Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Palestinian Arabs hate Americans more than any other people surveyed
Work accident!
President of Achva College/Negev is a Bedouin (posters)
02/23 Links: Kerry Oblivious To Demise Of the PA; PLO lose control of Lebanon refugee camps
ASA's president-elect hosting SECRET anti-Israel conference at NYU (Zionists not welcome) (updated)
"Khazar" study thoroughly debunked
Abbas' "peace plan" (ElderToon, updated)

Palestinian Arabs hate Americans more than any other people surveyed

Posted: 23 Feb 2014 05:00 PM PST

This Pew survey of how people from around the world think about the US and Americans is enlightening.

There's more....

Notice that there is no correlation between the amount of money the US gives to a nation and their opinion of the US.

Egypt and Jordan hate Americans more than Pakistanis!

I bet if you would survey BDSers and the rest of the "hate Israel" crowd, you will find that their opinions closely match the hate that Palestinian Arabs have for the US and Americans.

(h/t Anne/Arnold)

Work accident!

Posted: 23 Feb 2014 02:30 PM PST

Ma'an reports:

A member of the Islamic Jihad's armed movement al-Quds Brigades has died in a "jihadist mission," according to the group.

Al-Quds Brigades said in a statement that 24-year-old Zidan Muhmmad Fatayer from Deir al-Balah died on Saturday evening fulfilling his "duty."

The statement did not explain the circumstances of his death.

The Islamic Jihad Al Quds Brigades, in describing Futayer's funeral, wrote "The mourners chanted slogans demanding the Palestinian resistance, particularly the al-Quds Brigades, to continue the path of jihad until the liberation of the last atom of the dust of the land of Palestine."

It also said he was "elevated to glory and immortality yesterday evening doing his jihadist duty."

They have lots of photos of his funeral.

May we see thousands more such martyrs.

President of Achva College/Negev is a Bedouin (posters)

Posted: 23 Feb 2014 12:30 PM PST

(h/t Anne H)

Plus another poster in the never-ending series:

(h/t Mida)

02/23 Links: Kerry Oblivious To Demise Of the PA; PLO lose control of Lebanon refugee camps

Posted: 23 Feb 2014 10:30 AM PST

From Ian:

David Singer: Kerry Oblivious To Demise Of Palestinian Authority

US Secretary of State John Kerry and the US State Department continue to cling to the illusion that the Palestinian Authority still exists – despite PLO insistence that it does not following this Decree on 3 January 2013:
Kerry and the State Department's inability to appreciate this major change in PLO policy became very apparent following Kerry's visit to Paris last week to meet "President of the State of Palestine" and "Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO" – Mahmoud Abbas.
The State Department web site described Kerry's visit in these terms:
"In Paris, Secretary Kerry will meet with Palestinian Authority President Abbas to discuss the ongoing negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis."(h/t Bob Knot)

Letters from the Phantom Anti-Jewish Establishment

Hating Israel has become a small petty club for the wealthy left and the Israel Policy Forum allows assorted obscure figures to assert their status by denouncing things or demanding things under the banner of an organization whose only asset is the wealth of a few private equity backers.
The Jewish Anti-Israel left likes to pretend that it's a grassroots movement whose voice is being squelched by some nebulous Jewish establishment when in reality it is an unelected establishment using its wealth and lingering fame to shout over the majority of American Jews who support Israel. (h/t NormanF)

Arab Despots Puzzled At Ukrainian Refusal To Mow Down Protesters (Satire)

In the wake of a popular uprising in Ukraine that resulted in the deposing of Viktor Yanukovich as president, leaders throughout the Middle East are expressing bewilderment that the authorities in Kiev did not immediately resort to crushing dissent with machine guns, tanks, air strikes, and mass torture.
Following months of protests that turned violent in recent weeks, Yanukovich fled the capital city but insisted he remains the country's legitimate elected leader despite being deposed by Parliament today. Egyptian, Saudi, Bahraini, Syrian, Turkish, and Iranian officials said they still did not understand why the Ukrainian government allowed the protests to continue after the initial unrest in November.

Amnesty hedges its bets over Ben White

In his 1st edition of his Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide, Ben White included an essay by convicted Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy essay on Zionism in his 'select bibliography' (p.162).
White infamously declared "I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are."
White also wrote an enthusiastic article claiming that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not a Holocaust denier, in the same week as Ahmadinejad began to invite Holocaust deniers to a conference in Iran.
Now it looks that even Amnesty are being rather more cautious with Ben White.

Elkin: Mahmoud Abbas Should Learn Some History

Deputy Foreign Minister Zev Elkin returned Sunday from a weekend in the Galilee, during which he visited the village of Pekiin, including the town's ancient synagogue.
Elkin followed his visit with a post to Facebook suggesting that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas might benefit from a similar trip.
"Next time that Abu Mazen [Abbas – ed.] argues that the Palestinians are the original inhabitants of the land, going back thousands of years, it should be recommended that he visit Pekiin," Elkin wrote.

Report: Congress may condition PA aid on curbing incitement

The U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee is considering freezing aid to the Palestinian Authority unless its continued incitement against Israel is curtailed, according to a Channel 2 report Saturday.
International Relations, Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz reportedly met with congressmen to express his appreciation for the initiative.
"Maybe now, when there is international recognition and a monetary threat on the aid, the incitement will lessen," Steinitz said.

Fogel Parents Meet Children Named for the Slain

In two weeks, the town of Itamar will mark three years since the brutal murder of the Fogel family, a slaying that shocked the nation. In 2011, two teenage Palestinian Arab terrorists entered the town and murdered Ehud and Ruth Fogel and three of their six children.
In the years since the attack, 38 children have been named after Ehud, Ruth, and the murdered children Yoav, Elad and Hadas.
Last week, Ehud Fogel's bereaved parents, Chaim and Tzila, hosted an emotional gathering in Itamar during which they met 20 of the children named for their slain son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. They and the children's parents helped the young children to plant trees in the yard of the Fogel family home.

Syrian troops capture areas along Israeli Golan Heights

Syrian government forces captured Saturday two rebel-held areas on the edge of the Israeli-occupied[sic] Golan Heights after days of intense fighting near a decades-old cease-fire line between Syria and Israel, state TV said.
The violence came as the UN Security Council unanimously demanded immediate access everywhere in Syria to deliver humanitarian aid to millions of people in desperate need.
Russia and China, strong supporters of the Syrian government, joined the rest of the council Saturday in sending a strong message to President Bashar Assad's government that civilians caught in the three-year conflict must be helped.

Palestinians mark DFLP anniversary with armed procession near Jerusalem

Palestinians in the village of Abu Dis, which lies just outside of the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, staged a procession over the weekend to mark the 45th anniversary of the founding of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Marxist faction and a member organization of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Dozens of Palestinians were seen brandishing AK-47 and M16 semiautomatic rifles as well as hand grenades and pistols while clad in military gear, according to Israel Radio. A number of shots were fired in the air during the festivities.
In recent months, Palestinians have increasingly been displaying firearms out in the open, particularly in the refugee camps of the West Bank, this after years in which the Palestinian Authority banned the practice.

Official: Fatah, PLO have lost control of Lebanon refugee camps

The Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization have lost control of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, a Lebanon-based Fatah official said on Saturday.
Fatah leader in Lebanon Muneer Maqdah told Ma'an on Saturday that Lebanese authorities told the PLO to adjust the situation in order "to avoid more aggravations" which they warned could have "negative impacts" on the refugee camps and on Lebanon more broadly.
The statement comes two days after a Palestinian was identified as one of the culprits of a double suicide bombing targeting the Iranian cultural center in southern Beirut. Officials are increasingly worried that economic deprivation in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon has laid fertile ground for Wahhabi militant groups.

Netanyahu urges world powers to up pressure on Iran

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on Germany and other Western nations involved in nuclear talks with Iran to ensure that the Islamic Republic does not attain the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons or the long-range missile capability to deliver them.
"I see with concern that Iran believes that it will complete its plan to become a nuclear power… with the ability to create a nuclear weapon and also to build intercontinental missiles, which Iran currently is engaged in without hindrance," he said, speaking before the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
The prime minister said that despite the interim agreement signed with the West, Iran is still pursuing three things — uranium enrichment, weapons development and the ability to deliver a payload — meaning that it is "getting everything while giving nearly nothing" in return.

Top Iranian cleric warns of 'crushing response' to US strike

Speaking to a crowd of students at Tehran University Friday, Tehran's provisional Friday Prayers Leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said, "We are eager for your options on the table."
He was referring to statements by US and other Western officials, saying that while Western powers would pursue the diplomatic track to prevent Iran from achieving military nuclear capability, other options — such as a military strike — would remain on the table in case diplomacy proved fruitless.
Iran's "number one option" on the table, according to Jannati, was "Down with the US."

Over 80 U.S. Foreign Policy Figures Call on Obama to Confront Turkey Over Democratic Downward Spiral

The Daily Beast on Thursday conveyed the contents of a letter signed by what the outlet described as "more than 80 top foreign policy figures from across the political spectrum," calling on President Barack Obama to confront Turkey over Ankara's ongoing crackdown against civil liberties, human rights, and the rule of law.
"Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is increasingly undermining a central pillar of the decades-long, strategic U.S.-Turkish partnership: Turkey's growing democracy," reads the letter… "We are writing because of our deep dismay at this development and to urge you to make clear to the Turkish public America's concern about Turkey's current path. Silence will only encourage Prime Minister Erdoğan to diminish the rule of law in the country even further."

Obama Urges Erdogan to Renew Diplomatic Ties With Israel

U.S. President Barack Obama spoke on the phone with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday and discussed with him the "importance of quickly concluding the normalization agreement with Israel."
According to a statement issued by the White House, the two leaders discussed several other issues as well, including cooperation "to address the growing terrorist presence in Syria."

Envoy asks Bulgaria to ban sale of Nazi memorabilia

Israel's ambassador in Sofia asked Bulgarian authorities to ban the sale of Nazi memorabilia.
Shaul Kamisa-Raz made the request in a letter to Bulgarian government officials with copies to mayors of major cities, the Sofia Globe news website reported Wednesday.
He asked whether there were legal ways to ban the sale and, if not, whether legislation banning it could be passed. "The topic of anti-Semitism should be studied in its historical context and the threats arising from this evil properly identified. We need to know what damage and what horrors can result, " he said.

Germany to offer consular help to Israelis in third countries

Germany will begin offering consular services to Israeli citizens in countries that have no diplomatic relations with Israel, according to the terms of an agreement expected to be signed when Chancellor Angela Merkel visits Jerusalem on Monday.
Yakov Hadas-Handelsman, Israel's envoy in Berlin, called the offer "a special message" from the German government and said it was indicative of the importance of the relationship between the two countries, according to Reuters.

120 Israeli companies to participate in global mobile event

The "startup nation" heads to Barcelona: Some 120 Israeli companies in the mobile and app industry will showcase their technology at the world's biggest mobile event -- Mobile World Congress -- to begin Monday in Barcelona. Hundreds of mobile company representatives, smartphone application developers and high-tech entrepreneurs and innovators will flock to Barcelona for the four-day event.
Israeli developers will present their innovations at the country's tech booth. Their technologies include a smartphone with special sensors that enable medical examinations and checkups; iDTV, a digital television system that integrates built-in cameras to scan and project images; Mycheck, a checkout app that allows you to pay restaurant and hotel bills through your phone; and Keeprz, which creates a mobile platform for local businesses.

Israeli-Arab scientist gives mass e-course taught in Arabic

When the president of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology asked Prof. Hossam Haick to teach the institute's first massive open online course (MOOC) – in English and in Arabic — the award-winning Israeli-Arab nanotechnology expert agreed immediately.
Then he found out how difficult a task he had accepted. One of the hardest aspects was translating all the cutting-edge technical terms into a common Arabic dialect.
"One of my main weaknesses is that I say 'yes' before I think how to do it," Haick tells ISRAEL21c. "The idea of teaching thousands of people across the world seemed very nice to me. I didn't know the challenges. It took nine months to put it all together."

Deep Purple brings color to Tel Aviv

The 'explosion' on the stage started at 9:30 p.m. Saturday night and did not stop for two hours. Yes they are senior citizens but if you put your hands over your eyes you would not know that the average aged of the members of Deep Purple is 62 years old.
In the first of two shows in Tel Aviv (the second one is tonight and tickets are still available), the British nominees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame rocked like it was 1972 and put on a show at the Nokia Arena that had the nearly full room of fans almost as old as the band dancing and singing along to the songs.

Israel Daily Picture: Joseph's Tomb -- What a Difference a Century Makes

The very first posting in Israel Daily Picture in June 2011 featured century-old pictures of Joseph's Tomb that we found in the Library of Congress archives. Virtually every 19th and early 20th century collection we've viewed contains pictures of the tomb. The online Keystone-Mast collection at the University of California - Riverside archives adds many more photos of Joseph's Tomb for the public's view.

ASA's president-elect hosting SECRET anti-Israel conference at NYU (Zionists not welcome) (updated)

Posted: 23 Feb 2014 08:00 AM PST

This flyer was posted to Facebook by Lisa Duggan, the president-elect of the American Studies Association:

The conference will have the usual obscene Israel-bashing that one would expect from the ASA,with speakers from Adalah-NY, Students for Justice in Palestine, and "Jewish Voice for Peace."

Indeed, the entire conference seems to be made up to justify the unjustifiable boycott of Israel voted on by the ASA and condemned by hundreds of colleges and universities.

But Duggan's comments in the Facebook page are more interesting than the conference itself, and reveals how Israel-bashers purposefully choose to live in an echo chamber of their own hate:

PLEASE DO NOT post or circulate the flyer. We are trying to avoid press, protestors and public attention. Feel free to share it with friends, colleagues and grad students though.

So protesting Israel-themed events is free speech (which peaceful, non-threatening and non-intimidating protests indeed are), but the idea of anyone protesting an Israel-bashing conference is awful and must be avoided at all costs!

Is this how the head of an academic association should be acting - as if she is ashamed of her viewpoints, only wanting to spout them to a handpicked audience of people with the same hate?

Well, sorry, Lisa. Your little conference is outed, and now you will have to worry that evil little Zionist spies will infiltrate, not to mention protest. You will be nervous that someone will secretly record the sessions and will post them to YouTube for the world to hear.

It is unclear whether this conference is officially sponsored by NYU itself. The registration webpage says all questions should go to NYU, implying that this is an official university event and not just part of the American Studies Program.

People might want to ask NYU about why they are seemingly sponsoring a conference that they want to keep secret from Zionists.

(h/t StopBDSParkSlope)

UPDATE: To the surprise of no one, the Facebook page disappeared. Not before I took a screen shot, though.

"Khazar" study thoroughly debunked

Posted: 23 Feb 2014 05:30 AM PST

A year ago, scientifically illiterate media started reporting on a study by Eran Elhaik of Johns Hopkins University that claimed that it proved decisively that Ashkenazi Jews descended from Khazars, and not the Middle East.

I showed then not only that Elhaik's paper was sloppy and that the methodology was problematic, but also that Elhaik was clearly painting the bullseye after shooting the arrow - he intended from the beginning to prove the bizarre Khazar theory before gathering data, the exact opposite of how a scientist is supposed to act.

It turns out that the researchers who gathered the datasets that Elhaik cherry-picked to reach his foregone conclusions have demonstratively debunked Elhaik and his methods.

From their paper, named "No Evidence from Genome-Wide Data of a Khazar Origin for the Ashkenazi Jews":

Abstract. The origin and history of the Ashkenazi Jewish population have long been of great interest, and advances in high-throughput genetic analysis have recently provided a new approach for investigating these topics. We and others have argued on the basis of genome-wide data that the Ashkenazi Jewish population derives its ancestry from a combination of sources tracing to both Europe and the Middle East. It has been claimed, however, through a reanalysis of some of our data, that a large part of the ancestry of the Ashkenazi population originates with the Khazars, a Turkic-speaking group that lived to the north of the Caucasus region ~1,000 years ago. Because the Khazar population has left no obvious modern descendants that could enable a clear test for a contribution to Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, the Khazar hypothesis has been difficult to examine using genetics. Furthermore, because only limited genetic data have been available from the Caucasus region, and because these data have been concentrated in populations that are genetically close to populations from the Middle East, the attribution of any signal of Ashkenazi-Caucasus genetic similarity to Khazar ancestry rather than shared ancestral Middle Eastern ancestry has been problematic. Here, through integration of genotypes on newly collected samples with data from several of our past studies, we have assembled the largest data set available to date for assessment of Ashkenazi Jewish genetic origins. This data set contains genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms in 1,774 samples from 106 Jewish and non-Jewish populations that span the possible regions of potential Ashkenazi ancestry: Europe, the Middle East, and the region historically associated with the Khazar Khaganate. The data set includes 261 samples from 15 populations from the Caucasus region and the region directly to its north, samples that have not previously been included alongside Ashkenazi Jewish samples in genomic studies. Employing a variety of standard techniques for the analysis of population-genetic structure, we find that Ashkenazi Jews share the greatest genetic ancestry with other Jewish populations, and among non-Jewish populations, with groups from Europe and the Middle East. No particular similarity of Ashkenazi Jews with populations from the Caucasus is evident, particularly with the populations that most closely represent the Khazar region. Thus, analysis of Ashkenazi Jews together with a large sample from the region of the Khazar Khaganate corroborates the earlier results that Ashkenazi Jews derive their ancestry primarily from populations of the Middle East and Europe, that they possess considerable shared ancestry with other Jewish populations, and that there is no indication of a significant genetic contribution either from within or from north of the Caucasus region.

...One recent study (Elhaik, 2013), making use of part of our data set (Behar and others, 2010), focused specifically on the Khazar hypothesis, arguing that it has strong genetic support. This claim was built on a series of analyses similar to those performed in our original study that initially reported the data. However, the reanalysis relied on the provocative assumption that the Armenians and Georgians of the South Caucasus region could serve as appropriate proxies for Khazar descendants (Elhaik, 2013). This assumption is problematic for a number of reasons. First, because of the great variety of populations in the Caucasus region and the fact that no specific population in the region is known to represent Khazar descendants, evidence for ancestry among Caucasus populations need not reflect Khazar ancestry. Second, even if it were allowed that Caucasus affinities could represent Khazar ancestry, the use of the Armenians and Georgians as Khazar proxies is particularly poor, as they represent the southern part of the Caucasus region, while the Khazar Khaganate was centered in the North Caucasus and further to the north. Furthermore, among populations of the Caucasus, Armenians and Georgians are geographically the closest to the Middle East, and are therefore expected a priori to show the greatest genetic similarity to Middle Eastern populations. Indeed, a rather high similarity of South Caucasus populations to Middle Eastern groups was observed at the level of the whole genome in a recent study (Yunusbayev and others, 2012). Thus, any genetic similarity between Ashkenazi Jews and Armenians and Georgians might merely reflect a common shared Middle Eastern ancestry component, actually providing further support to a Middle Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Jews, rather than a hint for a Khazar origin.

The paper also publishes this graphic with this explanation:

Figure 6 reports the mean genomic sharing between Ashkenazi Jews and the 11 population groups, and Supplemental Table 2 gives p-values for tests of the null hypotheses of equal mean IBD sharing with Ashkenazi Jews for pairs of population groups. The greatest level of sharing was observed with Sephardi Jews, considerably greater than with other populations. Substantial sharing with Eastern Europeans was also observed, though at a much lower level. Sharing with most other populations was lower still, and with Caucasus populations, the level of sharing was similar to that observed for the Middle East. In accordance with the results from other analyses, the IBD sharing of Caucasus populations with Ashkenazi Jews was relatively low.

Since this is a scientific paper, they can't say that Elhaik was a hack, but it is clear that his methods - using data from these very researchers - prove how low people will stoop to buttress their biases.

Of course, the media will never give this study (written last year) the same coverage that Elhaik's lies received.

(h/t The Jewish Press)