Love of the Land: Akiva Eldar Clueless in Jerusalem

Akiva Eldar Clueless in Jerusalem

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA Media Analysis
23 March '10

"It's clear these leaders have no clue what's happening in Israel's largest city," veteran Ha'aretz writer Akiva Eldar charges in his March 22 Op-Ed, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres. But one wonders whether it's not Eldar himself who hasn't got a clue when he writes in the very same paragraph:

For 17 years, since the days of the Peres-Yitzhak Rabin administration, holy places in the Old City have been closed to Muslim and Christian believers from the occupied territories. The only East Jerusalem residents allowed to enter the Temple Mount compound are women and the elderly.

In general, the thousands of West Bank Palestinians with permits to enter Israel (for work, study and other purposes) and all east Jerusalem Arabs, including men, have had free access to the Temple Mount over the last 17 years. There have been periods of heightened violence which prove to be the exception; at those times, access is usually limited to men over the age of 45 or 50 and women of all ages. An example of this restricted period fell earlier this month, as Hamas called a "day of rage," inciting violence on the Temple Mount and beyond. The fact that intermittent closures and restrictions are the exception, as opposed to the rule, is apparent from the media reports which note the beginning or the end of a more restrictive period. Thus, Akiva Eldar's own newspaper reported March 17, 2010:

Earlier Wednesday, Israel lifted its closure on the West Bank and granted open access to the Al-Aqsa mosque, with police saying that thousands of troops will remain on high alert but reported no disturbances. Israel originally sealed off the territory last week.

There are also periods of complete closure on the West Bank, such as during Jewish holidays, in which West Bank Arabs may not enter Israel aside from humanitarian cases. Yet even during a period of closure during the Jewish new year (Rosh Hashanah) which fell on September 2009, nearly 60 percent of the West Bank Palestinian population still had access to Jerusalem, according to the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The Sept. 16-29 "Protection of Civilians Report" by OCHA details:

(Read full report)

Love of the Land: Akiva Eldar Clueless in Jerusalem

Love of the Land: AP's Caption Challenged Photographer

AP's Caption Challenged Photographer

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA/Snapshots
15 November 09

Remember Bernat Armangue, the AP photographer whose erroneous photo caption wrongly stated that a Palestinian protestor passed out, even though he was holding his hand up in the air? (CAMERA staff prompted a correction.)

Once again, Bernat Armangue is caption challenged. Consider the following photo and caption:

An ultra Orthodox Jewish man pauses in front [sic] the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest site and known by Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalem's Old City, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009

Here are the problems with this caption, starting with the fundamental falsehood followed by two secondary points:

1) This caption gives the misimpression that the man is actually standing in front of the mosque, on the Temple Mount. Given the tensions surrounding the Temple Mount in recent weeks, the presence of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man standing in front of the mosque could be enough to set off additional Arab rioting, both on the mount and in nearby eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods.

In reality, he is apparently standing at the top of the steps that lead down to the Western Wall. He is resting his left arm on something, most likely the wall at the overlook at the top of those steps. From where he stands, he is separated from the Temple Mount by the Western Wall plaza. Especially in light of the sensitivity of the site, there is a huge difference between an ultra-Orthodox man standing on the entrance steps to the Western Wall, an area next to the Temple Mount and completely under Israeli control, versus an ultra-Orthodox man standing in front of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, on the Temple Mount itself, which is under the day-to-day control of the Islamic Waqf.

This would not be the first time that an AP photo caption has incorrectly placed a scene on the Temple Mount.

2) Why refer to the Temple Mount as the third holiest site in Islam and not point out that it is the holiest in Judaism?

3) The Al-Aqsa Mosque is not known by Jews to be the Temple Mount, it is known to Jews to be on the Temple Mount.

AP corrected photo captions in September 2000 and May 2009. We await a November 2009 correction as well.

(Hat tip to Yisrael Medad, who noticed this photo on BBC's Web site).

Love of the Land: AP's Caption Challenged Photographer

Love of the Land: Notes From the Eternal and Undivided Capital of the Jewish People

Notes From the Eternal and Undivided Capital of the Jewish People

Rachel Abrams
The Weekly Standard
26 October 09

A young eastern European girl survives the Holocaust, but she has lost all. First, perhaps, like so many countless others, her father is shot in the street before her eyes among scores of men rounded up in the ghetto in which her family has been living in starvation and rising terror; next, possibly, her mother dies of dysentery in the train to Auschwitz; later, maybe, when they arrive at the camp she is separated from her two brothers and they are never seen again. How does she survive and make it to Palestine? Somehow. She doesn’t speak of it, and it does not in any case seem to be the question that plagues her. In time, she marries, creates a new family, watches as her refuge becomes the State of Israel. The question that does interest her, and which she continues to ask herself, over and over again, and with which she haunts everyone among the living around her, is why she alone of all her family survived. Her son grows up; the question permeates his life. It enters the army with him, accompanies him as he rises through the ranks to become a major general. On the day on which he is named to one of the highest posts in the Israeli military, she, his mother, sits through the ceremony, then comes to him and tells him: “Now I know. Now I know why I survived.”
***
My sister, who has lived here for three decades and has just sent her third and fourth children to the army, called information a while ago to get the number of a Jerusalem restaurant. “What?” demanded the operator. “Why are you going to that restaurant? It’s terrible!” It’s better in Hebrew. But still.
***
"The fate of Jerusalem will be determined only by confrontation and not by the negotiating tables," says a survivor of a different stripe, Hamas “leader” Khaled Meshaal, from his hidey hole in Damascus, as a day of rioting by Palestinian Arabs on the Temple Mount ends. "Jerusalem is all of Jerusalem . . . . The Arabs and Muslims are [the city's] residents, and the Zionists have no claim over it." How much of this is due to the Obama Middle East policy? An un-keepable promise is made to the Palestinians that a negotiation in their favor will take place in exchange for little beyond words from their mouths (their word is their bond). Their response to the slow dawning upon them that this is a chimera is rage. A bunch of “Muslim youths” occupy the al Aqsa Mosque—one of their holiest sites—and from the windows of that sacred precinct stone and firebomb Israeli police. "I call for angry protests in Palestine and in the Arab world,” says Meshaal. “We must send a message to the world: In light of the settlements and actions in Jerusalem, there are no negotiations and we must rethink our steps."
***
Israelis are more and more openly expressing their disgust with the latest and most dangerous incarnation of the so-called peace process. They worry, with growing intensity with every escalation of violent Arab rhetoric and rage, that in the end the process will have wrought not peace but the Third Intifada. And who can argue with that? I can't help wondering, though, as I listen to the muezzin's call to morning prayers, just what question it is the Arabs are answering when they raise their children to fight for a state this way.

Love of the Land: Notes From the Eternal and Undivided Capital of the Jewish People

Love of the Land: Temple Mount Troubles

Temple Mount Troubles

Backspin/Honestreporting.com

26 October.com

Some of the media's flawed coverage of Palestinian-instigated violence on the Temple Mount.

Scenes of violence on and around the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City are currently causing further damage to Israel's already fragile diplomatic and public image. Descriptions of Israeli police "storming" the Temple Mount add to the impression, aided by the inflammatory rhetoric of Palestinian groups and neighbouring Arab states, that Israel is carrying out aggression against Muslim holy sites.

In the case of the Palestinian rioting on the Temple Mount, there has been no Israeli instigation of any kind. Contrary to Palestinian claims:

• There is no construction, renovation or archaeological activities taking place underneath the Temple Mount or al-Aqsa Mosque that could in any way endanger its foundations.

Israel has nothing to hide and even took journalists on a tour of the Western Wall tunnels to show that this is indeed the case. According to chief engineer, Ofer Cohen, "There's been a lot of talk about instability [based on ongoing archeological excavations in the area], and let me reassure you, we have improved the structural stability here tenfold over the last few years and have actually strengthened areas where there was danger of further collapse."

• There was no attempt by any Jewish groups to enter the Temple Mount compound to pray or confront Muslims at prayer.

Instead, during the High Holidays, a group of non-Jewish French tourists were pelted with rocks when entering the compound (as is their right to do so under existing arrangements for visitors). Israeli police intervened to protect those tourists.

As reported by Ha'aretz, "It's true those were French tourists," said a Fatah activist this week, in a belated acknowledgment on the Temple Mount incident that sparked riots earlier this month. But he immediately played dumb: "But how could we have known?"

The Guardian, however, simply reports:

Palestinians, however, have been increasingly concerned about right-wing Jewish settlers entering the compound and about rumours - denied by Israel - of excavations near the site.

The Times, meanwhile, recycles an old myth:

It was clashes outside the al-Aqsa mosque that sparked the second intifada - a widespread violent uprising by Palestinians. The origins of that event are traced to Ariel Sharon's provocative September 2000 visit to the compound.

This, despite the evidence to the contrary as stated by members of the Palestinian leadership themselves:

Whoever thinks that the Intifada broke out because of the despised Sharon's visit to the Al-Aqsa Mosque is wrong.. . . This Intifada was planned in advance, ever since President Arafat's return from the Camp David negotiations, where he turned the table upside down on President Clinton. (Palestinian Communications Minister Imad Al-Faluji, Al-Safir, 3 March 2001. Translated by MEMRI)

The Daily Telegraph disregards proven history and a wealth of archaeological evidence, referring to the Temple Mount:

where the two Jewish temples of antiquity are believed to have been built.

"Believed"? There is no question (other than in the minds of those deliberately seeking to delegitimize Jewish rights and history in Jerusalem) that Jewish temples stood on that site. Period. So why does the Daily Telegraph feel the need to use such language?

In general, the media has been content to present the story in simplistic terms - the Israeli "Goliath" versus the Palestinian "David". A bit more digging and sophisticated analysis would reveal that the situation is much more complex as the leader of Israel's extremist Islamic Movement, in collaboration with Hamas, seeks to use the Temple Mount issue to create violence and instability. The situation is also part of a continuing fight between Hamas and Fatah over control of eastern Jerusalem.

Can the media not look at the bigger picture?

Please send your considered comments to:

• The Guardian - letters@guardian.co.uk
• The Times - letters@thetimes.co.uk
• The Daily Telegraph - dtletters@telegraph.co.uk

Remember to include an address and daytime telephone number.

Love of the Land: Temple Mount Troubles

Love of the Land: The Latest Round of War

The Latest Round of War

carolineglick.com
10 October 09

An atmosphere of fantasy pervaded US President Barack Obama's Middle East peace processor George Mitchell's meetings with Israeli leaders on Thursday. In separate photo opportunities, Mitchell stood next to President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak and pledged to surmount all obstacles to achieve peace not only between Israel and the Palestinians but between Israel and Syria and Lebanon and with the whole Arab world.

Mitchell's remarks were even more stunning than similar statements from him during previous visits, because this week the Palestinians launched their newest terror campaign against Israel. Like previous rounds of Palestinian terror against Jews beginning in 1929, the latest round has been precipitated by wholly fabricated claims by Muslim leaders that Israel is asserting Jewish rights to the Temple Mount - Judaism's most sacred site - and so endangering the Muslim claim to the sole right to worship at the site that was never even mentioned in the Koran.

Beginning last week, convicted felon Raed Salah - who served a prison sentence for his Israeli Islamic Movement's northern branch's financial and other ties to Hamas - began inciting Israeli and Palestinian Muslim worshipers to make war against Israel. As he does every few months, Salah claimed falsely that Jews were committing the unforgivable "crime" of seeking to worship on the Temple Mount during Succot. Succot, which we observed this past week, is of course one of the three harvest festivals in which Jews are commanded to go up to the Temple Mount. This time, Salah's lies were accompanied by similar ones from Hamas leaders and Fatah leaders alike.

As is their standard practice, Palestinian leaders used known euphemisms in their declarations of war. Rather than openly call for Jews to be slaughtered, they called on Muslims to defend the Temple Mount from fictional Jewish assault. Wheelbarrows of rocks were found stockpiled on the Temple Mount on Monday. The rocks made clear the intention of Muslim leaders to reenact the 1990 stoning of Jewish Succot worshipers at the Western Wall. That Muslim assault precipitated a steep increase in Palestinian terror during the months that followed.

This week's riots similarly recall the 1996 Palestinian onslaught. That aggression was justified by the false Palestinian allegation that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's decision to open the Western Wall archeological tunnel was part of a secret plot to dislodge the Aksa Mosque. Yasser Arafat used his manufactured libel as an excuse to order his US-trained and Israeli-armed Palestinian security forces to open fire at IDF soldiers. In the violence that followed some 15 soldiers were killed.

The most violent exploitation of fabricated claims of Jewish aggression against Judaism's most sacred site to date, of course, came in September 2000. Then Arafat and his deputies in Fatah supported by Hamas and the Israeli Islamic Movement claimed that then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon's September 28, 2000, visit to the Temple Mount - a visit that had been coordinated in advance with the PA - was an act of war against the Palestinians and against Islam as a whole. More than 1,500 Israelis were killed in the seven years of terror war that followed.

Perhaps the most overt call for a renewal of jihad against Israel this week came from Fatah leader and titular PA President Mahmoud Abbas. In an interview on Yemenite television, Abbas said, "The second intifada erupted because of Sharon's visit to [the Temple Mount] and... it lasted seven years. This time, therefore the matter of Jerusalem requires a much greater effort [by the Palestinians], something more practical. It's not enough to talk about Jerusalem in books, or to give sermons in mosques. There is a need to work for it."

THE NEWEST round of violence has been building up for the past month. According to data released by the IDF, over the past month, the volume of terror attacks nearly doubled, from 53 attacks in August to 95 in September. This week's spike in violence caused IDF commanders to warn of the possibility that the violence will spread throughout Judea and Samaria. With the near seamless integration of Arab Israeli leaders in the incitement of violence, there is good reason for concern that Arab Israelis will play a prominent role in the newest round of jihad against Israel.

Abbas and his prime minister Salaam Fayad have augmented their violent attacks against Israel with a renewed diplomatic assault against the Jewish state. Fayad and Abbas have both called for the US and European governments to condemn Israel's imaginary provocations and moves to "Judaize" the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Rather than condemn these Fatah leaders for their key roles in inciting violence, the Europeans have been embracing them. Led by Sweden, which holds the rotating EU presidency, European governments have demanded that Israel end its provocative behavior.

For its part, rather than dismissing these obviously false allegations out of hand, the Obama administration demanded that Israel give an accounting of its actions to prove that it is not provoking Palestinian violence.
(Continue)

Love of the Land: The Latest Round of War

Love of the Land: The Incitement Towards a Third Intifada

The Incitement Towards a Third Intifada

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
08 October 09

There are clear attempts being made to spark a third intifada in Jerusalem. Violence by Israeli Arabs started two weeks ago in the wake of the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Obama and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and Obama’s inflammatory call at the UN for a Palestinian state that ends the occupation that began in 1967.

In an ominous echo of the ‘spontaneous’ rioting over Ariel Sharon’s walk on the Temple Mount in 2000 which was used as the pretext for the mass murder of Israelis through years of suicide bombings (Palestinian leaders later admitted the riots had been part of a planned strategy) the current spate of riots followed all-too familiar and demonstrably spurious claims that Israel was threatening the al Aqsa mosque. Last Sunday, after Palestinian Authority calls for Arabs to flood the site of al Aksa to protect it from so-called Jewish extremists (of whom, it goes without saying, there has been no evidence whatever) Israel barred men between the ages of 18 and 45 from ascending the site, whereupon Arabs hurled rocks and bottles at the police.

In the Jerusalem Post, Aaron Klein identifies the instigators of the unrest as Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority:

The riots are being directly incited by the PA, whose official media outlets and institutions are stoking Arab flames by claiming right-wing extremist Jews are attempting to threaten Al-Aksa Mosque - a decades-old blood libel that should be easily dismissible in light of heavy Israeli restrictions on Jews and Christians from ascending the Mount during most hours of the day, whereas Muslims are usually free to access the site 24/7.

Indeed, Israeli law prohibits Jews and Christians from praying on the site. If any so-called extremist Jew attempted to enter Al-Aksa, he or she would likely be immediately removed from the Temple Mount by Israeli police, who follow Jewish tour groups very closely and coordinate with the Wakf, the Islamic custodians of the site.

The PA is not just inciting violence; its officials also assist the riots. On Monday Israeli security forces released from custody Jerusalem's senior PA official, Khatem Abed Al-Kadr, who had been detained on suspicion of inciting riots. The PA-aligned Islamic Movement is reportedly even sponsoring buses to transport young, riled-up Israeli Arabs to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from Umm el-Fahm.

Klein identifies two reasons for Abbas’s incitement:

It seems the PA, emboldened by Obama's speech, may be using the riots as a pressure tactic to send a clear message to Israel - if negotiations do not create a state in the near future, expect another intifada. The PA under Arafat was notorious for negotiating on the one hand while leading a violent campaign against Israel on the other.

Already, some of Obama's policies have hardened Palestinian bargaining positions. Most notably, the PA is now demanding a complete halt to Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem in line with the US president's same demand. The PA never before set a settlement freeze as a prerequisite for talks.

The second suggested reason is that Abbas is trying to deflect Palestinian anger over his decision to call for a delay in the proposed UN show-trial of Israel over the Goldstone report.

Let us not forget that it is the ‘moderate’ Abbas and the forces he leads who America and the west say are ‘entitled’ to a state of their own, to which Israel is unreasonably providing obstacles. Without any doubt, Obama’s bullying of Israel has strengthened Arab rejectionism, undermined any fragile moves towards moderation and helped incite the Arab mobs to further hysteria. This is particularly irresponsible since Jerusalem’s Arabs, along with the rest of the region (as with Muslims in the rest of the world, including Britain), are steadily being radicalised by jihadi influence.

On Tuesday night, the Israeli Islamic leader Raed Salah was arrested on charges of inciting the rampage on Temple Mount. The flashpoint now threatens to be this Friday’s prayers after Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood (and the ‘moderate’ infamously embraced in London by Ken Livingstone), called for Arabs and Muslims to make next Friday a day of anger... to confront the ferocious Zionist attack against the Aqsa Mosque and the occupied city of Jerusalem.

We hold our breath.

Love of the Land: The Incitement Towards a Third Intifada

Love of the Land: Who is really to blame for the tensions on the Temple Mount?

Who is really to blame for the tensions on the Temple Mount?

Avi Isaacharoff
Haaretz
05 October 09

"Sunday, however, it seemed as if the appropriate conclusions had been drawn: After learning that dozens of Muslims planned to await the arrival of "extremist Jews" at the Temple Mount, the police decided that the entire area would remain closed to non-Muslim visitors."

Palestinian clashes with Israeli police on Sunday and on the day before Yom Kippur near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City have made foreign diplomats wonder whether Israel is enacting a new policy on the Temple Mount, which is serving to exacerbate tensions.

Media outlets and senior Palestinian Authority officials have contributed significantly to this perception after repeatedly claiming that Israel is planning to allow a group of "extremist settlers" to pray at the mosque. Even the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, has blamed Israel for implementing a dangerous policy on the Temple Mount that is liable to lead to a conflagration.

Yet, reality, as always, is a bit more complicated. The status quo in the plaza surrounding the Al-Aqsa Mosque has in fact not changed since 2003. The entry of Jews and tourists is permitted on the Temple Mount from 7:30 to 10 A.M., and from 12:30 to 1:30 P.M. These visits do not have to be coordinated with officials of the Waqf (Muslim trust) and take place without any interference. Indeed, last Thursday, for example, the area was totally calm. At 1 P.M., dozens of tourists could be seen wandering around the plaza.

The advent of the holiday season in Israel, combined with the desire of Palestinian politicians to win a few minutes of fame, has recently led, however, to various violent incidents.

At present, the PA is not doing enough to ease tensions, while the Islamic Movement's northern faction is apparently working in concert with a number of Palestinian figures in an effort to spark an escalation of hostilities on the mount.

In the past, revenues generated by the tourist visits there; which reached some $200,000 per month; were transferred to the Waqf, which is run by Jordanian authorities. Since the outbreak of the second intifada, however, there has been no coordination of visits with the Waqf, and in 2003, Israel unilaterally opened the Temple Mount to tourists.

Sheikh Azzam Al-Khatib, the head of the Waqf, said that just before Yom Kippur, a number of Jewish groups distributed notices announcing that they planned to visit the Temple Mount on the eve of the holiday. In response, the former mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, called on Muslim worshipers to gather at Al-Aqsa Mosque last Sunday, to defend it against the Jews. His call was also taken up by Hatem Abdel Khader, the Fatah official who holds the Jerusalem portfolio, and other factions belonging to the Islamic Movement.

After morning prayers that day, some 200 people gathered at the square waiting for the Jews to enter.

"The police knew about this," Al-Khatib said. "One of the officers who is responsible for police coordination with the Waqf, called me and I warned him not to open the Temple Mount to Jewish worshipers."

At 7:30 A.M., the Mughrabim Gate was opened and a group of tourists entered the compound. Muslims began hurling stones at them and at the police officers who tried to hurry the tourists away from the scene.

Sunday, however, it seemed as if the appropriate conclusions had been drawn: After learning that dozens of Muslims planned to await the arrival of "extremist Jews" at the Temple Mount, the police decided that the entire area would remain closed to non-Muslim visitors.

Related: Another Day In Israel
Temple Mount: 'Palestinians' Riot

Love of the Land: Who is really to blame for the tensions on the Temple Mount?

Love of the Land: Another Day In Israel

Another Day In Israel

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
05 October 09

The Palestinian Authority is condemning Israel for restricting access to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. In fact, there is a call to arms of sorts: “We call on the Palestinian public to confront Israel and its plans, that are intended to prevent the Palestinian people from fulfilling their aspirations of establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied territories,” the PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad announced. What’s more, the PA condemned “Israel’s attempts to conduct Jewish prayer services in the Aqsa compound” and calls on the entire world “to force Israel to halt is efforts to Jewify the city.” “Jewify”? That’s a subtle touch. What behind this?

Well, it seems that Israeli police decided to restrict access — to those under 50 years old (terrorist-profiling has its benefits, no little old ladies to be bothered there) — because“wheelbarrows filled with rocks had been discovered throughout the Aqsa Mosque compound on Sunday.” According to the JPost report:

Palestinians had filled the wheelbarrows with stones and bricks in preparation for riots in the Old City, police assessed. The discovery of the wheelbarrows, in addition to intelligence information and the call on Palestinians to “come and defend” Al-Aqsa, led the police to restrict entrance to the Temple Mount.

The Orthodox Union put out a statement condemning the PA’s actions, noting that this all occurs during the joyous festival of Sukkot. Peace Now chimes in with a sniveling call to stop the violence, unwilling to identify who the rock gatherers were. Israel must be condemned, you see, for being unhelpful in the peace process. (Is the rock-throwing part of that process?) No word from the Obama administration yet. I’m sure there is an East Jerusalem apartment building somewhere occupying their focus.

Love of the Land: Another Day In Israel