Elder of Ziyon Daily News

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• The myth of "Jewish only roads" (Presspectiva/CAMERA)
• Weekend links
• Who painted this picture of the Third Temple?
• Hamas writer rues the bad old days before the first Intifada
• The danger to the Church of the Nativity sure isn't from Israel
• UN confirms that Arabs lied about dead child
• Hamas now blaming Syria for murdering Ranaja in Damascus
• CNN interview of British victim of sexual assault in Tahrir Square
• Zulus and Christians rally for Israel - in South Africa

The myth of "Jewish only roads" (Presspectiva/CAMERA) Posted: 29 Jun 2012 03:09 PM PDT From CAMERA: Yishai Goldflam, editor-in-chief of Presspectiva, CAMERA's Hebrew Web site, published an Op-Ed column in Ha'aretz, faulting that paper and other Israeli media for spreading the falsehood that Israel maintains "Jewish-only" roads in the West Bank. This is significant, especially since the fiction of "Jewish-only" roads features prominently in "Israel apartheid" mythology and is frequently cited by anti-Israel and pro-BDS (boycott, divest, sanction) agitators. Here's the English translation: Do there exist roads in Judea and Samaria that are designated for "Jews only"? Are Christians and Muslims really prohibited from traveling on roads across the Green Line? This charge, which is often voiced in these parts, including in this newspaper, provokes condemnation of Israel's alleged racism-- and is simply untrue. There appears to be a terminology confusion that produces a factual error that harms legitimate discussion and criticism of Israeli actions. Here are the facts: the state did, indeed, impose restrictions on certain roads in Judea and Samaria several years ago and did not allow Palestinians to travel on them, especially after the eruption of the second intifada. But most of the restrictions were already removed in 2009. Today, most West Bank roads are open to the majority of the Palestinian population. And even at the time those roads were restricted for Israeli use, they were never restricted to Israeli Jews alone. The roads were open to all Israeli citizens -- Muslims, Christians, Druze and Circassians. There was never a religious or ethnic-based separation on the roads of Judea and Samaria. Actually this fact is crystal clear to anyone who has ever been to the area. Only someone who has never traveled in territory over the Green Line could possibly believe the claim that there exist roads for only Jews. Today, one can see license plates of Palestinians from Jenin to Hebron, on bypass roads that were allegedly built for Jews only, for example, the Qalqilya bypass, the southern Nablus bypass, and the Ramallah bypass roads, as well as on main roads like Route 505 leading to Ariel -- a road that was labeled at least twice in this paper "an apartheid road for Jews only." The Associated Press published a correction in January 2010 stating, "These roads are open to all Israeli citizens, including Arabs, foreigners and tourists." Similar corrections were published on CNN, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. But the journalistic responsibility and professionalism demonstrated by the world's leading media outlets apparently made no impression on the Israeli media, which even today continues to air this false charge. Beyond the error itself, the claim of "Jews-only" roads impairs reasonable discussion about Israeli actions. While it is possible to debate and criticize the (real) restrictions imposed on Palestinians (all Palestinians, not just Muslims) on some West Bank roads during a specific time period, Israel and her supporters are forced to address the bogus claim of ethnic-religious separation on these roads. Raising this claim, particularly in the Israeli media, grants it validity. Anti-Israel activists, too ignorant and lazy to substantiate their own charges, wave around "facts" they find in Israeli newspapers that supposedly "prove" the racism of the State of Israel and justify their own attacks on her. It's hardly surprising this mendacious claim has become a major weapon in the attempt to brand Israel an "apartheid state." Thus, irresponsible journalists and publicists contribute to the distortion of the domestic and international discussion about Israel. Many media outlets in the world have already acknowledged their mistake and corrected it. Is the Israeli media capable of meeting the accepted standards of journalistic integrity?

Weekend links Posted: 29 Jun 2012 12:40 PM PDT From Ian: New (mini-)Latma The Israeli Left reaches breaking point with Hamas Caroline Glick About those Jews. "So it works out that Iran's vice president really hates Jews. In fact, he hates Jews so much that even The New York Times reported it. On Tuesday, the Times published an account of Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi's speech before a UN forum on fighting drug addiction in Tehran" The Future Leaders of Palestinians Terrorists by Hisham Jarallah "In Palestinian society, it is much more important if one graduates from an Israeli prison than from a university in the U.S. or Europe. Economic prosperity and the peace process with Israel are not going to convince most Palestinians to vote for people like Fayyad or Abbas." US bars business with four in Hezbollah laundering link "The U.S. Treasury Department on Wednesday banned Americans from doing business with three Lebanese-Venezuelans and a Lebanese man it accused of helping to launder drug money to the benefit of the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group." A Deception Named UNRWA Ben Dror Yamini "The chain of absurd and deception has to end. There is a need for universal definitions and norms. The anti-Israel camp claims again and again that Israel must obey international norms. A wonderful and just demand. That is exactly what should also happen on the subject of the refugees. The same definitions of "who is a refugee" and the same treatment which helps the real needy and does not eternalize them as "refugees". That would be the international community's biggest contribution to encouraging peace." BBC exposes its Mid-East bias? "We may never know what conclusions Malcolm Balen reached over the BBC's coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. But Mortimer's latest report on its coverage of the "Arab Spring" may shed some light." Egyptian oil minister who signed deal with Israel sentenced to 15 years in jail "Former oil minister Sameh Fahmy and businessman Hussein Salem convicted of harming national interests by selling natural gas to Jewish state" London 2012 Two Muslim converts arrested over Olympic terror plot Why Is Sec. Clinton Giving Hundreds of Millions of Dollars to Muslim Brotherhood? Syrian Rebels Plundering and Destroying Churches (German site) (UPDATE: Maybe not) The Role of Iranian Security Forces in the Syrian Bloodshed Conan sketch on Madonna in Tel Aviv

Who painted this picture of the Third Temple? Posted: 29 Jun 2012 11:10 AM PDT Where on the Internet can you find this picture? On the Al Aqsa Heritage Foundation site! Of course it is meant to rile up the readers about supposed Zionist plans to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, but it is ironic that you can find pictures like this more often on Arabic sites than Jewish ones.

Hamas writer rues the bad old days before the first Intifada Posted: 29 Jun 2012 10:40 AM PDT A writer in the Hamas-oriented Felesteen site writes about how things were when he grew up in the 70s: When I was a young child in the seventies at demonstrations on the occasion of Earth Day or the anniversary of the Nakba, I would hear people shout: "Khaybar Khaybar Jews, Muhammad's Army will be back." We shouted these slogans, even though Palestine was far from Islam. Women wore scandalous short clothes, and grocery stores sold liquor and also sold soft drinks in public, and the Jews used to come every Saturday to shop from our markets and would walk secure in our streets ... The Jewish employers would share happy occasions with their Palestinian workers, dancing with them and drinking wine and beer at weddings together. The ideas that were prevalent at the time were closer to Kufr them to faith, such as Arab nationalism, communism, secularism. Even so we would shout throughout Palestine: "Khaybar Khaybar Jews, Muhammad's Army will be back." You can learn more about Hamas - and history - from a personal anecdote like this than from a thousand Arab op-eds in the New York Times.

The danger to the Church of the Nativity sure isn't from Israel Posted: 29 Jun 2012 09:14 AM PDT From YNet: UNESCO's World Heritage committee has voted to approve a Palestinian bid to place the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem on its list of sites of World Heritage in Danger. The Palestinians had pressed to have the church and pilgrimage route inscribed as an emergency candidate at the meeting of the World Heritage 21-nation committee in St. Petersburg, Russia. UNESCO spokeswoman Sue Williams said the committee voted 13-6 on Thursday to put the iconic Christian site on the list. Two nations abstained. Emergency status for the candidacy meant the Palestinians could take a shortcut to getting the church on the list. Some nations saw the move as an attempt by the Palestinians to mix politics and culture. The United States and Israel, neither of which is on the committee, were among nations opposed to the Palestinian proposal of an emergency candidacy for the iconic Christian site, shortcutting what is usually an 18-month-long process to apply for World Heritage recognition. So is the Church of the Nativity in real danger, or is this a cynical political move? PA officials are unambiguous: Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad welcomed UNESCO's decision, saying it strengthens the Palestinians' determination to act toward the establishment of an independent state within the 1967 borders. "It's time for the UN and its organizations to take a political, legal, cultural and moral stance to put an end to the suffering of the Palestinian people, and prevent the risk posed to its cultural heritage due to the actions of the Israeli occupation," he said. "This global recognition of the rights of the Palestinian people is a victory for our cause and for justice," Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP, as Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat called it "a historic day." "These sites are threatened with total destruction through the Israeli occupation, through the building of the separation wall, because of all the Israeli sanctions and the measures that have been taken to stifle the Palestinian identity," the Palestinian delegate said after the vote. But the application to UNESCO the PA didn't say that the danger to the church was because of Israel - but because of water leaks. Birthplace of Jesus: the Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem (Palestine) was also placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger as it is suffering from damages due to water leaks. Hmmm..the Palestinian Arabs saying one thing to one audience and a completely different thing to another. Sounds familiar. Amazing how the church survived when Israel actually was in charge of the Church of the Nativity on a day to day basis. The problem of the church roof leaking is an old one - and one that Israel offered to fix when Bethlehem was under full Israeli control. From AP, November 21, 1990 (click to enlarge): The roof problem obviously has nothing to do with Israel, and priceless artifacts in the church have been getting damaged by leaks for a very long time. And the Palestinian Christians opposed Israel fixing the problem that is now regarded as an "emergency," at least in the application to UNESCO. The biggest irony, of course, is that the Palestinian Arab leaders are saying that they want to preserve a holy Christian site at the exact same time that the Christians under their rule have been fleeing. From Gatestone Institute: The drive to have the Church of the Nativity recognized as a global heritage site is nothing short of offensive. Christians have been driven out of their ancestral lands; Palestinians have shown nothing but hostility to both Christians and Jews. Moreover, Christ himself was a Jew. Upon the birth of the State of Israel in 1948, Bethlehem had a Christian population of over 80 percent. With the rise of the Muslim population, Christians dwindled in numbers. Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority took over the town in 1995, thanks to the Oslo Accords. Along with the PA, came a tribal political system which caused Bethlehem's Christian population, already at 15%, to further sink to 2% today. Under this political system Christians are targeted, seen as inferiors, and subjected to threats, violence, discrimination and acts of terrorism. Upon entering Bethlehem Yasser Arafat was strategic in overtaking the Christian populace. He first expanded municipal boundaries to include 30,000 Muslims living in refugee camps, as well as Muslim Bedouins who lived east of the town. The first and second intifadas further drove Christians out of their ancestral town as they became trapped in the crossfire between the Palestinians and Israelis. The violent struggle predictably drew international attention, and created the ideal platform for Palestinian sympathizers to levy blame on the so-called Israeli "occupation." Israel's so-called "occupation" and "aggression" were solely based on self defense: both the Palestinian and Hamas Charters call for Israel's obliteration; Israel's southern cities is still live under nearly daily attack by hostile Arab States and forces seeking its destruction. The Muslim aggression on the other hand is based on a conditioned, generational hatred against the Jews (and Christians) evidently determined to see the Jews of the State of Israel, a country the size of Vancouver Island, pushed into the sea, while an Islamic Caliphate is formed to rule the Middle East. (h/t Leo Daf Hofshi) UPDATE: Don't forget that the terrorists who cynically used the church to protect them from being captured by Israel in 2002, and who did great damage to the church itself, are considered heroes by the majority of Palestinian Arabs.

UN confirms that Arabs lied about dead child Posted: 29 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT I reported last Sunday that Hamas held a major funeral for a five-year old boy killed in Gaza. The UN's OCHA-OPT's weekly Protection of Civilians report notes what really happened: Armed factions also intensified the firing of projectiles, including Grad rockets, at southern Israel...Some of the projectiles dropped short of the Gaza/Israeli border or exploded prematurely, killing a five-year old Palestinian child, and injuring a total of 15 Palestinians. This is separate from the two-year old girl killed the week before by a Qassam rocket who the Arabic media said was killed by Israel. Every single Arabic news site reported as a fact that he was killed by an Israeli warplane, and not one of them I could find reported Israel's denials. If you are an Arabic speaker, there is no way you would know that all those stories were lies (outside of reading OCHA's Arabic report.) And yet the news media and the leftist hate-Israel sites still quote Gaza officials without any skepticism, even when they are the biggest, provable liars.

Hamas now blaming Syria for murdering Ranaja in Damascus Posted: 29 Jun 2012 06:35 AM PDT From YNet: Who assassinated Hamas official Kamal Ranaja? Hamas is pointing fingers at two opposite directions – Israel and the Syrian regime. While members of the terrorist organization blamed Israel's Mossad for the Damascus assassination, other Hamas members claimed that Bashar Assad's forces were behind the hit. The main reasoning for this hypothesis is that the method of the assassination does not fit the Mossad's MOs. Arab media reported that Ranaja suffered a particularly brutal death. According to the report, assassins broke into his apartment, interrogated him under torture and the murdered him. The assassins then cut off his head, placed the severed body parts in a closet and set the apartment on fire – not forgetting to take away with them some secret documents. "The Mossad would have killed him differently, this was not its MO," said Mohamed Hifawi, a member of the Local Coordination Committees (LLC) in Syria on behalf of Hamas. "Israeli assassins would have done it quicker and cleaner and would not have wasted time needlessly abusing the body." "The way the body was mutilated and the attempt to burn the house are all methods that point to the involvement of the (Syrian) security forces," he told AFP. In a message to the French news agency, Hifawi mentioned other details which support his supposition. "He was visiting Syria and nobody knew he was in the country apart from the security services who gave him permission to enter. "He arrived at an apartment in a neighborhood in Qudsaya which was under a curfew and could only be accessed by the security forces and the regime's thugs." Israeli experts agreed: Former senior Mossad member Rami Igra said, "Practically, it's not reasonable that Israel or a Western country would settle accounts with a man like this, at this stage, in Syria. He's not big enough. "He's not important enough. To assassinate him would be a very complicated, dangerous operation, and it would be taking a huge chance. I don't see Israel or any Western country willing to take this risk," Igra said, noting the unstable Syrian situation. On the other hand, "it would not be a problem for any gang in Damascus, maybe one working for Assad, to do this," Igra added. "With certainty I can say, it was not Israel." Dr. Ely Karmon, a senior terrorism expert from the Interdisciplinary Center's Institute for Counter-Terrorism, agreed. He said the most likely entity behind the killing was the Syrian regime, since Ranaja may well have been "involved in smuggling weapons to the Syrian opposition," particularly to the Muslim Brotherhood. "If he really was an aide to Mabhouh," Karmon said, referring to reports that Ranaja was the aide of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the late Hamas arms smuggler assassinated in Dubai, "then he had connections to weapons smuggling." "The Muslim Brotherhood is in a state of crisis with the regime. There is a reasonable chance that he provided arms to the opposition," Karmon added. A second possibility is that Hamas itself killed Ranaja after suspecting him of pocketing cash given to him to pay for weapons, ships and smuggling teams. "We saw this happen with Fatah, when Arafat killed his own operatives in Europe for stealing cash," Karmon noted. (h/t Yoel)

CNN interview of British victim of sexual assault in Tahrir Square Posted: 29 Jun 2012 05:10 AM PDT Earlier this week, Natasha Smith, a journalism student and reporter from Great Britain, wrote a searing and incredibly brave article on her blog describing in sickening detail how she was sexually assaulted in Tahrir Square during the celebrations of Mohamed Morsi's victory in the Egyptian elections on Sunday: But in a split second, everything changed. Men had been groping me for a while, but suddenly, something shifted. I found myself being dragged from my male friend, groped all over, with increasing force and aggression. I screamed. I could see what was happening and I saw that I was powerless to stop it. I couldn't believe I had got into this situation. My friend did everything he could to hold onto me. But hundreds of men were dragging me away, kicking and screaming. I was pushed onto a small platform as the crowd surged, where I was hunched over, determined to protect my camera. But it was no use. My camera was snatched from my grasp. My rucksack was torn from my back – it was so crowded that I didn't even feel it. The mob stumbled off the platform – I twisted my ankle. Men began to rip off my clothes. I was stripped naked. Their insatiable appetite to hurt me heightened. These men, hundreds of them, had turned from humans to animals. Hundreds of men pulled my limbs apart and threw me around. They were scratching and clenching my breasts and forcing their fingers inside me in every possible way. So many men. All I could see was leering faces, more and more faces sneering and jeering as I was tossed around like fresh meat among starving lions. ...I began to think, "maybe this is just it. Maybe this is how I go, how I die. I've had a good life. Whether I live or die, this will all be over soon. Maybe this is my punishment for some of the emotional pain I've caused others through some foolish mistakes and poor judgement recently. I hope it's quick. I hope I die before they rape me." She's back in England now where CNN interviewed her: This has been a major problem in Egypt throughout the revolution, as we have documented. But it was happening in Egypt  for years.

Zulus and Christians rally for Israel - in South Africa Posted: 29 Jun 2012 03:16 AM PDT From AFP: Several hundreds of people staged a protest march in Pretoria on Thursday against South Africa's plans to stick "Made in the Palestinian Territories" labels on goods from the area. Around 300 members of the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) and the Inkatha Freedom party marched peacefully and handed over a petition against the labelling to the Ministry of Trade and Industry, ministry spokesman Sidwell Medupe told AFP. South Africa's Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies has argued that consumers must be informed of a product's origin, as is common practice in other parts of the world, including the European Union. Reverend Kenneth Meshoe, leader of the ACDP argued however that "the South African government must not involve itself in the political agenda of organisations and anti-Israeli lobbies." The government has issued a notice of intention to introduce "Made in Palestinian Territories" tags and will make a decision after a public consultation process that ends on July 10. The proposed law for labeling only those Judea and Samaria goods made by Jewish companies is itself a model of how ignorant people are of history. It includes this statement: "The government of South Africa recognises the state of Israel only within the borders demarcated by the United Nations in 1948. Such demarcated borders of Israel by the UN do not include Palestinian territories occupied after 1967." There were no borders demarcated by the United Nations in 1948. The UN proposed a partition resolution where a Jewish State would exist alongside an Arab State in 1947, but that resolution was never implemented as it wasn't accepted by any Arab nation, who decided to destroy Israel instead. That resolution is not international law. Israel's legal basis is not UNGA 181 but the fact that Jewish nationalists survived and won a war waged against them meant to exterminate their presence in Palestine. (This is without going into the legal basis of the League of Nations' action in 1922 supporting a Jewish homeland in all of Palestine west of the Jordan, partitioning off eastern Palestine into the new entity called Transjordan for the Arabs.) The lines that became what is incorrectly called "Israel's 1967 borders" were armistice lines that were agreed upon between Israel and the Arab nations, under UN oversight, in separate negotiations in 1948 and 1949. In fact, UNSC 242 notes this by saying that there must be "secure and recognized borders" between Israel and the Arab world. So which "borders" are South Africa referring to? When people are ignorant of basic facts,of course they come up with ignorant resolutions.

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