Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, July 10, 2019

07/10 Links Pt2: The Anti-Israel Bias of the UNHRC; Warren Completes Her Total Abandonment Of Israel

From Ian:

The Anti-Israel Bias of the UN Human Rights Council

The Council’s lack of true concern for human rights violations around the world and its single-minded focus against Israel became most conspicuous in June 2007 when its members voted 46-1, to make Israel’s actions a permanent item on the Council’s agenda. From that point and onward, every meeting of the UNHRC includes Item #7 on the agenda: Israel and its “human rights violations.” The United States, Australia, and numerous European countries have been critical of the Council for this fixed agenda item, noting that the Council does not scrutinize countries with far worse rights records than Israel. (In June 2018, the United States pulled out of the UNHRC because of its anti-Israel bias, labeling the organization as “a cesspool of political bias.”)

The final dimension of the UNHRC farce are the countries which have been allowed to sit on the 47-member council. Just to give one example, in 2017, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola were given seats on the Council. Angola and the DRC are countries known for gender-based violence, restrictions of freedom of expression, harassment of opposition leaders, lack of fair and free elections, suppression of freedom of assembly, discrimination against women, minorities, and people with disabilities, and persecution of the LGBT community.

Part of the mandate of the UNHRC is to “address important thematic human rights” such as “freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of belief and religion, LGBT rights, and the rights of racial and ethnic minorities.” How can they have been given the reins to monitor and condemn human rights violations around the world if they are in constant violation of those rights as outlined by the UN itself?

This stands in stark contrast with Israel where there is complete freedom of speech, freedom to protest, religious freedom, full equal rights for women, LGBT rights, open and fair democratic elections, and laws protecting women, minorities, and people with disabilities from discrimination.

JCPA: The Truth about Jerusalem’s City of David – The Lies about Silwan

The ancient Pilgrimage Road in the City of David is one of the most sensational archaeological discoveries to be made in Jerusalem since Israel’s establishment. On this road, remarkably preserved under the ashes of the Roman destruction, many thousands of Jews in Second Temple times, after a ritual bath in the Shiloah Pool, walked about 700 meters up the hill to the Temple Mount.

The site was first excavated more than a hundred years ago by French, British, and American archaeologists, at a time when the State of Israel did not exist and Jerusalem was under Muslim rule.

The City of David, which is under archaeological examination, covers about 15 acres – or about 6 percent of the Arab Silwan neighborhood. The Israeli Supreme Court has rebuffed claims that the digging endangers the homes of Silwan residents and has clarified that it is done under strict engineering supervision and in line with professional standards.

Hundreds of Arab residents of Silwan have been employed in the excavations under the houses of the village – so much so that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority threatened them and forced them to leave their jobs.

The excavations are being done in the vicinity of the Temple Mount and not under it. That has been true of all the excavations Israel has carried out over the years in other parts of the Old City and the Temple Mount vicinity. Al-Aqsa is not in danger; what is in danger is the freedom of scientific archaeological research in this area.

July 1938: The evil Evian Conference on the Jews

Exactly 81 years ago the Evian Conference on the Jews, took place from July 6-15, 1938

Helpless in the face of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed an international conference to rescue Jews who no longer wanted to live in Germany.

The so-called cvilized world gathers from 6 to 14 July 1938 at the Royal Hotel Evian, on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Several factors determine the ebb and flow of the emigration of Jews from Germany at different times. These include the degree of pressure on the Jewish community in Germany and the willingness of other countries to admit Jewish immigrants. With the intensification of legal repression and physical violence, many Jews wish to flee Germany.

Until October 1941, German policy officially encourages Jewish emigration. Gradually, however, the Nazis sought to deprive Jews fleeing Germany of their property by levying an increasing emigration tax and limiting the amounts that could be transferred abroad by German banks.

In January 1933, there are about 550,000 Jews in Germany, less than 1% of the total population of the country.

For a really long time, I wanted an Israel necklace with a pendant depicting the shape of the State of Israel. I thought this would be a unique way of expressing my love for the Jewish State. Everyone has a Star of David necklace, but not everyone has a State of Israel necklace. They are different. I wanted one, and I decided that if I got one, I would put it on and never take it off.

Dov took me out for dinner on my 57^th birthday, and when we were done, we walked around Jerusalem and happened to pass a jewelry store that was still open. We went in and I picked out a simple gold chain and pendant. It’s just an outline of the Jewish State, unpretentious, simple. I like it. And the only time I have removed it was during a medical procedure.

It takes time to get used to wearing something around your neck 24/7; sleeping with a chain isn’t comfortable at first. But I knew that after a while, I wouldn’t even feel the necklace. And I don’t, though in my waking hours, my fingers often wander up to the pendant, to feel its distinctive shape with my fingers, or to adjust the chain.

I love my necklace because I love my country. Which is why it was so disturbing when my son Aharon drew my attention to a website called PaliRoots. The website and its Facebook page market things with the same shape you see on my necklace—the shape of Israel—except they are calling it “Palestine.” They boast that they are “The first and only brand in the world that seeks to cultivate education and awareness about the unique Palestinian culture and traditions.”

Except that they are doing no such thing. Instead, they are pushing the modern State of Israel as if it were a place called “Palestine.” It is obvious that the items they are selling depict the Jewish State, because there never was a place with these same borders called “Palestine.”

Which makes it all a huge lie.

In fact, as Dov remarked when I showed him the website, PaliRoots is not about “Palestine” but about “Not Israel.” Their mission isn’t to “cultivate education and awareness,” but to eradicate the Jewish State and annihilate the Jews. The reason we know this is so is that if they were being honest, the shape of the items they sell at PaliRoots, would be in the shape of the 1920 British Mandate for Palestine, before it was divided up, rather than in the shape of the modern State of Israel, the Jewish State.

I decided I wanted to demonstrate for the people at PaliRoots what their stock would look like, if they were being honest. So I asked a daughter and a friend's son to render sketches of these items using the 1920 map of the British Mandate for Palestine. Here are side-by-side pictures of PaliRoots items with how they should really look, rendered in pencil by my daughter and by Mark David Cherney.

(sketch on bottom right by Mark David Cherney)

I want to encourage PaliRoots to develop a new line based on these sketches. They don’t need to credit me, my anonymous daughter, or Mark David Cherney. Having a more honest line of stock will be thanks enough.

But as things stand at PaliRoots, there are two rhetorical questions we need to ask:

Do they want all of the territory? Or do they just want Israel? Because if they just want Israel, it’s because they don’t want the Jews to have it and because they don’t want the Jews to live on land they deem part of the Islamic caliphate. Because otherwise it makes no historical or territorial sense to sell items with the shape of the modern State of Israel, and call that shape “Palestine.”

The PaliRoots endeavor, it is clear to see, is rooted in hate. This is distinct from the purpose of the necklace I never remove from my neck: the necklace I wear as I write this piece. My necklace with its pendant in the shape of the Jewish State was always about love. To be specific, my Israel necklace is about love of country and my nation.

At PaliRoots, on the other hand, the items on display are all about jealousy and hate. They use the shape of Israel as a template for an idea that never was. Stealing that shape and calling it “Palestine” is all about hating the Jews. It’s about denying Jewish history, expelling Jews from Israel, and ridding the world of them once and for all.

It’s about taking what belongs to someone else. And if you want to know the truth, it just shows what losers they are, that they could have had a “Palestine” in some form or another, if they’d just accepted we’d whupped their butts, and taken whatever they could get in negotiations. But that isn’t what they want.

They never wanted that. They never wanted “Palestine.”

They only want “Not Israel.”

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

In 2005, the Palestinian Authority passed an anti-smoking law, law number 25. It limits and bans smoking in various public areas and in schools. It also prohibits tobacco advertisements, forces cigarettes to have warnings, and institutes fines and other punishments for non-adherence.

Fourteen years later, this law has never been put into practice.

Six years after the law was passed, a committee was established in September 2011 with the aim of following up the implementation of Law No. (25). The PA never followed up to activate the executive regulations and judicial controls and community awareness needed to support the law.

As far as I can tell, nothing has changed. Kids are smoking in schools, as are teachers (but generally not in front of students.)

Ironically, Hamas has implemented anti-smoking measures that are effective. While 26.9% of the West Bank Arab adults are smokers; only 14.6% in the Gaza Strip are.

To give an idea of how dysfunctional this PA government is, yesterday - after 14 years, the Ministry of Health finally decided to ban smoking in its own buildings.

The Health Ministry itself didn't bother to ban smoking in its own facilities until now!

This is only a single example among many about how incompetent the Palestinian Arab leaders are at actually running a government. These types of stories are unreported for whatever politically correct reason, but the fact remains. The EU comes in and spends hundreds of millions to teach them how to run a country and they do the minimum necessary to get that cash, but show little interest in pro-actively governing on their own. Sure, there are lots of committees and meetings but nothing to show for it.

One reason is that the government is a dictatorship, with Mahmoud Abbas controlling Fatah, the PA, the PLO, the cabinet and the judicial system. This is why the priorities are paying terrorists and opposing Israel in international venues as opposed to actually trying to build a state.

When will Western media and diplomats start to wake up?

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/10 Links Pt1: The Opportunity the Palestinians Choose to Miss; PMW: Would you name a kids’ summer camp after a murderer?; Iraqi Beauty Queen’s citizenship under threat after defense of Israel

From Ian:

The Opportunity the Palestinians Choose to Miss

The Palestinian leaders' true intention is to thwart in advance any Israeli or international initiative that would put them on the road to genuinely and ideologically accepting the existence of the State of Israel, which could be interpreted as confirmation of the Jewish people's right to a state in any part of Palestine.

It is more important for PA President Mahmoud Abbas to go down in Palestinian history as one who stood firm against this eventuality rather than to take practical measures that would ease the hardships of his own people.

The recent meeting in Bahrain had a precedent: the Casablanca Conference following the Oslo Accords. There, too, politicians and businesspeople gathered from all over the world, including a few Arab countries. The Israeli delegation prepared detailed plans for economic cooperation with all the parties, the Palestinians first and foremost.

But the unofficial Palestinian representatives (there were no official ones) announced right from the start: "No cooperation with Israel." Thus, Shimon Peres' vision of the "New Middle East," the main project of that conference, died before it was born.

‘Deal of the Century’ and the choosy beggars

How did the choosy beggars respond? “Absolutely not,” they said. “We have conditions. Honorable people like ourselves will not agree to accept handouts unless our conditions are met.”

Throughout its existence, leaders of the Palestinian Authority have set standards of corruption unmatched by any crooked country, infamous junta or unelected dictatorship anywhere in the world. These “public servants” in the impoverished PA have become rich beyond words. How? By stealing from their brothers. Rejecting the assistance being offered is no skin off their back. They have everything they could want. So what if the citizens are suffering? The cries for help won’t reach their corrupt ears.

They also refuse to accept the tax revenues transferred by Israel. Why? Because of the sacred principle they uphold: to pay the people who blow up buses and stab elderly women and children. Israel deducts a small percentage of the tax monies, only the amount designated for murderers and their accomplices through the PA “pay-to-slay” policy. And what do the choosy beggars say? “All or nothing.”

This same century-old attitude has led them to where they are today. But that doesn’t matter to the head of the PA. He has already looted the funds meant for his destitute citizens, and lined his own pockets with enough for himself and his own, down to his great-great-grandchildren. He and his family are certainly not going to pay any price for peace.

“Palestinian honor is not for sale,” say the corrupt leaders. What honor are they talking about? Within a sea of poverty and deprivation, a small, filthy-rich cadre speaks eloquently about “honor” that can’t be bought. But they’re not the ones who will suffer the consequences.

However bad we may feel about what could have been and will never be – whatever sense of missed opportunity about the potential blossoming that quickly became a desolate wasteland before the first seed was ever planted – it is what it is. This offer of prosperity will never materialize because of one simple, immutable fact: Our neighbors don’t recognize our right to live here in Israel, within any borders whatsoever. As long as their desire to destroy us is stronger than a desire to improve their own lives, nothing will change – and no economic or political plan can alter that fact.

PMW: Would you name a kids’ summer camp after a murderer?

Would you name a kids’ summer camp after the perpetrators of 9/11, the New Zealand mosque shooter, or the Pittsburgh synagogue killer?

You wouldn’t, right?

But the PLO readily names kids’ summer camps after murderers of Israelis.

At least 2 PLO summer camps for Palestinian children are named after such murderers this summer. Both are held under the auspices of the PLO Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs.

One was named after the PA's role model terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi who led the most lethal terror attack in Israel’s history, when she and other Fatah terrorists hijacked a bus on Israel's Coastal Highway in March 1978, murdering 37 civilians, 12 of them children, and wounding over 70:

Would you name a kids’ summer camp after a murderer? -The PLO did!

At least 2 PLO summer camps for Palestinian kids named after murderers:
-The Dalal Mughrabi Summer Camp - after murderer of 37
- The Omar Abu Laila Summer Camp - after murderer of 2
More: https://t.co/R6pBbz9c1B pic.twitter.com/DxI1cFvE80
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) July 10, 2019

Posted text: “’In the name of Allah we will say our words, [in the name of] the revolution and the cause, in the name of our righteous Martyrs, in the name of the prisoners of freedom’ - with this shout the girls of the [summer] camp named after Dalal Mughrabi, which is being held in the Tubas district, received the supervisory staff of the [PLO] Supreme Council [for Sport and Youth Affairs], who are visiting the district in order to monitor the running of the summer camps.”
[Facebook page of the PLO Supreme Council for Sport and Youth Affairs, July 9, 2019]

Fatah and PLO summer camp teaches children to honor arch-terrorists who murdered hundreds:

Kids chant song asking for "mercy" for souls of Yasser Arafat, his deputy Abu Jihad, Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin, head of Black Sept. terror org Abu Iyad

More here: https://t.co/cj7I12jci1 pic.twitter.com/vXbGktT8Jb
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) July 10, 2019

IfNotNow plans to "bird dog" US presidential candidates (Daled Amos)

With the presidential campaign heating up and Democratic support for Israel apparently ebbing, the radical left-wing group IfNotNow has now re-formed itself as a 501(c)(4) and is out raising money.

More importantly, IfNotNow has a new goal:

“Our focus is going to be trying to push the candidates past giving lip-service to a two-state solution,” said IfNotNow co-founder Emily Mayer, “without recognizing the underlying dynamics and explicit moves by the Israel government that are creating a one-state reality where Palestinians are denied basic rights.”

The organization is also taking a page out of the playbook of groups such as Black Lives Matter and the American Civil Liberties Union: It plans to “bird-dog” presidential candidates at public events to create viral moments and prod the Democratic Party leftward on the issue of Israel.

In a MoveOn.org PDF on how to do bird-dogging, MoveOn.org describes it as

a great tactic used to directly engage or confront candidates and MoCs [Members of Congress] on our issues at their public events. It lets them know how important these issues are to everyday constituents. The goal of bird-dogging is to put tough questions to MoCs and force them to answer when they are in front of their constituents, voters, and the media.

Bird-dogging can be used to make sure MoCs can’t escape answering questions about important issues and to ensure that we are setting the terms of the debate.

MoveOn.org's playbook provides a checklist on how to prepare for bird-dogging.

For example:

Craft your question.

Ask a yes-or-no question, not an open-ended question. Your goal is to get your member of Congress on the record about a critical issue. Here are some example questions:

■ “Do you understand that by voting to take away the Affordable Care Act, you are taking away my health care?”
■ “Can my fellow constituents and I count on you to vigorously oppose any cut to Medicare, including privatization, which would threaten my ability to retire?”

These are manipulative questions that are meant more to put the person in a corner and pin them down than to get into a substantive discussion.

The goal is supposed to be to push the Democratic candidates to take more left-wing positions against Israel, clarify their stands and draw public attention to the changing attitudes of the Democratic Party. In the Politico article, Emily Mayer -- a co-founder of IfNotNow -- considered Biden and Booker out of sync with the Democratic base on Israel.

IfNotNow started off with an easy one.

They caught up with Bernie Sanders while he was campaigning in New Hampshire. Considering the fact that Sanders has called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government “racist,” getting the candidate to back their cause in condemning Israel was not going to be a problem

Not much of a challenge.

Last year in August, Corey Booker got caught doing something similar:

At the time, Booker claimed that he misunderstood the sign and thought it just had to do with Mexico. Since that time, Booker has continued to support Israel.

In Sanders' case, he didn't have to say a word. So the "confrontation" with Sanders was actually nothing more than a photo-op.

But their next target was Elizabeth Warren.

Here is how it went:

Sen. @eWarren says she’d push Israel to end its occupation of Gaza and the West Bank pic.twitter.com/RuT0Xgdr6a
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 9, 2019

If you do a search online, you'll find there are all kinds of headlines now proclaiming that Warren has promised to end the "Israeli occupation."

But is that really what happened?

They did not pin Warren down with a yes-no question.

All they did was gush all over her and say "We'd really love it if you also pushed the Israeli government to end the occupation"

What they got in return was "Yes. Yes. So I'm there."

Whatever that means.

IfNotNow tried to capitalize on all this with a press release:

In the past, Warren has regularly spoken of Israel as a strong ally in a tough neighborhood and has appeared at AIPAC events and used right-wing talking points. But as her career has gone on, her views on the issue have grown to be farther in line with her progressive values: She was one of the 60 Democrats to boycott Netanyahu’s speech in Congress, she supported the Iran Deal, spoke out against the Embassy move, and opposes efforts to criminalize the BDS movement.

Down the road, they may try to pin Warren down to specifics, but it's not clear what she said in the first place. Considering all the billion-dollar plans Warren is going around promising, saying yes to a vague question is not likely to cause her problems down the road.

Did Warren even pay serious attention to what they were saying?

Here is what happened, without the window dressing from the first video:

Two kids gushed about how much they admired Elizabeth Warren and she shepherded them into a photo op and quickly sent them on their way.

Considering the Democratic presidential field, IfNotNow is not likely to corner anyone who is not more than willing to agree on the issue of occupation.

On the other hand, if they instead ask more pointed questions that address other more controversial issues like the Gaza "protests", then we may see sparks fly.

The candidates are unlikely to be prepared for the simplistic one-sided questions that IfNotNow may soon be throwing at them.

While the media has made a point of not pinning down the candidates on how they plan to pay for the numerous plans they are proposing, the candidates may soon find themselves being held responsible for the stands they claim to take on Israel.

That may not be such a bad thing.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

David Halbfinger of the New York Times wrote an infomercial for J-Street in his story about their trip to Israel:

Birthright’s avoidance of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank has made it the target of angry protests by left-leaning Jewish activists. But for sheer ambition, no critique has approached this week’s attempt by the liberal lobbying group J Street to map out an alternative route for Birthright’s tours.

"Sheer ambition?" As he writes later on, nearly all of the people who attended were already J-Street:

Many of the young people on the tour had been to Israel before, some on Birthright trips, and most were already activists with J Street’s campus arm.

Which means that hundreds of synagogues arrange trips to Israel every year for their members that are equally "ambitious."

The slant of the piece can be seen in every paragraph:

The ride to Har Gilo, just south of Jerusalem, took the bus through an Israeli checkpoint. Hagit Ofran, a leader of Peace Now, addressed the group over a microphone and described how soldiers decided which motorists to stop: “To look suspicious,” she said, “you need to look Arab.”

It was a bracing how-do-you-do for liberals unaccustomed to blunt racial profiling.

Isn't the entire point of the checkpoint to stop Arab terrorists? Would it make sense to stop Jews when they don't try to stab other Jews? Are Arabs with Israeli license plates stopped?

These questions aren't asked, of course, Israel is simply accused of "racial profiling: without a single voice to delve deeper. (Which is the supposed point of this farce of a tour.)

But it was atop Har Gilo, peering out over the southern West Bank, that the travelers began to see troubling aspects of a country they had mainly loved from far away.

Down below was the separation barrier, with decorous brickwork beautifying the side facing an Israeli settlement. The Palestinian village on the other side looked upon a crude concrete slab.

Once upon a time, both villages faced an ugly concrete slab. The Jews decided to beautify it. The Palestinians decided to leave it there, or to use it for political graffiti. Whose fault is that?

Another fact about Gilo that J-Street apparently didn't want their members to know: There was once another concrete barrier between Gilo and Beit Jala, because Jews there had been subjected to constant sniper fire during the second Intifada. When the security improved, Israel took down the wall.

But since that doesn't fit the narrative of evil Israel, J-Street won't say it.

Many of the young people on the tour had been to Israel before, some on Birthright trips, and most were already activists with J Street’s campus arm. But they were still unprepared for Susiya.

Nasser Nawajah, a Susiya resident and activist with the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, told Susiya’s story: Evicted from their old homes just downhill to make way for an Israeli archaeological site, Susiya’s shepherds had set up a ramshackle collection of tents and huts here in their fields, lest their grazing lands be taken from them as well.

Arabs didn't live in Susiya until well after Oslo. Meaning that the entire village is a land grab for Area C, not an old Bedouin encampment that now has cinder block homes.

Did J-Street mention that little tidbit, or did they let the students believe that Israel was demolishing a centuries-old village?

Of course, Halbfinger cannot resist reporting on how the trip changed a long time, dyed in the wool Zionist into someone who is now disgusted by Israel:

By dinnertime, two participants said they were reconsidering their belief in a Jewish state. Jesse Steshenko, 19, of Santa Cruz, Calif., who has a Star of David tattooed on his right wrist, said he was “disgusted” with Israel’s government.

“I came in here a very ardent Zionist,” he said. “You never know when a Holocaust might happen again. Yet, coming here, I’m starting to doubt whether a two-state solution is possible — and whether Zionism is even worth pursuing anymore.”

Interestingly, someone his age with his name was a member of Junior States of America, a mock Congress, and he introduced a resolution that called Israel an apartheid state and demanded that the US recognize Palestine on the "1967 borders" - including the Western Wall and Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem.

Does that sound like an ardent Zionist to you?

Reporters are supposed to think critically. But sometimes, some groups get exceptions.

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Palestinian leaders oppose a new hospital to help Gazans

Last week:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has approved the measurement phase ahead of the construction of a huge 40-dunam international field hospital with 16 different departments near the Erez crossing, to be managed by an international medical team.

The Yediot Aharonot newspaper reports that the hospital will be funded by a private American organization and is meant to ensure a significant improvement and a response that is not currently available in the Gaza Strip to Palestinian Arab patients.

If Israel agrees to build a hospital to help Palestinians, you know what will happen next.

Official PA news agency Wafa writes:

The main objective of this hospital is to establish a separation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, particularly in the medical field. The occupation seeks to control the transfer of patients to the West Bank. Instead, the hospital will contribute to full separation between the West Bank The Gaza Strip and the prevention of the establishment of a Palestinian state.

In this context, Prime Minister Mohammad Ashtiyyeh said in a press statement: "No one coordinated with us about the hospital, which is intended to be funded by a private American institution, and with Israeli approval on the northern border of the Gaza Strip. We do not know what this institution is."

Health Minister Mei al-Kila said that the field hospital to be built on the northern border of the Gaza Strip by the American and Israeli sides is part of the "deal of the century" in order to completely separate the West Bank and the Gaza Strip under humanitarian pretext.

She added: "We welcome any health services to support our people in the Gaza Strip, but not at the expense of our national values, knowing that the government provides medical and health services for the people of the sector as they are in the West Bank."

"The essence of the matter is that any international projects in the Gaza Strip must be coordinated with the legitimate Palestinian government, and any projects away from the government and from the PNA means stabilizing dealing with Gaza as an entity outside the Palestinian context," said Mahmoud al-Zaq, a member of the political bureau of the Popular Struggle Front. "Only one Palestinian government must be dealt with and anyone who does not deal with this government means that it is launching the idea of a political entity in the Gaza Strip. "

Al-Zaq added that "the idea in essence is suspicious and we can not be convinced that America intends to do good for the Palestinian people. Rather, it is devising a political project at the expense of the humanitarian issue in order to end the political right of our people. "

He said that "the establishment of this hospital is not humanitarian, but to deepen the division. It is a malicious conspiracy project that has nothing to do with the Palestinian people, and any movement towards Gaza under humanitarian pretext without passage through the Palestinian Authority is a threat to the Palestinian cause."

Hamas went on to slam the PA for being against the hospital.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said that "the attempts of the government of Ashtiyyeh to disrupt the construction of an international hospital in the northern Gaza Strip [notice how Hamas claims Israeli territory as its own - EoZ] to resolve the worsening health crisis caused by the Israeli occupation, and caused by the retaliatory actions by Abbas and his government against our people in the sector, comes in the framework of their ongoing attempts to tighten restrictions on our people in Gaza and exacerbate their crises and hit the elements and factors of their steadfastness."

The takeaway quote comes from the health minister Mei al-Kila: "We welcome any health services to support our people in the Gaza Strip, but not at the expense of our national values." In other words, Palestinian political power is far more important than human lives.

Which has been the position of the Palestinian Authority throughout the years up to the Bahrain economic workshop.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/09 Links Pt2: The politically correct Quran; Warren I Would Push Israel to 'End Occupation' of Palestinians; Ilhan Omar Admits Lying to High School Students

From Ian:

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: The politically correct Quran

And then—out of nowhere, the magazine also hopes that “Judaism Will Decolonize Itself.” This entry was written by a Black Jew, Professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, whose black maternal ancestors were “enslaved in Barbados,” and whose father was a Russian Jew. On Twitter, she identifies as “queer and black” but not as Jewish. Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical physicist, writes: “Jews need to engage in deep conversations about the very idea that we’re entitled to a homeland. The Israeli government denies Palestinian people the right to live or be there and has made very clear that Jewish people are to be treated as first-class, which of course means there are second-class citizens. That does not make a democracy. ....But also, let’s remove the borders around gender...If we decolonize ourselves from what we have been taught, adapted, miscarried under imperial and colonial rule—we can be free.”

No mention of the Torah, the Talmud, rabbinic learning, Jewish intellectuals, Israel’s—and Israeli’s—great accomplishments, Israel's historical, religious and legal rights, Israel’s granting of asylum to Palestinians in flight from persecution in Gaza or on the 'West Bank' because they are homosexuals—and, of course, no mention of the ceaseless pogroms or the Shoah that made a return to our homeland a matter of existential survival.

Even more outrageous, this anti-Israel “decolonizing” propaganda is paired with the following: “Islam Will Return to its True Nature by Centering Justice.” It is written by the Organizers of Masjid Al-Rabia Muslim Community Center in Chicago, a gay and transgender friendly mosque founded by Mahdia Lynn, a “white bisexual transgender Muslim activist” who is shown wearing hijab. S/he states that “the role of imperialism in Islam” meant that “Christian Crusaders invaded Muslim lands and castigated the “permissive attitudes towards gender expression and homosexuality” that characterized Islam.

Has this author ever read the Qu’ran? Or the history of Islam from the 7th century until the Crusades began in 1095, three or four centuries later—after Muslims had killed an untold number of Christians and taken over or destroyed their churches.

Finally, the Chicago mosque organizers state: “Islam is a framework by which one can lead a better life.”

And Judaism is not?

The penetration of the gay movements by pro-Palestine propaganda has borne poisonous fruit. And please be advised: These marches are not feminist. The issues chanted, the banners held aloft, do not focus on abortion under siege, the equal rights amendment, or violence against biologically born women. It is pro-surrogacy and pro-prostitution which is not the view of abolitionist feminists who are themselves under siege and who are often viewed as “transphobic” for criticizing the physical violence against them by transgender activists who want no feminist analysis to limit them in any way.

Maybe, in a sense, all these Pride Marches are Odes to the Eternal Feminine, whereas many feminists are those who have demanded the right to make choices.

The Anti-Semitic Propaganda Blaming Jews for Police Brutality in the U.S.

Beginning in 2017, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—an anti-Israel group that is neither for peace nor especially Jewish in its membership—launched its “Deadly Exchange” campaign, which takes the fact that some American police departments have visited Israel to meet with law-enforcement agents there as evidence that Israelis are training U.S. police officers to commit unnecessary shootings and other abuses, especially against racial minorities. In reality, these visits, many of which are arranged by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), are used to study Israeli strategies for dealing with terrorism and mass-casualty situations. Miriam Elman describes JVP’s insidious logic:

Heavily promoted today by a host of U.S.-based anti-Israel organizations, the “Deadly Exchange” campaign . . . traffics in tropes about Jewish power in order to accuse Israel and Jewish American organizations of conspiring to encourage police brutality and increased deportation and imprisonment rates of American people of color. It follows that if you care about social-justice issues like policing problems and prison reform or the Black Lives Matter movement, then you must also revile Israel and detest its supporters, who now stand accused of complicity in the suffering of American blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans. . . . .

Racial issues in the U.S. unrelated to Israel have long been hijacked by BDS activists keen on turning them against Israel, and for years prominent progressive activists have been blaming Israel for police shootings of African Americans. . . . JVP’s innovation was to package that patently false [account] into a full-blown campaign that turns American Zionists into co-conspirators with Israel in some nefarious mission to hurt their fellow Americans. . . .

City councils are being aggressively lobbied by activists promoting the campaign, and at least one municipality—Durham, North Carolina—has now aligned its policing policy with the Deadly Exchange agenda. . . .

Israel Advocacy Movement: Debating Labour Antisemitism with David Collier, Joseph Cohen and Dipak Rajgor at London PalExpo

We spoke to Dipak Rajgor, the anti-racist who can't stop being racist, at the London PalExpo 2019.
Dipak: Antisemitism is a concern for any good decent human being
A few minutes later...
Dipak: Jews control the police 🤪
You need to watch this debate.

Gazans are working in Israel

Haaretz has a scoop:

Coordinating with Hamas, Israel increased the number of Palestinian laborers from the Gaza Strip allowed to work in the country, and this seems to be the main reason for the relative quiet along the border with the coastal enclave in recent days.

The move was not announced to the Israeli public. Like other relief efforts recently approved by Israel's political leadership and defense establishment as part of the understandings reached through mediation by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations, this decision, too, was not officially disclosed in Israel.

Gaza's head of the Chamber of Commerce, Maher Tabbaa, told the Saudi-owned Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper over the weekend that Israel promised to greatly increase the number of permits for Gaza businessmen to enter Israel. The number of permit holders rose by two-thirds, from 3,000 to 5,000, he noted, adding that the minimum age for entering Israel was lowered from 30 to 25, said Tabbaa.

This is an old trick, which Israel has used occasionally for the past few years. The permit holders are described as businessmen but in practice it seems the majority of them are workers – manual laborers. Before the rounds of escalation began in March 2018, such laborers were a rather rare sight in Israeli cities in the south.

I have seen in the past that COGAT would list hundreds of Gaza businessmen as exiting and returning to the sector, I didn't know they were laborers.

I see nothing wrong with Israelis employing laborers from Gaza, as long as the proper security checks are done.

For there to be calm, Israel needs Palestinian leaders to support calm. The only way to accomplish that is to give them something they will lose if there are attacks.

Thousands of Gazans who simply want work will energize the Gaza economy with Israeli salaries, and Hamas wants that to happen. More importantly, it doesn't want to lose it.

Over the past week, a relative calm has returned to the Gaza border region: The number of incendiary balloons has dropped and Hamas has also avoided renewing the violent night-time protests, which it sometimes held along the border fence. Last Friday's protest was also relatively quiet. Now, we can understand why.

it is also why Netanyahu increased the fishing zone a couple of weeks ago - even immediately after attacks. Hamas must have something to lose in order step up and act against the other terrorists.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Palestinian researcher recommends using "pro-Palestinian lobby groups like J-Street" to frame Israel as racist

The Arab media has been intensely interested in the demonstrations by Ethiopian Jews in Israel. They love framng the rallies in terms of proving that Israel is a racist state.

Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Al Youm made this explicit, with an article entitled "Experts: The Arabs should exploit Israel's violations against the Falasha Jews to expose their ugly face."

It canvassed a couple of academic "experts" on Israel on how to best exploit the demonstrations.

Tariq Fahmi, a professor of political science at the American University of Cairo, stressed that Arabs need to convey the image of Israel as a racist state to the international public opinion through the Western media through op-eds and the like.

A director at the Salman Zayed Center, Ibrahim Matar, said, "The Arab League should condemn the violations against the Falasha Jews and reflect the image of the international community." He added that Arab and Palestinian communities in Europe and the United States should bring the issue to international public opinion through human rights networks, organizations concerned with democracy and the elimination of discrimination, and "pro-Palestinian lobby groups such as J-Street."

Yes, the Arabs have lots of partners who are more than willing to portray Israel as a racist society. It is instructive that while J-Street claims to be pro-Israel, even the Arabs don't believe that.

The irony of course is that Arabs are deeply racist against blacks. Egyptian police killed at least 23 Sudanese migrants - including children - peacefully protesting in a park in 2005. Observers have noted Egypt's anti-black racism for years. In 1984, Egyptians were insulted that a black actor played Anwar Sadat in a Hollywood movie.

Earlier this year a pan-Arab MBC comedy show had an actress dress in blackface on an Egyptian bus speaking with a fake "Sudanese accent" to see reactions from the commuters.

Arabs aren't offended by racism, and most "human rights" groups aren't offended by Arab racism. But they all fall over themselves to condemn Israel no matter what the excuse, and racism is as good an excuse as any.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

07/09 Links Pt1: Netanyahu warns Iran that F-35s can reach ‘anywhere in the Middle East’; PLO summer camp teaches children to honor terrorists who murdered hundreds; The Gaza you don't see

From Ian:

Netanyahu warns Iran that F-35s can reach ‘anywhere in the Middle East’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Tehran on Tuesday that Israel’s F-35 fighter jets can reach “anywhere in the Middle East,” following threats against Israel in recent weeks by senior Iranian officials.

“Lately, Iran has been threatening Israel with destruction,” Netanyahu said, standing in front of an F-35 Adir jet during a visit to the Nevatim Air Force Base in the south. “It should remember that these planes can reach every place in the Middle East, including Iran, and of course also Syria.”

The F-35 stealth jet is not believed to have an effective range to reach Iran unassisted, but it could conduct operations there with in-air refueling, a capability possessed by Israel’s air force.

Netanyahu visit to Nevatim included meetings with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin, and the air force’s top command echelons.

Norkin last year said that Israel had used the fifth generation fighter jet in operations in the Middle East. At the time, Norkin did not specify in which countries the aircraft had been used.

Israel has long seen Iran as its greatest threat, while Iranian officials regularly threaten to destroy the Jewish state.

Seth Frantzman: Innovations in the U.S.-Israel Security Alliance

In April an Israeli airstrike struck an Iranian base in Syria on the road to the ancient city of Palmyra. The target, according to an Israeli report, was an Iranian 3rd Khordad air defense system. Two months later a U.S. Global Hawk drone flying over the Gulf of Oman was struck by a missile fired by a 3rd Khordad system in Iran, almost leading to war.

The two incidents highlight the shared threats faced by the U.S. and Israel, not only from Iran but also from hybrid groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, and Islamic State, which operate as both parastate entities and terrorist organizations. The result of these shared threats and the close political ties between Washington and Jerusalem is a uniquely close relationship between the two country’s militaries. Often the Israel-U.S. defense relationship is seen through the lens of U.S. foreign military financing for Israel, which comes to more than $3 billion a year. Far less attention is paid to the fact that since the 1980s Jerusalem has become a key supplier of advanced military technology to Washington. To name one recent example, the kibbutz-owned Israeli vehicle manufacturer Plasan supplied add-on “modular armor kits,” exterior platings that covered American military vehicles and protected U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. “That armor which was developed in Israel has saved many hundreds or thousands of lives of U.S. troops of vehicles hit by IEDs,” recalls Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador and visiting fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies.

Israel now has three of the largest defense companies in the world, Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. With $7.5 billion in exports in 2018 it is the eighth largest arms exporter in the world. The country has excelled in supplying the U.S. in areas where Washington requires a technology quickly. American companies—encumbered by a lengthier and more bureaucratically involved bidding and defense-acquisition process—can’t always move as quickly as their Israeli counterparts to meet the dynamic requirements of the modern battlefield. “There is a range of technologies where things were brought to market faster than in the U.S. or with no U.S. counterpart and once they see the effectiveness and use they [the U.S.] want it and it is mutually beneficial,” says Shapiro, who concludes that the U.S.-Israel alliance is unique in this respect. “I’m sure there is no other country where we see so many examples of it.”

The Gaza you don't see

The increasingly popular Twitter account called @Imshin disseminates videos, blog posts, and news from the middle-class and wealthy world of the Gaza Strip that never make it into the mainstream media.

According to the UN, 53% of Gazans live in poverty, despite humanitarian assistance. But while world media outlets choose to focus solely on photographs of destitute Gazans carting off sacks of UNRWA flour by donkey cart, the swank world of high-class hotels, black-tie restaurants, and gourmet supermarkets stocked to overflowing with Israeli products are ignored, presenting a misleading picture of what life in Gaza after Israeli "occupation" is truly like.

Under the hashtag #TheGazaYouDontSee, Imshin, who prefers to keep her identity anonymous, shares diverse vignettes from life in Gaza that are a far cry from the oppression and misery that "everybody knows" is the lot of the Gazan population. From shopping sprees to swimming academies, bumper cars to the upscale Palmera Restaurant, Imshin opens our eyes to the fact that life in Gaza is more complex than what anti-Israel propagandists would have one believe.

"Tala and Ameer share their day with us," Imshin tweets. "They start with lunch at the Palmera Restaurant. They've obviously been there before, they know exactly what they want and don't need on the menu."

"The reason I started following children's vlogs was that reading and listening to Palestinian news accounts, sites and radio stations was depressing and started to make me anxious," Imshin told Arutz Sheva. "I wanted a lighter non-political input, which still exposed me to the local dialect. I was very surprised with what I found."

Yiddish is a lot more alive than the media realizes, because they don't want to think much about chareidim

AP has a story about a Yiddish music concert in Israel:

In a musty basement hall of an unassuming building nestled among modern high-rises in the heart of Tel Aviv, a few hundred spectators are kindly requested to turn off their cellphones. What makes the typical scene surreal is that they are asked to do so in Yiddish — the playful, lyrical language of Diaspora European Jews.

In its first performance in Israel, a Grammy-nominated concert had arrived to play the lost songs of lost Jews in a nearly lost language. More than 70 years after the purged poems of Holocaust survivors, victims and Jewish Red Army soldiers were first composed and curated, a Canadian historian has brought back to life works thought to be long gone.

The result is "Yiddish Glory," a collection of songs describing the harrowing World War II experience of Soviet Jews. Even amid the horrors of the Holocaust, Jewish musicians created a vibrant cultural life in camps and ghettos, with the arts providing a refuge, a sense of meaning and even a form of resistance.

"The last thing a lot of Yiddish speaking people did was to write a song," said Anna Shternshis, the University of Toronto professor behind the project. "Before Yiddish was killed, it was sung."

Yiddish is a lot more vibrant than most people realize.

I'm not only talking about the popularity of the Yiddish language "Fiddler on the Roof" in New York. I'm not talking about the huge international hit, Shtisel.

In the chareidi communities of Israel, New York and elsewhere, Yiddish is still the dominant everyday language of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

Here is the latest cover of Kindlein, a weekly Yiddish magazine for children, which includes comics, stories, and puzzles.

The publishing house Kinder Shpiel has hundreds of Yiddish books for children and teens - here are some of their novels for young adults:

Children's books aren't nostalgia-driven. These children's publications, as well as many Yiddish language magazines, newspapers and books for adults, exist because there is a real demand for them from the chareidi community.

It is true that chareidim are insular, but that is not an excuse for reporters or scholars to ignore their existence. Nostalgia for the shtetl will not keep Yiddish alive - it is being kept alive by real Jews who speak the language every day, in shops and in parks and at work.

These are Jews that for some reason the larger Jewish community doesn't want to think about.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.