Monday, February 29, 2016

The perfect embodiment of Palestinian youth, idealism, weakness and death

...In the Children’s Crusade of 1212, the faithful set forth convinced that their spirit alone would achieve their results and they went entirely unarmed. Modern youth movements have similarly idolized the spirit of the young, the innocent aim to change the world through a crusade of peace. But in this season, the flower child has given way to the dagger child — the perfect embodiment of Palestinian youth, idealism, weakness and death.

Joshua Berman..
Times of Israel..
28 February '16..

In the spring of 1212, a young shepherd boy named Nicholas of Cologne preached that he had received inspiration to lead children on a crusade to free the Holy Land from Muslim infidels. Flocks of young people joined him in his trek south to the Mediterranean coast to lead what would be known as the Children’s Crusade. Thousands died of starvation along the way and those that set sail for the Holy Land were diverted to Egypt and sold into slavery.

But in the later lore of Western Europe, the Children’s Crusade attained a romantic aura as history’s first youth movement. Even if utterly misguided, these were ideologically driven youngsters, acting out of the purity of their innocent souls.

A similar dynamic is playing itself out now in Palestinian society. The iconography of Palestinian resistance features two contrasting images. The first is the muscle-bound fighter with ski-mask brandishing an assault rifle. He represents the Palestinian aspiration for dominance and power. But he requires a contrasting image alongside his own. Palestinian fighters have actually accomplished very little. And so, a complementary image must be adopted that is more in line with reality: that of the youth with slingshot. The image is an appropriation of the figure of David against Goliath. It champions not muscle, but rather the embodiment of the Palestinian spirit in a younger, weaker body. It implicitly champions the strength of spirit against overwhelming odds.

In previous times, the ultimate symbol of the Palestinian anti-hero was the blind and crippled Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was crippled by polio and could not walk during the entire length of his twelve-year presidency. And yet, there are almost no photographs of him in a wheelchair. Roosevelt feared that such a picture would tarnish his image as a strong leader. By contrast, the ubiquitous images of Sheikh Yassin staring wildly while pushed in his wheelchair represented the perfect embodiment of the Palestinian struggle of the spirit against overwhelming odds.

During Operation Protective Edge, the image of the muscle-bound masked fighter was paramount, as he dodged through tunnels and fired off rockets. But that struggle was a catastrophe for the Palestinians. And so now, the pendulum of Palestinian iconography has swung in the other direction, and today, it celebrates the struggle of the spirit. Its new poster-boy is just that: a boy.

When a 14-year-old Palestinian plunges a knife into a Jewish neck it’s the perfect murder. No adult has acted and so one is really culpable. A romantic aura sets in claiming that children act out of honesty and innocence. Even if unforgivable, the child’s action is seen as “natural.” And when photographs detail his arrest, it is truly hard to tell the victim from the criminal.

(Please Share) The Knife and the Message: The Roots of the New Palestinian Uprising

...As this document will show, the Palestinian president and those under his authority are indeed instructing young Palestinians what to do. Not sending them into battle as soldiers, but goading them into action through deliberate messaging, distortion and fabrication, sometimes stated openly by senior Palestinian officials, but mostly insidiously, aimed at keeping the conflict alive and portraying the Palestinians as the victims in a whitewash of terror.

Hirsh Goodman/Yossi Kuperwasser, editors..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
29 February '16..




Executive Summary

The latest wave of Palestinian violence against Jews is something new, an insidious wave of seemingly un-orchestrated attacks, perpetrated by unlikely assailants, and generally untraceable to any particular organization. They were also characterized by brutality, viciousness and randomness, and the purposeful use of the knife, to drive home the intent of bringing a new and unrelenting wave of slaughter to the Jews; a message to all Israelis that neither they, nor their children, will ever be able to live in this land in peace.

As this document will show, the Palestinian president and those under his authority are indeed instructing young Palestinians what to do. Not sending them into battle as soldiers, but goading them into action through deliberate messaging, distortion and fabrication, sometimes stated openly by senior Palestinian officials, but mostly insidiously, aimed at keeping the conflict alive and portraying the Palestinians as the victims in a whitewash of terror.

There is a guiding hand in all this, the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian faction that leads it, Fatah. What is being witnessed today is the end-game of a strategy adopted by Fatah in 2009 and culminating in Mahmoud Abbas’ speech to the UN General Assembly on September 30, 2015, when he announced that the Palestinians are no longer bound by the Oslo (peace) Accords.

A television broadcast that sends a youth on his/her mission of death is part of a carefully calibrated policy of incitement and cynicism, which has brought the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a new level, one that generates terror without fingerprints, but which adroitly serves Fatah’s strategy of an endless war of attrition, by varying means, against Israel.

While the current wave of violence has succeeded in placing the Palestinian issue back on the international agenda to some degree, it has lost the Palestinians a valuable asset: the Israeli political center. Israelis have lost trust in the Palestinians and their leaders, even those Israelis who believe that Israel should relinquish the territories as part of a peace agreement between the sides.

No society can live in fear and with anarchy at its doorstep, where suspicion lurks at every turn.

And no society can live with and tolerate the hatred being spewed against them, via social media and other means, with calumnies and lies reminiscent of the dark days that led to even darker days in the not-too-distant past of the Jewish people.

Israel will learn and adapt to this new situation as it has done in the past. The question is whether the Palestinian leadership will do the same and come around to understanding that the monster they have created, a generation of children led to believe in the culture of death, is not in their own best interest.

Israel can control the damage, but only Fatah and the PA can end it, and it is they, the Palestinian leadership, who have to do so if the path to negotiation and conciliation is to be opened again, and this endless and senseless wave of violence extinguished.

(Continue to Full Publication)

* * *
Notes
1 Raoul Wootliff, “Videos teach would-be Palestinian attackers ‘how to stab,’” Times of Israel, October 15, 2015, http://www.timesofisrael.com/videos-teach-would-be-palestinian-attackers-how-to-stab/
2 Yoav Zitun, “Eisenkot: IDF searching for every possible solution to tunnel problem,” Ynetnews, February 9, 2016, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4764074,00.html

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.
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Sourcing an anti-Israel libel promoted on BBC Radio 4 - by Hadar Sela

...The fact that Radio 4 apparently did not see anything problematic about broadcasting that and additional spurious allegations without question or challenge of course prompts the question of what it is that supposedly differentiates the BBC from Hamas-supporting websites which promote and amplify the same defamation – but without demanding a licence fee.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
29 February '16..

When anti-Israel campaigner Ken Loach appeared on BBC Radio 4’s ‘The World Tonight’ on February 25th, one of the more delusional allegations heard by listeners (and the competition was tough) was that during the 2014 conflict between Israel and Hamas, Israeli troops “executed” Hebrew speakers in the Gaza Strip.The World Tonight 25 2

“Will they go to Gaza and see the rubble? Will they see the schools that were bombed by Israel in 2014? Will they see the hospitals that were targeted by Israel? Will they see the places where families were herded together and then executed? Will they hear about the people who were asked if they spoke Hebrew and if they spoke Hebrew they were executed?”

Not only was that allegation – and the many others – not questioned or challenged by the BBC’s Ritula Shah but Loach was not even asked to provide a source for such a serious charge. Hence, we decided to look for its source ourselves and the search did not take very long.

The inventor of that defamation is a man who has made a career out of lying about IsraelMax Blumenthal – and in 2014 he touted it at the so-called ‘Russell Tribunal on Palestine’, with further amplification from Rania Khalek at ‘Electronic Intifada’.

(Read Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.
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Vassar's modernized blood libel and the right to identify and criticize vile statements - by Jonathan Marks

...Underlying Stanley’s argument is the judgment that Puar was merely “critiquing Israeli policy toward Palestinians” when she portrayed the Jewish state as a collector of the body parts of children. For Stanley, evidently such a portrayal is not even a rhetorical excess, much less something vile. But in fairness to Stanley, ethics is not his field.

Jonathan Marks..
Commentary Magazine..
28 February '16..

It bears repeating. Jasbir Puar, a professor of gender studies at Rutgers University, visited Vassar College to explain the Jewish state’s policy of deliberate maiming, especially of children, not with a view toward “winning or losing” or “a solution” but with a view to acquiring “body parts… for research and experimentation.” In this modernized blood libel, the vampiric Jewish state particularly craves the blood of children to serve its inhuman purposes. Several departments and programs, including Jewish Studies, sponsored Puar’s talk, and several professors attended. Yet, in a lengthy question and answer session Puar was not challenged, unless you count the questioner who worried that her focus on human beings had caused her to neglect Israel’s crimes against trees.

Mark Yudof, former president of the University of California, and Kenneth Waltzer, professor emeritus of history at Michigan State University, responded sensibly to all this in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (behind a pay wall). They noted, correctly, that Puar’s talk was part of a history of anti-Israel activity at Vassar that has occasionally crossed the line into overt anti-Semitism. They added that the Puar lecture was a new low and that faculty members and President Catharine Bond Hill ought to “confront [the] wave of anti-Semitism with free speech and rigorous academic inquiry.” They didn’t say Puar should have been barred from speaking, though their argument implies that sponsoring her talk was breathtakingly poor judgment. They merely called on members of Vassar’s faculty and administration to challenge Puar’s claims.

This was too much for Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. It has been a while since I earned my B.A. in philosophy, but I’ll try to keep up with his argument.

Puar, Stanley begins, is a well-known scholar who has written a book “that has been cited over 1700 times.” How dare, we are to ask ourselves, Yudof and Waltzer, question someone who has been cited so many times? Suitably chagrined, we move on to Stanley’s observation that Yudof and Waltzer “[attribute] to Puar the claim that Israel allows Palestinians only the bare minimum needed to survive, and that Israel mines the organs of dead Palestinians for scientific research.” Note Stanley’s philosophical caution. One can’t be confident that Puar said these things. Unless, that is, one were to review the transcript that others obtained weeks ago from the alumni group that recorded the lecture.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

To act also against those who sent them

...At what point will we start exacting a real price from those who encourage terrorist activities? When will we stop talking about "atmosphere attacks" and start acting against those who create that atmosphere?

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
28 February '16..

How many lone terrorists have carried out attacks during the ongoing "intifada of the individuals"? A hundred? A thousand? How many more will join them soon? And when we will stop calling them "lone" terrorists?

Does the fact that all of these "lone" terrorists have drawn their inspiration from the same source of organized and systematic hatred not turn them into a collective, even if there is no official guiding hand? And what can we do about the venomous poison spewed by the Palestinian Authority other than talk about it?

Is not a television or radio station that disseminates incitement the same as a gun? Are not the inciters responsible for the attacks that they inspired? If so, it is legitimate for us to act against them in the same way we act against terrorist operatives.

The Palestinian Authority has indeed helped Israel catch hundreds of Hamas terrorists. This is in the Palestinian Authority's interest and it is good this is the case. But the Palestinian Authority is taking no steps to eliminate the cult of death that exists in Palestinian society. It is doing nothing to stop the calls to murder Jews wherever they are. And it gives money to the families of terrorists and glorifies the actions of the "shahids" (martyrs).

Change the Name, Change the Game - End The West Bank Refugee Gravy Train - by David Singer

...Claiming the trappings of Statehood – whilst segregating its citizens into two different classes -– is a recipe for continuing tension and future conflict. Change the name – change the game – but be prepared to accept the consequences.

David Singer..
J-Wire.com..
28 February '16..

With more than three million Syrians fleeing war-torn Syria seeking safe havens in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and Europe – scarce United Nations resources continue to be used supporting and maintaining about 760,000 Palestinian Arabs currently living in the West Bank and registered as “refugees” with the United Nations Relief And Works Agency (UNRWA).Their refugee categorisation and status were changed on 3 January 2013 when PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas replaced the “Palestinian Authority” with the “State of Palestine” by this decree:

“Official documents, seals, signs and letterheads of the Palestinian National Authority official and national institutions shall be amended by replacing the name ‘Palestinian National Authority’ whenever it appears by the name ‘State of Palestine’ and by adopting the emblem of the State of Palestine.”

John Whitbeck – a legal advisor to the Palestinian team in negotiations with Israel – has written on the significance of this name change:

“In his correspondence, Yasser Arafat used to list all three of his titles under his signature — President of the State of Palestine, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and President of the Palestinian Authority (in that order of precedence). It is both legally and politically noteworthy that, in signing this decree, Mahmoud Abbas has listed only the first two titles. The Trojan horse called the “Palestinian Authority” in accordance with the Oslo interim agreements and the “Palestinian National Authority” by Palestinians has served its purpose by introducing the institutions of the State of Palestine on the soil of Palestine and has now ceased to exist.”

Abbas’s semantic ploy had left Israel without its designated negotiating partner under the Oslo Accords and had effectively ended negotiations for the creation a Palestinian State under the Bush Roadmap.

Unfashionable Truths in Palestine: Schanzer vs. the Abbas Racket

...Mr. Abbas has spent the Obama years contentedly refusing to negotiate with Israel, spearheading efforts to isolate her and, lately, encouraging young Palestinians to stab Israelis to death. The "good reality" that Palestinians enjoy has been—to a significant extent—bought and paid for by American taxpayers, who cough up several hundred millions of dollars a year to keep Mr. Abbas and his Palestinian Authority in power. For their part, the Palestinians know they have Americans by the short hairs, forced to either pay vast sums of taxpayers' dollars to an enterprise which incites violence and wastes and pilfers funds intended to reach the population, or withhold those dollars and watch while the Authority collapses and Hamas take over. Mr. Abbas knows Americans will continue to indulge the former, because they cannot permit the latter.

Jeff Robbins..
The Observer..
26 February '16..

In May 2009, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was in Washington, preparing to meet the new American President, Barack Obama. Nine years earlier Mr. Abbas' boss, Yasser Arafat, rejected an offer for the very Palestinian state that Palestinians claim they seek. The deal Mr. Arafat rejected would have given Palestinians an independent state on roughly 95 percent of the West Bank, all of the Gaza Strip and a capital in East Jerusalem. All Mr. Arafat had to do was renounce conflict with Israel—which he was unwilling to do.

Instead, he opted to launch a four-year bombing campaign in which young Palestinians were used to blow some 1,100 Israeli civilians to pieces—a campaign that boomeranged badly. The Israelis' response, aimed at stopping the killing wave, resulted in several thousand Palestinian deaths and shattered the Palestinian economy. The harm Palestinians did to Israel and to themselves only ended with Mr. Arafat's death in 2004, when Mr. Abbas, hailed by the western media as a moderate, took Mr. Arafat's place.

Sitting in Washington, Mr. Abbas and his advisers sensed that the new president bought into their narrative of Palestinians as victims and of Israelis as victimizers. Only months before, Mr. Abbas had himself spurned an Israeli offer for a Palestinian state that was even more far-reaching than that rejected by Mr. Arafat, extending his middle finger to the Israelis and announcing that not only would he not accept their offer but that he would not even negotiate. Instead, Mr. Abbas told The Washington Post, he preferred to sit back and wait—while an Administration that embraced the Palestinians and scorned Israel squeezed Jerusalem, derided its Prime Minister and ostentatiously distanced the United States from its ostensible ally. Mr. Abbas was in no hurry. "In the West Bank," he said, "we have a good reality... the people are living a normal life."

Mr. Abbas has spent the Obama years contentedly refusing to negotiate with Israel, spearheading efforts to isolate her and, lately, encouraging young Palestinians to stab Israelis to death. The "good reality" that Palestinians enjoy has been—to a significant extent—bought and paid for by American taxpayers, who cough up several hundred millions of dollars a year to keep Mr. Abbas and his Palestinian Authority in power. For their part, the Palestinians know they have Americans by the short hairs, forced to either pay vast sums of taxpayers' dollars to an enterprise which incites violence and wastes and pilfers funds intended to reach the population, or withhold those dollars and watch while the Authority collapses and Hamas take over. Mr. Abbas knows Americans will continue to indulge the former, because they cannot permit the latter.

This is what Mideast analyst Jonathan Schanzer describes as "a strategic patience on the part of the Palestinian elite," borne of a confidence that Europe can be counted upon to treat the Palestinians with kid gloves no matter what they do—and that the United States, as long as Obama is President, will largely do the same.

Saturday, February 27, 2016

(Excellent) - The Diplomatic View from Inside Netanyahu’s National Security Council

In this fascinating and revealing interview, Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman discusses his six-year tenure as deputy for foreign policy and international affairs at the National Security Council in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. He addresses Prime Minister Netanyahu’s far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians, Israeli preparations for an attack on Iran, US clandestine surveillance, and Israeli ties with Arab countries. Dr. Lerman joined the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in October 2015.

Begin-Sadat Center For Strategic Studies..
Besacenter.org/..
26 February '16..

This interview was conducted by Ariel Kahane (@arik3000), the diplomatic correspondent of Makor Rishon newspaper, and published on February 12, 2016. The original Hebrew can be read here.

Just a few days into his position as deputy National Security Advisor, Eran Lerman was almost fired. The year was 2009. Lerman—a reserve colonel with a doctorate in political science, and a valued and longstanding member of the intelligence community—was invited by Prof. Uzi Arad to take part in the revamped and expanded National Security Council (NSC).

Lerman answered the challenge. But shortly before leaving the American Jewish Committee for his new position, he had given a farewell interview to a media outlet in which he described his views, including a critical reference to government attitudes towards non-Orthodox Jewish denominations in America. His new boss’s boss—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—was very unhappy with such openness in senior members of the NSC staff. He made his displeasure known, and dispensed similar criticism to Uzi Arad for a different interview.

After being reprimanded, Lerman understood that the rules of the game had changed, and from that day to this has maintained media silence. He has spoken extensively with European diplomats, American colleagues, Jewish leaders, and acquaintances in Arab countries, but with very few limited exceptions, he has refrained from communicating with the Israeli public.

Now, four months after leaving his post, Lerman talks for the first time about the many dramatic events in which he has been involved. Lerman is the only senior figure who has been at Netanyahu’s side almost without pause since his return to power.

He has seen up close how the prime minister fought against the developing agreement with Iran, avoided a ground war during Operation Pillar of Defense, was drawn into such a conflict during Operation Protective Edge, stood up to pressure from Obama, decided to apologize to Erdogan, and expressed a willingness to offer the Palestinians extensive concessions. There have been three NSC heads over this period—Uzi Arad, Yaakov Amidror, and Yossi Cohen—while Lerman has remained close to the prime minister throughout. Now, freed from the bonds of silence imposed by his position, Lerman takes us inside the decision-making process, and even offers the occasional critique.

To my surprise, Lerman is willing to speak about highly sensitive subjects, such as the common interests shared by Israel and several Arab states, or the clandestine American surveillance of senior Israeli leaders. When I ask him how it is possible to hold secret discussions when everything you say might be recorded, and whether the constant fear of being listened to doesn’t eventually lead to madness, he answers:

“It’s not madness, it’s just the way things are. It’s a fish bowl; it always was. But fortunately, we’re not too bad at information security ourselves. When we want to make decisions, we know how to do it without everything being revealed. The prime minister is enveloped in layer upon layer of information, some of which I don’t always know, thankfully. He knows very well when conversations and actions are known to others and when they are truly confidential. Some decisions are made precisely so that everyone will know about them.”

We wanted to act against Iran on an issue critical to national security, and the whole world knew about it in real time. Is that not appalling?

“At the end of the day, the fact that everyone knew didn’t harm Israel’s interests. I can tell you that it was very much in the Americans’ interests that our ability to act against Iran was credible. As a consequence, two or three important countries that were initially unwilling to agree to sanctions against Iran were persuaded that without sanctions, Israel would go crazy. It wasn’t exactly a case of ‘hold me back,’ but there was a clear message of ‘If you don’t act, then we will.’”

Isolation for the Masses

Lerman, 59, lives in Re’ut, and is a father of three. In addition to Hebrew and English, he also speaks some Dutch, his wife’s mother tongue, and Arabic, a language that someone with his career path has to understand. He served in the IDF for 25 years, mainly in the Intelligence Corps. He left in 2001, and a short time later was appointed head of the Israeli office of the American Jewish Committee, a powerful Jewish voice in the United States and beyond. Like many others, he has no doubt that the Jewish-American arena is critical to Israel’s security.

We met twice at Shalem College, where Lerman recently began teaching. Lerman also has joined the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, as a senior research associate. Were it not for the pressures of time, we could have talked for far more than the three hours we spent together; six years of being present at the most sensitive security crossroads have given him a wealth of stories, insights, and conclusions. But before we got into details, I asked him to give me an overview, a kind of satellite photo of Israel and its place in the world as can only be seen from a great height.

“On both sides of the political spectrum, as well as in the media, there is a tendency to emphasize the threat and the sense of isolation,” Lerman says. “They give the impression that Israel stands alone in the world, that we have enemies on all sides, that BDS will shortly crush us, the Americans will abandon us, the Europeans will break us, and so on. What I’ve seen in recent years is that, while those elements do exist, they’re not dominant. The foundations of Israel’s relations with the United States are very strong, and just two weeks ago we saw the formation of a new pact with Greece and Cyprus—two European countries that two decades ago would not have considered approaching Israel.

“By the way, this is an example of a strange phenomenon: good news makes absolutely no waves in the Israeli public sphere. The paradox is that it’s very convenient for the Left to denounce the prime minister for supposedly leading Israel into a dead end in the international arena; while for certain groups on the Right, it’s convenient to say, ‘The whole world is against us anyway, so let’s just ignore what it has to say.’ Both these positions are misguided.”

Over the years you were there, the years of Netanyahu’s rule, has our international situation improved or deteriorated?

French (and other) follies - by Michael Kuttner

...Do you discern now why direct talks are doomed? Obviously the French and others enthusiastically peddling this tainted package of goods do not get it or more likely do not want to accept the stark truth even when it hits them in the face.

Michael Kuttner..
J-Wire.com..
6 February '16..

From the country which falsely accused Alfred Dreyfus of treason and whose Vichy collaborationists enthusiastically rounded up and transported Jews to their deaths, we now await another Gallic gesture of ill will heading in our direction.

Despite domestic problems greater than the Eiffel Tower and a resurgence of Judeophobia unparalleled since the Shoah, the French Foreign Minister and his Government have decided that the only problem menacing world peace is the lack of yet another dysfunctional terror State in Israel’s midst. Their recipe for curing this alleged problem is to convene an international conference whose sole purpose would presumably be to impose some sort of pre-ordained plan. Ostensibly the idea is to get the Palestinian Arabs and Israelis talking again with a view to removing every obstacle which until now has prevented any sort of peace arrangement coming to fruition.

There is only one major fatal flaw. Well, actually there are several.

Abbas and friends have been avoiding talks because they know that one on one negotiation will require concessions. That’s the first fatal flaw because for nearly seventy years they have refused to contemplate any such gesture. In fact during this time they have fed their constituents a daily diet of lies which amongst other things includes a denial of any Jewish legal or historical right to exist in our land. This combined with promises that the original 600,000 refugees, who have since multiplied thanks to UNRWA’s policies to many millions, will all be able to return to places which either no longer exist or are Israeli towns and cities. Made permanent refugees by the rejectionist policies of their own leaders these unfortunates languish in miserable camps. As there is no prospect whatsoever that these refugees will ever be resettled in their host countries (unlike Jewish refugees from Arab countries who were absorbed in Israel) there is no chance that any talks would resolve this issue.

Another insurmountable obstacle is the poisoning of children’s and adults’ minds via a daily dose of hate, incitement and jihadist education. Only someone totally detached from the realties of what goes on in this part of the Arab world would harbour any sort of optimism that talks based on unattainable objectives could succeed.

For all the above reasons every time direct talks have been attempted they have failed. Seventy years of lies and incitement mean that Abbas cannot make any gestures which contradict the fables and falsehoods which have become part and parcel of Palestinian Arab society.

Friday, February 26, 2016

Media, trust and the reporting of Palestinian terrorists as if they were innocent victims

...It has been difficult enough in Israel to endure this seemingly unending spate of attacks by knife-wielding Palestinian terrorists. We could really do quite well without newspaper editors twisting the knife as well.

Eylon Aslan-Levy..
Telegraph.co.uk..
23 February '16..

Nearly five months have passed since the “Lone Wolves Intifada” began in Israel, characterised by near-daily stabbings, stonings and car-rammings. Palestinian terrorists have succeeded in killing nearly thirty Israelis and injuring countless others. As Israelis have confronted this violent upsurge, however, parts of the international media have been rubbing salt into the knife wounds. On too many occasions, headlines have appeared to totally ignore the acts of terrorism themselves, leading instead with the deaths of the terrorists neutralised in the course of committing these crimes – while presenting them, acontextually, as innocents rather than attempted murderers.

The false impression given to the reader is that Israel’s security forces are arbitrarily and summarily executing Palestinians – instead of taking necessary action in self-defence to stop terrorist atrocities in real time. This is pernicious and defamatory. It is also poor journalism. In the name of professionalism and basic decency, it must stop.

On the night of 3 October 2015, in Jerusalem’s Old City, a Palestinian terrorist stabbed four Israelis (including a two-year old infant), killing two. He then opened fire at police officers, and was shot dead in response. The BBC then ran the galling headline “Palestinian shot dead after Jerusalem attack kills two”, neglecting to indicate that the same Palestinian, and not the disembodied "Jerusalem attack”, had in fact killed two. After subsequent complaints, the headline was finally changed to the more accurate “Jerusalem: Palestinian kills two Israelis in Old City”.

The incident sparked a persistent trend both in knives as a weapon of choice and in extremely poorly judged newspaper headlines – though neither is new.

Sometimes, the neutralisation of the attackers – presented as civilians – is presented as the story, rather than the attack itself. When Palestinian terrorists stabbed two Israeli women in a mini-market, and were shot before they could stab more, The Guardian ran: “Two Palestinians shot dead after knife attack in West Bank shop”. Aggressor and victim are often inverted: when four Palestinians attempted to stab Israelis in separate incidents, and were stopped with lethal force, USA Today ran “Israelis kill 4 Palestinians as violence surges”. And sometimes, headlines draw false moral equivalence between terrorist and victim: the Irish Times ran the scandalous “3 Palestinians, 1 Israeli Die in West Bank Incidents”, when the “three Palestinians” had stabbed Israelis, and were killed committing terrorist attacks, and the “one Israeli” woman had had been killed in a terrorist attack.

Embarrassingly, on some occasions, even the Arab media produced more accurate headlines than their Western counterparts. Whereas Al Arabiya reported accurately that “Palestinian girl, 13, shot dead after trying to stab Israeli guard”, the New York Times ran the laconically deceitful “Palestinian Girl, 13, Shot Dead by Israeli Guard”. Readers could reasonably assume that the guard had executed an innocent girl in cold blood, instead of defending his own life when an assailant ran at him with a lethal weapon after ignoring calls to stop. Just a week ago, two Palestinians opened fire on Israeli soldiers and were killed in return fire; another lunged at a border police officer with a knife, and was killed trying. The Guardian abased itself with the headline “Three Palestinian Teenagers Shot Dead on West Bank”. Even Al Jazeera had the basic decency to add, perfunctorily, the words “after alleged attacks”.

Trump, the EU crack-up and Israel - by Caroline Glick

...In the final analysis, Trump’s rise in America and the rise of the populists in Europe is yet another indication of the West’s growing identity crisis fueled by its economic, social, military and cultural weakness. Israel needs to read the writing on the wall and act appropriately lest we become a casualty of that identity crisis.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
25 February '16..

After smashing back-to-back victories in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries and the Nevada caucuses, going into next week’s Super Tuesday contests in 12 states, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump looks increasingly unbeatable.

What accounts for the billionaire populist’s success? And if Trump does become the next US president, what sort of leader will the former reality television star be? Trump is popular because he has a rare ability to channel the deep-seated frustrations that much of the American public harbors toward its political and cultural elites.

Trump’s presidential bid isn’t based on specific, defined economic or foreign policy platforms or plans. Indeed, it isn’t clear that he even has any.

Trump’s campaign is based on his capacity to resonate two deeply felt frustrations harbored by a large cross-section of American citizens.

As The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger explained recently, a very large group of Americans is frustrated – or enraged – by the intellectual and social terror exercised upon them by the commissars of political correctness.

Trump’s support levels rise each time he says something “politically incorrect.” His candidacy took off last summer when he promised to build a wall along the Mexican border. It rose again last November when, following the Islamic massacre in Paris, he said that if elected he will ban Muslim immigration to the US.

The many millions of Americans who are sick of being called racist, chauvinist, homophobic, privileged or extremist every time they breathe feel that in Trump they have found their voice.

Then there is that gnawing sense that under Obama, America has been transformed from history’s greatest winner into history’s biggest sucker.

Trump’s continuous exposition on his superhuman deal-making talents speaks to this fear.

Trump’s ability to viscerally connect to the deep-seated concerns of American voters and assuage them frees him from the normal campaign requirement of developing plans to accomplish his campaign promises.

Trump’s supporters don’t care that his economic policies contradict one another. They don’t care that his foreign policy declarations are a muddle of contradictions.

They hate the establishment and they want to believe him.

This then brings us to the question of how a president Donald Trump would govern.

Because he knows how to viscerally connect to the public, Trump will undoubtedly be a popular president. But since he has no clear philosophical or ideological underpinning, his policies will likely be inconsistent and opportunistic.

In this, a Trump presidency will be a stark contrast to Obama’s hyper-ideological tenure in office.

So, too, his presidency will be a marked contrast to a similarly ideologically driven Clinton or Sanders administration, since both will more or less continue to enact Obama’s domestic and foreign policies.

The US is far from the only country steeped in uncertainty and frustration today.

Today, the peoples of Western Europe are behaving much like the Americans in their increased rejection of the political and cultural elites. Like Trump’s growing band of supporters, Western Europeans are increasingly embracing populists.

Whether these leaders come from the Right or the Left, they all make a similar pledge to restore their nations to a previous glory.

These promises are based as well on a common rejection of the European Union. Like their voters, populist European politicians believe that the EU is a bureaucratic monstrosity that has pulverized and seeks to blot out their national characters while it seizes their national sovereignty.

Due to this growing popular opposition to the EU, establishment leaders throughout Western Europe find themselves fighting for their political survival. Whether their desire to exit the EU owes to its open borders policies in the face of massive Muslim immigration or to the euro debt crisis, with each passing month, the very concept of a unified Europe loses its appeal for more and more Europeans.

On June 23, this growing disenchantment is liable to bring about the beginning of the EU’s breakup. That day, British voters will determine whether or not the United Kingdom will remain in the EU.

Popular London Mayor and Conservative MP Boris Johnson is now leading the campaign calling for Britain to leave the EU against the will of Prime Minister David Cameron and the Conservative party establishment.

In recent days, several commentators have claimed that Johnson is Britain’s Donald Trump.

Like Trump, Johnson is able to tap into deep-seated public dissatisfaction with the political and cultural elites and serve as a voice for the disaffected.

If Johnson is able to convince a majority of British voters to support an exit from the EU, then several other EU member states are likely to follow in Britain’s wake.

The exit of states from the EU will cause a political and economic upheaval in Europe with repercussions far beyond its borders. Just as a Trump presidency will usher in an era of high turbulence and uncertainty in US economic and foreign policies, so a post-breakup EU and Western Europe will replace Brussels’ consistent policies with policies that are more varied, and unstable.

For Israel, instability is not necessarily a bad thing. For the past several years, we have consistently suffered under the stable, unswerving anti-Israel policies of both the EU and the Obama administration.

Our inability to influence these policies was brought home last week with the government’s announcement that it is renewing Israel’s diplomatic dialogue with the EU.

Secretary of State Kerry Slaps Abbas’ Wrist on Palestinian Incitement - by Stephen M. Flatow

...The PA can call terrorists “martyrs” and “role models.” The PA president’s own adviser can publicly salute “every drop of blood” that the terrorists shed. And all the Obama administration will do in response is slap Abbas’s wrist. Shameful.

Stephen M. Flatow..
The Algemeiner..
25 February '16..

JNS.org – Just when you thought Secretary of State John Kerry couldn’t get any weaker on the problem of Palestinian incitement and violence, he did.

Kerry met with Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman, Jordan, on Feb. 21, against a backdrop of daily Palestinian stabbings of Israeli women and children, and non-stop anti-Jewish incitement in the official PA press, radio, and television.

Yet the secretary of state did not threaten to withhold the Obama administration’s annual $500 million aid package to the PA over the incitement. He didn’t even threaten to reduce the aid.

Incredibly, Kerry didn’t even demand that the PA stop the incitement or the violence. Here’s how State Department spokesman John Kirby described what Kerry said to Abbas: “The secretary continued to urge for calm and a decrease in violence, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric.”

“A decrease.” Not an end to violence — just a decrease.

Note that the PA has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world. Moreover, the State Department’s own annual human rights reports acknowledge that PA police and security officers routinely imprison and torture the PA’s political enemies. In other words, the PA has proven itself to be fully capable of squashing troublemakers, if it so chooses. If it wanted to stamp out anti-Israel terrorists, it could.

And obviously the PA could stop the incitement at any time, if it wanted.

Consider a few of the examples of the vicious incitement in the PA media — or by the Fatah faction, which Abbas chairs — in the days preceding the Kerry-Abbas meeting:

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Question. Will the BBC report Iranian ‘terror grants’ pledge? - by Hadar Sela

...Presumably those payouts will be in addition to the pledges of similar compensation from the Palestinian Authority and the PLO – which the BBC has of course not reported to date.

Hadar Sela..
BBC Watch..
25 February '16..

As has been noted here before, back in July 2015, BBC coverage of the P5+1 deal with Iran included assurances from some of the corporation’s senior correspondents that funds freed up by sanctions relief would be used by the Iranian regime to improve the country’s economy.

“President Rouhani was elected because people hoped that he would end Iran’s isolation and thus improve the economy. So the windfall that they will be getting eventually, which is made up of frozen revenues – oil revenues especially –around the world, ah…there are people who argue that look; that will go to try to deal with loads and loads of domestic economic problems and they’ll have trouble at home if they don’t do that. If people – the argument goes on – are celebrating in Iran about the agreement, it’s not because they’ll have more money to make trouble elsewhere in the region; it’s because things might get better at home.” Jeremy Bowen, PM, BBC Radio 4, July 14th, 2015

“In exchange it [Iran] will get a lot. It will get a release of the punishing sanctions. We heard from Hassan Rouhani saying as Iran always says that the sanctions did not succeed but he conceded that they did have an impact on the everyday lives of Iranians. There’s an estimate that some $100 billion will, over time, once Iran carries out its implementation of this agreement, will be released into the Iranian economy.” Lyse Doucet, Newshour, BBC World Service radio, July 14th, 2015.

Israel Radio’s Palestinian Affairs correspondent Gal Berger recently reported that the Iranian ambassador in Lebanon has announced that Iran is to pay ‘terror grants’ to the families of Palestinian terrorists killed during the ongoing wave of attacks against Israelis.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.
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The Huffington Post’s Guide To Boycotting Israel? - by Zahava Raymond

...While the British government is making things more difficult for the BDS movement, for the Huffington Post this was apparently an opportunity to make things easier for anyone wishing to boycott Israel.

Zahava Raymond..
Honest Reporting..
24 February '16..

There has been a widespread backlash against the UK’s proposed legislation against anti-Israel boycotts, and accusations that it is an attack on free speech and democracy.

While the British government is making things more difficult for the BDS movement, for the Huffington Post this was apparently an opportunity to make things easier for anyone wishing to boycott Israel.

In what appears to be a free promo for the boycotters, the Huffington Post’s article includes:

A revealing list of items prescribed for boycott on the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s website highlights the goods targeted by the campaign – and which may soon be protected by government.

Under each product the article gives details such as where they typically originate from, where in the UK they are stocked, how they are labeled, and in the case of Medjoul dates, the fact that “The BDS movement renews its advice before Ramadan each year — as the dates are traditionally used to break day-long fasts.”


As for Jaffa oranges, readers are helpfully informed that “the BDS movement advises consumers to check the label to make an informed decision.”

Although the article says that “Boycotts target goods and services produced by Israeli firms on contested territory in the West Bank,” its list also includes Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, which is targeted by BDS because of its “long-standing contractual relationship with an Israeli franchise that manufactures ice cream in Israel proper and sells it in Israel settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

HonestReporting has previously called out the Irish Times for a similarly underhanded attempt at providing a guide on how to boycott Israeli products. Articles like these serve to promote the BDS agenda and gives what BDS thrives upon – media coverage and publicity.

Who Would've Thought? Iran Pledges Cash for Killing Jews - by Jonathan Tobin

...Iran’s desire to make mischief and to maintain pressure on Israel isn’t new. But the nuclear deal that President Obama imagined would be the start of a new and more peaceful era is giving Tehran the economic muscle to make the region even more dangerous. Instead of helping Iran to, as President Obama hoped, “get right with the world,” those who argued that the deal was good for Israel must now account for the fact that the West’s cash will now subsidize the slaughter of Jews.


Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
24 February '16..

In recent weeks, publications like the New York Times have been reporting about post-nuclear deal Iran and speculating about which sector of its society will benefit the most from the cash windfall that will result from the end of international sanctions on Tehran. The short answer to that question is that very little of the billions that will flow into Iran will find its way to ordinary citizens. Instead, most of it will wind up in the coffers of the government, its Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the companies that terror group and the regime control.

But it won’t be just the IRGC and the entities directly under the ayatollahs’ control that benefits from Western largesse. Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon has announced that Iran will now be offering new cash bonuses to Palestinian terrorists.

As the Times of Israel reports:

Mohammad Fateh Ali said Tehran will give $7,000 to families of “martyrs of the intifada in occupied Jerusalem” and a further “$30,000 to every family whose home the occupation has demolished for the participation of one of its sons,” according to local news reports.

It should be noted that the Palestinian Authority already pays pensions to the families of Palestinians that have been jailed by Israel for terrorism. Indeed, PA TV has a regular program profiling such people and treating them as heroes and martyrs. This is an integral part of a political culture that considers Jews to have no rights to any part of the country, including pre-1967 Israel. More importantly, Palestinian public opinion, egged on by the official media of both Fatah and Hamas, treat attacks on individual Jews, including women, children and the elderly as acts of heroism, not crimes.

But the offer of cash bonuses from Iran to those Arabs who seek out random Jews for slaughter in what is known as the “stabbing intifada,” lends added legitimacy to a society that has legitimized terror.

It should be noted that during the past few months, 32 people have been killed in the terror surge that began when the PA and its leader Mahmoud Abbas spread the lie that Israel was planning to harm the mosques on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Though apologists for the Palestinians have tried to place the blame for the violence on Israeli policies, the bloodshed is rooted in hatred for Jews. As the Palestinians have made clear they view Jews sitting in Tel Aviv cafes as being as much of a legitimate target as those living in remote West Bank hilltop settlements. Moreover, the Palestinians refusal to negotiate, let alone accept repeated Israeli peace offers, gives the lie to the idea that more concessions from the Netanyahu government or territorial withdrawals would magically end the conflict.

But Iran’s willingness to inject its financial power into the already toxic Palestinian political culture ought to particularly worry an Obama administration that has sought to create a new détente with Tehran.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Your mission is to make sure the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians does not get resolved

Imagine that your mission is to make such an agreement elusive for as long as possible. You know what you have to do. And perhaps now you also know who else is doing it.

Clifford May..
Pundicity/Washington Times..
24 February '16..

Imagine that your mission is to make sure the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians does not get resolved — not even now, a time when self-proclaimed jihadis are wreaking havoc throughout much of the Middle East and, as a consequence, Israel's relations with Egypt, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia are improving. What policies might help you accomplish your mission?

Start with an idea the French have been floating: Convene a "peace conference," announcing in advance that if progress isn't made, the Israeli side will be held responsible and the Palestinian side will be rewarded. No crystal ball needed to predict how that will turn out.

Second, demand that Israelis "end the occupation" and don't say what you think they're occupying — whether it's specific territories or every square inch of Israeli soil. Also, ignore the fact that Israelis, more than a decade ago, withdrew from Gaza, relinquishing claims to a territory they had taken from Egypt in a defensive war, a territory which earlier had been ruled by Britain and for centuries before that was a backwater of the Ottoman Empire.

Gaza is currently ruled by Hamas, a Palestinian organization openly committed to exterminating Israel through jihad. Toward that end, Hamas has fired thousands of missiles into Israel and, in recent years, has been digging terrorist tunnels. No problem: Justify that as "resistance."

When Israelis respond to such attacks, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields. Blame Israel for that, too. You'll be surprised how many people nod their heads. And you'll be encouraging Hamas to continue this lethal, immoral and illegal practice. Don't feel bad about that. Abetting the anti-peace process is not supposed to be a picnic.

It will be helpful, too, if you insist that Fatah, which rules the West Bank, is trying hard to achieve a modus vivendi with Israel even as its leaders incite terrorism (for example, by charging that Israelis threaten the al Aqsa Mosque, which Israelis actually protect and long ago placed under Muslim authority) and heap honors upon Palestinian teenagers who stab Israelis in the streets. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has for years refused to negotiate with Israelis. Ignore that. Almost everyone else does.

If you do get specific and demand that Israel end its occupation of the West Bank (territory ruled by Jordan until Jordan attacked Israel in 1967) you should pretend not to know that an Israeli withdrawal in the absence of security guarantees will lead to terrorists using the hills overlooking the Mediterranean coast to lob missiles and mortars into Tel Aviv as well as at Israel's international airport.

To defend themselves, Israelis will have to return fire or send troops back into the West Bank. That will to result in high body counts on both sides. If asked about this, say, "You're just speculating" or "Well, risks have to be taken."

One more suggestion: Support BDS, which stands for boycott, divest and sanction, a campaign to demonize Israel and persuade governments and corporations to wage economic warfare against the world's only Jewish state.

BDS advocates relentlessly throw mud at Israel in the not-unreasonable conviction that some will stick. For example, they delight in calling Israel an "apartheid" state when, in truth, Muslim citizens of Israel are guaranteed rights unavailable to Muslims — much less minorities — in any of the world's Muslim-majority countries. "Apartheid" means separate. Perversely, BDS advocates are trying to separate Israelis and Palestinians, not least by shutting down enterprises where they work together.

Not only an inherent bias, but often compounded by appalling ignorance of facts

...It is undignified for a man in Baker's position to be showing such arrogance in the face of legitimate criticism of the foreign journalists he is supposed to be representing here in Israel, especially when it comes from such a seasoned and respected journalist as Abu Toameh. Baker's embarrassing attempt to fend off criticism with a nasty tweet spoke volumes about the hypocritical stature of the foreign press here, which gladly doles out criticism of Israeli society whenever it can, but proves entirely unable to reflect on its own role in the region, let alone employ the self-criticism and honest introspection that it demands from everybody else.

Judith Bergman..
Israel Hayom..
24 February '16..

A little over a month ago, the Gatestone Institute website ran an insightful article by Khaled Abu Toameh titled "Palestinians: Western Media and Ignorance." In it, Abu Toameh described the disastrous job that foreign journalists are doing at reporting truthfully or objectively about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He mentioned the known fact that "foreign journalists based in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv have for years refused to report on the financial corruption and human rights violations that are rife under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas regimes. Palestinian 'suffering' and the 'evil' of the Israeli 'occupation' are the only admissible topics."

But he also gave examples of the terrifying incompetence of some of the journalists here. He described how in December 2015, more than 10 years after Israel unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza Strip and evacuated every last Jew, two Western journalists asked to be accompanied to the Gaza Strip to interview "Jewish settlers living there." A few years ago, another journalist wished to visit former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, several years after his death. And one journalist sought to visit the "destroyed" city of Jenin, where "thousands of Palestinians had been massacred by Israel in 2002." She was referring to the Israel Defense Forces operation in the Jenin refugee camp where nearly 60 Palestinians, many of them gunmen, and 23 soldiers were killed in a battle.

The examples from Abu Toameh's article, which deserves to be read in its entirety, highlight a factor that is not discussed too often when the media bias toward Israel is debated: the ignorance and sheer incompetence of individual journalists.

The distorted media reporting is not only the result of an inherent bias, but is very often compounded by an appalling ignorance of facts.

This ignorance stems from the same source as the bias, namely that most journalists are schooled in a "Palestinian narrative" and not in anything rooted in historical or current facts. Abu Toameh mentions how some of these journalists assured him that before 1948 there was a Palestinian state here with east Jerusalem as its capital. When he told them that prior to 1967 the West Bank was under the control of Jordan while the Gaza Strip was ruled by Egypt, this was news to them.

Cause and Effect: Incitement, its Harvest and the Numbers - by Arnold Roth

...more data-points that keep going unreported. One is the number of posters eulogizing the terrorists who are killed in the course of doing these attacks - the so-called martyrs of the Palestinian Arabs. The anecdotal evidence from scanning Facebook, Twitter and other Arabic-speaking parts of the social media is that the rising tide of Palestinian Arab barbarism is happening against a sound track of constant incitement from the highest levels of the Mahmoud Abbas regime in Ramallah. The return on that "investment" is plain for anyone who wants to see. Not enough people do.

Cause and effect [From a Palestinian Authority
government-controlled television broadcast
]
Arnold/Frimet Roth..
This Ongoing War..
24 February '16..

Data from the Israel Security Agency (aka Shin Bet) published yesterday shows that this beleaguered country of 8 million saw an almost three-fold increase in people injured in acts of terror during the year just ended, compared with a year earlier.

Statistics, as families of the victims of terror know much too well, are a cruel and dehumanizing way to think about the losses that a society suffers when terrorists do their savagery. They inevitably mask the complexity, drama and fine detail that have impacted the lives being reported - not only of the victims but of those who shared lives with them.

But numbers play an important role and the trends they reveal demand to be understood.

Start with the number of Israeli deaths by terror: 20 in 2014, 28 in 2015. Year-on-year comparisons hide a lot of detail, but an increase of 40% is significant on any view. So is the breakdown of where the victims were found: by far, most were civilians: 25, comprising 22 Israelis, 2 foreign nationals, one Palestinian Arab). Members of the security forces killed in terror attacks: 3. Understand now why the apologists for the Palestinian Arab side call it resistance?

Hamodia notes how those victims were killed: 16 in shootings (of which 5 involved both shooting and stabbing); 8 by stabbing; 3 by vehicle attacks (car-rammings); one by rock hurling.

Injuries from acts of terror grew astonishingly: 53 in 2014, 239 in 2015. Putting some context around that, previous Shin Bet annual terror surveys showed the number of terror attacks rising steadily, then flattening this past year:
2012: 578
2013: 1,271
2014: 1,793
2015: 1,719

The "yield" of deaths and injuries per attack, the obvious purpose of all this savagery, keeps growing.

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Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.
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Coming soon to a campus near you. The annual anti-Israel apartheid fantasy week

As Israeli Apartheid Week organizers prepare a series of public events demonizing Israel, we examine whether anything they say is actually true. Either way, they'll probably be on your (or your children's) college campus within the month.

Daniel Pomerantz..
Honest Reporting..
23 February '16..




Honest Reporting

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfeJHt91cWw

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.
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Tuesday, February 23, 2016

U.S. State Dept. prattles on while Arab terrorists exploit democracy; Israel pays the price

...There are enough extremist voters in Lebanon and Gaza that terrorists have been able to rise through the very democratic system that they subsequently destroyed in Gaza and which they dream of destroying in Lebanon. State Department officials prattle about the need for democratic elections in the Arab world when they don’t have to deal with the real-world consequences of such elections. Once again, it is Israel that is stuck facing the dangers caused by overseas meddlers.

Stephen M. Flatow..
Times of Israel..
23 February '16..

One of the most interesting items in the latest batch of Hillary Clinton’s emails is a message from a left-wing Israeli leader complaining about the Obama administration being too soft on Hezbollah and Hamas.

The email in question was sent to then-Secretary Clinton in 2011 by Tzipi Livni, who at the time was the head of the Israeli opposition. Livni wrote to Clinton of her “frustration” that “in the case of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the international community had limited its definition of democracy to the technical conduct of voting and failed to insist that those who sought the benefits of the democratic process accept its underlying principles as well.”

“The result, as you know,” she wrote to Secretary Clinton, “was to give a measure of democratic legitimacy and power to forces that were plainly not committed to democratic principles and that continue to pose a danger to their own societies and to their neighbors.”

Livni was drawing attention to a serious problem: the ability of Arab terrorists to exploit democratic elections–and the policy of the Obama administration to turn a blind eye, leaving Israel to deal with the consequences.

In Livni’s view, “those who sought the benefits of the democratic process” — meaning, those parties that wanted to compete in democratic elections in Arab countries– should be allowed to do so only if they “accept its underlying principles as well” — meaning that they would need to sincerely embrace the basic principles of democracy, or they could not participate in the elections.

Livni was responding to the dangerous developments that occurred on Israel’s northern and southern borders in recent years.

In the north, the Hezbollah terrorists were permitted to take part in Lebanon’s elections without having to change anything about their behavior or platform. They ran in the 2004 municipal elections and captured 21 percent of the nation’s municipalities. Then in the 2005 general parliamentary election, Hezbollah won 14 seats nationwide, and a Hezbollah-Amal joint faction won all 23 of the seats in southern Lebanon. As a result, Hezbollah became a partner in the governing coalition and was awarded two cabinet seats.

Hezbollah’s role in the national government has helped prevent the regime from taking any action against the 100,000-plus rockets that Hezbollah has stationed near the Lebanon-Israel border. By exploiting democracy to gain a share of power, Hezbollah strengthened its ability to continue its terrorist buildup without interference.

The lie of pro-Palestinian activism - by Caroline Glick

...Until 1994, Eid’s human rights activism made him the darling of the far Left. He was a co-director of B’tselem. He was invited to prestigious anti-Israel forums worldwide and given platforms where he presented his accusations against Israel to international acclaim. But since the PA was formed, those who once upheld him as a hero have turned their backs on him. In so doing, they have shown their true colors. During his talk at the University of Chicago, those colors came shining through. Eid talked about the human rights abuses and repression of Palestinians not at the hands of Israel, but at the hands of the PA and Hamas. In other words, Eid held the Palestinian leadership accountable for its failure to respect the rights of the Palestinians it claims to speak for. This, it turns out, is a big no-no.

Caroline Glick..
Our World/JPost..
23 February '16..

Last Thursday, yet again, we learned that pro-Palestinian activists couldn’t care less about Palestinians.

For them, the Palestinians whose rights they claim to champion are nothing more than means to another end.

Our latest lesson came from the University of Chicago.

Last week, Palestinian human rights activist Bassam Eid was abused and threatened by supposedly pro-Palestinian and pro-peace activists as he tried to inform his audience about the state of Palestinian human rights today.

Bassam Eid has dedicated his life to defending the human rights of the Palestinians. From 1967 through 1994, Israel administered the population centers of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. From 1994, with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority until today, the Palestinians have been ruled by the PLO and Hamas.

As a human rights activist, until 1994, Eid directed most of his criticisms against Israel. Since then, Eid has defended Palestinian human rights from abuse at the hands of the PLO and Hamas.

Until 1994, Eid’s human rights activism made him the darling of the far Left. He was a co-director of B’tselem. He was invited to prestigious anti-Israel forums worldwide and given platforms where he presented his accusations against Israel to international acclaim.

But since the PA was formed, those who once upheld him as a hero have turned their backs on him. In so doing, they have shown their true colors.

During his talk at the University of Chicago, those colors came shining through.

Eid talked about the human rights abuses and repression of Palestinians not at the hands of Israel, but at the hands of the PA and Hamas. In other words, Eid held the Palestinian leadership accountable for its failure to respect the rights of the Palestinians it claims to speak for.

This, it turns out, is a big no-no.

Palestinians, Kerry and the Game of Obfuscation - by Khaled Abu Toameh

...Kerry and his friends either do not "get it" or do not want to "get it." Palestinians are waging an out-and-out war against Israel with the goal of making Israelis suffer to a point at which they will beg their leaders to capitulate. In the Palestinian view, such behavior pays off royally.

Palestinian Authority leaders, official television,
schools and media outlets often display maps
 showing Palestine stretching from the River Jordan
to the Mediterranean Sea. The maps do not show
the existence of Israel.
Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
22 February '16..

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is back in town. This time he is meeting with Jordanian and Palestinian leaders about "ongoing security issues in the region and continued tensions between Israel and the Palestinians."

For those not involved in political newspeak, here is a translation:

"Ongoing security issues" = the Islamic State terror group (ISIS).

"Tensions between Israel and the Palestinians" = the ongoing wave of Palestinian stabbing, car-ramming and shooting attacks that began in October 2015.

Jordan and the Palestinian Authority (PA) fighting ISIS? Now that's an idea! Jordanian King Abdullah and PA President Mahmoud Abbas ending "tensions" between Israel and the Palestinians? Let's think about that.

Kerry comes back, but never calls a spade a spade. The "tensions" to which he deceptively alludes are knifings and car-rammings. And what is the biggest spade that Kerry avoids calling by its name? The new generation of Palestinians brainwashed to believe that Israel can be defeated with knives and car-attacks.

This "intifada" is simply a further phase in a larger plan to humiliate and destroy Israel. This plan began officially, with the establishment of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in May 1964. At that time there were no "settlements" -- not until after the June 1967 War -- so what exactly were the Palestinians planning to "liberate"?

The plan continued in 1974, at the twelfth session of the Palestinian National Council in Cairo, with the 10-point "Phased Plan" (see Appendix below for full text of the Phased Plan). Article 2 called for "armed struggle" (terrorism) to establish "an independent combatant national authority" that is "liberated" from Israeli rule.

Contrary to Palestinian leaders' pap, the current conflict is not about "defending" any mosque from being contaminated by the "filthy feet" of Jews: it is about seeing Israel forced to its knees. Abbas and others seek to reap delicious political fruits from this "intifada."

That is why, in his meeting with Kerry, Abbas made it clear that he intends to pursue unilateral moves to impose a solution on Israel, with the help of the international community.

Abbas also told Kerry that he intends to continue with his efforts to seek a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel over "settlement construction."

Never mind that on Palestinian maps, all of Israel is regarded as one big "settlement."

But back to Kerry. His "tensions" imply two sides engaged in some kind of a dispute that has aggravated a situation and strained relations between them, instead of what it really is: Palestinians openly trying to supplant Israelis -- the entire state.

So the game of obfuscation continues. No doubt, we will witness more pressure on Israel to make concessions that will supposedly ease the "tensions."

Kerry and his friends either do not "get it" or do not want to "get it." Palestinians are waging an out-and-out war against Israel with the goal of making Israelis suffer to a point at which they will beg their leaders to capitulate. In the Palestinian view, such behavior pays off royally.