04/22 Links: Gaza: Let Their People Go!; If Palestinians want peace, 'prove it' by halting payments to terrorists ~ EoZ

From Ian:

“If the borders opened for one hour, 100,000 young people would leave Gaza.”
— Rashid al-Najja, vice dean, Gaza’s Al-Azhar University.
“…I’d go to Somalia, Sudan — anywhere but here.”
— Salim Marifi, student at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University, Al Jazeera, May 6 2015.
“96 percent of water in the Gaza Strip is now undrinkable.”
— i24 News, April 9, 2017.
“Each day, millions of gallons of raw sewage pour into the Gaza Strip’s Mediterranean beachfront … turning miles of once-scenic coastline into a stagnant dead zone.”
— Associated Press, May 3, 2016.
“Gaza’s sole power plant runs out of fuel.”
— Times of Israel, April 16, 2017.
The endeavor to transform the coastal enclave of the Gaza Strip into a self-governing Arab entity (or even part of such an entity) has failed.
It has failed resoundingly and irretrievably.
After two and a half decades of futile effort, the time has come to accept this, and to acknowledge that further pursuit of this ill-conceived objective will only compound the current tragedy — for both Jew and Arab alike.
Incapable and uninterested
With the passage of time, it has become increasingly clear that, as a collective, the Palestinian Arabs in general and the Gazan Arabs in particular are totally incapable of and largely uninterested in creating and sustaining an independent political entity for themselves, by themselves.
Underscoring this dour assessment is the increasingly frequent and ominous flow of reports warning of imminent collapse of virtually all the basic infrastructure in Gaza — electric power, water, sewage and sanitation system — and the impending catastrophe this precipitates.

Dore Gold: The Legacy of the Taliban: Sunni Allies of Tehran

The U.S. decision to drop an 11-ton bomb, known as the “mother of all bombs,” in Afghanistan against an ISIS target brought back into focus that entire war and the fact that, aside from the problem of ISIS, there has still been a problem in Afghanistan of the Taliban.
How did the Taliban become so significant over the last number of years since the 9/11 attacks? It’s important to remember that the Taliban are as much a problem as the terror organizations that have congregated on Afghan soil. Taliban policies since the late 1990s involved a number of acts which they undertook which have undermined not just the security of the Middle East but also the security of the world. Of course it was the Taliban who gave sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and to al-Qaeda prior to the 9/11 attacks. They were originally located or protected by the regime in Sudan, but then in the mid-90s, bin Laden moved to Afghanistan where the Taliban had taken control and offered him a location for his training camps. It was there that bin Laden planned and implemented the horrible attack on the United States – against New York and against Washington, D.C.
One thing we’ve learned from this entire experience is that the West must not allow terror sanctuaries to grow, to thrive, and to be used to plan attacks against the West. That is the first lesson from the experience the West has had with the Taliban.
There’s a second experience with the Taliban that should be recalled. In March 2001, the Taliban decided to dynamite Buddhist statues in the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan that were 2,000 years old. These statues were located along the Silk Route and they were treasured by adherents of Buddhism, but all of a sudden the Taliban decided to attack these religious sites. The Taliban attack actually induced a debate in many radical Islamic circles about whether it was the right thing to do. At first, for example, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, thought it would be a mistake for the Taliban to attack the Buddhas because it would set up Muslims to be assaulted in Buddhist countries. Later, Qaradawi and others said, “You know what? The attack on these pre-Islamic sites was the right thing to do” and there was even a discussion about destroying pre-Islamic sites in Egypt like the pyramids and the Sphinx.

Paris cop killed in Champs-Élysées shooting was gay rights advocate who responded to 2015 terror attack

The Paris police officer slain in Thursday’s attack on a popular street has been identified as a gay rights advocate who responded to the city’s deadly November 2015 terror attack.
Xavier Jugelé, 37, was killed when a gunman unleashed a hail of bullets at police officers at the Champs-Élysées Thursday night.
Flag!, an association of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender French police officers, confirmed to The Associated Press that Jugelé the killed officer. He was a member of the organization and took part of protests against anti-gay propaganda at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.
“He was a simple man who loved his job, and he was really committed to the L.G.B.T. cause,” Mickael Bucheron, Flag! president, told The New York Times. “He joined the association a few years ago, and he protested with us when there was the homosexual propaganda ban at the Sochi Olympic Games.”
Mourners embrace the day after a fatal shooting left one police officer dead and two others wounded at the Champs-Elysees on April 20, 2017. The gunman reportedly targeted the officers after he got out of a car and opened fire on them.
28 photos view gallery
Jugelé, who would’ve turned 38 next month, joined the police force in 2010, according to reports.

Benjamin Netanyahu If Palestinians want peace, 'prove it' by halting payments to terrorists

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday that if the Palestinians truly desire peace with Israel, they must first "come clean" and put an end to "rewarding terrorism."
During a interview with Fox News television host Sean Hannity, Netanyahu claimed that the Palestinian Authority, lead by Mahmoud Abbas, has spent much of the financial aid they receive on paying terrorist and their families at the expense of the American tax-payer.
"I think the first test of peace is to say to them, 'Hey, you want peace? Prove it. Confront terrorism, stop rewarding terrorism, stop paying it terrorists,'" Netanyahu said from his office in Jerusalem.
"It could be more than a billion dollars that are given to terrorists," Netanyahu continued. "I'm not talking about Hamas. I'm talking about the mainline Palestinian Authority headed by the president, who is going to see (US President Donald) Trump in Washington."
A high-level Palestinian delegation is scheduled to travel to Washington next week to prepare for Abbas’s meeting with Trump, scheduled for May 3.

UN employee resigns amid allegations he was elected to Hamas leadership

Suhail al-Hindi, an United Nations Relief Works Agency employee who was allegedly elected to the Hamas leadership, resigned from his position at the UN body, the Palestinian news site al-Rishalah reported on Saturday.
UNRWA Spokesman Chirs Gunness confirmed Hindi is no longer employed by UNRWA. “I can confirm that Mr. al-Hindi is no longer working for UNRWA. It is not the policy of the Agency to discuss the terms of departure of individual staff members,” Gunness said in an email statement.
UNRWA suspended Hindi in February, pending an investigation into the allegations against him.
Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which is responsible for coordinating civil, economic, and security affairs in the Palestinian territories, accused Hindi of being elected to the Hamas leadership in February.
“The name Suheil Ahmad Hassan al-Hindi has emerged as one of those selected for membership in the Hamas politburo,” COGAT said in a report published on its website.
Hamas held leadership elections for its Gaza branch in the beginning of 2017, but has yet to announce all of their results.

Netanyahu Slaps Obama, Praises Trump's 'Very Strong' Leadership

One prominent global leader who is particularly happy about America's "welcome change" at the top is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who on Friday praised Donald Trump's "very strong" words and "forthright deeds" in response to the tyrannical regime in Syria.
The PM's comments came during a joint press conference with Defense Secretary James Mattis on Friday. During his remarks, Netanyahu made clear that he is glad to see that the policies of the Obama administration appear to have been tossed, like most of his legacy, into the dustbin of history.
"We sense a great change in the direction of American policy," said Netanyahu, the Washington Examiner reports.
"We noted the very clear and forthright words, Mr. Secretary, that you had to say about Iran," he said. "This follows very strong and forthright words on the part of President Trump, and very forthright deeds against the use of chemical weapons by Iran's proxy, Syria."
This "welcome change" in policy and strategy, he said, is "appreciated around the world and in our region."
Netanyahu proved to be a thorn in the side of President Obama, with whom he repeatedly butted heads, particularly leading up to the infamous Iran nuclear deal, to which the Israeli government was adamantly opposed. Netanyahu really ramped up his increasingly open opposition to the Obama administration when he addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress in March 2015 to slam the "very bad deal."
That same year, a political NGO connected to Obama's 2008 campaign attempted to oust Netanyahu in the Israeli election using U.S. taxpayer money.

Netanyahu talks dangers posed by nuclear-armed Iran

Netanyahu calls on Palestinian leaders to confront terrorists

Netanyahu: US shift in stance on Iran is an important change

'Repeal or replace': Netanyahu speaks out against Iran deal

Everything You’ve Been Told About Whether the Iran Deal Is Working is Probably Wrong

The erroneous assumption that Trump would immediately tear up the Iran deal, like the mistaken presumption that he would align with Israel’s settler movement and against the two-state solution, is another example of how Trump’s reputation on the Middle East is often at odds with his statements and actions. That reputation reflects wishful thinking on the part of some far-right pro-Trump partisans, who projected their own politics onto their candidate, and far-left anti-Trump activists, who have projected everything they oppose onto him. This fake-news feedback loop has proven potent in the popular perception of Trump, but he himself has not conformed to it.
Just as consequentially, the misrepresentation of Trump’s position on the Iran deal is of a piece with the broader misrepresentations of the Iran deal by both its proponents and opponents since its signing. On one side, critics of the deal have repeatedly pointed to Iran’s continued domestic repression and international malfeasance as proof of the nuclear agreement’s failure. But the deal and its backers never claimed to address those issues, only Iran’s nuclear program. On the other side, supporters of the deal have repeatedly declared it a success because Iran has been in compliance with its dictates in the early going. But most critics of the deal—including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his speech to the U.S. Congress—didn’t claim Iran would violate it out of the gate. Rather, they argued that Iran would comply with the deal until it obtained full sanctions relief and rebuilt its economy, and only then relaunch its nuclear program with the infrastructure the deal left intact, and with an international business community too entrenched for sanctions to be reinstated.
In other words, both sides have repeatedly moved the goalposts on the Iran deal for political purposes, when there is still plenty of time on the game clock before we know whether the accord helped curb the regime’s nuclear ambitions or enabled them. And for the moment, President Trump seems inclined to let that clock continue to tick.
But because this reality does not fit into an easy pro-deal/anti-deal framework, you’re unlikely to hear about it from any politician or pundit anytime soon.

Trump Admin Reassigns Obama Holdover Iran Deal Architect Who Snuck into Senior Position

Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a senior career service employee at the State Department and a hold-over from the Obama and Bush administrations, has been removed from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s policy planning team, according to a report by Politico.
Nowrouzzadeh was an integral member of the team that drafted the much-maligned 2015 deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran over that theocratic dictatorship’s nuclear program. During the negotiations leading up to that deal, Breitbart News reported that Nowrouzzadeh previously had worked for the National-Iranian American Council, a lobbying group with connections to Iran’s Islamic fundamentalist leadership.
According to Politico, Nowrouzzadeh has been reassigned to the State Department’s Office of Iranian Affairs. As a career service employee, Nowrouzzadeh is protected from outright dismissal over political leanings.
The move comes after Secretary Tillerson announced Wednesday that a review of the nuclear deal would take place despite apparent Iranian compliance with its terms.

Poll: Majority of Brits think UK and Israel share common cause fighting terror

Nearly twice as many British voters believe the UK shares common cause with Israel in fighting extremism as disagree.
Thirty-four percent agreed with the statement compared to 19 who did not. Nearly half – 46 percent – did not know.
The ComRes poll for the Jewish News came days after the murder of five people in the Westminster attacks.
Respondents were asked if they agreed that ‘In fighting against the same enemy of Islamic extremism, Britain shares common cause with the state of Israel’.
Conservative (43 percent -16 percent), Labour (33-23), Lib Dem (38-27) and UKIP (40-20) voters were all more likely to agree than disagree.

Scottish Jews protest Church of Scotland report on Balfour

Groups representing Scottish Jews have said they have “considerable reservations” about a report published by the Church of Scotland to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration.
A statement by the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities (SCoJeC), supported by the Glasgow Jewish Representative Council, was issued on Thursday in response to the publication of a report titled ‘Embracing Peace and Working for Justice.
The report, produced jointly by the World Mission Council and the Church, includes a resolution that condemns Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which Jewish groups say shows a lack of objectivity.
“We have considerable reservations, in particular the proposed Deliverance (resolution) which condemns Israeli settlements, but not Palestinian terrorism or Hamas’s institutionalised anti-Semitism,” said SCoJeC.
Relations between Christians and Jews in Scotland were thought to be improving after a low point in 2012, when the Church of Scotland sponsored and participated in a conference marking 95 years since the Balfour Declaration, in which anti-Israel cleric Reverend Stephen Sizer was the keynote speaker.

US-Israel extradition battle looms in case of teen JCC bomb hoaxer

A legal battle is shaping up between Israel and the United States over the Israeli-American teenager who made hundreds of bomb threat calls to American Jewish institutions, with US prosecutors indicting him on multiple charges on Friday and set to seek his extradition, and Israeli prosecutors preparing to charge him on Monday.
American and Israeli investigators have been questioning the youth, who lives in Ashkelon, since his arrest last month, and new details of his alleged crimes are continuing to emerge.
Israel’s Channel 2 news on Saturday said the youth, whose name is under a gag order in Israel, also charged for his phone threat services on occasion, specifying incidents in which he issued bomb threats to US educational institutions, forcing their evacuation, on behalf of students who wanted exams postponed. He was paid in Bitcoins for these threats; almost 2 million shekels (more than half a million dollars) worth of Bitcoins was found in his internet bank account.
Israeli prosecutors are on Monday planning to charge the 18-year-old with crimes involving extortion with menaces, causing panic and money laundering.

Israeli Army Strikes Syria After Three Mortars Hit Golan Heights

The IDF announced on Friday evening that it had attacked the sources of three mortars fired into the northern Golan Heights earlier that day.
Friday afternoon, a mortar shell exploded in an open area in the northern Golan Heights. No alarm sounded at that time.
Later, an alarm sounded shortly after 6pm in the area, and a short time later, two mortar shell hits were identified in Israeli territory. The IDF reported that there were no casualties and no damage was caused by any of the mortars.
In a statement, the army said, “The IDF will not tolerate any attempt to harm the sovereignty of the State of Israel or the security of its residents and will see the Syrian regime responsible for what happens within its territory.”
It was also reported that the mortars were apparently a spillover from the internal fighting in Syria.

Syria: Israeli retaliation proof it supports rebels

Syria claimed on Friday that Israel’s retaliation for the explosion of mortar shells in the Golan Heights was proof that Israel provides assistance to rebels trying to topple Bashar Al-Assad’s regime.
In a statement quoted by the official Syrian news agency SANA, a Syrian military source confirmed that Israel struck a military position in the Quneitra region.
The strike caused “material damage”, according to the statement.
The source said that the Israeli “aggression” came after an attempt by “terrorists” to infiltrate military positions in Quneitra was foiled. This, claimed the source, proves that Israel provides direct support to “terrorist organizations”.
The Assad regime uses the term “terrorists” to describe all the rebel groups trying to oust the president.

New York Times Finds Gaza Cancer-Patient Terror Attempt Unfit to Print

An attempt by the Hamas terrorist group to use cancer patients to sneak explosives into Israel was thwarted this week, and the New York Times hasn’t considered it news fit to print.
The Times, which has a bureau chief in Jerusalem and an extensive network of local stringers in Israel and the Gaza Strip, handled the story instead by picking up an Associated Press dispatch, for which it apparently couldn’t find space in its print edition.
Two Palestinian sisters from Gaza were caught trying to smuggle explosives hidden in medicine containers into Israel as they were headed for cancer treatment at a Jerusalem hospital, authorities said, accusing Hamas militants of trying to use the women to carry out an attack.
Here are some other stories for which the New York Times did somehow manage to find room in its print edition this week:
A full page (and more) about “a small subculture of surfers” who ride the waves at night.
A nearly 2000-word profile of a Los Angeles dermatologist who treats a lot of people in the movie and television business.

Don't cheat this time, Marwan Barghouti

According to the latest pictures I’ve seen of Marwan Barghouti, he can use a little dieting. He’s grown a bit heavier, with his sedentary lifestyle of late. Not like the early 2000’s, when he was active and busy planning the murders of hundreds of Jews. Some say, he helped plan the entire Oslo War - a.k.a. the second intifada.
Of course cheating on his diet – i.e. hunger strike – as he did earlier in the century, is no way to take off the pounds.
That’s right - terrorist mastermind, mass murderer and part time dieter Marwan Barghouti, called for a Palestinian security prisoner hunger strike recently, the same Marwan who was caught in the past on video cheating, eating food, while his comrades starved themselves to "liberate Palestine."
As I wrote in “Palestinian Leaders Trick Their People Again” (2004), “...while his fellow prisoners were refraining from food, Marwan Barghouti, the Tanzim terrorist leader, was caught on camera feeding his face. First he covered the door and window of his cell - so as not to be seen - then he washed his hands and pigged out.
Barghouti asked wardens for the food and ate without knowing that a camera was filming from a small hole in the wall.
According to Prison Services spokesman Ofer Lefler, Barghouti asked wardens for the food and ate without knowing that a camera was filming from a small hole in the wall. Israel wanted to catch him, to show fasting prisoners how their leader was behaving, Lefler said. "I want to show the world and the Palestinians that we are dealing with terrorists," Lefler continued, "Barghouti is sitting on a pot of meat and he sends his friends to die.”

EXCLUSIVE: Palestinian Jihadist Claims Islamic State Planning to Encircle Israel’s Borders

The Islamic State group is determined to move closer to Israel’s borders, Gaza-based Palestinian jihadist and IS supporter Abu Baker Almaqdesi told Breitbart Jerusalem in an interview.
Addressing a recent attack against a monastery in Sinai in which an Egyptian police officer was killed, Almaqdesi said, “It’s clear that the goal of the brothers is to close in on all sides in the direction of occupied Palestine and fight the Jews with the intent of expelling them from Islamic lands.”
Almaqdesi refers to the entire state of Israel as “occupied Palestine.”
According to Almaqdesi, despite IS’s fronts in Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Libya and Afghanistan, “our guiding compass is still the liberation of Jerusalem. The Jews have benefited from the abandonment of Islam’s holy places; they did so because of the estrangement of Muslims from their faith.”
Almaqdesi also addressed the attempts of the Islamic State group to continue firing rockets from Sinai and the Gaza Strip toward Israel. “We will continue firing at the Jews and we will continue in our attempts to commit attacks with the goal of harming Jews and their government in Palestine and in all the holy places.”

Lebanese PM calls for permanent ceasefire with Israel

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri urged the UN Friday to help his country reach a permanent ceasefire with Israel, Reuters reported.
“I urge the UN secretary-general to support efforts to secure, as soon as possible, a state of permanent ceasefire. This is long overdue and my government is committed to move this agenda forward,” Hariri said.
Hariri made the comments during a visit to south Lebanon, a day after Hezbollah organized a tour for journalists along the Lebanon-Israel border.
The Lebanese leader criticized the media tour organized by Hezbollah during which armed gunmen from the group appeared in a UN-created border buffer zone meant to be free of Hezbollah presence, calling it “unacceptable in our opinion.”
The Hezbollah tour, intended to show journalists defensive measures taken by Israel along the border in the past year, was also criticized by other opponents of the Iranian-backed group as a provocation and a violation of a 2006 UN Security Council resolution that created the buffer zone.

Trump Succeeds In Freeing American Charity Worker From Egyptian Prison. Obama Had Failed.

An Egyptian-American charity worker has been released from prison in Cairo after three years behind bars. The American citizen returned home to the United States late Thursday.
“President Trump and his aides worked for several weeks with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi to secure the freedom of Aya Hijazi, 30, a U.S. citizen, as well as her husband, Mohamed Hassanein, who is Egyptian, and four other humanitarian workers,” reports The Washington Post. “Trump dispatched a U.S. government aircraft to Cairo to bring Hijazi and her family to Washington.”
Trump apparently succeeded where former president Obama failed. The Post continues:
The Obama administration unsuccessfully pressed Sissi’s government for their release. It was not until Trump moved to reset U.S. relations with Egypt by embracing Sissi at the White House on April 3 — he publicly hailed the autocrat’s leadership as “fantastic” and offered the U.S. government’s “strong backing” — that Egypt’s posture changed. Last Sunday, a court in Cairo dropped all charges against Hijazi and the others.

According to White House officials, this wasn’t your classic Obama-era quid pro quo transaction or controversial prisoner exchange. Unlike Obama, who infamously traded five senior Taliban Gitmo detainees for U.S. army deserter Bowe Bergdahl in 2014, Trump personally oversaw Hijazi’s release and received assurances from Cairo that the prisoner release was a gesture of good faith.

Daniel Pipes: The Erdoğan Enigma

I nominate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, president of Turkey, as the most inconsistent, mysterious, and therefore most unpredictable major politician on the world stage. His victory in a referendum last Sunday formally bestows him with near-dictatorial powers that leave Turkey, the Middle East, and beyond in a greater state of uncertainty than ever.
Here are some of the puzzles:
Mystery #1: Holding the referendum. The Turkish electorate voted on April 16 in a remarkable national plebiscite that dealt not with the usual topic – floating a bond or recalling a politician – but with fundamental constitutional changes affecting the very nature of their government: Should the country continue with the flawed democracy of the past 65 years or centralize political power in the presidency? Under the new dispensation, the prime minister vaporizes and the president holds vast power over parliament, the judiciary, the budget, and the military.
Turks generally saw the 18 proposed changes to the constitution as a momentous decision. Famed novelist Elif Şafak spoke for most when she wrote that Turkey's referendum "could alter the country's destiny for generations to come." After the referendum passed, some of those opposed to it cried in the streets. "Turkey as we know it is over; it is history" wrote Yavuz Baydar, a journalist.
Defense & Foreign Affairs assessed the referendum as perhaps "the most significant and transformative change in Eurasia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa since the collapse of the USSR in 1990-91."
But there's a catch: for years Erdoğan has held the powers the referendum gives him. He is the boss in Turkey who can bend the country to his wishes. Anyone – cartoonist, cafeteria manager, or Canadian – accused of "insulting the president" can be fined or jailed. A former prime minister or president who dares disagree with Erdoğan vanishes from public life. He alone makes war or peace. What Erdoğan wants, he gets, regardless of constitutional niceties.

Ontario NDP supports campaign against Israel

First it was the federal Green Party under Elizabeth May. Now it’s Ontario’s Dippers.
The Ontario NDP under leader Andrea Horwath have included in their literature for this weekend’s conference in Toronto a resolution supporting the hateful Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The motion, ironically numbered 9-11 and obtained by the Toronto Sun, is hidden in plain sight on page 83 under Justice and Human Rights.
(There are no resolutions under human rights related to Syria or North Korea, or any countries with an ISIS presence or which are arbitrarily killing innocent citizens.)
Put forward by the Niagara Centre provincial riding association, the motion’s authors justify a “boycott (of) Apartheid Israel” because it is already supported by UN special rapporteur Richard Falk, Stephen Hawking, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Desmond Tutu, CUPE and CUPW (among others.)
CUPE local 416 was also a strong supporter of the hateful Queers Against Israel Apartheid (QuAIA) group which infiltrated Toronto’s Gay Pride parade for five years before disbanding in 2014.
The motion follows one that proposes working with social justice groups and U.S state governments to undermine the Trump presidency.

Mark Regev to speak to SOAS students despite protests

Mark Regev will next week become the first Israeli diplomat to address students at the School of Oriental and African Studies in more than a decade – despite protests at the historic visit.
The ambassador was invited by the UN Society and the Jewish Society, a year after anti-Israel graffiti was daubed on the campus following his meeting with the university’s vice-chancellor within days of taking up the post.
The university’s Palestine Society, Herb Society, Decolonising Our Minds Society and Origamill Society have asigned a statement protesting which they say “flies in the face” of the Students’ Union backing for the boycott campaign.
Suggesting “armed embassy personnel” would accompany the ambassador, they go on to suggest many students “fear for their safety with Israeli security personnel roaming our campus. Palestinian staff and students would be subject to the same questioning and searching they suffered living under military occupation in Palestine should they attend a public event.” They also claim that more than than 100 academic staff have signed a statement against Regev’s presence.
The university has distanced itself from the event, stressing the first talk by any Israeli diplomat since 2005 will take place under the auspices of the students’ union. But the university’s registrar Paula Sanderson pledged that it was in contact with the Union and the societies involved to ensure “the event can take place safely”.

‘Congrats, you’re scum’: Kirsten Gillibrand gets DESTROYED for #Time100 write-up of Linda Sarsour

As Twitchy readers know, Time Magazine released their list of the top 100 influential people and shocker, Women’s March organizers like Linda Sarsour made it.
Oh and look, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wrote about them. How edgy:
Seriously, calling Linda Sarsour exceptional or a suffragette? Psh.
It gets worse – per Time:
This is the rebirth of the women’s movement. These women are the suffragists of our time. And our movement isn’t going away—it’s just the beginning.
Any movement that is led by an individual who champions Sharia law has no business representing women and should absolutely go away.
Supporting a woman who threatened to remove another woman’s vagina probably isn’t the best idea, senator.

New York is a wonderful city. But our mayor fetes Al Sharpton and Linda Sarsour. Anti-Semitism is accepted unless it can be blamed on Trump.
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) April 21, 2017

Vicious Anti-Semite Running For Manhattan City Council Still Welcomed By Democrats

A Manhattan City Council candidate running against New York Councilmember Mark Levine for the City Council’s District 7 seat is publicly displaying some of the most vitriolic and vicious anti-Semitic hatred in recent memory – and still being welcomed to Democratic Party organization events.
Thomas Lopez-Pierre, 48, first tried for the Council seat in 2013, but even in 2012 he sent a series of emails calling Levine a “White/ Jewish candidate” and accusing him of trying “to sneak into office like a thief in the night.” By January 2013, Lopez-Pierre was emailing Brian Benjamin, a Democratic fundraiser who is black and supported Levine’s 2013 run. Lopez-Pierre wrote that Benjamin was an “uncle Tom [n-word] bitch,” for supporting Levine, adding, “[Harlem residents] know that you are a weak, little short man who sucks White/ Jewish cock.”
As recently as this past August, Lopez-Pierre sent out an email reading “Greedy Landlords and NYC Council Member Mark Levine are working together to push Black and Hispanic tenants out of Harlem!”
Although Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Comptroller Scott Stringer, Public Advocate Letitia James, and Congressmember Jerrold Nadler all demanded that Lopez-Pierre apologize, he refused, telling Manhattan Express, “I don’t see it as anti-Semitic, I’m not going to be ashamed to be committed to the political and economic empowerment of the black community. Levine has no business representing a black community on the City Council.”

Guess Which Anti-Semitic Hollywood Director Is Absolving Assad For Sarin Gas Attacks?

Okay. Who is a world-famous Oscar-winning Hollywood director who has uttered some of the most anti-Semitic statements on the planet, and just yesterday added to his malignity by insisting the sarin gas attacks launched by Syrian Presient Bashar al-Assad were actually committed by Assad’s opposition?
Go to the back of the class if you guessed Mel Gibson,who has long-since apologized for his anti-Semitic remarks.
Go to the head of the class if you guessed conspiracy-fanatic, ardent-leftist and Hollywood favorite Oliver Stone.
Stone, who is obsessed with conspiracies, (see JFK, which even the leftist The Guardian described thus: "fine fictional account of John F Kennedy's assassination dodges the truth like a magic bullet" ), offered this twisted tweet yesterday regarding Syria:

Who benefits from the gas attack blamed again on Assad? Not Assad. It was clearly committed by the terrorists who were losing this war.
— Oliver Stone (@TheOliverStone) April 19, 2017

Never mind the abundance of evidence that Assad launched the attacks, Stone smells the possibility of a conspiracy, and he’s the man for the job!

Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT): A peaceful revolutionary non-violent group? Poppycock!

For a start, the Britain’s think-tank, formally known as the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), now the Henry Jackson Society, stated with sources on page 28 of their HTs Ideology and Strategy report:
HT promotional materials have called for violence against Jews. Despite its official non-violent stance, HT has called for violence against Jews. In 2002, HT leaflets found in Denmark urged Muslims to kill Jews “wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have been [sic] turned you out.” A BBC report quoted the HT leaflet further: “The Jews are a people of slander…a treacherous people… they fabricate lies and twist words from their right context.”
In 2003, similar anti-Semitic rhetoric resulted in the group being banned from many university campuses in Britain and a complete ban of the group in Germany.
HT supports not only violence against Jews in general but offensive jihad against Israel in particular.
HT believes Israel has “occupied Islamic lands”—lands once ruled by Islamic law. Accordingly, HT believes those lands should return to governance by Islamic law and supports jihad as a means to that end.
Accordingly, HT views violent acts against Israel as legitimate political protest until Israel no longer exists. The organization’s literature has supported Islamist suicide bombers in Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank.
In 1994, HT’s global leader, Ata Abu Rashta, reiterated this point when he declared that Jews who came to Palestine after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire have no right to live there. He called for all Jews of fighting age in Israel to be “killed until none survive.”
It adds on page 29:
“HT also sanctions killing Jewish ‘women, children and elderly’ – innocent civilians – as collateral damage. In addition, HT “makes it permissible to bomb planes and carry out suicide bomb attacks, or any other means necessary, to kill the ‘enemy unbeliever’”.
So much for peaceful and non-violent means!

SS soldiers’ names to be removed from Dutch Holocaust monument

City officials from a Dutch municipality near The Hague said they would remove from its main monument for Jewish Holocaust victims the names of three SS soldiers also honored there.
The inclusion of the German soldiers’ names was discovered through research by the local Historical Association of Leidschendam-Voorburg, the Algemeen Dagblad daily reported Wednesday.
The monument, which also includes the name of a local criminal, was unveiled 10 years ago and contains approximately 400 names of Jewish Holocaust victims and some resistance fighters, the report said. Hubert Berkhout, a researcher for the Dutch Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, told the daily that he has never encountered the inclusion of Nazis in recently constructed monuments.
“It occurs in monuments set up shortly after the war when there was not so much information,” he said.
Separately, a 10-foot tall monument for dozens of Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust was unveiled Thursday at a ceremony in the northern municipality of Laren. Consisting of blocks of metal arranged around a gap, the monument, which was unveiled in the presence of Dutch Chief Rabbi Binyomin Jacobs, is in memory of 48 children and four of their teachers.

‘Keep Quiet’, a film about a Hungarian antisemite-turned Jew

Csanad Szegedi was an antisemite before becoming a Jew.
A leader of Hungary’s extreme right-wing Jobbik Party, and the founder of the fascist-style Hungarian Guard militia, he was one of the rising stars of the political scene in Hungary.
And then it all came crashing down after he was “outed” as a Jew, a sickening revelation he compared to a dagger thrust into his heart.
Szegedi’s astonishing journey from rabble-rouser to repentant Jew is the subject of Keep Quiet, a riveting documentary by Joseph Martin and Sam Blair to be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival on May 8 and May 11.
As it gets under way, Szegedi, a thick-set man, boards a train in Budapest bound for the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland. He’s accompanied by a Hungarian Jewish survivor who’s paying her first visit to Auschwitz since its liberation by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. Szegedi’s trip is part of an elaborate process devised by an Orthodox rabbi to rehabilitate him.

Brazilian Jews to teach about Holocaust at school that flew Nazi flags

A Jewish federation in Brazil will provide educational support to a private school in the country that had a third-grade classroom decorated with Nazi flags during a lesson on totalitarian regimes.
Students and history teachers from the Santa Emilia School in Recife will visit the Kahal Zur Israel temple, the first synagogue established in the Americas, in 1637, to learn about Judaism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, the school and the Jewish federation announced Monday in a joint statement.
The school removed a Facebook post praising the teacher — who also wore a swastika band around his arm like a Nazi soldier — after it drew major criticism, the Diario de Pernambuco newspaper reported.
“Third grade students have experienced a super theme class, almost a super production,” the April 10 post read. “Have they liked it? Of course.”

Library to release catalog on World War II era documents

Holocaust denial just got a little harder.
The Wiener Library for the Study of Holocaust & Genocide is making the United Nations’ files on World War II war crimes more accessible by allowing the general public to search an online catalog of the documents for the first time beginning Friday. People will still have to visit the library in London or the US Holocaust Museum to read the actual files.
The move is expected to increase interest in the archives of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, including the names of some 37,000 people identified as war criminals and security suspects. The commission operated in 1943-1949, but access to its records was restricted for political reasons in the early days of the Cold War.
“This is a whole hardware store of nails to hammer into the coffin of Holocaust denial,” said Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS University of London. “It’s the first time it is practically accessible to the general public as the commission initially intended.”
Plesch and other researchers campaigned for the UN to open access to the files, which he used to write the book “Human Rights After Hitler.” In 2014, the US Holocaust Museum made the archive freely available at its reading room in Washington. Prior to that, the records had been largely locked away at the United Nations, which granted only limited access.
“Nobody has paid any attention to it,” said Ben Barkow, director of the Wiener Library. “It has been hidden in plain sight.”

Archaeologists to probe ancient pyramid in Judean Hills

An enigmatic and little-known pyramid southwest of Jerusalem will be excavated for the first time this summer in an effort to determine who built it and when.
Hebrew University archaeologists will start digging at the pyramid at Khirbet Midras, in the Judean Hills south of Beit Shemesh, for the first time in July. This summer’s dig is the second season of excavations at Khirbet Midras, but the first in which scientists attempt to find out more about the massive structure.
The Khirbet Midras pyramid is believed to be the largest and best preserved of a handful of pyramid-topped mortuary complexes in Israel dating back to the Second Temple and Roman eras. The structure was first documented by former Israel Antiquities Authority director Levi Yitzhak Rahmani during a survey of the site in the 1950s.
Khirbet Midras is one of several antiquities sites located inside the Adullam Grove National Park, and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority will provide assistance with the excavation.

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