Love of the Land: May 2017

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

An Exercise in Creative Writing: Breaking the Silence’s Book Project - by Prof. Gerald Steinberg

...As one of the many advocacy groups in the New Israel Fund network that place the blame for the conflict entirely on Israel, Breaking the Silence (a small NGO with a large budget) has been unable to convince many Israelis of the wisdom and practicality of its perspective. Israelis know the reality, including the basic issues of Palestinian rejectionism, terrorism, and incitement, and are not buying the simplistic NGO narrative.

Prof. Gerald Steinberg..
Algemeiner.com..
30 May '17..

Kingdom of Olives and Ash, edited by fiction writers Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman and prepared in cooperation with the highly controversial (understatement) Israeli NGO “Breaking the Silence,” is being published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the 1967 war.

More than a literary work, this book is a political project, which, like most of Breaking the Silence’s activities, seeks to persuade an audience of non-Israelis and non-Palestinians.

As one of the many advocacy groups in the New Israel Fund network that place the blame for the conflict entirely on Israel, Breaking the Silence (a small NGO with a large budget) has been unable to convince many Israelis of the wisdom and practicality of its perspective. Israelis know the reality, including the basic issues of Palestinian rejectionism, terrorism, and incitement, and are not buying the simplistic NGO narrative.

As a result, this group has turned its passions and coffers towards international audiences with a superficial understanding of Israeli reality, in an attempt to force fundamental policy changes under the slogan of “ending the occupation.” This strategy is amplified by the millions of shekels it receives from European governments, church groups, and other actors that do not have Israel’s best interests in mind.

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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 which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Knowingly deceptive: Saying "50-year occupation" without mentioning Khartoum - by Elder of Ziyon

...If someone thinks that "occupation" is the ultimate evil and doesn't have a word to say about the Arab leaders' decision to reject peace in exchange for virtually all the land Israel gained in 1967, then that person doesn't care about "occupation" or peace - they support the old Arab genocidal attitude towards Jews in the Middle East.

Elder of Ziyon..
30 May '17..

There are lots of articles being published in recent and upcoming weeks about the Six Day War and its legacy.

Any article that talks about "occupation" and "colonialism" and all the other evils that are ascribed to Israel, that do not mention the Khartoum Resolution of September 1, 1967, is an example of deceit.

The main paragraph of the Khartoum Resolution said:

The Arab Heads of State have agreed to unite their political efforts at the international and diplomatic level to eliminate the effects of the aggression and to ensure the withdrawal of the aggressive Israeli forces from the Arab lands which have been occupied since the aggression of June 5. This will be done within the framework of the main principles by which the Arab States abide, namely, no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it, and insistence on the rights of the Palestinian people in their own country.

That last sentence means "destroy Israel," by the way. It was not referring to the territories in any way. Nobody at all demanded a Palestinian state in the territories in 1967.

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‘Our Man in the Middle East’ recycles his ‘Israeli Right killed the peace process’ theory - by Hadar Sela

...Bowen’s story ends there, with no mention of the Clinton peace plan, the 2005 Gaza withdrawal, the fact that Israelis elected Ehud Olmert – who ran on a platform of disengagement from Judea & Samaria – in 2006 or Olmert’s 2008 offer to the Palestinians. Such inconvenient facts would of course detract from Bowen’s very transparent aim to steer BBC audiences towards the simplistic and inaccurate view that the Israeli Right-wing murdered the peace process, while propagating the illusion of passive Palestinians devoid of all agency or responsibility.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
29 May '17..

Part five of Jeremy Bowen’s series ‘Our Man in the Middle East’ was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on May 19th. Titled “Recipe for Disaster“, the programme’s subject matter is described as follows in the synopsis:

‘How the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin changed the region’s history, as remembered by BBC Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen. “No political killing in the twentieth century was more successful,” he argues, observing the dramatic effects on the Oslo peace process. “Perhaps there was a moment for peace, and it came, and went.”‘

Like additional episodes in the series, this programme revisits a topic that Bowen has addressed before: in this case in November 2015 when he produced an article headlined with what is for him a rhetorical question – “Did Rabin assassination kill the best chance for peace?”. Nothing in Bowen’s approach has changed since then and his take away messaging once again leaves audiences in no doubt as to which side in the Arab-Israeli conflict killed off “hope” and “peace”.

Remarkably, Bowen’s 25 years in the Middle East have not done anything to improve his Hebrew pronunciation skills and listeners hear the former Israeli prime minister’s surname presented as ‘Ra-bean‘ throughout the programme.

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Monday, May 29, 2017

Another example of PA glorification of terrorism ignored at BBC - by Hadar Sela

It therefore did not come as much of a surprise when a women’s centre in a village under PA control was recently dedicated to Dalal Mughrabi but what is unusual – and hence newsworthy – is the reaction of one of the refurbished building’s funders....However, four days after it broke, none of the BBC’s locally based correspondents has yet covered this story.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
29 May '17..

Earlier this month the BBC’s new man in Jerusalem told World Service listeners that Israel “has long accused Palestinian officials of using sport to glorify terrorism”.

As was noted here at the time:

“Of course BBC audiences are consistently denied the information which would enable them to know whether “Palestinian officials” do indeed use sport to glorify terrorism and Bateman failed to inform listeners that just a day prior to his report, Rajoub’s Palestinian Football Association organised a tournament named after a terrorist responsible for the murders of 125 Israelis.”

Neither are BBC audiences informed about additional ways in which the Palestinian Authority and Fatah regularly glorify terrorism and promote incitement, such as naming schools, streets and squares after terrorists.

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Surprise? NY Times Unleashes Barrage of 5 Op-Eds Savagely Hostile to Israel - by Ira Stoll

...It’s one thing to see the Stephens hire triggering antisemitic or anti-Israel tropes in other publications. It’s another to see them erupting in the columns of the Times itself.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
28 May '17..

When the New York Times opinion page hired Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss, two outspoken Zionist veterans of the Wall Street Journal, a friend of mine warned me that the hires could be a mixed blessing from a pro-Israel perspective.

Now all the anti-Israel editors already at the Times will feel like they can let loose with impunity, because the hiring of Stephens and Weiss provides a ready response to accusations of “bias.” So said my friend.

Or, as I put it back on April 13, writing about Stephens: “Anyone who thinks the Times hiring of him was motivated primarily by a desire to respond to the paper’s pro-Israel critics might want to think again.”

My friend’s warning turned out to be prophetic.

In the weeks since the news of the Stephens and Weiss hires broke, the Times has — as if compensating — unleashed a barrage of op-eds savagely hostile to Israel and Jewish interests. Among them:

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This story begins in Tel Aviv, not Manchester - by David Collier

...Hamas, the civilian murdering radical Islamic terror group can be praised, and nobody would even blink. Only if that link is crossed, if somehow ISIS becomes the identifier, only then do we move into ‘unacceptable’ mode.

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
26 May '17..

This story begins in Tel Aviv, not Manchester. In a few days it will be exactly sixteen years since the Dolphinarium massacre. A terror attack against a discotheque that killed 21 Israelis, 16 of them teenagers. The terrorist, Saeed Hotari, was linked to Hamas. The target: Children.

On March 4 1996 two thirteen-year-old boys left their homes to go to Dizengoff Centre. They were friends and it was the first time they had gone out without parental supervision. It was the evening of the Jewish festival of Purim. They dressed in a Purim costume, roamed the centre as thirteen-year old’s do, and then left to take a bus back home. Kobi Zaharon and Yovav Levi never made it to the bus stop.

As they left the mall, a suicide bomber from the radical Islamic terror group Hamas, blew himself up outside the Dizengoff Centre. The streets were full of kids in fancy dress.

The bomber, twenty-four-year-old Abdel-Rahim Ishaq, deliberately targeted children.

Three days ago, a Muslim man carried explosives into a Manchester venue that was full of children and detonated the bomb. Driven by a sickening Islamic ideology, Salman Abedi ruined hundreds of lives. Twenty-two people were brutally slain, many more have suffered life changing injuries, and hundreds of others have had their lives dramatically altered.

Salman Abedi deliberately targeted children. As is likely, others probably helped him choose the target.

His being a Muslim is integral to the story. If he were Hindu, Christian or Jewish this would never have happened. This was a vile, brutal, cowardly and unforgivable attack on innocent children who were all out enjoying a special moment in their lives. This was an attack on the very heart of our society.

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Sunday, May 28, 2017

Reality vs. the Over-Dramatization of Israel’s “Dilemma” - by Dr. Max Singer

...Israel is not facing a dilemma about how much, if any, land to give up from the West Bank, because the Palestinians will not agree to take land and cannot be forced to do so. The Palestinian community sees peace with Israel as defeat in their 100-year struggle.

Dr. Max Singer..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 479..
28 May '17..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/overdramatization-israel-dilemma/

Ehud Barak recently had a long review in Haaretz of Micah Goodman’s important new book, Catch 67, to which Goodman responded the following week. Goodman argues that Israel’s 1967 victory created a “catch” or trap reflected in Israel’s current dilemma, in which both sides (the Israeli political left and right) are correct. Barak disagrees. In his view, the choice is clear: the left is correct.

Both Barak’s own view and his telling of Goodman’s ignore the reality of Israel’s actual choices today. We are not facing a dilemma about giving up territory. We are facing a distasteful task, and a need for patience over a period of decades.

Israel does not now have a choice about giving the Palestinians land or creating a Palestinian state; Israel is therefore not facing a dilemma.

While there are undoubtedly peace-seeking Palestinians, as a community, the Palestinians have not even begun to discuss the possibility of making a peace that accepts Israel and ends the Palestinian effort to gain all the land “from the river to the sea.” Nor have they begun public discussion of the possibility of most of the “refugees” settling outside Israel. Without debate among Palestinians, there is no way they can give up their determination to destroy Israel and make a genuine peace.

There is zero chance that there could be a real peace agreement now regardless of how much land Israel would be willing to give up.. A true two-state solution would finally defeat Palestinian and Arab efforts of a century, and they are not yet ready to accept defeat. Whatever disagreement there is among Israelis about how much land, if any, Israel should give up to get peace, that disagreement is not what is standing in the way of peace.

Manchester, media and politicians: Moved by some terrorist attacks, not so much by others - by Frimet Roth

...By now you may be asking, as I am, why the murder of Jewish children in Jerusalem is not deemed as horrific and intolerable as that of the children in Manchester. I have one explanation for the double standard and it starts with an "A". What's yours?

Frimet Roth..
The Good, The Bad, The Ugly..
26 May '17..

The entire sane world is united in its condemnation of the Manchester terror bombing. It has been particularly shocked by the targeting of children and teens, describing it as barbaric, cruel and horrific. Undoubtedly the only appropriate reaction.

But it is also puzzling.

Because it contrasts so starkly with the world's recent response to another terrorist who targeted children and teens and murdered. I refer to the Hamas mastermind of the Sbarro massacre on August 9, 2001, Ahlam Tamimi.

My daughter, Malki, among the fifteen murdered then, was, like so many of the Manchester victims, fifteen years old when she died.

What do you think these outraged news commentators and world leaders would say were the perpetrator of the Manchester attack freed, celebrated as a hero and given refuge by an ally of key Western powers?

Can you imagine them just blowing that off?

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Saturday, May 27, 2017

Actually, the Two State Solution Is Immoral, Racist And Inhumane To The Arabs - by Sheri Oz

...I am NOT talking about Israel’s security and I am NOT talking about us leaving our holy sites in their hands (even though I am against this) — I am talking about the humanitarian crisis that would characterize the lives of those left behind the wall that would mark the permanent border between us and them.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
26 May '17..

I wouldn’t wish the Two State Solution on my worst enemies. Yet that is what leftist organizations in Israel and abroad are doing – wishing the Two State Solution on our neighbours. They cry out for us to stop the “occupation”, arguing that the occupation is immoral and oppressive to the Arabs living in the Palestinian Authority (PA). They want us to separate from the Palestinian Arabs, with them on one side of a permanent border and us on the other side. They claim that this is the only humane way to preserve the Jewish majority and democracy in Israel and at the same time provide the Palestinian Arabs with the autonomy to which they think they have some kind of right.

Yet the autonomy they offer is a sub-state. Granted, it would be called The State of Palestine, but it would not patrol its own border with Jordan, for example, (Israel would) and it will not be allowed to have an army. Whether or not it will have an airport remains to be seen, and the huge numbers of currently internationally recognized “refugees” will not be allowed in. The only way for the PA to sign such a humiliating “peace treaty” would be for the Arabs to finally accept that they were defeated by Israel in 1967. If this is the deal, then it will be largely a capitulation by the Arabs, largely a unilateral deal not all that different from when we unilaterally left Gaza.

And we only have to look to Gaza to see what is immoral, racist and inhumane to the Arabs living there after we divorced them.

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Friday, May 26, 2017

A big hypocrisy alert: Who's building a wall, with 4 watchtowers, around 100,000 Palestinians?

...the silence from NGOs, the UN, Palestinian leaders and world media over what can literally be called a prison, with concrete walls and watchtowers, being built by the Lebanese government, shows how sickeningly hypocritical the entire world is. No one gives a damn about Palestinians unless Jews can be blamed.

Elder of Ziyon..
26 May '17..

You know how "human rights" groups and "pro-Palestinian" groups love to say that Israel puts Palestinians in Gaza as well as the West Bank in an "open-air prison"?

You know how the media will exhaustively cover any defensive measures Israel does to protect itself from terrorists that live among the Palestinians as "collective punishment"?

You know how Israel's security fence that has saved hundreds or thousands of lives is routinely denounced because it inconveniences some Arabs?

You know how Palestinian leaders will send official complaints to the UN for everything Israel does, or allegedly does, that has the slightest impact on the slightest number of Palestinian Arabs?

Finally, a final question: How much have you read or heard about a literal open-air prison, complete with watchtowers, being built around a Palestinian UNRWA camp in Lebanon that houses some 120,000 people?

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Surprise? For NY Times, the new man in Jerusalem is just as biased as the old one - by Stephen M. Flatow

...At least 14 Israelis (including two Israeli Arabs mistaken for Jews) have been stoned to death by Palestinians since the 1980s. It was only by a miracle that they did not claim a 15th victim in Hawara May 18. But you wouldn’t know that from reading Fisher’s fairy tale-account in The New York Times.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
24 May '17..

Anybody who thought the new Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times would be any less pro-Palestinian than his predecessor was sadly mistaken.

Ian Fisher replaced Peter Baker as head of The Times’s Jerusalem bureau in January. Many of Fisher’s articles in recent months have been slanted against Israel, but his coverage of the lynching attempt in the Palestinian Arab village of Hawara May 18 was the worst so far.

The facts of the - episode are well-documented in a graphic video that can be seen on YouTube. Arabs waving PLO flags and anti-Israel placards gather in the center of the town and begin shouting slogans. An Israeli civilian automobile—easily distinguished by the color of its license plate—happens to drive by. The sight of a Jew fills the mob with bloodlust. They surround the car and begin hurling large rocks at it.

In the video, you can see a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance blocking the Israeli car from advancing. The driver of the ambulance later claimed he was trying to navigate around the mob. That’s an obvious lie. You can see the ambulance has stopped in front of the Israeli car, and is not moving at all as the rock-throwers try to murder the Israeli driver.

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Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Jerusalem, Palestinians and the World's Need to Drive Out Destructive Fantasies - by Shireen Qudosi

...Palestinians would be better served addressing bedrock issues in their own society, including holding their people accountable for the hate indoctrinated into the hearts and minds of every Palestinian as soon as they learn to walk and talk. Stop financially supporting families of terrorists. Stop calling terrorists martyrs. Stop sacrificing your children and celebrating their deaths.

Shireen Qudosi..
Gatestone Institute..
25 May'17..

The most iconic moment of President Donald Trump's visit to the Middle East was not his "speech on Islam"; it was his visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

The Western Wall is a contested space, and that controversy has bled outside Israel's borders. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently reignited the debate, mentioning the Wall as being in "Jerusalem", instead of in Israel. It is a play on language often used to deny Israeli sovereignty over a space that clearly belongs to the Jewish people, as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, quickly rectified in response.

How we talk about religion matters. If we want to be effective in moving forward, it is important to be truthful. The truth is that Israel won the Six Day War, thereby liberating eastern Jerusalem from Jordan, which had seized it illegally when it attacked Israel in 1948-49 and expelled all Jews from eastern Jerusalem.

Israel has earned the right to reclaim Jerusalem fully. This also means that the Palestinians and other powers such as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the UN and domestic interest groups do not get a veto over reality. If the new foreign policy standard is to work together to combat destructive forces, then it is also important to recognize that it is destructive to start a discussion from positions of falsehoods.

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BBC Middle East editor’s ‘impartiality’ on view in Jerusalem - by Hadar Sela

Once again Jeremy Bowen provides a glimpse into the ‘impartial’ viewpoints that underpin his Middle East reporting and editing.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
25 May '17..

The Oxford Dictionary defines the word triumphalism as meaning “excessive exultation over one’s success or achievements (used especially in a political context)”.

That word was used by the BBC’s Middle East editor in a ‘question’ posed in a Tweet sent on May 24th showing what he termed “Religious Zionists” – rather than just Israelis – celebrating Jerusalem Day.

In contrast to Bowen’s inaccurate interpretation of the meaning of the holiday, ...

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Wednesday, May 24, 2017

(Video) Media Myths and the Reunification of Jerusalem - by Ricki Hollander

On June 7, 1967 (28 Iyar) Israeli paratroopers advanced through the Old City of Jerusalem toward the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, reunifying Judaism's capital city after 19 years of division under Jordanian occupation. Today marks the 50th anniversary of that day, and the media myths about Jerusalem continue. CAMERA presents the first in a series of films about those media myths.

Ricki Hollander..
CAMERA.org..
24 May '17..
Link: http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=4&x_article=3634

To examine these issues in greater depth, here are links to CAMERA's backgrounders on Jerusalem:

BACKGROUNDER: History of Jerusalem

The Battle Over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount

East Jerusalem: Setting the Record Straight

(Part 1 of 2) The twisted, lying academics at the University of Warwick - by David Collier

...This was a single talk led by an academic at the University of Warwick. A speech from a co-founder of a new anti-Israel movement on campus that is poisoning the minds of students with blatant falsehoods. This report will of course be discarded by those involved as being an attack by the ‘Zionist lobby’. Perhaps an accusation will be thrown that the Embassy is funding me. All the usual deflective tactics. It is highly doubtful there will be any introspection, any self-reflection. But there is more to this story. Much more.

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
24 May '17..

This is a two part report. This first part looks at a talk by ‘academic’ Teodora Todorova at Warwick. The investigation has uncovered highly disturbing activity at Warwick and the university have been contacted for comment. The second part will look into that activity.

Recently, because of the report based on a one day anti-Israel conference on 4th May that I attended at the University of Warwick, I was contacted by several students on the Warwick campus. Surprisingly not all were Zionists. Following credible information I was given, I began a special investigation into hard-core ‘faculty’ activism at the University.

This investigation uncovered faculty activists, academics employed to teach, who have created their own anti-Israel group at the University. ‘Warwick for Justice in Palestine‘ was created it seems, because the group led by students, was not extreme enough for some members of the faculty.

The second part of this report will look into the aims of this group, what they have goaded students to do in their name, how university funds have supported their activities and the long term negative implications for Jewish students on campus. However, I will begin by deconstructing the talk given at the initial event held by the group on campus. This is important because it highlights the venom being injected into the campus and contains a narrative that is impossibly twisted and mendacious .

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How does one have "settlements" in a city older than London or Washington D.C.? - by Sultan Knish

...They say that there are three religions in Jerusalem, but there are actually four. The fourth religion is the true Religion of Peace, the one that insists that there will be peace when the Jews have been expelled from Judea and Samaria, driven out of their homes in Jerusalem, and made into wanderers and beggars once again. Oddly enough, this religion's name isn't even Islam-- it's diplomacy.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
23 May '17..

When Jordan's Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city-- the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem possible.

The Jews living in the free half of Jerusalem continued to be killed by Jordanian Muslim snipers. The victims of those years of Muslim occupation included Yaffa Binyamin, a 14-year-old girl sitting on the balcony of her own house and a Christian carpenter working on the Notre Dame Convent.

Under Muslim occupation, while Muslim snipers were cold-bloodedly murdering their children, the Jewish residents living under fire couldn't so much as put in an outhouse without being reported to the UN for illegal construction. In one case a UN observer organization held four meetings to discuss an outhouse for local residents before condemning Israel for illegal construction.

It did not however condemn Jordan when one of its soldiers opened fire on a train wounding a Jewish teenage girl.

Not very much has changed.

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Celebrating Yom Yerushalayim - "Fly Your Flag" (Video)

From the former Latma's Tribal Update, a song for Jerusalem. "Fly your flag", is a celebration of Yom Yerushalayim, commemorating the unification of our eternal capital city 50 years ago. Enjoy!

LOTL..
First posted 10 May '13..

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

President-for-life, Mahmoud Abbas, on Manchester and Sbarro - by Arnold Roth

...There are situations where the condemnation of terror is as morally indefensible as the terror itself.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
23 May '17..

In 2008, President-for-life of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas announced he was awarding the PA’s highest medal, the Al Quds Mark of Honor, to Ahlam Tamimi, who masterminded the massacre at the Sbarro Jerusalem pizzeria. (Abbas' decision to make the award was widely criticized by outsiders and was eventually overturned.) The blood-drenched act of terror which Abbas was so anxious to honor was, like last night’s Manchester atrocity, an attack directed specifically at children by means of nail-enhanced explosives delivered by a human bomb.

This morning, that same President-for-life, Mahmoud Abbas, said in Bethlehem to the US President:

"Allow me… to condemn the horrible terrorist attack that occurred in the British city of Manchester… I do offer my warm condolences to the Prime Minister of Britain, families of victims, and the British people."

It's time for people who understand brazen hypocrisy when they encounter it, and especially members of the news reporting industry, to say openly what should have been said years ago:

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Academics, Lies and Palestinian Identity: Beginning A Serious Study - by Sheri Oz

...Unfortunately for the rest of us, when academics lie and when academic journals publish their lies, non-academics believe the lies: in this case, the lie that a Palestinian identity existed before Yasser Arafat made it politically expedient and fashionable to believe it did.

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diarries..
23 May '17..

In a discussion about a supposed long-standing Palestinian identity, a Facebook friend asked me to provide him with primary sources that would allow him to re-examine his assumptions. I decided to look into academic studies that might help shed light on this topic.

The first article that I opened was a paper written by George Washington University’s Anthropology Department faculty member, Ilana Feldman. Published in 2008, it was called: “Refusing Invisibility: Documentation and Memorialization in Palestinian Refugee Claims“.

On the second page of the article, Feldman makes the following statement:

Screenshot of page 499 from Feldman’s article published in the Journal of Refugee Studies.

That first sentence, “Before 1948, Palestine was recognized as a state”, has no reference to back up where she gets this ridiculous idea from. (I somehow doubt that she included Jordan in this “already recognized Palestine”.) But let us leave historical falsification aside for a moment and play a what-if game.

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Mr. Trump, There Won’t Be Peace While the Power Is Out - by Evelyn Gordon

If any Palestinian government ever prioritizes its own people’s welfare over anti-Israel terror, it might be possible to talk about peace. But as long as killing Israelis is the top priority for both Hamas and Fatah, the idea that either Palestinian party would ever sign a peace agreement with Israel is fatuous.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
22 May '17..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/there-wont-be-peace-while-the-power-is-out/

Donald Trump and the mainstream press may act like enemies on many issues, but they are the closest of allies when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Trump spouts fantasies about making Israeli-Palestinian peace, and Western media dutifully fails to report any news that might disrupt these fantasies, such as what the Palestinians’ two rival governments are actually doing to their own people right now.

If journalists were doing their jobs, they would ask Trump and his advisors one simple question: How exactly do you expect the Palestinians to make peace with Israel when both Palestinian governments have chosen to deprive their people of basic necessities–including electricity and medical care—to support anti-Israel terror?

Earlier this month, for instance, an Arab hospital in Jerusalem that mainly treats Palestinians announced it would no longer accept patients from either the West Bank or Gaza because the Palestinian Authority owes it so much money that it can no longer afford to buy medicines. The hospital, Augusta Victoria, said it urgently needs 23 million shekels ($6.4 million) to replenish its stocks. The PA’s unpaid debts to it total 150 million ($42 million).

Medicines are in similarly short supply in Gaza because, about two weeks ago, the Fatah-run PA stopped paying for them. Normally, the PA sends a shipment of medicines to Gaza every two months. But the last shipment arrived more than three months ago, and supplies of many drugs have been exhausted. Gaza’s Hamas-run government refuses to act in Fatah’s stead.

Both sides have some legitimate grounds for demanding that the other pay. Hamas bears responsibility because it is Gaza’s de facto ruler, but the PA is the one that gets billions of dollars a year in foreign aid to fund humanitarian needs in both the West Bank and Gaza. Meanwhile, however, both are refusing to compromise, and Gaza residents are paying the price.

The expected view of Jerusalem from the BBC’s ‘Man in the Middle East’ - by Hadar Sela

...In summary, Radio 4 listeners heard nothing new: the same jaded themes that Bowen has promoted over the last 25 years have simply been recycled and condensed into this latest item. Deliberately short on context, downplaying Palestinian terrorism and misrepresenting history, Bowen’s report tells BBC audiences nothing of real life in a city which is much more than just part of the much wider conflict.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
22 May '17..

On May 18th listeners to BBC Radio 4 heard the fourth part in Jeremy Bowen’s series of programmes ‘Our Man in the Middle East’.

Titled ‘Jerusalem’, the programme is both rambling and predictable, with Bowen’s portrayal of the city focusing on blood, violence, religion, power and nationalism at the expense of any mention of its diversity and eclectic coexistence.

From his opening sentences onward, Bowen places the spotlight firmly and exclusively on ‘the conflict’:

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An Inevitable Conflict: The Six-Day War - by Prof. Efraim Karsh

It has long been conventional wisdom to view the June 1967 war as an accidental conflagration that neither Arabs nor Israelis desired, yet none were able to prevent. This could not be further from the truth. Its specific timing resulted of course from the convergence of a number of particular causes at a particular juncture. But its general cause—the total Arab rejection of Jewish statehood—made another all-out Arab-Israeli war a foregone conclusion.

Prof. Efraim Karsh..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 470..
19 May '17..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/six-day-war-inevitable-conflict/

The standard narrative regarding the Six-Day War runs as follows: Had Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser not fallen for a false Soviet warning of Israeli troop concentrations along the Syrian border and deployed his forces in the Sinai Peninsula, the slippery slope to war would have been averted altogether. Had Israel not misconstrued Egyptian grandstanding for a mortal threat to its national security, if not its very survival, it would have foregone the preemptive strike that started the war. In short, it was a largely accidental and unnecessary war born of mutual miscalculations and misunderstandings.

This view could not be further from the truth. If wars are much like road accidents, as the British historian A.J.P. Taylor famously quipped, having a general cause and particular causes at the same time, then the June 1967 war was anything but accidental. Its specific timing resulted of course from the convergence of a number of particular causes at a particular juncture. But its general cause—the total Arab rejection of Jewish statehood, starkly demonstrated by the concerted attempt to destroy the state of Israel at birth and the unwavering determination to rectify this “unfinished business”—made another all-out Arab-Israeli war a foregone conclusion.

Nakbacide in a nutshell - by Daniel Greenfield

...There is an anecdote about an Israeli driver who accidentally hits a sheep belonging to an Muslim. The driver gets out and offers to pay for the sheep. The Muslim refuses. The driver offers to pay for five sheep, for ten sheep. The Muslim still refuses. "What do you want?" the frustrated driver asks. "I want that sheep," the Muslim says, pointing to the dead sheep. That is the Nakba in a nutshell.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
16 May '17..

Imagine if every year on the 7th of May, Germans held an annual commemoration of the defeat of the Nazi state, complete with Swastikas, anti-Jewish chants and slogans, and a historical narrative claiming that the Volksdeutsche expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were the real victims of WW2. That disgusting spectacle is what takes place on May 15th as Muslims in Israel chant and riot to protest their unsuccessful genocide of the minority indigenous Jewish population.

It's hard to think of a more repulsive spectacle of historical obliviousness, than a regional majority responsible for multiple genocides dressing up as the victims because their invasion of Israel ended in a stalemate, rather than a genocidal purge of its residents.

The revisionist Muslim history of Israel ethnically cleanses the thousands of years of history of the original Jewish inhabitants and a thousand years of persecution under Muslim rule.

It leaves out the massacres and atrocities carried out by the Muslim invaders against the Jewish inhabitants in the 20th century, including the Hebron Massacre, and the Nazi collaboration of their leader, the Mufti of Jerusalem. Instead it begins and ends with Deir Yassin and angry old women holding up oversized housekeys and reminiscing about the good times they had massacring Jews.

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Sunday, May 21, 2017

Abbas, Palestinians and Tomorrow's Secret 'Day of Rage' - by Bassam Tawil

...Once again, Abbas is playing Americans and other Westerners for fools. His people remain unwilling to recognize Israel's very right to exist. And so, Abbas will talk peace and coexistence while his people organize yet another Day of Rage.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
21 May'17..

Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA), preparing to welcome U.S. President Donald Trump to Bethlehem, are seeking to create the impression that their sentiments are shared by their people. Yet many Palestinians are less than enthusiastic about the visit.

It is in the best interests of Abbas and the PA to hide the truth that many Palestinians view the U.S. as an Israel-loving enemy.

While the PA president and his aides attempt to bury that inconvenient fact, they are also doing their best to cover up the truth that many Palestinians have been radicalized to a point that they would rather aim a gun or knife at Israelis than aim for peace with them.

The strongest and most vocal protests against Trump's visit have thus far come from Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians.

Ramallah is regularly described by Western journalists as a base for moderation and pragmatism. It is in this city that Abbas and the top PA leadership live and work.

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Consistently failing its audiences, three stories the BBC will not tell its audiences - by Hadar Sela

...As readers may recall, on May 3rd the BBC News website inaccurately informed audiences that during Mahmoud Abbas’ visit to the White House, the US president had “stressed there would be no lasting peace unless both nations found a way to stop incitement of violence”. The BBC, however, consistently fails its audiences by refraining from providing the readily available information which would enhance their understanding of the involvement of the Palestinian Authority and its ruling party Fatah in promoting violence, incitement and glorification of terrorism.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
18 May '17..

As has been noted in previous posts (see related articles below) concerning the BBC’s coverage of the hunger strike by convicted Palestinian terrorists serving time in Israeli prisons, while audiences have been told that the strike’s aim is to “protest detention conditions”, they have not been informed in any of the BBC’s reports what those conditions entail or exactly what the strikers are demanding.

On May 15th the strike leader Marwan Barghouti’s list of nineteen demands was published.

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Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Monday, May 29, 2017

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Saturday, May 27, 2017

Friday, May 26, 2017

Thursday, May 25, 2017

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Monday, May 22, 2017

Sunday, May 21, 2017

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