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Israeli-Turkish accord: core of new lineup vs Iran

June 28, 2016

Israeli-Turkish accord: core of new lineup vs Iran, DEBKAfile, June 27, 2016

(Please see also, Israel and Turkey restore relations – peace in our time? — DM)

Turkey_Israel480

The reconciliation agreement announced Monday, June 27 for restoring full normalization between Israel and Turkey after six years of animosity will restart intelligence and security cooperation between the two countries and entail joint military exercises, and investments in energy and defense.

DEBKAfile’s security experts evaluate the deal as offering a valuable and timely increment for Israeli’s national interests on eight scores:

1. It fits neatly into the current joint Saudi-Egyptian bid for Israel to bolster their emerging alliance with Turkey that is designed for drawing a Sunni line against Iran’s expansionist moves in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea, the Straits of Aqaba and in uncomfortable proximity to the Mediterranean shores of Israel and Egypt.

2. It is designed as the forerunner of a series of interlocking deals. DEBKAfile can disclose that the next bilateral accord expected to be concluded is a reconciliation agreement between Turkey and Egypt for Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi to bury the hatchet. In at least one respect, this ont will be modeled on the Turkish deal with Israel: Turkey is committed not to let Hamas act against Israel from its soil and, by the same token, not to permit Hamas’s parent and El-Sisi’s archenemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, operate from Turkey.

3. In this regard, Egypt and Turkey will maintain intelligence cooperation.

4. The bilateral intelligence mechanisms to be set up between Turkey and Israel and Turkey and Egypt will pool their input on Iran.

5.  This key aspect of the renewed cooperation between Ankara and Jerusalem lends it a military-intelligence dimension rather than that of a diplomatic protocol. This dimension finds expression in the decision to devolve its implementation not on the holders of political office but the heads of the military-intelligence services of the two countries.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gady Eisenkot, to whom the head of military intelligence defers, will in fact be in charge of these exchanges, as well as the joint military exercises which are in the active planning stage.

Realizing he had been passed over for this important facet of cooperation with Turkey, Israel’s new defense minister Avigdor Lieberman announced he was opposed to the deal. This was treated as no more than a token protest that will not impede it.

6.  Jordan has been slated as another member of the new alliance. King Abdullah is currently in the process of quietly dismantling the Muslim Brotherhood networks in his kingdom. Many of is members belong to the Palestinian Hamas.

7.  Under the agreement, Israel and Turkey will begin formal talks to build a gas pipeline between the two countries, through which Israel might sell its natural gas, with Turkish assistance, to Europe.

DEBKAfile rates this provision as fundamental to the entire process and of cardinal importance to both their interests. Israel is in need of a major client to boost the development of its offshore gas fields, whereas Turkey wants to be that client and, at the same time, Russia is after a piece of the energy bonanza and most of all a contract to build the pipeline to Europe.

Up until recently, Israel put up a keep out sign for Moscow, mainly under pressure from Washington. But in recent months the conversations between Binyamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin have progressed into an inclusive strategic dialogue on Middle East issues, especially on Syria. This opened the door to a Russian role being broached in the export of Israeli gas.

8. This role took another step forward Monday. On the table now is Israeli-Turkish-Russian military and intelligence collaboration for securing the Israeli offshore gas in the Mediterranean – a prospect that brought the Turkish president to finally apologize for his air force downing a Russian Su-24M bomber over the Syrian-Turkish border on Nov. 24, 2015.

For the sake of these promising relations, Turkey was ready to offer compensation in the case of the dead pilot, just as Israel agreed to pay compensation for the nine Turks killed in a clash with Israeli troops during an illicit attempt too breach Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli-Turkish-Russian cooperation and goodwill for their mutual benefit on the gas issue may also generate joint efforts in other spheres too.

Categories: Egypt, Erdogan, Intelligence, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Military exercises, Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia
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Worrying signs in Democratic platform

June 27, 2016

Worrying signs in Democratic platform, Israel Hayom, Zalman Shoval, June 27, 2016

Israel and its allies in the Democratic Party cannot afford to be complacent in light of the prevailing trends in the drafting committee.

*************

As is the case every four years before U.S. presidential elections, Israelis try to figure out which candidate will be better for Israel. The answer is often: Whoever is elected.

This does not mean that both presumptive nominees, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, are identical political twins. What it does mean is that candidates’ rhetoric on the campaign trail usually has little impact on their overall policy once they become president. In any case, it is not wise for Israelis to speak out on such issues. And in any event, such talk has no bearing on the election’s outcome.

But this should not prevent us from discussing the official party platforms, which are updated ahead of each election. Israelis will find it hard to stay ambivalent about the emerging Democratic platform in light of its clauses dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although the new platform will only be formally adopted at the Democratic National Convention in July, the new language introduced over the weekend on Israel-related issues makes it abundantly clear that the party is distancing itself from its traditional pro-Israel stance.

This trend was evident in 2012 as well, when the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee removed a clause mentioning Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — only to have it reinserted following pressure by party leaders. This time the very nature of the drafting committee underscores the negativity toward Israel. Five members of the committee were appointed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and six were appointed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (and four more were appointed by the Democratic National Committee).

But what matters more is not the proportion of pro-Sanders members in the committee, but their identities. They include James Zogby, a leading pro-Arab activist; U.S. Representative Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), a Muslim; and Dr. Cornel West, a professor with provocative views on Israel who has embraced the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and has come out against the Israeli “occupation.”

The Clinton campaign is fully aware of the electoral damage an anti-Israeli platform could inflict on her candidacy, not to mention the financial fallout on her fund-raising efforts, even if the platform is described as “balanced.” This is why her allies took pains to make sure the drafting committee hears out expert testimony from the likes of Dennis Ross, who served as a Clinton’s Middle East adviser, and former key Democratic lawmakers, but this did not sway the hard-core Sanders loyalists. Sanders has been invigorated by his impressive campaign against Clinton, while Clinton has had to deal with very low favorability ratings.

Thus, Sanders has had the upper hand in the ideological arm twisting, even though Clinton’s supporters have gone out of their way to describe the new language as a compromise that does not depart from the party’s traditional stance. They explained that it was designed to help party unity.

But here are the facts. Ellison, who represents Sanders on the committee, and Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez from Illinois, who represents Clinton, wrote a joint statement calling on party delegates to adopt the new language on Israel during the convention. They published it on left-wing organization J Street’s blog. Gutierrez recently returned from a trip to Israel and the Palestinian Authority organized by a pro-Palestinian group.

“Israelis today live in fear of acts of terror that can turn peaceful marketplaces and neighborhoods into scenes of violence and horror,” the two warned in their statement. “Palestinians struggle under an unjust occupation that deprives them of the rights, opportunities and independence that they deserve.” The statement made no mention of Palestinian incitement, of the Palestinians’ unwillingness to hold talks without preconditions, of Hamas, or of the real reasons behind the century-old conflict.

The committee has yet to publish its views on Jerusalem, but judging from how things have recently unfolded, keeping the 2012 language on the city is anything but guaranteed.

Some play down the importance of party platforms, and sometimes this dismissive approach has merits, including in Israel. Having said that, Israel and its allies in the Democratic Party cannot afford to be complacent in light of the prevailing trends in the drafting committee.

Categories: 2016 elections, Bernie Sanders, Democrat party platform, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Palestinians
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Humor | Op-Ed: My chat with Abbas’s “blood libel” rabbi

June 27, 2016

Op-Ed: My chat with Abbas’s “blood libel” rabbi, Israel National News, Jack Engelhard, June 27, 2016

Last week PA “president” Mahmoud Abbas went to Europe with a bagful of accusations against Israel, namely that “rabbis are calling on Israel to poison Palestinian water.” In return, people accused Abbas of bringing up the oldest, vilest and most discredited blood libel of all time.

Some said no such rabbi existed and that no real rabbi would ever say such a thing.

But wait just a moment, please. I met this rabbi, the particular one Abbas had in mind.

I happened to be in San Francisco where this rabbi preaches and where he davens Zen with Michael Lerner, the renowned Seer of Berkeley. I caught up to him during a bowling tournament on Saturday, normally the Sabbath and a day of rest, but these were the finals. We talked when it wasn’t his turn to throw.

Rabbi Matt belongs to BDS Clergy for Abbas, which goes back to Jews for Arafat.

This rabbi knows Jewish suffering. His parents died during the Holocaust – in Cleveland.

He was happy to say that he knew Abbas personally and that Abbas had quoted him correctly.

“Too late,” said the rabbi when I told him that Abbas was trying to walk back that kind of talk. “You can’t UN-spill the beans.”

But the entire world already heard Abbas tell a big fat lie. “You can call it what you want,” challenged the rabbi. “You’re forgetting truth.”

Truth?

“We call it truth Palestinian-style.”

Good point.

“Don’t forget,” the rabbi said. “Like Abbas himself says, Palestinians were here before anybody.”

So was the cockroach.

The rabbi was full of information.

“Jesus was a Palestinian. Did you know?”

Incredible news.

“Just ask Mahmoud. He says so right here on Google.”

I will check this out.

“Columbus was a Palestinian. My pal Mahmoud. I choke up when he speaks. Don’t you?”

Absolutely.

“Abbas gets standing ovations at the EU and the UN. They love it when he talks dirty. One zinger after another. Abbas really knows how to kill.”

That is a fact.

“So is this. The Palestinians invented the wheel, the automobile, the airplane and the computer. Just ask him.”

Does he have proof?

“It’s enough that he’s a man of peace. He’s all in for a two-state solution. One half for Hamas, the other half for Fatah.”

That’s been clear for some time.

Zipping right along, was this rabbi aware that no legit rabbi would ever say what he’s been quoted as saying?

“I AM a legit rabbi. How dare you!”

“Where,” I asked him, “did you make smicha?”

“What’s that?”

I explained that it’s about being ordained from a qualified and certified yeshiva.

“Hell yeah I’ve been ordained. Cheap. For $180 I can get you ordained, too. For that price, anybody can become a rabbi.”

“Where?”

“Right around the corner. Mack’s Tattoo Shop.”

“Are you Jewish?”

“That costs an extra 800 bucks. For an additional 650 you can be an accredited expert in Cabbala. A 10-minute course. In and out.”

“I’ve heard enough.”

“No you haven’t. Mack is running a Tuesday Special. For a measly 2,000 bucks you get the works and Mack will throw in a full-body tattoo job. Like mine.”

Wow!

“Tell him Rabbi Matt sent you and he’ll discount 10 percent. Interested?”

“Sure. Maybe later. Right now I just wanted to know where Mahmoud Abbas gets his facts and information.”

“So now you know. His word is as good as mine.”

Right, truth Palestinian-style.

Categories: Abbas, Blood libel, European Union, Humor, Israel, Palestinian truth
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Members of U.S. Congress investigating UNRWA for incitement to jihad terrorism

June 27, 2016

Members of U.S. Congress investigating UNRWA for incitement to jihad terrorism, Jihad Watch, , June 26, 2016

Members of US Congress have launched an investigation into incitement to terrorism in the UN Relief and Works Agency schools.

David Bedein, director of the Jerusalem-based Center for Near East Policy Research, provided material to Congress about UNRWA, which in fact has a long history of terrorism that has been underreported. Bedein has been on its trail for some time. Two years ago, he revealed in a documentary video entitled “UNRWA Goes to War” that there was a close symbiotic relationship between UNRWA and the jihad terror group Hamas, which, of course, promotes virulent hatred against Jews and incites Muslims to violence.

Steven Rosen, former director of foreign policy issues for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, corroborated Bedein’s evidence when he referred to UNRWA as “one of the worst UN agencies, an organization that harbors terrorists, teaches militant conflict with Israel and anti-Semitism in its schools, and perpetuates the Palestinian refugee issue as a source of tension”.

Despite evidence against UNRWA’s link to terrorism, UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness unsurprisingly denies all claims. Yet the preponderance of evidence suggests that he is not being truthful.

Bedein’s organization has released yet another video recently, entitled “The UNRWA Road to Terror: Palestinian Classroom Incitement.” Here’s one UNRWA student’s testimonial, among others, that you’ll read in the article below, taken from the video: “They teach us in school that Jews are fickle, bad people. I am ready to stab a Jew, and drive [a car] over them.”

unrwa-protest

“‘US Congressmen to investigate UNRWA schools for inciting terrorism’”, by Ariel Ben Solomon,Jerusalem Post, June 20, 2016:

Members of the US House of Representatives are investigating incitement to terrorism in the UN Relief and Works Agency schools, Rep. Doug Lamborn (CO) told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

“Congress has been asking questions about UNRWA for years, and it is important that we continue to do so until we are sure that the curriculum used and the teaching the children receive does not poison their minds,” Lamborn said.

“Textbooks and other materials that delegitimize Israel, denigrate the Jewish people, promote the ‘right of return’ through violent struggle, and glorify martyrdom must be banned.”

David Bedein, director of the Jerusalem- based Center for Near East Policy Research – which has provided material to Congress about UNRWA incitement – said, “Congress is going to begin an official investigation of UNRWA using some of our material to look at creating new standards for the organization.

While they cannot defund or get rid of UNRWA, which is ensconced in the UN,” they can advocate changes be made said Bedein, who also heads the center’s affiliated Israel Resource News Agency established in 1987.

Bedein sees getting rid of the agency as unrealistic and so is pushing for reform, particularly with its education system which promotes “war with Israel.”

The Center for Near East Policy is continually investigating UNRWA to promote accountability and transparency for the organization that serves the purpose of “keeping the Palestinian refugees as such by keeping alive the promise of return.”

Bedein’s organization released a new video, “The UNRWA Road to Terror: Palestinian Classroom Incitement,” showing youth that purportedly attend UNRWA schools voicing support for terrorism against Jews.

One UNRWA student named Arafat, from the Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, says in the video, “They teach us in school that Jews are fickle, bad people. I am ready to stab a Jew, and drive [a car] over them.”

Another UNRWA student from Kalandia says, “Stabbing and running over Jews brings dignity to the Palestinians. I’m going to run them over and stab them with knives.”

Nur Taha, an UNRWA student in Kalandia, commented, “With Allah’s help, I will fight for ISIS, the Islamic State.”

UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness responded to the charges, telling the Post, “As with many of Bedein’s previous films, in this latest he takes non-UNRWA facilities and falsely claims they belong to UNRWA. He shows teachers claiming they are from UNRWA when in fact they are not, and he plays the same tricks with students, often misrepresenting what they say in slanted translations.”…

Categories: Israel, Palestinian incitement, U.S. Congress, UNRWA
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A victory for patriotism

June 26, 2016

A victory for patriotism, Israel Hayom, Dror Eydar, June 26, 2016

(“Patriotism” — what a silly, old-fashioned concept. Thus spake the left. — DM)

1.
Nationalism won in Britain — not “fascism,” not “xenophobia” and not any of the other pejoratives pseudo-liberals love to apply to anything that counters their beliefs. Yes, pure and simple patriotism is what drove Brexit supporters, the kind of nationalism that leftist-liberal elites in the West in general, and Britain in particular, do not identify with.

British nationalism preceded Europe. The late historian Adrian Hastings placed the emergence of the buds of this nationalism in the eighth century and the formation of a true English national entity between the ninth and 11th centuries, at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. So the claims that the pro-Brexit movement was fueled by of “populism” and “empty rhetoric” indicates the critics’ own worldview.

2.
Fear of foreign migrants was not the main motive behind Brexit, but the unchecked flow of such migrants did serve as a wake-up call. Many of the migrants flooding into Britain refuse to integrate into British society. They do not adopt the culture of their hosts and do not see themselves as committed to the long-standing British ethos. This cultural (and perhaps national) autonomy migrants have created for themselves within Britain has served as a catalyst for the reawakening of natural feelings of patriotism among native Britons — feelings that elites have been trying to kill in the name of universal ideas.

3.
Not surprisingly, and quite entertainingly in fact, much of the Israeli media showed sympathy for the “Remain” camp. Why, you ask, does this have anything to do with us? Let’s look at the similarities between the Brexit vote and the last Knesset elections in March 2015. One can see the same media denial of the will of the people, belittlement of patriotic and religious sentiments and adherence to leftist totalitarian thinking (even at the cost of detachment from reality and the people). For Israeli media figures, the aftermath of the Brexit vote was a mini-replay of the dejection they felt after the last Knesset elections.

4.
Just a few months ago, U.S. President Barack Obama called on Brits to vote to remain in the European Union. The results of Thursday’s referendum showed Obama’s complete lack of influence. Obama is a symbol of both the radicalization of Western elites, who since the end of World War II have been trying to dissolve the idea of the sovereign nation-state, and the attempt by these elites to impose ideology (euphemistically called “values”) on the reality they see, instead of engaging in a thorough examination of reality and the lessons of history. The drama in the U.K. will have implications on these subjects, too.

5.
When it comes to Israel, it is still not clear whether Britain’s departure from the EU will be good or bad. Anti-Israel activists on the European continent and inside Britain, who, seeking via a variety of methods (some sophisticated and some less so) to thwart the Jewish people’s return to Zion, will not disappear, and will perhaps even get stronger. However, seeing the hostile EU be weakened is not a bad thing. We will wait and see how things develop.

Categories: BREXIT, Britain, Israel, Patriotism
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Iraqi Cleric Al-Kubeisi: ISIS Controlled by Netanyahu; Al-Baghdadi Stupid, Can’t Be Held Accountable

June 21, 2016

Iraqi Cleric Al-Kubeisi: ISIS Controlled by Netanyahu; Al-Baghdadi Stupid, Can’t Be Held Accountable, MEMRI-TV via YouTube, June 21, 2016

The blurb beneath the video states,

In a recent TV interview, Sunni Iraqi cleric Sheikh Ahmad Al-Kubeisi said that ISIS was an asset in the hands of Netanyahu, who “holds the remote control” and “gives orders to all the rulers of America, Europe, and elsewhere” and that the Jews are the masters of the land today. Al-Kubeisi further said that his fatwa ruling that people killed fighting ISIS were martyrs did not apply to the mostly-Shiite militia Popular Mobilization Units, because they “are killing Muslims just because they are Sunnis.” Asked about Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, he said that he was “so stupid that when he was detained in Camp Bucca… they used him as a scarecrow and then chucked him into the garbage.” The interview aired on the Iraqi Sumaria TV channel on June 11, 2016.

Categories: Iraqi media, Islam, Islam - Shiite vs. Sunni, Islamic State, Israel, Netanyahu
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How Anti-Semitism Became Respectable Again

June 11, 2016

How Anti-Semitism Became Respectable Again, PJ Media, David P. Goldman, June 10, 2016

On most university campuses the majority of young brainwash victims take it for granted that Israeli nastiness is the source of the endemic Jew-hatred in the Muslim world. That mindset prevails from Berkeley to the Vatican Secretariat. A billion and half people cry from the bottom of their hearts: For us to live, they must die, or at least be driven from their homeland. The wretchedness and despair of this great mass of humanity, a tiny fraction of which has turned up on Europe’s doorstep, is too great to ignore. Surely the Jews must in some way be responsible. It is enough to turn some liberal Jews into functional anti-Semites.

The difference between today and the 1930s, to be sure, is that Jews are armed rather than defenseless. I am weary of excusing myself for breathing. Let them hate us as long as they fear us.

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The world was anti-Semitic in 1944, when Ben Hecht wrote A Guide for the Bedevilled. The majority of educated, civilized, and rational people believed that the Jews in some fashion had brought their own problems upon themselves. Hecht began fighting anti-Semitism after an unsettling exchange with a New York hostess, who explained to him that Jews had to acknowledge their own responsibility in the matter of their persecution. This polite Gentile lady explained:

The Jews complain. They suffer dreadfully, and they accuse. But they never stop to explain or to reason or to figure the thing out and tell the world what they, and only they, know…They are–how shall I put it–collaborative victims, a thing they refuse to see…The Germans are not a race of killers, fiends, of a special and different sort of sub-humans.

Not that she approved of Nazi genocide, to be sure; she may not have known the extent of the butchery, but she  knew that dreadful things were happening to Europe’s Jews. But she thought that the Germans must have had some kind of provocation to hate the Jews so deeply. Why else would the Germans hate Jews so much?

When did the old anti-Semitism return? For half a century the horror of a million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis stopped the mouths of the anti-Semites, but that memory has worn off. What Hecht’s interlocutor believed in 1944, most liberals believe today, not to mention the vast majority of Europeans. Yes, the Arabs hate Jews, and express this hatred in a barbaric way, they will allow, but that is because Israel has provoked the hatred.

Tripwires that once seemed taboo are being crossed every day. One was triggered in the new action film “Triple 9,” which portrays a gang of ruthless Russian mafia killers operating under the cover of a kosher meat business. There are some violent Jewish criminals, but I have not been able to find a single example of an observant Jew among them. The filmmakers have invented a stereotype that has no instantiation in the real world.

As Debbie Schlussel writes:

The movie, “Triple 9,” in theaters today, is one of the most blatantly anti-Semitic, anti-Israel movies I’ve seen in a very long time. And it’s also anti-police and anti-U.S. military. Plus it’s an incredibly violent, bloody movie whose message is that American military men and police officers are just as bad as ISIS. And so are Jews and Israelis. On top of that, the movie employs anti-Semitic terms, approvingly.[Corrupt cops] murder, torture, and kill for an Orthodox Jewish Israeli Russian mafia family headed by Kate Winslet…There isn’t a single Russian mafia figure who is an Orthodox Jew, but why be concerned with facts when you’re director John Hillcoat or writer Matt Cook who made this Protocols-of-the-Elders-of-Zion cinematic “masterpiece.”…Orthodox Jews don’t behead and kill people and don’t preside over tortured, bloodied bodies in real life. That’s the domain of Muslims. Except in this movie.

Anti-Semitic caricatures used to be off limits. When Dickens created the far less offensive character of Fagin in Oliver Twist, he atoned by inventing the saintly Jewish figure of Rina in Our Mutual Friend. One finds unflattering portrayal of Jews here and there in English fiction (including some despicable poems by T.S. Eliot) but nothing like this filth. It’s become acceptable to hate Jews.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu touched another tripwire this week by nominating mass-murderer Marwan Barghouti for the Nobel Peace Prize, an act hailed by the Arab press. “Barghouti is currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his role in leading terrorist activities during the first and second intifadas that included dozens of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. He is a former leader of the Tanzim, a militant faction of the Fatah party currently headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, that took credit for many of the murders during the bloody Second Initfada in the early 2000’s. In 2014, he called for the launch of a third intifada,” the Jewish Press reported.

It is one thing to excuse Arab terrorism against Israeli civilians–the Left has done that throughout–and it is quite another to propose to reward murderers with the world’s most respected humanitarian honor. The world of enlightened opinion has no tears for the half million dead Syrian civilians, the tens of thousands of Kurds murdered by Turkish security services, or the countless dead in the Iraqi civil war now unfolding between ISIS and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias. But it cries a river for suicide bombers who murder Israelis, because the Israelis in some way were asking for it.

On most university campuses the majority of young brainwash victims take it for granted that Israeli nastiness is the source of the endemic Jew-hatred in the Muslim world. That mindset prevails from Berkeley to the Vatican Secretariat. A billion and half people cry from the bottom of their hearts: For us to live, they must die, or at least be driven from their homeland. The wretchedness and despair of this great mass of humanity, a tiny fraction of which has turned up on Europe’s doorstep, is too great to ignore. Surely the Jews must in some way be responsible. It is enough to turn some liberal Jews into functional anti-Semites.

This is not a new thought. Before and during the Second World War it was the conventional wisdom. Authors whom I abhor like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot said it openly. An author whom I love, J.R.R. Tolkien, said it allegorically: in The Hobbit, the Dwarves (whom he explicitly identified with the Jews) bring the calamity of Smaug upon themselves through their own obsession with gold in their miner’s kingdom at the Lonely Mountain. Tolkien was not an anti-Semite, not at least in the canonical definition (someone who hates Jews more than is absolutely necessary). On the contrary, he was something of a philo-Semite (he famously rebuked a German publisher who asked him to prove his Aryan heritage with the thought that he was sorry that he had no descent from “that talented people,” the Jews). But he wrote in a period when everyone knew that the Jews were in some measure responsible for their own troubles.

Tolkien, to be sure, compensated for his earlier ambivalent portrayal of the Dwarves/Jews in The Hobbit by portraying an Elven-Dwarvish friendship in The Fellowship of the Ring, deservedly the most beloved English-language novel of the 20th century. He was a man of his times who at length rose above his times. Those who did not rise above their times included G.K. Chesterton, who conjectured that there must be some truth to the medieval allegation that the Jews made Passover matzoh from the blood of Christians, and Hilaire Belloc, who wrote a book entitled “The Jews” calling for the “elimination” or “segregation” of “the alien.”

Islam, as Bernard Lewis wrote in his seminal essay “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” “has given dignity to drab and impoverished lives.” What is that dignity? It is the consoling belief that despite the humiliation of the Muslims during the past two centuries, the Umma still possesses God’s revelation and divine favor. The Christian West, from the White House to the Vatican to the Elysee Palace to the Kanzleramt, sustains this conviction by its courtship of Muslim good will. There is one great cognitive dissonance in the mix, and that is the transformation of the Jews from a despised, dependent and vulnerable minority to a Middle Eastern superpower. The return of the Jews to Zion threatens the belief that Islam is the seal of prophecy: how could God favor the Jews, who perverted the original revelation that Mohammed restored? That is why the Temple Mount remains a radioactive issue on the Muslim street. Merely by being there, Israel offers an existential challenge to Muslim identity. Conservative Muslim regimes, to be sure, may make a temporary accommodation with Israel when it is in their interest to do so; apocalyptic regimes like Iran’s never will.

Muslim civilization is crumbling, as I warned in my 2011 book “How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too).” The human cost of this crumbling will be horrific, ranking among the worst humanitarian disasters in human history, and a disaster that we will watch in real time in high-definition video. The West is sickened by the spectacle and indifferent to its causes; if the Jews madden the Muslims, enlightened opinion thinks, let them go away.

Ich, ich dulde dass du rasest, Du, Du duldest dass ich atme, wrote Heinrich Heine of the relationship between Gentiles and Jews in 19th century Europe: I tolerate your rage, and you tolerate my breathing. Things have changed. The crime of the Jews today is to breathe, and especially to breathe the air of their own country. As the body count rises, enlightened opinion once again will blame the Jews for breathing. Muslims will continue to engineer humanitarian disasters (as in the last Gaza War) to solicit Western sympathy, and European governments will attempt to placate their growing Muslim populations by blaming Israel.

The difference between today and the 1930s, to be sure, is that Jews are armed rather than defenseless. I am weary of excusing myself for breathing. Let them hate us as long as they fear us.

Categories: Antisemitism, Israel, Israeli security, Jewish left
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MSNBC Slams Israel’s ‘Extreme Right-Wing’ Government in Wake of Terror Attack

June 9, 2016

MSNBC Slams Israel’s ‘Extreme Right-Wing’ Government in Wake of Terror Attack, Newsbusters, Kyle Drennen, June 8, 2016

(Please see also, ‘Uneaten birthday cakes next to pools of blood’.  

The MSNBC transcript does not suggest that the attack had anything to do with Ramadan, or even mention Ramadan. — DM)

During live MSNBC coverage of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv in the 3 p.m. ET hour on Wednesday, NBC correspondents Ayman Mohyeldin and Martin Fletcher took turns blaming Israel’s “right-wing” government for Palestinian “frustration.”

Mohyeldin ranted: “…in terms of the context of what has been happening in the occupied Palestinian territories, the occupation, the shift of Israeli politics, including now the current government, more to the right, to what has been described by Israelis as even more of an extreme right-wing government, some of the measures that have taken place in the West Bank, the siege that continues in Gaza, all of those continue to fester.”

He then argued those policies created “the sense of depravation, the sense of frustration, the lack of any clarity on a political process”and declared: “There’s a tremendous amount of frustration among Palestinians who live in the occupied West Bank coupled with the shift of Israeli politics to the right, and that has led to even further measures of what Palestinians say is oppression in the occupied West Bank.”

Anchor Kate Snow replied: “A boiling point, perhaps.” She then turned to Fletcher and asked: “I just wonder whether this will be a call to action on – on both sides.” Fletcher responded: “Will it lead either side towards any movement towards peace or understanding that they need to make real progress? Probably not.”

He then joined Mohyeldin in hitting Israel:

I mean, as Ayman said, the Israeli government – you know, we keep – every few years we say, “Oh, this is the most right-wing government in Israel’s history,” and it just keeps getting more right-wing.So the chances that there’s going to be a move towards peace as a result of a violent shooting is probably the wrong conclusion. If anything, with the new defense minister, Avigdor Liberman, really an extremely right-winger, he will be – a settler himself – he will be calling, clearly as a defense minister, for a strong response of some kind.

Here is a transcript of the June 8 exchange:

Tel Aviv massacre

AYMAN MOHYELDIN: But in the bigger picture, in terms of the context of what has been happening in the occupied Palestinian territories, the occupation, the shift of Israeli politics, including now the current government more to the right to what has been described by Israelis as even more of a extreme right-wing government, some of the measures that have taken place in the West Bank, the siege that continues in Gaza, all of those continue to fester.

And as a result, the sense of depravation, the sense of frustration, the lack of any clarity on a political process that would lead to a – some kind of peace process, if you will, all of that has been brewing for the past several months. It’s been systematic for the last several years in terms of the ongoing occupation, but really, what we’ve seen is a spike, as Martin [Fletcher] was saying, in the past nine months with these wave of attacks. That has been a huge factor in why we are seeing this sudden spike.

There’s a tremendous amount of frustration among Palestinians who live in the occupied West Bank coupled with the shift of Israeli politics to the right, and that has led to even further measures of what Palestinians say is oppression in the occupied West Bank. The lack of any progress on the front with Gaza, it has been just a very – it’s been a recipe of disaster.

KATE SNOW: A boiling point, perhaps. Martin, as we – I’m trying to think back, and we’ve heard so much about the knife attacks that have happened last fall, I think, that was the last big spate of them – but is this – if you can put this in context, how significant is an event like this? And we’re talking about three people dead, multiple injuries. I mean, it looks a lot like what we saw in Paris, although not on the same scale. I guess I just wonder whether this will be a call to action on – on both sides.

MARTIN FLETCHER: Well, probably not much will change in the situation because of this. Because it was feared, the Palestinian – different Palestinian groups are trying to do this kind of thing. But it’s a shock, certainly to the Israeli public. It’s a shock because Tel Aviv is always sort of a rather hip, cool place outside the mainstream of the violence. Occasionally it reaches Tel Aviv with devastating effect. There have been bus bombs in Tel Aviv over the years and the attacks like this, but they have been far and few between.

The – I mean, from the point of view of the attackers, this was a successful attack that will shock the Israelis, but actually, will it change anything? Will it lead either side towards any movement towards peace or understanding that they need to make real progress? Probably not. I mean, as Ayman said, the Israeli government – you know, we keep – every few years we say, “Oh, this is the most right-wing government in Israel’s history,” and it just keeps getting more right-wing. So the chances that there’s going to be a move towards peace as a result of a violent shooting is probably the wrong conclusion. If anything, with the new defense minister, Avigdor Liberman, really an extremely right-winger, he will be – a settler himself – he will be calling, clearly as a defense minister, for a strong response of some kind.

MOHYELDIN: And this will be, correct me if I’m wrong, but really the first test on the security front for this new right-wing coalition government that was just formed within the last couple of weeks. This is the first, certainly the first significant major incident that has happened since this government has come into formation. And so I suspect, as Martin was saying, you’re going to hear tough talk in terms of measurements, in terms of if they identify and conclude that this is in fact the result of a Palestinian terrorist group or if a Palestinian individual was acting out.

(…)

Categories: Israel, Israeli government, Israeli politics, Israeli security, Leftists, Lieberman, Media, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian terrorists, Palestinians, Palestinians and media
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‘Uneaten birthday cakes next to pools of blood’

June 9, 2016

‘Uneaten birthday cakes next to pools of blood’, Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum, June 9, 2016

The rest of us in Israel, meanwhile, will be treated by the international community to reprimands about the need for peace, just as we are already being bombarded on local talk shows with the urgency for “an agreement with the Palestinians.” Like the terrorist attacks themselves, these pronouncements are repeated virtually without let-up.

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An Israeli parliamentarian who arrived on the scene of Wednesday night’s Palestinian terrorist attack in Tel Aviv summed up in a phrase what terrorism is all about.

“Uneaten birthday cakes next to pools of blood,” is how Likud MK Amir Ohana described what he encountered in the immediate aftermath of the shooting spree at the Max Brenner chocolate shop and cafe in the Sarona shopping complex.

No matter how precisely witnesses describe the attacks Israelis experience on a regular basis — the fear, the screams, and the killings — it is rare for words to capture carnage so well.

Yes, “uneaten birthday cakes next to pools of blood” tells us everything we need to know about the setting and its significance in the twisted, brainwashed minds of young people in the Palestinian Authority. It is precisely what the two young men, relatives from the village of Yatta near Hebron who brought makeshift assault rifles with them to an eatery on a summer’s eve, had envisioned. It was exactly their goal to slaughter Jews, some of them in casual dress and flip-flops, enjoying a respite from the oppressive heat of the day, others dressed to the nines, celebrating personal milestones.

Indeed, “uneaten birthday cakes next to pools of blood” says it all. It is a reminder of the funerals that will soon take place and the devastation entire families will feel for the rest of their lives; the months of physical rehabilitation and trauma awaiting those who were injured; and the tears of mothers, fathers, sons and daughters praying at bedsides.

“You never get used to it,” said a surgeon from the Sourasky Medical Center, where the wounded — among them one of the two terrorists — are being treated.

The rest of us in Israel, meanwhile, will be treated by the international community to reprimands about the need for peace, just as we are already being bombarded on local talk shows with the urgency for “an agreement with the Palestinians.” Like the terrorist attacks themselves, these pronouncements are repeated virtually without let-up.

The difference this time is the addition of the discussion about how Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s new defense minister, who assumed his role only last week, is going to meet the challenge, particularly as a proponent of the death penalty for terrorists, which the Jewish state does not have. Natch.

This is something the Arabs in Judea and Samaria, east Jerusalem and Gaza are keenly aware of, along with the knowledge that if they engage in particularly gruesome violence, they will be hailed as heroes by their society and leaders. Those who are killed while murdering Jews can look forward not only to paradise in the afterlife, but being martyrs after whom sports arenas, cultural events and streets are named.

Thankfully, Lieberman — whose alleged first order of business over the weekend was to strike terrorist bases in Syria — did not talk politics. Instead, he gave a brief press conference at the scene of the attack with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu had just landed in Tel Aviv from a two-and-a-half-day trip to Russia, ostensibly to mark the 25th anniversary of the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Moscow, but really to cement growing ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is the sad but necessary upshot of the Obama administration’s attitude toward Israel in particular and the Middle East in general.

Netanyahu understands that he has to have an alternative ally on whom to rely when it comes to safeguarding Israel from the dangers posed by the civil war in Syria, chief among them Iran’s presence and Palestinian proxy Hezbollah. Oh, and there’s the Islamic State group, too, which is also increasing its foothold in the Sinai, along Israel’s southern border, adjacent to Gaza. You know, where Hamas continues to build tunnels through which to smuggle weapons and kidnap and kill Israelis.

For his part, Putin is only too happy to oblige and replace the United States as the world’s superpower, a status his country lost when the Soviet Union fell 26 years ago. And the Palestinian “problem” was no more connected to that past event than it is to today’s global reality. It is simply a convenient excuse employed to hold Israel accountable and responsible for all ills. It is the politically correct contemporary anti-Semitic outlook, according to which Jews control the world.

What a hoot. We can’t even eat our birthday cakes at a chocolate shop without pools of our blood being spilled.

Categories: Defense of Israel, Fatah, Hamas, Hate groups, Islam and Jews, Israel, Israel and Russia, Leftist perspectives, Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinian incitement, Palestinians and media, Peace process, Ramadan terrorist attacks
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Muslim Leader Advertises that 9/11 was ‘Israeli-Jewish Job’’

June 8, 2016

Muslim Leader Advertises that 9/11 was ‘Israeli-Jewish Job’, Front Page Magazine, Joe Kaufman, June 8, 2016

(Just another tolerant, peaceful bunch of warm and fuzzy American Islamists. Obviously, the more the merrier. — DM)

911-was-israeli-jewish-job-sofian-zakkout

Sofian Zakkout, President of the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), is always looking for new ways to promote hatred of Jews. Recently, he advertised on his Facebook page an article about how the Nazi Holocaust was “faked.” Now, he is targeting Jews by posting onto social media a claim that they perpetrated the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Will any of the hate he is peddling do harm to the relationships he and his group have made, both financial and otherwise, with organizations associated with fighting crime?

Usually, anti-Semites — those rabid ones who are violently opposed to Jews — attach themselves to one of two categories, white supremacists or Muslim terrorists. Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, who is Muslim himself, strongly supports both.

When it comes to white supremacy, Zakkout is a fervent follower of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Zakkout has described Duke as “David Duke, a man to believe in!” and Zakkout has said of Duke, “I respect him for his honesty!” Zakkout’s Facebook page and the websites of his organization AMANA each have been used to promote Duke and his bigoted videos. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has previously cited Zakkout and his group for posting what the ADL described as a “venomous” anti-Semitic Duke video onto AMANA’s official site.

This past February, Zakkout advertised on social media a report claiming that the horrors committed by Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s were fabricated. Aptly titled ‘How the Holocaust was faked,’ it begins: “The alleged ‘Holocaust’ of ‘6 million Jews’ at the hands of Adolf Hitler and National Socialist Germany during WWII is the biggest lie ever foisted upon humanity.” It was produced by The Realist Report, an anti-Jew, anti-black, anti-gay independent media outlet, which describes Hitler as “the greatest leader in modern Western history.”

Zakkout is also very open about his strong support for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. In August 2015, he wrote in Arabic on Facebook, “Hamas is in my heart and on my head.” In July 2014, Zakkout organized a pro-Hamas rally held outside the Israeli Consulate in downtown Miami. On video, Zakkout is shown smiling, as event goers repeatedly shout, “We are Hamas.” Following the rally, Zakkout wrote the following in Arabic, above photos from the event: “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!”

On April 21st, Zakkout took to Facebook to promote a report discussing Jewish involvement in the September 11th attacks. Attached to the report was a graphic depicting an Israeli flag next to the burning World Trade Center towers, one tower totally engulfed in flames, with the caption, ‘Israeli CONNECTION to 9/11.’ Another photo from the report shows the burning towers with a Jewish Star affixed to one. The report begins, “It ain’t debatable! Soup to nuts, top to bottom, the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. were an ‘Israeli’-Jewish job.”

The report names twelve Jews, who it calls the “REAL planners and executors of 9/11.” According to the report, they include former and current Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert; then-soon-to-be Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg; and then-head of the criminal division of the Justice Department Michael Chertoff. It labels them “chosenite brethren.”

The website which published the report and which Zakkout linked to is Mouqawamah Music, a site that openly calls for “Death to Israel” and curses the Jewish religion. The site states, “[A]fter 132 some odd years of Jewish colonization in the Holy Land, there are only three words that properly encapsulate our pain, our sadness and our rage: DEATH TO ‘ISRAEL.’” And “What is today called Judaism is NOT a nice religion. It is and has always been a conspiracy against humanity, more of a domination strategy than a religion… [I]t is clearly wicked and filth-ridden…”

Sofian Zakkout has, once again, found a way to target Jews. Whether it is organizing pro-Hamas rallies, promoting David Duke videos, advertising Holocaust denial reports, or helping to push the absurd notion that Jews were behind 9/11, if it is a way to spread hatred of the Jewish people, Zakkout will gladly embrace it.

Unfortunately, Zakkout and his group’s anti-Semitic actions have had little effect on how he is viewed by some organizations associated with fighting crime. Zakkout’s name is still found on the official website of Citizens’ Crime Watch of Miami-Dade County as a Member at Large on the group’s Executive Committee. Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers has also been reluctant about removing Zakkout from its Board, and Zakkout’s AMANA previously received a $70 thousand grant from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — for counter-terrorism purposes, yet!

Nothing affiliated with Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout should receive any legitimacy or funding from any organization, especially those organizations associated with fighting crime. To do so would be a crime in itself.

Categories: 9/11, Holocaust, Islam and Jews, Islamic integration, Islamic radicalization, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Islamists in America, Israel
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