Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

06/21 Links Pt2: Mark Regev: Clarity in fighting terrorism; BDS activists storm lecture by MK in Berlin

From Ian:

Richard Millett: Physically attacked at SOAS after anti-Israel event with Roger Waters.

Jonathan Hoffman asked a question and he also interjected when SOAS lecturer Matar claimed outrageously that “anyone who is pro-Palestinian is instantly labelled anti-Semitic”.
When the event finished I met up with Jonathan inside the auditorium and he was being quickly surrounded by those wanting to speak to him. I jokingly castigated him for asking an “unbiased question”.
A male next to Jonathan then turned to me and asked if I was with him (Jonathan) and I said “yes” presuming he wanted to chat about the film. But he was immediately face-to-face with me and I noticed he was totally drunk. He was a white male, much taller than me and much younger, probably in his mid to late twenties.
I tried to get away but had nowhere to go as the room was very crowded. There was no security around whatsoever. He was facing me very close telling me I was going to be “f#*king mugged off”. I asked him to calm down and back off or I’d call the police and that I just wanted a relaxing evening to which he responded (here’s the audio):
“I’ll give you a relaxing exit. Would you like a relaxing exit? I’ll tell you what, you’ll get a f#*king pasting. You’ll get a f#*king pasting.”
I dialled 999 but he had walked away so I stopped. However, he then immediately returned, tried to slam my phone out of my hand and also punched me on the side of my head.
I had never seen the attacker before at any event. All he knew about me was that I was connected to Jonathan who had, during the Q&A, tried to put forward Israel’s narrative. This attacker, who had just watched a film with multiple scenes of dead and mutilated men, women and children wanted to find someone to take it out on.

Why Have Jewish Organizations Been Silent About Otto Warmbier’s Death?

Otto Warmbier, an American student at the University of Virginia—who was active in Hillel and who went on Birthright, where he received a Hebrew name—died yesterday after being arrested and tortured by North Korea. You’d think that the cluster of handsomely funded Jewish organizations that fly the banner of promoting and protecting Jewish life in America and abroad would notice and acknowledge Warmbier’s murder. So far, though, American Jewish officialdom has been deafeningly silent.
The odious Anne Frank Center, whose disingenuous mission statement blathers on about a kinder and fairer world where Jewish children are safe from the death camps of tyrannical regimes, didn’t bother taking a break from bashing Donald Trump to lament a young Jew put to death by the world’s worst offender of human rights. Nor did the ADL, an organization quick to stand up with Linda Sarsour as she denied Jews their right to self-determination but not so swift when the victim was a young Jewish man whose crime was pulling a silly prank at his hotel while on a college tour of a nation that routinely starves, imprisons, and executes hundreds of thousands of its own citizens. Everywhere you turn today, you hear no one demanding justice for Otto Warmbier.
What you do hear are the howls of the social justice brigades, for whom Warmbier, being white and a man, is mostly to blame for his own murder. When the young college student was arrested last year, the regressive left’s flagships, from Salon to the blessedly defunct Nightly Show, gleefully mocked Warmbier, arguing that white privilege was the real reason for his predicament and suggesting that when it came to oppression, there was really no difference between Portland and Pyongyang. “The hopeless fear Warmbier is now experiencing,” opined a young blogger on the Huffington Post, “is my daily reality living in a country where white men like him are willfully oblivious to my suffering even as they are complicit in maintaining the power structures which ensure their supremacy at my expense.”
This sort of bigoted nonsense is toxic to all Americans, but it’s particularly hazardous to Jews, whose suffering is too often explained away these days as an acceptable byproduct of excessive power and influence. It’s precisely the kind of anti-Semitic bile Jewish organizations were founded to combat. Their silence throughout Warmbier’s ordeal and murder is shameful.

The West should listen to musical giant Yevgeny Kissin

But Kissin is different from other contemporary musicians, musical giants but moral dwarves, like Daniel Barenboim and Gustavo Dudamel. Kissin is publishing a book this week, “Memoirs and Reflections”, edited by Marina Arshinova. “I am a stunch supporter of Western values”, he told the Spectator, “but in recent years I have realized that the Western establishment has often betrayed those same values. And one of the manifestations of this betrayal is the stance against Israel."
This is the diametric opposite of what another music virtuoso has done, Daniel Barenboim, who, in the newspaper Haaretz has just explained that Israel was “given” to the Jewish people by a world with the sense of guilt after the Holocaust, making the Palestinian Arabs pay the price. “Memoirs and reflections” is an act of love for the third country adopted by Kissin, who defines himself as “a citizen of Russia, the West and Israel”. He writes of feeling “like an Israeli soldier in the international arena.”
Never mention Jeremy Corbyn's name in Kissin's presence. “My late uncle, Lord Kissin, must be turning in his grave.” He is referring to his uncle Harry Kissin, a Labout militant who fled Nazism.
Words no less harsh are those Kissin reserves for the European Union. “I certainly don’t like what has become of it,’ he says. ‘Having grown up in the former Soviet Union I am for the independence of states. A common market is one thing but political centralisation is something completely different which I do not like.”
When in London, at the Royal Albert Hall, when anti-Zionists interrupted Zubin Mehta's conducting of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, Kissin told them: “When Israel’s enemies try to disrupt concerts of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra or the Jerusalem Quartet, I want them to come and make trouble at my concerts, too, because Israel’s case is my case, Israel’s enemies are my enemies, and I do not want to be spared the troubles which Israeli musicians encounter when they represent the Jewish state beyond its borders.”
Kissin attacked “the anti-Israel hysteria.” Bis, maestro! The Western establishment should go to his concerts and learn how to speak the truth.

The other day a friend posted a Hananya Naftali video on her Facebook page. Knowing she'd never knowingly post anything from a Messianic Christian missionary, I sent her a message telling her my suspicions about Naftali. But I didn't want to be spreading false rumors, so I decided to check with my new friend Shannon Nuszen to make sure I was being accurate.

Why Shannon? Because Shannon, once upon a time, was an evangelical missionary. Now she is 100% Orthodox Jewish, and living in Gush Etzion, not far from where I live. A board member of JewishIsrael, Shannon's about page says she "has spent her entire life studying and analyzing Christian scriptural arguments."

The page continues: "Shannon was immersed into the field of religious apologetics as a child by her father, a former 'Assemblies of God' minister. Traveling as an evangelist with her father, she learned the inner workings of the evangelical movement, and was exposed to the behind the scenes manipulation and many money making stage-show tactics. In the year 2000, Shannon engrossed herself into studying the Christian messianic movement, and was affiliated with some of the most deceptive missionary organizations that have unfortunately penetrated the Jewish world. Her background and history provide Shannon with an intimate knowledge of the Christian missionary agenda and the dangers it poses to the Jewish communities in Israel and the Diaspora."

Yup. Shannon was definitely the one to ask. And so I asked her, "Shannon, have you heard of Hananya Naftali? I'm fairly certain he's an undercover Christian missionary."

Shannon corrected me: "He's not undercover. He flat out admits as much," she said.

Oh, wow! I thanked her and rushed to tell my friend. She said, "Oy vey!" and hastened to remove the video from her Facebook page.

She sent me a report she'd written on Hananya Naftali and a video he created that leaves no doubt about his intentions. Featuring this clip on the JewishIsrael site led to Hananya Naftali reporting the organization for copyright violation to YouTube. Happily, Shannon and JewishIsrael won.

The original clip had a banner splashed across the screen which said: "IDF VS Christians."

Here's the description accompanying the clip: "Messianic Israeli YouTuber Hananya Naftali explores opposition and attitudes to jesus among his Jewish comrades in the IDF, and seeks the best way to share jesus with fellow soldiers."

I was really irked that I'd had suspicions about the guy for two years now and here people are still treating him as though he were a legit Jewish Israeli Zionist. People are still sharing his darned videos. They have no clue.

Why are they sharing his stuff? Because Hananya Naftali masquerades as a loyal Zionist Christian serving in the IDF. Which he is not. He's a missionary serving in the IDF, poisoning the minds of the Israeli youth stuck in tanks with the guy.

His fake out clips and blogs are all over the place. Like this one, that doesn't mention Jesus at all.

Sneaky. Which is what people have to do to trick you into joining their cults.

But his stuff is everywhere. While researching the topic to gather info for this column, in fact, I found a blog of Naftali's on the website of a pro-Israel foundation where I myself have blogged from time to time. I have a relationship with the founder of the organization so I asked her if she knew that Hananya Naftali is a missionary. She wrote back to thank me. She knew. She thought she'd removed every trace of his work from the website but had apparently missed that one.

Hananya Naftali: Raising Awareness

Raising awareness of this issue seems crucial

Shannon said, "I tell every leader dealing with missionaries who say 'they're ok,' it should be a concern that their fundamental belief that Jews must be converted to Christianity (and by that, I mean accept Jesus as messiah—because they play with words on this subject). Any Christian who states they do not believe in proselytizing, should be required to publicly state that and vow not to do it. Seems simple, but the Christian generally will not do it, and if they do, they will quickly apologize, retract, and explain to their Christian supporters that they did not mean it."

Israel Today, a website geared to Christian missionaries didn't mince words in explaining that IDF vs. Christians video: "Naftali repeatedly uses the word 'Christian' for what most of our readers might consider a 'Messianic Jew,' but the fact is that the words are interchangeable linguistically, especially to a Hebrew-speaking audience.

"One solid point made by Naftali is that in Israel it is often best to be a witness first in deed, and only then in word. Most Jews have already been told about Jesus, but very few have actually seen his love demonstrated in the actions of the Church."

Um, yeah. We were too busy burying our dead. Like during the Crusades. Not to mention the pogroms.

The Church is, historically, the gift that keeps on giving it to the Jews.

Beware of Hananya Naftali. Tell everyone you know. See a clip of his on social media? Put a link to this blog piece in the comments.

He's as much a threat to our people as Arab terror.
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Iran Threatens To Aim Missiles At Palestinians That Will Miss And Hit Israel (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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: Credit: Hossein Velayati via Wikimedia Commons

Tehran, June 21 - The Islamic Republic of Iran has modified its anti-Israel rhetoric in the last two days to reflect the poor performance of the country's ballistic missiles, media monitors are reporting.

Iranian forces launched seven ground-to-ground missiles at targets of the Islamic State Group in Syria on Monday, declaring the move a retaliatory strike for bombing and shooting attacks that place in the Iranian capital two weeks ago, and for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility. The impressive sights and sounds of the launchings, however, gave way to dismal performance statistics: only one rocket of the salvo hit the target; the other six misfired, fell short in Iraq, or hit places unknown. The poor showing prompted the mullah to alter its threats to target Israel with nuclear-tipped rockets to declare instead that Iran will aim for Palestinian areas, making it more likely that Israel will be hit.

"The Zionists' days are numbered," pronounced Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a radio address. "We are close to the day when we can place an atomic warhead atop our missiles, at which point we will program the weapons to hit Palestinian cities such as Qalqiliya, Jenin, Gaza, Jericho, and Tulkarem, thus making them more likely to hit Tel Aviv."

"Or we will target the Mediterranean Sea, or perhaps Lebanon," added Khamenei. "The Zionists will cower in fear before they are obliterated, maybe, knowing that our weapons can land almost anywhere. No one will knw where until it happens!" He also threatened to target Israel's offshore gas fields in the Mediterranean by aiming the weapons for Cyprus or Egypt.

Palestinian leaders have remained muted in their response. "We appreciate the sentiment behind the statements," offered Fatah official Saeb Erekat, formerly a negotiator with Israel. "The solidarity with our movement to rid the land of the Zionist occupier is moving indeed. We do think that we Palestinians are quite capable of our own self-destructive behavior aimed at harming Israel, and that while Iran's offer of help is a welcome gesture, it is not Iran's place to sacrifice us in order to destroy Israel. That is our job." He suggested that Iran instead provide the weapons to the Palestinians so the latter may launch them against Israel in the manner that Hamas have done with Iran-supplied rockets in the Gaza Strip.

"Of course we would rather Iran not supply anything at all if it means Hamas gets to use it," added Erekat. The fight against Israel is much too important to be left to anyone who would deny Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas the exclusive glory of conducting it."

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06/21 Links Pt1: Haley to UN Designate Hamas as Terrorists; Gaza’s Fake Humanitarian Crisis

From Ian:

Haley Calls for UN to Designate Hamas as Terrorist Organization

U.S. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley told the Security Council on Tuesday:
"Hamas is one of these forces of terror that yet again showed its true colors to the world earlier this month. It is a terrorist organization so ruthless that it will not hesitate to put the lives of innocent children on the line. A few weeks ago, UN officials discovered a tunnel underneath two schools run by the UN in Gaza. It was the exact type of tunnel that Hamas has used for years. These tunnels are what Hamas uses to smuggle in the materials they need to make rockets. Or to sneak into Israel to attack civilians or kidnap them in the dead of night."
"What is happening to the people of Gaza is heartbreaking. And it is so preventable. Gaza is prime real estate on the Mediterranean Sea. It has enormous potential. But the potential is being squandered by the terrorists who govern it."
"Make no mistake, Israel did not cause the problems in Gaza, even though it is often the usual suspect around here. Ten years ago, every Israeli soldier was withdrawn from Gaza, and for the last 10 years, there has not been a single Israeli settler in Gaza....We should never forget the responsibility for this humanitarian crisis rests squarely with the one group that actually controls Gaza: Hamas."
"I saw how this works firsthand. I walked through one of the terrorist tunnels coming out of the Gaza Strip, which Israel discovered and since secured. The top and sides of this tunnel were lined with solid, sturdy concrete. We know how badly Palestinians in Gaza need concrete to rebuild their homes. But here, in this tunnel, we see how Hamas uses the concrete Gaza receives - not to help the people, but to fortify its terrorist infrastructure."
"This Security Council must stand up to condemn Hamas' terror....We should condemn Hamas in this Council's resolutions and statements. We should name Hamas as the group responsible when rockets are fired from Gaza, or when fresh tunnels are discovered. And we should designate Hamas as a terrorist organization in a resolution, with consequences for anyone who continues to support it. That is how we can help build a more peaceful Middle East."

US Spokesperson Rebukes Veteran Arab Diplomat Over Remark to UN Security Council Comparing Gaza to ‘Concentration Camp’

A veteran Arab diplomat’s remark comparing the Gaza Strip with a “concentration camp” at a Security Council briefing drew a sharp rebuke from the US mission to the United Nations on Tuesday.
“Indecent and irresponsible remarks such as these are another example of the anti-Israel bias at the UN that has to end,” a spokesperson for the US mission to the UN told The Algemeiner following the speech at a Security Council meeting on “the Middle East, including the Palestinian question” given by Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister and UN envoy to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
During his address, Brahimi — who spoke as a member “The Elders,” a body of global influencers gathered under the auspices of former US President Jimmy Carter — sympathetically quoted a Palestinian woman in Gaza who told him, “Israel has put us in a concentration camp.”
Gaza has been under a joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the violent seizure of power by the Islamist terror organization Hamas in 2007. The Egyptians eased some crossing restrictions with Gaza in December 2016, while Israel enables the constant resupply of civilian and humanitarian goods into the coastal enclave. The UN’s own figures show that between 8,000-12,000 truckloads of goods cross from Israel into Gaza each month, including construction materials, medical supplies, IT hardware, foodstuffs and hygiene products.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, slammed Brahimi for having made “no mention of Israel’s legitimate right to defend its citizens.” Israel has faced three wars launched by Hamas from Gaza in the previous decade.
“The Security Council has provided a platform to antisemitic comments and a malicious blood libel,” Danon declared in a statement. “This one-sided obsession with Israel is beyond the pale. To accuse the Jewish state of using concentration camps is not only despicable, but it degrades the Security Council and the UN as a whole. We demand that the Security Council renounce Brahimi’s statement immediately.”

Iran’s Real Missile Target Wasn’t Syria

Former Secretary of State John Kerry has recently been making the rounds lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize. Last week, for example, he traveled to Norway where he sat on a podium with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. There, both criticized the Gulf Arab state and the current U.S. administration. In Kerry’s quest for the prize, he either lied about U.S. allies or leaked highly classified intelligence by detailing the (still-classified) contents of conversations. Either way, he sought to depict himself as a peacemaker when, in reality, he emboldened and resourced the main source of instability in the region. In his quest to secure an accord and to cement his own personal legacy at any strategic cost, he watered down language about Iran’s ballistic missile program. This provided Iran with cover, or at least enough legal ambiguity, to pursue its ballistic missile program.
Kerry and his team knew Iran’s aggressive intent but did not care. Numerous Iranian officials—including those surrounding Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—have pledged to develop and even use nuclear weapons. It was Hassan Rouhani, as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who managed, resourced, and oversaw Iran’s covert nuclear program to develop such weaponry. Indeed, he subsequently bragged about it.
Despite Iran lobbyists’ efforts to suggest that former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Israel’s should be wiped off the map, pictures from Tehran and Iran’s own official translations tell another story. When Major-General Hassan Moghadam died in an explosion at a missile laboratory and test facility in 2011, the Iranian press reported that his last will and testament asked that his epitaph read, “The man who enabled Israel’s destruction.” A year ago, Iran tested to ballistic missiles inscribed in Hebrew with calls for Israel’s destruction.
Iran’s immediate target might have been the Islamic State, but its ideological goal remains eradication of Israel. That the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards tweeted acknowledgment of such goal should not be as easily erased as his tweet. After all, Iran deal or not, it is the Revolutionary Guards and not Zarif who are in charge of the military applications of Iran’s nuclear program.

Abbas launches his own pathetic hashtag "With the President"

On the Fatah Facebook page it was announced that "activists" started their own hashtag supporting Mahmoud Abbas, "With the President" # :مع_الرئيس

But that hashtag was actually launched on the Fatah Facebook page hours earlier, to hype Abbas' visiting people in his Ramallah stronghold during their iftar meals. No one used it until then (besides it being used years ago in Egypt):

So Abbas, under fire for his handling of Gaza and his censorship of the media, started his own clumsy social media campaign to make it look like he has widespread support.

This hashtag shows the exact opposite of its intent. It shows that Abbas is not nearly as popular as people pretend and that he has to engage in bizarre social media plots to make it appear otherwise.

On Twitter, the hashtag was used by maybe a couple of dozen people.

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I stumbled onto this 2015 article in Slate about 3000 descendants of Palestinian Arabs who fled in 1948 to Egypt.

It shows exactly how much the Arab world really cares about Palestinians.

Excerpts:

Ghafra, now an 80-year-old grandmother, is one of 40 members of the Abu Hussun tribe who fled Beersheba, an oasis in the Negev desert in what is now Israel, in 1948. They journeyed 13 days on camelback across the Rafah border, along the Mediterranean coastline of the Sinai, and southwest to the Nile Delta governorate of Sharqeya. There, they settled on a piece of land they called Jeziret el Fadl—“Island of Favor.” Nearly seven decades later, 3,000 Palestinians remain marooned on the figurative and largely forgotten island.

“Under President Abdel Nasser, we were granted equal status with Egyptians, so nobody set up specific services for us,” says Said el Namudi, the community leader. “But now, they classify us as foreigners and nobody knows about us. International charities don’t know about us.”

Even neighboring Egyptians don’t know about Jeziret el Fadl. The village is invisible from the road, surrounded by a 9-foot wall of mud and brick. Inside the wall is a maze of one-story houses and dirt paths lined by children. Their distinctive light eyes, dulled by malnutrition, watch me with lethargic indifference as I pass by. These children make up 75 percent of the village’s population today, the result of three generations of relentless reproduction aimed at increasing Palestine’s future population, Namudi explains to me.

“Egypt has been a gracious host to us,” he says, speaking in slow, elegant Arabic. “All we want from the Egyptian government is for someone who lives in Egypt and was born in Egypt to be treated like an Egyptian. … Today, our poor pay the prices of Egypt’s wealthiest. All we want is for our poor to be treated as the Egyptian poor.” As foreigners, the Palestinians don’t have access to the state subsidies provided to poor Egyptians.

Sixty-year-old Maliha remembers well the days when she could pick up bread, sugar, oil, and rice for mere pennies. Growing up, she never worried about having the right papers—why should she? She was born in Egypt and had never thought to question whether she had the right to be there. But suddenly, about 30 years ago, something changed, she tells me as she swings her scythe at knee-high clovers with gusto disproportionate to her age and frame.

“God knows why, but suddenly, we had to pay for everything,” she tells me. “Everything costs money now.”

What Maliha doesn’t know is that 37 years ago, after extended discussions in a place called Camp David, her host country signed a treaty that began U.S. military aid to Egypt—and the end of equal status for Palestinians. With the swish of a pen, the state’s allegiances shifted toward the power and wealth of the West and away from the stateless Palestinians, who had become a political nuisance and a drain on the country’s resources.

Salon may be trying to pin the blame here, obliquely, on the US and Israel. However, an Al Monitor article on this topic says that Egypt started giving Palestinians "foreign" status after Nasser's death, years earlier. Egyptians hated the Palestinians from the start but Nasser liked them.

The situation had already been gradually getting worse throughout the 1970s, but the nail in the coffin came with Camp David and then later that year when a Palestinian assassinated the Egyptian culture minister, Yusuf Sibai, according to Oroub el Abed, a post-doctoral research fellow at the British Institute of Amman. “They started changing laws. During the days of Abdel Nasser, the laws used to say things like, ‘Education is to be free for all citizens, including Palestinians,’ ” Abed says. “But after the killing of [the minister], the words changed to ‘except for Palestinians.’ ”

As these laws began to be implemented in the ’80s under President Hosni Mubarak, people like Maliha gradually lost access to food subsidies, free education, and free health care—and they were then required to obtain and maintain legal residency as foreigners. Failure to do so could mean fines or even jail time, Abed says.

“They live in prison, literally,” Abed says. “Often, the state turns a blind eye because they know they cannot run after everyone. But when they do catch them without the right permits, what do they do? Deport them where? Nowhere. They cannot deport them. They simply put them in prison.”

I follow the region pretty closely, and I had no idea about this. No one wants to notice the facts: Arab states and NGOs claim to care about Palestinians, but in the end the only ones they care about are the ones that can be used as cannon fodder against Israel.

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.@UNRWA still lying

UNRWA tried to raise money on Refugee Day by sending out this message:

69 years since their original displacement in 1948, Palestine refugees are still refugees, awaiting a just and durable solution to their plight.

No, they are not refugees.

As I noted in February, there is only one definition of refugee in international law, in the 1951 Refugee Convention:

Any person who...owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

While Palestinian refugees were excluded under the Refugee Convention from protection by UNHCR, there is no additional definition to include them as refugees. UNRWA has a working definition of something they made up called "Palestine refugees" that have nothing to do with actual refugee status and is entirely for UNRWA to determine who is eligible to receive their services.

Today, nearly none of the original refugees (and some of them were refugees in 1948) are alive, and their descendants aren't refugees.

UNRWA knows all this, as I noted in the earlier article. UNRWA documentation almost never calls them "refugees" but only "Palestine refugees" which has its own definition that has nothing to do with actual refugee status. They cannot apply for asylum in Europe, for example, unless they are also truly refugees fleeing from Syria or Hamas.

And in this case, for this fundraising campaign , they are knowingly lying when they say "Palestine refugees are still refugees."

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06/20 Links Pt2: Breaking the Silence and Immoral Equivalence; Exposing the Media’s Lies About Israel

From Ian:

Immoral Equivalence

In March 2004, a group of Israel Defense Force soldiers founded Breaking the Silence, a nongovernmental organization ostensibly seeking to hold the military to its own stated standards of warfighting conduct. In theory, such a group could serve an important role in checking abuses. In practice, however, Breaking the Silence is something different. It has dubious sources of funding, pursues explicitly leftist political aims, and routinely misrepresents facts to paint Israel in the worst possible light.
Kingdom of Olives and Ash, a new collection of essays edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, features 26 different writers—all of whom visited Israel on delegations organized by Breaking the Silence. The book is a latticework of propaganda, pieced together by distortions and half-truths. The writers are talented, so there are no misplaced commas even though there are plenty of misguided ideas. The felicitous, compelling prose that makes this collection so readable is precisely what makes it so dangerous.
In their introduction, the married novelists Chabon and Waldman explain that they had long avoided the conflict: “Horrified and bewildered by the blur of violence and destruction, of reprisal and counter-reprisal and counter-counter-reprisal, put off by the dehumanizing rhetoric prevalent on both sides; we did what so many others in the ambivalent middle have done: we averted our gaze.” This claim is belied by the fact that Chabon wrote a novel 10 years ago featuring an entire counter-history of the Jewish state, while Waldman, the daughter of a Sabra émigré, has spent a decade fulminating about Israel’s misdeeds on social media.
No, Chabon and Waldman are neither ambivalent nor in the middle. Their insistence to the contrary is an attempt to gull the uninformed reader into believing they came into the project in innocence and came away sadder and wiser and ready to speak truth to power. They claim to have had “no political expectations of these writers,” but their partnership with Breaking the Silence tells a different story. The only scintilla of honesty comes in the form of punctuation: the two quotation marks with which they set off the word “security” when they ask whether Waldman bears “some measure of responsibility for the crimes and injustices perpetrated in the name of [Israel] and its ‘security.’” Since checkpoints, border walls, and police raids might all be justified when the security of civilians is at stake, Chabon and Waldman are compelled to imply that “security” is a mere ruse, that something far more sinister lies at the heart of these unfortunate realities.

Exposing the Media’s Lies About Israel

While today’s widespread use of the term “fake news” can be traced to US President Donald Trump claims that well-established facts are not actually facts, Israel has long had to grapple with the phenomenon of media outlets bending the truth for political gain.
Indeed, the mainstream media often blames Israel for all the problems in the Middle East, and this trend has only been exacerbated by the explosion of social media networks and alternative online outlets. Yet instead of complaining about this unfair treatment, organizations such as Israel’s Tazpit Press Service (TPS) are providing real-time, accurate and reliable news stories for international media outlets seeking coverage of Israel and the Middle East.
“Foreign agencies come to Israel with their own perspectives. No one is completely objective,” says Amotz Eyal, the CEO and founder of TPS. TPS employs “Christians, Arabs, Druze and Jewish experts who provide accurate stories about Israel,” Eyal says. “Our goal is to expose stories that other services do not cover — not just terrorist attacks, but stories about the different communities in Israel.” Since its establishment in 2012, TPS has broken stories on a wide range of topics related to economics, security, politics, technology, scientific developments, agriculture and more.
With regard to Reuters, The Associated Press and other leading wire services, the TPS CEO isn’t worried about taking on the industry’s Goliaths. “We’re not trying to compete by size, but rather by quality,” Eyal said. “We have 250 photographers all over Israel. We have more people on the ground here than any other service. As a result, we get to the stories more quickly than any other news agency.”

Mark Pellegrino: What Makes A State

Mark Pellegrino is an American actor of film and television, best known for his work as Lucifer in Supernatural, Paul Bennett in Dexter, and Jacob in Lost. He is co-founder of The American Capitalist Party.
When it comes to Israel, people generally fall into two categories of thought. The first, is that Israel is an artificial construct of victorious European powers; that it is a result of imperialism and has no claim to legitimacy, and thus no right to exist. The second, is that Israel was founded by Jews thousands of years ago and has every right to exist as a Jewish state regardless of its modern origins. Which perspective is right? Both sides claim a kind of squatter’s status to the land. The first claims an Arab majority has lived in the region for millenia and that this majority cannot be removed by legal fiat. The second claims a historical connection to the land dating back to the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages which entitles an entire people – via a kind of historical deed – to resettlement and re occupation of a geographic area. Though I sympathize with this latter view in terms of verifiable ancestral origins making a clearer tie to the land; and though the idea of migration from one place to another seems, to me, to be a fundamental human right, I find neither argument (from indigenousness) suffices to establish legitimacy in the eyes of those who are undecided on the issue. Furthermore, the fact that indigenousness or the artificiality of redrawn borders is not much mentioned in the establishment of the legitimacy of any Arab state in the Middle East (which were almost universally formed in the same ‘arbitrary’ way as Israel) leads me to believe that something may be rotten in the state of Denmark with such a standard. So, perhaps it’s not the origins of a state that makes for its legitimacy, but rather something else entirely. And perhaps it is the evasion of this fact that shifts the argument constantly to indigenousness as a standard for the establishment of a rightful ‘state’.
Let’s face it, like ALL human knowledge the concept of the state has evolved over time; and, despite the resurgence of statism in the early and mid twentieth century, the idea that the state’s function is the protection of this little thing called ‘right’ has been a nearly impossible discovery to avoid. Even vile statist regimes must play to the notion that they are servicing rights by violating them, and spend much blood and money upholding that illusion. The inflation of rights and the establishment of modern democracies has been the mechanism by which statists maintain this fiction. But the awareness that such a fiction need be maintained shows an evolution. The evolution is this: that even statists recognize protection of right as the function that legitimizes a state. Anything other than rights protection is illegitimate. In other words, any state that practices rights protection is legitimate and has a right to exist (since its right is predicated upon the protection of rights). Any state that does not, or actively violates those rights is illegitimate (for the same reason).

By default, Arabs expect Palestinians to kill Jews (Zvi)

From Zvi:

This Haaretz opinion piece by an Israeli Arab (who is not exactly pro-Israel) includes 2 paragraphs that should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the conflict.

Or so I thought. I had barely la nded my feet on Egyptian soil when I found myself surrounded by an angry crowd in the middle of Cairo. A local taxi driver happened upon my Israeli passport and took me for a Jewish spy. I was interrogated in public for two hours, during which I struggled to explain that there were Arabs living in Israel, too. The crowd burst into sudden collective laughter, and when an old Egyptian man wondered loudly why we were not fighting the Jews, I knew I was in trouble.Indeed, for millions of Arabs outside Israel, the idea of an Arab living in Israel, and not against it, seemed absurd on both counts: How could the "bastards" manage to survive within the Jewish State when a coalition of five Arab armies was crushed by it? And why in hell would the Jews let the bears in their backyard in the first place?

Arab societies have assigned a job to "Palestinian" (and Israeli Arabs, if they knew that Israeli Arabs existed). That job is to kill Jews. If the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are not killing Jews, then they are not doing their job. And if they are not doing their job, then in Arab opinion, they are traitors. If they live peacefully beside Jews, they are traitors. If they espouse nonviolence, they are traitors. If they negotiate with Israel, they are traitors. Those who got out of the way of the Arab armies and went to live in some other Arab country are not doing their job. They are traitors, and are treated like the scum of the earth. Those who would accept compensation are traitors; so if they sell a house to a Jew, they are murdered in cold blood.

Israeli Arabs are somewhat insulated from all of this because Israeli society DOESN'T assign them the role of Jew-killers, and most have no interest in proactively accepting that role.

But Palestinian kids are taught that role, intensively, from early childhood onward.

To most Arabs, the Palestinians are nothing but cannon fodder. They exist to kill Jews - nothing else. Any other behavior makes them traitors.

And the PA, HAMAS - all the Palestinians' dreadful leaders - are complicit in accepting and promoting that vicious delusion.

Arab "support" for the "Palestinian cause" is not support at all. It is threat and intimidation. It is the bayonet in the back that keeps the "cannon fodder" charging forward, rather than finding something more worthwhile to do with their lives.

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.

Meet Ro’i Klein. Look at his face. Doesn’t he look like a sweet and gentle man? 31 years old, husband to Sarah, father of three year old Gilad and one and a half year old Yoav, Ro’i (pronounced “Row-ee”) is an example of the best of Israel.

Admired for his calm peacefulness and constant smile, Ro’i was known for saying: “If I don’t do it, who will?” (All the best ones say that, think and act according to that idea).

People who live in other countries do not understand why we Israelis love our soldiers so much. We keep saying that we hate war and violence, loving our soldiers doesn’t seem to fall in line with that sentiment. Ro’i Klein and others like him are the reason why.

Ro’i was a Major and Deputy Commander of the 51st Unit of the elite Golani Brigade. Golani has a slogan that captures the atmosphere in the unit: “My Golani”. The army belongs to the country but the country belongs to its citizens and Golani belongs to each soldier serving in the unit. Not only that, Golani belongs to the family of each soldier in the unit and all of them belong to each other. It is not a unit made up of interchangeable, replaceable cogs, it is a family and every single member is precious.

On July 26th, 2006, the day before his birthday, Ro’i was with his soldiers in Lebanon. They were battling Hezbollah in Bint J’bail. Because the IAF had scattered fliers warning the citizens of Bint J’bail that fighting was to ensue, Hezbollah had time to prepare traps for the IDF soldiers.

Hezbollah captured one of the soldiers, 24 year old Amichai Merchavyah. Ro’i and his soldiers gave chase, trying to rescue Amichai. The Hezbollah fighters led them into a dead-end alley.

They were trapped.

One of the Hezbollah fighters threw a grenade at the soldiers. That had been the intent all along – to kill the Israeli soldiers in one fell swoop.

Ro’i, the commanding officer had to take care of his soldiers, he had to protect them, his family. Terrorists were trying to kill his children! No, I don’t mean Ro’i’s two children at home. In that moment Gilad and Yoav didn’t matter, neither did his wife Sarah. It was the children standing next to him that Ro’i had to protect. He had to make sure they went home to their families.

He knew he wouldn’t.

Ro’i told the soldier manning the radio to announce what had happened. Then Ro’i threw himself on the grenade.

Those of his soldiers who made it home say that Ro’i had just enough time to say “Shema” before he was blown to smithereens. “Shema” is the prayer central to the Jewish faith: “Hear oh Israel the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”.

Parents all over the world declare that they love their children so much that they would even die for them. In most countries that would be a hypothetical situation. In Israel, it is not.

Sometimes terrorists enter our homes threatening our next of kin. Sometimes terrorists attack on the street, in buses and cafés endangering members of our family that we have never met, related to us through their belonging to the nation of Israel... We are a tiny people and we truly are one family – we bicker and quarrel and we love each other so much that sometimes we die for each other. And that is exactly what Ro’i did.

Nine soldiers died on July 26th. They were fighting terrorists in Lebanon so that their families at home in Israel could live free from the threat of those terrorists. They were fighting to protect their mothers and fathers, neighbors and friends. They were fighting to protect people like me, people they never met.

We love our soldiers because they are us. They aren’t some people far away, doing things that have no bearing on our lives. They are us. They are our sons and fathers, brothers and friends. They are our sisters too. Our soldiers are our family. The loss of one is the loss of a beloved family member, whether we knew the soldier personally or not. Each is precious, none are replaceable. Ro’i is (it hurts to say was) exceptional but by no means unique. He is one of many who say “If I don’t do it, who will?”

Haim Smadar and Noam Apter are just two examples of others who made the same purposeful, loving, awe-inspiring choice Ro’i made. Each one was “just” a normal Israeli, someone who walked amongst us every day. They got up in the morning, went to school, went to work, met with friends, played with their kids, did things normal people do. They weren’t normal though – that is to say, they weren’t average – they ARE normal Israelis. Ro’i was a father and a soldier. Haim was a father and a security guard who checked clients entering a local supermarket. Noam was a son and a student.

That is the quality of spirit that exists in this country. They are our family. They love us with a passion so great they sometimes give their lives for us. And we love them back.

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.

06/20 Links Pt1: Knife-wielding Palestinian attacks Israeli troops, is shot dead; Is PA planning to deceive the US Again?

From Ian:

PMW: Is PA planning to deceive the US and donor countries – AGAIN?

The Palestinian Authority is planning once again to hide its approximately $300 million a year in payments to terrorist prisoners and the families of so-called "Martyrs," by continuing to reward terror but in a different framework, according to some Palestinian sources.
The first time the PA did this was in 2014 when the PA closed the PA Ministry of Prisoners' Affairs, which had paid the terrorist salaries, yet continued the payments through the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs. After Palestinian Media Watch exposed the PA's deception in The PA's Billion Dollar Fraud, by documenting the money transfers from the PA to the PLO, the PA law mandating salaries to terrorists has been repeatedly condemned by the US and countries in Europe.
Now, with increasing pressure by the US and other donor countries for the PA to stop rewarding terror, the PA is looking for a new way to both accept the international demands and yet at the same time continue paying terrorists, according to some Palestinian sources.
Hassan Asfour, a former PA minister and current associate of Muhammad Dahlan, political adversary of Mahmoud Abbas, explained it as follows:
"Abbas, despite his initial objection [to the US demand to stop prisoner salary payments], has begun to examine practical options to comply with the American demand in a way that will not lead to an explosion that might lead to his downfall and the downfall of their [Abbas' and US'] joint plan. Among these options that are being examined with special secrecy, is the option of transferring the prisoners' and Martyrs' salaries to a 'social insurance' body so that it will look as if it is 'humanitarian and social aid to needy families' and not 'monthly salaries to fighter families.'" [Fatah Voice, independent Palestinian news website, June 3, 2017]

Caroline Glick: Livni and dangers of peace theater

The homes of the terrorists who murdered Border Police officer Hadas Malka on Friday evening are now bedecked with Fatah flags and banners reading, “Our heroes.”
Far from condemning the terrorist attack, Palestinian Authority chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas and his comrades are condemning Israel. Its security forces, they allege obscenely, committed a “war crime” when they killed the three terrorists to stop their rampage.
The only reason that these actions are not enough to warrant the US and the rest of the West – not to mention the Israeli Left – treating Fatah/PLO as the terrorist group they are and have always been, is because doing so would require them to stop playacting at peace making.
And they couldn’t have that.
Instead, they mimic or recycle “peace process” lingo about “windows of opportunity,” and reincarnate failed peace processors.
In apparent bid to do the latter, last Friday Channel 10 first reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked MK Tzipi Livni to join his government with her Knesset faction and serve as his foreign minister.
While Likud denied the report, Livni claims Netanyahu made the offer through mediators that have been carrying out indirect negotiations between the two politicians.
Livni also has said that she rejected Netanyahu’s offer because she doesn’t believe he is willing to adopt her expansively pro-PLO positions.
Assuming that Livni is telling the truth and Likud’s denial is false, we need to ask why Netanyahu made the attempt.

Fathom Forum with Einat Wilf

Dr Einat Wilf served as an Intelligence Officer in the Israel Defense Forces and was member of the Israeli Parliament from 2010-2013 on behalf of the Labor and Independence parties.
In this video she will provides new thinking on the Peace Process, explaining how “constructive ambiguity” has prevented both sides from reaching a negotiated settlement, and arguing that the Israelis and Palestinians need to adopt a new strategy of “constructive specificity,” the idea of specifying in detail exactly what is required from each side if the process is to result in a ‘realistic’ peace, the excruciating compromises that are necessary, and bring the century-long conflict to an end.