Donate Us
8:15 PM
Elder of Ziyon
No comments6:05 PMElder of ZiyonNo commentsI once heard Bill Maher say that: “Israel has won every war she ever had to fight because she has to, she has no choice. If she loses she will be wiped off the map.”
So true.
In 2006, Israel was attacked by Hezbollah and was forced to go to war in Lebanon. The war had no frontline, it was Israelis in their home who were under attack by terrorists shooting missiles from the neighboring country, Lebanon. For 34 days Israelis in northern Israel (me included) hunkered down in bomb shelters while missiles slammed into our towns, our homes. We waited patiently while our soldiers took the battle to the terrorists who were attacking us, doing everything possible to make it stop.
We waited, never knowing when the next missile would come, never knowing where it would hit. Sometimes the air-raid siren worked. Sometimes it didn’t. I will never forget stepping outside after a missile slammed down behind my home and hearing the neighbor across the street screaming: “Why didn’t the siren go off??” That was the only warning we had to race to the bomb shelter, the only hope of protection. There was no Iron Dome then.
While our soldiers were battling for their lives and ours, we waited. Scary and difficult, we would wait however long it took. We didn’t mind.
Because we knew our soldiers would win.
The war ended with a UN brokered ceasefire on August 14, 2006. Israeli news commentators and security analysts told the people that while there was no visual that showed our decisive victory, Israel had won the war, Lebanon had been bombed back into the stone age (poor Lebanon that was being used as a launching pad for Hezbollah to wage a war) and that the IDF had destroyed much of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal.
Victory is similar to pornography. You might not know how to define what it is but you recognize it when you see it. Victory is not something that necessitates interpretation.
Since then, the Israeli government has carefully defined wars as “military operations.” Part of this is for financial reasons (the government is obligated to compensate citizens for financial loss due to war). I believe that this definition also has something to do with the idea that wars have to be won.
In late June, thousands from across the Midwest congregated in Chicago to demonstrate their support for legal rights, recognition and cultural heritage of LGBT communities in the city’s annual Pride Parade. The event, which typically emphasizes inclusion regardless of ethnic or religious background, left Laurel Grauer feeling discriminated against after being removed from the parade for carrying a rainbow flag adorning the Jewish Star of David. Organizers of the program, justifying her removal, claimed that the flag was deemed unacceptable due to its association with the State of Israel.Jewish Summer Camp Flies Palestinian Flag, Teaches Kids Bad Lesson in Politics
Unfortunately, this incident signals a trend of increasing anti-Semitism masquerading under the guise of anti-Zionism in the United States and abroad. Although not every rejection of the Zionist movement stems from racially-motivated sentiments, the lack of adequate justification for much of the anti-Zionist movement and an active unwillingness to dissect the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reflect a malignant underlying reason for opposition to the Jewish state.
Perhaps one of the worst perpetrators of anti-Zionist bias is the United Nations. The international organization has dealt disproportional criticism to Israel in relation to other, arguably far-more-guilty member nations. In its 2015 session, the U.N. passed a whopping total of 20 resolutions condemning Israel, while only passing 3 condemning resolutions against other member nations. In June, U.S. Ambassadors threatened to pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council for its consistent discrimination against Israel. The 78 resolutions and decisions passed against Israel dwarf the 29 passed against the next biggest offender, Syria. Meanwhile, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia have faced no condemnations at all.
In the words of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is a country where “women fly fighter jets, lead major corporations, head universities, preside over the Supreme Court, and have served as Speaker of the Knesset and as Prime Minister.” Contrast these conditions to Saudi Arabia’s, where women are not only denied their autonomy, but also (quite literally) enslaved into arranged marriages.
Camp Solomon Schechter, one of the Pacific Northwest’s longest-serving and best-loved Jewish summer camps, caused a bit of a stir this weekend after it hosted a group of 14 children, including Christian and Muslim Palestinians, and flew the Palestinian flag in their honor. This upset some campers, parents, and alumni, who wailed that the black-white-green-and-red had no place among the blue-and-white, and that a camp committed to Zionism and Israel shouldn’t kowtow to the enemy.IsraellyCool: Jewish Camp Doubles Down on Palestinian Flag Fiasco
Those outraged—and I say this as an uncompromising supporter of Israel’s right to defend itself against Palestinian terrorism and incitement—are missing the point. The problem here isn’t that the camp chose to welcome its Palestinian guests by flying their colors; that alone is a sweet gesture, especially when the Palestinians in question are prepubescents, not armed members of the Tanzim. The problem is that the camp chose to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a mindless, morally preening way, treating it not as something concrete but as a collection of grand symbolic gestures.
Here, for example, is the email the camp sent out in the aftermath of the controversy:
“For the sake of a teachable moment, we did raise the Palestinian flag as a sign of friendship and acceptance. It was met with uncertainty by some campers and staff, especially the Israeli’s [sic], but all understood that the message of hope for peace by flying the Israeli flag alongside helped develop empathy. Still we plan to take down all the flags for Shabbat since there is no peace and also to relieve the sadness and anger that some feel by the site of the flag. It was so fun to watch the kids from Jerusalem play soccer with our chanichim and madrichim!”
Ignore, if you can, the writer’s tenuous grasp on grammar, or the jarring shifts in tone between talk of sadness and anger and peppy reports of a spirited soccer game. But consider the logic at play here: we flew the flag because we hope for peace, then we took it down because there is no peace, and also because some people were upset.
You hardly have to be a great educator to realize just how profoundly idiotic this sentiment truly is, and how likely it is to raise a generation of children who are thoroughly confused. First, it reduces a thorny issue with real complexities and uncomfortable truths to one easy empty gesture. Why bother with facts and figures and nuance when you can just wave a piece of colorful cloth? And then, rather than use this gesture responsibly and invite the campers and staffers to talk about why the flag makes them uncomfortable—maybe, say, because the authority it represents spends a considerable portion of its budget promoting and rewarding the systemic murder of Jews—the camp opted to double down on the symbolism and take the flag down as a way to bemoan the elusiveness of peace. This is how you do bad performance art; it’s not how you educate children.
The clumsily worded statement in fact doubled down on the offending act, elevating the raising of the Palestinian flag as a demonstration of “the Jewish value of Hachnasat Orchim (welcoming guests)”, the guests being a Palestinian delegation spending several days with the Jewish camp under the auspices of Kids4Peace. Adding insult to insult, the Schechter administration further justified the Palestinian flag raising as an attempt to create a “safe space for all”, disregarding the emotional impact the flying of the Palestinian flag would have on their young Jewish campers. Despite the jumbled messaging the camp firmly maintains their Zionist bona fides.
While many in the tight-knit Pacific Northwest Jewish community expressed indignation at the flying of the Palestinian flag at the legacy Jewish camp, radical anti-Israel blogger, BDS supporter and terror apologist Richard Silverstein endorsed the camp, adding that “there should be nothing wrong with raising a Palestinian flag”.
Terror apologist Silverstein declared his support of the Palestinian flag raising.
Rabbi Yohanna Kinberg, who recently marched alongside anti-Israel group IfNotNow, posted a broadside attack against me (I broke the story on my own blog before posting here):
“This blog [The Mike Report] is a vile piece of trash it is truly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel in promoting hate. Camp Solomon Schechter is a very very Zionist camp and bringing kids 4 peace into their community was Jewish leadership at the highest level shame on all of you for reading this man’s blog.
Which leads us to ask the question, with endorsements like these, who needs endorsements?
Organized religion’s shallowest critics made the mistake of blasting Islam along with Christianity, and the Left crucified them for it.Australian Labor Party votes to recognize a Palestinian state
On Friday, it became official: The New Atheists are no longer welcome on the left. Battered, condemned, and disinvited, these godless and once-favored “public intellectuals” are now homeless, spurned by their erstwhile progressive allies.
Richard Dawkins, the famously skeptical evolutionary biologist, was the last shoe to drop. He was disinvited from a speaking engagement at Berkeley because his “comments about Islam” had “offended and hurt . . . so many people,” according to the event’s organizers.
Dawkins is in good company. His New Atheist compatriots, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, had already been expelled from the party. In both cases, insufficient deference to Islam was the proximate cause. Hitchens remained a committed socialist, but felt a war on Islamic terror and autocracy was needed. For this, he was denounced as a “neocon.” Harris is a liberal, straight and true, but drew the ire of Reza Aslan for refusing to except Islam from his broad critique of religion. “Islam is not a religion of peace,” Harris often says. In fact, he thinks it’s just the opposite. For that, everyone from Glen Greenwald to Ben Affleck has cast him as an Islamophobe and a bigot.
The members of Australia’s New South Wales Labor Party have voted for the recognition of a Palestinian Arab state following a push by former Foreign Minister Bob Carr.IsraellyCool: Israel Losing The PR War
The resolution was watered down ahead of the conference on Sunday in Sydney and failed to follow its original call for unilateral recognition of a Palestinian Arab state. Carr, who also has served as Labor Premier in NSW, proposed the resolution.
Federal Labor leader Bill Shorten has come under pressure to confirm his stance on the matter as the vote called on the next federal Labor government to recognize Palestine as an independent state.
Following on the heels of similar resolutions in the states of Western Australia and South Australia, the vote will present a challenge for Shorten when he heads the federal Labor conference next year.
Speaking on the ABC’s RN Breakfast on Monday, Shorten said any recognition needs to address the concerns of both sides.
“There’s two issues, one is the legitimate aspirations, and I stress legitimate aspirations of Palestinians to have their own state and I do support that, but also the legitimate aspirations of the people of Israel to live in secure borders,” he said.
He reiterated his support for federal Labor’s long-held position of a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. “If you support a two-state solution ultimately that includes recognition of Palestine,” Shorten said.
NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff said the resolution passed Sunday ” is a much better outcome than what was originally proposed in the conference booklet, and we applaud the efforts by many within the Labor Party who worked hard to achieve a more balanced resolution.”
With the NSW Labor party adopting a motion to recognise the state of Palestine, Caroline Overington, Associate Editor of The Australian, has written a must-read Op-Ed.Indigenous Friends of Israel- Press release 27.7.17.
The idea was always for Jews to share the Holy Land with the Palestinians.
Israel accepted those terms in 1947.
The Palestinians did not.
When Israel declared its independence in 1948, it immediately came under attack from Arab neighbours.
Israel has not known a day of peace since.
It has given an inch, in some cases miles, but peace has not been forthcoming.
In short, Israel remains a thriving, delicate, precious, youthful democracy in the Middle East.
In that sense, nothing has changed. But the language of the world is changing.
The hatred of Israel, felt by so many, is now the fault of the Jewish people. Israel is to blame for failing to make peace with their neighbours.
It is the Jewish people that stand in the way of a two-state solution, by refusing to relinquish land taken in a war for Israel’s survival.
In this version of the world, it is the Palestinians, and Hamas in particular, that dearly want to live in harmony with Israel.
The NSW Labor Conference will be held this weekend. Delegates were to deal with a resolution seeking Palestinian statehood but a deal has been made with former Foreign Minister and NSW Premier Bob Carr and others that the recognition will be a part of a two-state solution.The Guardian and John Lyons accuse Australian Jews of ‘targeting’ journalists
Mr Miller said from Cairns: “We would like to proudly follow in the footsteps of Australian Aboriginal William Cooper, who, in 1938, led a group of Indigenous Australians on a protest walk to the German Consulate in Melbourne to protest Kristallnacht, the start of the Holocaust.
“As it was the only known private protest worldwide against Kristallnacht, William Cooper was honoured by Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Centre in Jerusalem in December 2010. A bipartisan group of MPs from Australia was present for the event. We were privileged to be there with them and William Cooper’s family,” said Miller.
“It is fitting that an Indigenous voice be heard,” said Miller “because the Jewish people are the Indigenous people of Israel, contrary to some opinions.”
In contrast to the complete absence of Arabic writing or inscriptions to be found anywhere in the Holy Land dating before the Muslim conquests of the 7th century CE, and the absence of any reference to Palestine as a descriptor for a people before the late nineteenth century, there is an abundance of evidence of a distinct people and polity called “Israel” stretching back to the dawn of the Iron Age, more than 3,200 years ago. Even for those who do not believe in the Bible, there is a wealth of documents and other archaeological artefacts which attest to the antiquity of Israel, the Jewish people, and a Jewish polity in the Holy Land.
“A succession of conquerors displaced sections of the Jewish population at different times and the Roman colonizers changed its name from Judea to Syria Palaestina in 135CE to try to eradicate its Jewishness,” Miller continued.
Australian journalist John Lyons was among those in the media who, in 2014, leveled entirely false accusations that Israel sadistically tortured Palestinian children, abuse which purported to include whippings, beatings while tied to a cross and the practice of “caging Palestinian children outdoors”. As CAMERA noted at the time, Lyon’s report for Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) “Four Corners” was based entirely on uncorroborated Palestinian claims, and – in contravention of basic journalistic ethics – Israeli officials were never given the opportunity to respond to the charges.Daphne Anson: Sophie, Israel & A Lyons Share of Spleen
Senior IDF officials later characterised accusations by Lyons as “completely fictitious”.
Greg Sheridan, a colleague of Lyons at The Australian, referred to the Four Corners hit job on Israel as “a crude piece of anti-Israel propaganda that revived some of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes”.
These false charges that Israel tortures Palestinian children resulted in a row between Lyons and Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), a group which advocates the interests of Australia’s Jewish community. Echoing narratives that those who follow our blog would recognize, Lyons claimed in his 2014 op-ed at The Australian that AIJAC stifles criticism of Israel by bullying journalists, a narrative which he developed further in a book published this year which was the focus of a July 28th Guardian article by Amanda Mead.
The first sign that Lyons is going to receive sympathetic coverage from the Guardian is the headline:
"Pro-Israel advocates in Australia targeted three journalists, new book claims"
It becomes clear in the article that the highly evocative term “targeting” refers to the evidently insidious practice of attempting to hold Australian journalists accountable to accurate reporting about Israel.
Taking aim at Australia's steady pro-Israel foreign policy ("illogical and unhealthy") and at AIJAC and its director Dr Colin Rubenstein, Lyons assertsWorld Rewards Palestinian Terrorism, Former Anti-Israel Journalist Says
“For more than 20 years, Australians have read and heard pro-Israel positions from journalists, editors, politicians, trade union leaders, academics and students who have returned from the all-expenses-paid Israel lobby trips. In my opinion, no editors, journalist or others should take those trips: they grotesquely distort the reality and are dangerous in the sense that they allow people with a very small amount of knowledge to pollute Australian public opinion.”
(What his opinion is of trips sponsored by APAN, the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, is not reported.)
Inter alia, Dr Rubenstein has told the Guardian:
“We did put together a public document explaining why we thought Sophie McNeill … was an inappropriate choice for Middle East correspondent for the taxpayer funded ABC, with its statutory obligations of impartiality.
Everything we do – critiquing media stories; contacting editors, politicians and journalists and explaining our point of view to them; writing our our letters and op/eds; making complaints – are absolutely normal elements of deliberation and debate in a democratic society.
I would call on those who oppose our views, including Mr Lyons, to engage with different views in a democratic, tolerant and constructive spirit, rather than demand, as he appears to be doing, that those who disagree with him be silenced or suppressed.”
He's absolutely right, of course.
The ABC is Australia's equivalent to the BBC: a national broadcaster upon which objective reporting is incombent in return for public funding, in the ABC's case not out of a licence fee but out of taxes. But, again like the BBC, it is in the grip of the arrogant repulsive Left, and it promotes its leftwing agenda at will, thumbing its nose at critics and packing the panel and the audience to "flagship" programs such as Q&A (its version of the BBC's Question Time) with a surfeit of leftists. In fact, if anything, its current affairs output and what it chooses to report and comment on is more brazenly leftist than the BBC's.
Sophie McNeill came to journalism and the ABC from a background of political activism and a determination to continue to pursue that activism. This is how, six years ago, she described her view of a journalist's role:
"If you just try to frame stories from the point of view of the people who are really suffering in a situation, be it in Lebanon, if you re hanging out in a Palestinian refugee camp, [or] in Gaza you re hanging out, you know, at the children’s cancer ward. One of the saddest things I’ve seen in my whole life is spending some time filming in a children’s cancer ward in Gaza. I just think if you just – if you look at a situation and you just – yeah, I guess just try to spend time with the people who are – who really don t have any power and it is hard, you know, for them to have a voice. Then that’s, yeah, that’s the kind of journalism I want to do.... Everyone knew what was happening in Gaza ... you saw all the horrific videos ... a lot of people died ... there are no excuses any more..."
A journalist shared how his firsthand experience of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict changed his views to be more supportive of Israel.Journalist 'had no idea' about Jews from Arab countries
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) and Honest Reporting on Monday hosted American journalist Hunter Stuart for a frank discussion on how his perception of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict shifted during his one and half years living in Jerusalem and reporting from the region.
Speaking before a packed house at the WJC headquarters, Stuart described his upbringing as a self-declared liberal WASP from a “quaint, politically-correct New England town,” a “liberal bubble” where it was “considered cool to refer to Israel as a ‘colonial power’ or an ‘apartheid state’.”
Stuart went on to study at liberal Middlebury College in Vermont and moved to Brooklyn to become a freelance journalist, where his “obsession” with the Middle East grew, along with his negative perception of Israel and conviction of Palestinian victimhood.
“The same way that I thought of Israelis as a bunch of paranoid extremists, I thought of Palestinians as a noble native people who only wanted freedom,” Stuart said. “I thought they were fighting for a two-state solution and Israel was preventing them from having it.”
Remember Hunter Stuart? He was the journalist who arrived in Israel as a pro-Palestinian and soon found that reality did not match his preconceived prejudices. He wrote a piece in the Jerusalem Post explaining how the scales had fallen from his eyes during his eighteen months based in Jerusalem.Hunter Stuart: Podcast Interview
Meeting Jews from Arab countries seems to have been central to Stuart's about-turn. Smadar was one of the people who helped change Stuart's views. A staunch defender of Israel in her 50s, Smadar and her family had been forced out of Morocco. She and Stuart had long talks together. Overcoming his initial suspicions, Hunter and Smadar became good friends, albeit coming in from opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Later Hunter Stuart met Jews from Iraq and Iran. He had thought all Israelis were 'white Ashkenazim.'
Julie Hazan, HonestReporting’s US Director and Shahar Azani, Executive Director StandWithUs in New York, interview American journalist Hunter Stuart. Stuart discusses how his perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shifted as a result of his firsthand experience working as a journalist in the region. We also discuss Stuart's hopes for the future of the news media, and his views on global politics.
Instead, the hostility toward Jews — and Israel — was expressed in more generalized settings, particularly the conspiracy theories that proliferate in Arab countries.Sunday Times Fires Anti-Semitic, Holocaust Denying Columnist
Wasserman said his favorite anecdote in the book is the student who told him that another teacher had said that “the Mossad was behind 9/11, and also that 9/11 was not a bad idea.”
He asked the student how both ideas could coexist in one person’s head. The student “looked at me for a moment, resigned that yet another naïve foreigner failed to appreciate how holding two contradictory opinions at the same time was consistent with the political views permeating the region,” Wasserman wrote.
Another student, Ella, graduated at the top of the class. Shortly after, Wasserman saw an interview with Ella in a local newspaper in which she was asked for her impressions of the 2012 US election. Her “depressing” answer, as he put it: “It really didn’t matter because the Zionists controlled the banks, the media, and both political parties and wouldn’t let anything change in America.”
Perhaps Wasserman’s most foolhardy quest was to teach the students about how the pro-Israel lobby functioned as a curative to the overly expansive description of its influence in the 2007 book by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby.” (Disclosure: This reporter and Wasserman collaborated for a period in the late 2000s on a book on the pro-Israel lobby. It found no buyers.)
“In my lecture, I tried to leave the class with a simple point: the power of the pro-Israel lobby had been inflated by supporters and opponents alike for their own reasons,” he wrote. “Although clearly a powerful player in foreign policy, AIPAC was only narrowly influential and constrained by other public and political interests.”
Did the students get the message? Not quite. Later in the book, Wasserman related that he often found that the students bought into myths of Jewish influence — but with admiration, not contempt.
Wasserman, alongside other faculty on campus, came to accept that they were not the vanguard of progressive values in Qatar. Instead, they set more modest ambitions, such as one-to-one opportunities to lend a hand to those seeking a way out of a society that was stifling, especially to women.
The Sunday Times has fired its columnist Kevin Myers for making reference to two highly paid female BBC presenters are Jewish. Writing in the Irish edition of the Times, Meyers said: “I note that two of the best-paid women presenters in the BBC — Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted — are Jewish.”IsraellyCool: YouTube Silences Other Pro-Israel Activists
“Good for them,” he continued. “Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity. I wonder, who are their agents? If they’re the same ones that negotiated the pay for the women on the lower scales, then maybe the latter have found their true value in the marketplace.”
Myers is already known as a particularly unpleasant journalist who has called the children of single parents “bastards” and claimed that “Africa is giving nothing to anyone — apart from AIDS,” according to the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, a volunteer-led charity dedicated to exposing and countering anti-Semitism through education and zero-tolerance enforcement of the law.
CAA also noted that Myers has also devoted an entire column in the Belfast Telegraph to claiming that there was no Holocaust on the basis that not all of the Jews murdered by the Nazis were cremated, and attempting to nit-pick over whether six million Jews really were murdered, claiming that the Holocaust had become a “dogma.”
In that same column, Myers wrote: “There was no holocaust, (or Holocaust, as my computer software insists) and six million Jews were not murdered by the Third Reich. These two statements of mine are irrefutable truths, yet their utterance could get me thrown in the slammer in half the countries of the EU.”
A few days ago, I posted how one of my videos on YouTube had been taken down, with YouTube considering it hate speech – even though it was merely exposing the hate speech of someone else (Roger Waters in this case).North Carolina governor signs anti-BDS legislation
It seems YouTube are doing the same thing with other pro-Israel accounts.
I have appealed the designation of my video as hate speech and am awaiting YouTube’s response. But mark my words. If they continue with this disgraceful policy, I will move my videos to another platform – all 167 of them – and I will encourage others to leave YouTube.
I’m simply fed up with YouTube’s aiding and abetting the antisemites.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law legislation that would bar the state from doing business with companies that boycott Israel.PreOccupiedTerritory: Speak At Your University? But I Haven’t Killed Any Jews Or Cops By Radi Qal, Activist (satire)
The bill enacted Thursday requires divestment from, and prohibits state agencies from contracting with, companies that boycott Israel.
Earlier this month, the bill handily passed the state House of Representatives and the state Senate.
“This bill makes it clear that the State of North Carolina stands with Israel, which has long been an important trading partner of North Carolina,” said Carin Savel, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Raleigh-Cary.
North Carolina businesses conduct nearly $140 million per year in exports and commerce with Israel.
“The Jewish Federations across North Carolina have worked diligently on legislation to ensure that BDS efforts in their state fail. We applaud their tremendous work and commend the Gov. Roy Cooper for taking this important step against discrimination against Israelis by those who oppose the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in our homeland,” said Skip Schrayer, chairman of the Israel Action Network, an initiative of The Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
North Carolina becomes at least the 22nd state with laws or executive orders banning state business with companies that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS, against Israel.
Dear Sirs/Mesdames:CBC Radio Interviewee Rami Khouri Seemingly Justifies Terror Against Israelis
I have received your letter inviting me to speak at your institution. Thank you. I feel honored to be considered for such an event. But before I give my formal response, I seek to clarify the terms and assumptions under which this invitation was proffered, to determine whether it was issued with correct information in mind. Are you aware that I have never killed a Jew or a law enforcement official? That being the case, I fear it inappropriate for me to address your student body.
Please understand that if you already knew of this salient fact and issued the invitation anyway, I withdraw these objections. You may of course invite whomever you see fit. But in the event that my record was unclear on the matter when the decision to invite was made, I must emphasize that at no time, under no circumstances, have my actions, to my knowledge, resulted directly in the death of a single Jew or police officer. You have been so advised.
This fact in no way contradicts the sentiments that might lead a person to contribute to the deaths of Jews or law enforcement personnel. I wish to underline as well that while I have never knowingly caused the death of such people, neither have I made statements opposing such eventualities. My expertise lies in fields that have only tangential bearing on Jews or the police, or at least no more bearing on them than on anymore else, such that I have never been called upon to issue such statements.
On July 28, CBC Radio’s As It Happens news program interviewed Rami Khouri, Professor of Journalism at the American University in Beirut, on how “Palestinians return(ed) to East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque after Israeli authorities agree to remove security restrictions they’d imposed on the site.”CBC Headline Fails to Identify Palestinian as an “Attacker”
When commenting on the killing of two Israeli police officers on the Temple Mount, in a terror attack carried out by three Arab-Israelis several weeks ago, Khouri seemingly justified this terror attack by excusing and explaining that the attack occurred because “people were killed because there’s an occupation”. Here’s the exchange with the CBC’s radio host:
CBC Host: “Why was it so controversial to have metal detectors when you’re talking about a scene where people were killed?”
Khoury: ”People were killed because there’s an occupation and there’s people killing each other all the time. There’s a war going on.”
CBC Host: “I appreciate that, but I want to talk about the specifics of what’s happening at this site. Isn’t it important to keep it safe and secure?”
Khoury: “Absolutely and it should be safe for everybody, but it’s also a situation where any change in the status quo that has existed in the last 20 years since the Jordanians, the Palestinians and the Israelis reached an agreement on how the site should be managed, which is essentially saying that the Palestinian local religious leaders run Al Aqsa…”
In a report published yesterday on CBC News.ca, CBC editors gave the following misleading headline to an AP report:IsraellyCool: Reuters’ Flying Pig Moment
Importantly, readers view headlines 3:1 over the adjacent article, and many never read the article at all. For readers who only saw this headline and never read the full article, they would never know that the dead Palestinian was a terrorist attacker who had stabbed and wounded another Israeli soldier. Yesterday, an Israeli military court upheld an 18-month sentence for Israeli soldier Elor Azaria who was convicted of fatally shooting Palestinian attacker Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, who was lying on the ground after wounding an Israeli soldier with a knife.
In fact, the CBC’s article featured this information in their lead paragraph, but failed to mention that the Palestinian was an “assailant” or “attacker”. Meanwhile, in previous coverage by the CBC about this matter, their editors did identify the Palestinian as an “assailant”.
Bring out the flying pig for this reporting of an incident in Los Angeles.BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ promotes equivalence between violent rioters and victims of terror
Nine people were injured, one critically, in Los Angeles on Sunday when a van that collided with a pickup truck jumped the curb and slammed into an outdoor dining area, authorities said, calling it a “complete accident.”
Eight people were transported to hospitals after the incident on West Pico Boulevard, the Los Angeles Fire Department said on Twitter. A ninth person, an off-duty Los Angeles firefighter, was hurt but did not need to be taken to a hospital, it said.
“Complete accident, nothing intentional,” said Lieutenant Jim Lewis of the Los Angeles Police Department.
The incident bore initial similarities to vehicle attacks by Islamist militants in Europe and Israel. Last month, a man drove a van into a crowd of worshippers leaving a London mosque.
Yes, I could not believe my eyes either. They actually mentioned the vehicle attacks in Israel – and we know that is not a given.
Listeners to BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today‘ programme last week heard two reports on consecutive days relating to the Palestinian rioting ostensibly in reaction to security measures installed at Temple Mount after two Israeli policemen were murdered in a terror attack on July 14th. Both of those items were notable for their promotion of moral equivalence between the murders of victims of terrorism and the deaths of rioters killed while engaged in violence.NYT Writer Wonders What Jews Really Know About Torture, Oppression
In the July 25th edition of ‘Today’, presenter Nick Robinson introduced the item (from 01:16:07 here) as follows: [emphasis added]
Robinson: “Will the decision by the Israeli security cabinet to remove metal detectors at one of Jerusalem’s holiest sites lessen the tension which has led to the deaths of three Israelis and four Palestinians in recent days, as well as an attack on Israel’s embassy in Jordan?”
The three Israelis mentioned by Robinson are the members of the Salomon family murdered by a terrorist who infiltrated their family home on July 21st as they finished dinner. The four Palestinians were all engaged in violent rioting (that was praised by the Palestinian president’s party Fatah) at the time of their deaths. Radio 4’s presenter however made no effort to inform listeners of the vastly different circumstances behind those deaths or to clarify that the Israelis were victims of terrorism.
Robinson likewise failed to clarify that the two Israeli policemen he went on to mention were also victims of terror, or who carried out that attack.
In 2015, Roxane Gay—bestselling author, New York Times contributing op-ed writer, associate professor of creative writing at Purdue, and all around it-girl of the Twitterati—was bestowed PEN’s “Freedom to Write Award.” It was a strange decision. Earlier that year, Gay had written a piece adopting the slogan, “Je ne suis pas Charlie”—throwing in her lot with those who equivocated on the tragedy befalling Charlie Hebdo, whose surviving staff members PEN awarded its Freedom of Expression Courage prize that May. She explained her resistance to holding up the metaphorical banner of “Je suis Charlie” as part of an effort not to jump to conclusions, not to join in groupthink, to avoid having knee-jerk reactions just because everyone else was vulnerable to them. “The older (and hopefully wiser) I get, the more I want to pause. I want to take the time to think through how I feel and why I feel,” Gay wrote. “I don’t want to feign expertise on matters I know nothing about for the purpose of offering someone else my immediate reaction for their consumption.”Argentina delivers thousands of WWII-era documents to US Holocaust museum
All of which made it odd to see Gay race to the pages of The New York Times this week with an opinion piece about a television show whose premise had only been announced days earlier—a reaction that, by the laws of physics, almost couldn’t be more immediate and knee-jerk if she tried. In the process, she revealed something important about who gets the benefit of her doubt. I’ll give you one hint: It’s not Jews.
On July 19th, HBO announced that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will develop an alternate history series, Confederate, in which the Civil War ends in stalemate. Not even a week later, Gay wrote: “My exhaustion with the idea of ‘Confederate’ is multiplied by the realization that this show is the brainchild of two white men who oversee a show that has few people of color to speak of and where sexual violence is often gratuitous and treated as no big deal.” Placing Confederate squarely within the context of rising racial tensions in the United States, which can make it seem like “some people are still living in the antebellum era,” Gay divines that the series will be “slavery fan fiction” and that Benioff and Weiss are somehow insensitive towards, or even worse, sickly enthralled by American slavery. “I shudder to imagine the enslaved black body in their creative hands,” she says.
The Argentine Foreign Ministry delivered to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington a series of documents about World War II, some of them related to Nazi war criminals.Yeah, Right: Israeli Researchers Develop Program to Detect Sarcasm in Text
The digital copies of the documents delivered are mainly letters, telegrams, newspaper articles, notes and reports, totaling almost 40,000 documents. An agreement for this transfer was signed on Friday in Buenos Aires between Argentina´s Secretary of International Cooperation Ernesto Gaspari and USHMM representative Samanta Casareto.
The 38,779 documents were produced by Argentina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 1939 and 1950.
Among the documents are the communications between Argentina and countries involved in the war, as well as information sent by the Argentinean embassy in Germany. Some documents also record a meeting of chancellors in 1944.
Argentina was a refuge for Nazis after World War II. Adolf Eichmann was captured in the northern area of Buenos Aires in 1960; another Nazi war criminal, Erich Priebke, also lived there.
Sarcasm is no laughing matter for people with autism and Asperger’s syndrome, who have difficulty interpreting subtle irony and humor.Israeli Celebrity Chef to Open Third Int’l Branch in Australia
It’s an issue that’s become increasingly important as sarcastic comments abound on social media. A tweet like “The new ‘Fast and Furious’ movie is awesome. #sarcasm” is meant to be read the opposite of how it is written, but for some people, this literary twist is not readily apparent.
Researchers in the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology say they can transform sarcasm into straightforward statements using machine translation and artificial intelligence.
Sarcasm SIGN (for “Sentimental Interpretation GeNerator”) would transform the sarcastic sentence above to read “The new ‘Fast and Furious’ movie is terrible.”
Sentiment analysis applications are not new. Companies like Rosette Text Analytics pore over documents to look for attitudes, opinions and emotions to help companies predict employee churn, assess financial risk and volatility, understand market trends and disruptions, monitor signals for national security threats, and enable overseas call centers to better support their customers.
But existing apps get stuck interpreting sarcasm, says Lotam Peled, the industrial engineering and management graduate student who developed Sarcasm SIGN.
Israeli celebrity chef Eyal Shani is soon to open the latest branch of his Tel Aviv falafel joint, Miznon, in Melbourne, Australia. Miznon has already seen huge success in its Paris and Vienna locations and also will open in Manhattan’s Chelsea Market this fall.Haim Saban, wife fund Druze Soldiers Heritage Center in northern Israel
Miznon (Hebrew for “buffet” or “canteen”) doesn’t serve only the signature spicy deep-fried chickpea balls in pita pocket bread, but also a variety of vegetables, salads, meats and breads prepared in-house. Part of the appeal is an open kitchen so patrons can watch the behind-the-scenes magic.
Shani chose his next location based on evidence that the good folks of Melbourne, Australia are going wild for Israeli-style street food. According to TimeOut Melbourne, two other falafel places have opened in the city over the past year.
The Melbourne branch of Miznon is set to launch this August.
Israeli-American billionaire Haim Saban attended a groundbreaking ceremony in Israel’s northern Galilee for a Druze Soldiers Heritage Center.
Saban, an entertainment mogul, and his wife, Cheryl, are funding construction of the center in the town of Kisra-Sumei, which is also a memorial for fallen Druze Israeli soldiers, through Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, or FIDF.
Also attending Thursday’s ceremony were Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman; Sheikh Muwaffak Tarif, the spiritual leader of the Druze community in Israel; and former Member of Knesset Shachiv Shanan, the father of Advanced Staff Sgt. Maj. Kamil Shanan, one of the two Israeli Druze police officers killed by terrorists at the Temple Mount on July 14.
“The Druze community’s reputation is always connected to terms like ‘bravery,’ ‘sacrifice,’ and ‘sanctity of life,’” Saban said at the groundbreaking. “To this day, hundreds of Druze soldiers have given their lives protecting Israel. The FIDF Druze Soldiers Heritage Center is the very least we can do to show our gratitude and admiration for their sacrifices. The Druze community deserves its own place that will be a source of pride.”
4:00 PMElder of ZiyonNo comments
The Jews believe that their Lord has created Gentiles to serve them. ..The world is divided into two groups: the Jews and the Goyim, and the creation of non-Jews is to serve Jews, enslave them, steal from them, but this is forbidden for them to do among themselves.See? Now you know all about Jews!
The Gentiles are the donkeys whom the Lord created for the chosen people of God.When Abraham went to slaughter his son, Isaac, he was accompanied by his servants, and he said to them: Stay here with the donkey, while I and my son go to the mountain, hence it is known that non-Jews are donkeys!
Whoever kills a Christian or a foreigner or a pagan is rewarded with immortality in paradise and sitting there in the fourth palace. ...If a Jew intends to kill an animal, kill someone wrongly, or want to kill a pagan or an alien who kills a Jew, his sin is forgiven, and whoever kills a Christian or an alien or a pagan is rewarded with immortality in paradise and sitting there in the fourth palace.
The difference between the Jewish nation and other nations is similar to the difference between man and the rest of the animals. Some rabbis say that only Jews are created in the image of God (despite what is said in Genesis 1:27 on the creation of God in His image). ... In the Book of the Prophets, the Gentiles are considered beasts, and the non-Jew is no different from the wild boar....The Jewish doctor should avoid breaking the sanctity of the Sabbath in order to treat the gentiles. The Jew should not remove the rubble of a house that was destroyed on Saturday [if a Gentile is inside]. If one of the pagans falls into a pit, the Jew must close the opening with a stone.
In the Talmud it is common to find phrases such as "Kill the righteous from the Gentiles" and "The Jew should feed the dogs and not feed the Gentiles."
The Jews have the right to rape non-Jewish women, the wives of foreigners are permissible; because women are non-Jewish beasts.
The Jew is not permitted to be polite with the non-Jew , or to claim his love, unless he is afraid of harm.
It is not permissible to offer charity to non-Jews.
On the Day of Atonement all of the sins committed by Jews during the year are wiped out.
If the Gentiles steal something - even if its value is very trivial - they deserve to die; because they have violated the commandments that the Lord commanded them
If a foreigner and a Jew come before you in a lawsuit, and you can make the Jew a winner, then say to the foreigner: This is what our law requires...
The religious leaders must curse the heads of the religions (Muhammad, Christ, peace be upon them and the scholars of the unholy) three times every day,
Anyone who sees the tombs of the Goyim should curse them and curse them with specific words found in the Talmud.
All the goods of the land belong to the children of Israel, the land and all that is in it, and it all belongs only to the Jews, and they have full disposition in them; Jehovah gave the Jews control over the money of the rest of the nations and their blood.
The use of foreigners as practical animals has produced a profession in Palestine called "Shabbos Goy", which is mostly Arabs, and their function is to do what is forbidden to the religious Jew to do on Saturday.
12:30 PMElder of ZiyonNo commentsYour tax dollars at work: The Palestinian Authority is now using half of its foreign aid to reward terrorism.
The new PA budget boosts support to terrorists in prison by 13 percent and aid for the families of those killed “in the struggle against Zion” 4 percent, reports the Institute for Contemporary Affairs.
The total, $344 million, equals 49.6 percent of all foreign aid to the PA. In other words, cash from Uncle Sam, Europe and even Israel is subsidizing “welfare for terrorists.”
The PA sends a salary to each Palestinian imprisoned for an attack on Israelis, hitting over $3,000 a month after 30 years. Other stipends go to families of “martyrs” killed in the act. That’s $344 million for 2017 that’s not going to build roads or hospitals.
Knowing that you or your family will be taken care of is a clear incentive to kill. That’s why President Trump is threatening to end US aid if the PA doesn’t quit it.
The PA budget is a clear “no” to Trump’s demand. Ball’s in your court, Mr. President. (h/t Cliff)
PM Justin Tudeau forced to respond on Canada's funding of UNRWA after UN Watch exposed UNRWA teachers inciting terrorism. On April 9, 2017, UN Watch released a report at the Canadian Parliament entitled “Enhanced Due Diligence? An Examination of Canada’s pledge to stop UNRWA teachers from inciting Jihadist terrorism and anti-Semitism.” The report sparked a firestorm in the Canadian parliament. Numerous opposition MPs quoted from UN Watch’s report, sharply criticizing the government for reinstating funding to UNRWA. “Why are we funding teachers, principals, UNRWA workers who support antisemitism?” asked Conservative MP Dean Allison, Chair of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. Equally outspoken on the UN Watch report was Conservative MP Peter Kent. The questions caused the government to pledge accountability. International Development Minister Marie Claude Bibeau insisted that Canada was “closely monitoring the activities of UNRWA.” On further questioning by Kent, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself was forced to respond. He spoke of "Canadian pressure" and promised that Canada would ensure that “the help is going to where it is needed.”
"The United Nations has become a threat to the liberal international order. It weakens the constitution of liberal democratic states by attacking the political and cultural conditions required for their survival. It attacks the security of free-world countries and the common values that underpin free societies. In recent years, UN leadership has become more hostile to free citizens and politicians who dissent from illiberal supranational rule.
The UN often acts against the free world by targeting politicians who defend the liberty, security and safety of free citizens. In particular, UN chiefs target pro-Western politicians who defend the free world by upholding democratic rule over supranational rule and adopt secure border policy to keep free societies free. During the US presidential campaign, UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said he didn't intend to interfere with political campaigns but declared Donald Trump 'dangerous from an international point of view'.
UN members attack the free world by smearing pro-Western politicians with propaganda terms such as xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism and populism. Its leadership has framed democratic citizens' defence of free-world countries as 'xenophobia'. They call democratically elected politicians who represent their people and protect them from harm 'populist'. They claim secure border policy is a form of nationalism and by extension (in UN thought), an abuse of human rights. And they depict the UN as a bastion of benevolent internationalism, despite its track record...
The UN rails against conservative party politicians who defend secure border policy so that Western democracy and open society and can flourish. Human rights chief Hussein described right-wing Western politicians as 'demagogues' and compared their 'tactics' with those of genocidal Islamic State.
However, the UN adopts a comparatively accommodationist approach to closed and illiberal -societies under Islamist and communist rule. Last year, the UN General Assembly honoured communist dictator Fidel Castro with a minute of silence. On that day, as on so many others, it entertained attacks on Israel's sovereignty by Islamists. And the UN is yet to explain how its benevolent internationalism includes the Organisation of Islamic Co¬operation's redefinition of human rights to disallow freedoms 'contrary to the principles of the sharia'... Liberal internationalists need to ¬acknowledge there's something rotten in the state of the UN."
During the Obama years, concerns about Israel’s security situation focused on the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Today, the focus is changing: to the growing Iranian military presence in Syria, the growing military strength of Hezbollah, and the possibility of a devastating Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
That is the subject of a new article in Strategic Assessment, the magazine of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. Entitled “Political and Military Contours of the Next Conflict with Hezbollah,” it was written by Gideon Sa’ar and Ron Tira. Tira is a strategist who was a long-time Israeli Air Force officer and pilot; Saar is an influential Israeli politician who was for 11 years a Likud member of the Knesset.
It’s dangerous to try and summarize a complex and in many ways worrying text, but I will try. First, war is possible: “A conflict could break out due to a miscalculation, a failure in strategic communication, or uncontrolled escalation.”
Hezbollah’s build-up of precision weapons presents an enormous threat to Israel, as does the growing Iranian presence in Syria. Together, this may constitute “an attempt by Iran and Hezbollah to reach a strategic balance with Israel, or even to gain the capability to launch a strike that will cause significant damage to critical (military and civilian) systems in Israel.” How so?
Not only does no other religion in Turkey, other than Islam, have the power, influence or financing of the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet) -- whose budget even surpasses that of most ministries; other religions are either not officially recognized (as in the cases of Alevism and Yazidism), or are on the verge of complete governmental elimination -- as in the cases of Judaism, Greek Orthodoxy, Assyrian (Syriac) and Armenian Christianity.PMW: PA officials ensure Palestinian anger continues, repeat "Al-Aqsa is in danger libel"
"...[S]ince the creation of the world there is only one religion and it is the religion of Islam.... therefore, when Islam was not in that area before Mohammed came to it, it should have been there....So any place like this had to be freed, not to be conquered...And therefore, there is no Islamic occupation. If somebody occupies anything, it will always be somebody else, not the Muslims. So, there is no Islamic occupation. There is only Islamic liberation." -- Moshe Sharon, Professor Emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
To be effective, however, policies safeguarding religious liberty must include conducting an honest and open discussion of the history and doctrine of Islam, as well as its contemporary iteration, not as a "religion of peace" -- which, in Islam, is to occur only after the entire world has accepted Allah, as well as Islamic law, Sharia -- but as one of war and terror.
Despite Israel's decision to remove its security measures at the Temple Mount on July 24, Palestinian Authority leaders continue to provoke anger and instill fear in Palestinians by repeating the libel that the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem are "in danger," and that Israel wants to "destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque" in order to "build the alleged Temple." The PA government stressed the need for Palestinian "defense" of "Arab and Islamic Jerusalem."
On the same day that Israel started to remove the metal detectors it had put up following a terror attack in which two Israeli border policemen were murdered on the Temple Mount, the PA Minister of Religious Affairs repeated the libel that "Al-Aqsa is in danger" on official PA TV:
PA Minister of Religious Affairs Sheikh Yusuf Ida'is: "Israel divided [the Al-Aqsa Mosque between Jews and Muslims] regarding [prayer] time, when it admitted the herds of settlers in the morning hours and allowed them to hold Talmudic (i.e., Jewish) prayers, and after it began to place metal detectors [at the entrances] it wants to divide it [the Mosque] according to place. It wants to reach what is beyond that, as it has plans to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque and establish the alleged Temple in its place."
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, July 24, 2017]
Kamal Al-Khatib, deputy leader of the outlawed northern branch of the Islamic Movement, claimed that Israel had placed dangerous chemicals in the walls of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in the days in which the compound was closed to worshippers. Prof. (Emer.) Raphael Israeli, an expert on blood libels, traces the history of the Big Lie and its manifestations in the 21st century.NGO Monitor: Temple Mount Violence – When Amnesty International Knows Better than Everyone Else
“One of the classic anti-Semitic core motifs is the belief that Jews poison the drinking water of non-Jews. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas recycled this anti-Semitic theme at a plenary session of the European Parliament in 2016. There he said that a rabbi had asked the Israeli government to poison Palestinian drinking water.
“This was Palestinian fake news. There was no such rabbi. Nor did the Council he was supposedly the head of even exist. At the end of his speech, including this extreme anti-Semitic libel, Abbas received much applause and a standing ovation from a large number of Europarlamentarians. The chairman of the European Parliament at that time, Martin Schulz -- now the Socialist lead candidate in the upcoming German elections -- tweeted that Abbas’ speech was ‘inspiring.’ A few days later Abbas said that he was misinformed about the rabbi..”
Raphael Israeli is Emeritus Professor of Islamic, Chinese and Middle Eastern history at the Hebrew University. He has authored over 50 books including, Blood Libel and Its Derivatives: The Scourge of Antisemitism and Poison: Modern Manifestations of a Blood Libel.
Late last week, on Thursday, July 27, Palestinians arrived en masse to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque for the first time since terrorists killed two Israeli police on the Temple Mount on July 14. As happened many times over the past few weeks, the area of Jerusalem’s Old City and on the Temple Mount itself was chaotic and violent.'With rock, knife, ax, we follow the martyrs'
One news outlet described how Israeli police “responded” to “many young people throw[ing] stones and bottles at the forces.” A filmmaker who was present noted, “I was there. There wasn’t one single vantage point where you could tell either way who started it.” A Haaretz editor called it a “complex scene,” with multiple sites of confrontation between security personnel and Palestinians.
Amnesty International, though, professed total clarity. In a press release published July 27, based on claims originating with “Amnesty International staff at the scene,” Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty’s Deputy Middle East and North Africa Director, accused Israel of attacking “peaceful crowds at Jerusalem holy site.” Amnesty further alleged that this was an “entirely unprovoked attack” and that Israeli police of used “unnecessary and excessive force to disperse a peaceful gathering.”
The Jerusalem District Attorney's Office on Monday filed indictments against five east Jerusalem residents for incitement to terror and other offenses.Trump to meet with ambassador to Israel over Temple Mount flare up
Three of the suspects are accused of inciting violence on Facebook following a July 14 terrorist attack at the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem, in which two border policemen were murdered and another was wounded.
The indictments were filed with the approval of Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, as required by law, given the nature of the offenses, which touch on issues of freedom of speech.
Muhammad Mukhaimer, 19, is accused of calling for violence and acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians and security forces on Facebook on a number of occasions, praising terrorist organizations such as Hamas military wing Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Following the terrorist attack on the Temple Mount, Mukhaimer posted the following to his Facebook page under the hashtag "Shahid Friday": "They thought our heroes had grown old, but they're still alive, and they were taken down among the alleyways and at the entrance to the gates."
Later that day, Mukhaimer posted a photo of a police officer standing next to medics treating a wounded victim at the scene of the attack. Mukhaimer captioned the photo: "To hell and to darkness."
US President Donald Trump will meet with his ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Temple Mount crisis.Singing ‘hit Zionists,’ thousands rally against Israel in Istanbul
The meeting is scheduled for late Monday morning, Haaretz reported. An unnamed White House official told the Israeli newspaper that Friedman was coming to Washington this week “as part of a long-planned trip.”
“In addition to a variety of meetings, he will be meeting with the president, Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt tomorrow to discuss the events that transpired in the region over the past two weeks where tensions have recently lowered,” the official told Haaretz.
Friedman reportedly was involved in working to reduce tensions over the increased security measures at the Temple Mount, which ultimately were removed. The metal detectors and other measures were installed after a July 14 attack by three Arab-Israeli men that left two Druze-Israeli police officers dead.
Greenblatt, Trump’s special envoy for international relations, also visited Israel last week, also in a bid to help lower the tensions at the Temple Mount.
Thousands of supporters of a conservative Turkish party rallied in Istanbul on Sunday to protest security measures taken by Israel in Jerusalem — removed last week — and show solidarity with the Palestinians.Video, Pics: Extremist Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamist Group Rallies in London Against Israel
Protesters waved Turkish and Palestinian flags Sunday at the “Great Jerusalem Meeting” in Istanbul. A jingle with the lyric “Hit, hit Zionists” played.
Israel installed metal detectors and cameras around the Temple Mount compound following a deadly July 14 attack that saw three Arab Israeli gunmen kill two Israeli police officers at the holy site with weapons smuggled into the compound.
The new security measures sparked mass protests by Muslim worshipers, who boycotted the compound for 12 days.
Late last week, Israel removed the security measures.
But tensions remain high in Turkey, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying the removal of the detectors was “not enough.”
Sunday’s protest was called by the Saadet (Felicity) Party, which emerged from the same Islamic-rooted political movement as the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Erdogan, but is seen as more religiously conservative.
The Islamist party’s leader, Temel Karamollaoglu, told the crowd that Muslims would not give up on Jerusalem.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, the international Islamism group, held a rally Saturday in central London in protest of Israel’s security measures on the Temple Mount.Iranian leader calls on Hajj pilgrims to support Palestine
The group – which agitates for the establishment of a global Muslim theocratic state, or Caliphate, and sharia law – has up to a million members worldwide.
As an organisation, it is legal in the UK but is allegedly linked to terror and has been banned in Germany, Russia, China, Egypt, Turkey, and all but three Arab countries.
This event, which was segregated by gender, was called ‘Stand, Struggle, and Sacrifice for Al-Aqsa’ – the mosque on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which is the third most holy site in Islam and has been put under beefed up security following a series of Jihadi attacks on Jews and Christians.
“Masjid Al-Aqsa is about occupation and not about metal detectors and surveillance cameras”, claimed a statement printed on the event’s poster.
The protest was held outside the Saudi Arabian Embassy, with organisers accusing leaders and those of other Muslim nations of “continu[ing] to sit, watch, stay silent” and being “complicit” in the actions of Israel.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called on Muslims to take the opportunity of the Hajj rituals to take a united stance against “Israeli efforts to control the Aksa Mosque.”Saudi Arabia Calls Qatar’s Demand for Internationalization of Muslim Holy Sites a ‘War Against the Kingdom’
The Iranian leader described Hajj rituals as the best opportunity for Muslims to speak up about the Aksa and Palestine issue, Iranian media reported.
“Where can the Islamic Ummah find a better venue than Hajj to comment on the Aksa Mosque?” he said addressing a group of Iranian organizers of Hajj on Sunday.
He further accused the US of meddling in the issues of Muslim countries and creating terrorist groups in the region.
Saudi Arabia says that calls for internationalization of holy sites 'a declaration of war'JCPA: Why Israel Is Concerned About American-Russian Understandings on Syria
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister called what he said was Qatar's demand for an internationalization of the Muslim hajj pilgrimage a declaration of war against the kingdom, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television said on Sunday, but Qatar said it never made such a call.
"Qatar's demands to internationalize the holy sites is aggressive and a declaration of war against the kingdom," Adel al-Jubeir was quoted saying on Al Arabiya's website.
"We reserve the right to respond to anyone who is working on the internationalization of the holy sites," he said.
Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said no official from his country had made such a call.
"We are tired of responding to false information and stories invented from nothing," Sheikh Mohammed told Al Jazeera TV.
Qatar did accuse the Saudis of politicizing hajj and addressed the United Nations Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion on Saturday, expressing concern about obstacles facing Qataris who want to attend hajj this year.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain previously issued a list of 13 demands for Qatar, which included curtailing its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, shutting down the Doha-based Al Jazeera channel, closing a Turkish military base and downgrading its relations with Gulf enemy Iran.
Israeli Concerns about Iran in SyriaMexican politician rejects BDS during settlement visit
Israel has five major concerns regarding the Iranian entrenchment in Syria. Two of them are an immediate concern. Israel regards these specific two as tripwires that if and when crossed, Israel will react. These are:
- Iran’s ongoing effort together with its proxy Hizbullah to turn the northern part of the Golan Heights into a base from which the Iranians could launch – via their proxies – terror activities against Israel. Throughout the civil war in Syria, Israel countered Iranian efforts to establish a launching pad for terror attacks in the northern Golan Heights with the decisive reaction that foiled these attempts. Last year, it seemed that Iranians got the message, and they have been much more cautious about this idea.
- Iran’s presence in Syria allows for the acceleration of the delivery of military equipment to Hizbullah through Syria, including the supply of “tie-breaking” weapons and weapons components, such as –
- precision guidance for Iranian-made missiles such as the Fatah 110 and missiles with heavier payloads;
- land-to-sea missiles produced by Iran, China, and Russia (C-704, C-802, Yakhont supersonic anti-ship cruise missile with a 600 km range;
- SA-22 air defense system and a wide variety of anti-aircraft missiles produced in Russia and Iran);
- unmanned air vehicles, drones;
- mini submarines (Ghadir type);
- anti-tank missiles, etc.
There should be no discrimination against West Bank settlement products, Mexican politician Hugo Eric Flores Cervantes said on Sunday during a visit to Samaria.A view of Romanian-Israeli relations from Brasov
“Those who consider that the factories here are not producing products made on Israeli territory, are mistaken. There is no territory that is more Israeli than here,” Flores Cervantes said, adding that any other understanding is a historical mistake.
“Products should be exported from here to any place in the globe in the most open way possible,” he said.
Flores Cervantes was speaking in Spanish in response to a question about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. His words were translated by Yossi Eldar, vice president of the Israel-Mexico Chamber of Commerce.
“Trade between nations must and should be free,” Flores Cervantes said. “I am in favor of accelerating the trade agreement between Mexico and Israel as well as accelerating the marketing of products produced in Judea and Samaria to Mexico.”
He is the founder and head of the Social Encounter Party and serves in the Mexican Congress. “We are evangelical Christians and pro-Israel,” he told The Jerusalem Post in describing his party.
A good Legal Insurrection author is never completely off duty.IsraellyCool: WATCH: Terrorist Stunned By Pizza Tray
Last week, I blogged about an economic agreement being worked-out between Israel and 4 central European countries (including Hungary, which was one of the 5 countries on my summer tour).
Today, I snapped this photo in the Old Town of Brasov, Romania in front of the local synagogue.
Interestingly, during the Cold War, Romania was the only communist country not to break its diplomatic relations with Israel. More recently, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis paid a state visit to Israel in 2016, pledging Romania’s solidarity with Israel in the battle against terrorism, anti-Semitism, racism and hatred.
This relationship will allow Romania to develop its own version of Silicon Valley, which they call “Laser Valley”.
Last week, I posted how a palestinian terrorist stabbed a man in the neck in Petah Tikva, before being stunned by a pizzeria worker who hit him with a pizza tray.
Now I am pleased to report we have the footage!
Prof. Asa Kasher, who wrote the IDF’s ethics code, came out against the 18-month sentence of Hebron shooter Elor Azaria on Monday, telling The Jerusalem Post that it sets a precedent that “is totally wrong.”It’s Time to Close Down Al Jazeera
Kasher, speaking to the Post by phone, said that the sentence “is too light a punishment,” adding that the maximum punishment for manslaughter is 20 years.
“I think that 18 months, and there will be a reduction by a third for good behavior, making it a year, to come to a square and seeing a terrorist lying there totally ‘neutralized,’ and where commanders are calm... and just killing him with one shot to the head... it’s too light a punishment.”
Azaria was found guilty of manslaughter by a military court in January for killing incapacitated Palestinian attacker Abdel Fatah al-Sharif in Hebron on March 24, 2016. In February 2017, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and 12 month probation thereafter, and demoted from sergeant to private.
According to Kasher, the judges did not address an important ethical aspect of the case – that as a medic Azaria went against the values of both the IDF and the State of Israel.
“By military regulations, by being a medic, seeing someone lying on the road and been told there is no danger, he should have treated him. Those are our values, our norms. The basic values of Israel and the IDF is to protect basic human dignity, even my enemy whom I may kill sometimes out of self-defense. But when my enemy is lying fatally injured on the road, it is my duty to help him. And he didn’t.”
Among the demands put to Qatar by its Arab rivals are that it shut down Al Jazeera, the media company it owns and sponsors. The editors of such Western publications as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Economist have rushed to defend the network. Clifford May explains why they’re wrong, citing the observation by the late Arab intellectual Fouad Ajami that Al Jazeera is a “crafty operation” that “day in and day out deliberately fans the flames of Muslim outrage.”Family of Amman embassy guard said fearing for safety after name leaks
Among Al Jazeera’s brightest TV stars is Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the “spiritual leader” of the Muslim Brotherhood. He has praised Imad Mughniyah, the Hizballah terrorist mastermind behind the 1983 suicide bombings in Beirut, in which 241 U.S. Marines were killed. He once issued a fatwa, a religious opinion, calling for the “abduction and killing of Americans in Iraq.”
Sheikh Qaradawi favors the “spread of Islam until it conquers the entire world and includes both the East and West, [marking] the beginning of the return of the Islamic caliphate.” Hitler, he has said, deserves praise for having “managed to put [Jews] in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the [Muslims].”
Defenders of the network argue that however extreme Al Jazeera Arabic may be, its sister network, Al Jazeera English, is different. [But] consider the . . . exchange on National Public Radio earlier this month between [the interviewer] Kelly McEvers and Giles Trendle, the managing director for Al Jazeera English.
The family of the Israeli security guard who killed two Jordanian nationals at the Israeli Embassy compound in Amman last week have reportedly fled their home after publication of his name on Sunday.Amnesty International calls on Hamas to free Israeli hostages
Ziv Moyal’s family left their home in the south of Israel and moved in with relatives out of fear for their safety, after Jordanian media published a photo of Moyal’s diplomatic ID card, with his picture and name, according to Channel 10.
Officials confirmed that Moyal, 28, was the guard who shot and killed the Jordanians while being attacked by one of them with a screwdriver.
His family insisted that “he acted solely according to standard procedure.”
The incident last week has threatened a major diplomatic rift between Israel and Jordan, one of its few allies in the region, after Moyal was returned to Israel, along with the rest of Israel’s diplomatic staff in Amman.
In an unusual move, Amnesty International called on activists Monday to contact leaders of the Hamas terror group to pressure them to free two Israeli citizens held in the Gaza Strip.Red Cross to Israel: Reinstate family visits for Hamas terrorists
The human rights organization circulated a letter with the email addresses and fax numbers of senior Hamas members in a campaign to free Avraham Abera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, two Israeli men who crossed into Gaza of their own accord several years ago. It was the first time the group has publicly attacked Hamas, which controls the coastal enclave.
The letter was headed, “URGENT ACTION: Israel civilians abducted for more than 2 years.” Amnesty pointed out in the letter that the two suffer from “serious mental health disorders” and that the organization fears “that the two men are being held as hostages by Hamas’ military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades for a potential prisoner exchange.” The letter explained that Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, has been in Gaza since September 2014 and Sayed, a Bedouin Israeli, since April 20, 2015.
The organization demanded information about the two from Hamas, and called on people to send messages before September 4 and to contact local “diplomatic representatives in your country to urge them to take action.” September 4 marks the conclusion of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, but it is unclear what the significance of the date is to the human rights group.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has demanded that Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan reinstate visitation rights for Hamas prisoners from Gaza who are serving time in Israeli prisons. According to the committee, Israel's decision to prevent family members from visiting security prisoners is a "violation of the Geneva Convention."Israel Closely Monitoring Palestinian Authority Leader Abbas’ ‘Deteriorating’ Health
In an interview with Israel Hayom Sunday, Simcha Goldin, the father of the late Hadar Goldin who was killed in Operation Protective Edge in 2014 and whose body is being held captive by Hamas, called the move "a demonstration of hypocrisy and inhumanity" from the Red Cross.
Referring to the letter sent by the ICRC to Erdan outlining its demands, Goldin remarked: "The letter went out with the knowledge that dead soldiers are being held hostage in Gaza while Hamas prisoners ... receive improved conditions according to any convention."
Goldin said Israel's decision to deny the security prisoners visitation rights did not go far enough, in light of the fact that the bodies of Goldin and fellow fallen soldier Oron Shaul are still being held captive, along with three Israeli nationals who wandered into Gaza.
The Public Security Ministry has rejected the ICRC's request outright.
Israel’s security establishment is closely monitoring the health condition of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, after he was hospitalized this weekend at the Al Istishari Hospital near Ramallah.Hezbollah, al-Qaida swap bodies ahead of possible cease-fire
At the hospital, Abbas reportedly underwent “routine checks” including blood tests and X-rays. The hospital’s director, Dr. Fathi Abu Mughli, stated that the PA leader left after 90 minutes, The Associated Press reported.
“The results are good,” said Mughli, without elaborating.
PA officials stated that Abbas, 82, was admitted to hospital after suffering from fatigue caused by the stressful events of the past two weeks concerning the Temple Mount.
Throughout the 13-day crisis, Abbas purportedly endured a far more rigorous schedule than usual in order to keep up with the rapidly unfolding events and maintain constant contact with Palestinian, Arab and Western officials.
Hezbollah and a Syrian rebel group affiliated with al-Qaida exchanged the bodies of dead fighters along the Lebanese-Syrian border on Sunday in the first stage of an agreement to restore order to a contested frontier zone.Hezbollah takes over north east border of Lebanon
The al-Qaida-linked Fatah al-Sham Front, formerly known as the Nusra Front, is expected to leave the border region in the subsequent stages of the agreement, following two weeks of battles with Hezbollah and the Syrian army.
But the Front announced Sunday it had captured three Hezbollah fighters, one day after Hezbollah admitted a group had gone missing in the Arsal border region. It was not immediately clear whether the revelation would affect the deal already underway.
The Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah handed over the bodies of nine al-Qaida fighters in exchange for the bodies of five of its own, according to the Hezbollah's Al-Manar television network.
Lebanese Red Cross spokesman George Kattani said a woman and child were also handed over to the al-Qaida affiliate.
A convoy of buses was deployed on Monday to transport Nusra Front militants and refugees from Lebanon's border region to Syria in exchange for Hezbollah prisoners.MEMRI: Resistance Axis Sources: PMU Has Close Ties With Iran, Hizbullah, Opposes U.S. Presence In Iraq
Under a local ceasefire between the Lebanese Shi'ite group and the Sunni militants, about 9,000 fighters and their relatives would leave for rebel territory in Syria on Monday, a Hezbollah media unit had said.
The Nusra Front was al-Qaeda's Syria branch until it severed ties and rebranded last year. It now spearheads the Tahrir al-Sham Islamist alliance in the Syrian war.
The deal includes the departure of all Nusra militants from Lebanon's northeast border region around Arsal town, along with any civilians in nearby refugee camps who wish to leave.
Hezbollah took most of the barren, mountainous zone of Jroud Arsal last week, after launching an offensive with the Syrian army to drive militants from their last foothold along the border.
The next phase is expected to target a nearby enclave in the hands of Islamic State.
Since its establishment some three years ago – following a fatwa issued by Iraqi Shi'ite leader Ayatollah 'Ali Sistani calling for "jihad kifa'i"[1] against ISIS – the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU, Al-Hashd Al-Sha'bi in Arabic), an umbrella organization of armed Iraqi militias, has played an important role in the fight against ISIS in Iraq, alongside the Iraqi army and the international coalition.Court upholds $7.3B judgment against Sudan over embassy bombings
Because most of the militias in the PMU are Shi'ite and their commanders are very close to Iran, elements both inside and outside Iraq have long been questioning whether the militias are subordinate to and controlled by the Iraqi authorities, or are in fact controlled exclusively by Iran. To repel this charge by institutionalizing the PMU and thus granting it government legitimacy, in early 2014 the Iraqi government formed the "People's Mobilization Committee." Furthermore, in 2016 the Haider Al-'Abadi government passed the PMU Law, formally incorporating the organization in the country’s armed forces and subordinating it to the prime minister. In an effort to refute the claim that the PMU is controlled by Iran, Iraqi National Security Advisor Falih Fayyad, chairman of the People's Mobilization Committee, said that Iran had extended assistance to the PMU but only in an "advisory" capacity, and emphasized the Iraqi identity of the organization: "In its first months the PMU received assistance from Iran; nevertheless, it is a purely Iraqi endeavor..." Asked about the involvement of senior Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani and of experts from the Lebanese Hizbullah in establishing the PMU, Fayyad said: "We received help from the brothers in Iran and Lebanon... [and] we thank our friends for the extensive advice they granted us."[2]
These statements, however, did not quell the doubts regarding the organization's primary loyalties, for good reason. PMU commanders have openly discussed the militias' close connections with Iran and Hizbullah, as well as their fierce opposition to the U.S. presence in Iraq, which is sanctioned by the Iraqi government. Reports about these connections have also appeared in the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, which is close to the resistance axis.
This paper reviews recent statements by PMU commanders, as well as the Al-Akhbar reports, about these connections.
A federal appeals court on Friday ordered Sudan to pay more than $7 billion in damages to American families of victims of the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a lower court ruling that Sudan was liability for the bombings at U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
However, it threw out the $4.3 billion in punitive damages and is seeking to clarify whether the non-American victims’ families qualify for a chunk of the more than $7.3 billion in damages.
The ruling, written by Judge Douglas Ginsburg, a Reagan appointee, affirmed much of the lower courts’ ruling and rejected arguments from Sudan’s government that the court had considered “inadmissible evidence” to make their final determination.
"We’re obviously very pleased that the D.C. Circuit has affirmed [a lower court] decision after what has been a long struggle in court of the families,” said Stuart Newberger, a lawyer for the U.S. families at law firm Crowell & Moring. “We are hopeful that with this ruling, the Americans who were killed in [the attacks] get closer to reaching a final resolution to the tragic saga in their lives and finally get some closure.”
Lawyers for the Sudanese government argued that the entire case should have been thrown out for several reasons, foremost by challenging the court’s interpretation of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA), which was revised in the middle of the 15-year legal proceeding.
Osama bin Laden lived in Sudan until the government kicked him out in 1996. The court took the side of expert witnesses that said the country continued to fund the terrorist group al Qaeda, which carried out the attacks that killed 200 people — including 12 Americans.
10:01 AMElder of ZiyonNo comments#عاجل| #شاهد: كتائب القسام تنشر رسالة الجنود الأسرى لعائلاتهم#Øكومتكم_تكذب http://pic.twitter.com/2TUEs8kUUv— وكالة شهاب (@ShehabAgency) April 20, 2017
8:05 AMElder of ZiyonNo comments
The response came from a young man, no older than 18, Omar al-Abd. He was not known for religious extremism, and there was no suspicion of him belonging to any faction of jihad. On that day, an immediate response was made, and with one individual, a "balance of terror", was created with an occupation army claiming to be invincible....He went to what he planned with God. The new Palestinian icons, the new title of the movement of new generations of Palestinians, have lost confidence in their leaders and the inherited factions, and took the cause of their people into their own hands, and triggered a new Palestinian popular uprising...I believe that this article may violate the 2006 UK Terrorism Act:
1 Encouragement of terrorismQandil is calling a terrorist a hero, and as such his words being published in the United Kingdom seem to violate this law.
(1)This section applies to a statement that is likely to be understood by some or all of the members of the public to whom it is published as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to them to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism or Convention offences.
(2)A person commits an offence if—
(a)he publishes a statement to which this section applies or causes another to publish such a statement; and
(b)at the time he publishes it or causes it to be published, he—
(i)intends members of the public to be directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate acts of terrorism or Convention offences; or
(ii)is reckless as to whether members of the public will be directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by the statement to commit, prepare or instigate such acts or offences.
(3)For the purposes of this section, the statements that are likely to be understood by members of the public as indirectly encouraging the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism or Convention offences include every statement which—
(a)glorifies the commission or preparation (whether in the past, in the future or generally) of such acts or offences; and
(b)is a statement from which those members of the public could reasonably be expected to infer that what is being glorified is being glorified as conduct that should be emulated by them in existing circumstances.
![[Elder of Ziyon] Facebook may add "Insha'Allah" button for events](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9KIDYyRBYSDMD-x2PZwXZNYKl0eHCeNWbuEWt6IvsNL6IFhtZTpF2SvNRlui4o-nPTjPMcmSOxJ1nPo0pPGPzI5r7GHO_ZfKV9WUcNnkMeMslnkgWq0GeILJg-5vXLLCLckj6SUmdJqmc/s72-c/arabic_facebook_logo_by_ali_normal-d37tr0q.jpg){kind=logo}
![[Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News] 02/19 Links Pt1: Is Israel the Problem, or Are Jews the Problem?; Matt Lee embarrasses Jen Psaki again](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tRxguAPJ2I_X2LTvw-rSHim2FftRfbg5oL6ai2UewtQK4PTqPj0XX3WJ3C-PdT85kEVxaYssDhouVagmHAP207OUdA5eCMIvlKJD-l3Y3RZw)
