Tag Archives: Elder of Ziyon

May 11 2011

Elder of Ziyon’s Twitter thread with professional Israel hater, Ben White

This is cross posted by Elder of Ziyon

It is fun to watch how Israel haters react to my series of posters celebrating Zionism.

One such hater is someone named Ben White, who apparently is one of the leaders of the anti-Israel crowd. He wrote a book called “Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide” and has been praised by the usual crowd of anti-Zionists like Ali Abunimah and Ilan Pappe. 

His reaction to my posters was to put up his own spoof poster on Twitter, replacing “Zionism” with “Hasbara” and tweeting “Israel at 63: This is Hasbara!”:

Not having ever heard of him, I thought this was a compliment, because I think it is a very good example of what hasbara should be. Only when MargieInTelAviv responded 

ah can’t stand the truth can you? Why not check it out?


Did I realize it was meant to be an insult.

I responded:

Of course it is #Hasbara. And it is true. Hasbara is no more an insult than #Zionism!


Ben:

#hasbara in 2011 = treating kids in Haiti, evicting kids in #Palestine

He then included a link to “Hasbara Buster” who claims that Israel’s good deeds aren’t good in themselves, but an insidious plot to redirect the world from talking about Israeli crimes. 

Me:

You are a sad man to get so upset over Zionists doing good things.

Ben:

you are a not-so-bright man if u think it’s the “doing good things” bit that’s objectionable

Me:

Ah. One sided propaganda against Israel=good, telling the other side=evil. Got it.


Ben:


No, it’s called using acts of charity in strategy 2 defend apartheid. But nice #projection though

Me:

Even your example disproves your thesis. Org is private. But your hate overrides all. Sad.

He then tried to change the subject, with a photo that I suppose is meant to illustrate Zionist evil. Which is the usual modus operandi of people like him – they need to change the playing field in order to pretend to win.

But think about his main argument: he believes that when Israel – or in this case, ordinary Israelis – do good things, they have an ulterior motive: to cover up crimes. And when people like me publicize how great Israel is, we also have an evil motive: to cover up Israel’s crimes. 

In other words, to these mental midgets, Israel is inherently evil. Everything it does is evil. This is the premise that informs all of their activities. No shades of grey, no nuance, not even the possibility of admitting that things are more complex than they pretend. When Israel does something seemingly bad, it proves it is evil, when it does something good, it’s just more proof that it is evil. 

Logical people, who make up their minds based on evidence, can look at both sides of a story and decide. Haters, however, already know the answer, and any evidence to the contrary they use to “prove” their own point!

Let’s once again look at the oppressed Palestinian Arab cancer patients who enjoyed a day in the snow courtesy of the IDF, the subject of my first poster:

Looking at these photos drives the haters crazy, as we have seen. They cannot reconcile the idea of Israelis – especially Israeli soldiers – actually doing something nice for the people they supposedly despise and who are, they believe, being ethnically cleansed by the very same soldiers. The cognitive dissonance must be painful. They must therefore invent their own elaborate frameworks of bizarre conspiracy theories to reconcile the obvious truth about Israel with their own, twisted, hate.

How can oppressed Palestinian Arab kids allow themselves to be used as pawns by the evil IDF? How dare they laugh and smile and have fun with the symbols of Zionist atrocities? Better that they refuse to go sledding in Mount Hermon, and stay  in their hospitals, than go and have fun when there is a slight chance that someone might photograph them and use them in such a terrible evil hasbaristic way! Don’t they see that they are exactly like the Jews in Theresienstadt before the Red Cross visited it in 1944? Their smiles are lies! Their fun is a lie! The pictures are probably Photoshopped! The IDF was probably mowing them down with machine guns!

There is an entire industry out there, with people who are emotionally – and, in this case, financially – invested in demonizing Israel. Showing the truth is a direct threat to their worldview, and for them, this cannot be allowed. To them, Israel is a uniquely evil entity that must be destroyed, and tons of solid evidence showing that they are completely, irrevocably wrong is simply something else that they must do battle with their only weapon: lies.

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Mar 29 2011

What the Guardian’s Michael Tomasky won’t report: New study debunks myth of American Islamophobia

H/T Elder of Ziyon

Of course, those who believe, with an almost religious intensity, that the United States is a hotbed of anti-Muslim bigotry won’t be moved by this study.

However, anyone with even the faintest interest in an empirical analysis of this issue might be interested in a new 40 page report by the Center For Security Policy which not only debunks the claim that Muslim Americans are disproportionately victimized by religiously inspired bias crimes, but clearly demonstrates Jewish victims are, in fact, far more likely to be the target of such crimes.

As such figures don’t affirm (CiF America blogger) Michael Tomasky‘s preconceived conclusions, we can expect him to ignore these findings.

 

Mar 24 2011

She’s baaaack

Harriet Sherwood is back online to give us the benefit of her “wisdom” on the terror attack in Jerusalem.

The article is a mixture of statements of the obvious – I give you,

“… Its impact will be felt far beyond the people injured in the blast and those who witnessed the explosion….”

Well, yes…

As well as (curiously enough, given that it’s Harriet writing), a glimmer of understanding of why the IDF was engaged in acting against Hamas-linked terrorists in Gaza.

She even acknowledges that Hamas was responsible for the firing of the 50 or so mortar shells into Israel (although she couches it in somewhat equivocal terms).

She goes on to refer to the pressure on Hamas to do something for the armed struggle in order to satisfy the Palestinian people, (and here, totally unwittingly, she alludes to the fantasy ideology which has driven much of Hamas’ mad and fruitless acting out, which I have discussed in-depth elsewhere on CiF Watch).

So far so mediocre and hardly her usual offensive self, but let us not forget that she writes for the Guardian and sure enough later in the article out it comes:

“…. It is far too early to say what Wednesday’s bus blast heralds. But, at the very least, it is bound to reinforce Netanyahu’s belief that Israel has “no partner for peace”, a phrase that brings bitter laughter from observers who say Israel shows little sign of wanting to make peace…. “

Pardon me?

Is Harriet seriously trying to argue that Netanyahu is WRONG to believe that Israel has no partner for peace in the PA?  Dear Harriet, permit me to offer a little lesson in reality testing since you and your colleagues at the Guardian seem, (how shall I say?) somewhat deficient in this area:

You yourself admitted that there was a terrorist act in Jerusalem (OK you didn’t actually call it a “terrorist” act, unlike William Hague, the British Foreign Minister who condemned it in those terms, but you compared it to the terror attacks during the second intifada)

You then, quite correctly, named Hamas as the main culprits in the shelling of southern Israel. So far so good but hang on in, because this is where it may get difficult for you to understand:

True, Abbas condemned the massacre at Itamar, but on the day after that massacre he dedicated a town square to the memory of a suicide murderer!

Is this the action of a man who (a) tells the truth or (b) says only what he thinks his audience want to hear, and on the strength of that (c) can be trusted to mean what he says and (d) is therefore a reliable partner for peace?  The man is a proven liar.

In light of the foregoing, how on earth can the Israeli government possibly believe that the PA means to make a lasting peace with Israel? How can Abbas be trusted as a partner for peace, whether in quotes or not, or whether it evokes “bitter laughter” or not from observers?  It seems more and more likely that the bombers in the latest atrocity came from the West Bank, and if so they were very probably cranked up by his public adulation of terrorism!

Now, stay with me Harriet, because there’s more which underlines the nonsensical nature of what lies beneath your statement above:

Let’s go back to the Jerusalem bombing and more particularly to the Palestinian reaction to it.

So far as I am aware there have been no street celebrations or handing out candy as there was in Ramallah after the Fogel family were murdered, but Elder of Ziyon’s blog tells us the following, which ought to reinforce the belief that Israel actually has no partner for peace and which ought to convince even you:

Elder quotes from the Palestine Times which is a Hamas mouthpiece, but no matter:

…. Despite condemnation by the Fatah leadership, headed by President Mahmoud Abbas and his Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and described that operation as “terrorist”, there was joy in the street despite the pain experienced in the cities of the West Bank.

Upon hearing the news of a bus bombing in Jerusalem, citizens hurried to the coffee shops to follow-up on television news channels and radio stations to track the latest developments.

Abu Mohammed from Nablus, sitting in a café, said: “By God, it’s about time for such operations, which warms our hearts and the hearts of all who [suffer] from the oppression of the occupier recently.” ……

There are those who expressed their joy of such events. Samira from Ramallah: “When I saw the breaking news on one of the satellite TV news and there was an explosion on Jerusalem, the joy made my heart stop.”

A young man recalled happy memories of Tulkarm for operations similar to what happened today…

Others Palestinian citizens went into social networking sites like Facebook and forums on the World Wide Web, to express their joy and the news firsthand….” (emphases added)

So, what do we have, Harriet?

Abbas, a confirmed liar, who condemns barbarism out of one side of his mouth whilst out of the other he praises the perpetrators of such barbarism, and also the ordinary people of the West Bank, whose opinions are, we are meant to believe, representative of the majority and who feel joy and warmth in their hearts when Israeli Jews are killed and injured.

However, you may be able to redeem yourself, Harriet.

To do so you must write an intelligent, thoughtful and analytical article, based on fact and in objective reality about why you think Netanyahu is wrong to believe that Israel has no partner for peace in the West Bank, and supply us with evidence for your conclusions rather than your own half-baked opinions.

Then, who knows, you will be entitled to call yourself journalist.  Though, you may subsequently be sacked from the Guardian.

Mar 17 2011

One very good reason most Israelis are wary of further territorial concessions

H/T Sderot Media Center, Ysrael Medad and Elder of Ziyon

While assimilating the daily commentary about the Middle East and Israeli-Islamist Conflict, and the incessant drum beat of political analysts who insist, despite the considerable historical evidence to the contrary, that additional Israeli territorial compromise will undoubtedly lead to peace and security, I’m reminded of a quote in Alexandre Solzhenitsyn’s classic, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a story set in a Soviet Gulag in the 1950s, describing a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov.

“How can you expect a man who’s warm to understand a man who’s cold?”

It’s not that there aren’t many two-state solution proponents who truly have Israel’s best interest in mind, it’s that in the political abstraction that Israel has become – this increasing tendency by Jew and non-Jew alike to see Israel, and Israelis, as the proverbial “other” – they often lack the capacity to feel the empathy (in the generic sense, meaning the capacity to recognize and share the concerns that are being experienced by another) afforded to those whose identity aren’t obscured by such cognitive distance.

While there are, without question, many who are callously indifferent to Israel’s security concerns, and many who are motivated by nothing but malice, it certainly seems reasonable to expect those who aren’t hostile or indifferent to consider the considerable risks associated with drawing new national boundaries which would render our entire country vulnerable to (increasingly sophisticated and accurate) enemy rocket fire – a quite likely scenario in the event that radical elements maintain significant political presence in a nascent Palestinian state.

I used to live in a prosperous country whose neighbors included Canada and Mexico, and fully understand the political assumptions which can be nurtured by such a bubble.

As such, we merely ask those currently living in peace and without fear (free of the the existential threats that my new national family is forced to face daily) to expand their considerable political imagination to include the very real-world concerns of those whose very moral legitimacy and, indeed, mere existence is cruelly and relentlessly challenged – a reasonable, sober and, it seems, quite modest proposal.

Mar 14 2011

Palestinian Propaganda Map Deconstructed

This is cross posted by Elder of Ziyon

Anti-Israel  (and now other*) organizations are fond of showing the following graphic on their websites:

This map is a lie.

The first panel has the biggest lie:

While I presume that the white sections are indeed the land that was privately owned by Jews, the land in green was not privately owned by Arabs.

Only a tiny percentage of land in Palestine was privately owned. The various categories of land ownership included:

  • Mulk: privately owned in the Western sense.
  • Miri: Land owned by the government (originally the Ottoman crown) and suitable for agricultural use. Individuals could purchase a deed to cultivate this land and pay a tithe to the government. Ownership could be transferred only with the approval of the state. Miri rights could be transferred to heirs, and the land could be sub-let to tenants. If the owner died without an heir or the land was not cultivated for three years, the land would revert to the state.
  • Mahlul: Uncultivated Miri lands that would revert to the state, in theory after three years.
  • Mawat (or Mewat): So-called “dead”, unreclaimed land. It constituted about 50 to 60% of the land in Palestine. It belonged to the government. …If the land had been cultivated with permission, it would be registered, at least under the Mandate, free of charge.

By the early 1940s Jews owned about one third of Mulk land in Palestine and Arabs about two-thirds. The vast majority of the total land, however, belonged to the government, meaning that when the state of Israel was established, it became legally Israel’s. (I believe that about 77% of the land was owned by the government, assuming 6 million dunams of private land as shown in this invaluable webpage on the topic from which I got much of this information.)

To say that the green areas were “Palestinian” land is simply a lie.

Now the next one:

While this is an accurate representation of the partition plan, it has nothing to do with land ownership. The entire purpose of this map is to make it appear that Israel has been grabbing Arab land consistently, to serve as a bridge between maps 1 and 3. What is not said, of course, is that Israel accepted the partition and the Arabs did not, so as a result Israel in 1949 looked like it does in map 3.

Map 3 is still a lie, however, because in no way was the green land “Palestinian” at that time. Gaza was administered by Egypt and the West Bank annexed by Jordan. No one at the time spoke about a Palestinian Arab state on the areas controlled by Arab states – only in Israel.

In other words, this progression of maps is a series of lies meant to push a bigger lie, and it is tragic that a lot of people believe them to be the truth.

Here is a small attempt on my side to show a more accurate picture of Israel’s giving land it controlled up for peace since 1967:

This map shows that Israel gave up control of the Sinai, Gaza, Southern Lebanon and much of the West Bank over the years. Rather than falsely accusing Israel as a land-grabbing rogue state, it accurately shows Israel as perhaps the only state in history that has voluntarily given up more than two-thirds of the areas it controls in exchange for nothing more than a paper agreement – or sometimes not even that. All at the risk of serious security concerns for her people, no less.

This is all because Israel wants, desperately, to live in real peace with her neighbors. This desire is not reciprocated by those neighbors, unfortunately.

The real map shows the truth of Israel’s incredible concessions in the often vain hope for peace.

*I saw this one at a Colin Firth fan-site, as he is planning to star in a movie about The Stern Gang.

Mar 7 2011

Apartheid “Doublethink” Image of the Day

Courtesy of Elder of Ziyon

Though Elder has an entire collection of images pointing out the moral inversion which informs the movement to defame the most progressive nation in the Middle East as an Apartheid state, Omar Barghouti is clearly in a league of his own when it comes to the near comical hypocrisy of such “activists”.

Feb 19 2011

Guardian Notoriety Update

In our latest Guardian Notoriety Update we note the following commentary:

Elder of Ziyon brilliantly deconstructs the Guardian’s whitewashing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and their characterization of the group as pragmatic and moderate.

The Wire (the blog of Just Journalism) highlights Guardian Associate Editor Seumas Milne’s upcoming appearance at a panel discussion on the “Palestine Papers” by the pro-Hamas UK group, MEMO.  (Note our November post by Akus on Milne’s last tete-a-tete with the pro-Islamist group)

And, finally, Yisrael Medad notes Harriet Sherwood’s casual indifference to Israeli security concerns in her blog post about Israel’s recent removal of the Hawara checkpoint.

Feb 11 2011

“Palestine Papers” the Guardian buried: Palestinians refused to characterize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people

This is cross posted by Elder of Ziyon

In the preparation for Annapolis, the Israeli and Palestinian Arab negotiators discussed what a joint statement might look like. Tzipi Livni wanted to say that the end-game is two states for two peoples – and the Palestinian Arabs objected, for reasons that they themselves detailed.

Here are some sections of the discussion:

Tzipi Livni: Two states is the ultimate goal of the process. But also part of the TOR [Terms of Reference document they are drafting.] Each state is the answer to the natural aspirations of its people.

Saeb Erekat: [Raises roadmap language regarding unequivocal duty to accept each state as is. Reads from the roadmap.]

TL: To say the idea that two nation states contradicts the roadmap..…

SE: [But we’ve never denied Israel’s right to define itself.]
If you want to call your state the Jewish State of Israel you can call it what you want. [Notes examples of Iran and Saudi Arabia.]

TL: I said basically that our position is a reference to the fact thateach state is an answer to the national aspirations of their people.

Akram Haniyeh: There was an article in Haaretz saying that Palestinians would be stupid if they accept this [i.e. the Jewish state].

TL: Someone wrote the Palestinians?

Ahmed Querei [AA]: I want to say two state solution living side by side in peace security stability and prosperity, Palestinian democratic state independent with sovereignty, viable with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Tal Becker: That’s all? [Sarcastically.]

AA: Yes that’s our position. Two state solution living side by side in peace security stability and prosperity, Palestinian democratic state independent with sovereignty, viable with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is what we want to have. This small sentence.

TL: I just want to say something. …Our idea is to refer to two states for two peoples. Or two nation states, Palestine and Israel living side by side in peace and security with each state constituting the homeland for its people and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination…

AH: This refers to the Israeli people?

TL: [Visibly angered.] I think that we can use another session – about what it means to be a Jew and that it is more than just a religion. But if you want to take us back to 1947 — it won’t help. Each state constituting the homeland for its people and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination in their own territory. Israel the state of the Jewish people – and I would like to emphasize the meaning of “its people” is the Jewish people — with Jerusalem the united and undivided capital of Israel and of the Jewish people for 3007 years… [The Palestinian team protests.] You asked for it. [AA: We said East Jerusalem!] …and Palestine for the Palestinian people. We did not want to say that there is a “Palestinian people” but we’ve accepted your right to self determination.

AA: Why is it different?

TL: I didn’t ask for something that relates to my own self. I didn’t ask for recognizing something that is the internal decision of Israel. Israel can do so, it is a sovereign state. [We want you to recognize it.] The whole idea of the conflict is … the entire point is the establishment of the Jewish state. And yet we still have a conflict between us. We used to think it is because the Jews and the Arabs… but now the Palestinians… we used to say that we have no right to define the Palestinian people as a people. They can define it themselves. In 1947 it was between Jews and Arabs, and then [at that point the purpose] from the Israeli side to [was] say that the Palestinians are Arabs and not [Palestinians – it was an excuse not to create a Palestinian state. We'’ve passed that point in time and I'’m not going to raise it. The whole conflict between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is not the idea of creating a democratic state that is viable etc. It is to divide it into two.] For each state to create its own problem. Then we can ask ourselves is it viable, what is the nature of the two states. In order to end the conflict we have to say that this is the basis. I know that your problem is saying this is problematic because of the refugees. During the final status negotiations we will have an answer to the refugees. You know my position. Even having a Jewish state — it doesn’t say anything about your demands. …. Without it, why should we create a Palestinian state?

…There is something that is shorter. I can read something with different wording:
That the ultimate goal is constituting the homeland for the Jewish people and the Palestinian people respectively, and the fulfillment of their national aspirations and self determination in their own territory.

The joint declaration at Annapolis did not include any wording about the Jewish people, but afterwards President Bush said “The [final peace] settlement will establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is the homeland for the Jewish people…The United States will keep its strong commitment to the security of the State of Israel and its existence as a homeland for the Jewish people.”

By the way, the Guardian definitely saw this memo, because it was the one that they and Al Jazeera misquoted as saying that Livni said against international law.she was (She didn’t.)

Feb 9 2011

More “Palestine Papers” the Guardian chose to bury

Elder of Ziyon again has a great scoop – another “Palestine Paper” the Guardian chose to bury.

This document demonstrates that, in 2008, the PLO wrote a paper describing the legal rights of Jews to lands that they owned prior to 1948 in Judea and Samaria (land confiscated by the Jordanians when they took control of the territories after 1948 war).

Here’s one paragraph:

“Jews who owned land have the right to have their land restored to them or to be compensated, if restitution is not materially possible. Jews are entitled to compensation for other material and non-material losses, including lost profits, lost income, etc. caused by their displacement and dispossession.”

As we reported during the “Palestine Papers” expose, the Guardian didn’t so much as mention compensation for such refugees, and, indeed, in a piece prior to the “Palestine Papers”, Rachel Shabi completely dismissed the broader issue of Jewish refugees from Arab lands – characterizing the issue as relatively unimportant, and Israeli efforts to highlight the plight of such Jews, during the course of negotiations, as insincere or cynical.

As Elder noted, the Palestinians likely wrote the above passages to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy in the context of their own demands regarding the rights of Palestinian refugees.

Apparently, such moral consistency (concerns about the appearance of employing double standards) is not something the Guardian spends too much time worrying about.

Feb 8 2011

The Guardian’s notoriety (Part 1.)

One of the good things to come out of the Guardian’s “Palestine Papers” series was a noticeable increase in the number of bloggers, writers, and journalists (from across the political spectrum) who became aware of the egregious ideological bias at the Guardian.

This is the first installment of a new focus on other stellar bloggers and websites who expose the Guardian’s (anti-Israel) activist-journalism.

We have many allies in our fight against anti-Semitism (and the assault on Israel’s legitimacy) at the Guardian, and have always felt that – when it comes to this vital mission – egos must be checked at the door, and credit must be given where it is deserved.

So, in today’s edition we note stellar posts by the blog of Just Journalism, The Wire, and Elder of Ziyon.

The Wire noted a story by the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood which vividly described a hero’s welcome for a Hamas terrorist who recently escaped from an Egyptian prison.

Read their post, here.

Elder’s piece isn’t so much about the Guardian as it is an attack on a story in the Telegraph which contains a gross distortion about the significance of a WikiLeaks document.  However, we’re including it due to the way Elder chose to frame the Telegraph’s journalistic bias – as “taking a page from the Guardian.”

We’re always pleased when the Guardian is rightly recognized as the nadir of journalistic bias.

Read Elder’s post, here.

(We also invite you to contact us if you find a story in another publication – one that we may have missed – which rightly names and shames the Guardian.)