Maariv has a very disturbing story about how Israel has abandoned the historic Mount of Olives cemetery, the largest and most important Jewish cemetery in the world.
Excerpts:
Isaac Gul died at the age of 89 on the Sabbath before Passover. Born in Afghanistan, "he loved his country" his nephew Yochanan said. "He joined the army, fought bravely during the Six Day War, lived alone, and before he died he had only one request: to be buried on the Mount of Olives."
Two weeks ago, when his nephew came to the Mount of Olives to fill the request of his uncle, he was attacked by a group of Arab rioters with stones and bottles. Windshields were smashed. Gul was miraculously saved. This week, when going to unveil the gravestone thirty days since the death, he was shocked at what he saw. "Everything was destroyed, and there is no gravestone," he said, weeping.
Following this short interview I went the next day on a tour of the Mount with the Jerusalem city council member, Aryeh King. Not to find something I didn't know. To see it with my own eyes. This tour is a must for anyone who wants to understand the incompetence of the State of Israel with the Arab enemy. Not in Iran. Here, at home.
A few hundred meters from the Western Wall, a stone's throw from the Knesset, the Supreme Court and in the middle of the pulsating capital of Israel, the State chose to give up.
Who wants to visit loved ones on the mountain cemetery while risking getting hurt by stones, Molotov cocktails or being lynched by students in local schools. Those who come in will see neglect, dirt, vandalism and countless pictures, each of which, had it occured in a Jewish cemetery in Europe, would be headline news.
Many families prefer, fearing for their safety, not to visit the graves of loved ones any more. A close friend told me about an elderly relative he had who owned a plot at the Mount, and with her death, the family decided to bury her elsewhere. "We had a great fear that whoever comes to visit the place would risk his life," he explained, "or simply nobody will visit the grave".
The cemetery on the Mount of Olives, unique in its essential purpose, is also a piece of history in Israel. According to estimates, more than one hundred thousand Jews are buried there, including rabbis, leaders and cultural figures, intellectuals and men of action. Rabbi Ovadia Bartenura and Rabbi Haim Ben Attar. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and his son Itamar Ben Avi. Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook and Rabbi Isaac Herzog. Yoel Moshe Salomon and the poet Zelda. Henrietta Szold and Zalman Aran. Menachem Begin, Agnon and Uri Zvi Greenberg. Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani. The Jewish Quarter fell in battle in the War of Independence and fighters wanted to be buried in this special place.
In many cases, intensive illegal Arabic construction comes to within a couple of meters from the graves themselves. Access to burial plots requires maneuvering between crowded houses of Arab neighborhoods. "Look at all this," King points to a huge compound on the eastern slope of the cemetery. "Go and check the Jerusalem municipality approved master plan, and you will see that all this land is part of the cemetery. You'll find that much of the land occupied here by Arabs is wholly owned by Jews who bought them years ago. "
"Landowners lost their land, and have no ability to do anything," King continues. "The Arabs have taken it all. Almost all of the area's huge building boom occurred in the last 15 years. You can seeee it in the pictures. They build illegally on lands that are part of the cemetery, the land of individual Jewish people, and people do not mess with them."
Not far from us, adjacent to one of the plots, stand two large buildings, 18 apartments in each building. One is already populated. The construction of the second was recently completed. No one is stopping this illegal construction on land that does not belong to them. "You see this mosque", King points out, "it's one of the first buildings that were built here. There is a directive from the municipality's legal adviser that this mosque is a sensitive matter, so you do not destroy mosques. So the mosque remained in place, and what grew around it you see yourself ".
Until recently there were security cameras on poles. Vandals toppled the poles, broke the cameras, and destroyed in ten minutes the entire security system.
Dozens of graves, almost all of those who died in past 30-40 years, are broken and shattered. The tomb of Mordechai Siman-Tov, was opened and filled with waste. A tire was put next to it and set on fire. A nearby gravestone holds is smashed into four large fragments. The last name of Esther is impossible to identify. By the writing that is still intact you can only learn she was "modest woman".
The grave of "our father Yekusiel", what's left of it does not allow us to know which family he belonged. "Women who fear the Lord have much to be praised," according to what remains from the grave of Miriam, daughter of Nathaniel and Rachel. This tomb also had its headstone removed and thrown to the ground. A few meters away lies a pile of broken gravestones some of which are difficult to identify from which grave they were removed. So they lie like a wave of stones, shattered pieces from the stones of Murdoch and Aaron Cohen and Leah Moshaioff Bruriah and Simcha Cohen and many others. A word here, a half word there, letters floating in the air.
I searched on Google this week for reports that appear occasionally on Jewish cemeteries desecrated worldwide. Anti-Semitic rioters vandalized a Jewish cemetery in Morocco. Tombstones were broken and uprooted in a Jewish cemetery in southern New Zealand, a headline from a few weeks earlier. Swastikas painted on the walls of the cemetery in Larissa, Greece. Trees were felled at a Jewish burial place in Chisinau in Moldova. For some reason, when these events occur in the wider world, it shocks us much more. Then we hear of "anti-Semitism rearing its head again," Israeli politicians call for stopping the vandals, and an expert on the history of the Second World War duly shows up to answer the question if Europe isi returning to its past.
And what about us? We are the only country where anti-Semitic actions are not newsworthy. A country where anti-Arab graffiti is a story that draws attention a thousand times greater than desecration of Israel's capital everyday. We worry about antisemitism in Hungary, but with us? We are afraid to speak loudly against it.
The Mount of Olives cemetery is perhaps the only one in Israel that is wide open, in the full sense of the word, around the clock. On the Ras Al-amod there was once placed in a large iron gate, but anyone who wanted to use the path between graves, pulled it up long ago. Currently, the cemetery serves as a shortcut for the Arab residents who want to reach their homes.
Six months ago the Arabs here have desecrated the grave of Rabbi Meir Levin Itcha. Levin, a former leader of Agudath Israel, Minister of Welfare was Israel's first signer of the Declaration of Independence. The grave was broken and open. This week I tried to remember if I heard about this event at the time. I could not.
"38 years ago we started to arrange transportation from the school of Gore Mount of Olives, back and forth all day, free," says David Leventhal, who took over the responsibility for a section. "A lot of people wanted to go to the graves. In recent years, the passenger vehicle is almost empty. No one dares to come. They are attacked." Leventhal tries hard to preserve the place. "The Arabs smashed the graves. They now have a new method. They put a tire or a mattress, light it or throw a Molotov cocktail and run away....I've installed security cameras, and they broke them all. "
Nothing I have written here is new. These acts take place every day. Within the cemetery and beyond. I went through the list of recent attacks this week. Not a day goes by without a few incidents of stone throwing or Molotov cocktails. Sometimes the Jews escape lynching.
I debated whether to ask for a comment from someone for this article, and I decided there was no point. Police say it was the municipality, the municipality will approach the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Ministry of Religious Affairs will say it belongs to the Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, the latter will explain a comprehensive policy is needed, and is responsible for overall policy now busy forming the government. The Prime Minister will continue to talk about a united Jerusalem which is our capital forever. The mayor of Jerusalem he will continue to emphasize that he is the mayor of Jerusalem in all its parts. The President continue to bless us with Good Morning Jerusalem , and no one could refute the bottom line. The State of Israel, through the Government of Israel is not interested in truly being sovereign in Jerusalem.
I asked Mayor Barkat about this a couple of years ago and he assured me that things were safe.
I have a number of relatives buried in the Mount of Olives, including two grandparents and a great-great-grandfather whose gravestone was smashed during Jordanian occupation.
This is scandalous.
(h/t Yenta)
From Iran's always-entertaining PressTV:
A senior Iranian lawmaker says Osama bin Laden's death clearly shows that the al-Qaeda leader had an expiry date and the US was obliged to kill him.
“Bin Laden, whom all Muslim nations despised, was simply a stooge in the hands of the Zionist regime [of Israel] to show a violent image of Islam following the 9/11 attacks,” Deputy Head of Iran's Majlis Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy Esmail Kowsari told Mehr News Agency on Monday.
“The death of Osama Bin Laden reflected the removal of a one-time US pawn, and marked the end of an era and the start of another in US' subversive policies in the region,” he added.
I guess, by that logic, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is also a Zionist stooge because he makes Iranian politicians (like this guy) look like complete idiots, thus helping Israel's image in the international community.
In fact, PressTV might be Israel's best weapon!
Hamas' Al Qassam Martyrs Brigades website reports about the death of Daniel Viflic, the 16-year old schoolboy who was killed because Hamas shot a laser-guided anti-tank missile at a school bus.
The Hamas article doesn't acknowledge that Daniel was a minor. Instead, it says that Daniel was a "Zionist soldier" and even has the gall to pretend that it is quoting Ha'aretz to that effect!
The Haaretz newspaper reported that the slain Zionist was killed weeks east of Gaza City after the targeting of a bus he was traveling in by the Qassam Brigades.
The newspaper said that the dead man was a Zionist soldier who stayed in intensive care at Soroka Hospital in BeerSheva in the territories after a significant deterioration in his health.
The website then gleefully shows photos from the funeral as well as from the bus. And the commenters are uniform in their praise of this "heroic operation."
It appears that this is it: (UPDATE: No, it isn't - here it is)
Zentelligence is pretty sure about this, and already people are putting up dozens of funny reviews of that compound in Google Maps.
Here you can see how close OBL's hideout was to the Pakistan Military Academy:
My latest post at NewsRealBlog:
The entire impetus for the Fatah-Hamas “unity” agreement is the September attempt to get “Palestine” to be internationally recognized at the UN.
And today Fatah freely admits it:
Senior Fatah official Tawfiq Tirawi said Thursday that the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation will promote Palestinian interests ahead of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ planned statehood bid in September, making it “more important than peace with Israel.”
“We want this reconciliation to arrive at the UN General Assembly united. Appealing to the United Nations will be done with the support of all Palestinian factions and all the nations that have recognized a Palestinian state until now.”
Fatah and Hamas hate each other and have no desire to cede their respective power. They will keep things together just long enough for September and their hoped-for international recognition. This is exactly what they have done in the past.
And here is how the PA is planning to incorporate Hamas while pretending that “Palestine” accepts Israel’s right to exist:
T
irawi dismissed concerns voiced over the possibility that a future Palestinian government with Hamas in it will refuse to negotiate with Israel, saying that the Palestinian government will have “no say” in such peace talks, since “the only body allowed to negotiate with Israel on behalf of the Palestinian people is the PLO.”
So this is the game:
The PLO is the party that negotiates with Israel, and the party that officially recognizes Israel.
The PA is only responsible for governing the Arabs in the territories, not with any foreign relations.
The PA, despite claims of being democratic, reports to the PLO.
The fake Hamas/Fatah reconciliation is meant to only address the PA, not the PLO. They won’t hold any elections until after September, if ever.
So the PLO will claim to still recognize Israel and be peaceful, as it will claim that from its perspective nothing has changed.
The instant that Palestine is declared a state that is recognized by the world, in part because of these assurances that it is a peaceful state that recognizes Israel, Hamas and Fatah (and all the other terrorist parties that decide to join the government) will immediately take over the PLO’s foreign affairs, as that is what nations do. The PLO’s foreign affairs role will be superseded by “Palestine.”
Which means that the very minute that Palestine is recognized as a state, it will be by definition a terror state that no longer recognizes Israel! And indeed it will not need to. The entire peace process since Oslo has been a sham in order to gain territory, with peace being a tactic, not a strategy.
Hamas will insist that “Palestine”‘s foreign policy adhere to minimal Hamas demands, which is pretty much to insist that all of Israel is occupied territory–a position that the PA and PLO wholly agree with even if they will not say it in English. Their maps and logos show it to be true.
So instead of helping peace, this “unity” agreement is a recipe for prolonging and accelerating a six-decade war between the Arab world and Israel. A new “Palestine” would not help solve any of the real issues–like Jerusalem, “refugees,” water, Gilad Shalit, incitement to terror, actual terrorism. Hamas’ inclusion ensures that it will not be a peaceful state.
Will the West wake up in time to stop this recipe for disaster?
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: Britain’s nightmare post-election scenario
It never occurs to them that the tsunami of anti-Israel bigotry which has swamped Britain these past 15 years and more has legitimized ever-more brazen expressions of Jew-hatred. On the contrary, people in Britain tend to think that anti-Jew stuff has nothing to do with anti-Israel stuff. Since so many Jews are hostile to Israel or Zionism, they chorus, this can’t possibly be anti-Jew, can it? I suspect that Ed Miliband himself makes precisely this distinction. For the Labor leader, who is himself a Jew, is in effect deeply anti-Israel.
Not that he would characterize his position in this way. Indeed, in this week’s Jewish Chronicle he claims once again to be “a strong friend of Israel.”
This even though he damned Israel’s Gaza war last summer as “wrong and unjustifiable.” Since that war was driven entirely by the need to halt the thousands of attacks intended to murder as many Israelis as possible, Miliband was effectively damning Israel for defending itself.
If this is a “strong friend,” you can’t help wonder what an enemy would do. Miliband says he is committed to providing security for Israel. But how can this possibly square with vilifying it for defending itself? Miliband’s position draws upon the systematic lies and distortions deployed in the campaign of delegitimization intended to bring about the end of Israel. In the Gaza war, for example, Israel’s military strikes achieved a far lower ratio of civilian casualties than any other armed force has ever achieved. Yet in the demonology of the Left, Israelis have been vilified as willful child-killers. It is this monstrous libel to which Miliband effectively subscribes.
Michael Lumish: Progressive-Left Jews and the European Union
The universities throughout Europe and the United States have clearly turned against the Jewish State of Israel as they host their annual “Israel Apartheid Week” celebratory hate-fests. Yale University, in fact, recently cancelled the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA) under exceedingly suspicious circumstances. The University of Pennsylvania hosted a BDS conference last year.
But for whatever reason – reasons which I assume have as much to do with my exceedingly limited powers of persuasion, as much as anything else – I rarely can convince my left-leaning, pro-Israel Jewish friends that it is the left, itself, which has emerged as the greatest threat to the Jewish people in the west today, despite the fact that I, myself, come out of the progressive-left.
The prominent, if not hegemonic, conception of Israel within western-left organizations and venues is the notion that Israel is a racist, imperialist, colonialist, militaristic, apartheid, racist regime. That highly negative and toxic broad-brush represents the (often unspoken) ideological background against which Israel is viewed. The automatic assumption of Jewish guilt and wrong-doing is almost always brought to the conversation as a matter of course.
Andrew Goldman: A civil-rights veteran slams the anti-Israel ‘Jim Crow’ smear
As I know firsthand, all these outrages were committed by white Americans against black Americans in the old South.
As a lawyer for the Council of Federated Organizations, an umbrella group that brought a wide array of civil-rights groups together, I was in there on the ground during the famous “Freedom Summer” of 1964.
We civil-rights workers triumphed when the landmark Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964. As we strove to achieve that goal, we never questioned the right of whites to live in the area, unlike the Palestinian leaders who assert that Jews are an alien presence.
We never threatened to drive the whites of the South into the Mississippi Delta, in marked contrast to the bloodthirsty Arab war cry of “driving the Jews” into the Mediterranean Sea.
We didn’t have the support of entire nations who send money and arms to Palestinians and back terrorist attacks, as Arabs in the territories do today.
For that reason, I can no longer be a bystander as the noble legacy of the civil-rights movement is hijacked by a campaign whose goal is the destruction of Israel.
Whatever Israel’s faults, it offers full equality before the law. A visitor will see Arabs and Jews sitting in the same cafes, studying at the same universities and voting in the same elections. That isn’t the Jim Crow South I remember.
The Judean People's Front: The Many Myths of Jerusalem: Part 4
Leaving aside the fact that the Palestinians have consistently rejected every offer of statehood, consistent refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State, and given Abbas's current strategy of engaging in lawfare instead negotiations and paying terrorists instead stopping them, let us make one thing incredibly clear:
Holy cities are not and never have been used as political capitals in Islamic history!
Ever since Caliph Ali moved the seat of the Caliphate from Medina to Kufa in 656, holy cities have never been used a capitals in Islamic history. That is why neither Mecca nor Medina is the capital of Saudi Arabia, Karbala is not the capital of Iraq, and none of the dozens of Shiite holy cities in Iran are its capital. This is in stark contrast to the central religious and national role Jerusalem has played for Jews and the State of Israel.
Many Israelis and Jews love to say "Jerusalem isn't holy to the Muslims." This is ridiculous. It's none of our business to determine what is or isn't holy to another religion, just like it is no one else's right to tell us what is holy to Jews. Yes, Jerusalem isn't mentioned once in the Qur'an and it certainly is interesting that Muslims the world over seemed to virtually ignore Jerusalem during the 19 years of Jordanian occupation, but that's for another post.
So the proper response when someone says Jerusalem needs to be divided so Muslims can have half of the Holy City for their capital isn't "they don't really think it's holy," but rather, "Its holy status is completely irrelevant to its political status. Even though Jerusalem may hold religious value to Muslims, this should have no bearing on its political definition because it never has throughout Islamic history."
The Fake Palestinian Video that Cost Over a Thousand Israeli Lives
Remarkably, none of the other camera crews in the Netzarim junction area have any video of the shooting, but they did shoot lots of video of faked events that day. Eventually, Enderlin turned over 18 minutes of the 27 minutes of footage to the Court in the Karsenty trial, and some of this appeared to have been spliced from other events not even in Netzarim. Richard Landes, a history professor at Boston University also studied the Al Dura case for years, and was one of a small number of people to have viewed the original 27 minutes of footage. The description of what the cameraman claims to have seen and filmed and what Landes viewed have almost no overlap.
Both Poller and Landes in his writings have emphasized that the Al Dura story is hardly unique in terms of deliberate misreporting or completely fabricating the news concerning Israel and the Palestinians. Landes calls the staged productions- whether on a Gaza beach, or a Lebanese village, “Pallywood.”
Poller spends much of the second half of her book detailing why these second rate fake videos have so much appeal. Israel can’t win and must not win in the eyes of the modern media, almost all of whom are leftist and have bought into the Palestinian narrative of the theft of their land, forced relocation, and brutal occupation by Israel in the territories. Throw in the intimidation of journalists by groups like Hezb’allah and Hamas, and it is clear that to gain access and stay alive, the reporters have to adopt a certain stance and tone. Charles Enderlin was too big to fail in French journalism, so his determination to indict Israel for the Al Dura story, was a safe bet, whatever the actual facts of the case, and he felt confident he never had to look back and adjust his story. Enderlin had throughout his career, been invested in Palestinian suffering and Israeli brutality. Israeli officials, despite their obvious skepticism about the event, for years refused to challenge the official story, sensing that there would be no favorable outcome from doing so. What were the chances the French were going to admit they created a hoax which cost thousands of innocent lives over the next few years? Ne va pas se produire. (Not going to happen.)
British Jewry’s Islamist Problem
In 2013, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Husseini, a passionate Muslim supporter of interreligious dialogue and a tireless advocate for Britain’s Jewish community, was fired from his job at a London Jewish college. Muhammad had made the ultimate mistake within the world of interfaith dialogue: he had criticized its disciples.
Sheikh Al-Husseini dared to reveal that senior Jewish community leaders were conducting interfaith dialogue with pro-terror and anti-Semitic Islamist groups, while genuine moderate Muslims were left out in the cold.
The Sheikh is not alone in his concerns. In May 2013, a number of Bangladeshi, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist activists penned a letter to the Jewish community leadership. They asked if,
“Jewish interfaith representatives are talking to the ‘right kind of Muslims’. The ‘wrong kind of Muslims’ are associated with the extremist Jamaat-e-Islami, expressed in the UK through institutions such as the Islamic Foundation, Muslim Council of Britain and the East London Mosque. All three are currently being endorsed by Jewish interfaith involvement.”
Tracking illegal Arab construction, one EU-funded house at a time
Today, with a staff of 10 working from offices at the Sha’ar Binyamin Industrial Zone southeast of Ramallah, Regavim defines its mission as “setting a Zionist agenda for the State of Israel, with an emphasis on the land and its management and preservation.” In practical terms, that means deploying dozens of volunteers to the field and using sophisticated aerial footage to track Arab building violations.
Most recently, the group has chosen to focus on the European Union and its massive funding of illegal Bedouin construction in areas east of Jerusalem, commonly known as E-1. According to a report published in January titled “Illegal EU building in Adumim Region,” over the past two years the European Union has helped erect hundreds of illegal structures in area C of the West Bank, administratively controlled by Israel, in violation of Israeli building laws.
“One could never imagine that Germany would fund the building of thousands of illegal dwelling places in the suburbs of Paris as a ‘permanent solution’ for the Roma living in France, in complete opposition to the policy and laws of France,” claimed the report’s introduction.
Beyond its genuine concern for the well-being of the poorest Palestinians, the EU is politically motivated to entrench the Jahallin Bedouin on the strategic tracts of land they currently settle in order to maintain Arab contiguity between the northern and southern West Bank, Regavim argued. But the organization takes issue not only with Europe, but also with Israel’s bureaucracy and legal system which allows the situation to continue unabated.
European Parliament urged to ‘control’ aid for Palestinians
Citing alleged corruption by Palestinian recipients of aid money, the European Parliament’s Israel relations czar urged more conditionality by EU donor states.
Fulvio Martusciello, the chairman of the parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Israel, issued the call during a parliamentary debate Wednesday in Strasbourg on EU funding for the Middle East, his office wrote in a statement.
“We are talking million-euro projects that see part of their funds going to individuals who actually shouldn’t receive a single euro,” Martusciello, an Italian delegate for the center-right People’s Party bloc, said. “The money comes from EU taxpayers and we need to exercise tight control on it.”
Martusciello cited a 2013 report by the European Court of Auditors that found the Palestinians had been using European money for years to pay employees in the Gaza Strip, some of whom had not actually worked in seven years.
Defeating European hypocrisy
A few years ago, as I was standing in an expensive Danish supermarket, deciding what fruits and vegetables to buy, a middle-aged couple entered the shop and loudly began debating what they should buy for dinner. Looking around the fruit and vegetable section, the man proclaimed in a pious voice that whatever they were buying, for sure they were not going to support the Israeli avocados on display. He visibly twitched when I demonstratively went over and filled my basket with Israeli avocados, as if my life depended on eating them in huge quantities.
Many Europeans proudly describe themselves as "political consumers," yet their politics are extremely limited in scope. While nothing on earth makes their blood pressure soar quite so much as encountering Israeli produce in their local supermarket, they happily stuff themselves with Iranian dates and pomegranates, Egyptian carrots and green beans and Turkish cherries and grapes. They dress themselves in cheap clothes produced by overexploited, underpaid children working under slave-like conditions in Bangladesh and Pakistan, and they do not give it a second thought if young women on death row in China sewed their jeans, as long as they get their money's worth. If North Korea produced anything other than grief and nuclear weapons, they would rush to consume its produce, as well.
In a letter to EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, 16 of the EU's 28 foreign ministers recently asked her to push forward the process of labeling goods produced in Israeli settlements. "We would like to draw your attention to the letter dated 13th April 2013 sent to your predecessor on EU-wide guidelines on the labeling of settlement produce/products. ... We remain of the view that this is an important step in the full implementation of EU long-standing policy, in relation to the preservation of the two-state solution." Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Malta, Ireland, Portugal, Slovenia, Croatia, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg were all signatories to the letter.
Abraham Foxman: Antisemitism on Campus: Old Wine in New Bottles
In effect, the attacks on Israel on campus are unleashing inhibitions against expressions of anti-Jewish prejudice and beginning to legitimize attacks on Jews on campus.
While much of this is in a nascent stage, it is important to deal with it now on several levels.
First, greater efforts must be made to generate a more balanced view of Israel and the region among minority students. Some are undoubtedly locked in to their anti-Israel perspective for ideological reasons. But many others are certainly open to hearing a different take on the Middle East. Not one in which Israel is always in the right, but a complicated narrative about competing interest and needs.
Second, it must be made clear that whatever one’s views on the conflict, treating Jews differently is unacceptable and it is what it is, anti-Semitism. University officials must speak out clearly and unequivocally against even the slightest hint of singling Jews out that way.
Third, we must continually assess the status of Jews on campus in a calm and rational way, distinguishing between the real challenges Jewish students face without sending alarm signals which could undermine the normal life on campus that exists for most of them.
Jews in America have made too much progress over the last half-century to cause us to overreact. Still, we cannot afford to be complacent. We have to address these campus issues now before they expand further and spin out of control, truly creating a widespread worrisome atmosphere.
Indiana General Assembly Becomes 2nd State Legislature to Pass Anti-BDS Bill
The Indiana General Assembly has become the second-ever state legislature to pass a bill that formally opposes the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Tennessee lawmakers approved a similar measure on April 21.
Adopted in a voice vote, the Indiana Senate approved Resolution 74, which “expresses opposition to the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel” BDS movement.
The Senate’s move came after the Indiana House of Representatives unanimously (93-0) passed the anti-BDS House Resolution 59 on April 22. The measure now goes to Indiana Governor Mike Pence for his signature.
The Indiana bill contends that the global spread of anti-Jewish speech and violence “represents an attack, not only on Jews, but on the fundamental principles of the United States.” The resolution goes on to thank the presidents of Indiana University and Purdue University for “strongly” condemning the boycott of Israeli academic institutions after some faculty members and other staffers at those schools voiced support for the BDS movement.
IDF Soldiers tell Chicago Tribune they were heckled by MU Professor
This April, reserve IDF soldiers Hen Mazzig, and Matan Katzman did a two week speaking tour around the Midwest called, “Israeli Soldiers’ Stories.” The tour was sponsored by “StandWithUS,” and included about 10 university presentations as well as a handful of other engagements. On the last stop they spoke in Chicago at a Jewish Community Center. The Chicago Tribune covered the event, as, “a relatively easy one for 25-year-old Hen Mazzig. There was no heckling, no screaming and no one was calling him a murderer.” So, where did this happen on the tour? “Mazzig said a biology professor at the University of Missouri was heckling him from the audience with hostile questions and accusations. “[He said,] ‘Why do you kill Palestinians? How many U.N. schools have you attacked?'” Mazzig was referring to biology professor George Smith, the same man who is going to be teaching a course called, “Perspectives on Zionism” next fall.
But, that was not Smith’s only comments to Mazzig, “at the end, he (Smith) came to me and said, ‘How can you come here and defend Ashkenazi Jews — white Eastern European Jews — when you are an Arab Jew?’” The reason Mazzig mentioned this comment as so offensive, will probably be lost on people who are unaware of the history of modern Israel. Mazzig is of Iraqi descent. Sometimes, Jewish people from Arab countries are referred to as Arab Jews, which can be confusing. But, in this case it meant Jewish people whose families came from Arab countries to Israel. Without going into detail, there have been some instances of Jewish people from European descent treating Jewish people from Arab countries with discrimination. What the comment implies is that Mazzig should realize how racist Jewish people from European countries have been to Jewish people from Arab countries, then he should keep this hate alive, to the point that he refuses to defend his country.
But that is not all. The other soldier, Matan Katzman wrote a brief description of the MU event. “Prof. Smith interrupted several times during the speech, (he) accused us of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” Smith, “asked why we (were) deliberately firing on schools to kill as many civilians and children.” Katzman wrote that he could feel, “the adrenaline in my body,” when Smith accused him. “StandWithUS” shared a video of Katzman responding to Smith, “You can keep on ranting false accusations… I don’t know you… I don’t know if you served in the American Army… But, war is hell… you think I am happy when Palestinians get hurt in schools… It’s almost hard for me to answer you… I am that offended by the fact that you think I want to hurt people… that is completely not true.”
Anti-Israel UCLA Group Investigated For Corruption
On Tuesday evening, the undergraduate student government at UCLA unanimously voted for the Election Board to investigate charges that the LET’S ACT! Slate used illegal fundraising tactics in numerous campaigns, according to the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s campus newspaper. Documents were released on Monday that seemed to indicate that Let’s Act, a group closely allied with the anti-Israel hate group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), had illegally used money from student fees and sold drugs to fundraise. Slate members admitted that some of the documents were genuine but adamantly refused to admit any illegality.
The Undergraduate Students Association Council may not reveal the voting results until next week, as all complaints have not yet been closed. USAC Election Board Chair Shagun Kabra told the Bruin on Thursday that the Judicial Board and the current council are permitted to investigate because the complaints date back to before the current school year. USAC President Avinoam Baral said although the Election Board can only investigate claims from the current year, the Election Board should still investigate any issues from the current year.
Let’s Act endorses and supports SJP and the BDS movement at UCLA, and vehemently opposes Bruins United, a pro-Israel organization.
According to the Bruin, the leaked documents also charge that LET’S ACT! plotted to take control over departments in the Community Programs Office, the office that hosts some student retention and access programs. Two documents expressed hostility toward the Community Programs Office and urged the “overthrow” of its director, Antonio Sandoval.
ALERT: Bowdoin College Students May Vote on Israel Academic Boycott
The Bowdoin College Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group may obtain sufficient signatures on a Petition to send a referendum endorsing the full academic and cultural boycott of Israel to a vote by the full student body.
This is not a mere “divestment” resolution. In calling on the full student body to endorse the complete boycott of Israel, the referendum appears to be taking an unpredecented move among college anti-Israel initiatives, which normally are narrowly tailored.
It is a resolution, much like that passed by the American Studies Association, that would cut all academic and cultural ties with all Israeli Universities and any Israeli scholar or student acting on behalf of or through those universities. The ASA boycott was condemned as a violation of academic freedom by over 250 University Presidents (including Bowdoin’s) and several major academic groups, such as the American Association of University Professors.
Whether SJP will obtain sufficient signatures is a matter currently under dispute.
As of last night, SJP was claiming that it reached the required number at the time it closed the Petition.
Rasmea Odeh Prosecutor to get Justice Award
As we have reported before, Rasmea has been turned into a hero of the anti-Israel activist community, based in large part on her claim that the Israeli conviction was based on a confession extracted after 25 days of sexual torture.
In fact, the documentary evidence shows Rasmea confessed just one day after arrest, was implicated by others as the mastermind, and the conviction was supported by other evidence, such as bomb-making material found in her bedroom.
Nonetheless, the pro-Rasmea propaganda machine continues to churn out the claim that Rasmea is a victim. While out on bond pending appeal, Rasmea is regularly feted as a heroine alongside such notables as Angela Davis (who is a big Rasmea supporter).
It is not surprising, therefore, that the mythology of Rasmea the Victim is being used by activist groups to challenge a Justice Award to U.S. Attorney McQuade by the Michigan-based Arab-American Civil Rights League (ACRL) among other groups.
PolitiFact: Nation of Islam group says Israeli security trained Baltimore cops
We’ve seen plenty of claims in recent days about the unrest in Baltimore. One that caught our attention was a tweet from an account associated with the Nation of Islam. It read, "#Baltimore police trained by Israel Mossad & Shin Bet. More planned."
The Mossad is Israel’s foreign intelligence service and the Shin Bet is its internal counter-intelligence agency. They roughly correspond to the American CIA and FBI.
So, are the Mossad and Shin Bet working with Baltimore police? No.
Nation of Islam researchers included a link in their tweet that sent us to a page on the Baltimore County Police Department website. While county police were called in to assist during the riots, they are not the city police.
The link includes no information or evidence that county police were trained by Mossad and Shin Bet.
What that website says is that county police offered optional training for officers interested in a martial art called Krav Maga (pronounce ma-GAA). Krav Maga does have a strong connection with Israel. It was developed by the Israeli Defense Force in the earliest years of the country’s existence. It emphasizes quick and debilitating counter attacks in one-on-one combat.
The instructor mentioned on the Baltimore County webpage was Jon Pascal, who had spent 15 years with the Los Angeles County Police Department. There is nothing to suggest that Pascal is a Mossad or Shin Bet agent.
UK media largely ignore recent string of Palestinian terror attacks
Here’s how major UK news sites reported the terror attacks.
The Guardian: Only one report devoted to any of the terror attacks – an April 25th Reuters story (Palestinian man killed in incident at Jerusalem checkpoint) on the Palestinian knife attack near Ma’ale Adumim.
The Independent: No reports on any of the terror attacks.
The Telegraph: One report, an April 25th story by Kate Shuttleworth (Palestinians shot dead after Israeli officer stabbed) which briefly covered both the knife attack near Ma’ale Adumim and the car attack at A-Tur.
Times of London (The Times): No report on any of the terror attacks.
Financial Times: No report on any of the terror attacks.
As This Ongoing War observed about the broader failure of the Western media, even those who think of themselves as careful observers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have no idea that these series of Palestinian terror attacks had occurred.
Swedish teens confront neo-Nazi presence in schools
Members of a Swedish youth movement launched an anti-fascist campaign at a high school where neo-Nazis interrupted a lecture by a Holocaust survivor.
The campaign began last week at the Peders Skrivares high school in the western province of Halland, where on April 22 a group of skinheads demonstratively walked in on a talk given to students by Mietek Grocher, 89, Sveriges Radio reported.
The campaign had members of the SSU youth movement of the center-left Swedish Social Democratic Party set up a booth in the school, located in the city of Varberg, and hold signs reading “Sieg Heil – Hell No.”
At least six neo-Nazis in their 20s entered the room where Grocher was speaking and began taking photos of the listeners. They did not behave violently.
Center documenting Nazi atrocities opens in Munich
Seventy years after the end of World War II, the German city of Munich on Thursday inaugurated a documentation center on atrocities committed by the Nazis.
The new building stands on the site of the former headquarters of the Nazis' National Socialist Party. According to the city of Munich, "The fact that several buildings previously used by the Nazi regime still exist in the immediate neighborhood of the documentation center will play a central role in the center's information and communication concepts."
German officials attending the event included Charlotte Knobloch, head of Munich's Jewish community, and Munich Mayor Dieter Reiter.
"I am convinced that today is an important day for Munich because we are making clear that we are actively dealing with our past as the capital of the [Nazi] movement," Reiter said.
Ukrainian aliya triples in first quarter of 2015
Immigration to Israel under its Law of Return increased in the first quarter of 2015 by 41 percent over the corresponding period last year.
Approximately a third of the 6,499 newcomers who landed at Ben Gurion Airport in the first three months of 2015 were from Ukraine, and more than half were from the former Soviet Union, according to an interim report by the Jewish Agency for Israel released earlier this month.
Jewish immigration to Israel from Ukraine comprised 1,971 individuals in the first quarter of 2015 compared to 625 in the first three months of 2014 — a 215% leap.
Ukraine’s economy has suffered huge losses and monetary depreciation as a result of a revolution that swept its former president, Viktor Yanukovych, from power and triggered an armed conflict with Russian-backed insurgents, with devastating effects to the country’s industrial heart in the east.
200 Gazan farmers tour Tel Aviv Agritech
Voicing their desire for more flexibility at IDF checkpoints, increased farming equipment imports and opportunities to export crops, some 200 Gazan farmers came to Tel Aviv on Thursday to engage in a face-to-face dialogue with a senior defense official.
“We can overcome this problem,” Esaam Dawwas, quality control manager for the Beit Lahiya Cooperative Association, told The Jerusalem Post, following the discussion. “We need the Israeli government to deal with facilities for farmers, open the checkpoints and send us all the machines for agriculture and fertilizer for the farmers. We can solve this problem.”
Dawwas and his colleagues came to participate in the third and final day of the annual Agritech International Agricultural Exhibition and Conference at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds. They took part in a conversation in Arabic with Col. Grisha Yakubovich, head of the civil department at the Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories. Among the key issues to arise were the need to boost agricultural trade allowances, and to increase the availability of supplies crucial to farming.
“What happened here today is actually the fruit of cooperation between us and the Palestinian Authority,” Yakubovich told the Post after the dialogue. “This is not something regular that you see people from Gaza being brought out here in buses. That’s why it was so important for me to talk to them... and listen to the voice from the field.”
Israeli High-Tech Companies Raise Nearly $1 Billion in First Quarter of 2015
Israeli high-tech companies raised nearly $1 billion during the first quarter of 2015, according to the most recent report by IVC Research Center, the Israeli tech website Geektime reported Monday.
According to a recently published report from IVC Research Center, Israel’s leading research group on the country’s high tech companies and venture capital investment, Israel’s first quarter this year was the second most successful quarter for high tech fundraising in a decade, 48% higher than Q1 of 2014 and more than twice what was raised in Q1 of 2013. What’s more, it was only 10% less than the decade’s most successful quarter for high tech fundraising: Q4 of 2014. …
In the last few years, Israeli internet startups such as Waze and Wix have been all the rage, and that trend is not abating any time soon: With $343 million raised, the country’s Internet sector experienced its most successful fundraising quarter ever in Q1. According to Koby Simana, CEO of IVC Research Center, the high funding rounds of Taboola ($117 million) and Quixey ($60 million) largely contributed to this quarter’s success, as well as the maturation of the sector, with investors willing to raise larger average rounds.
Torah On The Moon?
French-Israeli businessman Chaim Aouizerate is the driving force behind an initiative called ‘Torah on the Moon’ (TOTM), which he calls a “values-driven” space initiative. The idea is to send an unmanned spacecraft carrying the Torah scroll in a special capsule to protect it during the launch, the flight and the landing.
Those interested in helping fund the project can buy letters and phrases.
Aouizerate stated, “Modernity has brought the significant blessing of technology to humanity. However, with this blessing, comes a loss of respect for the written word. Our goal is to reconnect people of all faiths with their identities, values, and roots by allowing the Torah, the world's oldest code of conduct and law, to take center stage in a way previously thought unimaginable: a one-way, crowd funded trip to the Moon. We hope that this mission will help individuals around the world refocus their lives, moving away from materialism while embracing knowledge, history and spiritual pursuits. To put it in the simplest terms, we are launching a Torah to keep our society grounded.”
Aouizerate and his cohorts have contracted the European Space Agency to analyze the Moon environment and hope the Agency will also help test the scroll’s space capsule. The project has been endorsed by the Zomet Institute, a public research institute run by Orthodox rabbis.
A couple of points in Jimmy Carter's op-ed in the Washington Post today calling on the world to embrace an illusory Palestinian Arab "unity" government that is filled with terrorists.
One is that Carter is almost certainly mixing up what he wanted to hear with what he did hear from Khaled Meshal:
In my talks with Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, he said Hamas would accept a two-state agreement that is approved in a Palestinian referendum. Such an agreement could provide mutual recognition — Israel would recognize an independent Palestinian state and Palestine would recognize Israel. In other words, an agreement will include Hamas’s recognition of Israel.
Meshal is not generally a liar, but he is good at stretching the truth to gullible Westerners. He's pretty open about his anti-Israel positions. And what he has said publicly is not that Hamas would accept a two-state solution, but that Hamas would temporarily accept a Palestinian Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza as a first stage towards the destruction of Israel.
There is a world of difference between the two.
In 2006:
[Meshal] promised, "Muslims will take over the world," and he explicitly said his organization's plan is to deceive Israel with semantics.
In his speech, the Hamas leader explained that his people are willing to continue fighting Israel even if it takes 1000 years for victory. Mr. Meshaal also said one aspect of Hamas's current strategy is to rely on such tools as using statements like "we love peace" or "we have given up the option of war," while still planning Israel's destruction.
Mr. Meshaal also promised: "Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. … We will make them lose their eyesight, we will make them lose their brains."
I have documented plenty of times that Meshal has played these very semantic games to imply recognition of Israel but without actually indicating any desire to do so.
And just today, a Fatah spokesman dismissed any chance of Hamas recognizing Israel:
A Palestinian official close to President Mahmoud Abbas has called the demand that Hamas recognises Israel's right to exist "unfair".
Mr Abbas's government is set officially to sign a reconciliation agreement with Hamas later today in Cairo, despite the terrorist organisation's continued refusal to fulfil US and Middle East Quartet demands to renounce violence and recognise the principle of Israel's legitimacy.
Palestinian Authority spokesman Nabil Shaath told Israel Radio that the requirements were "unfair, unworkable and [did] not make sense"."
He said all that was necessary was for Hamas to "refrain from any violence ... and be interested in the peace process".
Nice how Fatah has redefined the Quartet's requirements to allow Hamas to maintain its belligerent, intransigent stance. Just like Jimmy!
One other part of Jimmy's op-ed is noteworthy:
If they [the international community] remain aloof or undermine the agreement, the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory may deteriorate with a new round of violence against Israel.
Even Jimmy Carter, who loves peace and loves "Palestine," admits that they will turn to violence if they don't get what they demand.
He's half right. They will turn to violence if they don't get what they want. But they will also turn to violence if they do get what they say they want - because their demands will never end.
Everyone knows what these demands are: releasing all prisoners including the worst terrorists, forcing Israel to allow millions of Arabs to "return", kicking all Jews out of the Old City of Jerusalem and much of the rest of the city as well, and uprooting hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in a massive exercise of ethnically cleansing Jews from their traditional, historic home in Judea and Samaria. These demands have not changed one tiny bit since 1988, over decades of Oslo through years of a terror war.
It is nice to see that Carter admits that Palestinian Arabs are inherently violent. Too bad that this fact is so self-evident that it is not considered a problem anymore for enlightened, peaceful people like Jimmy.
Dr. Sami Al-Emam, professor of Judaism and an "expert" of Zionist ideology at Egypt's Al Azhar University, spoke to Jordan's Dostor newspaper about - what else - how evil Jews are.
He says that Israel has secret maps showing their ambition to take over all Arab lands from the Nile to the Euphrates. The turmoil in Iraq, Syria and Yemen is, naturally, the Jews' fault and foretold in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Israel is "demonic."
One of the illustrations of the article shows the Rothschilds' evil tentacles.
This is all positively moderate compared to his personal blog.
There, this "expert" asserts that the blood libel is completely true, but that the Jews don't kill non-Jewish children for their blood any more after the Russians and Germans found out and retaliated by murdering millions.
(h/t Shawarma News)
DayLife has a series of photos from Gaza, taken by Getty Images, each with the identical caption:
Christian Orthodox hold up candles lit from the 'Holy Fire' as thousands gather in the Church in Gaza City on April 24, 2011.
Most of the photos look like this:
A couple of dozen people at most in these photos, nto exactly "thousands."
But one of the photos looks like this:
Now, Gaza has maybe 3000 Christians altogether. The idea that "thousands" celebrated at this church seems more than a little far fetched. And from this last photograph, it looks like the church is far from full.
How many times do wire service captions shape the story more than the photos themselves?
"Killing Osama Bin Laden is the right thing. Period." is the title of a piece in Palestine Note written by PalArab American Sami Jamil Jadallah.
It starts off this way:
I celebrate and congratulate the American Special Operation unit that killed Osama Bin Laden. I congratulate both America and the Muslim world for this great success. No man and no organization in recent memory, perhaps in the last 500 years had done more damage to Islam and the Arabs than Osama and his Islamist Jihadists including Alqaeda, Taliban’s and other small fringe group of killers and murderers.
But don't be fooled into thinking that Jadallah, who says he is a US Army veteran, hated Bin Laden because he was against America. On the contrary:
To most people in the Arab and Muslim world, they tend to forget that Osama Bin Laden was the creation and invention of the American CIA and the American Zionist NeoCons, and he was their partner not only in Afghanistan when he was fighting the Soviet Union, but I believe he was their partner and ally during the September 11th attack on America. No one can convince me or hundreds of millions like me in the US and around the world that a group of 18 people can do what they did without key assistance from the inside.
Osama Bin Laden was a bonanza, a windfall for the world Zionists and NeoCons, and the September 11th attack was what was needed by these Zionist NeoCons to have their new world order and to take charge of both US domestic and foreign policy and to have their imprint on US “anti-terrorism” agenda. An agenda that has created animosity for America around the world not only in the Muslim world, and is driving America to the verge of bankruptcy while creating a windfall for Israel as the primary beneficiary of US war on terror. The war on terror has served Israel very well, it served it agenda in the American Knesset, and it served Israel well with its industry and intelligence services and the ability to have its Fifth Column in the US by invitation.
Another moderate Arab American that we hear so much about.
