Love of the Land: September 2018

Sunday, September 30, 2018

Surprise? Banal BBC News report from the Gaza Strip fails to inform - by Hadar Sela

...viewers of this report get an entirely context-free portrayal of water, power and medicines shortages in the Gaza Strip. They are not informed that all three of those issues are linked to the infighting between the terror organisation Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. The BBC cannot possibly claim that this report meets its remit of providing audiences with “accurate and impartial news, current affairs and factual programming of the highest editorial standards” in order to “help people understand” this particular issue.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
30 September '18..

A filmed report titled “Gaza family: ‘Our children suffer to get a bottle of water’” was posted on the BBC News website’s ‘Middle East’ page on September 27th.

“There are fresh warnings about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, where there are severe water and power shortages.

A new World Bank report says the economy is in “free fall”.

Meanwhile, deadly protests have resumed along the Gaza-Israel border and the situation “could explode any minute”, according to Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

Talks brokered by Egypt and the UN have so far failed to agree a long-term truce between Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Israel.

BBC News visited one family in Gaza to see how they were coping with the lack of resources.”

That synopsis does not inform BBC audiences that the pre-planned violence it euphemistically describes as “protests” has increased (rather than “resumed”) because in early September Hamas decided to up the pace of rioting along the border fence with a “nighttime deployment unit“. Neither are BBC audiences informed of the tensions between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority which have to date thwarted a cease-fire agreement.

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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.

Saturday, September 29, 2018

I believe this Palestinian teenager - by Stephen M. Flatow

Ahed Tamimi supports assaulting Israeli soldiers and “throwing stones”—meaning, trying to stone Jews to death. She also respects “every type of resistance” in which Palestinians engage: knives, guns, bombs.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
28 September '18..

Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian teenager jailed for assaulting an Israeli soldier, says she supports violence against Jews and seeks the destruction of Israel.

I believe her.

And I believe that groups such as J Street, which have defended Tamimi and claimed that she is nonviolently resisting “the Israeli occupation of the West Bank,” owe the Jewish community an apology for refusing to believe her.

When Tamimi was arrested last December for assaulting an Israeli soldier, the Jewish left leaped to her defense. J Street president Jeremy-Ben Ami wrote an op-ed arguing that Israel has been “illegally taking over” the land of her village, and her assault of the Israeli soldier “results quite naturally … from the human impulse to resist injustice against one’s community and family,” he wrote.

The J Street web site posted an essay by a Washington, D.C., rabbi named Hannah Goldstein, declaring that that she “can understand why” Tamimi’s father sent her and her siblings to throw rocks at Jews since “under occupation, their opportunities are limited” and “putting children [or allowing them to put themselves] in harm’s way for the sake of greater change seems worth the risk.”

But as soon as Tamimi finished her jail sentence, she began issuing statements making it clear that for her, the issue is not the village’s land, but rather the very existence of Israel. And far from being some kind of Palestinian Gandhi, she supports terrorism and terrorists.

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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.

Friday, September 28, 2018

The Unprincipled Boycotting of Israel as Part of the Demands of the Politicized Life - by Jonathan Marks

The boycott movement, in other words, can sign on to a solidarity movement that includes the targeting of civilians for death, but cannot sign letters of recommendation for their own undergraduates if those undergraduates seek to learn in Israel. That tells us all we need to know about the boycott movement. It was nice of Cheney-Lippold to tell us.

It was nice of Cheney-Lippold to tell us.

Jonathan Marks..
Commentary Magazine..
20 September '18..

John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, has been the subject of withering criticism of late, but I’m grateful to him. Yes, he shouldn’t have refused to write a recommendation for a student merely because the semester abroad program she was applying to was in Israel. But at least he exposed what the boycott movement is about, aspects of which I suspect some of its blither endorsers are unaware.

We are routinely told, as we were by the American Studies Association, that boycott actions against Israel are “limited to institutions and their official representatives.” But Cheney-Lippold reminds us that the boycott, even if read in this narrow way, obligates professors to refuse to assist their own students when those students seek to participate in study abroad programs in Israel. Dan Avnon, an Israeli academic, learned years ago that the same goes for Israel faculty members seeking to participate in exchange programs sponsored by Israeli universities. They, too, must be turned away regardless of their position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When the American Studies Association boycott of Israel was announced, over two hundred college presidents or provosts properly and publicly rejected it. But even they might not have imagined that the boycott was more than a symbolic gesture. Thanks to Professor Cheney-Lippold, they now know that it involves actions that disserve their students.

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Choosing the Right Strategy with Hamas: Make Concessions or Fight? - by Prof. Hillel Frisch

What should the strategy regarding Hamas be –make concessions or initiate a fourth round of fighting? It is best for Israel to prolong the negotiations as long as possible, concede as little as possible, and wait until the sanctions against Iran come into full force. Then Israel should prepare for the next big round – not to defeat Hamas, but to tame it and keep the Palestinians divided.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 960..
27 September '18..

Israel’s leading politicians, Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have been engaged in a fierce debate with Minister of Education Naftali Bennet over how to react to Hamas’s venture since the March of Return to change the status quo – from Hamas’s relative submission to a return to the situation of tit-for tat attacks and counterattacks that prevailed for most of the period between Hamas’s takeover of Gaza in 2007 and the third large round of fighting in the summer of 2014.

Netanyahu and Lieberman want to reach understandings with Hamas to restore the relative calm that prevailed for nearly four years since 2014. They are willing to make humanitarian concessions and probably acquiesce to a sizeable prisoner release of hard-core terrorists in order to restore the calm, even temporarily. Bennet, by contrast, is bitterly opposed to making concessions and seeks a fourth round of confrontation that will considerably weaken the organization.

The merits of the debate are difficult to assess because of the wisdom of both approaches on political and military grounds. The question, of course, is which of these strategies would be better for Israel at this particular point in time.

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Thursday, September 27, 2018

Shutting Down UNRWA’s Message of Hate and Indoctrination - by Deborah Singer Soffen/Joan Lurie Goldberg

...The indoctrination of impressionable children in a racist, violent ideology that encourages martyrdom puts a child’s personal well-being in jeopardy.

Deborah Singer Soffen/Joan Lurie Goldberg..
Algemeiner.com..
26 September '18..

The education of Palestinian schoolchildren must change drastically if there is ever to be a lasting negotiated peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Why? Because these schools have been inciting three generations of young Palestinians to hate and kill Jews, and the only means of conflict resolution that these students have been exposed to is violence.

For children all over the world, the new school year is filled with promise and excitement, affording them the opportunity for personal development so that they may eventually become productive citizens of their perspective communities. The same cannot be said for Palestinian children. The United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA and the Palestinian leadership have manipulated their education system to serve a different purpose. Rather than an education that strives to better the child, they exploit impressionable minds, indoctrinating these children into a culture of hate, thereby perpetuating the conflict rather than resolving it. Until their education system changes, the region is at least a generation away from a true, sustainable peace.

Palestinian schools, including various private schools belonging to Christian churches and Islamic charity foundations, all receive their textbooks from the PA Ministry of Education’s Curricula Center in Ramallah.

According to Dr. Arnon Groiss, whose research on the subject spans 18 years, the most recent set of books published in 2016/2018 are even more radical than their predecessors. According to him, a curriculum of hatred permeates all subject matter, from elementary arithmetic to high school social studies and science. Martyrdom is glorified, the Jews’ historical connection to their biblical homeland is rejected, and contemporary maps of the region omit the existence of the UN member state of Israel. Jews are demonized and terrorist/jihad concepts are woven into songs, plays, and academia.

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This article is dedicated to the memory of Ari Fuld, an American-Israeli father of four who was brutally murdered by a Palestinian youth indoctrinated in a school using books provided by the PA Ministry of Education’s Curricula Center.

The Brazen Racism of the Palestinian Authority - by Judith Bergman

Arabs who try to sell land to Jews can expect life imprisonment and to be subjected to forced labor by the PA for engaging in something that most people would probably describe as “co-existence”.

Judith Bergman..
MiDA..
26 September '18..

Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority (the PA) wrote his Holocaust denying thesis, published in Arabic as “The Other Side: The Secret Relations between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement”, in 1982 at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in Moscow. In the thesis, Abbas (who in 1983 went on to become a KGB spy) denied the existence of gas chambers in the concentration camps, and questioned the number of Holocaust victims, by calling the six million Jews who had been killed “a fantastic lie”. He simultaneously blamed the Holocaust on the Jews themselves.

It is unclear whether Abbas’ “thesis” took him into the territory of the discriminatory laws enacted against Jews, including a 1933 law which made it illegal to sell farmland to them, but 75 years after Nazi Germany enacted that law, Abbas is still playing at the same old Nazi game. Incidentally, the Nazi prohibition against selling land to Jews is apparently the same under Islamic law.

A recent report by Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) states that the PA recently managed to crack down on and arrest Arabs in Hebron, who were in the process of selling land to Jews there.

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Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Perhaps it is time for the civilians in the Israeli Security Cabinet to call the shots. - by Dr. Aaron Lerner

...In the case of Lebanon we are in the bizarre situation that the very same military that supports an extremely pro-active approach towards preventing the transfer of advanced equipment from Syria to Hezbullah in Lebanon declines to promote destroying equipment once it passes into Lebanon.

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
25 September '18..
Link: http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=73363

With the serious security challenges we face today on many fronts it is important to keep in mind the vital contribution that civilians can make to a successful decision making process.

Consider a few examples:

Brass opposed building spy satellites: Ehud Barak and others senior brass strongly opposed Israel building its own spy satellites - this even though it was already clear that the US could not be relied upon to fill the gap. Civilian Menachem Begin overruled the brass. The brass only truly understood why this critical equipment was needed when the first satellite photograph flashed up on the screen.

Brass opposed acquiring second strike capability: Ehud Barak took the lead in quashing plans to purchase German subs featuring launch tubes with an extra large diameter for Jericho missiles. Israel only received this strategic capability when Germany supplied the first subs for FREE after German equipment played a key role in the Iraqi missile attacks against the Jewish State.

Brass opposed opening the Second Lebanon War by destroying Hezbullah’s long range missiles: The brass wanted to first punish Lebanon by destroying infrastructure but civilian DM Amir Peretz insisted that the IAF take out the long range missiles before they began hitting Tel Aviv. This move was essentially the only correct Israeli decision in the entire war. To hear Peretz in his own words: http://youtu.be/SM_LMb10qsQ

Civilian DM Liberman has been pushing through arming the IDF with an ample supply of precision ground to ground missiles of various ranges to dramatically enhance our ability to address many challenges without relying on piloted platforms. This includes top of the line systems that Israel is already supplying to other armies but the local brass wasn't interested in.

And there are more examples.

How the BBC News website reports on a terror attack one week later - by Hadar Sela

...In other words, in an article about funds raised to help the family of the victim of a terror attack, BBC audiences found more references to ‘settlements’, ‘occupation’ and ‘international law’ than they did mentions of the word terror.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
25 September '18..

As documented here previously, the BBC News website did not report the murder of an Israeli father of four by a Palestinian terrorist on September 16th.

One week later, on the afternoon of September 23rd, an article headlined “Ari Fuld killing: $1m raised for family by crowdfunders” was published on the BBC News website’s Middle East page. Despite the fact that the story has nothing whatsoever to do with events taking place along Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, the report was tagged “Gaza border clashes”.

As has been seen on numerous occasions in the past, the BBC ignored the history of the location of the attack on Ari Fuld, instead advancing its standard simplistic narrative of ‘settlements’ in ‘occupied’ territory.

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Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Embracing the myth of Muslim Arab “victimhood” while ignoring the PA’s anti-Semitic death cult - by Daniel Krygier

...In normal societies, teenagers are filled with dreams about their future. However, Jabarin is a product of a regime that cynically deprives its own population of a decent future and offers nothing but genocidal hatred of Jews and Israel.

Daniel Krygier..
MiDA..
24 September '18..

The brutal murder of Ari Fuld, a US born-Israeli father of four, is the latest example of the lethal consequences of the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) toxic political culture of genocidal Jew-hatred. There is no shortage of perpetrators in human history. However, the Abbas-led Ramallah regime promotes a unique brand of lethal hatred that can best be described as perpetrators with a victim mentality.

This is how the murder of Ari Fuld was presented by Wafa, PA’s official news agency:

“A Palestinian young man was injured by gunfire on Sunday when he was shot by Israeli forces, after he allegedly carried out a stabbing attack targeting an Israeli settler in Gush Etzion settlement complex, near Bethlehem in the southern West Bank.”

As far as the Abbas regime is concerned, the Arab terrorist Khalil Jabarin, who murdered Ari Fuld is a “victim” despite ample proof of the opposite. Footage from the attack clearly shows that Jabarin’s attack on Ari was unprovoked. In addition, Jewish victims of Arab terrorism are frequently dehumanized as “settlers.” The Wafa news agency also failed to mention that the terrorist Jabarin was injured by his victim, who acted in self-defense and wanted to prevent Jabarin from attacking other Jewish civilians.

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The Arab List, Israel’s Nationality Law and UN Resolution 181 - By Prof. Hillel Frisch

For many years, General Assembly Resolution 181 was the document the Palestinians cited most frequently to buttress two of their major claims. They no longer do so because the document stipulates for the creation of a Jewish state, as emphasized by the nationality law they now decry.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 955..
21 September '18..

Ever since 1988, when, after 40 years of rejection, the PLO feigned acceptance of General Assembly Resolution 181 on the partition of mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the resolution has been the document used most frequently by Palestinians to underscore two of their major claims – the right to statehood within borders that were larger by far than those envisaged by the Oslo “peace” process, and the supposed “right of return.”

For these reasons, it holds center stage in one of the PLO’s most famous documents – the Palestinian declaration of independence, which was approved by the Palestine National Council (PNC), the PLO’s legislative body, in Algiers in 1988.

It can be self-defeating to cite documents without having read them. The Palestinians learned this in their attempts to mobilize Resolution 181 behind the Palestinian cause.

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Sunday, September 23, 2018

Once again, Hamas shows its true colors and the world community pretends to be colorblind - by Judith Bergman

Admitting Hamas is wrong means acknowledging Israel has been right, and an entire industry of ‘peace making’, the fodder that the current ‘narrative’ provides academia, journalists and a host NGOs would collapse, leaving thousands looking embarrassingly stupid.

Judith Bergman..
MiDA..
20 September '18..

Hamas senior leader, Yahya Sinwar, openly admitted that the “Great March of Return”, launched on March 30, was staged. The so called “border protests”, that have continued for months since, he explained before a Hamas gathering, were a deliberate provocation intended “to divert pressure onto Israel and prevent an ‘internal explosion’”, after reconciliation efforts with Fatah were “sabotaged”.

“After the reconciliation efforts (between Hamas and Fatah) reached an impasse, a number of factions planned to cause an internal explosion in the Gaza Strip, but the ‘Marches of Return’ thwarted the plan,” Sinwar said in early September during a Hamas conference in Gaza, according to a Ynet news website report.

In other words, Hamas employed its terrorists to stage weekly “protests” just to satisfy Hamas’s need to create a diversion to avoid a crisis for itself in the Gaza strip. These protests led to an environmental disaster, as burning kites and other incendiary devices were sent over the border into Israel, where hundreds of acres of land have gone up in smoke, killing wildlife and causing massive, irreparable agricultural and ecological damage.

The Hamas were not concerned in the slightest about international opinion, knowing very well that no matter what they do to Israelis or even their own citizens, the world community and international media will support them.

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Demanding more aid for anti-Semite Abbas? Why? - by Stephen M. Flatow

Now that Abbas’s anti-Semitic tirade of several months ago has temporarily faded from the headlines, the Jewish ex-State Department crowd has returned to one of their favorite pastimes: demanding U.S. money for this lunatic.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
20 September '18..

It was just four months ago that Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas delivered a speech that even critics of Israel acknowledged was antisemitic. Yet now, several Jewish ex-State Department officials are demanding that the US government give him $200 million.

Abbas’ disgraceful tirade took place on May 1. He said that the Jews in Europe provoked the Holocaust because of their “social function” as money lenders. He blamed Jews for communism, claiming that Josef Stalin was a secret Jew. He said that today’s Jews are not authentically Jewish, but are actually descendants from a medieval Turkish tribe. And he claimed that there were never any pogroms in Arab countries.

Note that this was not some drunken rant in a bar. Abbas delivered prepared remarks to an official session of the legislature of the Palestine Liberation Organization, of which he serves as chairman. (He is also chairman of the Palestinian Authority (PA) — in the 13th year of a four-year term, in addition to being the head of the Fatah party. Busy guy!)

Abbas’ address was so blatantly bigoted that even passionate supporters of the Palestinian cause acknowledged that he is an antisemite.

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Friday, September 21, 2018

Welcome to the Ahed Tamimi Global Propaganda Tour - by Daniel Pomerantz

...After an entire lifetime of being taught hate and sent into conflict zones, in a manner no child should endure, Ahed Tamimi is now taking her family’s twisted message to the world.

Daniel Pomerantz..
Honest Reporting..
20 September '18..

Ahed Tamimi was recently released from eight months in an Israeli prison for attacking an IDF soldier in a video that went viral on social and mainstream media.

Tamimi is now on something of an international press tour to talk about her experience and world view.

Speaking on France 24, Tamimi gave a beautifully polished interview in which she posited herself as an icon of peace. She said Israelis should “find their humanity” claiming they are trained to hate and kill Palestinians. According to the translation she even threw in a reference to (entirely fictional) armed Israeli 14 year olds.

Brainwashed

Ahed accuses Israelis of being, “brainwashed,” saying that Israelis are “victims” because they have been “fed with hatred.”

Yet it is Ahed herself who has been abused, victimized, fed with hatred and brainwashed.

Ahed’s Tragic Childhood

Ahed Tamimi grew up in an environment permeated with Palestinian terrorism: terror in which her family has long played an active and prominent role. For example, Ahed’s aunt helped plan the horrific Sbarros Pizza restaurant bombing, and her mother posted anatomically precise tutorials on how to most effectively stab Israelis. (More on these below.)

Ironically, this very terrorism is the reason Israel has security measures in the first place.

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When experts (and T. Friedman) ignore the truth about the Palestinians - by Jonathan S. Tobin

The latest Middle East peace plan from Thomas Friedman of “The New York Times” ignores the key fact about why such schemes always fail.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
20 September '18..

When New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman offers up a Middle East peace plan, the world stops and listens. Or at least it used to. The three-time Pulitzer Prize winner has been opining about the region for decades, and the shopworn feel to his advice is beginning to feel about as tired as a prose style that remains as awash in clichés today as it ever was.

In 2002, when Friedman sought to play midwife to a peace initiative from Saudi Arabia, the result was a public-relations coup for the columnist/author, even if it turned out that there was less to the idea than met the eye. But it isn’t likely that his latest set of suggestions for Middle East peace—in which he offers the Palestinians a plan for putting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a pickle—will cause much of a splash. Friedman still writes as if he was uniquely positioned to speak truth to both sides and the world is hanging on his every word.

It isn’t. But that doesn’t mean that his writing is insignificant—and that’s not only because he retains his influential perch at the Times. Friedman has evolved over the years into a pitch-perfect indicator of conventional wisdom. If you want to know what is wrong with the thinking that dominated U.S. foreign policy until the Trump administration—and what the people who believe they will run things again after they hope U.S President Donald Trump is swept out of Washington—then you should read Friedman’s columns.

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Thursday, September 20, 2018

Will Humanitarian Concessions Reduce Hamas Violence? No, and Here is the Evidence - by Prof. Hillel Frisch

...Israeli Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman appears to be accepting the argument that humanitarian gestures towards Hamas will buy quiet. The evidence provided by UN agencies in an effort to advocate for humanitarian gestures ironically proves that there is in fact no correlation between such gestures and a reduction in Hamas violence.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 952..
18 September '18..

Politicians, commentators, diplomats, citizens, international fora, the Knesset, EU institutions, and – above all – Israel’s major media sites endlessly debate Gaza’s alleged humanitarian plight and the virtue of humanitarian gestures as a means to mitigate it.

Even Israel’s hardline Minister of Defense, Avigdor Lieberman, appears to be buying into this argument. The Kerem Shalom border crossing is to be reopened after having been closed in reaction to the launching by Hamas of nearly 200 missiles over the space of two days. The fishing rights of Gaza fishermen will be widened to 12 kilometers in the hope that Hamas will stop the launches. Hamas will be free to continue sending off incendiary balloon bombs and to violently challenge Israeli troops at the security fence every Friday. Needless to say, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar told the Egyptians brokering the deal that Hamas cannot possibly desist from these forms of “resistance.”

The hope to buy off Hamas with humanitarian gestures is in vain.

There is overwhelming evidence that humanitarian gestures do not reduce Hamas-orchestrated violence. Ironically, the best evidence of the futility of the humanitarian argument is to be found in figures and graphs compiled by UN agencies and other pro-Palestinian fora that strenuously champion the humanitarian argument.

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BDS new low? Impeding a student to study in Israel - by Jonathan S. Tobin

An American-studies professor’s discriminatory conduct reminds us that his association’s boycott of Israel is illegal.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
17 September '18..

A teacher writing a letter of recommendation for a student is a commonplace event. Teachers refusing such requests may also be common, but when it happens, we assume it is because the student is asking for an endorsement they don’t deserve. But what are we to think about a refusal that is based in prejudice, rather than lack of merit?

That’s the upshot of a disturbing incident at the University of Michigan that was revealed this week.

John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor working in Michigan’s Department of American Culture, had promised a student (who chose not to reveal her identity) that he would write a reference required for her to take part in a semester-abroad program in Israel. But a few weeks later, Cheney-Lippold wrote back to tell the student that he had changed his mind.

Rather than having misgivings about her qualifications or worthiness for the program, the professor said his refusal was about what he termed “politics.”

He wrote her:

“I am very sorry but … as you may know, many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel in support of Palestinians living in Palestine. This boycott includes writing letters of recommendation for students planning to study there. I should have let you know earlier, and for that I apologize. But for reasons of these politics, I must rescind my offer to write your letter. Let me know if you need me to write other letters for you, as I’d be happy.”

Is he within his rights to act in this manner?

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Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Ari Fuld and the Truth About Palestinians Terror is a Choice. - by Sohrab Ahmari

It is up to Palestinian leaders to decide whether they want to be terrorists or statesmen. Pretending that they can be both at once was the height of Western folly, as Ari Fuld no doubt recognized.

AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed

Sohrab Ahmari..
Commentary Magazine..
17 September '18..

Ari Fuld described himself on Twitter as a marketer and social media consultant “when not defending Israel by exposing the lies and strengthening the truth.” On Sunday, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed Fuld at a shopping mall in Gush Etzion, a settlement south of Jerusalem. The Queens-born father of four died from his wounds, but not before he chased down his assailant and neutralized the threat to other civilians. Fuld thus gave the full measure of devotion to the Jewish people he loved. He was 45.

The episode is a grim reminder of the wisdom and essential justice of the Trump administration’s tough stance on the Palestinians.

Start with the Taylor Force Act. The act, named for another U.S. citizen felled by Palestinian terror, stanched the flow of American taxpayer fund to the Palestinian Authority’s civilian programs. Though it is small consolation to Fuld’s family, Americans can breathe a sigh of relief that they are no longer underwriting the PA slush fund used to pay stipends to the family members of dead, imprisoned, or injured terrorists, like the one who murdered Ari Fuld.

No principle of justice or sound statesmanship requires Washington to spend $200 million—the amount of PA aid funding slashed by the Trump administration last month—on an agency that financially induces the Palestinian people to commit acts of terror. The PA’s terrorism-incentive budget—“pay-to-slay,” as Douglas Feith called it—ranges from $50 million to $350 million annually. Footing even a fraction of that bill is tantamount to the American government subsidizing terrorism against its citizens.

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Tuesday, September 18, 2018

Ari Lit The Way For Us - by Varda Meyers Epstein

...Ari would tell you, if he were here, that the forces of evil are great in our day, but while our numbers are smaller, our impact is greater, more important. And you can know it with your heart when you see the tidal wave of grief that has swept through our nation. You know it at midnight as an orderly crowd sings quiet songs of faith as one, brought together in a pine-scented space in the land Ari loved, he the Lion of Judah, us now the inheritor of his torch, to light the way of truth, to never give up.

Varda Meyers Epstein..
Judean Rose/Elder of Ziyon..
17 September '18..

It was a morning like any other here in Israel, the day that Ari was taken from us. A blue, cloudless sky, a cup of coffee, Facebook. The making of lists, the folding of laundry, punching the clock at work. You cannot know when you wake up, the nature of the day, the evil it holds, and the holiness.

Until you know. Until the family Whatsapp pings: “Everyone ok? Pigua tzomet hagush* 2 injured.”

Telling your heart to be still, you think: “My husband.”

You do a head count.

Then you know it’s not your family, and the wondering begins. Who is it?

And it comes to you. You don’t know why and you push it away, the knowledge. But somehow you know. It’s Ari Fuld.

There is no reason to think it. No reason this particular name comes to you. You don’t know why you know, but you do.

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Why it is still open season on ‘obstacles to peace’ - by Jonathan S. Tobin

If you think “settlers” have it coming, then like a new HBO film, you’re missing the point about why Oslo failed.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
17 September '18..

One more Jewish life was just added to the list of those killed during the century-old conflict between Jews and Arabs. On Sunday, a Palestinian terrorist fatally stabbed to death Ari Fuld, a 45-year-old American immigrant to Israel and a married father of four, in addition to an articulate advocate for the Jewish state. But for some people, the only relevant fact about him is that he was a resident of Efrat, a Jerusalem suburb that lies over the so-called green line in the West Bank.

Efrat is part of the Etzion bloc that was originally settled by Jews before 1948. But in the eyes of the world, that still makes it a settlement and Fuld a “settler.”

Like the hundreds of thousands of other Jews who live in the West Bank and Jerusalem, Fuld was reviled as an obstacle to peace. That’s why the reaction to attacks on those who fall into this category is so often one of heartless indifference—if not gloating about people who had it coming—on social media and elsewhere. Not only Palestinians who consider all violence against Jews justified acts of “resistance” hold this attitude. Across the world and even among many Jews, “settler” is an epithet more than a description. Since the Oslo Accords were signed 25 years ago, settlements and settlers have become the all-purpose scapegoat for the lack of peace and undeserving of sympathy even when slain by terrorists.

While most Israelis have embraced a hard-headed realism about diplomacy forced upon them by 25 years of tragedy, myths about the Israeli right and about settlers killing prospects for peace continue to get an airing in the media and popular culture. The latest example of this trend is a new documentary being shown on HBO called “Oslo Diaries” that helps explain the antipathy for settlers.

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Monday, September 17, 2018

The Costly Price of Israeli Withdrawal: Lessons from the Past - by Prof. Hillel Frisch

Prominent politicians still advocate withdrawal from the West Bank. A simple analysis of pertinent basic data that appears in the Shin Bet’s terrorist summary for the year 2006 alone shows that the idea of withdrawal, which would imply the cessation of IDF activity in the area, could be misguided and dangerous.

Prof. Hillel Frisch..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 948..
14 September '18..

Twelve years after the tidal wave of terrorist violence known by the misnomer the al-Aqsa Intifada, one still hears prominent politicians, commentators, and political researchers advocate withdrawal from the West Bank.

An examination of data provided in the Israel Security Agency’s, or Shin Bet’s, terrorist summary for the year 2006 shows how misguided and dangerous the idea of withdrawal, which would imply the cessation of IDF activity in the area, could be.

To understand the following graph, one must recall that at the end of March 2002, Israel launched a large offensive against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the terrorists in the major towns in the West Bank to which it gave sanctuary. Not only did Israel physically retake all these areas temporarily, but it has engaged ever since in daily penetrations to make preventive arrests or apprehend those terrorists that succeed in perpetrating acts of violence.

The results were dramatic. Until the offensive, which was followed by another major offensive three months later, terrorism more than doubled each year since the beginning of the wave of violence in October 2000 up to and including 2001. After the offensive, the number of Israeli fatalities more than halved in each succeeding year. It is important to note that this reduction occurred before the completion of the most critical areas of the security fence and that the reduction in fatalities in the West Bank, which did not enjoy the security of the fence, was slightly greater than within the Green Line.

(Continue to Full Article)

Marking the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords - by Michael Freund

If Oslo taught us anything, it is that appeasement and territorial concessions are a recipe for ruin. All the rest is commentary.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
13 September '18..
Link: http://www.michaelfreund.org/21619/oslo-accords-lessons

Over the course of the past 70 years, Israel has committed its fair share of grave miscalculations, many of which continue to haunt the country and harm our national security. From the failure to annex Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, to the refusal to believe that Egypt would dare attack in 1973, and on to the inconclusive 2006 Second Lebanon War, the Jewish state's indecision has often proven to be costly in both blood and tears.

And yet, as we mark the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords with the PLO this week, it is clear that even these blunders pale in comparison with the capricious capitulation that took place on the White House Lawn on September 13, 1993.

Simply put, Oslo was the worst strategic disaster in Israel's history and we have yet to fully extricate ourselves from the damage it continues to wreak.

The tragedy began when, with reckless disregard for logic, morality or even common sense, then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and foreign minister Shimon Peres tossed a lifeline to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and magnanimously agreed to give him control over parts of the Land of Israel in exchange for an empty promise of peace.

Overnight, the reviled revolutionary, whose resumé included ordering plane hijackings, school massacres and the slaughter of civilians, was granted international legitimacy.

Arafat was subsequently allowed to set up shop in Gaza and Jericho, and later in all the major cities of Judea and Samaria, which he quickly used as a platform from which to murder more Israelis than ever before.

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