Netanyahu Slams “Disgraceful” Presbyterian Divestment

By Lea Speyer June 23, 2014 , 12:12 pm

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“Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.” (Proverbs 12:19)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend the Jewish Media Summit in Jerusalem. , June 22, 2014. (Photo: FLASH90)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the decision of the US Presbyterian Church to divest from three companies that provide supplies to the IDF and residents of Judea and Samaria.
Dubbing the recent vote “disgraceful,” Netanyahu told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that “most Americans understand that Israel is a beacon of civilization and moderation.”
The prime minister explained that while majority of the Middle East was “riveted by religious hatred, by savagery of unimaginable proportions,” Israel is “the one democracy that upholds basic human rights, that guards the rights of all minorities, that protects Christians.”
Netanyahu challenged Presbyterians to “fly to the Middle East, come and see Israel for the embattled democracy that it is, and then take a bus tour, go to Libya, go to Syria, go to Iraq, and see the difference.”
“I would give them two pieces of advice – one is make sure it’s an armor-plated bus, and second, don’t say that you’re a Christian.”
Speaking at an international gathering of Jewish journalists on Sunday, Netanyahu openly wondered why Israel has been singled out by the Presbyterian church.
“When the Middle East is fragmented in this horrible war, this savage, savage war between militant Shiites and militant Sunnis…the only place where you have freedom, tolerance, protection of minorities, protection of gays, protection of Christians and all other faiths, is Israel.”
Presbyterian Church USA voted on Friday at its annual general assembly to divest from Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola Solutions in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
According to a statement released by the church, Caterpillar provides Israel with bulldozers “used in the destruction of Palestinian homes.”
Hewlett-Packard “provides electronic systems at checkpoints, logistics and communications systems to support the naval blockade of the Gaza Strip, and has business relationships with illegal settlements in the West Bank.”
Motorola Solutions “provides military communications and surveillance systems in the illegal Israeli settlements.”
Dr. Yoaz Hendel, Chairman of The Institute for Zionist Strategies, told Breaking Israel News that Presbyterian USA is “operating on False assumptions.”
“The church voted based on a small part of anti-Semitism and a large part of false information. I want members of the church to come to Israel to see what a strong, democratic, liberal state looks like. Israel is not perfect but to have a biased reality that Israel is evil and everyone else is good – those people do not understand what is really happening in Israel,” he said.
“If people boycott Israel because they think they are going to save and change the world, then they are not in the right place of mind,” Hendel stated. “If one checks and understands what is happening in Israel – the education system, the peace vision, the fact that Israel is based on democratic values – if one understands what is the basic essence of Israel, they would never support any type of BDS against Israel.”

Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/17021/netanyahu-slams-disgraceful-presbyterian-divestment/#7qtEFklWpItdhGgA.99

Vicious betrayal

World Jewish Digest: The ostensibly 'liberal' Presbyterian church viciously betrayed the American Jewish community on Friday, voting to join the racist BDS movement by divesting from several companies that do business in Israel.

The church's general assembly passed the decision by seven votes, justifying its decision through claiming that it was against the occupation of the West Bank, not Israel.

But the companies involved, Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola, are huge corporations that do a great deal of business in Israel itself, as well as many other countries.

Jewish organizations struck back, with the ADL calling the move "out of step with the views of the majority of Presbyterians in the pews at the community level." While director Abraham Foxman said,

Over the past ten years, PCUSA leaders have fomented an atmosphere of open hostility to Israel within the church, promoted a one-sided presentation of the complex realities of the Middle East, and permitted the presentation of a grossly distorted image of the views of the Jewish community.

The AJC explicitly cited the racist nature of the BDS movement, calling the move "celebrated by those who believe they are one step closer to a Jew-free Middle East."

The Presbyterian vote

Presbyterian vote to boycott is just old fashioned anti-Semitism. We’ve seen it 1000X.

"why would Presbyterians vote to advocate boycotting the ONE country in the Middle East where Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, gays, women live in freedom and live without fear, and weekly invent things to improve the world, and advocate instead for a new Arab/Muslim corrupt, tyrannical, fanatical, hate filled, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-democratic, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, genocidal advocating country, unless they are just an old fashioned anti-Semite?" They are. Never forget the PLO to liberate Israel was created in 1964 when Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt Gaza. Never forget in 1947 the Arabs voted against a Palestinian state in the UN. It could now be 66 years old. Never forget that everyday Palestinians schools teach young children to hate Jews and want to kill them. Never forget Abbas made a unity gov. with Hamas, which states in wants to kill Jews everywhere..,.

can't recall who wrote this
Who is responsible for Palestinian refugees?

“There is no doubt that there is real suffering among the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank (which is actually ancient Judea and Samaria). The question is who, precisely, is most responsible for their suffering?

Certainly, Israel is far from blameless in its treatment of the Palestinians, and it helps no one when we overlook or whitewash Israel’s failings, as some Christian Zionists are prone to do.

But is Israel primarily responsible for the difficult living conditions faced by the Palestinians today? Absolutely not. The blame lays squarely at the feet of the Palestinian leadership.

Consider that in 1936, Haj Amin Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, later a collaborator with Hitler and the father of many of today’s radical Islamic movements, had this to say about living in peace with the neighboring Jews: “There is no place in Palestine for two races. The Jews left Palestine 2,000 year ago, let them go to other parts of the world, where there are wide vacant places.”

In contrast, in 1937, David Ben Gurion, later to be Israel’s first Prime Minister, said, “We do not wish and do not need to expel Arabs and take their place. All our aspiration is built on the assumption – proven throughout all our activity in the Land of Israel – that there is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.”

Ten years later, when the U.N. had proposed separate states for the Jews and the Arabs, Golda Meir said, “We are happy and ready for what lies ahead. Our hands are extended in peace to our neighbors. Both States can live in peace with one another and cooperate for the welfare of their inhabitants.”

And Ben Gurion invited the Arabs living in what would be the new state of Israel to remain among them as partners (which many of them did, and they have grown from 200,000 then to 1.6 million today): “If the Arab citizen will feel at home in our state . . . if the state will help him in a truthful and dedicated way to reach the economic, social, and cultural level of the Jewish community, then Arab distrust will accordingly subside and a bridge will be built to a Semitic, Jewish-Arab alliance.”

In stark contrast, Azzam Pasha, Secretary of the Arab League, would have none of it, calling instead for an all-out war against Israel: “It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.”

And so, the five surrounding Arab nations attacked Israel and were defeated in a war that was costly and difficult for everyone, resulting in about 800,000 Jewish refugees who fled from the neighboring Muslim countries and about 600,000 Arab refugees who fled from the war on Israel.

What happened to those refugees? Most of the Jewish refugees were absorbed by the fledgling State of Israel; the Arab refugees were not absorbed by their neighboring countries.

Why? Because they were used as human pawns against Israel, to the point that in 1959, the Arab League passed Resolution 1457: “The Arab countries will not grant citizenship to applicants of Palestinian origin in order to prevent their assimilation into the host countries.”

That’s why, until this very day, there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps in countries like Lebanon and Syria, never integrated into the larger population or absorbed as citizens with full rights.

How dare the anti-Zionists blame Israel for this atrocious treatment of the Palestinians. The fault lies with their own leaders who have betrayed them in their hatred of Israel. (This is why historian Efraim Karsh entitled his very important book Palestine Betrayed, where much more relevant information can be found.)

As recently as 2004, Hisham Youssef, spokesman for the 22-nation Arab League, stated that, “Palestinians live in very bad conditions. That official policy is meant to preserve their Palestinian identity. If every Palestinian who sought refuge in a certain country was integrated and accommodated into that country, there won’t be any reason for them to return to Palestine.”

Do these leaders really care about their suffering brothers and sisters, or is their opposition to Israel, fueled by the theology of radical Islam, more important to them?

In 2012, the Palestinian Mufti, one of the senior Islamic leaders, repeated a well-known Muslim Hadith (authoritative tradition): “The Hour [of Resurrection] will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jew will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: ‘Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”

More recently, in a recent program on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV, Hamas cleric and parliamentary member Yunis Al-Astal cited the Quran in guiding Muslims to “massacre” the Jews. (See Palwatch.org for more details.)

With statements like this, which are seconded by many Palestinian leaders, does Israel really have a peace partner among the Palestinian leadership?

As journalist Caroline Glick wrote, “Nearly every day a Palestinian leader announces that the Palestinians will not make peace with Israel under any circumstances. These statements are part of the public record, and all are published to great approval in the Arabic media. Palestinian children regularly appear on PA-controlled television children’s programs, calling for the annihilation of Israel and demonizing Jews as subhuman. Summer camps are named after terrorists.”

And as Israel has released thousands of Palestinian prisoners as a gesture of peace, even though many of these prisoners have the blood of Israeli men, women, and children on their hands, they are hailed as heroes when they return home. This is a terribly painful slap in Israel’s face, and yet another stumblingblock to peace.

As for the billions of dollars of support that pours into Hamas and the Palestinian Authority from America and Europe, only a small portion of it finds its ways into the hands of the people, instead being used to pad the bank accounts of the leaders and to further their war on Israel.

But let us not forget where the ultimate blame lies for the suffering of the Palestinian people: It lies at the feet of their leadership, and shifting the blame to Israel will do these suffering Palestinians no good at all.”

Torah Portion Korach Korah-Debate ok? JewU 111

Morally Bankrupt New York Times

WJD- Sivan 20, 5774
	How low can the New York Times go? Far lower than you could have possibly imagined. Following the lead of President Barack Obama, who recently failed to break off relations with the Palestinian government after it included Hamas, a terror group sworn to Israel's destruction, into its ranks, the New York Times Tuesday published a story that explored the suffering inflicted on Palestinians after Hamas members abducted three Israeli teens. You heard right. The Times looked only at how Palestinians were suffering due to the "siege" on Hebron as the Israeli army conducts house to house searches to look for the high school kids cruelly snatched from the road. Here's a sample: There were no trucks to drive because of a one-day strike in solidarity with hunger-striking Palestinians in Israeli prisons that shuttered nearly all of Hebron’s stores and industry. Worse, with Israeli troops limiting entry and exit as part of a crackdown after last week’s kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers, the Jabers were worried that Monday’s wedding party for Kayed’s 17-year-old daughter would be ruined. Don't you feel terrible for Kayed's daughter? Isn't it a shame she can't get married? And it's all Israel's fault! How dare they insist that the Palestinians return their abducted youth! How dare they search house to house because no Palestinian will possibly help them find the three boys! The gall. But wait, there's more: But many here and elsewhere in the Palestinian territories questioned whether the abduction even happened. Leaders referred to the “alleged kidnapping” in some of their official statements, and social networks were filled with conspiracy theories of how Jewish settlers staged the event or the Israeli government was using it as a pretext to oust Hamas from the West Bank and thwart the Palestine Liberation Organization’s recent reconciliation with Hamas. This is sort of like saying that Waco leader David Koresh claimed he was the messiah -- so it must be true! The Palestinians said it, after all, so Israel must be guilty of staging the entire kidnapping just to gain political points. posted by rabbi Jonathan Gionsburg

all drone Israeli army?

Recs

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Is Israel Building an All-Drone Army?

By Rich Smith | More Articles | Save For Later
June 15, 2014 | Comments (2)

When you hear the word "drone," do you picture a small robotic airplane, flying through the sky bearing a stars-and-stripes decal on its chassis? If you do, then chances are you live in America.
Because for most of the world, drones more often than not bear the flag of Israel as an insignia.
According to CNN, the state of Israel is the largest exporter of drones and drone technology in the world. Leading Israeli defense concern Israel Aerospace Industries, or IAI, counts as its customers the military forces of more than two-dozen nations around the world. These customers buy Israeli drones first and foremost because they're easier to acquire than American models -- where sales can be held up by government restrictions on drone exports. But customers also flock to buy Israeli drones because they work.
In fact, they work so well that Israel may be replacing its manned combat aircraft with robotic drones.

Israeli AH-1 Cobra -- doomed to extinction by a new generation of armed drone aircraft? Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Building a drone empire in the Middle East
Israel recently announced a plan to retire 33 Textron (NYSE: TXT  ) AH-1 Cobra helicopter gunships. News reports suggest that the Cobras' role will, in the future, be taken over by unmanned "drone" aircraft -- armed to the teeth with air-to-surface guided missiles. Already, one former Israeli Cobra squadron is said to have been equipped with Israeli "Hermes 900" unmanned aerial vehicles.
While Israel's defense ministry won't comment on reports of its possessing "weaponized" drones, media outlets around the Middle East have reported seeing Israeli drones conducting armed operations as far back as 2006. This backs up rumors of a shift to armed drones. And there would be sound logic supporting such a move, if it is indeed happening.
UAVs offer many advantages over piloted helicopters. Piloted remotely, they eliminate the risk of Israeli pilots being killed or wounded in combat -- or taken prisoner. Israel's drones can also fly for 12 hours and up, versus about 90 minutes for an AH-1 Cobra. They're cheaper to operate -- and in many cases, cheaper to buy.

Jihadists rewarded for violence by destroying free speech

Criticizing Islam Becomes "Incitement to Imminent Violence"

by Abigail R. Esman
Special to IPT News
June 11, 2014

http://www.investigativeproject.org/4422/criticizing-islam-becomes-incitement-to-imminent

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You could say it is a new form of Islamic honor crime: the silencing of those who dare besmirch the honor of Islam or its prophet, except the suppression now doesn't come from Muslims only. These days, it's the work of secular groups and governments: theaters in Germany, prominent publishers in England and the USA, of public prosecutors in the Netherlands, and most recently, of the Spanish Supreme court.

On May 30, that court ruled that Pakistani refugee Imran Firasat be stripped of his refugee status and deported. A Pakistani Muslim apostate, Firasat for years received death threats for marrying a non-Muslim, and for his outspoken criticism of Islam. In 2006, he received amnesty in Spain, a country where he was guaranteed the glorious freedoms unavailable to him in his homeland – freedoms enshrined in the foundations of any Western democracy: of religion, of opinion, and of speech.

But evidently he was not.

In 2012, Firasat produced a film critical of Islam in which he included footage of the attacks of 9/11, along with subsequent Islamic terrorist attacks in London and Madrid. According to a report from Gatestone Institute, "Shortly after Firasat's film was released, Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo and Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz initiated a process to review his refugee status."

The reason? Garcia-Margallo had determined that Firasat's film created a security risk from Muslims who might be angered by its content. (That those Muslims themselves posed a risk seems not to have entered the discussion.)

The Supreme Court's decision, which affirms the ruling of a lower court, reflects the growing influence of an anti-blasphemy measure introduced to the United Nations in 2011 by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), comprised of the 56 Islamic states. That measure, Resolution 16/18, aims to limit – even criminalize – speech that can be understood as "discriminatory – which, as I wrote at the time, "involves the 'defamation of religion' – specifically that which can be viewed as 'incitement to imminent violence.'"

But nearly anything can be called "incitement to imminent violence," just as a woman walking the street without covering herself ankle to brow in a niqab could be called an "incitement to imminent rape." Who decides what "incitement" and "imminent" are? Should we now arrest all non-veiled women in the West? Has Spain become another Sharia state? Has UN Resolution 16/18 marked the end of freedom as we know it in the West?

In fact, as the Heritage Foundation recently reported, "throughout Europe, in Canada, and even in the United States, judicial systems in countries with large Muslim minorities are under pressure to adopt Sharia free speech restrictions. As a result, in many places, including Denmark, it is now a crime to say anything negative about Islam or the prophet Mohammed, regardless of whether such statements are factually true or not. The concept that even offensive speech is protected—so fundamental to the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment—is collapsing."

Such attacks on democratic values – and their success in destroying them – are what have many experts, human rights groups, and politicians concerned about multiculturalism in the West. The idealized model – in which multiple cultures coexist peacefully within the same society – simply doesn't work; the conflicts of values are too extreme.

True, it would be easy enough to wave off such incidents of censorship if they were limited to a mere one or two: but they aren't. In 2010, for instance, Comedy Central pulled a "South Park" episode satirizing the violent reactions to depictions of the prophet Mohammad after a New York-based Islamic group, Revolution Muslim, threatened the show's writers with death.

Four years prior, the Berlin-based Deutsche Oper cancelled its run of Mozart's "Idomeneo," in which the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed are placed on chairs onstage. Explaining their decision, the organizers of the opera, which was first performed in 1781, cited warnings from the police that "the publicity surrounding the play would severely heighten the security risk." (Neither Buddhist nor Christian groups, it should be noted, expressed any discomfort with the production.)

And there are others: the extended criminal case against Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders for his statements against Islam and his film "Fitna," which, like Firasat's, focused on a recent history of Islamic terrorism and various calls for violence written in the Quran; or (also in the Netherlands) the arrest, at the demand of a radical imam, of pseudonymous cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot for sketches deemed "insulting" to Muslims.

America has hardly been immune: in 2008, Random House publishers cancelled publication of The Jewel of Medina, described as "a fictional account of the life of Mohammed's wife, Aisha." A year later, Yale University Press deleted imagesfrom a book about the so-called "Danish Cartoons" – a series of cartoons that ran in Denmark's Jyllands Post in 2005, citing fears of "insulting Muslims" and – there it is again – a risk to national security.

And earlier this month, the New York Times demanded that the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) revise an ad slated to run on the Gray Lady's web site, claiming that there had been numerous complaints about a previously approved, full-page version of the ad in the print edition of the paper. Explained the IPT at the time, "The NYT ordered us to insert the word 'radical' before the term 'Islamist groups,' so that it read, 'Stop the radical Islamist groups from undermining America's security, liberty, and free speech.'"

That change was not as minor as it might at first seem, argued IPT Executive Director Steven Emerson in an editorial for the IPT website. It suggested that Islamist groups who are not radicalized – like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) – are not dangerous. And yet it is precisely these organizations worldwide which often exert the kind of pressure that results in censorship of speech, in the subjugation of the arts, in the compromise of truth.

Fortunately, America's capitulation to pressure on this issue has been limited to the private sector. But Firasat's story should be taken as a warning, as much for the U.S. as for Europe, of the damage Resolution 16/18 and similar efforts are having on our culture – and on our future.

One week after the Spanish court robbed Firasat of his democratic rights in a democratic country, President Barack Obama stood on the beaches of Normandy and spoke to those gathered to mark the 70^th anniversary of D-Day. On that day, he said, the world marked the moment of "commitment" to liberty and freedom; and since then, "From Western Europe to East; from South America to Southeast Asia; seventy years of democratic movements spread. Nations that once knew only the blinders of fear began to taste the blessings of freedom.

That would not have happened without the men who were willing to lay down their lives for people they'd never met, and ideals they couldn't live without."

Those ideals still remain our ideals. We still cannot live without them. We cannot give up the fight.

Abigail R. Esman, the author, most recently, of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010), is a freelance writer based in New York and the Netherlands.

Related Topics: Islamist Censorship  |  Abigail R. Esman posted by rabbi Jonathan ginsburg