Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Rosenthal's Ten Propositions Part Two (Michael Lumish)

Vic Rosenthal of the Abu Yehuda blog, the Elder of Ziyon, and other venues, has a recent piece entitled simply, Ten Propositions.

I discussed the first five at Israel Thrives the other day.

These are the next five:

6 - Everyone should be able to follow their own religion or lack thereof without coercion. But the official religion of the state of Israel should be Judaism.

7 - Israel and the Jewish people have an absolute right to defend themselves.

8 - Collective guilt justifies collective punishment.

9 - Nobody has the right to try to kill Jews or Israelis, even if their means are ineffective.

10 - There should be a death penalty for murderous terrorism.

Let's take these individually.

Number Six:

Everyone should be able to follow their own religion or lack thereof without coercion. But the official religion of the state of Israel should be Judaism.

Many secular Jews have a problem with this.

I do not.

We have to keep in mind that the Jewish people are a tiny minority throughout the world and almost half of us live in Israel. The forces against the Jews of Israel are many and their defenders are few.

Were it not for the Long Arab-Muslim War against the Jews in the Middle East I would not care whether or not Israel declared Judaism as the official state religion. In fact, as a creature of the European Enlightenment and the Constitution of the United States, I generally oppose declarations of state religions.

However, given this political moment in the history of the Jewish people declaring Judaism as the official religion of the state serves to promote the idea of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.

And it is this idea that must finally be driven home to both Christian and Arab, alike.

Number Seven:

Israel and the Jewish people have an absolute right to defend themselves.

Yes, we do, but the rest of the world does not see it that way.

On the contrary, Jewish self-defense has been viewed as a form of aggression for millennia. Whether in Europe or the Middle East - whether in terms of Romans or Christians or Arab-Muslims - Jews have historically been denied self-defense on the grounds that we are guilty of whatever accusations are flinged at us. Thus Jewish self-defense is a means of avoiding righteous justice and should not be allowed.

This is an ancient anti-Semitic sensibility, prominent in both Europe and the Arab / Muslim world, that has evolved and attached itself to present-day political sensibilities. This is why so many westerners, largely on the Left, but not entirely, believe that Arabs have every right to try to kill Jews as a matter of "resistance" or "social justice."

However, it must be made explicitly clear to both westerners and the Arabs of Israel - in word and action - that the Israeli government, on behalf of the Jewish people, will simply no longer put up with the racist, Koranically-based violence toward ourselves or our children.

Number Eight:

Collective guilt justifies collective punishment.

It is only those of us who live in cozy and secure places, like northern California, who think otherwise.

It is very easy for people who, for example, live in the United States to oppose "collective punishment" because Americans are not in an ongoing war for survival.

The Jews of Israel are.

Whenever Hamas starts tossing Qassams and Katyushas into southern Israel, on or around the towns of S'derot and Ashkelon, the world community sleeps. However, whenever Israel stands up and says, "Enough of this!" the western-left leaps to its feet and starts screaming from the hillsides about "genocide" and "collective punishment" despite the fact that, yes, the IDF does more than any other army in human history to avoid civilian casualties.

The truth is that the Arabs of the Middle East have inflicted a long war of attrition upon the Jews and in war there is always "collective punishment." The Jews of the Middle East did not start this war and they do not want it, but if they are to survive and thrive - if they are to protect their own children - they absolutely must fight it.

And, of course, in war innocent people are hurt and killed.

There is always "collective punishment" in war.

If the Arabs would like to see such "collective punishment" end then they should very much consider relinquishing their never-ending murderous, theocratically-based hysteria concerning the Jewish people.

Number Nine:

Nobody has the right to try to kill Jews or Israelis, even if their means are ineffective.

This is an exceedingly strange statement.

Would anyone ever suggest that nobody has the right to kill, say, Rosicrucians... even if their means are ineffective?

It flat-out amazes me that Rosenthal even needs to say this... and, yet, I agree that he does.

How many comments have we heard from the anti-Israel / anti-Jewish Left in the last decade that the rocket-fire coming from Hamas is really nothing but "bottle-rockets"... and similar statements?

The western progressive-left has a tendency to downplay anti-Semitic violence against Jews because either they simply could care less or honestly believe that the Jewish people have it coming for allegedly oppressing the bunny-like, native, indigenous, olive-tending, "Palestinians."

Number Ten:

There should be a death penalty for murderous terrorism.

Jewish religious tradition opposes the death penalty.

Nonetheless, Jewish religious tradition also stresses the necessity for self-defense. Although I am not a theologian, I feel reasonably certain that such a proposition would find advocates among religious Jews, as well.

We cannot have hostile and powerful political actors, such as Barack Obama, demanding that Israel release the murderers of Jews from Israeli prisons as a "confidence building gesture" to terrorists like Mahmoud Abbas.

I am, therefore, in agreement.

Anyone who seeks to murder Jews in Israel for either Islamic religious reasons or due to Palestinian-Arab nationalism needs to be made to understand that Israel will not put up with it.

The penalties for those who seek to murder Jews within Israel must be harsh enough to seriously discourage the idea that it is perpetually Jew Killing Season among Arabs.

I just feel badly that I failed to find more points of disagreement between myself and Vic.

Maybe next time.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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Abbas walks back "poisoning wells" claim. Now let's see what he DIDN'T retract.

From NYT:

A little more than a day after President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority accused rabbis in Israel of calling for their government to poison the water used by Palestinians, he retracted the allegation in a statement on Saturday, saying it had become “evident” that it was “baseless.”

Mr. Abbas made the unsubstantiated allegation during an address to the European Parliament on Thursday. The remarks echoed anti-Semitic claims that led to the mass killings of European Jews in medieval times.

The Palestine Liberation Organization had initially published the allegation on a website run by one of its offices, and it spread through some regional news media outlets.

Mr. Abbas’s retraction was sent to reporters early Saturday morning, issued by the P.L.O., of which Mr. Abbas is the chairman. It said that Mr. Abbas “rejected all claims that accuse him and the Palestinian people of offending the Jewish religion.” It added that he “also condemned all accusations of anti-Semitism.”

“After it has become evident that the alleged statements by a rabbi on poisoning Palestinian wells, which were reported by various media outlets, are baseless, President Mahmoud Abbas has affirmed that he didn’t intend to do harm to Judaism or to offend Jewish people around the world,” the statement continued.

It's very nice that Abbas has admitted this, after he felt the pressure from the news media.

But what about the other lies Abbas made in this speech alone?

-He said that Israel has arrested a million Palestinians since 1967, a clear lie that gets bigger every year.
-He said that Israeli settlers were making Palestinian lives miserable, when in fact far more settlers have been killed by Palestinians than vice versa in the past year.
-He implied that Israeli settlements were ever-expanding, when in fact they have added practically no areas in over two decades.
-He said that his people have been in the area for thousands of years, when in fact every major clan can be traced back to other areas of the Middle East.
-He called all of the areas under his control "a big prison" while he himself had no problem going to Brussels, and over 100,000 Palestinians cross the Green Line every day.
-He claimed that women were equal to men under Palestinian law when in fact the penalty for "honor killings" of women is still lighter than for murdering a man.
-He said he doesn't want a religious war when he in fact incited the knife attacks last year by saying that Al Aqsa must be protected from Jews visiting by all means.
-He claimed to want peace and to be against terror while the political party he heads praises terrorism explicitly and credits him for inspiring the terror spree. Abbas himself also praises terrorists, even today.

And these were only some of the lies Abbas said to the EU Parliament. We are not even mentioning the litany of lies he has said in the past.

This incident shows an important fact: Abbas can be shamed. Yet reporters wouldn't have asked him for comment if Israel hadn't slammed that one specific egregious lie.

The most important part of the political reporter's toolbox is to point out contradictions and lies by major world figures. Yet this is the exception that proves the rule - reporters are reluctant to ask Abbas about all of the other inconsistencies and outright lies that he has said over the years.

The refusal to ask hard questions shows the bias that journalists have. Deep down, they want to see a peace deal, and they believe that exposing Abbas' lies will make that deal more difficult. Only Israel must be pressured, in their minds. So Abbas can lie with impunity until Israel makes the lies into a story that cannot be ignored.

And that is why Abbas feels he can get away with it.

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In an article about Brexit, Max Fisher of the NYT writes:

[T]he world has spent much of the last few centuries organizing itself under the principle of national self-determination, in which people with a common identity acquire their own state. Think of Italy for the Italians in the 1870s, Algeria for the Algerians in 1962, Tajikistan for the Tajiks in 1991 and so on.

While this idea has brought liberation to much of the world, it has also contributed to countless wars, including Nazi Germany’s invasions to “unify” with the German people of Austria and Czechoslovakia, the violent breakup of Yugoslavia along ethno-linguistic lines and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

So while many examples of national self-determination are good, Jewish self-determination is in the same league as Nazi invasions of neighboring countries.

Also, when exactly did the "Israel-Palestine" conflict begin? It certainly wasn't in 1948, that was the Israel-Arab conflict. The only wars between Israel and Palestinians came after Palestinians fired thousands of rockets were fired on Israel, but this happened after Israel was already six decades old.

So Fisher is saying that if a group starts wars and terror sprees against the world's only Jewish state, those wars makes the victim state retroactively something that should never have been created in the first place.

This is hardly a one-off for Fisher, who was hired by the Times after other similarly offensive statements such as when he justified (while pretending not to) the kidnap and murder of three Jewish teens.

(h/t Noam)

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06/25 Links: The European Parliament Rewards Hate; Senator questions PA payments to convicted murderers

From Ian:

The European Parliament Rewards Hate

Hats off to the British. Aside from all the other reasons to applaud Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (i.e. democracy, national sovereignty), it has voted to secede from an enabler of Palestinian terror and hate education. And if that accusation sounds harsh, consider what transpired in the EU Parliament on the very day of the Brexit referendum.
While the British were voting, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was addressing the EU Parliament in Brussels. By any objective standard, the visit didn’t start off well: Upon arriving, Abbas immediately rejected a personal plea by the parliament’s president, Martin Schulz, to meet with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who happened to be in Brussels at the same time. But things quickly got worse when Abbas started speaking.
Abbas’s speeches are always full of anti-Israel slander, and this one was no exception. He accused Israel of “massacring” Palestinians’ “history, heritage, identity and geopolitical entity.” He termed the Israeli “occupation” the longest in history and deemed it uniquely evil, “unlike anything that has happened to any other people anywhere in the world,” to quote one reporter’s live tweeting of the speech (I haven’t managed to find a transcript); in reality, of course, not only have there been many longer occupations, but few conflicts have ever entailed so little bloodshed. He accused Israel of being “fascist” and “racist,” of committing extrajudicial killings, and of turning “our country into an open-air prison.” All this is pretty standard, as was the conclusion, in which he paid lip service to his willingness to make peace with the monstrously evil country he just described.
But even by Abbas’s standards, this speech was exceptionally vile in two respects. First, he accused Israel of responsibility for all terrorism worldwide, ludicrously asserting that “Once the occupation ends, terrorism will disappear, there will be no more terrorism in the Middle East, or anywhere else in the world.” After all, Israel is clearly the reason why Muslims are killing fellow Muslims by bombing mosques, schools, and hospitals in Muslim countries like Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan, right?
Then, he resurrected a medieval blood libel, accusing Israel of poisoning Palestinian wells. Granted, he was speaking in Arabic, and this accusation wasn’t in his prepared English translation; but the simultaneous translator rendered it into English, and Israeli reporters had no trouble hearing it; thus one has to assume it was audible to EU parliamentarians, as well.

Abbas walks back claim rabbis sought to ‘poison’ Palestinian wells

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday backed away from his claim that rabbis had called to poison Palestinian water, saying he hadn’t intended to offend Jews, after Israel and Jewish groups said his statements were promoting blood libels and anti-Semitic tropes.
“After it has become evident that the alleged statements by a rabbi on poisoning Palestinian wells, which were reported by various media outlets, are baseless, President Mahmoud Abbas has affirmed that he didn’t intend to do harm to Judaism or to offend Jewish people around the world,” his office said in a statement.
In his speech to the Parliament of the European Union in Brussels on Thursday, Abbas claimed accusations of incitement by the Palestinians were unfair as “The Israelis are doing this as well… Certain rabbis in Israel have said very clearly to their government that our water should be poisoned in order to have Palestinians killed.”
A story reported in the Turkish press earlier in June claimed a rabbi had made such a call, though the story was quickly debunked.
His office said he “rejected all claims that accuse him and the Palestinian people of offending the Jewish religion. [He] also condemned all accusations of anti-Semitism.”
Abbas did not walk back his assertion, also contained in his EU speech, that terrorism worldwide would be eradicated if only Israel withdrew from the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel excoriated Abbas on Thursday as a peddler of lies, with the Prime Minister’s Office saying he “showed his true colors” and “is lying when he claims his hand is outstretched in peace.
“Israel waits for the day Abbas stops peddling lies and inciting [against Israel]. Until then, Israel will continue to defend itself against Palestinian incitement, which fuels terror,” the statement said. (h/t Yenta Press)

Some Cover, Others Cover Up, Abbas Anti-Semitism

Some news organizations did cover Abbas’s libel with appropriate focus. Reuters, for example, pointedly addressed the issue in the lede of its article, “Abbas says some Israeli rabbis called for poisoning Palestinian water”:
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israeli rabbis on Thursday of calling for the poisoning of Palestinian water, in what appeared to be an invocation of a widely debunked media report that recalled a medieval anti-Semitic libel.
Even Diaa Hadid, a New York Times correspondent whose coverage of Israel at times has been dreadful, emphasized the importance of the story with a powerful opening paragraph:
Echoing anti-Semitic claims that led to the mass killings of European Jews in medieval times, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority accused rabbis in Israel of calling on their government to poison the water used by Palestinians.
But other news organizations, including the Associated Press, ignored Abbas’s antisemitic comments even while covering Abbas’s speech.
The Wall Street Journal took it a step further. Not only did the newspaper ignore the Palestinian leader’s hateful remarks in coverage of the speech, but it even framed Abbas’s remarks as being moderate relative to a speech by Israeli president Reuven Rivlin:
The refusal of Mr. Abbas comes as an ironic finale to the two leaders’ visits to the Belgian and European capital.
In a speech to the European Parliament on Wednesday, it was the Israeli president who brought the unpopular message that there were no prospects of a final peace deal in the near future and that a recent French initiative to revive negotiations amounted to little more than “negotiations for negotiations’ sake.”

Syrian Refugees vs. Palestinian "Refugees" at UN "Human Rights" Council, June 22, 2016

06/24 Links Pt2: What impact will Brexit have on Israel?; The UK referendum and the politics of hate

From Ian:

Analysis: On diplomatic front, weaker EU not necessarily bad for Israel

No Israeli government official would dare say it, but a weakened EU is not necessarily a bad thing for Israel diplomatically.
Economics might be another issue. The specter of the EU falling apart, and what kind of forces that will unleash, is also a separate matter.
But on the very narrow issue of the diplomatic impact of the move on Israel, the fact that the EU house is now being shaken is not something necessarily inimical to Israeli interests.
Or, as one source put it, clearly the EU will pack a lesser punch when it makes statements about Israel and the Middle East. And that is not something that will cause many in the government to shed tears.
The British vote shows that the EU is now in serious trouble, with other states – starting with the Netherlands, and perhaps even including France – likely to question their membership in the union.
If that is the case, the Europeans will need to spend more time and energy trying to keep their own house in order, rather than trying to fix what is happening in homes in other neighborhoods.
An EU with 28 countries packs a lot of power. But with Britain pulling out, and some other countries either likely to do so or beginning the processing of checking into a divorce, it will have a more difficult time presenting itself as a major power.

Melanie Phillips: The UK referendum and the politics of hate

Well, I’m a British Jew. I supported Brexit principally on the grounds that Britain should become once again a democratic self-governing nation. I also back Britain being able to control its immigration levels.
The comparison with Jewish refugees and migrants, whose total number in the decades around the turn of the past century is exceeded by the numbers now migrating to the UK every year, is invidious. Pfeffer’s comments are as offensive as they are shallow.
Contrary to the claims of Remain, it is uncontrolled migration that swells neo-Nazi support. The rise of extremist parties in Europe has been fueled by those who have turned a blind eye to mass migration and who deny the growing phenomenon of Muslim assaults on women.
In Britain, neo-Nazi groups have been boosted by the denial of Islamization, Muslim rape gangs and the infiltration of schools by Islamic radicals.
What’s more, those claiming that Remain meant an end to the politics of hate are themselves the principal hate-mongers. Those backing Brexit talked about “getting our country back” from the EU. Commentators backing Remain used the same term to mean getting their country back from their fellow British citizens who supported Brexit.
Those who voted for UK self-government have thus been damned as pariahs who hijacked a nation to which they are deemed too horrible even to belong.
Britain’s EU referendum turned into a culture war. The divisions are savage and won’t go away. British Jews are on both sides. But when a society turns on itself like this it will hurt them all too in the end. It always does.

Al-Jazeera Network Explains BDS: HP, Cat, Adidas, Alstom, G4S "Make a Profit from the Occupation... Do They Have a Presence in Your Country?"

An infomercial titled "What Is BDS?" and produced by AJ+, an online news and current events channel run by the Al-Jazeera network, lists companies that are targeted by the BDS movement. According to the video, posted on the YouTube channel of AJ+ on June 4, Hewlett-Packard, G4S, Alstom, Cat, and Adidas are singled out as trademarks that "make a profit from the occupation."
Reporter: "The Palestinians face daily covert suffering, on top of their suffering from the guns of the occupation. All of Abu Yessar's work has been disrupted by the Israeli checkpoints, which are equipped with advanced electronic devices produced by HP. Yasser goes to school, where he learns that his teacher was arrested in an Israeli prison, run by the G4S company, which has a contract with the occupation. As for Umm Yasser, she finds it difficult to ride to the train, which serves only the settlements. The train was created and is operated by the Alstom Company. These settlements, the train and the wall are located in lands that, according to international law, are occupied. There can be no more visits to the home of the neighbors. The Israeli occupation forces destroyed it, using bulldozers made by the Cat Company. The Israeli authorities hold a marathon, which is sponsored by Adidas. These famous trademarks, as well as others, make a profit from the occupation. There are demands to boycott the occupation and those who benefit from it, to withdraw investments from them and to place sanctions upon them. These demands are led by a movement known as BDS. Some companies have stopped their activities in the occupied lands, whereas others have declared their intention to pull out. Do these companies have a presence in your country?"

"Jews taking over Kurdistan to implement Greater Israel"

Back in 2009, I reported that conspiracy theorist (and, later, prominent analyst at Iran's PressTV) Wayne Madsen had written that Jews were colonizing Iraq by buying land in Kurdistan.

Israeli expansionists, their intentions to take full control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and permanently keep the Golan Heights of Syria and expand into southern Lebanon already well known, also have their eyes on parts of Iraq considered part of a biblical “Greater Israel.”

Kurdish, Iraqi Sunni Muslims, and Turkmen have noted that Kurdish Israelis began to buy land in Iraqi Kurdistan, after the U.S. invasion in 2003, that is considered historical Jewish “property”.

The Israelis are particularly interested in the shrine of the Jewish prophet Nahum in al Qush, the prophet Jonah in Mosul, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel in Kirkuk. Israelis are also trying to claim Jewish “properties” outside of the Kurdish region, including the shrine of Ezekiel in the village of al-Kifl in Babel Province near Najaf and the tomb of Ezra in al-Uzayr in Misan Province, near Basra, both in southern Iraq’s Shia-dominated territory. Israeli expansionists consider these shrines and tombs as much a part of “Greater Israel” as Jerusalem and the West Bank, which they call “Judea and Samaria”.

Kurdish and Iraqi sources report that Israel’s Mossad is working hand-in-hand with Israeli companies and “tourists” to stake a claim to the Jewish “properties” of Israel in Iraq. The Mossad has already been heavily involved in training the Kurdish Pesha Merga military forces.

At the time I quoted Iraqpundit as saying that no one should underestimate the power of conspiracy theories in the Arab world, and as the story was translated to Arabic.

Seven years later, the conspiracy theory has just reappeared in a Jordanian newspaper.

The funny part is that the conspiracy theorists love to quote the Biblical promise of a Jewish nation from the Nile to the Euphrates as evidence. (Here's one of many maps of "Greater Israel" all over the Internet.)

Iraq's Kurdish regions are to the east of the Euphrates.

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Hamas accuses NGOs of being spies for Israel

From Middle East Monitor last week:

A group of employees working with international organisations active in the Gaza Strip have been found to be carrying out activities against the resistance, security website Al-Majd reported on yesterday.

Security sources told the Hamas owned website that the group was found to be carrying out doubtful activities related to work sites for the Palestinian resistance.

Later on, the workers of international aid organisations were questioned and they recognised that they are connected to international intelligence services.

The foreigners recognised that they were asked to record footage of resistance work sites such as tunnels, military bases and other sensitive places, in addition to monitoring military movements in Gaza.

The security source reiterated that these collaborators used their work with the international aid organisations to cover-up their anti-resistance acts.

At the same time, they recognised that they are run by international intelligence services connected with the Israeli occupation.

I wonder which NGOs have a secret pro-Israel agenda.

It would not be surprising if Israeli spies infiltrated anti-Israel NGOs to go to Gaza, but chances are far higher that Hamas didn't like what the NGOs were doing (some of them promote democracy, after all) and uses the accusation of them being spies to keep them in line.

Here is a map showing the locations of dozens of NGOs in Gaza City alone that I reproduced in 2013 (the site is no longer up.)

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06/24 Links Pt1: How Dare Europe Applaud a Blood-Libeler?; 'Palestinians were created to cause trouble for Jews'

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Obama’s money and Israel’s sovereignty

This week, MK Michael Oren stood up to his boss in the Kulanu party, Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, to the political Left, including hundreds of retired security brass, and to the IDF General Staff. The former ambassador to Washington urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to sign the multi-year security assistance deal that US President Barack Obama demands Israel accept.
The problem isn’t the money. By all accounts, Obama’s multi-year military assistance package is generous.
The problem is that in exchange for the expanded military aid, Obama is demanding that Israel surrender its diplomatic and military independence to the White House.
For more than 40 years, every US administration – including the Obama administration – that has sought to harm Israel in any way has hit up against an unmovable obstacle. Whether the White House wanted to enable the UN Security Council to pass an anti-Israel resolution, place an embargo on military exports or bureaucratically slow them down to force Israel to stand down during wartime; whether the White House wanted block expanded trade deals, crowd out Israel’s military industries, or sell game changing weapons systems to Israel’s enemies, the US Congress has always stopped it in its tracks.
Israel-haters in the US speak endlessly about the supposedly all powerful and malign “Israel lobby,” which controls US foreign affairs. But the simple truth is that it wouldn’t matter all that much if AIPAC were to shut down tomorrow. Even without AIPAC, Israel would enjoy the support of Congress.

French anti-racism groups spar over mayor’s support for Palestinian killer

Two French organizations devoted to fighting anti-Semitism clashed publicly over one group’s complaint to police on incitement against a mayor who launched a campaign in support of a Palestinian convicted of murder.
France’s Human Rights League, a nonprofit founded in 1898 to protest the racially motivated conviction for espionage of the French Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus, criticized the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, in a statement last week.
The league’s statement said BNVCA behaved like “a spokesperson of the Israeli government” when it filed the complaint against the Communist mayor of the Paris suburb of Stains, Azzédine Taïbi, for his refusal to remove from city hall a banner calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences in Israel for acts of terrorism in which dozens of civilians were murdered.
“Stains is taking action for peace, free Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian Mandela,” the banner read.
A French judge in March instructed Taïbi to remove the banner or face sanctions, citing previous precedents including the Administrative Court of Montreuil’s injunction in July, which nullified the honorary resident status conferred on Barghouti by another Paris suburb, Aubervilliers. The court said such actions exceed the duties and responsibilities of municipal governments.
But Taïbi refused to comply, prompting BNVCA to file criminal charges against him. According to BNVCA, celebrating Palestinians who murdered Jews risks legitimizing acts of violence against Jews in France, where Islamists have killed eight Jews in two shooting attacks since 2012. The perpetrators of both attacks said they were acting to avenge Palestinians. BNVCA vowed to continue legal efforts to counter the celebration of terrorists in France.

'Palestinians were created to cause trouble for Jews'

A man calling himself Wild Bill described his support for Israel in a video that is going viral.
"We all know that Islam is giving the world a lot of things that will be long remembered. They invented the fine art of skyjacking, suicide bombers and taqiya - the art of lying to infidels," he began.
"They are the only religion to develop a preschool program where the children sing about exterminating Jews and I do believe they are the only ones to demolish two skyscrapers while 3,000 people were still inside. Yes, Islam has a long and proud history of doing things that nobody else does.
"But by far the most creative invention of Islam is the Palestinian: a person who has never been seen before in the modern world who supposedly lived in a nation that never existed. The Palestinian was invented shortly after the nation of Israel sprang into existence as the new name for the traditional home of the Jewish people.
"Now, prior to the invention of the Palestinian, the Arab nations had been lusting for the land of the Jews because the hardworking Jewish people had transformed the desert land into a well-irrigated and beautiful oasis and the Arabs decided they wanted it.

Here is my translation of nearly all of Mahmoud Abbas' speech to the EU parliament yesterday based on the official Arabic transcript by Wafa. It includes some serious lies that should have been noticed by anyone with a passing familiarity with history.

And yet it was greeted with a standing ovation.

I highlighted some of the more egregious lies, but there were many.

In the name of of Allah the Merciful

His Excellency Mr. Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament

Ladies and gentlemen, members of parliament,

First I want to thank you for inviting me to speak again in front of your parliament, I would like to express my great admiration for the democratic model,..and the high and humanitarian principles represented by the European people, and also express respect and appreciation for your positions in order to lay the foundations of truth, justice and peace in my homeland Palestine.

I am pleased to convey to you the greetings of our people, who look forward to your distinguished parliament ...to work on the empowerment of our people to restore their rights and their freedom and independence, as we appreciate all forms of support you provide for the Palestinian people, and in particular to enable it to fulfill its economy and build the independent state institutions, including making it able to lay the foundations for a democratic system that is transparent and accountable and will apply international standards under the rule of law and respect for human rights.

I can not fail here to pay tribute to your parliament's recommendation to its Member States of the European Union to recognize the State of Palestine, and thanks go also to the parliaments of the Member States, which in turn are the other had recommended to their governments to recognize the State of Palestine...

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

One hundred years have passed since the Balfour Declaration in 1917, and 68 years of Nakba, during which Israeli forces committed in 1948 the killing and massacres and appalling crimes, caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of our people and turned them into refugees, and removed more than 488 villages and towns where people lived for thousands of years.

In 1967, Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and hundreds of thousands of our people fled, and our people are still under occupation.

In short, to say the least, on the Palestinian scene, is that Palestine is the homeland and its people, history and heritage, identity and geopolitical presence has been subjected to historical massacre and theft unmatched in the twentieth century and is still going on in the twenty first century, under the watchful eyes and of the international community.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The dark chapters of our people's lives are still continuing. Our people in Palestine live within the tyranny of occupation, its arbitrary actions and abhorrent racism, while the people who live in the refugee diaspora have lives of misery and deprivation.

But we are determined to hold out, and stay at home and work to get rid of the Israeli occupation, by political, diplomatic and peaceful means, we have come a long way, and we succeeded at the international level.

But we are still bogged down on the relationship with Israel, and we have tried very hard to return to the implementation of signed agreements, and respect for the obligations on us and them, but they refuse to carry out a minimum of them, instead devoting themselves to their occupation and control of all aspects of our lives.

In this regard, we are working to change the reality of the city of Jerusalem and to its historical identity, and protect Christian and Muslim holy sites, with the settlements continuously accelerating everywhere, in addition to land confiscations, house demolitions and constructions, and the arrest of thousands.

On the other hand, Israel is witnessing these days wildest ongoing violence, reflected by the settlers and their terror practices, as happened in the burning of the Dawabsheh family, as well as the brutal practices of the Israeli army and killings committed outside the law, and this extremism reached the extent of prompting a number of Israeli politicians and officials to direct criticism of their government, such as Herzog, the opposition leader, and Ya'alon the Defense Minister who resigned, and Ehud Barak, the former prime minister, and Deputy Chief of Staff, and a number of journalists, all of whom said that Israel exercises and the expansion of its behavior is fascist and racist, in their own words.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The resolution 181 taken by the United Nations was dedicated to sharing the land of historical Palestine between the two sides almost equally, but Israel has taken control by military force of 78% of historic Palestine in 1948, was not satisfied with that, but occupied the rest of it in 1967.

In spite of the international resolutions and the efforts of the international community, according to the vision of two-state solution, there is no independent state of Palestine yet, although it became a state in the United Nations system since 2012, and joined the many international organizations and treaties, and had been recognized by 138 countries.

However it is for the sake of peace, and an end to decades-long conflict, and the use, homelessness, and the diaspora of our people, we accepted the establishment of an independent State of Palestine on less than a quarter of the area of historic Palestine, according to the 1967 borders, and despite this great sacrifice, since the Madrid Conference and the Oslo Convention we are still caught up in the vicious cycle of negotiations for negotiations, imposed by Israel in the game to gain time, to establish facts on the ground, and which still continues to settle them and confiscation of our land, the construction of the wall of segregation.

Israel launched, and in a matter of six years, three wars on Gaza, killing thousands, it eliminated the presence of tens of Palestinian families, destroyed thousands of homes and structures in the Gaza Strip. Since Israel's occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip a million Palestinians entered Israeli jails and still there are 7,000 prisoners in Israeli jails;

We wonder in light of this bitter and dangerous reality, is not it time, ladies and gentlemen, that the Israeli occupation of Palestine ends? Why don't international laws and resolutions apply to Israel? And why do Security Council and General Assembly resolutions remain just ink on paper when it comes to Palestine and the Palestinian people's rights? And how long it will Israel act with impunity and escape the benefits of peace, recognition of historical injustice and the offense caused to the Palestinian people?

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our people are looking forward to life in freedom and dignity in their homeland as other peoples, and will not continually accept occupation and settlement imposed on them, no matter what the size of suffering and sacrifices. My friends, help us to remove the causes of frustration and hopelessness experienced by our people, and to get rid of the occupation which is the longest ever known in modern history.

Is it rational that the Palestinian people, one of the oldest peoples in the region and the world culture and knowledge, to be deprived of their own state? Is not it high time that they enjoys his freedom without restrictions and obstacles, and barriers and military checkpoints and gates and bridges open and close depending on whim and mood of the Israeli occupation army?

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Israel has used the strength of the occupation to turn our homeland Palestine into a big prison for our people.

Here, I reiterate before you, that we do not want to remove the presence of a geo-political entity, as some claim, but we will not allow one that eliminates the presence of our land, and our right to it. The continued denial of the rights of our people in their homeland only serves extremists, and generates terrorism and violence, and gives advocates their excuse for it, do not make your on the issue of Palestine and Jerusalem as a pretext for these and those, but make them a model of justice, peace, freedom and fairness.

Abbas seems to have expanded on this in his actual speech: “In order to overcome terrorism, we also need to end Israeli occupation by creating a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders with east Jerusalem as its capital...[The absence of a two-state solution would give] “pretext to those who commit terrorism in the name of religion. Once this occupation ends, those pretexts will disappear and extremism will be over as will terrorism...There will be no more terrorism in the Middle East nor elsewhere in the world.”

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

We look forward to the European Union and its member states and its honored parliament, for the continuation of efforts and played a political and diplomatic role of an actor, all the way to a peaceful solution just and lasting peace in our region, according to the two-state solution on the basis of 1967 and the resolutions of international legitimacy. Both Israel and Palestine have enjoyed EU partnership agreements and neighborly common membership in the Union for the Mediterranean, which qualifies the European Union in order to play this role, and so as to achieve security and stability for all.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

To be clear and explicit as is always my habit in my conversations, and I answer some questions that may inspire some people, we want the two-state solution and the establishment of the State of Palestine on the entire territory of the West Bank, according to the borders of June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, we do not object to the reciprocal minor adjustments.

And that the refugee issue is handled in accordance with Resolution 194, as stipulated in the Arab Peace Initiative, meaning a just and agreed solution to the refugee issue.

We reject the transitional solutions, and reject the state with temporary borders, and we want the Arab peace initiative to be applied also approved without changes.

One issue raised by the Israelis is incitement, and despite the fact that Israeli incitement is uninterrupted and practices of the occupation and the settlers do not stop, and to address this phenomenon, we call to reactivate the tripartite committee the problem of Israel and Palestine and the United States of America, in 1998, with Mr. Netanyahu personally, and welcome to enter the European Union fourth party in this Committee.

[Here is where Abbas seems to have said "Only a week ago, a number of rabbis in Israel announced, and made a clear announcement, demanding that their government poison the water to kill the Palestinians. Isn't that clear incitement to commit mass killings against the Palestinian people?")

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I assure you that Palestine, if Israeli occupation and settlement ended, and it gained its independence and sovereignty, it should happen soon, it can be represented as a civilized and quality addition in our region, and be an oasis of stability and will be a refined culture and civilization. The capital will be the in East Jerusalem, with the doors open to all the followers of the three monotheistic religions without discrimination.

...We will continue to build the Palestinian state institutions, because the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people is not subject to negotiations with Israel, and we want the continuation of your help with this, and we have as well dozens of colleges and universities, which enjoys a good reputation, and contribute to the construction of an educational and education renaissance in our country, which is a research and scientific mixed institutions, both at the level of teaching staff or on the level of students we are a free society, and open-minded, enjoy where women are just like men with the same rights and obligations, and everyone is equal before the Law.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

In the third of this month, a ministerial meeting was held in Paris, according to the French initiative, which included 28 countries and three international organizations, and we appreciate the noble effort, we look forward to see results in the convening of an international peace conference, according to international law and international legitimacy and the resolutions of the Security Council, and the Arab peace initiative as approved at the Beirut summit in 2002, and the roadmap, and the agreements signed, and determine the time limits of the negotiations and implementation, as well as the formation mechanism and the framework for follow-up, similar to what has been with Iran.

As the European Council of Ministers adopted at its last meeting, during the final statement of the meetings of Paris on the third of June 2016, they and the Arab brothers and the vast majority of countries in the world support this French effort. President Francois Hollande has assured me that a few days ago that France is determined to continue right up to the international peace conference before year-end, and stressed the need to start preparations for the convening and success of the conference, through specialized work teams, and assured him of our full support to these efforts, and I reiterate before you that we as Palestinians and Arabs, we stand with you in the same trench to defeat terrorism and extremism.

This will only be achieved by an end the Israeli occupation and the establishment of an independent State of Palestine on the 1967 borders, and whose capital is East Jerusalem, and to live in peace and security alongside Israel.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The failure of the State of Palestine, and the failure of the idea of a two-state solution that would prolong the life of conflict and strife, it will not only serve the extremists, and the advocates of violence and terrorism, which live on and hurt many countries in our region, and caused waves of displacement of refugees flowing into Europe, and including Palestinian refugees fleeing with them, who hope to be treated the same manner as other refugees, having lost everything fleeing the horrors of war, murder and terrorism, which we condemn whatever its source, and we must defeat terrorism and resolving these conflicts, which unfortunately has no prospects to be solved in the foreseeable future.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

As for the internal Palestinian situation, we are working to unify our land and our people, and to end the siege on the Gaza Strip, and we are still working to end the division, through the formation of a national unity government committed to PLO policies, international and regional obligations and commitments, and go for presidential and parliamentary elections as soon as possible . On this occasion, we thank you very much for your help in the reconstruction of what was destroyed by the Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip.

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Our hand is extended for peace, and we have the will and determination to achieve it: do you have such a will? Do you have to prepare your positions and admit the historical injustice inflicted upon our people and their rights? Just as you so, we also have our narrative, an honest narrative. Our presence on this earth has not stopped since the dawn of history, and to this day, our rights to our land and our holy Christian and Muslim princples are fixed. Only peace and genuine reconciliation can help recognize our rights and to repair the damage.

I assure you that we are not in favor turning the political conflict into a religious conflict, but peace is the interest of all, and I hope this to be the case for you, my neighbors. Come to make a lasting peace, away from the power and domination and control and expansion and settlement. Peace and coexistence based on the foundations of justice, truth and respect for the dignity and humanity and freedom of each party on an equal footing, is the real guarantee for security and stability and a promising future for the generations to come, and your generations.

In conclusion, I thank you again, Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, members of parliament, and I count on your support and my people, and your noble efforts to achieve peace in our region.

Long livethe Palestinian - European friendship, to make Palestine the Holy Land an oasis peace and security to its people and to its neighbors and the world.
Peace be upon you.

UPDATE: Here is audio of the accusation of rabbis exhorting Jews to poison the wells. The parliamentarians were well aware of what he said:

Voice Recorder >>

(h/t Rudi via Joods Actueel)

UPDATE 2: This video is better.

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From the Metro Market Facebook page, celebrating Ramadan at that Gaza mall.

Previous articles on this market here and here where we showed many Israeli products prominently advertised by that mall - including Sabra hummus!

(h/t David H)

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The EU and US cannot condemn Abbas' blood libel

It is 24 hours after Abbas' blood libel speech at the EU parliament.

It was widely reported - Reuters and the New York Times both featured his lies in their articles. Even Al Arabiya's coverage noted that there was no evidence for the claim.

Yet the only groups that have condemned it so far are groups that are explicitly Zionist to begin with. (Or they claim to be, in J-Street's case, even though that group seems to have ignored Abbas' many previous statements that are nearly as inflammatory and false.)

The EU parliament gave Abbas a a 30-second standing ovation after the speech. European Parliament President Martin Schulz welcomed him by saying, “Your presence here today, the day after President Rivlin delivered his address, sends a strong signal that the will to achieve a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine is still alive." But he has been silent since then.

The State Department spokesperson surreally talked about the incident but didn't come close to condemning it.

QUESTION: Are you familiar with the comments – the part of his speech in which he said that there were some rabbis who were wanting to poison Palestinian water?
MR KIRBY: I’ve seen the comments. I can’t confirm the veracity of that.
QUESTION: You can’t – I’m not asking you to confirm it. I’m asking you what you think of it.
MR KIRBY: Well, look, I mean --
QUESTION: I mean, is this the kind of – is this the kind of language that you guys want coming from someone who says that he’s a partner for peace and wants to negotiate, and then he accuses the other side of trying to poison his people?
MR KIRBY: We’ve been – without speaking to specific comments, as you know I’m not wont to do, we have been very clear – the Secretary’s been clear about our concerns about inflammatory rhetoric and incitement and --
QUESTION: Well, this is before the EU parliament. What --
MR KIRBY: Again, we want – here’s how I’d put it, Matt: We --
QUESTION: You don’t think it’s --
MR KIRBY: As we’ve said before, we --
QUESTION: You don’t think it might be true, do you?
MR KIRBY: I – again, I’ve seen nothing to indicate the truth of that. But we have long said what we want is for both sides to ratchet down not just the violence but the rhetoric, which can inflame some of the violence. And we just don’t find that sort of rhetoric helpful.

Oh, accusing Jews of poisoning the wells is not "helpful" and is an opportunity for both sides to ratchet down the rhetoric. Thanks for those strong words from Israel's best friend.

The fact is that while diplomats routinely and forcefully condemn Israel for actions that their own states are far more guilty of, there is nothing but praise for Mahmoud Abbas as he spouts his lies and incitement (Unbelievably, Abbas even began the speech saying that he is against incitement.)

The double standards cannot be clearer. And while they would deny this up and down, it is hard to construe the lack of reaction to this as anything other than an attempt to paper it over because the lie of Abbas as a peacemaker is too strong to be overcome by pesky facts.

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The EU applauds a blood libel (ElderToons)

Today, Mahmoud Abbas accused rabbis in Israel of encouraging their flock to poison Palestinian water supplies.

And the EU members applauded.

It is not exactly the first time that Abbas and the PA have made wild antisemitic accusations. Yet the ardor that the West shows for Abbas continues unabated.

Here are only three examples, in cartoon form, showing that Abbas can literally say anything and be respected as a man of peace.

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