BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti: Israel should save us and then die - by Jonathan S. Tobin

The boycott movement’s coronavirus hypocrisy doesn’t obscure its anti-Semitism. Good news about Israel will never convince those who hate it to change their minds.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
JNS.org..
07 April '20

Advocates of Israel have always liked to joke that supporters of the BDS movement shouldn’t be selective about their efforts to convince the world to boycott the Jewish state. In particular, lately they have said that they are waiting to see what those who seek to isolate and destroy Israel will do if its scientists come up with a vaccine for the coronavirus. The answer shouldn’t provide any comfort for anyone, especially those who continue to believe that the Jewish state’s scientific advances and other contributions to the world will eventually somehow convince its enemies to give up their century-long war on Zionism.

This issue arose this week because the founder of the BDS movement has actually provided a response to the quips of those who have invited foes of Israel to extend their boycotts to the fruits of the advanced medical research and innovation produced by Israel.

In a video posted on Facebook by an anti-Israel group, BDS founder Omar Barghouti said this past weekend that if Israel finds a cure for cancer or for a virus, then there is no problem to cooperate with it.”

Barghouti, who fancies himself a humanitarian, went on to say that if Israel were to perform such services for humanity, “then saving lives is more important than anything else.”

The chutzpah and the hypocrisy contained in this statement are hard to fathom. Those who seek to stigmatize all Israelis as persons that decent societies should shun and who advocate boycotts not only of all Israeli products, but of its culture and academics ought to at least be consistent. Where do those who think that the world should treat Israelis—and their technology and ideas—as beyond the pale get the gall to say that there would be “no problem” in using them to avoid a deadly disease?

What Barghouti is basically saying is that Israel should continue its incredible creativity, and go on transforming medicine and technology for the betterment of humankind, while also consenting to the elimination of the one Jewish state on the planet.

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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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Israel, settlement activity and the hypocrisy of Sarah Leah Whitson of @HRW - by Eugene Kontorovich

The acceptance of settlement activity by supporters of sanctions on Israel suggest they know that the international law they claim to enforce against the Jewish state is not international law at all.

Elder of Ziyon..
14 January '20..

Since this is behind The Wall Street Journal's paywall, here is the entire article:

Hypocritical attacks on Israel are common, but Sarah Leah Whitson takes them to a new level. As Middle East and North Africa director of Human Rights Watch, she is one of the sharpest critics of the Jewish state’s presence in the West Bank, promoting boycotts and international prosecution for the supposed crimes of occupation and settlement. Yet elsewhere Ms. Whitson strongly supports settlements in occupied territories—suggesting that she and her colleagues don’t take their own legal claims against Israel seriously.

The settlements Ms. Whitson supports are in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area that was within the borders of post-Soviet Azerbaijan until 1994, when Armenia occupied the region after a protracted war. Since then, the Armenian leadership in Yerevan has actively encouraged the movement of settlers into the area. Many Armenians regard Karabakh as their historic homeland. But the United Nations, international courts and the U.S. all consider it occupied Azeri territory.

Ms. Whitson, who is from an Armenian family, served as master of ceremonies at a 2018 fundraiser for the Armenian National Committee of America, a pro-settler charity that views Karabakh as an “integral part of the Armenian homeland.” Even as Ms. Whitson led Human Rights Watch’s campaign to boycott Israeli economic activity in the West Bank, she took to Twitter to promote Armenian wines, including from the occupied territories.

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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-Israel Politics: Where human rights become acceptable collateral damage - by Evelyn Gordon

Palestinians’ rights matter when targeted by Israel, but not when targeted by the Palestinian Authority. And Israeli rights never matter, except when violated by Israel.

Evelyn Gordon..
JNS.org..
03 July '19..

Three seemingly unrelated incidents occurred last week, yet all share a common denominator: They exemplify the way anti-Israel politics has corrupted the concept of human rights.

Let’s start with best-selling British novelist Richard Zimler’s report that two British cultural organizations recently refused to host him for lectures about his new book, though he has lectured many times on previous books. “They asked me if you were Jewish, and the moment I said you were, they lost all interest,” he quoted his publicist as saying.

It’s not that these groups have anything against Jews per se. They simply feared that hosting a Jew would make them a target for anti-Israel protesters.

Zimler isn’t Israeli, has no relatives or investments in Israel and doesn’t write about Israel. His latest book is set in the Holy Land 2,000 years ago, but its storyline is Christian rather than Jewish (it’s called The Gospel According to Lazarus). So he wouldn’t seem an obvious target, given BDS apologists’ repeated claim that anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitic.

Unfortunately, much of the anti-Israel crowd hasn’t gotten that memo.

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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 Seemingly Eternal Pro-Palestinian Charade - by Aaron Kliegman

Pro-Palestinian activism is too often a charade, masquerading as an effort to protect human rights when, in reality, it is a campaign to attack Israel, the Jew among nations. But worry not: Ilhan Omar will surely talk about the Palestinians in Syria soon enough.

Aaron Kliegman..
Freebeacon.com..
08 March '19..

Freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) has tried to couch her recent anti-Semitic comments as legitimate criticism of the Israeli government. Omar's progressive colleagues in Congress have done the same, saying that charges of anti-Semitism are meant to stifle debate about Israel. This defense is of course absurd: accusing the world's only Jewish state of cosmic evil and judging it by a standard different from that applied to all other countries are, historically, the two key features of anti-Semitism. But push aside the facts for a moment and assume their defense is serious. Why do Omar and like-minded progressives criticize Israel so often? Why do they oppose the Jewish state so reflexively, with such visceral hatred? Many of them justify their activism as support for the rights of the weak and oppressed Palestinians, who, they argue, suffer under Israel's rule. In other words, Omar and her allies say they largely oppose Israel because they are pro-Palestinian. The truth, however, is that many of these progressive voices in the media and on college campuses—and increasingly in Congress—who claim to be pro-Palestinian do not actually care about Palestinian rights—unless of course they can attack Israel.

This week, amid the current national uproar over Omar's anti-Semitic comments, and over the Democratic Party's shameful failure to condemn them, it is curious that Omar and her defenders have hardly mentioned the Palestinians. Yes, a few lawmakers included brief nods to the Palestinians in statements, but their overwhelming energy was devoted to justifying Omar's use of anti-Semitic canards—including the charge that Jewish Americans put Israel's interests above America's—as legitimate criticism of the Jewish state.

Meanwhile, halfway around the world on Thursday, when House Democrats pushed a resolution obfuscating Omar's anti-Semitism, dozens of displaced Palestinians who were forcibly deported and now live in horrid conditions wrote emails crying out for help, expressing concern about their children's futures. "What monsters those Israelis are!" supporters of Omar might say. But, to their great inconvenience, it turns out that Israel has nothing to do with these suffering Palestinians. In fact, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad displaced these refugees from southern Damascus, and they are now "struggling for survival in impoverished refugee camps" in northern Syria, according to the London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, a human rights watchdog that received emails from the Palestinians. Where is the outcry from pro-Palestinian activists, in the West or elsewhere?

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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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Academics’ Letter in the Guardian Exposes BDS Hypocrisy - by Simon Plosker

...So how is it possible to be “committed to academic freedom” as stated in the most recent letter, yet support an academic boycott of Israel? How is it possible to support Lara Alqasem’s right to study in a country that they believe has no rights? Or is it simply gross hypocrisy?

Simon Plosker..
Honest Reporting..
11 October '18..

There is nothing wrong with debating the Israeli policy that has seen the refusal to allow entry for Lara Alqasem, an American student BDS activist, to study at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. There has even been criticism from Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Michael Oren, as well as pro-Israel columnists Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss in the New York Times.

There is something particularly strange, however, about a letter in The Guardian signed by more than 300 academics calling on the Israeli authorities to permit Alqasem to enter Israel and pursue her studies.

The letter says:

Denying entry to foreign students based on political beliefs or ethnic heritage is an attack on academic freedom. As professors who are committed to academic freedom, and as humans who reject all forms of racial profiling, we are calling on the Israeli authorities to permit Lara Alqasem to enter Israel and pursue her studies.

While it might be possible to trawl through the list of signatories to ascertain their motives for adding their support to the letter, it’s entirely possible that most are motivated not by a hatred of Israel but by genuine concerns for academic freedom.

“Committed to academic freedom”?

There are, however, some standout names including:

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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 Palestinians assault women journalists …the world yawns - by Stephen M. Flatow

Everybody who says that a Palestinian state should be set up next to Israel needs to answer these questions: Do you really want to establish another dictatorship where women will be savagely mistreated? And how likely is it that such a barbaric regime will live in peace with its neighbors?

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
04 July '18..

Nothing exposes the incredible hypocrisy of Israel’s critics more than their response to the treatment of Palestinian Arab women.

All the human-rights organizations and Jewish “peace” activists who claim to care about women’s rights howl in outrage if an Israeli policeman so much as raises his voice at a Palestinian woman protester. But when a Palestinian Authority security officer raises his baton and brutally beats a Palestinian women protester, they remain silent.

Now take it a step further. If an Israeli policeman is rude to a Palestinian journalist, all the critics erupt in fury. But if a Palestinian policeman assaults a Palestinian journalist, not a word.

And that brings us to the latest burst of two-facedness: Palestinian security men savagely beating Palestinian women journalists in recent days, and all the international women’s groups and peace groups sitting in silence.

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

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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US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman is unfairly attacked, again - by Stephen M. Flatow

Once again, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has spoken simple words of truth, and once again he’s under attack from the Palestinian Authority and the Jewish left.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
13 February '18..

Once again, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman has spoken simple words of truth, and once again he’s under attack from the Palestinian Authority and the Jewish left. It seems that having a thick skin is one of the most important qualifications for serving as America’s ambassador to Israel.

Following a Palestinian terrorist’s fatal stabbing of Rabbi Itamar Ben Gal—a father of four young children—Friedman tweeted, “20 years ago I gave an ambulance to Har Bracha hoping it would be used to deliver healthy babies. Instead, a man from Har Bracha was just murdered by a terrorist, leaving behind a wife and four children. Palestinian ‘leaders’ have praised the killer.”

The news that Friedman donated an ambulance to Har Bracha infuriated Gideon Levy, a veteran columnist for the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who wrote an article mockingly (if awkwardly) titled, “U.S. Ambassador to Israel’s Ambulance.”

When, you might wonder, can donating an ambulance be problematic?

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

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 10 most insane UN anti-Israel actions of 2017 (there could've been more) - by Hillel Neuer

The list you’ve all been waiting for. While there were a myriad of other bona fide anti-Israel resolutions, reports and statements produced in 2017 by U.N. agencies and officials, I regret that I could only include ten.

Hillel Neuer..
Times of Israel..
21 December '17..

10. The U.N.’s Beirut-based agency of 18 Arab states published a report accusing Israel of “Apartheid.”

In response, UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer took the floor to ask Algeria, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and the others, a simple question: “Where are your Jews?” For once, the room was silenced. UN Watch’s speech went viral on the Internet, with the video viewed 5 million times worldwide.

9. The U.N. women’s rights commission condemned Israel as the world’s only violator of women’s rights. Real abusers of women’s rights, such as Iran, Yemen, and Afghanistan, were ignored.

The next month, UN Watch exposed the U.N.’s election of Saudi Arabia to this same women’s rights commission—and the fact that at least five EU states voted for the Saudis. The story went viral, and created a major scandal in Belgium, where the prime minister eventually admitted their vote and apologized, and sparked controversies in Ireland, Norway and Sweden.

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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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Europe's War Against the Jewish State - by Caroline Glick

...During his meeting Sunday with Netanyahu, Macron rejected those suggestions. And that makes sense. Because even if he wanted to supplant the Americans, there is no chance he would succeed. Israel will never permit the Europeans to mediate anything. Their war against Israel internationally and inside of Israel itself has achieved one clear result. The Europeans have convinced Israelis not to trust them, not to admire them, and not to consider them friends.

Caroline Glick..
Our World/Opinion/JPost..
12 December '17..
Link: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Our-worldEuropes-war-against-the-Jewish-state-517771

Europe is the epicenter of the political war against Israel. Europe fights Israel on the streets of Europe. Europe fights Israel in the corridors of power in Brussels, other Western European capitals and the UN. Europe fights Israel in Israel itself.

Europe’s war against Israel is a passive-aggressive campaign fought and denied simultaneously. But in recent years, the mask has fallen over and over again.

In the days that have passed since US President Donald Trump’s dramatic announcement that the US recognizes that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and is beginning to take concrete steps to move its embassy to the city, Europe’s war against Israel has again become impossible to deny or ignore. Europe’s response to Trump’s announcement has been extreme, violent and more outspoken than the response of the Arab world.

The EU-funded Palestinian Authority reacted to Trump’s move by exhorting its subjects to riot and attack Israelis.

Sunday, Yassin Abu el-Qura heeded his call. Qura stabbed Asher Elmalich in the heart and critically wounded him. Elmalich was a security guard at Jerusalem’s central bus station.

According to Channel 2, Qura is a member of a prominent family of Fatah members with close ties to the PA and its EU- and US-funded and trained security forces. His father is the commander of one of the security forces in Salfit, in Samaria. Two of his brothers are also PA security officers.

Around the same time Qura was stabbing Elmalich, the British government announced it was providing the PA with 20 million pounds in supplemental budgetary funding.

Qura’s attack was notable because it took place against the backdrop of lackluster attendance at PA-organized protests. As former US Middle East mediator Aaron David Miller tweeted on Sunday, the low attendance at these demonstrations, like the low attendance at anti-US and anti-Israel demonstrations in the Arab world is an “indication of how much the region has changed [in recent years] and the loss of centrality of [the] Palestinian issue. [The] Palestinian street is exhausted; the Arab street has disappeared.”

But while the Arab street was indifferent to Trump’s declaration, the European street went berserk. Thousands of protesters assembled in London and Paris, in Berlin and Stockholm. They burned Israeli flags and called for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews.

A World That Throws Hissy Fits Over Jerusalem - by Judith Bergman

...That is what it apparently takes to get Muslims in the West to demonstrate. Not the rape and sexual enslavement of thousands of Yazidi children and women by Muslims fighting for ISIS in Syria and Iraq, while their husbands and fathers were tortured and murdered; Not the torture, murder and general oppression of Christians in the Middle East; Not even the murder of their own Muslim brethren in the Middle East or elsewhere. No, none of these affects them.

Judith Bergman..
MIDA.org.il..
10 December '17..

President Donald Trump’s acknowledgment of the reality of the status of Jerusalem – namely that it is the capital of Israel and has been such for 3,000 years – shone a light of truth on more than just the realities of the region.

It also dramatically illuminated the true colors of much of the world community, whose members reacted to the speech with hysterical hissy fits unworthy of preschoolers. It was especially revealing of the member states of the European Union that never cease to babble on about ‘human rights’, yet always stop short of including the rights of the Jewish people.

The speech naturally became an excuse for the adherents of the ‘religion of peace’ to show just how peaceful they really are. Muslims across Europe turned out to demonstrate against the acknowledgment of a contemporary and historical fact. Interestingly enough, this was less so in Israel, to the great disappointment of the international media, which outnumbered the actual Arab rioters.

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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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Israel Slanderer and Boycott Advocate Waits for Israeli Lung Transplant - by Mordechai Sones

'Those who choose to boycott the State of Israel should show some self-respect and boycott all the services of the State of Israel.'

Mordechai Sones..
Shurat Hadin/Israel Law Center..
Link: http://israellawcenter.org/israel-slanderer-waits-for-israeli-lung-transplant/

Legal human rights organization Shurat Hadin, joined by 50 IDF reserve officers and soldiers, wrote to the Health Ministry and the National Transplant Center requesting that PA diplomat Saeb Erekat be removed from the waiting list for transplants in Israel.

About 50 soldiers and officers who fought in Operation Defensive Shield and who hold organ donor cards today petitioned the Health Ministry and the National Transplant Center to immediately remove Saeb Erekat from the list of transplants in Israel, due to the fact that Erekat has repeatedly slandered IDF soldiers, called for the boycott of the State of Israel, campaigned for sanctions against it, and led the BDS movement to isolate and harm the State of Israel.

Yesterday the media reported that an application had been filed on behalf of Saeb Erekat, a senior PA official, for a lung transplant in Israel.

In the wake of Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and the reserve soldiers battle in Jenin in which 13 IDF soldiers were killed, a false propaganda film by director Muhammad Bakri, entitled Jenin Jenin, was released. The film purports to provide prima facie evidence of war crimes committed by the IDF in Jenin which turned out to be wholly spurious, as was decided by the Central District Court.

Erekat took a large part in disseminating the blood libel embodied in the film, which portrayed the story as if a massacre took place in Jenin when noting of the sort occured. Israel lost 13 soldiers in the city which it entered after dropping warnings from the air telling the residents to leave and then refraining from bombing from the air to prevent civilian deaths.. Erekat appeared at the time in the various media, mainly on foreign television channels, and disseminated the lie of the massacre.

In addition, in November 2010, Erekat wrote a letter praising the planner of then Minister Rechavam Ze'evi's assassination, and in December 2015 he paid a condolence visit to another family whose son carried out a shooting attack against IDF forces.

In addition, Erekat is an enthusiastic supporter of the boycott movement against Israel - BDS. He has visited EU representatives in the past because they did not support BDS, and asserted that all their support for the two-state solution is meaningless if they do not support the boycott of Israel.

Sometimes, reality clashes with the fantasy world of Hollywood - by Stephen M. Flatow

...The victim was hospitalized with head wounds. Will the injuries have any permanent effects? Will his vision or hearing be damaged? Will he a bear an unsightly scar across his face? We’ll probably never know. The international news media lost interest in the story as soon as they realized there was no way to blame the Israeli driver. And, of course, so did Richard Gere.

Stephen M. Flatow..
Jewishpress.com..
17 April '17..
Link: http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/richard-gere-was-right/2017/04/16/

Actor Richard Gere sparked controversy last month when he said after a visit to Hebron that the Arab-Jewish situation there reminds him of the American “Old South.”

Gere was right – only not quite in the way he intended.

“It’s exactly like what the Old South was in America,” Gere remarked as he looked around the streets of Hebron. “Blacks knew where they could go, they could drink from that fountain, they couldn’t go over there, they couldn’t eat in that place. It was well understood. You didn’t cross it or you’d get your head beat in or lynched.”

Wouldn’t you know it, just a few days later, somebody from the “wrong race” accidentally crossed into place he wasn’t “supposed” to go, and sure enough he – to use Gere’s terminology – “got his head beat in” and was nearly “lynched.”

What a remarkable coincidence. So soon after Gere proclaimed his dire warning, it came true. You would think Gere would have immediately issued a loud declaration about how events have proven him right. Instead, he was silent.

The explanation for Gere’s odd silence is simple and sad.

While Gere was warning about Jewish mobs he believed were ready to “lynch” Arabs, what actually happened was that the mob in a suburb of Hebron consisted of Palestinian Arabs, and the target of the near-lynching was a Jew.

Sometimes, reality clashes with the fantasy world of Hollywood.

Gere’s stunningly pro-Palestinian hypocrisy - by Stephen M. Flatow

...It’s simple. A corrupt politician who does what Gere wants on the diplomatic front (i.e. gives in to the Palestinians) is a swell guy. A politician who doesn’t surrender to the Palestinians is a rotten scoundrel. The funny thing is that Gere is so full of himself that he didn’t even realize that what he was saying represents the grossest form of hypocrisy. I guess when you’re “impossibly good-looking,” you can get away with anything.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
16 March '17..

Diplomats never pretend to be experts on acting, yet for some reason actors constantly present themselves as experts on international affairs. Hollywood award ceremonies are now dominated by awardees delivering pretentious political diatribes.

The latest presumed fount of wisdom is Richard Gere, who visited Israel last week to promote a film in which he plays a character modeled on the American Jewish businessman from whom Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert accepted large bribes.

In an interview with Haaretz, Gere rattled off all the shallow slogans about Israel that he reads in The New York Times. “Obviously, this occupation is destroying everyone,” he proclaimed, even though Israel stopped “occupying” 98 percent of the Palestinians 22 years ago. “Settlements are such an absurd provocation,” he announced, even though settlements take up less than 2 percent of the Judea and Samaria territories. Jewish settlements are “certainly in the international sense, completely illegal,” declared the actor, who obviously knows nothing about international law, under which the settlements are, in fact, completely legal.

Naturally, no Hollywood monologue about the Middle East would be complete without a dose of moral equivalency.

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

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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Hypocrisy, Zoabi and 180 of her adoring faithful in Richmond - by David Collier

...every banner that gets waved over this cause, every dollar that gets spent, every march that is made, is effort that is missing from a far worthier, far more honest cause. All those fools that stood and applauded this speech, that spend their time helping the Arabs of Gaza and Ramallah to waste another generation on a pointless conflict. Those that actually believe Zoabi needs their help. These people have had their attention taken away from people elsewhere who really do need their help.

David Collier..
Across the Great Divide..
22 January '17..

22 January 2017. I am at an event organised by the Richmond Palestine Solidarity Campaign. A big crowd, perhaps 180, have gathered to hear Israeli Arab member of the Knesset Haneen Zoabi speak. The room is full, but the demographic breakdown is simple. A large majority are white, British and over 55. It is the typical PSC crowd.

Haneen Zoabi had received a standing ovation at the PSC annual general meeting just two days before, she receives one here before she has even spoken. I am in the presence of PSC royalty.

The situation with the Arabs of Israel is complex. If Zoabi was here to fight for the Israeli Arab citizens, she would have my attention. If her aim was to improve the living standards, education and employment prospects of those who voted her into power, she would have my support. If the real goal was to reduce the inequality that minorities often experience, I’d wave a flag in her name. But Zoabi is not here to represent the needs of Israel’s minorities, she is here to perpetuate the external conflict.

When speaking of the democratic freedoms of a minority group Zoabi comments thus: “We want the opposite. Give us our land back. Give us our homeland back. Give us our people back. We don’t want to scream, we don’t need this freedom of expression”. This, as the entire Middle East burns in radical Islamic bush fires around her.

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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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J Street, hypocrisy and Holocaust analogies: you can’t have it both ways - by Stephen M. Flatow

...So pardon me if I'm not impressed by J Street's indignation about David Friedman. When it consistently speaks out against Holocaust analogies—including those made by its executive committee member, Aaron Rice; its donor, George Soros; and its endorsee, Keith Ellison—then J Street might be taken a little more seriously. But I’m not going to hold my breath.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
21 December '16..

J Street and like-minded groups are denouncing Donald Trump’s ambassador-designate to Israel, David Friedman, over a comment Friedman once made comparing Jewish advocates of the Palestinian cause to Jews who collaborated with the Nazis.

I'm not particularly comfortable with Holocaust analogies. But I'm also not particularly comfortable with hypocrisy. In a fundraising email this week, J Street denounced Friedman's "horrifically offensive rhetoric." Yet just days ago, the same J Street publicly endorsed a candidate for the chairmanship of the Democratic Party who compared President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), who is seeking to head the Democratic National Committee, made his Hitler remark in 2007, so J Street can't dismiss it as something he said when he was in college. And Ellison's remark was videotaped, so nobody can claim it was edited or taken out of context.

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

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 women's rights would have harmed J Street's Palestinian statehood campaign - by Stephen M. Flatow

...Yet, just as J Street refused for two years to speak out about the mistreatment of a Jewish woman on its staff, it has refused to speak out about the mistreatment of Palestinian women by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
03 November '16..

J Street's controversial response to the sexual harassment of one of its staff members raises questions as to whether its attitude toward women's rights is compromised by its political goals.

After J Street learned, in 2014, that one of its staff members had been sexually harassed, it terminated its relationship with the harasser, Israeli journalist and Palestinian state advocate, Ari Shavit. But J Street has now admitted that it never said a word about Shavit's behavior to the other Jewish groups that have been organizing Shavit's speeches around the country.

J Street's two-year silence on the abuse of an American Jewish woman was wrong. J Street's silence about the abuse of Palestinian women is wrong, too, and both situations may well be related.

J Street's central mission has been to bring about creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. One of the reasons many Israelis are skeptical about that proposal is that "Palestine" would be a brutal totalitarian state. Israelis understand that brutal totalitarian states often invade neighboring countries.

If Israelis believed a Palestinian state would be a tolerant, pluralistic, democratic state, where the rights of minorities and women were protected, creating such a state would seem a lot less threatening to Israel.

So, yes, Palestinian women's rights matter. They matter because it's a question of justice and equality. And they matter because the issue reveals a lot about what kind of neighbor a Palestinian state would be.

Yet, just as J Street refused for two years to speak out about the mistreatment of a Jewish woman on its staff, it has refused to speak out about the mistreatment of Palestinian women by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

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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.

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. Would forcing Jews out of Judea and Samaria be ethnic cleansing? - by Elder of Ziyon

...Applying these standards to Judea and Samaria, Human Rights Watch would have to admit that the Jews who moved there voluntarily and built their own homes - which is nearly all of them - have the right to stay in their homes since there is no other claimant. But being the hypocrites that they are, Human Rights Watch would never, ever say this about Jews in Judea.

Elder of Ziyon..
11 September '16..

Leftist Israelis and many Westerners are upset an Binyain Netanyahu's video where he said that a Palestinian state that would include no Jews in Judea and Samaria would be practicing ethnic cleansing.



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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 Israel is not involved, assaults on freedom of the media and expression do not interest them

One might wonder if the human rights groups neglect these abuses because of their continued obsession with destroying Israel.

Ahmed Said (left) and Mahmoud Abu Awwad (right)
are two journalists living in the Gaza Strip who
were recently arrested by Hamas security forces.

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
23 August '16..

Palestinian journalists are at the top of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas hit-list in the crackdown occurring alongside preparations for the Palestinian local and municipal elections, scheduled for October 8.

The crackdown is part of an ongoing campaign by the two rival parties to silence critics in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Neither Hamas nor the PA tolerates a free and independent media -- especially on the eve of a crucial election that could have far-reaching political implications in the Palestinian arena.

A Hamas victory in the upcoming elections would be catastrophic for President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority. Such an electoral outcome would be tantamount to a vote of no-confidence in their policies and performance.

Hamas, for its part, is investing a huge amount of resources in the election campaign, in hopes that the results would further boost its standing among Palestinians. Hamas fears that a defeat would undermine its power in the Gaza Strip and pave the way for its collapse.

As the election campaign heats up, it is clear that Hamas and the PA agree on one thing: intensifying their repressive measures against Palestinian journalists.

This media crackdown is essentially ignored by international human rights organizations. Why? One reason is that when Israel is not involved, assaults on freedom of the media and expression do not interest them.

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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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