Hamas is so generous with crowded Gaza land

From Reuters:

Palestinian militants of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) take part in a joint drill with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) for the media in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip April 21, 2011.

It is nice to know that the DFLP and PFLP can do joint terror exercises under the magnanimous purview of Hamas. Isn't it sweet that Hamas is so nicely willing to grant so much of that valuable, scarce Gaza land for such an important purpose?

Clashes reported as Hamas stops Gazans from leaving

Palestine Today reports that Hamas has stopped hundreds of people from leaving Gaza to visit Egypt, causing the travelers to clash with Hamas police.

Police arrested some of them.

According to the article, Hamas severely limits the number of people allowed to exit Gaza every day.

Maybe Gaza is a big prison...and the warden is Hamas.

The humanitarian crisis for Gaza surfers continues

Things keep getting worse in Gaza.

There is a shortage of surfboard wax.

As a result, they have to manufacture their own substandard types of wax, exacting a terrible psychological cost.

I hope the UN Human Rights Commission addresses this crisis immediately.

Must See Iraqi TV (MEMRI)

Now, that's entertainment!

I think Jerry Springer might be able to resurrect his career in Iraq!

(h/t John Podhoretz - and Ian)

The immense value of moonbat art

Palestine News Network has an article about a mural painted in a Gaza camp:

The Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project is an initiative co-produced by The Rachel Corrie Foundation and Breaking the Silence Mural Project, along with co-sponsors The Middle East Children’s Alliance, the Gaza Community Mental Health Program and the International Trauma Treatment Program.

The mural is a community building memorial honouring all those who have lost their lives in struggle and those who are resisting oppression. Inspired by the killing of Rachel Corrie, the mural tells a tale of two cities linked through tragedy, Olympia, Washington and Rafah, Palestine. The overall purpose of the project is to increase the strength and visibility of the global solidarity movement for social justice across the world through the use of art, culture and technology.

‘Freedom Tree', the first of A Tale of Two Cities- Olympia-Rafah Solidarity Mural Project in Gaza, was inaugurated last January 16th. Located in the Afaq Jadeeda (New Horizons) Association of Nuseirat Refugee Camp, the mural was painted by the staff of New Horizons and facilitated by Susan Greene.

Facing the deaths of more than 1400 civilians, destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, roads and infrastructure after Israel’s large-scale military offensive (December 2008- January 2009), Palestinians in Gaza are finding ways of continuing to cope with trauma and rebuilding their communities.

The anti-Israel activist who wrote this story for PNN, Alessandra Bajec,  is now claiming that every single Arab killed in Cast Lead was a civilian. They love to deny that Gaza is run by a well-armed, Iranian trained terror group, and that more than half of those killed in Cast Lead were in fact terrorists. Nope - to these moonbats, they are all "civilians."

More interesting, though, was part of an interview where she asks the Director of the Public Relations Department at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program a very good question:

How concretely do you think this and similar projects can help people in Gaza in rebuilding their communities?

Indeed - how do these art projects really help Gazans who are supposedly suffering so much? Why is a giant mural in a camp a wonderful thing for people who are under "siege"?

The answer:

Such projects are very important, as I said, to show solidarity with Palestinians, to make people aware and expose the human rights violations that Palestinians endure. Once people in the world get to know about the Palestinian people, see what their life looks like…that will encourage more solidarity and advocacy, will help build our community and fundraise for our projects. So this is a really important project, definitely valuable in this respect.

So this project helps make people aware of supposed Israeli crimes (like killing over 1400 mythical civilians) so those people can hate Israel and give money for more similar projects, so more people can become aware of Israeli crimes and hate Israel!

It doesn't really help Gazans, you see. It helps the world hate Israel, which makes the Gazans feel good and their mental health will therefore improve because they know other people hate Israel as much as they do. Then more Westerners can tattoo "Resistance" on their biceps and really make a difference!

It is the circle of death wrapped up in pseudo-art. Very progressive!

Interview with IDF ethicist

The Jerusalem Post has a very long, but worthwhile, interview with the man who helped draft the IDF's ethical codes, Asa Kasher. Excerpts:

Our responsibility is to maintain our moral standards. That’s a very important starting point because in matters of war it can sometimes get blurred. People are always talking about factors like international law, public opinion, the Western world – that is, outside factors that we’re supposed to match up to. No, I say we have to uphold our own standards.

What are those standards?

We take decisions that reflect our acceptance of some aspects of international law; other parts, we have not accepted. The prime question, in these fields of morals and ethics, is what I see when I look in the mirror – not when I watch the BBC.

When the enemy becomes more ruthless and harsher than it was in the past, then we have to protect ourselves in smarter and different ways, but still according to the standards that we have set for ourselves.

You can use the analogy of a police officer at a bank robbery. If he sees that the robber is holding a toy gun, he won’t shoot him. He’ll simply catch him. But if it’s a real gun, and the robber has already killed hostages and he’s about to kill more, and the only way to stop him and save the hostages is to shoot him, the policeman will shoot him.

That robber’s actions have required me to protect myself from him via harsher measures. It’s not a case of: he’ll shoot so I’ll shoot, or he’ll do terrible things so I’ll also do terrible things, or he doesn’t care about killing hostages so I won’t care about killing robbers. That’s absolutely not the point at all. He doesn’t care about killing hostages, but I do care: I don’t want to kill him unless there’s truly no alternative.

This robber is threatening people’s lives, so we will shoot him if there is no other alternative. If we can catch him without firing on him at all, excellent. If we can catch him by injuring him, without killing him, excellent. If there’s no alternative, it’s a tragedy to hit him, but that’s what has to be done.

And that broadly is what is happening with our enemies today. If our enemy would fight on the battlefield, on open ground, in uniform, carrying his weapons openly, then it would be a case of an army facing off against a force that behaved like an army, and children and other non-dangerous people would not get hurt. But the enemy has changed the way it fights. So we have no choice. We have to protect ourselves as necessary.

Now there’s a basis to what we have to do: We are a democratic state. And that means two things. One, we are obligated to effectively protect our citizens from all danger. So we have a police force, to protect against crime. A Health Ministry, to protect against medical dangers. A Transportation Ministry, against the dangers on the roads. And we have a Defense Ministry, to protect us against the dangers our enemies represent.

The state cannot evade this obligation. It can’t say, “I am busy, I have more important things to do.” There is nothing more important than protecting citizens’ lives. Nothing.

A democratic state wants to deal with all kinds of other things, all kinds of agreements, citizens’ rights, elections, free media and so on. Okay, fine. But to enjoy all or any of that, you have to be alive. Before you get to any of that, to protect any of that, you have to protect my life. A state is obligated to ensure effective protection of its citizens’ lives. In fact, it’s more than just life. It is an obligation to ensure the citizens’ well-being and their capacity to go about their lives. A citizen of a state must be able to live normally. To send the kids to school in the morning. To go shopping. To go to work. To go out in the evening. A routine way of life. Nothing extraordinary. The state is obliged to protect that.

At the same time, the moral foundation of a democratic state is respect for human dignity. Human dignity must be respected in all circumstances. And to respect human dignity in all circumstances means, among other things, to be sensitive to human life in all circumstances. Not just the lives of the citizens of your state. Everybody.

This applies even in our interactions with terrorists. I am respecting the terrorist’s dignity when I ask myself, “Do I have to kill him or can I stop him without killing him?”

And I certainly have to respect the human dignity of the terrorists’ nondangerous neighbors – who are not a threat. We always talk about “innocents,” but “innocence” is not the issue here. The issue here is whether they are dangerous. So the correct translation is “non-dangerous.”

As in, non-threatening?

Yes, that’s the significance. If they are “not dangerous,” that means I don’t have even the beginning of a moral right to harm them deliberately.

Okay, so that’s some of the theory. Now relate that to Operation Cast Lead.

Fine. We have to protect our citizens and we have to respect human dignity. But when it comes to a war like Operation Cast Lead, those two imperatives are likely to clash. I am obligated to protect my citizens, but I have no way to protect them without the non-dangerous neighbors of the terrorists becoming caught up in the conflict. What am I to do?

Two things: First, you decide what is more important in the given situation. And second, you do whatever you can so that the damage to the other side is as small as possible: Maximizing effective defense of the citizens; minimizing collateral damage.

How do I decide which of the conflicting imperatives is more important? People don’t like this idea, because they don’t understand it: They think it is immoral to give priority to the defense of the citizens of your state over the protection of the lives of the neighbors of the terrorists. They don’t understand that the world is built in such a way that responsibility is divided.

Please elaborate.

We are responsible for the residents of the State of Israel. Canada is responsible for the residents of Canada. Australia, for Australia. And that’s just fine. We are not responsible for the lives of Canadians in the same way as we are for the lives of Israelis and vice versa. This is completely accepted and completely moral and no one questions this. We don’t have one world government that is responsible for everything. We have states with their own responsibilities.

Now from this stems the fact that when you have clash of imperatives, this responsibility for one’s own citizens takes precedence over the other responsibility to the non-dangerous neighbors. This isn’t anything to do with us being Israel, or Jews. The same applies to the United States or to Canada or to any other country.

I cannot evade my prime responsibility to protect the well-being of the citizens of my country. Now, among all the means I could use to protect them, I will choose those that are better morally – better from the point of view of the effectiveness of the protection and the minimalization of the damage to the neighbors of the terrorists.

And what do we do to minimize the harm done to the neighbors of the terrorists?

We can’t separate the terrorist from his neighbors. We can’t force the terrorists to move away, because they don’t want to move away. That’s their whole strategy: To be there. The Hamas terrorists in Gaza, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, they want to work from within. The terrorists have erased the difference between combatants and non-combatants.

They live in residential areas. They operate from within residential areas. They attack civilians. And they won’t leave when I tell them to leave. No one has the power to move them from where they are without conquering the entire area, which requires special justifications.

But if we can’t force the terrorist out, we can make the effort to move his neighbors. He won’t move away from his neighbors, but maybe his neighbors will move away from him. And experience shows that this kind of effort succeeds. That is, very many non-dangerous neighbors do move away from terrorists if they are warned.

So Israel, the IDF, carries out very intensive warning operations. Unprecedented. There are those who don’t like the term, “the most moral army in the world.” I think it’s a very complex phrase, and one has to make all kinds of professional diagnoses. You can’t just blithely invoke it. But let’s look at that claim in this particular context.

Who tries harder than we do to warn the neighbors [to leave a conflict zone]? Who does it better than we do? I don’t know if the public realizes this, but we recently carried out precisely such an act of warning – by publishing a map of Hezbollah positions in south Lebanon. Israel released details of hundreds of villages where Hezbollah has a position deep inside the village. From there, they’ll fire on us if and when they want to, and we will have to protect ourselves. That means we’ll have to fire into the village.

The publication of this map is a warning: We know, it says, that Hezbollah is intertwining its terrorists with non-dangerous neighbors. Understand that to protect ourselves in this situation will mean endangering the populace. The populace has to know that it is in a dangerous situation.

What to do in this dangerous situation? We don’t know. We’re telling those non-dangerous neighbors to give it some thought. Try to kick out Hezbollah? That is apparently very difficult. Move away from the Hezbollah position? Perhaps that is possible. Get away when the time comes? That may sound theoretical at present, but when the time comes, who knows? The fact is, this is an advance warning.

Now let’s come to Operation Cast Lead in this context. We distributed leaflets [to Gaza civilians, telling them that they should leave a potential conflict zone]. It may be that we can do that better – distribute better leaflets, more detailed, with more precise guidance on how to get away. We broke into their radio and TV broadcasts to give them announcements, to warn them. That can be done still more effectively.

We made phone calls to 160,000 phone numbers. No one in the world has ever done anything like that, ever. And it’s clear why that is effective. It’s not a piece of paper that was dropped in my neighborhood. The phone rang in my own pocket! Yes, it was a recorded message, because it’s impossible to make personal calls on that scale. But still, this was my number they dialed. It was a warning directed personally to me, not some kind of general warning.

And finally, we had the “tap on the roof” approach. The IDF used nonlethal weaponry, fired onto the roofs [of buildings being used by terrorists]. That weaponry makes a lot of noise. It constituted a very strong, noisy hint: We’re close, but you still have the chance to get out.

What we don’t use is nohal shachen (the “neighbor protocol”). I recently read comments by a British general, a commander in Afghanistan...

Gen. Richard Kemp?

No, this was someone else, saying at a press conference, how moral his forces are. And then he described their policy, which was nohal shachen, as the symbol of the morality of British soldiers.

What did he say, specifically, that they do?

He said that when they are facing a terrorist hiding out in a building with non-dangerous neighbors, they make one of the neighbors telephone or speak through a loudspeaker to the Taliban terrorist who is in this building, and say that rather than killing him and the neighbors and destroying the house, he should surrender and that he’ll be taken away with various guarantees. This British commander was very proud of this ostensibly humane procedure – a procedure that the courts here forbid us to do. We don’t do it.

We issue warnings in an unprecedented way – not one warning, but many. We make enormous efforts to get the neighbors away from the terrorists.

Now there’s one more thing that maybe we could do, and there’s an argument surrounding it: send soldiers into the building. Send in soldiers to check that maybe someone has stayed. I am against this. Very against this.

So there’s a difference between what we did in Jenin [during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, where 13 soldiers were killed in an ambush] and what we did in Gaza?

Yes, we changed our approach. The approach is more appropriate now. I think what we did in Jenin was a mistake. There was a primitive conception that “it’s all right to endanger soldiers.” Every time there was a dilemma like this – soldiers here and non-soldiers on the other side – the soldiers were endangered.

Why was that wrong?

You need, to a certain limit, to warn the people to get out. At a certain point, the warnings are over and there are two possibilities. That people have stayed because they don’t want to leave or because they can’t leave. If they can’t leave, despite all the warnings, despite the possibilities to get them out, even to send ambulances to get them out, that’s interesting to me, and we’ll come back to that.

But if a neighbor doesn’t want to leave, he turns himself into the human shield of the terrorist. He has become part of the war. And I’m sorry, but I may have to harm him when I try to stop the terrorist. I’ll do my best not to. But it may be that in the absence of all other alternatives, I may hurt him. I certainly don’t see a good reason to endanger the lives of soldiers in a case like that.

Sometimes people don’t understand this. They think of soldiers as, well, instruments. They think that soldiers are there to be put into danger, that soldiers are there to take risks, that this is their world, this is their profession. But that is so far from the reality in Israel, where most of the soldiers are in the IDF because service is mandatory and reserve service is mandatory. Even with a standing army, you have to take moral considerations into account. But that is obviously the case when service is compulsory: I, the state, sent them into battle. I, the state, took them out of their homes. Instead of him going to university or going to work, I put a uniform on him, I trained him, and I dispatched him. If I am going to endanger him, I owe him a very, very good answer as to why. After all, as I said, this is a democratic state that is obligated to protect its citizens. How dare I endanger him?

It is amazing how much a country under constant threat worries about how to minimize harm to those who support its destruction. And as Kasher said, it is not to impress the BBC or HRW, but to uphold Israeli society's own moral standards.

Once again, it is illuminating to compare an interview like this to the facile condemnations that come from the media and "human rights" organizations who automatically assume that civilians die because of IDF mendacity. This shows that Israel is light years ahead of the pontificating accusers, both in knowledge of what has to be done and, yes, in morality.

38 reported killed in Syria protests today (UPDATE: 68)

Ha'aretz writes:

Security forces shot dead at least 25 pro-democracy protesters in Syria on Friday, human rights campaigners said, as protesters flooded into the streets after prayers in at least five major areas across the country.

The protesters were killed in suburbs and towns surrounding Damascus, in the central city of Homs and in the southern town of Izra'a, two established Syrian human rights organisations keeping a tally of civilian deaths told Reuters.

Syrian security forces fired live bullets and tear gas at the tens of thousands of people shouting for freedom and democracy.

"The people want the downfall of the regime!" shouted protesters in Douma, a Damascus suburb where some 40,000 people took to the streets, witnesses said.

It is the same rallying cry that was heard during the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

Al-Arabiya in Arabic says that the number of deaths is at 38. AFP echoes that number.

Before today, some 228 people had been killed in the anti-regime protests in Syria.

UPDATE: Al Arabiya says 68.

The Muslim basketball star and the chief rabbi

From YNet:

American basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will visit Israel in July and meet with Rabbi Israel Meir Lau to discuss a film that he is making about World War II, the rabbi said recently.

The film is based on the book "Brothers in Arms", which Abdul-Jabbar co-authored and deals with the American troops who liberated Nazi concentration camps in the end of World War II. Abdul-Jabbar's own father served on the 761st Tank Battalion, which liberated the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany.

Among the Jews rescued from the camp were two children: Rabbi Lau and his brother, Naftali Lavie. Abdul-Jabbar and Lau met for the first time 14 years ago, during the former's first visit to Israel.

"The fact that such a famous basketball player, and a Muslim, is about to attach himself to the Holocaust issue is very exciting," he said. "I will certainly give my blessing to this initiative."

The retired athlete will arrive early in July as a guest of the Foreign Ministry and the Israeli Consulate in New York, and will participate in the Jerusalem Film Festival, where he will present the basketball documentary that he produced, "On the Shoulders of Giants."

Lau said that Abdul-Jabbar's father, Ferdinand L. Alcindor, had a dying wish: "That his son visit Israel, and meet the little boy that he rescued from Buchenwald and turned into a prominent rabbi."

Lau said he clearly remembers how an African American solider came up to him during the liberation, picked him up, and told the residents of the German city of Weimer: "Look at this sweet kid, he isn't even eight yet. This was your enemy, he threatened the Third Reich. He is the one against whom you waged war, and murdered millions like him."

Decades later, Lau said, his rescuer's son found him.

Rabbi Lau was the Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1993-2003.

(h/t JB)

Fogel family murderers arrested. They don't look Thai to me.

From JPost:

The IDF Spokesperson on Sunday confirmed the arrest of two Palestinians, one a minor, from Awarta, in the March murder of five Fogel family members in their home in the Itamar settlement. The arrest was a joint IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) operation.

The suspects committed the crime for nationalistic reasons, and according to Army Radio, admitted to the crime without expressing remorse. Six others have been remanded on suspicion of involvement in the murders.

According to Shin Bet findings, the two teens, 18-year-old Hakem Awwad and 19-year-old Amjad Awwad, carried out the crime based on their own convictions and without direction by any specific political or terrorist organization.

On the Friday of the murders, the two reportedly met at 3:00 p.m. and planned to carry out the murder. At 9:00 p.m. they met again, equipped with knives, and broke into the Itamar settlement. The two broke into one home, which was empty, and stole an M16 rifle. Afterward, they went to the Fogel family home.

The teenage suspects proceeded to murder two of the children by stabbing, and then entered the parents' bedroom. Udi and Ruti Fogel awoke to the murderers' presence, and began to struggle with them. In the end, the suspects gained control and murdered them as well.

The two then left the house. One of the suspects returned and murdered the three-month-old baby Hadas, taking an M16 from the house.

According to Israel Radio, Amjad said that he was unaware that there were two other children in the house, and that if he knew, he would have stabbed them as well.

Following the incident, the two suspects involved five others, mostly relatives, to help cover up their crime. Hakem's uncle, Saleh, reportedly hid the knives, burned their clothing from the night of the murders, and brought the stolen weapons to Ramallah resident Jad Obeid.

Ha'aretz adds more details, slightly at odds with JPost's:

The two suspects, who are unrelated to one another, were identified as members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine along with several members of their family.
Shin Bet investigators have at this point not identified the murder as being carried out under the auspices of the Popular Front organization. According to what is currently known, the murders were carried out independently by the two suspects.

According to the investigation, it took the suspects about ten minutes to cut the fence which separates the settlement of Itamar from the Palestinian village of Awarta. They climbed the security barrier at the settlement unnoticed and walked about 400 meters into the settlement. Once inside the settlement, they broke into an empty home and stole an M-16 rifle, a weapons cartridge, a vest and a helmet before proceeding to the Fogel family's home.

So there were two fences between 'Awarta and Itamar; they cut one and climbed the second.

Before entering the house, the suspects noticed Yoav and Elad Fogel in the home's window. Yoav and Elad were the first to be stabbed after the suspect entered the home. The suspects then entered the parents' room. Ehud and Ruth tried to fight off the attackers, but were eventually overcome and stabbed to death. Ruth was also shot, but due to the weather at the time of the murder, the gunshots were not heard. The suspects fled the home, fearing that the gunshots had been heard.

Outside of the home, the suspects realized that their gunshots had gone unnoticed and they had not yet been discovered. Amjad Awad subsequently reentered the home in order to steal an additional M-16 rifle that was there. Back inside the parents' room, Awad noticed three-month-old Hadas and stabbed her to death. While leaving the home once more, the suspect noticed that there were more children but apparently figured that he was running out of time. The lives of Roi Fogel, 8, and Yishai Fogel, 2, were spared.

There have been many articles since the murders by anti-Israel writers saying that Jews had killed the Fogels, or foreign workers in the settlements (there were none,) or that the IDF was unfairly searching the village of 'Awarta without any evidence.

None of them will retract their lies, of course.

05/10 Links: NGOs, Antisemitism, and Government Funding; Nepal expresses 'deep gratitude' to Israel

From Ian:

---

NGO Monitor: NGOs, Antisemitism, and Government Funding: NGO Monitor’s Report to the 2015 Global Forum on Antisemitism

Antisemitism is a very virulent and enduring form of racism that has unfortunately been reemerging to levels not seen since the 1930s, in the period leading up to the Holocaust. Throughout Europe, Jews have been deliberately targeted, violently attacked and murdered at synagogues, schools, kosher markets, and museums. Jews wearing yarmulkes (skull caps) or other religious markings are subject to harassment and violence. Crowds at soccer matches chant “Jews to the gas” and other genocidal taunts. Mass demonstrations in European capitals, ostensibly to protest Israeli actions towards the Palestinians, are rife with antisemitic and Nazi sloganeering and imagery. University campuses have seen extreme targeting and singling out of Jews. In Iran, state-sponsored Holocaust denial and calls to “wipe Israel off the map” are entrenched. Arab media is filled with vitriolic antisemitism and blood libels.
As antisemitism rises and reaches crisis levels in Europe, NGOs that claim to promote human rights and humanitarian agendas in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict and executing the Durban Strategy have fueled and exacerbated hatred of and discrimination against Jews, promoting antisemitic themes and imagery, as at the Durban Conference. These groups, which include international, Palestinian, and Israeli NGOs, also fail to report on or condemn antisemitism and incitement against Jews.
Despite the extensive evidence of NGO antisemitism – egregious examples are provided below – governments, in particular in Europe, continue to fund these groups with hundreds of millions of dollars, pounds, euros, and kroner, and enable the problematic activities and rhetoric.
Click here for PDF version

Richard Millett: Galloway gone! Ward ousted! Liberal Democrats demolished! Labour decimated! SNP in.

For five years Labour has been isolationist on the foreign policy front. It voted not to assist the Syrian people being slaughtered by Assad.
There was, however, one country on which Labour was not isolationist: Israel. Precious parliamentary time was wasted by Labour MPs these last five years smearing Israel as evil and debating, and voting for, a future Palestinian state.
But despite the election results there is no room for complacency for British Jews. The Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) have virtually swept away Labour in Scotland. They grew from six to an astonishing 56 MPs!
The SNP like to paint themselves as supportive of multiculturalism but there is, again, one country they are not too accepting of: Israel.
These are SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon’s words to the ‘Ending Scottish Arms Trade with Israel’ conference only yesterday:
“As you may be aware, during the recent conflict in Gaza the Scottish Government wrote to the UK Government urging an embargo on arms sales to Israel. The Scottish Government is a firm friend of Palestine and we will continue to press this issue after the election.”
An SNP council also once voted to ban Israeli books in its libraries.
No doubt the SNP will soon be joining forces with Labour, what’s left of the Liberal Democrats and Caroline Lucas of the Green Party to attack Israel.
In the meantime the average hard-working grassroots pro-Israel activist can enjoy some well-earned schadenfreude at the demise of Galloway and Ward.

UN Watch: Fighting Dictatorships, Defending Human Rights

May 2015 update on UN Watch's latest battles to confront dictatorships at the UN with the truth of their human rights abuses.

Fighting Anti-Israel Bigotry - UN Watch in 2014-2015

Screened at UN Watch Gala in Geneva on May 7, 2015. How Schabas was fired -- and more on incredible work of UN Watch to expose and combat the anti-Israel selectivity of the U.N. and its grossly biased Human Rights Council.

Netanyahu: Israel foiled Iran's efforts to open new front on Golan

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at the start of a cabinet meeting Sunday morning, mentioned that since the outgoing government's first cabinet meeting two years ago, the region has been in constant tumult.
“Despite the many attempts to challenge us from our borders, we fended off all these efforts without exception,” he said.
Netanyahu mentioned Hezbollah in south Lebanon, the efforts by Iran to open up a new front against Israel on the Golan Heights, attempts to transfer advanced weaponry from Syria to Lebanon, and efforts by Hamas to carry out a “strategic attack” against Israel in the south.
“During Operation Protective Edge, we delivered Hamas the most powerful blow it has received since its creation,” he said. “We are prepared for all developments from that front.”
More than anything, he said, the previous government acted to prevent Iran from getting nuclear arms. “These efforts are continuing, and we will not stop,” he said. “We will preserve Israel's right to defend itself by itself under any conditions and in any situation.”

PreOccupied Territory: We Must Disregard Elections In Favor Of Opinion Poll Results by Ed Miliband and Isaac Herzog (satire)

Both of our countries witnessed hard-fought national elections this year, elections that featured a striking similarity: in both cases, opinion polls leading up to the voting indicated the results were too close to call, with Labour holding perhaps a slight edge – only to discover on Election Day that the electorate had chosen decisively to elect our chief rivals. The discrepancy between the two sets of figures can mean only one thing: we must do away with voting and use only opinion poll results as our guide.
Our respective parties have already engaged in much of the post-mortem analysis, examining where our campaigns may have gone wrong, and why exactly the people voted against us. Such analysis has its place, but what we and our fellow left-wing politicians must focus on is working to reform the system to reflect what the polls so clearly demonstrated. Aside from some acquaintances across the parliamentary aisle, neither of us personally knows anyone who would not vote Labour. Small wonder, then, that the election outcomes came as a shock – and a suspicious one, at that. What thinking person could not see the manifest righteousness of our platform and policies when contrasted with the fear-mongering of our opponents? What rational citizen would knowingly choose a party with policies so flagrantly at odds with all that is good and right?
We unfortunately have been given our answer: too many such people exist, and can vote. The only proper response, then, is to reform the system so such travesties of democracy are no longer possible.

Suspects linked to hit-and-run incident against officer arrested

Two men, suspects in Saturday's hit and run attack against a police officer near Hebron, were arrested on Sunday during a raid by security forces, according to an official police statement.
Saturday's incident occurred during a police inspection of vehicles near Hebron during which a Palestinian vehicle was signaled to pull over. The driver accelerated, hit an officer, and then sped in the direction of a nearby village.
The Hebron residents, aged 23 and 26, who were arrested in their home and taken for further interrogation, were found in possession of the keys to the vehicle used in the attack. The vehicle itself, bearing marks from the incident, was found nearby.
The officer who was struck in the attack suffered light injuries and was released from Beersheva's Soroka hospital.

Melbourne, Australia: Bright, ambitious, kind, gentle teen and a Mother's Day terror plot

In Melbourne, Australia, a fresh round of police raids on Friday and a 17 year old is at the heart of the action.
People are asking themselves - yet again - how the suspicion of the security authorities could possibly have fallen on a teenage boy "from a successful migrant family", a "bright teen" with "ambitions to follow his father into medicine and one day work together".
As the news channels are reporting now, it's another instance of a terrorist bombing attack foiled before anyone was hurt. And with live explosives being detonated (by police) in the streets of a leafy Melbourne suburb.
The outline below, and the collection of quoted passages in the opening para, comes from "Mother’s Day bomb plot: Teen allegedly blocked family and friends from Facebook posts",

State-Funded University Promoting Alliances with Hamas-dominated Palestinian Universities?

Rabab Abdulhadi, director of San Francisco State University (SFSU)’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) and a committed anti-Israel activist, has long sought an alliance between SFSU and two Palestinian universities, An-Najah and Bir Zeit. The April 22 victory of Hamas, or the Islamic Bloc, in Bir Zeit’s student council elections demonstrates the perversity of this endeavor.
Bir Zeit University, located in the West Bank about a dozen miles north of Jerusalem, was already a seat of Islamist activity. The Hamas-supporters’ win assures that an imprisoned terrorist will hold the title of “honorary chairman” of the student council.
According to Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh:
Hamas supporters on campus won 26 seats, compared to 16 for their rivals in the Fatah faction, headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas.
The results of the election mean that Bilal Barghouti, who is serving 16 life terms in prison for his role in a series of suicide attacks against Israel, has become the “Honorary Chairman of the Bir Zeit University Student Council.”

Suede to do encore show in Israel, Primus cancels due to 'logistical constraints'

Britpop veterans Suede will be making their second appearance in Israel, following a successful show four years ago at the Tel Aviv Exhibition Grounds. This time, they'll be performing at the Mivtachim Menorah Arena in Tel Aviv on July 30.
Labeled the 'best new band in Britain' by Melody Maker when they broke out in the early 1990s, the group made good on the hype with albums highlighting the shimmering guitar work of Bernard Butler and the striking lead vocals of Brett Anderson. Their 1994 album Dog
Man Star is considered a classic, but marked the end of the Anderson-Butler partnership with the guitarist being replaced by Richard Oakes. The band called it quits in 2003 but regrouped in 2010 and have been active since, releasing a 2013 album Bloodsports and another album expected this summer. Two days before the announcement of the Suede show, the producers of Rock in the Park taking place on June 9-11 at the Ra'anana Amphitheater announced that one of the featured acts – Primus – was cancelling their show due to "logistical constraints."

The Belgians aren’t coming

Buckling under a relentless onslaught of cultural and academic pressure, Belgian artist Miet Warlop and her Campo Arts Center have canceled their presentation of Mystery Magnet at the Israel Festival.
“We tried to explain our position,” Ms. Warlop wrote, “but it seems there’s no longer any place for decisions based on art…and the pressure to conform with [society’s] demands was simply too great.”
Israel Festival general director Eyal Sher, deploring what he termed the company’s surrender to cultural terror, invited Ms. Warlop to reconsider “and above all to stand firm against the forces of intolerance and extremism.”
One cannot help wondering whether some of the pressure was fiscal, as in “go, and you’ll lose your funding.”

Tonge In Place & "Nasty" Nick Cotton's Noxious Noise

The inevitable set of Mendacious Maps prominently displayed, the Richmond branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been making merry with all the fun of the fair.
Among the Israel-haters saying their bit to camera in the following footage by branch honcho Alex Seymour (aka Seymour Alexander) is the incorrigible Jenny Tonge, looking and sounding as sour as always.
But the "star" of Seymour's video is a bloke with a Jewish name. He's actor John Altman, best known for playing Dot Cotton's jailbird son "Nasty"Nick Cotton in the BBC TV soap "EastEnders".
The script that Altman spews is full of spite and venom, and woeful, disgusting ignorance. Shame on him.

Guardian fauxtography in article on deportation of migrants from Israel

In the face of the deaths of hundreds by drowning as they try to reach Europe from war-torn Africa, relentlessly anti-Israeli Australian as-a-Jew blogger Anthony Loewenstein focuses on the story of a migrant flown back to Africa from Israel.
The European solution to the problem is to destroy the boats the migrants use to make their dangerous way to Europe, thus stranding them in Libya or Morocco and leaving them to their fate.
Israel found itself awash with some 60,000 migrants emerging out of Egypt’s Sinai Desert and making their illegal home in Israel. It is seeking a humane way to remove them from the country. Note that Eritrean migrants had to travel hundreds or thousands of miles though Sudan and Egypt to reach Israel. Under international law (so diligently cited when used to condemn Israel) these were the countries that actually had to offer them refuge as the first countries they came to. Yet there is no mention of their responsibility for this problem in Loewenstein’s article. As usual at the Guardian, it is all about Israel’s purported misdeeds.
In case Loewenstein’s story of the dangers faced by returned migrants like Robel Tesfahannes, whose story he chose to showcase, does not sufficiently inflame the passions of the usual crowd of Israel bashers that flock to CiF, the Guardian illustrated the story with this photograph at the head of the article:
Now, this is a shocking, but curious picture to use. Yes, this boat is undoubtedly full of Africans. They are clearly desperate to get somewhere. But aren’t we told that Israel is flying them back to Africa, not sending them back on boats? Furthermore, isn’t Rwanda a land-locked country in the middle of Africa, bordered by Congo, Uganda, Burundi and Tanzania? Didn’t Tesfahannes travel by air with 10 other Eritreans – not a boatload of men, women and children? How did Eritrean and Sudanese migrants find themselves on a boat in the middle of Africa, apparently put there by Israel?
Well, as usual a few seconds spent with a search engine (something seemingly beyond the skills of the Guardian’s editorial staff) reveals that this is actually a photograph of migrants hoping to disembark in Salerno after being rescued by the Italian naval ship “Chimera”, according to the caption in the Irish Times, which used the same exact image:

ISIS Terror Cells Threaten Gaza, Sinai and Saudi Arabia

The Palestinian Authority has warned that “hundreds” of Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists are setting up bases in Gaza for attacks on the Sinai Peninsula, and at least one of four recent attacks in Saudi Arabia has been linked the fanatic Islamic group.
The Palestinian Authority said that eight Salafist groups have set up bases in Gaza, and that many of its recruits are former Hamas members, Reshet Bet (Voice of Israel) radio reported Sunday morning. Hamas denies that the ISIS poses a threat to stability of its regime and said “only” a few dozen Salafists, supporting the ISIS, are in Gaza.
Hamas arrested a senior Salafist terrorist last month as well as dozens of the group’s terrorists in recent weeks.
A group that itself as the ISIS stated on Friday it launched mortar shells are a Hamas base in central Gaza.
Each radical Muslim group is competing to be more monstrous than the other, and Hamas last week even destroyed a tent that was turned into a mosque that ISIS supporters used.

Egypt's army has killed '725 terrorists' over 6 months in Sinai campaign

Egypt's offensive against violent militants in the Sinai Peninsula has resulted in the deaths of 725 terrorists, a new report by the Egyptian army claims.
According to al-Ahram, the report, which was released on Saturday, details operations spanning the period between October 25 to April 30 of last year. It specifically details February as being the most lethal month, during which 173 terrorists were killed, and January as the calmest, with 44 on the radicals reported dead.
Apart from the body count, 1,873 suspects connected to militant groups were reported detained, with most arrests, some 575 taking place in November, and the least, 158, in January.
November also saw the discovery and destruction of the most militant hideouts by security forces, with 1,023 such cases occuring in that month alone. An additional 800 havens were also reported destroyed in the period in question.

Senior Hezbollah commander said killed in Syria

Marwan Mughniyeh, a senior commander in Hezbollah whose cousin Imad Mughniyeh was allegedly assassinated by Israel, was killed in fierce battles in Syria on Friday, Syrian opposition sources said.
Mughniyeh was killed in a battle with rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, in the Qalamoun region, northeast of Damascus, the sources said.
He was reported to have been the commander of special operations for the Lebanese Shiite militia, which has been fighting alongside regime forces in the Syrian civil war.
Hezbollah announced Saturday on its Al-Manar television channel that, together with regime forces, it had taken the Al-Nusra Front’s largest base in the region, at Sahlet al-Maaysra.

A Turkish-Saudi Military Offensive on Syria?

Worse, any Turkish air raid to bomb Damascus would expose Turkish aircraft to the risk of being hit by the powerful air defenses in Syria. Turkish warplanes are not outfitted with the critical stand-off jammer systems that would blind enemy radars. Half of the squadrons of Turkish fighters that would fly over Syrian skies may not be able to return home safely.
Then there is the bigger risk of Syrian missiles. The Scud that hit Turkish territory on March 25 proved that the US/NATO Patriot missiles stationed in southern and eastern Turkey could only protect the areas in their immediate vicinity. But Assad not only has Scuds he can fire from a range of 180-200 kilometers; he has in his arsenal unknown numbers of Scud-C ballistic missiles, which have a range of 500 kilometers, putting several big Turkish cities "within range."
Turkey simply does not have a long-range anti-missile defense architecture to counter Syrian (and/or Iranian) missiles. Being a member of the alliance, it can rely on naval NATO assets to counter such threats, but that would be too risky a gamble.
It is true that the Erdogan administration has been weighing military options against Assad for the past couple of years. It is also true that Erdogan has an obsession about getting rid of Assad and is not the most peaceful leader in the region. All the same, the Turkish president is not a suicidal man. The odds are slim for a Turkish-Saudi military offensive against Assad's Syria.

Bi-partisan report blasts Iran for human rights violations as US continues negotiations

Iran insists it doesn't punish people for their beliefs, but its prison population - and a scathing new report from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom - say otherwise.
The bipartisan commission's 2015 report on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s incarceration and persecution of Christians, Baha’is, Jews and minority Sunni Muslims prompted key lawmakers to call for new human rights sanctions targeting Iran’s clerical regime, and urged President Obama, whose administration is currently in nuclear negotiations with Tehran, to lead the way.
"If the Obama Administration wants to be serious about holding Iran accountable, it should be working with Congress to reinforce and expand sanctions that target Iran’s ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom and human rights," Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., told FoxNews.com. "But it’s not.”
Kirk, a leading legislative architect of Iranian human rights and nuclear sanctions, added “Iran’s systematic violations of religious freedom ... have gotten worse under the supposedly more ‘moderate’ presidency of Hassan Rouhani.”
The climate of persecution is in spite of Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s recent insistence that “we don’t jail people for their opinions.”

PreOccupied Territory: Activists Jailed In Iran Touched By Khamenei’s Concern For US Blacks (satire)

Imprisoned Iranians being held for trying to defend human and civil rights in their country are moved by the Supreme Leader’s sudden interest in the welfare of African-Americans, say the activists’ representatives.
Amid the riots and continuing racial tensions in Baltimore, a representative of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to Twitter with messages scolding the US for its treatment of colored people. As a result, the hundreds of activists jailed for working to secure various freedoms the West takes for granted said they were genuinely touched by the leader’s remarks.
“It’s ridiculous that even though US President is black, still such crimes against US blacks continue to occur,” tweeted the Supreme Leader, whose government and police routinely arrest and torture people for expressing dissent. Many of those arrested said they had no idea Khamenei was such a sensitive, empathetic person.
“I’ve been held for eight months without trial, ostensibly for insulting the regime,” said Ali Jafavidi. “I’ve been subjected to physical torture, threats to my family, baseless accusations of sedition, and inhumane psychological pressure, all in the name of silencing those who dare to imply the current leadership is not Allah’s gift to Iran. But you know, I’m just touched that the man behind all this abuse might actually have a caring heart after all.”

Saudi Islamist Preacher: The Jews Poison Muslim Hearts and Minds with WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook

In an address posted on the Internet on May 3, 2015, Saudi Islamist preacher Abdulla Ba Neema (sometimes spelled Baneameh) said that the Jews "put poison into things that the Muslims like." According to him, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook are tools used by the Jews to poison and hearts and minds of the Muslims. "Our women's honor has been violated as a result of social networks," he said, adding that WhatsApp "is the sewage that flows in your heart." Despite his criticism of social networks, Ba Neema runs very active Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. Ba Neema was paralyzed in a swimming pool accident.

Germany sees rise in anti-Semitic, anti-foreigner crime

Germany's top security official says new statistics show a sharp rise in anti-Semitic offenses last year, as well as in crimes against foreigners.
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters Wednesday that anti-Semitic offenses rose 25.2 percent last year to 1,596 after declining in 2013. Crimes against foreigners were up 21.5 percent to 3,945.
De Maiziere says the rise is partially due to new reporting methods that more closely track the motivation of perpetrators, but said nonetheless "this development is worrying and must be stopped."
He says there is no political solution alone, but the "whole of society is needed."

Thousands attend Mauthausen liberation commemoration

President Heinz Fischer and Chancellor Werner Faymann were among those attending Sunday’s ceremonies. The annual event has particular significance this year as the world marks the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Hundreds of thousands of people died at the western Austrian camp and its subsidiaries. Many were worked to death. Others were shot, gassed, or died through medical experiments.
The camp was liberated on May 5, 1945 by American troops. Its inmates were the last of all concentration camp prisoners to be set free by the Allies.
On Friday, an Austrian website run by an anti-Holocaust organization was hacked and displayed images of child pornography.
Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner has ordered a criminal investigation and condemned the “sick, criminal attack.”

Survivor’s rise from the rubble of Warsaw to life in Israel

Moshe Tirosh, born Mieczyslaw Kenigswein, survived the Holocaust by hiding in the basement of the Warsaw zoo
The young boy emerged from the rubble of Warsaw, clinging to a woman he knew only as Mrs. Wala. She turned and walked off, and 7-year-old Mieczyslaw Kenigswein was alone, lost in the Holocaust.
He is now 78, an Israeli with a Hebrew name, Moshe Tirosh. During a visit to Warsaw, he recalled surviving the war not knowing if his parents were dead or alive — and how random twists of fate saved his life.
Tirosh’s earliest memories are of hunger and misery in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Called Miecio as a boy, he was nearly 5 when his mother, Regina, gave birth to her third child under floorboards, biting her knuckles to keep from screaming so the Germans would not discover them.

Veterans march through Jerusalem to mark WWII Victory in Europe Day

Scores of elderly veterans living in Israel marched on Sunday through Jerusalem's city center in full military uniform to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, drawing cheers and amazed looks from onlookers.
The men, who had fought for various European armies during the war, were smiling and waving as they walked the sunny streets of Jerusalem.
"It's very important that people remember this day. It's very important that people come here, even 10 years from now when not all these veterans will be with us. It's very important that this thing continues as a habit to come and celebrate this day," said Netali Palalo, the grandchild of a veteran who passed away.
Israel usually observes the Nazi defeat on May 8, Victory in Europe day, as do most European countries.

Veterans Parade, Haifa, Israel (h/t Bob Knot)


Are you a dangerous driver? A new app lets you know

Are you an anxious, cautious, dangerously irresponsible, angry or hostile driver? And how often do you use your cell phone while driving?
A new algorithmic system developed at an Israeli university can give drivers important feedback to assess their driving and talking-while-driving habits.
The app relies on smartphone sensors to collect data in real time while the user is driving, stores the data in the cloud and then analyzes it over time. The driver is presented with several outputs: classification of his or her driving style on a continuous scale; classification of the level of smartphone usage (non-user, passive, active) on a continuous scale; and feedback for a specific trip or for an accumulation of trips.
Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev associate professor Eli Rohn and six of his information systems engineering students developed this sophisticated app with several possible practical uses in mind.

Lockheed Martin sings the praises of Israeli cyber-security firm

A newly announced $25 million investment by US defense contractor Lockheed Martin along with several partners in Israeli cyber-security start-up Cybereason is the company putting its money where its mouth is. Several months ago, LH checked out Cybereason’s protection system, and liked it enough to recommend it to others, “after they compared our solution against a dozen others from the top industry players,” CEO Lior Div told The Times of Israel. The series B funding round was led by Spark Capital, with participation from existing investor CRV.
In fact, LH was so impressed with the results they got from Cybereason that they began offering it to their own customers – among them most of the top Fortune 100 companies, and the US federal government. CyberReason is now the security system recommended by LH to its customers for protection from a wide malware and hack attacks.
Now, LH has decided to commit a substantial sum of investment money to Cybereason. “The Cybereason platform is an outstanding complement to the tradecraft and technologies Lockheed Martin uses every day to defend our network and our clients,” said Rich Mahler, director of commercial cyber services at Lockheed Martin, announcing the investment. “Its real-time detection and attack tracing capabilities enable us to effectively leverage threat intelligence and provide our government and commercial customers with a calculated, strategic approach to cyber defense. In addition to deploying Cybereason internally and partnering with it, we also participated in this latest round as a strategic investor.”

Israeli aid team reunites with Nepalese woman rescued from rubble

An Israeli-led rescue team that pulled a Nepalese woman out of the rubble in the capital Kathmandu five days after a massive earthquake leveled much of the city late last month, was reunited with the woman on Friday, some 10 days after her rescue.
Workers from the Israeli group IsraAID, along with local soldiers and a team of experts from France and Norway, worked into the night for 10 hours to pull Krishna Devi Khadka to safety on April 30.
On Friday, she met with members of the Israeli team.
“Krishna told me she remembered everything and was so grateful to our rescue team led by Eran Magen as well as the Israeli hospital staff,” said IsraAID head of mission in Nepal Yotam Polizer.
Khadka, 24, had been stuck underneath a collapsed hotel alongside three bodies and could only breathe due to an air pocket that formed alongside her, IsraAid said in a statement.

IDF hospital in Kathmandu closed in official ceremony

In a joint ceremony with their Nepali counterparts, the Israeli army officially closed its field hospital in Kathmandu on Sunday.
As of the weekend, IDF medical personnel had treated 1,427 victims of the devastating earthquake that hit the mountainous Asian nation last month, including 90 life-saving surgeries, six cesarean sections and two natural births.
IDF engineers continue to collaborate with local authorities and have evaluated the stability of 295 public structures damaged in the earthquake, and IDF mental health officers continue to hold seminars for local education staff intended to help the population in their transition following the disaster.
The field hospital established in Kathmandu, the Nepalese capital, was the largest hospital ever erected by the IDF.

Nepal expresses 'deep gratitude' to Israel as emergency teams prepare to return home

At a small function to mark the closure of the emergency aid facility, Nepal's Urban Development Minister Narayan Khadka expressed the Nepal government's gratitude to Israel for its help.
"Let me express our sincere gratitude to the government of Israel and to the people of Israel for helping us in times of very critical hours for Nepal," Khadka said.
The hospital offered operating rooms, imaging facilities, advanced labs and an intensive care section with 150 Israelis taking care of its patients. It also had a synagogue and a kosher kitchen.
Apart from medical serves, Israel's emergency response teams, working under the IDF's Home Front Command, scanned 332 public buildings to check whether they were still stable, and carried out 605 safety courses for local Nepalese members of the public.
Israel's ambassador to Nepal, Yaron Mayer, said he was optimistic about the nation's future.
"I did mention that Nepal is crying and the whole world is crying, but I also said that I am optimistic for the future and looking ahead, things are now starting to rebuild. It will take time I know, but things will be better and Nepal will be stronger and we will be united working for these challenges," Mayer said.

Israel treats 4-year-old Gaza patient

Yara from Gaza was transferred to Israel for medical treatment after she was injured in a car accident in the strip. Three months later she has managed to surprise hospital staff at the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon by starting to walk just a few days after she was given a prosthetic leg.
Now released from the hospital, Yara can walk and even learned Hebrew during her time in the Israeli hospital. Back in Gaza, Yara was reunited with her parents for the first time since she left to get treatment in Israel.
The accident happened three months ago, near the young girl's home in the Tuffah district in Gaza City. Yara and 15 other children had been playing near a main road when a truck that passed by did not notice the children and ran into Yara. (h/t Bob Knot)