[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] 08/31 Links Pt2: Is the money given to Palestinian leaders helping?; Israel's Happiness Revolution

From Ian:

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Is the money we are giving Palestinian leaders helping?

Over the last 20 years there have been many stories of where the money goes that international donors give out to Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza. Whilst I would love to tell you that the money is spent on the wellbeing of the Palestinian people it is often spent on Palestinian officials, their corrupt habits and often worse terrorism.
For instance, in the last 20 years the Americans have invested $4.5 billion to promote Palestinian democracy in the West Bank and Gaza, as revealed by Palestinian Prime Minister, Rami Hamdallah during a meeting with Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives. $4.5 billion is probably a conservative estimate as it excludes the significant amount of money which has gone into the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) coffers since its creation in 1994, with Palestinian economists estimating the PA has received around $25 billion in financial aid from the U.S. and other countries since then. In 2013, the level of corruption was so bad that even the EU admitted that the PA had somehow lost 2.5 billion euros in aid from 2008-2012.
In terms of success bringing about democracy through the money lavished on it, the PA is right up there with attempts to bring back the dodo from extinction. It is an incredibly naive enterprise considering there is little chance of free assembly in the West Bank or Gaza, an independent judiciary is not on the cards any time soon, press freedom seems a pipe dream, and a functioning democratic Parliament is non-existent. That’s not to exclude, at the top of the Palestinian pyramid, leaders who seem as likely to relinquish power democratically as a baby is likely to stop wanting milk.

MEMRI: Hizb Al-Tahrir Preachers Incite Against West, Israel, Jordan, PA At Al-Aqsa Mosque

An examination of sermons and lectures delivered at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in recent months, particularly by members of Hizb Al-Tahrir, reveals increasing militancy and rampant incitement not only against Israel and the West but also against Jordan, Arab countries, and even the Palestinian Authority. As all these elements become targets for religious belligerence, it seems questionable whether any of the political players that claim any kind of sovereignty over this potentially explosive compound have the political will to exercise their claimed authority and quell the incitement.
Of the various Islamic organizations that hold religious and political activities at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Hizb Al-Tahrir is undoubtedly one of the most active. Movement members deliver lectures and sermons and teach classes on Islam at the mosque throughout the week. In addition to these addresses, which are usually attended by dozens, Hizb Al-Tahrir holds mass rallies in Al-Aqsa that are attended by tens of thousands.

Douglas Murray: Has Jeremy Corbyn ever bothered to speak to ‘the other side’?

Likewise if the future Labour leader really has been involved in a peace process in the Middle East rather than shilling for Hamas and co, can anyone find any occasion when he has gone to pay homage to the heads of any settler movements in the West Bank? There must be some? Pictures of him shaking hands with them, invitations to them to speak in Parliament, videos of him describing them as ‘friends’ and so on? Surely at the very least he will have had meetings with political figures to the right of Netanyahu in the Israeli Knesset? There must be some record of these?
And if Jeremy is indeed concerned about remembering the people killed by all sides in the Middle East conflicts then surely he can’t only be interested in those killed by Jewish paramilitaries during the 1948 War of Independence. Certainly he appears keen to attend memorials for them, but is there any record of him attending events to remember the Jews massacred by Palestinians during the same period? Recently there were some memorials for the medical staff murdered by Arabs in the Hadassah medical convoy massacre . Was Jeremy Corbyn at any of these memorials? It would be very good to know if he was. Otherwise, again, people might think Jeremy’s memorialising has been a little selective, not to say partisan.
And as for inter-faith. This is Jeremy Corbyn’s reason for meeting with some of the most rancid anti-Semites on the planet. So I assume he can also point to meetings with the most viciously anti-Muslim and anti-Arab pastors and rabbis anyone can locate. Fred Phelps for instance must have been into meetings with Jeremy Corbyn. And I imagine Pastor Terry Jones must have been called into a session or two before he tried to torch some Qurans? Meir Kahane has been dead for some years now. But surely before he was shot there are some records of inter-faith meetings between him and Jeremy Corbyn?
Somebody must be able to find these, surely? I know that if I were a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn’s then I would make digging out the photos of these meetings an absolutely top priority. Wouldn’t you?

UK Jewish Group Demands Public Rejection of Terror Groups Hamas and Hezbollah From Labour Leadership Frontrunner Corbyn

The head of a top Jewish organization in Britain said the leading contender for leadership of the country’s Labour party, Jeremy Corbyn, must publicly denounce terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah if he wants to win the trust of the U.K.’s Jewish community, The Telegraph reported on Friday.
Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said the Islington North MP will not be taken seriously by the Jewish community until he starts giving “clear, straight answers to straight questions” and repudiates a series of unsavory characters that he has been linked with. Among them are “antisemites, racists, terrorists bodies, people for whom I would expect any serious British U.K. politicians would want to maintain a great distance. Any British politician in a senior capacity will not be taken seriously if he has any partiality towards terrorist organizations,” according to Arkush.
Among the controversial figures linked to Corbyn are Holocaust denier Paul Eisen, head of the Islamic Movement in Israel Raed Salah, who has been accused of “virulent antisemitism,” Muslim extremist Dyab Abou Jahjah, who has been accused of propogating blood libels against Jews, and Rev. Stephen Sizer, who blamed Israel for the 9/11 attacks and was banned by the Anglican Church for six months for his antisemitic views.
Corbyn also infamously referred to members of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends,” though he later claimed that he had used “diplomatic language in the context of dialogue.”

‘A Sinner in Mecca’ documents gay Muslim pilgrimage

The confession of a Pakistani murderer. Overzealous religious police. An Arab angered his pregnant wife was molested in the holiest site known to Islam.
A new film made by a gay Muslim pilgrim offers a English-speaking Western audience a warts-and-all view of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in a documentary that has attracted death threats and an online hate campaign.
It is a rebuke of Saudi Arabia and its strict Wahhabi form of Islam, but it is also deeply personal — a man trying to reconcile his faith with his sexuality.
From that perspective which includes footage of his wedding to his American husband in New York, millions of Muslims will likely find “A Sinner in Mecca” provocative if not offensive.
But director and pilgrim, Indian-born New Yorker Parvez Sharma, sees it as a wake-up call for a faith followed by nearly a quarter of humanity which he believes has been hijacked by a violent minority.

The New Racists: Christians Who Hate Israel

That a serious Christian can place political agreement with an intransigent enemy before the simple morality of calling for an immediate end to terrorism beggars belief.
Given that the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel or the rights of the Jewish people, the Pope's recognizing a state of Palestine seems a contradictory gesture. By making this badly-thought-out choice, the Vatican simply encourages the Palestinians in their conviction that their tactics of violence, rejection of peace offers and glorification of terrorists and suicide bombers across their towns and villages is, regardless of all morality and prudent policy, the right course of action.
If morality is at stake, it will also enthuse them to continue with the lies about Jews, hate videos, hate preaching, false historicism, and school textbooks and TV shows that teach children to despise Jews as "sons of apes and pigs." Is that what the Vatican really wants? Is that a goal remotely in keeping with the wishes of Pope Francis?
"Christian children are massacred, and everything is done in plain sight. Islamists proclaim on a daily basis that they will not stop until Christianity is wiped off the face of the earth. So are the world Christian bodies denouncing the Islamic forces for the ethnic cleansing, genocide and historic demographic-religious revolution their brethren is [sic] suffering? No. Christians these days are busy targeting the Israeli Jews. The Pope, who should represent the voice of one billion Catholics around the world, was not busy these days in writing an encyclical against the Islamic persecution of Christians. No, the Catholic Church was very busy in signing a historic agreement with the "State of Palestine," a non-existent entity which, if it (God forbid) should be created, would be the first state after the Nazi Germany to officially ban the Jews and expel the remnant of its Christians." – Giulio Meotti, journalist.

On Temple Mount, some see a dome and imagine an altar

The night before she visited Temple Mount for the first time last year, Aviya Fraenkel was so excited she couldn’t sleep a wink.
“I remember climbing the Mughrabi Bridge [leading to the Temple Mount] and seeing the Western Wall beneath me, so small, and and all these different Jews way down there,” Fraenkel told The Times of Israel recently, standing at the bottom of the same bridge and waiting to enter. “You ask yourself: ‘Hold on, what was I doing down there all these years? It just isn’t interesting. I’m up here now!’ That’s a feeling you can never take back.”
“We still go to the Western Wall and love it, but you suddenly realize the difference. Why settle for so little? Why settle for imitations when we have the real thing?”
Fraenkel, a 29-year-old doctoral student in Assyriology and Bible studies at Bar-Ilan University, is part of a new revival movement sweeping Israel’s national religious community. Defying a centuries-old rabbinical ban on entering the 35-acre compound — considered the holiest site in Judaism where the first and second temples stood — Fraenkel, who created a special tour guides’ course last summer tailored for Temple Mount visitors, now tries to go up every week.
“It was brewing in me for many years,” Fraenkel recalled. “So I took the ritual bath and went up. I can’t completely explain it. Part of it has to do with the belief that there’s a next stage, that our ideals aren’t limited to a state — which is a lot — but that the state must manifest our religious yearnings of the past 2,000 years.”

In New York, Edelstein invites his Arab counterparts to meet him in Jerusalem

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein was set to turn a speech about the environment into an invitation for dialogue with neighbors in the Middle East in his address to the World Conference of Speakers of Parliament at the UN in New York on Monday.
“My friends and neighbors in the Middle East,” he said in a speech that The Jerusalem Post obtained a copy of on Sunday, “let us talk, people to people, parliament to parliament.
Come to Jerusalem. Come to the Knesset. Meet with me. Sit with me. Talk with me.”
Edelstein pointed out that he and his colleagues do not have the authority to define borders and make peace, but that they should not sit back and wait for their governments to reach agreements on their own.
“We can lay the foundations for any future peace by fostering international and regional cooperation on issues that transcend national borders,” he states, explaining that achieving sustainable development goals requires working across borders, even between states that do not have diplomatic relations.
“Let’s talk water. Let’s talk clean air. Let’s talk prosperity. Let’s talk partnerships. And peace? And borders? These talks, I assure you, will follow,” Edelstein is set to say.
The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), which organized the conference, can facilitate such talks, the speaker suggested.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Abbas moving to boot political opponents and tighten grip on power, critics claim

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s plan to convene the PLO’s parliament- in-exile, the Palestinian National Council (PNC), in order to elect new members of the PLO Executive Committee, is facing strong criticism from several Palestinian factions and officials.
Abbas’s critics claim his true intention behind the move is to get rid of his political opponents and tighten his grip on power. They also claim that contrary to recent reports, Abbas has no intention to resign or quit political life.
One of Abbas’s critics, Yasser Abed Rabbo, said that although he welcomed the decision to convene the PNC, he expressed concern that the upcoming session, which is scheduled to take place in Ramallah in mid-September, would be solely devoted to making personal changes in the PLO leadership.
Abed Rabbo, who was recently dismissed from his job as PLO secretary-general by Abbas, said the PNC meeting should also discuss ways of “correcting” the Palestinian political strategy “in light of the failure of the Oslo Accords.” He said the PNC session should be preceded by a meeting of representatives of various PLO factions to agree on the agenda and future steps.

Report: Abbas searching for candidates to replace him as PA head

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has asked members of his Fatah party to select three candidates to replace him, a daily linked to rival group Hamas reported on Monday.
A source in Fatah told the al-Resalah newspaper that Abbas, 80, is determined to announce his resignation soon from the leadership of the party, which controls the PA.
According to the daily, party organs are trying to dissuade the president from submitting his resignation.
Members of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council were summoned to a “crucial” meeting in Ramallah on Monday evening to discuss the party’s candidates for the PLO’s next Executive Committee.
There was no immediate response from Fatah officials.

Bassan Eid: Boycott the boycott

I don’t know who essentially is pushing the Palestinians towards this story of an economic boycott of Israel; to the best of my knowledge, the Palestinians aren’t the ones setting the economic boycott of Israel in motion on their own and the Palestinian Authority (PA) is trying to rest on its momentum and not to lead it. The BDS (Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment) movement is at the forefront leading the boycott, and as such it is hurting Palestinians a lot more than it is hurting Israel. To be sure, there are interested Palestinian parties, like Mustafa Barghouti, who ran from one dictatorial regime to become deputy under the auspices of the BDS movement and acts on its behalf to exacerbate and aggravate the boycott of Israel. To my mind, Barghouti can attain good results from his perspective with great ease in Norway, for example, but he would not even dare to enter refugee camps and suggest to the people living there that they launch a boycott against Israel.
Palestinian workers today are building homes in the settlements. They’re proud to build for Jews, and there’s no one to help find them alternative work.
Abu Mazen, head of the PA, hasn’t a clue about whom to target with this particular boycott. How can one impose a boycott on settlement products as long as one’s fellow citizens and nationals are the ones building the very same settlements?

Christian-Zionist Revolution is Brewing in Britain

When it comes to Christian Zionism, most people think of the United States - and with good cause. Groups like Christians United For Israel (CUFI) have been among the leading lights in Israel advocacy, with a highly motivated and active grassroots base and support from a diverse range of senior clergymen and women. In terms of numbers, they outstrip even their Jewish pro-Israel counterparts, and in terms of commitment and activism, they often put them to shame.
Less well-known are the Christian Zionist movements outside of the US, for example in Europe. This fact is also, to an extent, not without good cause: for a variety of reasons, Christian Zionists in Europe, while certainly active, have never managed to emulate the success of their American counterparts.
But that could be about to change. In the UK, something of a revolution is brewing, thanks to the vision and tireless efforts of one quietly-determined pastor in reaching out to both Christian and Jewish communities alike.
Dr. Oliver Manyemba is a Pentecostal Christian pastor, as well as a trained investment banker and lecturer at a top London university. He is also a one-man powerhouse who is shaking up the face of UK Christian Zionism - and, by extension, both wider Israel activism and Jewish-Christian community relations.

Hundreds gather for pro-Israel march in Stockholm

Some 600 Jews and pro-Israel activists gathered in the Swedish capital of Stockholm on Sunday to march for the Jewish state and support the battle against anti-Semitism.
The march, an annual event now in its fourth year, was held in the in Raoul Wallenberg Square in Stockholm, named in honor of the Swedish businessman who is credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews from Nazi-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust.
Among the participants in the event were leaders of the Jewish community and members the Swedish parliament, the Hebrew-language NRG news site reported.
A group of about a dozen pro-Palestinian protesters, sporting kefiya headscarves, held a counter-demonstration and called for a boycott of Israel. According to some reports, they also threw stones at the Israeli rally but police kept them apart from the main event.

Confronting anti-Israel views in Sweden

A new anti-Israeli organization has emerged in Sweden. But unlike other anti-Israeli organizations that are grassroots movements consisting mainly of Arabs, the “Jerusalem Committee” consists of Swedish politicians inspired by the extreme hostility toward Israel in the Arab world.
In the annual report of the Jerusalem Committee, from 2012, one can read that the initiative for the formation of the Jerusalem Committee was based on the Swedish participation in the Arab League’s International Conference on Jerusalem in Doha between February 26-28, 2012, where the participants from Sweden were major Swedish politicians like Kerstin Lundgren, foreign policy spokeswoman for the Center Party of Sweden, and Veronica Palm, a member of the Swedish parliament and one of the important names in the Social Democratic Party.
The International Conference on Jerusalem in Doha was hostile to Israel, with the participation of extreme anti-Israeli organizations like Neturei Karta. The purpose of the conference was to condemn Jewish presence in Jerusalem. In the final declaration of the conference the “Judaization” of Jerusalem was criticized. The host of the conference was the Qatari dictator Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani. Being hosted by a dictator did not seem to be an issue for the Swedish politicians who were protesting against Jewish presence in Jerusalem.
This conference inspired the Swedish participants to create the Jerusalem Committee with the purpose of “raising the issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian people’s situation during the occupation.”

Islamic refugee charities in 'significant cash irregularities' probes

TWO ISLAMIC charities that raised at least £1m between them for "refugees in war torn Syria and Palestine" and "victims of natural disasters in Pakistan" are facing probes into "significant financial irregularities"
The Light Charity UK (TLC) received more than £400,000 in one year, but after paying staff was left with just £8,000 for charitable causes, while the connected Fatimiyya Trust pulled in over £162,000 but had ZERO left after making a loss by spending close to £170,000 on staff and support costs.
The Charity Commission is to carry out separate inquiries into the two west London-based organisations which raised more than £1m between them from 2010 to 2012 and have failed to file subsequent accounts, so the total sum is unknown and could be significfantly higher.
TLC, based in Wembley, west London, according to its accounts for the year up to January 31 2013, raised £408,611 in that year.
But it reported fundraising activities cost it over £399,000 - the bulk of which (nearly £344,000 went on staff wages) - leaving under £8,000 in the charity pot.

Luxembourg chain halts sale of Israeli produce

Cactus supermarkets said it would stop carrying Israeli produce until suppliers demonstrated the goods didn’t come from the West Bank.
Tiny Luxembourg is a member of the European Union, which doesn’t recognize Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and East Jerusalem. There’s been a growing consensus among European states that there needs to be a move “to differentiate between Israel and its settlements project in the day-to-day conduct of bilateral relations,” according to a EU think tank‘s recent paper.
The company’s management reportedly said income from Israeli produce was not very high, and wasn’t worth the bother caused by a local pro-Palestinian group known as the Committee for a Just Peace in the Middle East.
The Comite pour une Paix Juste au Proche-Orient, as the organization is known in French, has demonstrated outside Cactus stores over its alleged sale of settlement products.
The chain nonetheless would continue selling Israeli-made products, such as SodaStream.

US industry union votes to boycott Israel

The United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers union [35,900 members 2014] voted on the resolutions on Aug. 20 during its national convention, the union reported on its website Friday.
The resolutions involving Israel and the Palestinians were voted on as part of a series of resolution on foreign policy issues, including support for the Iran nuclear deal. The union said in a statement that it was the first US national union to endorse BDS.
The resolution on Palestine and Israel “points to Israel’s long history of violating the human rights of the Palestinians, starting with the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians in 1947-48 that turned most of Palestine into the State of Israel,” according to the union. It also cites a statement issued by the union’s officers in 2014 condemning Israel’s war on Gaza.
The resolution also calls for cutting off US aid to Israel as well as US support for a peace settlement on the basis of self-determination for Palestinians and the right of return.

China Mulls Mass Conversion To Judaism To Bolster Banking Prowess (satire)

China’s turbulent economic fortunes have the country’s leadership considering a new economic policy that involves making the whole nation Jewish in order to optimize their banking capabilities.
Inflation, the aftereffects of a real estate bubble, currency instability, export pressures, debt, and other concerns have the Chinese Politburo worried that if they do not negotiate current perilous economic situation adeptly, the country will face economic collapse that will lead to widespread deprivation and social unrest. To forestall such a development, President Xi Jinping ordered the country’s political and economic leadership to explore measures aimed at augmenting the nation’s skills in the financial sector, including, if necessary, the adoption of Judaism, which has historically been associated with international banking prowess.
In March Xi had the Politburo commission a study of methods to better prepare the China’s economic stewards for their positions, positions that, in a system rife with cronyism and political horse-trading, were not necessarily secured through reputation. The result was a 450-page document published last week, discussing the avenues by which China might achieve better control over its economy, and minimize negative repercussions from events occurring beyond its borders. The report’s chief recommendation involved the adoption of the Jewish faith by at least the economic leadership figures, if not the entire population.

Egypt sentences 3 Al-Jazeera reporters to 3 years in prison

An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced three Al-Jazeera English journalists to three years in prison, the last twist in a long-running trial criticized worldwide by press freedom advocates and human rights activists.
The case against Canadian national Mohammed Fahmy, Australian journalist Peter Greste and Egyptian producer Baher Mohammed embroiled their journalism into the wider conflict between Egypt and Qatar following the 2013 military ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
The three were accused of supporting Morsi’s blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood in their coverage for the Qatari-owned broadcaster.
“I just want to go home today,” Mohammed told reporters in the courtroom as he waited for the session to begin.
“It is all about freedom of speech and professional journalism,” he said.

British envoy to Egypt summoned over Al-Jazeera comments

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry summoned the British ambassador in Cairo on Sunday to protest comments he made after a judge sentenced three Al-Jazeera English journalists to three years prison each for reporting “false news.”
The ministry said in a statement that John Casson’s comments were “unacceptable interference” in the country’s judiciary” and “incompatible with diplomatic norms and practices.”
The court sentenced the three journalists on Saturday, sparking international outcry over the long-running case and highlighting authorities’ crackdown on free speech in the country.
Speaking to television cameras in Arabic after the verdict, Casson said he was “shocked and concerned by the sentences,” in a case that is of “profound interest to Egyptians because it has become a symbol of the basis for stability in the new Egypt.”
“I am concerned that today’s ruling will undermine confidence in the basis of Egypt’s stability, both in Egypt and abroad,” he said.

The BBC must tell its audiences how it defines antisemitism

So, whilst we do know that the BBC does not work according to the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism, we do not know which definition it does use and hence the BBC’s funding public has no way of determining what the corporation does in fact consider “to be anti-Semitic material”.
That of course makes it very difficult for any member of the public wishing to submit a complaint concerning antisemitism in BBC content to know whether it is worth his or her time and effort to do so because the ‘goal posts’ are unclear. It also means that public funding is likely to be wasted on handling complaints which, were the general public privy to the BBC’s definition of antisemitism, may not have been submitted in the first place.
At the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism held in Jerusalem in May, one of the many issues identified was the need for media organisations to adopt standard accepted definitions of antisemitism such as the EUMC Working Definition or the US State Department definition.
Until the day the BBC recognizes the imperative of working according to internationally accepted definitions, in the interests of transparency and accountability it must at least publish its own definition of antisemitism and inform its funding public with which experts (if any) it consulted in order to arrive at a definition it obviously considers to be superior to and more authoritative than the existing ones.

Activists Score Victory Against Radio New Zealand Bias

In late August 2014, Radio New Zealand (“RNZ”), New Zealand’s state-owned radio network, broadcast two controversial items about Israel in which, amongst other things, an interviewee stated that Israel’s actions in Gaza were “genocidal” and that “Zionism and apartheid are the spirituals twin of Nazism.”
The New Zealand Broadcasting Standards Authority (“BSA”) has now ruled that the broadcasts breached the standard that broadly requires controversial issues of public importance to be balanced, a serious and rare outcome.

Guardian/Economist fail to question film’s claim that 70% of IDF ‘atrocity’ testimony was censored

“A movie theater isn’t the ideal setting for forensic analysis of something so complex as a fast-moving, three-front war that changed Israel and the Middle East”, writes Martin Kramer in his investigation into claims made in a new documentary promising to “expose the Israeli military’s censorship” of “atrocities” committed in the 1967 war.

How many Western film critics and other journalists, Kramer asks, will critically examine the claims made in such a film?
Enter the Guardian and The Economist, which both recently published articles that fail to challenge one of the central premises of the documentary: that out of 200 hours of testimony about the Six-Day War from 140 soldiers, all kibbutz members, transcribed into a book published in 1967 entitled “Soldiers’ Talk”, 70% was censored by the Israeli government.
Indeed, Kramer (a renouned scholar on Middle East history) persuasively argues that this claim is simply not true.
Here’s the relevant section from Kramer’s thorough investigation of the film, which is scheduled to be released in Britain in the fall.

Showers installed outside Auschwitz remind visitors of gas chambers

A group of Israelis who visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland on Sunday was surprised to see external showers set up at the entrance to the site.
“As a Jew who has lost so many relatives in the Holocaust, they looked like the showers that the Jews were forced to take before entering the gas chambers,” Meir Bulka, 48, told The Jerusalem Post.
According to Bulka, he was not the only one deeply disturbed by this unusual scene.
“All the Israelis felt this was very distasteful," he said. "Someone called it a ‘Holocaust gimmick.’”
Bulka decided to do something proactive about the situation rather than let it go. He went to the main offices and asked the management for an explanation to the strange scene.

Illinois man arrested for toppling Chabad menorah

A 20-year-old man was arrested last week for knocking over a 9-foot menorah at the University of Illinois in Champaign.
Max Kristy of Champaign was arrested several days after the Aug. 21 incident on the front lawn of the Illini Chabad Jewish Center, the Daily Illini student newspaper reported.
Kristy, who does not attend the university, was caught on a surveillance camera pushing the menorah until it snapped at the base. The electrical wiring inside also was damaged.
The menorah also was knocked over in April; the police have not connected the two incidents.
Kristy reportedly told police he was drunk at the time of the incident and planned to take the menorah as a gift to a Jewish friend, the News-Gazette reported. The friend confirmed to police that the two had talked about what he had done, according to the News-Gazette.

MEMRI: Egyptian Filmmaker: Jewish Conspiracy behind Egyptian Film Failure at Cannes Festival

In an August 10, 2015 interview on the Egyptian ON TV channel, filmmaker Khalef Yousuf said that the Jews were behind the failure of Egyptian films at the Cannes film festival. They would buy up all the tickets and then leave the movie theater in droves, in order to get the press to give the film bad reviews, he said. "The same thing happened at the advent of Islam," said Yousuf.

Zionists Sank The Titanic, New Study Shows (satire)

What many people don’t know is that the Titanic was built at the Harland and Wolff Shipyard, which was co-owned by JEWS, Gustav Wolff. Wolff clearly used his JEW TRICKS to build a ship that was sure to become one of the great tragedies of our time. Why, you ask?
The sinking of the Titanic led directly to the filming of the 1997 movie, Titanic. Hollywood, run by JEWS, made $1,843,201,268 from the movie’s release. Aside from the massive success of Titanic, it skyrocketed a young actor named Leonardo DiCaprio into superstardom. DiCaprio became an object of desire for millions of women all over the world. However, in 2005 it was revealed that out of all these women, the actor had begun a relationship with ZIONIST AGENT, Bar Refaeli.
Too many questions surround the Titanic. How did an unsinkable ship sink? Why did a JEW want to build it? Why would a handsome actor become associated with a SHE-JEW? This was clearly all orchestrated as part of the ZIONIST PLOT, aimed at making Bar Rafaeli a household name, thus expanding the influence of the ISRAELI REGIME.
OPEN YOUR EYES!!!!!!!!

Is Kanye's upcoming trip to Israel a ploy to boost his presidential profile?

Rapper Kanye West announced his plan to run for president in 2020 at Sunday's MTV Music Video Awards ceremony.
He ended his speech by declaring, "I have decided in 2020 to run for president," quickly riling up the live audience and social media.
West already clarified his political stance on the legalization of marijuana.
"You all might be thinking right now, I wonder, did he smoke something before he came out here, the answer is yes, I rolled up a little something, I knocked the edge off..." he said.
His announcement to run for the presidency comes ahead of West's scheduled trip to perform in Israel on September 30 at Ramat Gan Stadium. Is his upcoming trip the launch of his presidential campaign?

Top 5 AR, VR and 7D movies in Israel

Going to the movies has long been a favorite way to beat the heat of stifling summer or stay warm and dry during winter. While regular cinema experiences are always fun, Israel is a country of creative technologies and a flair for the extreme.
Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), interactive edutainment and 7D films add that extra dollop of excitement to screen time.
ISRAEL21c has picked five state-of-the-art movie experiences to enjoy in Israel.

An Israeli ‘white-ball solution’ to water stress

A new study by the World Resources Institute says that Israel — along with the entire Middle East — will be extremely “water stressed” in the coming decades.
But there is plenty of water stress going on in the world right now — such as in California, where earlier this month desperate officials dumped 20,000 black plastic balls into a Los Angeles reservoir to prevent further water losses due to evaporation in the devastating five-year-long drought.
The balls are a good idea — in principle. But according to Israeli water tech start-up NeoTop Water Systems, its water-ball solution is better on all counts than the one implemented in California.
“Not only is our solution cheaper, but it also saves more water. Using our method, we are able to decrease evaporation by 90%,” said Zeev Birger, the company’s founder. “If we manage to cover all of Israel’s reservoirs, we might be able to double our water supply in Israel.”

Unique Second Temple-era podium has Jerusalem archaeologists puzzled

A newly exposed stepped structure of large stone blocks on an ancient street in Jerusalem may have been a platform for public announcements, the Israel Antiques Authority said on Monday.
The pyramid-shaped, finely hewn piece of masonry was uncovered on a 2,000-year-old street that led from the Siloam Pool up to the Temple Mount, where the Second Temple stood at the time.
Archaeologists Nahshon Szanton and Joe Uziel, who are leading the dig, said in a statement that the exact purpose of the raised podium was unclear as no similar dais has been found in previous excavations.
“The structure exposed is unique,” the statement said. “Its exact use remains enigmatic. The structure is built along the street in a place that is clearly visible from afar by passersby making their way to the Temple. We believe the structure was a kind of monumental podium that attracted the public’s attention when walking on the city’s main street.”
Ancient rabbinical sources say stone assemblies were used for public announcements in biblical times, and the Talmud intriguingly mentions a “Claims Stone” in Jerusalem where lost and found-related transactions took place.

Matti Friedman: Israel’s Happiness Revolution

The Israeli culture wars arrived in my kitchen a few months ago when I discovered that the cure for my daughter’s grumpy preschooler moods was a Hebrew dance hit called “Happiness Revolution.” The song is of the genre known loosely as Mizrahi, a blend of Middle Eastern, Greek, and Western influences associated with Israelis who have roots in the Islamic world. In the country’s early decades Mizrahi music was deemed primitive and generally kept off radio and TV, shunted instead into an underground of small clubs, cheap wedding halls, and cassette stores clustered around the grimy bus station in Tel Aviv.
It turned out that my daughter not only knew the words (“A happiness revolution / Because we’re all family! We’ll dance like crazy / Because it’s time to fly!”) but also dance moves that she performed while watching her reflection in the oven door. She had learned the song at her Jerusalem kindergarten from the music teacher, a young ultra-Orthodox woman with no Middle Eastern roots that I can discern. When I attended the year-end party at the kindergarten, the kind of affair where the customary soundtrack has always been Naomi Shemer, the kids put on a performance involving a dozen songs, more than half of which were Mizrahi.
When I played “Happiness Revolution” at home, it turned out that my 8-year-old twins knew the song too—and, while we were at it, they wanted to hear “Terminal 3,” a Mizrahi hit about a South American vacation whose lyrics they learned on the bus during class trips. They didn’t think the music was strange or funny. They had breathed it in the Israeli air and it was theirs.

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Posted By Ian to Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News at 8/31/2015 06:00:00 PM

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[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] Rouhani's comedy act continues

The dude is hilarious.

Israel Afraid of Votes, Prefers Terrorism: Iran’s President 

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Zionist regime of Israel is afraid of ballot boxes, because it knows that terrorist inclinations, in every shape, lack public support, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said.

Terrorist activities, carried out either by organizations, regimes or bigots with false beliefs, have one thing in common, that is, lack of public support, Rouhani said in an address to the Second International Congress of 17,000 Iranian Terror Victims, in Tehran on Monday.

“Those (terrorist) individuals and groups have no popularity among the nations,” he stressed, adding that they cannot win people’s votes, which is why the Zionist regime of Israel is afraid of ballots and prefers intimidation and terrorism.

Terrorists have a great fear of votes and view their demise in ballot boxes, the president stated.

...Elsewhere in his remarks, the president reaffirmed Iran’s support for counterterrorism efforts.

He reassured the countries that grapple with the scourge of terrorism, such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen, of Iran’s continued support and backing for the oppressed.

Rouhani further stressed that Iran has been a victim of terrorism backed by Western powers and the Zionist regime of Israel.

Yes, someone who was one of eight handpicked approved candidates for election out of 680 registered candidates is lecturing Israel about democracy.

The president of the nation behind Hezbollah and numerous terror attacks worldwide, who funds terrorist groups,  is lecturing Israel about being terrorist.

Rouhani says that people don't vote for terrorists when Hamas won the last Palestinian elections.

He should start a sitcom.



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Posted By Elder of Ziyon to Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News at 8/31/2015 04:00:00 PM

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[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] "Licking the Hand That Would Cut Their Throats" (Daphne Anson)

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British columnist Oliver Kamm succinctly stated in a worth-reading recent article in the Jewish Chronicle concerning Jeremy Corbyn and the Corbynistas: “The left now tolerates bigotry and embraces terror …. It's no longer possible to assume that a declared progressive will defend free speech, secularism, women's rights, homosexual equality, cosmopolitanism and the spread of scientific inquiry. Those are the values that cause me to admire Israel – a nation whose pluralist ethos will be fulfilled when there is an eventual two-state solution with a sovereign Palestine.  Yet now we have a left that tolerates bigotry, allies with theocratic reaction, embraces terror groups and espouses irrationalism.” (http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/columnists/142780/corbyns-deplorable-allies)

Australia’s most-read columnist and scourge of the Left Andrew Bolt, as usual pulling no punches, has observed during this past week:  “There is now something close to panic in Europe…. Europe has not had so many refugees since World War II, but this time the danger is greater, since many come from cultures and a faith so alien and sometimes hostile.  That danger is real. The Charlie Hebdo terrorists were sons of Algerian immigrants; the jihadist who tried to shoot up the Paris-Amsterdam train last week was from Morocco; immigrant areas of Paris and Sweden’s Malmo are repeatedly rocked by riots; and some 4000 Europeans, mainly the children of immigrants, have joined the Islamic State… Unless the Islamists are stopped, millions more refugees will join this invasion of Europe, including parents of tomorrow’s jihadists.  And after a decade or two of that, how safe will Europe be for Europeans — and us?  Already Jews are fleeing France and Sweden for the comparative safety of Israel.  The stakes have got much higher. Defeating the Islamic State is critical”  (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/this-is-a-war-we-must-win-quickly/story-fnj45fva-1227500080892)

But try telling this to the Left, even left-wing Jews.  There is something particularly pernicious about the “progressive” Jews – whether progressive in a political or religious sense – when they argue, as many do, for open borders regarding this “refugee” influx.

In its statement of purpose, an Israel-bashing British group of “as-a-Jews” calling itself Independent Jewish Voices (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Jewish_Voices) makes, inter alia, the curious claim: “There is no justification for any form of racism, including … Islamophobia, in any circumstance.”  A curious claim indeed, given that Islam is not “a race” and given that there are women and at least one prominent gay among the signatories, all of whom must surely be aware of the trespasses against females and against gays that are often committed by Islamic regimes, Islamic families, and Islamic persons in the name of Islam.

I know of at least one of those signatories who has admitted that coming together with other Jewish and Jew-ish critics of Israel has been his first and only “Jewish communal” activity, while another, the offspring of a mixed marriage, was raised an Anglican and has been described wryly as “an occasional Jew”.

Truly unhelpful is the statement emanating a fortnight of so ago from 200 British Jews, including 20 rabbis, which castigated the Cameron government’s necessarily harsh response to the Calais crisis  (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jewish-community-leaders-speak-out-against-governments-calais-refugee-policy-10450367.html) “Many of us in the Jewish community are appalled by the UK’s response to the ongoing situation in Calais,” said the letter (http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/your-response-to-migrant-crisis-is-appalling-british-jews-tell-cameron-a2487361.html), sent from the Jewish Council for Racial Equality (JCORE). “Our experience as refugees is not so distant that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to be demonised for seeking safety.”  This week Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond described migrants attempting to cross over to Britain as “marauding”. Last week about 200 tried to storm the Channel Tunnel, while hauliers say drivers have been threatened by stowaways. Britain has paid for a £7 million security fence.  The letter said: “People fleeing conflict and persecution are not to blame for the crisis in Calais; neither is our welfare system, nor the French government. Above all, we in the UK are not the victims here; we are not being invaded by a ‘swarm’.” The Jewish leaders said refugees were usually seeking a safer society and were not attracted by benefits.  Britain accepted almost 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1938 and 1939. Among those saved were artist Frank Auerbach, now 84, and Labour peer Lord Dubs, 83.  Dr Edie Friedman, executive director of JCORE, said: “The Jewish refugee experience is still a vivid memory for many in our community.  The Government’s failure to even consider helping those fleeing conflict and persecution today shames us as a nation. Rather than shut ourselves off from the world, it is vitally important that we work with the rest of Europe to create safe and legal routes for refugees to claim asylum.” Since June, nine people have died in the Channel Tunnel while attempting to gain access to the UK. However, 2,000 have died in the Mediterranean trying to enter Europe by sea.  Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner said: “No country has a perfect record on immigration. No country could do, such is the complexity of the issue and the lives of those it affects.’  (See also this nice but naive statement by Liberal rabbis (https://jcoreuk.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/rabbis-call-for-government-re-think-on-cuts-in-aid-for-asylum-seekers/).

The letter creates a false analogy between the refugees from Nazi persecution and the hordes of economic migrants, including thousands and thousands of testosterone-fuelled young single men from benighted lands attempting to reach Britain illegally today, as pointed out in by several commenters blow the line in the Evening Standard’s report.   To quote just one commenter: ‘I am Jewish and wish to disassociate myself from the 200 Jews who have signed JCORE’S letter suggesting that the Prime Minister’s handling of the Calais migrant crisis is “appalling”. You quote (12 August) Dr Edie Friedman, Director of JCORE, as suggesting that the government has “failed to even consider helping those fleeing conflict and persecution”.  The truth is that the refugees in Calais are a mixture of asylum seekers and economic refugees.  The problem of migration is a global one and no Western country accepts unlimited migration. In the US the “progressive” Obama administration has removed around 2 million “illegal aliens” and Germany is in the process of removing 94,000 asylum seekers.  JCORE seems to suggest that the government grants no asylum applications at all. The truth is that some 8,000 were granted in 2014. JCORE also appears to imply that all Jews who wanted a refuge in the UK from Nazi persecution in the 1930s and 1940s were accepted. This is far from the case, as historians … have shown.”

And then, as one perceptive non-Jewish commenter has observed, with admirable brevity and sound common sense, the signatories are "Licking the Hand That Would Cut Their Throats”.

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Posted By Elder of Ziyon to Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News at 8/31/2015 02:00:00 PM

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[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] 08/31 Links Pt1: Gazans Fleeing to Israel; DNC chair blocks support for Iran nuclear deal

From Ian:

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Report: Gazans Fleeing to Israel, Risking Death to Escape Hamas Oppression

A growing number of Palestinians are fleeing the Gaza Strip for Israel, Israeli news site nrg reported on Sunday.
According to the report, the reason for the exodus is the oppressive rule of terror group Hamas, which has controlled the coastal enclave since 2007.
The number of Gazans attempting to make the move has steadily risen since Israel’s 50-day war against Hamas terrorists last summer, dubbed Operation Protective Edge, nrg said. When apprehended by Israeli authorities, the absconders told interrogators about their poor living conditions and the repressive Hamas regime.
The IDF interrogations revealed that the refugees are even willing to risk going to prison — or being killed by security forces mistaking them for terrorists — due to widespread hunger and fear of Hamas.
The fugitives also said that Hamas was acting to prevent the exit of Palestinians from Gaza into Israel, for fear they will become Israeli collaborators. They explained that since the establishment by Hamas of an administrative route near the border fence with Israel, which is guarded by Hamas fighters, they are forced to crawl under the fence, to avoid being caught and executed.

'Big embarrassment for Obama' as DNC chair blocks support for Iran nuclear deal

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz blocked a resolution that would have backed U.S. President Barack Obama's Iran nuclear deal, which curbs Iran's nuclear program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
Citing "knowledgeable Democrats," the paper reported that during the party's summer meeting, Wasserman Schultz had prevented a vote on a resolution seeking to put the national committee on record as supporting the nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers, ahead of a crucial vote in Congress that will seal its fate.
A CNN panel described the incident as the "president's big embarrassment."
"The Obama-controlled DNC could not pass a resolution this weekend expressing support for President Obama's Iran deal," New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin said during the panel debate. "It's a bit of an embarrassment for the administration seeing as it's his party; he appointed Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and it's revived the sort of latest round of eye-rolling among Democratic operatives about the state of the party."
CNN host John King said Martin was being diplomatic, saying it was a "big embarrassment for the president."
"We wanted to show support for the president," James Zogby, the co-chair of the DNC's Resolutions Committee, told The Washington Post. "We found that the best way to show support was a letter that members would sign on to, and the overwhelming majority of DNC members signed onto the letter."

Republican Senators: Filibuster on Iran Would Be a 'Gift'

Republicans intend to “hammer” Senate Democrats next month if they do not allow a vote on a measure disapproving President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, according to The Hill.
Republicans, who oppose the deal unanimously, need the support of six Democrats to break a filibuster by Democrats, while the deal's supporters need 41 Senate votes to block the measure of disapproval. So far, 30 Senate Democrats have committed to voting in favor of the Iran agreement, and only two Democrats have broken ranks.
If the resolution is filibustered, it would be a major victory for the White House, which wouldn’t have to resort to a presidential veto to keep the Iran deal alive.
However, opponents of the deal warned that Senate Democrats would pay a political cost for such a move.
“Democrats will be setting themselves up for a further political hit if they deny the people the opportunity —the people meaning members of Congress — to vote on it,” said Allen Roth, the president Secure America Now, which opposes the Iran agreement. “I think it’ll be handing a political gift to the Republicans.”

GOP Senator: States Can Undo Iran Deal Damage

Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma has co-authored an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal urging individual US states to widen sanctions against Iran even as the White House and Congress undo their sanctions against the rogue Islamist republic.
President Barack Obama’s deal with Iran “welcomes Iran as a participant in the world community conditioned only on marginal changes to its nuclear program. It effectively allows Iran to maintain technology that would lead to a nuclear weapon, as well as continue its human-rights abuses, sponsoring of terrorism, imprisoning of American hostages, and threats to American allies, including Israel,” writes Inhofe, in an article co-signed by Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general.
“Fortunately,” the two write, “the U.S. states have the power to limit these threats, if they all choose to use it.” They justify this by noting that it was Obama who chose to turn the major international accord as an executive agreement, rather than as a treaty, “in order to evade the Constitution’s requirement of two-thirds approval by the U.S. Senate for enactment.” Since Obama skirted the people’s representatives in Congress – “the people, through the states, may come to their own decisions regarding sanctions on Iran.”

Dividing the Arabs: America and Europe's Double Game

Iran is on its way in a few years to having nuclear weapons capability. The breakout time, according to President Obama, would effectively be "zero." Iran could then make as many bombs as it would like, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles to delver them to major American cities, directly from Iran, from South America, or -- making identification and retaliation impossible -- from submarines submerged off the U.S. coast.
Obama with one hand allows Iran to glide to nuclear capability and encourage the Muslim Brotherhood and similar Islamist terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula -- while with the other hand, he claims to support Israel.
Qatar's role is duplicitous. It plays host to U.S. military bases at the same time that it funds and supports ISIS.
Hamas, since last year's war, has chosen to use its scant resources to rebuild its kidnapping tunnels and war capability, instead of developing businesses and turning the Gaza Strip into a magnificent Arab Riviera, as Dubai has become. Hamas's failure does not come from a lack of resources; it comes from a deliberate choice of how to use them.
The Iranians, in opposing American policy, which is a tissue of amateur plans and plots, are flexible and exploit Islam's taqiyya [dissimulation] -- religious approval to lie in the cause of Allah and to further Islam. However, they are not even bothering with that, they are telling the truth: "Death to America; Death to Israel."

Obama: US and Israel must improve Intel cooperation to stop Hezbollah from getting missiles

US President Barack Obama voiced his commitment to Israel's security in an interview published by Forward on Monday, saying that the US and the Jewish state should get back to increasing security cooperation after the current debate on the Iran nuclear deal has subsided.
"I think that once we have completed the congressional debate and the deal is in the process of being implemented, it will be important for my administration and the Israeli government to move forward on what I’ve been calling for since April, when the political framework agreement in Lausanne was first announced, and that is to sit down and ask the question, what are the major security challenges that we together face in the region, and how can we build on the already robust, unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation that we have to make our security arrangements even stronger?" Obama told Forward.
In particular, he mentioned the importance of finding ways to increase intelligence cooperation between the US and Israel to prevent Iran's proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, from obtaining more missiles with which to target Tel Aviv.
Obama reiterated that his disagreement with Israel over the terms of the Iran nuclear deal was a "fight within the family."
"Over the next several weeks as we get to the conclusion of the congressional debate, I think it is important for everybody to just take a breath for a moment and recognize that people on both sides of the debate love the United States and also love Israel," he told Forward.

Now Exposed - Iran is Already Waging War Against Israel

How serious is the likelihood of attacks from Kuntar's group and other terror gangs in the Golan? "At any given moment, the IDF Northern Command faces at least two warnings of impending attacks in the Golan region," the officer said. In fact, just two weeks ago, the IDF "conducted an exercise simulating an Israeli incursion into Syria in response to attacks on the border….The main threat in the area is posed by jihadi groups, not the Syrian military."
"At any given moment." Sure enough, just four days later, Iranian rockets from Syria struck in the Upper Galilee. Air-raid sirens sounded for the first time in years, as residents of local town and kibbutzim grabbed their children and ran, panic-stricken, to their bomb shelters.
It was bad enough when it turned out that the Iran deal would give the Iranians hundreds of millions of dollars, which they could use to help Hezbollah and Hamas. And it was bad enough when it was revealed that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, recently authored a 416-page book on the need to destroy Israel.
But now it turns out that the danger is not hypothetical, and Tehran is not just using words. It is already engaged in a daily proxy terror war against America's ally, Israel.
Will Members of Congress ignore these “facts on the ground” as they are weighing how to vote on the Iran agreement?

Jewish Pundits Bemoan Media ‘Obsession’ With Jewishness of Congress Members Over Iran Nuclear Deal

Two well-known Jewish pundits took to Twitter on Sunday to question the practice of the newspaper, The Hill, to emphasize the Jewishness of members of Congress in relation to the Iran nuclear deal.
Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept tweeted similar sentiments about what they consider the dubious practice, which neither actually refers to as “antisemitic” though this could be inferred from their banter with followers.
Goldberg, whose many one-on-one interviews with President Barack Obama has made him an international household name, wrote: “The Hill newspaper appears to be a bit obsessed by the Jewishness of members of Congress.”
Greenwald, an award-winning author and long-time writer for publications such as Salon and the Guardian, wrote: “News outlets keep highlighting Jewishness of US politicians when discussing Iran Deal – why?”
Each linked to a piece in The Hill, a political website widely read in Washington, D.C., about a Washington Post report on Saturday, according to which Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz “blocked consideration of a resolution at the party’s summer meeting that would have praised President Obama and backed his nuclear deal with Iran.”

Report: Iranian Hackers Linked to Sophisticated Cyber-Attacks on Political Dissidents

Iranian dissidents abroad who are falling victim to sophisticated cyber-attacks are likely being targeted by Iranian hackers who seek “to steal their email communications and contacts,” according to a report released this week by Canadian researchers, Voice of America reported yesterday.
The report, titled “London Calling,” details a multi-layered, real-time phishing campaign that uses a cybersecurity technique known as “two-factor authorization” – often employed to bolster online security – to trick its targets. …
The ploy basically worked like this: A target would receive an early-morning phone call, usually from London. The caller, pretending to be a trusted source, would inform the target that he or she would soon receive a Google document, which would arrive almost instantly at the target’s Gmail account.
“So before you’re fully awake, you get something that looks legitimate,” Scott-Railton told VOA. “But what you’re actually looking at is a fake Web page controlled by the attackers.”

A new era? Iranians erase 'Death to America' graffiti from wall of former US embassy in Tehran

Slogans against America are being erased from walls on the street of Tehran, Iranian media has reported in recent days.
Iranian news sites have published pictures of a person wiping off graffiti that reads,"Death to America," also from the walls of where the US embassy was formerly located prior to its closure after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
The US embassy was sacked in the early days of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 by students who feared a repeat of a 1953 coup, when the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of Iran's prime minister. The ensuing US hostage crisis lasted 444 days and Washington and Tehran have yet to restore diplomatic ties.
Last week, as Britain restored its diplomatic mission four years after protesters ransacked the British ambassador's residence, Iran's foreign minister said it was too early to talk of reopening the US Embassy in Tehran.
Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, asked if Tehran would now countenance a restoration of the US diplomatic mission, said the United States' "illogical attitude" towards Iran meant the time was not ripe for a similar move with Washington.

Iran jails 2 people for 10 years for spying for US, Israel

Iran’s official IRNA news agency said two people have been sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of spying for the United States and Israel.
IRNA quoted judicial spokesman Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi as saying Sunday that the two were sentenced by a Revolutionary Court, which handles national security cases. He did not provide the names of those sentenced.
“The two persons were sentenced to 10-year prison terms by Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court,” Ejehi told reporters in Tehran on Sunday, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.
The lawyer for Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, who was tried for espionage in a Revolutionary Court, said the case “has nothing to do with the case of my client.” Leila Ahsan says the court has yet to issue its verdict on Rezaian.

Family of American held in Iran marks 4-year anniversary of captivity

Saturday marked the fourth anniversary of the imprisonment of a former U.S. Marine in Iran due to what Secretary of State John Kerry has said are false espionage charges.
Amir Hekmati became the first American to receive the death penalty in Iran in more than 33 years in January 2012 for espionage, waging war against God and corrupting the earth, according to the Free Amir website set up by his supporters.
That death sentence was later overturned by a higher court, but he was subsequently convicted in a secret trial of "cooperating with hostile governments" and received a 10-year prison sentence, according to the website and a CNN interview with Hekmati's sister, Sarah, last year.
"Today marks four years that our brother, son and American Marine veteran, Amir Hekmati, has been imprisoned in Iran," Hekmati's family wrote in a statement.
Kerry called on the Iranian government to release Hekmati on humanitarian grounds.

Zionist Lobby - Anti-American Bogeyman

Time has not sapped the clout of the Zionist Lobby. Never the political force of anti-Semitic claims, yet the myth of a lobby powerful enough to bend the will of government to what opponents consider unpatriotic interests – Jewish interests – remains a handy cudgel for the right moment. Heads of state still keep the Jewish scare on ice to blame for big disruptive acts. War and bogus Zionist power go together like horse and chariot. Monarchs and icons of the past found it so.
They wheeled out the bogeyman to blame for European wars. It was blamed for the first modern type, the Anglo Boer War. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh blamed the bogeyman for World Wars I and II respectively. In the build-up to the Anschluss Hitler warned that it would be the work of manipulative Jews. On the outbreak of war, the Fuehrer hitched the bogeyman to the hell he was going to unleash.
Then Zionists plucked sovereignty out of nowhere, and the bogeyman had to get a new face. Israel now took the blame for making war not peace. Israel was saddled with a unique sin called Occupation. It was the old bogeyman in new clothes that wouldn’t gift the Palestinians a state. And when Israel did make offers or overtures, they were never good enough for the powers that be. A Prime Minister of Israel once took a walk on the Temple Mount, and the world erupted in furious disgust. So did a Palestinian uprising known as Intifada. Never mind that their leader, Yasser Arafat, had planned the Intifada long before the bogeyman walked.
Was there no limit to blameworthiness? It seemed not when a member of Europe’s parliament traced climate change to the bogeyman. Clare Short complained that Israel “undermined the international community’s reaction to global warming.” How did the bogeyman contrive such a thing? Wily is as wily does. An Israel that refuses to make peace, explained her accuser, “prevents leaders from attending to the threat of carbon that, if left unregulated, will end the human race.” So, when the human race ends, it will be laid at the bogeyman’s door.

IsraellyCool: Shirley Temper And Brother Follow The Script

As I have documented on this blog, Basem Tamimi of Tamimi Press has trained his children well in the art of parading before the cameras. Daughter Ahed aka ‘Shirley Temper‘ is particularly adept, but son Mohammed aka ‘Sling-shot’ seems to be following in her footsteps.
Besides the images that have gone viral, the children’s interviews with Israeli television reaffirm the depth of their schooling in this art form.
In an interview with Channel 10 (see here from approx 26:15), Mohammed says “I want to say to him [the soldier] that the women who were there were able to strike him and kill him, but they are humane.”
Now see what sister ‘Shirley’ says in her interview with Channel 1.
“We could have killed the soldier, but our humanity does not allow us to kill anyone.”
Clearly someone is feeding them specific sound bytes, and I am guessing it is daddy dearest.

Israel Could Stop Nabi Salah Riots, But it Doesn't - Why?

The controversial footage - in which a soldier is forced to abandon an arrest of a rock-thrower - has caused a storm of controversy in Israel. Many right-wing legislators, such as Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, see it as proof of how the army's hands have been tied by the political echelons and called for an urgent review of the IDF's rules of engagement in dealing with rioters.
But others have questioned why authorities are not being more proactive in tackling what are essentially staged provocations, in Nabi Salah and elsewhere, many of which happen like clockwork each and every week.
Speaking to Arutz Sheva, David Bedein of the Center for Near-East Policy Research explained that the clashes are part of a longstanding attempt by Palestinians to seize control of a well owned by the Jewish village of Halamish.
Since losing a legal battle in the Israeli High Court, the Arab villagers - led by the notoriously violent Tamimi clan - have staged weekly attempts to take the well by force. Each time the IDF turns up to repel them, in what has become a weekly ritual involving anarchists and left-wing activists from both Israel and abroad.

Father of Palestinian boy at heart of clash with IDF: Our children are doing their duty

The father of Muhammad Tamimi, who was at the center of a viral video of Palestinian women and children preventing his arrest by an IDF soldier, spoke out on Sunday in support of his children's involvement in demonstrations in the Nabi Saleh village in the West Bank.
"We have the right to resist. Our children are doing their duty and must be strong," Bassem Tamimi told The Jerusalem Post, when asked how he feels about his children's participation in West Bank protests against soldiers. He noted, however, that they are not against the soldiers, but against the occupation.
Muhammad's mother and sister were among those filmed on Friday hitting the soldier and trying to pull the boy away from him. This isn't the first time the family had made headlines for encounters with the IDF - Ahed, 14, was filmed two years ago shaking her fist at an Israeli soldier in a video that went viral.
According to the IDF, the reason for Muhammad's attempted arrest on Friday was stone-throwing, a claim his father rejects.

Family ‘proud’ of soldier’s restraint in West Bank scuffle

The father of an Israeli soldier who was attacked in the West Bank while trying to arrest a child said Sunday that he was proud of his son’s restraint, even as the child’s family accused the soldier of using too much force.
A video of the soldier being attacked Friday by Palestinian women and children near the village of Nabi Saleh has received some two million views on Facebook and other social media. In the video, the soldier appears to forcefully restrain the boy, whose arm is in a cast. And on several occasions, he chokes the kid and presses his head against a boulder to keep him still. Activists said the boy is 12 years old.
A group of women and children begin grappling with the soldier and punching him repeatedly, while he holds down the boy. At one point, a girl bites his hand.
“We are very proud of what we saw, proud of the restraint that he demonstrated, because without a doubt if [the] women had been injured, it would have ended very differently,” Arnon, the soldier’s father, told Army Radio.

Israeli teacher under fire for participating in Nabi Saleh demonstrations

An Israeli high school teacher is under fire after he was seen in the Friday YouTube video that went viral, in which Palestinian women and children attack an IDF soldier as he attempts to arrest an 11-year old boy with a broken arm.
In the background of that video it is possible to see a tall man, in a bluish-gray T-shirt and a baseball cap, who has since been identified as a teacher at the Avin ORT High School in Ram Gan.
The teacher does not attack the soldier, but he does appear to call on him to leave the boy alone.
The IDF has charged that the soldier attempted to arrest the boy, Muhammad Tamimi, because he was throwing stones during the weekly Friday demonstration.

Seth Frantzman: Nabi Saleh and Israel’s professional army problem

The photos could have been published 30 years ago in 1985, or 30 years from now in 2045, when Israel will still likely be doing the same thing it is today. It’s the kind of incident that comes up every year. It recalls David “the Nahlawi,” a soldier from the Nahal Brigade who cocked his weapon at a Palestinian youth in Hebron in 2014, or the photos of Lt. Col Shalom Eisner hitting a foreign peace activist in the Jordan Valley in 2012. Sometimes the soldier’s actions are deemed to have been correct, other times the soldier comes in for massive condemnation and is sent to military prison.
For the pro-Israel community, these incidents are unfortunate mistakes, or part of an international media conspiracy that blows routine events out of proportion. The media doesn’t tell the “whole story,” because, we are told, the video or photos do not show what the Palestinians did to provoke the incident. Or the Palestinians are said to have “scripted” the incident. In the case of the soldier at Nabi Saleh the army spokesman told the press that the Palestinian youth was throwing rocks and that after the arrest, the intercession of the women and children, “a decision was made by the regional commander to cease the arrest.”
For the crowd more critical of Israel these kinds of incidents are all seen as symbolic of the evils of military occupation of the West Bank. The Israeli soldiers are described as brutes, the Palestinians as victims. Someone will soon make a meme of the incident, and someone else will interview the family of the Palestinian boy and that will be the end of it.
What no one seems to wonder is why, after 48 years of Israel running the West Bank, is the regular conscript army sent in to deal, again and again, with stone-throwing children.

Jew to Stand Trial for Fighting Back after Ambush

Well-known Jewish activist Noam Federman of Kiryat Arba will stand trial for an incident last year in which Arabs ambushed his vehicle with rocks.
Federman will be charged with damaging a vehicle.
The incident took place when Federman was driving through Hevron with two of his children. They were ambushed at close range. Federman and his son immediately got out of their car and chased the rock throwers into an alley.
In the alley, Arabs threw more rocks at Federman and his son, who threw rocks back. A video shot by Arabs shows Federman approaching an Arab vehicle, pulling out some egg cartons that were in it and throwing them onto the ground. He also appears to hurl a rock at the vehicle.
According to Federman, when police questioned him, they showed him a military video showing how an IDF vehicle was attacked at the same spot just before his vehicle got there. Instead of catching the attackers, the soldiers drove off, he said – leading the ambushers to attack his car next.
Federman said that Judea and Samaria Police filed the charge sheet without first holding a hearing with him as he had requested.

Intifada? Netanyahu Offers 'Vehicle Protection'

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu acknowledged on Monday the surging terror wave that Israeli citizens have been subjected to in recent months and years but appeared to offer little in terms of concrete action to thwart it.
"I held a special discussion this morning with the Minister of Defense, the Minister for Internal Security and the Minister of Transportation, in order to deal with what is looking like a growing trend of terror attacks, in Jerusalem as well as Judea and Samaria,” he said at the opening of the cabinet session. “We will beef up forces and increase vehicular protection to safeguard the security of the citizens of Israel.”
The term “migun,” which Netanyahu used, usually refers to installing rock-proof windshields in cars, and other forms of passive defense.
"The Israel Police has an important role in this, as it does in preserving law and order in general. I give full backing to the Minister for Internal Security, and his efforts to appoint the best man for the post of Israel Police Commissioner.
"Gal Hirsch is the right man in the right place,” Netanyahu added, regarding the nominee for commissioner, who has come under fire from various circles. “He is an officer with values, dedicated, he has great capabilities to create changes and contribute to the strengthening of the Israel Police and the rule of law in Israel.”

Wounded Israeli: It Was a Very Big Miracle

Ronen Edri, 46, who was wounded in a shooting attack on Sunday as he drove past the Jit intersection, near Kedumim in Samaria, spoke to Channel 20 and recalled the ordeal.
Edri was lightly wounded by shrapnel in his hand, but managed to continue driving to a nearby IDF base, where he was treated by the Ephraim Brigade's medics.
"I got up for a normal work day. I was driving to work and in front of me was a vehicle that was traveling relatively slowly. I kept driving until the intersection, I turned right and the second after I turned right, I heard a tremendous noise. A volley of gunfire destroyed the window to the left. I made a preliminary assessment that I can respond, I stepped on the gas and got away as fast as possible," Edri recalled.
"I was wounded in the hand, shrapnel in the back. All in all, thank G-d, it was a very, very big miracle. I am grateful for the miracle, I could have been in quite a different place right now," he added.
The attack joins a long list of terrorist incidents that have occurred recently on the roads of Judea and Samaria and in Jerusalem.

Police probe mysterious deep shaft dug in East Jerusalem

A 100-foot-deep hole discovered Monday beneath the streets of East Jerusalem has police stumped.
Police announced the discovery of a shaft dug in the yard of an elderly East Jerusalem woman, meters from the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, just outside the Old City walls.
A neighbor alerted police to the excavations on Nur al-Din Street, just north of the Old City, and officers who arrived at the home discovered a 30-meter-deep hole and ladders leading below ground.
The area surrounding the Old City is rich with archaeological remains dating back thousands of years, but Israeli law prohibits unsanctioned excavations, and all artifacts found must be handed over to the government.
An Israel Police spokesperson said there were no known suspects and that nobody was spotted at the scene of the incident.
The owner told police that several months ago, people arrived at her home and told her they were from the Jerusalem municipality and needed to dig in the yard to fix a water leak.
Since then they arrived every day to carry on the excavations.

Ashkelon: Mayor, Parents Protest Against Leftist Principal

Parents of pupils in Ashkelon’s School of the Arts are threatening to boycott the start of the school year because of the appointment of a radical leftist principal.
Avital Benshalom was approved as the principal of the school, despite opposition from parents and Ashkelon Mayor Itamar Shimoni over reports that she signed a petition calling on soldiers not to serve in Judea and Samaria in 2002.
Members of the parents’ organization threatened to petition the High Court of Justice on the matter. “Until she retracts her words, she is unworthy to head a school in our city,” Shimoni said Sunday.
In a letter to Education Minister Naftali Bennett, the parents’ organization said its members would keep their children out of the school indefinitely if Benshalom's appointment is not cancelled.

Druze Ex-MK Headed for Jail for Meeting Terror Chief in Syria

A panel of Supreme Court judges rejected on Monday an appeal by former Balad MK Said Nafaa against his conviction and sentencing for contact with a foreign agent in the course of an illegal trip to Syria, eight years ago. He will serve 12 months in jail.
In 2007, Nafaa helped organize a visit by Druze clergymen to Syria, which he took part in. During the trip, he met Talal Naji, deputy secretary-general of the PFLP terror group.
Nafaa was convicted of exiting Israel illegally to an enemy state, assisting others to exit illegally to an enemy state, and contact with a foreign agent.
Beside the 12 months he will spend in jail, he received a six-month suspended sentence for three years.

Palestinian prisoners launch fresh hunger strike

Five Palestinian prisoners launched a hunger strike on Saturday, and warned they would stop taking fluids on September 1 unless Israel ends its policy of imposing detention without trial.
According to the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, Fadi Obeidat, a lawyer for the PA committee, said over the weekend the detainees were threatening to refuse their “fluids” on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear whether that referred to nutrients and sodium-enriched fluids, or to drinking water altogether.
The new hunger strike comes days after a Palestinian inmate was removed from so-called administrative detention by court order after nearly dying as a result of a two-month fast that ramped up tensions between Israel and Palestinians and saw several violent confrontations.

Liberman: Israel should have let hunger-striker die in jail

Yisrael Beytenu party chairman Avigdor Liberman on Sunday slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security and foreign policies, saying Israel should have allowed a hunger-striking detainee to die in prison, and predicted the governing coalition would not survive the 2015 calendar year.
“I say this with complete confidence: In 2016, elections for the 21st Knesset will be held,” Liberman told a gathering of his party’s Knesset members and activists in Jerusalem, held to mark the upcoming High Holidays.
Liberman, who served as foreign minister in the previous Netanyahu government, told his party’s lawmakers to prepare for an election campaign in the near future. The right-wing Yisrael Beytenu won a disappointing six seats in March’s elections, and Liberman opted to go into opposition, from where he has been a relentless critic of his former ally Netanyahu.

Report: Hezbollah enlisting West Bank youth to carry out terror attacks against Israel

Hezbollah has been working intensively to enlist former operatives from Fatah's armed wing, the Al Aksa Brigades, in order to carry out terror attacks against Israeli targets in the West Bank and inside Israel, a Palestinian security source was quoted as saying on Sunday.
Saudi daily Okaz quoted the source as saying that "among those Hezbollah members involved in the operation is Kayis Ubayid, who was behind the kidnapping of Col. (res.) Elahanan Tenebaum in 2000." Tenenbaum was released to Israel from Hezbollah captivity as part of a prisoner exchange in 2004.
The source added that Palestinian security forces believe that recent shootings and the use of explosive devices such as that thrown at an IDF position near Beit Jala, south of Jerusalem, earlier this month, are part of the Lebanese Shi'ite group's efforts.

Senior Palestinian official calls for unification of Islamic Jihad, Hamas into PLO

Prominent Palestinian politician and former Fatah member Muhammad Dahlan called for the integration of all Palestinian factions, including Islamic Jihad and Hamas, into the Palestinian Liberation Organization's new government, BBC Arabic reported late last week.
Dahlan, a former leader of Fatah in Gaza, said in his interview that "the homeland of Palestine and the state of the PLO is in danger," citing the fact that the number of Israeli settlements have increased under Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's rule.
Dahlan also stated that he is not calling for a national reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas. Instead, his solution, he said, "is to unify all Palestinian governmental groups into the PLO."

Egypt launches crackdown on Gaza smuggling tunnels

Egyptian military bulldozers are digging through the sand along Egypt’s border with the Gaza Strip in recent days, pressing ahead with what appears to be a renewed campaign to pressure Gaza’s Hamas rulers and stamp out terror activity along the border.
The project, billed as an Egyptian military-operated fish farm, effectively would fill the border area with water and is designed to put an end to the last remaining cross-border underground smuggling tunnels, Egyptian military officials said. Hamas accuses Egypt of further isolating the beleaguered Palestinian territory.
The new excavations seem to be “a tightening of the grip of siege on Gaza,” Hamas official Mushir al-Masri said. Egypt “should not slide into this cliff that agrees with the Israeli policies of siege.”

Hamas, Egyptian TV Exchange Threats over Seizure of Hamas Militants in Sinai

In a televised address on August 21, aired on Al-Aqsa TV, a masked spokesman for the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades vowed that they would "not stand idly by" following the seizure of four of their militants in the Sinai on August 19. TV host Dina Ramez of the Egyptian Sada Al-Balad TV channel responded on August 23 by calling them "cockroaches" who should be "sprayed or else squashed with a slipper," and a day later, another Egyptian TV host, Riham No'man, said on Al-Assema TV that Egypt should strike Hamas.

ISIS release pictures of their new gold coins they say will 'break capitalist enslavement' - so why are they still paying their deranged gunmen in US dollars?

ISIS have released a new hour long video, showing off their latest propaganda tool - their very own coin currency.
The video, which includes a dreary and distorted history of world economics, shows the smelting of gold, silver and copper coins.
Dramatised by clips from Hollywood war films, the film accuses the US of 'confiscating Americans real wealth through an executive decree' with the introduction of the Gold Reserve Act in 1934.
Yet despite their glorification of their new currency, ISIS have no other means to pay their band of jihadis except through the use of US dollars.
Local trade continues to be done through the use of local currency or more commonly US dollars, due to the stability of the western currency.
The jihadi group claim in the video that one 21-carat one dinar coin will weigh 4.25 grams and it will be worth an equivalent to $139 due to its weight in gold.
The militant group claims that the currency will never lose value in comparison to paper money. Due to ISIS being a terrorist group, it will not be able to use the coins to trade outside its territory.

Parents of Jewish journalist Sotloff open up to press one year after ISIS beheading

On the one year anniversary of the Islamic State beheading of freelance journalist Steven Sotloff, his parents Shirley and Arthur opened up to the press in a recent interview with The Miami Herald in which they recount stories from their son's life and describe how they are dealing with the loss.
The grandson of Holocaust survivors, Sotloff came to Israel in 2005 and studied at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya until 2008, later taking on Israeli citizenship and eventually becoming a contributor to The Jerusalem Report, a sister-publication to The Jerusalem Post.
He had also worked for Time, Foreign Policy, and other outlets.
The 31-year-old from Pinecrest, Florida was kidnapped in Syria in August 2013 one year before the hardline Islamic group executed him.
“We don’t have Steven,” Arthur, a salesman told the Herald. “Steven is in a desert somewhere, laying in pieces with thousands of other people that have been killed. We’ll probably never get his remains back, so that means we won’t get the closure most people get when they lose somebody. This has been very difficult.”

Israeli who fought IS returns to Iraq to help freed Yazidis

Gill Rosenberg, an Israeli-Canadian who fought alongside the Kurds, has returned to Iraq to help the Yazidi women and children freed by a Jewish Montreal businessman.
According to a report by Channel 2, Rosenberg returned to Iraq last week on behalf of Steve Maman, who has been nicknamed the “Jewish Schindler” for founding the Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq project, which purports to have saved 128 women and children from sex slavery and abuse at the hands of the Islamic State.
Rosenberg, 31, had returned to Israel in mid-July after more than six months in Syria and Iraq.
Maman told Channel 2 that he had contacted Rosenberg on Facebook upon her return from Iraqi Kurdistan, and recruited her in his efforts to free Yazidi women.
He said that Rosenberg was in a safe place, and was using her local connections to free additional Yazidis. Maman praised Rosenberg’s bravery, and said it was unfortunate there were not more activists like her.

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Posted By Ian to Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News at 8/31/2015 12:00:00 PM

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