Surprise? NY Times Backs Cellphones to Fight Virus Everywhere Except Israel - by Ira Stoll

The only thing missing is for the disease to spread to Palestinian-controlled Gaza or areas of the West Bank, or for that matter, in Israel itself, and the Times then to blame Netanyahu for failing to use cellphone data to prevent the spread. It’s a safe bet that whatever Netanyahu does with the coronavirus and cellphones, the Times will find a way to criticize him.

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner..
24 March '20..

A New York Times news article from Israel is faulting Prime Minister Netanyahu for combating the coronavirus with measures similar to those the Times itself, in a different article published the same day, says experts recommend.

Here’s the side-by-side comparison. The Times article about Israel reports, “Mr. Netanyahu has resorted to emergency regulations to usher in increasingly draconian measures to combat the spread of the virus. Those included authorizing the Shin Bet internal security agency to use cellphone data to track citizens, without any parliamentary oversight.” The language­ — “resorted,” “draconian,” “without any parliamentary oversight” — makes it clear enough that the Times disapproves. Draco, a 7th century BCE Athenian lawgiver, favored the death penalty for anyone who stole a cabbage or an apple, according to Plutarch.

And here’s the front-page New York Times news article from the same day’s newspaper, under the introductory language, “There is a chance to stop the coronavirus … doing so takes intelligent, rapidly adaptive work by health officials. … What follows are the recommendations offered by the experts interviewed by the Times.”

The Times says, “Everyone who is infected in South Korea goes into isolation in government shelters, and phones and credit card data are used to trace their prior movements and find their contacts. Where they walked before they fell ill is broadcast to the cellphones of everyone who was nearby. Anyone even potentially exposed is quarantined at home; a GPS app tells the police if that person goes outside. The fine for doing so is $8,000. British researchers are trying to develop a similar tracking app, albeit one more palatable to citizens in Western democracies.”

The same Times article reports, “China’s strategy is quite intrusive: To use the subway in some cities, citizens must download an app that rates how great a health risk they are. South Korean apps tell users exactly where infected people have traveled.”

So when it’s South Korea, Britain, and China using cellphones to fight Covid-19, the Times basically cheers them on, describing them as expert-recommended. Yet when the Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, does a version of the same thing, the Times casts shade. It’s a classic Times double standard.

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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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Legal Blindness, the International Criminal Court and Israel - by Daniel Pomerantz

Applying a unique law to Jews that is not applied to any other people or religion, is both illegal and racist.

Daniel Pomerantz..
Honest Reporting..
23 December '19..

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is supposed to prosecute perpetrators of the worst types of crimes, like genocide, mass deportation, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

At the request of the Palestinian Authority, the ICC’s prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced last week that she is prepared to open a formal inquiry into whether Israel has committed war crimes: by building residential communities, which are often called “settlements.” She’s also investigating alleged IDF crimes during the 2014 Gaza war and last year’s riots along the Israel-Gaza border. She is currently waiting for a final confirmation from the International Criminal Court’s judges that she has jurisdiction to investigate. But this week’s news focused primarily on the legality of settlements.

Much of the world calls the area in question the “West Bank,” a name applied by Jordan during its 19-year occupation from 1948 until 1967, and still used by much of the international community today. Previously the area was called, “Judea and Samaria,” after its ancient Jewish inhabitants. For now, I will refer to the area simply as the “disputed territories,” as they are the subject of a very real and ongoing, dispute.

This is not a question of whether Jewish settlements in the disputed territories are right or wrong, which is a topic of debate even among Israelis. Nor is it a question of whether Jews or Palestinians have historic, legal or emotional connections to this land. The question is whether building Jewish communities in the disputed territories is an illegal war crime.

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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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Israeli winery Psagot and its challenge to Europe’s labeling regime - by Gabriel Groisman

The days when the Jewish people chose to do nothing in the face of discrimination are over. We must fight—even if some in Israel don’t want to.

Gabriel Groisman..
JNS.org..
01 December '19..

After years of European statements, resolutions and directives against the Jewish people’s right to live in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”), eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, on Nov. 12 the European Court of Justice continued the trend, confirming that under longstanding European Union consumer protection law, food and wine from those territories may not be labeled “Made in Israel.” Instead, ruled the court, their labels must indicate that they come from an “occupied territory,” an “Israeli settlement” or the like.

The court reasoned that European consumers must be able to “make informed choices” and that product labels must include “health, economic, environmental, social and ethical considerations, including respect for international law.” The court explained that the term “settlement” must be used “since it refers to a population of foreign origin,” going on to state that the “West Bank” is the territory of “the Palestinian people” and that they “enjoy the right to self-determination” in that territory.

And of course, although E.U. law and the ECJ decision do not relate only to Israel, in practice the only “social and ethical” consideration for which the E.U. is specifically mandating such labeling is the dispute over the pre-1967 territories in Israel.

The underlying case was initiated by Psagot Winery, based in the Binyamin region just minutes outside of Jerusalem. I am a member of the multi-national legal team advising Psagot on this matter. Psagot had challenged the legality of France’s application of these very labeling requirements, which it argued were discriminatory. The French court, in turn, filed an action with the ECJ to seek guidance on the matter.

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Gabriel Groisman is an attorney at Groisman Law, PLLC based in Miami, Florida, and also serves as the mayor of Bal Harbour, Florida. Groisman is a legal adviser to Psagot Winery and a leading voice in the global fight against anti-Semitism.

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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#HumanRightsHypocrisy - #HumanRightsFail - by Rena Young

Shockingly, yet consistently, Amnesty International had four times as many tweets on Ahed Tamimi as they did on the brutal Syria chemical-weapons attacks.

Rena Young..
JNS.org..
10 December '18..

International Human Rights Day is marked on Dec. 10, with special attention made to honoring the 70-year anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Over the last 70 years, technological innovations have radically changed how human-rights groups engage with the public at large. With the advent of social media, they can amplify their voice at minimal cost. A well-crafted tweet or an eye-catching infographic can enable an organization to reach millions of people in seconds. And while advancing human rights on social media is laudable, it also makes clear that the “universal” aspect is being replaced with more particularistic goals.

Following and analyzing the Twitter accounts of the two largest human-rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, lead to some uncomfortable conclusions regarding the groups’ supposed “promotion of universal human rights.” Sadly, these human-rights groups appear to be utilizing social media to promote just a small portion of the world’s human rights abuses, and not even actual war crimes.

For instance, on Nov. 12-13, Hamas and other terror groups targeted Israeli civilians with more than 450 rockets, amounting to nearly 500 war crimes. Yet HRW, the world’s “leading human-rights group” and its director, Ken Roth, did not take notice.

Not one tweet acknowledging these war crimes and the human-rights atrocities committed against Israelis. Not one post calling for the United Nations to condemn Hamas and the terror groups responsible. Not one article encouraging the world to express support for the children who spent nights in bomb shelters and will surely suffer ongoing psychological harm. One might conclude that the Arab-Israeli conflict is not a priority for the human-rights group.

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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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Anti-Israelism, or Worse, at Pitzer College - by Jonathan Marks

...While it has become the norm to apply a double standard to Israel, an obsessive and exclusive focus on the deficiencies of the Jewish state can be anti-Semitic. Because the double standard is the norm, there is no reason to accuse anyone on Pitzer’s faculty of anti-Semitism. But there is good reason to accuse those who voted against study abroad in Israel of permitting themselves to be swept up in an anti-Semitic current. That’s plenty to be ashamed of.

Jonathan Marks..
Commentary Magazine..
27 November '18..

The faculty of Pitzer College, a small elite California school, has turned a critical eye toward the college’s study abroad programs. That makes sense. After all, they’ve got one in China where, according to the State Department, the government restricts “political and social discourse at colleges, universities, and research institutes.” Academic subjects “deemed politically sensitive,” such as civil rights, are “off limits.” I mean, Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to turn the academy into a “stronghold that adheres to party leadership.” That doesn’t sound very Pitzer at all!

College campuses are sensitive to anti-Muslim prejudice. It’s no surprise, then, that Pitzer’s faculty might want to reexamine the school’s relationship with a country that, according to Sigal Samuel of The Atlantic, keeps an estimated one million Muslims in internment camps. In the camps, they are compelled to renounce Islam and “recite Communist Party propaganda songs for hours each day.”

It also makes sense that they’d want to get out in front of the situation in Brazil. There, campuses were recently “stormed by military police” and staff were “arrested for their political views in the wake of the presidential election.” Pitzer has a study abroad program there, too.

In Rwanda, according to Freedom House, scholars and students can be suspended for “divisionism.” Freedom House rates Rwanda “not free.” Among many other conditions, “space for free private discussion is limited in part by indications that the government monitors personal communications. Social media are widely believed to be monitored, and the law allows for government hacking of telecommunications networks.” That doesn’t sound very Pitzer either! But Pitzer has a study abroad program there.

So what study abroad program has so riled Pitzer’s faculty? The one at the University of Haifa in Israel.

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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.

("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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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.

When Palestinians are Arresting Women, Where are the Media? - by Bassam Tawil

...yet another example of how the West gives the Palestinians a pass to violate human rights and crack down on dissent, while remaining obsessed with Israel. Moreover, it is another example of the hypocrisy of Abbas, who condemns Israel for combating terrorism and incitement, while he throws Palestinian women in jail.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
19 November '18..

Last August, the Palestinian Authority (PA) protested because Israel arrested a Palestinian woman from Hebron on charges of incitement and affiliation with Hamas. The 42-year-old woman, Lama Khater, is also known as a strong critic of the President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority.

Khater's scathing attacks on Abbas and his government, however, did not stop the Palestinian Authority from condemning Israel and demanding her immediate release.

This was not the first time that the Palestinian Authority has condemned Israel for arresting a Palestinian woman who voiced criticism of Abbas and his policies. Last year, the Palestinian Authority condemned Israel for arresting Khaleda Jarrar, a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of several PLO terrorist groups. Jarrar was arrested by Israel for membership in a terrorist group and incitement.

The incidents concerning Khater and Jarrar came to mind this week as Palestinian sources revealed that Mahmoud Abbas's security forces in the West Bank arrested two Palestinian women.

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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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Evidently Not All Palestinian Blood Is Equal - By Dr. Edy Cohen

Recently, the human rights organization AGPS published a report documenting 3,840 cases of Palestinians killed since the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011 – nearly four times the number of those killed during the six years of the first intifada (December 1987-September 1993). The circumstances of the deaths were shelling, shooting, or torture in the interrogation rooms of prisons throughout Syria. Mahmoud Abbas remained silent and did not condemn Bashar Assad or Iran. Palestinian blood in the West Bank and Gaza appears to be worth far more than the blood of Palestinians elsewhere in the world. This is because Palestinians who are killed by IDF fire serve as a bulwark against Israel, whether by the Arab states or by the Western world.

The Yarmouk refugee camp, which
was home to tens of thousands,
was utterly demolished

Dr. Edy Cohen..
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 930..
24 August '18..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/palestinians-syria-killed/

A recently published report by the Action Group for Palestinians in Syria (AGPS), a human rights group, documented 3,840 cases of Palestinians who have been killed since the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011 – nearly four times as many as those killed during the six years of the first intifada (December 1987-September 1993). The causes of death ranged from artillery shelling to shootings to torture in the regime’s infamous prisons across the country.

In addition to this report, the Syrian regime released for the first time a list of names that included 548 killed Palestinians. While the regime’s report did not note their causes of death, rights groups agree that those Palestinians died as a result of being tortured, starved, and deprived of adequate medical treatment.

The AGPS also said that 1,682 Palestinians are still missing, their fates unknown. According to some assessments, these Palestinians were either killed at some time during the bloody civil war or – “in the best case” – are still in prison. Therefore, at least 5,522 Palestinians have either been killed or have gone missing since 2011.

Along with those killed or missing, tens of thousands of Palestinians in Syria have lost their homes and employment. The Yarmouk refugee camp, which was home to tens of thousands, was utterly demolished over the course of the war. Before the camp was destroyed, the Assad regime laid siege to it. During that time, images of emaciated Palestinians began emerging in Syrian opposition media outlets.

Despite these horrors, not one official in the Palestinian Authority publicly condemned the Assad regime.

This is incredible. Where is the outcry from the PA, Arab and global news outlets, rights groups, Palestinian and Arab politicians? Where is their denunciation of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s war crimes against the Palestinians? Why isn’t every single Arab lawmaker in Israel excoriating the Syrian dictator?

How a similar story in Israel get an entirely different BBC treatment - by Hadar Sela

...As we see, while the BBC produces factual, judgement free reporting on people convicted of “encouragement of terrorism” in the UK, a similar story in Israel gets entirely different treatment. And so, the BBC’s double standards on terrorism persist.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
08 August '18..

As we have seen in the past BBC reporting on social media incitement to violence and/or glorification of terrorism differs depending on location.

In April of this year the BBC News website’s domestic pages reported the sentencing of a Salford man previously found guilty of “encouragement of terrorism”.

“Muslim convert Adam Wyatt, 48, admitted disseminating a terrorist publication that said “Britain must atone for its sins in Palestine” and posting on social media that jihad was an obligation for all Muslims.”

The following month the website reported the sentencing of a man from Sunderland who had previously pleaded guilty to similar offences.

“A shopkeeper who tweeted support for Islamic State (IS) and called for “death to Shias” has been jailed for four-and-a-half years.

Mohammed Zahir Khan, of Nora Street, Sunderland, had admitted encouraging terrorism, dissemination of a terror publication and stirring up religious hatred.”

Unsurprisingly, the BBC did not send a reporter to interview either of those men before they were sentenced. Neither did it promote the notion that they were put on trial because of their identity to millions of audience members or portray either of their cases as being about “free speech”.

However, when an Israeli-Arab woman was sentenced to five months in prison after having been convicted of incitement to violence in her poems and social media posts, the BBC News website amplified her claims of political persecution in a July 31st report titled “Dareen Tatour: Israeli Arab poet sentenced for incitement“.

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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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Is storming the border with Israel an act of war? Just ask Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon - and Hamas. - by Elder of Ziyon

...What was so obvious in 2011, that attempts to breach a border are acts of war that can be expected to be met with deadly force, has suddenly become controversial in 2018.

Elder of Ziyon..
11 June '18..

The current "Great Return March" is not the first attempt by Palestinians to "return" to Israel by pretending to peacefully march through the Israeli borders.

In 2011, there were two sets of similar demonstrations or attempts, in May and June for Nakba Day and Naksa Day. Arabs of Palestinian descent attempted to walk into Israel from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, as well as Gaza and the West Bank.

In most cases, the demonstrators were not stopped by Israel, but by the police and armies of the host countries and territories - often violently.

On May 15, the Lebanese army fired at the demonstrators, killing 10 of them.

The Egyptian army stopped any buses with demonstrators before they could approach the border, and in Jordan dozens were injured as the Jordanian security forces stopped the demonstrators from approaching the border with Israel.

If these were peaceful protests, then why would the host countries be willing to use violence to stop its own citizens from approaching Israeli territory?

The reason is that everyone knows that crossing a border without permission is an act of war, not an act of protest.

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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 Lives Matter? In Damascus as well as in Gaza? - by Liel Leibovitz

...If you’re not outraged now, you don’t really believe, like me, that Palestinian lives matter. And if you were only outraged when Israel killed 50 Hamas terrorists trying to attack it, well, there’s an age-old term that accurately describes how you feel about Jews.

Liel Leibovitz..
Tabletmag.com..
23 May '18..

Last week, I wrote a piece lamenting the fact that tens of thousands of Palestinians were being manipulated by a murderous terrorist organization to risk their lives for no other reason than its maniacal commitment to the destruction of the state of Israel. Many readers, including some former friends, wrote to tell me that I was a heartless monster for failing to sufficiently empathize with the Palestinians, and the accusation stung: Staunchly supporting Israel does and should not mean being unable to feel deeply moved by the despair of Gaza’s inhabitants, even if their calamity was brought about chiefly by their homicidal warlords.

And so, in the spirit of empathy, I’d like to offer a challenge of my own to all those—in the media, in prominent progressive organizations, and elsewhere—who were so rattled by the riots in Gaza. Call it a reality-based thought experiment. Here goes:

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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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Mahmoud Abbas' fake apology got him off the hook at the Security Council - by Elder of Ziyon

...The UN is a worthless organization, but this incident proves that it believes that there are two sides to every antisemitic statement.

Elder of Ziyon..
07 May '18..

From Haaretz:

The United Nations Security Council declined on Friday to adopt a request by the United States to condemn recent remarks by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that were widely criticized as being anti-Semitic, according to AFP. Diplomats said Kuwait rejected the U.S. draft and killed it, arguing that Abbas had already apologized and that it was one-sided.

There are no other details, but one can surmise a bit from 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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EU reaction to Abbas' antisemitic remarks? It downplays them, and praises him as a peacemaker. - by Elder of Ziyon

...This is not a condemnation. This is merely saying that Abbas' statements are "unacceptable." And why are they unacceptable?

Elder of Ziyon..
02 May '18..





From the European Union External Action:

The speech Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas delivered on 30 April contained unacceptable remarks concerning the origins of the Holocaust and Israel's legitimacy. Such rhetoric will only play into the hands of those who do not want a two-state solution, which President Abbas has repeatedly advocated.

This is not a condemnation. This is merely saying that Abbas' statements are "unacceptable." And why are they unacceptable?

Not because they are antisemitic. Not because they deny history. Not because they blame Jews for causing the Holocaust.

No, the main problem with Abbas' speech is that it allows the Israeli right to point out that Abbas is an antisemite who does not deserve to be rewarded with a state!

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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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Counting Votes at the UN Human Rights Council - by Elliott Abrams

...Hat’s off to Australia, which has just joined the Human Rights Council for a 3-year term and stood with the United States. The Australians have stated their “principled opposition” to singling out Israel, and said that they would vote against all the resolutions brought under “Item 7.” Australia has similarly opposed one-sided resolutions in the General Assembly. It is shameful that the Aussies have not been joined by other democracies, but they deserve great credit for taking this stance the moment they joined the Human Rights Council.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
29 March '18..
Link: https://www.cfr.org/blog/counting-votes-un-human-rights-council

The UN Human Rights Council passed five more anti-Israel resolutions last week. This was not a great surprise, and U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley called the Council “grossly biased against Israel.” She added that “our patience is not unlimited” and again threatened to leave the Council unless its obsession with Israel ended.

The Council (as Haley noted) passed three resolutions on Iran and two on North Korea, making the concentration on Israel particularly grotesque. Israel is the only country whose conduct must, by Council rules (the so-called Item 7), be reviewed every time the Council meets.

Still, the vote counting is interesting. One resolution called for Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights. That resolution got 25 votes, almost entirely from Muslim countries plus a few dictatorships like Cuba, Venezuela, and China. No European country voted yes. (Why Brazil, Peru, and Chile voted for it is a mystery, and when our State Department gets staffed up it might start pressuring them to change their votes.) Voting against this resolution were Australia, Belgium, Croatia, Georgia, Germany, Hungary, Panama, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Togo, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and the United States. Abstaining were the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Rwanda, and Switzerland. Absent was Mongolia. That means that of the members of the Council, 25 voted yes but 22 did not—displaying a good lack of enthusiasm for the proposal.

The other resolutions passed by higher margins: 27 in favor or 34 or 41, with 43 voting for “The Right of the Palestinian People to Self-Determination” while only Australia and the United States voted no (with the DRC abstaining and Mongolia absent).

That any democracy should vote for that mendacious resolution is unpardonable. Those who did include Belgium, Chile, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Korea, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK. It includes phrases and conclusions that are simply false, such as reference to Israel’s “forcible transfer of Palestinians”—something that does not exist. It calls upon Israel to “immediately end its occupation of the Occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” which is absurd. As those governments must know, there is no way safely to do that (safely for Israel, Jordan, or the Palestinians, considering the possibility that Hamas, with Iranian support, would take over). Nor should any decent country be speaking of the “occupation” of East Jerusalem, as if Israeli control of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem were some kind of scandal and crime.

Who would've thought? BBC double standards on terrorism on view again - by Hadar Sela

...And so, while the BBC regularly uses appropriate language in its coverage of terror attacks in France (and elsewhere), its reporting on attacks against Israelis does not employ the same terminology.

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

BBC News website coverage of the March 23rd terror attack in south-west France included two reports – “France hostage crisis: ‘Two dead’ in Trèbes supermarket” and “France shooting: Police kill supermarket gunman” – featuring an insert titled “Major terror attacks in France”.

Obviously the BBC’s description of those attacks as acts of terror is appropriate – notwithstanding the corporation’s supposed editorial policy of avoiding the word ‘terrorist’ without attribution in order to avoid “value judgements”.

However, as regular readers will be aware, while its reports on attacks in certain locations (especially Europe and North America) do use such terminology, the BBC consistently refuses to use the word terror in its reporting on comparable attacks against Israelis and audiences have never been provided with an insert titled “Major terror attacks in Israel”.

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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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Surprise? Palestinians Tortured; Media Silent - by Bassam Tawil

...The Palestinians are, first and foremost, victims of their dictatorial and abusive leaders. Sadly, they are done no service by a biased and unprofessional media that acts as sort of collective "yes-men" to widespread human rights violations under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
23 March '18..

What happens when Palestinians make allegations of torture and assaults on their public freedoms? If the finger is being pointed at Israel, the international media falls over itself to bring the story to the broadest possible audience.

The story would not even end there. Human rights organizations and United Nations agencies would blast Israel for "abusing" Palestinian human rights and the Security Council would hold an emergency session to condemn Israel.

The response, however, when Palestinians fall victim to the practices of their own governments -- the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip -- is a completely different one. That is when silence descends upon the international media community hides behind a blue wall of silence

How can one account for this sinkhole in communications? Simple: when the story is not about alleged atrocities committed by Israel, from the point of view of the Western media outlets it is presumably not a tale worthy of being told.

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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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ADL Chutzpah and the Preaching of Ethics to Israel - by Judith Bergman

Speaking of the “ethical thing to do”, there is a particular chutzpah in preaching to Israel about ‘ethics’. Israel spends a disproportionate amount of resources –compared to its tiny size — on humanitarian aid all over the world, especially in Africa, and has done so for decades. Israel cultivated a strong relationship with Africa from the earliest beginnings, when the newly ‎decolonized African nations emerged. Israel sent thousands of Israeli experts in agriculture, hydrology, ‎regional planning, public health, engineering, community services, medicine and scores of other fields ‎throughout Africa between 1958 and 1973. Thousands of Africans trained in Israel during the same time. Unlike Europeans, who lived in their own, segregated compounds, the Israelis lived among the Africans they came to ‎assist on the African continent.

Judith Bergman..
MiDA..
12 March '18..

Large parts of the West, including American Diaspora Jewish leaders, appear to have decided that unless Israel desists from its plan of deporting thousands of single, male Africans who infiltrated Israel illegally during the past decade or so, then the Jewish state is either deeply “racist” or inhumane. In any rate it is certainly, they claim, compromising its “Jewish values”.

Now, there is nothing new in the fact that most people seem to love nothing better than a bit of virtue signaling, especially if it can be done at the expense of the Jewish state. However, the latest virtue signaling over the illegal African migrants in Israel seems of even poorer taste than usual, given the disproportionately large humanitarian contribution of Israel to the world, especially Africa.

For decades, Israel has been helping other nations flourish, while usually getting absolutely nothing in return, apart from being condemned by every conceivable international organization from the EU to the UN.

No matter how much Israel does though, it seems it is never enough. Not for the world in general and not for the leaders of US Diaspora Jewry in particular, who constantly obsess over the fate of “Jewish values” in the much harassed Jewish state.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) wrote this to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January: “As American Jews, one of our greatest concerns is the well-being and security of Israel…We also care about our shared Jewish values and refugee heritage—a very human concern that reaches across borders and distances—and unifies us as a people. We therefore strongly urge the Israeli government to refrain from implementing this plan…Addressing this issue in a humane and responsible manner remains no easy task, but it is the Jewish and ethical thing to do…”

Giving illegal migrants, the majority of whom only entered Israel to seek a better economic future, $3,500 each and passage to a safe third country, as Israel has offered, is actually an ethical thing to do, especially if one considers the alternatives.

Whereas Greenblatt runs an American-Jewish organization, Netanyahu runs a country. As such, other considerations than those of Jewish ‘purists’ – geopolitical realities for example — come into play.

Jewish community leaders can afford to focus on ethics only while keeping their hands clean of actual decisions — which cannot be guided by ethics alone — because what they say and do generally has little consequence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has to deal with the harsh unpleasantness of actual reality and the potentially damaging consequences of his decisions for the entire state of Israel.

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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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When media treats Palestinian street theatre as real life - by Adam Levick

...The omission of this small detail gets to the heart of the double standards in coverage of the conflict: foreign journalists covering the region are so careful not to amplify or accept at face value the “hasbara” disseminated by the Israeli government or pro-Israel groups, yet seem perfectly willing to report (as real news) such staged protests and other forms of political street theatre.

Adam Levick..
UK Media Watch..
06 February '18..

The Independent did what it often does when reporting on Israeli removal of illegal, EU funded buildings in Area C (areas of the West Bank under full Israeli control): they illustrated the story with a photo designed to maximize the desired narrative of Palestinian dispossession.

The photo used for the article (Israel demolishes EU-funded Palestinian classrooms in occupied West Bank, Feb. 5) leaves the impression that the demolition of their classroom – funded by the EU in an attempt to create ‘facts on the ground‘ in the contentious E-1 area connecting Ma’ale Adumim with the rest of Jerusalem – forced Palestinians to learn while sitting outside amidst the rubble.

The photo caption used by the Indy also leaves this impression:

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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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