Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Bonus Chanukah video: Fight for Your Right to Dreidel
Pro-Israel rally in Sweden last Sunday
Bonus Chanukah Video: The Eighth Night
Saturday night links
Hypocritical condolences from Abbas to Obama on school shooting
Chanukah video night 8: Eight Nights mashup (StandFour)

Bonus Chanukah video: Fight for Your Right to Dreidel

Posted: 16 Dec 2012 12:00 AM PST

Pro-Israel rally in Sweden last Sunday

Posted: 15 Dec 2012 09:35 PM PST

From Ilya Meyer's blog:

On Sunday 9th December this year a rally was held outside the offices of Aftonbladet, a Swedish tabloid equally well known for its vicious anti-Israel stance as for its peddling of raw anti-Semitic vitriol.

The theme of the rally was "Enough is Enough!" – no more media prejudice against the Jewish state, no more anti-Israel lies in the media, no more withholding of news that may explain Israel's position in a neutral or objective light.

In a biting minus 15 degrees, supporters of democracy, ethics and principle gathered together outside the front door of Aftonbladet to express their disapproval of the Swedish media's blatant prejudice against the Jewish state. True to form, Aftonbladet totally ignored the event taking place on its doorstep – it never figured in their reporting. If it doesn't suit the paper's political agenda, it simply didn't happen. Such is the Pravda-esque state of what passes for journalism in Sweden.

(h/t O)

Bonus Chanukah Video: The Eighth Night

Posted: 15 Dec 2012 08:30 PM PST

(h/t Dave Gold)

Saturday night links

Posted: 15 Dec 2012 07:15 PM PST

From Ian, unedited (sorry):

New group unites young Palestinians against Israel

'National Unity Brigades' say third intifada has already started in Hebron, vow not to relinquish 'an inch of Palestine'
"Youngsters who identify themselves with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations have joined forced with supporters of Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, according to a video uploaded to the Internet Friday, in order to fight against Israel.
"This is the beginning of the third Palestinian intifada, which erupts from the heart of Hebron and spreads to all of Palestine," they said."

Think Again: Disproportionate criticism

The success of the Iron Dome antimissile system allowed Israel to pursue a calibrated policy in Operation Pillar of Defense.
"Israeli military actions are consistently judged and found wanting by metrics that are applied to no other army or conflict. Application of these standards is designed to render Israel incapable of defending its citizens.
Prominent among these new metrics is the comparison of Israeli casualties to those of the civilian population from whose midst the enemy fights. As soon as the casualties on the other side exceed those suffered by Israel – usually within hours of an unprovoked attack on Israel and without any cessation of fire from the other side – Israel's response is labeled disproportionate."

Damned if they do, and damned if they don't?

"When she looked up for a minute, she noticed that the boy had grabbed the guard by the neck with one hand, and put a pistol to his temple with the other. Immediately, she cocked her weapon and tried to aim at the perpetrator without hitting the border policeman. She fired one shot, but the boy still had the gun to her subordinate's head. She then released two more bullets, and the boy was dead. Shortly after the incident, it was determined that the gun was fake."

Coed Combat - The Israeli Army VIDEO

Douglas Murray: Arab Winter update

"The latest news on Great Britain's export is that he recently took part in Tunisia in an 'International Conference in Support of Palestinian Prisoners in the Jails of the Zionist Occupation.' This event was such a bigging up of Hamas that the Palestinian Authority were invited as 'observers' rather than 'representatives' of the Palestinian people , and thus boycotted the conference.Among the stars of the event was Ahlam al-Tamimi, sentenced for her role in the suicide bombing of an Israeli pizza restaurant, where she helped murder eight children. She was released under the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap. Here she is on Hamas TV expressing her delight at her action, despite her initial disappointment when i hearing on the radio that she might have only helped to kill three Jews:

Americans' support for Israel didn't waver in wake of Gaza fighting

Pew study shows US public's sympathy for Israel over the Palestinians remains strong with 'stark partisan differences'; 36% have no opinion or sympathize with neither side
"The clearest partisan gap measured by Pew is in the political sphere. Among conservative Republicans, the preference for Israel is at a very high 75%, with just 2% sympathizing more with the Palestinians. For liberal Democrats, however, only 33% said they sympathized more with Israel, though this was still more than the 22% who said they sympathized more with the Palestinians. (Independents favored Israel by a margin of 47% to 13%.)"

Richard Millett: The cowardice of Peter Oborne

"Oborne quotes Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a former British ambassador to Israel, who recently said that "anyone who has a real affection for the Jewish people will want to help them to avoid this looming disaster."
Alarm bells start ringing when someone critical of Israeli policy then co-opts the "the Jewish people". Are all "the Jewish people" really responsible for "this looming disaster"? Israel is a democracy and British Jews do not have a vote. And it's not British Jews who have Hamas to their south and Hezbollah to their north."

CIF Watch: Banned by the Guardian: My journey at 'CiF' is over
It was a good run, but my personal 'Comment is Free' journey seems to have ended

"While I'll likely never learn why I fell out of favor with 'the Party', my guess is it may have something to do with our continuing counter-revolutionary commentary exposing their Judeophobic biases, their licensing of the most extremist, antisemitic voices, and a pervasive hostility towards the Jewish state at their site."

BBC Watch: Correction needed on BBC article from November 5th 2012
On November 5th 2012 an article in the Middle East section of the BBC News website reported that:

"The Israeli military said the man was shot after ignoring warnings to stop. Palestinian medics said the man was unarmed and mentally ill."
The Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre's weekly report for the period October 31st to November 6th reports as follows:
"The Palestinian media reported the death of Ahmed Tawfiq al-Nabahin, 23, a resident of Juhr al-Dik. The reports claimed he was "mentally disturbed." A picture of the same "mentally disturbed" individual, wearing a body-armor vest and armed with a rifle, was posted on the Hamas forum."

Face value: the BBC and Palestinian NGOs

"Addameer's Board of Directors includes Yousef Habash – reportedly the nephew of the PFLP's founder George Habash. He has also represented PNGO (the Palestinian NGO Network) and the Health Work Committees. Until 2007 at least, he was a member of the steering committee of the 'Palestinian Grassroots Anti Apartheid Wall Campaign'.
Addameer's Chairperson, Abdullatif Ghaith, was described by the Palestinian NGO 'Miftah' in 2004 as representing the PFLP at a sit-in organized by Azmi Bishara.
Addameer's Director, Sahar Francis, was formerly also a board member of 'Defence of Children International – Palestine': a title also formerly held by Al Haq's Shawan Jabarin who was denied entry by Jordan in 2003 due to PFLP ties."

Pollard gathered intel on Arab and Soviet weaponry, not US military activities, CIA document reveals

Declassified 1987 damage assessment says jailed spy's Israeli handlers 'never expressed interest in US military activities, plans, capabilities or equipment'
"Extensive post-plea debriefings of Pollard, aided by a review of document-receipt records, yielded an extensive account of Pollard's espionage objectives, activities, and compromised documents. A series of polygraph interviews tended to confirm that his cooperation with US authorities was bona fide," read the assessment penned by analysts in the CIA's Foreign Denial and Deception Committee and Navy Intelligence.

CAMERA: The Threatened Use of Poison Gas in the Middle East

"There is good reason to be alarmed at these reports. Yet, if the Syrian regime were to resort to using chemical weapons, it would not set a new precedent in the region. Over the years a number of regimes have shown a willingness to use chemical weapons against insurgents and defenseless civilians."

Hungarian police detain lawmaker who burned Israeli flag at protest
Balazs Lenhardt, formerly of the right-wing Jobbik party, was released after questioning

French teens arrested over explosion near teacher who reported anti-Semitism
"The teacher, Chantal Viroulou, told the radio station that before the incident, "students from that class, two or three of them at least, called me and told me: 'Jew, we will break your face.'" Viroulou, who teaches at the Latecoere professional high school in the town of Istres, did not say whether she was Jewish."

Toronto University Students Vote to Endorse BDS
The Graduate Student Union at the University of Toronto overwhelmingly votes to endorse the BDS campaign against Israel.

More Women Than Men Admitted at Israel Bar Association Graduation Ceremony

Hypocritical condolences from Abbas to Obama on school shooting

Posted: 15 Dec 2012 04:00 PM PST

From Ma'an:

President Mahmoud Abbas wrote to US President Barack Obama on Saturday to offer his condolences after a shooting in an American elementary school killed 26 people.

Interesting.

In 1974, the Palestinian Arabs innovated the idea of attacking a school and killing students. From Wikipedia:

The Ma'alot massacre[1] was a terrorist attack in 1974 which included a two-day hostage-taking of 115 people which ended in the deaths of over 25 hostages. It began when three armed Palestinian terrorists of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine[2] entered Israel from Lebanon. Soon afterwards they attacked a van, killing two Israeli Arab women while injuring a third and entered an apartment building in the town of Ma'alot, where they killed a couple and their four-year-old son.[3] From there, they headed for the Netiv Meir elementary school, where they took more than 115 people (including 105 children) hostage on 15 May 1974, in Ma'alot. Most of the hostages were teenagers from a high school in Safad on a Gadna field trip spending the night in Maalot. The hostage-takers soon issued demands for the release of 23 Palestinian militants from Israeli prisons, or else they would kill the students. On the second day of the standoff, a unit of the Golani Brigade stormed the building. During the takeover, the hostage-takers killed the children with grenades and automatic weapons. Ultimately, 25 hostages, including 22 children, were killed and 68 more were injured.

Yes, Abbas' brave Palestinian fighters murdered more children in a school than Adam Lanza did on Friday.
(A month earlier another group of Palestinian Arab terrorists stormed a school but it was a holiday. They still managed to kill 8 children, though.)

On January 1, Fatah - which Abbas heads - will celebrate an anniversary. But it is not the anniversary of Fatah's founding - no one celebrates that - but the anniversary of the first terror attack by Fatah, in 1964.

The official PA TV still celebrates massacres against Israeli civilians and the terrorists who were behind them. Today.

Abbas claims to the West that he is against terror, but the actions of his own party and his own government show that praising terror attacks is part of the Palestinian Arab culture. Abbas himself has praised terrorists, including child-killers.

The fact is that you will be hard pressed to find a Palestinian Arab leader that would condemn the Ma'alot attack in 1974, or is the slightest bit embarrassed by it.

Abbas' "condolences" ring very, very hollow.