06/01 Links Pt2: Intellectual Antisemites and the Left; Why BDS is antisemitic

From Ian:

---

Intellectual Antisemites and the Left

A recent example shows just how this works. (There are plenty of others, like professors Puar of Rutgers and Karega of Oberlin, but I’ll focus on a less widely reported example.)
An April article in Tablet tells of a Stanford University professor of Comparative Literature, David Palumbo-Liu. Comparative Literature is a very high-brow field. A generation ago the deconstructionist gospel, inculcating a sophisticated nihilism with leftist inflections, was received there first and remains alive and well. From Stanford’s heights, Professor Palumbo-Liu looked down upon mainstream media’s coverage of Israel and lo, it was not good. He thus told his readers to direct their attention to more reliable sites. “Look at Mondoweiss, the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the American Friends Service Committee, Electronic Intifada, If Americans Knew,” he wrote.
Okay, let’s look. The first three are fiercely anti-Israel voices of what I guess one must still call the Left. The Electronic Intifada is a straightforward Palestinian propaganda site. But If Americans Knew is something entirely different, namely an “anti-Zionist” website run by a woman named Alison Weir. Weir, as the Tablet Magazine piece explains, is in fact a classic Jew-hater, who even spreads the modern blood libel canards. Palumbo-Liu, soon realizing his tactical error in citing the site, quickly backtracked: “While the organization If Americans Knew, which was previously listed here, provides much useful information from reliable, neutral sources, I disagree with many of the public comments of its director. I have removed the original reference to prevent any confusion.”
Too late, Professor. As always, the gaffe is in telling the truth. This high-brow Stanford professor takes his “reliable information” from a Jew-hating blood-libeler.
Too late, too, it turns out, for Jewish Voice for Peace. In 2015 they published an open letter claiming to dissociate themselves from If Americans Knew, citing good evidence of Weir’s outright antisemitism. But, six months later, as chronicled on the blog Legal Insurrection, JVP cohosted a talk by Weir in Cleveland. So much for the dissociation.
Mondoweiss, for its part, hosted a round-table with various opinions about whether Weir is antisemitic and if so, whether that matters. That roundtable reveals wonderfully how the process of assimilation of Jew-hatred works. Thus, Susan Landau (who proclaims herself vigilantly against antisemitism) still thinks that “Differences within our movement exist; we stifle them to our peril.” And Russ Greenleaf defends Weir outright: when she appears with right-wing antisemites she is only trying to educate them, of course.
For such people, in a word, there’s really no reason not to associate with antisemites.

IsraellyCool: WATCH: Sign The Petition For Speakers Trust

Here’s the introductory video for a petition that has been started over the Leanne Mohamad, Wanstead High School hate speech video.
I know the outcry we’ve started over this 3 minute video is going to mean it’s seen by many more people than would otherwise have seen it. We may end up turning Leanne Mohamad into some sort of minor child star like Shirley Temper. I’m willing to accept that.
The reason I’m doing this and keeping the pressure on is that I see it as a test case. Her 3 minute video contains no new claims. Lies like that are repeated ad-nauseum any time two or three Jew hating BDSHoles are gathered together. Her video was short and to the point and it was delivered by a child, to children with the connivance of a multitude of adults. That’s why it represents a test.
If we can’t make reasonable un-aligned people in the UK understand why this video is so bad, then the UK will continue to become increasingly toxic for Jews. Jews will be forced not just to keep quiet about Israel but to outright denounce the Jewish State over and over again.
We’re fighting a cognitive war to get the truth to displace their lies.

Martin Kramer: The Return of Bernard Lewis

Forty years ago, nobody foresaw the rise of radical Islam—except for the preeminent historian who both predicted and explained it, and much else besides.
As the year 1976 opened, the Middle East hardly seem poised for a great transformation. The shah of Iran remained firmly seated on his peacock throne. Off in Iraqi exile, an elderly Iranian cleric named Ayatollah Khomeini nursed his grievances in obscurity. Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s confident president, had the country under his thumb; the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots languished in ineffectual opposition. In Saudi Arabia, a young man named Osama bin Laden finished his education in an elite high school, where he had worn a tie and blazer. Since the previous summer, Lebanon had been roiled by battles, according to Western reportage, between “leftists” and “rightists.” A key player there was the Palestine Liberation Organization under Yasir Arafat, darling of the international left and champion of a “democratic, secular state” in Palestine.
The role of Islam in politics? There wasn’t any to speak of.
Imagine, then, the surprise of the readers of Commentary magazine when the January issue landed in their mailboxes bearing these words on the bright yellow cover: “The Return of Islam.” The byline beneath that sensational headline did not belong to a roving journalist or a think-tank pundit but to Bernard Lewis, the eminent British historian of the Middle East, just recently transplanted to America. Thus did the West receive its very first warning that a new era was beginning in the Middle East—one that would produce a tide of revolution, assassination, and terrorism, conceived and executed explicitly in the name of Islam.

On the Road in Israel

When I was twenty-four years old, I moved to Jerusalem. It was basically my junior year abroad, only three years after my actual junior year. I took some Hebrew, began Arabic lessons, and enrolled in a few graduate level classes at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but I did not take these studies very seriously. I spent weekends in Tel Aviv, south Sinai, and the Galilee. I also hung out in East Jerusalem—where I discovered what real hummus tastes like; sorry, Israelis—and ventured into the West Bank any number of times. By the standards set by the second intifada, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians at the time was fairly tame. The first Palestinian uprising was winding down before I even arrived in Israel. Once I got to know the city pretty well, I would walk from the university through Sheikh Jarrah and from there to Damascus Gate for the above referenced hummus. I’d ride the 29 (or was it the 23?) Aleph bus through East Jerusalem just to see if it would get stoned—this was a few years before Palestinian suicide-bombers began blowing up buses. I do not actually remember much in the way of bloodshed during my year living on French Hill, though I am sure there was violence.
I have been back sporadically over the years, most recently last week after my travels in Tunisia and Egypt. It had been eight years since my last visit. There is nothing like some ground truth for much-needed perspective. The debates that occupy us in Washington, and the West more generally, about Israel, its conflict with the Palestinians, and the country’s role in the world seem, well, either small, divorced from reality, or both when confronted with the actual experience of contemporary Israel. Here is what I learned:
The Israelis feel vindicated and they have a point. For as long as anyone can remember, Israelis and their supporters around the world have been arguing that the conflict with the Palestinians is not the cause of the Middle East’s various problems. It did not matter because the world insisted on “linkage”—after Operation Desert Storm in 1991, there was a big push to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the final report of the Iraq Study Group (released in December 2006) called on the Bush administration to pursue peace; and, recently, King Abdullah II of Jordan as well as the Swedish foreign minister suggested that resolving the Palestinian issue will somehow make the self-declared Islamic State go away. It is obvious that the combination of dispossession and occupation has radicalized the Palestinian political arena, offered various extremist groups rhetorical justification for bloodshed, and provided an endless trough of fodder for Arab intellectuals and their fellow travelers. That said, the linkage argument that reduced almost anything and everything to “the conflict” was always weak. Now, with Syria consumed by violence, Iraq struggling with the political forces that have been pulling it apart since the U.S. invasion in 2003, Yemen failing, Libya fragmenting, and Egypt lurching from crisis to crisis, the Israelis say, “You see, none of this has anything to do with us or the Palestinians.” They are correct.

Why BDS is antisemitic

BDS is a global campaign against Israel and only Israel. It seeks to foment sufficient emotional anger with Israel, and with only Israel, so that people around the world will want to punish Israel, and only Israel.
We are free to criticize whoever we want to criticize and people attracted by BDS are critical about other human rights abuses too; but this specific punishment, exclusion from the global community, is proposed only against Israel. BDS cannot be defended as free speech; it goes beyond speech into action. See this debate for more on the issues of singling out Israel; the debate continues here.
BDS says that it seeks to punish only Israeli institutions and not to silence or exclude Israeli individuals. This is not true. Israeli individuals, academics, athletes, artists, actors, film-makers, work inside Israeli institutions; where else could they work? If BDS demands that Israelis should not be part of institutions then it puts an eccentric demand on Israelis. Follow this link for what happened when the BDS movement tried to disrupt a Hebrew production of Merchant of Venice in London.
The BDS demand that for Israelis to be accepted in the global community they have to emigrate, and so not be part of Israeli institutions, is a claim about the essential illegitimacy of the Israeli state. See ‘The Myth of the Institutional Boycott‘ for more on this.

Over 1000 Academics Sign Anti-BDS Petition

Faculty associations have been a focus of anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activity.
Unlike at universities, where there are counter-balancing constituencies, such associations can be hijacked by relatively small percentages of the membership, who take over committees and national councils. This allows the agenda to turn away fein the academic purposes of the organization, and instead, to turn the organizations into anti-Israel activist platforms.
We have seen that play out at the American Studies Association and some smaller associations. The American Anthropological Association just finished membership voting on a BDS resolution, but the results have not been announced.
The faculty association warfare on Israel is getting very personal:
The Academic Council for Israel, a relatively new group, has issued a press release announcing that over 1000 Academics have signed an anti-BDS Petition (I was a signatory):

Israel's UN envoy: BDS is the true face of modern anti-Semitism

Over 2,000 students filled the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday for a conference sponsored by the Israeli mission on how best to combat a movement on many U.S. campuses calling for a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians.
Taking place in the same hall where, 40 years ago, 72 nations voted to equate Zionism with racism, Israel's Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon called the conference a "historic" event.
Separately, Palestinian Ambassador Riyad Mansour dismissed the conference as "no big deal."
The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement seeks to ostracize Israel by lobbying corporations, artists and academic institutions to sever ties with the Jewish state. Supporters say the boycott is aimed at furthering Palestinian independence, and they have modeled their efforts on an earlier campaign against apartheid South Africa. Critics say the campaign is aimed at delegitimizing Israel itself.
"BDS is not about helping the Palestinians or bringing peace. Their only goal is to bring an end to the Jewish state. This is the reality and we won't be afraid to say it out loud, everywhere. BDS is the true face of modern anti-Semitism," Danon said in his opening remarks.

Why I Am Standing for Israel at the UN

For decades, the State of Israel has been battling bullets and bombs. Now, a new weapon is being used against our most cherished ally – a weapon that poses grave danger.
The rise of anti-Israel sentiments is apparent in this country and worldwide. A product of that hatred is the BDS Movement. BDS – Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions – a long-term global effort created by enemies of Israel to delegitimize the State of Israel.
Make no mistake about it: The unambiguous goal of the international BDS Movement is the elimination of the State of Israel.
The BDS Movement is a serious new threat designed to cripple Israel economically and politically.
The fact is that activities and events fostering an environment of intimidation and marginalization of Jewish citizens have seen a marked upswing on college and university campuses around the country, but the issue is not limited to the academic arena.

'Son of Hamas' attends anti-BDS conference

Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of one Hamas founder Hassan Yousef who in the past served as an undercover agent for the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), attended the Building Bridges Not Boycotts international summit at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York Tuesday, an event against the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Yousef, whose code name was “The Green Prince”, risked his life working undercover for the Shin Bet, and during that time he supplied information that prevented dozens of suicide attacks and assassinations of Israelis and exposed numerous Hamas terrorist cells.
He ultimately converted to Christianity and fled to the United States where he was granted political asylum.
At the conference, Yousef was seen with several armed bodyguards - apparently out of concern that an Islamist organization would try to assassinate him.

#StopBDS


SodaStream CEO: To Improve Your Company’s Sales, Get Attacked by BDS Movement

While the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign aims to hurt Israeli companies, the movement’s actions have actually had the opposite effect, the head of a major Israeli company told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Ambassadors Against BDS International Summit at the United Nations, Daniel Birnbaum, the CEO of popular home soda-maker SodaStream, said that when people ask him whether there is a correlation between BDS and his company’s profits, his answer is always yes.
“The more active the BDS movement was in a certain market of ours, the more successful we have been,” he said. “In the course of the last six to seven years, when BDS was attacking SodaStream, we grew from a $90 million revenue company to more than $400 million. I encourage any company that wants to grow its sales to be attacked by the BDS movement.”
SodaStream made headlines in January 2014 when Hollywood actress and company spokeswoman Scarlett Johansson was harshly criticized by the BDS movement for a Super Bowl commercial endorsing the product. At the time, SodaStream operated one of its factories in the Mishor Adumim industrial park in the West Bank. It has since shut the plant down and moved inside the Green Line to a larger facility, which, Birnbaum said, was not done “because of BDS.”

SodaStream launches home-made beer system

The Israeli home drinks maker saw its share price soar after the announcement.
Israeli home water maker SodaStream international (TASE: SODA; Nasdaq: SODA) has launched its new home beer system, the Beer Bar. The brand allows consumers to make quality home-crafted beer using sparkling water and a unique beer concentrate.
The Beer Bar was unveiled with a light beer called Blondie that the company claims has a smooth authentic taste, and a hop filled aroma. The Beer Bar enables consumers to concoct crafted beer in seconds by adding Blondie concentrate to Sparkling Water. Blondie contains 4.5% alcohol by volume, the average level found in most global beer brands. A one liter Blondie bottle yields approximately three liters of beer
"We are excited to launch a brand dedicated to serving the global growing trend of home crafted beer," says Daniel Birnbaum, Chief Executive Officer of SodaStream. "Our core carbonation technology and distribution infrastructure provide a great platform for us to extend our business into this emerging category, and we choose to do so with a dedicated beer brand."

SodaStream -Island of Peace #StopBDS


4 alternative arguments against BDS

The typical anti-BDS argument usually goes something along the lines of this:
“Well if you boycott Israel and then you would be boycotting the place that gave you your cell phone technology, disk drives and Waze! And do you really want to boycott the only democracy in the Middle East? Israel is a beacon of hope in a sea of chaos and authoritarianism.”
I’ve gotten quite sick of hearing this argument, even though the facts in it are true. There’s something about it that doesn’t appeal to the senses, combined with the fact that it’s repeated over and over again by StandWithUs and like organizations.
On May 31, the Israeli Mission to the United Nations hosted an anti-BDS conference titled “Building Bridges, Not Boycotts” at the United Nations in New York City, one of the largest anti-BDS gatherings of its kind. In honor of this event, I’ve decided to put together a list of underappreciated, humanistic reasons why the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is not the path toward peace:
1. BDS disincentivizes diplomacy
2. It’s not being used in the same context as the U.S. Civil Rights or Indian Independence Movements.
3. Omar Barghouti
4. Even PA President Mahmoud Abbas doesn’t support a full-fledged boycott of Israel

'A constant barrage of anti-Israeli propaganda at UCLA'

Oleg Ivanov, a member of the diplomacy and public policy group Jewish Diplomatic Corps (JDCorps), spoke to Arutz Sheva about his organization's struggle against the BDS boycott movement targeting Israel, and about rising anti-Semitism on college campuses.
Ivanov is a student at UCLA, where the BDS movement has a particularly strong presence.
He noted on a rising trend on campus since 2014 Operation Protective Edge, by which Zionist and Jewish students in general have faced an anti-Semitic backlash of having their loyalty questioned.
Ivanov revealed he now has to work to defend from these anti-Semitic accusations in ways that he didn't have to before.
Among the key anti-Israel groups on campus are Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Students Association, which "go out of their way to single out Israel specifically as being the great pariah state, not just in the Middle East but in the world."

Student Body Poised to Embrace BDS at Portland State University

On June 6, the Associated Students of Portland State University (ASPSU) will vote on a resolution recommending that the university rescind all connections with Israeli companies that ASPSU says “have been found to profit from human rights violations against Palestinian civilians by the Israeli government.”
The resolution singles out four companies that help “deny Palestinians basic civil rights;” they are G4S PLC, HP, Motorola Solutions, and Caterpillar. A preliminary debate took place on May 23, which led some students to believe that the measure has the support to pass. Although this will be Portland State University (PSU)’s first time voting on BDS, the students seem to be well acquainted with the claim that Israel is an apartheid state and human rights violator.
In a recent video, Ami Horowitz visited PSU to see how many students would give money to Hamas, a terrorist organization that calls for the destruction of Israel and uses its own people as human shields.

Anti-Israel UC Irvine Students Peacefully Scare the Crap Out of Jewish Students (satire)

The UC Irvine chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) disrupted a showing of the Israeli film “Beneath the Helmet” by yelling obscenities, physically blocking students, and attempting to force their way into the room where the event was being held.
When asked for comment, SJP President Celine Qussiny expressed pride over how the organization peacefully physically intimidated the participating students. She also maintained there is nothing wrong with the situation escalated to the point where police had to escort fearful Jewish attendees. “I think it’s great! Including law enforcement increases the diversity of the people involved in this Middle East debate and ushers in fresh ideas and discussion.”
She also wanted to make very clear that the organization differentiates between the Zionists they target and the Jewish students. “We don’t accept anti-Semitism, but we are indeed anti-Zionists. If it was up to me I would eliminate all the Zionists from campus. Although Zionists are mostly Jews, so odds are if you’re a Jew there is a good chance you are a Zionist. We only rough-up these coupon herders because we want to end the Israeli occupation. Anyway, what was the question again?”

Facebook, Twitter Pledge to Take Down Hate Speech in 24 Hours or Less

In partnership with the European Union, social media giants Facebook, Twitter, along with Google and Microsoft, have all pledged to stop online hate speech in less than 24 hours.
A new code of conduct would act to "quickly and efficiently" remove any message that singles out a person's or group's race, religion, nationality, etc. Though pitched as a way to stop the spread of terrorism online in the wake of the ISIS attacks in Paris and Brussels, the speech code would include anything considered racist, homophobic, or anti-Semitic by the companies.
A statement by Karen White, Twitter's head of public policy for Europe, said:
We remain committed to letting the Tweets flow. However, there is a clear distinction between freedom of expression and conduct that incites violence and hate.
Facebook's head of global policy management Monika Bicker said:
With a global community of 1.6 billion people we work hard to balance giving people the power to express themselves whilst ensuring we provide a respectful environment. There’s no place for hate speech on Facebook.
Speaking on behalf of the EU was Commissioner Vera Jourova, in charge of justice, consumers and gender equality, said there's "no place online" for hate speech.

Jewish groups welcome FB, Twitter pledge to crack down on hate speech

Jewish groups welcomed a pledge by four internet giants to crack down on online hate speech, though some questioned the firms’ commitment to act.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft on Tuesday signed a code of conduct with the European Commission that requires them to delete the majority of reported illegal hate speech within 24 hours, The Telegraph reported.
The European Jewish Congress offered an “enthusiastic welcome” to the code of conduct in a statement Tuesday, but the World Jewish Congress reacted more coolly in a statement the same day, voicing “skepticism about the commitment of these firms to effectively police their respective platforms.”
YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and others “already have clear guidelines in place aimed at preventing the spread of offensive content, yet they have so far utterly failed to properly implement their own rules,” the CEO of the World Jewish Congress, Robert Singer, said in the statement.
“Tens of thousands of despicable video clips continue to be made available although their existence has been reported to YouTube and despite the fact that they are in clear violation of the platform’s own guidelines prohibiting racist hate speech. … Nonetheless, YouTube gives the impression that it has been cracking down on such content. Alas, the reality is that so far it hasn’t.”

Israeli Lawfare Warrior: Facebook Lip Service to European ‘Code of Conduct’ Won’t Stop Online Incitement Leading to Murder in Streets of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv

The problem that Facebook, Twitter and other social-media outlets need to tackle is not merely hate speech, but incitement that leads to murder in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, an Israeli lawfare warrior told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.
Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, founder and chairwoman of Shurat HaDin-The Israel Law Center, was responding to the release of a “Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online,” a document produced by the European Commission (EC) and signed by Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube.
The social-media giants in question, said Darshan-Leitner, who is in the midst of conducting a class-action suit against Facebook in the United States, “have to do something real, not just pay lip service to the European Commission. In order to put a stop to incitement, they have to be vigilant about locating, monitoring and removing it. Signing a document and patting themselves on the back for doing so has no meaning whatsoever.”
As Darshan-Leitner — listed last year by both Forbes and Israeli financial newspaper Globes as among Israel’s 50 most influential women – told The Algemeiner last October, “Though freedom of expression is a democratic ideal, both morally and legally, it cannot be without limits.”
At the time, she also scoffed at the notion that the massive traffic on social media makes combating incitement and antisemitism almost impossible.
“It is ridiculous to say that Facebook cannot monitor these things,” she said. “Notice its millions of algorithms that know exactly what you like to wear and eat, who your friends are, what music you’re interested in, etc. How else do ads aimed specifically at you mysteriously appear in your feed and on the side of the page? If it’s got algorithms for consumer purposes, it can have algorithms for other purposes, as well.”

Rachel Shabi gets it wrong on Lieberman and two states

An op-ed by Rachel Shabi (a frequent Guardian contributor) published in the Independent on May 30th included the following claim concerning the position of Israel’s new defense minister Avigdor Lieberman on the issue of the two-state solution.
“The man now in charge of the Israeli army and the military occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank…has vowed there will never be a Palestinian state,
However, the claim that Lieberman vowed “there will never be a Palestinian state” ignores positions he’s taken consistently since 2009 – covered widely in the media – that he supports the creation of a Palestinian state.
He wrote, in a letter to the New York Jewish Week in early 2009, that he “advocates the creation of a viable Palestinian state.” A month later, he told Time Magazine that he would evacuate his own home in the settlement of Nokdim if a peace agreement with the Palestinians is reached.
In fact, even the Independent, in a July 17, 2012 report by Catrina Stewart (Could corruption trial stop the rise of the black sheep of Israeli politics?), acknowledged that Lieberman supports a two-state solution.

Golden Dawn lawmaker says Israel ‘eternal enemy’ of Greeks, Christians

Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos called on the Justice Ministry to take action against a neo-Nazi lawmaker after he made anti-Israel comments in parliament.
Speaking during a debate in parliament on Monday, Christos Pappas, from the Golden Dawn party, called Israel an “eternal enemy of Greece and Orthodoxy.”
Pappas was speaking during a debate on the ratification of Greece’s international agreements with other countries.
“The state of Israel implements genocidal methods and is a regional troublemaker,” he said, according to the Kathemirini newspaper, asking how “a state like Israel could possibly have relations with Greece, which is the cradle of civilization and humanism.”
Defense Minister Kammenos, a member of the nationalist Independent Greeks party, called Pappas’ remarks racist and xenophobic and called on the justice ministry to take action against him.
Kammenos has himself in the past been criticized for anti-Semitic comments, after claiming in 2014 that Greek Jews paid fewer taxes than other Greeks, but since taking up the position as defense minister has overseen increasingly warm ties with Israel.

Teen arrested for allegedly smashing Holocaust memorial in Poland

A teenager in Poland was arrested for allegedly smashing a Holocaust monument and scrawling anti-Semitic slogans and a neo-Nazi symbol on it.
The 16-year-old had escaped from a state juvenile care center, the PAP news agency reported Tuesday, quoting a police spokeswoman. The teenager did not say why he smashed the Star of David on the monument in Rajgrod, in northeast Poland, the spokeswoman said.
Police said the boy last week spray-painted offensive slogans and Odin’s cross, a neo-Nazi and white supremacist symbol, on the monument. The slogans were “Send you the gas” and “F— the whores,” according to police.
The monument in Rajgord, 130 miles from Warsaw, was previously vandalized in 2015, some six months after its unveiling.
“We welcome the news that the alleged perpetrator has been arrested,” said Gideon Taylor, chair of operations of The World Jewish Restitution Organization.

Europe backs employers' right to ban kippot, head coverings

The European Union's senior legal advisor has declared that employers are within their rights to forbid workers from wearing religious articles, including kippot, headscarves and crucifixes.
The issue arose when security company G4S fired a Muslim receptionist in Belgium, after she refused to remove her head covering. Lawyers representing the receptionist claimed that the move violated the EU's anti-discrimination laws.
Juliane Kokott, the advocate general at the European Court of Justice, says that G4S is allowed to set a "policy of strict religious and ideological neutrality" by banning garments representing all religions equally.
"There is nothing in the present case to indicate that an individual was ‘treated less favorably,'" she wrote. "While an employee cannot 'leave' his sex, skin color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age or disability 'at the door,' he may be expected to moderate the exercise of religion in the workplace.

Airport Executives from 40 Countries to Visit Israel for Security Lessons

With concern rising after a string of terror attacks, airport representatives from 40 countries will visit Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport next month to learn about Ben-Gurion’s innovative security procedures.
Ben-Gurion is one of the world’s safest airports—no flight departing Israel has ever been hijacked, and there hasn’t been a terrorist attack at Ben-Gurion since 1972. The layers of security are largely unnoticed by the more than 16 million passengers who arrive and embark there annually.
The first layer occurs in Ben-Gurion’s Airport Security Operations Center, which monitors every flight in the area and conducts background checks on every passenger and flight crew scheduled to pass through Israeli airspace. Around ten flights per day are flagged for security irregularities and checked further, Dvir Rubinshtein, operations center manager for the Israeli Ministry of Transportation, explained to CNN. “There is, every day, a situation where we have such concerns [about a flight],” he said, “and we check that and verify that everything is security cleared.”
Because of its record, other nations are looking into adopting Israeli security methods for their airports. “Most of the countries are actually coming here often to see how Israel is dealing with security aviation and the threats from terror aviation,” Rubinshtein said.
Aviation security expert Shalom Dolev told CNN that “some [of Ben-Gurion’s] fundamental principles and some best practices can be deployed in other parts of the world,” but because of its relatively smaller size, “it’s not a copy and paste because it’s not a situation where one size fits all.”

For $20M, These Israeli Hackers Will Spy On Any Phone On The Planet

With just a few million dollars and a phone number, you can snoop on any call or text that phone makes – no matter where you are or where the device is located.
That’s the bold claim of Israel’s Ability Inc, which offers its set of bleeding-edge spy tools to governments the world over. And it’s plotting to flog its kit to American cops in the coming months.
Unlimited spying
Ability’s most startling product, from both technical and price perspectives, is the Unlimited Interception System (ULIN). Launched in November last year, it can cost as much as $20 million, depending on how many targets the customer wants to surveil. All a ULIN customer requires is the target’s phone number or the IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity), the unique identifier for an individual mobile device. Got those? Then boom – you can spy on a target’s location, calls and texts.
This capability is far more advanced than that of IMSI-catchers (widely known as StingRays), currently used by police departments in the United States. IMSI-catchers can help acquire a target’s IMSI number, as well as snoop on mobiles, but only if the target is within range.
ULIN has no such geographic limitation. A quarterly update document posted only on May 2, spells out the tech’s power: “ULIN enables interception of voice calls, SMS messages and call-related information of GSM/UMTS/LTE phones, without the need to be close to the intercepted phone and without the consent of mobile network operators and requires only the mobile device’s phone number or IMSI. Customers can use ULIN to intercept calls, and gather other information, from anywhere in the world.”

Ultimate family bike maker raises $1 million in one day

The Taga Ultimate Family Bicycle raised more than $1 million in its first 24 hours on Kickstarter, making the Israeli design and engineering firm behind the campaign the undisputed kings of May crowdfunding campaigns.
“WOW. We’re overwhelmed. We’ve reached our goal in 8 minutes and a million dollars in under 24h. This is crazy. The support we’re getting from you is unbelievable. Thank you!! We will not rest until each and every one of you is super happy. Scout’s honor,” writes the Taga team to supporters.
The Taga 2.0 family bike is actually the second in a series. The idea for the Taga Bike first came about in 2007. By 2008, a production line in Taiwan was inaugurated and by the following year the Taga 1.0 convertible bike-stroller was selling in more than 40 countries.
In 2014, the Taga team created new plans for the Taga 2.0 and launched it on Kickstarter in May. Two versions — standard and electric — have add-on features including a sun hood, headrests, accessory bar and cargo holds.

Support for same-sex unions in Israel soars

Support for gay civil unions or marriage has sharply risen among Israelis to a strong majority over the past year, according to a poll released on Wednesday.
According to the poll, conducted by the Israeli civil equality advocacy group Hiddush, 76 percent of respondents answered in the affirmative to the question: “In your opinion, should civil marriage/civil partnerships be available for same-sex couples?”
In 2009, only a slim majority of Jewish Israelis said “yes” to the above question. In 2015 public support rose to 64%.
The poll, which was conducted via telephone on May 24-25 among 500 people, surveyed the Israeli public across religious and political lines.
In Israel, though same-sex marriage is not technically illegal, there is no institution authorized to carry it out. In a system inherited from Ottoman times, people can only marry in Israel through their religious institutions: Jewish couples must marry through the Chief Rabbinate, and Christians, Druze and Muslims all marry through their own state-sanctioned and publicly funded religious systems.

‘Orange is New Black’ star: Israel has no ugly women

On her first visit to Israel and its main gay pride parade, “Orange is the New Black” star Lea DeLaria said the Jewish state seems to have no unattractive women.
“There are apparently no ugly women in Israel,” DeLaria, a lesbian who plays the character of a butch lesbian prison inmate on the hit television comedy series, told Ynet in jest during an interview Tuesday upon her arrival in the country as a guest of Israel’s Tourism Ministry.
“I’ve not seen one ugly woman yet, but I can’t figure it out because I’ve seen, I’ve definitely seen ugly men here.”
The 2013 debut of “Orange Is the New Black” garnered 16 Emmy Award nominations, winning four awards and set viewership records, according to Netflix, the online streaming television giant that produced the series. Netflix does not publish the specifics of its viewership statistics, but DeLaria told Ynet the series had reached more than 80 million viewers worldwide.
The series follows an upper-class woman’s trials in federal prison, including the strains it places on her Jewish life partner. Lesbian sex is a constant theme in the series, including in the life of the protagonist.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More

Missionaries of Hate: American Evangelicals Spread Gay Hate in Uganda: Extension

This should have been an update to: Missionaries of Hate: American Evangelicals Spread Gay Hate in Uganda: Updated but the thing just grew and grew, so now it's a post. But it ain't all bitterness and hate, it gets progressively lighter as you move on down the page.

Further gay hate reading at the link, includes the first video below.

Arizona "Pro-Family" Group Linked to Campaigning for Gay Discrimination within the UN; Uganda "Kill the Gays" Pastor

h/t Maren.



From the clip:

''If you want to join in the fight against extremism, call, People for the American Way.''

Americans, what are they like? Americans don't do irony, but I do.

''It is no slogan that America remains the most resolutely religious country on God's great earth, and it is no slogan that America will always occupy a special place in God's heart.'' George HW Bush.

Yes of course, he his after all very much like yourselves, a petty, vengeful, jealous, genocidal maniac.

God wilfully directs or commands the wholesale slaughter of thousands of men, women, children and animals, for no other reason than that "his" people should have their land. The Village Atheist

And who better to carry out God's work than you lot? You are after all ''His'' people.

Here's a video below, showing America carrying out God's work. He really must have had a special place in his heart for America on that day. And one or two others. What was the butchers bill for that little genocidal jolly, three, or was it four million?

God bless America.




Featured at: Least We Forget: Fuck America Nothing further to see.




Featured at: USAF: A Most Ungodly Organisation A Perfect foil for the clip above. I think I've got that arse about, what harm.




Comment and plenty more clips of hired killers getting their freak on for Jesus at: US Army: Bible Bashing For Jesus




Featured at: "I was ashamed to be an American today" One clip on the Fred & Wilma Museum, and one on a schoolboard's persecution of a sixteen year old atheist schoolgirl.




Featured at: These People Are Insane More clips.




Featured at: These People Are Insane More clips.




Pat Robertson's true colours come shining through, and it ain't purple. But just as importantly see how he is being coached (supposedly off air) and the talk of better screening for the telephone calls he is to receive. And all this on that nice Mister Larry King's Show. Shurely Shome Mishtake?




Gay Marriage: End of the world for some Christians. Catch the second fellow, he has a vote!






He does come in for some stick, does poor old Mr Winky.




Bill Maher on the homophobic Jerry Falwell.







Maher on Mormons.




Might I remind you that there is a man, two in fact, that aspire to become the next President of the United States of America, who believe this shit.

Featured at: Utah Tops The Wanking League More, ''everything you wanted to know about batshit crazy religions'' including the best ''Scientology explained'' clip that I have come across. Strap in, five point harness and airbag essential, check your brain at the door.




Spitting Image, Bush 41




Well he would be wouldn't he, he is after all an American.




Religion ala Eddie Izzard.




Rowan Atkinson Amazing Jesus


Further comment and clips.

"..after the slaying of Tiller the Killer" Loads o' crazies.

It's a Funny Old World SC "Foetus for Jesus" monument. Strap in.

United States Air Force AKA The Ministry Of Truth Interesting story on USAF censorship. We trust you to bomb shit out of people with multi-million dollar war planes, but we don't trust you enough to let you read blogs. Nasty old bloggers!

Admiral Mike Mullen Talks Shite Includes a Bill Hicks clip.

Who Would Jesus Kill? Ex Marine Colonel Totally Mad Strap in!

"we should not condone immoral (Gay) acts" Said top General, taking time out from genocide in Iraq.

Warmongering vs. the Sanctity of Life Hypocrisy at its best.

A Horror Story: Depleted Uranium Text only, you really wouldn't want to see a video of that.

Although there are stills showing the effects of DU (and bucket loads of hypocrisy) featured in the two posts below.

The United States of America The Greatest Nation of Hypocrites on Earth (Graphic)

Onward Christian Soldiers (Graphic)

Read More

Ivan Hightower: America is still dead

Well he's not really called Ivan Hightower, but this article falls into my Ivan/China taking the high moral ground category, articles of which I have to say, are becoming ever more common. (Search this blog: high moral ground)

No, as you can see by the header, the author is one, David R. Hoffman. I shall look to him at the bottom of the page, but for the present, if you find yourself on the same hymn-sheet as both Hoffman and myself, you might like to sing along. My emphasis.

America is still dead
David R. Hoffman
03.10.2011

"Greetings:

If you are reading this, the President of the United States has declared you to be a terrorist or enemy combatant. As a result, you will be detained without charge or trial, tortured, and/or extrajudicially executed. You are not entitled to any legal due process, you have no civil rights, and there is absolutely no need for the United States government to prove any of the allegations it has made against you, even if you are a citizen of the United States.

Sincerely, Barack Obama"

Throughout much of its history, America had a Bill of Rights that protected the fundamental freedoms of its citizens, as well as a "check-and-balance" system that ensured no government institution, branch or individual would ever obtain unbridled power.

But all that ended with the recent extrajudicial execution of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. And while most politicians and pundits are opportunistically applauding al-Awlaki's death, a few perceptive Americans are growing increasingly concerned about the unprecedented powers the executive branch of government is assuming.
Share

Under those powers, American citizens can now be illegally detained, even within America's own borders, as was illustrated in the case of Abdullah al-Kidd, who, despite never being charged with a crime, was held for more than two weeks in high security cells and repeatedly strip-searched and shackled. In addition, American citizens like Bradley Manning and Jose Padilla were tortured in American military prisons, and now American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was deliberately marked for death.

Tragically, but not surprisingly, America's federal judicial system, the branch of government best positioned to halt these abuses, has done everything in its power to ensure that government-sanctioned kidnappers, torturers and murderers evade any semblance of justice.

The United States supreme court, for example, recently proclaimed that al-Kidd could not sue former attorney-general John Ashcroft, the official primarily responsible for al-Kidd's detention and abuse, because Ashcroft was legally "immunized" against such lawsuits; a federal judge in South Carolina dismissed the case filed by torture victim Padilla against former government official Donald Rumsfeld on the grounds that granting Padilla a trial would create "an international spectacle"; and when al-Awlaki's father attempted to have his son's name removed from the American government's "kill list," a federal judge decreed that Anwar al-Awlaki had to argue for this removal himself-a ruling that creates a ludicrous and perverse Catch-22 for persons on this list, because seeking legal redress in America to prevent their extrajudicial executions would also heighten their chances of being extrajudicially executed before they ever reached the courthouse.

The "Nobel Peace Prize Winning" Obama and his cronies have also done everything in their power to promote illegal detentions, torture and the extrajudicial executions of American citizens. Attorney General Eric Holder, a self-professed paradigm of "integrity" who demonstrates far too little of it, refused to prosecute corrupt CIA officials who, in defiance of a court order, destroyed videotapes that depicted the torture of detainees. And, in a revelation exposed by Wikileaks, it was discovered that Obama strong-armed foreign governments to prevent them from filing torture and/or war crimes charges against Bush and/or his minions.
(I think I can stop here, for it's all pretty obvious, especially for those that can carry a tune, it's just a case of finding a suitable hymn for the occasion, but that in itself, might be no easy task.)

But, in at least one respect, Obama may be even worse than Bush, because he is-according to a recent article by Matt Apuzzo of the Associated Press-the first United States president in history to intentionally target an American citizen for extrajudicial execution.

George W. Bush once said that terrorists hate America because of its freedoms. But it was Bush and his minions, not the terrorists, who did the most to undermine human rights, democracy and freedom in America. Yet as Obama continues to morph into George W. Bush (as Steven Thomma of McClatchy Newspapers so accurately observed) there has scarcely been a whimper of protest.

What are the reasons behind this deafening silence as America's most basic rights and freedoms are being eroded by the very people sworn to protect them? Why, in a nation that professes to fear the intrusiveness and overreaching of "big" government, aren't the streets overrun with protesters enraged about the unchecked and unconstitutional powers the president of the United States has usurped? Why isn't there commensurate outrage directed against the corrupt legal system, led by amoral men like Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy, who are not only enabling governmental abuses of power, but incessantly dismantling democracy and fundamental freedoms as well? Why are Americans so comfortable with the fact that torturers, war criminals, and murderers can not only evade justice, but also live freely among them?

One possible reason is that freedom to most Americans simply means the ability to conspicuously consume. Almost all the recent protests over health care reform and government spending are really about one thing: The desire to pay less in taxes, because paying less tax means having more disposable income to purchase that bigger house, fancier car, and whatever new trinkets modern technology offers. And as long as one is watching that big screen television, playing with that IPad, or "tweeting" that celebrity, it's easy to remain oblivious to the fact that your countrymen are being tortured and killed by their own government, your freedoms are being decimated, and your politicians are being bought and paid for by billionaires and corporate dollars.

A second reason for this silence was discussed in a Pravda.Ru article entitled Welcome to the Village (October 25, 2010). This article's title was inspired by the prophetic 1960s television drama The Prisoner, which starred the late Patrick McGoohan.

McGoohan's character (known only as "Number Six") is a disgruntled government employee who angrily resigns from his position, only to be kidnapped and transported to "The Village"-a bucolic yet sinister place where residents are constantly spied upon by a omnipresent overseer, known only as "Number Two."

My article explained how many of the fictional surveillance techniques used in "The Village" have now become reality as computers, satellites, ubiquitous cameras, facial recognition technologies and tracking chips have the capability to subject almost anyone in the world to continuous surveillance.

I was somewhat surprised to discover that, unlike many of my other articles, Welcome to the Village did not provoke much reader feedback or discussion. And while I realize that the article's title might not have accurately conveyed its content, I could not help but wonder if people, particularly in America, have become so paralyzed by the fear of terrorism that they are willing to surrender their privacy and individuality to "big brother" regimentation and conformity.

Which leads to the third reason: Americans incessantly praise "freedom" and "democracy" with their words (and are repeatedly conned into sending their youth off to die in purported defense of these principles), yet they just as incessantly embrace and promote fascism with their deeds.

Fascism, as I discussed in several Pravda.Ru articles written during the nightmarish years of the Bush dictatorship, has always been more seductive than freedom, because it demands less effort. Freedom requires people to think for themselves, and to gather facts and information necessary to formulate reasoned judgments or opinions. Freedom also means making difficult, sometimes life-altering decisions, with no guarantee those decisions will reap any positive results.

Fascism, on the other hand, favors emotion over reason, appeals to the basest instincts in human nature, and creates omnipotent demagogues who tell the masses what to think and how to think. Freed from the burden of making decisions for themselves, people can then pretend they are blameless for, and powerless to prevent, atrocities and injustices committed by those in power.

Make no mistake about it. I have no sympathy for terrorists or terrorism, and I agree that many of the statements al-Awlaki made were reprehensible, even in a world where Nobel Peace Prize winners sow death and destruction. But regardless of how wicked an individual might be, when a government chooses to extrajudicially execute its own citizens it creates a dark and dangerous precedent that can easily be expanded by those who gain power in the future. Given the kidnappings, illegal detentions, tortures and murders that have already been committed in the name of the so-called "war on terror," it is frighteningly clear that the American government may be traversing a path of no return.

Arrogant, militarily powerful, and lacking a viable foe to curb its contempt for international law, the United States government now feels "superior" to every other country in the world, and, as a result, has become a lawless, rogue nation operating under the clandestine philosophy that "might makes right" while openly (and hypocritically) cloaking itself in the garments of "freedom," "justice" and "human rights."

So America is dead, and within its cadaver lurks a country little different than the third-world dictatorships it claims to abhor-a country controlled by a plethora of sadistic, amoral, venal and ruthless reprobates who relentlessly manipulate the fear of terrorism to promote their own agendas and propagate their own brand of terror throughout the world.

Maybe one day Americans will awaken to this reality.

But by then it will probably be too late. Pravda.Ru

David R. Hoffman
Legal Editor of Pravda.Ru

I didn't have to look far from something on Hoffman, this from Winter Patriot, who looks like he might himself warrant a bit of looking at.

Read More

What Every American Must Know About Sharia

What Every American Must Know About Sharia BEFORE They Vote: How Hillary Clinton Duped America By Pushing Khizr Khan, A Sharia Muslim Scholar

 

By Walid Shoebat on August 4, 2016

 

I had a litany of so-called rebuttals on my articles I wrote [here and here] regarding Hillary’s man, Khizr Khan. In summary, they stipulated that Khan does not support Sharia or the Muslim Brotherhood. They used pure liberal sophism. There summary goes like this: an essay written by Khan about Shariah does not prove Khan is a Shariah supporting man.
This of course can be refuted by a simple question: if an orthodox Rabbi writes on Jewish law, would that mean he does not uphold such laws, and if an orthodox Christian writes on Christian ethics, would that mean he does not uphold such ethics?

To say that these do not uphold their dogmas would be absurd.

The question I ask should end the controversy, but it never does because the ignorant only uses sophism to create a controversy which creates doubt. This liberal tactic which permeates the media is not done because the American liberal is an ignoramus who knows nothing about Sharia. No no no. It is done because these Americans do not mind the agents of Shariah since Sharia goes against Christian ethics. The liberal, too, has tradition similar to the tribal Muslim from the middle east where:

“me and my brother are against my cousin and me and my cousin are against the stranger”.

The Christian, to the Muslim and the Liberal, is the enemy of both. Muslims and Liberals are in reality cousins. The Muslim Brotherhood had worked for decades to perfect a system where liberals would be used to advance Sharia. The Muslim Brotherhood states:

“The [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…”

According to the Muslim Brotherhood, there are two agents here: the liberal first, than the Muslim believer (Muslim immigrant).

The whole reason of us looking into Khan’s writings is that it debunks the notion that Khan was simply a ‘secular Muslim’ who could care less about strict Sharia.
But Sharia is Islam and Islam is Sharia. Period. The fact that Khan was Muslim should suffice. However, the fact that Khan is a Sharia scholar and an expert on Islamic jurisprudence makes it even clearer that Khan is an Islamist who thanked Saeed Ramadan, a father of the Muslim Brotherhood for using his sources.

Shouldn’t this suffice? To the anti-Christian crowds, it doesn’t, nothing will, nothing will ever will.  To the Muslim Brotherhood, if the Muslim can produce a suicide bomber, the liberal can produce national suicide. And if in doubt, just see how one man (Khan) caused Donald Trump to decline a notch.

Khan referred to Al-Wathaiq Al-Siyasiyah and Al-Muwatta, two Muslim sources for Sharia which we referred to from Khan’s own writing. And since these two are bad-apples, the liberals refuted:

“where does he give a “recommendation for Muslims to use Al-Wathaiq Al-Siyasiyah…”? I see him reference the text, but that alone is not a recommendation to use it.”

And since these two are riddled with Jihad, the liberal tried to find a way out.

The liberal media and Hillary (who are expert politicians) know that short soundbites demand entire essays to refute.

Since Americans hate long essays on how Islamic Sharia works, the veil covers the eyes of millions.

REFUTING ALL WHO SAY KHAN DOES NOT SUPPORT SHARIA

Sharia has three sources. In Khan’s scholarly essay, all he does, like all orthodox Muslims do, is to uphold the sequence, the three sources of Shariah. The top two are the Quran (which is thus says Allah) and then comes the Sunna (which is thus says the prophet Muhammad). The third is the jurisprudence of the Muslim fathers (tradition) or what Islam calls Fiqh.

To keep it kiss, Americans need to understand this basic principle: Islam mimicked from Catholicism during the Byzantine era a system basis derived from the Catholic faith where Scripture,  Tradition and Authoritative teaching (Magesterium) all three prongs are collectively used in one structure. 

Similarly, an Orthodox Muslim upholds his three: Quran, Sunna and Tradition and all three are used as a single structure called Shari’ah.

Islam copied Catholicism’s structure and is why “it looks like a lamb with two horns and speaks like a dragon”. Islam therefore attempts to mimmic the real deal (Christianity) while its “red dragon” sends a flood of Jihadis (Revelation 12) who use the three stages of Jihad: the tongue (which Khan used at Hillary’s campaign), the pen (which Khan used in his writings) and the sword (which Khan’s writings support).

The “secular Muslim” whom many in the West tout as “moderate” are in reality Muslims who simply say that we need only use the Quran. These want you to believe that the Quran should be read and interpreted exclusively without tradition. This way “Jihad” simply becomes a “struggle within” and “kill” “is only in warfare and self-defense”.

Such divide is made to fool westerners into thinking that Islam is similar to Christendom’s split where good Protestants simply uphold the Bible (Sola Scriptura) while the bad Catholics continued to uphold all three: Scripture, Tradition and Authoritative teaching (Magesterium).

The difference is that Muslim ‘protestant’ scholars simply do not exist. So far, no one from the bleeding hearts in the U.S. administration was able to find a handful of universally accepted Imams and Muslim scholars who believe in Sola Quranica. If so, produce the names? No one in the U.S. administration so far produced one scholar.

Khizr Khan in fact does not denounce anything Sharia. His writ is simply giving the sequence of authority in Islam regarding Sharia. In his “Shari’ah Explained” and similar to how Catholics break their system, he breaks them into three, :

“A) the Quran … B) The Sunna … C) Probity of Jurists and Muslim Jurisprudence- Al-fiqh” (see pages 25-29).

The “al-Fiqh” to a Muslim is as the Magesterium to a Catholic. Khan is not simply any lay Muslim. He is a top-notch scholar on Shariah. To Khan, Al-Wathaiq Al-Siyasiyah (literally the political documents) which are the oldest collection of Muhammad’s covenants are the initial Sharia just as the Didache (the writings of the apostles) are to the primitive Church. 

Dr. Hamidullah collected these documents which became the Muslim’s ‘Didache‘. A search on  Al-Wathaiq Al-Siyasiyah produces zero rejection by any Muslim scholar of such documents. Such rejection would be as if a Catholic scholar would denounce and reject the Didache.

Except that, Al-Wathaiq Al-Siyasiyah is literally “political Shariah“. When it comes to these documents, Khan never denounces these, but upholds them as a secondary authority just as a Christian would do with the Didache. Khan writes:

“In reliable reference books of Sunnah, written documents dictated by the Prophet are frequently mentioned and authenticated. (v) In his book Al-Wathaiq Al-Siyasiyah, 4 Dr. M. Hamidullah records 250 documents emanating from the Prophet and written down in his presence. These limited examples may serve to present the often ignored fact that the recent famous compilations of Hadith were by no means the first written documents relating to the Sunnah. With the exception of the Quran and Sunnah, every other source, chief or supplementary, has been a matter of controversy as to its validity or definition. There were some jurists who even considered the Holy Book [Sola Quranica], on which depends the very authority of the Sunnah, as the sole basic source of all Islamic jurisprudence.2 A careful examination of those sources, and of the extensive researches relating to them, would further distinguish the line that separates the first two sources from the rest of the sources. The latter were introduced at least a century after the Prophet, and were built upon the opinions of individual jurists. Such opinions should be subordinated, as in fact they were to the Quran and Sunnah, and not placed above them.”

Therefore, Al-Wathaiq Al-Siyasiyah is not some hodgepodge of documents to be ignored, they are, as Khan states “250 documents emanating from the Prophet and written down in his presence”. They are therefore subordinates to Sunna. They are never made null-and-void. In the last line, all Khan is saying is that these should be subordinated to the top two: 1)Quran, 2)Sunna.  In other words, they are #3. They are still Shari’ah.

Khizr in fact affirms this:

“The question of the sources which the jurists relied upon, or of the opinions they derived therefrom, is always open to reconsideration as to their compliance with the Quranic and Prophetic texts (Sunnah) and the fulfillment of their objectives. The passing away of Prophet Muhammed came after the declaration of the Quran, “This day I have perfected your religion [Islam].”3

This was explicitly emphasized by him in his last sermon, “0 people, bear in mind what I am saying, for I might not see you again. I have left you two things. If you hold fast to them never will you go astray after me. They are: God’s Book [Quran] and His Prophet’s Sunnah [Hadith].”4 None of the caliphs (successors) of the Prophet claimed the right to be a new source of legislation. Abu Bakr, the first caliph, whenever passing a judgment, looked into the [1] Quran. If he found an applicable text therein, he would apply it. If not, he turned to the [2] Sunnah.

If he found an applicable text therein, he would apply it. If not, he would ask the people whether any of them knew of a judgment passed by the Prophet on the particular issue. It some-times happened that some people would come forward and state that the Prophet had passed a judgment on it. If there was nothing at all, he would summon the [3] chief representatives of the people and consult with them.'”

1,2, and 3, are the legs of Islam’s footstool. This third “chief representatives of the people” is tradition, and the command to obey this literally stems from the Quran itself where it stated:

يا أَيُّهَا الَّذينَ آمَنوا أَطيعُوا اللَّهَ وَأَطيعُوا الرَّسولَ وَأُولِي الأَمرِ مِنكُم
O ye who believe! Obey [1] Allah [Quran], and obey the [2] Messenger [Sunna], and [3] those charged with authority among you [Tradition]. — Quran,4:59

The “authority among you” produced Al-Muwatta and Wal-Wathaiq Al-Siyasiyah. Obeying these is an instruction from the Quran itself. In other words, whatever is not in the Quran or the Sunna, it too was also established through jurisprudence (tradition) and must be obeyed so long it does not conflict with the main two.

Obeying tradition in Islam is essential or else the individual is no longer considered Muslim  just as a Catholic who denounces the other two authorities becomes no longer Catholic.

In the Muslim world, there never once arose a Martin Luther. Therefore, dividing religious Muslims who hide this truth by saying they only adhere to the Quran by asking westerners “Quranic chapter and verse please” is a farce.

Muslims, like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser is literally attempting to start what he calls “The Muslim Reform Movement“. But until Jasser becomes a ‘Martin Luther’ with millions of  adherents, this discussion on Muslim reformation becomes child’s play. Jasser is no Muslim scholar or an Imam who can pit reformation articles on the doors of the Kaaba.
He says that he will (like Luther) “pin it on the doors of mosques”:

 

 

For the remainder of the article, please go to:

http://shoebat.com/2016/08/04/what-every-american-must-know-about-sharia-before-they-vote-how-hillary-clinton-duped-america-by-pushing-khizr-khan-a-sharia-muslim-scholar/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+shoebat+%28Walid+Shoebat%29

 

 

Clint Eastwood: Khizr Khan Being ‘Exploited’ by Democrats

http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/08/04/clint-eastwood-khizr-khan-exploited-democratic-party/ 

 

 

Read More

06/15 Links Pt2: When Someone Says He’s Only Anti-Israel, Not Antisemitic, It’s a Lie; What to Expect from an Independent Palestinian State

From Ian:

---

Sting Operation Reveals Facebook’s Double ‘Community Standards’ in Relation to Pro-Israel Posts
Facebook apologizes for removing pro-Israel post

Facebook was forced to restore a posting it had removed from a pro-Israel page, after a social-media experiment revealed that an identical pro-Palestinian posting was not deemed to be in violation of “community standards.”
The restored posting in question, on the Israel Video Network page, was a meme that read: “It is called Israel and not Palestine. Share if you agree.”
On May 25, the Israel Video Network received a notice from Facebook that the post was being removed for violating community standards. In addition, group administrators were warned that the page would be shut down if it continued to post similar items.
According to former Yesh Atid Party member of Knesset Dov Lipman — who now serves as the director of public diplomacy in the vice chairman’s office of the World Zionist Organization — after he was alerted by Israel Video Network of Facebook’s behavior, he and his team set up a sting operation to test whether an identical post — but one which favored the Palestinians — would produce the same results.
In a statement on Tuesday, Lipman wrote, “My staff set up a page called ‘It’s called Palestine and not Israel’ and we, with the help of a friend, loaded an exact replica of the first graphic but exchanged the words ‘Palestine’ and ‘Israel.’ We then had people complain about the new graphic and Facebook responded that the new graphic did not violate its community standards.”
After repeated attempts to get in touch with a live person at Facebook “to complain about this inconsistency,” Lipman penned an open letter in the Jerusalem Post, exposing Facebook’s behavior.

World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder: When Someone Says He’s Only Anti-Israel, Not Antisemitic, It’s a Lie

“When someone says they are not antisemitic — they are only anti-Israel – that is a lie,” the president of the World Jewish Congress said on Tuesday night.
Ronald S. Lauder made this assertion in a speech he delivered at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where he received the Guardian of Zion award from the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar-Ilan University.
Addressing the approximately 200-strong audience of movers, shakers and Israeli academics, Lauder — the 20th recipient of the annual award – spoke about the increasingly unabashed expressions of antisemitism and Israel-hatred “not just from the far-Right, but from the far-Left.”
Whereas in the past, he said, Jews were to blame for all ills, “According to today’s antisemites, whatever is wrong in the world, Israel is at fault.” This, he added, “is no longer a fringe element of society,” and “when you hold Israel to a different standard, when you lie about Israel, its past and its present and its people — and when you want Israel to disappear — that makes you an antisemite… pure and simple.”

Clifford D. May: Terrorism and economic warfare

So today, non-state actors lead the campaign. Omar Barghouti, credited as a co-founder of the so-called BDS (for boycott, sanction and divest) Movement, has stated plainly that the goal is not to pressure Israelis into making concessions that might lead to peace. “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine,” he has said.
With two BDS supporters appointed — courtesy of Sen. Bernie Sanders — to the Democratic Party’s platform committee, even Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of left-leaning J Street, seems to have grasped the truth. The movement, he now says, “fails to recognize Israel’s right to exist, to support a two-state solution, to differentiate between the occupation and opposition to Israel itself.”
In recent months, more than 20 governors have signed anti-BDS laws. In response, BDS advocates are angrily asserting that their freedom of speech is being violated. That’s a canard. These laws simply make clear that taxpayers — in Illinois, South Carolina, Colorado, Florida and a growing list of other states — will not support companies that discriminate against Israel.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that conditioning government money on compliance with anti-discrimination policies does not violate the First Amendment,” legal scholar Eugene Kontorovich pointed out. He added: “Israel boycotts — which target all businesses from a particular country — have the key hallmark of impermissible discrimination: They cut off business to people and companies not because of their own particular conduct, but on the basis of who they are.”
BDS advocates claim to fight for “social justice” but they turn a blind eye to the Muslim-on-Muslim wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen, the genocide of Middle Eastern Christians and Yazidis, the enslavement of girls in northern Nigeria and the routine executions of gays in Gaza, Iran and other corners of the Islamic world.
“Anti-Semitism,” the British rabbi-philosopher Jonathan Sachs recently observed, “is a virus that survives by mutating. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, Israel.” There may be treatments for this virus but no one has a cure.

Fred Maroun: What to Expect from an Independent Palestinian State

France, with the support of the United States, is leading a new attempt at peace between Israel and the Palestinians, with the implied goal that an independent Palestinian state would be created -- but what should we expect from such a state?
Although past behavior is not a perfect predictor of future behavior, it is a strong indicator of it, especially if no corrective action has been taken.
Violence
When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared, "The dawn of freedom rises with the evacuation of the last Israeli soldier and settler." Yet, instead of using that freedom to build a successful economy, Palestinians destroyed the greenhouses that the settlers had left, and terrorists launched rocket attacks against Israel. These attacks forced Israel to institute a naval blockade of Gaza, to limit the supply of weapons to terrorists.
The Oslo Accords signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s provided a transition period meant to lead to Palestinian statehood. However, instead of peaceful coexistence with Israel, the Palestinian leadership launched an assault that became known as the Second Intifada.
During the recent stabbing attacks by Palestinian terrorists, Abbas declared, "Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it's for the sake of Allah. Every shahid (martyr) will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded, by Allah's will."
These violent actions and the incitement are not exceptions. They are part of a pattern of Arab denial of the Jews' right to exist, which started well before Israel declared its independence, and that caused several wars and innumerable terrorist attacks against Israel.

Michael Lumish: Nothing Left - Episode 103

Nothing Left This week Michael Burd and Alan Freedman have: Michael Lumish USA, 0:02;00 - Mmusi Maimane S.A, 0:30:10 - Mathew M Hausman USA, 56:0:00 - Dr Isi Leibler Israel, 1:21:20 - Dr Danny Lamm Aust., 1:48:00
My 5 minute bit is basically about the infiltration of the Democratic party with anti-Semitic anti-Zionists and starts at about the two minute mark.
Alan talks about the HonestReporting conference in Israel, among other things, and he notes that David Rubinger spoke. Rubinger is the photographer who took this photo that you may have seen once or twice before:

The West's Most Important Ally: Islam's Dissidents

Today a new Iron Curtain has been erected by Islam against the rest of the world, and the new heroes are the dissidents, the apostates, the rebels, the non-believers and the heretics.
This rapidly growing army of Muslim dissidents is the best liberation movement for millions of Muslims who aspire to practice their faith peacefully without submitting to the dictates of fundamentalists and fanatics.
They are alone against all. Against Islamism which uses Kalashnikovs and against an intellectual terrorism which submits them to media intimidation. Seen as "traitors" by their communities, they are accused by the élites in the West of "stigmatizing."
We should support them -- all of them. Some of the bravest defenders of freedom come from the Islamic regimes. Europe should give financial, moral and political support to these friends of Western civilization, while our disgraced intelligentsia is engaged in slandering them.

The EU is Coming to Close Down Your Free Speech

The German Chancellor was not interested in the reinforcement of Europe's external borders, the re-erection of its internal borders, the institution of a workable asylum vetting system and the repatriation of people who had lied to gain entry into Europe. Instead, Chancellor Merkel wanted to know how Facebook's founder could help her restrict the free speech of Europeans, on Facebook and on other social media.
Then, on May 31, the European Union announced a new online speech code to be enforced by four major tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube.
It was clear from the outset that Facebook has a definitional problem as well as a political bias in deciding on these targets. What is Facebook's definition of 'racism'? What is its definition of 'xenophobia'? What, come to that, is its definition of 'hate speech'?
Of course the EU is a government -- and an unelected government at that -- so its desire not just to avoid replying to its critics -- but to criminalise their views and ban their contrary expressions -- is as bad as the government of any country banning or criminalising the expression of opinion which is not adulatory of the government.
People must speak up -- must speak up now, and must speak up fast -- in support of freedom of speech before it is taken away from them. It is, sadly, not an overstatement to say that our entire future depends on it.

White House rejects increased Israel missile defense funding

The Obama administration on Tuesday opposed a call by US lawmakers to increase government funding for Israel's missile defense program by $455 million above the 2017 fiscal year budget request.
The White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued the rejection of the proposal made by the US House of Representatives in a Statement of Administration Policy on defense appropriations released Tuesday.
In May, the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended a major increase in spending on Israeli missile defense programs – quadrupling a budget line proposed by the Obama administration.
The increase, supported unanimously and across party lines in the committee, proposed $600 million in funding for fiscal year 2017 – an increase of $113 million from last year and $454 million over US President Barack Obama's request.
In response to the White House's statement Tuesday, the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC said it was "deeply disappointed" by the US administration's measure that "has criticized Congress for funding US-Israel missile defense cooperation."`

PM rejects ‘panic’ over reported cut in US missile defense aid

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday dismissed widespread “panic” over reports implying the US government is refusing to increase financial aid for Israeli missile defense.
While not denying the reports, which prompted opposition politicians to harshly criticize Netanyahu, a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office insisted that American aid for missile defense system protecting Israel would ultimately be increased rather than cut.
On Tuesday, the White House said it opposed a move by the House of Representatives to increase funding for Israeli missile defense procurement by an additional $455 million above the administration’s budget request for the 2017 fiscal year.
Due to “multiple misleading reports,” the Prime Minister’s Office on Wednesday issued a statement insisting “there is no cut in US aid.” Rather, there is an “internal debate” between Congress and the White House over the size of the annual increase to the American missile defense program.
Netanyahu is seeking to anchor this additional aid as a part of his ongoing negotiations over the extension of an US-Israel memorandum of understanding, which regulates US military aid to Israel, the statement noted.
“Not only will the security assistance for missile defense not be cut, it will be increased,” it said.

AIPAC ‘Deeply Disappointed’ Obama Won’t Up Israel’s Missile Defense by $445 Million

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) issued a statement criticizing the White House Office of Management and Budget’s “Statement of Administration Policy” which threatened to veto the Senates $576 billion defense spending bill, among other reasons because the statement of policy “opposes the addition of $455 million above the FY 2017 Budget request for Israeli missile defense procurement and cooperative development programs.”
Last month, the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended $600 million in funding for 2017, which represents an increase of $455 million over the president’s original request.
The statement of administration policy released Tuesday by the Office of Management and Budget reads: “The bill is inconsistent with the [Bipartisan Budget Act], and the administration strongly objects to the inclusion of problematic ideological provisions that are beyond the scope of funding legislation. … If the president were presented with H.R. 5293, the President’s senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”
One of those “problematic ideological provisions” is the increased allocation for Israel’s missile defense research and development.

Trump: US must strengthen alliance with Israel

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday said the US must strengthen its alliance with Israel, in an address strongly critical of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Reading mostly from a teleprompter, in a speech to Evangelical voters in Washington, Trump delivered a sharp rebuke of Clinton, declaring her “unfit to be president” while vowing to “restore faith to its proper mantle in American society.”
As he took the stage, Trump boasted of the support he’s received from evangelicals Christians, including a series of endorsements from Christian leaders, including Jerry Falwell Jr., who leads Liberty University.
He said the US must strengthen its alliance with Israel to ensure its security, and added that the entire world must learn how to deal with radical Islam.

Hillary Clinton will target Hamas’s ‘virtual territory,’ campaign says

Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, plans to deny Hamas “virtual territory” should she win the election in November, a senior campaign official told The Jerusalem Post this weekend.
Last week, the Hamas leadership immediately praised the shooting rampage at the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv on social media. Ismail Haniyeh, the top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, has maintained a Twitter account since March 2012 and has 314,000 followers. Khaled Mashaal, the group’s chief, has had an account active since last May, now with 45,800 followers. The main Hamas Twitter page, active since October 2010, has 239,000 followers.
Israeli security experts told the Post last week that little had been done to deny terrorist organizations these platforms, despite concern by Western law enforcement agencies – as well as among the very organizations that host them, in particular Twitter and Facebook – over the effect these messages have in stoking violence around the world, from Israel to the United States.
Clinton campaign officials said that the candidate’s strategy to deny terrorist organizations the ability to recruit online “would apply to all terrorist propaganda, including that of Hamas.”

US Ambassador: 'Best weapon against BDS - a Palestinian state'

US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro addressed the 2016 Herzliya Conference on Wednesday, noting the close social, economic, and political ties between the US and Israel.
“Israel is home to over 2,500 US firms,” Shapiro said, pointing out that there “are more Israeli companies listed on the NASDAQ exchange than Indian, Japanese, and Korean listings combined.”
Looking to shore up President Barack Obama’s pro-Israel bona fides after more than seven years of diplomatic tensions with the Israeli government, Shapiro claimed the US President admired Israel for its many accomplishments.
“’Americans admire a people’, said President Nixon, “who can scratch a desert and produce a garden,’” said Shapiro. “That admiration was on full display during President Obama’s visit in 2013. ‘If people want to see the future of the world economy,’ he [Obama] said, ‘they should look at Tel Aviv, home to hundreds of start-ups and research centers.’”
Shapiro said the White House remained committed to fighting BDS, but claimed that the most powerful weapon against efforts to delegitimize and isolate Israel is Palestinian statehood.
“I always emphasize President Obama’s and Vice President Biden’s staunch opposition,” said Shapiro.
“I have directed my Administration to strongly oppose boycotts, divestment campaigns, and sanctions targeting the State of Israel,” President Obama said in February. “As long as I am President, we will continue to do so.”

Does France think Tel Aviv is Palestinian territory?

Does the French Embassy in Israel consider Tel Aviv to be Palestinian territory? According to a letter recently received by a Tel Aviv resident, that would seem to be the case.
A Tel Aviv resident who applied for a French residency card was surprised to receive a document from the embassy that included the words "Tel Aviv, Israel/Palestinian Territories."
A number of documents on the official website of the French Embassy in Israel have used the phrase "Israel/Palestinian Territories" in referring to areas that are not beyond the Green Line. The French Embassy is located in Tel Aviv, but its notices have referred to the area as "Israel/Palestinian Territories."
Knesset Member MK Oded Forer (Yisrael Beytenu) approached Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) about the issue, asking her to summon French diplomatic representatives for clarification.
The French Embassy in Israel responded to the complaint with a statement saying, "This was a technical error originating in the software. The error has been corrected and now all the documents on the website read 'Israel.'"

Muslims ‘Compete for Victimhood’ After UK Gov Announces Money For Security At Jewish Schools

The British government has announced millions of pounds in extra funding for heavy security at Jewish schools, amid a rising threat from Islamist attacks.
The Home Office confirmed to Schools Week that they have granted the Community Security Trust (CST), which funds security measures for the Jewish community, more than £13 million.
A spokesman for CST rejected “competition for victimhood” claims after a Muslim schools said they would expect similar funding.
The money will be used to step up security in Jewish state schools, and other community sites, after antisemitic attacks across Europe.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “A key responsibility for government and the police is to protect individuals and the communities in which they live.
“Following recent attacks against individuals and Jewish community sites, including in Paris, Copenhagen, Brussels and Toulouse, there have been considerable efforts from the police, working with the community, to mitigate any threats to Jewish interests in the UK.
“This funding is to provide further measures as part of these ongoing efforts to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish community.”

Alan Johnson: From Cable Street to Raed Saleh, Labour must understand anti-Semitism has shape-shifted

The degree to which the party simply does not currently ‘get’ antisemitic anti-Zionism was shown by the warm reception given to the Islamist anti-Semite Raed Salah by Jeremy Corbyn in 2012. Corbyn organised a press conference to defend Salah’s presence in the UK and said of him: ‘He is far from a dangerous man. He is a very honoured citizen, he represents his people extremely well, and his is a voice that must be heard.’ Corbyn even added this personal message to Salah: ‘I look forward to giving you tea on the terrace [of the House of Commons] because you deserve it!’
In fact, Saleh – as many pointed out to Jeremy Corbyn at the time– opposed not the occupation but the ‘bacteria of all times’. He did not criticise Benjamin Netanyahu, but the demonic ‘unique mover’ who was behind 9/11. He did not call for the West to apply diplomatic pressure on Israel but attacked the entire West as a ‘slave to Global Zionism’. These statements were all one click away on the internet and the leader was pointed to them. He ignored them all and instead issued fulsome praise for Saleh. About Saleh’s blood libel speech, the UK Appeal Court decided that ‘We do not find this comment [by Salah] could be taken to be anything other than a reference to the blood libel against Jews.’ It also decided that this would ‘offend and distress Israeli Jews and the wider Jewish community’.
If the party misses this opportunity to construct an intellectual and cultural firewall to separate legitimate criticism of Israeli policy from foul demonization of Israel per se, then the party’s crisis will likely become chronic. Antisemitic anti-Zionism will flourish, the fundamental perception of the party among the electorate will be that Labour is ‘extremist’, there may well be an exodus of long-standing members; and the climate for Jews in this country will become less welcoming and more dangerous. Much is at stake.
Professor Alan Johnson is the editor of Fathom and Senior Research Fellow at BICOM. His 15,000 word submission to the inquiry was titled ‘Antisemitic anti-Zionism: the root of Labour’s crisis.’

Ex-London mayor Livingstone sticks with ‘Hitler backed Zionism’ claim

Former London mayor and senior Labour party official Ken Livingstone on Tuesday doubled down on his controversial claim that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler supported Zionism, a comment that led to his suspension from Britain’s opposition party in April.
Addressing members of a parliamentary committee tasked with investigating a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents within the Labour party, Livingstone declined to apologize for the remark, insisting his claim was historically accurate.
He said that in recent weeks “hundreds” of people have approached him to express their support for the statement.
“If I had said that Hitler was a Zionist, I would apologize for that, because it’s rubbish,” he told the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

Bernie Sanders: Anything But Harmless

As Bernie Sanders’ campaign winds down, he has evolved from quixotic gadfly to persistent annoyance, to one who seeks to alter and shake things up, to one who may potentially inflict permanent damage on the US – Israel relationship. If unchecked his efforts could result in irreparable harm to bi-partisan support for Israel, the bedrock of our nation’s policy of guaranteeing Israel’s security.
His by now well-known appointments to the Democratic party platform draft committee coupled with pronouncements of his goals leave no room for ambiguity or uncertainty about his intentions. He is seeking not just a more balanced, more even-handed policy of the Democratic Party, but nothing less than a realignment of the relationship between the United States and Israel.
I find his angry rants, rallies and rhetoric in which he rails against segments of society, albeit, privileged ones, only slightly less frightening in their demagoguery than those of the equivalent of the rants of his counterpart on the other side, Donald Trump.

Any Jew Can Get An Op-Ed Published In The New York Times!

Let me guess, you are surprised by the headline, right? You think the New York Times is an antisemitic rag, right? But really, the New York Times is totally open to any Jew who wants his or her opinion in a national publication.
It’s super-easy! You don’t need any credentials or qualifications. All you have to do is bash Israel.
Take Sunday’s op-ed by Daniel Sieradsky. Daniel who?, you may be asking. Me, too. That’s the beauty of it! This formerly obscure “activist” and, according to his bio, former publisher of the Israel-bashing blog Jewschool, wrote an op-ed, published by the New York Times, on the subject of New York’s anti-BDS Executive Order. The Governor of New York himself, the man who signed the Order, Andrew Cuomo, could not even get his own op-ed published in the Times — he had to publish it in the Washington Post!
See the difference? Andrew Cuomo — not a Jew. Clearly, the New York Times is biased in favor of Jews! (As long as they hate Israel.)
Sieradski follows in the footsteps of College of Staten Island Creative Writing Professor and proud BA-holder Sarah Schulman, who used the Times to popularize the charge that Israel “pinkwashes” its treatment of Palestinian Arabs, and Meirav Zonszein, who was afforded space in the New York Times to complain about her own experience seeking an abortion in Israel.

Desmond Tutu is Wrong about Marwan Barghouti

Barghouti has declared many times (e.g. in a statement issued on May 15, 2014) that there shall be no peace with Israel without the “right of return.” What the Palestinians mean by the “right of return” is that the descendants from the 700,000 Palestinians refugees of 1948 (which UNWRA estimates at 5 million today) should be entitled to become Israeli residents and citizens. Besides having no basis in international law and no precedent in history, such a “right” is incompatible with the two-state solution, since its implementation would turn pre-1967 Israel into a binational state with an Arab majority. In a two-state model, each nation-state absorbs its own refugees, just as Israel did with many of the 900,000 Jewish refugees expelled from Arab and Muslim countries in the 1950s. Clearly, Barghouti’s struggle continues to deny the Jews’ right to their own nation-state.
Barghouti was the leader of the military wing of the Al-Aqsa Brigades, which carried out thousands of deadly attacks (including suicide bombings) against Israeli civilians. These deadly attacks included the murder of a Greek Orthodox monk on June 12, 2001; the murder of six Israelis during a bar-mitzvah celebration on January 7, 2002; the murder of three Israelis in a shooting spree at a Tel-Aviv restaurant on March 5, 2002. Barghouti was also directly responsible for operating the terrorist cell of Raed Karmi in Tulkarem, which carried out many deadly attacks against Israeli civilians.
As Alan Bauer, the victim of a terrorist attack masterminded by Barghouti, wrote to President Obama in March 2014: “We cannot re-wind the clock and make the injuries and suffering disappear; the one thing we can do is to pursue justice and to do everything in our power to prevent terrorists from striking again.” Archbishop Tutu would be well-advised to ponder those words.

Antisemitism Expert: Twitter Must ‘Step Up’ War Against Jew-Targeted Hate Speech

Twitter needs to “step up and deal with the hate speech” that is increasingly sweeping the popular social media platform, an antisemitism expert told The Algemeiner on Thursday.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), was responding to recent reports from Jewish personalities on Twitter that they have been coming under attack by antisemites and white supremacists.
According to Cooper, “Over the last six months, Twitter has taken considerable steps to remove terrorist accounts. ISIS alone has been sending out 200,000 tweets a day. When it comes to dealing with hate speech, they have done virtually nothing against disgusting, racist and antisemitic hashtags that are currently active on the site.”
Twitter’s purported lackadaisical response to antisemitic hate speech in its feeds even prompted prominent New York Times Washington deputy-editor Jon Weisman to shut down his account of 34,000 followers. After providing Twitter with a vast collection of antisemitic tweets sent to him over the last several months, Twitter responded that none of the offenders had violated the site’s rules.

New Proactive Strategies Are Necessary To Defeat Academic BDS

As a veteran of the academic BDS struggle, I am encouraged by the coming together of several academically-oriented groups to combat BDS. The narrow margin of victory against academic BDS in the American Anthropological Association has demonstrated to the faculty world wide that while BDS is seen as antithetical to academic freedom, there are still growing powerful threats that drain academics of their primary missions to generate new knowledge and research and to share that with colleagues, while teaching students to think critically and productively.
There is also a growing threat of faculty members hijacking academic association agendas to make political statements, now being challenged legally within these associations with the actions of senior members of the American Studies Association bringing legal action against their association for engaging in professional activities unrelated to the corporate charter of the association. These actions are both crippling intellectually and financially to the primary purposes of these organizations as their missions are hijacked.
If ever there was a time for grass-roots faculty to speak out against these actions, it is now. As academic institutions and associations become more steeped in this movement, there is less focus on academic excellence and more focus on politicization. It is time for academics to tell their institutions that BDS resolutions are antithetical to academic freedom and have no place being efforted in faculty governance councils and academic associations. Statements and principles adopted by the American Association of University Professors (reaffirmed over time) and many Nobel Laureates in response to BDS are well established and should be affirmed in such proactive resolutions.

‘Sophisticated’ Economist duped by Pallywood tale starring the Tamimis

The Economist fancies itself a sophisticated magazine, one which “offers authoritative insight” into news, politics, business, finance, science and technology. However, as it pertains to Israel, they’ve sometimes proven themselves just as vulnerable to the mindless groupthink plaguing the rest of the media.
A case in point involves their review of The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine by Ben Ehrenreich (The view on the ground, June 11), a book featuring the Tamimis of the West Bank town of Nabi Saleh. Though some British media outlets have caught on to the family’s well-choreographed ‘Pasbara’, the anonymous Economist critic barely shows even a hint of journalistic skepticism in the face of Ehrenreich’s risible narrative.
As noted by our colleague Tamar Sternthal, Nabi Saleh is “where photographers gather nearly every Friday to document repetitious scenes of Palestinian residents and international activists clashing with Israeli soldiers” and where activists often place their children in danger to score propaganda points.
Nabi Saleh’s most popular Pallywood child star, Ahed Tamimi (dubbed “Shirley Temper“), revived her recurring role as the symbol of Palestinian “resistance” last August, when she was seen attacking an Israeli soldier who had detained a rock-thrower.

Continuing the mapping of BBC inconsistency in terrorism reporting

An ambiguous approach is also seen in recently produced material concerning the 20th anniversary of the IRA terror attack in Manchester. An article appearing on the BBC News website does clarify what the story is about in its headline – “Manchester IRA bomb: Terror blast remembered 20 years on” – but anyone unfamiliar with the story who read the ‘About The BBC Blog’ post promoted by the corporation on social media would have great difficulty understanding that the “1996 Manchester Bomb” was a terror attack committed by the IRA.
As we see once again, the BBC not only has difficulty in achieving consistency – and therefore impartiality – in its reporting of terrorism in assorted locations, but even in different reports about the same incident.
Ten years have passed since the BBC chose to ignore the Thomas Report’s call to “get the language right”. As the past week has shown once again, that decision does not serve the corporation’s funding public by helping them understand international and domestic events and it certainly has not enhanced the BBC’s reputation as an impartial broadcaster.

BBC WS ‘Witness’ blames Israel for Iraqi nuclear weapons programme

Listeners also heard Selbi make the preposterous claim that were it not for Operation Opera, the 1991 Gulf War might have been avoided. Hidalgo made no effort to remind audiences that the war was the result of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and totally unrelated to Israel.
“If the Israelis had not bombard us we wouldn’t have gone to a covert activity and everybody would have been happy. The IAEA inspectors are [were] there continuously; this is a prerequisite for the nuclear reactor […] and Iraq would maybe, maybe wouldn’t have gone through the 1991 war.”
Selbi also made the following unchallenged claim:
“This line of activity – enriching uranium – we did not even think about it before the bombardment.”
The second of Hidalgo’s two interviewees was self-described Fatah conscript Imad Khadduri to whom the BBC previously provided a platform for the promotion of similar claims in an interview ten years ago. Khadduri and Selbi are among the co-authors of a book they self-published in 2011 and among the protagonists of the historically problematic notion that the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme only came into being after – and as a result of – Operation Opera.
The unchallenged promotion of such distorted historical accounts cannot possibly be said to contribute to meeting the BBC’s remit of building “a global understanding of international issues”.

German initiative preserves 70 Jewish graveyards

A German-funded pilot program for protecting Eastern European Jewish cemeteries has helped preserve at least 70 graveyards since 2015, the effort’s initiators told Council of Europe delegates.
The briefing Wednesday in Strasbourg about the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative, or ESJF, came two years after its inception with an initial budget of $1.35 million, Yossi Beilin, a former justice minister of Israel and a member of ESJF’s advisory board, told JTA.
The briefing at the Council of Europe, a body of 47 member states that aims to encourage pan-European cooperation and dialogue, was partly intended to help “find more resources for the next steps” and make ESJF into a permanently functioning body with core funding, Beilin said.
The initiative has restored cemeteries in Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Belarus, Serbia and Moldova, Beilin said.

Louis Brandeis: The Jewish Boy From Kentucky Who Became a Supreme Court Legend

Exactly a century ago, President Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. After a contentious confirmation process, he became the first Jewish justice, serving on the bench for 23 years. His rulings on privacy, workers’ rights, and free speech feel as relevant today as they did when he issued them, and his foresight, wisdom, and clear-spokenness cemented his reputation as nothing short of a visionary.
In Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet, writer Jeffrey Rosen explores Brandeis’ personal and professional life. He joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss the influence Thomas Jefferson had on Brandeis—known as the “Jewish Jefferson,” the justice’s ruling in Whitney v. California—a landmark free-speech case, and why Brandeis is uniquely relevant in the fractious political climate of our day.

Israeli tech scene second only to Silicon Valley, Google exec says

A top Google official on Tuesday hailed Israel’s tech sector, saying it trailed only Silicon Valley in the United States when it comes to “initiatives.”
Eric Schmidt, formerly Google chief executive and now executive chairman of its parent company Alphabet, said Israel, a country of only around 8 million people, was punching far above its weight in technology.
“For a relatively small country, Israel has a super role in technological innovation,” he told an audience at Google’s offices in the commercial capital Tel Aviv.
“I can’t think of a place where you could see this diversity and the collection of initiatives aside from Silicon Valley,” he added. “That is a pretty strong statement.”
Israel has long self-styled itself as the “start-up nation,” encouraging entrepreneurship –- especially in the technological sector.
However, companies have often been sold to larger investors in the United States, rather than remaining in the Middle Eastern country.
Schmidt said he had seen a “maturation” of the “start-up nation” in recent years.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Returning for a Ninth Season

This is literally the only news that matters today:
Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” will return for Season 9 on HBO, the premium cabler announced Tuesday.
“We’re thrilled that Larry has decided to do a new season of ‘Curb’ and can’t wait to see what he has planned,” said Casey Bloys, president, HBO programming.
Asked why he decided to come back, David said, “In the immortal words of Julius Caesar, ‘I left, I did nothing, I returned.’”
This is what the people want to hear. This is what the people need to hear. Put this on cable news. Feature hours and hours of interviews with comedians talking about how the best sitcom in TV history (YEAH THAT’S RIGHT) is returning. It beats another billion segments of talking heads blathering on about stuff they don’t understand and can’t change anyway. It beats having to listen to Donald Trump whine and President Obama lecture. It beats idle speculation on an election that’s still months away or a tragedy that cannot be changed.
All Curb Your Enthusiasm news is good news. Tell the people. Spread the word. Larry David is coming back to cable.

---

---

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Read More