direct evidence that fits and builds upon the hypothesis of Philistine origins from the western Mediterranean,” Daniel M. Master, director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon and head of the archaeological team, told The Times of Israel this week.
Former British MP George Galloway has defended disgraced Labour MP Chris Williamson after he was suspended in February for insinuating that the Labour party has been “too apologetic” over antisemitism.
However, Williamson was reinstated last week with just a warning for his behavior.
Since then, at least 90 Labour MPs and colleagues have called on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to remove Williamson.
In a video published by RT on Tuesday night, Galloway charged that antisemitism is being weaponized to attack people like Corbyn and Williamson.
“The danger is, if you’re calling everyone antisemitic - the whole Labour party, the whole Labour movement, the whole [Jeremy] Corbyn movement - then the real antisemites can go about their evil, fatal business unnoticed,” he claimed.
He said that the analogy of the “boy who cried wolf” is useful, adding that “we are so far down the rabbit hole now of the weaponization of antisemitism as a political issue that it has become not just unjust, not just immoral but positively dangerous and dangerous to Jewish people themselves.”
Galloway called the idea that Corbyn, “who I have known since the 1970s,” is an antisemite “absurd” and “offensive.”
Going on to defend Williamson, the former Labour MP said that there was not a “scintilla of antisemitism or any other form of racism...present in his mind [or] in his soul.”
He said that allegations against Williamson are “dangerous, reckless and irresponsible.”
During his address, Galloway insinuated that people like Corbyn and Williamson are accused of antisemitism for just having books of Noam Chomsky, Prof. Norman Finkelstein, Karl Marx and others, who too have been accused of antisemitism for sharing their views.
An MP is facing deselection for signing a statement criticizing the UK Labour party’s decision to readmit a lawmaker who was suspended over anti-Semitism allegations, the Guardian reported Wednesday.
Ellie Reeves, who is 22 weeks pregnant, was one of 121 MPs and members of the House of Lords who called on opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn to take away the whip from Chris Williamson MP.
The Labour Party last week reportedly reimposed Williamson’s suspension two days after it was lifted, amid an ongoing furor over the party’s handling of complaints of anti-Semitism.
Chris Williamson, a Corbyn ally, was filmed in February telling a meeting that the party was “too apologetic” and had “given too much ground” in its response to anti-Semitism allegations.
The chairman of Reeves’ constituency of Lewisham West and Penge has received notice from a party member who requested a motion of no confidence in the lawmaker, the Guardian reported.
We’re a couple of weeks into a shiputz (renovation) of the larger home
above and to the side of our rented “grandmother’s apartment.” I’m fine with
that. Or rather, I was fine with
that. Until the other day. When ten days had turned into two weeks and counting.
Don't get me wrong. The necessary precautions are all
in place. There is a shomer on guard
for the duration of the renovation. (There has to be, by law.) Dov locks me in
every morning as he leaves. But still, this is a country where many of my
people are killed by people who look and sound a lot like these workmen. It is disconcerting to hear their language, Arabic, all
around me as I sit at my virtual desk in my home.
This street is quiet. If sound comes through my window, it is generally birdsong. When it
is not, it is children playing in Hebrew, or adults speaking in
Hebrew or English, depending on where
they were born. If an Israeli neighbor is in on the conversation, we
speak Hebrew, for we are in the Jewish State.
The shiputz, however,has
stirred the air of the neighborhood, and changed my milieu. Instead of the quiet, calm
sounds of my street coming through the window, I hear the workers, above and around me, shouting one to the other. Instead of “Chanah” or “Avi,” I hear, “Raed,
Raed,” followed by a guttural flow of Arabic, unintelligible to me.
A workman will call down from
the rooftop to another workman inside the kitchen. Someone will call from a
car to the people on the roof. This is a lot of shouting for my street. And it
is shouting in Arabic, the language of the people who kill us.
For a moment, this is disconcerting.
And then it is not. For this is life in this country, after all.
It’s my life, at any rate, and
this is just how it is a lot of the time. Maybe if it been our shiputz, we would have hired Jews. You
pay more, but you help your own people and it’s a safer choice. It is not,
however, my shiputz. It is cheaper, moreover, to hire Arabs, so that is what people do.
At least that is what my landlord
did.
It is upsetting, but as there
is nothing we can do about this, we just get on with life. I with my work at
home, my husband out and about with his work as a handyman, which leads him to
no regular location.
As for my fleeting moment of
agitation, I knew what had brought it on. It was my chance meeting with a
neighbor. The caterers had called to ask if she wanted a security guard at her
son’s bar mitzvah party. She hadn’t thought about it, but now wondered if she should have thought about it. Would my
husband be carrying, she asked, and I said he would. She’d ask a few more
people just to be sure, and I thought that was fine and told her so: “Nothing
will happen.”
And I really meant it.
But since I am a writer, I am susceptible
to any suggestion: my imagination can go a little crazy. This means that six
hours later, once work and chores are over, the loud construction workers having
gone home for the day, I have time to think. That is when the “what ifs” begin
inside my head.
The what ifs go something like this:
What if an Arab worker walks down the staircase leading to my mamad (reinforced shelter), sneaks through
the open window, and grabs me by the throat?
What if, like Dafna Meir, I am cooking supper, when he walks
straight in through the front door with a knife?
What if he comes into the house while I am in the shower, and when
I open the door, he is there, and covers my mouth with his hand?
The scenarios flash by and fear
takes hold. For a moment it is fierce. But only for a moment. And then, like
the workers who have knocked off for the day, it is gone.
I play a stupid game on
Facebook and forget all about it.
That is until the next time.
For instance tomorrow morning
when the workers spill out of the truck to begin the day, puttering and drilling
all about me. Shouting, “Raed, Raed,” as I fold the laundry and the what ifs flash by. What if he comes up from behind? What if he has a gun?
I think these thoughts for a
moment. Then I put them away with the laundry, where I cannot see them.
Hidden out of sight and out of
mind.
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Yesterday I noted that Palestinians were saying that Jews who were reverently and quietly praying on the Temple Mount were "desecrating Al Aqsa."
Obviously, treating a holy place with respect isn't desecration.
However, StandWithUs tweeted a photo that is one of desecration:
Back in time: #Jerusalem during Jordanian occupation before Israel reunited the city on June 5, 1967: when Jordan destroyed the entire Jewish Quarter of the Old City, including 52 synagogues. Pictured is a Jordanian soldier standing on the remains of Hurva Synagogue. pic.twitter.com/G7qda8GFye
The Jordanian soldier is inside the main sanctuary of the destroyed Hurva synagogue. You can see the mural of the Ten Commandments behind him.
And he is posing triumphantly holding an unrolled Torah Scroll, splayed across the rubble.
This is what desecration of a holy site, and holy object, looks like.
Thank God the Hurva has been rebuilt and is now a permanent part of the Jerusalem skyline. Keep in mind that the people who claim to support peace consider that rebuilt synagogue to be an illegal settlement structure.
Meaning that they are far more upset over repairing the desecration than they ever were over the desecration itself.
If Tikun Olam has a meaning nowadays, it is rebuilding the Jewish presence that was ethnically cleansed in Jerusalem in 1948.
(h/t Lenny)
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The PA was unable to pressure Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan to stay away from the Manama workshop and failed to organize an effective Arab-Islamic rejectionist camp against it.
Moreover, while the delegation of Palestinian businessmen headed by Sheik Ashraf Jabari of Hebron went to the Bahrain conference despite the rage of the Palestinian Authority, only one of them was briefly arrested and interrogated. Even though most of them live in the PA territory, the PA only made threats against them while taking no practical measure to prevent them from going – even though the PA said that doing so was “national treason.”
Senior Fatah officials claim that the PA chairman feared to clash with Arab states that sent representatives to Bahrain. The PA’s difficult financial crisis, precipitated by the cutoff of American aid and PA’s refusal to accept tax revenues from Israel, is having its effect. Abbas is pinning his hopes on the Arab League’s fulfilling its promise to provide him with an economic safety net for a few months that will enable him to recover and prevent the PA’s collapse.
The officials say Abbas is trying to stall for time to concentrate on a political effort against the Deal of the Century in November, after the Israeli elections and close to the date when the political part of the American peace plan will be published.
Until then, Abbas will mount a diplomatic campaign to organize an international conference that will include representatives of Russia, China, and the European Union, which oppose the Deal of the Century.
In the aftermath of President Trump’s momentous proclamation of March 21, 2019, many rose to applaud while words of criticism emanated from the usual corners. But as the noise dissipated and the sun rose the next day, two new realities were beyond dispute: America’s stature in the world had risen and the security of its ally Israel had been enhanced.
Now, I look back at some of the lessons learned:
1. Foreign policy must evolve with changed circumstances. Many who criticized the president’s decision noted that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, of blessed memory, negotiated with Syrian President Hafez Assad in 1994 to return portions of the Golan in exchange for peace and they urged that this failed process remain open.
But almost nothing about the circumstances that existed then are relevant today. In particular, the Syrian civil war, in which the Assad regime has murdered or displaced more than one million of its own people and became a client state of Iran, is a seminal event that cannot be ignored. By affirming Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, President Trump has sent a clear and moral message to the world that Syria has forfeited any legitimate claim to the Golan Heights.
2. Brains without courage make for a weak foreign policy. All presidents are smart. If they weren’t, they never would have attained their lofty positions. Past presidents all grasped the need for Israel to retain sovereignty over the Golan. But only President Trump had the courage to give practical effect to this undeniable truth. Courage matters.
3. Right makes might. Some have criticized the president’s decision as one of “might makes right” — a euphemism for the erroneous proposition that a nation as strong as the United States can pursue a policy devoid of any moral foundation. Here, exactly the opposite is true: The United States is stronger because it has acted justly.
The United States has sided with Israel, a nation that at great risk opened its border every night to provide emergency health care to Syria’s sick and wounded, and against the Syrian regime which has inflicted unspeakable trauma upon its own people.
The Palestinian Authority has finally publicized its monthly financial expenditures for the first 5 months of 2019. They show that the PA has paid no less than 234,172,000 shekels (over $65 million), or, on average, 46,834,400 shekels/month in salaries to terrorist prisoners (including released prisoners) in spite of its self-imposed financial crisis.
Based on this monthly average, the PA expenditure on the “Pay-for-Slay” salaries to terrorist prisoners in 2019 should reach 562 million shekels, as compared to 502 million shekels in 2018. This amounts to 60 million shekels or a 11.8% rise in PA salaries to terrorist prisoners in 2019.
Since 2014, the PA Ministry of Finance had been publishing an annual anticipated budget in the first part of the year as well as monthly reports of actual expenditures in each budget category. Based on the monthly budgetary updates, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that the PA expenditure in 2018 on salaries to terrorist prisoners and released terrorist prisoners was no less than 502 million shekels.
Immediately after the Israeli cabinet implemented Israel’s Anti “Pay for Slay” Law and started deducting from the 2019 tax income the amount PMW had shown that the PA spent in 2018 on salaries to the terrorist prisoners, the PA decided to disregard its donor countries’ demand of full financial transparency and hid all its budgetary data. In place of the monthly budget expenditure updates, the website of the PA Ministry of Finance carried a notice saying "Due to the contingency law and legal dependencies with the Israeli side, the financial reports were temporarily suspended." This note appeared for almost three months.
I am actually stunned at this "video op-ed" from the New York Times attacking the idea that America is great.
The myth of America as the greatest nation on earth is at best outdated and at worst, wildly inaccurate. If you look at data, the U.S. is really just O.K. pic.twitter.com/pFrWBH0Zfl
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) July 2, 2019
The title indicates that the authors are practically in pain when confronted with people who believe America is great. "Please stop telling me America is great. It hurts my delicate sensitivities!"
The blurb for the video:
America is the greatest country on earth. It’s a phrase, a slogan, a dogma for patriots. And as we stare down the barrel of an upcoming election, we’re prepared to hear this refrain echo.
In the video Op-Ed above, we argue that the myth of America as the greatest nation on earth is at best outdated and at worst, wildly inaccurate. Comparing the United States of America on global indicators reveals we have fallen well behind Europe — and share more in common with “developing countries” than we’d like to admit.
There are two major problems with this video.
One is its tone. It does not look like a "video op-ed" from the New York Times; it looks like a Saturday Night Live skit. Its use of old movies and videos shows not a sober argument about America's real problems, but rather it is making fun of anyone who actually thinks that the USA is great. The objective of the video, including the narrator's voice, is to make anyone who disagrees with its premise into a buffoon. While the authors might believe that it violates their safe space when people call America great, they have no problem directly mocking those people.
This is not an op-ed at all: it is propaganda.
Perhaps this is to be expected from a newspaper that had an editorial yesterday that tried to spin the longest economic growth period in America's history as a bad thing.
However, the video is not primarily an analysis, despite its cherry picking of statistics. It is just snark. It is trolling anyone who loves this country.
The second problem with the video is that it tries to rank the USA's "greatness" according to specific metrics where the US doesn't lead, or is woefully behind.
No one is arguing that America is perfect or that it doesn't have problems. No one is arguing that the US doesn't lead the world in many key indicators. But saying that this is what "great" means is sophistry.
When one asks potential migrants from around the world what country they most want to move to, the US is by far the top choice.
Either they are all idiots for preferring the US to Sweden, as this video would have you believe they should because of literacy rates, or there is more to America than its problems.
This is the point. America represents something that most other nations do not: it is the Land of Opportunity. France isn't.
In America, despite its problems, people of any origin and any race and any socio-economic class can dream to reach the greatest heights. There will be obstacles, but in America those obstacles can be conquered - and there is a track record where those obstacles have been conquered by others.
The mindset from our Founding Fathers that anyone can do anything remains a part of the fabric of the nation. This is what makes America great. And this is exactly what the New York Times is actively trying to destroy.
Cynicism is the enemy of idealism. America is built on ideals; the people behind this video - and those who funded them, and who promote them, including the New York Times - are motivated to ridicule, demean and destroy those ideals.
This video is not meant to inspire Americans to do better, which we most certainly need to. It is meant to satirize those who believe in the American dream. It is meant to insult America itself.
Ironically, the US is the only country in the world that can create a New York Times that can make such an attack. And you are not seeing any significant numbers of Americans rushing to move to Europe where things are supposedly so much better.
There are reasons for this, and this video is meant to obscure those reasons.
I know that this is not my usual topic. However, the methodology used here (and elsewhere) to attack America follows the same playbook as those attacking Israel: Compare your target against a mythical perfection and then hammer at not reaching that goal, cherry pick statistics that suport your thesis and ignore any counterexamples, demean the good and highlight the bad as if that is representative - or, in Israel's case, fabricate the bad.
Both the US and Israel are built on the idea that ordinary people can do extraordinary things against the odds. This is what makes both countries great and it is the reason that there is such an affinity between the two nations. Weakening either weakens both and ultimately makes the world a much more dangerous place.
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A senior Palestinian official Monday condemned the participation of US envoys in the unveiling of an archaeological site in East Jerusalem and scoffed at the “fake” account of Jewish history attributed to the subterranean road.
Saeb Erekat said he believed the tunnel was a project being used by Israeli right-wingers to further Israel’s claim on East Jerusalem and advance settlement growth there.
“It has nothing to do with religion, it is fake,” he told journalists at his office in Ramallah in the West Bank.
He cited reports by two Israeli NGOs questioning the archaeological methods used.
One of the organizations, Peace Now, also says cracks emerged in multiple houses in Silwan after the digging began.
Erekat said: “It’s a settlement project. It’s based on a lie that has nothing to do with history."
This is a person regarded as a "moderate." This is a person that was a lead negotiator for, ahem, "peace."
And this is a person who is actually more reasonable than most other Palestinian leaders!
"Questioning archaeological methods" does not mean that the road discovered that leads up to the Temple Mount is not real. It was clearly used by hundreds of thousands of Jewish pilgrims to visit the Second Temple. No archaeologist in the world denies this.
But Saeb Erekat does.
Which means that (yet again) Erekat is proven to be a liar. You literally cannot believe a word he says.
The Western media, unfortunately, doesn't hold him to the same standards that any Western politician would be held to when they are shown to be knowingly lying. On the contrary, they are eager to interview him. The Forward published an op-ed from this liar just this week (claiming that the US supports "Greater Israel" based on the Bahrain workshop that didn't talk about politics or borders at all.)
A number of years ago, Erekat issued a quote referring to Israel's prime minister, with a saying I never heard and couldn't find anywhere else. Perhaps it is an Arabic saying, but it is clearly Saeb Erakat's personal motto:
“There’s a saying that if you don’t stop a man who is lying after 24 hours, the lies turn into facts."
"How many civilians must be killed to speak of a massacre?" asked Mr Erakat. "The Israeli massacre in Jenin's refugee camp clearly happened and this is a war crime and crimes against humanity also took place".
Mr Erakat had accused Israel during the battle of killing up to 500 people in Jenin, a figure the UN report dismissed, saying 52 Palestinians and 23 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting.
"The UN should have used the word "massacre" or "war crime", especially because the Jenin's camp is managed by the UN," Erakat said.
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Ethiopian Jews refer to themselves as "Beta Israel" and consider the term "Falasha" to be derogatory.
"Falasha" means stranger, exile, wanderer or landless person. Wikipedia notes: "The derogatory term Falasha, meaning 'landless, wanderers', was given to the community by the Emperor Yeshaq I in the 15th century, and is to be avoided as extremely offensive. "
Yet Encyclopedia Britannica still has an entry for "Falasha." It doesn't even note that this is an offensive term. Its online entry was edited earlier this year, so they don't have the excuse of, say, the Jewish Encyclopedia of 1906.
Perhaps worse, the Britannica students site also has an entry for "Falasha," teaching children that this is an acceptable term.
This is racism enshrined in the most prestigious encyclopedia in the world.
(Palestinian Arab websites routinely use the word "Falasha" transliterated to Arabic, and the current violent demonstrations in Israel by the Beta Israel are being followed closely as the Arab media. The Palestinians are anxious to call Israeli society racist, without noticing that their very terminology is racist. But no one expects Arabs to hold by Western standards of not referring to people by names they find offensive. The question as to why Arabs are held to lower standards than Westerners, and why people would be more upset at Britannica than Palestinian Arab media for using the offensive term, is a topic for another day.)
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The chief government figure opposing the bill is Foreign Minister Simon Coveney. Coveney argues that Ireland risks its standing in the European Union because the bill is legally unsound. He is correct. A Brussels-based EU trade official warned the Irish government that "the bill would be in contravention of EU competence on trade matters," as the EU Commercial Treaty demands uniformity in member-state trade policies.
Irish politicians who passed it would likely be regarded as racist, particularly in view of the German Parliament's recent resolution to designate BDS (the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel) as anti-Semitic.
In addition, there could be "potentially huge losses of US tax benefits for US companies with subsidiaries in Ireland, if the Bill is passed into law. This could potentially lead to major US companies pulling out of Ireland, and for other companies who were considering relocating, to not do so."
The bill may also may well hurt Ireland's effort to secure a position on the UN Security Council (UNSC) in the 2020-2021 vote by regional member-states in the General Assembly. Canada and Norway are competing with Ireland for the two seats allotted to the UNSC's West Europe/North America region.
[The] legislation... will harm the interests of Palestinians -- an estimated 30,000 of whom are employed by Israeli businesses in the West Bank... The Ireland Israel Alliance also accuses the bill's supporters of hypocrisy, and cites their failure to condemn analogous situations in which Irish firms invest in international companies that do business in other occupied territories around the world.
Although the "military arm" of Hezbollah is prohibited in the EU, the "political arm" is not, which means that in Germany, Hezbollah is free to engage in "non-military" activities -- such as fundraising.
On the one hand, the federal police conduct countrywide raids on middle-aged Germans who post their thoughts on Facebook, while on the other, members of openly lethal terrorist organizations who espouse nothing but hatred towards a specific ethnic group, the Jews, are not only allowed to march in the heart of the German capital... but are free to organize and fundraise for their purpose.
That participants in the anti-Semitic Al Quds march have been allowed to flaunt their hatred for nearly four decades now, while middle-aged Germans are having their apartments searched for anti-Semitic and racist messages on Facebook, exposes a disturbing double standard in the application of the law.
At the very least, it shows that German authorities appear to harbor extremely selective views of what constitutes hate speech, based, it seems, on nothing more than the identity of the group that voices it.
In all these cases — as with the ongoing crackdown by YouTube and Facebook on “extremism” — institutions are shaping the information environment in pervasive and tendentious ways. In the process, Jewish history is redefined as an infinitely elastic metaphor while inevitable protests and corrections are regarded as parochial Jewish efforts to “claim” history. Conversely, any critical treatment of Middle Eastern history or Islam is “Islamophobic.” The specific effect is to cast Israel as the universal villain and Palestinians as the universal victim.
The extent to which BDS has helped normalize antisemitism was demonstrated at Cambridge University, where statements by former Indonesian Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, including about Jews’ resentment over being accused of having “hook shaped” noses, and “Can you imagine the Israelis taking over Cambridge and calling it Israel? How would you like that?” were met with polite laughter. Similarly, at an Intelligence Squared debate in London, the resolution that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism passed by a substantial margin, much to the satisfaction of an Islamist who participated.
Ironically, progressive vilification of Israel and its supporters, especially Jews, is expanding at the same time that neo-Nazis in the US and Europe are explicitly expressing support for BDS. A recent study showed that neo-Nazis in the US are increasing active in online forums dedicated to BDS and regularly share all manner of antisemitic materials without reproach.
Similarly, neo-Nazis in Germany have begun using the phrase “Israel is our misfortune,” a sentiment that converges with the German Green Party’s explicit support for BDS. The crossover between the two streams was seen recently when a founder of the Green Party spoke at a neo-Nazi event. This comes as the German Parliament voted to condemn the BDS movement as antisemitic. To date, however, progressives have not rejected or repudiated neo-Nazi support for BDS.
Underlying this convergence are longstanding if understated alliances between extremist figures such as David Duke and Louis Farrakhan. While logically consistent (at least partially) from the neo-Nazi perspective, progressive tolerance for the convergence is more difficult to explain. One historical parallel from the 1960s, when elements of the German far-left converged with neo-Nazis over shared antipathy toward Israel and Jews, hints that a similar process may be underway today globally. Whether this will be self-marginalizing remains unknown but the corrosive impact on mainstream political discourse and social attitudes is already apparent.
The Children of Israel seek to corrupt the world, by spreading oppression and evil and all categories of vice, with the intention of destroying the human race.
They want to destroy religious and moral values, and break up social and family ties, and destroy relations between people, using food, drink and sex.
They encourage new trends, and pressure people to buy new products like phones and cars which distract them.
Thus, the children of Israel - the demons of humanity - control humanity .. Utilizing the weaknesses created in our bodies .. And mentioned by Allah.
The author seems to be Syrian and he has a blog that is filled with hatred for Jews. A number of Arab media sites besides this one consider his opinions to be worth spreading.
(h/t WC)
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Elder of Ziyon
