By now you have certainly heard about Secretary of State John Kerry’s troubling remarks warning that if Israel does not agree to a his idea of a peace agreement, it could become “an apartheid state with second-class citizens.” You have also doubtless heard that Secretary Kerry has tried to walk back that remark stating, “if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two peoples living side by side in peace and security is through a two state solution.”

What the media has been pretty quiet about is the fact that Israel is not the party standing in the way of a “two state solution.” Despite numerous offers of statehood, prisoner releases, construction freezes, relaxation of security measures and numerous other concessions from Israel, it is the Palestinian leadership that refuses to entertain a two state solution because it will not relinquish the aim of eradicating the one and only Jewish State.

Just days ago, Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi said, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch:

Our people, people of Gaza, Gaza of resolve, of nobleness and struggle: Your freedom is near. Our prisoners’ freedom and your freedom are also near, Allah willing. You will return to the bosom of legitimacy, to the bosom of the homeland, which is represented by [the] Gaza [Strip] and the [West] Bank, by Palestine — all of Palestine, from its [Jordan] River to its [Mediterranean] Sea. This is our goal; this is the lantern that lights our way; these are our principles in the Fatah Movement: Palestine — [the] Gaza [Strip] is part of it; the [West] Bank is part of it; and it is Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, and it is all of Palestine, which will be an independent state for us, Allah willing.

Haifa, Jaffa and Acre are, of course, cities in Israel that are not the subject of any negotiations. How then does Tirawi propose to make them part of Palestine? Well, he has previously said, “We in this movement have not cast down the rifle and have not let go of the rifle. The rifle is here!”

Only Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin has reported on Tirawi’s goal to eliminate Israel, framing the issue:

President Obama and Secretary of State John F. Kerry never tire of telling Israel all the ills that will befall it if it doesn’t make peace with the Palestinians. However, they studiously ignore the Palestinians’ refusal to embrace a two-state solution. We’re not talking about Hamas; the Palestinian Authority refuses to relinquish the one-state solution. Moreover, Palestinian Authority officials’ repeated comments amount to calls for genocide.

Kudos to Rubin. And, to the rest of the news media… Where’s the coverage?

Watch the video of Tawfiq Tirawi’s remarks here:

The Emmaus Group has issued a response to the controversy that began when one of its co-founders, Christy Anastas, spoke in Uppsala earlier this month.

It reads as follows:

EMMAUS GROUP STATEMENT
Released Thursday 30th April 2014

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good
men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke

Over the last two weeks the founders of the Emmaus Group have been subject to a considerable onslaught of accusations and criticism following a speech made by Christy Anastas in Uppsala, Sweden.

To all those who have been angered or shocked by Christy’s talk we understand your reactions. For too long, violations of Palestinian human rights have taken place internally, unexposed, masked by the popular belief that Israel is the major perpetrator.

We appreciate the concerns expressed for her safety and wellbeing in the UK. To satisfy these concerns, she attended a British police station yesterday to confirm that she was not being coerced or used by anyone, that she speaks freely of her own will, and that such claims were politically motivated.

What the Uppsala talk proves, evidenced by the virulent campaign to silence Christy using threats, discrimination and intimidation towards her family, is that there is no freedom of speech in the Palestinian Territories. Her siblings avoid attending education establishments for fear of humiliation. The family have been sworn at and disrespected by the community, and endure a constant stream of abusive phone calls. Crowds have gathered outside her house and tourist organisations in Bethlehem now boycott them. Such actions demonstrate a basic cultural lack of understanding of true freedom of speech.

However, we have also received great support from people around the world, notably from Palestinians and other Arabs nationals too, who cannot speak out for fear of reprisals,proven by the reaction to Christy’s talk. For any Palestinian resident in the territories to expose the internal problems, discrimination and corrupton, would be extremely dangerous.

“blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My name’s sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in Heaven……….”

Matthew 5: 11-12

This article has been corrected. See note at bottom. Also, Christy has visited the police station without incident.

Christy Anastas, the 24-year-old woman who has fled the West Bank (where a journalist was recently sentenced to a year in prison for mocking Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas on Facebook), will present herself for inspection at a police station in England on the morning of April 29, 2014.

Why?

Because a self-styled “peace and justice” activist has called the police in England, informing the authorities that she may be a “missing person.” Consequently, Christy will present herself at a police station somewhere in England this morning to assure them that she is not being held against her will.

That’s the report from Howard Stern, who along with Christy, is a co-founder of the Emmaus Group, an activist organization that promotes awareness of the mistreatment of Christians in Muslim-majority environments. Stern reports the following:

Christy has lived with my wife and I and our other two grown up kids for two years. We are family. We love her dearly. She is totally part of the family, free to come and go as she pleases. She has friends, drives a car and enjoys church where she helps at youth club. As a family we are all upset by his actions and words as Christy has, is and never will be coerced and forced to do anything she does not want to. We are a Christian household. We are all protective of her and I do chaperone her a lot and speak with her where appropriate but she is strong-minded kid and knows what she wants and what she believes in – taken after her mother in that dept!! [Author’s Note: Christy’s mother, Claire Anastas, is an ardent anti-Zionist activist. More about this below.]

When the dust settles, Stern hopes to obtain a formal apology from the self-styled “peace and human rights’ activist who called the police in an attempt to “help” Christy.

In the meantime, Stern writes, “We have reported the matter of his reporting to MPs, our lawyers and senior church officials who we liaise with. Christy will attend a local police station in the morning to confirm all is ok and well.”

One has to wonder why so-called “human rights” activists have not expressed any concern over the possibility that Christy’s mother, Claire, has been testifying under duress on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
(more…)

April 28 Update: CAMERA Prompts Haaretz Correction on West Bank Barrier

April 30 Update: NY Times Corrects Photo Caption on West Bank Clash

In the convoluted map of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the same event taking place in two slightly different locations could have two vastly different significances. In other words, in a region divided up by a Green Line, Area A, Area B, Area C, Palestinian towns, Israeli communities or settlements over the 1967 Armistice Line, location matters. And given the geopolitical sensitivities, media outlets have a particular responsibility to accurately cite locations.

Twice this past weekend, major media outlets, The New York Times and the Israeli daily Haaretz, erroneously identified the site of Palestinian demonstrators (one violent, one apparently peaceful).

The following photograph and incorrect caption appear on the front-page of The International New York Times today:

This photograph is not from “an Israeli settlement.” Palestinian demonstrations do not take place in Israeli settlements. If they did, that would be very big news.

According to the original caption provided by European Press Agency (which we accessed from the Newscom photo archive), “Palestinian protester holds his gas mask during clashes over the Jewish settlement of Qadomem, near Nablus, West Bank, 25 April 2014.”

In a second misidentification of setting, Haaretz published the following photograph and caption on page 5 of its Weekend supplement this past Friday (April 25):

The houses in the background are not from the city of Modiin, a bedroom community in central Israel within Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries. In no place does the concrete barrier reach within that proximity of Modiin. According to Haaretz‘s Hebrew edition, this photograph shows Modiin Illit, also known as Kiryat Sefer, a Haredi town several kilometers away from Modiin, over the Green Line.

The Hebrew caption states: “A Palestinian woman in front of the separation barrier near Modiin Ilit, 2011” (CAMERA’s translation).

A Prank. That’s how a threatening flier distributed at a predominately Jewish dormitory at New York University has been characterized. The flier, distributed by Students for Justice in Palestine bears the name of a group that calls itself the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. It states,

If you do not vacate the premise by midnight April 25, 2014, we reserve the right to destroy all remaining belongings. We cannot be held responsible for property or persons remaining inside the premises. Charges for the demolition will be charged to your personal accounts.

NYU Spokesman, John Beckman, expressed rather under-stated concern despite the evident threat to both property and persons. According to the New York Post, Beckman said,

while the school encourages open discussion, the prank crossed the line.
“It is disappointingly inconsistent with standards we expect to prevail in a scholarly community,” Beckman said. “Our Residence Life and Housing Office will be communicating with the students in the dorm, looking into the matter, and following up appropriately.”

A NYU alumni who was more alarmed about the university’s tepid response said he contacted Beckman by phone. When he questioned how the university would respond if the “prank” had been directed at another minority group, Beckman hung up on him.

Interestingly, NYU publishes on its Web site a document called a Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy which establishes:

Prohibited harassment includes conduct that creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive academic or residential environment

A question to ponder is that even though a disclaimer statement at the bottom of the flier establishes that it is not a real eviction notice, does that mean the threats contained in it are not real and should not be taken seriously? We’ll have to see if threatening the property and well-being of Jewish students is considered harassment. Or is it merely a “prank.”

If you’ve ever had the feeling that Israel is criticized regardless of what it does, rest assured: It isn’t paranoia.

The absurdity of much of the conversation about Israel is summed up neatly by two recent articles about Israeli Arabs and army service.

A year ago, AI Monitor published a piece in which Israel was charged with “discrimination” because it does not require Israeli Arabs to serve in the army or volunteer for national service.

And yesterday, Christianity Today reported that Israel is accused of “intimidating” Arab Christians by urging them to serve or volunteer.

And there you have it. If it doesn’t encourage service, Israel discriminates. If it does, it intimidates.

Saeb Erekat is the gift that keeps on giving—for those tracking the Swiss cheese-like consistency of “the Palestinian narrative.” Erekat, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator in PA-Israeli talks, has a habit of making Pinocchio-like assertions. For example:

* In 2002, he insisted to Cable News Network (CNN) that Israeli troops had destroyed the refugee district in the West Bank city of Jenin. In truth, they killed 55 Palestinian Arabs, almost all combatants, losing 23 of their own in house-to-house fighting.

* Earlier this year he declaimed on his people’s descent from ancient Canaanites who allegedly preceded the Israelites in the Promised Land by thousands of years. Never mind the much later arrival of Arabs or that the Palestinian Arab national movement essentially began in 1920.

Now Erekat has done it again. According to Middle East Monitor, the PA representative declared, “Hamas is a Palestinian movement, is not and will never be a terrorist organization .” Apparently the United States, Israel, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries have erred in designating Hamas (the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement) as terrorist. Perhaps the hundreds of Israeli non-combatants murdered by Hamas members since the late 1980s, including children and the elderly, were actually secret agents.

By now, indicted by his own statements, Erekat would seem to deserve little credibility with members of the news media. That he continues to be treated as a viable source appears to speak volumes about the shortage of self-professed moderates, fluent in English, on the Palestinian side.

On April 14, Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran, reported on the case of an Iranian woman who was scheduled to be executed for killing in self-defense an Iranian Intelligence Ministry official who she claimed lured her to his apartment and sexually assaulted her. Shaheed demanded that

The Iranian authorities should review her case and refer it back to court for a re-trial, ensuring that the defendant due process rights guaranteed under both Iranian law and international law.

This case follows a well documented history of incidents in Iran of women being stoned to death under government auspices.

An article in the Daily Telegraph on May 30, 2013, reports on Iranian progress in human rights. The Iranian regime passed a law allowing for the hanging of adulterous women instead of burying them up to their necks and stoning them to death as was previously the punishment. Men are given a better chance. According to the Telegraph article, they are only buried up to their waists and if they can free themselves they can avoid being stoned to death.

On April 24, 2014, Iran was re-elected to a coveted post on the Commission on the Status of Women in the United Nations Economics and Social Council charged with promoting women’s rights. The appointment has received minimal coverage in the media. An internet search on the morning of April 24 revealed, so far, articles in the Canada Free Press and CNS news discussing the topic in any detail.

While alternate media like the Canada Free Press draw attention to such stories, The New York Times meanwhile publishes an Op-Ed in its April 13 edition “Are Iran and Israel Trading Places?” suggesting that Iran is liberalizing and Israel becoming a theocracy. The Times Op-Ed brazenly states, “One is liberalizing while the other is flirting with theocracy.” Right.

It seems as though “peace talks” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have hit another stumbling block – or completely fallen apart perhaps – as Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party has entered into an agreement with the terrorist organization Hamas to form a Palestinian unity government.

The Wall Street Journal notes:

Wednesday’s declaration wasn’t the first time the two sides have vowed to unite and follows past agreements that eventually fell apart over bickering.

But the timing of the announcement, however uncertain its outcome, was certain to complicate peace negotiations with Israel. Hamas is pledged to Israel’s destruction.

In fact, Hamas aims to kill all Jews everywhere, “no matter how long it takes.” Arab animosity toward and terrorism against Jews is nothing new. As CAMERA has previously reported:

Arab violence against Jews is often alleged to have begun with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 or as a result of Israel’s capture in 1967 of territories occupied by Jordan. But even before the Mandate for Palestine was assigned to Great Britain by the Allies at the San Remo Conference (April 1920) and endorsed by the League of Nations (July 1922), Palestinian Arabs were carrying out organized attacks against Jewish communities in Palestine.

CAMERA details the infamous 1929 massacre in Hebron:

According to Dutch-Canadian journalist Pierre Van Passen who was in Palestine at the time, fabricated pictures of Muslim holy sites in ruins were handed out to Hebron Arabs as they were leaving their mosques on Friday, August 23, 1929. The captions on the pictures claimed that the Dome of the Rock was bombed by the Zionists. That evening, armed Arabs broke into the Yeshiva (Talmudic academy) and murdered the lone student they found. The following day, an enraged Arab mob wielding knives, axes, and iron bars destroyed the Yeshiva and slaughtered the rest of the students there. A delegation of Jewish residents on their way to the police station was lynched by an Arab mob. The mob then proceeded to massacre Hebron’s Jews — both Sephardi and Ashkenazi — who had lived peacefully with their Arab neighbors for years. With only one British officer supervising, the Arab police made no attempt to prevent the massacre.

The head of Hebron’s Ashkenazi community, Rabbi Ya’akov Slonim, had been on good terms with his Arab colleagues and offered his home as a refuge to Hebron’s Jews, believing that they would be spared. But the mob broke in and killed the Rabbi, members of his family and all those assembled there. Van Passen gave the following account, revealing an attempted cover-up by British officials:

What occurred in the upper chambers of Slonim’s house could be seen when we found the twelve-foot-high ceiling splashed with blood. The rooms looked like a slaughterhouse. When I visited the place in the company of Captain Marek Schwartz, a former Austrian artillery officer, Mr. Abraham Goldberg of New York, and Mr. Ernst Davies, correspondent of the old Berliner Tageblatt, the blood stood in a huge pool on the slightly sagging stone floor of the house. Clocks, crockery, tables and windows had been smashed to smithereens. Of the unlooted articles, not a single item had been left intact except a large black-and-white photograph of Dr. Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. Around the picture’s frame the murderers had draped the blood-drenched underwear of a woman.

We stood silently contemplating the scene of slaughter when the door was flung open by a British solder with fixed bayonet. In strolled Mr. Keith-Roach, governor of the Jaffa district, followed by a colonel of the Green Howards battalion of the King’s African Rifles. They took a hasty glance around that awful room, and Mr. Roach remarked to his companion, “Shall we have lunch now or drive to Jerusalem first?”

In Jerusalem the Government published a refutation of the rumors that the dead Jews of Hebron had been tortured before they had their throats slit. This made me rush back to that city accompanied by two medical men, Dr. Dantziger and Dr. Ticho. I intended to gather up the severed sexual organs and the cut-off women’s breasts we had seen lying scattered over the floor and in the beds. But when we came to Hebron a telephone call from Jerusalem had ordered our access barred to the Slonim house. [Van Passen, Pierre, Days of Our Years, Hillman-Curl, Inc., New York 1939]

In total, sixty-seven Jews were killed and 60 were wounded. The Jewish community in Hebron was destroyed.

In the last week, British Pathé has released thousands of videos from its archives, including some newsreels relating to Palestine under the British mandate. Here, American Jews in 1929 are so concerned about their brothers and sisters in Palestine that a reported 35,000 marched in front of the British consulate in New York City demanding protection for them:

And in Jerusalem, nervous Jews erect makeshift barriers and patrol the streets to protect themselves:

Though the video declares that the arrival of British troops meant that “the situation is well in hand,” this was not the case. There were many other incidents of anti-Jewish violence predating the establishment of the state of Israel.

These videos are a treasure trove of new evidence to an old reality: Arab terrorism against Jews in the land of Israel is not about occupation, settlements, the contours of future borders or refugees. It is not even about the existence of a Palestinian state. Arab terrorism against Jews is about the existence of a Jewish presence and it has been for ages. So… Where’s the coverage?

National Post of Canada Columnist Robert Fulford seems to have grasped something that the organizers of the Celebrate Israel Parade, New York City’s Jewish Community Relations Council and United Jewish Federation, apparently have not yet comprehended; the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel) is anti-Semitic. Fulford wonders why it is that so many people don’t recognize the obvious, or don’t want to.

He observes,

In devising their purposes the BDS campaigners have never shown even the beginning of a sense of proportion. It’s remarkable that the world needs a 29-year-old movie star to point this out.

Fulford notices that,

Like the great majority of Americans in the film industry, Johansson is a liberal Democrat. She took part in the last three presidential elections and raised money for Barack Obama.

But according to Fulford, Johansson apparently possesses a quality that most in her crowd lack.

Unlike many who fall into that category, she also thinks for herself.

The May issue of Vanity Fair carries a cover story about Johansson. The author of the piece, Lili Anolik, asked her how she explains why she has been viciously criticized for the SodaStream ads. Johansson answered, “There’s a lot of anti-Semitism out there.”