You never know what you might find flying over Beit Omar!

Tazpit News Agency..
20 May '13..

Hundreds of residents of Gush Etzion were astounded to find a Nazi flag flying right near the mosque in the Palestinian town of Beit Omar. The IDF was notified.

Uri Arnon told Tazpit News Agency: "I felt we were going back 75 years, losing our hold on the land. The Arabs no longer feel the need to hide their murderous tendencies, announcing out loud that they wish to destroy us."

An IDF spokesman said that the flag was hung on an electrical line, and that they were waiting to professionals to come and remove it.

PLEASE SHARE AND SHOW THE WORLD!

Link: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=551377808247620&set=a.174146345970770.57757.173645132687558&type=1&theater

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International Dimensions - Iran’s Arms Supply to Hizbullah

Dore Gold..
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs..
17 May '13..

In an exceptional political signal, a senior Israeli official contacted Mark Landler of the New York Times and explained that the Israeli government was determined to continue to prevent the transfer of advanced weapons to Hizbullah. The official, who remained anonymous throughout the report, added that if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reacts to this policy by attacking Israel – either directly or indirectly through a proxy force – he will “risk forfeiting his regime, for Israel will retaliate.”

Israel’s policy of preventing the supply of advanced weapons to Hizbullah has been in place for some time, but in the past was primarily the responsibility of the Israeli Navy which intercepted Iranian weapons ships in the Mediterranean. According to U.S. sources, Israel has more recently concentrated this effort in Syrian territory. The Syrians may have had an interest in assuring that some of their more advanced weaponry not fall into the hands of the Sunni extremist groups they have been fighting that are linked to al-Qaeda, like Jabhat al-Nusra. Should the Assad regime retreat to Alawite areas near the coast, it would not want to see those advanced weapons in the hands of the Sunni forces, with whom it may be fighting for years to come.

But a new motive appears to have become far more predominant in recent weeks. Iran appears to have decided that it must prevent a situation arising in which it loses its grip on Syria, which has been characterized by an Iranian institute tied to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the “35th district of Iran.”1 As a result, Iran appears to be providing itself with an option to take over Syria, if Assad falls. It has not only directly intervened by itself and deployed its own Revolutionary Guard forces on Syrian soil, but it has also sought to build up an expeditionary army made up of Lebanese Hizbullah and other Shiite militias from Iraq as well.2 Iran is training and equipping these forces. It is also providing Hizbullah with state-of-the-art weapons, partly as a reward for the services the organization is providing.

Blood libel and the al-Dura hoax - Why it still matters

...It’s not just that the Israelis didn’t kill al-Dura; it’s that the fault for the continuation of the conflict at the moment in history when he was supposedly slain rests almost completely on the people who have elevated him to sainthood and used his mythical spilled blood to justify boycotts of Israel.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary/Contentions..
19 May '13..

Nearly 13 years ago, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak journeyed to Camp David to end the conflict with the Palestinians. With the approval of President Clinton, he offered Yasir Arafat an independent Palestinian state in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza and in part of Jerusalem. Arafat said no. A couple of months later, the Palestinians put an exclamation mark on that refusal by launching the terrorist offensive that came to be known as the second intifada. Yet in spite of the fact that it was the Palestinians who had rejected peace and who were engaging in terror attacks on Israeli targets that would cost more than 1,000 Israeli lives, they were still portrayed in much of the Western media as the victims. While the process that brought about this perplexing reversal was complex, one particular incident became the symbol of this vicious distortion: the Muhammad al-Dura affair.

The story promoted at the time by the Palestinian propaganda machine was that Israeli army fire killed a small boy while he and his father were seeking shelter from fighting near a Gaza checkpoint. Film footage provided by French TV made this tragedy an international cause célèbre and an official Israeli apology reinforced the Palestinian narrative and helped turn al-Dura into the poster child for Israeli beastliness and their own suffering. Yet soon doubts began to surface about the veracity of the claim of Israeli responsibility and the discrepancies and falsehoods in the Palestinian narrative were exposed in various Western outlets. Over the years, the initial story has been debunked in a variety of places. A German documentary proved that the shots that killed the boy could not have come from Israeli positions and French gadfly Phillipe Karsenty, who pointed out the original report was false, was sued in the courts by prominent journalist Charles Enderlin (who had broadcast the initial lie) but ultimately vindicated. Now it appears the Israeli government has finally caught up to the problem and issued what may be a definitive report that comes to the harshest possible conclusion about the al-Dura myth. As Haaretz reports:

Thirteen years after an exchange of fire in Gaza appeared to have resulted in the death of a Palestinian boy at the start of the second intifada, an Israeli investigative panel has found “there are many indications” that Mohammed al-Dura and his father, Jamal, “were never hit by gunfire” – neither Israeli nor Palestinian – after all.

The national panel of inquiry further claims that contrary to the famed report carried by the France 2 television network on the day of the incident, September 30, 2000, 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura appears to be alive at the end of the complete footage captured of the event.

Israel - Resisting Easy Definition But a Triumph of Resilience

Daniel Mandel..
American Thinker..
19 May '13..

Israel, having attained its 65th anniversary, resists easy definition. Sixty-five years ago, on May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister, declared independence, to which American and Soviet recognition was forthcoming the next day, following the expiration of British rule.

Any reckoning on Israel, its successes and failures, is also inescapably interwoven with the verdict one gives on the animating philosophy of the state, Zionism, which itself will celebrate later this year its 116th anniversary.

Zionism foresaw a collectivity of Jewish labor redeeming a patrimony lost in antiquity. It envisioned a national solution to that age-old disease, anti-Semitism, conscious of the fact that time was running out for Jews in Europe. Theodor Herzl, political Zionism's founder, even thought it might prove the antidote to anti-Semitism, though he doubted the possibility of reviving ancient Hebrew as a spoken language. He once asked rhetorically, "Who amongst us knows enough to purchase a railway ticket in that language?"

Herzl was wrong on both counts. The national language was revived, a feat that still eludes other peoples seeking to emulate Israel's success, but anti-Semitism, far from having been extinguished, is very much alive. Even when put to bed, it is a light sleeper.

The widespread revilement of the Jews in pre-state times was replicated when the U.N. General Assembly resolved in November 1975 that Zionism, uniquely among national movements around the globe, was a form of racism. So Israel became the focus of renewed anti-Semitism in the form of anti-Zionism, a distinction without a difference insofar as the target remains Jews, with discrimination now applied to sovereign identity rather than individual rights.

Israel solved anti-Semitism in the sense that it permitted Jews to cease being timorous petitioners to foreign governments and permitted those in need or desire of joining the national enterprise to do so. In fact, nothing better evokes today, if only fleetingly, the lost pioneering ethos of Israel than latter-day efforts to rescue Jews in distress. This is but a continuation of the process that began in Europe in the nineteenth century and embraced the Arab Middle East in the 1940s and 1950s, when Arab nationalism and Muslim supremacism combined to depopulate virtually each and every established Jewish community in Arab lands. Unlike their European counterparts in the 1930s, however, these Jews did have somewhere to go. In the span of Jewish history since the destruction of the Second Jewish Commonwealth nearly two millennia ago, that is likely to remain Israel's biggest achievement and calling-card.

Al Durah Staged and Conspiracy Theory - Reflections by Richard Landes

...The Al Durah coup was pulled off by a core of planners and actors, a larger circle of people who cooperated once the tale had been set in motion, and finally a broader circle of believers who were duped by the coup. In a basic sense, the issue is how many people need to know it’s a fake, and how many are duped? If it takes a really broad group of people who know it’s a fake and play along (including people at high public levels), then we’re dealing with a conspiracy. If it only takes a few who know and many more who are duped, it’s a sting.

Richard Landes..
Augean Stables..
19 May '13..

(There can never be enough said about Phillippe Karsenty and Dr. Richard Landes who stood their ground and did battle on behalf of the truth, upholding the honor of the State of Israel and its citizens, in the face of one of the most vicious and widely propagated blood-libels of the last 100 years. With the release of today's Report of the Government Review Committee Regarding the France 2 Al-Durrah Report, its Consequences and Implications, their work has truly borne fruit. Y.)

One of Charles Enderlin’s favorite defenses is to accuse his critics of believing in “conspiracy theories.” Here is Larry Derfner, whom Charles cites approvingly in his book on the subject, dismissing Philippe Karsenty and me as “conspiracy nuts”:

No doubt about it – Phillippe Karsenty and his allies have a lot of evidence that the killing of Mohammed al-Dura was a hoax, that it was staged by France 2 TV in cahoots with the Palestinians. In fact, Karsenty, Richard Landes and the rest of the conspiracy theorists have so much evidence that it may even add up to .001% [Enderlin mistranslates as 100% - rl] of the evidence that the Mafia, or Castro, or the Pentagon killed JFK. They may have the merest, slightest fraction of the evidence there is that Shimon Peres masterminded the Rabin assassination, or that the Mossad was behind 9/11.

Now that the Israeli government has come out with a report on the al Durah affair which is at least as sharply critical of his work as the French Court of Appeals in 2008, we can expect Charles and his defenders to come out with both conspiracy barrels blazing.

There is, however, a fundamental difference between a “coup montée” (a planned sting) and a conspiracy.

In the former case, it’s a small group of people who coordinate their activities in order to violate rules without the knowledge of the wider public. In this case, we are dealing with a cognitive or narrative hoax, in which some group of players wants the public to believe even though it didn’t happen. These are common in the history of the modern press, and they play a key role in broader “propaganda” campaigns aimed at swaying public opinion.

The Al Durah coup was pulled off by a core of planners and actors, a larger circle of people who cooperated once the tale had been set in motion, and finally a broader circle of believers who were duped by the coup. In a basic sense, the issue is how many people need to know it’s a fake, and how many are duped? If it takes a really broad group of people who know it’s a fake and play along (including people at high public levels), then we’re dealing with a conspiracy. If it only takes a few who know and many more who are duped, it’s a sting.

The France 2 Al-Durrah Report, its Consequences and Implications

" The Al-Durrah affair is a modern-day blood libel against the State of Israel, alongside other blood libels like the claims of an alleged massacre in Jenin. The France 2 report was utterly baseless."

Prime Minister's Office..
19 May '13..

Publication of the Report of the Government Review Committee Regarding the France 2 Al-Durrah Report, its Consequences and Implications

The Government Review Committee: "The France 2 report's central claims and accusations had no basis in the material which the station had in its possession at the time…There is no evidence that the IDF was in any way responsible for causing any of the alleged injuries to Jamal or the boy"

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received today the report of the Government Review Committee on "The France 2 Al-Durrah Report, its Consequences and Implications." The report was presented by the Minister of International Affairs, Strategy and Intelligence Yuval Steinitz, in the presence of Director General of the Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy, Yossi Kuperwasser.

Prime Minister Netanyahu directed then Minister of Strategic Affairs Yaalon to set up the governmental review committee in September 2012. The purpose of the committee was to examine the Al-Durrah affair in light of the continued damage it has caused to Israel, and to formulate the Government of Israel's position with regards to it.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: "It is important to focus on this incident – which has slandered Israel's reputation. This is a manifestation of the ongoing, mendacious campaign to delegitimize Israel. There is only one way to counter lies, and that is through the truth. Only the truth can prevail over lies."

Minister of International Affairs, Strategy and Intelligence Yuval Steinitz: " The Al-Durrah affair is a modern-day blood libel against the State of Israel, alongside other blood libels like the claims of an alleged massacre in Jenin. The France 2 report was utterly baseless."

(Video) Journalistic Responsibility vs. Syrian Propaganda on South African Television

Yarden Frankl..
Honest Reporting..
19 May '13..

The South African television show Carte Blanche,  broadcast an episode on the Syrian civil war. On the show, they interview a Syrian woman who blames Israel for the bloodshed.

Not surprisingly, she works for Syrian National Television and is a supporter of President Assad.

She is obviously just expressing Syrian propaganda. Yet the interviewer never challenges her ridiculous accusation.


HonestReportingVideo

Journalists have a responsibility to make sure that the sources they use are credible. In this case, Carte Blanche failed the case.

Thanks to the viewer who alerted us to this story. If you find a case of anti-Israel reporting, let us know. Visit our website http://honestreporting.com to find out how you can help us make a difference in the media's treatment of Israel.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWGZpQJWbeI&feature=youtu.be

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The latest presentation of Jesus as a Palestinian

Having no ancient Palestinian history, the Palestinian Authority has tried for many years to convince its people that they have a history going back many thousands of years, that there was an ancient Palestinian nation, and that one of the great figures of history, Jesus, was their “forefather” and they are “Jesus' descendants.”

Itamar Marcus/Nan Jacques Zilberdik..
Palestinian Media Watch..
19 May '13..



Official PA daily:

“The Palestinians [are] Jesus' descendants" and "Jesus' story is his [Palestinian] people's story"

"Jesus... the virtuous patriotic Palestinian forefather... brought forth his New Testament and spread it among mankind - which led the Jews to persecute him until they caught him, crucified him, and murdered him"

"The Zionist movement... wanted to falsify historical facts, to exile and crucify the Palestinian Arab nation and then murder it"

Having no ancient Palestinian history, the Palestinian Authority has tried for many years to convince its people that they have a history going back many thousands of years, that there was an ancient Palestinian nation, and that one of the great figures of history, Jesus, was their “forefather” and they are “Jesus' descendants.”

The fact that in Christian tradition Jesus is a Jew from the nation of Judea and that the historical record has no record of a Palestinian Arab people, is not taught by the PA. The PA also ignores the fact that Rome only changed the name of Judea to "Palestine" after the Judean Bar Kochba Rebellion in the year 136, long after the death of Jesus. Furthermore, according to Christian tradition, Jesus did not marry, had no children, and therefore Palestinians could not be "Jesus' descendants."

The following is another presentation of Jesus as a Palestinian. According to this op-ed in the official PA daily, Jesus the Palestinian was oppressed and persecuted by the Jews, similar to today's Palestinians, who are likewise oppressed and persecuted by the Jews. Nonetheless, just as Jesus was resurrected, so too "the Palestinians, Jesus' descendants, rose from the ashes," the op-ed states.

Squeezing Out the Truth at The Economist

Sarit Catz..
CAMERA ..
16 May '13..



When it comes to reporting about Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the influential Economist, a London-based weekly news and international affairs publication, regularly abandons responsible journalism. The magazine gives every indication of having an agenda to vilify Israel by presenting accusations of Israeli racism, ethnic cleansing, and discrimination without any basis in fact. (See CAMERA's previous debunking of some of these false claims.) The Economist's most recent smear of Israel comes in a May 4th article, published both in print and online, entitled “Squeeze them out; As Jewish settlements expand, the Palestinians are being driven away.”

The thesis of the story is that the Israeli government is “herding the West Bank's Palestinians out of the rural 60% of the territory, officially known as Area C” in order to hand the area over to Israelis. And, yet again, The Economist provides no evidence for its false claims and leaves out crucial information that negates its thesis.

As Ari Briggs of Regavim, an independent research institute and think tank, wrote in a Jerusalem Post Op-Ed the opposite phenomenon is occurring:

The illegal “building intifada” being waged by the Palestinian Authority on state lands in Area C of Judea and Samaria, (the West Bank), has become the latest battleground for the radical Left in conjunction with foreign-funded Israeli so called human rights NGO's such as B'tselem and Bimkom.

This unlawful land theft is being carried out with the full support of the EU, foreign aid organizations and the UN.

And seemingly also with the encouragement of much of the media –in this case, The Economist.

(Read full post)

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"The Gatekeepers" and the banality of Dror Moreh

...His predecessor, Avraham Shalom, gives away the film's implied position: "Because of terrorism, we forget the issue of the Palestinian state." Why did we forget? Maybe terrorism was the goal from the onset, and the Palestinians actually never wanted a state? But Moreh is not showing statements that could put cracks in his narrative.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
17 May '13..

1. I was invited to a discussion of the Israeli Documentary Filmmakers Forum recently. To prepare, I watched the two films that represented Israel in the American Academy Awards' documentary film category -- Dror Moreh's "The Gatekeepers" and "5 Broken Cameras" by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi. Despite the harsh reviews they received, I recommend seeing them. They represent a perspective that needs to be dealt with.

I'll write about "The Gatekeepers" now and save "5 Broken Cameras" for another time. The sycophantic interviews of Dror Moreh in the American media did not bode well for his ability to decode the riddle of the heads of the Shin Bet. They do not say much that is deep in the film. Perhaps this is because Moreh could not deal with such minds or because he was interested not in psychological or intellectual depth, but rather in the political story in which the heads of the Shin Bet served as statistics to fill in the left wing's version of the failure of the Oslo Accords.

The theme of "shooting and weeping" has been well known since we came back to our country and had to defend it with our lives, together with the necessity of taking the lives of others. Now even the heads of the Shin Bet have doubts. This either-or quality is the bread and butter of drama: morality versus terrorism, combat versus conscience, control versus the desire for liberty. The film opens with former Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin's motto: "There's something unnatural about taking the lives of people in a single second."

His predecessor, Avraham Shalom, gives away the film's implied position: "Because of terrorism, we forget the issue of the Palestinian state." Why did we forget? Maybe terrorism was the goal from the onset, and the Palestinians actually never wanted a state? But Moreh is not showing statements that could put cracks in his narrative.

While the film pretends to present complexity, it never fulfills its promise. It shows the world as black and white, and the historical excerpts have no profound context. The Six-Day War. A Palestinian population. Occupation. That's it. There's no discussion about our historical, religious and cultural context as a nation living in this region. Not a word about our principled claim to sovereignty over it.

Regional Reality Check - Farewell to Sykes-Picot

...In fact it seems the only real, stable borders still existing are those of Israel. And that is in good part because Israel has built elaborate security barriers north, east, and most recently south, to demarcate and defend them. Israel’s borders exist on the ground, and the great irony is of course that they are the only boundaries in the region that do not exist on maps and are viewed as temporary until a peace agreement with Syria and with the Palestinians is achieved.

Elliott Abrams..
Pressure Points..
17 May '13..

Much has been written about whether the instability in Iraq, the warfare in Syria and the crises this causes for Lebanon, Turkey, and Jordan, the Kurdish drive for autonomy (at least) in Iraq and Turkey, will at some point combine to unravel the Sykes-Picot Agreement between France and England in 1916. Put another way, the question is whether the borders established in the context of the First World War will stick.

Here is one answer: they are effectively gone already, whether as a legal matter they disappear or remain. After all, when Iran can send any amount of arms through Syria and Iraq to its allies and proxies in Lebanon–ignoring the Lebanese government and Lebanese border–what is left of borders? Iran has in effect an open space running from the Afghan border to the Mediterranean, where it can place arms and soldiers almost at will. We know that Iranian IRGC forces are in Syria, and we know that Hezbollah forces from Lebanon are fighting there too. We know that just as jihadis from all over the world crossed from Syria into Iraq, ignoring that border to fight the Americans, today they are arriving across borders into Syria, now to fight the Assad regime.

Deciphering delegitimization and the imperative for a political ‘Iron-Dome’

It seems that no matter how heinous the deeds, or obnoxious the declarations, on the Palestinian side, this will never disqualify anyone to be welcomed as an honored interlocutor in the discourse on Israeli concessions. The only criterion for invitation seems to be that there should be someone else who has perpetrated deeds more heinous, or made declarations more obnoxious.

Martin Sherman..
Into the Fray/JPost..
16 May '13..

How is it that after all the wrenching concessions it has made, Israel is far more reviled today than during the rigid “rejectionism” of Yitzhak Shamir? I believe we have to talk to each other and to listen to each other. I think bilateral engagement... is the only way. But confidence, trust, is not existing. – Jibril Rajoub, Fatah Central Committee, at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, April 23.

We the Palestinians are the enemies of Israel. There is no going back to negotiations. Listen. We as yet don’t have a nuke, but I swear that if we had a nuke, we’d have used it this very morning. – Jibril Rajoub, on the Lebanese-based TV station Al Mayadeen, April 30

I have been sitting in front of my computer screen with waves of despair and disbelief flowing over me, unable to write a sentence for hours.

As I meander through cyberspace, each proposal I encounter for resolving the Palestinian issue seems more detached from reality, more devoid of reason, more desperate, more delusional and more depressing than the one before.

Repeatedly disproven, never discarded

It would be one thing if these outlandish schemes were being promoted solely by Israel’s external adversaries. But what I find bewildering and debilitating is that these demonstrably unworkable proposals are being energetically pursued and promoted by influential Israelis themselves.

Almost inconceivably, policy prescriptions that not many years ago would have been condemned as almost treasonous, are being enthusiastically embraced and ardently advanced by individuals and organizations, deep within the mainstream Israeli establishment. Time after time, we see one public figure after another succumb to the pernicious pressures of political correctness and endorse political paradigms they had previously denounced as too dangerous to be adopted.

Failure, no matter how dramatic, disastrous or devastating, seems to have little effect. Regardless of results, reality or reason, they cling stubbornly to evermore radical variants of the same concept of political appeasement and territorial abandonment, which although repeatedly disproven, is somehow never discredited, and certainly, never discarded.

When negotiated withdrawal failed to bring peace, unilateral withdrawal was adopted. When that failed to bring the desired results, unrequited unilateral withdrawal – i.e. withdrawal for withdrawal’s sake – is now being touted as an objective in itself.

BDS - The Black Hole

Any state can declare someone persona non grata; Hawking took the unusual step of declaring himself an ungrateful persona.

Liat Collins..
JPost Columnist..
16 May '13..

It’s not every day you discover you’re smarter than an iconic scientist of Stephen Hawking’s stature. That day came for me last week. On May 8, to be precise.

When Cambridge University announced that Hawking was pulling out of the annual Facing Tomorrow conference hosted by President Shimon Peres for reasons of health, I felt sorry for him.

When Matthew Kalman writing for the Guardian demonstrated that, as rumored, Hawking had withdrawn from next month’s three-day gathering for ideological reasons, I felt worried about him – and sorry for all of us.

Hawking wrote an email to the conference organizers stating: “... I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference.

Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”

Of course, Hawking, a former recipient of Israel’s prestigious Wolf Prize for physics, would have been free to speak his supposedly brilliant mind had he come.

Keeping busy threatening Palestinians who meet with Israelis

Khaled Abu Toameh..
Gatestone Institute..
17 May '13..

While Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was meeting in his office in Ramallah with Shelly Yacimovich, chairwoman of Israel's opposition Labour Party, his Fatah faction was busy threatening Palestinians who meet with Israelis.

That Abbas continues to meet with Israelis on a regular basis in Ramallah does not seem to bother Fatah.Nor does Fatah seem to be bothered that Palestinian security officers work closely together with their Israeli counterparts in the West Bank. That is called "security coordination" between the Palestinians and Israel.

But when Palestinian youths are invited to meet with Israelis as part of an interfaith dialogue project, Fatah is quick to issue denunciations and threats. When Palestinian and Israeli teenagers are invited to play football together as part of a project to promote peace and coexistence, Fatah is also quick to react.

But Fatah has no problem when Abbas or any top Palestinian official meets with Israelis.

Nor does Fatah have a problem with some of its senior representatives carrying Israeli-issued VIP cards that grant them various privileges that are denied to most Palestinians, such as permission to enter Israel and avoid waiting at Israel Defense Force checkpoints.

Palestinian youths from Hebron, though, who met with Israelis near Bethlehem to share their problems and insights have been forced to issue a statement distancing themselves from the meeting. Following threats from Fatah, which condemned the event as a form of "normalization" with Israel, the Palestinian participants claimed that they had been "misled" regarding the true goals of the meeting.

Who is the de facto sovereign of the Temple Mount?

...This week a senior official from the Foreign Ministry's Jordan desk was asked who was in charge of the Temple Mount. Without hesitating, the official said: The de facto sovereign of the Temple Mount is not the State of Israel but rather the Kingdom of Jordan, which has effective rule there.

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
17 May '13..

Things are being hidden on the Temple Mount, and one does not need to be a genius to understand that. It was enough to watch the body language of the government's representatives who attended last week's meeting of the Knesset's Internal Affairs and Environment Committee to see that things the state would prefer not be visible to the eye were going on.

MK Miri Regev, the committee chairwoman, asked for a discussion about "the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount" in a somewhat naïve attempt to open a crack in the prohibition against Jewish prayer there, which has been in effect for many years. The state sent its best "forces" to defend the status quo on the Mount and explain that any change could bring blood, fire, pillars of smoke and old-new holy wars upon us. Advocates of the Temple Mount described the injustice being perpetrated there and the feeling of humiliation, together with the basic laws that were being violated. But suddenly the meeting, which was quite ordinary in character, veered from its familiar path. Surprise followed surprise -- and denials were quick to follow.

Elhanan Glatt, the director-general of the Religious Services Ministry, dropped a bombshell, announcing to the members of the committee: "By order of Deputy Religious Services Minister Eli Ben-Dahan," that the ministry intended to draft amendments that would enable Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount and submit them for the cabinet's approval." Only 90 seconds passed from that moment to the denial that arrived almost at the speed of light, evidently because of intervention from the Prime Minister's Office.

What exactly went on there behind the scenes? Here is one possible explanation: Ben-Dahan wants to change the situation on the Temple Mount. Before he was appointed to his position, Ben-Dahan participated in the activities of one of the Temple Mount groups. Now, as deputy religious services minister and the official in charge of the ministry, he is trying to change things. Glatt, who served until recently as the chief executive of the Center for Bnei Akiva Yeshivot, is trying, too. So is his former boss, the current chief executive of the center, Rabbi Haim Drukman, who recently made several statements supporting Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. It is possible that Glatt was sent to send up a trial balloon and check the responses.

Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he was in the opposition, promised in writing that when he became prime minister he would work to regularize Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. But, as happened to another Likud prime minister, Menachem Begin, who also promised as a member of the opposition to regularize Jewish prayer there, Netanyahu discovered, when he became prime minister, that all the defense officials firmly rejected the institution of any such amendments.

Until last week, the last time anyone pronounced the forbidden phrase "amendments for the regularization of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount" was during the 1980s. Judge Ruth Orr acquitted a group of members of the Betar movement who had prayed on the Temple Mount. When then-Religious Affairs Minister Yitzhak Rafael (National Religious Party) toyed with the idea, the Prime Minister's Office blocked him, too.

Paula Stern, the BBC and an Appreciation of Israel

...We are living - in a land so beautiful it can bring tears to your eyes and steal your breath away. The majesty, the dignity, the absolute holiness of this land comes through as you drive, as you walk, as you sit on your balcony and stare out at the mountains to the east, south, west or north. From my backyard, I can see Jerusalem and the mountains nearby. From my front porch, I can see the Judean Desert and the low hills that lead down to the Dead Sea.

Paula R. Stern..
A Soldier's Mother..
17 May '13..

I'm in a holding pattern with this blog. Not much to write about in terms of being a soldier's mother because thankfully, my sons are home - two with their wives; another happily and unhappily studying away in high school. Yaakov is coming home this summer to begin further studies; he brings with him his wife and two daughters. Chaim is blooming in university, finding facets of himself, polishing his abilities and finding the voice that is uniquely his.

My daughters are doing well - my oldest is finishing university - she is the kind of mother I always wanted to be. Aliza is grace. Hard to explain it with another word so I'll leave it at that. They've grown to be people - something that a mother has to learn to accept. They are individuals - all of them, with their own directions and lives.

I'm going through a rough time personally - not things I really want to write about, but things that weigh on my mind. The BBC show aired and it was...okay. That's a ridiculous word but an excellent one. I never thought it would be pro-Israel - but the fact that it wasn't anti-Israel pleases me greatly. They were fair. Over and over, that word comes to mind.

(Read full post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.

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The Commemoration of a Self-Inflicted Tragedy - Naqba

...Israel successfully resisted invasion and dismemberment — the universally affirmed objective of the Arab belligerents — and Palestinians came off worst of all from the whole venture. At war’s end, over 600,000 Palestinians were living as refugees under neighboring Arab regimes. So the term naqba is misleading. Indeed, it smacks of falsehood, inasmuch as it implies a tragedy inflicted by others. The tragedy, of course, was self-inflicted.

Daniel Mandel..
The American Spectator..
15 May '13..

Today, Palestinians and their supporters, as they have done increasingly over the years, mark what they call the Naqba (Arabic for catastrophe). It was on this day 65 years ago that Israel came into existence upon the expiry of British rule under a League of Nations mandate.

That juxtaposition of Israel and naqba in not accidental. We are meant to understand that Israel’s creation caused the displacement of hundreds of thousand of Palestinian Arabs.

But the truth is different. A British document from early 1948, declassified only weeks ago, tells the story: “the Arabs have suffered a series of overwhelming defeats…. Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and, following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing from the mixed areas in their thousands.”

In other words, Jew and Arabs, including irregular foreign militias from neighboring states, were already fighting and Arabs fleeing even before Israel had sovereign existence.

Thus, on May 15, what is now called the Naqba consisted, not of an Israeli act of forcible displacement of Arabs, but of neighboring Arab armies and internal Palestinian militias responding to Israel’s declaration of independence and Britain’s departure with full-scale hostilities. Tel Aviv was bombed from the air and the head of Israel’s provisional government, David Ben Gurion, delivered his first radio address to the nation from an air-raid shelter.

Israel successfully resisted invasion and dismemberment — the universally affirmed objective of the Arab belligerents — and Palestinians came off worst of all from the whole venture. At war’s end, over 600,000 Palestinians were living as refugees under neighboring Arab regimes.

So the term naqba is misleading. Indeed, it smacks of falsehood, inasmuch as it implies a tragedy inflicted by others. The tragedy, of course, was self-inflicted.

Qatar, Israel, and the consequences of conceding endlessly

...It’s mind-boggling how the Arabs can appear so conciliatory when sacrificing nothing, while Israel is regarded as intransigent when conceding endlessly and at great existential risk. It may well be that our reputation is sullied precisely because of our very readiness to concede. Our pliability isn’t without detrimental consequences. Even futile negotiations do great harm down the line. Simply put, egregious territorial generosity undercuts all future Israeli bargaining positions.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
17 May '13..

The wardrobe adaptability of the Emir of Qatar Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani is very telling. The same goes for his cousin, Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani.

When it serves their purposes, Qatar’s staggeringly wealthy two most powerful players strut about in very traditional Arab garb. But when the occasion deems it expedient, they soothe subliminal western anxieties by donning tailored suits of the exceptionally elegant sort that proliferates in European Union forums. That purportedly imparts an impression of trustworthiness.

The cousins’ policy line is just as chameleon-like. There’s a yawning gap between their utterances in English and in Arabic.

Not too many years ago, Qatar was an Israeli success story, or so it was widely believed in Jerusalem. Relations with Doha, especially trade ties, flourished since the mid-Nineties. They weren’t formal or full, yet they were hardly covert. Everyone knew about them. Unnamed Qatari higher-ups had reportedly visited Israel and Shimon Peres, then deputy premier, openly visited Qatar in 2007. Tzipi Livni did the same a year later. Other Israelis, such as Ehud Barak, hobnobbed with the emir.

But Qatar unilaterally abrogated these ties after Operation Cast Lead. Doha offered to restore them if Israel allowed unrestricted shipments of building materials to Gaza. Since these can be used to build bunkers, Israel refused.

However, the Qatari transformation isn’t only Israeli-linked. Qatar had become the financial sponsor of the misnamed Arab Spring, bankrolling assorted Muslim Brotherhood insurgents and their allies. The upheavals shaking the Arab world – Syria foremost – were in effect orchestrated by Doha.

The emir – despite his excellent personal ties with Israelis, Americans and other Westerners – has used his clout and unimaginable riches to bring to power and sustain Islamist forces that are fundamentally inimical to the West, to say nothing of their implacable hatred for the Jewish state.

As the Washington Post Misses the Point Completely

Leo Rennert..
American Thinker..
16 May '13..

In its May 16 edition, the Washington Post runs an article by correspondent William Booth about restrictions faced by Palestinian and Israeli journalists in covering each other's turf ("Palestinian journalists campaign to restrict Israeli counterparts' access" page A10).

Booth leads off with a campaign by Palestinian journalists to limit their Israeli counterparts' access to cover Palestinian parts of the West Bank. "For the first time, Palestinian authorities say they will require all Israeli journalists to apply for press credentials; those without may be escorted away by police," Booth reports.

And, of course, press access conditions are even worse in Gaza where Israel forbids its reporters to enter lest they be kidnapped by the Hamas terrorist regime -- a fact acknowledged by Booth.

So far, so good.

Booth, however, comes perilously close to drawing an equivalence between press restrictions bedeviling Israeli and Palestinian reporters. While about 50 Palestinian journalist have credentials issued by the Israeli government, Booth belittles this fact by adding that almost all of them work for international organizations. Only a handful of Palestinian reporters working for West Bank or Gaza media "can report in Israel, and their movements can be severely restricted," he adds.

Taking a Moment and Walking through the Peace Index Poll

Dr. Aaron Lerner..
IMRA Weekly Commentary..
16 May '13..

The Peace Index is a project of the Evens Program for Mediation and Conflict Resolution at Tel Aviv University and the Israel Democracy Institute. This month's survey was conducted by telephone on April 28–30, 2013, by the Midgam Research Institute.

Let’s take a moment and walk through some of the findings among adult Israeli Jews:

What is your position on holding peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority?
1. Strongly in favor 31.2
2. Somewhat in favor 32.9
3. Somewhat opposed 12.8
4. Strongly opposed 16.7
5. Don’t know / Refuse to answer 31.2

So Israelis want to talk.

But wait a moment.

Do you believe or not believe that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will lead to peace between Israel and the Palestinians in the coming years?
1. Strongly believe 6.8
2. Somewhat believe 24.0
3. Somewhat don’t believe 22.6
4. Don’t believe at all 44.2
5. Don’t know / Refuse to answer 2.4

That’s right. Israelis want to talk, but they don’t think it will lead to peace.

Israel, the Picture of the Year and the Politics Behind It

David Katz..
Times of Israel..
16 May '13..

As a veteran photographer and, in more recent years, an advisor on the use of imagery in the campaign to delegitimize Israel, it came as no great surprise when World Press Photo named the “Gaza Burial” picture as Photo of the Year – an entry by outstanding Swedish photographer Paul Hansen, a staffer with Dagens Nyheter.

As for the reason it came as no surprise, my feeling on seeing the incredibly evocative and beautifully lit image was that World Press Photo, an organization founded in 1955 and known for holding the world’s largest and most prestigious annual press photography contest, had been motivated more by its own publicity at the expense of Israel, than by the integrity of many of the other images that it had received in this category. It seems the judges realized they would get a lot more mileage out of a picture depicting dead Palestinian babies in Gaza, much to the benefit of both their travelling photo exhibition, viewed by over a million people in 40 countries, and a yearbook published in six languages.

On first seeing the image, I just felt a sense of sadness at the circumstances that led to the picture being made in the first place and frustration at the bias and double standards that Israel faces on a daily basis by organizations like World Press Photo in relation to this kind of imagery.

The 2013 World Press Photo of the year by Paul Hansen (photo credit: AP/Paul Hansen, Dagens Nyheter)

At the same time that Paul Hansen was in Gaza – where photographers can only work if they are watched over by the terrorist organization Hamas – I was in Southern Israel photographing wave after wave of incoming rockets and their effects on the lives of the one million Israelis that were in the line of fire.