Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, November 30, 2015

Egyptian siege of Gaza continues

The Gaza ministry of the interior released statistics on how many people have crossed between Gaza and Egypt this year, and compared it to previous years.

So far this year the Rafah crossing has only been open for 19 days.

This chart based on the data shows how restrictive Egypt has been year over year.

In contrast, Israel has allowed about 140,000 crossings this year at Erez, based on Gisha's chart of the first ten months of the year.

If you look at goods that were imported from Egypt versus Israel, it would look even worse for Egypt.

Yet we are still not seeing any articles about Egypt's "siege" of Gaza.

Egypt says that these closures are necessary for security reasons. But Israel has far more fear of violence from Gaza and yet it allows far more access to and from an enemy territory.

This is how Arabs treat their Palestinian brethren. But that doesn't make the news.

This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 11 years and over 22,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Egyptians who support Israel's right to exist can lose their citizenship

Egypt's Ahram Online reports:

Egypt's Prime Minister Sherif Ismail issued a decree on Sunday revoking the nationality of three Egyptian citizens for joining the military service of foreign country without a permit from the Minister of Defense.

According to the decree, Mohamed Fayez Hussein Hassan Fogo, Ragab Ismail Ragab Bazazou and Walid Salman Hamdan Abdel Rahman El-Talbany were stripped of their Egyptian nationality for joining a foreign army and for working in a foreign security apparatus without a permit from Egypt's defence ministry that is necessary according to constitution.

The prime minister also issued a decree to cancel the Egyptian nationality of Emad Sami Hassenein for becoming an Israeli citizen without a permit from the interior ministry that is likewise required according to the Egyptian constitution.

I cannot find anything yet on the case of Hassanein, and how he could have become an Israeli citizen. Chances are high that he married an Israeli.

But an article in AllAfrica elaborates on the law on stripping Egyptians of citizenship. According to article 16 of law no. 26/1975, the valid reasons for such a move are:

People who acquire a foreign nationality without obtaining permission from the Interior Ministry

Joining the military service of a foreign country

Living abroad while convicted with crimes related to harming state security

Accepting a position in a foreign government or a foreign international body despite the issuance of a justified order by the Egyptian Cabinet to withdraw from that position

Joining a "foreign body whose purposes include working for the undermining of the social or economic order of the State, by the use of force or any other illegal means"

Working "for a foreign state or government which is in a state of war with Egypt, or with whom diplomatic relations have been severed,....[which] would constitute harm to Egypt's military, diplomatic or economic situation, or would adversely affect any other national interest."

People who at any time has been "qualified as Zionist."

In other words, when Egyptians accuse citizens of being Zionist, they aren't just insulting them - they are putting their citizenship at risk.

This could help explain why Egypt's dwindling Jewish community has been careful never to say anything remotely pro-Israel - it could get them deported.

But this law also helps explain why Egypt has one of the highest rates of antisemitism in the world.

Wikipedia's entry on Egyptian nationality laws pointedly ignores the Zionism part.

Libya's nationality law had an almost identical provision until 2010, when it was changed. But over 35 years after Camp David, Egypt has not modified this law that is clearly against human rights principles of freedom of expression and belief.

I haven't seen any "human rights' group say anything negative about this, though.

Horrible IDF attack on kindergarten inexplicably not photographed (correction - video/photos)

Today, the Palestinian Authority's official WAFA news agency reported:

Israeli forces Sunday raided and wreaked havoc into a Kindergarten in the town of Beit of Ummar to the south of Hebron, according to a local official.

Spokesperson of the anti settlement popular committee in Beit Ummar, Mohammed Awad, informed WAFA that armed Israeli soldiers raided a kindergarten at dawn, after breaking down its main front door and windows.

He said that forces further destroyed the furniture, computers, and children’s belongings, as well as ripped up the tiles of one of the classrooms, before withdrawing from the area.

This was reported elsewhere, always quoting Mr. Awad, whose committee of which he is almost certainly the only member is named "Popular Committee Against Settlements and the Apartheid Wall in Beit Ummar." The supposedly raided kindergarten is called "Hope for the Future of Children."

One would think in an age where everyone is carrying a camera in their pocket that photos and videos of this damage would be widely published. But for some reason, I cannot find any photos of smashed computers, broken windows and ripped up floor tiles. No photos of children's toys strewn about either.

A different kindergarten in Beit Ummar

Remarkably, this is not the first time that Mr. Awad claimed that Israeli forces raided a kindergarten in Beit Ummar. In 2010 he gave an eerily similar report about IDF forces ransacking the "Birds of Paradise" kindergarten that was published by Ma'an - again without photographs and without anyone sending a photographer to document the crime.

It almost seems as if they are just making stuff up. But we can't accuse the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian media of doing that, can we?

UPDATE: Bob Knot found the Facebook page for the kindergarten. It mentions that it was closed yesterday because of the IDF but does not mention any damage or what they did there.

He also found a video showing damage to the kindergarten and Awad's (actually Ayyad's) Facebook page had photos.

There was a major IDF operation in the area yesterday and apparently the kindergarten was used at one point.

.@UNRWA worker didn't get the "neutrality" memo

Hossam Ghali is a staff nurse at UNRWA in Gaza.

On Facebook, here was one of his profile pictures:

It looks like UNRWA didn't manage to get the message to everyone that their jobs are supposedly in jeopardy if they post messages that violate UNRWA's stated neutrality rules.

Egypt's Al Azhar U to hold "Al Quds" conference. Not likely to be sympathetic to Israel.

From Egypt's Al Ahram:

Egypt's Al-Azhar, the world's highest Sunni authority, says it will convene in February an international conference on violations committed by Israeli occupation forces against Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is considered the third holiest site in Islam.

Al-Azhar's High Clerical Council said in a statement Friday that the conference will address "violations committed by the Zionist entity against the holy mosque, questions around whether Muslims could visit the mosque, and how such a move could affect the interests of the Palestinian people."

A wave of Palestinian protests - met by Israeli repression - in recent months has been triggered by an increase in Jewish settlers attacks and storming of Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Israeli troops have killed more than 100 Palestinians during clashes since October. At least 17 Israelis were killed in separate attacks by Palestinians.

Settlement-building, racial discrimination, confiscation of identity cards, long queues at checkpoints, and the desecration of Al-Aqsa mosque, have been the daily routine in Palestinians' lives under occupation in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

There is something somewhat interesting that will apparently be addressed by this conference, though.

There has been bitter debate in the Arab world as to whether it is permitted for Muslims in countries surrounding Israel to visit the Al Aqsa Mosque, which means getting approval from Israel.

Palestinians want their brethren to visit, but many say that such a move would be "normalization" with the "Zionist enemy."

So that aspect of the conference might actually be interesting.

Isaac and Ishmael: How Muslims Think about Israel, in a Nutshell (2011 NRB post)

In the first quarter of 2011, I wrote fairly regularly for a site called NewsRealBlog. The site became inactive after a few months but the articles remained online.

Today, I realized that the site was gone - and so were my articles.

So I will republish some of them here. (Pasting them into a word processor, they take up over 80 pages - and those are only the articles I was able to recover!)

Most of the articles hold up pretty well over the past 4.5 years.

This one was originally published March 25, 2011.

OnIslam, which is a breakaway website from Islam Online, has a fatwa section where someone recently asked this:

Can you answer the question why the Palestinians and the Israelis have been fighting for so long? What is it all about? Why do they seem to hate each other so much? Is it related to the Catholic/Protestant faith, Judaism and Islam?

The answer given is very illuminating.

It illustrates why real peace is impossible: because the other side doesn’t even know the basic facts about Judaism, Zionism and Israel. It is simply not possible to reach an agreement when one side’s entire conception of the others is, simply, filled with lies.

Here is the first part of the answer:

In the Bible, in the Book of Genesis there is a verse which reads:

“And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.” (Gen. 17:8)

You can read this verse in the Jewish Book called Torah also. Here Jehovah is addressing Abraham, the Patriarch. Because Jehovah (God) was pleased with Abraham, He wishes to give the children (“seed”) of Abraham the Land of Canaan as an everlasting possession.

It is the present Palestine that is meant by the Land of Canaan. The Jews interpret the expression “thy seed” to mean the people who later came to be known as the Children of Israel.

Israel was the second son of Isaac; and Isaac was the second son of Abraham. Jews argue that they are the people to whom God or Jehovah gave Palestine as an everlasting possession, that is because they claim to be the Children of Abraham through Isaac.

But here they ignore Ishmael, the first son of Abraham, and his children. (The Arabs are the Children of Ishmael). They deny the right of Ishmael saying that he was the son of a slave woman Hajar, whereas Isaac was the son of a free woman, Sarah.

In fact, in the Torah itself it is clearly stated that the firstborn should get double portion of his father’s share, even when his mother has a lower status. Read the verse in the Book of Deuteronomy of the Old Testament of the Bible and the Torah:

“If a man has two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated: then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn: but he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.” (Deut. 21: 15 to 17)

You find here two rules:

1. Of the wealth of the father, the eldest son should get double portion;

2. If the eldest son happens to be the son of a hated woman (hated for some reason such as her lower status), his double share should not be refused to him, on that account.

This simple rule of the Torah is ignored by the Jews here, when they argue that Ishmael should not get his right.

What I mean here is that even if we appeal to the Torah, the Jewish religious book, the Jews have no exclusive right to the Land of Palestine. The fun of the matter is that the Christians of the world, with the exception of the Palestinian Christians, have accepted the claims of the Jews, even when their own Bible is against it.

And all the modern secular states of the so-called civilized world accept the claims made by Israel on the basis of a book at least 2,000 years old, in order to deny the birthright of a people who have no other land but Palestine.

Don’t you love when Muslims tell Jews how to interpret the Torah?

The “scholar” answering the question obviously ignores what God said a mere ten verses later:

And Abraham said unto God: ‘Oh that Ishmael might live before Thee!’ And God said: ‘Nay, but Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son; and thou shalt call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee; behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. But My covenant will I establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year.’

This is all besides the many sections where God promises the Land to Isaac, Jacob, and the Children of Israel. By cherry-picking one verse, and mis-characterizing an irrelevant biblical section later, the writer is simply lying about what the Torah says. (And even according to him, Jews should have one-third of the land from the Nile to the Euphrates–so Israel better start picking up more land!)

Then he goes on to say:

We must also understand that the present day Israelis are mostly European Jews who have migrated to Palestine. They have settled there ousting the original people, massacring them, or making them refugees in their own land.

Probably about half of Israelis are descended from ancestors who lived in Arab lands. No one counts, because it really doesn’t matter, except to racists.

You know that the Jews were a tribe of hunted people in the whole of the Christian world; because they were considered to be the murderers of Jesus. In all European cities, they were confined to the dirty areas in the suburbs, called the ghetto.

The Jews were treated like animals and they were not allowed any rights by the Christian countries. In fact the Jews were given the freedom to live as citizens only in the Arab Islamic world. It is here that you can see the most horrible instance of ingratitude, in the way the present day Jews reward the Muslims for the consideration they used to get.

The persecution of Jews in Christendom reached a terrible level during the Second World War in Germany. Hitler and his Nazi Party killed thousands of Jews in Concentration Camps.

Thousands? Well, let him explain:

This incident in the history of the world is usually called the Holocaust. (The Jews of today have made the Holocaust look far more terrible than it really was; just to get the sympathy of the world so that they will be excused for the Palestinian Holocaust. But there is nobody to call the plight of the Palestinians a Holocaust, even though the conditions are comparable).

Ah, I see. A few thousand Jews were killed by the Nazis–fewer than the number of Palestinian Arabs killed by Jews!

At the end of the Second World War, Britain promised the Jews a state in Palestine, because they wanted to rid Europe of the curse of the Jews for one thing and they wanted to keep a promise they had given to the Jews while fighting the Nazis.

Balfour just disappeared into thin air!

The whole project of Israel was the scheme of a group of (chiefly European) Jews called Zionists.

In the World War II, Germans were fighting against the Allies (i.e. Great Britain, the US, France, etc.). Since the Jews were the most persecuted people in Germany, they (i.e. the European Jews) helped the Allies in the war.

By this time Jews had started their Zionist movement. Zionists demanded a reward from the Allies for their role in the fight against Hitler; and the Allies offered the Arab land of Palestine to the Jews for their state. Towards the end of the WW II, Jews from Europe started coming openly and secretly to Palestine which was under the British rule.

There are more lies here than I can count. European Jews were a little too busy trying to avoid being slaughtered to be able to help much in the Allied war effort, but guess who did?

Zionist Jews from Palestine! You know, the ones who weren’t there before WWII ended.

In 1947, there were about 1.3 million Arabs in all of Palestine. By 1949, about 750,000 Palestinian Arabs were living in squalid refugee camps, set up virtually overnight in territories adjacent to Israel’s borders.

About 300,000 lived in the Gaza Strip… Another 450,000 became unwelcome residents of the West Bank of the Jordan. There were many Arabs living in Israel as citizens. But the new state was bent on facilitating the growth of the Jewish nation at the expense of Arab rights.

OK, let’s think about this. According to this article, there were 750,000 Palestinian Arabs who ended up in….the West Bank and Gaza, which is in – Palestine!

So why didn’t they make their state then? Why were they considered unwelcome in Jordan when Jordan is the only state that gave them citizenship?

You can read the whole thing to see how false this “history” is. But as bizarre as it is, it points to the fundamental problem: you cannot negotiate with people who are so far removed from the truth, and who are so willing to lie, brazenly and without fear.

11/29 Links: PA Minister: Palestinian women make "cries of joy" upon son's death; 2 More Stabbings

From Ian:

PMW: Palestinian women are unique, make "cries of joy" upon son's death, says PA minister

The Palestinian Authority Minister of Women's Affairs, Haifa Al-Agha, who is herself a woman, recently praised Palestinian women pointing out their "uniqueness" compared to all the other women of the world because they rejoice upon the news of the death of their sons:
"[PA] Minister of Women's Affairs Haifa Al-Agha... noted the Palestinian woman's uniqueness, which differentiates her from the women of the world, as [only] she receives the news of her son's Martyrdom with cries of joy." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 7, 2015]
This official PA promotion of Martyrdom (Shahada - Death for Allah) as an ideal and the praise of mothers who do not show sorrow but make "cries of joy" when their sons die, was voiced by the PA minister during the current wave of terror attacks. Many young Palestinians have been killed as they stabbed or attempted to stab Israelis. By praising mothers for their "cries of joy," Minister Al-Agha is sending a message to PA society to attack Israelis without fear of death because Martyrdom for Allah is said to be the highest value and highest achievable status.
The minister also added that Palestinian women are noteworthy not only because they celebrate death but because they fight as well:

The death knell for Women's Studies

The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) has just voted to support a boycott of…ISIS.
No, just joking. The boycott is against Israel - only.
The recommendation was developed in 2014 by Feminists for Justice in Palestine and draws on a “transnational, intersectional feminist framework” which emphasizes an “indivisible sense of justice.”
Please don’t ask me to explain such self-important and obscure language.
The good news: Although NWSA claims that, in 2014, 2500 of their members “stood in unison in support of freedom and justice in Palestine,” in late November of 2015, only 35% of the voting membership (or 653 members) bothered to vote.

JCPA: Amb. Alan Baker: 10 Things to Know about the UN Partition Vote of November 29, 1947

1. It was a historic resolution that expressed the then-prevailing view of most of the major states of the United Nations, which voted in favor of it.
2. It established the principle of two states for two peoples.
3. It recognized the uniqueness of Jerusalem and the Jewish people’s bond to the city.
4. Had the Arabs agreed to live with the resolution as the Israelis did, despite its drawbacks from the standpoint of both sides, we would be in a different situation today with far fewer bereaved families on both sides.
5. Because of the Arabs’ rejection of it and in light of their decision to fight its implementation, the resolution has not assumed any validity except for the historical symbolism of its basic content.
6. The significance of its nonimplementation is that all the previously existing historical and legal rights as recognized by the Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and the San Remo Resolution have remained in force.
7. From that time to the present, negotiation mechanisms prescribed by Resolution 242 (1967), the Camp David accords (1979), and the Oslo agreements (1993-1999) have not been completed and no solution has been agreed upon.
8. Therefore, all the claims about Israel’s rights (and also, of course, about the Arabs’ rights) are still valid and remain unchanged until agreement on a permanent settlement is reached.
9. Therefore, any assertion by the United Nations and the Europeans about the territory belonging to the Palestinians in fact contravenes the symbolic basis of the partition resolution.
10. The time has come for the states to recognize this and stop contravening that symbolic basis.

Europe is in chaos due to the raw fact of millions of Arabs pouring onto the continent, heading for Germany and Sweden.

The United States is also very familiar with large waves of immigrants pouring into the country at an alarming rate for a great many citizens... and a great many nativists.

With the waves of mid-late nineteenth-century immigration into the United States from Eastern and Southern Europe the notion of a "melting pot" emerged.

The United States would welcome the strange-sounding, strange-looking, allegedly criminal, foreigners washing onto our shores - even Jews - if they assimilated. Some American manufacturers hiring these immigrants went so far as to offer their employees free instruction on how to be American.

{Quite often baseball was involved.}

After World War II, and after the transition from economic liberalism in the United States to what is sometimes call "rights liberalism" - women's rights, gay rights, ethnic rights, and so forth - the "melting pot" notion gave way to the "salad bowl" notion. No longer were ethnic minorities expected to dissolve themselves into American culture as developed by the Anglo settlers of the seventeenth-century. By the middle of the 1960s, and the rise of the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left, a multicultural ideal developed and Americans began recognize the value of distinctions between cultures.

The fundamental idea, of course, was that the various ethnicities should not melt into a sort-of homogeneous, Wonder Bread, Leave It To Beaver culture, but would remain distinct while integrated into the whole.

The enormous current wave of Arabs into Europe fits neither model, which is hardly surprising since these are not Europeans and they are not migrating into America. It is, rather, what I call the "TV Dinner" model of national ethnic non-integration. If we have learned nothing else over the course of recent decades it is that large segments of the Arab immigrants into Europe have no intention whatsoever of integrating. Many will insist upon maintaining traditional, and separate, societies within the host countries.

The difference between the American immigrant experience and the European immigrant experience is that in the United States there is a blending of cultures, while distinctions are still maintained. Individuals may fully integrate but cultural presences in the form of cuisine, culture, and politics remain as part of a larger interconnected cultural landscape. Arabs in Europe, on the other hand, are quite often finding it difficult to reconcile the old country with the new and this is causing major problems throughout Europe and it is likely that in the coming years the growing Arab immigrant population is going to exacerbate those problems.. They are not living side-by-side, but together, with their neighbors in Europe. Many are living side-by-side, but separate, from their neighbors. They do so while maintaining an often violent malice toward European morality and culture alongside an irrational, Koranically-based hatred toward the Jewish people.

David Crouch, writing in the Guardian tells us:

Sweden needs “respite” from the tens of thousands of refugees knocking at its door, the government has said, announcing tough measures to deter asylum seekers in a sharp reversal of its open-door policy towards people fleeing war and persecution.
The country’s generous asylum regime would revert to the “EU minimum”, Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Löfven, said on Tuesday, revealing that most refugees would receive only temporary residence permits from April.
Identity checks would be imposed on all modes of transport, and the right to bring families to Sweden would be severely restricted, he said.

Sweden is awakening to the fact that it made an exceedingly dangerous foreign policy mistake vis-à-vis Arab immigrants.

The EU flung open the doors of Europe and both Germany and Sweden went entirely supine... for awhile. The European response was motivated largely by compassion. There is no doubt, however, that when the historians dig into this vital moment they will uncover who benefited financially and who benefited politically. Nonetheless, it is only the crassest of cynics who would refuse to acknowledge the humanitarianism behind the willingness to take in so many Arab immigrants. Yet, the recent influx of millions of Arab and African Muslims into Europe is going to have long lasting effects on the nature of European culture and society.

As the immigrant population increases, and flexes its political muscle, there will be a decline in the rights and well-being of women, a decline in the rights and well-being of Gay people, and a decline in the rights and well-being of Jews. Concurrently there will be an increase in crime and an increase in terrorist activity, as we just saw in Paris.

Saying so should not be controversial, but acknowledged as obvious.

Europe, North America, and Australia are open and diverse societies. We welcome immigrants. We enjoy diversity. The problem in Europe, however, is that the immigrant population is interested in neither the "melting pot" notion, nor the "salad bowl" notion, but the "TV dinner" notion. They are not only fleeing the war-torn Arab-Muslim Middle East, but they are bringing the war-torn Arab-Muslim Middle East with them and, if recent European history is any guide, a very large segment of these immigrants will refuse to integrate or even really associate themselves with the larger society.

They will maintain their separate neighborhoods and separate cultures and many of the green beans will refuse to fraternize with the salisbury steak.

And some, unfortunately, will seek to murder the mashed potatoes.

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

Hamas leader says Jews kill Pal kids to use their blood for matzah

From MEMRI:

In a November 26, 2015 interview on the Hamas Al-Aqsa TV channel, Salah Al-Bardawil, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said that the Jews had "ancient biblical beliefs, which instructed them to kill children and collect their blood, in order to knead it into the bread that is eaten on Passover." "This is the killing of a Palestinian child in order to collect his blood and to knead it into the bread they eat," he said.

Following are excerpts:

Salah Al-Bardawil: Why does the Zionist enemy, with all its might, execute Palestinian children – especially Palestinian girls? I can tell you that there are six reasons for this – not just one reason, but six. The first reason for the targeting of Palestinian children has to do with faith. The Zionist entity subscribes to false biblical doctrines – especially today, when we are experiencing so-called extremism. But this is a typical Jewish situation, which is in harmony with the biblical-Zionist history and faith. This is manifest in the Quran, which quoted the Jews as saying: "kill the sons of the belivers" [Quran 40:25]. Thus, they subscribe to a principle of faith, which they must implement, and kill the sons of the believers.

Why not kill the believers? Why kill their sons? The killing of the sons of the believers – or, to be clearer, the killing of the Palestinian children – stem from children being weaker and thus easier to kill than adults. This is a cowardly enemy, which fears retaliation, and therefore it targets the weaker, still accomplishing the goal of reducing the number of Palestinians.

[…]

In addition, they have beliefs which they have tried to conceal from the world. I am referring to the ancient biblical beliefs, which instructed [the Jews] to kill children and collect their blood, in order to knead it into the bread that is eaten on Passover. This is the killing of a Palestinian child in order to collect his blood, and knead it into the bread they eat. Today, they are trying to say that these things never happened, and that it was a joke or a lie, but these are the facts of history. Anyone reading about their history will find this there.

So Jews have been using Palestinian children's blood for matzoh since Biblical times. Can't wait for Wikipedia to update its articles.

This looks like a parody, but it's not. It is a recommendation that was overwhelmingly approved by those voting at the National Women's Studies Association meeting:

Recommendation 1
The first recommendation, developed by Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine (FJP), an ad-hoc group founded in Puerto Rico at NWSA 2014, urges the Association to join the international Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and draws on transnational, intersectional feminist frameworks to emphasize an “indivisible sense of justice.” Voting on this question follows on a solidarity statement released by NWSA early in 2015, issued in response to strong member engagement with BDS at the 2014 NWSA Conference in Puerto Rico.

How does the recommendation or resolution relate to the NWSA mission, which reads, NWSA leads the field of women's studies in educational and social transformation.

As feminist activists, scholars, teachers, and public intellectuals who recognize the interconnectedness of systemic forms of oppression, we cannot overlook the injustice and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, perpetrated against Palestinians. This resolution is an act of transnational solidarity aimed at social transformation for a better world.

Who will do the work required to execute the proposed recommendation or resolution?

Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine (FJP), an ad-hoc group founded in Puerto-Rico at NWSA 2014 will lead the efforts to publicize and disseminate the resolution, including education, outreach, media and publicity.

Full text of recommendation or resolution.

Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine Support An Indivisible Sense of Justice!

Support BDS
A Resolution submitted to: National Women’s Studies Association 2015

As feminist scholars, activists, teachers, and public intellectuals we recognize the interconnectedness of systemic forms of oppression. In the spirit of this intersectional perspective, we cannot overlook the injustice and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, perpetrated against Palestinians and other Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, within Israel and in the Golan Heights, as well as the colonial displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba. The discriminatory treatment, exclusion, military siege and apartheid imposed by Israel on its own Palestinian citizens as well as those residing in the occupied territories constitute flagrant breaches of international law, UN resolutions, and fundamental human rights.

In the present moment, our counterparts in Palestine face daily violations of their human rights, including their academic rights to free speech, assembly, association, and movement. At the same time, Israeli institutions of higher learning have not challenged, but instead legitimized, Israel’s oppressive policies and violations. These violations, which severely impact the daily lives and working conditions of Palestinian scholars, students, and the society at large, are also enabled by U.S. tax dollars and the tacit support of western powers, thus making any taxpayer in the West complicit in perpetuating these injustices.

As members of NWSA who are committed to justice, dignity, equality and peace, we affirm our opposition to the historical and current injustices in Palestine that we view as part and parcel of the multiple oppressions we study and teach about. We also affirm the commitment of NWSA to principles of human rights, justice and freedom for all, including academic freedom. At our 2014 national conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, nearly 800 participants signed a petition calling upon the organization to declare its support for the international movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. About 2500 members of the audience at the plenary on Palestine stood in unison in support of freedom and justice for/in Palestine.

Therefore, in keeping with these principles and the strong consensus of the majority of our 2014 conference participants, let be it resolved that the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) endorses the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) of economic, military and cultural entities and projects sponsored by the state of Israel. In doing so, we join the growing grassroots international consensus and add our voices to other professional U.S. academic associations that adopted similar resolutions in recent years. These associations include the African Literature Association, American Studies Association, Association for Asian American Studies, Association for Humanist Sociology, Critical Ethnic Studies Association, National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, Peace and Justice Studies Association, University of Hawaii at Manoa-Ethnic Studies Department, United Auto Workers Local 2865, The University of California Student Workers Union, and over 1000 members of the American Anthropological Association.

In plain English, a group of people who hate Israel use pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook to claim that somehow historic oppression of women are interconnected with Israel's actions to defend itself from terror. Therefore, out of all of the examples of oppression in the world, these academics decided that Israel's actions are the only ones that must be condemned and the only ones that are "interconnected" with women's studies, and therefore Israel is the only country that must be boycotted. Syria and China and North Korea are just dandy.

Other so-called scholars in those other groups said that "one has to start somewhere," and they always start with Israel and then lose all interest in boycotting anyone else.

Here's some extra comedy from the same organization's Code of Ethics:

NWSA members/staff may not engage in discrimination in the organization based on age; gender; race; ethnicity; national origin; religion; sexual orientation; disability; health conditions; marital, domestic, or parental status, gender identity and gender expression; or any other applicable basis proscribed by law.

So will they work with Israeli Jewish professors or won't they? (BDSers never have a problem with working with Israeli Arabs.)

This resolution makes the National Women's Studies Association into a laughingstock whose members have no ability to evaluate the difference between easily debunked lies and truth, for whom rhetoric trumps facts, and who cannot even understand their own sickness in condemning the only country in the Middle East that gives a damn about Arab women's rights.

The icing on the NWSA hypocrisy cake is that the resolution passed at the exact same time that young Arab women under PA rule are being incited by their own government's ruling party to stab any Jew they find.

TIME columnist finds it easier to explain murdering Jews than killing other French people

Vivienne Walt, a Time magazine writer, has written how difficult it is to explain the Paris terror attacks to her child.

She writes:

In January it had been relatively simple to explain to my child, who was then eight, why the cartoonists had been the target, and why a Jewish supermarket was attacked—grim as the details were. ....Answering questions over dinner on Sunday was more difficult, however. The targets this time were young people having fun on a warm Friday night; people, in fact, who were his age not all that long ago.

Really? It is easier to explain why terrorists would murder Jews than to explain why they would murder other Parisians?

I wonder how Ms. Walt explained the January attacks in a way that her son would understand. Are Jews considered natural targets in the Walt household? Or is it because of their presumed association with that shitty little country that happens to be the Jewish state? I would love to know what makes shooting Jewish shoppers relatively normal to Vivienne Walt.

Yoav Hattab, murdered at Hypercache, was 21, and Yohan Cohen was 22. They were pretty young.In fact, they were younger than nearly every victim of the more recent Paris attacks. But apparently that didn't make it more difficult to explain their murders to Vivienne's 8 year old son. Shopping for food is probably as familiar an experience to her son as sitting in a cafe or going to a concert, but clearly that didn't make the job of explaining those murders any more difficult.

Somehow, their being Jewish made it all understandable.

So what exactly did she say so that her son would be secure in the knowledge that only attacking Jews (and cartoonists) is not something he needs to empathize with or worry about?

Grappling to find the logic in this, my son pondered the situation, and asked, “Well, why did they attack those restaurants and not other restaurants?”

It was a good question, hitting at the most terrifying aspect of all—the randomness of the attacks. Friday’s attacks impacted so many regular Parisians because they had been aimed directly at the most normal of people — the drinkers, the concert-goers, the soccer fans.

Implying, again, that the Jews going shopping are not exactly "the most normal of people," and in a small way their murders are more logical than those of the drinkers and soccer fans.

Does Vivienne Walt harbor antisemitic feelings? If so, it is certainly deep in her subconscious. After all, she wrote an article for Time in the wake of the Hypercacher attacks about how it affected the Jewish community. But here it is. Murdering "normal" French people is something that even adults have a hard time grappling with, but murdering French Jews is is something that can be explained even to a pre-teen,

And the editors at Time did not even think for a second that there was anything wrong in this piece..

11/28 Links: Israel remains the Middle East's only anchor; Syria is dead, Israel must prepare

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: It’s all over for the ‘decent left’, and they have only themselves to blame

Two weeks after Paris we finally have some clarity from the political left. The current stance of their leadership (as expressed in the Parliamentary Labour party) is that while there is no justification for bombing ISIS, there are many reasons to bomb London. On the same evening that Jeremy Corbyn told his party that he could not support airstrikes on ISIS his old comrade (and head of the Labour party’s new ‘defence review’) Ken Livingstone shared his view on Question Time that the 7/7 bombers ‘gave their lives’ in an act of supremely selfless objection to the 2nd Iraq War.
Now I know that there are a few people still on the left who object to this line of thought or try to resist it. They like to call themselves the ‘decent left’ among other things. But they should recognise that they have lost. Their party is headed by a Marxist who is supported by a Stalinist and seconded by someone who while spending this week denying he is a Maoist was once again shown to be a supporter of IRA violence. Knowing when you have lost is important. It means you can begin the mourning process.
One minor point of interest to me over recent days has been watching some survivors of the left who have spent the last decade attacking anyone who has written on terrorism and Islamism now beginning to talk like old pros about Islamism and terrorism. You’d almost think they’d spent the last decade addressing these issues, rather than trying to shut down anyone who did address them. I suppose they’ll make some running of it and bluff along for a while, but these people seem to me little use to anyone. We don’t need them to talk about how ‘pathetic’ ISIS are or otherwise describe them as offensively as possible (‘death-cult’ etc) as though they might offend ISIS into submission. These people remain part of the problem because even though they have woken up to an element of Islamism they still display that lack of honesty which is one reason why they have lost even on their own political side.
Because currently the ‘decent left’ is trying to hold the following line. It is no longer ‘racist’ to be rude about ISIS or ISIS-like groups. Nor is it any longer ‘bigoted’ or ‘Islamophobic’ to identify an ideological component to their actions. There is even a recognition that ‘non-progressive’ ideological views are held by a certain portion of the Muslim communities of Europe. However, it remains deeply bigoted, racist and ‘Islamophobic’ to express any concern about bringing millions more Muslims into Britain and Europe.

Ken Livingstone 7 7 bombers were protesting Iraq invasion

Guy Bechor: Israel remains the Middle East's only anchor

For years, 'experts' have been dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, without realizing just how marginal it is and without understanding that it is being used as a tool for diverting the attention from the region's real problems.
What is there today on the other side, opposite Israel? A big void. There is a group of elderly people in Ramallah, with no power or legitimacy, and no agreement they could have reached would have been accepted by the Arab public in Judea and Samaria on in Gaza, and in any event, they had no intention of reaching any agreement. Their only goal was to gain the territories and use them for the next attack aimed at minimizing and weakening Israel.
Apart from that, there is nothing: No democracy, no economy, no law and no future. And there were those who wanted to give this void land from which they would attack central Israel with missiles.
The Arab regimes have accepted Israel's existence and are, secretly and openly, seeking its assistance. The conflict with the Palestinians exists, but it's tiny compared to the Sunni-Shi'ite demon, the huge battle with radical Islam and the world powers' infiltration of the Middle East in a military drive.
In the huge storm, the likes of which the area has not known since the Mongol invasion a little less than 800 years ago, Israel has remained the only island of stability. In the Middle East, which is desperately searching for a balance, we remain the only anchor.

Israelis Celebrate Modern Hanukkah Miracle as Mahmoud Abbas Begins 11th Year of His 4 Year Presidential Term (satire)

With only days left until the Festival of Lights, Israelis from all walks of life are celebrating a 21st Century miracle, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas prepares to begin the 11th Year of a Four Year term of office that began in January 2005. The Daily Freier spoke with Tel Aviv residents as they made preparations to celebrate this momentous occasion.
“So the legend is that there was only enough corruption, incitement and farce to last four years…” explained local historian Yoni K. as he looked for sufganyot and potatoes in the Shuk Ha Carmel. “But through a little luck and maybe even a miracle, his four year term has lasted ten years and counting! Nes Gadol Haya Po!”
Nearby, local homemaker Rachel T. searched for Hanukkah gifts to send Mr. Abbas. “Abbas is always complaining about the Jews’ dirty feet, so I thought, why not get him a doormat…you know, just in case he has Jews over for company!”
While most people will celebrate Hanukkah as they always do, Florentin resident Danny G. wants to try something new this year. “Well first, I think we will hang out at my apartment and take turns reading President Abbas’ Doctoral Thesis. And then, I was thinking of hitting some clubs in Dubai with President Abbas’ son Yassar!”