Tuesday, June 20, 2017

  • Tuesday, June 20, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon
From Zvi:


This Haaretz opinion piece by an Israeli Arab (who is not exactly pro-Israel) includes 2 paragraphs that should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the conflict.
Or so I thought. I had barely la nded my feet on Egyptian soil when I found myself surrounded by an angry crowd in the middle of Cairo. A local taxi driver happened upon my Israeli passport and took me for a Jewish spy. I was interrogated in public for two hours, during which I struggled to explain that there were Arabs living in Israel, too. The crowd burst into sudden collective laughter, and when an old Egyptian man wondered loudly why we were not fighting the Jews, I knew I was in trouble.Indeed, for millions of Arabs outside Israel, the idea of an Arab living in Israel, and not against it, seemed absurd on both counts: How could the "bastards" manage to survive within the Jewish State when a coalition of five Arab armies was crushed by it? And why in hell would the Jews let the bears in their backyard in the first place?
Arab societies have assigned a job to "Palestinian" (and Israeli Arabs, if they knew that Israeli Arabs existed). That job is to kill Jews. If the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are not killing Jews, then they are not doing their job. And if they are not doing their job, then in Arab opinion, they are traitors. If they live peacefully beside Jews, they are traitors. If they espouse nonviolence, they are traitors. If they negotiate with Israel, they are traitors. Those who got out of the way of the Arab armies and went to live in some other Arab country are not doing their job. They are traitors, and are treated like the scum of the earth. Those who would accept compensation are traitors; so if they sell a house to a Jew, they are murdered in cold blood.
Israeli Arabs are somewhat insulated from all of this because Israeli society DOESN'T assign them the role of Jew-killers, and most have no interest in proactively accepting that role.
But Palestinian kids are taught that role, intensively, from early childhood onward.
To most Arabs, the Palestinians are nothing but cannon fodder. They exist to kill Jews - nothing else. Any other behavior makes them traitors.
And the PA, HAMAS - all the Palestinians' dreadful leaders - are complicit in accepting and promoting that vicious delusion.
Arab "support" for the "Palestinian cause" is not support at all. It is threat and intimidation. It is the bayonet in the back that keeps the "cannon fodder" charging forward, rather than finding something more worthwhile to do with their lives.



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Meet Ro’i Klein. Look at his face. Doesn’t he look like a sweet and gentle man? 31 years old, husband to Sarah, father of three year old Gilad and one and a half year old Yoav, Ro’i (pronounced “Row-ee”) is an example of the best of Israel.
Admired for his calm peacefulness and constant smile, Ro’i was known for saying: “If I don’t do it, who will?” (All the best ones say that, think and act according to that idea).
People who live in other countries do not understand why we Israelis love our soldiers so much. We keep saying that we hate war and violence, loving our soldiers doesn’t seem to fall in line with that sentiment. Ro’i Klein and others like him are the reason why.
Ro’i was a Major and Deputy Commander of the 51st Unit of the elite Golani Brigade. Golani has a slogan that captures the atmosphere in the unit: “My Golani”. The army belongs to the country but the country belongs to its citizens and Golani belongs to each soldier serving in the unit. Not only that, Golani belongs to the family of each soldier in the unit and all of them belong to each other. It is not a unit made up of interchangeable, replaceable cogs, it is a family and every single member is precious.
On July 26th, 2006, the day before his birthday,  Ro’i was with his soldiers in Lebanon. They were battling Hezbollah in Bint J’bail. Because the IAF had scattered fliers warning the citizens of Bint J’bail that fighting was to ensue, Hezbollah had time to prepare traps for the IDF soldiers.
Hezbollah captured one of the soldiers, 24 year old Amichai Merchavyah. Ro’i and his soldiers gave chase, trying to rescue Amichai. The Hezbollah fighters led them into a dead-end alley.
They were trapped.
One of the Hezbollah fighters threw a grenade at the soldiers. That had been the intent all along – to kill the Israeli soldiers in one fell swoop.
Ro’i, the commanding officer had to take care of his soldiers, he had to protect them, his family. Terrorists were trying to kill his children! No, I don’t mean Ro’i’s two children at home. In that moment Gilad and Yoav didn’t matter, neither did his wife Sarah. It was the children standing next to him that Ro’i had to protect. He had to make sure they went home to their families.
He knew he wouldn’t.
Ro’i told the soldier manning the radio to announce what had happened. Then Ro’i threw himself on the grenade.
Those of his soldiers who made it home say that Ro’i had just enough time to say “Shema” before he was blown to smithereens. “Shema” is the prayer central to the Jewish faith: “Hear oh Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”.
Parents all over the world declare that they love their children so much that they would even die for them. In most countries that would be a hypothetical situation. In Israel, it is not.
Sometimes terrorists enter our homes threatening our next of kin. Sometimes terrorists attack on the street, in buses and cafés endangering members of our family that we have never met, related to us through their belonging to the nation of Israel... We are a tiny people and we truly are one family – we bicker and quarrel and we love each other so much that sometimes we die for each other. And that is exactly what Ro’i did.
Nine soldiers died on July 26th. They were fighting terrorists in Lebanon so that their families at home in Israel could live free from the threat of those terrorists. They were fighting to protect their mothers and fathers, neighbors and friends. They were fighting to protect people like me, people they never met.
We love our soldiers because they are us. They aren’t some people far away, doing things that have no bearing on our lives. They are us. They are our sons and fathers, brothers and friends. They are our sisters too. Our soldiers are our family. The loss of one is the loss of a beloved family member, whether we knew the soldier personally or not. Each is precious, none are replaceable. Ro’i is (it hurts to say was) exceptional but by no means unique. He is one of many who say “If I don’t do it, who will?”
Haim Smadar and Noam Apter are just two examples of others who made the same purposeful, loving, awe-inspiring choice Ro’i made. Each one was “just” a normal Israeli, someone who walked amongst us every day. They got up in the morning, went to school, went to work, met with friends, played with their kids, did things normal people do. They weren’t normal though – that is to say, they weren’t average – they ARE normal Israelis. Ro’i was a father and a soldier. Haim was a father and a security guard who checked clients entering a local supermarket. Noam was a son and a student.
That is the quality of spirit that exists in this country. They are our family. They love us with a passion so great they sometimes give their lives for us. And we love them back. 




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From Ian:

PMW: Is PA planning to deceive the US and donor countries – AGAIN?
The Palestinian Authority is planning once again to hide its approximately $300 million a year in payments to terrorist prisoners and the families of so-called "Martyrs," by continuing to reward terror but in a different framework, according to some Palestinian sources.
The first time the PA did this was in 2014 when the PA closed the PA Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs, which had paid the terrorist salaries, yet continued the payments through the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs. After Palestinian Media Watch exposed the PA's deception in The PA's Billion Dollar Fraud, by documenting the money transfers from the PA to the PLO, the PA law mandating salaries to terrorists has been repeatedly condemned by the US and countries in Europe.
Now, with increasing pressure by the US and other donor countries for the PA to stop rewarding terror, the PA is looking for a new way to both accept the international demands and yet at the same time continue paying terrorists, according to some Palestinian sources.
Hassan Asfour, a former PA minister and current associate of Muhammad Dahlan, political adversary of Mahmoud Abbas, explained it as follows:
"Abbas, despite his initial objection [to the US demand to stop prisoner salary payments], has begun to examine practical options to comply with the American demand in a way that will not lead to an explosion that might lead to his downfall and the downfall of their [Abbas' and US'] joint plan. Among these options that are being examined with special secrecy, is the option of transferring the prisoners' and Martyrs' salaries to a 'social insurance' body so that it will look as if it is 'humanitarian and social aid to needy families' and not 'monthly salaries to fighter families.'" [Fatah Voice, independent Palestinian news website, June 3, 2017]
Caroline Glick: Livni and dangers of peace theater
The homes of the terrorists who murdered Border Police officer Hadas Malka on Friday evening are now bedecked with Fatah flags and banners reading, “Our heroes.”
Far from condemning the terrorist attack, Palestinian Authority chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and his comrades are condemning Israel. Its security forces, they allege obscenely, committed a “war crime” when they killed the three terrorists to stop their rampage.
The only reason that these actions are not enough to warrant the US and the rest of the West – not to mention the Israeli Left – treating Fatah/PLO as the terrorist group they are and have always been, is because doing so would require them to stop playacting at peace making.
And they couldn’t have that.
Instead, they mimic or recycle “peace process” lingo about “windows of opportunity,” and reincarnate failed peace processors.
In apparent bid to do the latter, last Friday Channel 10 first reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked MK Tzipi Livni to join his government with her Knesset faction and serve as his foreign minister.
While Likud denied the report, Livni claims Netanyahu made the offer through mediators that have been carrying out indirect negotiations between the two politicians.
Livni also has said that she rejected Netanyahu’s offer because she doesn’t believe he is willing to adopt her expansively pro-PLO positions.
Assuming that Livni is telling the truth and Likud’s denial is false, we need to ask why Netanyahu made the attempt.
Fathom Forum with Einat Wilf
Dr Einat Wilf served as an Intelligence Officer in the Israel Defense Forces and was member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010-2013 on behalf of the Labor and Independence parties.
In this video she will provides new thinking on the Peace Process, explaining how “constructive ambiguity” has prevented both sides from reaching a negotiated settlement, and arguing that the Israelis and Palestinians need to adopt a new strategy of “constructive specificity,” the idea of specifying in detail exactly what is required from each side if the process is to result in a ‘realistic’ peace, the excruciating compromises that are necessary, and bring the century-long conflict to an end.





This past Sunday, Iran fired a series of missiles at ISIS terrorist bases in eastern Syria, in retaliation for the 2 terrorist attacks in Tehran on June 7.

Iran's Tasnim News Agency reported the the retaliation was A Warning to Foolish Troublemakers:
The “limited missile raid” by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps against terrorist positions in Syria’s eastern region of Deir ez-Zor unveiled part of the Iranian Armed Forces’ assault and deterrent capabilities, Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan said Monday.

The strike was also a “crushing response and a warning” to those seeking to ignite tensions with their troublemaking and ignorant ambitions, he added.

Late on Sunday, the IRGC fired six missiles, including high-precision Zolfaqar missiles, at various targets in Deir ez-Zor within a range of 650 to 700 kilometers.
But as it turned out, the Iranian missile display really wasn't all that crushing.

In fact most of the Iranian ballistic missiles failed to reach their intended targets. Ehud Ya’ari of Israel’s Channel 2 reported that of the 7 missiles that Iran launched, only one managed to reach its intended target in Syria. Of the others, 3 missiles crashed into Iraq, one landed a few hundred meters short of the target, another landed in the Deir Ezzor area and the location of the last missile was unknown.

Of course, that did not stop Iran from having video available as a testament to their missile-launching prowess.



Still, at least Iran's claim was not as contrived as in years past.

In 2008, Honest Reporting revealed an example of Iranian fauxtography where the photo below appeared on the web site of Sepah News, the PR news service of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.


Later, the photo was replaced with this, the actual, original one:


Little Green Football showed how parts of the original photo were reused in order to hide the fact that of the 4 rockets -- one had failed to fire.



In 2013, The Telegraph reported on another example of Iranian fake photography when the paper revealed that a picture of Iran's premier fighter jet patrolling the skies was in fact a fraud.


A picture of the Iranian Qaher 313 -- a jet that was dismissed as a model that was not even capable of flight -- was found with the same shadow and light as the one flying over Iran's Mt Damavand.



In addition, a stock photo of Mt. Damavand was found that was very similar to the one in the fake photo.



So while the threat of Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb is very real and very serious, their technology is not as advanced as they would have the West believe.

When it comes to Iran's ballistic missiles, the fact that Iran can miss their intended target reminds one of Hamas, whose rockets have been known to land close to home. After all, doesn't Hamas get supplies and material from Iran?

On the other hand, keep in mind that it is likely that Iran gets some of its own missile technology from North Korea, and while North Korea is an unpredictable threat that cannot be dismissed, 2 rocket launchings failed in April just 2 weeks apart.

Is the fact that both countries have had such spectacular fails proof they are helping each other?

[Hat tip: DG]



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  • Tuesday, June 20, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Yesterday, Ma'an Arabic reported that Israel reduced the amount of electricity to Gaza by 8 MW. It quotes a Hamas spokesman as saying that Israel is fully responsible for the reduction in electricity and for how difficult this will be for Gazans.

Today, Ma'an reports that Israel reduced electricity again by an additional 12 MW.

In neither of those articles is it mentioned that the Palestinian Authority demanded these cuts and stopped paying for that electricity, and that Israel was reluctant to go along.

Their English-language articles mention that this was at the "request" of the PA. But they also emphasize that NGOs are demanding that Israel supply the electricity for free anyway, laying the bulk of the blame on Israel.

The PA has been reluctant to publicly own its decision to cut Gaza off from electricity. The official Wafa news agency only speaks about it elliptically, saying the the ultimate responsibility for all woes in Gaza is Israel's. It didn't even mention the reduction in electricity over the past two days - done at the PA's insistence.

Hamas and the PA don't like to publicly blame the other for this crisis. No doubt part of the reason is because their Arab patrons are so sick of their infighting that the flow of money to both the PA and Hamas is threatened when Arab nations see them using their own citizens are pawns in their political fight.

The non-partisan Arabic media don't want to contribute to the gaping schism between the sides.

So Israel is a useful scapegoat.

As always.



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  • Tuesday, June 20, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon
The pressure is certainly on the Palestinians for paying prisoners - which is the most sacred part of the Palestinian Authority budget, and the one that has been under international scrutiny for the past month or two.

Hassan Abed Rabbo, media adviser for the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs, wrote an article rejecting any effort by any party to reduce the PA budget so it cannot pay terrorists and their families. He says that the West is informed that changing the salaries of "prisoners and martyrs  would lead to the collapse of the PA, and the people would protest in the streets."

Abed Rabbo staunchly defends the institution of paying prisoners as part of Palestinian resistance. (Which we all agree with!) he ends off by calling for Palestinians to unify and come up with alternative methods of paying terrorist salaries in case the West cuts them off.

Odeh Bisharat, writing in Haaretz, advances a much more bizarre argument supporting salaries to terrorists:

Did Israel pay child benefits to the family of Yigal Amir, the man who murdered Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin? Will Ehud Yatom, who killed the two Bus 300 hijackers with his own hands, get an old-age allowance? Does the state pay old-age benefits to Moshe Zar, who was the driver for the Jewish underground cell that in 1980 planted a bomb that led to the amputation of the legs of Nablus Mayor Bassam Shaka?

These are just some examples of Jews who were involved in acts of terror and the killing of prisoners. There are more. The answers to the questions, of course, are clear; these and others who committed acts of terror are getting social benefits. And that’s fine, because a properly run state makes a distinction between rights and duties. Lawbreakers must be punished, but not deprived of their social rights; otherwise, it would be a jungle here. Even criminals have the right to live in dignity, not to mention their families, who are entitled to social benefits no matter what their relatives have done.

U.S. President Donald Trump violates this fundamental principle. He claims to want to achieve peace in the Middle East, while at the same time demanding that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas halt stipends to the families of Palestinian prisoners, thus sentencing tens of thousands of people, including many children, to poverty or even starvation, which sooner or later will fuel another outburst of violence.
Yes, this was a serious argument published in Haaretz this week.

Bisharat's arguments are laughable. If paying salaries to these terrorists was part of a normal social program, then the PA should also pay the equivalent amount to people in its own prisons and their families.

But the PA and the PLO pay these people not because they are poor but because they are heroes. Bisharat calls paying salaries specifically to murderers to be a "right."

The Palestinians love this  argument. This drivel that does not distinguish between normal social programs and specific programs to deliberately pay and honor terrorists was republished in Ma'an, Al Quds al Arabi and elsewhere.

Not surprisingly, Bisharat's justifications for supporting terror are partially supported by the New Israel Fund. 





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Monday, June 19, 2017

  • Monday, June 19, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon
Legal expert Eugene Kontorovich spoke at the UNHRC today about the blacklist of companies that work in the "occupied territories"  that the UN is putting together.



NGO Monitor and Kontorovich have put together a booklet showing many companies who are profiting from other occupied territories - companies that the UN doesn't care about: From its introduction:

On March 24, 2016, at its 31st session, the UN General Assembly Human Rights Council (UNHRC) adopted Resolution 31/36, which instructed the High Commissioner for Human Rights to prepare a “database” of business enterprises.1 The database will focus on one particular issue, which an earlier Council resolution claimed raises human rights issues: that “business enterprises have directly and indirectly, enabled, facilitated and profited from the construction and growth of the settlements.”2

Such an activity—making blacklists of private organizations—is absolutely unprecedented for the HRC. And the current “research” program is focused on only one context: companies working in areas designated as being under Israeli civil jurisdiction in the West Bank under the Oslo Accords. The General Assembly has allocated $138,700 to cover the costs of this research project. The clear goal of the Council in producing such a list is to create negative reputational consequences for the listed companies, and ultimately to trigger sanctions against targeted companies through subsequent action by the Security Council or national governments.3

If business activity that “facilitates” or “profits” from settlement activity raises human rights issues, then the Commission’s current research program is unjustifiably narrow in its scope, and fails to capture the full context and magnitude of business activities that support settlement enterprises in occupied territories. The narrow focus of the report’s mandate undermines both the legal and practical value of the resulting database. It is also likely to produce consequences both unexpected and undesired by the Council and member states.

Every situation of prolonged belligerent occupation in the world involved widespread “settlement” activity—a non-technical term to refer generally to the migration of civilians from the occupying power into the territory.4 In all of these occupations, business enterprises, including third-country firms, play a major economic role. Many of these settlement enterprises have resulted in the large-scale ethnic cleansing or displacement of the occupied population or subjected it to widespread and massive human rights violations that have been amply documented.

This report is designed to put the HRC’s “database” project in a global perspective. It examines business activity in support of settlement enterprises in occupied territories around the world. This study reveals that such business is ubiquitous and involves some of the world’s largest industrial, financial services, transport, and other major publicly traded companies. Such companies include Siemens, Crédit Agricole, BNP Paribas, Santander, Vodafone, Renault, Veolia, Trelleborg, Wärtsilä, and Turkish Airlines, to take just a few examples.

...As this report shows, the kind of business activity on which the Council is composing a
“database” on the grounds that it violates human rights, is ubiquitous in occupied territories
around the world. Yet in all of the occupation/settlements contexts examined in this study,
the Council has never mentioned the issue of foreign business activity in its detailed reports
on the human rights situations in these territories. If such activity—which in all these cases
contributes to the occupying power’s ongoing control of the territory and dispossession of the
occupied people—is truly a human rights issue, these massive omissions suggest a complete
disregard by the Council for the human rights of people around the world. In such a case, the
Council is not even worthy of its name.
On the other hand, such omission would be justifiable if, as argued here, otherwise legitimate
business activity does not become illegal when it supports a contested political or territorial
situation. In such a case, it would only be the Council’s inquiry into Israel that is unjustified and illegitimate. Instead, it would be just the most egregious example of the Council’s “practice of wrongly singling out Israel for criticism,” which US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has recently demanded must end.13 Such a practice is, as Ambassador Haley says, “seriously wrong,” and deprives the resulting database of any legitimacy.
In other words, the UNHRC is filled with hypocrites for pretending that companies in occupied territories are violators of human rights when they only single out one alleged occupation and give everyone else a pass.




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From Ian:

Rabbi Abraham Cooper: How the documentary “Chosen and Excluded – The Hate for Jews in Europe” was chosen to be excluded from the German-French Network
The film goes on to show how the many centuries old Christian tradition of Jew-hatred gets a modern makeover with the World Council of Churches’ financing of anti-Israel incitement. Hate-mongering against Israel in the margins of a national gathering of the German Protestant Church is shown as well.
It is one thing to show a single anti-Semitic murder resulting from extreme Islamist ideology. But the film recounts a number of extreme anti-Semitic crimes committed by Muslims. These include, the 2006 murder of Ilan Halimi, the 2012 Toulouse Jewish school killings, the 2015 Paris hypermarket murders and those in 2014 at the Brussels Jewish museum. The movie further shows the pogrom-like Muslim attacks in 2014 against synagogues in Paris and Sarcelles as well as the 2014 Islam-inspired robbery and rape in another Paris suburb, Creteil.
Many European politicians and media outlets have attempted for more than a decade to dilute or hide mention of extreme Muslim anti-Semitism. The suppression of these facts takes place even as it is the most violent expression of the ancient Jew-hatred in contemporary Europe. During the French socialist Jospin government at the beginning of this century, the huge increase of anti-Semitic incidents – mainly caused by Muslims – was to a large extent hidden by the police and the Ministry of Interior under the general heading “hooliganism.”
The censored movie was initially made available thanks to a – probably illegal — 24 hour long showing on the internet by the German daily, Bild. The movie was for a time also viewed on You Tube. It is remarkable that it has taken more than fifteen years before a major documentary on European anti-Semitism was produced by a European broadcaster. Due to the Arte censorship the documentary has generated far more publicity than had the broadcasters simply screened it.
The Arte management uses two arguments to explain its suppression of the documentary. Their first argument was that the movie was not professional enough. The German public broadcaster ARD apparently does not share this opinion as it is willing to broadcast the documentary. The second claim was that the documentary did not cover a number of countries that the broadcaster had agreed on with the filmmakers. Arte also claimed that the documentary gave too much attention to the Middle East.
So it’s all about the, er, settlements then?
Leaving aside the sweeping arrogance and self-absorption of such thinking, it is plainly divorced from reality. Run that logic past the Copts of Egypt, who just buried their dead after 29 of their people were ambushed by jihadists while travelling to a monastery south of Cairo. Tell them that if only their foreign policy outlook or posture towards radical Islam were more accommodating they wouldn’t suffer periodic massacres. Tell it to the enslaved Yazidi or the beleaguered nation of Assyria. Tell them that is their conduct and their policies that are at the root of their own misfortune.
In our desperation to conceive of a coherent strategy for insulating ourselves from the medieval barbarism emanating from parts of the Middle East, we inevitably rationalise and search for change by looking inward at our own conduct or else outward not at the culprits but at rational actors like Israel whose conduct we feel we can control. We foolishly assume that the fundamentally unreasonable will respond to reason.
The hard truth is that evil has always existed and it can never be satiated, negotiated with or reformed.
The murderers of civilians in London and Manchester or Christian pilgrims in Cairo, the vandals of Palmyra and the arsonists of Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank are moved by irrational hatred and a compulsion to destroy things of beauty until our lives take on the misery of theirs. The greatest mistake we could make in our war against jihadism is to respond to irrational acts with our own irrational thinking.

Douglas Murray: Finsbury Park attack: We need a consistent response to terror
All that is needed is some consistency. At present the same people whose response to any act of terror carried out in the name of Islam is that everybody should look away, and respond with no more than a chorus of ‘Don’t look back in anger’ are now pretending that everyone they disagree with has spent years inciting people to drive vans at crowds of Londoners. I see that JK Rowling is among those pointing the finger at Nigel Farage.
Here’s a test. Yesterday the annual Khomeinist ‘Al-Quds Day’ parade took place in London. The march calls for the destruction of the state of Israel and in our allegedly zero-tolerance-to-terror city of London supporters of the terrorist group Hezbollah openly paraded with the terrorist group’s flags. What twist of popular logic allows that people waving the flags of a terrorist group in London on Sunday have no connection with terror, but that a van-driver committing an act of terror later that same day should be blamed on Nigel Farage?
If it does turn out that Sunday evening’s terrorist was a non-Muslim deliberately targeting Muslims here are some things you will not hear:
  • Nobody will claim that we must rethink our foreign policy to better align itself with the views of the attacker.
  • Nobody will claim that we must carry out an analysis of all other views held by the terrorist, the better to understand ‘where he is coming from’ and then act on them.
  • There will be no talk of ‘legitimate grievances’.
  • Nobody will blame the ‘Prevent’ programme for the attack or claim that the already existing far-right element of the Prevent programme must be completely scrapped or wholly re-thought. More likely is that there will be calls for this element to receive even more resourcing than it currently does.

  • Monday, June 19, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon
Jordan's Petra news agency reports:

Jordan on Sunday condemned the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque / Al-Haram Al-Sharif yards by large numbers of Israeli security forces and extremist groups and assaulting worshippers and closing the doors of Al-Qibli Mosque.

State Minister for Media Affairs Mohammad al-Momani said such provocative actions constitute a violation of the sanctity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque / Haram al-Sharif, and threaten to inflame the passions of Muslims everywhere.

But in Arabic, Momani said that these actions, which he described as "provocative", represents "a violation of the sanctity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and a violation of the feelings of Muslims everywhere."

All together now: Awwwww.




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  • Monday, June 19, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon
Over the past couple of years, the use of "Zionist" as a sure-fire epithet has become less apparent in the Arab world compared to the old days when that was the go-to insult against one's political opponents.

The Fatah and Hamas still use the term sometimes about each other, but people realize that the insults are meaningless and therefore they have lost their bite.

But the larger Muslim world still uses the term liberally as an insult. Malaysia has done it for a while, and this weekend I saw two examples in Pakistani and Kashmir media.

From Rising Kashmir:
Anti-Israel, anti-Zionism slogans in AssemblyThe Jammu Kashmir Assembly Saturday reverberated with anti-Israel and anti-Zionism slogans.
Senior Congress leader and MLA Kargil, Asgar Ali Karbalai raised anti-Israel and anti-Zionism slogans while other opposition leaders joined him.
Karbalai said the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition government was executing the Israeli and Zionist agenda in the State by blinding and maiming innocent Kashmiri children and civilians in Kashmir.
Because Israel loves to maim Muslims worldwide!

From Pakistan Today:
CIA and Mossad appear to have partly succeeded in using RAW to warm a war theatre and try to test the Pakistani resolve in the face of continued pressure being brought upon it on the pretext of a series of deliberately timed self-staged acts of terror such as on the Delhi Parliament, Mumbai, Pathankot and the Uri attacks. ...While Afghanistan must also see through the Zionist plan to keep it burning through the Indian mask and induction of mercenary IS, it must look to an Afghan-owned Afghan-led peace as followers of the Islamic faith and stop being used by pretending well-wishers.
If they believe that we control the world, I guess we do, in a sense.



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From Ian:

PMW: PA names square after mastermind of massacre of 22 children and 4 adults
The Palestinian Authority has named yet another square after a terrorist. The newly inaugurated "Martyr Khaled Nazzal Square," is named after the terror leader who planned the attack that led to the murder of 22 children and 4 adults in the Ma'alot Massacre on May 15, 1974. This is just the latest example of the PA's relentless glorification of terrorists.
This new square in Jenin is named after terrorist Khaled Nazzal, the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), and commander of its military branch. He was responsible for the Ma'alot Massacre, during which terrorists took school children and their teachers as hostages, and eventually murdered 22 children and 4 adults. Terrorist Nazzal also planned an attack which resulted in the murder of 4 hostages in an apartment in Beit Shean (Nov. 11, 1974), and a shooting and grenade attack in central Jerusalem in which 1 was murdered and 47 others were wounded (April 2, 1984).
The "Martyr Khaled Nazzal Square" was inaugurated at a rally with PA officials, "under the auspices of the Jenin District and the [Jenin] municipality." Participants included the Deputy District Governor of the Jenin District, and the DFLP in Jenin.
Amb. Alan Baker: New Palestinian Attempt at UNESCO to Claim Hebron and the Patriarch’s Tomb as a Palestinian Site
From recent media reports, it is evident that the Palestinian campaign to delegitimize Israel, falsely adjust history, and abuse the international community by manipulating a respected international specialized agency is proceeding at an enhanced pace. The campaign has turned UNESCO into a partisan political tool beyond, exceeding, and ultra vires its own constitutional principles. This despite recent indications since the Abbas-Trump meetings of a relaxation on initiatives in the international community against Israel.
The latest example of this is the Palestinians’ request to register the Old City of Hebron – including its Tomb of the Patriarchs – to the “State of Palestine” at the upcoming meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, scheduled to take place in from July 2 to 12, 2017, in Krakow, Poland.1
Both these sites are being fast-tracked and listed for debate as “endangered” World Heritage Sites on the agenda for the upcoming meeting of the World Heritage.
This attempt by the Palestinian leadership runs counter to any claim by Palestinian representatives as well as by leaders in the international community, that the Palestinians come with clean hands to the international community and genuinely seek a peaceful solution with Israel.

PreOccupiedTerritory: Opposition Fumes: AG Refuses To Investigate Netanyahu Culpability In London Fire (satire)
Lawmakers from several Opposition parties in the Knesset voiced anger today at the Attorney General for not opening an inquiry into Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over possible involvement in the London blaze last week that left dozens of people dead.
Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has not initiated an investigation into Netanyahu’s guilt in the Grenfell Tower fire that claimed the lives of at least 79 people last Wednesday, with more still missing. Politicians from Meretz, Labor, HaTnua, and the Joint List alliance blasted the Attorney General’s inaction and called it yet another manifestation of his partisan refusal to take proper measures against the prime minister who appointed him.
“Everyone knows who ultimately carries blame for every problem, every misfortune,” declared an exasperated Ilan Gilon of Meretz. “It’s axiomatic. That is what makes Mandelblit’s refusal so mind-boggling. On top of the corruption he’s supposed to be investigating, but for some reason that eludes me has not recommended police action, he must now investigate Bibi for dozens of counts of criminally negligent homicide. What does he think he is, some objective personality? Those are no longer relevant in the postmodern world of the narrative. And our narrative deems Bibi a criminal. Act, Mandelblit!”
Labor leadership Hopeful Erel Margalit cast Mandelblit’s inaction in even starker terms. “Protests have been going on in front of the Attorney General’s house for months now,” he recalled. “And just the other day one of the protesters held up a sign calling him a traitor. I used to think such language was out of bounds, considering that in the popular consciousness – that is, in the consciousness of the left and the media, which is what counts – such rhetoric led to the assassination of Rabin. But now I’m not so sure we should be so restrained in our speech.” He cited the example of the gunman who shot Congressman Steve Scalise last week, and suggested that liberal activism might still legitimately include political violence. “It’s for the right cause,” he explained.



My friend and ally Mike Harris (author of How to Win a Debate with an Israel Hater) forwarded me this story, with which many EOZ readers are likely familiar. 

By now, it’s a commonplace for radical anti-Israel groups like Jewish Voice for Peace to try to bring their disruptive protest tactics to any event promoting support for or celebration of the Jewish state.   Yet this year, they chose a very special target for one of their “direct actions.”   

That target was the LGBTQ contingent of New York’s annual Celebrate Israel parade featuring gay men and women – young and old – showing their support for the only nation in the Middle East where their sexual orientation is not a legal and religious crime. 

The way JVP decided to show their displeasure with that part of the event was to infiltrate the group and, at a key moment, disrupt their program by killing the music, tearing off their outer garments to reveal “Israel = Apartheid” t-shirts beneath, and screaming their slogans from the stage someone else (New York’s gay Jewish community) built.

The fact that some of the people terrorized by the infiltrators were kids was immaterial to the protestors and – more importantly – the planners of the protest who had determined in advance that their anti-Israel agenda trumps everything, everywhere, always.

While it would be easy to analyze such behavior through the lens of JVP hypocrisy and moral degeneration, it’s more interesting to think about what must be going on in the mind of those who have decided that the best way to push their allegedly progressive agenda is to infiltrate and terrorize gay youth.

Why this is interesting is that groups like JVP don’t simply think of themselves as progressive, but insist that they and their allies get to define who deserved that label and who does not.  The slur PEP (which stands for “Progressive in Everything But Palestine”) is one that gets routinely trotted out whenever a left-leaning individual or organization tries to stray from the anti-Israel orthodoxy groups like JVP are trying to enforce – demonstrating that maintaining Left-wing credentials is just as important to them as maintaining anti-Israel ones.

This poses a problem, however.  For progressive opinion has also been highly supportive of gay rights and increasingly supports people (including young people) exploring a constellation of sexual orientations.  And, whatever you might think about those ideas and associated political goals, it’s pretty clear that gay rights has become a defining principle for those who call themselves progressive.

The problem for JVP et al arises because, as mentioned previously, Israel not only represents an oasis of toleration in a Middle East sea of murderous homophobia, but is actually the most gay-friendly nation on the face of the earth.  This makes the agenda of Israel’s enemies one which must end with the increase in territory where homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment or death. 

Israel bashers have used their usual tricks to get around this problem: highlighting and inflating the importance of incidental anti-gay violence by Israeli Jews while never mentioning the issue of systematic violation of gay rights by everyone else, for example.  When Israel’s friends ignored those taunts and began touting Israel’s progressive credentials through the lens of gay rights, JVP and its regressive allies came up with a new way around the problem: accusations of “Pinkwashing” (a fake phenomenon you can read about here).

This brings us back to that Israel Pride disruption that began this discussion.  For it is one thing to make the argument that gay support for Israel contradicts progressive values and be ready to defend that argument against those who claim the opposite.  But it’s quite another thing to jump up on someone else’s stage and start shouting your slogans that contradict the opinions of those whose space you just commandeered.
The interesting thing about JVP’s deliberate targeting of the LGBTQ contingent at the parade is that it required moving from fierce disagreement with the political opinions of segments of the gay community, to direct targeting of real human beings making up that community.  In other words, the protestors’ determination to establish themselves as True North for all progressive causes (including gay rights) required them to terrorize living, breathing gay people.

As mentioned previously, it would be simple to dismiss this whole episode as one more example of dishonest, reactionary behavior on the part of the anti-Israel fringe.  But whenever one moves from treating people as human beings to treating them as mere means to your own political ends, we are dealing with something far more dangerous than misdirected zeal.

For if Israel’s enemies are so lacking in empathy that they are ready to storm the gates to keep gay people in line (while all the while claiming and believing themselves to represent progressive thought in its purest form), what might they be willing to do next?






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.

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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