Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Politicide: How the Western Left is Killing the Israeli Left (Mike Lumish)

There is much discussion, particularly after Benjamin Netanyahu's recent re-election, about Israel's continued slide politically toward the right. Anti-Zionists and Israel-Haters generally attribute this move rightward as a reflection of the inherent nefarious nature of Zionism, if not Jews. On the left, in the United States and Europe, Jews who care about the Jewish state are sometimes tolerated, and sometimes not, but always subject to charges of racism by the element on the left that dislikes Israel and Zionists and AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League and all other Jewish organizations that are not either anti-Zionist or contemptuous toward the Jewish state.

J Street is usually acceptable, but J Street is not a pro-Israel organization.

Leftists, however, who do not share the anti-Zionist contempt for Israel, and who know a thing or two about the Arab-Israel conflict, will usually acknowledge that the failure of the Oslo process and Arafat's unleashing of the Second Intifada played a big role in moving Israel toward the political right. Anyone who understands the history of the conflict knows that during the 1990s, when Arafat and Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton were sitting around the big table, there was considerable optimism within Israel that they would be able to broker a negotiated settlement with the local Arabs and thus bring peace to the region.

It all seemed so rational and sensible, after all. The notion of land for peace seemed like it should work. Give the Palestinian-Arabs 100 percent of Gaza, nearly 100 percent of Judea and Samaria in a contiguous area with land swaps, and the Arab sections of eastern Jerusalem as a capital. When Arafat rejected this more than generous offer, refused to make a counter offer, and unleashed the equivalent of 9/11 every two weeks for over three years upon the Jews of the Middle East, those Jews became demoralized with the non-peace process and thus began to move toward the right.

Would anyone expect anything else? It is just so easy to sit in our comfortable offices, houses, and apartments in the United States, almost completely safe within one of the largest and most powerful countries on the planet, and lecture those Jews, in that tiny beleaguered nation, on morality and politics. The Second Intifada destroyed the Israeli left because the Oslo peace process was the baby of the western left and it led to nothing but violence, death, and a furious denunciation of Israel. Between 2000 and 2005, the Palestinians launched a civil war against the Jews, featuring suicide bombings.

Thus it was that Israel turned away from Meretz and Labor and began to look more and more toward Likud and right-leaning political parties. What virtually no one acknowledges, however, is that a major part of the reason that Israelis rejected the left is because it was during the height of the Second Intifada, the height of the Palestinian orgy of violence and killing of Jews in the Middle East, that the left's hatred for Israel reached toward hysteria, as Paul Berman has pointed out. As Jews were being slaughtered in pizzerias by fools who wanted to die for their religion, western leftists were jumping up and down, pointing the trembling finger of blame at those Jews, and telling them that IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT!

Israelis, for the most part, are not stupid people. They know who their friends are and they know who their friends are not. When the western left turned against Israel and laid the entire blame for the conflict on the Jews of the Middle East, even as those Jews were being slaughtered in a frenzy of Palestinian violence, Israelis came to understand the international left was, if anything, their enemy. It came to look more and more like the western left was simply siding with the Arabs in their ongoing war against the Jews.

So, naturally Israelis moved to the right.

By essentially siding with suicide bombers and Jihadis and Hamas, the western left killed the Israeli left.

The question for left-leaning diaspora Jews today is, do we side with Israel or do we stick with left? It is, however, becoming increasingly difficult to do both. How does one support a political movement, or a political party, that is unjustly aggressive toward one's own people? Because, if I have to choose between the Jewish State of Israel and the western progressive-left, that choice could not be easier.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

Major Iranian news outlets publish updated antisemitic blood libel

Over the past two weeks, many Iranian websites have reproduced a long article accusing Jews of murdering gentile children in their synagogues, draining their blood and mixing it in their matzoh for Passover.

Perhaps the most prominent site was news site Alef, under the title "What group has been the biggest criminals in the history of mankind?"

The article includes the most grotesque artwork of Jews as murderers, both medieval and modern, including this one that they took from an antisemitic Arabic Facebook page:

It goes through many countries and lists every Jewish blood libel. It claims that the reason Jews were expelled from Spain was because of their habits of murdering Christian babies.

The article even reproduces a cover of Der Sturmer from 1939 showing the Nazi paper accusing Jews of ritual murder as evidence that it must be true!

(The article also include a video of a 1989 Oprah interview of a mentally ill woman named "Rachel" who made bizarre claims that her Jewish family was part of a cult that sacrificed babies and who raped her on a Torah scroll in a synagogue, among other things. I spent a little time researching this, and I don't want to have that story hijack this post, but from what I can gather all her "memories" had been prompted by a highly unethical therapist when the idea of reconstructing repressed memories was very popular. None of her stories have ever been corroborated by anyone she knows. Interestingly, she has become a prominent if controversial advocate against sexual abuse of children since then.)

Beyond that, the article claims that rabbis mix human blood with wine and place it on the lips of the infant boy during circumcision. It claims that the Talmud says "Anyone who kills a non-Jew, his reward is in heaven."

Other news sites that reproduced the article, verbatim, include Mashregh News, Asredena, Harfeakhar, Khabarist, Khabarkhoon, Habbe, and Ghatreh. From there it has spread to blogs and other secondary sites.

Most of the comments are virulently antisemitic as well.

Nothing gets published in Iranian websites without permission of the government, and this is a clear and conscious decision to promote Jew-hatred in Iran. Antisemitism is official Iranian policy.

Westerners who had guided tours of Iran and then claim that Iran has no antisemitism. like Roger Cohen, are once again shown to be useful idiots.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv and @RZimmt)

Haters fail to stop Israel-South Africa hockey game

From IOL News:

Cape Town - An international ice hockey match between South Africa and Israel at the Grand West Ice Rink was disrupted by an anti-Israel protest on Thursday night.

Cape Town activist, Bram Hanekom, a leader of the protest at the rink, said he was assaulted by security guards whom he alleged were part of the Israeli ambassador’s security detail.

However, Michael Farr, spokesman for Sun City International, denied the assault and said protesters threw marbles on the ice and had then been evicted.

[Hanekom] said he was certain that the security staff had a different uniform to that of the Grand West security staff and that he had heard one say over the radio that “their man was safe”. He believed this was a reference to the Israeli ambassador, who attended the match.

The Israeli embassy denied that their security had been at the venue.

The haters were proud that they managed to delay the game with marbles and red paint:

Palestinian activists, led by the NC4P, BDS South Africa, PSA, COSAS, the ANCYL and others successfully protested the Israeli Ice Hockey World Cup Game yesterday evening in Cape Town . Marbles were released on the ice as well as red colouring to reflect the blood of the thousands of Palestinians who suffer under Israel’s Apartheid government. The protests resulted in an embarassing over 45 min delay in the Israeli game.

Here is a video of Hatikvah being played before the game, with the crowd singing along.

Israel won the game, 6-3.

Gaza weekend: Bombs explode near UNRWA and Abbas' house, "work accident"

From TOI:

Two explosions targeted the offices of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA in Gaza City on Saturday night. There were no casualties in the blasts, according to UNRWA and Gaza security officials.

“A bomb exploded near the outer wall of the headquarters of UNRWA in Gaza, about ten feet from the door, causing no casualties or damage,” an agency spokesperson, Adnan Abu Hasna, told AFP.

The explosions come on the eve of a scheduled visit by the West Bank-based unity government to the Gaza Strip.

As of this writing, there was no mention of these explosions on UNRWA's website or on spokesperson's Chris Gunness' Twitter account.

Also:

An explosive device blew up near the Palestinian cabinet's headquarters in western Gaza City late Friday, said witnesses.

The explosion was heard near the old home of President Mahmoud Abbas, which was turned into the cabinet's headquarters.

And:

The al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement, said Saturday that a fighter was killed while on duty.

The brigades said in a statement that Nafeth Said al-Mughni from Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip was killed after being hit with a bullet in an accident, but did not give further details surrounding his death.

Obviously, all of these incidents are because of settlements.

04/18 Links: Israel shocked by Obama’s comments on sanctions, S-300 supply; Iran stonewalls IAEA

From Ian:

Israel analysts shocked by Obama’s comments on sanctions, S-300 supply

Israeli analysts expressed shock and amazement Friday night at US President Barack Obama’s stated openness to Iran’s demand for the immediate lifting of all economic sanctions, and his defense of Russia’s agreement to supply a sophisticated air defense system to Iran.
There was no immediate official Israeli response to the president’s comments, which were made after the start of Shabbat in Israel, when politicians generally do not work.
“Jaws dropped” around the studio, said the Channel 10 News diplomatic commentator Ben Caspit, as news broke of Obama’s declared empathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to supply Tehran with the S-300 missile defense system.
“Obama is something else,” Caspit added. “He’s decided to take America out of the wars…”
The station’s news anchor, Alon Ben David, chipped in, “He’s amazed that the Russians honored an agreement with him [for this long]? That’s what is astonishing.”
Responded Caspit, “This is the new America. We had better get used to it.”
Channel 10 also quoted unnamed senior Israeli diplomatic officials saying the prospect of Israel derailing the deal taking shape in US-led talks with Iran on its nuclear program was now zero. “The Iran issue is finished,” the officials were quoted saying.

US Taxpayers Paying Muslims Who Don’t Want to be Terrorists to Carry Out Terrorist Attacks

Here’s where the US funding of the PLO has taken us.
US taxpayers subsidize the PLO’s Palestinian Authority. The PA pays out handsome salaries to convicted terrorists. This encourages even those Muslims in the West Bank who don’t want to be terrorists to try and commit an act of terrorism in order to get a handsome salary and other perks when they’re actually released.
This latest terrorist was unenthusiastic about the terror part. He just wanted to be arrested.
The man approached the soldier and told him that he wanted to stab a soldier and then be arrested, and he then showed the soldier his folded knife.
The soldier pointed his gun at the man, and told him to not come any closer. The Golani soldiers nearby arrested the sort-of terrorist and took away his knife.
That would be the safe way to carry out a terrorist attack. And this happens all the time.

5 Australian teens arrested on charges of plotting ANZAC Day attack

Five Australian teenagers were arrested Saturday on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack at a Veterans' Day ceremony that included targeting police officers, officials said.
The suspects included two 18-year-olds who are alleged to have been preparing an attack at the ANZAC Day ceremony in Melbourne, Australian Federal Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Neil Gaughan told reporters.
Another 18-year-old was arrested on weapons charges and two other men, aged 18 and 19, were in custody and assisting police, police said.
ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps and commemorates the World War I battle in Turkey on April 25.
"I will say the attacks related to edged weapons," Victoria Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton told The Australian. "We believe the attacks could have occurred at any time in the next week."

04/17 Links Pt2: Gideon Levy Spreads His Anti-Israel Poison Abroad; Postcard from the past

From Ian:

The bombing that wasn't

Seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the question of why the Allies did not bomb the death facilities remains • The tremendous frustration felt by prisoners, who watched helplessly as bombers flew over them again and again, remains unabated.
Alongside military and tactical considerations, there were also very deep political and moral trends that precluded the bombing of the camps. The failure to intervene was the result of a tragic confluence of factors ranging from a lack of understanding, bureaucratic opposition, problematic timing and tense political circumstances. There was also the fear of sacrificing "precious" lives (those of the pilots) in order to save Jewish victims, who were thought of as less important by war planners.
Had Allied POWs been among those imprisoned in Auschwitz, "I think that they would have devoted much more thought to bombing the camps," Werrell said.
The tremendous frustration felt by the camp inmates -- who watched helplessly as the bombers flew over them time and again without dropping any explosives on the factories of death -- remains unabated. That frustration was compounded by the knowledge that even after Allied commanders refused to allocate forces for rescue mission, pilots did fly sorties to provide supplies to the combatants of the Warsaw Uprising (even while taking casualties). There was also the bombing of a French prison, a direct hit that was ordered in the hope of preventing the execution of 13 partisan fighters.
When it came to Auschwitz, there were no pilots available.

Haaretz's Gideon Levy Spreads His Anti-Israel Poison Abroad

The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz has a minimal following in Israel. According to a recent Target Group Index (TGI) survey, Haaretz‘s readership amounted to only 5.8% of the news market. And even this minimal share is higher than it was last summer during the IDF's Operation Protective Edge to stop Hamas rocket fire. At that time, numbers were even lower due to a slew of cancellations that were prompted by columnist Gideon Levy's Op-Ed demonizing Israeli pilots for carrying out their military orders. Most Israelis recognize Haaretz for what it is, an ideological newspaper with a far-left editorial policy that appears more interested in advocacy than in objective news gathering.
Gideon Levy serves on Haaretz's editorial board, penning a weekly column, "Twilight Zone," as well as political editorials for the newspaper. He is known in Israel as an acrimonious, anti-Israel ideologue and activist, recently arrested for spitting and cursing at IDF soldiers, who often invents his own facts to support his radical agenda. His fan base consists primarily of fellow Israel haters and activists, while mainstream Israelis and journalists dismiss him as a dishonest propagandist.
Discredited by the mainstream in his own country, Levy has taken to spewing his vitriol and promoting boycotts against the Jewish state in foreign countries where he can try to influence uninitiated audiences with dishonest calumnies against Israel. He sells himself as a heroic truth-teller who has "made it his mission," as one recent Canadian interviewer described him, "to bear witness to Palestinian life in the occupied territories." Levy acknowledges his countrymen's disdain for him, but does not attribute this to his libelous fabrications. Rather, he tries to cultivate an image of himself as a whistle blower who has incurred the hatred of his countrymen for allegedly exposing the nasty truth about them. He is aided and abetted in this task by anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic organizations and foreign journalists all too ready to believe the worst about Israel and grant this dishonest ideologue the platform from which to disgorge propaganda against his country.

Verdict on judicial review of Southampton conference cancellation: The anti-Semites lose.

The conference organisers own barrister suggested that terrorists would not strike at the conference because it would be an ‘own goal’ ( at least it shows they are aware whose side they are on).
The conference organisers attempted to discredit Sussex Friends of Israel. Firstly by stating they are not a Jewish group (and therefore imply they could not be a target for a terror attack) and secondly by continually connecting them with the EDL as two groups ‘working together’. SFoI were the only referenced element of the Jewish protests. It was a dirty tactic they repeated several times
The conference organisers astonishingly commented that the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen were in no way related to Israel or Palestine. Whilst anti-Semitism predates Israel and exists away from it, I do not know of any sane person that does not believe there is a correlation between events in Israel and the amount of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe.
The conference organisers argument was known to be weak. They had been warned there was little chance of success. They were therefore ordered to pay partial defence costs.
The conference organisers were battered; there was no a single point they attempted to put across that was accepted.
In the end it was so one-sided I almost began to feel sorry for them (okay, not quite).

Arab paper does everything it can to downplay Holocaust

Arab newspaper Vetogate had a series of articles about Holocaust Remembrance Day.

One says that Palestinians were paying the price for a crime committed in Europe.

Another says that Israel uses the event to blackmail the world, that it is grossly exaggerated ,and anyway the Zionists cooperated with the Nazis.

A third says that while everyone remembers the alleged Holocaust, Jews did equally terrible things to the Palestinians, such as the Kafr Qasim massacre, Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatila, the Gaza war and the Mavi Marmara.

Just for comparison's sake, more Jews were gassed on an average day in Auschwitz (about 6000) than Arabs killed in all those events combined, assuming the more reliable estimates of deaths at Sabra and Shatila (which wasn't done by Jews)to be several hundred.

Friday open thread

Since no one reads the blog on Friday afternoons anyway!

04/17 Links Pt1: A Hamas State of Palestine in Gaza (For Now); Hamas: It’s ‘our right’ to abduct Israelis

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas's Plan: A Hamas State of Palestine in Gaza (For Now)

Palestinian political analysts believe that it is only a matter of time before Hamas succeeds in fulfilling its scheme to turn the Gaza Strip into an independent state.
"The discussion is no longer whether there is a separationist plan for the Gaza Strip, but when and how it would be implemented," said Hassan Asfour, a former Palestinian Authority minister affiliated with Fatah. "It is the duty of the Palestinian Authority leadership to say what it intends to do to foil this plan."
Addressing the Palestinian Authority president, Asfour added: "Mr. Mahmoud Abbas, it is not enough to talk on television about [Hamas's] separation plan. Think of ways to thwart it. Otherwise, no one will say that Hamas 'hijacked' the Gaza Strip; instead everyone will be talking about how the Palestinian Authority leadership abandoned the Gaza Strip."
If and when Hamas carries out its plan and establishes its own sovereign state in the Gaza Strip, the international community, primarily the U.S. and EU, will have to come to terms with the fact that the two-state solution has finally been realized; the Palestinians ended up with two states of their own -- an Islamist emirate in the Gaza Strip and a PLO-controlled state in the West Bank.
The Americans and Europeans will also have to listen very carefully to what Hamas is saying: namely, that a Palestinian state in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, or any part of the Palestinian territories, would not end its struggle to destroy Israel and replace it with the State of Greater Palestine.

Melanie Phillips: Out of Obama’s frying-pan into Hillary’s fire?

During her nine years as a senator for New York state, which includes arguably the most Jewish city in the world outside Israel, she posed as a friend of Israel and the Jewish people. Yet this hardly matched her previous or subsequent attitudes.
In November 1999, on a visit to the Middle East while Bill Clinton was in the White House, Hillary publicly appeared with Yasser Arafat’s wife, Suha. Mrs. Arafat proceeded maliciously and falsely to accuse Israel of using poison gas against the Palestinians and contaminating with chemicals Palestinian water sources.
Having impassively listened to a simultaneous translation, Hillary gave the terrorist’s wife when she finished a hug and a kiss. After all hell subsequently broke loose, Hillary belatedly criticized all inflammatory rhetoric, dismissed the kiss as the Middle East equivalent of a handshake and claimed that the translation – which reporters who were also listening to it reproduced correctly – was “unclear” and “incomplete.”
There is much evidence of where her real sympathies lie. In his book American Evita: Hillary Clinton’s Path to Power, Christopher Anderson wrote: “At a time when elements of the American Left embraced the Palestinian cause and condemned Israel, Hillary was telling friends that she was ‘sympathetic’ to the terrorist organization and admired its flamboyant leader, Yasser Arafat.”
Her hostility to Israel has been revealed in her own words and deeds. In her memoir Hard Choices, she accuses Israel of being an occupying force and claims that it denies “dignity and self-determination” to Palestinians in the West Bank. But these claims are malicious distortions employed by Israel’s enemies.

Inside Obama’s Meeting With Jewish Leaders

For 36 years now, Iranian officials have threatened to annihilate Israel. As Basij commander Mohammad Reza Naqdi said recently, “Destroying Israel is non-negotiable.” There may be different centers of power throughout the regime, as Iran experts posit, but everyone agrees with the Supreme Leader that Israel—the “Zionist cancer”—has got to go. Middle East experts and experienced Iran watchers in the West typically dismiss such threats as instrumental rhetoric intended to thrill local bigots and separate the Arab and Persian masses from their rulers. So why take such rhetoric seriously? The Iranians wouldn’t ever really use the bomb. In fact, they’re very clever, rational people.
Of course, if you’re a leader in the American Jewish community, you can’t help but hear Iran’s exterminationist rhetoric in a different frame. So maybe the legacy of Rabbi Stephen Wise was on the mind of American Jewish leaders Monday when President Barack Obama called them to a meeting at the White House. It being Holocaust Remembrance Week, who wants to be remembered as the contemporary version of Wise, who chose to protect his relationship with Roosevelt rather than criticize a president who did nothing to save European Jews from extermination?
“It was one of the tensest meetings I can ever remember,” said one participant who has been invited to many White House sit-downs over the years and requested anonymity. “The president spoke for 25 minutes, without notes,” he told me. “It was very impressive. Some people said very nice things, others expressed concerns, and talked about the role of Congress, and he talked about presidential prerogative, and cited other precedents for it. Lots of people challenged him very strongly, like about taking the threats of dictators seriously when Khamenei says death to America, death to Israel, death to the Jews. The president said he knows what the regime is, which is why he is trying to take away their weapons. He didn’t dismiss what the Iranians say, he just didn’t really address it.”

Muslim on Temple Mount really tries to disrupt Jewish tour guide (videos)

This is pretty funny.

It shows a deranged Muslim man trying mightily to shout over a calm Jewish tour guide who ignores him completely.

As he gets ignored, he starts grunting like an animal. He then walks around aimlessly while shouting, unsure if he wants to be filmed or not.

Meanwhile, while Jews aren't allowed to silently pray on the Temple Mount, Hamas terror rallies are perfectly acceptable, as this video from this morning shows:

People on Facebook call themselves "Death to Jews"

Earlier today there was a rumor, found out later to be false, that the Arab who murdered a Jewish man with his car yesterday had a Facebook page that gave, as his secondary name, "Death to Jews" - in Hebrew.

It was another Arab from Jerusalem:

(This page has since been taken down.)

One other person, a woman from Gaza, uses the same parenthetical name:

When you look in Arabic, you find a number of others (some of which seem to have changed recently):

This person is Italian, and there is nothing about Israel on his page. It seems he just wanted to tell the world he hated Jews but hide it from Facebook.

Most of the people who use "Death to the Jews" as their parenthetical name are, of course, Arab:

This one claims to have actually worked at Facebook.

This one is probably just anti-Zionist, right?

Here's a Facebook page called "Death to the Jews - We are all Palestine" hiding as a concert venue. I don't think he means those across the Green Line.

Other Facebookers try to show off their Jew-hatred in other languages:

Supposedly, Facebook recently tightened up its standards. But they don't seem to look very hard for some kinds of hate.

Fatah terrorists appropriate iconic Iwo Jima image

From the Fatah Facebook page,

This is, of course, appropriated from the famous iconic photo of US Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, as this comparison of the mirror image of Fatah's poster with the original picture shows: