Throughout the 2,000 years of Jews living in the Diaspora, there has been no precedent for the behavior of major liberal mainstream sectors of the American Jewish community. They are undermining themselves and provoking massive waves of resentment from Americans, many of whom were favorably disposed toward them.
The United States has been the home of the largest Jewish community in the Diaspora over the past half-century and was regarded by many Jews as the “goldene medina.” Traditional antisemitism is at an all-time low with the exception of the current anti-Israeli agitation initiated at campuses by Muslims and far-left radicals. Many Jews have become affluent and powerful, and Jews in general are highly respected by most Americans.
Until recently, all mainstream Jewish organizations sought to maintain bipartisanship with regard to Israel and major issues of Jewish concern. This, despite the fact that for complex historical reasons the vast majority of American Jews were inclined toward liberalism and voted Democrat.
Even after eight years of President Barack Obama’s efforts to create daylight between Israel and the United States to appease the Iranians and other Arab countries, and despite the extraordinary support for Israel expressed by all sections of the Republican Party, Jews still tended to vote Democrat. This contrasted sharply with Anglo Jewry, whose members defected in droves from the British Labor Party when it became anti-Israeli/antisemitic under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
Nearly half of Jewish Israelis believe the political left is not loyal to Israel, and a majority of citizens maintain it is illegitimate to criticize the state during times of security instability, according to a poll published on Tuesday. The Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University Peace Index also found some 44 percent of Jewish Israelis favor annexation of the West Bank, compared to 38% of opponents. But Israelis are split on an outpost legalization bill that would recognize unauthorized construction on private Palestinian land — and which some politicians, from both sides of the aisle, have described as a first step in annexing the area — with 46% siding with the government position in support of the legislation, and 43% backing the attorney general’s stance opposing the bill.
The poll of 600 respondents — 500 Jewish and 100 Arab — also revealed that most Israelis believe the Donald Trump administration will be supportive of Israel and downplay fears of an uptick in anti-Semitism in US as a result of the election.
Most (56%) back contentious legislation that would bar mosques from using loudspeakers to broadcast the call to prayer — though a majority also believe other solutions could be reached in lieu of legal action. According to the survey results, among Jewish Israelis, 55% say “criticizing policy in times of security tension is illegitimate.”
With the capture of Be’er Sheva by British-led forces on October 31, 1917, the way was open to Jerusalem. But the path to the Holy City was no cakewalk.
The British forces, led by Gen. Edmund Allenby, climbed and fought through the hills leading to Jerusalem, culminating in the battle of Nebi Samwil (Samuel) November 14-21, 1917. Both sides deployed three divisions; the British took 2,000 casualties, and the unknown Turkish casualty count was undoubtedly higher. Between the battles of Be’er Sheva and the capture of Jerusalem, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917.
From Nebi Samuel the route to Jerusalem was relatively open. The German commander of the Turkish and German troops in Palestine, General Erich Von Falkenhayn, ordered the withdrawal of his troops from Jerusalem.
According to the Turkish account, Turkey in the First World War by Dr. Altay Atli: The British attack on Jerusalem began on 8 December. The city was defended by the XX Corps, commanded by Ali Fuad Pasha. Falkenhayn did not send reinforcements to Jerusalem because he did not want the relics and the holy places damaged because of severe fighting…. His refusal to send reinforcements had resulted in the loss of Jerusalem…. Enver Pasha was losing patience too. On 24 February 1918, he replaced Falkenhayn. On December 9, 1917, two British sergeants on patrol met a delegation of Jerusalem dignitaries carrying a white flag (a bedsheet from the American Colony) who came to surrender the city. The moment was preserved by a photographer from the American Colony.
Fake news is a trending news story. Fakesters create mockups
of popular websites where they post news stories created entirely out of thin
air. People believe these fake stories and share them because they appear on
websites that look just like CNN or
the Washington Post. The fake stories
have even led to a shooting incident known as Pizzagate.
Jim Geraghty, writing for the National Reviewsays
that no one knows what to do about the phenomenon of fake news. Which is completely ridiculous. Because it's
clear that putting the fakesters out of business begins with looking at root
causes. And the root cause of fake news is media
bias.
Media bias is dishonest news which is just another kind of
fake news. It is media bias that led to
the popular perception that Hillary Clinton was going to cream Trump in the
recent presidential election. We believed it because the media led us to
believe it. It was a fake news story that sucked us in all the more so because
it didn't appear on mockups of the CNN
or Washington Post websites but on
the real deal.
The media hoped to convince us that Clinton would win so
that no one would want to waste a vote on Trump. In fact, it's quite possible
that many people voted for Clinton thinking that a vote for Trump would be a
throwaway vote. After all, Americans are taught from grade school on up to
maximize their votes. Trump might indeed have won the popular vote as well as
the electoral vote had the media not persuaded us beyond all doubt that he
didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning the election.
It was a concerted, conscious effort to divert votes to
Clinton through one mammoth and ongoing lie to the public.
And as long as the media can lie through its teeth and we
just drink it in, fake news will continue to explode on our screens and dupe us
into believing all kinds of stupid stuff. And it doesn't help when government
officials feed these news sites their lying lines.
Take, for instance, the first line of this Wall Street Journalstory that appeared in my Google
newsfeed on Sunday:
"Secretary of State John Kerry sharply criticized
Israel’s continued construction on contested Palestinian territory and didn’t
rule out administration support for action at the United Nations on the
Arab-Israeli conflict before President-elect Donald Trump takes power."
If the author had spoken of "contested territory,"
that would have been a fairly neutral statement in line with good journalistic
standards. The use of the phrase "contested territory" would have suggested
that both Arabs and Jews claim the territory as their own, which is true. With
the phrase "contested Palestinian territory," however, the author plants the seeds of bias
in the very first line of her piece so as to poison her readership against
Israel in favor of the Arab narrative. With this phrase, the author suggests
that while Jews claim the land, it actually belongs to the Arabs. This is media
bias by description: "Palestinian territory."
The author posits no proof of her assertion that the
territory is "Palestinian," merely states this as if it were a fact.
Because the article appears on a distinguished website, the Wall Street Journal, many readers will indeed
absorb the idea as a fact: that there is such a thing as "Palestinian
territory" and that Jews are wrong to build homes therein.
The author would have you believe that Jews have no rightful
claim to the territory, only an unreasonable demand. She wants you to think
that Jews are stealing the homeland of another people by building homes there.
This idea is certain to generate righteous fury in readers with a bent for
social justice. Which is why the author uses inflammatory language that
prejudices readers against Israel and for the Arabs.
It's a fake news story as much as the fake news story that
brought on Pizzagate, because the territory in question is Judea and Samaria. Judea
and Samaria are not only indigenous
Jewish territory, but land that rightfully belongs to Israel according to international
law. The word "Jew" is English for "Yehuda" which is
what "Judea" means. There are biblical,
historical,
and archaeological
proofs of this fact. Jews are to Judea as Arabs are to Arabia.
What is "Palestinian territory," on the other hand?
According to David
Bukay:
"Palestinian Arabs, as opposed to
Arabic-speaking residents, have not been in the area west of the Jordan River
from the Islamic occupation, from the Ottoman Empire, or even from British rule
since 1917. No Palestinian state has ever existed, and so, no Palestinian
people has ever been robbed of its land. There is no language or dialect known
as Palestinian; there is no Palestinian culture distinct from that of
surrounding Arab ones; and there has never been a land known as Palestine
governed by Palestinians at any time in history. For these reasons,
Palestinians have been driven to fabricate a past by denying and expropriating
that of Jews and Israel."
If
there never was an Arab-ruled state known as Palestine with a distinct language
and culture, then how is it possible for there to be something that is "Palestinian
territory?" And if there is no such thing as "Palestinian
territory," then how can one consider the territory to be legitimately "contested?"
An honest news piece would need to account for all of these ideas for the sake
of balance.
And of course, the author is lucky enough to have no less
than Secretary of State John Kerry lending credibility to her slanted viewpoint
with his, as she puts it, sharp criticism of Israeli construction. This is media
bias by selection of sources (Kerry). There's Kerry's bold threat: if Jews don't stop building
homes on land Arabs want, President Obama may help the UN unilaterally declare
a Palestinian state in his few remaining lame duck days in office. Because with
Trump coming in, implies the author, we lose our last chance to help these poor
Arab people get a state (aside from Jordan, Gaza, and the sections of Judea and
Samaria that are under the PA).
All that in the first sentence of her piece. And much more
as the article goes on to outline key points from Kerry's speech at the Saban
Forum.
Kerry, the author says, speaks of the Obama administration
losing patience, because the situation is "getting worse." In other
words, Jews are building yet more homes!
Kerry "cannot accept the notion that [building Jewish homes is] not a
barrier to peace."
Kerry phoned Netanyahu over 375 times but said Bibi ignores U.S.
criticism regarding Jews building homes. “We issue a warning today when we see
a settlement’s going up. Nothing happens.”
The article continues with false assurances that the Iran
deal somehow helps Israel with this followed by the reminder that the U.S. finalized
a new military aid deal with Israel, which, the author tells us
"significantly boosted" American support for Israel. Which is yet
another lie. The new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) shows no serious
improvement over past agreements and serves more as a freeze
of the status quo. Also, under the terms of the new agreement Israel cannot
request additional funds and in the event that Congress would approve more
funds for defending Israel against missiles or tunnels, for instance, these
funds would be deducted from the total sum of U.S. military aid to Israel.
Netanyahu thought long and hard about whether to agree to these terms, not
knowing whether things would be worse under, for instance, a Clinton
administration, or better under a Trump administration.
The author implies that the U.S. is good to Israel but
Israel is bad to the U.S. The U.S. made a deal with Iran that helps Israel,
according to the author, who begrudgingly quotes Netanyahu's dissent. She fails
to outline why everyday Israelis do not see the Iran deal as a good thing but
as a major existential threat. She tell us that relations between America and
the U.S. hit a new low when Bibi "went around" the White House to
speak against the deal to Congress (media bias by spin).
The author also implies that Obama made an unprecedented military
aid package to Israel, without giving readers the context that the aid package
is a freeze and that it comes with the condition that Israel may not request
additional assistance should war break out, God forbid.
The author leaves these details out because they do not
further the poisoned perspective she wishes her readers to adopt. She further
leaves out any mention of constant Arab terror, which is, after all, what
constitutes the absence of peace. Israel had to evacuate 75,000 people from
their homes due to Arab arson in recent weeks. There have been constant stonings
of Jewish cars by Arab terrorists on the roads of Judea and Samaria.
Kerry does not cite Arab terror as an impediment to peace.
Only the building of Jewish homes. And the author parrots this crazy narrative,
leaving out any mention of homes burnt down, or lives lost to terror. This is
media bias by omission.
It's sickening, frankly. What's more sickening is that
thousands of people will read and believe this crazy, unbalanced fake news
piece. Worse yet, no news outlet with a significant readership will call out
Kerry or the Obama administration for disseminating its antisemitic propaganda:
namely that building Jewish homes serves as an obstacle to peace.
Count the lies in this piece that appears in a distinguished
news outlet:
1.Jews are building homes on
Arab land
2.Building Jewish homes is an
obstacle to peace
3.Judea and Samaria are Arab
territory
4.The Iran deal helps Israel
5.The new MoU regarding U.S.
military aid to Israel is unprecedented in its scope
The omissions? The lack of context? No mention of Arab
terror. No mention of the fact that the MoU was widely regarded in Israel as a
bad deal for Israel. No mention of the fact that the Iran deal facilitates
nuclear breakout time.
If we want to stop the trend of fake news cold in its
tracks, we're going to have to demand an end to this sort of egregious media
bias. We need to call out authors who fail to lend balance to their pieces. We
need to call them out for pushing opinion as news.
And we're going to have to be loud.
It's time to take back the media and get real.
Starting right now.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Malmo, December 7 - A spike in reported rapes that coincides with the influx of refugees and migrants from African and Middle Eastern countries into Europe has driven the European Parliament to take decisive steps to combat the sexual violence, leading to a new Continent-wide cap this week on the number of rapes allowed per migrant.
The body voted overwhelmingly this afternoon to limit the number of permissible rapes per Muslim migrant to two, a figure beyond which the perpetrator will face the local justice system, if the local justice system can penetrate the no-go zones where many migrant communities cluster. Supporters of the measure hope the limits provide a better sense of safety and security for citizens as well as a welcoming model for the newcomers, who may face a steep learning curve entering a culture where rape is a less-accepted form of communication.
"It's crucial that we strike a balance," stressed Asken Foryt, a Norwegian delegate to the parliament. "Violence, especially sexual violence, has seen an unacceptable rise in the last several years, especially among our newer residents, so we have to find a way to wean them from that behavior. But a sudden ban on rape would likely prove untenable, considering the assumptions that governed life in their previous environment. It is our hope that eventually, within a generation or two, we might no longer see a difference between the sexual assault rate among immigrants and the general population. The law leaves room for a lowering of the limit to one per migrant after seven years."
Among the details of the limit is that the per-migrant figure will not be taken individually, but in the aggregate: only as rapes accumulate beyond two for every migrant in Europe annually will the limit be considered breached. Thus, explained Dutch parliamentarian Majden Groper, a single migrant might conceivably commit hundreds of reported rapes without legal consequences, because many other migrants are not accumulating rapes at nearly the same rate, and some avoid them entirely, bringing down the per capita figure.
Critics of the measure expressed concern at its strictness. "Migrants and refugees already face prejudice, and this does not help," lamented German delegate Muhammad Schtupp. "I could have voted for this law if the limit were above six or seven, but I fear that we are sending the wrong message at a time when openness to people seeking a better life is more important then ever. If Europe doesn't want these rapes to happen it really should stop behaving in ways that invite them."
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
One man, one vote, one time: In 2005, Mahmoud Abbas was elected to a four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. He has not bothered to run for re-election since.
He is also the chairman of Fatah, a political movement with past ties to terrorism that is the dominant faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO was founded in 1964 -- three years before Israelis were in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. Abbas is chairman of the PLO, too. What all this means is that despite Abbas' declining popularity -- two-thirds of Palestinians would like him to resign, according to a recent poll -- no one has been able to successfully challenge his power.
And last week, at the Seventh Fatah Congress, held at the Muqataa, his fortified headquarters in Ramallah, Abbas further solidified his position. With members of rival factions barred from attending, and no other candidates on the ballot, Abbas was handily re-elected as Fatah's leader. "Everybody voted yes," Fatah spokesman Mahmoud Abu al-Hija assured reporters who had not been permitted to witness the event.
Mon 19 December 2016
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has come under considerable scrutiny in the past few months. Three African countries (Burundi, South Africa, and Gambia) have begun the process of exiting the court, claiming the ICC has an anti-African bias and that the laws of the court conflict with their understanding of sovereign immunity. Kenya and Uganda have also threatened to leave citing procedural and other irregularities. In addition to the issues relating to Africa, the ICC began a “Preliminary Examination into the Situation in Palestine” under highly controversial circumstances. Other critics have highlighted the small number of successful prosecutions and slow pace of the work. The expert panel will discuss these issues and what they mean for Israel. Panelists include, Gerald Steinberg, Bar Ilan University and NGO Monitor; Anne Herzberg, Legal Advisor, NGO Monitor; Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, Northwestern University; Adv. Pnina Sharvit Baruch, Senior Research Fellow, head of the Program on Law and National Security, and former head of the IDF International Law Department.
Bar Ilan University, Beck Hall 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM
At a café in Beit Jala, where Gideon (fictitious name due to security concerns) met with me for an exclusive Israellycool interview, the 22-year-old described what was supposed to be happy time in his childhood –a field trip to “liberated Gaza.”
“We were in this big bus, and we entered this street, and when we went in the ‘settlement’ street, it was smooth and nice,” he recalled of this 10 shekel trip to the ruins of Gush Katif. The guide proudly pointed out where “martyrs” killed Israeli soldiers, bravely causing the Jews to retreat. Once inside, he and his schoolmates were more than eager to mock Jewish settlers and to loot whatever was left.
“I remember I saw the kippah on the street with the Star of David – so the children put it on and made fun of it and spit on it,” he said. “When we got to this place on the second level [of the regional community center], there was this basketball court, and we were shocked that it was nice. We didn’t have anything like this in Gaza.”
He visited the hothouses that were this farming community’s specialty. “I remember how brilliant they were in how they made it. And I thought: ‘Why don’t we have these plants in Gaza? Trees like they have?’ It was organized. Homes were nice.”
He had watched the 2005 pullout on television, ironically cheering the IDF as they tore thousands Jews from their homes and farms.
“I saw the image of the Jews screaming and soldiers hitting them,” he said. “I was very excited about that because they were going out. And then I started hearing the sound of blowing stuff up. I asked my family about it, and they said now that they’re kicking them out, they’re blowing up their houses so they don’t leave anything for us.”
Gideon grew up in a middle class Christian home in Gaza City not far from the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, where the sounds of those expulsions came. He attended UNRWA schools (even though he did not consider himself a “refugee”) where he was taught that Israel is to blame for Palestinian hardship. But his family’s finances deteriorated once Hamas took over. As he matured into adolescence, he realized how Hamas leadership – and not the settlers – are the true Palestinian oppressors.
"If they cut off the olive-tree branch, oh my homeland, than we will turn it into a sub machine gun and use it to take revenge"
Just a reminder: Mahmoud Abbas is the head of Fatah.
(h/t Ibn Boutros)
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Israeli authorities Tuesday cancelled weekly permits allowing elderly Gazans to travel to occupied East Jerusalem on Fridays to attend prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
An official at the Palestinian liaison office told Ma’an that Israeli authorities decided to cancel the weekly visits of Palestinians in Gaza to Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque due to Palestinian worshipers not returning directly back to the Gaza Strip after prayers, in violation of the permit conditions.
However, the official added that Israel would continue to permit 100 Palestinians who are UNRWA employees, the UN agency responsible for providing services to some five million Palestinian refugees, to travel to Al-Aqsa for prayers.
Since several months ago, Israeli authorities have allowed 250 Palestinians to leave Gaza for prayers at Al-Aqsa, including UNRWA employees and 150 additional worshipers whose permits are arranged by Gaza’s Civil Affairs Committee.
As Yisrael Medad shows, the "not returning directly" means "not returning at all." Gazans were taking advantage of the ability to pray in Jerusalem to illegally immigrate to Israel.
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From MWC News, an "alternative news" source, by Elias Akleh:
Notice how they illustrate "Zionism:" a Jew praying and a Torah.
Refreshingly, and despite the headline, the author is quite explicit that he sees no difference between evil Zionists and Jews altogether:
Zionist ideology was born out of Judaism; a supremacist, racist, manipulative, genocidal religion with a racist discriminative warmongering blood thirsty god (Satan), who demands bloodshed, child sacrifice, total destruction and enslavement of all goyims (non-Jews), and the hording of all gold and silver. Those, who apologetically attempt to separate the two, have not read or understood the Judaic teachings and historical events narrated in the Old Testament and in other Judaic texts.
And Jewish anti-Zionists are just as evil as Jewish Zionists, because, well, they are Jews:
It is also noticeable that some anti-Israeli government sentiment is on the rise among American Jews themselves. Jewish organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Tikkun Olam, Satmar (Jews Not Zionists), Jews Against Racist Zionism, and Neturei Karta International (NKI) are raising their protesting voices against the inhumane policies of the Israeli government.
Yet, one must not be disillusioned by these Jewish organizations. Although they seem to be liberal and humanist, yet supremacist Judaic theology, or at least elements of it, is still ingrained in their Jewish psyche and identity. The fact that they are still calling for the implementation of the already dead and impractical two-state-solution asserting their support for an Israeli state for Jews, whose existence in itself and in any form negates a Palestinian state over the whole Palestine and deny Palestinians’ right of return to their own homes and land.
Abolishing Zionism and returning Palestine to its original owners would not guarantee global peace because the real threat resides in the core of the Judaic teachings that call for the supremacy of the Jews as god’s chosen people and its hatred and enmity to all goyim.
MWC News claims that in order to publish at the site, "Articles must be well-written, balanced, articulate, factual, and succinct."
Here's a good litmus test for "progressives" who pretend to be aghast at resurgent antisemitism from the right to see whether they will do anything about this article on one of their own alternative news sites.
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Calling himself “more conservative than [President-elect Donald] Trump on every issue,” yet the bane of the alt-right, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire — who has the distinction of being “one of the few people who has managed to unite the Black Lives Matter movement and white supremacists in protest against him” — told the UK-based J-TV that he has received more antisemitic tweets in the past year than any of his colleagues in the media. On the program “Current Affairs” — moderated by the UK-based Henry Jackson Society founder and executive director Dr. Alan Mendoza — Ben Shapiro, an American political author, pundit and Orthodox Jew, who resigned from Breitbart News Network in March after a widely publicized incident involving reporter Michelle Fields and former Trump staffer Corey Lewandowski — said nevertheless that he does not believe that the incoming administration in Washington will be antisemitic.
“I’ve been a very critical voice about Donald Trump and about [former Breitbart editor] Steve Bannon, his White House chief strategist, in particular,” he said. “[But] I don’t have any evidence that [either is] antisemitic. I think that both are willing to pander to some of the worst people in the world on the alt-right in order to advance their agenda on particular issues, but there is no evidence that Trump is particularly anti-Israel, and Breitbart has never been an anti-Israel site; it’s always been a very pro-Israel site, so I’m not deeply concerned about antisemitism in the Trump administration as much as I am about the emboldenment of antisemites through a kind of patting on the head… But as far as policy [is concerned]…I think it’s going to be a more pro-Israel administration than the Obama administration was…”
“Israelis have to be bombed… it is wrong to maintain the State of Israel. It is an illegitimate creation” — Taher Herzallah, American Muslims for Palestine National Campus Coordinator One of the most prominent faces of BDS in America is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — a self-titled “grassroots, human rights organization” with branches at dozens of US campuses. But while it claims to be “resisting racism,” SJP’s 2014 national conference featured a keynote speaker infamous for defending public calls to “shoot the Jew!” This discrepancy between SJP’s stated principles and its conduct is no exception: funded and closely guided by AMP and other political interest groups, SJP systematically exploits the language of social justice to promote a bigoted agenda. In private SJP denies Israel’s right to exist, while in public they claim to support justice and peace.
SJP’s ties to AMP run deep, and SJP itself has admitted that, “NGO employees are in powerful positions,” within their movement. AMP chairman and Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian co-founded SJP in 2000 and is credited with “help[ing] to construct [the] successful narrative SJP has produced over the years” (in fact, AMP supplies the infamous “wall” that SJP displays on campuses). AMP organized the first SJP national conference in 2010, and has funded the group’s national conferences ever since. AMP’s own conferences include a “Campus Track” with sessions on “How To Start an SJP”.
AMP, in turn, has disturbingly close ties not only with Hamas but also with its parent organization — the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is a religious supremacist movement which believes that Islam must “impose its law on all nations.” The Brotherhood openly promotes homophobia and female genital mutilation, and vigorously fought efforts to bring Sudan’s dictator to justice for genocide against Africans in Darfur. AMP emerged in 2005 as a successor to the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”), which was, according to memos uncovered by the FBI, founded by the Brotherhood “to serve the cause of Palestine on the political and media fronts” in the US. That is, the IAP was established by the Brotherhood — a foreign religious supremacist group — to spread propaganda. The IAP officially advocated for replacing Israel with an Islamist theocracy, and its former leaders now oversee AMP’s finances.
Former United Nations Special Rapporteur Richard Falk has proven himself to be no fan of Israel, to put it mildly. He wrote a book called “Slouching Towards a Palestinian Holocaust” after all. But if you think he’s bad (and he is), he’s nothing compared to the UN Human Rights Council. A recently released Wikileaks cable from 2008, sent by the US Mission Geneva to the US Secretary of State, reveals that Falk proposed the UNHRC’s mandate be expanded to included – wait for it – violations of international humanitarian law by palestinians (but not non-international human rights violations by palestinians because we are talking about Richard Falk here).
As you can see from the cable, Falk’s proposal went down like a lead balloon.
Note the acknowledgement that the UNHRC is just an instrument with which to batter Israel.
1. (C) Summary: Newly appointed Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, took the Human Rights Council by surprise in his first appearance before the body June 16 by proposing that his mandate be expanded to include violations of international humanitarian law by Palestinians. Falk’s proposal had clearly not been previewed either for supporters of the mandate, nor for Israel, the U.S., or any other delegation that opposes it. In a June 18 meeting with Mission officers, Falk admitted he had been unaware of the intense political sensitivities regarding this mandate at the Council, and noted that representatives of Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) delegations had told him that reopening the mandate would be impossible for procedural reasons. In fact, the Review, Rationalization and Improvement (RRI) of the OPT mandate, which Israel had hoped would be scheduled for the September 2008 Council session, does not appear on the program of work and will not be conducted at that time. Still, Falk’s proposal highlighted not only his unfamiliarity with the highly charged political environment in Geneva, but perhaps also an unexpected independence and approach to his new mandate that may make him a more serious interlocutor on this issue than his predecessor had been. End Summary.
Here is a list of every time the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was mentioned in the past month in Arabic-language newspapers, and whether the article accepts them as real.
Egypt's Al Mogaz "investigated" the Protocols and ruled that they were legitimate (covered here.)
SudaNile.com says that the Protocols can be a great model to use to learn to influence the world.
Al Quds al Arabi quotes the "second protocol" to make a point, without any indication that it believes that it is a hoax.
Arabi21 complains that Arab media shows too much "pornography," saying that this is one of the instructions in the Protocols to break down a society. Al Ahram, one of Egypt's major newspapers, refers to the Protocols when giving an example of how leaders don't listen to what the people want.
Kitabat mentions it in passing as well, with no indication it is anything but a reference to a fact.
Al Basra refers to a book by Benjamin Netanyahu as a realization of the goals of the Protocols.
Almmike refers to the Protocols as but a single example of how the West is trying to break apart Arab nations.
New Sabah seems to be a Shiite publication in Iraq whose article blames the Jews for tearing apart the Arab world, using the Protocols.
The only Arabic-language article I could find this month that mentions that the Protocols are a myth came from a non-Arab media outlet - the Arabic version of RT.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
It’s
amazing how many things can be wrong with one little sentence.
Nov 24th
was the day fires started appearing in different places in Haifa. 60,000 people
were evacuated from 12 neighborhoods in the city. The day before the fires were
in Zichron Ya’acov. Throughout the week fires appeared in towns in the north
and center of the country.
I don’t
remember when I started getting Facebook notifications requesting I mark myself
“safe from the brush fires.” At the time, I was more focused on the flames in
my neighborhood than my social media notifications. When things started to calm
down I could focus on the beeping of my phone. That’s when I began to get
angry.
Before I
go further, I want to make it very clear that Facebook is an example, a symptom
indicative of an attitude. They are not the problem itself.
Activating the Safety Check In feature
I
suppose I should be pleased Facebook decided to turn on the Safety Check In
feature for us. Although the feature was invented and developed in Israel for
Facebook I only remember it being used once before – when a parking garage
in Tel Aviv collapsed, trapping a number of people. It seems that none of the terror
attacks we’ve experienced have been deemed significant enough or of wide enough
impact to merit turning on this feature.
In an
article on Israel21c, they reported: In the wake of the Paris tragedy, some 4.1
million people checked in with friends and relatives using the Safety Check
feature, and around 360 million people received automatic messages through it
from friends in Paris who had marked themselves as “safe.”
The
feature was initially intended for use in natural disasters such as earthquakes
and tsunamis. It was the enthusiastic response of users following the terror
attacks in Paris that led Facebook to decide to apply the feature for “man-made
disasters” as well.
The
“brush fires in Haifa” were deemed significant enough to turn on the feature.
So why did I get angry?
There
were two major issues in the one little question: “brush fires” and “safe”.
Brush fires
Brush
fires are what happens in places like Australia when the weather is too dry.
They are natural disasters, terrible and with some of the same outcomes as what
we experienced. Brush fires spread over vast amounts of territory. They don’t
spontaneously combust in multiple, disconnected neighborhoods. They also don’t
begin with Molotov cocktails.
What we
experienced was man-made, deliberate arson. It wasn’t a brush fire or a forest
fire. It was people targeting everything we hold dear: our homes, our wildlife
and our land.
In 2010
there was a terrible fire in the Carmel Forest (which is right next to Haifa).
It was caused by human negligence, exacerbated by weather conditions and
because of some poor decisions, caused the death of 44 people. That was a
forest fire. It consumed trees. What we just experienced was a wave of fires deliberately
ignited in green areas in the middle of neighborhoods.
One
could say, “But Facebook didn’t know what caused the fires so they just said
brush fires.” Yes. Maybe. On the other hand, on the day of the fires in Haifa
the experts already knew that the fires that occurred the day before in Zichron
were not natural. The bizarre suddenness of fires popping up within the
neighborhoods of Haifa were, even then, very suspicious.
Within
Israel there are still arguments regarding what extent of the fires were caused
by arson. What media and political commentators from elsewhere are ignoring is
the reason for these arguments, as if the existence of the arguments
signifies lack of validity in the definition of arson terrorism.
1.First and foremost, there is an issue of financial
compensation.
The Israeli government is obligated to compensate civilians damaged in a terror
attack whereas they are not obligated to compensate for damages caused by a
natural disaster.
Insurance companies are released from the obligation to compensate the insured
when the cause of damage is terrorism. If this was a natural disaster the
government would not be responsible for the uninsured.
In this case, the bill for compensating people who lost their homes and
livelihoods will be in the billions. The government has no incentive to
declare these fires a terror attack. It was only when the evidence piled up
to levels impossible to ignore that Israeli politicians declared that we were
under attack, that this was an arson intifada.
2.The normalcy bias
The normalcy bias is a recognized sociological condition is
defined as “the phenomenon of disbelieving one's situation when
faced with grave and imminent danger and/or catastrophe.” In other words, no one wanted to believe
that there are Arab terrorists amongst us who hate us so much that they are
willing to burn the country down around us all. We all know there are
terrorists but the wanton destruction of the land they too live in, the land
they claim to love so much, takes a level of hate that surpasses the standard
gun/bomb/knife/car/stone attacks on Jews. The people who live in Tel Aviv, the
Israeli media and society elites find it particularly difficult to comprehend
this level of hatred. They prefer to believe that if Israelis could be better,
kinder, the Arabs who hate us would stop trying to destroy Israel and would be
willing to live together in peace. Israelis, particularly those who shape our news,
don’t want to believe that the fires were caused by arson terror.
The
question, “Am I safe from the brush fires?” bothered me because the fires
obviously weren’t your standard “brush fires” but it was the “are you safe” part
that was the real problem.
When I
first received the request to mark myself safe my house wasn’t on fire. Some of
my neighbors’ houses were. The authorities had deemed the area so dangerous
they requested everyone evacuate (we decided to stay and defend our home). At
one point an arsonist started a fire right behind our garden (we know it was an
arsonist because someone saw him before the flames began and then he raced away
before anyone could catch him). The flames from that fire were as high as the
house. To our great luck the neighbors managed to put out the flames before
they ignited our too dry garden. Had our garden caught fire, due to the weather
conditions, our home would have quickly been consumed as well. We got lucky.
On the news,
we heard reports of fires elsewhere in the city and then elsewhere in the
country. My home wasn’t burning… did that mean I could declare myself safe?
The most
disturbing part of the fires is who caused them. The extent of the fire damage
was caused by the weather conditions but they were started by arsonists. Those
who were not caught or others who think arson terrorism is a good idea could
start new fires at any time.
There
are pyromaniacs everywhere but the extent of the fires and the people caught
starting them proved that many (if not all) were caused by arson-terrorism.
From the
locations of the fires, it seems that they were started by people familiar with
the areas in which they were ignited. For example, the fire behind my garden
was started on a side path between our street and the main street, a place not
obvious from the road, only someone walking the neighborhood would happen on
that spot.
My home
is right next to a hospital that serves both Jews and Arabs, where Jews and
Arabs work together. The construction projects in my neighborhood (including
the house right next to mine) are full of Arab construction workers. Jews and
Arabs work together, shop together… our lives are not separate. How can anyone
tell who is a peaceful Arab-Israeli and who has so much hatred in their heart
that they are willing to burn down the land we both live in?
No one
blames the entire Arab population for these acts of terrorism. Israeli Jews
have a lot of appreciation for Israeli Arabs (and the Arabs in PA controlled
areas) who want to live together peacefully.
At the
same time, no one is completely sure what percentage of the Arab population
supported the arson-terror or would be willing to participate in similar acts
in the future. What do the construction workers building next door to me think?
What do
you think? How should I answer the question: “Am I safe?”
Solidarity
I don’t
need a Facebook Safety Check In to let me know if my friends are safe. I don’t
even need Facebook to correctly define the crisis. It would be nice to be
treated like other nations in the world. Facebook gimmicks are just an example.
When there are flag filters for people to change their profile picture in
solidarity with a country who experienced a terror attack (like what was
created for France) or hashtags like #IStandWithTurkey or #IAmOrlando but not for
Israel it sends a message.
Somehow
terror attacks elsewhere are declared to be attacks while attacks in Israel
remain undefined (or completely ignored). Somehow it is deemed appropriate to
stand in solidarity, if only via social media, with other countries – but not
Israel.
Solidarity
doesn’t fix the problem but it is an important step. As long as some lives
matter more than others, nothing will ever change.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
Watching John Kerry deliver his indictment of Israel’s settlement enterprise at the Saban Forum in Washington, DC, on Sunday, my strongest feeling was one of sorrow — sorrow for him, but mainly for us, at the wasted time and the wrongheaded approach that doomed the indefatigable, well-intentioned secretary of state’s approach to peacemaking.
Kerry calculated that he has spent 130 hours in formal discussions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his near four years as secretary of state, and visited Israel a staggering 40-plus times.
And yet for all that time and effort, as his valedictory jeremiad again made plain, he never internalized why he was unable to clear the obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking. And in the one key area where Sunday’s presentation showed a belated appreciation of where he had gone wrong, clarity has arrived long after the damage was done.
The first, foundational mistake was to believe, like a long line of global statespeople before him, that he could succeed where others had failed in trying to strong-arm the two sides into an accord on a rapid timetable, when it is tragically and undeniably obvious that the deadline-based approach cannot work.
Many, perhaps most, Israelis recognize an imperative to separate from the Palestinians in order to maintain a state that is both Jewish and democratic. But In today’s treacherous Middle East, they need more persuasion than ever that relinquishing territory will bring guaranteed tranquility, rather than escalated terrorism and new efforts to paralyze, and ultimately destroy, the country.
He continued by lambasting settlements, while claiming he understands that they are not the root cause of the conflict, saying he “cannot accept the notion that they do not affect the peace process — that they aren’t a barrier to the capacity to have peace.”
And here was the clincher. He said he knows this, because “the Left in Israel is telling everybody they are a barrier to peace and the Right that supports it, openly supports it, because they don’t want peace.”
And there you have it. Kerry’s utter gall. His accusation that most Israelis oppose peace. Not that we long to live without fear of being stabbed, car-rammed, torched, blown up by bombs and hit by rocket-fire by hate-filled terrorists bent on our annihilation. Not that we have relinquished most of the West Bank and all of Gaza to those killers. Not that every territorial withdrawal has been accompanied by an escalation in violence against us.
Netanyahu also addressed the Saban Forum, via video feed. His remarks were decidedly different from Kerry’s. He stressed the danger of the Iran nuclear deal; reminded everyone that the Palestinian Liberation Organization was created in 1964, three years before the Six-Day War, which led to Israel’s taking control of the territories it is accused of “illegally occupying.” He also pointed out that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about settlements or Palestinian statehood, but rather part of the “battle between modernity and medievalism.” If Netanyahu is waiting with bated breath for Trump’s inauguration in January, it is with good reason – if only never to have to hear from the insufferable Kerry, who quipped that his wife complained over the years about his spending more time conversing with the Israeli prime minister than with her.
To Kerry, none of that matters because of the settlements. The secretary refuses to understand that building a few more houses in existing communities doesn’t mean that Israel wouldn’t or couldn’t give up territory if Abbas were ever to take yes for an answer. He ignores the fact that the Palestinians have repeatedly refused to accept Israeli offers of statehood. The focus on settlements is a flimsy Palestinian excuse for not making peace–not the substantive obstacle Kerry falsely claims it to be.
Kerry was also right when he said the Arab states wouldn’t make formal peace with Israel without an agreement with the Palestinians. But Netanyahu’s assertion that the Arabs are far more worried about an Iran that has been empowered and appeased by Obama and Kerry than they are about the Palestinians is also correct. Formal relations may have to wait, but, despite Kerry’s warnings, Israel’s diplomatic position is not as weak as he claims. From Obama’s first moments in office, his administration has been committed to the idea that more “daylight” between Israel and the United States would provide a path to peace. Eight years of ginned up fights with Netanyahu and tilting the diplomatic playing field in their direction has only encouraged the Palestinians to be more intransigent. More daylight has been an abysmal failure, and, in characteristic fashion, Kerry would rather double down on this disaster than admit he’s been wrong.
Stabbing Israel in the back at the UN won’t bring peace any closer either, but Kerry prefers to leave the State Department with a gesture that would damage Israel and hamstring his successor rather than simply go home. It can only be hoped that Obama will listen to the better angels of his nature and to those who tell him that acting in this manner will only provoke President-elect Trump to embrace Israel even more closely rather than Kerry’s bitter and foolish advice.
Hamas' al-Qassam Brigades issued a statement saying that Ahmad Atiya Ibrahim Mansour, 30, died when his grenade blew up unexpectedly.
"He has been elevated to the path of Jihad and resistance in the Honor and Glory in the field of Mujahideen al-Qassam Brigades heroesm" the statement said.
Let's look back at the highlights of this man's life so we can appreciate exactly what has been lost:
May the ranks of holy martyrs of Hamas increase exponentially. Ameen.
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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Wednesday, December 07, 2016
