No surprise but BBC fails to produce follow-up reporting on Gaza power story - by Hadar Sela

...Despite its vigorous promotion of the story between April and September 2017 – which not infrequently led audiences to mistakenly believe that the crisis was connected to Israeli counter-terrorism measures – the BBC has not produced any follow-up reporting informing audiences of the developments in the story.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
23 January '18..

Back in November 2017 we noted that BBC reporting on the electricity shortages in the Gaza Strip had come to an abrupt halt.

“When the long-running electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip was exacerbated by the Palestinian Authority’s decision to cut payments for electricity supplied to the territory in April of this year, BBC audiences saw coverage of that topic (albeit often lacking accurate background and context) on a variety of BBC platforms. […]

After Hamas and Fatah announced their latest ‘reconciliation’ in mid-September, BBC coverage of the electricity crisis in the Gaza Strip suddenly waned and no further reporting on the topic has since appeared.

However, if BBC audiences perhaps assumed that reason for that dramatic drop in coverage is that the Hamas-Fatah ‘unity deal’ (which was reported profusely and enthusiastically by the BBC) has solved the long-standing crisis, they would be mistaken – as the Times of Israel reports.”

Just as those getting their news from the BBC were told nothing of the Palestinian Authority’s continued refusal to renew payment for the electricity supplied by Israel to the Gaza Strip after the latest Hamas-Fatah ‘unity deal’ was announced in September 2017, they also saw no reporting on the reversal of that decision at the beginning of January 2018.

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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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Where one raid tells all you need to know about Israel’s predicament - by Stephen M. Flatow

You wouldn’t think that one isolated Israeli counter-terror raid could explode every major myth about Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian Arabs. But last week’s raid in Jenin came pretty close to doing just that.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
22 January '18..

You wouldn’t think that one isolated Israeli counter-terror raid could explode every major myth about Israel’s conflict with the Palestinian Arabs. But last week’s raid in Jenin came pretty close to doing just that.

Overnight Jan. 17, Israeli commandos entered the city of Jenin in search of two particular Arab terrorists. When the operation was over a few hours later, the Israeli forces withdrew.

Wait! The Israelis withdrew? But isn’t Israel “occupying” the Palestinians? That’s what J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace are always telling us. Just this week, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the Union for Reform Judaism, wrote that Israel is “ruling over millions of Palestinians.”

I guess Rabbi Jacobs hasn’t been to Jenin lately. In fact, I would imagine he hasn’t been there since at least 1995. That was the year Israel withdrew all its forces from the city (and the other areas where 98 percent of Palestinians reside) and a new ruler took over: the Palestinian Authority (PA). Counter-terror raids like the one in Jenin are the only occasions on which Israeli forces enter PA-ruled cities.

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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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Israel in Trump’s 1st Year – Steering Toward Apotheosis - by Daniel Seaman

Trump turned the Middle East upside down to the appall of experts and liberals just by adding the element of common sense: support allies, punish violators of trust. Something not tried in 25 years

Daniel Seaman..
MiDA..
22 January '18..
Link: http://en.mida.org.il/2018/01/22/israel-trumps-first-year-steering-toward-apotheosis/

In one year, Donald Trump has done more for the State of Israel and for resolving the Middle East conflict than Barak Obama or any previous president for that matter, had done in the past 50 years.

When Obama left office after eight years as President of the United States, the Jewish People in the State of Israel were at their most powerful, secure and prosperous position ever. This was, without a doubt, a direct consequence of his presidency. It was not his intention though. By no means at all.

Obama sought to change the paradigm in the Middle East. He had respect for Islam and was concerned with appeasing Arab grievances. His famous speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009 offered a new beginning with Muslims around the world, based upon mutual interest and mutual respect. More importantly, upon shared common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

When the Arab Spring broke out, whether or not as a result of Obama’s policies, it brought new issues to the fore. Issues that Obama had little interest in, including how to build support for fledgling democratic transitions. His policy instead was to reshape and redesign the balance of power and the political equation in the Middle East. He abandoned long time American friends and betrayed steadfast allies while strengthening extremists and the extreme branch of Islam and sought to marginalize Israel. By empowering a corrupt and lethal Shi’a theocracy in Iran, he meddled in a 1400 year war that has been going on in the Islamic world, and literally stirred the hornet’s nest.

This proved to be a mistake of, well… biblical proportions.

The catastrophic failure of Obama’s foreign policy and colossal misunderstanding of the Arab world, combined with the sheer arrogance of his progressive ideology, proved detrimental to the stability of Arab regimes throughout the Middle East. This failure cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Iran and most of all, Syria of course.

The terrible misery that was created led to the mass migration of Arabs from these collapsing countries and the swamping of Europe. Instead of inducing “Hope” he sowed agony and despair.

Whereas Obama pandered to Muslim tyrants, the animosity he felt towards the elected leader of Israel was no secret. Members of his administration flaunted it. The Iranian deal was the biggest example but the final act was the UN Security Council vote on settlements at the twilight of his term, which he hoped would weaken Israel’s position in any future peace talks.

Making terrorists pay —unless they’re Palestinian Arabs - by Stephen M. Flatow

A terrorist attack was scrubbed clean at JTA. The attempted murderer was called a "man" and the firebomb attack at an IDF jeep in which he tried to burn Jewish soldiers to death termed a "clash."

Stephen M. Flatow..
Israelnationalnews.com..
22 January '18..
Link: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/21588

The headline was enough to alarm anyone who has a heart: “Israel’s Army Wants a Dead Palestinian Man’s Family to Pay for the Jeep That Crushed Him,” the Jewish Telegraphic Agency announced last week.

Those cruel Israelis! Here an Israeli army jeep goes and “crushes” an apparently innocent “Palestinian man,” and the Israelis have the nerve to demand a pound of flesh from his family, too. The cruelty! The chutzpah! It’s enough to make you want to sell your Israel Bonds.

Until that, is, you get to the third paragraph of the JTA article. Then you discover that there’s more to the story than the headline indicated. A lot more.

The headline told us only that he was a “Palestinian Man.” Not a terrorist. Not an attacker. “Palestinian Man” clearly suggests that he was an innocent Palestinian civilian.

But way down in the third paragraph, we discover that a Palestinian Arab terrorist named Abdullah Ghneimat, age 22, threw a firebomb at an Israeli jeep. To put it another way, Ghneimat attempted to burn some Jews to death.

So, the JTA’s headline should have read “Palestinian Terrorist.” Or “Palestinian Firebomber.” Or “Palestinian Attacker.” In other words, language that would have accurately described what he was doing. That one little word changes the entire story. Ghneimat was not the victim. He was the aggressor. He was an attempted murderer.

After throwing the firebomb, Ghneimat ran. The Israeli Army jeep pursued him. During the chase, the jeep “flipped over a wall,” according the article. Meaning that the Israeli soldiers were almost killed. Fortunately, the hand of justice intervened. The would-be murderer was killed instead of his intended victims.

Now comes the chutzpah—and it’s not Israeli chutzpah.

Questioning Mahmoud Abbas’ Historical Revisionism - by Pesach Benson

I’m sure that there are plenty more questions that I haven’t thought of. So — are any journalists out there looking for a story?

Pesach Benson..
Algemeiner.com..
21 January '18..

One of the more overlooked issues raised by Mahmoud Abbas’ recent speech was a claim that the Palestinians are Canaanites, whose presence in the Holy Land predates the arrival of Abraham:

We shall stay here regardless of the occupation and the settlements. We shall not leave this country. This is our country. This has been our land since the days of the Canaanites. By the way, our Canaanite forefathers. … The Torah says … and I do not want to go into history or geography… from the days of the Canaanites and to this day, [our forefathers] have not left this land. They were here before our patriarch Abraham. We were. Since before our patriarch Abraham.

Abbas reiterated this claim on Wednesday. The forum was Cairo’s Al-Azhar University, which is regarded as Sunni Islam’s foremost institution of higher learning.

Religion plays a major part in the Israeli and Palestinian narratives, but it’s rare to see the foreign press take a deeper look at these beliefs and their impact on the conflict.

So how do Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims and Christians feel about claims that:

• The Palestinians are descendants of Abraham.
• The Palestinians are descendants of Canaanites (and Natufians).
• The Palestinians predated the Canaanites.
• Jesus was a Palestinian.
• A Jewish temple never existed on the Temple Mount.

Are Jewish, Muslim and Christian leaders willing to explain the theological and political impact of these assertions? And — on a different level — if one’s religious belief can’t be reconciled with a national narrative, what does that say about individual identity? I don’t have any answers.

But there are plenty of questions.

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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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What exactly is the Palestinian strategy without negotiations? - by Elder of Ziyon

...The Arab states have woken up years ago to the fact that their investments in the Palestinian enterprise has been a waste of money. Their support since then has been vocal and symbolic, but not very concrete. America is reaching the same conclusion. For the PA to bet that the EU will not do the same thing in the next few years is a hell of a gamble.

Elder of Ziyon..
21 January '18..

The Palestinian leadership has made it clear that they will not accept any United States involvement in the peace process.

Obviously, Israel isn't going to not accept any process that does not involve the United States.

Which means that the Palestinian Arab have given up on negotiations.

So what are they planning to do?

Mahmoud Aloul, Fatah Deputy President, gives an interview that is reproduced in the Fatah Facebook page and Al Quds. And while he didn't go into any specifics, it looks like the Palestinians are pretty much continuing with their strategy of the past few years.

Aloul says that the Palestinian leadership has reviewed the actions of all previous US administrations, and decided that all of them - Obama included - were really pro-Israel and had no interest in helping the Palestinians get a state.

Delusion continues to be official Palestinian policy.

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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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This is How to Create the Next Ahed Tamimi - by Sheri Oz

...How many kids in the Palestinian Authority are being trained today to be the next Ahed Tamimi? After all, martyr celebrity status is something to covet, is it not?

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
21 January '18..

We do not yet know the name of this child. If the father keeps up his training, then we will know his name one day. This kid needs to get over his innocence. Then he will know how he really should behave around Israeli soldiers. If his father is lucky, he will be the next Ahed Tamimi.



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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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Shutting down media critics in Jordan isn't quite the challenge it might seem to be - by Arnold Roth

...If you're not already familiar with Jordan Media Institute (and especially if you're a member of Vice President Pence's entourage making its way to Jordan as we write these words), here's a short list of some posts we blogged about it - and by extension about the unique interplay of extreme violence and professional aspiration that we think the school represents... We wrote these right after discovering that the students at this prestigious institution had declared Ahlam Tamimi, the Hamas agent who killed our daughter Malki, masterminded the Sbarro massacre in 2001 and now a free citizen of Jordan, as their role-model.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
20 January '18..

As a large delegation of American officials headed by Vice President Mike Pence makes its way in the coming hours to Jordan, we're thinking about what goes on over there. What do people think in Jordan? How free they are to express themselves? And why isn't this talked about more?

They're important questions at multiple levels. Jordan is for all practical purposes the largest and most important of the three Palestinian Arab entities. The other two of course are the almost-state of Palestine, the one run by the Mahmoud Abbas clique from Ramallah; and the unspeakably monstrous Hamas polity operating mainly, but not only, from the Gaza Strip.

It's hard to know what Jordanians think or believe because they have one of the most tightly controlled news reporting industries in the world. And by we mean, the power exercised by the king and those who are with him.

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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 implications of unmasking Abbas are clear beyond any doubt - by Daniel Krygier

Time has come to tell the PLO that the game is up, they lost and are in no position to demand anything from anyone. Accepting defeat could be the best thing for the Arabs of the PA

Daniel Krygier..
MiDA..
19 January '18..
Link: http://en.mida.org.il/2018/01/19/trump-dropped-truth-bomb-middle-east/

Throughout history, nations and people knew when they were winning and when they were losing. Despite suffering spectacular failures and chronic defeat, Arab leaders in general, and the PLO leadership in particular, pretend as if they are the victors setting demands.

Can you imagine Hitler during the dying days of his Nazi empire, issuing threats and demands to the Allied victors from his Berlin bunker? Would the defeated Napoleon issue threatening demands to the victorious British Duke of Wellington in Waterloo? Of course not. Even fanatics like Hitler knew when the game was over.

Israel’s Muslim Arab enemies and their allies stand out as the only aggressors in human history that become more aggressive and threatening the more they lose.

After failing to prevent Israel’s rebirth in 1948, the Arabs and their allies have spent the past 70 years trying to destroy the Jewish state through military means, terrorism, boycotts, political propaganda, historical revisionism, and legal warfare through the UN and other international organizations. All attempts have failed. While facing many unresolved challenges, Israel thrives like never before.

Israel’s legendary Foreign Minister Abba Eban eloquently put this anomaly in perspective after Israel’s victory over the Arab states in the Six Day War in 1967:

“I think that this is the first war in history that on the morrow the victors sued for peace and the vanquished called for unconditional surrender.”

The US was not popular in post-1945 Japan. However, imperial Japan, which was immensely more powerful than the Arabs were, knew when the game was up and realized that it was in no position to demand anything from the victorious Americans.

The Terrorism Jobs Program: Pampering the Palestinians Must End - by Nonie Darwish

...Palestinians today complain that the world no longer cares, and that is very likely true. The world has other, more urgent problems to worry about -- such as being invaded or by their neighbors or the future to the region of nuclear proliferation. It is high time for the world to demand that Palestinians be absorbed into the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), as are all other refugees, and assimilated wherever they may be, to end this fraudulent "right of return" saga. The longer financial aid and the pampering of Palestinians continue as an "insurance policy" ostensibly to prevent terrorism, the longer the suffering, dependence, terror and conflict will go on. It is time for Palestinians to learn that threatening terror is not a way to earn a living.

Nonie Darwish..
Gatestone Institute..
16 January '18..

A British woman, Kay Wilson, apparently realized that when a Palestinian terrorist "plunged a knife into her chest", left her for dead and then murdered her friend, it was British taxpayers who had paid for it.

"Is the UK funding the terrorists who tried to murder me?", she asked.

Yes, it is. "According to data collected by Israel's Defense Ministry, the PA spent a total of 1.237 billion shekels ($358 million), or about 7% of the PA's total annual budget, on terrorist stipends last year."

International payments to Palestinians that are used to pay terrorists in jail, as well as their families, serve both as a "reward for bad behavior" and also as a powerful incentive for youths to become terrorists.

They are a jobs program.

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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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Can you imagine? The BBC’s narrative on ‘East Jerusalem’ omits relevant context - by Hadar Sela

...Despite its public purpose obligation to provide audiences with “impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them” the BBC has not produced any content relating to the failure of the agreement that the Palestinians signed over two decades ago to guarantee freedom of access for Jews to religious sites under the control of the Palestinian Authority and to safeguard those sites. However, the BBC’s copious multi-platform amplification of the simplistic narrative according to which a Palestinian capital in ‘East Jerusalem’ is the “formula for peace” continues apace.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
19 January '18..

Although the BBC has been telling its audiences that “the Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state” for many years, since the US president’s announcement of recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on December 6th 2017 that messaging has been promoted on a variety of BBC platforms on an almost daily basis.

BBC portrayals of the topic usually include the narrative seen in a frequently reused backgrounder on Jerusalem produced by Yolande Knell in which audiences were led to believe that a Palestinian capital in “east Jerusalem” is an already agreed component of the two-state solution rather than a topic to be discussed in final status negotiations.

“Of course, Palestinians see things starkly differently. They want east Jerusalem as their capital.

And that’s part of the long-standing international formula for peace here, known as the “two-state solution”.

Knell also portrayed the two-state solution in terms that dovetail with the PLO’s interpretation of that term.

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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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Providing Cover for Palestinian Antisemitism at the Washington Post - by Sean Durns

...The Washington Post is failing to provide readers with the full story. If, as their masthead proclaims, “democracy dies in darkness,” good reporting dies from one-sided omissions and seemingly purposeful distortions.

Sean Durns..
Algemeiner.com..
18 January '18..

The Washington Post is treating antisemites as credible sources — and purposefully omitting hate-filled remarks by Palestinian leaders.

On January 14, 2018, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas gave a two-hour harangue before the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Central Council. Not for the first time, the president of the PA — bound by the Oslo Accords to recognize the Jewish nation of Israel — denied the Jewish people’s connection to their ancestral homeland. And — also not for the first time — The Washington Post gave Abbas cover.

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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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Abbas's Big Bluff - Again - by Bassam Tawil

...Abbas knows that the day he stops working with Israel is the day Hamas will "eat him for breakfast" and take over the West Bank. Abbas is well aware that he is in power in the West Bank thanks to the presence of the Israel Defense Forces. Abbas is banking on the world having a short memory.

Bassam Tawil..
Gatestone Institute..
18 January '18..

PLO leaders who met in Ramallah on January 15 recommended that the Palestinians revoke their recognition of Israel.

The recommendation came in response to US President Donald Trump's announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

The PLO leaders also advised their leadership to suspend security coordination with Israel. They also called for revising all agreements signed with Israel, including the Oslo Accords.

The meeting of the PLO Central Council was chaired by President Mahmoud Abbas, who in the past few weeks has chosen to embark on an open collision course with the US administration, possibly in the hope that US Department of State will back down as it always previously has.

...Abbas and the Palestinians miss the days of the Obama administration, which they felt was hostile to Israel and constantly sided with 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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Delegitimization and Hate: The Academic Pogrom Against Israel - by Daniel Seaman

Bigoted brutes use physical violence. Academic intolerance is just as much a form of abuse, using classrooms as priests used their pulpits to demonize the Jews and incite the masses.

Daniel Seaman..
MiDA..
18 January '18..
Link: http://en.mida.org.il/2018/01/17/academic-pogrom-israel/

For generations, Jews experienced the horrors of the pogroms, periodic outbreaks of hatred and street mob violence. Western society is now more civilized, the street thugs replaced by intellectuals and liberals; the physical violence substituted with abuse and intimidation in the realm of academia.

As universities return from their winter breaks and the Christian holiday season, Jewish and pro-Israel students and academics brace for the daily antagonism they face for simply having a different opinion. This culminates in what has now become a tradition – Israeli Apartheid Week events on campuses, during which Israel is vilified. Jewish students and anyone pro-Israel are harassed in the same venues that hold the concept of “safe-spaces” so dear. For everyone except Jews that is.

The people who are opposed to and offended by racism, White Supremacists or the KKK, are the same ones who will cooperate and join hands with hatred and genocidal Islamic religious extremism directed at Jews and the State of Israel. They cooperate with open and violent bigotry in the guise of academic freedom.

They would be the first ones to rightfully shut down as “hate speech” any conference devoted to proving that black people have lower IQs, for evicting all illegal Hispanics from the nation, or that promote the view that homosexuality is a mental disorder. Yet they are the very same people who never seem to express any objections when campus hooligans disrupt and harass talks by Israeli diplomats and rallies by Jewish students. They tolerate the onslaught of propaganda, lies and slander aimed at delegitimizing Israel, promoting incitement and hatred

If the opposition to the Israeli position was only limited to the open space on campus, you could excuse it as an element of freedom of speech. The travesty is that the classroom, the place meant to be the sanctuary of the free flow and exchange of ideas, has very often become an arena dedicated to vilifying Israel and suppressing the truth by academic professors and lecturers. In similar fashion to times when priests used their pulpits to demonize the Jews and incite the masses.

Silencing Israel’s narrative through academic intimidation and boycotts is in effect an intellectual pogrom. Isolating and falsely demonizing Israel as a pariah state or an international outlaw, or as being beyond the pale, is no more than an attempt to cast the Jewish people into an academic and intellectual ghetto, aimed at ethnically cleansing the Jewish narrative from the legitimate debate on the Middle East.

Surprise? Just an attempt to massacre scores of religious Jews. (And B'Tselem supports the side of the terrorists.) by Elder of Ziyon

...to B'Tselem, Palestinians are animals who literally cannot stop themselves from attacking Jews, and it is Jews who are responsible for being attacked by the unfortunate fact that they exist. This is not human rights. This is supporting terror and Jew-hatred. And for this reason alone, B'Tselem has discredited itself as any kind of moral authority.

Elder of Ziyon..
17 January '18..

From Times of Israel:

Army sappers detonated a cellphone-operated explosive device that was apparently planted by Palestinians at the entrance to the Joseph’s Tomb holy site in the city of Nablus early Tuesday morning, ahead of a visit by approximately 1,000 Jewish worshipers, the army said.

There were no injuries or significant damage caused by the controlled blast, and the pilgrimage to the shrine continued as planned, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said.

A remote controlled bomb is not something that a lone-wolf terrorist does. This was a well-planned terror attack, done under the noses of the Palestinian Authority (if not with their actual tacit support.)

Dozens could have been killed and wounded. And the people who come to worship at Josephs Tomb are by and large not big Zionists - just religious Jews who brave terrible conditions to visit late at night.

Of course, under signed agreements, the Palestinian Authority is supposed to allow free access to Jews to their holy places. In reality, the Jews would be torn limb from limb if they tried to visit on their own, and they need to be protected by the army and border police.

According to the military, as the group was leaving the area, local residents began to throw rocks at the troops and the buses, causing no injuries, but some light damage to the vehicles.

This is as pure an example of Jew-hatred as one can imagine.

But B'Tselem doesn't support freedom to worship. It supports the people who attack the Jews.

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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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Correcting a self-proclaimed Bethlehem expert's fictional account in National Geographic - by Tamar Sternthal

..."Through the world’s best scientists, photographers, journalists, and filmmakers, National Geographic captivates and entertains a global community through television channels, magazines, children’s media, travel expeditions, books, maps," and more, boasts National Geographic. To this list of ostensible experts, National Geographic ought to add fiction writers, given that in this piece they favored a novelist over water experts on the very issue of water. So, while National Geographic may well be fulfilling in its mission to captivate and entertain, it is downright failing to deliver the facts.

Tamar Sternthal..
CAMERA Media Analyses..
15 January '18..

In time for Christmas, National Geographic published an interview with novelist Nicholas Blincoe which contains numerous factual errors about the holy city and surrounding area ("The Little Town of Bethlehem Has a Surprising History," Dec. 23). A note at the bottom of the piece indicates that the interview "was edited for length and clarity." Apparently, though, no effort was made to edit for accuracy. Over the last several weeks, CAMERA's Israel office prompted correction of some of the errors, resulting in an appended clarification, but other falsehoods remain, and the ongoing editing introduced new inaccuracies.

Blincoe, author of "Bethlehem: Biography of a Town," fancies himself an Bethlehem expert — "facts about Bethlehem a speciality" he boasts on Twitter, and in Christianity Today he presumptuously called himself Bethlehem's "biographer" — but in reality facts about Bethlehem are the author's undoing.

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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 evidently has a problem with women - by Stephen M. Flatow

...Little things reveal a lot. Palestinian women candidates who ran for office in the last PA municipal elections were prevented by the PA from putting their own names on the ballots. The PA authorities listed them only as “sister of” or “the wife of.” If that happened under any other government in the world, Jewish “progressives”—including J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace and all the rest—would be screaming in protest. Instead, they are silent. So yes, Mahmoud Abbas has a problem with women—and Abbas’s Jewish cheerleaders have a problem of their own: they’re in denial.

Stephen M. Flatow..
JNS.org..
17 January '18..

Why is it that every time a female U.S. government official says something that the Palestinian Authority (PA) doesn’t like, PA leaders respond by making a disparaging remark related to the fact that she is a woman?

In his bizarre two-hour rant before the Palestinian Central Council on Jan. 14, PA President Mahmoud Abbas declared that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley “wears high heels not for elegance but to use to hit anyone who attacks Israel.”

When Condoleeza Rice was secretary of state, an official PA newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, called her (on June 23, 2002) “the dark complexioned lady,” “the Black Lady” and “this pitiful woman.” On Nov. 3 of that year, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida railed against Rice for “her loose way of sitting, when she puts one leg on top of the other.” The writer then alluded to Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Another official PA newspaper, Al-Ayyam, referred to Rice (on June 22, 2003) as a “black widow,” a “single black lady” and a “black raven,” and patronizingly compared her to African-American supermodel Naomi Campbell.

The PA’s problem with women is not limited to Republicans.

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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 Media's Whitewashing of Abbas’ Revisionism and Rejectionism - by Pesach Benson

...there was a bigger picture that the mainstream media snoozed through. What most journalists would consider the boring, long-winded digressions were actually part of a bigger pattern of historical revisionism and rejection of any place for the Jews in the Mideast.

Pesach Benson..
Honest Reporting..
16 January '18..

Mahmoud Abbas’ two-hour address to the central committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization was the diplomatic equivalent of giving the finger to Israel, the US and peace prospects.

The speech was expected to articulate the Palestinian leadership’s response to Trump’s Jerusalem declaration and threatened cuts of aid for refugees.

But given how long the talk was, it must have been a challenge for reporters to focus on sorting out the “news” from the “rambling.” Indeed, the PA president rejected US mediation, blamed Israel for the “death” of the Oslo accords, and dropped tidbits such as someone offering the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Dis to become the capital of a Palestinian state. (Abbas didn’t say who made the offer.)

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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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Amnesty International tacitly encourages children to assault armed soldiers, but... - by Elder of Ziyon

...Amnesty would never encourage children to attack armed Syrian or Russian soldiers. Because those soldiers would kill the children without a moment's hesitation - and without any fear of condemnation by Amnesty. But Israel has completely different rules for "human rights" NGOs.

Elder of Ziyon..
16 January '18..








Amnesty International says:

Israeli authorities must release a 16-year-old Palestinian activist who could face up to 10 years in prison over an altercation with Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank last month, Amnesty International said as she appeared in court today.

Ahed Tamimi will go before Ofer military court in the occupied West Bank accused of aggravated assault and 11 other charges after a video showing her shoving, slapping and kicking two Israeli soldiers in her home village of Nabi Saleh on 15 December went viral on Facebook.

“Nothing that Ahed Tamimi has done can justify the continuing detention of a 16-year-old girl. The Israeli authorities must release her without delay. In capturing an unarmed teenage girl’s assault on two armed soldiers wearing protective gear, the footage of this incident shows that she posed no actual threat and that her punishment is blatantly disproportionate,” said Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

Amnesty is saying that Israeli soldiers should just allow children to attack them.

But it gets worse.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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In Gaza, another invisible "Fell Short" wrecks a Palestinian Arab home - by Arnold Roth

...But where are the media reports about this? And about those that preceded? These rockets might just as well have been invisible for all the attention they get. The answer seems to be, no one cares very much. Arabs injuring other Arabs (or worse) isn't a theme that gets much media attention except in Israel. And the Hamas regime that keeps the Gaza Strip under its doctrinaire jack-boot has even less interest in publicizing Fell Shorts or the misery they bring into the lives of hapless Palestinian Arabs onto whose heads, roofs and homes they crash.

Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
16 January '18..

This happened on Monday according to a report published late Monday night:

A rocket fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip struck a Palestinian home in Deir al-Balah by mistake, Arab media reported Monday. Located in the central Gaza Strip, two residents of Deir al-Balah were badly wounded and a third lightly wounded. ["Rocket from Gaza Strip accidentally strikes Palestinian home", Jerusalem Post, January 15, 2018]

Another "Fell Short". We only know about them from open sources but have reported on nearly a hundred of them in the past few years. Nearly a hundred rockets fired in the general direction of Israel with the intent of doing any sort of damage to any target that is Israeli - humans, buildings, vehicles, hardly matters what - that failed to cross the Gaza/Israel border. They fell short.

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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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