Tuesday, April 25, 2017

From Ian:

A Reminder Not to Forget
Jews, too, sometimes prefer to forget. On the left, there is a nefarious tactic of trying to portray the Jewish people as more sinning than sinned against. For those in the anti-Zionist realm, the Holocaust is an ugly snag in the narrative of an Israeli Goliath targeting a Palestinian David. But sometimes there is a desire to forget even within the staunchly pro-Israel camp. It can be tempting, in celebrating Israel’s military might, its flourishing democracy, its miraculous existence, to forget that we were not always so strong. But we cannot let that pride come at the expense of remembering who we are, which necessarily includes remembering what we as a people have endured.
And we won’t. Jewish liturgy and tradition are peppered with the language of memory. We are commanded to remember the Sabbath. We sing about the repercussions of forgetting Jerusalem. Many blessings and prayers conclude with the exhortation that what we are doing is l’zecher yitziat Mitzraim—in memory of our exodus from Egypt. And every year, in commemorating that exodus during Passover, we contemplate our obligation to see ourselves as if we, personally, had been taken out of Egypt; we sing of how in each generation, a new enemy rises up who seeks our destruction; and we commit ourselves to telling the story to our children and our children’s children.
We are a people who understands the immeasurable power of a story told well, so we will not forget. We must ensure that the world does not either.
‘I am a Muslim Arab and an Israeli Zionist, and I love the Jewish people’
One of the most patriotic families in Israel lives just a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip. The father—a former Gazan—wears a medallion with the map of Israel and a Star of David around his neck, two of his sons are IDF soldiers who are willing ‘to die for the State of Israel,’ and they all feel a strong connection to Judaism. Years after being smuggled into Israel following the father’s secret collaboration with the Shin Bet, they declare: ‘We have no other country.’
N., a Muslim Arab resident of Gaza, traveled to Israel last summer to see her three grandchildren, two of whom are IDF soldiers. She hadn’t seen them for six years.
When she arrived in Israel, N. knew that she was ill and that her days were numbered. A female IDF soldier escorted her from the Erez Crossing to the entrance to her son’s home, in one of the Jewish communities near Gaza.
“I opened the door for her and gave her a hug,” her son, D., recalls. “She saw the children. I said to her, ‘Mother, look, my sons are in the army. My sons are soldiers.’ We hadn’t seen each other for years. I looked at her. She was happy. She asked me to take care of them, to make sure that nothing happened to them. Before we parted, she hugged my two soldiers in her arms and said to them: ‘Inshallah, I hope we will soon get to see this uniform in Gaza. When will Israel come back there? We have no life.’”
“Grandmother kissed us incessantly,” says Y., a sergeant in the IDF. “She stroked our hair and kept saying, ‘May God protect you.’”
N. stayed with her family for a month. Shortly after returning to Gaza, she passed away. “I feel so relieved,” says D., “knowing that my mother was pleased with us when she died.”
How did a Muslim Arab turn into a pro-Israel activist
‘Metro’ tells the story of Yahya Mahamed, who said his eyes were opened to the truth about Israel. Now calling himself ‘Zionist Muslim,’ he is working at StandWithUs to help others
Sometimes we are privileged to meet rare and inspiring people, people whose life experiences are so different from our own that hearing about them provides us with a new understanding of the human spirit, a new way to see things, and a new way to think.
Yahya Mahamed is one such person. Tall, dark and slim, the first thing one notices about him is his smile.
It’s sincere and disarming and immediately evokes the feeling that a friend has been found. As his story unfolds, it becomes clear that behind those dimples is a young man of courage, humor, intelligence and a tremendous heart.
Metro sat with Mahamed at the Jerusalem office of StandWithUs, an NGO dedicated to educating people around the world about Israel. This is his story.
“I grew up in Umm el-Fahm, the third-largest Arab city in Israel. It’s a very problematic place. The Islamic Movement runs the municipality. This means they have power over everything: schools, services, who gets hired... and they are very anti-Israel. ISIS logos and swastikas are common,” he says.

  • Tuesday, April 25, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon
PA president Mahmoud Abbas plans to meet famous Emirati singer "Ahlam" soon during a visit to the UAE.

The thing is, he met her in February right before the final of Arab Idol, held in Beirut, where she is a judge.

People are talking about Abbas' seeming obsession with Ahlam, and not in a complimentary way.

King Leer




Palestinian Arabs on social media are complaining about how Abbas is interested in meeting Ahlam while the prisoners are suffering on their hunger strike.

One said that this was an insult to the Palestinian people.

Because of the criticism, the official PA media have not been showing these photos or reporting on his meetings with the singer.




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

While I take a back seat to no one in expressing glee when some SJP/JVP-sponsored student government divestment vote goes down in flames (not to mention burning with rage when such votes go the BDSholes’ way – especially when they cheat), it might be time to stop tracking success or failure of the BDS “movement” (or Israel’s standing among the young) based on what a handful of Student Senators say or do.

Claims that student government votes carry actual political weight can only be supported if at least one of the following conditions is true:

(     1)    That there exists a plausible chance that such a vote will be taken seriously by those who actually make decisions regarding where a college or university invests its money (i.e., the school’s adult leadership and institutional investment managers), leading to the possibility of actual divestment; and/or
   
(      2)    That such votes represent genuine anti-Israel sentiments among the wider student body that student government is supposed to represent

Regarding condition (1), given that college Presidents, Boards of Trustees and investment managers have been saying “No!” to BDS calls since the start of the Millennium, it’s pretty safe to say that the number of schools actually considering divestment from Israel continues to stand at zero. 

In fact, during a BDS era that stretches back close to two decades, college and universities have been falling all over one another to build or strengthen partnerships with their Israeli counterparts (many of them investing – rather than divesting – millions into these relationships). 

And keep in mind that during this same era, schools have joined divestment projects – targeting Sudan and Iran – for their genuine human rights abuses vs. the fictional ones ginned up by BDS activists against Israel.  So it’s not that colleges and universities are loath to use their investment portfolios to make political statements.  Rather, their loud condemnation of student calls for BDS – often within hours of those calls being made – represents their rejection of the political snake oil the boycotters continue to peddle.

Regarding condition (2), as recent history has shown, school administrators are loath to show disrespect for student opinion, especially if that opinion can plausibly be said to represent the actual will of the majority of the student body (or at least a large minority).  So the fact that those same administrators are ready to tell Student Senates to shove their BDS resolutions where the sun doesn’t shine (or something to that effect) means they know what the boycotters also know: that student governments pass divestment votes in spite of the fact that those votes do not represent wider student opinion.

Much has been made of recent last-minute divestment votes announced or taken during the Jewish holidays.  Beyond the underhanded nature of sneaking such votes in while political enemies are celebrating religious holidays, this sort of behavior also represents an admission by cynical BDS activists that they could never win a fair fight for the simple reason that student opinion is not on their side.

If it were, you’d see student pols running on BDS platforms, informing voters that this would be their top priority if elected.  Instead, you only see pro-divestment votes being cast by ignorant Senators brow beaten by the boycotters throughout grueling all-nighters, or stealth BDSers who run for office with the sole purpose of passing divestment measures (who then leave office if they get – or don’t get – their way on this one issue).  In fact, on one of the few occasions when Israel has played a role in a campus election, the result was a rout for divestment supporters.

So if pandering administrators and normally indifferent students are all comfortable telling the boycotters to take a hike, why should any of us be still getting bent out of shape when a gaggle of Students for Justice in Palestine types manage to squeak through a “victory” by getting an impotent divestment resolution passed that is guaranteed to be ignored?


Even if you believe (as I do) that BDS campaigns are just the means to inject a steady drip of anti-Israel venom into the minds of impressionable students, we can fight against that campaign more effectively if we don’t treat such votes as stunning victories, harrowing near misses, or terrible blows.  Rather, we should see them for what they are: the boobie prize the boycotters are forced to content themselves with in an era when boycotts are nowhere to be seen, investment in the Jewish state continues to skyrocket, and the only sanctions being enacted are by dozens of state legislatures and the US government to condemn the aptly named BDS “movement.”



We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
From Ian:

PMW: PA TV honors murderer by joining family’s birthday party
As'ad Zo'rob is a Palestinian murderer. In 2002, he shot and killed his Israeli employer who was giving him a ride in his car. Zo'rob is serving a life sentence for the murder. Official Palestinian Authority TV called him "heroic" and decided to join the family's birthday celebrations in his honor. At the party earlier this month, the PA TV host referred to the murderer as "the heroic prisoner" and a source of "pride" for "all of Palestine":
Official PA TV reporter: "Dear viewers, we are transmitting to you from the home of heroic prisoner As'ad Zo'rob..."
Brother of murderer: "He is a hero, and is everything to us. He has made us proud."
Official PA TV reporter: "Of course, this prisoner is a [source of] pride for your family and all of Palestine."
[Official PA TV, I Call You, April 3, 2017]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented the participation of PA TV at a similar birthday party for terrorist Abbas Al-Sayid who is serving 35 life sentences for planning two suicide bombings, one in 2002 at a Passover celebration, killing 30 Israelis, and another in 2001, killing 5 and wounding 100.
PA TV weekly program Giants of Endurance
This example of PA TV presenting a murderer of an Israeli as heroic is no exception. PMW has documented that all Palestinian terrorist prisoners and all terrorist so-called "Martyrs" are considered "heroes" by the Palestinian Authority and its leadership. It is therefore not surprising that official PA TV has a special weekly program dedicated to honoring terrorist prisoners called Giants of Endurance. PA TV honors these "heroes" by having their relatives as guests in the studio or visiting them in their homes, inviting them to speak about their imprisoned terrorist relative and sending him/her greetings.
PA TV honors murderer on his birthday, visits family of “heroic prisoner”


Douglas Murray: What does the UN think Saudi Arabia can teach us about gender equality?
In these tricky – not to say dark – times there is one place to which we can always turn for light relief: Geneva. The city itself may be unamusing. But it does play host to the world’s most hilarious organisation – the body which calls itself ‘the UN Human Rights Council’ (UNHRC).
A few days ago, the Council voted to appoint members for the 2018-2022 term of its ‘Commission on the Status of Women’, a UN agency ‘exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.’ Among those appointed to the Commission was that notable supporter of gender equality – Saudi Arabia. Best of all is that – as the excellent UN Watch points out here – at least five EU member states must have voted to put Saudi Arabia on the Commission.
There was a time when moves like these garnered some outrage, or at least comment. So far this one appears not to have done so. Which might be because everyone has too many other things on their minds. Or that everybody thinks Saudi Arabia has been making such leaps and bounds in the realm of gender equality that it can teach the rest of us a thing or two. Or that nobody thinks that the UN Human Rights Council, its ‘Commission on the Status of Women’ or any of its other expensive initiatives matter one jot and know that the whole thing is barmy. Personally I think that the last of these possibilities is the most likely.
But if everybody realises that the UNHRC is the last place in the world where you would go for anything other than a dark laugh, what is the point of countries like ours contributing to it either through financial contributions or sending representatives? Surely we can come up with a better use for the cash? If not, why not just pile it up and burn it? At least that would be a harmless use of everyone’s time and money. Unlike the UNHRC, which is exceptionally costly and consistently harmful.
Jpost Editorial: Saudis and Women
Why would the UN appoint Saudi Arabia as a defender of women’s rights, a country where a woman cannot even open a bank account without her husband’s permission and received the right to vote and run for office in municipal elections just two years ago? It should not come as too much of a surprise. After all, this is the same UN whose Human Rights Council enforces Agenda Item 7, which dictates that Israel’s purported human rights violations must be raised and discussed every single time the UNHRC convenes. More UNHRC condemnations are made against Israel than against all other countries in the world combined.
Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, has pledged to change what she calls the “culture” of the international body. She has already done much to combat the knee-jerk criticism directed against Israel that characterizes so much of UN discourse. Perhaps her next order of business will be to help ensure that countries like Saudi Arabia are singled out for their human rights violations. It would be fitting if Haley’s strong female leadership became the driving force for a campaign within the UN to condemn Saudi Arabia for the suppression of half of its population.
The UN once was and might again be a force for good in the world. The potential is boundless for an institution that brings together all the nations of the world. Wars can be prevented; blatant human rights abuses can be stopped; the damage resulting from famine and natural disaster can be ameliorated. All this and more can be achieved through dialogue and cooperation.
However, before any of this can happen, the UN must have a minimum level of self-respect that prevents it from appointing Saudi Arabia to a council responsible for safeguarding the rights of women.

  • Tuesday, April 25, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

We are familiar with the anti-Israel bias of the United Nations.

In November 10, 1975, there was United Nations Resolution 3379 that Zionism is racism.

In September 2009, the UN came out with the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead -- a report that condemned Israel and minimized Hamas responsibility. The Goldstone Report was so filled with inaccuracies, that 2 years after it came out, Goldstone apologized for the report's conclusion that Israel had intentionally targeted civilians.
wordle
The top 250 words in the Goldstone report's conclusions and recommendations section, in graphical format using Wordle. The size of the words indicates how often they were used. The reference to the terrorist group Hamas can be found on the right, in a red square. Credit: Elder of Ziyon
In 2014, William Schabas was selected by the UN to head a similar investigation into Israel's Operation Protective Edge. After various issues of Schabas' bias were revealed, he finally recused himself.

These made big headlines at the time.

The UN anti-Israel bias continues to show up. Sometimes it makes some headlines, sometimes not.

But though the UN bias is persistent, we sometimes forget the extent to which the UN supports anti-Israel terrorism.

This goes beyond the regular rape accusations against the UN, and accusations that they have been lax in prosecuting those charges.

The institutional bias and refusal of the UN to deal with it permeates its relationship with Israel, and goes way beyond the bias Israel regularly faces in the UN, the UN Assembly, UN Security Council and UN Human Rights Council.

UNRWA is known for its partisanship. This of course is to be expected. Since the UNRWA's existence is completely dependent on a Palestinian refugee crisis, it is not surprising that it has accomplished so little to actually resolve the problem. What is not mentioned is that UNRWA's bias against Israel is an inescapable result of that dependence on the Palestinian Arabs.

The problem of UN-sponsored schools using anti-Israel textbooks from Palestinian Authority has often been noted. Yet, UNRWA's failure to deal with the problem continues.

Beyond the texts being used, the teachers themselves reinforce the anti-Israel bias. In February 2017, UN Watch came out with its report: Poisoning Palestinian Children: A Report on UNRWA Teachers' Incitement to Jihadist Terrorism and Antisemitism.

This video gives a small taste of the anti-Israel prejudice UNRWA allows:



While UNRWA has finally responded to pressure and taken steps to deal with the problem, withholding salaries from such employees for up to one month, the response has been that UNRWA employees complain that they can't post hate on Facebook.

UNRWA, for its part, has played down the fact that there is a UNRWA-Hamas connection. Peter Hansen, UNRWA's commissioner-general in 2004 played down the fact that Hamas had infiltrated UNRWA:

Oh, I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another.

Ten years later, The Lawfare Project charged that Ban Ki-moon Overlooks UN Agency’s Complicity in Hamas War Crimes Targeting Palestinian Children, specifically:

  • UNRWA has been caught three times during Operation Protective Edge storing Hamas rockets. Roughly ten percent of all Hamas rockets fired indiscriminately at Israeli civilians have fallen short, causing damage in Palestinian civilian areas in Gaza.
  • UNRWA confirmed that Hamas fired into the Beit Hanoun area in northern Gaza where, on July 24, 2014, an UNRWA school was hit. An estimated 17 children and UN personnel were killed, and 200 others wounded.
  • UNRWA has publicly admitted to handing rockets stored in its facilities over to the “local authorities” in Gaza, i.e., Hamas.
  • UNRWA has publicly admitted to hiring Hamas (and Islamic Jihad) terrorists as teachers at its schools, thereby providing direct access for Hamas to recruit Palestinian children.
  • UNRWA schools have reportedly been used as launching pads for mortar attacks against Israeli civilians.
  • A senior UN official, John Ging, confirmed that Hamas terrorists “are firing their rockets into Israel from the vicinity of UN facilities and residential areas,” thereby putting UNRWA staff and students in harm’s way and using civilians in Gaza as human shields.
  • UNRWA has permitted Hamas to use its schools as grounds for the recruitment and training of child soldiers and suicide bombers, and for the operation of militant summer camps for children.
  • UNRWA has openly taught Palestinian children from a curriculum that incites violence, encourages suicide-homicide bombings, espouses the concepts of martyrdom and jihad, and calls for the destruction of Israel.
  • An UNRWA health clinic that housed a Hamas terror tunnel entry shaft was built with explosives in its walls. The booby-trapped UNRWA clinic was then detonated on July 30, 2014, killing three IDF soldiers. The soldiers were working inside the UNRWA clinic to examine its structural integrity before sealing the Hamas tunnel under the building. Additionally, Hamas officials have reportedly admitted that, as of December 2011, at least 160 children had been killed in the tunnels. (Update: The booby-trapped building was reported to be an UNRWA clinic, but other reports have stated that the building was a former International Committee of the Red Cross clinic.)

More recently, actual ties between UNRWA employees and Hamas have come to light. Along with news that the Gaza head of World Vision had been accused of funneling $43 million to Hamas and Israel sentenced a Palestinian engineer with UNDP for aiding Hamas, just a few days ago it was reported that UNRWA’s Gaza union head, accused of Hamas ties, no longer employed by agency -- UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness refused to say whether the worker quit or was fired due to his being elected to a Hamas leadership role earlier this year. No new information is available on UNRWA’s infrastructure chief, who allegedly was also elected to the Hamas political bureau.

Now that the UNRWA Commissioner General has declared that UNRWA is a global advocate for the protection and care of Palestine refugees, practically in competition with Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, the problem is likely to only get worse.

The incompetence, neglicence and the outright complicity of UNIFIL with the Hezbollah terrorist group is of even greater concern.

In 2000, during a Hezbollah cross-border raid the terrorists captured three IDF soldiers; Benny Avraham, Adi Avitan and Omar Sawaid, who were patrolling the security fence along the border with Lebanon. A timeline of the events make clear that the UN in general -- and UNIFIL in particular -- not only bungled the opportunity to rescue the IDF soldiers, but the UN and UNIFIL deliberately lied to Israel and attempted to stonewall their investigation:

October 7, 2000: Hizbollah kidnapping

Seven hours after the kidnapping, UNIFIL officers find Hizbullah's getaway cars. They find and catalogue 53 items in the cars, including fake UN flags, stickers and UNIFIL license plates. The amount of blood in the vehicles indicates that the occupants "may have been badly injured and may succumb to their injuries."-- but Athmanathan's assessment is not communicated to senior UN or Israeli officials.

October 8, 2001: An Indian UNIFIL officer films the vehicles' recovery, during which armed Hizbullah terrorists detain the convoy and demand the vehicles at gun-point. The UNIFIL Force Commander turns the vehicle over to Hizbullah "to avoid confrontation and because they were not United Nations property."

July 6, 2001: UN finally admits to having the tape, but won't turn it over because they must remain neutral.

Kofi Anan calls for an internal investigation following indications that UNIFIL had hidden the existence of the tape from Israel and senior UN officials for months and the UN "did not deliberately mislead the Israeli government."


July 15, 2001: A third video clip that "purports to show still photographs of Hizbullah fighters during the abduction itself" is shown on Lebanese TV.

July 16, 2001: According to the UN internal investigation:
General Athmanathan informed Mr. Guéhenno that, on 11 July, UNIFIL had learned of the existence of another videotape (hereafter referred to the Shebaa tape). This videotape, which did not indicate any time or date, nor the identity of the person filming, showed the shelling of IDF posts on 7 October, three to four kilometres from the abduction site, as well as activity in a UNIFIL shelter. The footage on this videotape is of the bombardment of Israeli positions along the Blue Line, and shows smoke that could be of the burning Israeli jeep. It appeared to be filmed from several locations, including from in or near a United Nations observation post and shelter.
The video was not of the kidnapping itself.

July 30, 2001:
US Congress adopts resolution 411-4 for UN to release video

August 2, 2001: The UN releases the results of its investigation. Read report here.

UN admits "serious errors of judgment were made, in particular, by those who failed to convey information to the Israelis, which would have been helpful in an assessment of the condition of the three abducted soldiers." But:
Rather than giving the tape directly to Israel, though, the UN decided place sharp restrictions on when and how Israel could view the tape, allowing Israeli officials to view the tape only three times, at neutral sites in Geneva and Austria. The UN also refused to turn over the aforementioned items, which were bloodstained personal belongings of the IDF soldiers and UN officials fervently denied the existence of a third tape, a tape that many Israeli officials claim may have offered the most direct and useful information.
According to the Jerusalem Post:
Israel Ambassador to the UN Yehuda Lancry announced that Israel had accepted the UN's offer to view an edited version of the video [of the recovery], in which the faces of Hizbullah terrorists who may have been involved in the kidnapping are obscured.
According to Palestine Facts:
Only heavily edited versions were eventually turned over to Israel, indicating a cover-up was still operating in the matter, probably to protect UNIFIL personnel who were involved or who were negligent in their duties. An Indian member of UNIFIL gave an interview to an Israeli newspaper in which he said that four Indian members of UNIFIL helped Hezbollah carry out the abduction.
November 1, 2001: Israeli army rabbi Israel Weiss pronounces the soldiers dead.
Their remains have yet to be recovered.

Among the conclusions of the internal investigation:
The videotape of 8 October was the catalyst for this investigation. There is nothing in the Indian Battalion videotape that justified its release to any party on elementary considerations of humanity. The investigation team uncovered the existence of another tape that, despite the fact that it was taped on 7 October, and the fact that it was filmed in a nearby location, also contains no information that bears on the well-being of the soldiers. The Force Commander's initial assessment and subsequent assessments by other senior officials has not varied: neither the tape nor the photographs contain any information that relates to the well-being of the soldiers. The investigation team concludes that at no time was videotape or other photographic material relevant to the condition of the soldiers withheld.

Later it was revealed by a former UN military observer that the UN ‘destroyed’ evidence after abduction of 3 Israeli troops because of the “potential sensitivity of the issue.”

In 2006, Hezbollah again kidnapped Israeli soldiers. It led to the second Israel-Lebanon war, brought to an end with UN Resolution 2701. When Israel agreed in 2008 to release terrorist Samir Kuntar in exchange for the remains of the 2 murdered soldiers, UNIFIL was there - saluting the coffins of Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists:


UN Resolution 2701 was supposed to ensure that Hezbollah would not be able to arm Southern Lebanon and establish missiles and rockets there.

UNIFIL was supposed to enforce this.

Not surprisingly, UNIFIL has failed to do its job.

In 2006, David Kopel wrote about United Nations an Accomplice in Hezbollah Kidnapping for The Volokh Conspiracy blog. In an update, he addressed the question of whether the United Nations, base on UNIFIL's failure to prevent the kidnapping and murder of the 3 IDF soldiers and the UN's deliberate attempt to stonewall Israel's investigation.

He wrote:

Anti-semitism. I don't think that anti-semitism is the root of the UN's problem with Israel. It's true, as some commentators have pointed out, that the UN is functionally anti-semitic; that is, the UN constantly condemns Israel far more often and more vehemently than it condemns other countries which (even if you believe the worst about Israel) violate human rights much more severely than Israel does. The Eye on the UN website provides copious documentation of the UN's functional anti-semitism.

Nevertheless, I think the UN's pervasive anti-Israelism, although anti-Semitic in practice, is not primarily motivated by hatred of Jews.
...Although UNRWA was captured [by anti-Israel interests] very shortly after it was born, the broader UN assault on Israel didn't get going until the 1960s; the assault peaked in the 1970s, and later receded slightly from its 1970s apex. The anti-Israel assault of the 1970s was merely one element in a successful Soviet strategy of aligning the new UN members, most of them former colonies of Europe, and most of them dictatorships, into an anti-Western bloc. Israel, having the misfortune of being located in the middle of a sea of dictatorships, was a natural target of this UN super-majority; but the same would have been true if Romastan were a pro-western democracy.

Today, the Islamic bloc at the UN continues to find local political advantage in anti-Israelism (as it would with anti-Romastanism), while the rest of the Third World finds it advantageous to go along. I don't think that the dictatorship of China, for example, cares one way or the other about Jews or Israel; but the Chinese dictatorship correctly discerns that voting with the Islamic bloc against Israel is a cost-free way to curry favor with Islamic states, and win their support on issues relevant to China.

Regarding Kofi Annan, and most of the rest of the UN's leading executives, I would say that, functionally, they are vicious anti-Semites, but that, in their hearts, they are not particularly prejudiced against Jews per se. Rather, their actions are explainable under the principles of organizational behavior. Annan is a career UN employee (the first one to become Secretary-General), and he has risen through the organization by shrewdly placating whoever needs to be placated. His anti-Israel actions are simply the result of his astute calculation of the balance of forces at the UN. If he could gain more power at the United Nations by denouncing Fiji or by defending Israel, he would do so.

So there is no anti-semitic conspiracy at the UN, in the sense of a conspiracy directed by people who are deeply motivated by hatred of Jews. Rather, the UN's criminal complicity in the kidnapping of Israelis, like the rest of the UN's anti-Israelism, is explainable as the logical result of a wide variety of UN actors behaving according to their self-interest.

Perhaps Kopel is right.

It may matter very little, since the functional difference appears to be minimal.

Whether we are talking about the UN, or UNRWA and UNIFIL -- the fact remains that UNRWA and UNIFIL constitute a real danger to Israel, and the failure of the UN to resolve the problems shows that the UN itself is a danger to Israel as well.

But there are just so many instances that we can tend to forget just how bad the UN is.



We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
  • Tuesday, April 25, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon
Yemen Jews en route to Israel, 1949
Al Arab, a UK-based pan-Arab newspaper, has an unusual article by UAE writer Salem Hamid, that compares how the Arab world has made mistake after mistake when dealing with the Jews and Zionists.

In 1930 Shakib Arslan published his famous book "Why Muslims Delayed Progress," a question that still echoes today. After successive generations and decades, and the question remains waiting for the answer, as the Arab reality remains stalled even after the departure of Western colonialism.

It is clear that there is a psychological background of confusion and hesitation planted in the recesses of the Arab consciousness. We must boldly ask: Why is the pan-Arabism falling behind?

Consider what happened in the judo competition for the Olympic Games in 2016 in Brazil, when the Israeli Judoka Or Sasson defeated his rival Egyptian Islam Shihabi in the first round match.

The Egyptian player refused to shake hands with the Israeli player. The astonished audience witnessed this act and people all over denounced the Egyptian. This leads to the question: Why are we Arabs deliberately distorting our image in front of the world in normal situations?

Are the responses of our actions in the eyes of the West immoral? ...

We must remember that after the announcement of the plight of Palestine in 1948 the Arab countries expelled their Jews to Palestine. The number reached approximately 900,000 Arab Jews, and thus the Arabs gave with this move, consciously or unconsciously, a gift to the emerging Jewish state, because of their hatred of the Jews and the failure to consider them as normal citizens in their countries of origin.

The Arabs were unable to separate the Jewish religion and Zionism as a political movement, resulting in the failure of tolerance and coexistence with the Jews as a community. The passage of time has led this Arab act against Arab Jews to a disastrous result. The Arabs lost the elite of their fellow citizens of the owners of money, influence, arts, industrial diversity and culture. Then they entered into costly wars and incalculable losses against Israel. The Arab mentality continued weaving conspiracy theories to their people, and the permanent search for a scapegoat to justify their defeats.

In the final analysis the "racist" Jewish state represented by the Israeli entity gained different colors of citizens in the area of ​​land that the Arabs lost, but these Arab Jews themselves became citizens, as well as Jews who came from Russia and the West. [NB: I put "racist" in quotes because that is how I interpreted the intent, but it was not in scare quotes in the original - EoZ]

For more than two thousand years Jews lived in Arab countries such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, as well as in Muslim countries such as Turkey and Iran, and today they make up more than half of Israel's population.

Given the number of Jews at the present time who remained in the Arab home countries we can note the vast difference between the past and present. Now, in contrast, we find that the Palestinians are the largest refugee group in the world, and generously supported. After the 1948 war, 700,000 fled from their towns and villages, and we know that some of them did not emigrate because of the war, but they were asked [by Arab leaders] to leave, and they thought it would be temporary, and they would return to their areas after the end of the conflict with the Israeli entity.

The Syrian Prime Minister in 1948-1949, Khalid al Azm, wrote in his memoirs of the Arab role in persuading the Palestinians to leave from their areas. The Arabs did not realize the gravity of this error that created the Palestinian refugee crisis to date, prompting the United Nations to form UNRWA in 1949, the largest United Nations agency ever created to deal with only one group of refugees.

Our problem in the Arab world is a cultural problem of anti-diversity and lack of acceptance of others who are different. English historian Paul Johnson notes a precursor to the social and political deterioration of the Arabs after the expulsion of their fellow Jewish citizens, when Spain expelled its Jewish citizens  in 1492, leaving a significant impact on Spain, as this led to the deterioration of Spain and its colonies in financial science, finance and financial loans.

In czarist Russia, many anti-Semitic laws led to the weakening  of the entire Russian government and its corruption in the end, which also led to a mass exodus of the Jews, and therefore the intellectual and human capital loss.

As for Germany, it was possible that the United States would have been the runner-up in the nuclear bomb arms race if Adolf Hitler did not expel Jewish scholars such as Albert Einstein and Edward Teller, and others who emigrated to the United States and invented the American nuclear bomb.

If the Arabs had noted  the mistakes that other nations made they could have learned the lessons of such folly of expelling Arab Jews who might have been supportive to help the Arab regimes in the face of Israel if they only had the concept of citizenship, coexistence and tolerance.

There are those who are still confused between Zionist racism and Judaism as a religion. Arab anti-Semitism is not the result of chance and did not start since the rape of Zionism of the land of Palestine in 1948, it is a historic reality and still present in the literature of Islamic heritage, which is essentially the jurisprudence and interpretations of human beings of the previous centuries, the interpretations which were suitable for their time, which was less open, more wary and fanatical. But it seems that the hatred against the Jews will remain constant as long as these heritage books continue to incite since the first stages of education for children, when we teach them that "those who have evoked your anger" are the Jews, and that "those who have gone astray" are Christians! (Quran 1:7)

Thinkers and critics point out that school curricula throughout the Arab countries need radical changes to erase phrases that incite hatred, and the trend towards the formulation of approach works to promote tolerance and acceptance of others' language, and to move away from fanaticism and sectarianism.  Hatred and hostility is a highly infectious disease that greatly affects everyone, whether they are ordinary or intellectuals.

But the case of deterioration of the Arab thought go beyond the principle of citizenship and the values ​​of coexistence to the basic level of how poor is our university education, which educates generations and controls the future behavior. In view of the ranking order of universities around the world we do not find an Arab university's name in the list.

At the level of scientific research, we find that the Arabs are very much lagging behind the rest of the world, and if we compare the patent numbers, for example, between Egypt and Israel, on the grounds that Egypt is the largest Arab country in terms of population, the Patent Office in the United States announced in 2015 it gave 3804 patents to Israel compared to 30 patents from Egypt.

It is natural to say that states should learn from their neighbors, even if they are have a historical legacy of enmity, and should overcome the stereotype in the form of an Israeli soldier terrorizing the Palestinians.

We must also ask ourselves why there is not yet a Palestinian state? If Israel allowed Palestinians to have a state of their own, would there be peace in the Middle East? What is the Arab share in the failure to reach the day of the declaration of the birth of a state for the Palestinians?

It seems that many opportunities were lost so far from our hands, after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Britain seized most of the Middle East countries, including the region that makes up  historic Palestine, which is now ruled by Israel.

After 17 years, specifically in 1936 during the Arab Revolt against the British and against the Jews, the British formed the  "Peel Commission" task force to study what they called the uprising. The Committee concluded that the cause of violence is that the Palestinians and the Jews want to rule the same land, the answer that was reached by the Peel Commission was to establish two independent states, and one for Jews and other Arabs.

But even this British two-state solution faced difficulties and controversy and did not lead to any practical benefit to the Palestinian cause.

The solution to establish two states was strongly opposed by the Arabs, whom the British offered 80 percent of the disputed lands, compared to 20 percent for the Jews, and despite the small size of the Jewish state the Jews  accepted this offer, while the Arabs refused.

And it continued the process of biting off the Palestinian land that has become a dream of establishing a Palestinian state within what is known as 1967 far-fetched in the light of the spread of Israeli settlements.

The result is that the Palestinian issue in the Arab consciousness has become merely talk,  but the Palestinians themselves have contributed to this situation.





We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
This entire article at The Guardian is amazing, not least because it is written as if the opinions expressed are perfectly normal for a university that specializes in teaching about the Middle East.

Students and academics at Soas University of London have said a visit by the Israeli ambassador Mark Regev this week could lead to serious tension and substantial distress on the campus.

Regev has been invited by two student societies to speak about the Middle East and prospects for peace on Thursday, but his visit has been criticised as provocative by other staff and students who are planning a protest.

More than 150 academics from Soas and other UK universities, plus 40 student societies at the university, have written to the Soas director Valerie Amos urging her to intervene to stop the meeting on Thursday at which Regev is due to speak.

A letter signed by more than 100 Soas staff says: “We fear that if this provocative event proceeds as planned, it will cause substantial distress and harm to many of our students and staff who are, have been or will be affected by the actions of what a recent UN report refers to as the Israeli ‘apartheid regime’.

“The event could further cause serious tension on campus and result in a charged atmosphere that will be detrimental to the wellbeing of all faculty, staff and students.”
This is not a spoof. This is not satire. This is seriously what supposed academics are claiming will be the outcome of an Israeli representative speaking on campus, a single Zionist speech among the hundreds of anti-Zionist talks, activities, lectures  and boycotts that infest SOAS every year.
The students’ union challenged the university authorities over the staging of the event, raising concerns about possible safety and security risks posed by the ambassador’s visit and “the inability of students and staff – in particular Palestinian students – to participate openly in the debate, because of possible repercussions on their ability to enter Israel/Palestine”.
Apparently Israel is completely unaware of the anti-Israel activities they do the other 364 days of the year, but they will have Mossad operatives taking names on the day of the Regev speech just looking for excuses to ban Palestinians from coming home.

Prof Jonathan Rosenhead, one of the organisers of the academics’ protest letter to Lady Amos, said: “Holding this meeting at Soas, where staff and students have voted overwhelmingly in support of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, and in support of Palestinian rights, seems like a deliberate provocation.
Calling for the destruction of Israel isn't a provocation. Holding a speech defending it is.
A statement posted on Facebook by the Soas students’ union said: “We stand with the Soas community in expressing our concern at Mark Regev’s presence on campus, and in rejecting the idea that our spaces of learning should serve as avenues for officials to put forward state propaganda.”
But perhaps the most outrageous comment about this speech came from Yair Wallach, the chair of the Centre for Jewish Studies at SOAS, who said “We see little value in the talk itself. This is the view of myself and other colleagues at the Centre for Jewish Studies. Therefore we suggest that the JSoc and the SOAS UN society reconsider the event.”

That is how thoroughly anti-Israel SOAS is. Even its "Jewish studies" leaders are against the idea of even hearing an Israeli representative speak.

Snowflakes.

Here is a list of speeches, available on podcast, hosted by the SOAS Student Union over the past couple of years that are considered to have more value than a speech by a representative of Israel. "Twerking as an act of resistance" sounds like it is hugely valuable.


The last time a representative from Israel visited SOAS in 2005, someone pulled a fire alarm at the outset of the speech, delaying it for an hour.





We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Monday, April 24, 2017

  • Monday, April 24, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon


A few weeks ago an anti-Israel group called the Balfour Apology Campaign started an official petition to the British Government demanding that they apologize for issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917:

We call on Her Majesty’s Government to openly apologise to the Palestinian people for issuing the Balfour Declaration. The colonial policy of Britain between 1917-1948 led to mass displacement of the Palestinian nation.

HMG should recognise its role during the Mandate and now must lead attempts to reach a solution that ensures justice for the Palestinian people.
Calls to apologize for Balfour have been spreading since the 99th anniversary of the document, and even Mahmoud Abbas has been publicly insisting on an apology.

After some 13,000 signatures were received, the British Government responded with a resounding no:

The Balfour Declaration is an historic statement for which HMG does not intend to apologise. We are proud of our role in creating the State of Israel. The task now is to encourage moves towards peace.

The Declaration was written in a world of competing imperial powers, in the midst of the First World War and in the twilight of the Ottoman Empire. In that context, establishing a homeland for the Jewish people in the land to which they had such strong historical and religious ties was the right and moral thing to do, particularly against the background of centuries of persecution. Of course, a full assessment of the Declaration and what followed from it can only be made by historians.
Unfortunately, the response turns politically correct at this point.
Much has happened since 1917. We recognise that the Declaration should have called for the protection of political rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine, particularly their right to self-determination.
At the time there was next to no desire by Arabs in Palestine for an independent state - their leaders overwhelmingly wanted to be part of Greater Syria. The idea of a people called "Palestinian" was literally unheard of.

However, the important thing now is to look forward and establish security and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians through a lasting peace. We believe the best way to achieve this is through a two-state solution: a negotiated settlement that leads to a safe and secure Israel living alongside a viable and sovereign Palestinian state, based on the 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, Jerusalem as the shared capital of both states, and a just, fair, agreed and realistic settlement for refugees.

We believe that such negotiations will only succeed when they are conducted between Israelis and Palestinians, but with appropriate support from the international community. We remain in close consultation with both sides and international partners to encourage meaningful bilateral negotiations. We do not underestimate the challenges, but if both parties show bold leadership, peace is possible. The UK is ready to do all it can to support this goal.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office
If they think that their "even handed" response will take the wind out of the sails of the haters who created the petition, they are sadly mistaken. The haters don't want a Palestinian state alongside Israel, they want an Arab state replacing Israel.

Which has been their goal since Palestinian nationalism started.

It is nice to see that Her Majesty's Government did not even consider the petition to have any merit to begin with. There was no apology for not apologizing. The rest is well-known British policy, and the only way that this policy will change is when the world governments start looking at things clearly and seeing that these moves are not meant to foster peace but to deny self-determination to the Jewish people.



We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
From Ian:

Who Does the Anne Frank Center Represent?
The center’s transformation was no accident. It recently got a new board chair, a private-wealth manager named Peter Rapaport, and he brought on Goldstein, who has a background in political organizing. It shuttered its small museum and disbanded its board of advisers comprised of Holocaust experts. All of the staffers who were working there when Goldstein arrived have left.
With just its famous name and a savvy social-media strategy, the Anne Frank Center has transformed into a putative authority on anti-Semitism and American politics. But it’s not at all clear the organization speaks for anybody other than its own leaders—not Holocaust scholars, Anne Frank’s family, or the Jewish community. Ultimately, by politicizing Anne Frank, the group may undermine her legacy.
And it’s acted accordingly. Over the last year and a half or so, all of the former employees, who mostly had backgrounds in museum work, have left. At least one was fired, said Rapaport. In an email, Yvonne Simons, the former executive director, said only that “the board of directors choose a different path for the Anne Frank Center and changed its mission after my 10-year tenure.” Several longtime board members have also departed.
In other words, it is a tiny organization in the process of reinventing itself. The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect and Understanding may not be a Holocaust organization, a Jewish organization, or one founded by Anne Frank’s father. Its may not have leaders with a scholarly background, a mass membership, or institutional standing among Jewish groups and Holocaust museums. But because it talks a big game and wields the name of Anne Frank, the media has awarded it authority it never earned.
The Recent Discovery of Heinrich Himmler’s Telegram of November 2, 1943, the Anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, to Amin al-Husseini, Mufti of Jerusalem
Himmler’s telegram, the Mufti’s response, and the demonstrative political rally of protest on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration show Nazi Germany’s positive support of the Palestinian Arabs and their reciprocally warm feelings. With the benefit of recent scholarship, we may better appreciate the nature and extent of this type of collaboration.
In his recent article in this journal, Johannes Houwink ten Cate cited the Swiss historian and journalist, Werner Rings, who identified four different forms of collaboration, according to their degree of identification with the ideology of Nazism, as follows: “tactical, neutral, conditional and unconditional collaboration.” Using these categories as his standard of comparison, Ten Cate concludes that Amin al-Husseini was one of the few unconditional collaborationists because of his ideological collaboration with the Waffen-SS. Separately, Barry Rubin and Wolfgang Schwanitz list examples of the Mufti’s contributions to the cause of Nazi-Germany. These include, “… fomenting a pro-Axis revolt and a massacre of Jews in Iraq; collaborating with Hitler; gathering intelligence for the Germans; recruiting Muslim army units for the German army and SS; preparing a Middle East Holocaust against the Jews; promoting pro-Axis revolts in Egypt and elsewhere; and conducting pro-Nazi propaganda by every means at his disposal.”
Any discussion of Amin al-Husseini’s ideological collaboration must also point out his remarkable claim that Nazism and Islam have a basic affinity. Examples of such shared values are the “Führer Principle,” discipline, and obedience which, according to him, find clear expression in the Koran. Rubin and Schwanitz observe that “… Islamists did not need to take ideas from German Nazis or Italian fascists. As al-Husaini had argued in the 1930s and 1940s, they had a parallel yet symbiotic world view, drawn from their own societies’ political traditions, history, and religion.” Such views clearly indicate that the Mufti’s commitment to the principles of National Socialism represented a form of unconditional ideological collaboration.
One should not overlook the essential fact that this ideological collaboration was reciprocal. The Nazi elite had a special respect and great admiration for Islam. Although these views have been documented, they have not yet been placed in context. In his recently published study, Islam and Germany’s War, David Motadel describes the admiration of the Nazi elite for Islam, an admiration which frequently predicated the rejection of Christianity. According to Motadel, who cites the scholarship of Peter Longerich, “The man who was perhaps most fascinated with the Muslim faith and enthusiastic about what he believed to be an affinity between National Socialism and Islam, was Himmler.” Himmler’s doctor, Felix Kersten, wrote an entire chapter on his patient’s “Enthusiasm for Islam,” which was excluded from the English translation. According to Kersten, “Himmler saw Islam as a masculine, soldierly religion.”
David Singer: United Nations Rewrites Balfour Declaration Parliamentary Debate Records
An official United Nations document published by the Division for Palestinian Rights of the United Nations Secretariat contains a deliberately altered record of a 1922 parliamentary House of Lords debate on the Balfour Declaration.
The Balfour Declaration – dated 2 November 1917 – called for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people – it being clearly understood that nothing would be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
The Balfour Declaration was subsequently written into international law after being incorporated into the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine on 24 July 1922.
The upcoming centenary of the Balfour Declaration has prompted a concerted international campaign calling on the British Government to apologise for another Government’s decision taken 100 years ago. Baroness Anelay – Minister of State (Foreign Commonwealth Office) – told the House of Lords on 3 April 2017 that no such apology would be forthcoming.

  • Monday, April 24, 2017
  • Elder of Ziyon

Nasreen Qadri is an Israeli Arab singer who became famous when she won a TV singing competition in 2014.

Qadri has been named to sing in both Israel's Remembrance Day and Independence Day ceremonies.

She says she is part of this country and represents it therefore it's an honor for her to sing at those ceremonies and that it gives her a sense of belonging. She hopes this will convey a message of peace and brotherhood and against racism and violence.

She toured the US with Radiohead together with another Israeli band, Dudu Tassa and the Kuwaitis, earlier this year.

(h/t Yoel)





We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Some two weeks ago, Yair Rosenberg showed in a Tablet article how anti-Israel activists and Jew-haters used a tweet about a pre-Passover toast by Israel’s deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely to claim that “Israeli Foreign Ministry officials are literally toasting yesterday’s event [i.e. a chemical attack on civilians] in #Syria.” As Rosenberg noted, “this latest blood libel is a reminder, if one was needed, of the enduring nature of anti-Semitic tropes, which somehow find ways to adapt to new mediums and situations without shedding their essential characteristics.”

Even though many of the people who responded to the tweet pointed out that the toast was for the holiday, the tweet has remained up; other users tweeted similar versions and also left their tweets up despite being told that the toast was for Passover.  



Unsurprisingly, among those who retweeted this new blood libel was Rania Khalek, though she quietly canceled her retweet after she was called out for it on Israellycool.

But Khalek couldn’t remain abstinent for long, and eventually she retweeted the view of notorious Assad apologist Sharmine Narwani that “Syria was targeted for destruction” so that Israel could push for a recognition of its annexation of part of the Golan Heights.



Khalek’s friends and former colleagues at the Electronic Intifada (EI) weren’t idle, either: they published a post by the vile David Sheen under the title “In Israel, the eliminationist camp is already in charge.”



Another EI tweet promoted Sheen’s post by insinuating that Israel was conducting a “campaign against African babies”.



In his relentless quest to demonize Israel, Sheen promotes in this post a video of a “lecture” in which he claims to present “some of the seediest scandals that plagued Israeli society in 2016.” As he notes: “Many of these were covered extensively by The Electronic Intifada and by this writer specifically, but otherwise received little attention from other media outlets.” Worried that promising coverage of Israel’s “seediest scandals” might not be enough to get EI fans to watch all of the video, Sheen urges his readers to really watch “the entire 90-minute lecture,” though he warns that doing so “all in one sitting can be somewhat exhausting and even deeply depressing as it contains a list of horrific crimes and the human suffering they cause.”

However, some of the almost 2000 people who did watch Sheen’s “examination of Israel’s state-sponsored race wars against indigenous Palestinians and African refugees” since it was posted on March 21 apparently felt it was a rather rewarding experience.

Commenter Khurram Aziz praised Sheen for his “excellent” work and promised to send his video “to all Dutch media outlets;” he also sympathized with Sheen’s complaint that the media were neglecting Israel’s evils, but had an explanation: “virtually all MSM news outlets including Reuters, and even Alt Media (Controlled Opposition) are under control of Rothschild Zionists and the partners in crime the Jesuits of the Vatican!”

Aziz also noted that as a musician, he observed “in the Jazz scene here in I💜AMSterdam and NY, a preponderance of Jewish musicians hogging the limelight […] admittedly very good in their own way, but clearly this is the result of the Hidden🔯Hand in the Music Industry.”

Aziz was so enthusiastic about Sheen’s work that he left several additional comments.



Sheen got some more comments from fans of his work.




Clearly, David Sheen’s most enthusiastic fans get his message. For the rest of us, anti-Israel activists like Sheen, Khalek and Abunimah as well as their fans are a reminder that the Jew-hatred that is reflected in the centuries-old blood libel still has plenty of proponents in the 21st century.




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
From Ian:

Israel pauses to remember 6 million murdered in Holocaust
Israelis across the country paused for two minutes Monday morning in memory of the six million Jews who were murdered in Europe under Nazi rule as a siren pierced the clear blue sky in an annual marking of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The 10 a.m. siren was to be followed by ceremonies at schools, memorials and elsewhere in honor of those who lost their lives, as well as Shoah survivors.
The country’s central commemoration event got underway immediately after the siren at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem, where dignitaries will lay wreaths next to a monument commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.
Among those taking part in the wreath-laying are President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein.
Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance) Siren 2017
Today at 10:00 AM something incredible happens: sirens sound all over Israel and for two minutes everything stops. Today we remember the Holocaust.


JPost Editorial: Never Again
Last year on Holocaust Remembrance Day, we published an editorial calling for measures to be taken to ensure that survivors in Israel do not live out their last years in poverty.
Despite the best efforts of volunteer and professional organizations and new legislation that provide some survivors with increased benefits, the goal of providing every survivor with the care and dignity that was robbed of him or her earlier in life is still far from being achieved.
According to data provided by the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Survivors, about 25% of the country’s approximately 200,000 Holocaust survivors live below the poverty line. A fifth skip meals because they do not have enough money to buy food.
A report issued last week by State Comptroller Joseph Shapira highlighted glitches within the system – whether it’s the failure to allocate sufficient financial, housing or medical assistance, or the failure to have a central authority responsible for standing up for Holocaust survivors, while pointing a finger at the government for inadequately safeguarding survivors’ rights.
“The state’s attitude toward survivors may affect the memory of the Holocaust for future generations,” Shapira’s report cautioned.
As The Jerusalem Post’s legal affairs reporter Yonah Jeremy Bob wrote, Shapira warned that time is running out and the government must improvement things for survivors, whose average age is 85.
According to the report, 16,000 survivors are waiting, some for years, to receive subsidized housing for which their eligibility has already been approved. In addition, in 2014 and 2015, NIS 60 million earmarked as aid to elderly survivors was never used for that purpose due to lack of oversight and of plans by the Social Equality Ministry to use the funds.
'The IDF is the voice of those lost in the Holocaust'
IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot addressed the annual March of the Living in Poland Monday, marking Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Eizenkot, who led the IDF delegation to this year’s event, brought the Torah scroll held by then-Chief IDF Rabbi Shlomo Goren (later Chief Rabbi of Israel) during the liberation of the Temple Mount and Old City of Jerusalem.
During his speech, Eizenkot emphasized the importance of the IDF’s inclusion in the March of Life and its role in sustaining the legacy of Holocaust victims and survivors.
“For generation after generation, our brothers and sisters lived scattered and separated from one another, but were joined in spirit, in their hearts, and in their vision from time immemorial to return to the land of their forefathers,” said Eizenkot.
“But before they could build a [national] home and defense forces, disaster struck, and many Jewish communities of Europe were destroyed.
“Here, on this land, they were taken off in darkened cattle cars, brutally ripped away from their families, and led away to the identical fate – extermination.
“Their only sin was being Jewish, and for that they were tortured, crushed, and put to death - because there was no one who would stand up and fight for them.”

AddToAny

EoZ Book:"Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism"

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

subscribe via email

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Blog Archive