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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

'Jews Were in Israel Way Before Brits in Britain'

Appearing on BBC, Bennett argues two-state solution is failed approach, presses Jewish rights to Israel.

By Ari Yashar
First Publish: 2/25/2014, 4:10 PM

Economics Minister and Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett recently appeared on the BBC, where he argued the two-state solution has failed, and that Israel needs to reaffirm its Jewish nature.
After noting that in joining the coalition he agreed to let the peace talks happen and even reach a national referendum if an agreement was to materialize, Bennett stressed that his opposition to dividing the country lies in the historical ties of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.
"We've been in this land way longer than Americans have been in American land and the British have been in British land," remarked Bennett.




Bennett argued that the two-state solution being discussed is a mistaken approach, which has been proven as a failure following Israeli land withdrawals from Lebanon, Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza.
"Three times already we handed land over to the Arabs and within days they started shooting at us missiles. It's not working apparently," emphasized the Economics Minister.
Bennett added that not only has the approach failed, but that the Palestinian Authority (PA) refuses to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He stressed that any land divide would create a Palestinian state and a Palestinian-Jewish bi-national state, which the PA would then be able to fight for.
In providing alternatives, Bennett noted the possibility of bringing in Jordanian involvement to try and shift up the framework of negotiations that have failed until now.
The Economics Minister added that he has been using his position to build business between Israelis and PA Arabs in Judea and Samaria, claiming that such a move can "build peace from the ground up" rather than rely on the diplomats to reach an agreement.
When asked about the Israeli business leaders who pressed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to make "peace" to avoid the international boycotts threatened by US Secretary of State John Kerry, Bennett dismissed the arguments as being backwards.
"How will Israel's economy look the first time a plane is shot down from the West Bank, which is just four kilometers (2.5 miles) away from Ben Gurion Airport?" asked Bennett.

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Yitzhak Rabin Finally Gets Israeli Citizenship

Jordanian-born teenager named after slain Israeli prime minister can finally fulfill his dream to serve in IDF after battling bureaucracy.

By Tova Dvorin
First Publish: 2/19/2014, 5:22 PM

Rabin (L) and his mother, with ID cards
Rabin (L) and his mother, with ID cards
Orly Harari
 
Headlines in Israel Wednesday were dominated by Yitzhak Rabin - not the assassinated Prime Minister, but a brave Arab teenager of the same name. 

Rabin, 18, was born in Jordan to an Arab Muslim family, two months after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination. His parents decided to name him after the slain Israeli leader as a gesture of gratitude for his role in signing a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994.

His parents' decision made headlines across the globe and drew ire from Jordanian officials, despite the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel. After suffering abuse at the hands of locals - who did not share his kind sentiments towards the Jewish state - baby Yitzhak and his mother were allowed to emigrate to Israel, for humanitarian reasons.

Rabin stated in November that he "feels completely Jewish," and that his one wish was to become an officer in the IDF. However, he had never received a draft notice due to his citizenship status, with the Ministry of Interior had insisted was temporary due to the nature of his immigration.

On Wednesday, after years of struggling with the Ministry, that wish was finally granted by Interior Minister Gidon Sa'ar. Sa'ar traveled to Eilat to present Rabin with his Israeli identity card - and citizenship - in a special ceremony.

"I went to the Interior Ministry, the military and the media," Rabin's attorney, Naomi Gonen, told the press after the event. "I was sure it would be easier, but then I found out that things work very slowly to move through the system. It took a few months, but the main thing is that in the end we succeeded - mainly thanks to the media, who supported the cause."

"The struggle of Yitzhak Rabin ends now that he has successfully obtained an identity card, and the gates of the country are open for him," the attorney continued. "Were it not for the positive response of the media in this fight to get him his citizenship, we would never have succeeded."

'We Heard a Boom, and the Windshield Shattered'

Palestinian Arab teenagers hurl stones at car full of women, small children; victim recounts the horror to Arutz Sheva.

By Tova Dvorin
First Publish: 2/19/2014, 3:42 PM

Palestinian Arabs with stones (illustrative)
Palestinian Arabs with stones (illustrative)
Flash90
 
Palestinian Arab teenagers hurled stones at an Israeli car just outside the Samaria community of Eli Wednesday afternoon. While the victims of the attack are shaken, no one was hurt.

"We were in a full car - two women and several children - traveling from Jerusalem to Elon Moreh," Alona, the driver, recounted to Arutz Sheva. "Right after we passed Eli we heard a loud 'boom' that shook the car. We saw glass shattered in our car and realized that the Palestinian Arab teenagers we saw earlier had thrown stones at us as we passed."

It took a few moments - but, thankfully, the victims of the attack managed to find help.
"We found a group of IDF soldiers along Route 60 and told them what had happened," Alona said. She emphasized that no one had been hurt in the incident.

Rock attacks against Jewish Israelis have become more and more common in Israel over the past month, in an incitement campaign the Shin Bet recently linked to the ongoing peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Earlier this month, Palestinian Arab teenagers hurled stones at a group of yeshiva students visiting the tomb of a Talmudic sage in the Lower Galilee. The attack was premeditated, students claim, as the youths descended upon the students' tour bus wearing masks, and a car was seen following the bus after it finally managed to escape. Students were forced to hide under the seats to avoid being hurt by the projectiles.

The community of Beit-El was also thrust back into the spotlight on Tuesday over rock attacks, after it was alleged that whilst police take a hard line against local Jewish activists, the perpetrators of a recent barrage of rock-throwing incidents are still at large.

The driver's broken windshield Alona

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Hoenlein: BDS is the '21st Century Anti-Semitism'

Malcolm Hoenlein: Saying 'I hate Israel' instead of 'I hate Jews' does not cover up the fact that both mean the same thing.

By Yoni Kempinski, Elad Benari
First Publish: 2/18/2014, 4:12 AM

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said on Monday that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is “the 21st century form of 20th century anti-Semitism.”

“It is the same manifestation, except [it is] attacking the collective Jew - Israel - rather than the individual Jew as we saw 70 years ago,” Hoenlein said at a press conference in Jerusalem.



The fact that it is not politically correct to say “I’m hate Jews” but is seemingly okay to say “I hate Israel” should not be used to cover up the fact that both statements mean the same thing, he added.
Referring to Iran, Hoenlein referred to the differences between Congress, where some members have been pushing for legislation that would impose new sanctions against Iran, and the Obama administration that has threatened to veto any new sanctions.

“We do not believe that there is a big difference between them,” he said. “It’s a question of timing, whether you pass the legislation first and then wait or you wait and then pass the legislation. We hope that Congress and the administration can work this out together, because we all want the same outcome - Iran being denied the capability of having a nuclear weapon.”

Hoenlein said that Iran was not living up to its commitments, noting that not much has changed in the country since President Hassan Rouhani took over from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“[There have been] more executions under Rouhani than we saw under Ahmadinejad. It is outrageous that the world doesn’t challenge this,” he said, citing Iran’s human rights violations and support for terrorism.

Hoenlein called for a unified approach on Iran so that the solution that everyone wants can be reached.

“Iran represents a global threat. Every foreign leader we meet today talks about the danger they face from Iran,” he added.

“Israeli Apartheid Week” is coming to your campus

By: Sam Levine, Zimmerman Fellow, ZOA N. California ED
February 4, 2014
 
 Pro-Palestinian student groups put this on to defame Israel

Wall of truth picture

Hi Friends,
 As you know, in the next month or two, “Israeli Apartheid Week” is probably coming to your campus. This is an event the pro-Palestinian student groups put on to defame Israel as an apartheid state that commits war crimes against the Palestinians. It is full of hate and lies about the Jewish State, and usually includes big banners and graphics that libel Israel in the middle of campus.
“…full of hate and lies about the Jewish State…”
Thankfully, ZOA has an effective way you can fight back against “Israeli Apartheid Week.” We have collaborated with the Freedom Center to revamp their great Wall of Truth banner. This is an 8 foot by 8 foot self-standing, professionally made banner that highlight and corrects the top 10 myths of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Please see a picture of the banner and content below. This standing banner counters many of the lies that “Israeli Apartheid Week” perpetrates, and ZOA offers it to you totally free of charge to use on campus, along with handouts of the myths for students to take with them. We hope you will take advantage of this effective tool to defend Israel at your University.
Please contact me to reserve it for your campus.
WALL OF TRUTH

MYTH 1: JEWS HAVE LITTLE HISTORICAL CONNECTION TO ISRAEL

 Jews have lived continuously in the land of Israel for over 3000 years; the Arabs arrived through multiple invasions, beginning in the 7th Century AD. In the year 70 AD, when the Jewish civilization was already over 1000 years old, the Romans forced most of the Jews of Judea and Samaria (now the West Bank) into exile. By the end of the 19th Century, the majority population of Jerusalem was Jewish.

MYTH 2: ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE

 “Apartheid” refers to the system created by South Africans in which “non-white” residents of that nation were denied citizenship and basic civil rights, and were forced to live in separate residential areas with segregated and inferior educational and medical services. Those wishing to demonize and destroy Israel now falsely call it “an Apartheid state.” But the only true Apartheid states in the Middle East are Islamic states in which Jews are not allowed to live and where Christians, Baha’is and other religious minorities are objects of discrimination and persecution.
 There are 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel with civil rights that are the envy of the Arab world.  Israeli Arabs vote in Israel’s elections, have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, sit on Israeli courts and on the Israeli Supreme Court, and serve as tenured professors teaching in Israeli colleges and universities. The Arab citizens of Israel have more rights, and enjoy more freedom, education, and economic opportunity than the inhabitants of any Arab or Muslim state.

MYTH 3: THE HOLOCAUST IS EUROPE’S PROBLEM; PALESTINIANS HAD NO ROLE IN IT 

 The Arabs generally and the “Palestinians” specifically were supporters of Hitler in the 1930s. The father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was a devoted Nazi who spent the war in Berlin and worked with members of the Third Reich to plan death camps for the Jews of the Middle East. Today he is revered by the Palestinians as the George Washington of their cause. The Muslim Brotherhood translated Mein Kampf into Arabic in the 1930s and called for the destruction of the Jewish state at its birth. Today Arab leaders call for the destruction of the Jewish state and routinely deny that the Holocaust with which their forbears collaborated actually took place.

MYTH 4: ISRAEL OCCUPIES ARAB PALESTINE

 Since Roman times when the Philistines inhabited the region around Jordan (hence the name “Palestine”) there has never been a political entity – neither a province nor a state – called “Palestine” and no one claimed there was until well after the United
Nations created Israel in 1948.  The land on which Israel was created by the U.N. was also used by the colonial powers to create Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. It was land that had belonged to Turkey for 400 years. The Turks are not “Palestinians” and are not even Arabs.
 There never was an Arab country called “Palestine” or inhabited by “Palestinians.” Before the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, which was sixteen years after the birth of Israel, no Arab political entity was called by that name.

MYTH 5: THE KORAN DESCRIBES JERUSALEM AS HOLY TO ISLAM

 The Koran does not mention Jerusalem because Mohammed never set foot in the city. Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies in 636 after the death of Mohammed. Muslim jihadists claim that the Koran mentions “The Furthest Mosque” — Al-Aqsa in Arabic – and that this is a Koranic reference to Jerusalem. This is a lie. The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem had not been built when the Koran was written, so the reference is to some other (or any other) “furthest mosque.” In contrast, Jerusalem is and has always been a holy city to Jews. The daily prayers of the Jews are focused on Jerusalem. The Hebrew Bible mentions Zion and Jerusalem a total of 809 times.

MYTH 6: THE ARABS WANT PEACE AND A STATE ON THE WEST BANK

 The Arabs rejected peace and a state on the West Bank first in 1948 when it was offered to them by the U.N. and then in 2000 when it was offered by Presidents Clinton and Barak. In 1949, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which the U.N. had designated as a homeland for the Arabs, were annexed respectively by Jordan and Egypt. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.” Today the “liberation” of Palestine “from the river to the sea” is still the goal of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The war in the Middle East is about the desire of the Arabs and Muslims to destroy Israel; it is not about the desire for a Palestinian state.

MYTH 7:  THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON IS NOT JEWISH

 This lie is one of many designed to steal the history of the Jews in order to justify erasing them from the Middle East. When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, it immediately began a campaign to delegitimize Israel by rewriting history with the intention of denying Israel’s right to exist. Among its false claims is that the remains of the Temple of Solomon – the Western Wall – are in fact the remnants of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Al-Aqsa Mosque was deliberately built on top of the Temple after the Muslim conquest to humiliate the conquered. This is the same imperialistic tradition that prompts jihadists today to build a mosque at Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 attack.

MYTH 8: ISRAEL’S SECURITY FENCE IS AN “APARTHEID WALL”

 This is two lies in one. The West Bank fence is a fence, not a wall. About 97% of the fence is made of chain-link material. The remaining 3% is concrete, designed to repel sniper fire in particular areas. The fence was built in 2003 in response to thousands of suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli citizens by Palestinian terrorists, sponsored and armed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The fence was built to keep out terrorists, not Arabs.
 In the years since the construction of the fence, terrorist attacks have declined by more than 90%. The fence is Israel’s legitimate defense against a ruthless and amoral terrorist aggressor.

MYTH 9: ISRAEL IS THE CAUSE OF THE REFUGEE PROBLEM

 The Palestinians claim there are 5 million Palestinian refugees who fled Israel during the 1948 war. This is false. There were only 500,000 Arab refugees from the 1948 war – an unprovoked war that Egypt and four other Arab states had launched against the newly created state of Israel. In the aftermath of the war, more than 500,000 Jewish refugees were driven out of the Arab states in the Middle East. There are no Jewish refugees today, sixty years later, because Israel resettled them. Why are there still Arab refugees? The Arabs have been given billions of dollars by Israel and the United States to relocate their refugees. But the Arabs are still in refugee camps. While Israel resettled Jewish refugees, no Arab country would take in the “Palestinians” who were forced into camps and were kept there by the Arab regimes to stir up hatred against the Jews. The refugee “issue” has been created by the Arab regimes as a weapon in their war against the Jews. It should be resolved by resettling the inhabitants of the refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza where almost all of them have lived all their lives.

MYTH 10: ISRAEL COMMITS WAR CRIMES BY KILLING CIVILIANS

 This is the Big Lie, coming as it does from Palestinians who have made terrorist attacks on civilians a weapon of choice, and who make martyrs and national heroes out of suicide bombers.
 The Gaza strip was a base for 7,000 rocket attacks against schoolyards and townships in Israel before the Israelis responded in 2007. During Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza rocket sites there was one civilian death for every 30 terrorists. By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

Read more: http://zoa.org/2014/02/10231203-israeli-apartheid-week-is-coming-to-your-campus/#ixzz2thXRojxM

Obama Treats Enemy Dictatorships Better than Ally Israel

By: Morton A. Klein; Daniel Mandel
January 31, 2014
 

Under Obama’s pressure, Israel’s Netanyahu government accepted in-principle a Palestinian state


The Obama pattern is clear. The respect for sovereign decisions and deference to security concerns that apply to other U.S. allies are absent when it comes to Israel.
The Obama pattern is clear. The respect for sovereign decisions and deference to security concerns that apply to other U.S. allies are absent when it comes to Israel. 
Last week, it leaked that Israel’s Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, had privately described Secretary of State John Kerry as “obsessive and messianic” in his quest to broker an Israeli/Palestinian peace settlement. The Obama Administration angrily rejected Ya’alon’s words as “offensive and inappropriate,” demanding and receiving an apology. Yet, only weeks earlier, Yasser Abed Rabbo, a close adviser to Fatah/Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas, also excoriated John Kerry as possessed of “dangerous” proposals and seeking to “appease Israel by fulfilling its expansionist demands in the Jordan Valley under the pretext of security. He wants to buy Israeli silence over the Iran deal.” But for these grave, personal PA allegations against Kerry, the Obama Administration has said nothing.

Why this startling discrepancy in the Administration’s response? Why has it ignored blatant anti-peace statements from the PA, such as the call by the PA Minister of Religious Affairs, Mahmoud Al-Habbash  for Syrian jihadists to cease murdering each other and wage war against Israel? Or the PA’s Abbas Zaki reaffirming that the PA’s public demand for a state alongside Israel is merely a device aimed at eventually removing Israel from the map –– a policy supposedly repudiated over 20 years ago?
 Because the Administration will not assimilate evidence that invalidates its public formula that the Palestinians are willing to conclude a genuine peace with Israel. So it ignores or finesses PA anti-peace words and deeds, while stridently criticizing Israel on disagreements and reluctance to make unilateral concessions. 
“…the Administration will not assimilate evidence that invalidates its public formula that the Palestinians are willing to conclude a genuine peace…”

Under Obama’s pressure, Israel’s Netanyahu government accepted in-principle a Palestinian state and unprecedentedly froze Jewish construction in the West Bank for 10 months in a bid to bring the PA to the negotiating table. The PA refused to come until the very end and broke off talks shortly after, but it was Israel whom Obama singled out in a January 2010 TIME interview for failing to make any “bold gestures” for peace.

 When in March 2010, during a visit to the region by Vice-President Joseph Biden, the PA’s named a public square in Ramallah after Dalal Mughrabi, the leader of the 1978 coastal road bus hijacking, in which 37 Israelis, including 12 children, were slaughtered, the Obama Administration was silent for days. When Clinton belatedly criticized the Mughrabi event, it was only to whitewash the PA by falsely claiming “a Hamas-controlled municipality” had initiated it. 

 In contrast, a mere Israeli announcement of building program in a Jewish neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem that also occurred during the Biden visit led the Obama Administration to immediately condemn it and describe it as “destructive,” an “insult” and an “affront.”
 No other state, let alone ally, attracts the same ire, even when policy divergence is massive. When in April 2010 Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in the words of journalist Joel Brinkley, made “delusional criticism of the United States and its allies” and threatened to “join the Taliban” –– this, in the midst of U.S. soldiers fighting and dying shoring up his regime –– the Administration found it merely “troubling” and “frustrating” and asserted that Karzai needed to be “treated with respect.” 

 When in June 2010, Turkey voted against a new US-supported U.N. Security Council sanctions bill on Iran, there was no talk of destructiveness, insults or affronts –– the U.S. was merely “disappointed.” And when in October 2011, the Abbas’ Fatah brazenly demanded U.S. taxpayer aid as “a political and moral right,” Obama took no notice, let alone curtail or withhold aid to the ingrate PA.
 When Iran’s top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, addressing a mass rally, called the U.S. a “Great Satan” and an “enemy who smiles,” and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani boasted that “the U.S. and world powers surrendered to the Iranian nation’s will,” Obama said nothing. Only when the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Zarif, laid a wreath at the tomb of a Hizballah terrorist leader, who in 1983 murdered 242 U.S. marines in Lebanon, did the Administration permit a low-level National Security Council official to condemn it is a short statement.

 Israel is expected to do things neither the U.S. nor its other allies would do. This month, the Obama Administration was critical of Afghanistan’s Karzai releasing of scores of Islamist “dangerous criminals against whom there is strong evidence linking them to terror-related crimes.” But last year, the Administration pressured Israel into releasing scores of convicted Palestinian killers of Israeli civilians –– although it did express concern when one of those released, Al Haj Othman Amar Mustafa, turned out have also murdered an American. Actions unacceptable elsewhere were positively demanded of Israel.

 The Obama pattern is clear. The respect for sovereign decisions and deference to security concerns that apply to other U.S. allies are absent when it comes to Israel. Israel is expected to bow to the Administration’s policy without demur, run security risks the U.S. itself would not abide, and ignore the extremism, non-acceptance and bad faith of its Palestinian interlocutor, just as the Obama Administration does. This is just the unseemly underside of the disconnect between the Administration’s public words of support for Israel and the reality of its coolness and indifference to the realities it faces.

 Morton A. Klein is National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Dr. Daniel Mandel is Director of the ZOA’ s Center for Middle East Policy.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

'Allah Gave Israel to The Jews, There's No Palestine'

Muslim scholar in Jordan attacks 'Palestinians' for distorting Koran, Jews given Israel 'until Day of Judgement.'

By Ari Yashar
First Publish: 2/6/2014, 11:00 PM

Koran (file)
Koran (file)
Flash 90
Allah has promised Israel to the Jews -- so says Sheikh Ahmad Adwan, a Muslim scholar living in Jordan, who declared on his Facebook page recently that "Palestine" doesn't exist.
Blogger Elder of Ziyon translated Arab news sources that this Saturday reported on Adwan's statements, in which he quotes the Koran saying Allah assigned Israel to the Jews until the Day of Judgement (Sura 5 Verse 21), and that Jews are the inheritors of Israel (Sura 26 Verse 59).
"I say to those who distort...the Koran: from where did you bring the name Palestine, you liars, you accursed, when Allah has already named it 'The Holy Land' and bequeathed it to the Children of Israel until the Day of Judgment," argued Adwan. "There is no such thing as 'Palestine' in the Koran."
"Your demand for the Land of Israel is a falsehood and it constitutes an attack on the Koran, on the Jews and their land. Therefore you won’t succeed, and Allah will fail you and humiliate you, because Allah is the one who will protect them (i.e. the Jews)," warns Adwan.
The sheikh had more harsh words for the "Palestinians," calling them "the killers of children, the elderly and women" in using them as human shields in order to falsely accuse the Jews of targeting them. He reports having seen the same tactic used by "Palestinians" against the Jordanian army in the 1970s.
"This is their habit and custom, their viciousness, their having hearts of stones towards their children, and their lying to public opinion, in order to get its support," declared Adwan.
Adwan has previously said his support for the Jewish people "comes from my acknowledgment of their sovereignty on their land and my belief in the Koran, which told us and emphasized this in many places, like His (Allah’s) saying ”Oh People (i.e the Children of Israel), enter the Holy Land which Allah has assigned unto you'" (Sura 5, Verse 21).
The Jews are a peaceful people according to Adwan, who says "if they are attacked, they defend themselves while causing as little damage to the attackers as possible. It is an honor for them that Allah has chosen them over the worlds – meaning over the people and the Jinns (spiritual creatures) until the Day of Judgment. ...When Allah chose them, He didn’t do so out of politeness, and He wasn’t unjust other peoples, it is just that they (the Jews) deserved this.”
Video (mostly in Hebrew) from Orot TV shows Adwan's 2012 visit to Tzfat, where he met with the city's Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu and expressed his support for Israel: