Efraim Karsh: Haaretz--The Paper for Thinking People?

Not Reposted with permission from Middle East Forum

Haaretz: The Paper for Thinking People?

by Efraim Karsh
Hudson New York
December 16, 2011

Of the countless threats of Arab violence in the run-up to the November 29, 1947 Partition Resolution and in its wake, none has resonated more widely than the warning by Abdul Rahman Azzam, the Arab League's first secretary-general, that the establishment of a Jewish state would lead to "a war of extermination and momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacre and the Crusades."

Unfortunately, the longstanding failure to trace the original document in which the threat was made has given rise to doubts regarding its veracity, and by implication - the murderous Arab intentions: not least since the historical truth has been erased from public memory by decades of relentless pro-Arab propaganda.

Small wonder, therefore, that when the missing document was recently found, with an annotated full translation published in the Middle East Quarterly, which I edit, Haaretz columnist and self-styled "new historian" Tom Segev, who had spent a good part of the past two decades turning the saga of Israel's birth upside down, went out of his way to whitewash Azzam's threat and downplay its significance. "There is something pathetic about this hunt for historical quotes drawn from newspapers," he wrote, without disputing the threat's contents or authenticity. "Azzam used to talk a lot. On May 21, 1948, the Palestine Post offered this statement by him: 'Whatever the outcome, the Arabs will stick to their offer of equal citizenship for Jews in Arab Palestine and let them be as Jewish as they like.'" He then quotes Ben-Gurion's alleged description of the League's Secretary-General as "the most honest and humane among Arab leaders."

Azzam might have talked a lot, but there was no contradiction whatsoever between his public threats and private assertions. He privately told his Jewish interlocutors that their hopes of statehood would meet the same calamitous fate as the crusading state, and he reiterated this prognosis in the newly-discovered document. A week before the pan-Arab invasion of Israel on May 15, Azzam told Sir Alec Kirkbride, the powerful British ambassador to Amman: "It does not matter how many [Jews] there are. We will sweep them into the sea." Even the actual Palestine Post report, from which Segev chose to bring a misleadingly truncated quote, had Azzam describe the Arab-invaded State of Israel as "a bridgehead into Arab territory" (that is, a crusader-like alien implant) that must be fought and destroyed for "otherwise they will be fighting us here, in Transjordan, and elsewhere in the Arab State."

It is true that Azzam was prepared to allow survivors of the destroyed Jewish state to live as Dhimmis, or second-class citizens, in the "Arab Palestine" that would arise on its ruins (after all, his statement was made in a memo to the UN seeking to justify "the first armed aggression which the world had seen since the end of the [Second World] War," to use the words of first UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie). But this can hardly be considered an indication of moderation. If anything, it affords further proof, if such is at all needed, that the gap between "the most honest and humane among Arab leaders" and the basic Jewish aspiration for national-self determination was as unbridgeable in 1948 as it is now.

But the story doesn't end here. For Mr. Segev didn't content himself with distorting the contents and significance of a key historical document but also sought to besmirch those who brought it to public attention by claiming that they lifted it from Wikipedia, to which it had supposedly been uploaded by one Brendan McKay - a professor of computer science at the Australian National University in Canberra.

This claim is not only false but the complete inversion of the truth. There was no trace of the newly-found document in Azzam's Wikipedia entry at the time of the document's publication in the Middle East Quarterly. On the contrary, noting the long-misconceived May 14, 1948, as the threat's date - it was actually made on October 11, 1947, in the run-up to the partition resolution - the Wikipedia entry (accessed October 3) questioned its very existence:

One day after the State of Israel declared itself as an independent nation (May 14, 1948), Lebanese, Syrian, Iraqi, Egyptian, and Transjordanian troops, supported by Saudi and Yemenite troops, attacked the nascent Jewish state, triggering the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. On that day, Azzam is said to have declared: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades". However, Joffe and Romirowsky report that this "cannot be confirmed from cited sources". Benny Morris, who had previously quoted it in his books, refrained from using it in his book 1948 "after discovering that its pedigree is dubious".

In other words, rather than upload Azzam's original threat to Wikipedia (or to any other publication for that matter) as falsely claimed by Segev, Mr. McKay, who on September 22, 2010 informed fellow Wikipedia discussants of having obtained a copy of the original interview in which the threat was made, failed to share his important discovery with the general public so as to keep Arab genocidal designs on the nascent Jewish state under wraps.

Why Mr. McKay agreed to pass a copy of the document to the evidently pro-Israel David Barnett, an American international politics student who had been chasing the document on his own, thus enabling it to see the light of day at long last - including, eventually, in Wikipedia - is not entirely clear: in a private communication, he declined my offer that his name be added as co-author as he didn't "have a good opinion of MEQ".

It is clear, however, that instead of minimizing Azzam's threat and patronizing him in the worst tradition of the "white man's burden" approach, Mr. Segev should have marveled at an important discovery that lays to rest one of the longest running debates on the 1948 war and helps his country reclaim the historical truth after decades of relentless distortion. But then, some journalists simply cannot handle the truth.

Nor, so it seems, can their editorial colleagues.

On October 24, three days after the publication of Segev's article, I emailed my response to Aluf Ben, Haaretz'seditor-in-chief, and was informed that the paper's op-ed editor would be in touch. Yet it was only six weeks later (on December 5), after much haggling during which I agreed to cut the article's length by half, that a Hebrew translation was (almost invisibly) published in the inside pages of the op-ed section. When I kept insisting that the original English-language article be also published I received the following response on December 12:

I'm afraid that we will not be able to publish this piece due to space limitations in the English edition of the newspaper. Our paper is considerably smaller than the Hebrew edition and we give priority to pieces published on the main editorial page of the Hebrew paper, which is why you were passed over last week. I had hoped to find a spare slot this week, but this has not been possible.

I would be pleased to be in touch with you directly next time one of your pieces is published on our opinion pages, so that I can receive the original English version in time to consider it for the same day's newspaper.

It is doubtful whether the editors believe their own words. Not only are space limitations wholly irrelevant in the case of an online publication, which is what Haaretz.com essentially is, but the editors have had my article for seven weeks, which should have given them more than ample opportunities for a timely publication.

Worse: the fact that Haaretz took the trouble to have Mr. Segev's Hebrew-written piece translated to English, and to have my response translated to Hebrew, while refusing to post an English-written article on its English-language website - where the main defamatory damage to my professional reputation was intended to be done - cannot but be seen as a blatant cover up of a professional misconduct by one of its most senior columnists.

While there is nothing new or surprising in a paper's refusal to own up to its misreporting or publish facts and analysis contradicting its political line, it is ironic that "the paper for thinking people," as Haaretz habitually flaunts itself, would engage in the shoddy business of truth suppression and mouth shutting at a time when it self-righteously fights an alleged attempt by the Israeli government to do precisely that.

Efraim Karsh is director of the Middle East Forum, research professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College, and author, most recently, of Palestine Betrayed.

via daledamos.blogspot.com

Tunisia lifts warrant summoning Arafat's widow // hmmm why?

(h/t ChallahHuAkbar / ynetnews.com) The Justice Ministry says Tunisia has lifted a warrant summoning the widow of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat over a corruption scandal. Ministry spokesman Kadhem Zine El Abidine said Friday that the investigating judge who had issued the warrant against Suha Arafat in October has since reversed that order. The case centered on alleged embezzlement linked to the creation of The International School of Carthage outside Tunis, which she founded in 2006 with Leila Trabelsi, the wife of former longtime Tunisia President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. (AP)

The government was overthrown... remember? who controls North Africa now? you can expect all judicial process to end.

Israeli, German researchers expose the Nazi past of a prominent historian and 'resistance hero' - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

(RT @ChallahHuAkbar) (haaretz.com) The night of April 17, 1945 was a dramatic one in the Bavarian town of Ansbach. The Third Reich was on the verge of collapse and U.S. forces were besieging the city. They would take it in less than 24 hours. That night a small, courageous group of young anti-Nazis tried to get the town to surrender without bloodshed or destruction.

Karl Bosl (on the right)

The tragic events of that night and the following morning would enable one of Germany's most important postwar historians to clear his name of accusations that he was pro-Nazi. Through a web of lies and half-truths, the historian, Karl Bosl, swept away his Nazi past and replaced it with the image of a brave opponent of the Nazis. Research by Prof. Benjamin Z. Kedar, the vice president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Peter Herde of Wurzburg University in Germany, has exposed what really happened that night, as well as Bosl's true Nazi past. As a result, the government of the Bavarian city where Bosl was born, Cham, announced about two weeks ago that it was changing the name of a square from Dr.-Karl-Bosl-Platz and removing a statue of Bosl from town hall. The two scholars discovered that Bosl had tried to gain anti-Nazi credentials through his previous contact with Ansbach's true hero, a young man named Robert Limpert, who had been Bosl's student. Limpert, born in 1925, had established an anti-Nazi underground cell in Ansbach. In the days before April 18, he and his comrades posted flyers on city hall calling on residents to disrupt the defense of the town and get it to surrender to Allied forces. Limpert even secured the deputy mayor's consent to surrender, but he was overridden by Ansbach's Nazi military commander, Col. Ernst Meyer, who insisted that the town fight to its last bullet. Limpert then took the courageous, perhaps crazy, step of cutting communications wires he thought linked Meyer's headquarters with Nazi forces in the town. But the lines were not connected. Limpert's act of sabotage was witnessed by two members of the Hitler Youth, who turned him in to Meyer. Limpert was arrested at home, quickly convicted and executed on a gallows set up outside city hall. On April 18, Limpert actually escaped his captors but was recaptured. Meyer himself put the noose around the young man's neck, but on the first attempt the rope broke. The executioners were successful with their second try. Shortly after the execution, Meyer fled Ansbach and U.S. forces captured the town. Three days later, Limpert was buried in Ansbach in a ceremony in which he was eulogized by his former teacher, Bosl. The eulogy was Bosl's first attempt to rid himself of his Nazi past, say Kedar and Herde. "He spoke about Limpert as if they had been on the same side," Kedar said. An American officer, Frank Horvay, who was in charge of Ansbach's denazification, played a key role in further burnishing Bosl's image. The two men apparently became friends. The researchers obtained a letter in which Horvay wrote about Bosl to his teacher in the United States. Horvay recounted the cutting of the communications wires but said Bosl was the one who carried it out. This account found its way into a number of other letters, and in January 1946, Bosl received a document from the American forces stating that although he had nominally been a member of the Nazi Party, he had also been a member of the anti-Nazi underground who had risked his life to post anti-Reich notices. The document also noted Bosl's purported act of bravery in cutting the wires. Horvay helped Bosl publish an account on the "New Germany" in an American publication, and the way was paved toward clearing his name. During his research, Kedar located Horvay's daughter in Kentucky and was provided some of her father's personal papers. The truth came out after research into Bosl's papers and interviews with two members of Limpert's underground group who survived. The researchers dispelled Bosl's claim that he had only been a member of the Nazi Party for a short time and had left for ideological reasons. He had been a member for years, Kedar and Herde say, and Bosl left the party for failure to pay a fee. The scholars also found that Bosl had also been a member of other Nazi organizations. After the war, Bosl became a leading historian of the Middle Ages. Stories surfaced occasionally about his Nazi past, but they were countered by accounts of his alleged anti-Nazi activity. "Bosl was cautious," said Kedar, a Holocaust survivor and also a historian of the Middle Ages. "He never said he had cut the cables himself, but he provided the letters in which others said so. When people interviewed him and asked him directly about the case, he said he didn't want to talk about it." Kedar and Herde's research was recently published in English by Hebrew University's Magnes Press in a book entitled "Karl Bosl and the Third Reich." Bosl died in 1993

BDS Fail: Apple to open development center in Israel

(h/t @IsraelInUSA) From Globes:

Sources inform "Globes" that Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) has decided to open a development center in Israel focusing on semiconductors. The decision was taken even before the company entered into talks to acquire Herzliya-based flash storage solutions provider Anobit Ltd..
Apple has hired Aharon Aharon, a veteran player in Israel's high tech industry, to lead the new development center.

Although Apple is a global innovation leader, the company is a relatively small investor in R&D. The producer of the iPad and iPhone invested $2.4 billion in R&D in 2010, which was only 2% of its revenue, much less proportionately than other high-tech companies.
Apple's deployment of R&D activities is in line with this policy and the company has only one technology development center, which is at company headquarters in Cupertino, California. All activities outside of company headquarters revolve around marketing, sales and support. Strategic development is carried out at home. The planned Israel center will therefore be the company's first such center outside of its California headquarters.

The planned Anobit acquisition is a big deal as well.
Sorry, BDSers, but you have to give away your iPhones and iPads now.

via elderofziyon.blogspot.com

Ron Paul’s Self-Inflicted Handicap

Contentions

Alana Goodman | @alanagoodman

(Commentary) Because the media doesn’t view Ron Paul​ as a serious contender for the GOP nomination, he’s gotten almost no scrutiny this season for some of the uglier skeletons in his closet – most notably, his infamous newsletters that promoted outright bigotry.

Sean Hannity was the first to question Paul about the newsletters after last night’s debate:

Hannity: Why do you not take responsibility for the things that were in your individual newsletters?

Paul: In 2002, the Texas Monthly reviewed that and they wrote a long, long article, and that’s a liberal newspaper, so you read that and you’ll find out –

Hannity: I read Reason magazine which is libertarian and –

Paul: I did not, I did not write it. And I do not support those views. And they’re painted to make me think that, you know, I’m a racist or something.

Hannity: There were some very racial things in there.

Paul: I’m the greatest defender of civil liberties, especially when it comes to the inequities in our judicial system, you know, with blacks, the imprisonments for the drug wars, the number of blacks to get the death penalty.

Hannity: I gotta run. Let me ask you one last question. Do you know who did write it and do you repudiate what was in your newsletter?

Paul: I do not. And I don’t believe anything, any of that stuff that they’ve quoted.

Ron Paul has had three years to formulate a response to these questions, since Jamie Kirchick​’s investigation into his newsletters came out in The New Republic. He had to know that he was going to get asked about this at some point during his campaign. And that’s his answer? That he doesn’t know who wrote these things? That’s completely unacceptable.

And this was during a friendly interview with Hannity, who didn’t push back too hard. Imagine how that same conversation would have gone with someone from CNN or MSNBC, or even one of the news anchors from Fox.

The polls are showing that Paul actually has a good shot of winning in the Iowa caucuses, and he certainly has the passionate supporters and ground game to potentially pull it off. But it’s important for voters to remember Paul’s insurmountable, self-inflicted handicap, and why he has no chance of becoming president.

Palestinian Leadership: It Is Forbidden to Normalize Relations with Israel

Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who planned to hold a conference in Jerusalem and Bethlehem this week were forced to cancel the event after receiving threats from Palestinians.

The conference was organized by the Israeli Palestinian Confederation, a group that seeks to promote peace and coexistence between the two peoples.
The organizers of the conference were hoping to hold elections for a new "parliament" that would consist of Israelis and Palestinians and that would offer itself as a third government to the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.
The first conference, which was supposed to take place at the Ambassador Hotel in Jerusalem, was cancelled at the last minute after angry Palestinian protesters demonstrated in front of the hotel. The protesters shouted slogans denouncing the event "because it promotes the culture of peace" and is designed to "normalize" relations between Israelis and Palestinians.
The demonstrators also shouted slogans strongly condemning Al Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh, who was supposed to be one of the main speakers at the conference. Because of the protest and out of fear for his safety, Nusseibeh decided not to come to the hotel.
The Palestinian protesters later stormed the conference hall, forcing the frightened Israeli representatives to leave the hotel.
The following day, a similar "anti-normalization" demonstration forced the Israeli and Palestinian peace activists to cancel an event that was scheduled to take place in the town of Bet Jalla near Bethlehem.
The protesters later explained that their move was in line with the Palestinian Authority's policy of banning any form of normalization with Israel. This is the same authority that signed the Oslo Accords with Israel and whose senior leaders carry Israeli-issued VIP cards that enable them to move around freely – a privilege denied to most ordinary Palestinians.
Some Palestinians said that the demonstrations were in fact initiated by top Palestinian officials in Ramallah who do not want to see Israeli and Palestinian representatives working together to promote peace and coexistence.
By banning such public gatherings, the Palestinian Authority leadership is further radicalizing Palestinians.
This was not the first time that the Palestinian Authority or some NGOs had come out against activities that supposedly promote normalization between Israelis and Palestinians. Over the past few years, they have cancelled many events of this type under the charge that it is forbidden to normalize relations with Israel.
The Palestinian Authority and these NGOs are also coordinating their activities with other "anti-normalization" groups in the Arab world, specifically Jordan and Egypt.
At the end of the day, it is such activities that drive Arabs into the open arms of Muslim fundamentalists. The "anti-normalization" campaign also serves to undermine the minority of moderate Arabs who still believe in coexistence and peace.
The Palestinian leadership in the West Bank is shooting itself in the foot. In the future, its representatives will be afraid to return to the negotiating table or conduct dialogue with any Israel out of fear for their lives. If Palestinian academics such as Nusseibeh are afraid to appear in public with Israelis such as Uri Avineri, Ruth Dayan and Shlomo Ben-Ami, this speaks volumes about where Palestinian society is headed.

via hudson-ny.org

Violent rioters and media goons

On Monday night, hooligans identified with the national religious camp staged three unlawful, and in at least one case violent, protests against the IDF.

First, several dozen people surrounded by hundreds of reporters pretended to set up a new settlement along the border with Jordan. Their aim was to protest Jordan's opposition to repairing the Mugrabi Bridge through which Jews and Christians alight to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The second and third protests' declared aim was to prevent the IDF from carrying out orders to destroy Ramat Gilad, a small enclave of homes in Samaria located on land owned by rancher Moshe Zar and named for his son Gilad who was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 2001.

At one protest, rioters entered the Ephraim Brigade's base for several minutes and vandalized vehicles and spray-painted equipment.

It was the last protest that was truly violent. Hooligans allegedly stoned passing Palestinian vehicles and threw a stone at the car belonging to the deputy brigade commander and injured him.

Violent riots of this sort are virtually unheard of in the national religious sector. The community's devotion to IDF service is so strong that soldiers from the sector are overrepresented in all combat units. Over the past 15 years they have effectively replaced the kibbutz movement as the backbone of the IDF.

It was due to the community's dedication to the military that the protests against the IDF's implementation of the Sharon government's order to expel some 10,000 citizens from their homes in Gaza and Northern Samaria in August 2005 were almost entirely nonviolent.

Viewed in the context of the community's loyalty to the IDF, the unlawful, ant-IDF riots Monday night were the sort of "man bites dog" story that it was reasonable to assume the media would pounce on.

It could be reasonably assumed that a responsible media would ask how has this happened? What motivated young religious Zionists to attack IDF officers with stones? Why are they breaking the law? 

But alas, in their wall-to-wall coverage of the protests, the media asked none of these questions. Rather, the media mischaracterized the riots as a "dog bites man" story and set about using the unlawful actions of these young hooligans as a means of criminalizing the entire national religious community.

In just two representative examples, while every communal political and religious leader condemned the protests, Yediot Aharonot's chief commentator Nahum Barnea blamed the protests on "incitement from rabbis in Judea and Samaria." Army Radio talk show host Razi Barkai and his guests used the riots as an excuse to demonize the national religious camp in terms not heard since the immediate aftermath of thenprime minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in 1995.

Egged on by the media, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.- Gen. Benny Ganz visited the scene and decried the protesters. OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrachi told reporters, "I have not seen such hatred of Jews towards soldiers during my 30 years of service."

Also responding to media pressure, on Tuesday Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu convened the security cabinet together with senior Justice Ministry officials and IDF commanders to come up with new ways of fighting "right-wing violence."

With politicians across the political spectrum breathlessly calling the hooligans "terrorists," the meeting ended with a series of decisions to equate the investigation and treatment of these protesters to that received by Palestinian terrorists.

For instance from now on, these protesters will be tried in military courts, they will be issued administrative detention orders, they will be barred from entering Judea and Samaria, and intelligence operations against them will be ramped up.

BY THURSDAY, the media turned its guns against Netanyahu. While welcoming his draconian moves, the headlines of the tabloids excoriated him for refusing to label the protesters "terrorists."

Ma'ariv's lead story on the subject began, "Even the unprecedented rioting by far-rightwing activists at the Ephraim Brigade's base, and the injuring of the brigade commander and his deputy, didn't convince Prime Minister Netanyahu to label the rioters as 'a terrorist group.'" (Incidentally, the brigade commander was not injured.) 

Aside from their proper castigation of the protesters' behavior as abominable, the media's coverage of the protests was a study in reality distortion. A competent rendering of Monday night's events would have placed them in the context of the climate of lawlessness that increasingly informs the decisions of Israel's elected leaders. Indeed, just last week the government caved in to threats of mob violence at the Temple Mount.

For many years, fear of Muslim riots on the Temple Mount caused successive governments to fail to uphold the law guaranteeing freedom of worship to all religions. Bowing to the Muslim mobs, Jews and Christians were denied the right to visit the Temple Mount or to pray there. Since 2007 access to Judaism's holiest site has been granted to Jews and Christians through the Mugrabi Bridge located at the Western Wall. But both Jews and Christians are prohibited from praying while on the Mount.

The Mugrabi Bridge is made of wood and is highly flammable. It was built as a temporary structure. In 2007, repairs on the bridge sparked violent Muslim protests.

Over the past several months, Jerusalem's municipal engineer issued repeated warnings that bridge is unsafe. The government was supposed to repair it, rebuild it or replace it with a new, permanent ramp that would allow safe access to the Temple Mount. But fearing the mob, the government failed to act.

Left with no choice, last week Jerusalem's municipal engineer took the only responsible step and closed the bridge, and so barred non-Muslim access to the Temple Mount. On Tuesday, the media reported that rather than fix the bridge, the government is considering sufficing with stationing a fire truck at the Western Wall for rapid response to bridge collapse or incineration.

As one official explained to The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, "On the one hand, the bridge has to function... so in the interests of public safety it's got to be repaired. On the other hand we're very aware of the sensitivities, and we want to do what we can to mitigate the possibility that extremists would exploit the situation."

MUSLIM RIOTERS aren't the only ones who use violence to force the government's hand. Leftist rioters routinely resort to violence to get their way as well.

When on Wednesday Netanyahu failed label the religious Zionist rioters a terrorist organization, he opted instead to liken them to the leftist anarchists. Every Friday these anarchists, supported by NGOs such as Gush Shalom, join Palestinians in violently rioting against IDF soldiers guarding construction of the security barrier in places such as Bil'in, Ni'lin, Nabi Musa and Neveh Tzuf.

These organized, planned riots have been taking place regularly since 2002. Their organizers have spent next to no time in jail. The Justice Ministry has not asked to define them as a terror group. Their members have not been tried in military courts or placed in administration detention. Little intelligence has been gathered about them.

Whereas the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria, and all major leaders of the national religious community, condemned those who participated in Monday night's unlawful protests, leftist NGOs, luminaries and politicians as well as Israeli Arab politicians and religious leaders have been silent in the face of the Friday rioters' routine use of violence against IDF soldiers.

For instance, in June 2005, demonstrators led by Gush Shalom and by Arab MKs held violent protests in three villages. Protesters attacked IDF soldiers with rocks and clubs. At one such protest near Bil'in, IDF Cpl. Michael Schwartzman lost an eye. He and his comrades were stoned by Jewish and Arab protesters who called them "Hitler," and "Eichmann." None of the protesters apologized for injuring him. Indeed, in a radio interview the next week, MK Ahmed Tibi claimed Schwartzman brought his injury on himself.

The media that today devotes the lion's share of their news coverage to Monday night's riots, barely covered Schwartzman's story. Yediot buried the story on page 6. Haaretz waited a week to report the story and then said Schwartzman was to blame because he wasn't wearing protective eye gear.

In stark contrast, on Tuesday alongside its condemnation and demonization of Monday night's violent national religious protesters, Haaretz published a eulogy to Palestinian rioter Mustafa Tamimi who was killed last Friday by IDF troops at Nabi Musa as he stoned their vehicle. The article lionizing Tamimi was written by Jonathan Pollack, the head of the anti-Zionist Anarchists Against the Fence group that organizes the weekly anti-IDF riots. Violent riots against IDF soldiers at Nabi Musa are planned for this Friday as well.

Just as the government fears the Muslim rioters at the Temple Mount, so the IDF fears the anarchists and their media supporters. Due to this fear, not only has the IDF failed to complete the security barrier in the areas where it is attacked by rioters, but several officers have been removed from their commands for ordering their soldiers to defend themselves forcefully against the rioters.

Given this atmosphere of lawlessness, where violent rioters have for years successfully forced the government's hand, it is apparent why Monday night's protesters decided to use violence against the IDF. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

But not only was their behavior - like that of the Muslim and leftist rioters - morally unjustifiable, unlike the Muslims' and leftists' behavior, it was tactically self-defeating. The Muslim mobs and the leftist rioters are able to use violence to advance their aims because they receive media support for their actions. The media routinely condemns the government for "inflaming passions," when it upholds the law in Jerusalem and permits Jews freedom of worship or respects their property rights.

So, too, the media alternately ignore or glorify the leftist rioters against the security barrier. The media downplay their violence and their support for the destruction of the state. So, too, outlets such as Channel 2 and Channel 10 habitually broadcast snuff films of IDF soldiers taken by the rioters whose clear aim is to criminalize commanders for seeking to uphold the law and successfully discharge their duties.

In the case of the rioters from the national religious camp on Monday night, given the political views of the majority of the media, it should have been obvious that the media would use their actions as a means of criminalizing the entire national religious community.

And indeed, in his column in Yediot Wednesday criminalizing the national religious camp Barnea wrote, "The Right in the Knesset can't turn its eyes to the heavens and say, 'Our hands did not shed this blood.'" 

The truth of course is quite different. To find it, Mr. Barnea and his colleagues should start their investigation by looking in the mirror.

via carolineglick.com

Thousands Abused in Dutch Catholic Institutions

(abcnews) (h/t @Jewess) Thousands of children suffered sexual abuse in Dutch Catholic institutions over the past 65 years, and church officials knew about the abuse but failed to adequately address it or help the victims, a long-awaited report said Friday. The release of the report was followed by an apology to victims by the archbishop of Utrecht, who said the revelation "fills us with shame and sorrow."

The Dutch investigation uncovered some of the most widespread abuse yet from a slew of inquiries around the world into sex abuse in the Catholic church. It echoes reports in Ireland that detailed how tens of thousands of children suffered wide-ranging abuses in workhouse-style residential schools.
The Dutch report said Catholic officials failed to tackle the widespread abuse, which ranged from "unwanted sexual advances" to rape, in an attempt to prevent scandals. Abusers included priests, brothers, pastors and lay people who worked in religious orders and congregations, it said. The investigation followed allegations of repeated incidents of abuse at one cloister that quickly spread to claims from Catholic institutions across the country.
The suspected number of abuse victims who spent some of their youth in church institutions likely lies somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000, according to a summary of the report investigating allegations of abuse dating back to 1945.

The commission behind the report received some 1,800 complaints of abuse at Catholic schools, seminaries and orphanages and said that the institutions suffered from "a failure of oversight." It then conducted the broader survey of the general population for a more comprehensive analysis of the scale and nature of sexual abuse of minors — both in the church and elsewhere.
Based on a survey among more than 34,000 people, the commission estimated that one in 10 Dutch children suffered some form of abuse broadly in society. The number doubled to 20 percent of children who spent part of their youth in an institution like an orphanage or boarding school — whether Catholic or not.
The commission was set up last year under the leadership of former government minister Wim Deetman, who said there could be no doubt church leaders knew of the problem.
"The idea that people did not know there was a risk ... is untenable," he said.
Deetman said abuse continued in part because the Catholic church in the Netherlands was splintered, so bishops and religious orders sometimes worked autonomously to deal with abuse and "did not hang out their dirty laundry."
However, he said the commission concluded that "it is wrong to talk of a culture of silence" by the church as a whole.
Bert Smeets, an abuse victim who attended the presentation of the report, said it did not go far enough in investigating and outlining in precise detail exactly what happened.
"What was happening was sexual abuse, violence, spiritual terror, and that should have been investigated," Smeets told The Associated Press. "It remains vague. All sorts of things happened, but nobody knows exactly what or by whom. This way they avoid responsibility."
Archbishop Wim Eijk said victims would be compensated by a commission the Dutch church set up last month and which has a scale starting at euro5,000 ($6,500) and rising to a maximum of euro100,000 ($130,000) depending on the nature of the abuse.
He said he felt personally ashamed of the abuse. "It is terrible," he said.

Islamic "scholar": Saying Merry Christmas is worst then fornication or killing someone

eye

#OWS Mom Places 4 Year-Old Daughter on Train Tracks.wmv

Poetic

No Good Alternative Left in Egypt

(commentary) ...the Muslim Brotherhood​ winning 47 percent of the vote in the first round of parliamentary elections and even more hard-line Salafists winning another 21 percent. The second round of voting, which ended Thursday, is expected to confirm those results.

(weaselzippers) Keep this story in mind when we start seeing more reports of the Obama regime reaching out to the “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood.

Christian Bale Attacked by Chinese Guards

(nytimes.com) BEIJING — The actor Christian Bale was assaulted by government-backed guards on Thursday when he tried to visit a blind lawyer who has been illegally confined to his home in eastern Shandong Province. The lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, has emerged as a cause célèbre among the country’s rights advocates, dozens of whom have been similarly roughed up when they tried to break through the cordon that local officials have placed around Mr. Chen’s village. The encounter, captured by a CNN camera crew who accompanied him on the eight-hour drive from Beijing to Dongshigu village, promises to become a public relations debacle for China, which has been eagerly promoting Mr. Bale’s latest movie, “The Flowers of War,” which premiered last Sunday at the one of the capital’s most important government buildings.

So glad we owe money to these people? Thanks for voting for Obama

Netanyahu to #NYTIMES: Suck my BIG FAT HEBREW NATIONAL!

(jpost.com)Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is refusing to pen an op-ed piece for The New York Times, signaling the degree to which he is fed up with the influential newspaper’s editorial policy on Israel. In a letter to the Times obtained by The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Netanyahu’s senior adviser Ron Dermer – in response to the paper’s request that Netanyahu write an op-ed – wrote that the prime minister would “respectfully decline.” (MORE)

Of course: Europe fails to enforce its own sanctions against Iran

(Carl) Yet another reminder that sanctions will never stop Iran's nuclear program... because Europe won't enforce them.

Continental Europe's zig-zag course with sanctioned Iranian officials remains a counterproductive leftover vestige to the EU's nearly 30 year failed policy of dialogue with Tehran's clerical rulers. Take the example of Irans foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, who on December 4 appeared in Bonn to attend the Afghanistan conference. Though Salehi is sanctioned by the EU because of his work on Iran's illicit nuclear weapons program, he met with Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle [pictured above. CiJ] and schmoozed with the conference attendees. The EU has waived its own visa restrictions against Salehi.
Attention to a second case this week raises again the point of impotent EU diplomatic sanctions. Iranian oil minister Rostam Ghasemi swooped into Vienna on Tuesday to attend the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meeting on Wednesday. Ghasemi commands Iran's revolutionary guards' Khatam al-Anbia military. The EU, Australia and the United States have sanctioned Ghasemi. His tentacles are immersed in blacklisted revolutionary guard companies. Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps is defined as a global terrorist organization by the US government. Yet his presence at the Vienna parley makes a mockery of Iran-based sanctions. Diplomatic business as usual is precisely what Tehran seeks. And the EU, sadly, is reciprocating.

The irony is that the Europeans probably have a greater interest than anyone outside of Israel in stopping Iran. Their economies are already teetering on the brink - a sharp rise in the price of oil resulting from a war could tank Europe's economies for a generation. And yet, the Europeans continue to throw a stick in the spokes of the one thing that might have a chance of averting war. They seem to have a death wish, provided of course that they can take as many Jews as possible with them (God forbid).
What could go wrong.

Carl must of written this blog post on the fly. They not only want to avoid war with an aggressive state, but they want to do business with people who are religiously inclined to be martyrs. These aren't Shinto Buddhists or Communists, these are Muslims and you can not co-op their emperor or prove their system doesn't work. It is obvious that Europe wants their cake and to eat it to. It seems like the whole world does.

(Have one's cake and eat it too - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) A French equivalent expression is: vouloir le beurre et l'argent du beurre, meaning literally to want the butter and the money for the butter. The idiom can be emphasized by adding et le sourire de la crémière ("and the smile of the female buttermaker").
The expression avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca ("to have the barrel full and the wife drunk") is used in Italy with an equivalent meaning.
In Spanish, querer estar en misa y en procesión ("wishing to be both at Mass and in the procession") and nadar y guardar la ropa ("swimming and keeping an eye on the removed clothes") are similar in meaning.
There is a Serbian equivalent as well, Не можеш да имаш и јаре и паре ("You can't have both goatling and money").
Similarly, in Chinese, "也要马儿好，也要马儿不吃草" (pinyin: Yě yào mǎ hǎo, yě yào mǎ bu chī cǎo) means "you want the horse to be the best, but don't want it to eat any grass".
There is a Greek equivalent as well: "Και την πίτα ολόκληρη και τον σκύλο χορτάτο" ("you want the pie whole and the dog full").
A similar expression in Swiss German is Du chasch nit dr Füfer und s Weggli ha ("you can't have the five cent coin and a -certain type of swiss- bread roll").
A Nepalese equivalent also exists that goes dubai haat ma laddu, which means having laddu (a sweet candy) in both your hands.
In Argentina, the expression la chancha y los veinte literally means "the pig and the twenties". It comes from the old piggybanks for children that used to contain coins of 20 cents. The only way to get the coins was to break the piggyback open -- hence the phrase. This can be emphasized by adding y la máquina de hacer chorizos, which translates to "and the machine to make sausage".
In Bulgaria it's a very often occurrence for the expression to be used: "И вълкът сит, и агнето цяло" ("The wolf is full, and the lamb - whole.")