Elder of Ziyon Daily News

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• PLO upset at planned Israeli TV show for NBC
• 12/09 Links Pt2: My awful Palestinian ‘history’ lesson, Seinfeld’s kibbutz days
• 60% of antisemitic mail to German Jewish council comes from well-educated Germans
• Jews were the first to lose their homes in the Arab-Jewish conflict - in 1866
• 12/09 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Iran Must Renounce Genocide, Iranian fears ‘a trap’ at Mandela funeral
• Iran censors cleavage during FIFA draft broadcast
• The antisemitic article that was praised in the NYT
• Norwegian trade union accuses Jews of poisoning Palestinian Arab wells

PLO upset at planned Israeli TV show for NBC Posted: 09 Dec 2013 05:00 PM PST Last month: Jerusalem is set to be the backdrop for "Dig," an action adventure series co-written by "Homeland" and "Heroes" co-creators and executive producers, Gideon Raff and Tim Kring. The six-episode event series marks the first project commitment by Jeff Wachtel in his new role as NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment's newly appointed president and chief content offer. "Places in such constant turmoil like the Middle East resonate in other cultures," Wachtel told the Journal. "There's such a vibrant culture there that they're throwing out into the world." "Dig," slated to film entirely in Jerusalem and debut to U.S. audiences via USA Network, will follow a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent posted in the holy city who stumbles upon a potentially world-changing conspiracy 200 years in the making while investigating the murder of a female archaeologist. "When we combine Hollywood's creative potential with Jerusalem's historic backdrop, it will result in the ability to connect hundreds of millions of viewers around the world to this unique and beautiful city. There is an undeniable inspiration and creative energy in Jerusalem, which is why it has become a center for international film production," said Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem, in a statement. "This is not about budget," added Wachtel, speaking about the reasons for shooting in the capital city. "The first reason is authenticity." The PLO is upset. Well, they always are, but over this, too. Hanan Ashrawi is calling on NBC to drop the project, because, well, it may show Jerusalem as being somehow vaguely related to Judaism, which is of course an unpardonable crime. To them, Jerusalem may only be shown as a war-torn area where hook-nosed Jews are raping and slaughtering Arab babies with the very keys that symbolize that "Palestinians" lived there since the Pleistocene epoch. Anything less is a whitewash of Israeli crimes. Ashrawi said that NBC should withdraw for "legal and ethical reasons." Remember that Ashrawi's own organization described Jews as slaughtering non-Jewish children to drink their blood for Passover. (Their response insulting me for discovering their hate is still on their website.) Her organization has also praised terrorists and suicide bombers, attacked Judaism, and is against peaceful dialogue between Arabs and Jews. She's so damned ethical! Usually the PLO is much faster at whining about things like this. Back in the 1970s, every time a water boiler exploded in Israel the Ashrawi's PLO would take credit for another wonderful bombing. Must be the "occupation" that is slowing them down.

12/09 Links Pt2: My awful Palestinian ‘history’ lesson, Seinfeld’s kibbutz days Posted: 09 Dec 2013 03:00 PM PST From Ian: My awful Palestinian 'history' lesson (Part 1) I've done some real soul-searching recently. By that, I mean trying to balance my understanding of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. My understanding of the Israeli narrative is deep and personal, so recently I endeavoured to understand the Palestinian narrative on the matter. In order to do this, I went to the Hamas-run "Palestinian Info Center" in the hope that I'd get some background on their perspective so I might understand their claim better. I went straight to the page "the History of Palestine". The introduction was not meant for 'any' target audience- only Muslims. It was not only historically dubious, but most disturbingly it was rich in anti-Semitic allegations. Who Is Destroying Al-Aqsa Mosque? "The officials themselves and the staff members are the reasons," one of the Mosque's Muslim security staff said. "This chaos and indifference rolls down from the senior officials here who enjoy huge salaries compared to the average staff member." He pointed at scaffolding stretching to the Mosque's dome, "You see these scaffoldings? They [the officials] put them up to claim maintenance work is being done in order to beg donors for money. These scaffoldings have been there for years with nothing done... The sheikh here just takes photos of them to show to donors. " He points to two large donations boxes at the center of the mosque. "Look at the donation boxes here; they collect an average of one million shekels ($284,000) per month. We have no clue where that money goes...The poor and the needy never get any of it." NGO Monitor: Economic cooperation or economic warfare? Economic warfare against Israel, also known as "BDS" (boycotts, divestment, sanctions), is a central component of a strategy developed by NGOs at the 2001 UN Durban Conference aimed at demonizing and isolating Israel internationally. The Dutch government has publicly denounced BDS initiatives, stating that they directly contradict Dutch policy and harm peace efforts. Yet, there are at least 17 NGOs receiving Dutch support that actively partake in blatant anti-Israel BDS campaigns. Groups such as Addameer, Defense for Children International – Palestine Section, and Miftah, endorsed the 2005 Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS against Israel. Is Ireland Obsessed with Israel? However, there is one volatile region of the world that hasn't left the Irish political consciousness since the 1970s. I am of course talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – an issue so divisive that it can send an ordinarily placid, peace-loving hippy into an apoplectic fit of rage. Ireland has an internal and external image of being very pro-Palestinian whilst also being very anti-Israeli. We were deemed the most "hostile country in Europe" in 2011 by the Israeli foreign ministry after an over-the-top pantomime performance on Grafton Street where activists portrayed IDF soldiers as Nazis – a particularly insensitive and hard-hitting insult to the majority Jewish state. This begs the question: why are we as a nation so obsessed with a land over 4000 km away, with which we have no historical ties? Surely we should be more concerned with getting our own back yard in order? Let's examine several theories often put forward to explain this peculiarity. The Lancet: Injecting Politics Into Medicine Each year, UK medical journal, The Lancet, publishes a series of special reports exploring health conditions in the Palestinian territories. The journal is regarded as a prestigious publication and submitted articles are peer reviewed. The Lancet's 2013 report contains some 35 contributions, most of which, at first glance, appear to deal with quantifying genuine medical issues without unwelcome politicization. A closer look, however, reveals that the journal is still tainted with anti-Israel bias. American Studies Association leaders to members: Dear Mindless Sheep I may have left the impression that the American Studies Association's academic boycott was a done deal, but so far the only thing that has passed (albeit unanimously) is a vote of the organization's leadership to jettison academic integrity for the sake of narrow, partisan interest. Whoops! I mean to preserve academic integrity by opposing it for just one group, Israelis (but just the Jewish ones) in solidarity with "Palestinian Civil Society." Finalizing the deal will involve a ratification of this decision by the membership of the organization, and just as the BDSers took no chances when they stacked the deck of the committees responsible for the original decision and ensured a lopsided number of voices heard during that debate supported the leadership's preferred outcome, they then went on to minimize chances that the hoi polloi of the American Studies Association (i.e., the scholars they were elected to represent) get in the way of their political crusade. When Did the Quakers Stop Being Friends? Such beliefs and activities are a tragic betrayal of the AFSC's own history and religious origins. It may be that a movement like the Quakers, which has seen its numbers dwindle along with other liberal Protestant denominations, sees anti-Zionism as a last resort; a movement with powerful emotional appeal on which it can draw in order to maximize its power. If so, then it has undone a great deal of the good it once did, and substituted hypocrisy and bad faith instead. Once a byword for humanitarianism and faith, it has now become, in effect, a brand—one on which the AFSC can trade as it exploits the putative neutrality and pacifism it stands for in order to advance hostility toward Israel and, with its promotion of the "right of return," an end to Israel itself. In the end, the AFSC's story reflects the tensions between pacifism and politics, between aid work and political activism, and between neutrality in the Middle East conflict and religious anti-Zionism. It demonstrates that small religious movements are susceptible to hijacking by radicals, and suggests that pacifism may inevitably engender its opposite. The organizations slide has been a long one, and at the moment it shows no sign of or interest in reversing it. Today, only the "inner light" of individual Quakers will bring about change. BBC silent on doubling of terror attacks since renewed ME talks In a recently published summary of terror attacks carried out in November 2013, the Israel Security Agency notes a rise in the number of attacks. In Judea & Samaria, 107 attacks took place (compared with 99 in October) and in Jerusalem 53 attacks occurred (compared with 32 in October). The majority of incidents in Judea & Samaria and in Jerusalem – 135 out of a total of 160 – were attacks with fire-bombs, whilst twenty-one of the attacks involved the use of improvised explosive devices and two were small arms shootings. A look at the statistics provided by the ISA for the months July to November 2013 shows that the number of terror attacks taking place in Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem since the renewal of direct negotiations between Israel and the PLO on July 29th has more than doubled. The BBC's consistent under-reporting of terror attacks against Israeli citizens in Judea & Samaria and Jerusalem means that BBC audiences are – in contravention of the BBC's public purposes remit – unaware of the context of the doubling of the number of attacks in the months since the renewal of talks, just as they are also largely unaware of the continued missile attacks from the Gaza Strip and security incidents along Israel's border with Syria for the same reason. Welcome to Hebron: Leave Your Preconceptions At the Door Even as Palestinians throw fire bombs and commit acts of violence in Hebron, our soldiers risk their lives to uphold freedom and security for all of the city's residents. In the face of constant attacks, our values prove stronger the violence against us. The city of Hebron is one of the oldest cities in the Middle East. It is the spiritual center for the three Abrahamic religions, and where Abraham purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs in order to bury his wife Sarah, according to the Bible. The city has held great significance throughout the ages and has been ruled by a large number of kingdoms and empires. IDF Blog: POV video: What Is It Like to Be Attacked By Rocks? Agence France-Presse Whitewashes Palestinian Murderer in Mandela Tribute Agence France-Press, a global news service to which many publications (including Breitbart News) subscribe, whitewashed the crimes of jailed Palestinian activist Marwan Barghouti on Friday, in publishing his tribute to the late South African leader Nelson Mandela. Nowhere in AFP's article did it mention the fact that Barghuti was convicted of murder in connection with three terrorist attacks against civilians, including one inside Israel. Al Jazeera Fires Reporter Who Questioned Objectivity of Arafat Coverage Investigative journalist Ken Silverstein, who joined Al Jazeera two months ago and co-wrote the network's November scoop about a team of Swiss scientists that found unusual traces of polonium-210 in Arafat's bone samples, was fired after he refused to travel to Paris to cover the pending release of a French laboratory study on Arafat's bone samples, multiple sources familiar with the situation told the Washington Free Beacon. Antisemitic reporter Mira Bar-Hillel pens op-ed (on antisemitism!) for The Independent Get it? Bar-Hillel not only comes to the risible conclusion that British newspapers don't provide enough coverage of Israel, but that this putative dearth of coverage is inspired by fear of being labeled antisemitic. Of course, her working theory is undermined by recent studies on British media coverage of Israel (and, more specifically, the Guardian's own data) which demonstrates quite the opposite: that news relating to the Jewish state represents something approaching an obsession to UK editors, reporters and commentators. Conclusive proof that British papers don't fear accusations of antisemitism can of course also be found in the simple fact that Indy editors felt no hesitation in publishing an essay – on the topic of antisemitism – by a journalist who has admitted to possessing an antipathy towards Jews. Downplaying the Holocaust -- Sulzberger & NY Times: Anna Blech at TEDxHunterCCS Anna Blech won first prize at the New York City History Day competition for her research paper, "Downplaying the Holocaust: Arthur Hays Sulzberger and The New York Times." For this paper, she also was awarded The Eleanor Light Prize from the Hunter College High School Social Studies Department and membership in the Society of Student Historians. (h/t Jewess) Analysis: Israel's Economic Dominance of the Middle East; Foreign Currency Reserves Dwarf Neighbors "Israel's ability to put spare cash in the bank for emergencies very much signifies that the Israeli economy is growing, especially compared to its Arab neighbors," said Professor Joseph Pelzman, the Institute for International Economic Policy the Elliott School, George Washington University Professor of Economics, International Affairs and Law, in Washington, D.C., and a permanent visiting professor at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, in Be'er-Sheva. "What I found fascinating is that the world hasn't really understood how marvelous the Israeli economy has become and, obviously will expand much faster, as its natural gas makes Israel a participant in the global energy business — and this because of the anti-Israel sentiments on many international levels that have worked to preclude Israel from being recognized," Professor Pelzman said. OECD chief: Other nations can learn from Israel's economy The Finance Ministry said the OECD report highlighted Israel's robust economic growth, low unemployment rates and a strong high-tech industry. But the report also cited a low average living standard compared to other leading OECD countries, acknowledging ongoing environmental challenges. "OECD membership is very important to Israel, helping us deal with social and economic challenges," said Lapid, standing alongside Gurria. "Israel will continue to maintain high levels of growth and financial stability." The secretary-general called Israel's economy "strong," and encouraged Israel to work toward incorporating its benefits into all segments of society. He said other OECD members could learn from Israel's managing of its economy. Israel, Jordan, Palestinians to finally build Red-Dead pipeline Representatives of the three parties to the agreement – Israel's Minister for Regional Cooperation Silvan Shalom, Jordanian Minister of Water and Irrigation Hazem Nasser, and Palestinian Authority Minister for Water Shaddad Attili – were scheduled to gather at the World Bank in Washington for an official signing ceremony. "We're talking about a historic process that realizes a dream of many years," Shalom told Yedioth Ahronoth, which broke the story. "We have here strategic cooperation of national significance between Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority." Seinfeld's kibbutz days Other notable celebrities have also experienced kibbutz life. Sigourney Weaver rebelled against her parents at the age of sixteen, and ended up in Israel for a short three weeks' stay. Bob Hoskins picked oranges and bananas at Kibbutz Zikim. Sacha Baron Cohen (Ali G / Borat) volunteered at Rosh Hanikra and Beit Haemek for a year in the late 1980s. British actress Helen Mirren volunteered on a kibbutz for 6 months after the Six Day War. American Congresswoman Michele Bachmann spent a summer volunteering on Kibbutz Be'eri at the age of 18 in 1974. One Soldier's Choice to Join the Jewish People and the IDF Private Meir Ben Dror was born Matthew Pasualito, and in the past two years has adopted a new name, tongue, religion and home on his path to enlistment. With a beaming smile and pronounced Italian accent, Private Meir Ben Dror yelled, along with about 600 graduates of the Mikve Alon Hebrew Training Base, "I have no other country [but the land of Israel]." Meir, whose birth name was Matthew Pascualito until he moved to Israel, has taken a truly unique path. Meir grew up in a secular Catholic family in Venice, Italy but never felt a special closeness to the religion he was born into. "I cannot say I left Christianity to convert. I simply joined the Jewish people," he shares. "I feel like I was born Jewish, as if I was a part of this from the first day of my life. Throughout the holidays, I feel as if I've been eating pomegranates on Rosh Hashanah, fasting on Yom Kippur and sitting in the sukkah all the years of my life." From Alaska to the IDF, With Love Six years ago, Channah Kopel of Efrat suggested that her local knitting group make hats for IDF soldiers. At the time, her son was a soldier stationed in the Golan, one of the coldest places in the country. Today, the knitting group's idea has spread around the globe, with knitters from as far away as California, Alaska and New Zealand pitching in to keep Israel's soldiers warm through the winter. Technion Formula Race Car Takes First Place 25 Technion students took first place worldwide out of all newcomer teams Sept. 2013 in Italy, with the Formula SAE car they built and raced. Here's the stop-motion version of their endeavor.

60% of antisemitic mail to German Jewish council comes from well-educated Germans Posted: 09 Dec 2013 01:00 PM PST The Forward mentions a fascinating study: Over the course of a decade, the letters poured into the Central Council of Jews in Germany like a river. "Is it possible that the excessive violence in Israel, including the murder of innocent children, corresponds to the long tradition of your people?" asked one. "For the last two thousand years, you have been robbing land and killing people!" exclaimed another. "You Israelis are a crowd showing contempt for humanity," charged another, though its writer was addressing fellow Germans. "You drop cluster bombs above inhabited territory during the last days of war, and accuse people criticizing such actions of anti-Semitism. That is typical of you Jews!" Many would view the stream of vitriol, sent to German Jewry's central communal organization between 2002 and 2012, as little more than raw sewage. But Monika Schwarz-Friesel, a professor of linguistics at the Technical University of Berlin, saw it as raw data. Together with Jehuda Reinharz, the American historian and former president of Brandeis University, Schwarz-Friesel has recently published a study of these letters. And their findings reaffirm one of the enduring, if still surprising truths about anti-Semitism in Germany and elsewhere. More than 60% of the hate mail came from well-educated Germans, including university professors, according to their study, "The Language of Hostility Towards Jews in the 21st Century," released earlier this year. Only 3% came from right-wing extremists. The researchers know this partly from analyzing the language of the letter writers — but also because many of the authors of the emails in their sample gave their names, addresses and professions. "We checked some of them, [and] the information [was] valid," said Schwarz-Friesel in an email to the Forward. She and her research partner were amazed that the writers were so brazen. "I don't think they would have identified themselves 20 or 30 years ago," said Reinharz. "We found that there is hardly any difference in the semantics of highly educated anti-Semites and vulgar extremists and neo-Nazis," said Schwarz-Friezel. "The difference lies only in style and formal rhetoric, but the concepts are the same." This is not exactly new. Schwarz-Friesel pointed out that many Nazis were highly educated, too. One of the research pair's other main findings was that hatred for Israel has become the main vehicle for German anti-Semitism. More than 80% of the 14,000 emails focused on Israel as their central theme. Schwarz-Friesel and Reinharz say they strove hard to distinguish emails that were critical of Israel — even those that expressed anger toward it — from those that were anti-Semitic. "Only those letters were classified as anti-Semitic that clearly [saw] German Jews as non-Germans and collectively abused German Jews to be responsible for crimes in Israel!" she explained. In the paper's abstract, the researchers clarify further that "Verbal anti-Semitism is based on 1. Collective discrimination; 2. Fixation (by stereotypes) and 3. Devaluation of Jews." Schwarz-Friesel said she also considered as anti-Semitic letters that analogized Jewish or Israeli behavior to that of the Nazis. As a linguist, Schwarz-Friesel sought to decode the classical anti-Semitism that was often hidden in the language of the emails. Schwarz-Friesel says her skills enable her to identify anti-Semitic intent that's often deliberately obscured. She cites a letter from a professor that opens this way: "You people have a history of 2,000 years…" The letter then goes on to criticize Israel. In this way, according to Schwarz-Friesel, the writer brands Jews as historically evil. Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust studies at Hebrew University and academic advisor to Yad Vashem, praised the study's methodology as unique. "Such an in-depth research based on language analyzing has not existed yet," he said. The anti-Israel crowd never tires of claiming that they are not antisemitic. However, this study indicates that antisemitism is the driving force behind anti-Zionism, not the other way around. Educated people do not as often generalize anti-Muslim feelings from the acts of a few - they bend over backwards to avoid "Islamophobia." Yet here we see that university educated Germans will use Israel as their excuse to demonize Jews, and to take the trouble to write specifically to the Central Council of Jews and not a German Zionist organization to spout their hate. The idea of analyzing antisemitism in this way is brilliant. No doubt the ADL and other Jewish organizations in the US and elsewhere get lots of hate mail, I hope they are saving it for similar analysis. (h/t Yerushalimey)

Jews were the first to lose their homes in the Arab-Jewish conflict - in 1866 Posted: 09 Dec 2013 11:00 AM PST This comes from the The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, "the first successful Jewish serial in the United States," April 1867. It is a partial reproduction of "Sir Moses Montefiore's Report to the Board of Deputies of British Jews," apparently from the previous year or maybe even earlier. On Saturday, April 14th, after the morning service, I took a walk round the garden, and was much pleased with the improvement of the place since my last visit to Jerusalem. I regret, however, not being able to report the same of the land at Jaffa, which has been unfortunately let to persons who, being unable to resist the threatened attacks of the neighboring Arabs, deserted the place altogether. The consequence is, that the houses are completely demolished and the trees destroyed. I am at present, however, in communication with the Chief Haham of the Morocco congregation in Jerusalem in reference to the matter. If sufficient funds can be obtained for the purpose, I hope to see four or five families established at that now deserted place, who will apply themselves sedulously to the cultivation of the land, which is of considerable value, and ought to be immediately secured by a fence to mark its boundaries. This is one of the earliest attacks I have seen by Arabs directly towards a Jewish community in Israel. (Previously, the earliest I was aware of was at Petah Tikva in 1886, at least twenty years later. There were also pogroms in Safed and Hebron in 1834 but the attacks on Jews then seem to have been more opportunistic during other intra-Arab fighting.)

12/09 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Iran Must Renounce Genocide, Iranian fears ‘a trap’ at Mandela funeral Posted: 09 Dec 2013 09:00 AM PST From Ian: Inflexible on Iran, empathetic on Palestine In the past, Obama seemed receptive to Israeli concerns over Tehran's nuclear program — less so to Jerusalem's peace process demands. Now that seems to have been reversed Obama endorsed Netanyahu's demands that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people over a year ago. But on Saturday, he for the first time publicly indicated that even under a final status deal, Israeli troops will remain stationed on the territory of a future Palestinian state, at least for some time. "Ultimately, the Palestinians have to also recognize that there is going to be a transition period where the Israeli people cannot expect a replica of Gaza in the West Bank. That is unacceptable," Obama said, referring to the incessant rocket fire on Israeli towns that followed the 2005 disengagement from the Hamas-ruled coastal strip. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas needs to be "willing to understand that this transition period requires some restraint on the part of the Palestinians as well," Obama said. "They don't get everything that they want on day one." Why Should Anyone Believe Kerry? Kerry's ego may have been stroked by the Iranian deal, but his already shaky credibility is shot. There is no reason for Israel to believe American assurances and even less reason for the Palestinians not to think that they have more to gain from saying no than yes. But the consequences of this diplomatic farce are more far-reaching than the souring of relations between Israel and the United States. By setting the Middle East up for certain diplomatic failure, Kerry has set the stage for a third intifada and threatened the Israelis with it himself. He may think he can blame Israel with the violence that may come after the negotiations blow up but, like the almost inevitable Iranian betrayal of the nuclear talks, what follows will be largely on his head. Netanyahu says recognition of Jewish state is 'minimal requirement for peace' Offering a laundry list of problems facing the region, Netanyahu suggested putting the conflict in perspective – but said that peace was vital nevertheless, primarily for Israelis and Palestinians themselves, referring to a final-status agreement as a "strategic goal" of his office. The prime minister spoke after US President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry gave remarks to the forum on Saturday, both discussing the Middle East peace process and Iran's nuclear ambitions. Netanyahu said the "minimal requirement for peace" with the Palestinians was their recognition of the state as home to the Jewish people with equal right to self-determination as themselves. US ambassador rejects talk of Iran-Palestinian 'linkage' The United States hasn't tied progress in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks to efforts to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program, the US ambassador to Israel said Monday morning, playing down recent chatter regarding a possible "linkage" between the two diplomatic processes. "There is no connection between these two issues," Dan Shapiro told Army Radio. "These two issues are connected to Israel's security, our security, and the security of the entire Middle East, for a quieter and more stable region. But we do not see in this any connection in which we are required to give in one and receive in the other." PA Rejects Release Delay, Warns 'Total Failure' In response to reports that US Secretary of State John Kerry will delay the third batch of terrorist releases by a month, a spokesperson of Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared Monday that the PA will not agree to the delay, reports Kol Yisrael government radio. Issa Karaka, PA Minister of Prisoner Affairs, said that while an official confirmation of the postponement has yet to be made, there are definite American pressures in that direction. Karaka added that Abbas told Kerry in their meeting last week that he refuses the proposed postponement, saying the matter could negatively impact peace talks with Israel. Kerry's delay is seen as meant to pressure the PA into accepting Kerry's proposed Jordan Valley security arrangements made last week, which PA officials say Abbas rejected as they would not have prevented Israelis from living in the area. PLO: Palestinians won't accept current proposals from Israel The Palestinians can't accept any proposals or plans like the ones that are being suggested today; that solidify occupation and legalize the division of the Palestinian territories, the PLO Executive Committee announced Sunday. The announcement, which was issued to mark the 26th anniversary of the first intifada that began in 1987, was referring to recent security arrangements between Israel and the Palestinians, as proposed by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Hamas: We Won't Cede a Single Grain of Soil The Secretary of the Hamas government in Gaza, Abd el-Salam Siam, said Sunday in a press release marking 26 years since the outbreak of the First Intifada that the Gaza government supports all forms of the struggle against "Israeli occupation," including popular struggle, struggle through peaceful methods and armed struggle. Hamas TV's Giant Bee Nahoul Explains the Concept of Negotiations Israel-Syria Border a Tinderbox Israeli military planners say that the Syrian arena has become intrinsically linked to Lebanon. With many thousands of Hezbollah operatives fighting in Syria, and with Syrian jihadi organizations branching out into Lebanon, an incident that begins as an attack on Israel from Syria could quickly end up spreading to the Lebanese border. Counteracting the explosiveness of the situation are a few stabilizing factors. No side in Syria is keen on opening a front with Israel and facing the IDF's firepower when it is neck-deep in a fight to the death in the Syrian civil war. Additionally, localized incidents, as again demonstrated last week, can, through a careful combination of firm responses and restraint, be contained by Israel. UN: Israel to resume transfer of building materials to Gaza Israel has decided to once again allow construction materials for UN projects to be brought into the Gaza Strip, the United Nations announced Monday. The import of construction materials was suspended after the IDF discovered a Hamas tunnel leading out of the Gaza Strip in October that used 500 tons of cement. According to Robert Serry, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, the UN is building schools, housing, water and sanitation facilities in the Strip, at a cost of $500 million. Netanyahu: Iran Must Renounce Genocide Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke Sunday at the Saban Forum and said that stopping Iran's nuclear program is not enough – Iran's policy of genocide must change, too. Netanyahu quoted incendiary statements by Iran's leaders, who called Israel "a rabid dog," among other things. The Iranian regime, he said, "is committed to our annihilation and I believe that there must be an uncompromising demand at the Geneva talks, for a change in Iran's policy. In other words, there needs to be not just a change in the capability of Iran to arm itself, but also a change in its policy of genocide. I do not think that I or anyone can exaggerate the threat that Iran poses to the Middle East." Iran foreign minister alludes to deceiving Obama administration during nuclear negotiations Zarif, reporting on the Geneva negotiations to the regime's parliament last Wednesday, alluded to deceiving the Obama administration and the 5+1 world powers, the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany. "The Americans talk nonsense [on enforcing limitations on Iran's nuclear program]… All of these [negotiations] are ultimately for [the representatives] to protect the interests of the country," he said. Referring to what Iran claims is its right to enrich uranium, he added, "This right is there, regardless if the West accepts it or not." Mike Huckabee: Israel Has 'License' to Act Independently on Iran (INTERVIEW) The U.S. "has indicated that they are going to act independently of Israel as it relates to Iran," Huckabee said, calling that a "very foolish policy." "I think now [the Israelis] have really a license to act without having to be scolded for not having consulted the U.S. for their plans," he said. Iranian paper fears 'trap' for Rouhani at Mandela funeral An editorial titled "Satan lays a trap, this time in Johannesburg" in the Kayhan daily laid down the dangers to Rouhani of a chance meeting with the "head of the Great Satan government," AFP reported on Sunday. "Some domestic and foreign media outlets are using the funeral ceremony as a pretext to push Rouhani toward a meeting with the head of the Great Satan government," according to the editorial board of the hardline paper. Hizballah's War of Shadows With Saudi Arabia Comes Into the Light Nasrallah rarely mentions Saudi Arabia by name, only referring to the monarchy in vague terms in order to maintain plausible deniability. But that all changed on Tuesday, when he accused Saudi agents of being behind the suicide-bomb attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut last month that claimed 23 lives. (The assassination of a senior Hizballah commander on Wednesday, though the assailants remain unknown, deepened the group's sense of embattlement.) In doing so he has openly declared a war that has long been fought in the shadows, first in Lebanon where Hizballah-allied parties are at a political impasse with the Saudi-backed Future Movement of Saad Hariri, and now in Syria, where Hizballah, with Iranian assistance, is fighting on the side of President Bashar Assad against Saudi-backed rebels. "This is the first time I have ever seen such a direct attack [by Nasrallah] against Saudi Arabia," says Lebanon-based political analyst Talal Atrissi. "This was the formal declaration of a war that has been going on in Syria since Saudi first started supporting the rebels." Syrian Islamists: No to Democracy, Minority Rights A video released by a leading Islamist faction shows Islamist military leader Abu Bilal al-Homsi exhorting his followers to reject the largely secular Free Syrian Army, led by Salim Idris. According to Al-Homsi, Idris has said that the Free Syrian Army under his command is fighting for "democracy, secularism, communism, and the rights of minority groups", including Syrian Druze. Rebels must fight not for democracy or rights, but for Islam, Al-Homsi declared. From the beginning, the purpose of the rebellion was to institute Islamic law, he argued. Al-Qaeda: Death to Shi'ites for 'Damaging Mohammed's Legacy' The video opens with a speech from a judge in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, which has been a focal point of territorial fighting between the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad and rebel forces. The judge's job: to establish rule over the Syrian city through the implementation of Sharia, or Islamic religious law - including doling out execution orders. "Don't fear the Egyptian or Israeli armies, the judge declares" and calls for jihadi fighters to renounce their commanding officers and remind them that on the Islamic Day of Judgement, they will be held accountable for calling off the (global) Jihad pan-Islamist organizations like Al Qaeda support. Jordanians Protest, Demand Security Radwan al-Nawaiseh, spokesman for the Arab People's Committees, told the newspaper that these scenes of protest in Jordan confirm that the Jordanians do not trust their government. He highlighted the significant decline in public freedoms which can lead to the deterioration of the citizens' economic conditions. The protests are nothing new, as Jordan has seen regular protests as a result of the Arab Spring that has toppled four regimes across the region. A combination of youths and Islamists have been demanding sweeping reforms, but King Abdullah has mostly been able to curtail the demonstrations, partially by curtailing his absolute powers. The Cairo effect: America's declining power from the Egyptian perspective Egypt's popular de-facto leader, Sisi, did the math. He remembered Obama's indecisiveness during Egypt's uprising and the Carter-like abandonment of Mubarak, not to mention Obama's lack of support for Sisi's government. On the other hand, he saw how Russia treats its allies and how far it's willing to go to keep them in power. Last Thursday, Russia's most high-ranking delegation (including foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and the defense minister Sergey Shoygu), has landed in Cairo and received the red-carpet welcome. The final results of the visit are still not certain; but it looks like the two countries are headed for a major arms deal and military cooperation. But, more than anything, this deal signals to America that every ally, and even patron, is replaceable. Turkey's Erdogan on shaky ground as elections loom After dominating Turkish politics for a decade, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is entering election season on uncertain footing — without the support of key groups that had powered his previous electoral wins and facing divisions within his own party. Erdogan, whom critics accuse of cutting an increasingly autocratic figure, faces municipal elections in March that are largely seen as a vote of confidence in his Islamic-based government. A poor result could weaken Erdogan just as he seeks to shift into the presidency in an August vote while still maintaining enough influence in his party to choose his successor as prime minister in parliamentary elections expected next year. Turks detained at Auschwitz for alleged Nazi salute Two Turkish tourists were detained by guards at the Auschwitz museum for appearing to make a Nazi salute. The tourists, a man and a woman, both 22, were taking pictures of each other in front of the gate to the former Nazi death camp under the iconic sign "Arbeit macht frei" — "Work makes you free" — and raised their right hands in the gesture of a Nazi salute. Both are studying history in Budapest. They had stopped at a hotel in Krakow before making their visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum.

Iran censors cleavage during FIFA draft broadcast Posted: 09 Dec 2013 07:30 AM PST HuffPo Quebec reports that Iran cut the live broadcast of the FIFA  Final Draw because of cleavage. Fernanda Lima, a stunning Brazilian actress, co-hosted the event in  a low cut dress that was too much for the Iranian censors to handle. From all reports, the beauty stole the show as fans were suddenly more interested in Lima than in the announcements. Iranian coverage - which is on a delay just in case a beautiful girl or an israeli flag might pop up - was suddenly cut off, going back to a studio of Iranian sportscasters. One of them apologized, saying "Our friends in the technical department do everything in their power to disseminate what is possible, depending on, you know, certain requirements." Hundreds of Iranians quickly figured out what happened, and went to Lima's Facebook page to apologize. Globoesporte reports that in Iran, women are not allowed to attend football matches. (h/t Manny)

The antisemitic article that was praised in the NYT Posted: 09 Dec 2013 05:00 AM PST A year ago, David Brooks of the New York Times gave out the "Sidney Awards" for best magazine articles of the year. Here is how he described the first winner: At the start of the 1980s, about 5 percent of Harvard students were Asian-American. But the number of qualified Asian-American applicants rose so that by 1993 roughly 20 percent of Harvard students had Asian heritage. But, according to Ron Unz, a funny thing then happened. The number of qualified Asian-Americans continued to rise, but the number of Asian-Americans admitted to Harvard fell so that the student body was about 16 percent Asian. Between 1995 and 2011, Harvard's Asian-American population has varied by less than a percentage point around that 16.5 percent average. Not only that, the percentage of Asian-Americans at other Ivy League schools has also settled at a remarkably stable 16 percent, year after year. This smells like a quota system, or at least that was the implication left by Unz's searing, sprawling, frustrating and highly debatable piece, "The Myth of the American Meritocracy," in The American Conservative. It wins the first of the 2012 Sidney Awards, which go to the best magazine essays of the year. You're going to want to argue with Unz's article all the way along, especially for its narrow, math-test-driven view of merit. But it's potentially ground-shifting. Unz's other big point is that Jews are vastly overrepresented at elite universities and that Jewish achievement has collapsed. In the 1970s, for example, 40 percent of top scorers in the Math Olympiad had Jewish names. Now 2.5 percent do. The fanatical generations of immigrant strivers have been replaced by a more comfortable generation of preprofessionals, he implies. Unz' article was also noted and often praised by The Economist, Forbes, Time, The Daily Beast and others, but mostly for the part about Asians and not the part about Jews. There are a couple of problems, though. While Unz' main point about Asians seems to have merit, his methodology about Jews at Harvard is worthless. Andrew Gelman, director of the Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University, demolishes Unz' piece based on the numbers. (Unz replied, but Gelman notes that he did not address the main points of the criticism.) A recent, very thorough paper by Nurit Baytch goes into far more detail. Because I like to try to explain complicated things, I'm going to briefly describe one of the major problems with Unz' analysis as shown by Baytch and Gelman. When one looks further, one can see that this error and the others appear to have been conscious. In other words, Unz may have set out to find a way to make Jews look bad, and by George, he found it. Unz' main argument about Jewish over-representation at Harvard is that Harvard is 25% Jewish, based on estimates provided by Harvard Hillel. He compares that to the number of Jews who may be considered good candidates for Harvard - specifically, people who were National Merit Scholarship semifinalists (NMS) and those in the US teams for the International Math Olympiad (top six students nationwide.) According to Unz, the percentage of Jews in the NMS in recent years is only 6-7%. Similarly, he claims that the percentage of Jews in recent Math Olympiads is only 2.5%. Therefore, according to Unz, Jews are vastly overrepresented at Harvard (and other Ivy League schools) compared to their actual intellectual achievements. The losers, in Unz' opinion, are the Asians and - especially - white non-Jews. As mentioned, Unz' used statistics from Hillel to determine the number of Jews at Harvard. It is not known exactly how Hillel came up with those numbers. But his method of calculating the number of Jews in NMS semifinals used something called Weyl Analysis. Very briefly, this method look at known Jewish surnames (Goldberg, Cohen, and so forth) as a percentage of a known Jewish population - for our purposes let's pretend that 50% of Jews have clearly Jewish surnames. Then, by counting the number of Jewish surnames in an unknown group and multiplying by the same factor (2 in this case), you can determine the number of Jews in the group altogether. A good statistician would use the same methodology to create two separate estimates of two different groups, in this case Harvard undergrads and NMS semifinalists. But Unz uses the Hillel numbers for Harvard, and the Weyl analysis for the NMS semifinalists.  (He appears to have used his own subjective guesses of what names are Jewish sounding for the Math Olympiad and other groups.)  If there is a fundamental flaw in either Weyl or Hillel's estimate, the results are meaningless. Indeed, they are. Using Unz' methods reproduced by Baytch (as best as could be determined), Weyl analysis shows that Harvard undergrads in 2008 were only 7-9% Jewish, not 25%. This is quite in line with the Weyl analysis on NMS semifinalists. Weyl analysis is clearly underestimating the number of Jews today, and Unz apparently jiggered the numbers to overrepresent the number of Jews in the past to bolster his thesis. (Baytch shows that there were more Jews in NMS and the Math Olympiad dataset than Unz' Weyl analysis showed, and at Harvard the number of Jews in reality is probably more than 7-9% but much less than 25%. For today's Harvard undergraduates, the number calculated through Weyl analysis is even lower.) Again, there are many other statistical problems with Unz' article, and Baytch's paper goes into far more detail. But the major problems with Unz' article in The American Conservative (founded by Patrick Buchanan) go beyond the problematic statistics. They are found in his conclusions. He writes a number of very curious paragraphs that the NYT and others seem to have overlooked. After he claims to have proven that Jews are vastly overrepresented at Harvard to the detriment of (mostly) white non-Jews, he writes: It would be unreasonable to ignore the salient fact that this massive apparent bias in favor of far less-qualified Jewish applicants coincides with an equally massive ethnic skew at the topmost administrative ranks of the universities in question, a situation which once again exactly parallels Karabel's account from the 1920s. Indeed, Karabel points out that by 1993 Harvard, Yale, and Princeton all had presidents of Jewish ancestry, and the same is true for the current presidents of Yale, Penn, Cornell, and possibly Columbia, as well as Princeton's president throughout during the 1990s and Yale's new incoming president, while all three of Harvard's most recent presidents have either had Jewish origins or a Jewish spouse. At most universities, a provost is the second-ranking official, being responsible for day-to-day academic operations. Although Princeton's current president is not Jewish, all seven of the most recent Princeton provosts stretching back to 1977 have had such ancestry, with several of the other Ivies not being far behind.82 A similar degree of massive overrepresentation is found throughout the other top administrative ranks of the rest of the Ivy League, and across American leading educational institutions in general, and these are the institutions which select our future national elites. ...The overwhelming evidence is that the system currently employed by most of our leading universities admits applicants whose ability may be unremarkable but who are beneficiaries of underhanded manipulation and favoritism. Nations which put their future national leadership in the hands of such individuals are likely to encounter enormous economic and social problems, exactly the sort of problems which our own country seems to have increasingly experienced over the last couple of decades. And unless the absurdly skewed enrollments of our elite academic institutions are corrected, the composition of these feeder institutions will ensure that such national problems only continue to grow worse as time passes. We should therefore consider various means of correcting the severe flaws in our academic admissions system, which functions as the primary intake valve of our future national elites. In other words, these manipulative Jews who run Ivy League schools are destroying America! Many of the Jewish writers who focus on the history of elite university admissions, including Karabel, Steinberg, and Lemann, have critiqued and rebuked the America of the first half of the Twentieth Century for having been governed by a narrow WASP ascendency, which overwhelmingly dominated and controlled the commanding heights of business, finance, education, and politics; and some of their criticisms are not unreasonable. But we should bear in mind that this dominant group of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants—largely descended from among the earliest American settlers and which had gradually absorbed and assimilated substantial elements of Celtic, Dutch, German, and French background—was generally aligned in culture, religion, ideology, and ancestry with perhaps 60 percent of America's total population at the time, and therefore hardly represented an alien presence. By contrast, a similarly overwhelming domination by a tiny segment of America's current population, one which is completely misaligned in all these respects, seems far less inherently stable, especially when the institutional roots of such domination have continually increased despite the collapse of the supposedly meritocratic justification. This does not seem like a recipe for a healthy and successful society, nor one which will even long survive in anything like its current form. Unz is saying that Jews are an alien presence in America, and their goals are not in alignment with what real Americans want! How can you read this as anything but antisemitic? This is essentially a white supremacist argument that is disguised as scholarship. There is more. Ron Unz is president of the Unz Foundation, which gives quite a bit of money to causes he feels are worthwhile. Some of his recipients seem to fit a pattern. For example, in 2009, 2010 and 2011 the foundation gave $108,000 to Paul Craig Roberts, a columnist who turned towards anti-semitism since 2006, according to the ADL. $74,000 went to Philip Giraldi, a fellow American Conservative columnist who has written numerous articles about the pernicious Jewish Lobby. Plus $75,000 to Holocaust minimizer/Hezbollah praiser/Israel hater Norman Finkelstein. And $80,000 to the far left, antisemitic Counterpunch magazine. And $60,000 to the virulently anti-Israel (and often antisemitic) Mondoweiss, where founder Philip Weiss lavishly praised Unz' article without mentioning his financial relationship with Unz! Between Unz' own words and where he puts his money, it sure looks like his bogus statistics have an agenda behind them.

Norwegian trade union accuses Jews of poisoning Palestinian Arab wells Posted: 09 Dec 2013 02:43 AM PST The Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees,which has 340,000 members, recently sent a group of delegates to the West Bank. The resulting article in their monthly magazine is filled with anti-Israel (and antisemitic) propaganda. Miff.no, a pro-Israel Norwegian website, reports that the article accuses Israel of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing"  against Palestinian Arabs, It notes that the Arab population in the area has increased by a factor of ten in the past 100 years, and compares that to Norway's population which has only doubled in the same time period. If the Palestinian Arabs have suffered "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing," as the union claims, then what do you call what happened to Norwegians? The article shows this photo and caption: "At the very holy Ibrahim Mosque in the town of Hebron in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers restrict access for Palestinians." Nothing about how this was a holy Jewish site before Islam existed. Nothing about the Jewish forefathers and mothers buried there. It is a very holy mosque, and Jews are restricting access (I suppose keeping out people with guns is "restricting access.") The article also says, as fact, "Israeli settlers are known to poison wells." Thus we see the medieval blood libel of Jews poisoning wells has become accepted as truth in the 21st century. (h/t Antisemitism-Europe blog)

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