Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

05/24 Links Pt1: Sanders Picks Two BDS Supporters For DNC Committee; PA glorifies murderer of Taylor Force

From Ian:

American Jewish filmmaker Ami Horowitz recently took to the lawns of Portland State University in an experiment, to quip at students and see how far he could draw out their anti-Israel, pro-BDS sentiment.
Posing as a representative for a faux-organization dubbed "American Friends for Hamas," Horowitz set out to raise donations for the Hamas cause, explicitly stating that donated dollars would be funding violent intentions and promoting the destruction of the state of Israel.
"I want to see if these guys are willing to take it to the next level," Horowitz said pre-experiment, set in the "Pacific Northwest: American home of the BDS movement against Israel."
Horowitz introduced himself as an activist for the Hamas-linked organization, describing Hamas as "not your fathers terrorist organization."
"We've kind of evolved beyond that," he said. "We've rebuilt and re-branded ourselves [as Hamas]," he argued. And yet, his descriptions of what donations would be funding digressed back to the traditional Hamas methodology of striking civilian targets.
"We want to fund operations against Israel," Horowitz said. "The type of attacks we're talking about are cafes and schools - you know, soft targets." (h/t Yenta Press)

Will the Dem Platform Dump Israel?

A Democratic platform fight will leave us with two questions.
One is whether the Clinton camp has the strength or the will — despite her status as the certain presidential nominee — to successfully resist Sanders’ pro-Palestinian push. Given the strength and the passion of the left-wingers who will be in Philadelphia fighting for Sanders, that’s far from certain.
The second question is, will a Democratic platform that de-emphasizes support for Israel, or the spectacle of a nasty floor fight over this will have any impact on the election?
Despite her own checkered past with respect to Israel, Clinton has made her differences with Sanders over Israel clear in the past months. If the platform isn’t what she wants, she’ll ignore it the same way presidential candidates — and presidents once they’re elected — always ignore platforms.
Nor would a pro-Palestinian platform have much effect on the votes of most American Jews. The overwhelming majority are liberals and die-hard Democrats. Even those who are not partisans will be less inclined to defect to the GOP in the year of Donald Trump. Clinton’s percentage of the Jewish vote will probably easily exceed the totals won by Barack Obama and move it back into the vicinity of 80 percent after dipping below 70 in 2012.
But even though it probably won’t affect the outcome this year, a platform fight about Israel will be a seminal moment in the history of U.S.-Israel relations. It may be that left-wingers like Peter Beinart are right, and the Democrats are moving inexorably toward nominating an anti-Israel presidential candidate whose positions will conform to the opinions of a liberal base that rejects the Jewish state. In past years, Democrats have accused Republicans of using the issue as a political football by claiming that their party was more supportive of Israel. That charge seemed foolish after Congressional Democrats abandoned Israel on the question of the Iran nuclear deal in order to comply with a partisan litmus test exacted by Obama. But after this summer, it may no longer be possible for Democrats to argue that they are just as supportive of Israel as the GOP. Instead of pointing to their own records, Republicans will be able to just point to the Democratic platform.

Sanders Picks Two BDS Supporters For DNC Platform Committee

Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders has tapped two major backers of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement to be members of the DNC platform committee after reports emerged that Sanders wants to revamp the platform to highlight the issue of Palestinian rights.
Sanders picked James Zogby, president of the Arab-American Institute in Washington, and Cornel West, a philosopher and anti-Israel activist, to fill two of his five slots on the 15-member platform as part of his plans to revise the Democratic Party’s stance on relations with Israel.
West is a vociferous critic of Israel who has called the Gaza Strip “the ‘hood on steroids” and, in 2014, wrote that the crimes of Hamas “pale in the face of the U.S.-supported Israeli slaughters of innocent civilians.”
On Saturday, Zogby slammed the Obama administration for continuing to “enable [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s] malevolent rule.”
In an oped in the Huffington Post, Zogby wrote that even though the administration has “repeatedly expressed displeasure over Netanyahu’s settlement policies and his blatant interference in US internal politics,” it is “now debating whether to reward his government with a 10-year aid package valued at $35 billion—while Netanyahu, supported by allies in Congress, is brazenly holding out for $45 to $50 billion. And so, operating with virtually no restraints, Netanyahu continues to maneuver and to aggressively advance his hardline agenda. He maintains his grip on power. Israeli society continues to become more extreme and intolerant. Palestinians are more despairing and desperate. And peace more remote.”
In addition to Zogby and West, Sanders also picked Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn), the first Muslim elected to Congress. For his part, Sanders is the first Jewish candidate to win nominating rights.

PreOccupiedTerritory: Sanders Not Sure He’s Made His Tolerance For Terrorism Clear Enough (satire)

Senator Bernie Sanders told campaign staff last night that he still has concerns that he had not made his acceptance of Islamic terrorism sufficiently plain to the electorate, campaign sources reported this morning.
At a late-night strategy meeting at his campaign headquarters, the senator discussed the difficulties plaguing his continuing effort to secure the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency. Front-runner Hillary Clinton as all but guaranteed victory in that fight, but Sanders and his supporters have vowed to keep campaigning until the party’s national convention, where the official choice will be made by the delegates. In analyzing the yawning gap between Clinton’s delegate count and his own, Sanders wondered aloud whether he should take a less equivocal stand on his tolerance for Muslims who attack civilians in the name of Islam.
“Appointing apologists for terrorism to this campaign is all well and good, but how many Americans – especially registered Democrats – know or care that those people have defended or dismissed such attacks?” asked the candidate. “I want everyone to make sure my position on terrorism is crystal clear: it’s fine if directed at Jews, Israel, American interests, and Westerners in general, provided it can be contextualized to make the attacker out as a victim. Have we been consistently on message in that respect?”

From MEMRI:

Egyptian political commentator Nabih Al-Wahsh accused Israel of downing EgyptAir Flight 804, and called for Egyptians and Arabs to kill any Israeli they come across and to mutilate his body. Al-Wahsh, a lawyer, filed a lawsuit with Egyptian courts four years ago in an attempt to abolish the Camp David Accords. Al-Asseema TV presenter tried to stop Al-Wahsh from inciting to violence, but to no avail, as Al-Wahsh called for the establishment of “death squads” that would hunt down Israelis all over the world. The show aired on May 20.

Nabih Al-Wahsh: "All the evidence indicates that the filthy Zionist entity is behind the (EgyptAir) plane crash, and time will prove me right.

[...]

"The filthy and despicable Zionist entity is behind this, and I have presented the evidence."

Host: "Did they plant a bomb?"

Nabih Al-Wahsh: "No. They used a missile."

[...]

Nabih Al-Wahsh: "Sir, we do not want to bury our heads in the sand again. From here, I call upon any Egyptian or Arab man who comes across an Israeli person to kill him and mutilate his body..."

Host: "No, no, no..."

Nabih Al-Wahsh: "I take full responsibility for saying this..."

Host: "You are responsible but still, you must not call for violence."

Nabih Al-Wahsh: "There is no such thing as 'not calling for violence.' We pay by the same token: Violence for violence and filth for filth. The despicable Zionist entity does not abide by norms or agreements. It exported AIDS into Egypt, as well as aphrodisiac bubble gum, and all kinds of catastrophes. I have filed a lawsuit, which has been in courts for four years now, to modify or abolish the shameful Camp David Accords. We have abided by it, due to our adherence to a monotheistic religion, and in keeping with our customs, but the despicable entity has not abided by it, so I call on anyone who comes across... No Israeli must come here. In Sharam Al-Sheikh, in Hurghada..."

Host: "No, no, no..."

Nabih Al-Wahsh: "Sir, we must stop pampering them and patting them on the back..."

Host: "We do not do this, but we must not call for violence. That's it."

Nabih Al-Wahsh: "I call to form death squads that will hunt down any Israeli, anywhere in the world. We are fed up! The parliament must establish a commission of inquiry. The people have had it. The people are fed up. Well, most of them are. The plane crash overshadowed all the catastrophes; 90% of the Egyptian people are sure that Israel is behind it. Let me just say this: Today, Netanyahu accepted the resignation of the Minister of Defense, because the latter protested the downing of the plane.
[...]
"We must get rid of the cancerous Zionist entity."

Half the time Israel sends Arabs candy that causes impotence, and the other half of the time it is aphrodisiacs.

Iranian media is also playing up the Egyptian crackpot theories.

Al-Mesri al-Youm newspaper wrote that in its report of the plane's crash, Greece hasn’t mentioned Israeli warplanes' wargames in the Southern parts of Crete Island which was revealed earlier this month by Tel Aviv, adding that the maneuvers had started one night before the Egyptian plane's crash.

It added that the exercises are staged with the goal of training the Israeli air force pilots using Greece's airspace which is adjacent to Egypt and Libya.

According to the report, Israel started the maneuvers on May 18 and they will last until next January.

I found one Egyptian report that said this.

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Mahmoud Abbas spoke at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul on Tursday, where he did what he does best - trying to hijack the summit to become yet another anti-Israel vehicle, and lying on a grand scale.

Here is the beginning of his speech:

We emphasize our support and our commitment to the responsibilities set out in the agenda of the Secretary-General for this humanitarian summit. In Palestine, our people and leadership seek with all our will and determination to end the suffering of our people, through peaceful means, since the question of Palestine and its people has been here for nearly seventy years. More than half of our people have been wrongfully displaced from our homeland, and are still waiting for a solution, Our people will not accept to remain under occupation, nor consistently in the current situation, which humiliate our freedom and humanity and dignity and basic rights.

We need to ensure the presence of collective international political will to implement the resolutions of international legitimacy, which calls for a comprehensive and just political solution to the Palestinian issue, as the basis for putting an end to the tragedy of the Palestinian people of all its aspects, which was implemented beginning in 1917, and has lasted until the present day.

If the Palestinian tragedy began in 1917 and and it is time to end it "in all its aspects" then Abbas is calling for the modern state of Israel to be retroactively erased from history. This is not a call to end "occupation" - it is a call to end the entire concept of a Jewish state and for the world to apologize for even thinking that the Jewish people have any rights as a people.

Abbas also told the summit that he wanted to save thousands of Syrian refugees but Israel refused to allow them to come. The truth is the opposite according to Abbas' own words.

Abbas told a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo late Wednesday that Ban contacted Israel on his behalf.

Abbas said Ban was told Israel "agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee ... sign a statement that he doesn't have the right of return (to Israel)."

"So we rejected that and said it's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return," Abbas told the group.

As far as I know, no reporter has ever asked Abbas about his insistence, in his own words, to let thousands of people in Syria die for his desire to destroy Israel.

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New York, May 18:

An investigation continues in Midtown after police say a knife-wielding man was shot and killed by officers Wednesday morning at the corner of 49th Street and Eighth Avenue.

Omaha, May 20:

The knife-wielding suspect critically wounded by police trying to take him into custody at 165th and West Maple Road Friday morning has died. He was identified as 31-year-old Joshua Beebee.

Brooklyn, May 8:

A 27-year-old man was shot twice after he allegedly approached two police officers with a dagger in hand Sunday evening in Brooklyn.

Jacksonville, FL, May 14:

Jacksonville police shot a man who they said charged at them wielding both a machete-style knife as well as a dagger-like knife while threatening to cut their heads off Saturday morning near McDonald’s at East State and North Market streets downtown.

Los Angeles, May 1:

Los Angeles police shot and killed a man in Panorama City on Saturday night after he approached two officers with a knife in his hand, authorities said.

Citrus Heights, California, May 20:

A nearly seven-hour standoff ended Thursday night when police shot and killed a man barricaded inside a Citrus Heights apartment, police said.

Wausau, Wisconsin, May 1:

A Wausau police officer Saturday night shot and killed a man who was wielding a knife, according to Wausau Police Patrol Capt. Matt Barnes in a Sunday morning press conference.

Temecula, California, May 5:

Temecula police shot and killed a man who was advancing on them with a knife, the sheriff's department said Thursday.

House of Charity, Washington, April 28:

A man was killed Thursday outside the House of Charity, shot by police after approaching officers with a knife and urging them to “kill me, kill me,” witnesses said.

All of these happened in just the past month and it is not an exhaustive list of cases where police routinely shooting people armed "only" with knives..

Now, from the Palestinian WAFA new agency, May 23:

The Detainees and Ex-Detainees Committee, said in a report published on Sunday, that 85 percent of Palestinians who were killed by Israel since the beginning of 2015; 179 Palestinians, were killed in extrajudicial field executions.

It maintained that Israeli forces executed Palestinians in ‘cold-blood’ and on the grounds of mere suspicion, maintaining that forces acted as both judges and executioners.

It said that the majority of killed Palestinians were shot from a very close range with the intention to kill.

It described Israeli politicians’ calls to kill Palestinians instead of detaining them, as a ‘war crime’, and intentional extrajudicial murders; which it affirmed, violates principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the four Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Time to bring international law charges against every police department in the US for shooting knife-wielding suspects.

It is International Double Standards Against Israel Day, celebrated on every day that includes a sunrise.

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05/23 Links Pt2: No one has a monopoly on values; Breaking the Silence: Sabotaging Israel from within

From Ian:

No one has a monopoly on values

Since the media is never wrong, it takes care to create an imaginary reality for us in which the citizens of Israel are dying of hunger in the streets, the survivors are fascist occupiers, and those who believe in the sanctity of the land of Israel are messianic or right-wing extremists. There is no other option.
Let's suppose for a minute that the Left was in power, and senior officers were to take matters of value and morality into their own hands, but in the other direction: to the right. Would the media embrace them in that case, too?
In the reality in which we live, a senior officer (major general) who compares processes taking place here to the Germans in the 1930s is a man of values, but an officer who invites his soldiers to pray before an action in Gaza? That's darker, even reminiscent of Iran. It's a shame that Albert Einstein isn't here to test the theory of moral relativism in our country.
And another brief reminder, not from 1948 or 1973, but rather from March 2015, when Israel held elections. Remember? The people made the media eat dirt, and it can't forgive them. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Zakia Belkhiri’s “Peace Selfies” and Her Antisemitic Rants

Zakia Belkhiri showed up to a rally being held by anti-Islam protesters, and she began taking selfies with those who had gathered. The BBC, Huffington Post, and many other sites praised Belkhiri for dealing with the protesters peacefully and for setting a positive example. A problem arose, however, when people went to Belkhiri’s social media pages and found viciously antisemitic comments. In this video, David Wood discusses Belkhiri’s posts and the double standards of the media.

Zakia Belkhiri’s “Peace Selfies” (and Her Antisemitic Rants)

The Sykes-Picot Agreement Obstructed, Rather Than Abetted, Jewish Aspirations for Statehood

Among the misconceptions that have been repeated in connection with the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Anglo-French plan to partition the Middle East is the notion—heard from both friends and foes of the Jewish state—that the treaty furthered the Zionist cause. Quite the contrary, writes Martin Kramer:
The Sykes-Picot map . . . constitutes the first partition plan for Palestine, into no fewer than five zones. . . . Many of the most veteran Zionist settlements—Metullah, Rosh Pina, Yesod Hamaalah, Mishmar Hayarden—would be in the exclusively French zone, as would Safed. The internationalized . . . zone would include Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Tiberias, as well as newer settlements such as Tel Aviv, Petaḥ Tikvah, Rishon Letzion, Reḥovot, and Zichron Yaakov. [The pro-British Zionist leader Chaim] Weizmann called this division a “Solomon’s judgment of the worst character; the child is cut in two and both halves mutilated.” Were Sykes-Picot implemented, he protested, “the Jewish colonizing effort of some 30 years [would be] annihilated.”
Second, the agreement gave France a dominant role as far as the Jews were concerned. France would have full control of the Galilee settlements, and would be on equal par with Britain in Judea and the coastal plain. Weizmann regarded France as wholly unsympathetic to Zionism; far from facilitating Zionist colonization, France would block it. . . .

World Religion News reports:

Medical marijuana or medical cannabis which is the use of cannabis and its cannabinoids to treat disease or improve symptoms. The legalization of medical marijuana has seen the market getting flooded with marijuana products, like marijuana lotions, marijuana edibles, and so on. The medical marijuana industry is booming. 2016 is slated to see a rise of $1 billion in legal sales of marijuana products. Boutique investment bank Ackrell Capital, reports that last year, the legal sales of marijuana products crossed $4 billion.

The market is becoming competitive. Hence, the companies are looking for different ways to promote their legal marijuana products sales. They are looking for ways to make their products appeal to a variety of consumers. The targeted customers also include Jews, hence, the companies are trying to certify their products as kosher by letting the Rabbis inspect their medical marijuana plants.

From a kosher dietary standpoint, smoking marijuana in itself is not an issue, since cannabis itself is kosher. It is a leaf. However, when making a marijuana product, a lot of things has to be considered, like its ingredients, whether it is being manufactured or made in a kosher kitchen, and so on. In the Jewish religion, there are certain foods that are forbidden, like pigs, insects, and so on. So care should be taken while making marijuana products that they do not come in contact with forbidden food.

Vireo, a subsidiary of Vireo Health, got its first medical marijuana certification last January, from the Orthodox Union, America's most prominent Jewish groups. Vireo is in the process of selling medical marijuana products like cannabis oil and tinctures that are kosher. Cresco Labs, Illinois, is another company that is in the process of getting their products certified kosher, from a local rabbinical organization. According to the executive VP of operations at Cresco Labs, David Ellis, they had to show every inch of their facility to the rabbis.

RT (formerly Russia Today) Arabic gives us an object lesson in how journalists can make things up with facts by taking this story and swapping cause and effect, leading to this sorry excuse for reporting:

After the Union of Orthodox Rabbis certified that American Jews could consume marijuana made by Vereo Health in New York, last year, the industry flourished in the United States in an unprecedented way....According to the firm Ackrell Capital, the legal sales of products made from marijuana exceeded $4 billion over the past year.

Yes, those kosher-keeping Jews are the main driver for a $4 billion pot market!

If you think that Western media wouldn't do the same type of misrepresentation every day, you aren't being very careful in how you consume the news.

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How's that Fatah-Hamas unity doing?

This poster comes from the official Fatah website. It shows all the major leaders of Hamas.

The caption says "baby killers."

It is referring to a fatal house fire in Gaza earlier this month that killed three children. Hamas blamed Fatah (and Israel) for the electricity shortages that cause people to have to use candles; Fatah blamed Hamas for making it impossible for Fatah to fix the problem (as if they could.) Both have been accusing the other of raising taxes on fuel that is part of the reason for the fuel shortages.

In a couple of weeks they'll go back to pretending that everything is OK again.

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05/23 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Millions of children are taught that Jews are apes and pigs; 'Son of Hamas': Islam is the problem

From Ian:

How Do You Define a War Crime?

What does Hamas’s massive tunnel-building project mean to the people of Gaza? The answer can be summed up in one word: fear. They live in fear that the structures being dug beneath their homes will start a conflict that will bring down another round of death and destruction upon their families. Speaking off the record to the New York Times’ Gaza correspondents, various residents said anonymously what they couldn’t say in public at the fear of their lives. They had no doubt that much of the aid and building materials that has been sent to Gaza to rebuild the homes that were destroyed the last time Hamas started a war with Israel is being diverted to the Islamist terrorist group’s massive project.
But when asked as to whether Hamas building tunnels in residential neighborhoods whose only purpose is to facilitate cross-border terror raids into Israel is a war crime a Human Rights Watch official that the Times described as an “expert on international law regarding warfare, the best that Sari Bashi could come up with is a shrug of her shoulders. According to Bashi, building terror tunnels in residential neighborhoods is “not explicitly prohibited.”
Really? That, in a nutshell, sums up everything that is wrong with the international community’s response to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
While Bashi, an American-born Israeli lawyer, admits Hamas has “an obligation to take all feasible measures to protect civilians, including not taking the armed conflict to civilian areas, to the extent possible,” she won’t go farther than that. That’s bizarre because it would seem obvious, even to those who aren’t “experts” in international law that structures built solely to facilitate efforts to cross an international border to murder and kidnap is illegal. Indeed, terrorism, whether it is committed via a tunnel or with rockets shot indiscriminately at cities (as Hamas did several thousand times during the 2014 war) or suicide bombings, is always illegal.
But in the upside-down world of human rights activism that a group such as Human Rights Watch epitomizes, ambivalence about Palestinian war crimes is always accompanied by vicious condemnations of Israel’s efforts to defend its people against things like terror tunnels and rocket fire. But while such organizations purport to have great sympathy for the plight of Palestinians, especially those in Gaza, their ire is almost always directed at the wrong people.

Netanyahu: Millions of children are taught that Jews are apes and pigs

Children throughout the Middle East have been brainwashed to believe that Jews are akin to apes and pigs and should be killed, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
“Hatred against the Jewish people is so routine in the Middle East that many in the West fail to notice it, let alone condemn it,” Netanyahu said in a prerecorded brief address to the fifth annual Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on the danger of verbal and visual incitement against Jews, particularly on the Hamas-run Al-Aksa television.
“Hateful language that should be condemned everywhere and always, is not condemned everywhere and always,” he said.
“Millions of children are being taught daily that Jews are subhuman, that they are apes and pigs and they have to be destroyed,” he continued.
“These children get up each morning, put their clothes on and go to school. They play with their friends, they ride their bikes,” Netanyahu said as he described a normal childhood routine. “But their pure and impressionable souls are then seized by fanatics. Their minds are poisoned with hatred.”
Such incitement to kill “is one of the worst crimes imaginable,” he said.
“No child should be taught to hate, let alone to kill or to want to die,” he said, adding that this is occurring both in the Palestinian territories, such as Ramallah, and the Middle East in general.

PM Netanyahu addresses the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference

Dermer blasts 'narrative' of a moderate Iran and a peaceful Palestine

Israel's ambassador to the United States slammed on Sunday the "fiction" that a partner for peace exists within the Palestinian Authority, warning of a hostile reaction from Jerusalem to any effort to impose terms of a two-state solution through international bodies.
Addressing The Jerusalem Post's annual conference in New York, Ron Dermer, a close confidante to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that world powers supporting an initiative by France to outline parameters for peace between Israel and the Palestinians are "ignoring the will of the free people who live in the most endangered democracy on Earth."
"These powers, albeit with the best of intentions, will only encourage the Palestinians to continue their 100 year campaign to destroy the one and only Jewish state," Dermer told the crowd.
"Such an effort will not only prevent peace today," he said, but could prevent peace "for decades to come" and bolster international efforts to delegitimize Israel.

The Truman Library has a "student activity" sheet asking questions about how the US decided to recognize Israel.

The questions being asked are at odds with history.

Have the class review the documents regarding the complex issue of recognizing Israel. Look at the history of Palestine, the United Nations proposal, Truman’s friendship with Eddie Jacobson, and the world climate after World War II. What would have happened if Truman would have not recognized Israel? What would the world climate be like if Palestine would have been divided into two nations as in the UN proposition. Would the peace process even be necessary if Truman would have not conceded to Israel?

These are leading questions that ignore the fact that the partition plan was a dead letter because of violent Arab opposition. The idea that somehow the 1947 partition plan, and resultant Arab state, would still be in force in the 21st century had the US backed it in May 1948 is the height of absurdity. The wording that Truman "conceded" to Israel is also ahistorical. He very much made up his own mind.

It gets worse:

The refugees of country “X” have just liberated a province of one of the African nations. The new provincial government has sent a letter to the United States government wanting recognition of the newly liberated province as a legitimate nation. Do you recognize this new country? What protocol do you follow? How will other African Nations respond? What will the United Nations do? What is the country’s historical background? What are the religious and political beliefs held by the people of this new country? What are the qualities of the leaders of the political parties in question? Are there residents of the United States who have ties to country “X”? Would there be pressure from this section of the population to recognize the new government? Tackle these questions and others that a government must wrestle with in recognizing a new country and government?

Truman was nothing if not independent. The timeline on the Truman Library website notes that he resisted pressure from both sides and came up with his own ideas. A small excerpt:

October 4, 1946: On the eve of Yom Kippur, President Truman issues a statement indicating United States support for the creation of a "viable Jewish state."

October 23, 1946: Loy Henderson, director of the State Department's Near East Agency, warns that the immigration of Jewish Communists into Palestine will increase Soviet influence there.

October 28, 1946: President Truman writes to King Saud of Saudi Arabia, informing the king that he believes "that a national home for the Jewish people should be established in Palestine."

1947-48: The White House receives 48,600 telegrams, 790,575 cards, and 81,200 other pieces of mail on the subject of Palestine.

Yet in this interview with Truman he says that he "burned" all of the letters, not wanting to be influenced one way or the other. His friend Eddie Jacobson was instrumental in getting him to speak to Chaim Weizmann (and Truman resisted even that, ignoring an earlier telegram from Jacobson asking him to meet with Weizmann) but the Jewish lobby was utterly ineffectual.

Truman was most certainly not swayed by the Jewish community, just as he was not swayed by the unrelentingly anti-Zionist State Department.

This lesson plan is biased, and it actually insults Truman.

(h/t L. King)

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Heidi Levine in Gaza

The Israel Foreign Press Association issued a statement last week condemning Hamas:

On Thursday, FPA member Heidi Levine, a photographer for SIPA Press, was detained by Hamas security men for more than three hours before she was allowed to leave Gaza. As she exited, Hamas security told her she was banned from the territory, claiming her work “reflects badly on Gaza.” They provided no examples of the work that allegedly upset them.

The FPA strongly condemns the thuggish behavior of the Hamas security and the implication that Hamas should judge what is or isn’t acceptable coverage of Gaza. Unfortunately, this incident is not isolated. A number of FPA members have reported being forced to undergo uncomfortable questioning by Hamas security forces while entering or exiting Gaza in recent months.

We call on Hamas to end these practices immediately and urge the group to give journalists unfettered access in and out of Gaza.

One of the people questioned by Hamas recently was Reuters reporter Luke Baker, who issued a series of tweets about how pleasant the experience was:

Briefly taken in for polite questions by Hamas security forces in #Gaza today. Interesting placard on the wall pic.twitter.com/Ducf05b5Mt
— Luke Baker (@LukeReuters) February 25, 2016

On questioning in #Gaza -- I was not reporting. Was called to one side while walking on the street and taken into a small headquarters 1/3
— Luke Baker (@LukeReuters) February 25, 2016

I was not escorted by anyone with guns. A major from the security services introduced himself by name and asked me a series of questions 2/3
— Luke Baker (@LukeReuters) February 25, 2016

I was never accused of anything. Was given coffee and then tea. All questions about what I was doing in Gaza and what I do for work, etc
— Luke Baker (@LukeReuters) February 25, 2016

As I pointed out then:

Hamas could have given Baker a full day at a spa it wouldn't matter - a government detaining a journalist for no reason is a form of intimidation. Unless Baker could have freely refused to be questioned, he was being given a message that his actions in Gaza were being watched and that he should be careful not to upset the authorities.

In this case, there is no danger that Baker would ever say anything that would upset his Hamas buddies, and both Hamas and Baker know it. So he enjoyed his tea and chatted freely.

Who is the head of the Foreign Press Association in Israel?

Luke Baker.

Is he now tacitly admitting that he was being intimidated by Hamas in February? Or is he only complaining about the treatment given to Heidi Levine and unnamed others (and why are they unnamed?)

It sounds like Baker was forced to allow this press release because of Hamas becoming too egregious in its intimidation, but he doesn't consider his own being politely questioned as any problem at all.

More likely, Baker is more concerned about his own access to Gaza than to journalistic ethics of exposing the abuses when it happens to him.

This retweet by the FPA after the Levine story is instructive:

One of Heidi Levine's justly acclaimed photos - hard to see how it "reflects badly" on Gaza. https://t.co/KCd2OBIAkO pic.twitter.com/1QW60aBN6P
— John Reed (@JohninJerusalem) May 19, 2016

Hamas officials don't offend them because they are intimidating journalists - they offend them because they are unfairly intimidating journalists!

The implication, of course, is that any reporter in Gaza who is critical of Hamas gets what she deserves.

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Middle East Eye reports:

Israel said late on Sunday it was lifting a ban imposed last month on private imports of cement to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

More than 1.2 million tonnes of construction materials have entered Gaza since the mechanism was set up in 2014, much of it for war reconstruction. According to an Israeli official, 80 truckloads of cement enter Gaza weekly, each carrying 40 tonnes.

The ban was imposed in early April, with Israel accusing Imad al-Baz, deputy director of the Hamas economy ministry, of diverting supplies.

"In accordance with the security assessment and the understandings reached with the international community, as of today Sunday May 22 the re-entry of cement into Gaza has been approved," said a statement from the government body responsible for implementing policies in the Palestinian territories, COGAT.

"The exploitation by Hamas is a severe violation of the construction mechanism and the agreement between COGAT, the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations," said Sunday's English-language statement, in response to an AFP query.

Al-Baz has denied the allegation, saying that the imports were conducted in line with a UN-brokered Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, aimed at allowing for reconstruction after a devastating 2014 war with Israel.

In April, the UN implied that Hamas indeed was diverting cement:

Deliberations between Israeli and UN officials, including Nickolay Mladenov, the UN’s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, yielded an agreement to allow cement to be imported anew. Stipulations included al-Baz’s dismissal and an increase in the number of Palestinian inspectors on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing, according to the sources.

The information about al-Baz’s actions came to light via international actors taking part in the reconstruction effort in Gaza, COGAT said in April.

“We are disappointed that Hamas continues to harm and take advantage of the Palestinian population, only to advance the personal interests of the organization,” COGAT wrote on its Arabic-language Facebook page.

The United Nations condemned the “deviation of materials” in a statement released at the time, but refrained from naming Hamas as responsible.

“Those who seek to gain through the deviation of materials are stealing from their own people and adding to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza,” said Mladenov.

Haaretz says that this admission has of Hamas stealing cement has become a little more explicit:

Following a hiatus lasting some six weeks, Israel agreed to resume supplies to the private sector in Gaza after UN special envoy Nickolay Mladenov promised to ensure it doesn’t reach Hamas. One of the preventative steps involves stationing additional Palestinian inspectors on the Gaza side of the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

Mladenov also told Israel that the cement Hamas had stolen from private-sector contractors has been returned to them.

Whether we can trust any of this is another story. My impression is that Hamas doesn't usually steal the cement for tunnels, rather Gaza homeowners are choosing to sell the cement that they receive on the black market rather than rebuild their homes, and Hamas is buying it. That is very difficult to stop.

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HRW lies again about international law

HRW's Sari Bashi

From the New York Times:

Sari Bashi, a spokeswoman for Human Rights Watch and expert on international law regarding warfare, said that building tunnels in residential neighborhoods was not explicitly prohibited. But she said militant groups had “an obligation to take all feasible measures to protect civilians, including not taking the armed conflict to civilian areas, to the extent possible.”

Here's what the ICRC has to say:

Under the Statute of the International Criminal Court, “utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts.[

The prohibition of using human shields in the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I and the Statute of the International Criminal Court are couched in terms of using the presence (or movements) of civilians or other protected persons to render certain points or areas (or military forces) immune from military operations.

It can be concluded that the use of human shields requires an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objectives.

Why is HRW, which normally errs on the side of protecting civilians when interpreting international law, suddenly deciding to rule against Gaza civilians and for the Hamas terrorists who are deliberately digging tunnels underneath Gaza civilian homes?

Is there really any fundamental legal difference between forcing civilians to be herded to a military site (which is the restrictive way HRW defines human shielding) and placing the military target directly under the homes of civilians, who have nowhere else to go?

We saw this a lot during Operation Protective Edge. Over a dozen Hamas violations of internatinal law were all but ignored by "human rights" groups whose very job is to protect civilians being placed at risk from Hamas actions.

Apparently, when Israel is on the other side, HRW chooses to look the other way for all but the most egregious Hamas crimes.

And the losers are Gaza civilians.

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