The Lamed Hey, the Defenders of Kfar Etzion vs. Google

Fresnozionism.org..
24 May '13..

Gush Etzion is an area southeast of Jerusalem, which contains several ‘settlements’. One of them is Kibbutz Kfar Etzion. Part of the Palestine Mandate from 1917 to 1948, and the Ottoman empire before that, it was purchased from local Arabs and settled by Yemenite Jews in 1927. They lived there on and off (they were driven out several times by Arab ‘riots’) until May 1948 when the invading Jordanian army overran it and massacred all but four of its defenders. All of the West Bank and East Jerusalem were made Jew-free by the Jordanians, who illegally occupied the area until 1967, when the kibbutz was reestablished.

The Haganah sent thirty-five men to relieve the besieged kibbutzim of Gush Etzion in January 1948, following an Arab attack. They were wiped out and their bodies mutilated after an Arab shepherd, whom they unwisely set free after encountering him on the way, reported their presence. They are referred to as the Lamed Hey, “the thirty-five.”

Let me spell it out more clearly: Jews lived there on land they owned. The kibbutzim of Gush Etzion (there were four of them) represented the realization of the promise made by the world to the Jewish people in the Palestine Mandate, that there would be a national home in the land of Israel. Arabs violently resisted their presence, and when Jordan violated the UN charter by invading and occupying Judea and Samaria in 1948, Jews were murdered or expelled. Not one Jew was allowed to remain on the Jordanian side of the cease-fire line. Because they were Jews.

But in the eyes of the ‘international community’, the ethnic cleansing of the area east of the 1949 armistice line and the 19-year Jordanian occupation thereof transformed Gush Etzion into Arab land, land that today ‘belongs’ to the new non-member-state of the UN, ‘Palestine’.

Apparently this magical transmutation was recognized by Google, because when Jewish residents of Gush Etzion tried to use Google’s search engine this month, they received a message suggesting that they switch to the appropriate page for their location, Google Palestine (Google.ps), in Arabic, rather than the Hebrew-language Google Israel (Google.il) they had been using. This follows Google’s recent decision to re-title Google.ps ‘Palestine’ instead of ‘Palestinian territories’.

Physicist Nahum Shahaf, al-Dura and a lonely battle for the truth

The first to try to stem the flow of lies and bloodshed that followed the Muhammad al-Dura affair -- much like the Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike to stop the trickle that threatened to become a flood -- was physicist Nahum Shahaf.

Photo credit: Osnat Krasnansky

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
24 May '13..

On September 30, 2000, France 2, a French public television station, broadcast the images and the reporter's accompanying statements for the first time. Later on they were broadcast thousands of times by television stations the world over, including in Arab countries. This week it became clear, this time officially, that the story was a modern blood libel. Jamal al-Dura and his son Muhammad could be seen in those images, kneeling in fear behind a barrel at Netzarim Junction. Shots were supposedly fired at them from the nearby Israeli position, and Charles Enderlin, the station's main reporter in Jerusalem, stated against the backdrop of photographs taken by Talal Abu Rahmah (the Gaza station's local photographer): "Muhammad is dead, and his father is seriously wounded..."

That was the beginning of the al-Dura affair, which swelled to monstrous proportions and gave the Palestinians a smoking-gun "proof" that Israelis are child-killers. These photographs became a symbol of the Second Intifada.

* * *

It turns out that Muhammad did not die, at least in that incident. It also turns out that some of the wounds and scars on his father, who was said to have been seriously wounded in the incident, resulted from a 1992 attack by Palestinians and the surgery he later underwent in an Israeli hospital. But the committee appointed by Minister Moshe Ya'alon, whose findings were published this week, did not discover much that was new. It only gave an official state imprimatur to the findings of many others who untiringly tilted at windmills, claiming that the story was a lie that the Palestinian propaganda machine had adopted for its own purposes.

The first to try to stem the flow of lies and ensuing bloodshed -- much like the Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike to stop the trickle that threatened to become a flood -- was physicist Nahum Shahaf of Ramat Gan. Almost everything Shahaf said at the time, when Yom-Tov Samia, then the head of the IDF Southern Command, appointed him as head of the IDF committee to investigate the incident, ultimately received the government's approval after a 13-year delay.

Shahaf, seen as odd and eccentric a decade ago, was right about almost everything. The government committee's examination of the raw footage showed that at the end of the film, in a segment that was never broadcast, the boy is seen alive and it is not certain that he was wounded at all. France 2's raw outtakes show no blood on the wall, the ground or the barrel. While Jamal claimed that he had been struck by 10 to 12 bullets, the film shows no bullet striking his body or any drops of blood on it, and there is a great deal of doubt as to whether any shots at all were fired from the Israeli position.

Thank you Hafez al-Assad by Caroline Glick

...Had Assad accepted Israel's offers, we would have been facing a situation today that we would be hard pressed to contend with. On the one hand, we would be facing an all but certain war with Syria with al-Qaida or Iran controlling everything from the Jordan Valley to Haifa Bay. On the other hand we would be facing this threat as a fractured society.

Caroline Glick..
CarolineGlick.com..
24 May '13..

The threats emanating from Syria have become downright frightening. For the past several days, Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan has been warning repeatedly that it is certain that Israeli population centers will be hit by Syrian ballistic missiles and that we have to be prepared for the worst-case scenarios, including Scud missile-launched chemical weapons attacks on Israel's metropolitan centers.

On Wednesday, Air Force commander Maj.- Gen. Amir Eshel spelled out Israel's concerns from a military perspective. The chance of war breaking out at any time is extremely high. Syria has a massive arsenal that includes advanced anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship missiles and surface- to-surface missiles. Syria also has large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, advanced artillery as well as the other components of a large conventional military force.

Eshel warned, "Syria is collapsing before our eyes. If it collapses tomorrow we could find its vast arsenal dispersed and pointing at us."

In that event, Eshel said, the air force will have to operate at 100 percent of its capacity to clear a path for ground forces to operate in Syria and secure the armaments to prevent them from being dispersed, or used against Israel.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz warned that Israel could easily find itself fighting a three-front war in the near future. Presumably we would be fighting Syria, Lebanon and Iran - whose nuclear program continues to move to completion undaunted by empty US and European threats.

Syria is a mess because there are no good guys in a position to win. Syrian President Bashar Assad is one of the most dangerous leaders in the world. He is a major supporter of terrorist groups. He enabled al-Qaida and Hezbollah to use Syria as a logistical base in their war against US forces in Iraq. He is a vassal of Iran. He is allied with Hezbollah. He is a mass murderer.

Since the civil war began two years ago, Assad's complete dependence on Iran and Hezbollah - as well as on Russia - has been exposed for all to see. There is little doubt that whatever checks the US was able to exert against him before the civil war began no longer exist. And if he survives in power, he will be completely indifferent to US pressure and so will behave far more violently than he did before the war began.

And yet for all Assad's horrific behavior and the reasonable presumption that his actions will only become more violent and dangerous with each additional day he remains in power, the most telling aspect of the Syrian civil war is that Israel, the US and Europe are incapable of deciding whether he is better or worse than the alternatives.

Because standing opposed to Assad and his Hezbollah and Iranian protectors is al-Qaida.

Simple enough, yes? - “We simply don’t want to hear from you”

...What will it take for you to understand? They don’t want you. Not the Brits, not the academic world in general, and certainly not the Palestinians. It doesn’t matter how far you go in negating your own people’s right to self-determination, no matter how much of a good Jew you are, you will not be good enough.

Fresnozionism.org..
23 May '13..

The naivete of the Left is sometimes almost touching (almost, but not quite). Here is a clip from a Ha’aretz article written by a young woman named Or Tshuva, a postgraduate student in the department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University of London.

Left-wing Israeli academics have in the past few years faced a great challenge. Threatened with censorship, prosecution and ostracism in their home universities, they have been subtly forced to hold their tongues when it comes to publicly expressing their political opinions. In 2009, Neve Gordon nearly lost his job as a politics professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev after writing an op-ed arguing that Israel has become an apartheid state that can only be saved by an international boycott. One year later, in 2010, world-renowned art theorist Ariella Azoulay was denied tenure by Bar-Ilan University apparently due to her pro-Palestinian political views. These incidents send Israeli academics a clear message: tolerance of critical opinions is running out.

It is for exactly this reason that many Israelis pursue academic careers abroad. But in the international academic community, they often find that no matter how far left or pro-peace they are, their “Israeliness” remains an obstacle. Universities and scholars that explicitly support boycotting Israeli academic institutions are still relatively rare, but it seems that to avoid undesirable political rows, many universities choose not to collaborate with their Israeli counterparts or offer scholarships to Israeli students. In many cases, Israelis looking to participate in student-exchange programs or pay for postgraduate studies in Europe, and especially the United Kingdom, are unable to find any opportunities. When it comes to funding, they tend to discover Israel is neither part of the Middle East nor of Europe. Israelis are usually not entitled to apply for the scholarships available to other foreign students.

Independent state in temporary borders? And the likely fallout?

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
23 May '13..

So what's the big deal about having a sovereign independent Palestinian state inside temporary land-locked borders in the West Bank?

We are strong, they are weak and we can always clobber them if things get out of hand.

And what would be the big deal if the Palestinians actually ended up having tens of thousands of rockets? After all, as Yossi Beilin argued this week in an interview on Israel Radio, Israel is not concerned about the tens of thousands of rockets held by Hezbollah - Israel’s concern is only if Hezbollah actually shoots the rockets.

The above many sound pretty silly to you.

Unfortunately, there are all kinds of people recommending policy with some pretty silly ideas.

There is every reason to expect that the same reluctance to act against Hezbollah as it armed to the teeth over the years would gain expression in the case of a sovereign Palestinian state.

Come to think of it, we already see this philosophy in play in the Gaza Strip where in the last round we opted to restore "deterrence" rather than wipe out the rockets.

But does any of this really matter?

Defying Logic with an Absurd Attack on Birthright, Adelson, and Jewish Identity

...All of which makes this op-ed in Haaretz among the most asinine, self-defeating columns in recent memory–an impressive feat, since the competition for such distinction in Haaretz alone is vigorous.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary/Contentions..
23 My '13..

Several years ago, a spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office visited U.S. chapters of the Jewish Federations of North America to talk to American Jews about their relationship to Israel. In a press avail, I had asked him what was Israel’s single greatest need from Diaspora Jewry. His response, which is always the response to that question, was: them. That is, what Israel wanted most from American Jews was for American Jews to move to Israel. Aliyah is the lifeblood of the Jewish state, as Israeli officials commonly and persistently phrase it.

Immigration has been a great economic and cultural blessing to the State of Israel. And so has tourism from abroad, which generates billions a year in revenue, much of which helps pay the salaries of workers at the lower end of the economic spectrum who work in industries that depend on tourism to survive. American Jews’ engagement with and connection to Israel is thus vital to maintain, not only for economic reasons but also to ensure international support for Israel and push back against the Jewish state’s isolation.

All of which makes this op-ed in Haaretz among the most asinine, self-defeating columns in recent memory–an impressive feat, since the competition for such distinction in Haaretz alone is vigorous.

There are few things that bother the Western press more than wealthy people and national or religious pride. So you can imagine the outrage when Sheldon Adelson, the wealthy Jewish philanthropist and funder of Birthright Israel, a program to provide trips to Israel for young Jews, met with Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid to request that Israel not slash funding for the program. Haaretz’s Itay Ziv fumes:

“What would they say in Gaza if I didn’t report that the Israelis killed him?”

Richard Landes..
The Augean Stables..
23 May '13..

One of the more scandalous episodes of the Al Durah Affair came about after the judges saw the rushes and Karsenty won his appeal, much to the astonishment of the journalistic community who, under the aegis of Jean Daniel of Le Nouvel Observateur, put together a petition in his support. Below is a discussion of this development from an earlier post on Public Secrets (“they stage stuff all the time”) and Journalism.

In it I quote a remarkable response to Ha-aretz reporter Adi Schwartz’ question to Enderlin, “Why say ‘target of fire from the Israeli position” [when you didn't at the time have any evidence], to which Enderlin responded, “what would they say in Gaza if I didn’t report that the Israelis killed him?” This is an astonishing quote, whose discussion I’ll delay to after the discussion of the “Nouvel Obs Petition.”

But then the “friends of Charles” did something remarkable and remarkably foolish. They put up a letter of support for their colleague that bemoaned the “campaign of hatred and vilification” that had dogged his steps for lo! these seven years… accusing him of a hoax when he told the world that the boy was killed by fire coming from the Israeli position. The court’s decision, they declared, surprised and worried them: surprised, because the court “granted the same credibility to Karsenty,” a mere civilian, as it had to Enderlin, the veteran reporter “known for the seriousness and rigor of his work, who exercises his profession in sometimes difficult conditions”; worried, because the court’s decision “gives a ‘permission to defame’ journalists, which would permit anyone, in the name of ‘good faith’ and ‘the right of free criticism,’ to strike with impunity at the ‘honor and reputation of information professionals.’” This, they concluded, coming “at a time when the freedom of action of journalists is the object of repeated attacks,” would undermine “this fundamental principle, pillar of democracy” and therefore they “renew our support and solidarity with Charles Enderlin.”

The text of this petition, signed by many, is as revealing as the Cristiano letter both in its complete indifference to the public secret that the Cristiano letter revealed about the systematic intimidation of the correspondents in the field. Perhaps that’s what the petition meant by “difficult circumstances” that their “veteran reporter” sometimes operated in. But somehow (unless one posits deliberate deceit), it could not occur to them that their friend was systematically misrepresenting the “terrain” he knows so well, that he would misreport events because “what would they say in Gaza if I didn’t report that the Israelis killed him?”

On the contrary, the petition was written and signed by people who showed no interest in the evidence, who believe that their colleague should be given superior credibility because he is their colleague. And they clearly think that freedom from criticism by their readers guarantees their freedom of speech. It would be hard to imagine a more blatant expression of a privileged corporatist mentality redolent of the ancien régime. Ben Dror Yemini compares them to the “anti-Dreyfusards, who also stubbornly clung to the first version.”

Washington Post Stumbles on Temple Mount

...There would be no "constant friction" if Palestinians engaged in peaceful prayer at Al-Aqsa Mosque atop Temple Mount instead of using it as a storage place for stones that periodically are used to pelt Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall. Whitewashing Palestinian attacks on Judaism's most sacred sites doesn't square with objective journalism.

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
23 May '13..

William Booth, the Washington Post's Jerusalem bureau chief, has a big spread in the May 23 edition about access for women worshipers to the Western Wall and efforts to make the issue less contentious ("Israel offers bold plan to restore calm at iconic site -- Western Wall redesign aimed at accommodating more liberal strains of Judaism" page A8).

Booth's article is generally fair and comprehensive in explaining the often contradictory views of various stakeholders.

Except in a couple of instances when Booth commits, first, a historical error, and then, a howler of a current-events mistake.

In the first instance, Booth writes that "the Temple Mount is considered a remnant of the Second Temple, built by King Solomon atop Mount Moriah..." King Solomon did not build the Second Temple. He built the first Temple about three millennia ago. It was destroyed some 400 years later by the Babylonians. Temple Mount is the site of both the First and Second Temples. But King Solomon is accurately remembered only as builder of the First Temple. (The earlier version of this article had incorrectly said that King Solomon built the Second Temple. Solomon built the First Temple. The story has been updated. Washington Post)

The second error is much more egregious in its upside-down description of current events at Temple Mount and the Western Wall. Referring to the Mount, which overlooks the Western Wall, Booth writes: "Armed Israeli security forces that often patrol the site are a source of constant friction." That's a 180-degree mistake because it attributes "constant friction" to exactly the wrong party. It completely reverses cause and effect.

Hezbollah and Terrorism - France’s Outrageous Double Standard

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary/Contentions..
23 May '13..

For anyone who still thinks Europe’s widespread anti-Israel sentiment is purely a reaction to Israel’s policies, completely untainted by anti-Semitism, consider the unblushing announcement made by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius today: France, he said, is now ready to consider listing Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist organization, because “the fact that it has fought extremely hard against the Syrian population” has caused Paris to reverse its longstanding opposition to the move.

Naturally, I’m delighted that France has finally seen the light about Hezbollah. But France had no problem with the organization during all the years it was conducting cross-border attacks on the Israeli population. Lest anyone forget, these attacks continued even after Israel’s UN-certified withdrawal from every last inch of Lebanese territory in 2000; it was one such cross-border raid that sparked the Israel-Hezbollah war of 2006. In other words, France has just declared that cross-border incursions to kill Jews in Israel are perfectly fine, but cross-border incursions to kill Muslims in Syria are beyond the pale. If that isn’t an anti-Semitic double standard, I don’t know what is.

Indeed, until now, France has consistently billed Hezbollah as a legitimate political force that contributes to stability in the Levant. That was always nonsensical: Starting a war with your southern neighbor that devastates large swathes of your own country, as Hezbollah did in 2006, is not exactly stabilizing behavior. But apparently, in France’s view, fighting Israel does contribute to Middle East stability: It’s only because Hezbollah is now fighting Syrians instead that Paris suddenly sees the organization as a destabilizing force.

As expected, journalists and ‘human rights’ official bash Israel in private too

Fresnozionism.org..
22 May '13..

So you don’t understand why Israel gets such bad treatment in the international press? And you wonder why the war crimes of Hamas and Arab terrorism are invisible to the “human rights” industry?

Let’s look, thanks to Alana Goodman, at how these folks talk among themselves, on their (no longer) private Facebook page, the Vulture Club (which, according to Goodman, has about 3,500 members).

Cast of characters:

Peter Bouckaert, senior official of Human Rights Watch
Jerome Delay, AP photojournalist
Javier Espinosa, El Mundo reporter
Marc Bastian, Agence France Press reporter
Andrew Ford Lyons, International Solidarity Movement activist
Julia Macfarlane, BBC World Service journalist
Fredrik Naumann, Photojournalist for Felix Features (Norway)
Jan Eikelboom, “News hour” reporter (Netherlands)
Thomas Haley, independent photojournalist
Bruno Stevens, independent photojournalist, Belgium
Susan Glen, university lecturer in photojournalism, UK

Here they are discussing the recent report of the Israeli government about what I called “one of the most damaging fake atrocity stories in military history,” the al-Dura hoax.

How professional and unbiased they are! The initial post appears to be by the university lecturer, Susan Glen.

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(+Video) Palestinian Official Declares Desire to Nuke Israel. Where's the Coverage?

SC..
CAMERA Snapshots..
22 May '13..

On April 30th, a senior Palestinian Authority official, Jibril Rajoub, deputy secretary of the Fatah Central Committee and chairman of the PA Olympic Committee said in regards to Israel, “We as yet don’t have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning.” Virtually none of the popular press has covered this threat.

Maybe, you’re thinking, they haven’t reported this shocking statement because they don’t know about it. Maybe he said it in a closed room or maybe to himself. Well, no. Rajoub made this declaration on Lebanese television and the video has been posted, translated and transcribed by Palestinian Media Watch.


Palwatch

UN Health Assembly Slams Israel - Syria Decries "Inhuman Israeli Practices"

UN Watch..
Vol. 436
22 May '13..

GENEVA, May 22 – The annual assembly of the UN’s World Health Organization adopted a resolution and held a special debate today criticizing Israel — the only specific country on the organization’s agenda — with Syria demanding urgent action on “inhuman Israeli practices” that target “the health of Syrian citizens.” Click here for links to relevant WHO documents.

The WHO resolution against Israel was not yet published, but was likely a copy of last year’s condemnation.

Observers of the world body in Geneva said the annual hypocrisy reached a new low this year.

“To see the Assad regime point the finger at Israel out of professed concern for the health of Syrians is, frankly, a sick joke,” said Hillel Neuer, exectuive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch, a non-governmental monitoring group accredited to the UN.

“They’ve slaughtered 80,000 of their own people, and are now busy destroying the lives of millions more. The real question is this: Why is the UN allowing mass murderers to deflect attention from their crimes by scapegoating democracies?”

Asking Norway to face up to the lethal consequences of its funding decisions

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
22 May '13..

Last week, the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK ran a serious analytic piece prepared by Tormod Strand, a respected investigative reporter. Based on a news segment that went to air on NRK television, it looks at how Norwegian aid money is playing a significant role in the Palestinian Authority's disgraceful ongoing encouragement of terrorism among its own people.

If we were writing their headlines, we might have thought to call this the Royal Norwegian Reward for Terrorism Program. But that would be ungracious.

We traveled to Oslo a week earlier to speak to the Norwegian public and parliamentarians about the immoral ends to which their money is being applied. The May 14, 2013 NRK article (including a video interview with Arnold Roth) refers to that visit, and is online here.

Below is an English translation, provided by kind courtesy of friends in Finland, Norway and Hong Kong.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

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From Israel - "Peace Process"

Arlene Kushner..
Arlene From Israel..
22 May '13..

The notion that there can be a viable negotiation process that will result in peace with "two states side-by-side" persists whatever the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And so, no matter how weary we become of the delusion, we must continue to track efforts to make it happen, and combat it as effectively as possible.

As I wrote yesterday, Sec. of State Kerry is due here tomorrow. And so there is a flurry of activity -- or, more accurately, perhaps, a deluge of words espousing one position or another -- in anticipation of his arrival.

What we have most notably are the words of Minister of Finance Yair Lapid (head of Yesh Atid), who gave an interview to the NY Times, on Monday in which he declared that he would do everything he can to advance the discourse on peace:

“Israelis want peace and security and Palestinians want peace and justice – these are two very different things, and this is the real gap we have to close."

~~~~~~~~~~

Let's pause here, to consider this statement. The Palestinian Arabs do NOT want peace and justice. They want the destruction of Israel. The failure to grapple with this reality is at the heart of the position of those who continue to push for negotiations.

As to "justice": A very basic misconception -- which has been fueled by PLO lies -- is that the Palestinian Arabs are entitled to the land beyond the '67 line, and that "justice" requires our giving it to them. They have no moral or legal or historical basis for this claim. The land is Jewish -- as history and legal documentation make clear.

See here for more: http://arlenefromisrael.squarespace.com/336554365346/

~~~~~~~~~~

Actually, when it comes to "justice," the question I would like to pose to "two-state" advocates is why they imagine the Palestinian Arabs deserve a state within any parameters. There are probably thousands of ethnic groups -- groups with legitimate historical reality and distinct cultural traits -- who are without their own state. And yet the world does not clamor to give them sovereignty over the land on which they live.

What have the Palestinian Arabs done, even, remotely, to merit that sovereignty? What would a "Palestinian state" contribute in a positive way to the family of nations? What have the Palestinian Arabs done to develop a positive, constructive civil society that would form the basis of that state? Their failure in this regard is all the more striking because they have received so much international support and such huge international funding.

The challenges are starting to become sharper - The post-Al Durah period

"When it comes to Israel, however, too many journalists and too many media outlets won’t let the facts ruin their story. Well, this week we tried to ruin that story, if only just a little bit. I am very happy about that. Even if it will change nothing. Because in the end, the truth should win out."

http://aldurah.com/

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
22 May '13..

The matter of Mohammad Al Durah and what happened, or did not, to him thirteen years ago at Netzarim Junction 13 years ago is suddenly news again. This is because the government of Israel came out with a plain-spoken report that it published on Monday [it's here], saying that the central claims made in the September 30, 2000 France2 television report and the accusations it embodied

"had no basis in the material which the station had in its possession at the time… There is no evidence that the IDF was in any way responsible for causing any of the alleged injuries to Jamal or the boy" [Israel Government Report]

It's also because an important legal case that has been taxing the resources of the French court system for eight years will result in a reserved decision due to be handed down some time today [UPDATE: We have just heard from sources in Paris that the decision was postponed for the second time - evidently to June 26; more on this later]. That case is not an enquiry into a killing but rather an arcane look at whether French defamation laws ought to sanction an independent French media gadfly, Philippe Karsenty for making very critical statements about the actions of France2 and the French/Israeli correspondent Charles Enderlin in turning the events of that day in Gaza into an event that has resonated and cost many lives.

We have a lot to say about the larger issues thrown up by the France2 video: about the extraordinary failure of the media to ask the questions that ought to have been asked; about the inexplicable credulousness of analysts and observers ready to buy in to the narrative of a child, cowering beside his father, under assault by Israeli sharpshooters who fire and fire and fire until... He is never shown being hit, and though the French voice-over dramatically pronounces him dead, the video shows him unquestionably alive soon afterwards. No blood on him or on the ground or on the father, and no visible wounds. What does this say about the shrinking role of objectivity and the primacy of truthfulness in news reporting (discussed on this site here, here and elsewhere? But this is not the time to address the larger issues.

Instead we defer to the Israeli journalist Ben Caspit. An analysis penned by him in Hebrew and translated to English appears today on the Al-Monitor website, though you need to be determined if you want to find it (there's no sign of it on their home page). It's a strong piece that defends some of what remains of the journalistic profession's tattered honour - and not by justifying what has happened in the media these past thirteen years but by describing it for the failure that it is and was. Al Durah is a symbol - not of the death of children or even of terrorism and anti-terrorism but of moral bankruptcy. But we're getting ahead of ourselves and Ben Caspit. Here's the whole text.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

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Pursuing ‘Peace’ Mirages, Kerry Returning to Israel

P. David Hornik..
Frontpagemag.com..
22 May '13..

On Thursday Secretary of State John Kerry will be visiting Israel, and presumably also the Palestinian Authority, for the fourth time since accompanying President Obama on his visit here in late March. Four times since late March suggests something like obsession. Indeed, Kerry is reportedly set to unveil a “framework for peace talks” in early June.

The PA, for its part, is making threats about what it will do if the talks don’t start up again. Israel Hayom reports that “The Palestinians have done all the legal work necessary to join 63 U.N. agencies, conventions and treaties [and are] planning to apply as a state to 16 international organizations if peace talks with Israel [do] not resume by June.”

The Palestinians want to make this unilateral-statehood push on the basis of the UN vote last November that gave them the status of a nonmember observer state. The United States (along with Israel, of course) was one of the few countries voting “no” and, at least declaratively, strongly opposed the Palestinian move.

Meanwhile, not for the first time, the Palestinians—both official bodies and civilians—have been engaging in behavior not notably consonant with visions of peace.

Earlier this week it was reported that:

A Palestinian man who was detained by the Palestinian Authority security forces in Hebron has lost the ability to speak as a result of severe torture, according to a report released by the Independent Commission for Human Rights.

Mohamed Abdel Karim Dar of Hebron was hospitalized after being tortured while in detention, the report, which documented 28 cases of torture in PA prisons in the West Bank last month, said.

Dar had been detained by agents belonging to the PA’s Preventive Security Service and held in solitary confinement, the document said.

“He lost the ability to speak and suffered from wounds to his body as a result of banging his head against the wall and tying his hands while being held in solitary confinement,” the report added….

The organization…said that it had received complaints of torture and mistreatment against other branches of the PA security forces in the West Bank—13 against the police, seven against the Preventive Security Service, seven against the General Intelligence Service and one against Military Intelligence.

Earlier this month World Tribune reported that

Britain…has been playing a major role in training and financing Palestinian security forces in the West Bank…. [O]fficials said Britain has been training and advising virtually every major PA security force, often in coordination with the United States.

The report goes on to note that British intelligence “has repeatedly urged PA security commanders to stop torture,” but “acknowledged that torture and abuse continued in PA detention facilities against Hamas suspects and pro-democracy activists.”

Shattered Lens Revisited – Photo Bias and Double Standards in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Coverage

Honest Reporting..
First Posted 09 December '10..






With yesterday's posting of an excellent piece, Palestinian Fairytales by David Katz, I was reminded of his Shattered Lens series done in conjunction with Honest Reporting 2 1/2 years ago. With the al-Dura hoax once again occupying the headlines these pieces are both timely and worth reviewing even for those who may have seen them the first time around. Y.

Images have unprecedented power to mold public opinion. The three international wire services – the Associated Press, Agence France Press / Getty Images and Reuters – have assumed a central role in presenting images from Israel and the Palestinian territories to the world.

HonestReporting first became intimately involved in the role of the wire services in photo choice when we exposed Reuters’ 2007 calendar gaffe, which followed the Fauxtography affair from the 2006 Lebanon War.

Since then, we have covered numerous instances of photo bias, including a blatantly staged photo of Hamas taken by Reuters photographer Mohammed Salem in 2008. Reuters continues to publish Salem’s photographs of the region, including another series of staged images we documented shortly after the Gaza flotilla in June.

Until now, however, nobody has commissioned a study to examine the imagery produced by the wire services to see whether there are any identifiable trends that may indicate bias.

To find out if Israel is being treated fairly by the wire services, we embarked on a three-month in-depth study of how Israel is portrayed by all three wires. This study covers the period that began with the Gaza flotilla on May 31, 2010 and ended with the murder of four Israelis at the hands of Palestinian terrorists on Aug. 31, 2010.

The study was carried out by David Katz, a professional photographer with 25 years experience working at the highest levels in the media together with HonestReporting. Over three months, some 13,500 photos from Israel and the Palestinian territories were reviewed.

The study revealed a pattern of double standards and bias that has become a norm in coverage of the region, particularly in regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Distortions of images mostly fell into the following categories:

Coming This September - Hamas textbooks to teach about 'liberation plans'

Khaled Abu Toameh..
JPost..
22 May '13..

Hamas has begun preparing new school textbooks that teach children about “plans to liberate Palestine and the legitimacy and various forms of resistance [against Israel].” Jamal Abu Hashem, advisor to the Hamas-controlled education ministry, said new books would be introduced as part of National Education Studies for grades 8-10.

Abu Hashem was speaking during a workshop in Gaza City that was attended by senior officials of the education ministry and experts from a number of universities. His statements were published by several Hamas websites.

Some of the new books will refer to the geographical significance of Palestine and its religious, strategic and security status, the Hamas official said. The books will also teach children about Jaffa, Jericho, Acre, Rafah, Nablus, Hebron, Jerusalem and Beersheba, he added.

The children will study the history and background of prominent Palestinian figures such as PLO founder Ahmed Shukairi, his successor, Yasser Arafat and slain Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin.

The al-Dura case - Why was the IDF abandoned?

Fresnozionism.org..
21 May '13..

Thirteen years after Israel’s enemies unleashed one of the most damaging fake atrocity stories in military history, the Israeli government has come up with an official report [1.8 mb pdf] to refute the September 30, 2000 France 2 news broadcast, narrated by respected correspondent Charles Enderlin, that claimed to show 12-year old Mohammad Dura shot dead by IDF soldiers.

Oh, we already know and knew almost immediately beyond a reasonable doubt that al-Dura was not shot by the IDF, and we almost certainly know that he was not shot at all, by anybody. Persuasive evidence (more persuasive than the official report) is here.

In fact, we can say with confidence that the incident was a fake, set up by France 2′s Palestinian cameraman and local Gaza residents.

But what is difficult to understand is the Israeli diffidence in the face of the vicious allegations.

The immediate response of the IDF was to temporize. From the official report:

On that same day, following the France 2 report, the Spokesperson Unit released a statement which made clear that while it was not possible to determine, based on the footage broadcast by the network, the source of the shots apparently fired at Jamal and the boy, ultimate responsibility lay with the Palestinians for cynically launching armed attacks from within the civilian population. …

But then, at a press conference on October 3, it turned disastrous:

[Maj. Gen. Giora] Eiland, in response to a question regarding Al-Durrah, answered that as a result of the gunfire at the junction, Jamal and the boy “took cover next to a wall, several meters from where Palestinians fired at us. The soldiers returned fire and apparently the boy was hit by our fire.”

Eiland later explained,

I had not seen all the evidence made available to the Israeli army only later…Given the long history of Palestinians exposing their children to danger, I assumed that the main issue in this case would be the question: Why would the Palestinians have exposed their own civilians to danger by firing on the Israelis while a boy and his father were in the crossfire? I did not realize that my words would be used to accuse Israel of cold-blooded murder.

The footage was played and replayed around the world. Two weeks later, two IDF reservists were torn to pieces in Ramallah to shouts of “al-Dura! al-Dura!” The alleged cold-blooded murder became the symbol of the Intifada, and an inspiration for suicide bombers. Daniel Pearl’s murderers and even Osama bin Laden, before and after 9/11, invoked it as justification for their acts.

Meanwhile IDF Maj. Gen. Yom Tov Samia, OC Southern Command, reenacted the incident, examined the relative locations of soldiers and Palestinians, and concluded that IDF bullets could not have hit al-Dura. This was announced at a press conference on November 27, which was almost entirely ignored by the media — and by top officers and Israel politicians. Indeed, the IDF Chief of Staff, Shaul Mofaz, told the Knesset that the investigation was a “private initiative of Samia,” not part of an official investigation.

Why didn’t Mofaz and his boss, Ehud Barak, who was serving as both Prime Minister and Minister of Defense at the time, take up the cause of the IDF and demand, with the maximum possible diplomatic force, that all information related to the incident — including all the footage shot by France 2 on that day — be placed at Israel’s disposal to do a proper investigation?

Dear Maysoon, Throw Away That Rusty Key

Lyn Julius..
The Daily Beast..
20 May '13..





Dear Maysoon,

I was moved to read your piece commemorating the flight of your husband from a village near Jerusalem in 1948. He has kept the rusty iron key to his home. Yours was one of hundreds of articles in the global media, together with demonstrations and marches, marking your Nakba—the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs in 1948.

A picture dated February 10, 2009 shows the entrance of an abandoned Jewish synagogue with a removed Star of David from the wall in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. (Saddam Hussein / AFP / Getty Images)

But let me tell you a little known-fact: as your husband's family was fleeing their village, a greater number of Jewish refugees were streaming out of the Arab world with one suitcase—in the opposite direction.

Over 800,000 Jewish refugees fled in the years immediately following 1948. This is the Jewish Nakba—a forgotten tragedy shrouded in silence. One of those refugee families was mine. We lived in a comfortable house in a riverside Jewish neighbourhood in Baghdad.

"There is no place like home," as you say. Iraq was home to Jews for 2,600 years. A third of Baghdad was Jewish. But in 1948, persecution became so intolerable that my parents, along with 90 percent of Iraq's Jews, had no choice but to flee. The Jews lost everything—citizenship, homes, lands, businesses, synagogues, schools, hospitals and heritage. The same story repeated itself across the Arab world, as dispossessed Jews fled discrimination, abuse, riots and executions. Of a million Jews, only 4,000 remain.

You complain that there are Jews who deny the Arab Nakba. But plenty of Arabs and their supporters deny that Jews were ever refugees—let alone suffered a monumental injustice. They claim that Jews left the Arab world "of their own free will." Or they blame the Zionists—although a third of us resettled in the West.

If you are tempted to blame the Jewish exodus on Israel’s creation, let me assure you that Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism did not begin in 1948: If you then ask, what has the injustice against the Jewish refugees who fled Arab countries got to do with you Palestinians? The answer is: everything.

The World of Palestinian Fairytales

...The father of photojournalism, Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, “Our job is to view events with a clinical eye and to record them, but not to distort them by means of tricks, either while shooting or in the darkroom.” It is our job to hold the media to this proper and correct standard.

The famous Cottingley fairies
fake picture. Photo ByWikipedia

David Katz..
Times of Israel..
21 May '13..

In 1917 in a village in the north of England, two young cousins named Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths borrowed the quarter plate camera of Elsie’s father Arthur Wright – one of England’s earliest qualified electrical engineers.

When he went to develop the pictures, Mr. Wright got more than his daughter playing with her friends, instead, he saw fairies. A rational man, he dismissed them as fake, and banned his daughter from using the camera again, however Elsie’s mother had very different ideas.

In 1919 when she made the images public, the famous writer of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyal wrote in a leading magazine of the picture’s authenticity. And so, with popular distribution, and recognized approval of leaders of the day – the legend was set, and the fairytale became a reality.

It was not until the early 1980’s that the cousins admitted that the pictures were fakes; Frances said ‘I don’t see how people could believe they’re real fairies. I could see the backs of them and the hatpins when the photo was being taken.”

Fast forward 83 years to September 30, 2000, and the start of the second Palestinian ‘Intifada.’ France2 TV broadcast footage of an episode that occurred earlier that day at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. The footage was by a Palestinian stringer — a freelancer — named Talal Abu Rahma, who claimed that even though the incident occurred over the course of an hour and numerous other cameramen were around who had not witnessed it, he alone had captured footage of a young Palestinian boy cowering behind his father, being shot to death by the Israeli army.

Charles Enderlin, France2 Jerusalem bureau chief, who during the incident had been more than 100 kilometers away in Ramallah, edited and added commentary to the piece that went out that night on France2, and then on networks and news outlets across the world, as the tale of Mohammed al-Dura went from being legend to history.

Yet even then, doubts over the authenticity of the footage were raised, as American professor Richard Landes labeled it a classic case of Palestinian media manipulation, or ‘Pallywood’.

This is a brief description of the events that took place that have led to where we are 13 years later.

Indeed, the research into and debate around the incident has filled the web and even impacted upon the French legal system. The website aldurah.com chronicles the incredible efforts of Prof. Landes and French media analyst Philippe Karsenty to prove this modern day blood libel was a staged fake.

However, as a photographer and imagery consultant, this image and its use over the past 13 years has been key to my motivation to use every bit of knowledge and experience I have to show how imagery is being used so effectively in the campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel.

It is said that the camera never lies. Whoever coined that term could not have been more misinformed. As a photographer of nearly 30 years, I can tell you that any half decent photographer can make a camera do anything he or she wants.

A slanderous swamp that engulfs "all the news that's fit to print."

...And that may be Adelson's biggest sin, in the anti-Zionist eyes of the Times. Birthright is perhaps the most successful antidote to a rising tide of assimilation among young American Jews. Adelson has contributed tens of millions of dollars to Birthright so as to give young Jews who have never visited Israel a chance to see the Jewish state for themselves.

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
21 May '13..

When it comes to political labels to describe public figures, the New York Times has a vocabulary all its own -- pejorative adjectives for conservatives; soft, deferential adjectives for liberals. It's all part and parcel of a left-wing bias in what purport to be the paper's "news" articles.

To wit, the latest example:

In its May 20 edition, the Times runs an article by Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren about the ups and downs of Yair Lapid, a charismatic newcomer to Israeli politics, whose political star crested when voters made his party the second largest in the Knesset, but whose star more recently has been on a precipitous decline ("Fresh Israeli Face Plays Down Dimming of Political Star" page A4).

Why has Lapid's popularity gone south, aside from the fact that as finance minister in the governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is pushing an austerity drive of raising taxes while cutting spending?

"One of the things that led some people to turn on Mr. Lapid was the revelation that he met in April with Sheldon Adelson, the ultraconservative financier who backs Mr. Netanyahu and owns the Israeli Hayom newspaper that loyally supports him," Rudoren tells Times readers.

In this single sentence, intentionally or not, Rudoren reveals the depth of the Times' anti-conservative, anti-Zionist intrusion into its news sections.

Lapid meeting with Adelson? Talk about guilt by association. Because, as far as Rudoren is concerned, Adelson doesn't belong in polite society. After all, horror of horrors, Adelson is an "ultra-conservative."

Territorial compensation for a failed attempt to destroy Israel is absurd and immoral

Dani Dayan..
Opinion/Haaretz..
20 May '13..

A few words uttered in English by an Arab prime minister excited – perhaps even electrified – the few who still believe the conflict in the Middle East can be resolved with the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.

Speaking on behalf of the Arab League, the prime minister of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, said in Washington last month that Israel should return to the June 4, 1967 borders with the option of "comparable and mutual agreed minor swaps of the land." Two of the three leaders who believe in the two-state solution, United States Secretary of State John Kerry and Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, were thrilled. Not just a step forward, Kerry said, but a big step forward. Not just positive news, said Livni, following his lead, but very positive. Only their third friend, the leader of the cult of failure that never learns from its mistakes, President Shimon Peres, remained uncharacteristically silent.

Nobody bothered asking the two esteemed ministers where such good news was hiding here. The Arab Peace Initiative, the Arab League's proposed solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, would have some value only if it were more moderate than the Palestinian position. Otherwise, we would find ourselves in the same bad situation we got into when U.S. President Barack Obama, in his inexperience, set too high a bar for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas regarding the construction freeze. Abbas could not be less holy than the pope, and the talks broke down.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization’s position on the issue known as “territorial exchanges” has been that the Palestinian state must encompass 6,205 square kilometers. The Qatari statement on this principle, which includes six conditional words and a thirteen-word sentence, may come close to the Palestinian position, but stops some distance from it. So what’s the great accomplishment here that had those ministers’ bureaus all aflutter?

At any rate, there is an important lesson for us to learn from the Qatari proposal: Any Israeli concession quickly becomes a fait accompli for the Arabs, which Israel is expected to honor indefinitely.

Who firebombs a grave? Like to guess?

Paula R. Stern..
A Soldier's Mother..
21 May '13..

It's an amazing concept. Why would someone firebomb a grave...and an ancient one at that?

I just read a news article that Arabs have thrown 290 firebombs (and or planted explosive devices) at Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem in the last six months alone (that doesn't count hundreds, perhaps thousands, before that).

I actually know the answer as to why - it comes back to that concept of hating all that is different from them and worse, an attempt to erase any one else's past. Okay, I got that...sick...but I got it.

But seeing that headlines also reminded me of an article I wrote a decade ago. Only, it wasn't about Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem, but her son, Joseph's tomb in Nablus (Shechem).

In February, 2003, Arabs rioted and burned the grave/tomb of Joseph, son of our patriarch, Jacob and his beloved wife, Rachel. Joseph was buried in Shechem after his bones were exhumed by the Israelites as they were leaving Egypt - a promise fulfilled not to leave his bones in a foreign land. His bones were carried through the desert, until they were brought home to rest in the land of his fathers. Only today, his tomb is found inside a Palestinian city. To get there is nearly impossible and only accomplished with an army escort, under strict protection.

Rachel was buried, according to tradition handed down over the centuries, in Bethlehem. You can get to her grave site, but you need to leave your car in Jerusalem and take armored buses - silly...it's only a few hundred yards. The area around the tomb has been fortified, cement barriers erected to protect those wishing to pray beside her grave.

(Continue)

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MK Feiglin, Deputy Knesset Speaker on Iran, Arab Spring, U.S. Aid, and More

...We are not spread in the Diaspora anymore. We are a sovereign country. When somebody is threatening a new holocaust on the state of Israel, it is very important to make it very clear that we are those who are taking responsibility for our own security and we are those who are going to solve the problem by ourselves. It is a crucial message. In the past Israel knew, but somewhere along the way we forgot it.

Alex Newman..
The New American..
20 May '13..

JERUSALEM — Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) Moshe Feiglin, who leads the Manhigut Yehudit (the Jewish Leadership) faction of the ruling Likud Party, spoke to The New American’s Alex Newman in late April during an interview at the Knesset in Jerusalem. (The photo shows MK Feiglin, center, with Newman.) While a controversial figure in Israel and still relatively unknown abroad after his successful election in January, the new lawmaker has developed a strong following among liberty-minded Jews.

However, MK Feiglin has also come under fire for statements about Arabs and Muslims perceived as incendiary — especially the idea that Israel should encourage non-Jews to emigrate, using financial incentives in an effort to create a more Jewish state. The war veteran and former army captain, also a father of five, shared his thoughts on the role of Israel in the world and much more.

The New American: How serious is the threat from Iran? What should be done about it? Does America have any role, or is this just Israel’s problem?

MK Moshe Feiglin: The Israeli strategy is a mistake. I think our prime minister is probably the most capable man to do what needs to be done, but I have a different point of view on the strategy that needs to be taken over here. It seems like today Israel is focusing on making the issue a problem of the whole world, not only Israel, and I think it’s a mistake. I think we should do exactly the opposite. It should start and end for us as an Israeli issue that is our responsibility to solve.

We are not spread in the Diaspora anymore. We are a sovereign country. When somebody is threatening a new holocaust on the state of Israel, it is very important to make it very clear that we are those who are taking responsibility for our own security and we are those who are going to solve the problem by ourselves. It is a crucial message. In the past Israel knew, but somewhere along the way we forgot it.

I think that when Ahmadinejad first — I think about eight years ago, or 10 years ago, I don’t remember exactly when — but the first time that he came with this idea of the destruction of the state of Israel, just talking about it, I think the world was expecting a very immediate reaction — a military reaction — from Israel. When it was not done, the result of it was that the delegitimization of the state of Israel all over the world rose up, because when you are not willing to pay a price to keep your existence, when you show dependence on others to do the job for you, you lose your legitimacy to exist. It is true with every state, but much more than that with the state of the Jews.

If you ask me what should be done, first of all I want to explain that I see the delegitimization of Israel in the world — in the universities of England and France, and some of the universities in the United States as well, in the West — I see that as a bigger threat than the atomic bomb, than the nuclear threat. We should learn from our own Holocaust 70 years ago: The Holocaust did not start in 1939; it started with the speeches in the Reichstag of the Third Reich in 1933 until the war. Those speeches led to delegitimization, to a question mark, to arise about the right of the Jew to exist.

Those speeches of Ahmadinejad led to the question mark above the right of the state of Israel to exist. You can see the connection between Ahmadinejad, the fact that Israel did not react, and this question mark above our legitimacy to exist, and you can see that it comes all together, that’s the connection. When the delegitimization was there all over Europe, the Holocaust was able to happen. So I see that — those speeches, the fact that the leader of a big country, a member of the UN, speaking like that and not being punished by us right away — as a bigger problem than the nuclear weapon itself.

Now, if you ask me how Israel should react — what Israel should do, should we bomb Iran, what kind of reaction we should have — I think the answer is that we should think outside of the box. We got used to the idea of soldiers and people paying the price for the cruelness of leaders, and this is the wrong way to look at it. I think that when a leader is saying that Israel, the Jews, don’t have a right to breathe the air on the globe, he himself should lose that right. In other words, what I’m saying is that Iran is not the target, not even the nuclear reactors are the target.

Obviously it’s going to be very hard and complicated to deal with that also, and it’s going to cost a big price in Israeli soldiers and pilots and so on. The target should be the regime — the target should be the leaders; the target should be Ahmadinejad himself. We should ask ourselves how many millions would not have lost their lives if the Western world would have understood that concept with Hitler and acted at the right time.

A fundamental historical untruth, stained with imbecilic and false demagoguery.

...Losing a war is disastrous. Losing an all-out war is disastrous seven-fold. The Palestinians undoubtedly experienced a tragedy during the War of Independence; they have paid the price for their murderous aggression and bear full responsibility for its results and consequences.

Uri Heitner..
Israel Hayom..
20 May '13..

"I was the one who said, speaking before the Knesset plenum, that the Holocaust was the worst crime in the history of modern mankind," MK Ahmed Tibi proudly declared in an interview with Ilana Dayan on Army Radio. He immediately followed by saying, "I would expect from the victims of the Holocaust not to make others their own victims. And here we are, you made us the victims of the victims." And he went on to expand on the terrible injustices caused to the Palestinians, not following the Six-Day War (resulting in the "Occupation"), mind you, but the War for Independence, the creation of the state.

Indeed, so much cynicism and sophistication in this maneuver by Tibi. Here, he declares, look at how empathetic I am to your suffering, now I demand that you do the same for me. Suffering versus suffering. Tragedy versus tragedy. Holocaust versus Nakba. And the difference -- while the Palestinians are not responsible for the Jews' Nakba, the Jews are responsible for the Holocaust of the Palestinians, who did nothing wrong.

This cynical and sophisticated approach is based on a fundamental historical untruth, stained with imbecilic and false demagoguery.

The very essence of comparing these historical events is entirely comprised of a cynical lie. The war for independence was not part of one people's plan to exterminate another people; it was a war between them. The nation presenting itself as the victim was the aggressor, which rejected any compromise because it was unwilling to accept an independent Jewish entity in the land of Israel. It was he who attacked the Jewish population, and it was the Arab states which invaded the newborn State of Israel with the intention of destroying it and drowning the Jews in blood. All of this occurred just three years after the Holocaust.