Co-Existence in Haifa

In an exhilarating display of unity and brotherhood, thousands of Israelis, including Jews, Arabs and Christians, gathered in Haifa to sing together in harmony.

A group called Koolulam organized the event at which 3,000 people who had never before met learned to sing “One Day” by Matisyahu in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

The event is part of an effort to create more unity and cultivate a feeling of togetherness by sharing “communal experiences.”

Listen to the fantastic results and share with your friends. It’s incredibly beautiful–everyone will want to hear this!

Lies, Lies and More Lies

The following is from a friend of mine which reflects wide ranging support.

Abbas, the Palestinian leader, the guy with whom we are to make peace, addressed the Security Council about a month ago. As one reads the comments on his speech and the quotes from it, the extent of the lies spread by the Palestinians, with Abbas at the helm, once again boggle the mind.

Although Israel is of course, like any other country, has its faults, the entire picture and even every negative fact about Israel spread by Abbas and his mates, is just one huge lie . The extent of the lies is just beyond the comprehension of the western mind. Forget about the "inaccuracies" sprouted by well-known politicians  here - they're not in the same league as he is. They sometimes tell the truth! This is a unique phenomenon.

Just to touch on one example from his speech - the most impressive (by a hair's breadth) for me. He claimed that " Palestinians youths are raised in “an environment of tolerance, coexistence of civilizations and nondiscrimination". This is like stating adamantly that ISIS teaches its followers  - guess what? - "tolerance, coexistence of civilizations and nondiscrimination". We regularly see quotes from their schoolbooks in which maths is taught using sums about how many Israelis a Palestinian kills in various circumstances and how many martyrs go to heaven because of killing an Israeli and on and on, plus the young kids' holiday camps where they learn how to do it, and of course to hate Jews and Israelis so that their greatest feat will be to become a martyr as above.... and so on. Beyond comprehension? Well, it worked under the Nazis and it's working for the Palestinian youth. New heights in the art of lying....

While many pretend that these are the facts while knowing the opposite, there are also many who in good faith, and wanting to do good for the underdog, lap it up and set out to correct the horrors imposed by Israel on the Palestinians (although they don't seem to care much about all the wrongs being done elsewhere in the world against minorities all over, but we won't flog that dead horse here again).

When and if you look through the editorial from our local paper, you'll see lies, including the above-quoted, which are so preposterous any normal human being would be too embarrassed to come out with them, and any normal human being would chuck him out and say "come on, cut out the bullshit - who do you think we are, total idiots?"  But nobody says it. Maybe I'M on the wrong planet.

I confess to getting a bit frustrated sometimes....

Time For UNRWA To Face The Truth About Its Textbooks

by Marcus Sheff  February 17, 2018

According to the textbooks being read by half a million Palestinian children, the only solution available is victory via resistance, jihad, radical Islamism and defeating Israel once and for all.

Last week, immediately after a motion in support of UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) was approved by the European Parliament in Strasbourg, UNRWA jubilantly tweeted, “Second largest democratic parliament in the world reaffirms commitment to UNRWA. The European Parliament unanimously stands with Palestine refugees.”

UNRWA’s triumphalism was jarring. It exposed not only a self-serving oversimplification of the situation, but also a wholesale disregard for the concerns rightfully raised about its work. In particular the promotion of hatred, extremism, violence and conflict in UNRWA schools.

A recent world tour by UNRWA commissioner-general Pierre Krähenbühl to drum up financial support following a US freeze on funds to the organization relied heavily on an accompanying PR slogan, “#QualityEducation is key to a better future.”

No doubt it is. But Palestinian children are not receiving it.

The 500,000 children taught at UNRWA schools across the West Bank, Gaza and in east Jerusalem all study the new Palestinian Authority school curriculum, completed by the PA Education Ministry in August 2017.

Our report on the accompanying textbooks and examples demonstrates that radicalization is pervasive in this new curriculum, even more so than its predecessor. Quite simply, the new textbooks groom young Palestinians to sacrifice themselves as martyrs.

These are schoolbooks which promote hate, encourage a commitment to jihad and feature a radical Islamist, and occasionally Salafist, worldview. Young Palestinians are taught that martyrdom for boys and girls is a life goal, that dying is better than living and that jihad is the pinnacle of ambition. Those who risk their lives by taking up arms are praised and those who choose the path of non-violence are denigrated as cowards.

Science and math lessons are used to teach violence. Newtonian gravity is taught through the image of a boy with a slingshot targeting soldiers, to explain power, mass, and tensile strength, while math exercises instruct students to calculate number of martyrs in Palestinian uprisings and teach probability with examples of Israelis shooting at passing Palestinian cars.

UNRWA is firmly in denial about the curriculum it teaches. But those who finance UNRWA should not be. In 2017, the US gave $364 million, equivalent to a third of the UNRWA budget. The EU came in second at $143m. Germany followed at $76m. Then Sweden at $61m. and the UK at $60m. (Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states combined represented just 7% of UNRWA’s budget). These countries are receiving a damaging return on their very significant investment.

After all, the benchmarks are clear. The UN has a roadmap for UNRWA. Through another of its bodies, UNESCO, several resolutions have set out clear standards on textbooks. They are expected to promote peace and tolerance. They are mandated to encourage respect for the “other” and peacemaking as the tool for resolving conflict and gender inequality. They are to include unbiased information and exclude hateful material.

The new PA curriculum fails miserably on every count. It fails to respect tolerance, nor is there any understanding toward the Israeli and Western “other.” Instead, there is demonization. The principle of “no hate” is thoroughly rejected – the curriculum is packed with wording, imagery and ideology likely to create prejudices, misconceptions, stereotypes, misunderstandings, mistrust, racial and national hatred, and religious bigotry.

And by no measure can the information presented in the curriculum be viewed as unbiased. In fact, students are indoctrinated, with the world divided into a Manichean paradigm, a simplistic binary choice between good and evil. There is little or no complexity, empathy or real understanding of historical development. As for gender equality, while some secular topics in the curriculum include respect for women’s choice, in the religious and jihadist elements, women are not equal in life, only in their value as martyrs in death.

At last week’s European Parliament plenary session to discuss UNRWA, commissioner Johannes Hahn said that “The European Union is convinced that the two-state solution is the only possible answer if we want to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East.”

Absolutely. But with respect to that most important of UNESCO standards – peacemaking as the way to resolve conflict – the PA curriculum rejects negotiations with Israel to achieve Palestinian statehood. According to the textbooks being read by half a million Palestinian children, the only solution available is victory via resistance, jihad, radical Islamism and defeating Israel once and for all.

Outside the plenary session itself, in the flowery-carpeted bar where legislators, staff and lobbyists mingle, a ray of hope could be found. Some parliamentary members were openly challenging the work of UNRWA. Meanwhile, several legislators from the centrist and liberal factions were also quietly questioning the UNRWA approach. For many in the European mainstream, openly challenging UNRWA remains a step too far. But this must quickly change, for the sake of the very people UNRWA is mandated to help. UNRWA is a vital UN agency providing essential services to Palestinians. But right now, it is betraying itself, its donors and most importantly, the 500,000 Palestinian children it serves.

The good news about Gaza you will hear on Al Jazeera but not the BBC

By Tom Gross Donald Trump’s election as US president has meant the whole notion of ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ is now very much part of a wider conversation. But for decades before the Trump era, more honest or open-minded journalists were aware that some of their colleagues often didn’t tell the whole truth about all kinds of matters, or cherry-picked what they reported. And perhaps no subject has been so misreported as the Palestinian issue. Western media has often focused on this issue to the detriment of many other conflicts or independence movements throughout the world. The BBC, in particular, has devoted an inordinate amount of its budget and staff to covering the West Bank and Gaza in thousands of reports over the years. But you would be hard pressed to learn from the BBC’s coverage that, despite many difficulties, Gaza’s economy is also thriving in all kinds of ways.

To get a glimpse of that you would have to turn instead to this recent Al-Jazeera report from Gaza, showing footage of the bustling, well-stocked glitzy shopping malls, the impressive children’s water park (at 5.25 in the video), the fancy restaurants, the nice hotels, the crowded food markets, the toy shops brimming with the latest plush toys (at 8.39 in the video). (This video was translated into English by the excellent Middle East Media Research Institute).

For the full article read here

Palestinians Enraged by Arab Journalists Visit to Israel

Israel’s hosting of Arab journalists is an “inexcusable and unjustified disgrace,” the Palestinians charged.  

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week hosted “special guests” from the Arab world in Jerusalem – a delegation of nine Moroccan, Lebanese, Syrian, Kurdish  and Yemeni journalists who came in order to “get to know Israel, its history and its society from up close,” the ministry said.

In response, the Palestinian Authority (PA) on Thursday denounced the journalists’ visit and called for their blacklisting.

The PA Ministry of Information called on the Arab Journalists Union to take “punitive and deterring measures” against the visitors and their media outlets, Times of Israel reported.

“Siding with Israel and its terrorism marks a departure from the Arab rank and the decisions of the Council of Arab Ministers of Information,” the PA ministry said, calling the visit an “inexcusable and unjustified disgrace.”

The visit, the statement added, “constitutes a departure from the official and popular Arab position that considers Israel a state of occupation, racism, ethnic cleansing, and extremism.”

Israeli MFA spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon tweeted in response: “Freedom of press Palestinian Authority style.”

“We will keep hosting journalists from all over the world and let them form their own impressions of Israel,” Nahshon pledged.

“We are proud to organize this visit of journalists from Arab countries to Israel, to help open a window on Israel and its people for readers across the Arab world,” MFA Director-General Yuval Rotem stated.

Seeking to expose the truth about the reality in Israel and the region, Israel periodically hosts journalists and opinion shapers from Arab and Muslim countries and enables them to experience the Jewish state in an unbiased and unfiltered fashion.

Timeline for Saturdays attack in Northern Israel

1.       the Iranians launched an attack drone into Israel, which the 

Israelis tracked and shot down  

2 the Israelis sent jets into Syria to hit the Iranian command center 

that had sent the drone, at the Tiyas Airbase in Syria . 

3 forces backing Bashar al-Assad fired off "dozens" of anti-aircraft 

missiles, including into Israeli territory, which forced Israeli 

communities to go into lockdown and the pilots of one F-16 

to abandon the jet.  

4 the Israelis sent eight jets into Syria to target a dozen Syrian and 

Iranian military facilities (lists and descriptions of the targets: 

 5   Assad forces fired off another 15-20 anti-aircraft missiles, again 

forcing Israeli communities to go into lockdown .

The drone was similar to the advanced American UAV seized by Iran - The drone emulated Western technology.  The structure and sophistication were similar to the American UAV Iran seized in 2011, including a "low signature" aimed at avoiding detection 

Word to the Palestinians: Grow Up!

by Stewart Weiss  Feb 1st

For 70+ years, through three generations, the Palestinians have been fed, wet-nursed, coddled and accommodated by a global set of ‘parents.'

Although the human being is the most sophisticated and capable of all of God’s creations, at our earliest stages we are among the most vulnerable and the most helpless. A newborn giraffe will start walking within an hour of birth; after 10 hours, the baby giraffe will be able to run and keep up with the herd. But it will take years for a human infant to become even partially self-sufficient; until then he will be completely dependent on others for his every need. As a result of this, the child experiences instant gratification; his food will be brought to him, he’ll be bathed and gently tucked in bed, and if he cries, his parents will rush to satisfy his every request.

Responsible parents know there comes a point when the child must learn to fend for himself, when it is permissible – even preferable – to say “No!” Otherwise, that child will likely become a demanding, spoiled, incorrigible brat who will struggle to find his place in society.

This is precisely what has happened to the Palestinians. For 70+ years, through three generations, they have been fed, wet-nursed, coddled and accommodated by a global set of “parents.” Rather than earn their keep and live within their means, they have been handed billions and billions of dollars – much of which has either been stolen by their handlers or illegally used to purchase weapons. Rather than move out of their squalid camps into decent housing – as Israel has offered numerous times – they have been cruelly kept in cramped surroundings by so-called “leaders” who foment their anger and prolong their agony for political and monetary gain. Rather than drop their refugee status and integrate into a variety of countries – as hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern Jews did, and as millions of others are doing today in Europe – they tenaciously cling to their persecution complex as if it were a warm blanket.

So it comes as no surprise that when they finally get a long-overdue “spanking” by a head of state and berated for their atrocious behavior, the Palestinians react like that proverbial spoiled child and throw a tantrum. They threaten, they throw things (stones, Molotov cocktails, etc.), they curse, they break things (like signed agreements and diplomatic relations), they call the president names, they lock themselves in their room or they run and hide under the UN’s and the Europeans’ skirts. In typical infantile behavior, they blame everyone – except themselves – for their problems.

Though they are the arch-villains of mayhem, glorifying suicide bombers and naming stadiums after child-killers, they call the Israelis “terrorists.” At the same time that they refuse to come to the table and negotiate, they blame Israel for being “intransigent.” While they fabricate a false narrative of their history in the region, they deny the legitimate, universally affirmed more than 3,000-year presence of the Jewish people in Jerusalem.

Sadly, there is no shortage of misguided Jews who rally to their cause, Jews who act as their apologists, accomplices and enablers, and no lack of media people who glorify their “suffering” – some of whom write in this very paper, spinning out monotonous, single-issue op-eds ad nauseam that are so vacuous and boring that intelligent people long ago stopped reading them.

What can be done about this dangerous, destructive enfant terrible? Is there any hope for him, any therapy or behavior modification that can turn him into a responsible citizen of the world? 

Ironically, Israel itself offers the best model for attaining maturity and accelerating growth. Israel, too, was in a precarious position when we returned to our homeland and many non-believers were sure we would be dead aborning. We had every reason to feel persecuted – no nation ever endured more than we had – yet we shrugged off the urge to rant and recriminate and we set about the process of nation building.

We offered to live in peace with our neighbors, we agreed to a partition of our ancient homeland; we elected a government-in-waiting and raised up a fledgling army. We worked the land until our hands bled; carrying a plow in one hand and a gun in the other, as we made the desert bloom while dodging bullets. Rather than sit idly and bemoan our fate, we changed our fate. We had some help along the way from a few friends, but mostly we did this all by ourselves. 

So, Palestinians, if you ever hope to mimic our achievements and hold your head high with self-respect – even royal bearing – stop your interminable whining, stop pointing fingers at everyone around you, and grow up. It will take a lot of work, a lot of effort, but that’s because life, real life, is much more than child’s play.

End the Big Palestine Lie

The only way to end the conflict with Israel is to end the lie that there are “Palestinians” who live in the historical state of “Palestine.” 

Some points from various articles recently published

a           a)    Palestinian boss Mahmoud Abbas recently declared that Israel is “a colonial enterprise that has nothing to do with Jewishness.” Moses, King David and  thousands of years of Jewish history would disagree. Israel and the Jews are part   of  the story of human civilization. Over 50 percent of the human race has a holy  book that tells of the Jewish journey to Israel. That includes Mohammed’s own  copy  of the Koran.

       b)    Where Does ‘Palestine’ Really Come From?

             Palestine isn’t a Hebrew or Arabic word. The Greeks used it to describe the area.  And when the Romans and their Arab mercenaries repressed the indigenous Jewish population, they renamed it all Palestine.

Palestine, after the Philistines: but why did the Greeks and Romans name the area after the Philistines?

The Philistines were one of the Greek origin sea peoples who had originally invaded and colonized the area. The Jewish resistance to Philistine colonialism is chronicled in the histories of Samson, King Saul and King David. It was natural for the Greek and Roman colonies that the Jews of the Second Temple era clashed with to use “Palestine”, the name associated with earlier colonies, to refer to their new colonies.

The eventual decline and fall of the Roman and Persian empires made way for the Islamic conquests of the region. But the Islamic bandit hordes had no original ideas. Their religion was a hodgepodge of Judaism, Christianity, assorted pagan beliefs and Mohammed’s violent fantasies. The rest of their culture they took wholesale from the Greeks. This game of historical Idiocracy ended with a collection of Arab colonists who call themselves “Palestinians” and claim to be descended from… somebody.

c)     Palestinians Are Egyptians and Saudis

The Arab Muslims who lived in ’48 and ’67 Israel are made up of various clans from around the region.

Abbas has referred to Jordan and Palestine as “one people living in two states.” Hamas interior minister Fathi Hammad had once asserted, “Personally, half my family is Egyptian. We are all like that. More than 30 families in the Gaza Strip are called Al-Masri (Egyptian). Brothers, half of the Palestinians are Egyptians and the other half are Saudis.”

The most famous Al-Masri is a billionaire who lives in a West Bank reproduction of an Italian villa named “The House of Palestine”, and was recently detained by the Saudis. Munib Masri served as a Palestinian Authority minister, holds a legislative seat and accounts for a quarter of the “Palestinian” economy. The greenhouse in his villa was a gift from Napoleon III to his mistress. Masri, whose family name originated in Egypt, and claims to be a Palestinian, is actually a Saudi citizen who lives in an imported Italian villa. He made his money supplying the US military during Desert Storm.

The “Palestinians” are Egyptians, Saudis, Jordanians, Senegalese, Sudanese and a number of other Muslim invasive colonists. They are not Philistines, Canaanites or Jews. They’re as indigenous as Al-Masri’s “House of Palestine” made out of imported Italian marble and filled with European art.

The “Palestinians” are what they always were: a foreign Islamic Arab colony inside Israel.

d)    The Big Lie of Palestine

After all the agonized wailing about the deeply meaningful “Palestinian” connection to “Palestine”, they still haven’t come up with their own name for the place. One that they can properly pronounce. (There’s no proper “P” in Arabic.) But Abbas keeps coming up with new lies about which ancient people the “Palestinians” are descended from this week.

e)    A lie of Islamic Imperialism

The claim of the “Palestinian” colonists to Israel is a lie of Islamic imperialism. The Muslim powers of the region have funded the racist attacks by the PLO, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups on Jews.

The “Palestinians” are not the victims of colonialism. They are its perpetrators.

The fighting between Israel and Islamic terrorists is a struggle between imperialism and colonialism. The imperialists are not the oppressed Jewish minority that has been forced out of nearly everywhere else in the region. It’s the Arab Islamic majority that represses minorities across the region.

“Palestine” is a pathetic attempt to launder one imperial identity with another followed by shameless efforts to appropriate the identities of nearly every ancient people in the region. Including the Jews.

The only way to end the conflict is to end the lies.