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Israel Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 01, 2013 12 Comments
Earlier this week three were unconfirmed reports of a very large explosion near the Syrian city of Latakia. There was relatively little media coverage to start, almost all from Israeli newspapers citing social media accounts. As in all these cases, Israeli officials were silent as to whodunit.  That's the dance that takes place to avoid a major war. Israel destroys game-changing weapons on their way to Hezbollah, Syria pretends it's not sure what happened, and everyone goes along with a major confrontation.  So long as Israel doesn't try to shift the balance of power within Syria and focuses on weapons headed to Hezbollah, Assad is under limited pressure to react. But not for the first time anonymous U.S. officials have told multiple U.S. media outlets that Israel was behind it. Which raises the question, why the leaks?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 29, 2013 12 Comments

From Israel National News, A List of Monsters As Israel prepares to release 26 more terrorist prisoners as a "gesture" to the Palestinian Authority, Arutz Sheva presents a partial list of those slated for freedom. It reveals a catalogue of atrocities, the majority of which involved the...

Posted by David Gerstman on October 29, 2013 10 Comments
In the more recent iterations of the Star Trek television show, there were villains called Cardassians. They were even more ruthless than the Klingons. They also had a remarkable justice system as is shown in the following dialogue:
Gul Dukat: In Cardassia, the verdict is always known before the trial begins; and it's always the same. Commander Sisko: In that case, why bother with a trial at all? Gul Dukat: Because the people demand it. They enjoy watching justice triumph over evil, every time. They find it comforting. Commander Sisko: Isn't there ever a chance you might try an innocent man by mistake? Gul Dukat: Cardassians don't make mistakes. Commander Sisko: I'll have to remember that.
When reading Anne Bayefsky's latest account of the machinations of UN Human Rights Council, it's hard to think of a better analogy than the Cardassia's predetermined verdicts.  Israel is scheduled to sit before the UNHRC and be subjected to its Universal Periodic Review (UPR), here's how it works, as Anne Bayefsky explains:
As the UPR theory goes, once every four years the Council spends a few hours talking about the human rights record of each UN member state. The process has a number of stages. The country under consideration sends representatives to make some speeches about its terrific human rights situation. Other states are each given no more than two minutes to comment and make recommendations for improvement. The state concerned voices its acceptance or rejection of those recommendations. NGOs – including phony NGOs sponsored by governments – are allotted a limited time to make comments. And then the recommendations – and the government’s rejection of any of them – are put into a report which is perfunctorily “adopted.” In practice, the UPR looks like this. A very large number of friends of each rights-abusing country line up to praise its human rights record and generate a long list of faux congratulatory recommendations which can be easily “accepted.” The favor is repaid when their pals’ turns come along. These states then announce that serious recommendations “do not enjoy their support.” The praise and the rejections, all get included in a report that contains no findings and no conclusions, and there are no decisions to take action.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 21, 2013 11 Comments
One week ago we posted about how a new website exposed The Truth About Palestinian Rock Throwing. We featured a video exposing the The Wadi'a Maswadah Hoax, about a 5-year old Palestinian rock thrower allegedly "arrested" by the IDF.  In fact, the child was brought to his parents, contrary to media hype, which ignored a culture that pushes young children to the front lines.

Wadi'a Maswadah Hoax screen shot

The website has a second video, about the misleading media narrative surrounding an Israeli driving into a Palestinian boy in East Jerusalem, The 2010 E. Jerusalem Ambush-Hoax:
On October 8, 2010 major elements of the Western and Arabic “news” media engaged in a campaign to elicit sympathy for a two pre-teen Palestinian boys, whom they claimed were “run down” by a Jew in E. Jerusalem. The situation was greatly aggravated by dramatic photos and selectively-edited videos, which, on first glance, seemed to support this incendiary allegation. In reality, these children – along with a gaggle of international “news” photographers – waited at the bottom of a hill for Jewish cars to roll past, at which point the children hurled rocks at it, and actually charged the car as it attempted to swerve to avoid hitting them.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 14, 2013 13 Comments

We have featured Pallywood here many times, the Palestinian industry producing everything from outright video hoaxes to mere gross exaggerations all in the name of demonizing Israel. But there is an even more pernicious western media version of Pallywood, the outright bias and misleading characterization of...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 13, 2013 24 Comments

We ran this over at College Insurrection last week, but I think it's worth running again an excerpt from Hen Mazzig, An Israeli Soldier to American Jews: Wake up! As a young Israeli who had just completed five years of service in the IDF, I looked...

Posted by David Gerstman on October 13, 2013 8 Comments

When you read the first few news dispatches below from the past year and a half, keep this photo in mind. Aid Groups and U.N. Agencies Urge Israel to Lift Gaza Blockade - The Associated Press - June 14, 2012 Fifty international aid groups and United Nations agencies urged Israel...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 08, 2013 28 Comments

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement, as our readers know, is a vile combination of leftists and Islamists joined together by hatred of Israel who hide behind false and exaggerated claims regarding the "occupation," when the real goal is the destruction of Israel. The BDS...

Posted by David Gerstman on October 04, 2013 2 Comments

Israel is being told it must test Iran's intentions. But the lesson of the Oslo Accords is that untrustworthy partners cannot be trusted without grave consequences....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 02, 2013 11 Comments
The full text is here. Scott Johnson at Power Line has some of the key excerpts exposing the history of Iran's new "moderate" President Hassan Rouhani. Rouhani is anything but moderate, he was a key player in numerous terrorist attacks and the building of Iran's nuclear program. Excerpts (and additional videos) after the video. But I'll start with the ending lines:
In our time, the biblical prophecies have been realized: As the prophet Amos said: They shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them, They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, They shall till gardens and eat their fruit. And I will plant them upon their soil, never to be uprooted again. Ladies and Gentlemen, The people of Israel have come home, never to be uprooted again.
I feel deeply honored and privileged to stand here before you today representing the citizens of the State of Israel. We are an ancient people. We date back nearly 4,000 years to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We have journeyed through time, we’ve overcome the greatest of adversities, And we reestablished our sovereign state in our ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel.... Well, Rouhani headed Iran’s Supreme National Security Council from 1989 through 2003. During that time, Iran’s henchmen gunned down opposition leaders in a Berlin restaurant. They murdered 85 people at the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. They killed 19 American soldiers by blowing up the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. Are we to believe that Rouhani, the National Security Advisor of Iran at the time, knew nothing about these attacks? Of course he did.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 27, 2013 4 Comments

We previously documented the provocative antics of French diplomat Marion Castaing. Playing her part in a Pallywood drama, we demonstrated that contrary to the media narrative, Castaing was not roughed up by Israeli soldiers. Instead, the video from several angles proved: I think we’ve seen enough from the...

Posted by New Neo on September 24, 2013 12 Comments

The Nairobi mall attack has conjured up memories of the first terrorist attack I ever remember, the Lod airport massacre. You may never have heard of it---or of Lod airport, for that matter, which is the main airport in Tel Aviv and was later renamed Ben...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 20, 2013 8 Comments
Yesterday we posted examples of the racist and other posters placed around the Oberlin campus last February as part of The Great Oberlin College Racism Hoax of 2013.  There are many more in the Oberlin police department document production we did not post. On no campus in the United States or elsewhere would the racist posters using the "N" word and so on be acceptable public discourse (even if it is an interesting free speech legal issue). But what about the anti-Israel poster? Oberlin Poster Anti-Israel w out handwriting Unfortunately, such discourse on campuses and elsewhere is par for the course in the anti-Israel movement.  The attempt to single out Israel alone for boycott, and the false equation of Israel with Apartheid, fascism and Nazism, is part of the dialogue and accepted.  Oberlin is one of only a handful of higher education campuses where the student government has endorsed the anti-Israel BDS movement and boycott.  https://twitter.com/SJPNational/status/331473633899864064 In fact, Oberlin has one of the most active anti-Israel movements which spreads historically inaccurate falsehoods about the "occupation" and Israeli "Apartheid" policies: I have to wonder, if only the anti-Israel posters were put up around Oberlin not accompanied by attacks on blacks, Muslims and gays, would anyone have noticed or cared?  Would the campus have erupted in protest? Somehow I doubt it. The specific flag used on the Oberlin poster is akin to a stock image in anti-Israel protests, this one in San Francisco:
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