Friday, November 30, 2018

CNN Says Goodbye to Commentator Who Advocates the Elimination of the Jewish State

It is no secret that Marc Lamont Hill is a radical who hates Israel, promotes anti-Israeli violence and terrorism, and advocates the violent elimination of the Jewish state. After asking how long would he continue as a political commentator on CNN, our question has been answered. The network has finally severed its ties with him.

CAMERA..
29 November '18..

Nov. 29, 4 PM Update:
CNN has been under fire, including by CAMERA, for its continued collaboration with someone who increasingly expresses bigotry and promotes violence. It has now been reported that CNN has severed its ties with Lamont Hill.


It is no secret that Marc Lamont Hill is an extremist who hates Israel, promotes anti-Israeli violence and terrorism, and advocates violent "resistance" to, and the elimination of, the Jewish state. Yet he continues to be listed as a political commentator on CNN and a professor at Temple University, promoting himself as a journalist, author, social justice activist, and bombastically proclaiming himself “one of the leading intellectual voices in the country.”

The fact that he is still accepted as a mainstream “scholar” and “journalist” while using his activist status as a platform to incite anti-Israeli violence and the end of the Jewish state is particularly disturbing. How many times does he have to display his true colors before CNN finally decides that enough is enough?

How many times must his defense of the kidnapping and murders of Israeli children by a terrorist group, his advocacy on behalf of convicted Palestinian terrorists, his opposition to Israel’s use of an air defense system to protect its civilians from deadly rockets, his close association with noted anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan, and his relentless, propagandistic lies about Israel be exposed? How many times must he repeat his opposition to peaceful resistance and how many times must he advocate violence until media outlets distance themselves from him? (See previous articles.)

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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. 
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The International Criminal Court (ICC) Takes Anti-Israel Bias to New Heights - by Evelyn Gordon

...Thus, in the interests of pursuing their anti-Israel vendetta, the pretrial judges have forced the court to squander years on a triviality, even as mass murderers around the globe go unpunished. They have thereby betrayed both the court’s stated mission and a fundamental principle of justice: that the magnitude of the ostensible crime should matter more than how much the judges dislike the perpetrator.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
29 November '18..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/icc-takes-anti-israel-bias-to-new-heights/

The International Criminal Court’s blatant anti-Israel bias is no secret. Just two months ago, I wrote about its decision to launch an unprecedented fishing expedition against Israel. Nevertheless, its latest decision raises bias to an art form—the art in question being farce. It also completely destroys any pretensions the court has left of serving its original purpose: Ensuring that the world’s worst crimes don’t go unpunished.

On November 15, the pretrial chamber of judges ordered the court’s prosecutor—for the second time—to reconsider her refusal to investigate Israel’s 2010 raid on a flotilla to Gaza. Demanding one reconsideration is rare. Demanding two is unheard of. No such option even exists in the ICC’s rulebook.

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda appealed this ruling last week. But regardless of what the Appeals Chamber decides, it’s already too late to salvage the pretense that the court is an unbiased judicial institution and not a cesspool of anti-Israel prejudice.

To understand why, a review of the case is in order. In May 2010, a flotilla tried to break Israel’s legal blockade of Gaza. Israel intercepted most of the ships peacefully. But on one, according to the same UN inquiry that upheld the blockade’s legality, passengers attacked the soldiers with “fists, knives, chains, wooden clubs, iron rods, and slingshots,” seriously wounding nine. To protect themselves, the soldiers opened fire, killing ten people.

Comoros, whose flag that ship flew, filed a complaint against Israel over the incident in May 2013. In November 2014, Bensouda dismissed it. Despite concluding (wrongly) that the soldiers used excessive force, she said the fact that they opened fire only after being attacked and the low number of deaths made the incident insufficiently grave to warrant attention from a court created to prosecute major atrocities. But in July 2015, the pretrial chamber ordered her to reconsider—the first time it had ever overturned a prosecutor’s decision.

I dissected the judges’ egregious errors of both fact and law at the time, including their failure even to mention the passengers’ attack on the soldiers, which was central to Bensouda’s decision, and their astounding argument that the gravity of the case should be determined not by what happened, but by how much international “attention and concern” it attracted. Bensouda evidently found their ruling equally unpersuasive, since she appealed it. But after losing that appeal, she duly reconsidered.

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Ismail Haniyeh sends letter to UN pretending that terror is allowed under international law - by Elder of Ziyon

...He also quotes several non-binding General Assembly resolutions that from the early 1970s that say that people under colonial subjugation have the right to resist "by all necessary means," which never includes terrorism, except to Palestinians and their fans. Of course, Israel is not a colonialist state to begin with, but the idea that international law allows Hamas-style terror attacks is absurd.

Elder of Ziyon..
29 November '18..

Hamas "political" leader Ismail Haniyeh sent a letter to the UN against an American initiative to condemn the group for shooting rockets at Israeli civilians.

In the letter, Haniyeh claims that Hamas' terror is not only not prohibited, but a "right" under international law.

The letter says:

The rules of international humanitarian law have contributed to strengthening the legal status of the resistance and national liberation movements against the occupation, and to legitimizing their resistance activities to achieve their right to self-determination as mentioned in the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, in particular article 1 / paragraph 4,

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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. 
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Palestinian Authority TV lies, claims “Palestinian antiquities” at Judean fortress of Herodium

Note: 1980 years before the creation in 1965 of the “Palestinian people,” Judean King Herod built a palace fortress at Herodium, south of Jerusalem. There are no “Palestinian antiquities” at Herodium or anywhere in the land of Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinian Media Watch..
27 November '18..
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGN3f8SKW0Y








Official PA TV newsreader: "The occupation authorities continue to falsify and steal Palestinian antiquities at the archaeological site at the Herodium fortress..."
Official PA TV reporter: "The occupation tries to exploit the heritage sites for the benefit of the Israeli narrative: the existence of Jewish history on the land of Palestine. Therefore it is intentionally falsifying the facts, searching for false antiquities in this land, and striving to erase the Arab landmarks that contradict its narrative. Israeli attempts to falsify [the land's] Palestinian character [continue] at this important archaeological site."
[Official PA TV News, Sept. 19, 2018]

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. 
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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's Israel: A World of Hyperbole, Lies and Half-Truths - by Simon Plosker

...Alibhai-Brown concludes by calling on UK parliamentarians to “support peaceful Palestinian man, women and children who have so long been denied rights, livelihoods and dignity. Sometimes goodwill is the best present.” Goodwill is certainly the last thing that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is capable of when it comes to Israel.

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
28 November '18..

British commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has a reputation for publishing anti-Israel screeds dating back over many years. So it isn’t unexpected to find the usual litany of lies, half-truths and hatred in her latest piece that appears in i News.



According to Alibhai-Brown:

Over the centuries, various holy land sites have been sacred to all three Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Jewish believers believe these were promised to them by Abraham, and for Muslims, Jerusalem is where Prophet Mohammed was sent glorious dreams and despatches from Allah. For centuries the three faiths were able to coexist in peace. Not any longer.

Why is the Jewish claim to the land a religious ‘belief’ while Islamic links to the holy land are referred to as factual?

In any case, Jewish links to the region in a purely religious context ignores (most likely deliberately) 3,500 years of Jewish nationhood that goes far beyond Judaism as just a religion.

And what history books has Alibhai-Brown been reading? Apparently none if she believes that “the three faiths were able to coexist in peace” for centuries, ignoring the fact that she is talking about one of the most fought-over pieces of real estate in the world.

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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. 
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In the meantime while Airbnb boycotts, Israel builds its diplomatic strength - by Caroline Glick

...The Palestinians have responded with alarm to Israel’s rapid expansion of its diplomatic relations in the Arab world and beyond. But whereas the Palestinians remain a top agenda item for European leaders and leftist politicians and activists in the West, Arab leaders are unlikely to revert to their historic willingness to keep their ties to Israel captive to the Palestinians and their campaign to destroy the Jewish state.

Caroline Glick..
carolineglick.com..
28 November '18..

Airbnb’s partial boycott of Israel last week came just as the Arab world, Africa, and Eastern Europe moved closer to the Jewish state. These two diametrically opposed developments – one negative and one positive — showed that a race is on between competing global movements to determine whether Israel will sink or swim in the international area.

On the negative side, on November 19, the Silicon Valley-based tourism behemoth Airbnb announced that it is delisting Jewish-owned properties located in “Israeli settlements in the West Bank” from its website. Airbnb chose not to delist properties in the so-called “West Bank” owned by non-Jews.

Airbnb’s decision to adopt a policy that is openly discriminatory towards Jews was the result of years of lobbying and pressure from the UN Human Rights Council, which the Trump administration left in June. The UN Human Rights Council was joined in its campaign by the European Union (EU), by EU member states, and by U.S.-based foundations ideologically aligned with the hard left.

These forces, which share an aversion to nationalism, and ascribe to post-nationalist globalism, have combined since at least 2001 to achieve the goal of delegitimizing the existence of the Jewish state while legitimizing terrorism and war against Israel.

Airbnb’s move is a testament to the effectiveness of this campaign — as are the growing disenfranchisement and intimidation of pro-Israel students on college campuses; the boycotts of Israeli exports; and the mainstreaming of extremist politicians who refuse to accept the legitimacy of Jewish nationalism or Jewish self-determination.

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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. 
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Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Who would've thought? B'Tselem still counts Hamas terrorists as child victims of Israel - by Elder of Ziyon

Like Amnesty, B'Tselem has had years after the evidence came in to adjust its databases to reflect the hundreds of "civilians" who were proudly claimed by terror groups as one of their own. B'Tselem is more honest than HRW and Amnesty in how they report casualties, but a lie is a lie. And there is no excuse for them to continue to publish databases with false information that they know very well is false.

Elder of Ziyon..
27 November '18..


At Academia.edu, Jonathan Slosser had written a paper showing that over four years after the 2014 Gaza war, B'Tselem still inaccurately calls many Hamas terrorists "civilian."

And instead of the "human rights" organization decrying Hamas' use of child soldiers, it blames Israel for killing legitimate targets in a war.

Here is a selection of his findings.

B'Tselem:

Ahmad Salim Lafy 'Abdin
17 years old, resident of Gaza city, killed on 31 Jul 2014 in Gaza city by gunfire from an aircraft. Did not participate in hostilities. Additional information: Killed in his family's home in the a-Nasar neighborhood.

Hamas Al Qassam Brigades:

He loved to join the resistance and join the Mujahideen. He loved working in the ranks of the Qassam Brigades and was committed to all the duties required in order to serve the path of jihad.

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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. 
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Question. Will anyone stand up to Airbnb's anti-Semitic boycott? - by Barbara Kay

Should you seek to sojourn in occupied Crimea, Airbnb is there to serve you. As for Israeli sectors of the West Bank? Apparently not

Barbara Kay..
National Post..
27 November '18..

Planning a group holiday in Kashmir? Airbnb is there to serve you. Likewise in Tibet, northern Cyprus and Georgia’s separatist republic of Abkhazia, all occupied or disputed territories. Airbnb’s political neutrality in these hot spots therefore quite rightly casts suspicion, to put it mildly, on its recent decision to delist some 200 Jewish homes in West Bank communities.

Airbnb stated, “We know that people will disagree with this decision and appreciate their perspective. This is a controversial issue.” No kidding. An Israeli class-action lawsuit has been filed against Airbnb, seeking US$4,000 in damages for every affected host.

Indignation has been running high outside of Israel as well, in statements both spontaneous — disgusted blog, Twitter and Facebook posts — and considered. The Beverly Hills city council, for example, passed a unanimous condemnatory resolution, calling Airbnb out for anti-Semitism and stating, in part: “The City of Beverly Hills hereby calls upon Airbnb to correct this act of disrespect to the land of Israel and restore its original services immediately.”

Setting aside the anti-Semitic optics, is it legal for Airbnb to do this?

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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. 
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Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Repaying Israel’s kindness with terror - by Stephen M. Flatow

Israel permits Arab residents of Gaza—enemy territory—special permits so that they can receive medical care in Israeli hospitals or to carry out business transactions in Israel, and they use those privileges to assist terror cells.

One of these couriers of death
was 53-year-old Na’ama Mikdad
Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
27 November '18..

Israel gives the Palestinian Arabs self-rule in large sections of Judea-Samaria, and they use it to promote terrorism.

Israel releases Palestinian terrorists from prison as a gesture, and the newly freed prisoners resume engaging in terrorism.

Israel permits Arab residents of Gaza—enemy territory—special permits so that they can receive medical care in Israeli hospitals or to carry out business transactions in Israel, and they use those privileges to assist terror cells.

Anybody notice a pattern here?

This week’s discovery of a huge Hamas terrorist network in the Palestinian territories is chock full of disturbing lessons.

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Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. His book, “A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror,” has just been published and is available at Devonsquarepress.com or Amazon.com.

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. 
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No, National Geographic, the Oslo Accords are not about "returning" land to Palestinians - by Elder of Ziyon

...Too many people think it is axiomatic that a people called the Palestinians have been indigenous to the region and deserve to control "their" land. However, the Palestinian Arab people are an invention of the 20th century.

Elder of Ziyon..
27 November '18..

Update: CAMERA’s Israel office yesterday prompted correction of a National Geographic article on the preservation of biblical archeological texts which contained an ahistorical reference to disputed West Bank land.

Words matter, and when lies get embedded into everyday descriptions of the Middle East as fact it is enormously difficult to set the record straight.

National Geographic has a nice article (not yet online) about the race to find and preserve Biblical archaeological texts, many of which can be found in Israel and areas controlled by Israel. But one parenthetical statement makes one wonder who does fact checking for the esteemed magazine.

"In 1993, after signing the Oslo Accords - which provided a framework for returning disputed territories to Palestinian control - the Israeli government launched Operation Scroll, an urgent survey of all the archaeological sites the country potentially stood to lose."

It is nice that the author didn't lazily say "occupied territories" instead of "disputed territories," but it is quite untrue that Oslo was about "returning disputed territories to Palestinian control."

Because they were never under control of anyone known as Palestinians, nor were they ever under control of any independent political entity since the Romans defeated the Jews in 70 CE.

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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. 
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("has to be removed and eradicated") AP ‘Clarification’ Casts Iranian Threats as Israeli Perception - by Tamar Sternthal

...While AP says that “Israeli officials view” Iranian statements about Israel’s upcoming demise as threats, a few days ago the news agency had no difficulty identifying an Israeli minister’s statements about a Hamas leader’s limited time on this earth as a threat.


Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA.org..
25 November '18..

After reporting yesterday that “Iran has never threatened to attack Israel,” the Associated Press’ “clarification” today unfortunately casts those very real threats as a matter of Israeli perception, as opposed to reality. The November 24 article by Nasser Karimi, dateline Tehran, outrageously claimed:

Iran supports militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas that are pledged to Israel’s destruction. Iran has never threatened to attack Israel, but has vowed to retaliate if it is attacked.

Iran has threatened to annihilate Israel on countless occasions. In April 2017, Iran paraded a missile inscribed with the words “Death to Israel.”

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei tweeted on June 3, 2018:

Our stance against Israel is the same stance we have always taken. #Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen. 7/31/91 #GreatReturnMarch.

In its Sept. 25, 2018 report (“Israel’s Eradication — An Ideological And Practical Goal of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Regime“), MEMRI documented the following threats, all from June of this year:

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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. 
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Monday, November 26, 2018

BDS is clearly a fail in the Middle East, but it’s alive in America - by Jonathan Tobin

The campaign to isolate Israel and its international endeavors has been an epic failure, but efforts to isolate pro-Israel U.S. Jews and to mainstream anti-Semitism continue.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org
26 November '18..

BDS activists who think they are succeeding in isolating the State of Israel aren’t paying attention to the news. On Sunday, reports surfaced that negotiations about building a gas pipeline that connects Israel’s natural-gas resources to Cyprus, Greece and Italy have finally succeeded. The pipeline network will reportedly be the longest and deepest ever built. Initial estimates of the cost build it start at $7 billion.

And the good news for friends of Israel doesn’t stop there. And that should influence the way we think about BDS and its purpose.

Part of the background to this deal is the fact that the European Union invested $100 million in a feasibility study about importing Israeli natural gas to the continent. That’s why the plan, dubbed the EastMed Pipeline Project, will give both Cyprus and Israel preference over other potential importers of gas into Europe.

The project, which will hopefully be completed over the next five years, will provide Israel’s already prosperous economy with another boost. But the preference for Israeli imports also signals that Arab influence over Europe that is rooted in its ability to export oil and gas is waning. With Europeans wanting alternatives to both Arab and Iranian oil, as well as Russian natural gas, Israel will not only profit from the transaction; its standing as an important economy and a military power to be reckoned with will also grow.

The fact that Italy, Greece and Cyprus are now prepared to join Israel and Egypt in joint military and civil exercises to protect both the pipeline and regional security is equally important. Despite continued threats from Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, the notion that the Jewish state stands alone no longer can be sustained.

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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. 
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More of the same Gaza framing from BBC Radio 4 programme ‘PM‘ - by Hadar Sela

...While the British surgeon remarked that “this volume of severe injuries is something that most countries never see” in both versions of the report, Bateman made no effort to explain to BBC audiences that those injuries could have been avoided had Hamas – which is also in charge of the local health system described by Bateman as “already under huge pressure” – not planned, encouraged, facilitated and financed this particular terror project.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
26 November '18..

Listeners to the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘PM‘ on November 23rd heard an item which was rather clumsily and confusingly introduced by presenter Jonny Dymond.

[emphasis in italics in the original, emphasis in bold added]

Dymond: “Nearly six thousand residents of Gaza have suffered bullet wounds over the course of this year as Israeli soldiers have attempted to drive them back from the tightly packed strip of land in which they live and southern Israel – the border between the two. Most of those injuries are to young men who have been hit in the leg – shot in the leg. All of them require medical assistance of course and doctors in Gaza have become pretty adept at treating such injuries, assisted by John Wolfe, a retired consultant vascular surgeon from St. Mary’s Hospital in West London. Our Middle East correspondent Tom Bateman reports.”

Over the past eight months we have repeatedly documented the fact that the BBC has downplayed or erased Hamas’ role in initiating, organising and facilitating the ‘Great Return March’ violent rioting along the border between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

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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. 
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Life in Israel is never boring or dull - by Michael Kuttner

If there is one thing that can be guaranteed, apart from death and taxes, it is that life in Israel is never boring or dull…


Michael Kuttner..
J-Wire..
23 November '18..

Living in parts of the world where nothing in particular is happening and one day is as predictable as the next can seem to be desirable but is usually boring. Where there are no challenges and no purpose the boredom levels especially amongst teenagers tend to ramp up and in many cases leads to suicides and other anti-social problems.

In Israel, the majority of youngsters learn very early on in life why they are living here and what it means to defend the values and the very existence of those around them. Terrorism has now reached almost every corner of the globe and in places where it has not yet reared its lethal head, it is only a matter of time before it does. It is a sad fact of life that Jews have been the target of hate crimes for millennia and nowadays it is the Jewish State and its very legitimacy which is under constant threat.

Therefore when we are faced on a daily basis with manifestations of antipathy most Israelis are not fazed and instead redouble their efforts to defeat it. Some of the latest examples exemplify how the world has gone mad and why life here is a daily roller coaster.

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Michael Kuttner is a Jewish New Zealander who for many years was actively involved with various communal organisations connected to Judaism and Israel. He now lives in Israel and is J-Wire’s correspondent in the region.

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. 
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Moral Bankruptcy, Corruption, and the Airbnb Embrace of Failure - by Hillel Fuld

Airbnb will go down in history as the weak company that gave into political pressure from extremists. And that is the best-case scenario.

Hillel Fuld..
Opinion/JPost..
24 November '18..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Why-Airbnb-embraces-failure-572699..

Airbnb... Oy Vey, Airbnb.

I’ve tweeted about this unfortunate, no, tragic decision by Airbnb a few times.

But apparently, many of my Facebook friends don’t do Twitter, and too many people have asked me to share my thoughts about this.

If you haven’t heard, Airbnb made a corporate decision to single out Jews in Judea and Samaria, AKA “the West Bank” and remove those listings from the platform.

So what do I think? I think I love Airbnb. I use it often. I am friends with part of the executive team and I use Airbnb in literally every single talk of mine to illustrate the concept of disruption vs. innovation/“inventing the wheel.”

I say, “If you look at the all winners, they invented and own nothing. Uber, Facebook, WeWork, and Airbnb, among others. They all took a concept, flipped it on its head and created a unicorn. They took an existing trillion-dollar industry and disrupted it.” Airbnb was a case study for me on how to build amazing companies.

As long as this decision is not reversed, which I want to believe it will be although I have no indication that is the case, Airbnb is now a symbol of corruption, no longer of disruption.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

BBC News once again ignores abuse of Israeli humanitarian aid to Gaza - by Hadar Sela

...With its audiences being repeatedly steered towards the inaccurate belief that all the economic and humanitarian problems in the Gaza Strip are attributable to Israeli counter-terrorism measures, it is significant that once again the BBC has shown no interest in reporting a story which clarifies why such measures are necessary.

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

On November 22nd the Israel Security Agency announced that it had uncovered attempts by Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip to establish a terror network in Judea and Samaria. The plot included exploitation of Israel’s humanitarian aid to civilians in the Gaza Strip.

“The Hamas operation was uncovered with the arrest of Oweis Rajoub, 25, an alleged member of the terrorist group from the Palestinian village of Dura, near Hebron, on September 23, the Shin Bet said.

The goal of the West Bank cells was to conduct large terror attacks against Israeli military and civilians targets at the same time as rockets and mortar shells were being fired from the Gaza Strip, in order to challenge Israel on two fronts simultaneously, the internal security service said. […]

The coordination and planning between the operatives in the West Bank and Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip were conducted, in part, by Palestinians travelling from the coastal enclave to hospitals in Israel. Gazan businessmen with permits allowing them to travel to the West Bank were also reportedly found to have passed messages between the two groups. […]

In August, Rajoub received a cellphone from his Hamas handlers. A few days later, he was told to go to Bethlehem to meet with a woman who gave him “trousers into which a cloth strip had been sewn on which instructions for using his phone had been written,” the Shin Bet said.

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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. 
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The Absolutely Brain-Frying Insanity of the Demonisation of Israel - by Melanie Phillips

...The demonisation of Israel thus exhibits the signature motif of Soviet totalitarianism: a passage through the mirror into a nightmarish world where black is white and lies are truths and everything is the negation of reality, and those who state the facts are stamped upon as enemies of the people.

Melanie Phillips..
MelaniePhillips.com..
23 November '18..

Brendan O’Neill asks the obvious question. Denouncing the boycott by Airbnb of Israeli properties in the disputed territories, he wonders at the extraordinary double standard under which Airbnb doesn’t similarly boycott properties in Tibet or northern Cyprus or Crimea which are occupied by China, Turkey and Russia.

The same question can be asked of the British Quakers who have said they will no longer invest in any companies which profit from “the occupation of Palestine”, a move they offensively and misleadingly compare to their past protests against apartheid and the slave trade. Paul Parker, the Quakers’ recording clerk, said: “…our beliefs compel us to speak out about injustices wherever we see them in the world.” Yet the Quakers also admit they have no policies “relating to other occupations”.

As O’Neill writes: “Israel is always singled out. It is treated by right-on Westerners as being more wicked, more toxic, more evil and more destructive than any other state on Earth. That is why they boycott it, rage about it and take to the streets about it in a way they never do about Turkey, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else. They hate Israel more than any other place. The question is: why?”

Why indeed. Certainly antisemitism is there in the mix. So too is leftist ideology which ludicrously regards Israel as a colonialist oppressor.

The question remains, however, why the Palestinian cause rather than any other became the issue of issues for the western left.

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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. 
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The Unmasking of Hamas and Fatah - by Caroline Glick

We learned a lot about the Palestinians over the past few weeks. The most urgent order of business for the government and the IDF is to deal realistically with what we now know.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
22 November '18..
Link: https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Hamas-and-Fatah-unmasked-572615

The recent almost-war with Hamas taught us a lot about the terror regime. It also taught us a lot about Hamas’s rival, Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority it controls in Ramallah. Israel’s most urgent task is to understand the implications of what we now know.

The first thing we learned about Hamas is that its control over Gaza is all encompassing.

This week, the media published the communications between Hamas forces during their battle with IDF Special Forces in Gaza on November 11. From those communications we learned that Hamas forces detected the vehicle carrying the Israeli forces very quickly. While they didn’t know who was in the vehicle, they knew the vehicle was suspicious and dispatched a force to intercept it.

Hamas’s ability to detect the vehicle and act swiftly to intercept it demonstrated the terror regime’s ability to use both technological and physical assets to maintain its control over Gaza in a manner reminiscent of the Stasi in East Germany.

THE ALMOST-WAR with Hamas last week also taught us that contrary to the longstanding assessment of the IDF’s General Staff, Hamas is not at all interested in reaching a long-term ceasefire with Israel and therefore there is no point in trying to negotiate one.

For the past several months, various experts inside the Israeli government and military and in foreign countries have claimed that Hamas’s leadership in Gaza is split between two factions.

The first faction, led by Hamas Secretary General Ismail Haniyeh, works with Iran and Qatar to scuttle all efforts to reach a long-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. The second ostensible faction in this ostensible rivalry is led by Hamas terror boss Yahya Sinwar. The Sinwar faction, so the thinking goes, while dedicated to fighting Israel until it is destroyed, believes that the most urgent order of business is solving Gaza’s humanitarian crisis. Based on this assessment, Israel opted to permit Qatar to supply Gaza with gas to fuel its power stations and cash to fill its pockets. The day before Hamas’s largest rocket and mortar onslaught against southern Israel ever, Israel permitted Qatar to transfer $15 million in cash to Hamas.

The fact that right after receiving the cash Sinwar turned around and ordered the rocket assault on Israel shows that his purported interest in a long-term ceasefire with Israel, and the alleged breach between Haniyeh on the one hand and Sinwar on the other was a ruse. He didn’t want a ceasefire. He wanted to fight under optimal conditions – with the power plant purring, his pockets full of cash and his public ecstatic at his great success in bamboozling the bumbling Jews.

How the Kingdom of Jordan's mainstream media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers - by Arnold Roth

...Caravan is a weekly TV show on Jordan’s privately-owned Roya TV channel, evidently the most watched of Jordan’s TV channels. Caravan aims explicitly at a young audience and tries hard to seem hip in a vaguely Western way. In its October 23, 2018 edition, the show's attention was entirely given over to Ahlam and Nizar, a husband-and-wife team of convicted, unrepentant Palestinian Arab murderers. And as becomes painfully clear, a pair of well-loved Jordanian heroes.

Smiling faces, open admiration:
The murdering Tamimis
Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
24 November '18..

[This is the first part of a three-post look at the little-known and deeply troubling way the Kingdom of Jordan deals with a Hamas murderer/terrorist living unhindered and free in its midst. In the next two parts, we ask what this means in the context of current US efforts to see our daughter's killer extradited from there to face trial on US federal charges.]

Being the parents of a child murdered by a proud and pleased woman who doesn't stop boasting about what she did was never going to be easy to endure.

Regular readers know that Malki, our sweet, vivacious fifteen year-old eldest daughter was one of the victims of the Hamas bombing of the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001. The mastermind of the attack, convicted for her role in scoping out the target site and bringing the human bomb, was sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment. She was the first-ever Hamas female jihadist. Her name is Ahlam Tamimi.

Tamimi walked free, along with 1,026 other Arab terrorists - most of them killers - in the catastrophic deal Israel made with the Hamas terrorists to secure the freedom of an Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit, in October 2011. She has been living free-as-a-bird in Jordan, not under cover, not in hiding, ever since.

She married another convicted Arab terrorist/murderer, Nizar Tamimi, in the summer of 2012. He is her cousin. Another cousin is Ahed Tamimi, the 17 year old blondish "icon" of Palestinian "resistance" recently released from an Israeli prison.

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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. 
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Saturday, November 24, 2018

Are terrorists good at football? - by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

It doesn't matter to the PA - they are still the role models for Palestinian teens playing football!

Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik..
Palestinian Media Watch..
21 November '18..

Sports is considered a place where politics and conflict are put aside - but not in the Palestinian Authority. A football tournament for high school boys in Hebron, arranged by the local Fatah branch, named all 11 teams after terrorists - including terror leaders responsible for most of the deaths from terror Israel has suffered since its founding. Six were top Palestinian terror leaders and founders of terror organizations, while the other five were terrorists or members of terror organizations. The PA Ministry of Education endorsed the event's role modeling of terrorists with a representative who "honored the winning players and teams."

Here is the list of the teams in the President Martyr Yasser Arafat Football Championship:

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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. 
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Friday, November 23, 2018

The one option Israel doesn’t have in Gaza - by Evelyn Gordon

...Barring a miracle, Hamas will eventually become overconfident and cause Israel enough anguish to provoke it to reoccupy Gaza. By postponing that day, and thereby allowing Hamas to further arm and entrench itself, Israel merely ensures that when it comes, it will come at a much higher price—in Israeli casualties, in Palestinian casualties and in international opprobrium. But knowing that doesn’t change the political reality that such an operation isn’t possible now. In today’s reality, the most that Netanyahu can do is buy a few more years of quiet. And his only choice is whether to do so via a ceasefire or a limited military operation, each of which carries its own major price tag.

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
22 November '18..
Link: http://evelyncgordon.com/the-one-option-israel-doesnt-have-in-gaza/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being assailed by his own base for his restraint last week following Hamas’s massive bombardment of southern Israel. But in considering what Israel’s policy should be, it’s important to realize that for now, the option of permanently ending Hamas terror doesn’t exist—not because it’s beyond Israel’s capability, but because it lacks sufficient public support.

If someone came up with an idea for destroying Hamas that could be executed quickly and with minimal casualties, Israelis obviously would support that, but nobody has. Thus the only plan with proven capability to suppress terror over the long term remains the one Israel executed in the West Bank in 2002 in response to the second intifada: The army goes in, and it never leaves. That’s how Israel defeated the second intifada, and how it has kept West Bank terror within tolerable limits ever since.

But doing the same in Gaza would have very high costs—in soldiers’ lives, in international opprobrium and possibly in saddling Israel with responsibility for Gaza’s civilian problems. It would be far more costly than it was to reoccupy the West Bank because Hamas has used its 11 years of total control over Gaza to become far better armed and far more deeply entrenched than West Bank terrorists were in 2002.

No democracy could undertake such a costly plan without widespread public support, but especially not Israel, because any major military operation requires a massive call-up of reservists, and Israeli reservists tend to vote with their feet. They’ll show up in droves for an operation with broad support, but an operation widely considered unjustified will spark major protests.

That’s exactly what happened when, during the second intifada, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon thought Israelis’ overwhelming support for reoccupying the West Bank created a golden opportunity to do the same in Gaza. He was forced to scrap that idea after a massive public outcry, especially from reservists.

The crucial difference Sharon had overlooked was the level of pain that Israelis were experiencing. The West Bank was wreaking havoc nationwide at that time. A wave of suicide bombings and other attacks in cities throughout Israel killed 452 Israelis in 2002, including 130 in March 2002 alone. But Gaza was causing most Israelis very little pain. Though there were attacks on soldiers and settlers in Gaza itself, there were almost no attacks from Gaza inside Israel. Consequently, most Israelis weren’t willing to pay the price that a major operation in Gaza would have entailed.