Columnist Ben Caspit writes on Facebook this morning regarding the report yesterday that President Rivlin never visited the family of Baby Adele Biton HY"D (May God Avenger her blood), who passed away a couple of months ago two years after being the victim of a terror attack.
מהבוקר אני רואה כאן ברשת ידיעה מפוברקת על הנשיא ריבלין, לפיה הוא לא ביקר את הוריה של אדל ביטון "כדי לא להרגיז את... http://t.co/cixAgWttCV
The full Facebook post is at that link and its quite short. Here's a much better translation than Facebook will give you.
Since this morning, I see a fabricated report on President Rivlin that claims that he did not visit the parents of Adele Biton "so as not to anger the Arabs." This is a cheap and transparent fabrication at an imaginary site from a reporter who does not exist, which does not stop many Right wing degenerates from spreading it and accusing Rivlin of treason. To permit [taking the life] of the country's President, the Right wing ideologue, the picture of beauty and morality.
It is apparent that the idiots never end, they just change identities. Rivlin visited the Biton family and said powerful emotional words in the family's home. But the lowlifes of limited intelligence do their own thing. We have learned nothing, and apparently we will not learn anything. This is how it is when there are no brains.
The story I saw - on Arutz Sheva's website - and on which I based my post, was based on an interview with Adele's mother, and said nothing about him 'deserving to die' (God Forbid) or anything similar.
If you read the Arutz Sheva story carefully, you will see that Mrs. Biton criticized the President for not visiting in the hospital. It is true that he paid a shiva (condolence) call when they were sitting shiva for Baby Adele five months ago.
What Caspit is actually referring to is this story - which describes threats that Rivlin has received since speaking out against the firebombing of the Arab home in Duma and the stabbing of a participant at the gay pride parade in Jerusalem - both on Thursday. The death threats are disgusting and deserve condemnation. But Adele Biton's mother is not their source, and the story only mentions Adele among several terror victims named by Rivlin. Adele's mother deserves to be left in peace at least as much as the President does. It's unfair of Caspit to blame her.
I've met President Rivlin and admire him greatly even if I don't always agree with him. Ironically, if you go to the last link, you will see Rivlin wearing a kaffiyeh with curses written in Hebrew in the top right corner of the picture. In the background are Jewish holy books.... When I met him, he was speaker of the Knesset, and I was taken to his office by a client to meet him. His Knesset office was also filled with Jewish holy books. The man deserves better.
Buzi Herzog has lived through everything and learned nothing
Israel's Left has spent nearly 20 years turning purported Rabin assassin Yigal Amir into the national bogeyman, while accusing the Right - and particularly Binyamin Netanyahu - of inciting the Rabin assassination. Now, the Left is trying to incite the assassination of Naftali Bennett - who is not as pliable as Binyamin Netanyahu - by putting up posters like the one above which claims that Yigal Amir (who is not allowed to vote) has told his family to vote for Bennett.
The title of this post doesn't just describe Tzipi Livni. It describes some comments she made on a satirical television show on Saturday night.
Writing on Facebook, [former Shin Bet chief and Netanyahu critic Yuval] Diskin said that Livni’s remarks were “unacceptable and ugly”.
“I normally have a great appreciation for Livni’s attitudes and
values, but in this case I'm coming out against her in the most
aggressive manner,” he said.
“It is permissible and even desirable to criticize,” stressed Diskin.
“This is in part the essence of democracy. Personally, I too have
criticism over the conduct of the Prime Minister and his leadership
style and his lack of personal example. But there is a fine line in my
opinion, that once people cross it, they become what Netanyahu and his
friends were when they ignored the incitement of their supporters
against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.”
“I call on Tzipi Livni, as well as on many of my friends, to immediately apologize for her remarks,” said Diskin.
Livni, who appeared on the “Matzav HaUma” (State of the Union) satirical program on Channel 2 on Saturday night, took satire to a different level and was perceived to have gone beyond the realms of political correctness.
"Two potential Prime Ministers are better than an impotent Prime Minister,” Livni said of her unity pact with Labor leader MK Yitzhak Herzog.
"Yitzhak and I decided to take out the garbage together," Livni said,
hinting at Netanyahu. She later said, “The truth is that Bibi said that
we’re going to elections because of the 0% VAT. I thought there is a
zero in this story, but it’s not the VAT.”
The comments were criticized by Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz
(Likud), who said, "Since we cut off ties with [Palestinian Authority
Chairman Mahmoud] Abbas she has simply become unbalanced. She's addicted
to talks with the Palestinians and can't quit."
Coalition chairman MK Ze’ev Elkin denounced the derogatory comments as well, telling Arutz Sheva that Livni had “completely lost it” in her appearance on the show.
“What we saw last night is beyond who we saw during the previous
Knesset term. Even in terms of style and expression level it seems that
she completely lost it,” said Elkin, who added, “I want to see all the
reporters who attacked me for calling [Livni and Herzog] ‘the beauty and
the geek who will not pass the threshold’ speaking out against Livni
now. I used parliamentary expressions but she stooped to a new low. But I
guess the left is allowed to lash out using such crude expressions.
This is probably part of the rules of the game.”
In an earlier post, I reported that police were attempting to place two Jewish teenagers under arrest for putting up posters protesting the upcoming visit of Pope Francis I. Early this afternoon, a Jerusalem judge threw out the arrests.
Jerusalem Magistrates' Court Judge Shmuel Herbst rejected early
Friday afternoon a request by police to place two youths under house
arrest for seven days, distance them from Jerusalem and slap them with a
security deposit after they were caught putting up posters hostile to
Pope Francis.
The posters said, among other things, that Christianity is an
“accursed” religion that is complicit in the murder of millions of Jews,
and that its leaders dream of “annihilating the Jewish state.” It
called on the “impure” pope to “get out of our holy land” and “return
the stolen vessels of the Temple.”
Police claimed this was incitement to racism but the judge rejected
this, determining that “theological arguments and disputes between
religions have existed from time immemorial and these arguments do not
constitute a danger to the public.”
The judge added that there is a “very weak” case to be made against
the sentence that says Christians dream of annihilating the Jewish
state, but that it does not constitute racism in any case.
He ruled that the youths are allowed to protest against the pope, but
determined that they may not come within 150 meters of him.
Meanwhile, the police continue to announce administrative detention orders against known activists whom they'd like to keep out of sight while the Pope is here.
Police on Friday announced ten more nationalist activists would have
restraining orders issued against them, bringing the total to 15 ahead
of Pope Francis's visit next Sunday and Monday.
"Yesterday the head of the Jerusalem district mentioned that there
would be a further 10," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP without giving details.
The detentions began Wednesday, when several Jewish youths were put under house arrest in a move justified by concerns they might carry out "provocative acts" during the pope's visit.
This is the Middle East's only 'democracy.' Obama could take lessons from us.
The 'settlers' council' has filed a police complaint for incitement against Leftist icon Amos Oz after Oz referred to 'hilltop youth' as neo-Nazis. They expect Oz to be arrested 'within hours' as happened earlier this week to a Yitzhar woman who advocated throwing stones at Arabs and IDF soldiers. Somehow, I don't think Oz will be arrested....
Representatives of the Binyamin and Samaria Residents Council filed a
complaint with the Israel Police against Amos Oz on Sunday, following
the author's comments that "hilltop youth" were "neo-Nazis", Channel 2
reported.
"The writer's words are serious incitement to racial hatred, and for
that he deserves the Nobel Prize in racism," said the Council.
Executive Director Sagi Keisler said that he expects that police will arrest Oz in the coming hours.
"Following the precedent of Eliraz Fein from Yitzhar,
who wrote similarly unsavory things in the settlement's internal forum
and was arrested immediately afterwards, the police can't ignore the
writer's grave incitement," he said.
Fein was arrested last week after she published a statement
online reading “I am in favor of throwing rocks (at Jews, in terms of
Arabs there of course isn’t any question), even in a situation where
the rock kills a soldier!!!”
As Obama heads for Saudi Arabia, he's hiding a dark truth
As President Hussein Obama heads to Saudi Arabia later this month, ostensibly to discuss "countering violent extremism," he is hiding a dark truth. Since 2012, the United States under Obama has been sitting on a report on Saudi textbooks that likely shows that those texts are chocked full of Islamic extemism. Of course, they don't want to offend the Saudis....
The study, commissioned in a reported $500,000 State Department
contract in 2011, was the most comprehensive ever commissioned.
Completed in late 2012, the findings with their implications on radical
indoctrination and anti-Semitism have been kept hidden from the public.
However, a new report published by the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, a Washington-based think-tank, quoting sources familiar
with the hidden study, notes Saudi textbooks still “create a climate
that fosters exclusivity, intolerance, and calls to violence that put
religious and ethnic minorities at risk.”
Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human
Rights and Labor in Obama's first term when the study was commissioned,
told The Daily Beast that the option was always open to publish the study, even if that wasn't the original intention.
“We commissioned the study to assess and evaluate the content of the
textbooks with the intention of sharing our findings with the Saudi
government and with the option, depending on the findings, of making it
public if the problems persisted,” Posner remarked.
Posner noted the security dangers associated with Saudi Arabia's
traditionally hateful textbooks, given that such learning materials
radicalize the next generation. Alarmingly, the textbooks aren't only
used in Saudi schools; they are sent free of charge to Muslim schools
worldwide, including in the US.
As you might imagine, the textbooks are particularly hostile to Jews.
“Among the references that were most offensive were commentaries that
linked Christians and Jews to apes and pigs,” Posner revealed. “If
those references are still in some textbooks then the problem hasn’t
been solved.”
An example of the anti-Semitic content in Saudi textbooks was
revealed in a 2006 cable from the US embassy in Riyadh. Disclosed on
WikiLeaks, the cable reports that an eighth grade textbook reads
"God will punish any Muslim who does not literally obey God just as God
punished some Jews by turning them into pigs and monkeys.”
Read the whole thing. With this President, it's just one disgrace after another.
Given how unpopular Lapid's budget is, it probably could have been just about anyone.
But I have to say that the picture above looks more like something that would appear on LATMA than like a serious effort at 'incitement.' He doesn't look like a Nazi in the picture - just like someone doing a poor job of disguise.
The Yesha (revenants') Council has sent a letter to the police, accusing Haaretz's Amira Hass of inciting violence against the revenants by writing a column that claims that the 'Palestinians' have a 'right' to throw stones at the revenants.
In a column published Wednesday, Ha'aretz writer Amira Hass,
who lives in the PA city of Ramallah, wrote, “Throwing stones is the
right and the duty of anyone living under foreign rule.” Later in the
column she termed rock-throwing “a metaphor for resistance.” Hass is the
official Ha'aretz correspondent for what the newspaper labels the "occupied territories".
Hass, who also lived in Gaza for three years in contravention
of Israeli law, wrote that arrests of rock throwers "is part of the role
of the foreign occupation, no less than gunfire, torture during
investigations, land theft... and discrimination in distribution of
water."
Several recent rock attacks by Arabs targeting Israelis living in
Judea and Samaria have caused serious injury. In the most serious case, a
terrorist wounded a mother and three of her children, including a
3-year-old who was critically injured. All were rushed to the hospital, including the toddler who has since undergone numerous surgeries.
Hass’ column constitutes praise for violent rock attacks and gives
such attacks legitimacy, Ro'eh and Shachner said in their complaint,
adding that it ignores the dangers posed by such attacks.
I do not understand why successive Israeli governments have allowed this woman to live in and report from the 'Palestinian' side. This is not the first time she and Israel's Hebrew 'Palestinian' daily have incited violence against Jews, nor is it likely to the last. Ironically, very few Israelis read Haaretz - it is one of the least read newspapers in the country. It's the international media that give Haaretz its power.
If you're in Israel and you want to watch Innocence of Muslims, you'd better download it now. A group of Israeli Arab MK's and religious leaders has filed a lawsuit calling on Israel to join such progressive bastions of free speech as Egypt, Libya and Indonesia in forcing Google and YouTube to take the video down.
MK Taleb a-Sanaa and various Arab-Israeli mayors and religious leaders on Wednesday filed a petition with the Jerusalem District Court demanding that Google take down an anti-Islam video ridiculing the Muslim Prophet Mohamed from YouTube, to prevent future publicizing of the film and to block all access to the film in Israel.
...
The petitioners claim that the publication violates the religious feelings of Muslims in contravention of Section 173 of the Penal Code, constitutes incitement to racism against Muslims in violation of Article 144 of the Penal Code, and is defamatory according to the 1965 Defamation Law.
The petition was filed by attorney Kais Nasser, and was filed against Google, which owns YouTube.
News reports have indicated that Google has already blocked access to the video in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia and India, but has rejected a request by the White House to pull it from the video-sharing site YouTube altogether. Authorities in Afghanistan ordered YouTube to be shutdown "indefinitely" to stop Afghans from watching the film, while Russia and Saudi Arabia also threatened to block the website unless it removes the film.
If the laws were properly interpreted, perhaps we would not have reached this point. My own view is that Israel's laws in this area are stifling and probably in need of revision. I would not ban the film.
The Attorney General’s Office announced on Monday that the authors of the book Torat Hamelech, which says it is permissible in some situations to kill non-Jews according to Jewish law, will not be indicted. Investigations against rabbis who gave their approbation to the book will also be closed.
The book, published in 2009, was written by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur of the Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. It provides an analysis of the Jewish laws regarding the permissibility or otherwise of killing non-Jews during times of war and peace, and was condemned as racist by many pluralistic groups who claimed it incited violence and racism against Arabs and other minorities in Israel.
The book’s publication in 2009 sparked a huge public outcry, which also saw Israel’s two most respected rabbis, Sephardi Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef and leader of the non-Hassidic Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox community Rabbi Shalom Yosef Elyashiv come out in public opposition to the publication of the Torat Hamelech.
Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein said that the investigation was being closed because there is not enough evidence that the book was published with the intention to incite racism. Weinstein wrote that the Torat Hamelech is written in a general manner and does not call for violence.
According to the A-G, works pertaining to rulings on religious law or publications of religious sources should not be dealt with in criminal proceedings in order to preserve freedom of religion.
In addition, Weinstein said that it was hard to assert that the book permits individuals to act, rather than a ruling authority.
I do not own and have not read the book, but I suspect strongly that most of what it does is cite Chapter and Verse from Maimonides' Mishneh Torah.
In Friday's JPost, editor Steven Linde discusses the decision to fire Larry Derfner.
When Derfner asked that we run the piece in the Post, we rejected it and dissociated ourselves completely from his comments, to which we object in the strongest possible terms.
Even though his column did not appear in the paper, we came to the conclusion that we could no longer provide a stage to someone who openly promulgates such venomous views.
Derfner later wrote an apology that we chose not to run. In it, he expresses deep regret for his blog post, saying: “My intention was to shock people into recognition, but I ended up shocking many of them into revulsion, and twisting what I wanted to say into something I didn’t and don’t mean at all.
“I regret what I wrote [last] Sunday. I apologize to everyone who was offended by it, and I apologize to my countrymen. The post is no longer on my blog; I’ve taken it down.”
The substance of Derfner’s apology itself was not convincing. He used ludicrous logic to defend his position, repeating the same obscene sentiments that made many readers sick to their stomachs in the first place.
He had meant, he said, “to shock Israelis and friends of Israel into seeing how badly we’re hurting the Palestinians by denying them independence: It’s so bad that it’s helping drive them to try to kill us.”
If you saw Oren Kessler’s article in the paper this week about the anti-Israel coverage in the Arab media following the attacks on the southern border, you may have noticed that their commentaries were not significantly different from Derfner’s.
Abdel Bari Atwan, editor-inchief of the London-based pan- Arab daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, wrote that Israel bore direct responsibility for the terrorist attack on its soil.
“This attack put the spotlight back on the most important struggle – that for the honor of the Arab and Islamic nation,” Atwan argued. “Resistance is a legitimate right as long as land is occupied and the people and holy places are humiliated.”
Derfner’s blog later appeared on a Hamas website, giving succor to Israel’s enemies.
...
The move, I stress, had nothing to do with threats to cancel subscriptions or advertisements; it was an editorial decision taken on moral grounds. While politically independent, the Post is a quintessentially Zionist newspaper priding itself on its patriotism and credibility, as well as its balanced reporting and diverse commentaries.
We are certainly not silencing the Left, and will continue to feature columnists of all political stripes. Freedom of speech has its limits, however, and Derfner clearly overstepped them.
I'm amazed that Derfner even tried to get the Post to run that piece. At least they had the common sense not to run it.
But then we all knew who Derfner was long before this incident. We just never had our faces rubbed in it quite the same way before.
Breaking: Facebook shuts down 'Third Intifada' page
Facebook has shut down a controversial page that was promoting a 'third intifada' to begin on May 15.
Despite previous statements saying they would monitor but not remove the controversial Facebook group calling for a Third Intifada, Facebook administrators shut down the group early Tuesday morning in response to enormous pressure from pro-Israel activists. All links to the group now go to users personal Facebook profile.
The group had been calling for a march on Israel to “liberate” Palestine beginning on May 15. It remains to be seen how Facebook will respond if similar groups emerge with similar message of a Third Intifada.
New media expert Andre Oboler, one of the first to discover the group was down, told HonestReporting that Facebook made the correct decision shutting down the group. “It’s about time,” he said. “Facebook needs to learn to distinguish between the right to ‘attack’ conceptual ideas, and the ‘wrong’ of attacking people be it because of their race, religion, nationality or political view. When they start to understand that, perhaps they will stop making so many mistakes.”
Friday night's car bombing at a Coptic Church in Alexandria, Egypt was no coincidence.
In the weeks before the New Year's Day suicide bombing of an Egyptian church, al-Qaida-linked websites carried a how-to manual on "destroying the cross," complete with videos on how to build a bomb and the locations of churches to target — including the one that was attacked.
They may have found a receptive audience in Alexandria, where increasingly radicalized Islamic hard-liners have been holding weekly anti-Christian demonstrations, filled with venomous slogans against the minority community.
...
Only two or three days before Saturday's bombing, police arrested several Salafis spreading fliers in Alexandria calling for violence against Christians, a security official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
According to authorities, the strong belief among investigators is that local extremists who knew the area and the nature of their target were behind the blast. The Egyptian weekly Al-Youm Al-Saba said police were examining photos of the Salafis' weekly protests for suspects.
In the weeks before the attack, al-Qaida militants on the Web spewing calls for "jihad," or holy war, on Egypt's Christians laid out everything anyone would need to carry out a bombing.
One widely circulated posting includes a so-called "Jihadi Encyclopedia for the Destruction of the Cross," with a series of 10 videos describing how to build a bomb.
In the videos, an unidentified militant in a white lab coat and a black mask is shown listing the ingredients to make TNT and mixing up the chemicals in beakers.
The site lists Coptic Christian churches in Egypt, along with phone numbers and addresses — including Alexandria's Saints Church. "Blow up the churches while they are celebrating Christmas or any other time when the churches are packed," it says.
Read the whole thing. Anyone want to try to argue that words don't matter and that incitement doesn't lead to terror?
It probably bears mentioning that the Copts have a miserable history of anti-Semitism. I continue to discuss this incident despite that history, because it's rare that we get to see a terror attack from up close like the videos that are available from Friday night's attack, and because I am doing all I can to quash the scurrilous attempt to blame this attack on Israel and Jews.
When will they start charging imams with inciting against Jews?
Israeli authorities have indicted the imam of a Nazareth mosque for incitement against Pope Benedict XVI and for supporting al-Qaeda and 'global jihad' (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The indictment said Nazim Mahmoud Salim, who was arrested by police a month ago, led a group of about 2,000 worshippers, and had also preached at the flashpoint al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, Islam's third holiest shrine.
Salim is charged with inciting violence against Pope Benedict during his visit last year to Nazareth, the town of Jesus' boyhood in the heartland of Israel's minority Arab population.
In his sermons and on his website over the past decade, the indictment said, Salim preached "an ideological world view identical to that of global jihad" and wrote "publications that supported and identified with the terror organisation al Qaeda."
It said Salim's teachings inspired attacks against Jews and Christians, including the murder of one Jew.
At the time of Pope Benedict's visit to the Holy Land in May 2009, the indictment quotes Salim as saying in a sermon at al Aqsa: "The pope prepares himself at the gate of the Vatican and at the head of a crusade against the Islamic world ... we will expel the pope from Nazareth."
This is what must start to happen. There have been close to 20,000 Islamic attacks (that have been documented) just since 911, each one with the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric. And no one will talk about that or address that.
Until now. We must monitor the mosques.
Well, yeah. But would he have been indicted if he hadn't incited against the Pope? Imams incite here against Jews every day (and especially on Friday) and I don't see any of them being indicted until now. Why does incitement against Jews alone apparently not matter?
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
