The cowardice of Lauryn Hill (update)

From hip-hop artist Lauryn Hill's Facebook page:

Dear Friends and Fans in Israel,
When deciding to play the region, my intention was to perform in both Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Setting up a performance in the Palestinian Territory, at the same time as our show in Israel, proved to be a challenge. I've wanted very much to bring our live performance to this part of the world, but also to be a presence supporting justice and peace. It is very important to me that my presence or message not be misconstrued, or a source of alienation to either my Israeli or my Palestinian fans. For this reason, we have decided to cancel the upcoming performance in Israel, and seek a different strategy to bring my music to ALL of my fans in the region. May healing, equanimity, and the openness necessary for lasting resolution and reconciliation come to this region and its people.
Respectfully,
Ms. Lauryn Hill

The concert was announced in the beginning of March and cancelled on Sunday, three days before it was to be performed.

What Hill didn't say was that she was subject to a huge campaign to bully her into canceling the concert from the BDS crowd.

The excuse that she canceled because of the issue of not being able to perform in Ramallah is obviously a lie. If that was her intent all along, then she wouldn't have announced the Tel Aviv concert until arrangements had been made for the Ramallah concert. Canceling a concert three days beforehand is a political statement whether she likes it or not. And it is a slap in the face of her Israeli fans.

Lauryn Hill didn't have the honesty to say, like Salif Kelta did, that she was threatened by hundreds of haters. Her decision had nothing to do with "peace and justice" or logistics. After all, she performed in Israel in 2007 without worrying about any Ramallah performance.

On the other hand, she didn't publicly embrace boycotting Israel, ,and she tried with this message to say that she still loves her Israeli fans.

The BDS crowd ignores that, and is calling their bullying tactics a victory. It is - because despite her pretense of canceling because she cares about her fans, she really did it to avoid being pilloried by professional haters who don't want peace but want to see the Jewish state destroyed.

She can't have it both ways. Her cancellation is more of a "source of alienation" to her fans than her performance would have been - no one is boycotting the many artists who have braved the threats and performed in Israel.  She caved to haters and antisemites and didn't have the honesty to admit it.

With this episode, Lauryn Hill showed herself to be nothing but a coward.

UPDATE: Dionne Warwick, who is performing in Israel this month,  had  a pointed response to Lauryn Hill:

A statement released to the press read that Ms. Warwick "would never fall victim to the hard pressures of Roger Waters, from Pink Floyd, or other political people who have their views on politics in Israel."

"Waters’ political views are of no concern to Ms. Warwick, as she holds her own unique views on world matters. Art has no boundaries. Ms. Warwick will always honor her contracts," the statement read.

"If Ms. Warwick had an objection to performing in Israel, no offer would have been entertained and no contract would have been signed," the statement concluded.

(h/t cba)

About that Hamas tunnel work accident...

From Ma'an:

The military wing of Hamas, al-Qassam Brigades, said Monday evening that a fighter affiliated to the group had been killed in a tunnel collapse in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.

Al-Qassam Brigades identified the fighter as 25-year-old Mahmoud Adel Ghaban from Beit Lahiya.

A number of fighters in Gaza have been killed by accidents during military training exercises in recent years, and the tunnel networks, which are largely used for smuggling in the coastal enclave's south and military purposes in the north, are notoriously dangerous.

A tunnel in the northern Gaza Strip? Where would such a tunnel be going to?

Chag Sameach!

I wish all of my readers who celebrate Passover to have a happy and healthy holiday!

I'll still be posting for a few more hours, but I wanted to make sure that my readers in Israel and Europe get the message. I will not be posting anything during the first two days of the holiday, until at least Wednesday night.

Islamic Jihad says it is too moral to use chemical weapons

Palestine Today writes that Said Abu Ahmed, spokesman of Al-Quds Brigades, military wing of Islamic Jihad, said that the Palestinian "resistance" groups would never use chemical weapons because of the ethics of the "resistance" and their Islamic religion which would prohibit their use.

In other ethical news, the same Islamic Jihad praised the murderers of Ben Yosef Livnat, returning from prayers at Joseph's Tomb, this morning, saying it was a natural response to the provocation that Jews do. By praying, I guess.

Triple Crown hopeful owned by Orthodox Jewish family from Egypt

From the Jewish Standard:

It took American Pharoah barely more than two minutes and two seconds to win the 2015 Kentucky Derby.

For Joanne Zayat of Teaneck, whose husband, Ahmed, owns American Pharoah (and yes, that is how it is spelled), those two minutes and barely more than two seconds stretched out and then blurred and bore little relation to regular time as it usually passes.

There she was — really, there they were, Ahmed and Joanne Zayat, their four children — all Orthodox Jews — and a small crowd of friends and relatives, in one of the owners’ boxes at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, on a glorious flowering spring Shabbat, watching as their horse won America’s most iconic horse race.

How did they get there?

It’s an unusual story.

Although most Jews in Egypt left the country in the 1950s — when its ruler, Gamal Abdel Nasser, made it clear that their lives were likely to be longer, healthier, and happier were they to live them elsewhere — “some affluent Jews stayed, for various reasons,” Joanne Zayat said. That group included Ahmed Zayat’s family.

Mr. Zayat, born in 1962, grew up in Maadi in suburban Cairo. “It was a very mixed neighborhood, with a lot of ex-pats,” Ms. Zayat said. “It looked a lot like here.” To foreshadow a bit — among his pastimes was riding horses at his country club.

When he was 18, Mr. Zayat came to the United States; he went to Harvard, graduated from Yeshiva University, and then earned a joint master’s degree with Harvard and Boston University. A natural entrepreneur, he worked in a number of fields. Among his companies was Al Ahram Beverages, which eventually he sold to Heineken. He did very well.

About 10 years ago, Mr. Zayat retired — or so he said. “He decided he needed to stop traveling,” his wife said. “He wanted to be home with my kids.

“But everyone who knows my husband knows that he can’t be retired for more than 15 seconds. So he decided to take his passion and turn it into a business.”

What did he love? Horses!

“There is a phrase — if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life,” Ms. Zayat said.

“So he decided to go into the horse business.”

...

What is it like being Orthodox Jews at the Kentucky Derby? “There is no conflict,” Ms. Zayat said. “Most of our big races are on Saturdays, so we walk to the track.”

They stay at a hotel in Louisville, which is an easy walk on race day, and get kosher meals, including full Shabbat dinners, from a caterer, “but for the Preakness and the Belmont we can’t walk from any hotel, so we rent a trailer.” It’s not just a regular old RV; “It is 45 feet long, has two bathrooms, has a full kitchen and dining area, and sleeps six to eight people.

“Shabbes is still Shabbes. You are still getting gefilte fish for dinner,” she said.

“I think that when you are true to yourself, and you have a strong value system, people respect it.

“This is a free country, and people get that.”

Read the whole thing.

(h/t Irene)

Saudi airstrike kills 5 in humanitarian aid office. You must have missed the headlines.

Different building hit by Saudi airstrikes

From IBTimes:

Shelling from Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces hit an international humanitarian aid office in Yemen on Thursday, killing five Ethiopian refugees and wounding 10, a local official said. The news comes amid growing concern about the Saudi-led military offensive's impact on Yemen’s civilians and infrastructure.

If you want to know the up-to-date statistics of how many civilians were killed since Saudi Arabia started their airstrikes, good luck. You won't find a scorecard attached to every story about the fighting the way that reporters in Gaza loved to include in their stories.

Also unlike Gaza, when civilians are killed it is assumed that not all of them were killed by the Saudis, while in Gaza all of the people killed were assumed to be from Israeli fire, even though well over a thousand Hamas rockets fell in civilian areas.

In fact, while reporters flocked to cover the Gaza war, secure in the knowledge that Israel wouldn't bomb the areas where they stayed, no reporters are trying to sneak into Yemen to file first-person reports. With rare exceptions, reporters aren't even trying to do anything original in their reporting.

The Gaza reporters happily accepted the Hamas talking points as fact, but no one (outside of Iranian media) is viewing the Houthi version of the story from Yemen as having any legitimacy.

Another point that is roundly ignored by the media is that the Saudis are relying on US intelligence when they choose their targets. NGOs that eagerly asserted with no evidence that Israel was engaging in indiscriminate bombing in Gaza based on civilians being killed are not pointing their fingers at any failure of US intel.

The double standards are clear to anyone who cares to look. Which doesn't, of course, include the media.

Mother of accused Itamar murderer denies everything

Hamas' Palestine Times newspaper quotes the mother of one of the youths who were arrested for the Fogel family murders.

[The mother stated] that her son was asleep with his brothers at 9:30 PM, i.e., during the operation, and he is not linked to any political party or organization, and he is a student in high school who only travels between home and school.

She added: "My son was arrested, on April 4th, about two weeks ago, and when the families went to inquire of their status, one of the soldiers told me there we want to conclude the investigation of this crime, even if we have to fabricate the charge against any person from the village."

Yeah, that sounds believable.

Of course, it will be considered not only believable but gospel truth to the Mondoweiss crowd. Every other statement attributed to the IDF are lies, of course, but a mother of a murderer claiming that an IDF soldier freely admits that they arrested her son for no reason will be swallowed whole.

Galloway calls killing Bin Laden "illegitimate" (UPDATE: it was a hoax)

Last night I jokingly tweeted if Human Rights Watch would denounce the US killing Bin Laden because he was a civilian (he didn't wear fatigues, did he?)

I guess I got the human rights issue wrong.

Pro-Palestinian campaigner George Galloway has denounced the killing of the world's most wanted man as "illegitimate".

Speaking hours after President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been captured and killed in a US operation in Pakistan, the former Respect MP said it was always illegitimate to somebody in somebody else's country.

He added: "No state which carries out [extra judicial killings] can remotely be described as democratic."

President Obama said in his address that bin Laden had been responsible for thousands of deaths, but Mr Galloway denied this was justification for the US' actions.

He said: "We can't allow our foreign power to send out death squads to assassinate whoever they see fit. That must be illegitimate.

"They could have kidnapped him and taken him for trial, couldn't they. To murder someone in somebody else's country has to be...an absolutely illegal series of acts."

It will be interesting to see if other far left terror supporters start taking up this line of reasoning.

UPDATE: I had originally gotten this from TheJC (forgot to include the link) but they have corrected the story:

A hoax video has been posted on YouTube claiming that George Galloway described the death of Osama bin Laden as illegitimate.

The video, based on old footage about a different matter, was posted this morning and circulated around the internet and on Twitter.

A spokesman for the former MP said they were urgently contacting YouTube to have it removed and that the issue was in the hands of Mr Galloway’s lawyers.

Israel to give tax revenue to Jihadist Palestinian Authority

From UPI:

Israel, following the intervention of U.S. officials, will transfer about $89 million in tax revenue to the Palestinian Authority, Israeli officials said.

The unnamed officials said the funds would be transferred next week, Haaretz reported Monday.

On Sunday, senior U.S. officials sought clarification of Israel's plans to temporarily suspend the transfer of funds to the P.A.

The officials sought the clarification after Army Radio reported Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz had decided to halt the transfer of the tax revenues to the P.A. in response to the Fatah-Hamas unity, the newspaper said.

The American officials met with members of the Treasury Department and the prime minister's office to discuss the issue and demanded a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials to arrange the transfer, Haaretz said.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office denied a decision had been made to stop the transfer of funds, the newspaper said.

Israel should absolutely freeze handing money over to an entity that includes Hamas in its government, just as it did in the past.

It is more than troubling that the US is pressuring Israel to do otherwise.

In 2006, when Israel imposed a similar freeze, it was with the full knowledge and cooperation of the US (and probably the Quartet.) So what has changed?

A tweet from Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt exposes, in this case, how insanely anti-Israel some European diplomats are:

Worried by reports that Israel government will steal tax money from Palestinian Authority. Unacceptable.

He is calling a freeze on the funds, where they will not be touched, "stealing." One would expect that a diplomat would be more circumspect in his language, but sometimes hate trumps acting like an adult.

(h/t Marcus)

A small incident in Gaza

From PCHR:

At approximately 20:00 on Wednesday, 27 April 2011, dozens of Palestinian civilians, including women, spontaneously gathered in the Unknown Soldier Yard, in support for reconciliation efforts between Fatah and Hamas movements declared in the Egypti... At approximately 20:30, 4 police vehicles arrived at the area, and immediately many police officers, some of whom were wearing civilian clothes, stepped down. They violently beat, insulted and chased the participants. They also arrested 5 of the participants, including Mr. Jamal Farawana, a defender of prisoners’ rights, who was violently beaten, and Mr. Talal Abi Zarifa, a leader of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

And what was the spontaneous demonstration for?

To support the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah!