By the Temple Mount, we sat and wept

I wanted to see what all the fuss was about at the holy site and was subjected to humiliations from start to finish, included being told I’m forbidden from crying.

Lahav Harkov..
Reporter's Notebook/JPost..
08 September '15..

I didn't intend to write about my trip to the Temple Mount on Tuesday morning. Having written about politicians visiting the site and arguing about it in the Knesset so many times, I felt that I was remiss in never having been there myself, and simply wanted to get a sense of what it’s like.

However, since I wasn’t there to cover news, I decided not to wield my press pass and to visit like any other Jew on a tour of our religion’s holiest site. I mentioned the idea to my parents, who had met Temple Mount Heritage Foundation chairman Yehuda Glick earlier this year. They called him, and he helped organize our tour with guide Eyal Sapir.

As I said, my plan was to get some background information, but I’ll be honest, I’m a religious Zionist, so I was also very excited to visit the Temple Mount from that aspect, though I knew that I couldn’t pray there.

The moment my group arrived at the security check at the bottom of the Mughrabi Bridge, it became clear to me that this was going to be a humiliating ride – although I didn’t know how degrading it would get. The strange thing is that both Sapir and the police said it was a relatively uneventful, quiet visit, leaving me to think: Really? The norm is for Israeli Jews to be treated like dangerous criminals just for wanting to walk around? In the State of Israel? I suppose I knew from what people like Glick and other activists have said, but to experience it was jarring, and that was what changed my mind about writing about my visit.

From the start, the sense was that the police work for the Isalmic Wakf, which manages the site, and not for the citizens of Israel. They treated us with disdain, and catered to and tried to anticipate every inane complaint by Wakf staff.

“Don’t make this a hard day for me,” the police officer sneered at us. “No praying.

No bowing. No lying on the ground. No singing. No dancing.”

At the top of the Mughrabi bridge, a police officer looked me up and down and murmured something about my clothes. I’m religious. I know how to dress at a holy site. I wore a head-covering, a longer skirt than usual, and a shawl covering my elbows.

“Your skirt,” the police officer said.

“It completely covers my knees,” I responded, invoking the rules of every religious school I attended.

I was frustrated. I’m not used to being treated like I’m guilty for existing. I took to the one outlet I had to express my outrage, twitter: “On the way to the Temple Mount, not sure who’s treating me with more suspicion and disdain – the police or the Arabs.”

The Application of Lipstick on the BDS Pig

...What’s dangerous about the Third Narrative’s supposedly kosher BDS is that it offers the legions of thought police throughout academia an outlet for their anti-Israel fervor that also flatters their unearned sense of academic integrity. But they can put all the lipstick they want on this pig, it won’t make it kosher.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
11 December '14..

The BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) movement targeting Israel has had more success in the Kafkaesque confines of the modern American university than in the real world. Yet even in the academy, where both the rule of law and basic constitutional rights are heavily curtailed and anti-Semitism is tolerated if not fostered, it has begun to lose battles. That’s because a few principled American academics still support academic freedom, and make their argument convincingly. Yet now another group of leftist academics is offering a way to target Israel while maintaining a façade of academic integrity.

The group is a leftist organization called the Third Narrative, which seeks to replace the prevailing anti-Israel narrative on the left with their own anti-Israel narrative, which they consider morally superior. It’s as though one Illinois governor is claiming to be less corrupt than one of his predecessors. Fine, but let’s remember just how relative your morality is here.

The Third Narrative’s mission statement criticizes the overheated anti-Israel rhetoric of the left, but still wants the left to take aim at Israel:

The Third Narrative initiative is our response to this situation. We hope to engage people on the left who suspect that it is wrong to lay all blame for the Arab-Israeli conflict at the feet of Israeli Jews…but aren’t sure how to respond to Israel’s most vitriolic critics. Some of what these critics say is true, some of their accusations are justified. Some of what Israel’s traditional defenders say is also accurate. When it comes to this conflict, the truth is rarely black or white; it resides in a gray area where advocates on either side typically don’t like to venture. That is where we try to go with The Third Narrative.

In theory, it sounds good. A less hateful left is still thoroughly intellectually dishonest, but still an improvement. (It’s a low bar.) Once fiercely opposed to BDS, the organization now seems to have been opposed to the form the mainstream BDS movement was taking, especially the anti-Semitic umbrella BDS organization. The Third Narrative apparently thinks there’s a third way between BDS and no BDS, as it explained in an open letter titled “A Time for Personal Sanctions”:

Any Guesses to When the Media Cares About Incitement?

...To be fair to the Times, part of the focus on Israeli social media habits was driven by the fact that Justice Minister Tzipi Livni decided to turn this into an issue of national—and now international—concern. Perhaps she will be successful in these efforts to ensure Israelis only use social media for politically correct purposes from now on. Just so long as no one thinks that the next time Israelis are kidnapped or killed, there won’t still be rejoicing on the Facebook pages and Twitter feeds of the other side.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
03 July '14..

After several weeks out of the headlines, Israelis and Palestinians are regrettably back at the forefront of Middle East news once again. But during that brief ISIS-led interim the international media didn’t forget its line on Israel, and when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped in the West Bank reporters quickly became preoccupied with bemoaning Israeli heavy-handedness during the search operation. It was, however, only once confirmation came that the three victims had been murdered that the gloves really came off and a narrative emerged that aggressively condemned all potential Israeli responses, rather than reflecting upon those who kidnap and kill Israelis in the first place, or upon wider Palestinian attitudes that celebrated these acts.

Yesterday the New York Times devoted an entire piece to the apparently small minority of Israelis who have been making anti-Arab postings over social media; we live in strange times when such things constitute news. Only at the very bottom of the page was there any mention of the Tag Meir coexistence rally that Israelis had organized in Jerusalem. And as the British media watchdog CIF Watch noted, the British media gave universal coverage to the perhaps 200 or so Israelis involved in the scuffles with police in Jerusalem following the funerals of the three teenagers, while remaining completely silent about the 1,000 who turned out for the Tag Meir rally the following day. The mood at that gathering was one of total condemnation of the recent killing of an Arab teenager in East Jerusalem, in what has been widely interpreted as a revenge attack. And this sentiment would appear to be far more reflective of the Israeli mainstream. Still, it also seems fair to ask if it is conceivable that a similar rally condemning the killing of the three Israeli teens could ever have been held in Ramallah? Indeed, had the Times cared to look for it, they would have found ample material showing Palestinians celebrating the kidnapping of the Israelis.

Yet even before the anti-Arab disturbances in Jerusalem or the ill-judged Facebook postings by young Israelis responding to news about the murders, parts of the press were already condemning Israel in advance. The unforgiving attitude was particularly palpable at the BBC where, in the same breath that commentators expressed disapproval at the killings, they quickly moved onto speculating about what kind of terrible and disproportionate revenge the Israeli government would inflict on the Palestinians next. The focus was less about the coldblooded murder of three Israeli boys and more concerned with criticising Israel for a wild policy of retaliation that hadn’t even happened yet. Indeed, a paralyzed Israeli cabinet still hasn’t made any firm statement on what the response will be, something which has clearly stoked anger among those sections of the Israeli public already incited by the murders.

When the news about the discovery of the bodies first broke, large numbers began spontaneously gathering at solemn candlelit vigils in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. From what I could see it was pictures of these gatherings, not calls for Arab blood, that were dominating Israeli social media sites. So I was surprised when a BBC correspondent reporting from the field where the bodies had just been found spoke not of the vigils but instead about a small “angry right-wing” protest reportedly taking place nearby.

Will $40 Million US Tax Dollars Subsidize UN Agency That Tolerates Teaching Martyrdom to Palestinian Kids?

Heather Robinson
Huffington Report
07 February '10

Last week the United States announced an initial contribution of $40 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN agency dedicated to providing food, jobs and education in the Palestinian territories. According to a U.S. State Department press release, the money will "provide critical health, education, and humanitarian services to 4.7 million Palestinians across the region."

This United Nations agency, which receives the largest share of its funding from the U.S. taxpayer, has in recent years come under fire due to at least one of its employees' admission that it employs members of Hamas.

Last month, due to concerns Hamas had infiltrated UNRWA, the Canadian government quietly decided to redirect funding away from the agency; instead, the $300 million in aid Canada has pledged to the Palestinians for the next five years will go to food aid and the support of the Palestinian justice system in an effort to help the Palestinians build a civil society.

Perhaps the U.S. should follow Canada's lead.

In recent years, watchdog organizations have shined a light on the content of books in schools in the Palestinian territories - and what they illuminated was a consistent pattern of propaganda denying Israel's right to exist, dehumanizing Israelis and Jews, and lacking any concrete perspective that would point towards a nonviolent resolution of the conflict, such as a two-state solution. UNRWA schools use the same text books as those that are used in Palestinian schools run by the Palestinian Authority - and by Hamas.


While not part of the original article I have added this as a current example of children's media from Al-Aqsa TV (Hamas), Feb. 5, 2010

(Read full article)

Quiz

You probably don't recognize the name Dalal Mughrabi, but Palestinian children certainly will.

Back in 1978:
Dalal Mughrabi was a Palestinian terrorist.

In March of 1978 she led one of the most cruel and deadly terror attacks in Israel’s history. She and her fellow terrorists landed in rubber boats on a beach near Tel Aviv. On that beach, photographing rare birds was American photographer Gail Rubin. After first questioning her, the terrorists then murdered her in cold blood and went on to hijack a bus on the nearby coastal road, killing 37 civilians, 12 of them children.

Now, in 2009:
The Palestinollowian Authority, under the control of the Abbas government, has set up a modern new computer center. It will be named "after the martyr Dalal Mughrabi," the female terrorist who led that deadly 1978 attack. The new center is funded by Abbas's office, which receives Western aid money.

(Read full post)

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Amnesty Researchers

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2009

Palestinian Incitement (1999)

Today's Golden Oldie is a Dry Bones cartoon done in 1999.
Ten years ago this month.

Palestinian incitement has never stopped and Hillary's next campaign will probably not be a run for the Senate.

Settlement Freeze May Be Permanent If Amorphous Requirements Met

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
08 September 09

So the settlement freeze will be extended if I we get some minor gestures from Arab countries that we have already had in the past and - here is the big requirement for the Palestinians: something is done about incitement.

Why the cynicism about making incitement the litmus test?

Take a look at the article for a hint: "The official said Israel expected that in return for the moratorium there would be an end to incitement against Israel in the PA media and education system - although a way of measuring this still needed to be worked out."

Repeat: "a way of measuring this still needed to be worked out".

Been there. Done that.

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wanted to keep his buddy Uri Dan busy so he wouldn't be tempted to share his misgivings over Sharon's policies with the public, he appointed him the "Anti-Incitement Committee". Dan seized the opportunity to meet with Palestinian officials and complain about Palestinian incitement. He got nowhere. Which is no surprise since none of the people before him and none of the Israelis after him got anywhere in what amounted to nothing more than a debating society since it was impossible to come up with a workable measurable definition of incitement.

Consider the following: Which is worse? An inciting item in a Palestinian school book or unfriendly remarks in a pamphlet distributed in some synagogues?

So when the Netanyahu team focuses on what anyone who knows the history of Oslo knows is a profoundly unenforceable requirement you have to wonder:

Either:

#1. They don't remember.
#2. They are fooling themselves.
#3. They are trying to fool us.

Which is worse?
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'Settlement freeze will last 6 months'
HERB KEINON and TOVAH LAZAROFF , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 8, 2009
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804514211&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

A moratorium on new construction in the settlements, expected in the wake of Monday's announcement of 455 newly approved housing units in the West Bank, will last for six months, with an extension dependent on whether the Palestinian Authority and neighboring Arab countries step up to the plate and deliver what is expected of them, a senior political official told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

The official's comment came a week before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with US Mideast envoy George Mitchell to discuss the US-brokered package that is expected to lead to a renewal of negotiations with the Palestinians.

Netanyahu spoke to the official over the past few days and explained both the sudden approval of the 455 homes and the soon-to-be-announced moratorium.

The new construction plans in the settlements, which were announced on Monday morning, included 149 apartments for Har Gilo, 12 for Alon Shvut, 89 in Ma'aleh Adumim, 84 in Modi'in Illit, 76 in Givat Ze'ev, 25 in Kedar and 20 in Maskiot, as well as a sports park in Ariel and a school in Har Adar.

Mitchell is expected to arrive on Saturday night for two days of high-level meetings in Jerusalem.

At a Ma'aleh Adumim rally on Monday, MK Uri Ariel (National Union) said that the Construction and Housing Ministry had issued an order not to make any more plans for Jewish housing in east Jerusalem.

But political officials said that in addition to the six-month moratorium, Netanyahu would reiterate to Mitchell that Jerusalem will not be included, and that public buildings in the settlements will be approved where necessary to enable normal life to continue.

The official said Israel expected that in return for the moratorium there would be an end to incitement against Israel in the PA media and education system - although a way of measuring this still needed to be worked out - as well as significant normalization steps from the Arab world.

If these steps were not forthcoming, the source intimated, the construction moratorium would end.

Israel, according to the official, expected a number of Arab countries - such as Morocco, Qatar and Oman - to renew their former low-level presences in Israel, as well as allow for educational and cultural exchanges, and for Israeli airline flights over their territory.

The prime minister's plans to please the settlers, the US and the Palestinians, did not mollify anyone.

The Americans and the Palestinians continued to publicly demanded an immediate and total freeze.

"Given the choice between making peace and making settlements, they have chosen to make settlements," chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs responded on Monday by referring to an earlier statement criticizing the Israeli plans and calling for a construction halt.

Right-wing politicians, including Likud MKs, Israel Beiteinu's National Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau and Knesset speaker Ruby Rivlin criticized Netanyahu's plan to approve new permits and then impose a freeze on any additional ones.

Danny Dayan, the head of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, accused Netanyahu of trying to pull the wool over everyone's eyes with the new permits - the first ones that Netanyahu has issued since taking office in March.

According to the Prime Minister's Office and Peace Now, no construction permits for Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria have been issued since November 2008.

"It has no real political or practical significance. The negative impact of the freeze that will follow the approval of the 455 units is tenfold greater than the somewhat positive approval of these units," said Dayan.

"By the way, most of them are recycled plans that were already approved by former prime minister [Ehud] Olmert," he said.

"It is quite pathetic that the 2,500 units that this government is going to finish are units that Olmert built. The only thing that is new and attributable to this government is the freeze; that is regrettable," Dayan said.

Hagit Ofran of Peace Now agreed that there was little new in what Defense Minister Ehud Barak had approved.

Still, Peace Now's executive director Yariv Oppenheimer lashed out at the plan. Netanyahu failed in his attempt "to go on a diet," because when it comes to settlement construction, "he is eating a big meal," said Oppenheimer.

All that has happened with the talk of approving new construction permits and then freezing them is that settlers can continue to build apartment units this year at the same pace as last year, he said.

Oppenheimer noted that settlers would be able to finish the 2,500 apartment units now under way in the settlements as well as start 455 additional units.

Out of the approvals, the two which have the most impact, according to Ofran, are in Har Gilo and Maskiot.

Built in 1972, the Har Gilo settlement had only 462 residents in 2007. The approval of 149 new apartment units there more than doubles the size of the settlement, which is an enclave within a populated Palestinian area.

The authorization of 20 new homes in Maskiot marks the first residential building in that area, said Ofran.

Although the site, located in the northern Jordan Valley, was authorized as a settlement in the mid-1980s, no families lived there on a permanent basis until 2008, when eight moved in. Six families lived in new modular homes and another two in structures that belong to the pre-army yeshiva, also housed on that site.

The construction of 20 new homes was the government's backhanded way of creating a new settlement, a move that skirted its international obligations and promises, Ofran said.
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End the Incitement

14 March 2007

At the time of this writing Israel's lackluster PM and the PA's irrelevant President are trying to prop each other up. The topic they've discussed is supposedly peace. But the only path to peace is through an end to incitement. And that's one item that I'm sure was not on their agenda.

For more info and links, check this previous posting about Incitement and the Peace Process.

(While this Dry Bones is from 2007, none of us should have had any illusions that this is something that would be going away. As can be seen from this PMW posting, both the PA and Hamas have not allowed themselves to be distracted from their normal course of discourse. YH)

Palestinian TV children's quizzes teach that there is no Israel

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
PMW Bulletins
Sept. 2, 2009

Palestinian children are taught through formal and informal education to see a world in which "Palestine" exists and replaces all of Israel. Two children's quizzes broadcast last week on Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority television show how the PA routinely teaches its children to identify all Israeli cities as Palestinian cities.
(Continue)

Swedish Future

The cartoon shows a future Miss Sweden in a burqa, the body-bag in which Islamists want to imprison all women. The demonization of Jews and the Jewish State continues in full force. The insane Islamist antisemitic incitement has now commandeered the European press. The end will, of course, be the Arabization of Europe. Here's Alan Dershowitz commenting on the latest outrage out of Sweden:

Sweden's shame over Israeli 'organ theft' nonstory

Why won't its government condemn the outrageous article that accused Israeli soldiers of harvesting Palestinian organs?

Cambridge, Mass. - "The Swedish government has refused to condemn a "blood libel" published by one of Sweden's leading newspapers, Aftonbladet.

The article claims that Jewish soldiers in Israel killed Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. The writer of the article, Donald Bostrom, has acknowledged that "he has no idea whether the accusations are true." Yet a widely read Swedish newspaper was prepared to publish this undocumented and highly volatile accusation without requiring its author to present any credible evidence.

This false accusation is reminiscent of the medieval blood libels that falsely accused Jews of killing Christian children in order to use their blood for religious rituals. It is also reminiscent of the notorious Czarist forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. One expects this sort of thing from Iranian or Syrian newspapers, but not from Swedish papers.

Not only has Foreign Minister Carl Bildt refused to issue a personal condemnation of the current "organ libel," his foreign ministry explicitly disavowed the denunciation that was issued by Sweden's ambassador to Israel, who had called the article "shocking and appalling." In a self-righteous statement, Mr. Bildt claimed that condemnation of the article would be inappropriate because freedom of expression is a part of the Swedish Constitution." -more

Weekly Commentary: Destroying terror infrastructure better compliance test than stopping incitement

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
20 August 2009

Stopping Palestinian incitement against Israel and destroying the terror infrastructure are both important Palestinian obligations. But it would be a serious mistake on Israel's part on all counts if it opted to focus on Palestinian incitement as the primary test of Palestinian compliance.

Don't get me wrong. Palestinian incitement against Israel serves to not only poison the atmosphere today but also plants the seeds for yet another generation of Palestinians brainwashed against co-existence.

It is important to shame the Palestinian media, education system and other platforms for Palestinian incitement and efforts in this field certainly deserve our praise and support.

But years of Oslo have taught us that "incitement" isn't a workable compliance test.

#1. Over a decade of various Palestinian-Israeli committee meetings have yet to come up with a robust and readily applicable definition of incitement.

#2. There is no agreed way to measure or rank the severity of different "incitements" (something that is a function, among other things, of not only the content of the incitements but also the identities of the inciters and the venues of the incitements).

As a result, the determination of compliance (in particular, when compliance is judged on a comparative rather than absolute basis) is readily susceptible to self serving manipulation and distortion.

Put in simple English: If the Netanyahu team focuses on incitement as the test of Palestinian compliance they will ultimately find themselves being told by Washington that the Palestinians have kept their part of the bargain - regardless of what horrific evidence PMW and others come up with to the contrary.

In sharp contrast, it is possible to come up with a schedule of readily observable terror infrastructure destroying activities for the Palestinians to carry out as well as indicators of the continued existence of a terror infrastructure.

Hint: "Moderate" Fatah's own armed militias are part of the terror infrastructure and PLO Conference declarations notwithstanding, the Palestinians are obligated to permanently close them down along with all the other militias.

Again: Ending the poisonous Palestinian incitement against Israel would make a vital contribution to long term stability. But it would be a terrible mistake to focus on Palestinian incitement as the primary test of Palestinian compliance.
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Swine Flu

Genocidal violence against Jews has been always been instigated by the spreading of demonizing lies and insane libels. And it continues to this day.

The bizarre antisemitic incitement by Palestinian officials (both in Hamas-controlled Gaza and the "moderate" Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority on the "West Bank") continues.

In the very latest libel: Palestinian authorities have accused Israel of spreading AIDS, STDs, and supplying "Aphrodisiac chewing gum" to innocent Palestinian youth:

"Hamas police spokesman Islam Shahwan said recently that Israeli intelligence officers are behind the smuggling of sexually stimulating drops and chewing gum into Gaza to "weaken and destroy" Palestinian youth and the social structure, according to Palestinian news agency FPNP ("Firas- Palestine News Press")

Shahwan claimed that a parent had complained to police that his daughter had chewed the Israeli gum and suffered "side effects." He said that Hamas police had subsequently arrested the distributors, confiscated the aphrodisiacs and confirmed that the drugs had been supplied by Israeli intelligence.

This accusation is one more example of the continuing PA campaign by both Fatah and Hamas to demonize Israel based on libels by officials, who accuse Israel of trying to poison or corrupt Palestinian youth. For the last 10 years, the Palestinian Authority Fatah leaders have been disseminating the libel that Israel spreads AIDS and sexually-transmitted diseases among Palestinian youth, turns them into drug addicts and has a special intelligence unit devoted to distributing drugs to Palestinian teenagers.

One PA official even accused Israel of distributing sports shoes that cause the wearer to become paralyzed, and perfumes that cause drug addiction." -more

"Paralyzing Sports Shoes?"