Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

Rome suspends naming a park after Yasir Arafat

The Mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, reversed the city's decision to name one of the city's parks after arch-terrorist Yasir Arafat.

The original plan was for a street to also be named after the late chief rabbi of Rome, Rabbi Elio Toaff, for "balance." Toaff died in 2015.

The Jewish community of Rome protested bitterly against the decision. The chair of the Jewish Community of Rome, Ruth Dureghello, wrote an open letter to the mayor, saying "We remember Arafat, for those who obviously do not know the story, as the moral force behind the anti-Semitic attack on the Synagogue of October 9, 1982, in which Stefano Gaj Taché was killed, a Jewish, Roman and Italian child. Choosing to dedicate to Arafat a park is unacceptable...The city of Rome must choose: to remember the terrorists or their victims. Both things are not possible."

The letter also called Arafat the "forerunner, if not the creator, of modern terrorism."

Here is what happened in 1982:

The attack took place at the Great Synagogue of Rome in the historic district of Rome on Saturday morning, at 11:55 a.m., at the conclusion of Sabbath services. As the families of the local Jewish community began leaving the synagogue with their children from the back entrance to the synagogue, five elegantly dressed armed Palestinian attackers walked calmly up to the back entrance of the synagogue and threw at least three hand grenades at the crowd, and afterwards sprayed the crowd with sub-machine gun fire. Eyewitnesses at the scene stated that the hand grenades bounced off the steps and exploded in the street
A 2-year-old toddler, Stefano Gaj Taché, was killed in the attack after being hit by shrapnel. In addition, 37 civilians were injured, among them Stefano's brother, 4-year-old Gadiel Taché, who was shot in the head and chest.

Reaction in the Italian press to the initial decision was mixed. There were a number of articles that agreed with the Jewish community that it was ill-advised. An op-ed in Il Fatto Quotidiano ridiculed the "balance" of honoring the terrorist and the Chief Rabbi, saying that the political correctness that prompted the decision was akin to equating the Torah with a Kalashnikov.

Strade Online remembers not only the Great synagogue attack but also the 1973 attack by Palestinians at Fiumicino International Airport that killed dozens and the 1985 attack at the same airport that killed 16.

But Comune-Info.net instead complained about how Rome gives "veto power" to the Jews, and it said that the Jewish community letter calling Arafat the architect of modern terrorism is an example of brilliant fake history. It says "We do not want to believe that it is for low reasons of interest dictated by the economic and media power of Zionism that we accept the pro-Israel diktat, no, we just think that the terror of being unjustifiably labeled anti-Semitic has now assumed the power of an invisible but very sharp sword ready to decapitate anyone who dares to criticize Israel."

Because murdering hundreds of people is valid criticism of Israel.

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08/14 Links Pt2: Yad Vashem warns of Nazi ideology on display in Virginia; Anti-Semitic signs at Switzerland hotel

From Ian:

Former Muslim Sandra Solomon fearlessly defends Israel

Sandra Solomon, an Arab born in Ramallah who converted to Christianity more than ten years ago and became a supporter of Israel, explains in an interview to the Kan broadcasting network her motivations and goals in a single-woman crusade for sanity that constantly places her in danger.
Niece of one of the Fatah movement's founders, Sahar Habash, a close confidant of former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat, Solomon frequently repeats her unequivocal disapproval of attacks carried out by Muslims against Israelis, citing education as the cause of the violence.
She condemned the recent Neve Tzuf attack in which a Muslim broke into a home and killed three members of the Salomon family: “The Palestinian terrorist who murdered a family on Friday evening in Halamish - where did he get the idea to enter a home and kill the people who were in there?” asked Solomon. “The young Palestinians who carry out attacks are already murdered from a psychological point of view by the education that is given to them.”
“As a child, I was brought up to hate Israel,” she related. “The most important thing to us was the liberation of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the liberation of Jerusalem and the destruction of the State of Israel.
“We watched the second intifada on television” she said, recalling her childhood spent in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. “After every big terror attack—including when children were killed—candy was given out. The education that was given to me was that only Palestinians are the victims, that they are oppressed in this conflict and that the Zionists are the occupying criminals who took the land for themselves.”

Commemoration gone wrong

This week, Mayor of Rome Virginia Raggi reversed the municipality's decision to memorialize late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat by naming one of the city's public parks after him. The original plan sought to honor the Nobel Prize laureate who, in the municipality's view, worked to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians. For balance, it was decided to name a street in the Italian capital after the late chief rabbi of Rome, Rabbi Elio Toaff.
In a letter to the municipality, the head of the Jewish community in Rome, Ruth Dureghello, condemned the decision for even drawing a comparison between the two figures. Explaining that the plan would debase the late rabbi, she demanded it be called off. Noting Arafat's direct involvement in the terrorist attacks that killed a young Jewish man in Rome in 1982, Dureghello wrote, "The municipality must decide whether it wants to memorialize the terrorists or their victims."
The municipality responded with that well-known anti-Semitic refrain: "Some of my best friends are Jewish." The supposed "balance" in this trick of transfiguration through the use of an exalted rabbi far removed from politics is reminiscent of the actions of the fascist leader Benito Mussolini, who, when he rose to power Italy in 1923, met with Rome's then-Chief Rabbi Angelo Sacerdoti to ease the minds of Italy's Jews. But when the Grand Council of Fascism embraced the race laws, it adopted the anti-Semitic policies of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and sent the Jews to their deaths. Around 7,900 of Italy's Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and lest we forget, it was Italy that bombed Tel Aviv, killing 130 people, in September 1940.
There is something shocking about the municipality's initial decision to turn the man who made terrorism a Palestinian start-up, who pledged to send "millions of martyrs to Jerusalem" to kill Israel's Jews and in fact did as much right up until his death despite signing the Oslo Accords, into a figure worthy of being memorialized as a peace activist.

By His Own Admission, Wilkerson Cannot Be Trusted

On July 23, retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson appeared on MSNBC and accused Israel of increasing the tension surrounding Al Aqsa Mosque by installing metal detectors nearby. "The ultimate [Israeli] goal with regard to the mosque is to drive the Palestinians and Arabs in general out completely," he said, adding that the Israeli government's "ultimate goal is to cause the Palestinians to react in a way that it can then react viciously and violently as it has in Gaza repeatedly."
With such invective, Wilkerson depicts metal detectors, which are used at holy sites throughout the Middle East, as a provocation against the Palestinians. He also inverts cause and effect, portraying the metal detectors (and Israel's attacks on Hamas in the Gaza Strip) as the cause, rather than the response to Palestinian violence.
A few days after Wilkerson offered his assessment on MSNBC, Israel removed the metal detectors it had installed, thereby demonstrating that when it comes to assessing Israeli intentions, Wilkerson had no idea what he was talking about. If anyone is trying to increase the tensions surrounding the Temple Mount, it is Palestinian leaders who have used the Al Aqsa Mosque as a pretext and as a staging ground for jihadist attacks against Jews for decades.
Wilkerson's recent appearance on MSNBC was not the only time he has defamed Israel. In 2016, he declared that a gas attack on civilians universally blamed on Syrian President Bashar Al Assad "could have been an Israeli false flag operation." When pressed by his interviewer from an internet TV station to describe what the motivation for an Israeli gas attack would be, Wilkerson dodged the question. All he could say is that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was "too clueless" to know what was in his country's best interest in the Middle East.
It is Wilkerson who needs a clue. In the same July 21 MSNBC interview, Wilkerson reported a conversation he had with an unnamed Catholic Bishop in Ramallah in 2002 or 2003, who had declared that, "that the biggest enemy for him -- for Christians -- in that region was not the Arabs, it was the Jews."

Stanton Griffis (1887–1974) had a long career as Ambassador to Poland, Egypt, Argentina and Spain, in addition to having been a top executive at Brentano's, Paramount Pictures and Madison Square Garden.

In his wonderfully named memoir, Lying in State, he publishes a series of autobiographical letters he wrote while in these positions. While he was hardly a Zionist, and he had sme harsh words for the Israeli side as well, here are two notable excerpts from his letters, both written apparently in 1949.

Israel won the war but found an uneasy peace, a peace that rises and falls like the wind in the desert. Israel won not only because of American dollars but because it is very hard to beat crusaders. It is very hard to beat a nation that has a great principle; it is very hard to beat a country that is smart enough to carry out the policy of divide and conquer—Israel knocked out most of the Arab nations one by one.

The Jews were righting an Arab world torn by jealousies and hatreds, and the result was for good or for evil; I hope, for good. ....

The Arab armies were small and untrained. I asked my senior military attache to tell me the size and strength of the army of one of the small Arab countries. He may have been a bit cynical, but his answer was, "They have about five thousand men under arms, about half of them are usually absent without leave, and the other half are looking for them. When they find them they change places."

They had no real will to fight. The Arabs were not impelled by the urge to defend this homeland as the Jews were. And so the world witnessed the astonishing situation in which fewer than one million Jews were victorious against a Moslem world of two hundred and eighty millions.
The result is part of the new map of Europe today.
====================================

Touring Tel Aviv and Jewish-held Jerusalem, it is not difficult to see why the crusading, organized and hard-working Jews have been able to defy the whole Arab world with its laziness, its corruption, its dreamy philosophies, and its fantastic mixture of great wealth and hideous poverty. Tel Aviv and Jewish-held new Jerusalem constitute a land of milk and honey, of organization, of modernism; that contrasts sharply with the Arab cities of approximately the same size and particularly with Old Jerusalem held by the Arabs and the site of the holy places of three out of the four great world religions.

"In my book," it is certainly a mistake for the Christian tourist to visit Old Jerusalem. The Via Dolorosa, along which Christ was supposed to have carried His cross, is a horror of filthy, stinking Arab shops, little improved, I think, as to sanitation, ptomaine or literacy during the past 2,000 years. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Calvary are beset with commercialism and dirt and I am still sufficiently naive to want to keep my childhood illusions about Jerusalem. I will take a De Mille picture or a Sunday school colored picture of the old days rather than see it as it really is. On the other hand, while, of course, the Jewish wailing wall is deserted, the Moslem mosques are clean and well kept. I devoutly hope that some day some great world organization such as Lawrence Langner has visualized will make it their work to restore Old Jerusalem to a semblance of beauty. Call it what you will, or be of what religion you may, the beautiful illusion is better to create faith than the stinking reality which is the Via Dolorosa today. Langner's idea would be a modern drive of the smelly money changers from the temple.

...
In this specific problem of the Near East I earnestly hope that when the bitterness and enmities die down, the Jews and the Arabs will trade together, that the Jews will be reasonable in their territorial aspirations, and that the Arabs will forget for all time their fanatical leanings towards "Holy War."

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The New York Times recommends Hamas book award choice (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Last week’s anniversary of the Sbarro massacre was celebrated by the Aqsa TV channel, and their audience very much appreciated being reminded of the carnage perpetrated 16 years ago by Palestinian terrorists.

Last year, just in time for the 15th anniversary of the massacre, the American writer Ben Ehrenreich was busy celebrating all the praise he was receiving for his newly published book that glorifies the Tamimis of Nabi Saleh, who are not only ardent supporters of Palestinian terrorism in general, but who also have the greatest admiration for their relative Ahlam Tamimi, the proud mastermind of the Sbarro bombing.

We made a video back then, introducing Ehrenreich’s main protagonists.

It seems that glorifying terror supporters like the Tamimis is good business: for the 16th anniversary of the Sbarro bombing, Ehrenreich’s book came out as a paperback, and – just like last year – the New York Times is doing its best to help Ehrenreich sell his book.

But it’s not just the New York Times that is urging its readers to get Ehrenreich’s book. Already a few weeks ago, the Middle East Monitor (MEMO), an Islamist site that organizes an annual “Palestine Book Awards”-event, shortlisted Ehrenreich’s book for this year’s awards – which is, no doubt, a well-deserved honor for Ehrenreich.

I sincerely hope he will get the award. As I explained three years ago, when veteran anti-Israel activist Ali Abunimah was honored by MEMO, it’s a bit like a Hamas “Books-of-the-Year” award. In Abunimah’s case it was particularly fitting that MEMO’s award presenter was Ang Swee Chai, who once defended her promotion of material produced by white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke by explaining:

“I didn’t know who David Duke was, or that he was connected to the Ku Klux Klan. I am concerned that if there is any truth in the video, that Jews control the media, politics and banking, what on earth is going on? I was worried.”

The lady who so emphatically shares the worries of antisemites around the world remains a “patron” of the “Palestine Book Awards”, and maybe Ehrenreich will be lucky and have the honor to meet her.

Another “patron” of the “Palestine Book Awards” that Ehrenreich might love to meet is Azzam Tamimi. I don’t know if he’s related to the Tamimis Ehrenreich adores, but he definitely shares their enthusiasm for Palestinian terrorism and considers his close ties to Hamas “a great honor.”

In any case, there can be no doubt that Ben Ehrenreich should like the MEMO-crowd just as much as he likes the Tamimis: read MEMO’s moving report on the romance between convicted murderer Nizar Tamimi and convicted murderer Ahlam Tamimi and you’ll have to admit that Ehrenreich himself couldn’t have portrayed this union between two murderous terrorists in more sympathetic terms.

So let’s all cross our fingers that Ben Ehrenreich’s paean to the terror-loving Tamimis will get the Hamas Book Club award – he definitely deserves it, and it would also be a fitting tribute to the good judgement of the New York Times.

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08/14 Links Pt1: Latma is Back: All About the Facts; Abbas and PLO condemn US Senators

From Ian:

Legal Grounds Resurrects Latma to Explain How the So-Called Palestinians Lie

I proudly introduce here a one-of-a- kind video produced by the Legal Grounds Campaign, co-chaired by Jeff Daube and myself: “All About the Facts.”
The Latma team has created a song for the video: A biting parody that is laugh-out-loud funny. In English with Hebrew subtitles.
While we expect this to appeal to young people who are ignorant about Israel’s realities or have been misled by false information, we believe you, too, will be delighted by it.
Additionally, we have designed a short website that viewers will be able to connect to after seeing the video; it provides basic facts about Israel’s rights in the land.

PMW: Mahmoud Abbas and PLO condemn US Senators

At a meeting of the PLO Executive Committee, led by PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO condemned the US Senators of the Committee on Foreign Relations for their vote in favor of the Taylor Force Act, which calls to cut all funding to the PA if it continues paying salaries to terrorists and allowances to families of so-called Martyrs.
The PA's rewarding of terror has been a source of contention between the Palestinian Authority and its American and European funders since 2011, when Palestinian Media Watch first exposed the PA's practice of rewarding terrorist prisoners. The U.S. Congress finally decided to act decisively after becoming aware that the family of the murderer of American veteran and university student Taylor Force, who was murdered last year in Tel Aviv, would be receiving a lifetime monthly stipend.
The Palestinian Authority sees all Israelis and all visitors to Israel as legitimate targets and therefore rewards the terrorists and families of those who are either imprisoned or killed. Accordingly, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is defying the international community including the donor countries by continuing to spend $355 million a year on these payments.
The PLO Executive Committee's condemnation of the US Senators is another statement by Mahmoud Abbas that he has no intention of seeing the murder of Israeli civilians and visitors to Israel as terror and therefore will continue to reward the killers.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Israel-Jordan peace agreement: The emperor has no clothes

Jordan today, it must be concluded, is working non-stop behind the cover of its peace treaty with Israel to destroy the Jewish State and create a Palestinian one instead. What is worse is that Israel refuses to admit to the situation and continues most carefully to keep the agreement, hoping calm will prevail along the border until the next elections. Every politician knows that if, during his term, relations with Jordan deteriorate, the media – our shallow, slanted and agenda-ridden media – will accuse him of being the cause of the agreement's nullification, making him pay the price in the next round of elections. That is why politicians bolster up the temporary tactical quiet, ignoring the strategic threat to the very existence of the state posed by the peace agreement.
If Israel's leaders felt endangered by the actions of Abdullah, they would do something to prevent his destructive activities, cleverly disguised as military and economic cooperation. The problem is that in their view, short term tactical advantages are preferable to attending to strategic problems that affect the long term. We are all going to pay a high price for this way of running things on the part of Israel's decision makers – as can be seen by the security equipment crisis last month in Jerusalem.
King Hussein was all for Israel's continued existence and did not question Jerusalem 's status. That's why peace with him was positive in general. His son Abdullah changed his father's strategy and works tirelessly to create a Palestinian state on the ruins of the destroyed Jewish one. Now that King Abdullah's nefarious scheme has been revealed, Israel must rethink its Jordanian route and work to create a Palestinian Arab state in all or part of Jordan, since the majority of the people there are Palestinian Arabs.
The alternative is establishing a Palestinian state on Israeli territory with its capital in Eastern Jerusalem, a strategic danger to Israel.
There is no reason that the Jewish people, who returned to its land after 2000 years of exile, should pay with its very existence for the survival of the Hashemites brought by the British from Hijaz to rule the most artificial country in the world – Jordan.

“From an organizing perspective, the tactics of getting local state and federal governments to condemn the bigoted BDS movement provide a common platform and points of unity for people in the United States to start working on. Such legislation – and debate over it - provides a concrete way for citizens and their leaders to directly connect with the issues… and it also provokes a discussion that is often difficult to provoke on the true racist nature of BDS.

And the movement has had an impact on how people think about and discuss the conflict. It’s been great in affecting the discourse and just mobilizing people. Suddenly the discussion around the country is: does BDS represent an act of bigotry that merits the anti-racist legislation condemning it? Which is a very different question than whether or not BDS warrants its self-description as a human rights campaign.”

The above is actually not a quote but rather a paraphrase of statements made by BDS activists regarding how we should perceive their stunning lack of actual victories, given the decade and a half the boycotters have been trying to generate any actual wins for their “movement” (beyond getting stacked student governing bodies to pass meaningless boycott resolutions, or corrupting dying institutions to the point where they will do the BDSers bidding).

The sentiment in the original quote can be summed up by the actual sentence which precedes it which reads: “Advocates of BDS, meanwhile, say that the lack of concrete victories is incidental to the movement’s success.

As I’ve noted before: how nice for them! For such a formulation means that whenever they actually pull some nasty bit of boycott or divestment work over the finish line, it’s time to pop the champagne corks and insist everyone in the world fess up to BDS’s unstoppable momentum. But if they lose, they should still be given credit for opening up conversation and making previously suppressed topics (i.e., their condemnations of Israel that actually ring out across the physical and virtual universes 24/7) discussable.

My paraphrase of their original “we win by losing” argument at the top of this piece should highlight the absurdity of the boycotters’ contentions and pretensions. For can anyone reading this imagine a scenario in which any BDSer anywhere would embrace the notion that every one of the dozens of anti-BDS bills that have been debated in the country represents victory for their enemies – whether or not those bills get passed?

While I’ve generally been lukewarm about the use of legislatures and courts to settle BDS-related disputes (especially when ground-level political alternatives are available), I’ve come to appreciate the utility of creating actual hard costs on those wishing to boycott the Jewish state in the form of having to give up the large American market in exchange for boycotting the small Israeli one.

But whatever you think about this or that piece of legislation (including one making its way through Congress as you read this), we can rest assured that if the bill passes or fails (for any reason), the boycotters will come up with a explanation for why either decision should accrue to their victory column.

But if we play by their rules, then passage of the bill (or any of the dozens of similar bills already passed by state governments) represents a stunning humiliation for the BDS “movement,” and any failure of these bills still counts as a victory for us since it “opens up discussion” of why the boycotters are a bunch of bigoted, hypocritical jerks.

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The Goyim Know!

One of the weirder memes that the right-wing antisemites love is "The Goyim Know." Reports from Charlottesville indicate that there were signs held by the white supremacists with hose words and that they broke out into chants of "The Goyim Know."

A search of the Internet finds a few of these memes, almost invariably with Orthodox Jews making the purported statements of fear:

As my readers know, I am the card-carrying leader of the worldwide Jewish and Zionist conspiracy.

So I felt the need to clarify exactly what the goyim know, since the signs were a bit ambiguous.

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Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah mad one of his long, meandering, threatening speeches about how powerful Hezbollah is and how weak Israel is on the 11th anniversary of the end of the Second Lebanon War.

He obliquely threatened to shoot rockets at Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor, as he bragged that Israel closed down the ammonia tanks in Haifa after a previous threat.

As usual, the brave leader issued his speech by video instead of in front of his fans, out of fear that a Hezbollah spy for Israel would assassinate him.

But one point he made that I didn't see in the English reports that is worth mentioning.

Last month, President Trump met with Lebanese prime minister Hariri where he praised Lebanon's role in the fight against terror. Trump said, "The Prime Minister and I have just concluded an extensive conversation about the challenges and opportunities facing Lebanon and its neighbors. Lebanon is on the front lines in the fight against ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Hizballah. "

Nasrallah said, "The words of Trump that his country and Lebanon are partners in the war on terror reflects his political ignorance because Hezbollah is a partner of the [Lebanese] government."

In this case, Nasrallah is correct. To claim that Lebanon is fighting against Hezbollah is indeed ignorant - the Lebanese army ignores and even sometimes partners with the more powerful Hezbollah in the south.

Hezbollah is part of Lebanon's government and has complete military control over a significant part of the country, with not a word of dissent from the Lebanese government. Nasrallah has veto power over any Lebanese government initiative.

Trump's words indeed were naive. the Lebanese government as it stands now is part of the problem, not the solution.

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George Soros Invests in Occupied Terrtories

I received this press release from the Kohelet Policy Forum:

Memo: Geroge Soros’s Investments in Occupied Territories

San Leon Energy, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is an oil and gas exploration company with assets and operations in Albania, France, Ireland, Nigeria, Poland, Spain, and Morocco.

As part of its Morocco operations, San Leon drills in Western Sahara. In 2015, the company reported finding gas in its Laayoune-4 well, and announced that it would be applying, in conjunction with Morocco’s Office National des Hydrocarbures et des Mines (ONHYM), for a new eight-year license to continue exploration. When asked about the company’s operations in Western Sahara, San Leon’s lawyer, Daniel Martin, said the company has not talked with the Saharawis since they are “not a representative people.”

George Soros’s investment management companies have held significant shares in San Leon at least since 2010 and till 2016 (latest full Annual Report). Quantum Partners LP is “a private investment fund that’s operated by Soros Fund Management. ”

Since 2011, when it managed USD 24.5 billion , Quantum is Soros’s family private wealth management fund . In 2011, Quantum Partners LP, was the single largest significant shareholder of San Leon energy with 19% of companies shares. In mid-2015, Quantum Partners LP held 8.52% of San Leon , and a year later in 2016, 3.5% .

It is clear that Soros Fund Management were completely aware of San Leon’s massive Western Sahara business activity from the very start. San Leon never hid its Western Sahara business. Further, as early as in 2010, San Leon’s extraction preparations and construction at its Western Sahara sites were completely public .

So when Soros, through his donations to the New Israel Fund and J-Street, makes it clear that he is against any activities in what he considers occupied territories, that doesn't apply to his activity in any other occupied territories.

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If you oppose some of David Duke's antisemitism, you can't support the rest (poster) (update)

Leftists are rightly up in arms over David Duke's appearance at the neo-Nazi, white nationalist rally in Charlottesville.

But they are strangely silent when he shows his support for BDS and for Roger Waters.

If you are going to denounce Jew-hatred, you don't get to pick and choose. And if you do, it shows that you are using antisemitism to make a political point, and that you really don't care about antisemitism.

But we already knew that with the silence that most "progressives" have towards officially sanctioned antisemitism by Arab governments, by Palestinians, by UNRWA, and by the Left.

I was inspired by this tweet:

I was blocked by @ChemiShalev @haaretzcom for pointing out that David Duke &Co cheered Roger Waters https://t.co/1xvAt1qiDV
— Petra Marquardt-B. (@WarpedMirrorPMB) August 13, 2017

UPDATE: I was forwarded this photo of Chemi Shalev and Roger Waters, whom David Duke likes so much:

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08/13 Links: HRW Sarah Leah Whitson's Jewish Problem; Charlottesville And The Charlatan Linda Sarsour

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: Sarah Leah Whitson’s Jewish Problem Appears Again at Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch (HRW)’s long news release (“Israel: Jerusalem Palestinians Stripped of Status,” August 8, 2017) consists of a compilation of “testimonies” Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem, who are permanent residents of Israel but not citizens.
In the release, and as has been her practice for 15 years, Sarah Leah Whitson, Director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division, attacks Israel with a stream of false claims and demonization. According to Whitson, “Israel claims to treat Jerusalem as a unified city, but the reality is effectively one set of rules for Jews and another for Palestinians” (emphasis added).
The attempt to portray the situation as Jew versus Palestinian is wrong and reflects an on-going attempt by Whitson to manufacture claims of discrimination. The issue has nothing to do with religion or ethnicity. Rather, the key distinction is whether the individual is an Israeli citizen or not. As detailed in HRW’s own report, Palestinians from East Jerusalem are not citizens of Israel. Israeli citizens who live in the eastern part of the city (roughly considered to be based on the 1949-1967 cease fire lines following the Jordanian occupation), whether they are Jewish or Arab (or otherwise), have the same rights as all Israeli citizens. And notably absent from the HRW report is the basic fact that Palestinians in east Jerusalem have the option to apply for citizenship (thousands have been granted such status), but most choose not to for political reasons.
In addition, permanent residents of East Jerusalem are granted many of the same benefits as citizens including national insurance, health care, and free movement throughout Israel, etc. As in all Western countries, however, and contrary to HRW’s claims, the maintenance of residency status is not without requirements. It is also important to note that Palestinians who are permanent residents also have the right to field candidates and vote in Jerusalem’s municipal elections. (Many choose not to.) Many of the “discriminatory” policies falsely alleged by Whitson and HRW actually result from the failure of Palestinians to exercise their right to vote and elect municipal leaders who will implement their desired policy outcomes.

Anna Baltzer is back with a program to make Blacks hate Jews

Anna Piller was a pretty young woman who had a non-religious Jewish mother and gentile father and who, by her own admission, was not raised Jewish nor did she know anything about the Jewish religion. Anna dreamed of getting a job after college that would allow her to travel with a good income and a chance to be in the limelight.
Ida Piller, Anna’s grandmother, narrowly escaped the Nazis in World War II and was a big supporter of Israel who even had her art displayed permanently in Israel. Anna found that sinecure of her dreams working for Hamas and Palestinian terrorists as a “proud Jewish woman” who supports Hamas against the Jews of Israel.
Her family hid this from grandmother Ida by having Anna change her last name to Baltzer and she went on to tour colleges, law schools, churches, even synagogues accusing Israel of atrocities that did not occur and excusing Arab terrorist attacks as “resistance.”
Ida Piller died recently so Anna was able to use both the names Piller and Baltzer. Anna’s mother at first told her daughter she was “brainwashed” by the Arabs, but later decided to support Anna in her campaign of lies and anti-Semitism because, after all, Anna was acquiring money and fame. Who wouldn’t want that for a child? Never mind that she was helping to further the killing of other people’s children for fascists in Gaza.

IsraellyCool: Terrorist Rasmea Odeh Honored at Chicago Farewell Event

Last night was terrorist Rasmea Odeh’s farewell event in Chicago. If the organizers are to be believed, there were over a thousand there to pay tribute to her.
Some of the event was live-streamed on Facebook, but as usual I have gone through the footage to save you having to wade through all the filth yourself, while shining a light on the sickening lies, terror support, and general moral bankruptcy of these people.
We’ll start with “low-lights” of Angela Davis’ keynote address. Note in particular:
Claims the very real immigration fraud and terrorism charges against her were all just trumped-up
Talk of “resistance to the occupation” (i.e. terrorism)
Calling Chicago “colonized land”
Mention of other convicted murderers as heroes, including Mumia Abu-Jamal and Assata Shakur (with a parallel being drawn between Odeh and the latter)
Insinuating Trump was only elected because of racists
Mention of all kinds of racism except one kind (guess which!)
Accusing Israel of trying to assert racial domination
Imploring the crowd to follow Odeh’s example
Babies cooing during the speech. Yes, people brought their babies
Calls of Free free Palestine after the speech
Next we have Odeh herself. She is first introduced as a wonderful person and heroine by the speaker, after he also speaks of liberating all of “historical Palestine.” The cheers she gets are truly sickening.

According to an op-ed in Jordan's Ammon News, there was a Haaretz article suggesting that Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians would be better off as a single confederation.

This is about as progressive an idea as one can imagine to help Jews integrate into the Middle East.

So the reaction by this op-ed writer, Helmi Al Asmar, is instructive.

He frames this proposal this way:

The Zionist collective mind is constantly working to think of finding ways to legitimize its strange existence among us. The occupation of the usurper was and will remain in the Arab collective collective conscience an emergent tumor that will never be part of the body of this land.
The latest of the tricks that the Zionist mind creates is what Prof. Gabrielle Mucid [?] of Israel: A confederation between Palestine, Israel and Jordan, claiming that there are many reasons, political, economic, security, psychological and historical, make the solution of confederation ideal for the Arab-Israeli conflict!

The idea is of course stupid, and would result in the end of Israel.

But the Arab reaction reveals much more: the idea that Jews actually belong in the Middle East is horrifying and they will never be accepted as people who truly belong where they are actually more indigenous than most Arabs.

The writer, Helmi al Asmar, was born in the West Bank and now lives in Jordan. He is also a poet.

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