Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Understanding UN bias against Israel (video)
Two rock star FAILS for BDSers
Ancient Shabbat marker found in the Galilee
Gaddafi sent delegation to Israel!
Universal health care - for terrorists (poster)
Glenn Beck in Knesset (video)
Pure anti-semitism in the Palestine Chronicle
Ma'an English vs. Ma'an Arabic (updated)

Understanding UN bias against Israel (video)

Posted: 13 Jul 2011 01:03 PM PDT

A very effective word-graphic video:

It appears that this was created for the Jerusalem Institute of Justice.

Two rock star FAILS for BDSers

Posted: 13 Jul 2011 11:35 AM PDT

From Moby's website:

if you go to america does that mean you support american foreign and domestic policy? does a visit to america mean that you support guantanamo?
if you visit italy does that mean you support berlusconi?
if you visit the uk does that mean you're a happy supporter of david cameron?

i'm guessing the answer is: no.

a visit to a country isn't a condemnation or an endorsement of the domestic or foreign policies of that nations current government.

when i tour i visit countries that are universally loved (canada), as well as countries for which people have more complicated feelings (israel).

but when i tour i'm going to countries to play music for people.
my presence in a country is not an endorsement or a condemnation of that countries policies.
my presence in a country is an effort to connect with people through playing music.

almost every country on the planet has some aspect of their foreign or domestic policy that is questionable(i mean, i live in the united states, and many aspects of our foreign and domestic policy are seriously questionable...but yet i continue to live there and do what i can to effect positive change).

i have opinions about the policies of the countries i visit, of course, but i think its incredibly dangerous to form opinions of a place without actually spending time there.

the situation within a country is oftentimes considerably more complicated when experienced from within rather than when seen from thousands of miles away or through the sensationalistic and often simplifying and reductionist lens of the media.

i'm sorry if my decisions to visit certain countries are troubling to some people.

Moby played in Tel Aviv yesterday.

And from Richard Millett's blog:

Take That are currently touring the UK and during a recent concert at Wembley national treasure Robbie Williams approached a group of screaming teenage girls who were sporting cheesy Israeli head-wear and took away one of their Israeli flags, promptly kissed it and then took it on to the stage with him (see clip below).

You could call it sticking two fingers (or even one finger, if you wish) up at the vicious anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which desires to kill off the Jewish state for good.

If you listen carefully, you can hear BDSers heads exploding.

(h/t Israel Muse)

Ancient Shabbat marker found in the Galilee

Posted: 13 Jul 2011 10:10 AM PDT

From JPost:

An ancient rock inscription of the word "Shabbat" was uncovered near Lake Kinneret this week – the first and only discovery of a stone Shabbat boundary in Hebrew.

The etching in the Lower Galilee community of Timrat appears to date from the Roman or Byzantine period.

News of the inscription, discovered by chance Sunday by a visitor strolling the community grounds, quickly reached Mordechai Aviam, head of the Institute for Galilean Archeology at Kinneret College.

"This is the first time we've found a Shabbat boundary inscription in Hebrew," he said. "The letters are so clear that there is no doubt that the word is 'Shabbat.'"

Aviam said Jews living in the area in the Roman or Byzantine era (1st-7th centuries CE) likely used the stone to denote bounds within which Jews could travel on Shabbat. The Lower Galilee of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages had a Jewish majority – many of the Talmudic sages bore toponyms indicative of Galilee communities.

The engraving uncovered in Timrat is the first and only Shabbat boundary marker yet discovered in Hebrew – a similar inscription was found in the vicinity of the ancient Western Galilee village of Usha, but its text was written in Greek.

One of the very cool things about Israel is that an ordinary person, walking his dog, can stumble upon an archaeological treasure like this - which is what happened.

Biblewalks also tries to figure out which town this was the marker for:

We speculate that the marker in Timrat is related an ancient town, located approximately 1kmto the south-east of the marker. This Jewish Roman town was called "Mahalul", and flourished from the commercially strategic location during the Roman/Byzantine times (Mishna and Talmud). It is mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud (Megila page 2 , 2 1:1, Hebrew): "Nahalal is Mahalul", and listed among the walled cities from the period of Joshua. The distance from the Roman village to the Timrat Sabbath stone fits the exact range of the perimeter as defined by the Jewish tradition.

Another candidate for the town related to the marker is Simonia, located around the nearby Tell Shimron. This was another Jewish town during the Roman and Byzantine periods. It is also located about 1.5KM from the marker, on the south-west side.

(h/t Yoel)

Gaddafi sent delegation to Israel!

Posted: 13 Jul 2011 08:57 AM PDT

I had missed this one from JPost:

A delegation from Libya sent by leader Muammar Gaddafi recently visited Israel and met with opposition leader Tzipi Livni and other officials, Channel 2 reported on Sunday.

According to the report, the delegation of four senior Libyan officials received visas from the Israeli embassy in Paris after gaining approval from Israeli security services. Once in Israel, the delegation immediately asked to meet with Livni.

Upon receiving the invitation for a meeting, Livni immediately turned to security officials, who gave their approval for the opposition leader to meet with the Gaddafi delegation.

In the four-day visit, the senior Libyan officials reportedly met with other Israeli officials in addition to the opposition leader.

Earlier this year, a leader of a Jewish group told The Jerusalem Post that Libya secretly offered to give Israelis of Libyan descent an undisclosed sum of money if they agreed to form a "Libyan political party."

Michael Totten comments:

I can't help but wonder: does Qaddafi take the myth of overwhelming Jewish power so seriously that he thinks Israel can pull the plug on NATO's campaign against him?

Ah, the positive part of anti-semitism!

(h/t Silke)

Universal health care - for terrorists (poster)

Posted: 13 Jul 2011 07:59 AM PDT

All the aid money that goes into Palestinian Arab infrastructure frees up funds for Hamas to buy rockets, guns and explosives to target Israel.

(h/t D)

Glenn Beck in Knesset (video)

Posted: 13 Jul 2011 06:55 AM PDT

Again, whatever you think about his politics, you cannot argue with the fact that he loves Israel and Jews.

Except that many anti-Israel Jews, people who will never say a word against explicit Arab anti-semitism, are openly saying that Beck is an anti-semite.

MJ Rosenberg in HuffPo writes that Beck is especially critical towards liberal Jews, so therefore he must be anti-semitic.

Sorry. I can accept people calling him a buffoon, or a right-wing nutcase.

But the accusation that Beck is anti-semitic is manifestly absurd.

Rosenberg, absurdly, titles the article "Glenn Beck Defiles the Holy Land." He is very happy with virulently anti-semitic Arabs having rights to freely say whatever they want; he is happy with Jewish shrines being taken over by Muslims in the textbook definition of defilement - but when an openly pro-Israel media figure, someone who loves unapologetic Jews, speaks in front of the Jewish State's government to acclaim, Rosenberg calls this a defilement?

Rosenberg's definition of anti-semitism is really anti-liberalism. And it is really sad that so many Jews think that Judaism is identical with leftist politics, so much so that they are not even embarrassed to publish drivel like Rosenberg did.

(h/t Yoel)

Pure anti-semitism in the Palestine Chronicle

Posted: 13 Jul 2011 05:57 AM PDT

The Palestine Chronicle calls itself "an independent online newspaper that provides daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, etc, on a variety of subjects. However, it's largely focused on Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East region."

It is edited by Ramzy Baroud, a prolific anti-Israel writer that this blog has mentioned before. But it boasts an honorary editorial board that includes Hanan Ashrawi and Dr. Eyad El-Sarraj, as well as the following endorsements:

"The Palestine Chronicle has been an invaluable source of information and analysis about Palestine and related issues, drawing from a wide range of sources, including many that are otherwise inaccessible to the concerned public. An independent voice, it has been trustworthy and reliable." -- Noam Chomsky, a professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"In the midst of an institutional media bias against telling the searing truth about Palestine, the Palestine Chronicle is a beacon. History, witness, analysis and ways forward are here, written with authority and humanity. Long may it publish." -- John Pilger, a world-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker.

"The Palestine Chronicle presents independent commentary on crucial issues. The editors and their work constitute a sign of hope for a better future." -- Kathy Kelly, Co-coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence

"The Palestine Chronicle is an essential publication for keeping up with the big picture in the Middle East." -- James Petras, Professor Emeritus, Binghamton University; author of many books.

"The Palestine Chronicle is proof positive that there is hope, that alternative media can one day overpower the corporate mainstream." -- Joshua Frank, co-editor of DissidentVoice.org.

With all of that supposed influence, one of its latest essays is most revealing.

Written by Stuart Littlewood, it is called "Zionists in Our Midst: Battle of Britain II."

Churchill, in his Battle of Britain speech 71 years ago, said: 'If we can stand up to him [Hitler], all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science...'

Today those "broad, sunlit uplands" of Churchill's are again shrouded in storm-clouds. Zionist infiltrators have succeeded where Hitler failed. The difference now is that the enemy's invasion forces are not massing across the Channel. They are already here in our midst and we are indeed on the brink of a new Dark Age, as the ruthless conspiracy masterminded by foreign interests expands its influence by stealth and by subversion and by intimidation.

America is sliding into the abyss fast as US Congressmen repeatedly parade their abject subservience to the powerful pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC. Who will forget the pathetic spectacle of 29 standing ovations they accorded the swaggering, lying, crazed Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu while he delivered his poison?

The question now is whether we in the UK can stand up to the encroaching menace and save "all that we have known and cared for", when we have so completely lost our moral bearings.

We duck our solemn responsibilities under the Geneva Conventions and give Zionist war criminals a safe haven immune from arrest.

We allow fanatics, such as Conservative Friends of Israel, to organize and promote the interests of the criminal Israeli regime at the very heart of Westminster government.

We allow MPs to place themselves under the influence of foreign interest groups and to abuse the principles that are supposed to underpin standards in public life.

We allow Jews to be hugely over-represented in our Parliament and to dominate key areas of our administration, including those related to security. If Muslims were over-represented to the same extent they'd have 200 seats and action would be taken.

We spend large amounts of treasure and send our troops to murder foreign civilians and die in foreign lands simply to support US-Israeli greed, destroying our own good name in the process.

We allow civil society's hard-earned savings to bail out Zionist bankers in distress and fund endless wars and the corporate and personal profits of those who promote wars.

...Churchill, a Zionist sympathizer of the old-fashioned kind, confronted many dire threats but could not have foreseen, in his day, how the tentacles of Zionism would envelop the civilized world. But there's no excuse for today's leaders when the truth is so brazenly ugly. That they embrace it and even change our laws to accommodate it, underlines their utter unsuitability for high office.

We stood up to Hitler. Is no-one incorruptible enough to stand against the Zionist menace?

While the entire screed owes a huge debt the the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Littlewood lets his "anti-Zionist" mask slip off by not only referring to "Zionist bankers" but to Jews in Parliament, with the implication that Jews cannot possibly be loyal British subjects.

In other words, this is a classic (if poorly written) anti-semitic libel, that is being given prominence by a media source that is well-respected in the English language "pro-Palestinian" universe (and of course this same article has been copied to other well-known leftist and "pro-Palestinian" websites as well.)

Will the self-styles fighters against bigotry who support the Palestine Chronicle rise up and demand that this article get removed? Will Littlewood's essays be banished from publication by similar sites because he has exposed himself to be a hateful, bigoted man whose opinions are forever tarnished because of his sickening bias against Jews?

Or is this just more proof that anti-semitism and anti-Zionism are two sides of the same coin?

Ma'an English vs. Ma'an Arabic (updated)

Posted: 13 Jul 2011 03:56 AM PDT

From Ma'an (English):

Israeli soldiers shot and killed a young Palestinian man early Wednesday near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, Palestinian and Israeli security officials said.

University student Ibrahim Sarhan was shot while emerging from a mosque during a search operation in Al-Farah refugee camp near Nablus, Palestinian security sources told AFP.

Soldiers were looking for an activist of the Islamic Jihad movement but Sarhan did not belong to any Palestinian political group, they said.

From Ma'an Arabic:

The Islamic resistance movement Hamas in the West Bank confirmed that the martyr Ibrahim Sarhan, 22, is one of its children and its activists in the Farah camp.

The Arabic article was timestamped 11:24 AM. The English one was posted at 11:40. It was still the top English story at 14:00.

UPDATE: At 17:18 Ma'an English updated the story - but it still does not point out that Sarhan was a Hamas member, only approaching the issue elliptically:

Sarhan was close to graduating from the faculty of engineering at An-Najah University, where he supported the Islamic bloc in student senate elections, the Hamas party announced Wednesday.

In a statement, Hamas said Sarhan was shot while en route to morning prayers.

Yet the Hamas statement explicitly said that he was one of its activists, as can be seen on the Hamas Al Qassam website.