My "Palestinianism" in Use

"Anti-Palestinianism" has become a theological issue, Palestinian Bible scholar Yohanna Katanacho said at an international conference in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

He explains:

...some Israeli theologians "strive to establish a particular reading of biblical history in order to gain political advantage."  "Such reading strategies put (Palestinians) at a disadvantage. They are perceived as the Canaanites or Philistines," he said, referring to enemies of the biblical Israelites.

"Some Palestinians are tempted to play this history game and argue they were in the land before the ancient children of Israel, as if an ancient historical presence is the basis for contemporary human rights, including the right to own your own home that you inherited from your grandfather or grandmother."

American Evangelical scholar Gary Burge continued:

"When we have a conversation about the Christian church and the land, we have to be adept at how we use the Bible," Burge said at a panel discussion on biblical authority.

"Here in Israel-Palestine," Burge said, "the Bible consistently serves special interests."

Adept?  You seem to have be downright fictitious and reading the Bible, the history and the archaelogical evidence completely wrong.

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Getting That Uncomfortable Feeling?

Jennifer Rubin sees anti-Semitism.

Melanie Phillips sees Munich:

We are indeed now facing the unthinkable. Not just that Iran is on the verge of being allowed to proceed to nuclear capability. The really unthinkable reality is that the enemies of the civilised world are not just to be found in Tehran. They are also in London, Brussels and Washington DC.

From the Obama administration we hear in response to Israel being termed a 'rabid dog'

“Obviously we disagree with it profoundly … It’s inflammatory, it’s unnecessary, and I think at this moment when we are trying to negotiate what can and can’t be achieved, the last thing we need is names back and forth,” Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee...“Obviously we don’t believe that anything is served with, you know, names that challenge everybody’s sense of propriety and justice and rectitude. We’ve been through this before, as we’ve heard prior, very disturbing assertions regarding the Holocaust,” Kerry said. “We need to move away from this.”

But shouldn't it be obvious that doing business with Iran is, well, a very bad deal?


A very very bad deal.

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And Where Are Those Synagogues?

Word for word:-

A specialist in Jerusalem’s history, Khalil Ibrahim, has claimed that the Israeli authorities built three new Jewish synagogues to practice biblical prayers, including chambers to host women’s prayers, inside the tunnels that are scattered beneath the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Ibrahim, who also works as a tour guide, told Palestine Online: “We only saw these synagogues during our tours; otherwise we would not have known anything about them. They were built quietly under the ground. These synagogues are an extension of other religious sites that Israel is building in occupied Jerusalem, especially around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, to impose new realities on the ground. The constructions have political backing in an effort to Judaise the city.”

Ibrahim explained that the Israeli government aims to encircle the Al-Aqsa Mosque with a belt of settlements and structures that carry alleged religious titles, including synagogues.

Ibrahim also revealed that: “inside these synagogues, the Jews are using Psalms to model and demonstrate the Temple’s structure under the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Other facilities including schools, libraries and synagogues are being built in an attempt to undermine and erase the Islamic and Arab heritage in the holy city and to construct a Jewish heritage in its place.”

I'd love to know where these synagogues are and exactly how new they are.

I'd also appreciate lesser incendiary language.

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So, "Palestine" Did Exist

Directed to the site of the Chatham University Archives by "Picture A Day", I found the territorial delineations of "Palestine" and you know what?

They're on both sides of the Jordan:-

P.S.  Now see EOZ's take.

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White Is A Blackguard

Reframe, redefine, fudge it.

That's the progressive line on how to subvert and undermine Israel's stanidng.

Example:-

Ben White lectured in SUBO-Brooklyn College NY last Thursday, on tour as part of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Right to Education Week.  He argued that Israel was an apartheid state and advocated for a one-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict.

From the report:

“No one is saying Israel is exactly equivalent with South Africa,” he continued. “Ultimately, the way we judge apartheid is defined by international law.”...White said that the starting point for understanding the the source of Israel’s apartheid system is to look back at the 1948 Arab-Israeli war...“The only reason Israel has a Jewish majority is because of the forced expulsion of the Palestinians,"...White noted that his lecture occurred exactly one year after Israel launched air strikes inside Gaza in response to rocket attacks by Hamas militants...White pointed out that even after the cease-fire, Israel still continues to block a variety of goods from entering Gaza and the West Bank.  “On what ground does this policy have to do with security?” White asked. “To ask the question is to highlight the ridiculousness of it.”

White said that Israeli policies regarding the Palestinians are meant to “maintain a regime that insures the domination of one group over another.” White concluded his lecture by asking his audience to rethink Israel’s right to be a Jewish state. He called the peace process towards a two-state solution a failure.

“Re-imagine a future of genuine coexistence and equality,” he said. “Real coexistence only happens after you have broken down the power structures that maintain the status quo.”

There is no logic in there, no reason, no fact.

That's progress.

Not "exactly".  What does that mean except that it is an isn't 

Why start in 1948?  Why not November 30, 1947 when Arabs - continuing their violent, aggressive terror and ethnic-cleansing campaign against Jews waged since 1920 - opened hostilities against the Jewish, yes, "Jewish", state recommended by the UN, while partitioning, yet again, the territory for the Jewish national homeland as mandated by the League of Nations in 1922, recognized by the US in 1924 by treaty, as decided upon at San Remo in 1920, all according to international law?

Given that Hamas just got discovered using cement to build a tunnel into Israel, I think we'd all agree that security has everything to do with it.

When one group (Arabs) refuses to agree to the reality of a Jewish state and actively identifies with its enemies, adopts the toxic terminology of disenfranchisement and does not even participate by its own volition in the civic culture of Israel except to vote for anti-Zionist politicians, domination is required.

Let us be presented with one Arab/Muslim state that practices coexistence even to other Arab-Muslims, not to mention Christians, then maybe we can believe "Palestine" will be the second.

White is a blackguard.

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Whose Mother Should Have Been The Center of Attention?

I just sent this out to the New York Times:

Dear New York Times Executives and Editors,

A mistake was made.  In attempting to illustrate in a graphic fashion the murder of a sleeping soldier by a teenager driven by a nationalist agenda, a photograph of the mother of the murderer, portrayed in a sympathetic setting, was selected.

We all know it was a wrong choice.  We all know it displayed a lack of balance.  It was a poor professional selection and it will be taught for decades in photojournalism classes as an example of getting it wrong.

To refuse to remove it and not to indicate that it should, at the least, have been accompanied with a picture from the murder scene or of the grieving family or of the slain soldier himself, is compounding the error.

The picture should be replaced at your web site.  The error should be acknowledged.  The selection process should be reviewed.  Those who made the wrong decision should be publicly identified for that is what the press does to every other institution it covers.

Professional journalism is accuracy, balanced representation, accountability and responsibility.

Do not let we media consumers down and feel as if the paper truly does hold to a biased and different standard of professionalism when dealing with Israel.

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Freeze Iran Like Jewish Communities in Yesha Should Be

President Obama was right to demand a settlement freeze in the West Bank in 2009. Now he must demand a total centrifuge freeze in Iran.

That comparison was composed by Ari Shavit, a senior columnist at Haaretz, and the author of “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.” 

It appears in an op-ed that blames President Bush for the situation in Iran.

That's right, not Obama.

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Shiloh Lends Itself to Music

From out of Shiloh's archaeological digs come evidence of the Jewish past but the name also serves other purposes, one of them a new group who have issued now Shiloh Rising.

Seven sisters singing "raw, soulful Christian music".  Their story.  A short video.

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What? Apologize? The New York Times?

You've read the headlines and stories:

New York Times apologizes for ‘poor choice’ on Atias photo

The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan apologized in a blog post on Tuesday for making a “poor choice” when it came to printing an “emotional and sympathetic” picture of a Palestinian mother at the head of an article about the fatal stabbing of Israeli soldier Eden Atias.

and

NYT Apologizes Over Article on Slain IDF Soldier

New York Times apologizes for using a picture of the mother of the terrorist who murdered soldier Eden Atias.

and

New York Times Admits It Got It Wrong

The acknowledgment of fault by the New York Times is a significant achievement...

However, sources inform me that the thinking inside the NYTimes goes like this:

It's not an apology. It's a column by the public editor.

The Public Editor did write:

 ...two senior editors at The Times...Both the photo was a regrettable choice.

Isn't expressing regret like apologizing?

More:

said Michele McNally, the assistant managing editor in charge of photography...The selection of the Palestinian mother’s image...was not appropriate in this case...

So, the Public Editor is viewed as someone who just intereferes and has no bearing on the issue of media ethics in the paper?  I hope Ms. Sullivan won't have to apologize to all those involved in making in inappropriate and regrettable selection of photographs.

Nice to know, though.

P.S.  I have been informed that the digital edition is never changed.

But that can't be as I've seen loads of stories with the notation: this story is been changed to reflect....


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Progressively Worse

The New Israel Fund is going to become more (?) progressive Haaretz informs us.

...the New Israel Fund (NIF) is poised to start pushing for one more self-empowering political movement that might very well be called Progressive Pride.

“You have every right to speak out for the Israel you want to see!” a new NIF video exclaimed at the annual NIF gala dinner held in Manhattan this week.

“There is no need to apologize for what you are: you are Jews and progressives,” Hillel Ben Sasson of the NIF–funded Molad Center for Renewal of Democracy exhorted. “When you go to Israel, you do not need to check your progressive values at the door.”

Bothered?

See this:

In a must-read piece, Peter Berkowitz explains that Obama’s problems, specifically all the things he discovers on the job (no shovel-ready jobs, insurance is complicated, etc.) stem from an intellectual weakness prevalent on the left:

The president and the officials around him are the product of the same progressive version of higher education that simultaneously excises politics from the study of government and public policy while politicizing education. This higher education denigrates experience; exalts rational administration; reveres abstract moral reasoning; confidently counts on the mainstream press to play for the progressive political team; accords to words fabulous abilities to remake reality; and believes itself to speak for the people while haughtily despising their way of life.

Need I write more?

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Silly But Sly at Silwan

Silwan is an Arab neighborhood in  Jerusalem which seeks to negate and uproot (or continue to cover-up) Jewish heritage and legacy in the city by asserting an Arab-only (is that what apartheid is?) identity although it sits on or near some of the most earliest and important archaeology sites in the city.

Well, they are now battling NBC:-

American TV series to be filmed at settlements in Silwan

First, the news:

...a new drama series for American network NBC [will be filmed] in the settlement outpost “City of David” that is established at the entrance of Silwan south of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Note, they throw in "settlement", and "outpost", place City of David is quotations marks to belittle it and add "south of Al-Aqsa" as if a threat to a Muslim holy site is imminent.

They do include

...Israel is rich in terms of historical monuments and places and being the first American series filmed in Israel.

Then they make a demand:

Wadi Hilweh neighbourhood committee requested Keshet production company and NBC network not to film in the settlement outpost established on the lands of Silwan since it will contest the Islamic and Arabic history and serve in the falsification of facts in the town of Silwan.

How will it falsify?  Islamic & Arabic history is post-City of David.
 
A bit of outreach:

The committee invited officials from the company and NBC network to visit the neighbourhood of Wadi Hilweh and get introduced to its history, features and daily Israeli violations carried out by the occupation authorities before filming a series that will only enhance the false Israeli story on one hand and blurs the Arab and Islamic civilizations on another.

And then more threats and getting America involved:

The committee denounced the Israeli aims and goals behind filming the series in the settlement outpost of “City of David” since it is surrounded by Islamic historical monuments from all the sides; Southern Wall, Dome of the Rock, Umayyad Palaces, the Wailing Wall (Buraq) in addition to the presence of several monuments from different ages inside the settlement...The committee appealed for the American Consulate to interfere and prevent the filming in the Islamic Arabic neighbourhood.

They haven't made a blood libel, as yet, by perhaps claiming we Jews killed a pro-Arab archaeologist.

After all, they did kill one a few years back.  And a book was written.

Who could have possibly killed him?

Most of the work of the investigation was carried out by a local Palestinian journalist, Nabhan Khreishah...Khreishah interviewed as many people as he could at the university..A teaching assistant of Glock's named Hamdan Taha had wanted Glock to give him a job at the Institute, something Glock stubbornly refused to do until at last, after a noisy argument in the teachers' union and the Birzeit University student council, Glock had reluctantly given in. For many years, Glock had held the severe and unyielding view that Taha's work was below the standard he wanted for the select group of Palestinian archaeologists he was trying to create; he did this despite the fact that most other Birzeit professors thought Taha was a positive asset to the university, and implored him to give the assistant a chance. It was poor judgment on Glock's part to oppose hiring a Palestinian at such a politically charged moment. Khreishah had to investigate the possibility, therefore, that Glock might...have been seen as an enemy of the Palestinian people as a result of his refusal to give a qualified Palestinian a job. But the dispute had been settled a month before the killing. 
 
Hamdan Taha is now director of the antiquities department of the Palestinian Authority, a branch of the PA's ministry of tourism...the American FBI considers Taha the principal suspect in the crime because he was seen to have benefited from Glock's killing. Certainly, if you look at the matter from the wrong end of a telescope, you might dimly discern Taha prospering after Glock's death, but Taha holds a doctorate in archaeology from the University of Heidelberg, has a wife and family, and knows more about Iron Age burials than how to organise a professional assassination. He is not a credible suspect.

Is that credible?

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Part of a Horned Altar Found at Tel Shiloh

I was informed of this find two weeks ago.

But was asked to wait.

An ongoing archaeological dig in the ancient Jewish village of Shilo in Samaria (Shomron) has turned up [part] a stone altar dating back thousands of years.
The altar is believed to date back to the period from roughly 1,200 BCE to 600 CE known as the Iron Age...The altar is 60 centimeters by 60 centimeters, with a height of 40 centimeters, and was found on the southern edge of the site of ancient Shilo.

It was found in the area of Weli Yatim, I think, in secondary use.

In this Hebrew story, there's a better picture.

Another story.

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Shavit's Should Be

It should be:

It might be argued that Shavit overstates Zionism's overlooking of the indigenous Arab population, while understating the extent to which Zionists were forced to take up arms because segments of the Arab population responded to gestures of goodwill and cooperation with violence.

But this?

...he narrates the forced exodus in July 1948, after Arab governments ignored the U.N. call for a truce, of tens of thousands of Arabs by Israeli soldiers from the strategically important town of Lydda near Israel's primary airport

Is that right?

From David Gerstman:

...the story of Lydda (now called Lod) is not so simple. The residents of Lydda were not summarily expelled. The expulsion was a response to a massacre of Israeli soldiers, after the town had agreed to terms of surrender.

Maurice Ostroff interviewed a soldier who fought in that battle:

    Mike Isaacson, who now lives in Pretoria, South Africa, served as a Mahal volunteer in Dayan’s battalion. This is how he described his experience to me:

    “On July 10 when the battalion attacked Lydda, the Arab leadership surrendered. Lydda’s leaders were told they could continue to live in peace, provided they surrendered their arms and accepted Israeli sovereignty. They agreed. “Leaving only a few soldiers as guards, the battalion left Lydda to return to Ben Shemen. However, when two Arab Legion armored cars appeared on the horizon the next day, giving the impression that Legion reinforcements were arriving, the Lydda Arabs reneged on their agreement. They didn’t give the Israeli soldiers in the town the choice of being expelled. They slaughtered them. “In the meantime, the battalion was surprised to find itself in Ramle sooner than intended. Instead of taking the road to Ben Shemen, the leading vehicle, driven by Jimmy Kantey, had in error turned towards Ramle at the crossroad…. “As a consequence of the massacre of the Israeli soldiers, the troops on returning to Lydda could not accept a fifth column in their midst and forced thousands of families out of the towns during the next three days.

...Alex Safian of CAMERA adds some more details.

    Despite the surrender agreement, and the promise to turn over arms, the Israelis, now numbering only 500 men, had to once again take the town in another desperate battle.

    Fighting house-to-house to root out snipers, and this time giving no quarter, within an hour much of the town was once again under control, and an estimated 200 Arabs were dead.

    But the Dahmash Mosque, was still fighting, held by an estimated 70 fighters, and with an unknown number of others inside. Rather than launch a costly frontal assault, Lt. Col. Kelman decided to breach the mosque’s walls with an anti-tank weapon, known as a PIAT, and then have a platoon rush the building.

    After the PIAT was fired, the men that stormed the building found that the defenders were dead, killed by the effects of the armor piercing projectile in the confined space of the mosque. (Kurzman, p. 515-516)

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GraphicZionism: In Stages

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Sourced:

Palestinian goal: destroy Israel in stages

Ibrahim Mudayris, Official, PA Ministry of Religious Trusts and Religious Affairs:

"We might return to the 1967 borders by diplomacy, but we shall not return to the 1948 borders [i.e. eliminate Israel] by diplomacy. The 1948 borders- no one on earth recognizes as ours. Therefore we shall return to the 1967 borders, but we have not given up on [Israeli cities] Jerusalem and Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramle and Tel Aviv. Never. Your father's blood was shed here, at the villages, at Ashqelon, Ashdod, Hirbia [all in Israel] and hundreds of villages and towns that demand it from us. [Their blood] shall curse anyone who will concede a grain of earth of those villages. The land of Palestine will demand the Palestinians return as Muhammad returned- as a conqueror."

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Temple Mount Move?

What the ... ?

No, not Jewish.

Arab:

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How Do You Pronounce Rawabi in French?

Noted:

During their meeting, the two parties signed agreements stipulating that the French government will transfer 19 million euros to the PA. The funds will be allocated toward the advancement of various projects, including the construction of Rawabi

And this:

French President Francois Hollande on Monday...met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Mukata government compound in Ramallah...also told Abbas that during his conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the premier cited the refugee issue as one that was liable to make it difficult for the two sides to reach an agreement..."When I speak of the initiatives that the two sides must present, I spoke with President Abbas and told him to reach understandings on this issue [the refugees]. This was the focus of part of our discussion.”

Palestinian sources told Haaretz that while this seems like a French attempt to get the sides to make concessions on two core issues, at this stage no agreements should be expected. Abbas, for his part, said the Palestinians cannot present a position that differs from the position that was approved by the Arab League, known as the Arab Initiative, and which also has UN Security Council backing.

Netanyahu spoke in the Knesset on this

“We are attentive to any initiative and we are ready to discuss any initiative that is proposed and that is not a dictate,” Netanyahu said, referring to a much-cited argument that some of the Arab Initiative’s demands — such as a return to the 1967 lines and the right of return — are non-starters for Israel...

and an analyst explained:

...proponents say that the text of the initiative specifies that any solution needs to be “agreed upon” by both sides, meaning that Israel will not forcibly be flooded by millions of Palestinians. However, it also says that any such solution needs to be in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which resolved that “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”

Another little-known clause in the Arab Peace Initiative rejects “Palestinian patriation,” which implies that refugees living in camps on Israel’s borders will not be granted citizenship of their current host countries. This issue seems resolvable in the framework of a future Palestinian state, but critics fear it could further complicate issues.

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What's Worse: A Jewish Prayer or an IDF Soldier?

Pictures of IDF soldiers on the Temple Mount causing the Islamists such consternation, almost as much as Jewish prayers:

Reported so:

A group of 80 Israeli soldiers stormed this morning with their military uniform al-Aqsa mosque from the Mughrabi Gate, Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage confirmed.  The Foundation added that 9 Jewish settlers broke in two groups into al-Aqsa mosque under military security, meanwhile 60 Jewish students stormed into Haram al-Sharif.

P.S.  Al Aqsa as a storehouse for ... stones-to-be-thrown:-

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GraphicZionism: Obama to Netanyahu

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GraphicZionsim: On Obama Goes Defensive

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The Obama administration is on the defensive days before Iran nuclear negotiations are scheduled to resume in Geneva, as critics in Israel and in the U.S. Congress say Iran would concede too little and gain too much from an easing of international economic sanctions.

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What A Wonderful Waqf World

Word-for-word:

Yehuda Glick, the Chairman of the so-called Temple Mount Heritage Fund, leading a group of religious Jews escorted by Israel policemen, stormed on Sunday morning Al- Aqsa mosque compound.

Director of Media at Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage, Mahmoud Abu Ata said that 76 Jewish settlers led by Glick stormed the compound.  He pointed out that Click [sic] stormed Al-Aqsa mosque provocatively, and toured the compound holding a book talking about the alleged temple.  Al-Aqsa mosque guards confronted the Jews and banned them from performing Talmudic rituals at the compound.

From the quiet, peaceful, rational, coexistence-seeking Islamic Religious Trust, the Waqf.

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