Dear Family & Friends

I cried this morning when I read Caroline Glick’s moving piece about UNESCO’s vile dissection of Israel’s 3000 year historical connection to our holy, sacred sites in our ancient Homeland. That is the only way the world’s ongoing prejudice against the Jewish people & our religion can really attack us. We somehow overcome the knives, guns, vehicular homicides & latest, a bus bomb – even & especially BDS & JStreet. But, when the world tries to destroy our connection to our precious Homeland, that’s the cruelest hit of all. We will overcome it, not to worry. But, we could use the prayers, wishes, words of disapproval by letter to UNESCO & the world media – & by social media. Notice how they always use the alphabet letters to hide their names!

Most of all, know that Israel is the Homeland of the Jewish people & always will be. All of our ancient Jewish holy sites are ours & yours if this is your Homeland.

If you are in galut, abroad someplace, come home. We need you. But, you need us & your Homeland more.

Why go to foreign countries where a Jew cannot walk down the street with his kippah on his head or Magen David necklace around her neck, without being cursed or spit on or beaten up or worse, G-d forbid. The yogurt is supposed to 3 shekels cheaper in Berlin, but they hate us there as before. It’s just not worth 3 shekels.

So come home really or really want to hard enough. “If you will it, it is no dream.” I know because I made my final Aliyah in August 2012 after 127 roundtrips & I am grateful for every day I’m here.

Now my home is full of grandchildren & my 2 great grandchildren coming & going. My kitchen smells wonderful for Pesach/Shabbat Friday. More cooking tomorrow.

Today I celebrated Pesach early at a family picnic in the beautiful pine forest at sunset on the hills of Judea! Two grandsons made a spectacular campfire & roasted chicken wings with buried potatoes, fresh cucumbers & 3 juicy oranges. Yum!

Life is good, great & wonderful, Baruch HaShem! Thank G-d!

The moon is shining through my roof window, growing to full by Friday!

Have a gentle night, a happy day. All the very best, Gail/Geula/Savta/Savta Raba x 2/Mom

1.Where UNESCO & ISIS converge By Caroline Glick

2.Green-Lined pollard Suffers Clapper Craptrap by Yisrael Medad

3.Terrorist who set off bomb on Jerusalem bus dies of wounds

4.‘Apartheid Week’ really does threaten Israel, some experts warn

5.Dry Bones by Ya’acov Kirschen “Bus Bombing in Jerusalem”

6.Israel blasts TIME’s insistent depiction of terrorist as victim

8.After declaring autonomy, Syrian Kurds ‘open to ties with Israel’

1.Where UNESCO & ISIS converge By Caroline Glick, JPOST.com 4/20/16

Palmyra “carries the memory of the Syrian people, and the values of cultural diversity, tolerance and openness that have made this region a cradle of civilization.”

Palmyra, Syria

Last month, UNESCO’s director general, Irina Bokova, issued a statement congratulating Russian- backed Syrian forces for liberating the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State (ISIS).

Bokova said Palmyra “carries the memory of the Syrian people, and the values of cultural diversity, tolerance and openness that have made this region a cradle of civilization.”
Bokova added, “The deliberate destruction of heritage is a war crime, and UNESCO will do everything in its power to document the damage so that these crimes do not go unpunished. I wish to remind all parties present of the absolute necessity to preserve this unique heritage as an essential condition for peace and the future of the region.”

Last week, UNESCO’s executive board passed a resolution unanimously outlining the steps the organization would take to rebuild the devastated site, whose major monuments were destroyed or damaged during the city’s 10 months under ISIS rule.

All of this, is all very well and nice.

The problem is that UNESCO commits the very crimes for which it condemns ISIS. Indeed, it committed the crime of seeking to wipe out history, whose preservation is “an essential condition for peace and the future of the region,” the day it passed its resolution on Palmyra.

Right after UNESCO’s board unanimously passed its resolution on Palmyra, it also passed a resolution whose goal is to erase Jewish history in the land of Israel.

The resolution, titled merely “Occupied Palestine,” (a country that doesn’t even exist), defined the Temple Mount, Judaism’s most sacred site, as an exclusively Muslim site. Jews who visit it were referred to derisively as “right wing extremists.”

The Western Wall, Judaism’s second holiest site, was similarly referred to as an exclusively Islamic site.

The resolution reinstated a previous resolution’s false claim that the tombs of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people in Hebron and Bethlehem are mosques. The resolution, like the one from last week, was also a war crime, where UNESCO acted with malice to destroy the historical record.

In another act of cultural aggression, whose goal is to destroy the historical record, in last week’s resolution UNESCO falsely and maliciously referred to Jewish cemeteries as “fake graves,” in “Muslim cemeteries.”

And if that weren’t enough, UNESCO denounced Israel for the “conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into so-called Jewish ritual baths or into Jewish prayer places.”

UNESCO’s acts are not the ravings of lunatic extremists or genocidal imperialists shouting about caliphates, crucifying and enslaving innocents. The latest resolution was sponsored by supposedly moderate Islamic countries, two of which – Jordan & Egypt – have peace treaties with Israel.

Support for the resolution wasn’t limited to Islamic countries voting as a bloc. France, Spain, Sweden, Slovenia, India, Russia and Argentina were among the nations who voted in favor of a decision that referred to the Western Wall in scare quotes.

The US sits on UNESCO’s executive board despite its open anti-Semitism. By doing so, the US grants legitimacy to a body which is waging a culture war against Israel no less determined – and arguably no less criminal– than ISIS’s war against all vestiges of non-jihadist culture in Syria, Iraq and throughout the world.

And why shouldn’t it act in this way? Much of the cultural elite in the Western world has joined UNESCO in its campaign to erase Jewish civilization from the historical and scientific record.

UNESCO’s culture war against Israel is of course led by the Palestinians. The entire Palestinian national narrative is based on a conscious cooptation and theft of Jewish history. The Palestinians themselves understand exactly what they are doing.

In 2011, The Guardian and al Jazeera published what they referred to as “the Palestine Papers.” The papers were taken from the PLO’s negotiations support unit, charged with instructing Palestinian negotiators with Israel about their positions in the talks.

Among the papers was one that explained why the Jewish connection to the entire land of Israel – rather than just to Judea and Samaria – must be denied at all costs.

“Recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine,” the document warned.

That document was nothing new. Rather, it was simply a restatement of the PLO Charter. The charter states, “Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaisim, being a religion is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.”

PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas lives by these lies.

He has repeatedly denied the historical record, proclaiming that there was never a Jewish temple in Jerusalem and that Jews have no history in the land of Israel.

No Palestinian leader has ever disagreed with him.

Rather, the PLO has a long, unbroken record of committing war crimes no different from ISIS’s in deliberately destroying Jewish antiquities, starting with the Temple Mount, which, since the PA was established in 1994 has been the focus of sustained campaign of destruction ordered by PA leaders and conducted by Palestinians.

Like the Temple Mount – the cradle not only of Judaism but of Christianity as well – so Jewish sites throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza have been systematically plundered, torched, vandalized, turned into mosques and destroyed by the Palestinians, often acting on orders from the PA . The Shalom al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho was first destroyed immediately after the PA took control of the city in 1994. The same is the case of the ancient synagogue in Gaza. Joseph’s Tomb and in Nablus was torched and turned into a mosque.

In 2014 UNESCO declared the ruins of Bar Kochba’s fortress of Beitar a World Heritage Site. Except that they called it Battir. And they said it was a Roman site.

And they erased its Jewish roots, claiming the terraced agriculture the Jews of ancient Israel developed was a Roman innovation.

When UNESCO began considering Beitar’s application for its protected status, The New York Times eagerly published its historical revisionism.

This is not surprising. The Times has repeatedly reported stories whose purpose is to erase the Jewish history of Israel. Last October, the Times published a story about the Temple Mount which cast aside mountains of evidence, gathered over decades by professional archaeologists, in order to question whether the Jewish temples were really located there.

In elite universities, students receive doctorates and go on to receive tenure despite, or perhaps due to their publication of politicized research, which free from evidence, demonizes Israel and Israelis as colonialist implants with no history or rights to Israel.

For instance, in 2007, Barnard College granted tenure to Nadia Abu El-Haj. In 2001, El-Haj, an anthropologist with no training or experience in archaeology, published Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society.

In her book, El-Haj alleged that Israeli archaeologists have deliberately falsified their findings. El-Haj claimed that the artifacts and sites they discovered and excavated were actually Islamic but the Jews hid the evidence. Jews, she said, also destroyed Christian sites with bulldozers.

Harvard Professor James Russell referred to her book as “malign fantasy,” designed to demonstrate the “colonial essence” of Zionism by denying the history of “Jewish sovereignty and long historical presence.”

But most of El-Haj’s esteemed colleagues applauded her act of academic aggression against history and science. Her colleagues at Barnard rewarded her with tenure. Her colleagues throughout the academic world showered her book with applause.

In so doing, they, like the governments that supported the UNESCO resolution denying Jewish history, and condemning Israel for stubbornly defending its heritage, and like the New York Times and other elite publications that publish as fact Palestinian historical falsehoods, are committing the same war crime that ISIS committed in Palmyra. They are, in Bokova’s words, engaging in “the deliberate destruction of heritage.”

Just as Bokova pledged to document all of ISIS’s war crimes against ancient heritage sites “so that these crimes do not go unpunished,” so Israel should document the actions of UNESCO and its allies that aid and abet the destruction of Jewish heritage sites.

History itself will convict them.

Where UNESCO & ISIS converge By Caroline Glick

2.GREEN-LINED Pollard suffers Clapper craptrap By Yisrael Medad 04/18/2016

As this newspaper reported, US spy chief James Clapper has claimed in a filing to a New York court that Jonathan Pollard continues to hold “sensitive and confidential information classified as top secret,” and should be restricted in his parole…[and] Pollard’s release could cause serious harm to the national security of the United States.
And this is somehow based on his esteemed judgment that information obtained by the former-spy pre-imprisonment is still considered sensitive, giving reason to impose limitations on his release.

In the first instance, this is but a refashioned Catch-22. As we know, Catch-22 is a type of unsolvable logic puzzle sometimes called a double bind. It is a paradoxical situation from which an individual cannot escape because of contradictory rules.

Can Clapper inform us just when Pollard’s supposed knowledge of sensitive information expires as regards its dangerous value and possible harm caused? When does Pollard cease being a risk? Or is it forever?
This reminds me of Vladimir Slepak’s appearance on the BBC Panorama program four decades ago when he was asked to explain his refused exit visa based on his knowledge of Russia’s technology. He told his interviewer that he told his supervisor that there are no secrets he could reveal to the West because the West was a decade ahead of the Soviets in this field. Russia was woefully behind. The supervisor told him, “ah, yes, but that is the secret”.

But let us return to Clapper. Have we forgotten his own ‘knowledge’?
I quote from an item in Politico by Josh Gerstein on February 10, 2011:- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is backing away from comments he made Thursday calling Egypt’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement “largely secular.”
At a House Intelligence Committee hearing earlier in the day, Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) questioned Clapper about the threat posed by the group. Clapper replied by suggesting that the Egyptian part of the Brotherhood is not particularly extreme and that the broader international movement is hard to generalize about.
“The term ‘Muslim Brotherhood’…is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence…In other countries, there are also chapters or franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally.”

Any judge who would trust a background estimation brief by Clapper should immediately have alarm bells going off in his mind.
Does US President Obama trust him?
Back on September 9, 2015, Clapper testified that U.S. intelligence officials have a “huge concern” about Islamic State’s ability to infiltrate waves of Syrian war refugees flowing into Europe and potentially the United States… “one of the obvious issues that we worry about, and in turn as we bring refugees into this country, is exactly what’s their background?”…“We don’t obviously put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees.”

But this week we have been informed that the State Department is hoping to bring an average of nearly 1,500 Syrian refugees to the United States per month in order to meet President Obama’s target of settling 10,000 refugees in the country by September. About 1,300 refugees have already been placed in the United States since Obama first made the commitment in September.

If Obama can toss Clapper to the wastebasket, so can Pollard’s judge.

3.Terrorist who set off bomb on Jerusalem bus dies of wounds By Daniel K. Eisenbud JPost.com 04/20/2016 21:22

· Police: Jerusalem public bus explosion caused by bomb

IDF demolishes home of terrorist who murdered Shlomit Krigman

Shaare Zedek Medical Center spokeswoman Shoham Ruvio said the man, who lost both legs in the explosion, died at approximately 7 p.m. following multiple surgeries, but that police and hospital staff have yet to ascertain his identity.
An unidentified male passenger of Egged Bus No. 12, which exploded in an unconfirmed terrorist attack on Monday in Jerusalem, died Wednesday evening, as police continue to investigate who is responsible for the blast that wounded 20 other men, women and children.
“We don’t know anything about him – his name, his age, anything,” said Ruvio on Wednesday night, adding that a 13-year-old girl and 34-year-old woman remain at the hospital in light-to-moderate condition.

Amid a gag order, police have not responded to multiple Israeli reports that the unidentified man was a suicide bomber.
Meanwhile, following a protracted investigation into terrorist activity in the flash point east Jerusalem neighborhood of Isawiya, Border Police arrested 31 suspects during an early morning raid Wednesday that turned into a full-scale riot.
“Counterterrorism intelligence gathered over the last several weeks in connection with those suspects showed they possessed illegal weapons, participated in rioting, and numerous other serious disturbances,” said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.
After identifying the dozens of suspects involved, heavily-armed officers entered the neighborhood on Mount Scopus at approximately 4 a.m. to carry out the arrests, he said.
However, shortly after arriving, a large group of masked Palestinians began throwing rocks at police, as well as a pipe bomb that exploded near the officers, although none were wounded.
Rosenfeld said it took the officers nearly two hours to disperse the rioters using stun grenades and other non-lethal means, and then carry out the arrests. No injuries were reported during the extended clash, he said.
Additionally, 18 other suspects living in the neighborhood were given court orders to appear for security offenses, he said.
Following the arrests, Amnesty International Israel released a statement claiming that police are utilizing heavy-handed collective punishment tactics in Isawiya, and arresting children as young as 10.
“Amnesty International Israel has expressed serious concerns about the Israeli police raid in the east Jerusalem village [sic] of Isawiya today,” the statement said.
“Evidence and reports that came to us raises concerns that police operations in the village [sic] are mainly intended for children and youth, designed to collectively deter residents by conducting arbitrary arrests in violation of international law.”
The left-wing human rights group also accused the police of damaging the property of several residents of the neighborhood.
“We urgently call for the release of detained minors and an independent investigation into the allegations of violations of the rights of residents there,” the statement continued.
Rosenfeld dismissed Amnesty International’s allegations, saying the raid was carefully planned and orchestrated, adding that no property was damaged.
“The police operations were planned ahead of time based on concrete intelligence on the suspects who were involved in terrorism and riots,” he said.
“There was no damage whatsoever caused to property, and police units left the area immediately after the suspects were arrested.”
Since the wave of attacks engulfed the capital last October, the vast majority of attacks against Jews and security personnel have been carried out by minors, some as young as 11, due to Palestinian incitement and their relative legal immunity.
During this time, Palestinians have carried out 211 stabbings, 83 shootings, and 42 vehicular attacks, killing 34 Jews, according to information on the Foreign Ministry’s website.
Approximately 200 Palestinians have been killed by security forces over the same period, 130 of whom were said by Israel to have been conducting an attack at the time of their death.
The remaining 70 people died in clashes with Israeli security forces, or with Jewish residents living in the West Bank.

Going against prevailing wisdom, pro-Israel voices sound the alarm on Students for Justice in Palestine’s flagship project, saying the annual campus onslaught fuels attacks on Jewish students, erodes support for Israel

By Matt Lebovic March 18, 2016, 3:34 pm

A 2014 Middle East Monitor cartoon shows an Israeli war plane bombing Gaza while a ‘BDS’ missile heads toward the plane. (Courtesy)

In the assessment of some Israel supporters, loud elements of the pro-Israel community have made mountains out of molehills with their reaction to IAW, the annual Israel-bashing fest of Students for Justice in Palestine. In the words of an anonymous “Northeast Hillel director” quoted by JTA this week, “Apartheid Week” and other SJP activities amount to “kind of a big nothing.

“Many pro-Israel activists say their most successful strategy is simply to ignore it,” said Nadya Drukker, Brooklyn College’s Hillel director, in the article.

But on another part of the pro-Israel PR spectrum, some activists vehemently oppose an “ignore it” strategy, and are ringing alarms about the growth of campus anti-Semitism catalyzed by SJP’s supposedly “big nothing” activities — notably including the group’s quest to eliminate Jews from student government, aided by partners like Palestine Legal.

“Israeli Apartheid Week is a tremendous source of anti-Semitic expression and incitement of hatred for the Jewish state and Jews generally,” said Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, cofounder and director of the Israel advocacy AMCHA Initiative.

As SJP’s most publicized anti-Israel fest, IAW icons include the ugly gray apartheid wall, usually covered in “facts” to demonize Israel; mock Israeli military “check-points” set up to “simulate” the daily lives of Palestinians & ubiquitous calls to “de-normalize” relations with Israel & implement BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) against the Jewish state. (IAW is held worldwide in various countries between February & April; in the US this year, it is taking place between March 27 & April 3.)

Since its creation in 2005 by Arab students in Toronto, rolling “Apartheid Weeks” have taken place on North American campuses during the spring semester, with funding and guidance from the far-left Jewish Voice for Peace. For Jewish college students who visibly identify as such, the annual hate-fest can be a dreaded ordeal.

“Frequently during Israeli Apartheid Week and BDS campaigns, Jewish students are singled out, harassed, intimidated and even assaulted, regardless of their feelings on Israel,” Rossman-Benjamin told The Times of Israel in an interview. “Jewish students report feeling afraid to display their Jewish Star necklaces, wear their Jewish sorority or fraternity letters, or walk to Hillel for Shabbat dinner during these heightened weeks,” she said.

Last week, AMCHA released study findings that correlate BDS activities and anti-Semitic incidents on American campuses. From swastikas spray-painted onto the porches of Jewish fraternities, to students being punched at pro-Israel gatherings, the study called BDS a key driver of anti-Semitic incidents at dozens of universities. On some campuses, faculty & administrators actively support SJP and the BDS movement, adding fuel — and badly needed legitimacy — to anti-Israel fires.

“Israeli Apartheid Week activities are often sponsored by university groups and academic departments, sending a message that the anti-Semitic aspects are completely acceptable,” said Rossman-Benjamin.

In addition to flashier, public displays of hating on Israel, SJP has been strengthening its model and organizational structure to achieve more tangible results, according to a report issued by the Washington-based Israel on Campus Coalition last month.

“SJP’s institutional development poses a critical challenge for pro-Israel activists,” said the report. “The emergence of a national agenda marks a shift toward strategic planning, an important precondition for effective activism. Much like its strategy-building efforts, SJP’s updated leadership model lays the foundation for further organizational development,” according to ICC researchers.

Leaked plan calls for ‘unity’ to dismantle Israel

In this year’s “Apartheid Week” game-plan, leaked to The Times of Israel, SJP organizers call for tactics like increased use of social media and coalition-building on campus. Although BDS resolutions are rarely passed by a North American student government — much less implemented by the host university — SJP leaders consider their flagship project to be anything but “a big nothing.”

“Ten years since its launch, the BDS movement is now widely recognized by Palestinians, the solidarity movement, Israel and its supporters as a key way in which we can hold Israel to account and end international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism,” according to the document.

Among new tactics offered in the IAW plan, an “Olympics Without Apartheid” campaign calls on activists to condemn this summer’s Rio Olympics, partly due to a (cancelled) partnership between the Brazilian host city and the firm International Security and Defense Systems, which SJP called “one of Israel’s nastiest military companies.

“Local campaigners against the impact of the Olympics and Palestine activists are linking up to resist the way the Rio 2016 Olympics is resulting in forced displacement in Rio and supporting Israeli apartheid in Palestine,” according to SJP.

Not surprisingly, the document gives unqualified support for Palestinians’ ongoing “intifada” against Israeli civilians and soldiers, in which terrorists — many of them adolescents — have attacked hundreds of Israelis with knives, cars, guns, and explosives. Making no mention of incitement or terrorism, SJP frames the violence as a response to Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians, a population that has grown exponentially since modern Zionism’s advent in the 1880s.

“Since October 2015, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been joining demonstrations and protesting Israel’s regime of apartheid and settler-colonialism,” according to the document. “The ongoing, youth-led Palestinian uprising is a response to Israel’s intensifying ethnic cleansing and oppression of Palestinians, especially in occupied Jerusalem.”

Campus groups seeking to hold an official IAW must first agree to a “Basis of Unity” document, in which activists agree to undo Jewish statehood by implementing a “right of return.” There is a special call to target “artists, intellectuals and sports teams” — many of whom “legitimize Israeli apartheid by continuing business as usual.”

The state of the Jews on campus

According to the data-gathering Israel on Campus Coalition, the academic year has been filled with “joint lists of demands,” “intersectionality” & “baiting” — all strategies deployed by SJP to erode support for the Mideast’s lone democracy.

In contrast with a nonchalant stance toward SJP and BDS, the Coalition warns that anti-Israel groups are increasingly attempting to remove Jewish and pro-Israel voices from student governments, and that SJP has transformed into “a structured advocacy movement” since last year.

Not all is bleak for Israel supporters, however, as ICC researchers also reported increased pro-Israel campus activities in every region of the US since September.

“We have seen a steady increase in the amount of pro-Israel campus activity across all geographic regions,” according to last month’s ICC report on fall 2015 activities. “New England saw the largest increase in pro-Israel campus activity during the fall semester,” said the report.

According to Brandeis University junior Seth Greenwald, an activist affiliated with almost one-dozen pro-Israel groups, the expansion of travel opportunities to Israel for both Jewish and non-Jewish students has helped deter some Israel detractors from organizing, he said.

Calling on students to “proudly put forward Israel’s narrative,” Greenwald said Israel supporters must also explain the “two-faced and insidious” role of BDS in leading to — for instance — thousands of Palestinian job losses, while causing little economic damage to Israel.

“SJP attempts to instill fear and silence, rather than dialogue and discussion,” said Greenwald in an interview with The Times of Israel. “They call this anti-normalization, an unwillingness to speak with their enemy,” he said.

Widely acknowledged as a prime force in combating BDS on campus, the well-resourced StandWithUs views IAW as a platform for students and faculty to single out and demonize Israel among all nations, while hiding behind the guise of human rights for Palestinians.

“Apartheid Week is a problem in that it is part of a larger strategy to dehumanize Israelis, turn future leaders and opinion-makers against them, and ultimately eliminate Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” said Max Samarov, a StandWithUs strategist.

Samarov said there is no “one size fits all” strategy to deal with the growing BDS movement. Rather, pro-Israel students and administrators must determine responses on a “case-by-case basis,” and keep in mind that falafel does not sufficiently address charges of genocide, or the harassment of Jewish students on campus.

“We should avoid playing defense and use the week as motivation to develop and implement a proactive strategy of our own,” said Samarov. “At some campuses, anti-Israel displays and events really don’t reach outside the choir, and calling attention to them can be counterproductive. In other places these activities are more troublesome, and it is important to challenge misinformation on the spot and provide an alternative perspective,” he said.

READ MORE ON: Students for Justice in Palestine SJP, Israeli Apartheid Week, BDS Boycott Divestment Sanctions, American college campuses, anti-Semitism, Hillel, StandWithUs, Israel on Campus Coalition, Palestine, anti-Zionism, Palestinian terrorism, Brandeis University, Columbia University, United Nations, Third Intifada, 2016 Olympics, genocide, ethnic cleansing, university campuses, harassment, students, Brooklyn College, propaganda, falafel, Jewish Voice For Peace,

Dry Bones blog updates for winston@winstonglobal.org

5.Dry Bones by Ya’acov Kirschen “Bus Bombing in Jerusalem”

Just four days before Passover, a bomb exploded on a bus in Jerusalem, injuring over 21 people as it & other vehicles were engulfed in flames.

Dry Bones by Ya’acov Kirschen “Bus Bombing in Jerusalem”

Celebrating Terrorism, Palestinian Style by Khaled Abu Toameh
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7879/palestinians-celebrating-terrorism April 19, 2016 at 5:00 am

Shortly after the Jerusalem bus terror explosion attack on April 18, a number of Palestinian factions rushed to issue statements applauding the “heroic operation” and urging Palestinians to pursue the path of armed struggle against Israel.

The Palestinian jubilation over the terror attack, the first of its kind since the suicide bombings during the Second Intifada more than a decade ago, is yet another reminder of the growing radicalization among Palestinians. This radicalization is mostly attributed to the ongoing anti-Israel incitement and indoctrination by various Palestinian factions and leaders.

Not surprisingly, the first Palestinian group to applaud the Jerusalem bus attack was Hamas.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that his movement “welcomes the Jerusalem operation and considers it a natural response to Israeli crimes, especially extra-judicial executions and the desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

The Hamas spokesman was in fact echoing similar charges made by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who declared that Palestinians will not allow Jews to be “defiling the Aqsa Mosque with their filthy feet.”

How can anyone blame Hamas for making such accusations against Jews when Abbas, Israel’s peace partner, was the first to come out against tours by Jews to the Temple Mount? It is worth mentioning that Abbas’s allegations came only a few weeks before the eruption of the “Knife Intifada” in early October.

Another Hamas leader, Hussar Badran, also praised the terror attack. He said his movement was determined to pursue the resistance to “expel the occupation from our Palestinian lands.”

When Hamas leaders talk about “expelling the occupation from the Palestinian lands,” they mean that Israel should be eliminated and replaced with an Islamist empire.

On Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV, broadcaster Mohamed Hamed was so happy and excited to hear about the Jerusalem terror attack that he decided to salute the perpetrators.

Other Palestinians who are not necessarily Hamas supporters took to social media to praise the terror attack and call for more. On Twitter, many Palestinian activists created hashtags called #Bus12 and #TheRoofoftheBusGoesFlying to celebrate the terror attack.

Reflecting the state of jubilation over the Jerusalem terror attack, Palestinian cartoonists quickly joined the chorus of those celebrating the “heroic operation” against Israeli civilians. One of them, Omayya Juha, responded quickly by drawing a cartoon featuring a Palestinian woman celebrating the terror attack by ululating and handing out candies.

Within hours of the attack, Palestinian factions seemed to be competing with each other over who would issue the most supportive statement of the terror explosion. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)reacted by issuing separate statements applauding the Jerusalem bus blast. They said it marked a “qualitative development” in the intifada. The two groups vowed to continue killing Israelis as part of an effort to “escalate” the intifada. Later, another group called the Popular Resistance Committees issued its own statement in which it threatened “more painful strikes against the Zionist enemy.”

Even Abbas’s Fatah faction went to great pains to justify the terror attack. In an initial response to the attack, Fatah spokesman Ra’fat Elayan used Hamas’s words tocomment on the bus blast: “This is a natural response to Israeli practices against our people, including arrests, killings and recurring incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Later in the evening, there were reports that some Palestinians, particularly in the Gaza Strip, took to the streets to express their joy over the terror attack.

The public statements of the Palestinian leaders and groups after the Jerusalem terror attack are yet another sign of how they continue to incite their people against Israel. These are the type of statements that prompt Palestinian men and women to grab a knife (or in this case an explosive device) and set out to kill the first Jew they run into.

The major obstacle to peace with Israel remains the absence of education for peace with Israel. In fact, it is safe to say that there never was a real attempt on the part of Palestinian leaders and factions to prepare their people for peace with Israel. On the contrary, the message they send to their people remains extremely anti-Israel.

The incitement, threats and fiery rhetoric will only lead to more violence. For now, all indications are that the Palestinians are headed towards upgrading the “Knife Intifada” to a wave of bombings against civilian targets inside Israel. Judging from the reactions of the various Palestinian factions and activists, support for terror attacks against Israel is so widespread among Palestinians that they are prepared to celebrate the bombing of a bus carrying civilians. This casts doubt on the Palestinian leadership’s and people’s willingness to move toward peace and coexistence with Israel.

Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist, is based Jerusalem.

6.Israel blasts TIME’s insistent depiction of terrorist as victim

Magazine refusing to correct portrayal of Bahaa Allyan, who killed 3 Israelis, as ‘graphic designer’ shot by Israel, with no mention of his victims by Times Of Israel Staff March 18, 2016

The area of where the deadly bus attack took place in Armon Hanatziv was mostly empty on Wednesday (Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90)

Israel’s Government Press Office publicly attacked TIME magazine on Thursday for depicting a Palestinian terrorist who killed three people in October as a victim of Israeli security forces, and failing to issue any correction or clarification on the matter despite repeated requests by Israeli officials in the months since.

In a post on its website which it also shared on Facebook, the GPO blasted TIME editors who have refused to amend the October 15 story for “ignoring the victims and humanizing the attacker.”

The story reported on the October 13 terror attack in Jerusalem’s Armon Hanatziv neighborhood, when two armed Palestinian gunmen boarded an Egged bus and began shooting and stabbing passengers.

The terrorists killed three people: Haviv Haim, 78, Alon Govberg, 51, and American-Israeli Richard Lakin, 76, who was critically wounded and died some two weeks later.

Both terrorists were shot by police. Bilal Abu Ghanem was captured while Bahaa Allyan was killed.

The October 15 TIME story, titled “The Desperation Driving Young Palestinians to Violence,” simply referred to Allyan as “a graphic designer” who “was killed by Israeli security forces after allegedly trying to carry out an attack in Jerusalem.” It gave no further details about Alyan’s actions and made no mention of his victims.

“To our sorrow, repeated requests to Time Magazine, initially by an Israeli NGO and subsequently by the GPO, have all failed to induce Time to correct the serious factual error in the 15 October article,” the GPO said.

An Israeli NGO first approached TIME Magazine correspondent Rebecca Collard [who wrote the story] on October 18 and received no response. The Government Press Office contacted Collard on February 25, presented the facts and demanded a correction. Neither recognition nor correction of the erroneous article resulted. When contacted again, TIME Magazine correspondent Collard wrote to the GPO on March 4: “I’ve forwarded your concerns to my editors.”

“Another reminder and a letter to the Time International editor did not help and the article still — five months after the attack — presents the murderer of three civilians as a seemingly innocent Palestinian graphic designer who was inexplicably killed by Israel,” the Government Press Office said. “Israel has been criticized recently for confronting some of the foreign media with accusations of bias. Let the reader be the judge.”

Victims of the shooting expressed their anger over the misleading text to the Ynet news website.

Maya Rachimi, who was injured in the attack, said of Aylan’s depiction as a graphic designer: “I had no idea that leaving me with two scars on my body and a punctured lung — after stabbing me with a 20cm-long knife — was professional artwork, not terrorism.”

The deceased Lakin’s son Micha Avni said he was not surprised by the magazine’s conduct and accused it of anti-Israeli bias. “Those who cannot call terrorism — terrorism, and condemn the murder of Israelis as well as American citizens, are part of the problem, and are inciting to terrorism by staying silent,” he said.

GPO director Nitzan Chen said the office had resorted to publicly shaming TIME as it had lost patience for “completely distorted media reports… We decided we would not longer be silent.”

He said he expected an apology from the magazine. “That is the minimum that can be asked for the families who lost their loved ones in this murderous attack,” he said.

8.After declaring autonomy, Syrian Kurds ‘open to ties with Israel’

Israeli professor says Jerusalem should endorse Kurdish aspirations in war-torn Syria, can help defeat Islamic State by Dov Lieber March 18, 2016, 6:08 Pm

Dov Lieber is The Times of Israel’s Arab affairs correspondent.

In this Saturday, July 25, 2015 file photo, a demonstrator waves the People’s Protection Units flag, known as YPG, which is the main Kurdish fighting force in Syria, during a demonstration in Irbil, the Northern Kurdish region of Iraq. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)

After the main Syrian Kurdish group officially declared areas under its control in northern Syria a federalized autonomous region this week, the Syrian regime and opposition, as well as Turkey, immediately rejected the declaration.

The group was also not given a seat at the table of peace negotiations taking place in Geneva.

Despite not being recognized, the Syrian Kurds have fully governed their region for two years. Their governance has been overwhelmingly democratic, egalitarian and secular in a region where totalitarian and Islamist ideologies prevail.

The only other areas in the Middle East that can be characterized in this way are the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq — where minorities are well-protected under new laws & Israel.

“[The Syrian Kurds] are a community of people who are willing to cooperate with Israel,” Professor Ofra Bengio, head of the Kurdish studies program at Tel Aviv University, told The Times of Israel on Thursday. There have not been any pro-Israel public declarations by Kurdish Syrians leaders, Bengio said, “but I know that some have been to Israel behind the scenes but do not publicize it.”

Professor Ofra Bengio (Courtesy)

The Kurdish expert said that she has made personal contacts with Syrian Kurds who would like to send the message that they are willing to have relations.

“This is like the Kurds of Iraq behind the scenes. Once they feel stronger, they can think about taking relations into the open,” she said.

Israel has had a secretive relationship with the Iraqi Kurds, including limited military assistance, and Israel has been a willing buyer of the KRG’s oil. When the autonomous Iraqi region decided it would defy Baghdad’s orders last year and begin selling its own oil directly, Israel was one of the first countries to give the Iraqi Kurds the economic outlet and much needed money to fund their fight against the Islamic State.

A report by the Financial Times estimated that Israel had purchased 19 million barrels of Iraqi Kurdish oil, worth roughly $1 billion, between May and August of last year.

Bengio believes Israel should move quickly to give behind-the-scenes support to the nascent Syrian Kurdish polity.

“This is the most effective party that can defeat the Islamic State and stand as a bulwark against it. The more ways we can find ways to cooperate with them the better for us,” she said.

Making a comparison to when Israel’s Arab neighbors immediately declared war on the nascent Jewish state after independence was declared in 1948, Bengio said, “The Kurds in Syria were a non-entity in 2012. In a few years, they have been building their state while fighting for it at the same time, just like what happened with Israel.”

“Israel can gain friendship with a party that is stable, pro-Israel, more democratic, more open and liberal. The role of women in Kurdish Syria is open, more egalitarian than any other place in the region,” she added.

In June of 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed support of the Kurdish cause.

“We should … support the Kurdish aspiration for independence,” he said, adding that the Kurds are “a nation of fighters [who] have proved political commitment and are worthy of independence.”

The prime minister, however, did not specify whether he supported only the Iraqi Kurds, or the struggle of Kurdish minorities in Syria, Iran and Turkey as well.

More recently, in January, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked called for an independent Kurdistan between Iran and Turkey, and urged an enhanced policy of cooperation between Israel and the Kurds.

Turkey, however, with whom Israel is going to great lengths to repair relations, is greatly opposed to the Syrian Kurdish independence movement. Ankara views the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has renewed a decades-old insurgency since peace talks collapsed last year. The US also considers the PKK a terrorist group.

Bengio dismissed Turkey’s accusation that the PYD is a terrorist group. She said that even though the PYD is linked to the PKK, it did not carry out terrorist attacks, nor does the US label the PYD a terrorist organization as it does the PKK.

“Today, the PYD is working to stabilize what they have achieved since 2012. It’s not logical to believe they would open up another front with Turkey,” she said.

She added that despite Turkey’s opposition, the PYD has managed to receive the support of both the US and Russia.

Though relations between Syrian Kurds & Israel would be secret, Bengio believes that Israel should stand strong in its support of Syria’s Kurds & break the linkage between its relations with Turkey & that of the Kurds. She cited Turkey’s support of Hamas while it continues to have relations with Israel.

“Turkey supports Hamas that openly seeks to annihilate Israel. While this is still the case, Israel should at least have the right to provide humanitarian support the Syrian Kurds,” Bengio said.

Tamar Hussein Ibrahim, a Syrian Kurdish journalist currently living in Irbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, said that neither Israel nor Syrians Kurds should shy away from publicly declaring mutual support.

“Israel should openly support and endorse Kurdish aspirations in Syria and the Syrian political factions should publicly declare these relations. At the end of day, this will be good step for the stability and coexistence in the region,” he said.

“Israel can have a trustworthy and reliable ally in the new Syria and I think the Kurds are the ones ready for that,” he added.