We had a handout for all the members of Congress we met - which was probably about 90% of them in total. It was a scorecard that went through a number of issues about the Iranian nuclear agreement, saying that unless every single question is answered adequately, they should vote against it.
The questions (along with lots of supporting documentation for each one) were:
a. ‘ANYTIME, ANYWHERE’ inspections regime: The final agreement calls for inspectors to determine whether Iran is complying with the agreement. Will those inspectors have the right, with minimal/no notice and no veto right to visit any site they suspect may be involved in any aspect of nuclear weapons research or production?
b. Phased lifting of sanctions: Will economic sanctions previously imposed on Iran be lifted upon signing of a final agreement or, instead, only over a period of months and years, conditioned on Iran’s compliance with the agreement, and in a way that gives Iran a continued and strong economic incentive to comply?
c. Lifting of sanctions conditioned on fully disclosing PMD (possible military dimensions of past nuclear related work) Will Iran be required to disclose all research and substantive work that it has previously done on nuclear weapons before sanctions relief?
d. Severe limits on nuclear related research & development and on use of advanced centrifuges - Will the final agreement strictly limit Iran’s ability to research, develop and acquire (a) faster and more efficient centrifuges (the machines needed to enrich uranium, the key ingredient of a nuclear weapon) and (b) any other components of a nuclear weapon?
e. Shipping of enriched uranium out of Iran - Will the final agreement definitively cut off Iran’s ability to access its stock of enriched uranium, the key ingredient of a nuclear weapon, by requiring Iran to ship that uranium out of the country?
f. Effective ‘snapback’ mechanisms - Will the final agreement ensure that any Iranian violation will be (a) swiftly identified and (b) met with rapid reimposition of sanctions so that (c) Iran is deterred from violating the agreement in the first place?
g. Sunset provisions tied to changes in Iranian behavior - The final agreement will likely provide that many of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program will lapse after 10 years, while others will lapse after 15. Will that lapse be automatic or will it be conditioned on Iran’s behavior – such as its support for terrorists and murderous regimes – having changed by the end of the given period?
h. Disposal of “extra” centrifuges - The April 2 framework agreement says that Iran will reduce its installed centrifuges from 19,000 to 6,104, with 5,060 enriching uranium for the first ten years. Will the 12,000+ centrifuges that will not be needed during the first ten years be dismantled (and, ideally, shipped out the country) or, alternatively, disabled in some other way?
i. Trade-off of permanent sanctions relief for temporary restraints - The fundamental premise of the April 2 framework, and almost certainly of any final agreement, is that Iran will get (what is very likely to be) permanent relief from the most crippling sanctions in exchange for temporary restraints in its nuclear behavior, while leaving all major elements of its nuclear infrastructure intact. Is that a sound trade-off?
My group's first meeting was with a Democrat who was very pro-Israel but also very pro-Obama. He had strongly supported Pillar of Defense, for example.
We spoke mostly to his aide (which is normally how these things go; actually speaking to the politicians does not happen as often) but he did come in and gave a monologue. He said that as long as the Iran deal will push off their nuclear weapons capability for ten years, he would sign on. He also said that he met with Bibi in 2012 and told him that he felt that he was injecting partisan politics in the US-Israel relationship; saying that he felt that Netanyahu was campaigning for Romney.
Whether it is true or not, the fact that this was his perception is something that the Israeli leadership must pay attention to.
It is easy to get people like this to support Iron Dome, for example. But to get them ti understand the problem with Iran is much harder.
The other meeting I had (our bus came late so there was only time for two meetings) was with another Southern senator's office, but he was a Republican freshman senator. The Iran issues were preaching to the choir.
In that meeting I spoke to points G, H and I to the aide, making particular note that there was only a 12 year window between President Clinton's announcement of a "good" deal with North Korea and their first atom bomb test. I said that if Iran doesn't change its behavior of supporting terror, increasing its ICBM capability and generally taking over the region, there should be no way that things should be considered perfectly OK after ten years.
I don't know how much of a difference this mission made for the Iran agreement, but it certainly didn't hurt. And when members of Congress see so many Jews coming to visit them they know that this is an issue that many people care passionately about - enough to take a day off of work to help advocate for what we feel is so important not only for Israel but for the US and the world as well.
One of the supreme ironies of those who claim Israel is "an apartheid state" can be seen from this 1997 article, by David Kaplan, recently rediscovered, which describes Israel's involvement in helping the blacks of South Africa during the apartheid era.
That it has been doing so without any fuss or fanfare may explain why so few Israelis or South Africans know about it. A closely kept secrete, the programme has been running since the dark days of Apartheid.On the day that a delegation of the South African Zionist Federation in Israel (Telfed) visited the campus, the atmosphere amongst the participants was jubilant. Met with traditional South African dance and music, the 28th group of participants was celebrating the near completion of their course with a farewell cocktail party.Among the veterans of the Beit Berl programme are over two dozen mayors of South African towns and cities including the present mayors of the country’s two largest cities, Johannesburg and Cape Town, as well as those from smaller towns like Randburg, George, and Grahamstown. To that list, we can now add Port Alfred’s mayor, Eric Khuluwe. He tells us,
“Port Alfred is growing at an enormous pace as people are streaming in from the rural areas, seeking employment. The job situation is bleak and we are finding it an uphill battle to provide basic civic services. We have sixty-one local councils in my district and we need to involve as many people on the local level as possible in decision-making. This is the policy of the ANC government and is indicative of the nature of our democracy that empowers people to determine their own destiny. The Beit Berel three-week intensive course was excellent; it widened my horizons and provided practical guidance on team-management. I feel far better equipped to return to my city now and impact on its future. “
Since 1986,over twenty South African Members of Parliament, as well as hundreds of local government officials and ministers of provincial councils have passed through Beit Berel. Patrick Adams, a Coloured man in charge of Emergency & Disaster Management for the Cape Metropolitan Council in Cape Town, says,
“The course was very professional. I am in charge of Reconstruction & Development programmes in the Western Cape region, and my team is currently immersed in running numerous housing and community projects. Not only have I learned a new dimension of problem solving, but I have also been exposed to the problems in Israel and enjoy a greater understanding of the issues here.”
What seems routine today all began in the undercover world of the early 80s when clandestine contacts took place between progressive Israelis and the anti-apartheid forces in South Africa. The local powerhouse behind this project is Professor Shimshon Zelniker, who has masterfully manoeuvered between South Africans, Americans and Israelis, a fascinating amalgam of colourful characters including Hollywood stars, Jewish politicos, civil rights activists, freedom fighters and donors.Zeinicker, a professor of political science at Beit Berel and at UCLA, was a member of Shimon Peres’ advisory team in 1982.
“I was given responsibility for third-world policies, and my first mission was making positive contact with leaders of the struggle in South Africa”
The players in this unfolding theatre of clandestine operations spread across three continents. In South Africa, Clive Menell of Anglovaal paved the way by bringing on board Archbishop Benjamin Tutu. Soon other internationally renown personalities like Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden joined the circle, as did Ethel Kennedy, who twisted Tutu’s arm into meeting with the Israelis.This was the turning point, for what followed was a secret meeting in South Africa between a delegation of Israelis representing anti-apartheid sentiment and prominent Blacks, such as Albertina Sisulu and Ntatho and Sally Motlana.
“We came out of the meeting with a clear mandate for action. Armed with an understanding that there would be no political manifestos and no pictures of politicians kissing each other, but a programme geared solely to assisting in the struggle, we approached Jews in the United States for support. In Israel, Yossi Beilin, Alon Liel, Ruth Baron and myself, among others, spearheaded the programme to be called the Israeli and South African Centres for International Cooperation” (ICIC) and would be based at Beit Berel."
CLANDESTINE RECRUITMENT
The early days saw us
“pounding the pavements in South Africa for some twenty months recruiting support and participants. The success of the operation was predicated on our ability to keep it under wraps.”
Asked how that was possible, Zelniker replied, “You know how porcupines makes love? Very carefully”.
The first group of twenty arrived in 1986 representing three constituencies – Soweto, the Cape Coloured community and Women’s groups.
“We brought in the Histadrut to help in the initial training,” said Zelniker. “After the success of that first group, it was easier to obtain more funding. We approached very prominent, radically anti-Israel, Black leaders in the U.S. and received their blessing. Individual Jews donated large sums of money in the full knowledge that they would receive no recognition, and the American Government very quietly also assisted us in funding.”
Zelniker’s shuttling to and fro between Israel and South Africa was not without risk.
“My associate Ruth Baron was also detained. There were many ways the South African Authorities could have derailed the programme and they made it crystal clear that physical intimidation could be escalated. We were worried about the graduates being whisked away on their return from Israel for interrogation and intimidation, which on occasion did happen.”
Despite all the harassment, including infiltration by the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS), the programme flourished.At one point in the late 1980s, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times bumped into a group of Black trainees in Tel Aviv. He thought he had uncovered the scoop of the century – ANC and AZAPO forge secret ties with Apartheid’s ‘ally’!
“He telephoned me and said,‘this is sensational. What’s it all about?” When I explained to him the need for secrecy I thankfully managed to persuade him that the programme and South Africa’s future were far more important than his ego. He dropped the story.”
It was only a year or so after Mandela’s release that the programme’s profile entered the public domain.
“In 1993 we introduced a rural community development programme in the former homelands, and it was then that we came out into the open,” reveals Zelniker.
Today the programme has wide appeal throughout South Africa. Another participant in the present programme is Thabisile Msezane from Boksburg, who runs a day care-centre. Thabasile explains, “In the Boksburg area there were no schools and children loitered aimlessly in the streets wasting away their lives. Each day I noticed a little boy roaming around the shopping centre where I bought milk. He would ask me for money to buy food. I thought,
“What kind of future does this child have?”As I was starting a day care centre, I wanted to enroll this kid and so went in search of his parents. I was directed to a shabby compound behind a farmhouse, where I found his them. While speaking to the boy’s father, the child spread the word amongst his friends telling them he was going to school. By the end of my conversation, I had enrolled another twelve children. Today I have 150 pupils, some of whom walk a distance of twelve kilometres to get to the school.”
Trevor Ngwame, a councillor from Johannesburg, was all praise for the Beit Berel programme.
“We are dealing with the legacy of apartheid – no jobs, lack of housing and poor education. My approach is to offer people hope, and motivate them to organize themselves. We have seen how successful Israelis have been in overcoming insurmountable odds.Like South Africa, this country has never been short of problems and yet it manages to advance amazingly. This is what we want to do. Of course, Israel’s problems are very different, and in the South African context we have to ensure that people see a light at the end of the tunnel. I am not naïve to believe that matters are going to fall into place overnight. While the government must deliver the goods, the people also have to rise up to the challenge and they need the tools to it. This programme has been a tremendous help in this regard.
Zelniker concludes, “As a Jew I have learnt that liberation is not simply about taking the people out of the ghetto. It means taking the ghetto out of the people. To say that I am proud of this programme would be an understatement.”
From Ian:
PMW: PA honors 3 terrorists who lynched two Israeli reservists
Last week, Palestinian Authority Member of Parliament and Director of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake visited the families of three of the terrorists who took part in the lynching and murder of two Israeli reservists in 2000. Karake honored these murderers by giving their families "plaques of honor." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 9, 2015]
Karake has stated that Palestinians have an unequivocal right to "resistance" and "struggle" - PA euphemisms for violence against Israel. He calls the murderers of Israelis "heroes."
On Oct. 12, 2000, a Palestinian mob brutally murdered and mutilated the bodies of two Israeli reservists who had accidentally entered Ramallah. A well-known picture from the gruesome murder showed a Palestinian raising his bloodied hands heroically, showing the crowd his hands covered in the blood of his victims. The bodies of the two Israelis were thrown out of the window, and the mob dragged them through the streets of Ramallah. (Photo credit: Agence France Presse)
Israeli aid to Nepal covered for baby trafficking, Spanish-language TV claims
Israel used its humanitarian aid mission to Nepal as a cover for trafficking 25 Nepalese babies, two Spanish-language networks reported.
Iranian HispanTV and Venezuela’s Telesur networks broadcast the reports. Telesur is the national public television channel in Venezuela, which is rebroadcast throughout Latin America on other public television networks.
HispanTV broadcast the original report, which quotes an unnamed NGO as stating that “Israel uses humanitarian help as a cover for trafficking of 25 babies in Nepal.” Telesur picked up the report last week.
The report stated, correctly, that of the 25 babies that were taken to Israel, “15 of them were born through Tammuz, an Israeli surrogacy company which provides services to Israeli couples unable to bear children, particularly homosexual couples.” The other babies also reportedly were born to surrogate mothers for Israeli parents.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the report.
“The ‘Tehran-Caracas axis’ even perverts humanitarian aid to victims of natural disasters such as the Nepal earthquake, just as they had accused the Israeli medical mission of harvesting body parts in the Haiti catastrophe,” said Dr. Shimon Samuels, director for International Relations of the Wiesenthal Center. “Through these Spanish-language television satellites, Iran foments anti-Semitism across the Americas, just as it sponsors global terrorism, slanders the Holocaust and pursues its nuclear program.
Radical Offshoot of Human Rights Watch Sends Strike Team to Nepal to Assassinate Victims Saved by Israel (satire)
After Human Rights Watch’s head Kenneth Roth tweeted condemnation of Israel for constructing a 60 bed field hospital in Nepal, sources tell The Israeli Daily (TID) that a radical offshoot of the organization called ‘No Jewish Human Rights Watch’ has dispatched a strike team to hunt down those Nepalese who accepted Israel’s offer of life saving assistance.
“Defending human rights requires shedding blood,” wrote NJHRC’s leader, Sub Commander Fred. “Usually that’s Jewish blood, so nobody really cares, but this situation requires more direct action. We must make an example of those selfish Nepalese traitors who chose Zionist aid over death.”
While Roth did not defend NJHRC’s tactics, he understood their passion. “For some, it just isn’t enough that we focus so much of our attention on the tiny Jewish State, even while hundreds of thousands of Syrians are murdered and Iran jails reporters brave enough to criticize their regime. But could we focus even more on Israel? Probably. Fred’s methods may be wrong, but his heart is always in the right place.”
This is the first time NJHRC has threatened direction violent action. Israeli security officer, Major Chaim Shitz, however, voiced no concern. “Once those guys realize that they can’t get a soy latte in Nepal, we’re pretty sure they’ll scurry back to Berkeley.”
UK Election Results: Another Term for Israel-Friendly Conservative Government
Like the British electorate at large, British Jews likely overwhelmingly supported the Conservative Party, fulfilling the predictions of just one of many British election polls prior to May 7. The poll, conducted by London’s Jewish Chronicle newspaper last month, showed that 69 percent of Jewish voters planned to support the Conservative Party, compared to 22 percent for Labour.
While Miliband’s Jewish background might have created a sense of affinity for some Jewish voters, Miliband has also been heavily criticized for Labour’s stances on Israel, including introducing non-binding legislation last year calling on the U.K. to recognize Palestinian statehood. The British parliament then voted symbolically, 274-12, in favor of requesting that the U.K. recognize a unilaterally established Palestinian state. Miliband also said he would support the recognition of a Palestinian state.
“Ed Miliband is not generally felt to be a reliable supporter of Israel by Jewish British voters we (the Anglo-Jewish Association) have spoken to. In contrast, the Conservatives have been solid supporters of Israel, though not blindly,” Jonathan Walker, president of the U.K.-based Anglo-Jewish Association, recently told JNS.org.
In addition, some Jewish voters have felt that Miliband has not expressed himself as forcefully as Cameron on the issue of rising antisemitism in Britain, nor acknowledged the connection between antisemitism and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel—which Cameron, by contrast, has done.
Ex-MP George Galloway to challenge election results
Former MP George Galloway, leader of Britain’s left-wing socialist Respect party, is to challenge his defeat in Thursday’s election, which saw him lose his seat in parliament.
In a brief address on Sunday, Galloway claimed that there had been “widespread malpractice” in postal voting, which meant that the results must be “set aside.” Galloway lost to Labour’s candidate by the large margin of some 11,000 votes.
He also disputed a statement made on an Urdu-language television show that his opponent in the elections, Naz Shah, had been forcibly married to her cousin at the age of 15, claiming that he had obtained a marriage certificate from Pakistan showing that Shah had been married at 16.
“This is pathetic and without any foundation,” a Labour spokesman said of Galloway’s intent to challenge the election results. “George Galloway should accept he was booted out by the people of Bradford West. They saw through his divisive politics and made a positive choice, by a majority of well over 11,000, to elect a brilliant new MP, Naz Shah.”
Iran is Lying, and We Know It
The most frustrating part for a rational observer of the P5+1 negotiations with Iran is this: There is little doubt that Iran is lying, and will continue to lie, but that doesn’t seem to matter to those negotiating with it.
Rather than cause Tehran to capitulate by ratcheting up the pressure, the White House and its negotiating partners first eased the sanctions that had been compelling Tehran to negotiate and then effectively tabled the military option. Since then, they have made a seemingly unending catalog of tangible and irreversible concessions, to which the Iranians have responded with increased hostility. Yet, still the talks go on.
Last month, in just a week’s time, the P5+1 reportedly relented on three key demands: that Iran must come clean on its past nuclear-weapons work, that it must dismantle its plutonium-production plant, and that it must cease its uranium-enrichment activities. Not only has the White House folded on these important criteria, it is also employing an array of experts to cook up more schemes to keep the talks alive. The White House has signaled added flexibility by moving to offer sanctions relief immediately after a deal is signed, rather than waiting until Iran meets its obligations.
What the Persian Gulf states want: Iran kept at bay
This week, President Obama will gather kings, emirs and sheiks from the oil-rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf at Camp David for a summit aimed at bolstering the U.S. alliance with their Sunni Muslim government.
It's an uncomfortable marriage of convenience, and both sides know it.
For decades, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim sheikdoms made a rough bargain with the United States: They provided a reliable supply of oil, and we provided weapons and troops to defend them. More recently, once the monarchs realized that Islamist terrorism was a threat to them as well as us, we also collaborated against Al Qaeda.
But these alliances have been fraying, mostly because of diverging views on Iran, the Arab states' historic rival, ruled by Shiite Muslims.
To Saudi Arabia and most of the other Sunni monarchies, Iran is the root of all evil. Saudi Arabia's late King Abdullah urged both President George W. Bush and Obama to launch a military attack on Iran to “cut off the head of the snake,” the king said.
Obama plans in tatters as Saudi king, most Gulf leaders to skip summit
It is not just the Saudi king who will be skipping this week’s Camp David summit of US and allied Arab leaders. Most Gulf heads of state won’t be there.
US President Barack Obama had invited six Gulf kings, emirs and sultans to the presidential retreat at Camp David, seeking to shore up wavering trust while Washington negotiates with regional power Tehran. Obama’s plans now lie in tatters, with only two heads of state slated to attend the Thursday meeting.
The absences will put a damper on talks that are designed to reassure key Arab allies, and almost certainly reflect dissatisfaction among leaders of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council with Washington’s handling of Iran and what they expect to get out of the meeting.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir announced late on Sunday that newly installed King Salman will not be attending. The ostensible reason was because the upcoming summit on Thursday coincides with a humanitarian ceasefire in the conflict in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting Shiite rebels known as Houthis.
Why the Snub? Saudis Know Obama’s Replaced Them With Iran
If the Obama administration thought it’s half-hearted efforts to make up with Saudi Arabia and other Arab states outraged by its Iran policies, it’s got another thing coming. On Sunday, the Saudis told the White House that King Salman would not be attending meetings there or at Camp David this week. Later, Bahrain said its King Hamad would skip the same meeting. The snubs are as pointed as President Obama’s recent signals that he has no intention of meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu anytime soon. But while the president has little interest in patching things up with America’s sole democratic ally in the Middle East, he was quite interested in making nice with the Saudi monarch. But the Saudis and Bahrain, like the Israelis, are deeply concerned by the U.S. effort to create a new détente with Iran. It’s not just that Salman apparently has better things to do than to schmooze with Obama. The president may have thought he could essentially replace the Saudis with Iran as the lynchpin of a new Middle East strategic vision without paying a price. But the Saudis understandably want no part of this. The result will be a region made even more dangerous by the Arabs, as well as the Israelis, coming to the realization that they can’t rely on Washington.
The conceit of Obama’s strategy rests on more than a weak deal that he hopes will be enough to postpone the question of an Iranian bomb even as it essentially anoints Tehran as a threshold nuclear power. Rather it is predicated on the notion that once Iran is allowed to, in the president’s phrase, “get right with the world” and reintegrated into the global economy, it can be counted on to keep peace in a region from which Obama wants to withdraw.
Beinart Hosts ‘Future of US-Iran Relations’ Debate in NYC
On Tuesday, May 12, Peter Beinart, author of The Crisis of Zionism, will facilitate a panel called “The Future of US-Iran Relations” at The Graduate Center at CUNY, where he’s an associate professor. Beinart will host “two experts with decidedly different perspectives:” Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and Trita Parsi, who heads the National Iranian American Council.
Here are links to three recent articles that discuss the context of the proposed nuclear agreement between the U.S. and Iran, written by each speaker:
Beinart in The Atlantic: The Real Achievement of the Iran Nuclear Deal
I think the details [of the nuclear deal framework] are far, far better than the alternative—which was a collapse of the diplomatic process, a collapse of international sanctions as Russia and China went back to business as usual with Tehran, and a collapse of the world’s ability to send inspectors into Iran. But ultimately, the details aren’t what matters. What matters is the potential end of America’s 36-year-long cold war with Iran.
For the United States, ending that cold war could bring three enormous benefits. First, it could reduce American dependence on Saudi Arabia. First, it could reduce American dependence on Saudi Arabia… What George W. Bush failed to achieve militarily, Barack Obama may now be achieving diplomatically.
MEMRI: Lebanese Journalist: Arabs Must Confront Iran's Powerful Lobby In U.S.
In a May 5, 2015 opinion piece in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat titled "The Threat of A Well-Oiled Iranian Lobby", the paper's managing editor, 'Eyad Abu Shakra, stated that today it is very important to build an effective Arab lobby in the U.S. This, because the Arabs are facing an increasingly ruthless media onslaught – not by the Israeli lobby but by the Iranian one.Iran, he says, has established a sophisticated lobby in the United States that can appeal to numerous segments of elite opinion – from business circles to those concerned with the suffering of the Iranian people under the sanctions regime – and is increasingly penetrating the mainstream media. He adds that this lobby paints itself as representing the Iranian people, though it is actually an arm of the regime. Having grown skillful and confident, it obscures Iran's expansionist ambitions and harmful interference in the region, and has even managed to plant the idea that terror is a purely Sunni phenomenon of which Iran is completely innocent.This is a challenge, he concludes, that the Arabs cannot afford to underestimate.
Iran claims its warships ‘shooed’ US, French forces in Gulf of Aden
Iran claimed Sunday that its warships had “shooed away” American and French military forces in the Gulf of Aden.
US and French “reconnaissance planes, helicopters and warships approached the Iranian warships in a provocative move” on Saturday night, the semi-official FARS news agency reported. “The vessels and aircraft then received a warning from Iranian Destroyer ‘Alborz,’ apologized and rapidly changed direction.”
The agency said the same thing happened last Monday, when “a US warship and military planes changed their direction as they were patrolling in the Gulf of Aden after they came close to an Iranian naval fleet and were warned to move away.”
The report said the Iranian Navy’s 34th fleet, comprising the Alborz destroyer and Bushehr helicopter-carrier warship, is conducting three months of “anti-piracy patrols” in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. It quoted the flotilla’s commander, Mostafa Tajeddini, saying, “Checking foreign warships in the international waters and surveillance of potential threats to Iran’s national interests is our essential responsibility.”
Israel and Germany sign deal for ships to guard gas rigs
Israel agreed Monday to purchase four warships from Germany to protect its offshore natural-gas drilling platforms, in a €430 million ($480 million) deal.
The deal was signed by Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who is in Israel to mark 50 years of diplomatic relations between the countries.
Defense Ministry Director General Maj. Gen. (Res.) Dan Harel called the nearly $480 million deal “a dramatic leap upward in the navy’s ability to protect the State of Israel’s strategic natural gas sites.”
Under the contract, Germany will provide four advanced Sa’ar-class corvettes to the Israeli navy, to be delivered over the next five years, and will finance approximately one-third of the cost of the deal with a special grant of €115 million.
According to the Hebrew-language news site Ynet, once the vessels are delivered, they will be fitted with Israeli-made weapons systems in a process that will take about a year.
Strong Israeli Presence at Oil and Gas Conference in Texas
The largest oil and gas conference in the world, known as the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), was held in Texas last week – and 14 Israeli companies were present during the three-day event. Founded in 1969, the OTC serves as a major platform for the development of hydrocarbon resources in the area of drilling, environmental protection, exploration, production development, technology, and innovation.
Israel’s Economic Mission to the Southern United States brought the Israeli companies to exhibit innovative technologies at the conference, including Amiad Water Systems Ltd., BERMAD, HARBO Technologies, Strauss & Co., PCT- Protective Cooling Technology, among others.
In addition to the Israeli companies, this year’s conference featured 2,682 companies from 37 countries. More than 90,000 visitors attended from across the world.
IDF Commander: Hamas Transformed the Gazan Civilian Sector Into War Zone
Speaking last week at the International Ground Forces Ceremony in Latrun, IDF Col. Uri Gordin — who commanded the Nahal Brigade during Operation Protective Edge last summer — discussed the differences between how Israel and Hamas treat their civilians.
He said Israel “aims to protect its civilian population. The Israeli fighter endangers himself to protect civilians.” By contrast, Hamas “was not trying to stop us, but wanted us to harm civilians… This way, it can negatively impact Israel’s legitimacy to act against it.”
Another of Hamas’ goals was to “obtain victory photos. One particular way was to kidnap soldiers. In such a situation, the fear of having a soldier kidnapped made us act differently.”
The asymmetry between Hamas and Israel was not only tactical, he said, but also moral.
Gordin said, “there is also a difference in values between us and Hamas. The commitment of the commanders is one aspect of it.” He said Hamas commanders would flee after the IDF inflicted casualties on their fighters.
19-year-old stabbed in West Bank in suspected terrorist attack
A spokesman for Magen David Adom emergency medical services Monday said that a 19-year-old man was stabbed in Mishor Adumim, a neighborhood located near a West Bank settlement.
Paramedics arrived at the scene and provided medical treatment before evacuating the victim to nearby Shaare Zedek Medical Center, who was reported to be in moderate condition.
The attack was carried out by an Arab-Israeli resident of Jerusalem. Eyewitnesses claimed that the attacker ran towards bystanders at a hitchhiking spot and stabbed the 19-year-old in the back.
Police suspect the attack was motivated by nationalist sentiments. Israeli security forces have opened an investigation into the incident.
IDF indicts 3 Palestinian minors for alleged attempted gassing of bus, stabbing of soldier
The IDF announced on Sunday that its West Bank Prosecutor’s arm has filed an indictment with the Samaria Military Court against three Palestinians minors, all 17-years-old, for the attempted gassing of a bus and crimes related to the alleged stabbing of a soldier on April 2.
The three Palestinians initially planned to illegally cross the border into Israel and perpetrate a terrorist attack against a bus of civilians, said the IDF statement.
They allegedly acquired four knives, each of which was 20 centimeters long, two gas masks and Strychnine poison to try to gas passengers on a bus.
Further, they intended to stab the passengers while they were being gassed, and would then be “martyred” themselves, according to the statement.
All three participated in various preparatory and surveillance activities, but one of the three at the last moment, reneged on the terrorist attack, noted the statement, which led to him being charged merely for conspiracy to commit murder.
Soon: Armed IDF Soldier on Every Judea and Samaria Bus
Local authority heads in Judea and Samaria met Sunday with IDF Central Command head Roni Numa. The authority heads discussed a number of security issues that have been plaguing their communities.
Among the biggest problems is a lack of control at checkpoints in Judea and Samaria. Because of the laxity of enforcement at some checkpoints, Arabs who are not authorized to enter Area C are not prevented from driving on roads under Israeli civilian and military control. While the majority of these Arabs are simply trying to get to work or home, the officials fear that terrorists will take advantage of the situation to attack Israelis.
In addition, the officials said, there was a major problem with bus transportation with Arabs who have work permits to enter Israeli cities. Many Jewish passengers complain of harassment and intimidation on buses, with a large proportion of the passengers – many of them women and children – afraid to complain, and unable to get assistance from bus drivers.
Numah told the local authority heads that he planned to place a soldier on each bus traveling in Judea and Samaria in order to prevent such intimidation.
Rearrested Terrorist to Serve 20 Years in Prison
A military committee dealing with terrorists who were freed in the Gilad Shalit deal and later re-arrested determined on Sunday that Samer Issawi, a terrorist prisoner who went on a hunger strike in order to pressure Israel to release him, will be sent to 20 years in prison.
Issawi was first arrested in 2002 on terror charges and sentenced to 26 years for terrorist activity. He was released in the Shalit deal in October 2011, but rearrested in July of 2012 for violating the terms of the release agreement.
Once in jail, Issawi began an on and off hunger strike which lasted for more than eight months before he signed a deal with Israel which saw him released in December of 2013.
However, last June Issawi was rearrested and on Sunday, the military prosecutor told the committee that since his release, Issawi had resumed “full terrorist activities”.
Analysis: As Abbas Era Hits 10 Years, Palestinians Mired in Political and Economic Muck
May 8 marks what many consider an unceremonious 10-year anniversary of Mahmoud Abbas becoming the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), though his official term has been expired for more than six of those years. Since Abbas took over for Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004, the political and economic situation in the West Bank has become as untenable as ever. With no clear successor to Abbas in the fold and reports of rampant corruption, nepotism, and cronyism, the PA faces an uncertain future.
“The state of affairs in the PA right now is paralysis,” Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank, told JNS.org. “Abbas has a stranglehold on political power, and he appears to be intent on remaining in office for the foreseeable future. There is no vice president. There is no succession plan, and there is no oxygen for political challengers to articulate their vision for the future.”
Established by the Oslo Accords peace treaty in 1993 as an interim Palestinian government, the PA—which has been dominated by the Fatah political party and its parent organization, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), throughout its existence—has languished in political and economic limbo for the last several years under Abbas. Peace talks with Israel from 2013-14 crashed, and the Hamas terrorist group continues to grow its popularity among Palestinians.
Under Abbas, the PA has not held formal elections since 2006 and only maintains control in the West Bank after being ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007. Abbas has had a tenuous relationship with Israel, maintaining close security ties with the Jewish state out of a shared fear of Hamas, but also seeing Israel repeatedly cut off tax transfers to the PA, mostly recently due to Abbas’s moves to gain unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state in international agencies.
PreOccupied Territory: Abbas Issues Peace Terms: Heads We Win, Tails You Lose (satire)
In an attempt to break an impasse of more than a year in Israeli-Palestinian final status talks, Palestinian Authority President and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas departed from precedent and proposed his own settlement, under which the two sides would flip a coin to determine who must make concessions on a given point of contention. Under the terms, if the coin comes up heads, the Palestinian side wins, and Israel must make a concession, whereas if it comes up tails, the Israeli side loses, and the Palestinians may extract a concession from them.
Israel and the PLO remain far apart on such troublesome issues as a right of return for the descendants of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 conflict; the status of Jerusalem, especially the eastern section; the fate of existing Jewish settlements in what would eventually become the State of Palestine; borders; territorial contiguity; and the extent to which the emerging Palestinian state would have a military.
Under Abbas’s proposed negotiation framework, each of the aforementioned sticking points would be subject to a coin-toss, instead of the protracted, inconclusive, and acrimonious negotiations that have characterized Israeli-Palestinian talks for the last several years – when they have taken place at all. Negotiators for the two sides have not met in more than a year, with each blaming the other for the breakdown and continued intransigence.
The advantage of the coin-toss format, says expert Nathan Detroit, is that it offers a shortcut and a way to save face. “Once negotiators have staked out a position on something, softening or abandoning that position is basically an invitation to the opponent to make further demands, since it smacks of weakness. Abbas’s heads-we-win-tails-you-lose format has an element of genius in it, in that it allows the negotiators to blame the coin and not come off as having given away too much in an attempt to reach agreement.”
Palestinians seek ban on Israel at world soccer body
The Palestinian Soccer Association vowed Sunday to push ahead with efforts to have Israel suspended from FIFA following joint talks with the world soccer body’s president Sepp Blatter in Zurich.
But both sides agreed to continue talking with Blatter, who announced plans to visit the region for top-level talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the issue ahead of the upcoming FIFA Congress in Zurich on May 28-29.
News of the visit was announced by Blatter on Sunday as he met with Israel Soccer Association chief Ofer Eini and his Palestinian counterpart, Jibril Rajoub.
FIFA said the main purpose of the meeting was to discuss the Palestinian FA’s request to suspend their Israeli counterparts at the upcoming FIFA congress.
But the Palestinians said there had been no progress at the meeting, adding they would not be deterred from efforts to have Israel suspended.
Hamas Jails Gaza Man for 'Spying for Israel'
A military court in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Monday jailed a Palestinian convicted of "spying" for Israel to 15 years, judicial sources said.
In March two other men were given the same sentence for the same offence.
Under Hamas and Palestinian Authority law, those convicted of "collaboration" with Israel, murder and drug trafficking face the death penalty.
Execution orders must be approved by the Palestinian Authority president before they can be carried out, but Hamas no longer recognizes the legitimacy of Mahmoud Abbas whose four-year term ended in 2009.
Hamas Denies ISIS Has Presence in Gaza
Khalil al-Haya, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, on Sunday denied reports of the presence of a branch of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Gaza.
His denial comes despite threats by a Salafist group in Gaza that is affiliated with ISIS to kill Hamas members “one by one” in retaliation for the arrests of its members.
Last Friday, those threats appeared to be edging to fruition, after an ISIS-affiliate in the Sinai Peninsula claimed it launched two "bombs" at Hamas posts in Gaza.
Speaking with the Palestine newspaper on Sunday, al-Haya claimed that the Hamas-controlled authorities in Gaza will not allow any entity to harm the security of the region and that anyone who violates the law will be severely punished.
"Hamas is not deterred by threats of any kind by ISIS or Israel," said al-Haya, who accused the Fatah organization and the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, of deliberately inflating reports of ISIS presence in Gaza.
Egyptian youths face trial for 'insulting Islam' by making fun of ISIS
Four Egyptian kids who dared make fun of ISIS in a harmless video are headed for trial along with their teacher on charges of "insulting Islam," after their Muslim neighbors got hold of the footage and went to police.
Aged between 15 and 16, the youths could face up to five years in a youth detention center – while the teacher would serve any sentence he receives in prison – if the court finds them guilty of violating Egypt’s blasphemy law, Egypt-focused activists say.
Egyptian Christian and civil rights groups are leading calls for their release, but the five – members of the Coptic community that descends from the non-Arab people whose Pharaohs ruled ancient Egypt – have already spent weeks in police holding cells.
“They are some kids who decided to have fun in a private place,” Mina Thabet, a Coptic activist and researcher at the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, told FoxNews.com from Cairo.
Denying Reports of Heavy Losses, Hezbollah Claims Seizure of Syria Border Zone
Hezbollah’s media arm claimed on Saturday that the group along with Syrian troops had pushed out rebel fighters from a critical buffer near the Syrian-Lebanese border, but the reported repulse appears to have come at a high cost for the Lebanese terror group.
Opposition fighters in Syria said that Marwan Mughniyeh, a senior commander whose cousin Imad Mughniyeh was reportedly killed by Israel in 2008, was killed in fierce clashes between Hezbollah and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Syrian opposition groups.
While Hezbollah neither confirmed nor denied Mughniyeh’s death, the group refuted rebel claims that it had sustained major losses — some reports said up to 60 fighters. It said only three of its fighters had been killed.
Reports of Mughniyeh’s death came amid an extended campaign in the Qalamoun mountain region, just northeast of Lebanon in Syria, by Hezbollah and Assad’s troops to drive opposition forces from the area.
'Assad puts intelligence chief under house arrest for planning coup'
Syrian President Bashar Assad has placed his top intelligence official under house arrest for allegedly conspiring with the regime’s enemies to carry out a coup, the British daily Telegraph reported on Monday.
Ali Mamlouk, who heads the National Security Bureau, was reportedly detained after he was suspected of maintaining contact with governments backing the Syrian rebels as well as oppositionists from abroad.
According to the Telegraph report, key associates of the president, including those with access to him, “are increasingly turning on each other.”
The newspaper cites sources within the presidential palace as saying that there is great dissension within the various intelligence arms, some of whose commanders are growing wary of Iran’s burgeoning influence in Damascus.
Factions within Assad's "inner circle" are weary of the role the Islamic Republic is playing in Syria's domestic conflict and how much influence their officials are amassing in Damascus, while others are in support of Iranian patronage.
Rape and Torture: Iran's Political Weapons
The rape and torture of Kurdish and dissidents in Iran -- both women and men -- is now widespread and systematic.
Most recently, on May 4, Farinaz Khosrawani, 25, a Kurdish woman employed at the Hotel Tara in Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan, plunged from a fourth-floor window of the Tara Hotel, Kurdish news media reported.
Khosrawani allegedly jumped to her death to avoid being raped by an Iranian government security agent; the circumstances surrounding her death have not yet been confirmed.
Apparently furious over Khosrawani's unexplained death, thousands of Kurds took to the streets, torching the hotel where she had worked. Police officers, according to news accounts, used tear gas to disperse the crowds.
"When Farina's body was found in front of the hotel and crowds started to gather; the government security employee involved was arrested and taken for questioning," according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN). "The news then reached social media and information regarding this issue was widespread. This has caused increased tensions and sensitivity around any news regarding confirmation of Farinaz's cause of death."
Breaking news from Fox:
A pair of social media accounts possibly linked to the Islamic State terror group posted messages referencing Sunday evening's attack on a Texas free speech event moments before it happened.
The Los Angeles Times reported that a Twitter account bearing the name "Shariah is Light" posted a message with the hashtag "texasattack" at 6:35 p.m. Central Time. The account featured an image of Anwar Awlaki, an American-born cleric killed in 2011 by a drone strike in Yemen.
Moments later, authorities say two men pulled up in a car to the Curtis Culwell Center in the Dallas suburb of Garland, Texas and opened fire. A school security guard was injured in the ankle before police officers shot and killed both suspects. The gunmen had not been identified as of Monday morning and their bodies lay next to their car while police searched for a possible incendiary device.
Authorities have not officially determined whether the shooting was linked to an event, a contest hosted by the New York-based American Freedom Defense Initiative that would award $10,000 for the best cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad.
"Shariah is Light" also tweeted a command to follow a second account, titled "AbuHussainAlBritani". That second account posted several messages referencing the shooting in Texas and appearing to link it to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
"The knives have been sharpened, soon we will come to your streets with death and slaughter!" the first message from the account read.
A second message said "Allahu Akbar!!!!! 2 of our brothers just opened fire at the Prophet Muhammad art exhibition in texas!"
“Kill Those That Insult The Prophet,” a third message said.
A final message from the account read, "They Thought They Was Safe In Texas From The Soldiers of The Islamic State."
Both accounts have been suspended by Twitter.
Breitbart adds:
Approximately twenty minutes before a shooting at an event to promote free speech in Garland, Texas, which resulted in an injured officer and two dead suspects, a radical jihadist account on Twitter posted that a person was with another individual and insinuated that he was planning to sacrifice his life to Islam’s “Allah,” using the hashtag #texasattack.
The bro with me and myself have given bay’ah to Amirul Mu’mineen. May Allah accept us as mujahideen. Make dua #texasattack
— Shariah is Light (@atawaakul) May 3, 2015
The Twitter account of the individual in question, @atawaakul, sports the username, “Shariah Is Life,” and has expressed many pro-Islamic State sentiments on its timeline. A photo of Anwar Al Awlaki, the deceased Al Qaeda master recruiter, is displayed as the Twitter user’s profile picture. On April 23, the Twitter user linked to a Breitbart News article written by Pamela Geller, who organized the “Draw Muhammad Contest” in Garland. Texas.
From Ian:
Swedish trawler leaves for Gaza in attempt to break naval blockade
A trawler left its port in Sweden to travel some 5,000 nautical miles in order to break Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The boat, named Marianne of Gothenburg and purchased jointly by Ship to Gaza Sweden and Ship to Gaza Norway, left on its journey on Sunday evening. It is the first ship in the Freedom Flotilla III to leave for Gaza, according to the website of Ship to Gaza Sweden.
The Marianne will stop at ports in Helsingborg, Malmö and Copenhagen, as well as other ports that will be announced later, according to the website.
The boat does not have room for a significant cargo, but will be carrying solar panels and medical equipment, according to the organization.
It is carrying five crew members and eight passengers. Among the passengers are: Israeli-born Swedish citizen Dror Feiler, a musician and spokesperson of Ship to Gaza; Henry Ascher, a professor of Public Health and pediatrician; Lennart Berggren, a filmmaker; Maria Svensson, pro. tem. spokesperson of the Feministiskt initiative; and Mikael Karlsson, chairperson of Ship to Gaza Sweden.
Swedish deputy PM compares migrant crisis to Holocaust, apologizes
Sweden’s deputy prime minister has apologized for comparing the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean to the horrors of the Holocaust.
In a televised party leader debate Sunday, Asa Romson deplored the desperate situation of migrants trying to make the perilous and often deadly crossing to Europe, saying “we are … turning the Mediterranean into the new Auschwitz.”
Critics, including Jewish leaders, called the comparison to the Nazi death camp misguided and offensive. About 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed in Auschwitz during World War II.
Romson, who represents the Green Party, apologized Monday on Twitter, saying “It was wrong to make the comparison with Auschwitz.”
Swedish expo on WWII White Bus rescue mission made Judenfrei
An exhibition on Sweden and Denmark’s “White Bus” operation to rescue people from concentration camps at the end of World War Two has been vandalised, officials said Saturday, with the perpetrators cutting out a large chunk of text concerning the Jews who were saved.
“They have consciously cut out the part that concerns the Jews, nothing else was touched,” Reverend Mikael Ringlander, one of the organisers, said of the attack that occurred overnight to Saturday.
“We held a ceremony in the synagogue yesterday. It must have angered someone,” he said, adding the incident has been reported to police
The weekend exhibition in Gothenburg had been staged to mark 70 years since Sweden’s Red Cross together with the Danish government in the spring of 1945 sent hundreds of buses to German-occupied territories to rescue people imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.
U.N. Watch: Predictable anti-Israel bias
The United Nations' so-called “inquiry” into last summer's fighting in Gaza predictably excoriates Israel for the deaths of 44 Palestinian civilians who sought shelter in seven U.N. schools. Yet the same report confirms that Hamas terrorists stashed weapons in some supposedly “vacant” schools.
Included with the report's summary was a letter from Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to the Security Council, “criticizing Israelis for attacking ‘inviolable' facilities of the organization in Gaza where civilians sought refuge,” The New York Times reports. And while Mr. Ban merely wrist-slapped Hamas for using U.N. facilities as rocket depots, the world body is considering whether to press Israel for reparations when it returned fire, according to The Times.
Based on the U.N.'s own findings, not only did children have access to at least one school where rockets were stored, they might have been lured to play there, according to the group U.N. Watch. And never mind the likelihood, as the report also points out, that U.N. facilities were used as sites from which to launch rockets against Israel, constituting “grave violations of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law,” according to U.N. Watch.
So instead of going after Islamofascists for drawing fire to U.N. facilities, Turtle Bay instead targets Israel for defending itself. Once again, the United Nations documents where it loyalty lies — with terrorists.
Gerald Steinberg: Publication of Israeli soldiers' accounts clouded by political agenda
By not publishing key information, the organisation is expecting readers – in Israel, but primarily abroad, including Australia, to blindly trust it and to suspect no agenda other than the documentation of valid complaints by soldiers. However, as shown by NGO Monitor's systematic research, there are also important financial dimensions. Breaking the Silence receives substantial funding from radical Europeans, who link their donations to the number of statements that are collected. The Dutch church organisation ICCO demanded at least 90 incriminating interviews, while Oxfam (which claims to promote a humanitarian agenda) linked funding directly with the provision of "as many interviews as possible" regarding "immoral activities". These arrangements highlight the clear financial interest in presenting as many negative testimonies as possible.
Indeed, the failure to examine the motivations and history of the donors to this tiny group is of major importance. These funders are involved in anti-Israel activities from Ireland, Britain and the Netherlands and have actively supported, funded and partnered with organisations promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) targeting the Jewish state. The funders are clearly interested in portraying the actions of IDF soldiers as criminal and callous, thereby hoping to pave the way for prosecutions targeting Israel at the International Criminal Court. This is an extension of the long Arab-Israeli wars by other means.
Of course no army is perfect, and some soldiers may have legitimate complaints. But as in any democratic society, this must be done through legal and administrative processes, and not by garnering headlines in the foreign media. Given the obsession with Israel, the deep hostility, and the large sums that are available, particularly to NGOs that join in this form of modern warfare, consumers of such publications, including journalists and government officials, should exercise caution and a healthy degree of skepticism.
Behind Breaking the Silence: Foreign Funding, Bounty Hunting, and Hypocrisy
On May 4 the organization which has given itself the courageous moniker of “Breaking the Silence” issued a harshly critical report about the IDF’s performance in last summer’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. It claimed indiscriminate shooting by Israeli soldiers caused the deaths of hundreds of Palestinian Arab civilians.
In the days following, that report has itself been criticized, debunked, dismantled and discredited. It’s worth understanding why.
The name of the organization issuing the scathing report, “Breaking the Silence,” suggests no one else has been willing to criticize the IDF. In reality, of course, that is the primary global discourse about the IDF.
And it is not as if IDF soldiers are uncritical of their experiences. But most of that criticism is internally directed, with the goal of actually improving conditions and procedures. BtS’s effort, in contrast, is a public relations exercise in demonizing Israel and its military apparatus.
‘Catch the Jew!’ Replete With Diverse People in an Ideological Minefield
As he travels through Palestinian towns, Tuvia learns that funding for the beautiful homes and Arab cultural centers comes from the European Union (EU), especially Germany. He visits Gerald Steinberg of the NGO Monitor research institute. Of 150 international NGOs operating in Israel, 50 are funded by Germany or German foundations, and all of them are pro-Palestinian. Tuvia wonders why these young Europeans are so dedicated to protecting the Palestinians from Israeli oppression.
Tuvia finds his answer as he follows a group of Italian youths touring the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, led by an Israeli named Itamar, “a proud ex-Jew.” The educational trip has been arranged by an Italian institution in Milano and paid for by the EU. Tuvia wonders what these Europeans will think about the “Dead Jews’ Museum.” But Itamar the educator does his best to turn the World War II story into a contemporary one, by making comparisons between then and now—that is, between yesterday’s Nazis and today’s Israelis.
Thanks to their guide, at each exhibit, the Italians see the dead Jews of the camps but hear the name “Palestine.” They watch a film of Nazi officers but hear the name Israel. As Tenenbom puts it, the Europeans are “using Yad Vashem, the monument for millions of Jews slaughtered at their hands, as a platform for poisonous propaganda against the survivors of their butchery.”
“Catch the Jew!” is filled with such realizations, small and large. It is at once a breezily written travelogue and a voyage through the political landscape, spotted with ideological landmines at every step. Even if you think you know everything there is to know about Israel, you’ll meet people you never knew existed and you’ll have fun getting to know them. But beware: in June, Tuvia told JNS.org, he will be starting his research for a new book—about the U.S.
The Latest Jewish Dilemma on Campus
Last month’s student election at Stanford included allegations of anti-Semitism by the Students of Color Coalition against Molly Horwitz – who identifies as Jewish and as a woman of color. The contentious debate that followed has drawn attention to a new dynamic facing Jewish students on college campuses across America.
Increasingly, the BDS movement is pitting Jews who support Israel against student groups that represent minority rights on campus.
The twist, as the New York Times reports, is that American Jews have traditionally been at the vanguard of progressive causes, as well as the strongest supporters or Israel.
College activists favoring divestment have cast the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a powerful force’s oppression of a displaced group, and have formed alliances with black, Latino, Asian, Native American, feminist and gay rights organizations on campus. The coalitions — which explicitly link the Palestinian cause to issues like police brutality, immigration and gay rights — have caught many longtime Jewish leaders off guard, particularly because they belonged to such progressive coalitions less than a generation ago.
And with student groups like the progressive and pro-BDS Jewish Voice for Peace emerging on numerous campuses, Jewish students are increasingly forced to choose sides in divestment debates, with Jews on both sides of the aisle.
St. George was a Palestinian.
Islam21C has him born in Cappadocia, a part of modern Turkey, into a noble Christian family in the third century, around 270 CE, some 300 years before the birth of Moḥammad. Whilst Wikipedia has him born in Lydda, Syria Palaestina (Lodd) – 23 April 280 CE.
Both agree his mother was named Polychronia, a Greek native of Lydda. His father Gerontius was a Greek Christian from Cappadocia and an official in the Roman army.
According to Wikipedia, both parents were Christians from noble families of the Anici, so their son was raised with Christian beliefs. They decided to call him Georgios (Greek), meaning “worker of the land” (i.e., farmer).
So both parents being Greek, where does the Palestinian bit fit in, given that ‘Palestinians’ are Arabs.? That is of course unless they are claiming that all Greeks are now Arabs to.!!
His actions saw him dragged through the streets of ‘Palestine’ and beheaded before Nicomedia’s city wall, on 23 April 303. His body was returned to Lydda for burial, where Christians soon came to honour him as a martyr.
Now we see some similarities here to modern day Gazans.
Sound familiar?
“Dragged through the streets of ‘Palestine’ “
“Martyr”
Now Muslim Village and Islam 21C not only change from calling him Palestinian to being a Turkish-Arab, but likely a believer in tawḥīd too.
Daniel Pipes: The Middle East is running out of water
A ranking Iranian political figure, Issa Kalantari, recently warned that past mistakes have left Iran with a water supply so insufficient that up to 70%, or 55 million of 78 million, Iranians, could be forced to abandon their native country for parts unknown.
Many facts buttress Kalantari's apocalyptic prediction: Once lauded in poetry, Lake Urmia, the Middle East's largest lake, has lost 95% of its water since 1996, dropping from 31 to just 1.5 billion cubic meters. What the Seine is to Paris, the Zayanderud was to Isfahan -- except the latter went bone-dry in 2010. Over two-thirds of Iran's cities and towns are "on the verge of a water crisis" that could result in drinking water shortages; already, thousands of villages depend on water tankers. Unprecedented dust storms disrupt economic activity and damage health.
And the Iranians are not alone. Many others in the arid Middle East may also be forced into unwanted, penurious, desperate exile. With one unique, magnificent exception, much of the Middle East is running out of water due to such maladies as population growth, short-sighted dictators, distorted economic incentives, and infrastructure-destroying warfare.
Israel provides the sole exception to this regional tale of woe. It too, as recently as the 1990s, suffered water shortages. But now, thanks to a combination of conservation, recycling, innovative agricultural techniques, and high-tech desalination, the country is awash in water (Israel's Water Authority: "We have all the water we need"). I find it particularly striking that Israel can desalinate about 17 liters of water for one U.S. cent, and that it recycles about five times more water than does second-ranked Spain.
In other words, the looming drought-driven upheaval of populations -- probably the very worst of the region's many profound problems -- can be solved, with brainpower and political maturity. Desperate neighbors might think about ending their futile state of war with the world's hydraulic superpower and instead learn from it.
Israeli water-tech flows to thirsty California
Parched California is already working with Israeli industrialists, government experts and academics on advanced water technologies and long-term strategies to lessen the effects of its severe drought.
One example is the $1 billion ocean-water desalination plant Israel’s IDE Technologies is building to provide 50 million gallons of water daily in the San Diego area starting in November.
But that’s just a trickle compared to the flood of joint projects that could get flowing in the coming dry years.
Israel’s population is 8.3 million, while California’s is 38.8 million. Yet California can implement many aspects of Israel’s holistic approach combining education, technology and water management, says Yossi Yaacoby, director of the WaTech innovation center for Mekorot, Israel’s national water-management consortium.
“We have so much we can contribute to the discussion. There are several steps we can take together to overcome the lengthening cycles drought we are expecting,” Yaacoby tells ISRAEL21c.
Combating BDS
Combating BDS requires a deep understanding of the movement, its funding, organizational architecture, and the plethora of Jewish and Muslim NGOs who fund-raise and train on its behalf, for example, the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC).
There is finally movement in the anti-BDS camp to break down some of the basic elements that need to be addressed and educate the still scattered opposition. During the past few months two conferences took place with the goal of looking at the heart of the campus – students and faculty. The StandWithUS (SWU) conference in Los Angeles focused largely on students and what they face in the fight against BDS. This is a major concern to parents and the mainstream Jewish Community, as we seek to empower and educate students on the responsibilities of free speech and the facts pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But a greater concern that often fails to receive attention are professors, who represent a permanent fixture in any university. A symposium at the University of Baltimore School of Law entitled Academic Freedom at Risk: the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement Against Israel featuring a variety of experts, including retired Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz who delivered the keynote address. With regard to faculty who rarely speak out against the BDS movement Dershowitz commented that he has “never met a less courageous group of people than tenured professors…who don’t have the guts to stand up to the loud-mouth people on the hard left who try to create an atmosphere of political correctness on our campus.”
Holland to cut stipends of Holocaust survivors living in settlements
The move was slammed on Monday by former Labor MK Colette Avital, the head of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, an umbrella agency representing 52 different groups seeking to promote the welfare of survivors.
“A European government can certainly take a position as it relates to Israel’s policies in the territories, but the conclusions in this regard need to be taken up with those who make the decisions in Israel,” Colette Avital said on Israel Radio.
“It is surprising and outrageous that the Dutch government, of all countries, chooses to impose sanctions against civilians who endured the Holocaust on its territory and who subsequently chose to move in with their children at an old age,” she said. “It is hard to accept such harassment of survivors, whose welfare should be sacrosanct in the eyes of the Dutch authorities.”
In response, the spokesperson for the Dutch Ministry dealing with the matter said that the Dutch authorities were in touch with the family involved, and that this “very unfortunate” incident “should have been prevented.”
The official said that since the woman could not have known the consequences of moving to the “occupied territories,” her pension will not be reduced.
“The Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs will soon publish a modified policy regarding pension beneficiaries in the territories occupied by Israel,” the official said.
Asked by The Jerusalem Post whether this meant that other Dutch Holocaust survivors living in the settlements will have pension benefits cut, the spokesperson responded: “The Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs will soon publish a modified policy. After publication, this new policy will be applied to new cases. The Dutch authorities cannot yet prejudge the exact provisions of this new policy.”
IsraellyCool: Our Flawed Response To The “European Colonialism” Libel
One of the most damaging stereotypes promulgated by the anti-Israel crowd is the “white European colonialism” myth. In other words, it is claimed that since the overwhelming majority of pre-1948 Jewish olim are of Ashkenazi descent (i.e. Israelite refugees who settled in Central/Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages), Israel’s rebirth is essentially a European settler colonial construct and therefore an “injustice” against the Arab population of Palestine, who are believed to be indigenous. And we all know how civilized, progressive people are supposed to treat settler colonial states: boycotts, isolation, and delegitimization. For this reason, it has become the centerpiece of contemporary antisemitic propaganda, and remains a popular slogan among those who want nothing more than to bring the Jewish state down.
But what’s even worse is our preferred method for responding to this libel. Instead of confronting it head on, we offer what amounts to little more than an evasion. What I’m referring to here is the “more than 50 percent of Israel is Sephardic and Mizrahi” counter-argument. It is ineffectual, lazy, and akin to applying bandages to axe wounds. By immediately moving the subject over to Sephardim (the majority of whom returned after Israel’s War of Independence), you are tacitly conceding to the anti-Zionists that Israel’s rebirth was, in fact, a European colonial project. And just how do you think people will respond if you tell them “Israel may have been established by thieving colonizers from Europe, but hey! Look at those Sephardim! They came from Arab countries, right? That means they’re legitimately Middle Eastern, so we can just ignore all of that earlier colonial business!”? Do you think that’s going to convince them of Israel’s legitimacy? I can almost guarantee that it won’t. At first glance, it may seem like an easy and convenient rebuttal, but it is deeply flawed and doesn’t disprove anything.
Canada May Propose Defining Boycott of Israel a ‘Hate Crime’
The pro-Israel Canadian government may be planning to include boycotts of Israel as a hate crime, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported Monday.
It said that such a move would target organizations such as the United Church of Canada, Canadian Quakers, campus protest groups and labor unions. It also would raise legal questions under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Canadian Prime Stephen Harper is unarguably the most pro-Israel head of any government in the world. He sounded like an echo of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during his visit to Israel last year.
Recently-retired Foreign Minister John Baird in January signed an agreement with Israel to fight the Boycott Israel movement, and government ministers have said they will show “zero tolerable” towards groups that are part of Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS). He described the Boycott Israel movement as “the new face of anti-Semitism.”
Anti-Israel Course is a Campus Farce
Sunday’s New York Times has a story on the campus boycott Israel movement. Toward the end, it alludes to a controversy at the University of California, Riverside. I quote the passage in full:
The disputes often spill into the academic realm. Jewish groups are urging the University of California, Riverside, to shut down a student-taught seminar called “Palestinian Voices.” They argue that the course, which is sponsored by an outspoken faculty supporter of the B.D.S. campaign and includes sessions on “Settler-Colonialism and Apartheid,” amounts to indoctrination.
Although one can understand why the reporters chose not to write more about the Riverside story, the story is worthy of further consideration. First, the faculty “sponsor” is not merely an “outspoken faculty supporter of the B.D.S. campaign.” David Lloyd, an English professor is part of the “Organizing Collective” (really?) of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He may be just an English professor. But fortunately, the person he is sponsoring to teach the course is better qualified to teach an informative and rigorous course touching on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Oh wait. Tina Matar, who will be teaching the one credit course, is actually an undergraduate, also in the English department. She is also president of Riverside’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which has spearheaded the campus boycott Israel movement nationally. Riverside has passed a divestment resolution, targeting companies alleged to profit from Israel’s activities in the West Bank. More recently, it has persuaded Riverside to stop using Sabra hummus in its dining halls. But let’s be fair. Even a fervent undergraduate partisan might somehow manage to teach a rigorous course, as worthy of one measly credit as others (undergraduate teaching is a thing at Riverside).
Al Qaeda’s Base at MIT
At the end of April, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology unveiled a permanent memorial to MIT Police Officer Sean Collier. Officer Collier was gunned down by the Boston Marathon bombers, Chechen refugees Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, three days after they blew up the Marathon.
It is painful to learn that in the late 1990s, there were students at MIT who helped recruit for the Chechen jihad and raised funds for Al Qaeda-affiliated groups operating in the Tsarnaevs’ homeland. It is even more painful that the man who led this fundraising effort was still on MIT’s staff when Officer Collier was gunned down.
Suheil Laher had been MIT’s Muslim chaplain for almost 20 years. Today he continues to preach at the Islamic Society of Boston, the extremist mosque founded by MIT students near campus, where the Tsarnaevs worshipped during their radicalization.
Americans for Peace and Tolerance have just released a mini-documentary, “Al Qaeda’s Base at MIT,” showing how MIT Muslim chaplain Suheil Laher used his leadership of the MIT Muslim Students Association as a vehicle for raising money for Al Qaeda causes around the world. We especially focus on the Al Qaeda affiliate in Chechnya, which Laher and his associates lionized, even as MIT trusted him to be its Muslim students’ spiritual guide.
The Washington Post sinks to Mondoweiss level (updated)
The usual suspects have been pulling out all of the stops to attack Israel’s new Justice Minister, MK Ayelet Shaked. Shaked has been called a racist, accused of inciting genocide, even compared to Hitler. Until recently, this kind of verbal excrement has been confined to marginal outlets like that running sewer of Jew-hatred, the Mondoweiss blog (you can google it if you wish; I don’t provide links to running sewers). But now, amidst the overall degradation of discourse about Israel and Jews, it even appears in the Washington Post.
The sewage is recycled by Post writer Ishaan Tharoor, who does link to Mondoweiss and regurgitates the slander that he finds there:
In July [2014], in a controversial post on Facebook, the then-member of the Knesset posted the text of an article by the late Israeli writer Uri Elitzur that referred to Palestinian children as “little snakes” and appeared to justify the mass punishment of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation….
Even if these aren’t Shaked’s own words, the sentiment is noteworthy, and it reflects what critics say is the Israeli nationalist right’s widespread intolerance of the Arabs in their midst, who make up one-fifth of the Israeli population.
Shaked’s Facebook post was selectively quoted at the time by a writer named Gideon Resnick, and pushed to go viral in the left-wing blogosphere by Ali Abunimah of “Electronic Intifada.” Shaked responded, (h/t NormanF)
Sick: Gaza Blogger Uses Disabled Child's Picture to Smear Israel
A Palestinian Arab blogger and "award-winning journalist" has been caught cynically using a picture of a severely disabled Palestinian child for propaganda purposes, falsely claiming his limbs were blown off by the Israeli military during last summer's conflict with Gaza.
Mohammed Omer - who started the Rafah Today blog and has written for numerous major news outlets including Al Jazeera, the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, the New Statesman, Aftonbladet and others - received the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in 2008.
The Prize is granted to journalists who "tell an unpalatable truth, validated by powerful facts."
But ironically, Omer's reporting skills have been exposed as anything but truthful after a tweet he posted Sunday, featuring a Palestinian toddler from Gaza he claims is "one of the last Gaza war victims," referring to last summer's Operation Protective Edge.
But the picture in question is of Mohammed al-Farra, a toddler from Gaza with a rare genetic disease who has been living at Israel's Tel Hashomer hospital with his grandfather after being abandoned by his parents.
Soon after being exposed, Omer removed the tweet - which had been retweeted dozens of times by then.
BBC coverage of terrorism in Israel in April 2015
A terror attack in Jerusalem’s French Hill neighbourhood on April 15th in which one person was killed and another seriously injured was not reported by the BBC.
A missile attack from the Gaza Strip on April 23rd did not receive any BBC coverage.
A stabbing incident in Hebron and a car attack in Jerusalem on April 25th were also not reported.
In other words, BBC audiences were informed of less than 2% of the total number of attacks which took place during April and the corporation’s coverage did not include the fatal attack on civilians which took place at a location less than a twenty-minute drive from the BBC’s offices in Jerusalem.
Report: Anti-Semitic vandalism spiked in Ukraine in 2014
Vyacheslav Likhachev, who monitors anti-Semitism for the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress and the Vaad, recorded 23 such incidents over the course of the year within both Ukrainian and separatist- held territory. Incidents of vandalism had held steady at nine annually since 2011, having fallen from a peak of 21 in 2006.
“Thus, even though the statistics for 2014 display significant growth in both anti-Semitic vandalism and anti-Semitic violence in comparison with previous years, the peak of the crimes remains in the mid-2000s [first decade of the century], and when taking the long perspective, the situation over the last five years seems to be relatively stable,” Likhachev explained.
Popular targets for vandals were Holocaust memorials, including Kiev’s Babi Yar. Several synagogues, in Zaporizhya, Simferopol, Mykolaiv, Kiev and Hust, also were targeted in attempted arson attacks.
According to Likhachev, the increase in the desecration of Jewish sites can be explained by the fact that “symbolic violence has now been legitimized in Ukrainian society,” with a significant percentage of Ukrainians approving of the destruction of statues of Lenin and other Russian and communist symbols.
Vandals destroy monument to Polish Jews killed in Holocaust
An act of vandalism destroyed a monument commemorating a Polish Jewish community.
Police are investigating last week’s incident at the Jewish cemetery in Rajgrod, a town of some 1,700 in northeastern Poland. The cemetery does not have security monitoring.
The monument was unveiled last September by the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland and Israeli Avi Tzur, whose ancestors came from Rajgrod. The town’s Jewish population was liquidated in 1942.
8 decades on, Holocaust victim’s plea heard at NC high school
Shira Goldberg stepped across the stage at East Henderson High School in western North Carolina and presented a yellowed letter to Shani Lourie.
The letter’s writer, a German woman seeking help in escaping the Nazis from an American man she believed was a relative, was Shira’s distant cousin. The 8-year-old Florida girl was entrusting this tragic piece of family history to Lourie, an educator at Israel’s national Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem.
The act on Wednesday morning climaxed a more than yearlong search for information about the letter conducted by approximately 60 students — none Jewish — in the history classes taught by Todd Singer, a Jewish man new to the profession.
“I beg you not to put this letter aside without having read it,” Betty Erb, a resident of Berlin, wrote on April 17, 1939, to John G. Erb of 2030 Conlyn Street in Philadelphia.
2014 a record year for life science investments
The industry, Zeevi said, “is rapidly and exuberantly growing, while playing an important role in the world healthcare market. Following a decade of significant growth, the Israeli life sciences industry is continually demonstrating encouraging parameters of maturity and promising signs towards a breakthrough decade.”
Zeevi made the comments in a report on the business in advance of this week’s BioMed 2015, an annual event that generally draws hundreds of industry executives, scientists and engineers, with thousands of attendees from over 45 countries. As in previous years, hundreds of Israeli life science companies will present and exhibit their products, services and technologies allowing for hands-on experience.
According to figures from the Israel Venture Capital (IVC) Research Center, quoted in the IATI report, $801 million was invested in 167 life sciences companies, a figure that was 55% higher than the $516 million raised by 142 companies in 2013, and 64% more than the $489 million invested in 133 life sciences companies in 2012. Between 2005 and 2011, an average of $371 million was invested in 99 life sciences companies annually.
Israeli pollution app entrepreneurs to be feted at White House
Israeli entrepreneurs Ran Korber, Emil Fisher, and Ziv Lautman are to be honored at the White House Monday, when they will be lauded for their technology’s contribution to improving the human condition.
The entrepreneurs’ BreezeoMeter app caught the White House’s attention, said Lautman, because “air pollution is at the front of the stage, as the president recently launched the climate change action plan, that focuses on reducing air pollution emissions,” and BreezoMeter’s technology helps raise people’s consciousness about air pollution – helping them to avoid it and incentivizing them to do something about it.
The ceremony at the White House Monday will bring together emerging entrepreneurs from across the United States and around the world who have taken on some of the world’s toughest challenges – poverty, climate change and extremism, as well as access to education and healthcare. This event comes ahead of the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Kenya this summer, which US President Barack Obama is set to visit.
BreezoMeter’s technology shows how good or poor air quality is in a specific location — like right outside your house. According to Korber, who developed BreezoMeter along with Lautman, the app “takes information from pollution stations and extrapolates it, based on wind direction, speed, and other factors, to give an accurate reading of pollution levels even far away from a station.”
Israeli invention fights stunted growth in children
A new dietary supplement developed at Schneider Children's Medical Center in Israel has successfully helped children in the bottom 10th percentile for height and weight grow taller and gain weight. The supplement, named Up-Pro, will be available in stores in the near future.
Studies show that children who took the supplement grew 1-2 centimeters taller than the control group, who were given placebos. The children's height to weight ratio was not affected, and the additive did not cause anyone to become overweight.
The participants in the trial were children in the bottom 10th percentile of height and weight for their age, who do not suffer from hormonal disorders associated with stunted growth.
"Until now we did not have a solution for these kids," the head of the hospital's Endocrinology and Diabetes Institute, Professor Moshe Phillips, said.
Jews reclaim former Silwan synagogue
A former synagogue in 'Arab' Silwan (Shiloah) in Jerusalem, abandoned by Yemeni Jews in the 1930s, has been restored to Jewish ownership, in spite of Palestinian Arab protests. The Jerusalem Post reports:
Amid accusations of a brazen “takeover” by Jews of a sought-after former Yemenite synagogue occupied by an Arab family in Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood early Wednesday morning, a right-wing NGO heralded the move as legal and long overdue.
“Israeli settlers took over three apartments in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, under the pretext they are absentee’s property, according to local sources,” Palestinian news organization WAFA reported.
“Witnesses told WAFA that a group of settlers, guarded by police officers, arrived in Silwan at midnight and broke into three vacant apartments owned by the Abu Nab clan. Police said the settlers had won a court ruling establishing that the three apartments are the property of Yemenite Jews [from] a long time ago,” it continued.
Despite claims that the apartments were misappropriated in the cloak of night while the family that lived there was away, Ateret Cohanim, an organization that purchases properties for Jews in Arab neighborhoods, said the property was vacant and legally acquired.
IAF Pilot in Flight Action
The Holy Land (4K Timelapse)
One of the many reasons that the pending Hamas/Fatah agreement is not going to be viewed positively by Western nations is that it will almost certainly get rid of the West's darling prime minister, Salam Fayyad.
Fayyad was never elected to his post and he is not a member of either Hamas or Fatah. However, it is because of Fayyad that West has been enamored with the idea that Palestinian Arab statehood is possible over the past couple of years.
Fayyad has no terrorist history. He has a Western education and outlook. He has largely corrected the more egregious abuses and corruption that was endemic under Arafat.
And (for those very reasons!) he is hugely unpopular in both Hamas and Fatah circles.
The remarkably small and vague agreement signed by Hamas and Fatah includes this section:
Fatah and Hamas Agree to form a Palestinian government and appoint a [caretaker] prime minister and [government] ministers before the elections.
Which means that Hamas has veto power over Fayyad.
And Hamas is insisting that they do not want him as PM:
Hamas has insisted on the departure of Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister favoured by Israel and the west, under a deal agreed with its rival faction Fatah for a unity government, according to sources in Gaza.
The existing Fatah dominated PA is trying to deny the story, but since the two groups have not yet started to negotiate anything concrete it is pretty clear that absent huge external pressure, Fayyad will be gone. (And if they keep him it would only be until the minute they don't need him anymore, likely in September.)
Western nations that have been encouraged by Fayyad's actions need to understand that he will not be part of any "Palestine" and that the theoretical state would be dominated by corruption and terror.
Would the World Bank have written their fawning report on Palestinian Arab statehood had Fayyad not been running the PA's internal affairs?
Al-Monitor reports:
It all began as a personal project by a young Israeli Arab who lives in northern Israel. He wanted to use social networking to convince other Israeli Arabs that the Israel Defense Forces are not some “army of evil” and that its soldiers are not as bloodthirsty as they tend to be portrayed in Arab propaganda films. He soon learned, however, that in the digital age, there is no end to surprises. Instead of messages and responses from the Israeli Arab audience he was targeting, he began receiving messages of peace and love from young Arab men and women from across the Arab world.
M. is an Israeli Arab Muslim who served in the IDF. He spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. Last year, he came across a series of billboards sponsored by the Balad Party as part of its campaign against the recruitment of Israeli Arabs into the IDF. He decided to fight back. “I saw the signs that were hung in Arab villages, and I kept track of the Facebook campaign being run by activists of Balad and the other Arab parties under the name ‘TZaHaL ma bistahal’ ['The IDF isn’t worth it']. It infuriated me,” he said.
“Activists would show up in the main square of Shfaram with bits of rubble, as if the rubble were from Gaza. They carried big signs too, as if they were trying to say, ‘Look what the army that is calling on you to enlist is actually doing in the Gaza Strip.’ Some of the activists would even paint their faces red, as if they were injured, while they tried to relay their message of ‘Don’t enlist!’ to young Bedouin, Druze, Christians and Muslims. I decided to respond to them on Facebook, so I made a page called ‘TZaHaL bistahal’ ['The IDF is worth it'], but instead of getting responses from the young Arabs to whom I was directing my personal campaign, I started to get photos and texts from young people around the Arab world. My jaw dropped.”
The photos and video clips sent from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and other countries can be found on the Facebook page "BeTzaHaL" ("In the IDF"), and there are lots of them. One young woman from Saudi Arabia filmed a green Saudi passport. Her voice plays in the background, against a street scene in Jeddah, with a message for the people of Israel: “Good evening. I am a young woman from Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. I am a member of one of the better-known tribes of the Hijaz, and I am showing you Darajeh Square, a famous landmark in Jeddah. I’d like to send a message of peace and love to Israel and its dear citizens. I know it is surprising that a Saudi Arabian citizen sends a message to the people of Israel, but it is a basic principle of democracy that everyone is free to voice an opinion. I hope the Arabs will be sensible like me and recognize the fact that Israel also has rights to the lands of Palestine.”
A young man from Iraq shot a picture of his passport along the Tigris River. “I want to send a message of peace and love to the dear Israeli people,” he says. “I decided to shoot this video and tell you, ‘True, we are two countries that do not have friendly relations, but that doesn’t matter. I believe that the number of people who support Israel here will grow consistently.’”
Other young people send M. photos of their passports with handwritten messages in Hebrew, Arabic and English. It is always the same: “We love Israel.” One Egyptian police officer took it a step further by including his police cap along with his passport in the shot and wrote in Arabic, “We love, love, love Israel and its army.” He even added a picture of a heart with a Star of David in the middle of it.
M. said that the whole thing began with a young Coptic woman from Egypt who emigrated to the United States, where she experienced racism and manifestations of hatred toward Copts. “I quickly learned that she also speaks Hebrew, like many young people who studied Hebrew at Cairo University,” he said. “So I said to her, ‘Why don’t you do a little something to spread the message, so that people in other countries will see and hear that there are other voices in the Middle East?’ She sent a photo of her passport, and pretty soon I started getting pictures of passports from all across the Arab world. The very next photo came from Iraq.”
M. also engages the senders in private conversations, which are not posted publicly. “After I got the video from Baghdad, I asked the person who sent me the clip what it was that caused him to express support for Israel. He responded, ‘You’d be surprised. I’m not the only one. There are a lot of young people here who think like me. Everything that is happening to us here in Iraq — the killings, the terrorism, the veritable bloodbath — showed us that Israel has nothing to do with it. There are many young people living in Iraq today who have no religion. They are fed up with the religious wars between Sunnis and Shiites and want to live their lives without religion.”
M. says that he has also been receiving messages from a young student in Jordan. A member of a prominent clan, she claims to have many senior army officers in her family. What impresses her most about Israel is its liberalism. “I was amazed to learn that they have gay pride parades and that single-sex marriages [performed abroad] are accepted there,” she confided to M. “She told me that although she realized that her sexual orientation is different, in a traditional society she cannot come out as a lesbian, especially since she is a member of a prestigious clan. All she can do is be envious of the fact that in Israel, just a few dozen miles from the Jordanian border, a whole different life is possible.”
Over the past year, M. continued to receive a daily stream of messages from young Arabs, shedding light on yet another aspect of the dramatic changes underway in the Arab world. Yes, there are wars, revolutions and a return to traditional religions. There are bloody struggles between Shiites and Sunnis and the Islamic State has risen. At the same time, however, many young people long for another reality, even if perhaps it cannot be implemented in their own countries. Syria and Iraq have been torn apart, Yemen is fighting the rise of the Houthis and in Egypt, young people continue to dream of how liberalism and democracy might one day beat back religious zealotry.
It is certainly possible that the phenomenon encountered by M. during his private protest is a fringe one, but in an era of open skies and open Internet, no leader, not even a dictator, can block borders once they have been breached.
The Facebook page has some great videos.
