Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, August 31, 2014

08/31 Links: Melanie Phillips A New Strategy For Israel; Left on the wrong side of history

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: Melanie Phillips Calls For New Strategy to Present Israel’s Case

Ms. Phillips stated that Israel needs to reframe the entire narrative about the Middle East, firstly by educating the uneducated through teaching the history of the Jewish people and Israel, through exposing the Muslim and Arab anti-Semitism so prevalent even among so-called moderates in the Middle East, and to position Israel at the forefront of the global battle for civilization by reclaiming the word Zionist for the moral high ground where it belongs.
She stressed that Zionism is an integral part of Judaism and to be hostile to Israel or Zionism is to be hostile to Judaism.
Israel should delegitimize the delegitimizers by calling the United Nations to account, particularly UNRWA’s relationship with Hamas and the credibility of the UN Human Rights Council as a mechanism for empowering dictators and rogue states.
Ms. Phillips also urged Israel to hold its allies to account for their silence in the face of years of demonization and delegitimization and the constant incitement against Israel and Jews.

Melanie Phillips: Western Jewry - Paying the Price for Gaza

Reveal UNRWA's bluff

It was quite ironic that during the fighting in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces was shot at from facilities of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, and had to return fire, as over the years no one defended the existence of UNRWA more than the IDF and the Israeli defense establishment. But now, with the fighting over, it is time for Israel to do what it should have done decades ago -- remove the layer of protection and legitimacy it grants to UNRWA. Israel should recognize UNRWA for what it is -- a hostile Palestinian organization that perpetuates the dream of the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel -- and treat it accordingly.
Israel's policy on UNRWA was set by the defense establishment. It was based on the premise that UNRWA was "the lesser of two evils" -- or as a Defense Ministry official put it to me, "UNRWA is crap, but Hamas is more so." This is a narrow view of the issue. Even if UNRWA itself does not attack the IDF directly, it ensures that there will always be someone to do so in the future. Under a thin veil of humanitarian activities, UNRWA acts with a clear political agenda, aimed at perpetuating the situation of Palestinian refugees and fostering the dream of their return to Israel. This is how UNRWA builds the ideological foundation for the next generation of fighters against Israel.

The Australian, Editorial: Left on the wrong side of history

Further muddying the public space, activist group Australians for Palestine failed to correct a falsehood in a recent email newsletter that misrepresented a photograph of a group of dead children as victims of the Gaza conflict. In a letter to the editor today, Sonja Karkar from Australians for Palestine admits the image was used “inadvertently” and that no correction email was sent out. The hypocrisy of the Left and its rampant moral equivalence makes a rational debate on national security and the threat posed by extremists more difficult. The murderous rampage of the Islamic State, whose warlords have Israel, the rest of the Middle East, much of Asia and some of Europe in their sights, shows what is at stake in quashing the caliphate. Apologists for Hamas and those who would turn a blind eye to the Islamic State barbarism are on the wrong side of the moral ledger of history and humanity.
The Prime Minister spoke yesterday about the atrocities perpetrated in Iraq — beheadings, crucifixions and mass executions. He reminded us of our nation’s obligations under the UN’s doctrine of a responsibility to protect those facing slaughter in Iraq. “This is as near to pure evil as we are ever likely to see,” Mr Abbott said, and urged our nation to strive for a better world. Yet, this bracing dose of reality for our nation, and those like our own, is greeted by the sadly predictable, but utterly obnoxious, refrain of “mission creep” from those unable to discern our nation’s vital interests.
The threat of terrorism for us is real, but the slaughter of innocents is occurring right now. We must be part of the mission to end this, rather than indulging in the moral emptiness of the Green Left.

From Hyperallergic:

Artists participating in the 31st São Paulo Biennial have signed an open letter calling on the organizers to return sponsorship funds accepted from the Israeli state, Hyperallergic has learned. The patronage, credited to the Israeli consulate in São Paulo, appears on the sponsor board in the main exhibition space, in official publications, and online, alarming some participating artists who arrived in São Paulo ahead of the September 1 preview.

In the letter, the artists state that with the Israeli sponsorship, their exhibited work is “undermined and implicitly used for whitewashing Israel’s ongoing aggressions and violation of international law and human rights.” The missive follows an August 20 meeting between objecting artists and the Biennial president, Luis Terepins, who said that the organization would consider the matter, a source close to the discussions told Hyperallergic. When no resolution seemed forthcoming, the open letter was organized. The letter, reproduced below, has 55 signatories as of this writing; the biennial lists 68 participating artists and collectives.

Israel's consulate contributed $40,000.

At least one of the artists who signed this anti-Israel letter is Israeli, Yael Bartana.

A Turkish group is another sponsor of the biennial, to no one's dismay, except perhaps some Kurds and Armenians, but who cares about them? Certainly not these progressive artists!

The curators of the show support the artists:

The curators of the 31st São Paulo Biennial have supported the artists’ call on the organization to return Israeli sponsorship funds, a demand they believe “should also be a trigger to think about the funding sources of major cultural events.” Their stance, articulated in a three-paragraph statement sent to Hyperallergic earlier this evening (and reproduced below), endorses the broader strategy undertaken by the open letter the objecting artists released yesterday.

In their statement, Biennial curators Charles Esche, Galit Eilat, Nuria Enguita Mayo, Pablo Lafuente, and Oren Sagiv write, in part: “[S]ources of cultural funding have an increasingly dramatic impact on the supposedly ‘independent’ curatorial and artistic narrative of an event. The funding, whether state, corporate or private, fundamentally shapes the way the public receives the work of artists and curators.”

So to be consistent, the artists should reject all outside funding, right? If funding affects the art, then it is just as immoral to accept funding from Samsung and KPMG and Air France as it is from Israel and Argentina, right?

But, as we've seen many times, "you've gotta start somewhere," and Israel is where these self-righteous hypocrites always start - and end.

Sickeningly, two of the curators who support the artists are Israeli as well.

UPDATE: The sponsor page has removed all "international support" donors from their list of partners.

The page before:

And now:

2 RPGs and a Koran

Al Qassam Brigades terrorist Mohammed Abdullah Hussein Hawajri was killed on July 26 by the IDF along with three of his terrorist colleagues.

His family posted a bunch of photos of their proud mujahid. But this one is interesting:

Look how artfully the Koran is placed between the two RPGs.

Not only that, but if the RPGs would have been placed on the table directly, they would not have been centered vertically with the Koran. So four AK-47 magazines were used to add to the effect, to allow the set designer to emphasize that Islam and violence are entwined.

Gaza's Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, proving that the Palestinian Arab media are simply propaganda outlets, praised the media and journalists as "partners in the victory" against Israel.

During a ceremony to honor "martyrs of the media," which was organized by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Information, Hanieyahsaid that the media "contributed to the steadfastness of the Palestinian people."

He said, "The Palestinian people has triumphed over the Israeli aggression on all levels, including militarily, politically and morally and in the media."

Haniyeh said that "the men of the Palestinian media have formed the source from which the world's media derived all that was going on in Gaza, and was a source for even the Israeli media after they lost confidence in their leaders."

There is no indication that the media that relied on these liars for their reports are bothered in the least.

Fake Palestinian Civilians of the Day

PCHR, that "human rights" organization that the UN relies upon to determine its death statistics from Gaza, reported on July 29:

At approximately 06:00, an Israeli drone fired a missile near a house belonging to Ahmed Sa'id all-Hashash in al-Hashash neighborhood in the north of Rafah. When members of the family attempted to evacuate the house taking their disabled mother out, the Israeli drone fired a missile at them. When a number of their relatives attempted to help them, the Israeli drone fired a third missile at them. As a result of these attacks, 6 civilians were killed: Ibrahim Ahmed al-Hashash, 16; Mohammed Ahmed al-Hashash, 18; Mas'oud Ahmed al-Hashash, 20; Sa'id Ahmed al-Hashash, 20; their mother Hana' Ali al-Hashash, 43; and Mohammed Mousa al-Hashash, 20.

Here are the Hamas "mujahid martyr" posters for four of these family members:

Bilal

Muhammad

Masoud

Said

Here's the funny part: Hamas admitted that these were member of the Al Qassam Brigades on the day they were killed. It was all over pro-jihadi forums that very same day.

There is no way that PCHR didn't know that this was a family of Hamas terrorists, but that didn't stop them from calling them all "civilian."

So when you see statistics of how 75% of those killed in Gaza are civilians - here is what a lot of those "civilians" look like.

(h/t Israellycool, Johnny, Bob Knot)

08/30 Links: 75 UN troops flee to Israel; Will Jews Buy Umbrellas When They See Clouds in the Sky?

From Ian:

Will Jews Buy Umbrellas When They See Clouds in the Sky?

19th century Zionist philosopher, Max Nordau, was quoted as telling Jewish leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky that “the Jew learns not by way of reason, but from catastrophes. He won’t buy an umbrella merely because he sees clouds in the sky. He waits until he is drenched and catches pneumonia.”
On so many counts, Nordau’s words remain completely accurate and reliable today.
In Israel, in the aftermath of Jews being removed from Gaza, disastrous peace talks, and the capitulation to terrorism, Hamas is still firing weapons at the State of Israel. Throughout Europe, Jews are attacked and in danger. In America, American Jews – wrongly – think that without Judaism they can retain Jewish identity – and thus assimilation rates continue to skyrocket. And throughout all of it, the world unfairly continues to condemn Israel.
During these frightening times, it is interesting to remember Zionist heroes, such as Max Nordau, who first raised the concept of what he termed at the time a “muscle Jew,” at the Second Zionist Congress in Basel on August 28, 1898. During a recent trip to France, I met countless Jews who discussed the need to emigrate to Israel – and thankfully today there is an army to protect the Jewish State.

Policy Paper for Submission to the UN: UNRWA Pt I

The UNRWA workers union has been controlled in practice by Hamas for many years. The “Professional List”, headed by senior Hamas activist Suheil Al-Hindi, won a landslide victory in the elections for the UNRWA workers union held in September 2012.
In the elections, in which nearly 11,500 employees of UNRWA voted, the “Professional List” won all 11 seats allocated to the teachers’ sector, 6 of 7 seats in the employees’ sector and 8 out of 9 seats in the service sector.
The "Al-Karama (Honor) List," affiliated with the Islamic Jihad organization, also participated in the elections, whereas the Fatah movement chose to boycott them, claiming that Hamas controls the UNRWA workers union and limits its activities.
The 2012 workers union elections were not the first ones to be won by Hamas. They also won the 2009 elections. The bloc affiliated with Hamas also won the previous election for the UNRWA workers union by an overwhelming majority. Lists affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PLO (uniting representatives of the PFLP, Fatah and the People's Party) and the independents took part in the 2009 elections. 17 representatives of Hamas (63%), four from the PFLP, four from Fatah, one from the People’s Party and one from the independents were elected to the union, which includes 27 members.

Michael Lumish: Netanyahu & the West Doom Israel to Perpetual War.

With the recent alleged conclusion of Operation Protective Edge, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with the western powers, has doomed the Jews of the Middle East to perpetual war.
Unless we see significant policy changes coming out of Jerusalem viz-a-viz the security of the south, Israel can write off that part of the country and just accept the idea that their children will never be even remotely safe. Furthermore, of course, if Israel had any plans to economically or agriculturally develop that part of the country they can simply forget about, at least into the foreseeable future.
Hamas, as it turns out, is actually far more effective in the ethnic-cleansing of Jews from Jewish land than is even the EU, the UN, or the Obama administration. Obama has been twisting Jewish arms for years trying to get us to move off of Jewish land without success, but Hamas knows how it is done.
Violence.
You simply hit Jews in the head until we go away.

08/29 Links Pt2: The Muslim Colonists: Forgotten Facts about the Arab-Israeli Conflict

From Ian:

Chloe Valdary: Beyond Repair: Racist Revisionists, Injurious Illusions

Arab countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria have a hand in promoting this bigotry. These countries deny basic rights to Palestinian Arabs in order to keep them in their dejected state, in part because they seek to make Israel look bad, but, more importantly, because of their own prejudices against them. This, however, is no surprise. It is important to remember that historically, Arab countries have never actually cared about Palestinian Arabs. In Israel’s war of independence, 7 Arab countries sought, not only to destroy Israel but also to set up their own imperialistic empires (Greater Syria) throughout the Middle East. This was certainly Jordan’s goal, as has been shown in recently unclassified cables between the King of Jordan and Golda Meir. Yet this history is largely ignored by statesmen who, in seeking to find quick solutions to problems neglect to examine the psychological makeup of the people being dealt with. Fathom the hypocrisy of an Arab country which persecutes its Palestinian Arab brothers and sisters by denying them basic rights, and then insists that their inferior status is what makes them special in the first place. This prejudice is endemic, because the Palestinian Arabs believe them.
Thus, Palestinian Arab Nationalism in its current form (and to be frank I do not know if any other form could ever exist since the very idea of Palestine as a nation is academically defunct) is a form of self-hatred, because it is rooted in the notion that the non-Palestinian Arab is eternally superior and the Palestinian Arab is irrevocably oppressed. Palestinian Nationalism is inherently discriminatory because it contends that a separate distinct “special” Arab race exists, that that special Arab race ought to be oppressed, and that that oppression is what deems it worthy of existing. This is orientalism in its most extreme form, for discrimination can at least be outlawed and even self-hatred can potentially be corrected. But taking pride in one’s self-hatred, well that, is beyond repair.

The Muslim Colonists: Forgotten Facts about the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Justin McCarthy, a professor of history at the University of Louisville, writing in his Annotated Map, “Forced Migration and Mortality in the Ottoman Empire,” also notes that there were about five million Muslims displaced due to the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Crimean War, Balkan wars, the Turkish war of independence and World War I.
Sergio DellaPergola, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in his paper “Demography in Israel/Palestine: Trends, Prospects and Policy Implications,” provides estimates of the population of Palestine in different periods. As the demographic data below shows, most Muslims living in Palestine in 1948 when the State of Israel was created had been living there for fewer than 60 years:
1890: Arab Population 432,000
1947: Arab Population 1,181,000
Growth in Arab population from 1890 to 1947: 800,000
The Yazidi in Iraq and the Christian Copts in Egypt are not “settlers” and “occupiers;” neither are the Jews in Israel. They are victims of a common enemy that seems to want a Middle East free of non-Muslims.

David Singer: The Key to Peace Lies in the Past

The period 1920-1947 without doubt covers a host of critically important legal and historical signposts that cannot be forgotten or buried.
Whilst the two-state solution ultimately created between 1946-1948 as a result of the San Remo Conference is ignored – attempts to resolve sovereignty in today’s highly volatile West Bank and Gaza – are destined to certain failure and renewed conflict.
The two-state solution posited by the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap creating a 22nd independent sovereign Arab State in the West Bank and Gaza between Jordan and Israel for the first time ever in recorded history has failed to materialize – despite twenty years of intensive political and diplomatic efforts by the international community.
The PLO (founded in 1964) and Hamas (founded in 1987) both seek to unravel the decisions made at San Remo in 1920.
They need to be replaced as Israel’s Arab negotiating partners by the two successor States to the Mandate for Palestine – Jordan and Israel – and possibly Egypt – to determine and allocate sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza between their respective States.
Unearthing the past still remains the key to peacefully resolving the future.

The Ties Between the Nusra Front – the Syrian al Qaeda Affiliate – and Hamas

Hamas Leader Khaled Mashaal Expands His Terror Domain
The Lebanese news website Ertikaz published important information on the circumstances behind the establishment of the two movements in the Yarmouk camp, and it is clear that no less a figure than Hamas’ Khaled Mashaal stands behind both of them — almost certainly from the time he was given protection by the Syrian regime prior to the Syrian rebellion.
According to Ertikaz, Khaled Mashaal’s bodyguard was Muhammad Zaghmout, whose family lives in Gaza. Zaghmout and additional Palestinians who hold key positions in both movements are “graduates” of Afghanistan fighting and filled various posts in Khaled Mashaal’s military organization. According to this report, Aknaf Bayt al-Maqdis is the leading organization and al Nusra coordinates with it.
Zaghmout — Mashaal’s former bodyguard — serves as the commander of both the Aknaf Bayt al-Maqdis and al Nusra, Ertikaz reports.
As long as the terror groups were combatting Syrian President Assad, Al Nusra and the Islamic State (previously ISIS) cooperated on several fronts. After they defeated Assad’s forces, however, they began to fight among themselves for exclusive control in those same areas, such as Raqqa and Deir ez-Zour and the Lebanese front. Right now in the area of Arsal in Lebanon, the Islamic State and al Nusra are fighting together against the Lebanese Army and Hizbullah.

Report: Two Muslim teenage girls planned to suicide-bomb synagogue in Lyon

From JSSNews:

Sources from the Directorate General of Internal Security told JSSNews that the Jewish community of Lyon has just escaped a major disaster.

Two Muslim girls, 15 and 17, were arrested in Tarbes Venissieux a week ago, when they planned to blow themselves up at the Great Synagogue of Lyon.

The two teenagers, who communicated only on social networks, wanted to die as martyrs, like the "Islamikaze" attacks that kill innocents almost every day somewhere in the world.

"These girls were part of a network of young Islamists that are monitored by the services" says an Internal Security source who wishes to remain anonymous.

Originally the girls were suspected of wanting to join jihadists in Syria.

(h/t Yenta Press, Alexi)

08/29 Links Pt1: A Pro-Hamas Left Emerges; Why a Liberal Rabbi Unsubscribed to the New York Times

From Ian:

Sarah Honig: Another tack: Genuinely knocked for a loop?

The fact is that Britain had been exporting jihadist terror for years while pompously upholding its pluralist posture.
Two British Muslims also paid a lethal visit to Israel in April, 2003. Asif Muhammad Hanif, the suicide-bomber who took three innocent lives at Mike’s Place on Tel Aviv’s sea front was a London lad. His absconded accomplice, Omar Khan Sharif, came from Derby, where he attended posh private schools and enjoyed all the best that the UK could offer.
But in their case, there was no British shock or shame. Atrocities against Israelis can always be explained away and even forgiven. The ultimate expression of this mindset was enunciated by Cherrie Blair, then-resident at 10 Downing Street, as Tony’s better half. Her husband keeps himself busy after his retirement from the premiership by serving as the Quartet’s special envoy to the Middle East and he serially churns out plans for peace and for Palestinian rights.
Mrs. Blair argued during the bloodiest days of the Second Intifada that suicide-bombers are driven by utter desperation. Israeli occupation, she intoned, had rendered the poor, hungry, direly oppressed Palestinian masses, straining piteously under Israel’s brutal yoke, so hopeless that they were ready to detonate themselves.
Cherrie had nothing to say about the bombers’ victims and she vehemently denied that she was making excuses for terror, stressing – with just the right tone of righteous indignation – that we need to examine what made young people despair so.

A Pro-Hamas Left Emerges

Efforts by the literary scholar Judith Butler several years ago to include Hamas in the camp of the global Left illustrated a lack of historical knowledge that is simply not acceptable among professional historians. But Procrustean distortion in the name of a cause is apt to overwhelm any fealty to professional standards among ideologues of all stripes. In every sense of the word, Hamas is an organization of the extreme Right and rejects all of the values that at one point defined leftist politics ever since the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and large parts of the secular Left of the 20th century. This summer, the "Hawblog" group statement has offered support to an organization that has attacked the values that used to define the Western Left and made hatred of the Jews as Jews and the destruction of the Jewish state its primary goals. If these scholars have any criticisms of Hamas at all, they did not voice them at a time when doing so mattered.
It was probably only a matter of time before seven decades of leftist antagonism to Israel would lead to waging political warfare in support of an organization known for terrorist attacks against civilians, religious fanaticism, and anti-Semitism of a most foul and familiar sort. In summer 2014, that moment has arrived.

Israeli Liberals’ Advice to Diaspora Jewish Counterparts: Grow Up

While Strenger didn’t elaborate, another Israeli professor and dedicated leftist, Michael Gross, did exactly that in a guest column for Haaretz two days earlier. Rhetorically asking what standard Diaspora Jewish liberals use to evaluate Israel’s liberalism or lack thereof, he continued, “Do they mean a well-functioning public health care system, expansive reproductive rights, gun control, a ban on the death penalty or inexpensive higher education?”
Gross obviously knows the big issue for most liberal Diaspora Jews is “the occupation.” His point is that like any real country, Israel is multi-faceted. And if you examine the real Israel in all its complexity, rather than treating it as a cartoon character with no existence beyond the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, then on many trademark issues to which liberal Jews accord great weight in their own countries, Israel is actually closer to the liberal ideal than America is.
Essentially, both men were making the same argument: If liberal Diaspora Jews would look at Israel as a real country, rather than as a projection of their fantasies, they would see it was neither as perfectly good as they once imagined it nor as irredeemably evil as they imagine it today. Like any other country, it has real problems, and like any other country, it deals with some problems better than others, but its positive qualities are no less real than its flaws.
And if Diaspora Jewish liberals are incapable of seeing the real Israel through the cloud of their adolescent fantasies, then that isn’t Israel’s fault. It’s their own.

Would Beinart have supported the Klan in 1964?

The ‘peaceful protests’ that Beinart refers to center around attempts to destroy the security barrier that protects Israel against the infiltration of terrorists, as occurred during the Second Intifada when hundreds of Israelis were murdered by suicide bombers. They have a secondary purpose of trying to provoke police and soldiers into responses that can be used as weapons in the propaganda and legal wars being waged against Israel.
The idea that the Palestinian national movement, whose objective is the destruction of Israel and the murder or expulsion of its Jewish residents, is anything like the US civil rights movements of the 1960s is not just entirely wrong but an obscene inversion of reality.
To Beinart’s rejoinder that I see Palestinians only as “haters and killers” and not as human beings, that is insultingly false. But the political movement and ideology that Beinart wants us to support is one of hating and killing.

Hamas encouraging the next generation of terrorists

Hamas Gaza leader Ismail Haniyeh visited the families of "martyrs," specifically the family of Hamas terrorist Mohammed Abu Shamala, and took the time for some photo-ops: