PA, PLO, and Fatah enraged by Israeli UN Ambassador's election as chairman of UN Legal Committee

PA, PLO, and Fatah enraged 

by Israeli UN Ambassador's election 

as chairman of UN Legal Committee

PA: 

"A shameful and disgraceful thing"

Fatah:

"A blow to international law"

PLO: 

"A prize for terror"

Fatah Lebanon: 

Election of Israel to chair UN Legal Committee 

is killing of "Justice"

• Fatah cartoon shows Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's hands dripping blood and UN endorsing Israel's "killing" of Palestinians

• Fatah cartoon (2) shows Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu having murdered "Lady Justice"

Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

Click to view on PMW's website

Enraged by the election in June of Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon as chairman of the UN Legal Committee, the Palestinian Authority Government Spokesman Yusuf Al-Mahmoud called it "a farce and a shameful and disgraceful thing," and stated that Israel is a "threat to the peace and security of the region." [WAFA (official PA news agency), June 14, 2016]

The official PA daily printed a cartoon titled "Israel is chairman of the UN Legal Committee," showing an Israeli soldier looking through the sights of a machine gun while standing on the scales of justice. [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 16, 2016] 

Abbas' Fatah Movement called the election "a blow to international law." [Website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission, June 14, 2016]

Fatah in Lebanon portrayed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a killer of Palestinians as well as of Lady Justice in two cartoons. 

In both cartoons, the election of Israel as chair of the UN Legal Committee, which deals with all of the UN's legal activities and coordinates its fight against terror, was termed "a prize for terror." 

One cartoon (above) shows a figure representing the UN and the world waving Prime Minister Netanyahu's bloody hands in the air as a sign of victory on the UN podium. At their feet are skulls and bones of Palestinians, one of the skulls is holding a Palestinian flag. [Falestinona, website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon, June 24, 2016]

The other cartoon, stating that "the election of Israel as head of the UN Committee is a prize for its terror and occupation," showed Prime Minister Netanyahu standing over the bleeding body of Lady Justice with a smoking gun in his hand. [Falestinona, website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon, June 17, 2016]

The Palestinian National Council (PNC), the legislative body of the PLO, stated that the election of Israel as chairman of the Legal Committee is "a prize for its terror and occupation against the Palestinian people." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 17, 2016]

The following are longer excerpts of some of the reports mentioned above:

Headline: "The [Palestinian] National Council (PNC): The election of Israel as chairman of a UN committee is a prize for its terror and occupation"

"The [Palestinian] National Council (PNC, i.e., the legislative body of the PLO) stated that the election of Israel (i.e., in June 2016) as chairman of the Sixth Committee, the Legal Committee, of the UN is a prize for its terror and occupation against the Palestinian people...

The PNC demanded of the regional and international parliamentary unions, and specifically of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) (i.e., an international organization of parliaments of sovereign states established in 1889 to promote democracy and world peace), to take deterrent steps against the Israeli Parliament, which continues to legislate racist laws which are in opposition to the guidelines of international law, the UN Convention, and the goals and principles for which it was established, the most recent being the ratification of the '[anti-] terror' law yesterday [June 15, 2016] in the [Israeli] Parliament, which constitutes the height of the racist Israeli fascism against our people and its resistance, and imposes additional unreasonable punishments on anyone who defends his land and tries to achieve his freedom and independence."

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, June 17, 2016]

Israeli anti-terror law - Ratified on June 15, 2016, the law legislates significantly stiffer penalties for acts related to terror - involvement in a terror attack, aiding terrorists in carrying out an attack, public support of or identification with acts of terror, heading a terrorist organization, working for a terrorist organization, acts/business deals involving weapons used for terror, training of terrorists, threatening to carry out a terror attack, etc., and allows the government or Minister of Defense to define an organization as a terrorist organization at the request of the Head of the Israeli Secret Service, after receiving the opinion of the attorney general.

Text posted on the website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission with Fatah's response to Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon's appointment as chairman of the UN Legal Committee, the first time an Israeli was elected to be head of a permanent UN Committee

Headline: "The [PA] government: Making Israel chairman of the UN Legal Committee is a shameful and disgraceful thing"

"Official [PA] Government Spokesman Yusuf Al-Mahmoud said that making Israel chairman of the UN Legal Committee (i.e., in June 2016) is a farce and a shameful and disgraceful thing.

Al-Mahmoud said in a press statement today, Tuesday [June 14, 2016], that... 'What is shocking is that we, in the second decade of the third millennium, are seeing the last occupation in the world appointed as chairman of the UN Legal Committee, despite its bloody and aggressive record throughout the last decades against an unarmed people, and despite its threat to the peace and security of the region.'"

[WAFA (official PA news agency), June 14, 2016]

Headline: "Fatah: Chairmanship of the UN Legal Committee [given] to Israel - a blow to international law"

"The Fatah Movement considered the Israeli occupation state being made chairman of the UN Legal Committee a 'blow to international law and a grave precedent that grants it justification to continue its crime and racism...'

Fatah Spokesman Osama Al-Qawasmi said in a press release: 'The occupation state (i.e., Israel) is at the top of the list of states that do not respect international law, and it even strives to violate it daily with its crimes and racist activity against our people.' He wondered: 'How can a state that occupies the state of Palestine and conducts the most racist and criminal policy - killing, arrests, demolition of homes, theft of lands, and expulsion of civilians... - [how can it] stand at the head of the UN Legal Committee, one of whose missions is supervision of the implementation of international law.'

Fatah also demanded that the world's nations that are members of the UN organization force the occupation state [to follow] international law and respect human rights in Palestine before it stands at the head of the UN Legal Committee. In this way there will be a minimal measure of credibility." 

[Website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission, June 14, 2016]

ELIE WIESEL z'l by Natan Sharansky

Perhaps better than anyone else of our age, Elie Wiesel grasped the terrible power of silence. He understood that the failure to speak out, about both the horrors of the past and the evils of the present, is one of the most effective ways there is to perpetuate suffering and empower those who inflict it.

Wiesel therefore made it his life’s mission to ensure that silence would not prevail. First, he took the courageous and painful step of recounting the Holocaust, bringing it to public attention in a way that no one else before him had done. His harrowing chronicle “Night,” originally titled “And the World Remained Silent,” forced readers to confront that most awful of human events — to remember it, to talk about it, to make it part of their daily lives. Then, as if that weren’t enough, he turned his attention to the present, giving voice to the millions of Jews living behind the Iron Curtain. Although he is rightly hailed for the first of these two achievements, it was the second, he told me on several occasions, for which he most hoped to be remembered.

Wiesel first traveled to the Soviet Union in 1965 as a journalist from Haaretz, on a mission to meet with Jews there, and was shocked by what he saw. Those with whom he spoke were too afraid to recount Soviet persecution, terrified of reprisals from the regime, but their eyes implored him to tell the world about their plight. The book that resulted, “The Jews of Silence,” was an impassioned plea to Jews around the world to shed their indifference and speak out for those who could not. “For the second time in a single generation, we are committing the error of silence,” Wiesel warned — a phenomenon even more troubling to him than the voiceless suffering of Soviet Jews themselves.

This was a watershed moment in Soviet Jewry’s struggle. While the major American Jewish organizations felt a responsibility to stick to quiet diplomacy, wary of ruffling Soviet feathers and alienating non-Jews in the United States, Wiesel’s book became the banner of activists, students and others who would not stay quiet. He had realized that the Soviet regime wanted above all for its subjects to feel cut off from one another and abandoned by the world. Indeed, I can attest that even 15 years later, Soviet authorities were still doing their utmost to convince us — both those of us in prison and those outside — that we were alone, that no one would save us and that the only way to survive was to accept their dictates.

Wiesel was thus uniquely perceptive in realizing that without this power to generate fear and isolation, the entire Soviet system could fall apart, and he was prophetic in calling on the rest of the world to remind Soviet Jews that they were not alone. The history of the Soviet Union would likely be very different had the struggle for Soviet Jewry not come to encompass the kind of outspoken, grass-roots activism that Wiesel encouraged in his book. Without public campaigns and the awareness they generated, there could be no quiet diplomacy to secure results. Every achievement in the struggle for Soviet Jewry over the succeeding 25 years — from making the first holes in the Iron Curtain, to securing the release of political prisoners and human rights activists, to ultimately making it possible for millions of Soviet Jews to emigrate — resulted from this mixture of activism and diplomacy, neither of which could succeed without the other.

Over the years, of course, Wiesel became an important part of establishment Jewish life. Every Jewish organization sought to co-opt him, to invite him to speak or to support their causes. Yet he remained deeply connected to the dozens of refusenik families whom he had effectively adopted as his own. From 1965 on, he once said, not a single day went by when he was not preoccupied with the fate of Soviet Jews, many of whom he regarded as family.

And he was true to this approach to the very end, to the last battle in our struggle: the March for Soviet Jewry in Washington in December 1987. Elie and I had first discussed the idea of a march more than a year earlier, in mid-1986. Yet six months after our initial conversation, I found myself lamenting to him that the Jewish establishment was too resistant to the idea, afraid of the logistical difficulties involved and of being painted as enemies of a newly born detente. Elie replied that we should not expect establishment organizations to take the lead and should instead mobilize students, who would pressure them from below to get on board. So I traveled to about 50 U.S. universities in the months leading up to the march, galvanizing activists who were eager to participate. And sure enough, just as he predicted, all of the major Jewish organizations eventually united behind the idea.

As we were all marching together, establishment leaders justifiably congratulated themselves for this great achievement. Elie looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Yes, they did it.” Rather than splitting hairs about who had been more influential, he credited the power of the Jewish world as a whole. We had been right to act as we did, to make noise and push for change through our own resolute campaign, but we needed the establishment to see our efforts through. Elie understood exceptionally well how to unite these two forces for the common good.

Elie Wiesel’s humanism, his active concern for the voiceless, hardly stopped with his fellow Jews. He spoke out against massacres in Bosnia, Cambodia and Sudan, against apartheid in South Africa, and against the burning of black churches in the United States. He became, as others have said, the conscience of the world. Yet he never gave up or sacrificed even a bit of his concern for the Jewish people. He did not feel he had to give up his Jewish loyalty or national pride to be a better spokesman for others. To the contrary: It was the tragedy of his people that generated his concern for the world — a world he felt God had abandoned — and it was his belief in universal ideas that helped him to ultimately reconcile with his Jewish God.

May his memory be a blessing.

RARE- Rabbi Meir Kahane's HY"D last speech "JEW, LEAVE THE EXILE" at Z.E.E.R.O Conference

The Basics of Islam 13: Robert Spencer on Islam's View of Women

Standing Together Showing Some Love To IDF Soldiers

Saying Thank You To IDF Soldiers

Standing Together IDF

Standing Together is an official non-profit organization recognized by the Israeli Knesset as well as by the IDF. Our goal is to supply and support IDF soldiers with whatever they need and wherever they might be as well as to tell the true story to what happens to Israel's troops when they are facng Islamic terror. All our activities and campaigns are in done in conjunction with and under IDF clearance. 

Standing Together's goal is to show appreciation to soldiers while offering an opportunity to people from around the world to say 'thank you' to Israel's heroes who are keeping Israel safe and who are standing guard for the entire Jewish nation. 

 Our support campaigns include everything from winter gear to special summer apparel, cmale back water carriers, personal gear items that makes the lives o f IDF soldiers just a little bit easier as they protect Israel. Standing Together also travels across Israel with our well recognized Standing Together truck and deliver everything from cold drinks, ice cream and pancakes during the summer months, BBQs, Pizzas and hot drinks during the freezing winter months to thousands of soldiers. We are now in the process of purchasing two new trucks that will be stationed in the north and south of Israel and reach 1,000 soldiers every day! 

​

Here are some of the latest videos from our campaigns and outings 

https://youtu.be/cYj0SzapgAE

https://youtu.be/FanK_-en9Ik
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_wFjkhBZbw

My goal for the upcoming trip is to find sponsors for our summer campaigns which include dry-fit clothing for front line soldiers as well as 10,000 camel back water carriers and outings to 20 different elite units who will be finishing their training over the summer. We are also looking for partners who would like to sponsor the two new trucks we are purchasing and would obviously have the sponsors name or the community that takes on this important project.
We are delivering thousands of ice cream bars along with cold drinks and refreshments to the troops who are returning from operations or drills and we meet them in the field with letters from the sponsors as well. It is absolutely amazing to see the response from soldiers when they learn that people from all over the world love and support them. 

Beyond our IDF support and 'thank you' campaigns, we at Standing Together believe in making a personal connection between Israel, the IDF and people from around the world.It is important to us that people hear the personal experiences of soldiers and hear what really happens to soldiers of the IDF when they are on duty and facing radical Islamic terrorists. With all the bad and fabricated reports that are being spread around the world, we feel our support is paramount in helping Israel's heroes protect Israel while knowing people around the world have their backs.

A bit about Ari Fuld

  ​

Ari Fuld is the Assistant Director of the Standing Together IDF support organization. Originally from Queens NY, Ari made Aliyah and drafted into the IDF in 1992 after a year of study at Yeshivat Hakotel. For the past 21 years he has served in an Elite IDF Paratroopers unit and has beeninvolved in many of the latest IDF operations. When not in uniform, Ari is working 24 hours a day to make sure the men and women of the IDF have what they need to continue keeping Israel safe. Before joining Standing Together Ari split his time working with several Jewish educational institutions and as a marketing and business development manager at several hi-tech companies in Tel Aviv. In his free time Ari can be found running his martial arts club in Bet Shemesh or spending his time online with several Israel advocacy projects he is working on. He holds a degree in business management and marketing as well as a teacher’s degree and is a certified martial arts instructor as well as studied for rabbinical ordination in Jerusalem.

 

How I Met Standing Together 

In 2006 my unit spent two very difficult weeks in Lebanon and I made it home by pure miracle.My unit was ambushed by Hizbollah terrorists and several of my friends were injured and one was killed. In one of the operations several of my friends were hit by gunfire and I was ordered to get them out of the line of fire. As we were evacuating them to the safe area (20 miles in Lebanon) there were missiles, gunfire and explosions happening all around. When I finally made it back to the safe area the medic let me know that the back of my vest was full of holes and apparently I was hit. The medic pulled out a huge warped piece of iron from my vest and it turned out to be a piece of shrapnel from a rocket that blew through my vest and by miracle stopped before severing me in half.

We were fighting for two weeks straight and when we were finally given the order to come home by foot we were exhausted both physically as well as emotionally. 

When we finally crossed back over the border and several of us collapsed from total exhaustion. The Standing Together truck drove right up to the border to meet us and supplied us with everything from food to gear and hundreds of letters from sponsors around the world. There is no doubt in my mind that those words of support together with the much needed gear gave us the strength to go back in for our final tour of duty. 

Like some kind of personal "Pay It Forward", I began working  with StandingTogether to supply IDF soldiers with whatever they need, wherever they are. I know exactly what it feels like to receive support and encouragement from people around the world and I will do what I can to make sure others receive the same. 

Here are some pictures from my unit during several of our last operations

Me as I returned from a major in flight exercise 
My team before we went out on a terrorist stakeout.

​My unit before we embark on a huge land exercise

We donated 200 winter packs to the Tanks battalion stationed in the North

Muslim Writer Calls Out Palestinian Terror Glorification

Thursday's shocking Palestinian terrorist murder of a 13-year-old girl prompted the usual praise from Palestinian Authority (PA) outlets. Muhammad Taraireh was hailed as a martyr for stabbing and murdering 13-year-old Hallel Ariel, a U.S. citizen, as she slept in her bed.

"Martyr (Shahid) Muhammad Taraireh, who carried out today's operation in which one female settler was killed, and a male settler was injured," read the post on Fatah's Facebook page and translated by Palestinian Media Watch.

The terrorists' mother said her son made her "proud" and called him a hero and a martyr. "Allah willing, all of them will follow this path, all the youth of Palestine," Taraireh's mother told a local Hebron news outlet.

This brutal murder comes shortly after Abbas' senior advisor Sultan Abu Al-Einein called for Palestinians to decapitate innocent Israelis. "Every place you find an Israeli cut of his head," said Al-Einein.

The terrorists' family will now begin receiving monthly payments that the PA pays to all terrorist families.

Blatant praise for terrorists is expected from Palestinian officials and significant segments of the Palestinian population. Yet the silence emanating from the broader Muslim world following such brutal attacks is similarly disturbing.

In a blog posted by The Times of Israel, Muslim interfaith activist Nadiya Al-Noor blasts Muslim hypocrisy in the context of Palestinian terrorism.

"I have seen firsthand the casual, destructive anti-Semitism that plagues the Muslim community," she wrote. "I have heard it from the mouths of our religious leaders, from our politicians, and even from our otherwise peaceful, liberal Muslim activists. I have witnessed in horror the desperate attempts to justify Palestinian terrorism from people who I once respected. Why? Why do we decry all other types of terrorism, but bend over backwards to legitimize violence against Israeli Jews?"

Too many Muslims seek to justify such terrorism by citing the Israeli "occupation," relying on "anti-Semitic lies fed to us by Al-Jazeera" such the canard that Israelis seek to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Al-Noor wrote. Too many Muslims refuse to refer to Israel by name and proclaim that "Resistance is not a crime!"

Yet Al-Noor bravely opines "stabbing a little girl to death in the one place where she was supposed to be safe is certainly not "resistance."

"We'll stand up against the persecution of Christians, atheists, Hindus, Shias, Ahmadis, and anyone else who is persecuted," she wrote. "We will sob to the heavens if a Palestinian is killed, but when it comes to Palestinian terrorism against Jews, we either turn a blind eye to it, or we twist the story to make the terrorists into the victims. This is unacceptable."

"When you make excuses for terrorists, you support terrorism."

Al-Noor's observations directly relate to strategies adopted by U.S. Islamist organizations, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which routinely condemns acts of terrorism worldwide – but never when it comes to Israelis.

Iran is as belligerent as ever, by Joseph I. Lieberman

Joseph I. Lieberman is a former U.S. senator from Connecticut and serves as chairman of United Against Nuclear Iran. Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata is the former foreign minister of Italy and is a member of United Against Nuclear Iran's Advisory Board.

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=16561

On Friday, July 1, thousands of Iranians will gather in the streets for Quds Day, whose main purpose is to call for "Death to Israel." Israeli, and probably American, flags will be burned, along with the likenesses of the leaders of both countries. These annual regime-organized rallies are in their fourth decade.

But now, the belligerence embodied in Quds Day stretches far beyond the borders of Iran, with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei providing funding to enable the participation of anti-Israel extremists in cities around the world.

At the same time, some global leaders and corporate executives are too anxious to believe that Iran has changed in the wake of the conclusion of the nuclear deal. They are eager to find signs of reform from Tehran to justify business pursuits and to open lines of trade. But there is no greater proof, no more revealing time, for the world to understand the true nature of the Iranian regime than on Quds Day.

While some want us to see peace, moderation, and even friendship with Iran, the objective truth continues to be Iranian extremism, hostility, and violence. While some want to see lucrative business opportunities, the reality is that there are severe business risks in Iran that are too great to be ignored for the sake of short-term economic benefit. Just last week, the Financial Action Task Force announced that it would keep Iran on its blacklist because it remains "concerned with the terrorist financing risk emanating from Iran and the threat this poses to the international financial system."

The U.S. State Department recently declared again that Iran remains the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, supporting groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, whose attacks on Israelis, Syrians, Palestinians, Lebanese, and Americans brought death and destruction. Iran also commits gross human rights violations against its own people, and sets up front companies owned by the sanctioned Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, funneling the revenue directly into the hands of the ayatollah for nefarious purposes at home and abroad. The regime still kidnaps and holds hostage people from countries which are at the same time pursuing business opportunities with Iran. The most important point for business executives to understand is that businesses doing business in Iran are still subject to severe economic sanctions due to the country's non-nuclear related behavior.

Rouhani himself is a walking contradiction. Last year, he spoke hopefully of ongoing talks between Iran and U.S. diplomats while marching in Quds Day demonstrations alongside signs declaring "Death to Zionism" and "Death to America." Days later, Iran finalized the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with the "Great Satan," America.

Fortunately, nearly one year after the nuclear agreement was signed, there remains considerable wariness and aversion from countries, businesses and financial institutions to broker deals with Tehran. Why? Because, they are not blind to the authoritarian and extremist essence of the ayatollah and his regime. They cannot ignore his bellicose statements, and his regime's vociferous support for such appalling activities as the Holocaust cartoon contest, which his office deemed "excellent" and "appreciated" just weeks ago. And they should not conclude that there is no more risk to doing business in Iran.

Younger Iranians may dream of reform, but the power remains in the hands of an extremist clerical establishment with hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East. Consider that in 2009 the new chairman of Iran's Assembly of Experts, the body tasked with selecting the next supreme leader, called for the assassination of then-Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni.

Quds Day began in 1979. It is clear 37 years later that Iran has not changed. The global community would be wise to keep its distance from this radical government until such time that it does truly change.

Joseph I. Lieberman is a former U.S. senator from Connecticut and serves as chairman of United Against Nuclear Iran. Giulio Terzi di Sant'Agata is the former foreign minister of Italy and is a member of United Against Nuclear Iran's Advisory Board.

Anger, Honor and Freedom: What European Muslims' Attack On Speech Is Really About

"Clash of civilizations," some say. Others call it the "failure of multiculturalism." Either way, the cultural conflicts between some Muslims and non-Muslims worldwide continue to play out as Western countries struggle to reconcile their own cultures with the demands of a growing Muslim population.

But herein lies the problem: in many ways, the two cultures are ultimately irreconcilable. There is no middle ground. And hence, the conflicts and the tugs-of-war continue.

Over the past two months, the events surrounding controversial Dutch columnist Ebru Umar have encapsulated that "clash" at its core, a salient metaphor for the tensions, particularly in Europe, between the West's Muslim populations and its own. More, they illuminate the enormity of the problems we still face.

Umar is no stranger to the spotlight, or to the wrath of Dutch Muslims who read her many columns, most of them published in the free newspaper, Metro. For years, the Dutch-born daughter of secular Turkish immigrants has raged against the failure of other Dutch-born children of immigrants, mostly Moroccan, to assimilate into the culture of their birth. She loudly condemns Dutch-Moroccan families for the shockingly high rates of criminality and violence among Dutch-Moroccan boys – as much as 22 times the rate of Dutch native youth – a phenomenon she ascribes to their Islamic upbringing and their parents' refusal to allow their children to mingle among the Dutch.

But her critiques have earned her no converts. Instead, Dutch-Moroccan youth, whom she calls "Mocros," have regularly taunted her, both online and in the street.

This past April, however, Umar added a new team of enemies to her portfolio: when, in response to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erodogan's demand that a German satirist be prosecuted for insulting him on TV, Umar tweeted "f***erdogan," Dutch Turks turned on her in fury. "How dare you insult our president!" cried these Dutch-born subjects of Holland's King Willem-Alexander. And while Umar took a brief holiday on the Turkish coast, one such Dutch-Turk turned her in to the police. She was arrested at her vacation home in Kusadasi, and though released the following day, was forbidden to leave the country. The charge: Insulting the Turkish president. It took 17 days before discussions between Holland's prime minister and Turkish authorities enabled her to return to the Netherlands.

But she could not return home. In her absence, Umar's home had been burgled and vandalized, the word "whore" scrawled on a stairway wall. Death threats followed her both in Turkey and on her return. When it became clear she could not ever return to the apartment she had lived in for nearly 20 years, she announced on Twitter (Ebru Umar posts constantly on Twitter) that she would be moving out.

Meantime, in Metro and elsewhere, she continued her criticism of Moroccans and, as she herself notes, of Islam overall.

And so it was that on the day Ebru Umar moved out of her apartment in Amsterdam, a group of Dutch-Moroccans in their twenties came to see her off, taunting her with chants: Ebru has to mo-o-ve, nyah nyah." Though furious, she ignored them – until one of them began to film her loading her belongings into her car. For Umar, being taunted by the very people whose threats had forced her from her home in the first place was bad enough: but this violation of what little privacy remained for her was more than she could take. She grabbed her iPhone and began filming them right back. "Go ahead," she challenged. "Say it for the camera."

Scuffles ensued, and soon one of the Moroccans had her iPhone in his hand. The others laughed. Then they ran away. Umar filed a police report and, still smarting, took to Twitter once again: "C**t Moroccans, I hate you," she posted. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you and I hate your Muslim brothers and sisters, too. F**k you all." (It is important to note that, however offensive, the expression "c**t Moroccans" is a common epithet in the Netherlands.)

But, hey – she was angry. Her phone had been snatched from her hand in a brutal, aggressive gesture that left her feeling violated and, vulnerable. She had just been forced to leave her home. She had endured prison, a criminal inquiry, and death threats, all at the hands of the same group on whom she now spewed her fury.

Her words may have been harsh or inappropriate, but they were words. She had not struck her tormenters as they filmed her. She did not call for their demise, or strap a bomb around her waist and visit the local mosques.

She took to Twitter and said: I hate you.

"But hate," she tells me later in an e-mail, "is just an emotion." And in a column penned more than two years ago, she observed, "Hate me till you're purple, but keep your claws off me."

Here is where Ebru Umar's story becomes the story of the Western world. In response to her words ("I hate you. F*** you"), several Muslims – Moroccans and others – filed charges against her for hate speech. (Though ironically, "I hate you" does not legally qualify as "hate speech.") Such words are an attack upon their honor, a humiliation: and if there is one thing experts on Arab and Muslim culture will agree on, it is the significance of humiliation and honor in governing their lives. For this, Dutch Moroccan youth threaten Umar on the streets, and have done so, she says, for years: after all, she insults them.

But in truth, it isn't just the youth. The broader Muslim community stands by, silent: they do not condemn the youth who taunt her, who rip her telephone from her hands, or post things on the Internet like "We hate you, too – can you please kill yourself?" or "Oh, how I hope she ends up like Theo van Gogh."

Theo van Gogh, also a controversial columnist, was shot and stabbed to death in 2014 by a radical Dutch-Moroccan Muslim.The commenter wishing her the same fate used the name "IzzedinAlQassam," the founder of modern Palestinian jihad, and an icon of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.

For people like this, it doesn't matter that Umar – or van Gogh – inflicted no violence, any more than it mattered that the editors of Charlie Hebdo were not violent. It was the insult, the humiliation – to them, to Islam, to Mohammed – that mattered: and an insult, a humiliation, deserves a violent response.

Indeed, much of the Muslim violence in Europe is about exactly this: intimidating non-Muslims into a fearful capitulation, where words like "I hate Muslims" and drawings of Mohammed become extinct because the Muslim communities insist that it be so. It is about forcing Westerners to rearrange their lives, their culture, to accommodate the needs and values and culture of Islam. It is about control, and the power over freedom. And it is about creating a culture in which honor is injured by words and restored through violence and terror.

When Umar says "I hate you," what she hates, really, isn't the Moroccans who attacked her or their "Muslim brothers and sisters." What she hates is this – this effort, this battle over honor and speech and freedom, and this clash between violence and expression, guns and conversation.

"I don't want Muslims to leave," she tells me, again by e-mail. "I want them to embrace the Enlightenment, Western society, the Netherlands." And in turn, she calls on the Dutch to "set rules: no violence in any sense. And stop using culture or religion as an excuse for behavior."

Ebru Umar's words. More of us should listen.

Abigail R. Esman is an award-winning freelance writer based in New York and Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with more than 20 years of experience writing for national and international magazines including Salon.com, Vogue, Esquire (Holland), Town & Country, Art & Auction (where she is a contributing editor), The Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, The New Republic, Artnews and others.

“BREXIT: The Fall of Europe & The Rise of Israel?” – Rabbi Jeremy Gimpel

Shalom everyone! The following is an amazing lecture given by Rabbi Jeremy Gimpel ofTheLandofIsrael.com, providing a different take on the possible effect of “Brexit.” Could this be the beginning of nations around the world truly becoming what HaShem intended them to be, strong and free with of Him?

BREXIT: The Fall of Europe & The Rise of Israel?

Video courtesy of YouTube channel thelandofisrael

Huckabee: Hillary Clinton Would Be a Disaster for Israel

Gov. Mike Huckabee at the Herzliya Conference / Screenshot

“Hillary Clinton will be a disaster for Israel,” former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee told Walla on the sidelines of the 2016 Herzliya Conference Wednesday. Huckabee, an early dropout in the GOP presidential race, suggested Clinton would continue President Obama’s policy regarding Israel. “And I don’t think anyone would say that Israel-US relations have been good under his leadership over the last eight years,” he commented.

In his address to the conference, Gov. Huckabee said that “every friend of Israel is a friend of the United States and every enemy of Israel is an Enemy of the United States.” He also suggested that “America is looking into the mirror and sees Israel.”

Huckabee noted that the greatest common foe facing Israel, the US and the free world was “radical Islamic ideology that takes us back to the 7th century.” He then reiterated: “We have a common enemy and that enemy is radical Islam that wishes to destroy civilization itself and wishes to turn the clock back to centuries ago.”

Mentioning the past week’s two acts of terror, one killing four in Tel Aviv, followed by the mass shooting in Orlando, Fl. that killed 49, Huckabee said that the argument about whether the Orlando shooting was a terror attack or hate crime is “ridiculous. All terror is based on hate.” He said that he feared that sometimes people were afraid “to call out the common enemy of radical Islam in case we offend someone,” but went on to state that he was offended when “innocent people were murdered in the name of an ideology that wishes to destroy all semblance of peace.”

He referred to the “Ill-fated and tragic deal to trust the Iranians,” saying that “here can be no deal with those who believe its okay to murder people” because of their race, religion or ethnicity. “It’s impossible to enter into any agreement with the present leadership of Iran… I hope and pray that it will be rescinded.”

Focusing on the Israeli-Arab conflict and the talks about a two-state solution, Huckabee said that the idea is naïve and cannot be realized “unless both sides agree that the other side has a fundamental right to exist.” He said that until there were no longer schools in Judea, Samaria and Gaza celebrating the death of Jews, there could be no solution. He added that there was no magical formula for the issues but that the basic issue of radical Islam and one people wanting to destroy another and celebrating every time someone on the other side was killed had to be solved first. “This is not a conflict about land, or about power, but about existence,” he asserted.

“Neither Israel nor the United States is perfect but we do have a system of laws that we insist are abided by… we do not name streets after or make heroes out of terrorists.”

Huckabee also focused on the issue of Jerusalem, saying that “the notion that Jerusalem should be divided is nonsense…. Only one nation in the world every claimed it as its capital… it is never even mentioned in the Quran… At some point we have to come to grips that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, not because it has been since 1948 but because it has been for 3000 years and it has to be accepted.”

Returning to his original point, Huckabee concluded, “We have to recognize that if it’s good for Israel then it’s ultimately good for the United States and if it’s good for the United States then it’s ultimately good for Israel… the similarities between the two countries are just too glaring to ignore… our alliance is too precious.”

He said that Israel’s sovereignty, safety and security had to be protected because Israel was just the first “domino” and the United States would follow. “Anyone who comes after you is after us next,” Huckabee said.

David Israel

About the Author: David writes news at JewishPress.com.

CAIR Hilarity: We Welcome "Significant, Healthy Debates" Among Muslims

He might have been trying to be ironic. But Corey Saylor seemed to be playing it straight Monday when he claimed that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)wants "more empowered voices" in the future to "let the public at large see more of us talking about the full spectrum of views that exist within the Muslim community."

We could hear the spit-take all the way from Arizona. That's the home of Zuhdi Jasser, who founded theAmerican Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) and the Muslim Reform Movement. Both groups embrace a "separation of mosque and state" and stand against the Islamist victimization agenda pushed by CAIR.

For that, CAIR repeatedly has called Jasser names in attempts to discredit and silence him. It tried to block his appointment to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in 2012 and tried unsuccessfully to have him ousted two years later.

Saylor's comments about embracing debate came during a news conference to unveil CAIR's latest report on groups it says are pushing "Islamophobia" in the United States, along with their funders. The report includes the AIFD among organizations "whose primary reason for existence is to promote prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims."

While simultaneously calling for more empowered Muslim voices, CAIR accuses Jasser, a Muslim, of promoting hatred and prejudice against his faith because he disagrees with CAIR politically. For example, following terrorist attacks like the slaughter at Orlando's Pulse nightclub, or last November's multi-pronged attacks in Paris, Jasser will talk about the radical Islamist ideology that drives the violence. CAIR, on the other hand, insists it has nothing to do with religion.

Rather than welcoming "the full spectrum of views," as Saylor claimed, CAIR wants to "marginalize debate," Jasser said in an interview. "They simply want to continue their sense that Islam has a PR problem, and it's not a reform issue, that it needs to happen in the separation of mosque and state. The Islamists don't ever want to recognize they are Islamists or that they do try to collectivize our community into a political movement. Because once they did that, they'd have to recognize that there are diverse voices that reject Islamism and their Islamist platform."

It happened to him again last week. Jasser spoke in Birmingham, Ala., about curbing Islamist extremism and the terrorism done in its name. "No, it's not all Islam that's the problem, but there's a problem in the house of Islam that needs to be addressed," Jasser said.

A local television station turned to CAIR and a local mosque for reaction. "They said he's a part of the problem and is only spreading Islamophobia," the story said.

CAIR's report, done in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Race and Gender, also includes the Investigative Project on Terrorism among 33 "inner core" organizations that, like AIFD, exist to gin up hatred of Muslims and Islam. IPT "claims to investigate the activities and finances of radical terrorist groups, but makes all of Islam culpable," the report said.

No supporting evidence is provided.

It is a false claim. In fact, IPT frequently cites Muslims who oppose Islamism, ranging from liberal UK reformist Maajid Nawaz to Jasser, an American Navy veteran and physician. But we also have exposed many of CAIR's skeletons and emphasized its roots in a Hamas-support network in the United States created by the Muslim Brotherhood. We also frequently showcase radicalism exhibited by CAIR officials.

Saylor's statement about embracing debate echoes a recommendation in CAIR's formal report: "Empowering a diverse range of legitimate voices to persuasively contribute, particularly in the news media, to the views of Islam and American Muslims within public dialogue." [Emphasis added.]

CAIR, the statement implies, reserves the right to tell the public which voices qualify as "legitimate." CAIR's stated objective, therefore, is at odds with its own definition of how debate can occur.

Saylor's full statement further exposes the shallow nature of the claim CAIR wants "more empowered voices."

"Our major holiday, Eid, is a topic of significant debate," he said Monday. "When is it going to happen – because it's based on a moon cycle? So if we can have these kind of healthy debates we want all of those voices to be trained and go out and speak to the public at large."

First, debate is limited to "simple practices of certain dietary requirements, or prayer or calendar issues," Jasser said. "None of the diversity that they're talking about is related to core issues of universal human rights."

Second, CAIR must ensure those engaged in debate are "trained" to participate.

"That's the hypocrisy," Jasser said.

When CAIR officials speak of diversity, Jasser said, they're referring to ethnic/national background. Muslim Americans come from all over the world, from the Middle East and Asia.

"Islam is an idea. It's not a race," he said, so true diversity includes different views about the faith and its application in modern life.

"When it comes to intellect diversity, they're completely missing in action," Jasser said.

CAIR equates criticism of scholars or certain Islamist dogma with hate, he said. "They, with self-righteous indignation, refuse to accept the fact that somebody can love the community and love their faith and still be very critical of what is normatively felt to be Islamic law. That is un-American. Imagine somebody telling someone them that they are not good Americans because they disagree with this policy or that policy."

CAIR largely has ignored the Muslim Reform Movement and has not commented on the specific principles its members enumerated.

The Muslim Reform Movement issued a public Declaration of its principles. Among them:

We support the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by United Nations member states in 1948.
We reject interpretations of Islam that call for any violence, social injustice and politicized Islam. Facing the threat of terrorism, intolerance, and social injustice in the name of Islam, we have reflected on how we can transform our communities based on three principles: peace, human rights and secular governance.
...
We are for secular governance, democracy and liberty. We are against political movements in the name of religion. We separate mosque and state. We are loyal to the nations in which we live. We reject the idea of the Islamic state. There is no need for an Islamic caliphate. We oppose institutionalized sharia. Sharia is manmade.

To be true to its own call, CAIR needs to embrace these ideals or publicly explain why it will not. That might lead to an outcome Saylor said with a straight face that he wants – "More empowered voices" and "significant, healthy debates going on among ourselves every year, every day."

Now that would be a news conference worth watching.

Israeli PM Netanyahu is a Nazi with a swastika tattoo - in Fatah cartoon

 

Click to view on PMW's website

by Nan Jacques Zilberdik

The above cartoon showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a Nazi with a swastika tattooed on his arm was posted today on one of Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Movement's websites. 

The cartoon titled "Knockout" shows a boxer representing "Palestine" - his glove is in the colors of the Palestinian flag and labelled: "The State of Palestine" - delivering the knockout blow to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has a swastika tattooed on his arm, Stars of David on his gloves, and the name "Netanyahu" on his belt. [Website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission, June 23, 2016]

A few days ago, the same Fatah website showed Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman as Islamic State executioner Jihadi John:

Earlier this month, Fatah portrayed Netanyahu as a baby killer on Facebook:  

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA and Fatah often claim that Israel behaves like the Nazis or worse, and Netanyahu himself has been pictured before as a Nazi:

Israel, US agree to cyber information-sharing efforts

The United States and Israel have signed a joint declaration on cyber defense cooperation, making Israel one of the only nations to join the Department of Homeland Security’s information-sharing platform on cyber threats.

The declaration was signed Tuesday by Israel’s National Cyber Directorate chief Eviatar Matania and Cyber Security Authority head Buky Carmeli, as well as Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, and Under Secretary of Homeland Security Suzanne Spaulding.

The agreement was announced at the 6th Annual International Cybersecurity Conference at Tel Aviv University.

The bilateral cyber defense initiative will commit the US and Israel to expanded cooperation“for the benefit of dealing effectively with common threats in the cyber domain,” the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

The pact means Israel will be one of the first nations in the world to join the DHS’s Automated Indicator Sharing program, which involves data-sharing on cyber threat indicators between governments and private companies.

The declaration specifically means the two nations will cooperate in real time on the monitoring of cyber activities, defending vital infrastructure, private-sector partnerships, and future efforts at research and development of new technologies.

Spaulding, the undersecretary for national protection and programs with DHS, will oversee the bilateral cyber defense operations, along with Israel’s Carmeli.

BHCO's AG Loretta Lynch: ‘Most effective’ response to Islamic terrorism ‘is love’