Tuesday, April 26, 2016




“There was an indiscriminate massacre by Arabs last night at Tiberias, in which 19 Jews [21 in some sources] were killed, including three women and 10 children, a slaughter unequalled since the Arabs attacked the Jews of Hebron and Safed in 1929,” The Times of London reported on 4 October 1938, quoting its correspondent writing on 3 October.  The attack was premeditated, well-planned, and merciless.

“At 9 p.m. a large band of armed Arabs, after having cut all the telephone wires, made a concerted attack on Tiberias,” the report went on.

“They entered the town in two detachments, one from the north, the other from the south.  Five minutes later, when the invaders were in place, a whistle was heard from the hills above the town and firing began.  It was directed chiefly at the district offices, the police station, and the billets of the British police.  Simultaneously fires broke out in the district offices and the synagogue, and six houses in the Akiva quarter, which lies on the hillside above the Old Town, were entered, set on fire, and the inmates – men, women and children – massacred.  The police turned out immediately, and within 25 minutes were reinforced by the Transjordan Frontier Force, from Samakh, which fought its way past an ambush at a road obstruction near the hot springs to the south of Tiberias.  After the arrival of the troops fighting in the town lasted for two hours before the raiders were driven out.  A curfew was enforced about 11 p.m.  Most of the Jewish casualties occurred in three wooden houses.”
Killed in one of those houses were Joshua and Shoshanah Ben-Arieh and their two little boys.  The couple, with son Arieh, were stabbed and left to burn to death; the other son, Moshe, an eighteen-month-old toddler, was shot dead.  Also stabbed and burned to death at the house were three visiting children: Chaim Leimer aged twelve, his sister Rivka, aged ten, and brother Ezra, aged eight.  Their mother Hanka, aged 37, was badly wounded.

In another of those houses an American citizen, Menachem Kabni (as the American Jewish Outlook, 7 October 1938 names him) – The Times report says merely “Mr Kalpin” – was stabbed and burned to death along with his a female relative; another female relative escaped.  (According to The Times the female survivor was his wife; according to the American Jewish Outlook, his sister.)

And in the third house 26-year-old Rachel Mizrachi was home alone with her five children – her husband Shimon Yochanan Mizrachi was on guard duty elsewhere in Tiberias.  She too was brutally murdered, together with Ezra (aged twelve), Miriam (five), Yocheved (three), Samuel (two) and Hephzibah (one).

Ezekiel Katz (or perhaps Saltz) , aged forty-two, died when the synagogue of which he was gubbai was set ablaze.  Two Jewish constables, Israel Bookman and Zvi Chatzkelovitz, lost their lives, and also killed was Jacob Gross.  Rahamin Halevy and Hanna Sabach were slightly injured.
(See http://myrightword.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/looking-for-kabni.html for other accounts of the victims’ names.)

Next day, 5 October, The Times carried a report of Arab unrest and near anarchy in some parts of Palestine, so much so that it seemed that Britain might have to fight to conquer Palestine all over again.  “Rebel activities from a nuisance have become a threat to orderly government,” it observed.  “Rebel attacks have for months so endangered traffic on the inter-urban roads that Government has had to declare a night curfew on all roads outside the towns and villages…. The telephone and telegraph system has been so frequently sabotaged that communication is uncertain, and even Jerusalem is cut off at times.  The landing of airborne mails at Tiberias has been given up because it is unsafe to carry mails from Galilee to Jerusalem.  Outside the large towns it is almost impossible to collect taxes except as collective fines…. Ordinary police patrolling and crime detection have been given up… The administration of the villages through the mukhtars (headmen) has stopped because the mukhtars obey orders of the [Arab] bands.  The schools may soon reopen, but this means little as the Government schoolmasters are Arab propagandists and are subservient to the Arabs’ wishes… Because issuing arms to the Arab police often means supplying arms to the bands, they have been disarmed in many places, and may soon be entirely dismissed .…”

In a telegram to Malcolm MacDonald, British Secretary of State for the Dominions and Colonies, the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbis of Palestine, Yaakov Meir (who died the following year aged 83) and Yitzhak Herzog, declared: “Palestine Jewry is deeply horrified at the Tiberias massacre and sacrilege.   In God’s name, we appeal to you to end the terror.” [http://www.jta.org/1938/10/04/archive/21-jews-slain-in-tiberias-massacre-worst-since-29-synagogue-homes-razed]

The following month, on 24 November in the House of Commons, MacDonald made a speech which foreshadowed his White Paper of 1939, predicated on a fear of a full scale Arab rebellion necessitating huge British military commitments in Palestine at a time of impending war in Europe, and which, in attempting to appease the Arabs, was seen by Jewish and non-Jewish Zionists as a betrayal.

In that speech (The Times, 25 November 1938) MacDonald maintained, inter alia:

“No one could justly say that Great Britain had not been fulfilling her obligation to facilitate the migration of Jews to Palestine.  Since 1922 more than 250,000 Jews had entered Palestine and settled there.… The Jews were in Palestine not on sufferance but by right and today, under the lash of persecution in Europe, their eagerness to return to their own homeland was multiplied an hundredfold.  The tragedy of a people who had no country had never been so deep as it was this week…. But he had hoped that we were not going to allow our horror at the plight into which these people had been thrown to warp our cool and just judgment on the difficult problem of Palestine today…. When we promised to facilitate the establishment of a national home for the Jews in Palestine we never anticipated this fierce persecution in Europe….”

You may correctly anticipate the rest.

“In 1933 30,000 Jews came into Palestine; in 1934 42, 000; and in 1935 … 61,000….  If he were an Arab he would be alarmed…. The House of Commons … ought to recognise that many in the Palestinian Arab movement were motivated by a genuine patriotism…. [T]hey were thinking … of their freedom, and they were afraid that if this process went on at last they would have to surrender to the political overlordship of the enterprising, hard-working, ever-increasing citizens of the Jewish national home.  We, the British people, should be the last people in the world not to understand the feelings of the Arabs in this matter because we, too, would sacrifice our material advantages if we thought that our freedom was at stake.”  (What he meant by “freedom” for the Arabs seems puzzling, since Mandate Palestine was in effect a British colony and since the Arabs were ruled by clan heads and had little concept of freedom in the western sense.)

Nevertheless, MacDonald, aware that “a great many people regarded this agitation as the mere protest of a gang of bandits,” conceded that “many Arabs who had taken part most eagerly in the troubles were cutthroats of the worst type.  Their massacre of the innocents at Tiberias, and on a score of other miserable battlefields, had disgraced their cause.  It was true also that many of those who were associated with them had been terrorized into that association.”


Moreover, when the Balfour Declaration was promulgated “there were already living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea more than 600,000 Arabs…. The Jews brought with them money, and development work provided extra means of livelihood.  Modern health services, which were extended not only to Jews but to Arabs, gave the individual a further lease and security of life.  Since 1922 the Arab population in Palestine had, scarcely at all by migration from outside and almost entirely by natural increase, gone up from something over 600,000 to 990,000 persons.  It was calculated that the total of 990,000 Arabs in Palestine today would have become 1,500,000 within 20 years…. The Arabs could not say that the Jews were driving them out of the country.  If not a single Jew had gone into Palestine after 1918 he believed that the Arab population in Palestine today would still have been about 600,000.  It was not only the Jews who had benefitted from the Balfour Declaration.  They could deny it as much as they like, but, materially, the Arabs had gained very greatly from the Balfour Declaration.  It was useless to present that argument to most Arabs.  They were dead to the argument; they were blind to the spectacle of a gradually improving spectacle of life for their people…”



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From Ian:

Muslim worshipers attack Jews trying to pray on Temple Mount
Video footage from Arab television emerged on Tuesday showing Muslim worshipers on the Temple Mount attack a small group of Jews who ascended to the holy site and attempted to pray.
Israeli authorities on Tuesday evicted eight Jewish visitors from the Temple Mount complex in response to what security forces said was inappropriate behavior at the holy site.
Police said 527 visitors, of them 400 tourists, ascended to the holy site during Tuesday morning visits.
After the last group of Jewish visitors left the compound, a gathering of Muslim worshipers began yelling slogans at the Jews.
Police and Border Police officers in the area escorted the group of Jews away from the scene and acted to subdue the disturbances.
As Israeli Jews celebrate Passover, the security services are on high alert as part of an effort to head off any attempts by religious Jews to make overt gestures on Temple Mount that might be construed as worship.
Temple Mount: 2 Waqf officials arrested for attacking Jews
Among a number of individuals arrested during clashes between Jews and Muslims on the Temple Mount earlier Tuesday were two members of the Jordanian Waqf, the Islamic trust which administers the site.
The two Islamic "guards" were arrested for assaulting Jewish visitors.
Israel Police also arrested nine Jews during the day, claiming they had violated the rules; presumably, this includes the ban on Jews praying or showing religious worship of any kind on the Temple Mount.
In total, 825 visitors ascended the Temple Mount Tuesday, including 557 tourists and 268 Israelis.
"The Jerusalem District Police, Border Police officers and police reinforcements in Jerusalem will continue providing extra security reinforcements throughout the city, and especially at flashpoints, in order to maintain order, public safety and welfare, as well as to regulate traffic," the Jerusalem police responded.
PMO to Jordan on Temple Mount: Jerusalem is acting responsibly, and Amman knows that
One day after 13 Jews were removed from Jerusalem’s Temple Mount for illegally praying at the contested holy site, the Jordanian government on Monday warned Israel of “serious consequences” if the area’s delicate status quo is breached.
Sunday morning’s impasse was further exacerbated when a group of Muslims was also removed from the compound by police for chanting “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”) at the nearly 1,000 Jewish and Christian visitors who ascended it for the holiday.
In a sharply worded statement issued Monday, Jordanian Media Affairs Minister Muhammad al-Momani accused “Israeli settlers and police” of flagrantly violating international laws and conventions by “storming al-Aksa Mosque,” which he said could lead to “serious consequences.”
The ongoing and wholly unsubstantiated allegations that the Israeli government surreptitiously intends to seize al-Aksa – Islam’s third holiest site – has led to the recent wave of deadly terrorism which has largely fueled what many are deeming a third intifada.

  • Tuesday, April 26, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
Freedom House had been one of the remaining, objective arbiters of which countries are free and which aren't. A few years ago, I had shown that there was no correlation between how free a country is according to Freedom House and how much attention it received from Human Rights Watch.

Unfortunately, Freedom House seems to have fallen prey to the politically correct anti-Israel crowd.

Its new report on press freedom (embargoed until later this week) changes Israel's rating from "free" to "partly free." And the reasons it gave to justify this are, by any measure, bizarre.


Israel's score went to 32, which is barely in the "partly free" category. 

Freedom House ranks freedom of the press under three broad criteria: whether there is freedom under the legal, political or economic environment. The description of why Israel's score went down seems to be wholly based on their perception of the economic environment making it harder for print media to survive, because Israel Hayom is distributed for free (plus the "paid content" part which I don't understand.)

Freedom House in 2015 gave Israel a 30 - a slightly better score, and it gave its reasons here. But I fail  to see how those reasons have changed for the worse this year.



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  • Tuesday, April 26, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
Amnesty International loves when there are Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians.

Because then it can issue statements against all such attacks and pretend that it is not biased against Israel.

Yet even when Amnesty issues a very mild rebuke of Hamas, it bends over backwards to minimize blame while it uses it as yet another excuse to bash Israel.

Here is most of the Amnesty press release about the recent Jerusalem bus bombing, divided up into the parts that are negative towards Hamas, neutral and negative towards Israel (I omitted some background information.)

Even though the title calls on Hamas to condemn the attack, most of the negative words it has are for Israel alone.





Anti-Hamas
Neutral
Anti-Israel
Hamas must condemn attacks on civilians following Jerusalem bus bombing


After the Hamas movement in Bethlehem claimed the person who detonated a bomb aboard a Jerusalem bus earlier this week as a member, Amnesty International reiterates that deliberate attacks on civilians can never be justified, and calls on Hamas to condemn all such attacks.



On the evening of 18 April, 20 people were wounded when a Palestinian man detonated a bomb on an Israeli bus in Jerusalem….While it does not appear that Hamas’ leadership or its military wing in Gaza ordered the attack, the involvement of the Hamas movement, possibly including members of its military wing in Bethlehem or elsewhere, is a worrying development.

Hamas, including its political leadership in Gaza and elsewhere, must clearly condemn all attacks targeting civilians. Such attacks can never be justified and represent a serious violation of international humanitarian law.



In the upsurge of violence since the beginning of October 2015, 29 Israelis and two US nationals have been killed in Palestinian stabbing, shooting, and car-ramming attacks on Israeli soldiers, police and civilians.1 The vast majority of these attacks, however, have been carried out by individuals not affiliated with any Palestinian armed group,

though Palestinian political factions and armed groups, including Hamas and its military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, have frequently praised the attacks.



During the same period, at least 197 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and civilians,

the majority of whom were reportedly either carrying out or perceived as intending to carry out attacks.



While deliberate attacks against civilians are never justifiable, the Israeli authorities have an obligation to uphold international law at all times, including in their response to such attacks.

Amnesty International has documented a series of unlawful killings of Palestinians – including attackers or alleged attackers who were not posing an imminent threat to life when they were shot – by Israeli forces since the beginning of October 2015. Some of these killings appear to have been extrajudicial executions.

In addition, Israeli forces have increased measures that amount to collective punishment against Palestinians, such as demolishing the family homes of attackers, imposing arbitrary restrictions on movement, and carrying out mass arbitrary arrests. Collective punishment is prohibited under international law, including Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which applies to Israel as the occupying power.


Note that Amnesty takes pains to say that Hamas in Gaza doesn't seem to have really been directly involved and cannot even say that Hamas had anything to do with the attack altogether - its only negative words for Hamas is the fact that it did not condemn the attack, not that it was involved in planning and executing it.

The bus attack was well planned and involved many people, and the bomber was an admitted member of Hamas. The Shin Bet says that Hamas was behind it. Yet Amnesty, which will run with any anti-Israel accusation with little proof, is careful to give Hamas the full benefit of the doubt as to whether it was involved in planning this attack.

Amnesty loves to point to press releases like this as proof that it is not biased, yet it proves the exact opposite.



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  • Tuesday, April 26, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
On Sunday:
The IFJ condemned the arrest yesterday of Palestinian journalist Omar Nazzal, member of the board of IFJ affiliate, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, while he crossed the al-Karameh border.

According to the PJS his mobile was confiscated and he was allowed one call to his wife which he told her he was taken to the Etzion interrogation center.

Nazzal was on his way to Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina, to attend the General Meeting of the European Federation of Journalists taking place on 25-26 April as part a PJS delegation invited to participate.

IFJ president Jim Boumelha will be writing to Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu to demand that Nazzal is released forthwith and allowed to travel to Sarajevo to attend this general meeting.

“It was shocking to hear that a participant to a congress for journalists from all over Europe has been arrested by the Israeli authorities on his way to attend and banged in Etzion prison without any reason being given,” said Boumelha. “The 100 delegates representing over 320,000 journalists in 51 unions from all over Europe will be demanding that their colleague is released forthwith.”

From Times of Israel:

Israel’s Shin Bet security service on Monday accused a Palestinian journalist arrested this past weekend of belonging to a “terror group” after colleagues called for international support for his release.

Omar Nazzal, a member of the general secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), was detained by Israeli officials on Saturday at the border between the West Bank and Jordan.

He was seeking to travel to a meeting of the European Federation of Journalists in Bosnia.

The Shin Bet said in response to an AFP query that he had been recently appointed a director of Palestine Today, a TV channel it declared illegal in February, and was active in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a group Israel considers a terror organization.

“Omar has for years been known to be a Popular Front activist: he was arrested now because of his involvement in current Popular Front activities,” Shin Bet said in a written reply.

It said he was not detained because of his journalism but over “his involvement in terror group activities”.
Of course, the Shin Bet is right - Nazzal is a PFLP operative who uses his supposed journalism credentials to promote terror.

He has written several articles for the official PFLP website.

One has to wonder why the International Federation of Journalists are more upset over the arrest of a member of a terror group who masquerades as a journalist in order to travel to Europe than they are over the fact that terrorists cynically endanger all journalists by using them as cover.

Oh, and while the Times of Israel doesn't mention it, Palestine Today is an Islamic Jihad media organization, one that they proudly use as part of their "media war" division.

The IFJ should be condemning the clear violation of their ethics by so-called "journalists" who use that title as cover for their political and terror-supporting activities. But obviously ethics is something for them to accuse others of violating, not an issue for them.


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Monday, April 25, 2016

From Ian:

Vic Rosenthal: The answer to globalized Jew-hatred
Israel’s public behavior needs to change. Our officials need to understand that neither the Arabs nor the West accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East. They did not accept it in 1948, they do not today and they will not tomorrow. This is not based on a rational calculation of interests; it is a result of deeply felt anti-Zionism, which is globalized Jew-hatred. Our adoption of Western humanist values to an even greater degree than the West itself is never enough for them; and the Arabs rightly hold us in contempt.
Therefore there is no point in trying to hold off the pressure from the US and Europe by making concessions to the Arabs, on the grounds that these minor retreats aren’t dangerous and will make us look good. We cannot ‘look good’ to those who hate us, and the demands for concessions will never end.
There is no point in behaving humanely to those who would behave toward us as the Islamic State does in Syria, if we let down our guard. There is no point in giving up our honor as the owners of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount in order to keep the Arabs quiet. And there will be no point in not using artillery and air power, including even tactical nuclear weapons if appropriate, to shut down the missiles from southern Lebanon.
Zionism indeed changes the odds and makes it possible for the Jewish people to stand up and fight, and to win. But to realize the change we must use the power of our state and our army.
The world will not understand the need for a Jewish state, no matter how we behave. But it can be made to understand that there is one and that it will fight fiercely and without quarter against anyone that tries to destroy it.
The Jewish story is under assault
Last week, as Jews around the world prepared for Passover, the war against the Jewish people and its story — against the meaning of Passover itself — took a particularly ugly turn. A UNESCO resolution, sponsored by seven Arab countries, denounced Israel for supposed violations of Muslim rights to prayer on the site that Muslims call the Haram el Sharif and Jews call the Temple Mount. The resolution ignores the fact that the Israeli government enforces a ban on Jewish prayer at the holy site, granting Muslims exclusive right to pray there. Worse, the resolution implicitly denies the Jewish connection to the area by never actually using the term Temple Mount (only Haram el Sharif). It does refer to the Western Wall, but places that label in quotation marks while leaving the Muslim equivalent, Al Buraq, intact, as though that were the only authentic name.
Reading the resolution, one could conclude that there was no ancient Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, that the Mount isn't the holiest site in Judaism, that the Western Wall isn't the heart of Jewish prayer. One could conclude, therefore, that the Jews living in Israel today have no historic claim to the land, passed down through generations. Of all the attempts to destroy us throughout our history, the campaign against history itself is the most devious.
Passover suggests this definition of the Jews: We are a story we tell ourselves about who we think we are. The current assault on the Jewish story is so dangerous precisely because it strikes at that core idea.
Meet the godfather of Israeli experts on international law and war crimes
When the second intifada broke out full force, then-IDF chief of staff Lt.-Gen. Shaul Mofaz signed the order, stating that an armed conflict now existed. “On that day we went to war with the Palestinians, and I think in retrospect, we were right,” said Reisner.
Regarding where international law should go from here and how equipped it is to deal with fighting asymmetric warfare, Reisner has some nuanced views.
On the one hand, he expressed frustrations with what he views as randomness in what does and does not get on the banned-weapons list once you go beyond biological and chemical weapons.
He also said that the law of proportionality, deciding what attacks are permissible, is far too vague to be useful, and leads to experts on different sides talking past each other.
On the other hand, he does not think it is realistic for Israel to make an open push to change the rules.
“Any idea Israel comes up with will be converted, subverted and diverted by other elements. It’s not that I don’t think that international law has problems. It has a lot of problems.
But because of Israel’s complex diplomatic position, I don’t think it’s realistic that Israel could lead a change in international law that would make sense.”

  • Monday, April 25, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
There were new protests in West Bank UNRWA camps today, as "popular committees" decided to shut down UNRWA offices.

The reason seems to be that UNRWA is replacing the old food voucher system with one that uses magnetic cards.

I have not seen anything that says that the benefits have changed but these "popular committees" depend on regular outbursts of anger in order to justify their existence. So they are telling residents of the camps that their benefits are being reduced by UNRWA and that the "right of return" is being taken away, and calling on them to strike.

Of course, these regular outbursts against UNRWA are almost never reported in English-language media.




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  • Monday, April 25, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
It used to be that the worst insult that any Arab would hurl at any other was to accuse them of being Zionist, or of cooperating with Israel.

That is no longer the case.

Hezbollah media is in overdrive in claiming that Saudi Arabia is working together with Israel, and the news stories are not making any waves whatsoever.

Just last night, deputy secretary general of Hezbollah Naim Qassem claimed that Israel has trained dozens of officers from the Saudi army under a UK program.

Recently Hezbollah media also reported Israeli news claiming high-level secret meetings between Israeli and Saudi officials.

A discussion to be held next month at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy between former Israeli National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror and Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal is being reported in Arab media but there is no real vitriol over it.

The idea that Gulf countries and Israel are in a de-facto alliance is being more and more accepted in the larger Arab world, and the mere mention of Israel is no longer effective at beating Arab states into submission.

All thanks to Iran.



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From Ian:

Root causes and red herrings
Separating 'red herrings' from 'root causes'
Over the last two decades, Israel has allowed itself to be manipulated into a perilous and potentially tragic situation. To have any hope of extricating itself from this unenviable position, it must be very clear as to what this conflict is really about -- and what it is not.
It must separate the "root causes" from the "red herrings." Mistaken diagnosis will result in mistaken policy choices which are liable to precipitate "terminal" consequences.
It is time to acknowledge the unpalatable fact that the enmity of Arabs towards the Jews and the Jewish state is:
Not about borders but about existence.
Not about what the Jewish people do but about what the Jewish people are.
Not about the Jewish state's policies but about the Jewish state per se.
And not about Jewish military "occupation" of Arab land but about Jewish political existence on any land.
Israel must internalize these truths and undertake a policy to convey them with conviction and vigor to the world. Otherwise Israel may well be "liberated."(h/t Elder of Lobby)
U.N. Watch: Palestinian pitch
Once again the indefatigable Palestinian Authority is drafting an Israel-bashing United Nations resolution condemning Israel's settlements. What's different this time? The Palestinians' hope that a lame-duck U.S. president, whose relations with Israel are strained, won't use the U.S. veto this time to quash the measure.
The United States customarily defends Israel and has nixed many half-baked Security Council resolutions that seek a back door to Palestinian statehood. These empty gestures are no path to peace but a short fuse to heightened hostilities.
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki said President Obama, fresh from his “achievements” with Iran and Cuba, “may try to put a basis for a new era regarding the Palestinian-Israeli issue” by not vetoing the resolution. This latest resolution draft reportedly calls the Israeli settlements illegal and seeks a one-year timetable to reach “a final status agreement.”
A State Department spokesman said it has no position because the draft resolution remains in a “very early stage.”And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed it as another attempt to force a Palestinian solution. This, after peace negotiations have been idled since the last U.S. initiative collapsed two years ago.
The Palestinians may ultimately back off. Ineffectual resolutions served cold at the United Nations only further the divide with Israel. That much should be abundantly clear, regardless of Mr. Obama's lame-duck status.
Alan Dershowitz: Obama owes Netanyahu an explanation
Jewish American jurist Alan Dershowitz last week criticized U.S. President Barack Obama's "interference in British affairs" and the hypocrisy of having reprimanded Israel's prime minister for having done the same.
In an op-ed for Fox News, Dershowitz lamented Obama having defended his prior comments urging British voters to vote against leaving the European Union, following scathing criticism that he was meddling in British affairs.
"I don't believe the EU moderates British influence in the world, it magnifies it," Obama said at a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday. He later warned British voters that it could take up to a decade to strike a trade deal with the U.S. once Britain leaves the union.
In his op-ed, Dershowitz pointed out Obama's argument that "in a democracy, friends should be able to speak their minds, even when they are visiting another country," and accused him of having a "short memory" recalling how "outraged the same President Obama was when the prime minister of a friendly country, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke his mind about the Iran deal."

  • Monday, April 25, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
Palestine News Network is funded by the Holy Land Trust*, which says that its goal is to "build a future that makes the Holy Land a global model for understanding, respect, justice, equality and peace."

It is headed by Sami Awad, who often tours Europe and North America with his messages of non-violence.

Here are excerpts of an article in the HLT-funded Palestine News Network:
After having eluded the Jewish problem in Europe during World War II, the Christian West's leaders decided to get rid of their [Jewish] problem with the biggest excuse and uglier than sin, through the implementation of the Balfour Declaration, the establishment of a national home for them at the expense of the Palestinian people, and through this they created a persistent problem and planted a malicious and cancerous plant in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world, which continues to bear bad and malicious fruit, which affected the whole world, and still strikes in all directions.

No reasonable human being, no matter his religion, whether Jewish or other, would want to live amid psychological disorders and obsessions of slaughter and death like bombings on buses, as happened a few days with the bombing of a bus in downtown Jerusalem which wounded 21 Jewish settlers and soldiers.

The occupying entity is a rabbit in the mouth of a sleeping lion, and soon the Arab lion will wake up and swallow the rabbit.
Does this sound like it is a "model for understanding, respect, justice, equality and peace?"

*UPDATE:  I am told that HLT no longer has anything to do with PNN.


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  • Monday, April 25, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
When Israel sends teams of people and equipment to aid victims of natural disasters around the world, it is derided by haters as merely trying to distract the world from Israeli crimes.

The bigoted logic is that since the Jewish state is inherently evil, than anything good it does is also evil.

Last week, for the first time as far as I can tell, the PLO sent a team of doctors to a disaster area, in Ecuador.

The pan-Latin America Telesur network reports it this way:
Latin America sent three quarters of the world's rescuers to Ecuador, Europe the second-highest amount, and the United States zero.

Latin America far surpasses any region in sending humanitarian aid and rescue experts to Ecuador for earthquake relief, with Venezuela sending almost a third of all rescue specialists and Palestine sending 19—19 more than the United States.

Palestine is the only country outside of Europe and Latin America that sent rescue experts to Ecuador, though Russia sent 30 tons of humanitarian aid, and China sent a satellite and a 911 system, mobile hospitals and US$100,000 to the Ecuadorean Red Cross.

Latin America sent a total of 702 rescuers, with even impoverished and violence-ridden Honduras sending a rescuer. Cuba sent the most after Ecuador’s neighboring countries and Mexico, followed by left-wing Bolivia.

Europe also sent almost 200 rescuers, some collectively with most of the rest from France and Spain.
I don't know if any US aid workers have arrived yet, but certainly the US offered to send help immediately after the disaster.

And the Israel delegation was completely ignored by this article. As JPost reports:
The Israeli humanitarian aid charity IsraAid set up a field hospital in a village in Ecuador in the wake of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that killed 654 and injured thousands.

The field hospital was set up in the coastal village of Canoa, where 98 percent of the buildings were destroyed in the initial April 16 earthquake that hit Ecuador’s Pacific coast. A 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck four days later, on Wednesday.

The American Jewish Committee is collaborating with IsraAid to provide the emergency assistance.
The mission includes veteran aid workers, a medical workers, and a psychosocial team, IsraAid said. The team will provide food and relief supplies; emergency medical assistance; and child friendly spaces and psychosocial support to the survivors of the temblor, with an emphasis on women and children. The field hospital began operating on Saturday evening, according to the Times of Israel.
The Israelis came at the same time as the Palestinians, so Telesur's omission (which was repeated in other news media)  is curious.

Are the Palestinian Arabs engaging in "earthquake washing" to try to make themselves look good while they continue to cheer murderers of Jews back home?

The truth is a little different. They sent teams to Ecuador because Ecuador helped Gazans in 2014.
"We don't forget our friends, a deadly earthquake has hit Ecuador, there are many victims, we care for Ecuador and we will help the people of Ecuador no matter how moderate our capabilities are,” Faisal Abu Shahla, a representative of Fatah, stated.
But you know that the PLO has seen how the media coverage of Israel sending aid to disaster areas is positive, and they want to benefit from this as well.

Not that there is anything wrong with them sending help, even for PR purposes - if victims get helped, the motivations of the helpers really doesn't detract from the good things they do.

Except, according to the haters and antisemites, when Israel does it.




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  • Monday, April 25, 2016
  • Elder of Ziyon
From the official Petra News agency:
Jordan on Sunday warned of serious consequences to Israeli settlers and police storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif today. State Minister for Media Affairs, Muhammad Al-Momani, said in a statement to the Jordan News Agency (Petra) that the Israeli violations against worshipers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque/ Al-Haram al-Sharif are a violation of international laws and conventions, warning that such practices would lead to dangerous consequences.

The minister, who is also Government Spokesman, demanded Israeli occupation authorities to immediately stop such moves, deny entry to settlers and Israeli forces into the yards of the holy shrine and allow Palestinian worshipers to enter the mosque.
So what happened to prompt this strong rebuke to Israel for allowing a tiny degree of religious freedom?

Nothing, really. The number of Jews who visited the Temple Mount was higher yesterday than normal, because of the Passover holidays. As many as 13 of them were removed after allegedly trying to do that ultimate crime, praying.

But Al Jazeera aired a half-hour program about nothing but how Jews are "storming Al Aqsa Mosque" and published this video showing how awful they were acting:



Other Arabic news media devoted significant time to the story of Jews walking around.

Amazingly, no human rights or religious rights groups have come out in favor of allowing Jews access to their own holy site. On the contrary, they regard Jews walking around peacefully - or at worst, muttering a few Hebrew words - as being the criminals.

For fun, tweet Amnesty and HRW and Oxfam the question of whether Jews have the right to pray on their holiest site. These defenders of human rights will never answer you because they are, deep down, against Jewish rights.




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