Showing posts with label Linkdump. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linkdump. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

From Ian:

Europe would not last a week if it had to face what Israel does
I was watching the videos from Ramallah and elsewhere of the Palestinian riots against the blessed American decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. All those Israeli policemen and soldiers engaged in dispelling the riots and violence without inflicting losses but managing to contain the damage.

These young Israelis doing such a tragic job are the same age as I am, at night they return to their wives and children, mothers and fathers. They are not shaheeds, they care about human life, their own and the ones of the people they must confront in the streets. They are the face of a state dealing with this drama for the last 70 years.

Then I thought of all the blackmail, the attacks, the wars, the threats, the tension and the death drawings that the world prepares for the small Jewish state with whose disappearance it is obsessed. And I thought, looking and looking at those images, that no European country, not one, would survive a week of this instead of Israel.

Most of commentators today worry about the “consequences” of the just and historical American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. But if the fear of violence had dictated its actions, Israel would not have been born in 1948 and the Jews after Auschwitz would have been found in a deli of Brooklyn rather than on the beaches of Tel Aviv.

In its 70 years of existence, Israel has lost 23,447 soldiers and 2,495 civilians, it survived 12 wars and thousands of missiles, while coexisting with the specter of a chemical and nuclear war.
Phyllis Chesler: Are New Yorkers becoming like Israelis?
On 9/11, I typed, “Now, we are all Israelis.”

At the time, what I meant was that Muslim terrorists had come after us in New York CIty in a rather big way, just as they’d been attacking Israelis decade after decade, even as the world yawned indifferently or cheered the terrorists on.

Now, what I mean is that terrorist attacks have been normalized in the West, even in New York City, which has seen one attack after the other, beginning with the political assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990 by El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian-born American citizen radicalized in Pakistan, who was later involved in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

Let’s not forget that in 1994, Lebanese-born, Rashid Baz, shot at a van filled with Orthodox Jewish students, killing Ari Halberstam and wounding three children.

Who can forget the 1997 Brooklyn-based Palestinian bomb plot to blow up the New York subway trains—or the lone, Palestinian shooting attack on the 86th floor of the Empire State Building.

One can write that Palestinian Arabs export terrorists—not just terrorist ideology.
History repeats itself as Lord Allenby captures Jerusalem’s Old City, again
For a couple of hours on Monday afternoon in Jerusalem’s Old City, there was partying like it was 1917.

World War I Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) soldiers, Turkish pashas, local religious leaders, ladies in long skirts and bonnets — and the legendary T.E. Lawrence — celebrated as they awaited the arrival of Field Marshall Edmund Allenby, commander of the British Army’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force, to officially liberate Jerusalem from Ottoman rule.

A century after the Great War, these actors played the long-dead Allenby and other historical figures to the delight of the many hundreds gathered from around Israel and the world who were genuinely excited to join in the festive reenactment.

Exactly 100 years ago on December 11, 1917, General Allenby delivered the British Army’s Proclamation of Martial Law in Jerusalem in seven languages from the steps of the Tower of David.

For some, like eighth-generation Jerusalemite Shalom Bagad, showing up on Monday was coming full circle.

“My mother Shulamit was here exactly on this very date in 1917 to watch Allenby enter Jerusalem and give his proclamation,” Bagad said.

From Ian:

Israel foils Hamas kidnapping plot planned for Hanukkah
Israeli security services arrested three members of an alleged Hamas terrorist cell in the northern West Bank suspected of planning to kidnap an Israeli citizen during the Hanukkah festival, the Shin Bet security service announced Wednesday.

The three Palestinian suspects were arrested in late October, following a weeks-long investigation during which the Shin Bet, Israel Defense Forces and Israel Police uncovered the kidnapping plot. Details of the case were kept secret under a gag order, which was removed on Wednesday as the findings were handed over to state prosecutors to begin preparing indictments.

The Shin Bet said the alleged ringleader of the terror cell was Mu’ad Ashtiyah, a 26-year-old Palestinian from the village of Tell, near Nablus in the northern West Bank.

He recruited cousins Mahmoud and Ahmad Ramadan, both 19 and also of Tell, to assist him in the plot, the security service said.

According to the Shin Bet, the three men planned to “kidnap a soldier or settler from one of the bus stations at a central junction in Samaria” — the biblical term for the northern West Bank.
When lifesavers opt for death
On Monday, two days of ongoing violent riots erupted near Ramallah in which rioters threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at IDF forces. The IDF Spokesperson's Unit published footage of a Red Crescent ambulance helping transport rioters, disguised as wounded, to the demonstration. The ambulances unloaded the masked, fake wounded at the heart of the riots. Wrapped in Palestinian flags, the passengers joined their brothers in hurling rocks at our soldiers. All this took place under the auspices of an organization that is supposed to save human lives and help the wounded and injured, not give rides to terrorists who are looking to vent their spleen at IDF troops.

This wasn't the first time that the Red Crescent has lent its hand to violence and terrorism. Two years ago, Yaakov and Netanel Litman were shot to death in a terrorist attack near Otniel. Dvir Litman, 16, was sitting in the front seat and watched helplessly as his father and brother bled out. A passing Red Crescent ambulance completely ignored their calls for help. The ambulance driver approached the site of the attack, told the Litmans to "call 101 [the number for Magen David Adom]," and drove off.

Immediately after the incident, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the Foreign Ministry to demand that the Red Crescent explain why it abandoned wounded Jews, in violation of all humane and cultural norms, and threatened that Israel would take appropriate action against the Red Crescent. Not much has happened.

The Red Crescent is known for its willingness to volunteer its ambulances to hide and transport terrorists and weapons to be used in terrorist acts. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad has reported how it used an ambulance packed with explosives to carry out a terrorist bombing; in March 2002, an ambulance was stopped at an IDF checkpoint south of Ramallah. Underneath a stretcher carrying a sick child, soldiers found an explosives belt and bombs. The driver was Islam Jibril, a Tanzim fugitive who had joined the Red Crescent as a driver. In June of that same year, a doctor at a Jenin hospital was arrested after he was enlisted by Hamas to smuggle suicide bombers into Israel. When interrogated, he admitted that he had also smuggled weapons using ambulances.
So you think anti-Zionism is different than anti-Semitism?


The flourishing 'Hebrew Spring'
The Arab Spring, which erupted seven years ago in a wave of region-altering revolutions, was unlike the Prague Spring in the 1960s that injected Czechoslovakia with a spirit of political liberalization. The Arab Spring essentially failed to bring democracy and liberty to the Arab world, despite the masses in the streets demanding change in the hope of ending the decadeslong iron-fisted rule of tyrannical regimes.

In most of these countries, the situation today is worse than it was before the outbreak of demonstrations. The Arab Spring deepened the rifts within Arab society, widened the chasm between religious and secular, and certainly between Shiites and Sunnis. Many in the Arab world, including senior journalists and pundits, accuse Israel of purposefully derailing the Arab Spring, in order to forge alliances with Arab leaders against the will of the people.

Instead of Arab Spring, a different term has made the rounds in recent months in the Arab media: The "Hebrew Spring," referring to Israel's warming ties with Arab countries and the marginalization of the Palestinian issue.

To be sure, a plethora of signs is pointing to the existence of this Hebrew Spring. In August, Sudanese Investment Minister Mubarak al-Fadil al-Mahdi voiced his support for normalization with Israel. King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain condemned the Arab boycott against Israel and said citizens of his country were permitted to visit the Jewish state (indeed, a delegation of 24 clerics is currently on a historic visit). There have been public reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has met openly with the Israeli prime minister and the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia issued a religious decree forbidding the murder of Israelis. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot was even interviewed by a Saudi news site.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

From Ian:

The Arch of Titus and Saeb Erekat
Recently, my wife and I visited Yeshiva University's museum on 16th St in NYC to see the Arch of Titus exhibit. We saw the museum's full-size 3-D computer recreation of the famous scene of the Jewish prisoners of war carrying the Temple relics (menorah, shulchan [table], trumpets) to Rome. We also saw the displayed collection of 20-30 coins of the Second Temple period, minted in Palestine, some by the Jews and some by the Romans.

In one small corner of a display case, I saw the "complete collection" of coins minted by non-Jewish Palestinian governments from 1917 back through the Byzantine period, the Arab (invaders from the Arabian Peninsula and the east) Period, the Roman period, the Greek period, the Persian period, the Jewish monarchy and before that.

The complete set of these coins minted by non-Jewish Palestinian authorities fits comfortably in one small corner of a display case because these coins do not exist and have never existed. There are no such coins. Zilch, zippo, nada, cero, efes, null, gornicht, nuttin. The empty set. There was never an identifiable, Arab Palestinian people, or a Palestinian ethnic identity until the mid-20th century when some Arab hate merchants realized that such a peoplehood and ethnic identity would be useful in opposing the national aspirations of the Jews.

Until the 20th century, "Palestine" was understood by Arabs to be a province in Greater Syria. From 1948 until 1967, Arabs in the part of Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) living under Jordanian control were comfortable with Jordanian nationality and ethnicity. There was no problem in the Arab mind with Jordanian sovereignty on the West Bank of the Jordan River because everyone, Arab and non-Arab, knows that Jordan is Arab Palestine. The post World War I formation by the British of the country of Transjordan resulted in the first example of Palestinian Arabs holding sovereignty in any part of Palestine. During the previous several centuries, the Turks held sovereignty in Palestine.
Advocates Call for Action Against UN Official Who Headlined Anti-Israel Event at University of Toronto
Advocacy groups are urging action against a United Nations official who headlined an event organized by an anti-Israel group at the University of Toronto (UT) last month.

Michael Lynk — special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory — was the featured lecturer at a November 29th event cosponsored by Canadian Friends of Sabeel and Emmanuel College, UT’s theological school.

According to the Jewish human rights group B’nai Brith Canada, “attendees at the event were required to pay for tickets, with the proceeds earmarked for Sabeel’s operations.”

Sabeel is a leading proponent of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, with its work largely focused on Christian congregations in North America and Europe. The group peddles a Palestinian variation of “liberation theology,” which rejects a Zionist interpretation of the Christian Bible, and has accused Israel of operating a “crucifixion system” against Palestinians.

Lynk in turn is charged by the UN with investigating “Israel’s violations of the principles and bases of international law” — a mandate criticized for both presupposing Israeli guilt and failing to address potential abuses committed by Palestinian factions. A law professor at Western University in London, Lynk has previously endorsed boycotts of Israel and was described before his appointment as “an ardent anti-Israeli activist” who “plays a leadership role in groups that advocate against Israel” by the monitoring group UN Watch.

“By headlining a fundraiser for an extremist group that seeks to boycott Israel, Rapporteur Lynk breached the UN Code of Conduct,” charged UN Watch chief Hillel Neuer. “He promoted a group that targets the same state he is investigating, thereby violating his duty of impartiality, as well as the prohibition against using his office for third party gain.”
The Palestinian 'pay-to-slay' budget continues
In the UK the Daily Express has been running a vigorous campaign exposing the lunacy of the country's £13billion annual overseas aid budget. Every day they publicise a new example of some inappropriate spending. Yet, by far and away the worse example of all - the 'Palestinian' pay-to-slay budget - is never mentioned. This should be an open goal for the Board of Deputies. The British public is sick of the overseas aid budget. If the Board - instead of spending its money fighting 'Islamophobia' - paid for a few ads to expose the pay-to-slay scandal - the Government would come under real pressure to stop these payments once and for all. And that would be a real contribution to the fight against terrorism.

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Europe’s war against the Jewish state
Europe is the epicenter of the political war against Israel. Europe fights Israel on the streets of Europe. Europe fights Israel in the corridors of power in Brussels, other Western European capitals and the UN. Europe fights Israel in Israel itself.

Europe’s war against Israel is a passive-aggressive campaign fought and denied simultaneously. But in recent years, the mask has fallen over and over again.

In the days that have passed since US President Donald Trump’s dramatic announcement that the US recognizes that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and is beginning to take concrete steps to move its embassy to the city, Europe’s war against Israel has again become impossible to deny or ignore. Europe’s response to Trump’s announcement has been extreme, violent and more outspoken than the response of the Arab world.

The EU-funded Palestinian Authority reacted to Trump’s move by exhorting its subjects to riot and attack Israelis.

Sunday, Yassin Abu el-Qura heeded his call. Qura stabbed Asher Elmalich in the heart and critically wounded him. Elmalich was a security guard at Jerusalem’s central bus station.

According to Channel 2, Qura is a member of a prominent family of Fatah members with close ties to the PA and its EU- and US-funded and trained security forces. His father is the commander of one of the security forces in Salfit, in Samaria. Two of his brothers are also PA security officers.

Around the same time Qura was stabbing Elmalich, the British government announced it was providing the PA with 20 million pounds in supplemental budgetary funding.

Qura’s attack was notable because it took place against the backdrop of lackluster attendance at PA-organized protests. As former US Middle East mediator Aaron David Miller tweeted on Sunday, the low attendance at these demonstrations, like the low attendance at anti-US and anti-Israel demonstrations in the Arab world is an “indication of how much the region has changed [in recent years] and the loss of centrality of [the] Palestinian issue. [The] Palestinian street is exhausted; the Arab street has disappeared.”

But while the Arab street was indifferent to Trump’s declaration, the European street went berserk. Thousands of protesters assembled in London and Paris, in Berlin and Stockholm. They burned Israeli flags and called for the annihilation of Israel and the murder of Jews.
Ben Shapiro: No, Protests And Violence Against Israel Aren’t Trump’s Fault. They’re Just Anti-Semitism.
On Monday, a would-be suicide bomber failed at killing Americans in the same way he failed at life: self-implosion followed by utter shame and humiliation. But Ayaked Ullah, 27, still garnered a hint of media sympathy by stating that Israel’s recent bombings of the Gaza Strip had driven him to action. According to CNN:
Recent Israeli actions in Gaza compelled Ullah to carry out the attack, a law enforcement source said. The suspect was upset, in his words, with the "incursion into Gaza," the source said, but did not elaborate on what incursion he may have been alluding to. Israel launched airstrikes this weekend against what it said were Hamas targets in Gaza after several rockets were fired out of Gaza towards Israel. This came amid widespread protests over President Trump's move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

This is asinine. The attack was planned for a certain amount of time; the only incursions into Gaza happened this weekend. But this is the constant lie from Islamist sympathizers: that it’s Israel that lies beneath their evil. That’s not true. It’s hatred of Jews.

In Malmo, Sweden, a synagogue was firebombed, supposedly in retaliation for President Trump’s announcement that Israel’s capital is Jerusalem. What does the synagogue have to do with Trump’s announcement? Nothing. But Jews are Jews, and must be attacked. Protesters in Malmo chanted, “We want our freedom back, and we will shoot the Jews.” A second synagogue was firebombed in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Meanwhile, in London, protesters chanted, “Khybar, khybar,” a Koranic call to violence against Jews. And in New York, Imam Mohammad Qatanani of Passaic, New Jersey chanted, “With our souls and our blood, we will redeem you, oh Aqsa!” Nerdeen Kiswani, representing the New York City Students for Justice in Palestine, shouted that all of “Palestine” should be liberated, including Tel Aviv. Demonstrators chanted “Khybar” as well.

Does any of that have to do with Jerusalem? Does any of it have to do with Israel? Or does all of it have to do with religious hatred of Jews?

Trump Did Not Bring Jerusalem Crashing Down
On Friday, it seemed that every journalist in Jerusalem was waiting for something to happen at the Damascus Gate in the Old City—one of the most popular entrances Muslims use to reach the famous Al-Aqsa mosque for Friday afternoon prayers, and a common site for big protests. Yet the resulting melee was not the massive demonstration everyone seemed to be waiting for.

Israeli soldiers stood in dozen-person groups at the entrances Muslims use to reach Al-Aqsa, and in frequent smaller clumps all along the way. I asked one soldier stationed at the corner of Al-Wad, the street leading to the mosque, whether this Friday was any different from others, and whether he expected any problems. He smiled, and said it was the same as any other day. A few feet away, a man selling bread concurred. “Every day is a day of rage,” he told me in Arabic.

The divided city is one claimed by both Israelis (in West Jerusalem) and Palestinians (in East Jerusalem) as their capital, and American presidents have typically treated its status as an issue to be resolved through negotiations. In the wake of Trump’s announcement, people in the Palestinian half of the city are angry, but few seemed eager for the new intifada, or uprising, that some Muslim leaders are calling for.

Crowds of men began streaming into the city for midday prayers. A few older women obligingly shouted things like “Trump is bad!” when they saw the waiting crowd of foreign journalists. All was quiet for about an hour, and then the same giant crowd streamed back out, many people stopping to shop on their way back to the Damascus Gate, where the cameras were conveniently waiting.

The area outside Damascus Gate is literally set up like a stage: Big steps lead down on three sides to the lowered platform where people emerge from the Old City. A few dozen people stood on the steps and chanted in Arabic, holding a sign featuring a truck that called on America to “dump Trump” and another sign showing Trump’s lips as urinals. A throng of journalists surrounded this group, outnumbering them roughly three-to-one. As protesters moved, the cameras shifted around them, moving like a flock of birds near a power line. Most Palestinians, however, went home.

Monday, December 11, 2017

From Ian:

100 years later, Allenby returns to Jerusalem
British conquest was hailed by Jews as a Hanukkah miracle
The Old City's Tower of David Museum launches an exhibit in honor of the centennial of the capture of the Holy City from the Ottoman Turks by British forces
Viscount Henry J. H. Allenby of Megiddo and Felixstowe and John Benson are not typical Jerusalem tourists.

The great-great nephew of Field Marshal Edmund Allenby and the great-grandson of Major General John Shea, respectively, Allenby and Benson are currently in Israel to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the capture of the Holy City from the Ottoman Turks by British forces led by their military leader ancestors.

Benson and Lord Allenby, along with Lord Allenby’s mother Sara Viscountess Allenby, are in the capital at the invitation of The Tower of David Museum, which on Monday will stage a public reenactment of General Allenby’s proclamation delivered from the front of the ancient citadel inside the Old City’s Jaffa Gate on December 11, 1917.

The special guests received a preview on Sunday of the museum’s new exhibition, “A General and A Gentleman: Allenby at the Gates of Jerusalem,” which officially opens on Monday. The exhibition focuses on the events of three pivotal days in December 1917, from the the moment the Ottomans surrendered to Britain’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force on December 9 to Allenby’s proclamation of martial law on December 11.

The proclamation, issued in seven languages (English, French, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, and Greek), promised protection for the holy places and assured freedom of religious practice for all the city’s inhabitants:
However, lest any of you should be alarmed by reason of your experiences at the hands of the enemy who has retired, I hereby inform you that it is my desire that every person should pursue his lawful business without fear of interruption…Therefore do I make known to you that every sacred building, monument, holy spot, shrine, traditional site, endowment, pious bequest of customary place of prayer, of whatsoever form of the three religions, will be maintained and protected according to the existing customs and beliefs of those to whose faiths they are sacred.

Barry Shaw: December 11, 1917: The Liberation of Jerusalem
That door began to close by 1919 when Jew hating British administrators, brought up to Jerusalem from Egypt, reneged on their duty to carry out orders. In a treasonable act of defiance and anti-Semitism, they ignored official British policy.

General Money, the Chief Administrator, ordered that “The walled city of Jerusalem is placed out of orders to all Jewish soldiers from the 14th to the 22nd April inclusive.” It was no coincidence that this period was the pilgrim festival of Passover. This outraged Colonel John Patterson, the commanding officer of the Jewish Legion, who wrote, “I cannot conceive a greater act of provocation to Jewish soldiers, or a greater insult. Not since the days of Emperor Hadrian had such a humiliating decree been issued.”

The Balfour Declaration stipulated that His Majesty’s Government would use their “best endeavours to facilitate the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Instead, in 1920, they defied British policy, ignored their duty to implement the terms of the Declaration, and duplicitously colluded with anti-Jewish Arab rabble-rousers, including Haj Amin al-Husseini, later to meet with Adolph Hitler to plan the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem in the Middle East, to incite violence against Jews. They chose the annual Nebi Musa festival to riot in the Old City while the British stood aside.

With cries of “Death to the Jews!” Jewish women were raped, men were killed, and Jewish property destroyed. This British and Arab anti-Semitic collusion and violence was the first major Palestinian act of terror attack against Jews.

With typical British “even-handedness,” Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who had been an officer in the British army, was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for illegal possession of firearms, namely three rifles and two pistols, despite the fact that the Governor, Colonel Ronald Storrs, was aware that he possessed them. This was the same sentence imposed in absentia on Al-Husseini who had fled Palestine, following the Arab murder and rape of Jews and the destruction of Jewish property.

The rest is history.
As Jews evacuated from Aden bloodbath, a daring mission to rescue a Torah scroll
In June 1967, the fury of the Arab world at Israel’s lightning victory over its enemies hit Aden, a tiny British colony at the southwestern tip of today’s Yemen on the Arabian peninsula. The once-thriving Jewish community — already much depleted — was once again a target.

“I have never seen such hatred and deliberate destruction,” one survivor later recalled. “Even the young Arabs were screaming out that they wanted to kill us. It was terrible.”

Three Jews trapped in the Crater district of the port city were attacked by an armed mob; two were brutally murdered, the third was found alive but barely able to breathe.

For those old enough to remember, history appeared to be repeating itself.

Twenty years previously, in the wake of the UN vote to partition Palestine, Jewish businesses, stores, and homes had been attacked in Aden. Two Jewish schools were burned down. At the end of three days of violence in December 1947, more than 80 Jews were dead.

“There were not riots but murder,” Joseph Howard, a child at the time, later remembered.

A British commission of inquiry into the disturbances later found that “trigger happy” firing by soldiers of the Aden Protectorate Levies — an Arab military force trained and armed by the UK to protect its colony — were responsible for many of the Jewish deaths. These local forces, the inquiry concluded, were sympathetic to the rioters, and did not attempt to control them. The inquiry recommended British troops be permanently stationed in the colony.

From Ian:

Explosion Rocks Major Manhattan Transport Hub, One Suspect in Custody
An explosion rocked New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, one of the city’s busiest commuter hubs, on Monday morning and police said one suspect was injured and in custody, with three other injuries reported.

Police were not yet identifying the device used. Local television channel WABC cited police sources as saying a possible pipe bomb detonated in a passageway below ground and WPIX cited sources as saying a man with a “possible second device” has been detained in the subway tunnel.

The fire department tweeted there were four injuries, all non-life threatening. One of the injured was a Port Authority police officer.

The bus terminal was temporarily closed, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a Twitter statement.

A large swathe of midtown Manhattan was closed to traffic, between 45th Street to 40th Street and 7th Avenue to 9th Avenue, police said. Subway trains were bypassing the Times Square station, the city’s busiest.

“There was a stampede up the stairs to get out,” said Diego Fernandez, one of the commuters at Port Authority. “Everybody was scared and running and shouting.”
Douglas Murray: President Trump: The Courage to Act
President Trump's announcement on the status of Jerusalem last week was both historic and commendable. Historic because it is the first time that an American president has not just acknowledged that the Israeli capital is Jerusalem but decided to act on that acknowledgement. Commendable for breaking a deceitful trend and accepting what will remain the reality on the ground in every imaginable future scenario. As many people have pointed out in recent days, there is not one prospective peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians in which Tel Aviv becomes the capital of the Jewish state.

Yet, the Palestinian leadership, much of the mainstream media, academia and the global diplomatic community take another view. They believe that the American president should have continued with the fairy tale and should never have said "That the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and that the United States Embassy to Israel will be relocated to Jerusalem as soon as practicable." They claim that this is not a simple recognition of reality and not simply the American President granting the State of Israel the same right every other nation on the planet has -- which is to have their capital where they like. Such forces claim that this is a "provocative" move. Amply demonstrating the illogic of this position, the first thing the Turkish Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan did after the American president made his announcement was to threaten a suspension of Turkish relations with Israel.

The reaction around the world in recent days has been a reminder of the one central truth of the whole conflict. Those who cannot accept that Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel tend to be exactly the same as those who cannot accept the State of Israel. Consider the expert whom the BBC's flagship current affairs programme Newsnight chose to bring on to receive soft-ball questions on this issue. Dr. Ghada Karmi, from the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter, a notorious opponent of Israel, was inevitably given the sort of respectful interview style that Newsnight presenters generally reserve for when they are interviewing Madonna or some other mega-star they cannot believe their luck at having gotten to speak with.
Firebombing Jewish Children in Sweden
It is not just European Jewish leaders who, in such cases, feel driven to draw a sharp distinction between European Jews and the Jewish state. In an interview with Expressen, Jonas Ransgård, a member of the Gothenburg city council, lamented the fact that "Jews in Sweden are held responsible for what Israel thinks is right or wrong." Such remarks, of course, imply:
1. that Swedish Jews, being Swedes, are surely too sensible and humane to agree in any large numbers with Israeli (or pro-Israeli) policies or actions, and
2. that Israel, by virtue of its supposedly provocative behavior, is at least indirectly responsible for anti-Jewish attacks in Europe.

If the firebombing of the Gothenburg synagogue was motivated by Trump's decision on Jerusalem, it was not the only notable response to that decision in Sweden this weekend. On Friday night, an anti-Trump rally in Malmö drew about 200 people, many of whom shouted anti-Jewish remarks and threatened to "shoot the Jews." On Saturday, anti-Trump protesters marched in Stockholm and set fire to the Israeli flag. A search through the major Swedish online media did not yield any details about the ethnic or religious backgrounds of the participants in any of these incidents.

What, sadly, is hardly ever acknowledged by Europe's establishment media is that Jews -- and Israel, the only openly pluralistic country in the Middle East -- are under constant assault by Western European leaders, citizens, and (especially) so-called "new Europeans," as well as by the governments of no fewer than 21 Arab and Muslim countries in the Middle East.

The attack on the Gothenburg synagogue may have been immediately triggered by Trump's recognition of Israel's capital, but it is part of a pattern of persecution and savagery that has been in place, and that has been systematically ignored, denied or played down by the news media and public officials, ever since the Islamization of Western Europe began.
Red Crescent drives Arab rioters


Sunday, December 10, 2017

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Unsettled: A Global Study Of Settlements In Occupied Territories
Legal discussions of Article 49(6), however, are almost invariably centered on the Israeli case,1 and do not examine its potential applicability elsewhere.2 For example, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) (2016, VI–VII) influential Study on Customary International Humanitarian Law lists 107 instances of national and UN practice applying or interpreting the prohibition, and all but two relate to Israel.3

As a result, our understanding of Article 49(6) remains thin and lacking; the interpretation of it comes from a single case, rather than from systematic evidence of state practice. One can draw an infinite number of lines through a point. Studying all the available data however—i.e., all settlement practices elsewhere—can provide greater meaning and definition to the rule, or at least address some of the many questions about its meaning.

This article examines every occupation since the adoption of the Geneva Conventions that involve the movement of civilian population into belligerently occupied territory. Eight such situations were identified. No previous work has examined them together. Indeed, for several of the situations, there has been no prior academic work on the relevant settlement policy. Thus, one of the additional contributions of this article is the first scholarly examination of Russian and Armenian occupation practices in light of international law.

The state practice of the occupying powers in these other situations, as well as the international reaction to them, forms a remarkably consistent pattern. This pattern is contrary to, or at least in substantial tension with, hypotheses about Article 49(6) generated solely based on the Arab–Israeli situation. Thus, since the conventional understanding of Article 49(6) has been based almost entirely on the Israeli example,4 this article shows that it requires a fundamental reexamination.

While the study of state practice cannot precisely define the scope of Article 49(6) liability, it does show that standard discussions of the norm define the prohibited conduct far too broadly. In particular, there is no support in state practice for the notion that mere facilitation or accommodation of settlement activity violates the norm, or that there is any duty to prevent, obstruct, or discourage settlement activity.

Douglas Murray: Are racist chants now acceptable on the British left?
On Friday the Guardian columnist and Corbyn-supporter Owen Jones sent out this Tweet to his followers:
Owen Jones @OwenJones84
Palestinians urgently need our solidarity. Join me protesting Trump’s Jerusalem speech outside London’s US Embassy *tonight* >> 12:22 AM - Dec 9, 2017
As a video of the resulting demonstration shows, the crowd outside the embassy loudly chanted (among other things) ‘Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud’. This is a famous Islamic battle-cry which might be translated, ‘Jews, remember Khaybar, the army of Muhammad is returning.’

The battle of Khaybar relates to a 7th century attack on a Jewish community by the armies of Mohammed.

Now two obvious questions arise. Why might this battle cry have been used on Friday night outside the American embassy in London? And are racist chants of this kind now acceptable on the British left?

Saturday, December 09, 2017

From Ian:

David Collier: Islamic war cries heard, as antisemitism runs free on the streets of London
The anti-Trump bandwagon
Everyone is also up in arms because the POTUS, Trump, was the one who made the declaration. Which creates a problem for the media outlets who see Trump as the devil incarnate. These people, who are convinced that everything Trump does is wrong, and about to cause World War 3, cannot support Trump even when he is right or tells the truth. An anti-Trump reflex came into play. Israel didn’t just suffer from those people who always hate Israel, it suffered because the only thing more hated by many European media outlets than Israel, is Donald Trump.

In effect, it left little motive in the media to try to act responsibly, or diffuse any anger, because a ‘spontaneous’ violent outburst would help ‘prove’ that Trump is a danger to world peace. Rather than run articles explaining that in effect, Trump had only pointed out that because everyone already acts as if Jerusalem is the capital, and because Israel has the right to name its own capital, surely it is better to recognise the reality, they chose to focus on and amplify the angry voices. Even some staunch Zionist outlets, failed to support the move, because it originated with Donald Trump.

The London demonstration
Across the world, over the last two days we have witnessed the usual mob gathering in cities to attack the ‘blatant provocation’. Absurdly pushing the idea that pointing out reality can somehow damage a peace process, that the Palestinians have been blowing up for decades. Last night, 8th December, there was one in London. It was called by groups like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War Coalition, and friends of Al Aqsa. It was also supported by organisations such as War on Want, Socialist Worker, and Jewish Voice for Labour.
Religious incitement and hate

The event itself was full of religious incitement and anti-Jewish hatred. The crowds were chanting anti-Jewish (not anti-Zionist) statements in Arabic. Calling for a war to free Al Aqsa, and reciting the phrase ”Khaybar Khaybar, ya yahud, Jaish Muhammad, sa yahud’ ( Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, The Army of Muhammad Will Return ) – in reference to the attack by Muslim soldiers on native Jews in Khaybar in 628ad. There were also cries of death to America and Israel. You can see a short clip of the footage here:


Melanie Phillips: The British and European perfidy
Twenty-four hours after President Trump’s watershed speech recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, there has been predictable Palestinian violence and equally predictable, almost unanimous condemnation from Western European leaders and the western left.

What needs to be understood is that the former is symbiotically connected to the latter. As I said in my blog post yesterday, the Palestinians use violence in order to get a reaction that advances their agenda.

Until now, the west has duly obliged. For a variety of reasons including fear, ideology and bigotry the west has bought into the lie that the “Palestinians” have a historic and religious right to the land. It therefore sees them (to a greater or lesser extent, depending on whether it thinks of itself as a “friend” to Israel) as a legitimate resistance movement being crushed by the Israelis. The more violence the Palestinians commit against Israel, the more they entrap it into responding with greater force. Then they can rely on the west putting pressure on Israel to make suicidal concessions to them.

This western response is crucial to their strategy. They know they alone can’t defeat Israel. So they need to get the west to do their dirty work for them: forcing Israel into concessions which will enable them to mount their final attempt to exterminate it from the IDF-vacated “West Bank” just down the road.

To get the west to do so, it’s vital that it believes and endorses the Palestinians’ mendacious claims about their own history and religion. Which the west has duly done for decades.
Jonah Goldberg: Trump Puts Fact Ahead of Fiction in Israel
The only reason recognizing Jerusalem as the Jewish State’s capital is controversial is that the world has been pretending it’s not for decades.

The most exhausting thing about the Middle East — except for the bloodshed, poverty, tyranny, etc. — is that it refuses to conform to how it’s described in the West.

It’s like journalists, diplomats, and politicians want to announce a football game, but the players keep insisting on playing rugby. The field looks similar. The scoring isn’t all that different. It’s just a different game. But don’t tell the gang in the booth. They get furious when you point out that the facts don’t line up with the commentary.

Consider President Trump’s momentous (though for now mostly symbolic) announcement that the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Before you can debate whether this was a good move, you must acknowledge one glaring fact that the chatterers want to ignore or downplay: It’s true. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, convenes there. Israelis call it their capital for the same reason they claim two plus two equals four. It’s just true.

What makes the decision controversial is that everyone had agreed to pretend it wasn’t the capital in order to protect “the peace process.”

That’s another term that doesn’t quite correspond with reality. There is no peace process. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president finishing the twelfth year of his four-year term, has refused to meet with the Israelis to discuss anything since early in the Obama administration.

Friday, December 08, 2017

From Ian:

David Collier: Obsessive and suffocating, 176 anti-Israel events in a month
At the start of a recent event at the House of Parliament, an MP opened his speech by claiming it was necessary to give the argument of ‘Free Speech on Israel’ – ‘a platform’ because apparently criticism of Israel receives no airtime. The first speaker at the event, even claimed it necessary because their argument is not given ‘any form of platform’ at all.

How wrong they both are. What follows is simply a list of events. I produce it here because I believe few understand the scale of, nor the fallout from, the problem at hand.
The larger picture

The research took time, and until the very end, when I stumbled across yet another remote exhibition in a library, I knew I would never provide a complete picture. The image is of a single month, November 2017, and contains all of the ‘pro-Palestinian’ (anti-Israel) events I could find.
The big lies

The list puts paid to the ‘no platform’ lie. Built alongside the straw man argument that ‘all criticism’ of Israel is considered antisemitism, there is a myth that anti-Israel events almost never happen. It plays on the trope of Jewish power and influence, suggesting Jews are manipulating governments into silencing legitimate criticism. This dangerous myth, even being spread by MP’s in parliament, is one of the elements behind the rise in antisemitism.

The list below shows that those claims are simply not true. The list shows how obsessed and suffocating the anti-Israel cause is.

These events are activity from a single 30 day month – November 2017. The list of events is not complete, and I welcome any additions (seriously – contact me). Some street stalls are not advertised, some groups are closed, group names have to be known to be searchable, and some one-off events would never be picked up.
French Antifa calls for ‘striking a blow’ in Paris over US Jerusalem recognition
Amid Palestinian rioting in the West Bank and Gaza, the Paris branch of the far-left Antifa organization appeared to call for Israel’s destruction and for violent protests in that city against the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The call to arms by the Antifa organization in Paris, or Antifascist Action by its full name, came Friday amid widespread rioting in the West Bank, and the death of one Gazan, in protests over US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Wednesday night.

Noting that CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish communities, “is asking President Emmanuel Macron to also recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, we can strike a blow against the imperialist West from within the belly of the beast,” the Paris Antifa group wrote in a call on Facebook, inviting supporters to a demonstration at Republique square on Saturday “against the colonization of Jerusalem.”

The invitation ended with the words: “Al Quds belongs to the Palestinians, Palestine stretches from the sea to the Jordan River.”
The "Ottoman Balfour Declaration"
In a great, historical irony, ninety-nine years after the Ottoman Empire, the then-temporal and religious leader of the world's Muslim community and Palestine's longtime imperial master, voiced support for "the establishment of a religious and national Jewish center in Palestine," the Palestinian leadership demanded an official apology from Britain for endorsing the same idea at about the same time.

It is true that the Ottoman declaration came too late to make a real impact on the course of regional events and quickly faded into oblivion, in contrast to the Balfour Declaration which was endorsed by the entire international community. It is also true that the Ottoman pronouncement was largely driven by ulterior motives, notably the desire to harness the real or imagined "international power of the Jews" and the economic fruits of the Zionist project in Palestine to the Ottoman imperial interests—as was the Balfour Declaration as well. Yet the fact that support for the Jewish national revival in Palestine was considered the natural quid pro quo for these prospective gains underscores both the pervasive recognition of the historic Jewish attachment to this land and the ability to transcend millenarian Muslim dogmas regarding non-Muslim communities.

If only for these reasons, and having been an alternative option at a time when the war's outcome was yet to be decided and diplomacy was to be foreseen, the "Ottoman Balfour Declaration" needs to be re-examined and highlighted, especially at a time when Islamist intolerance and supremacism rear their heads.

From Ian:

David French: Donald Trump Strikes a Blow against International Anti-Semitism
By moving America’s embassy to Jerusalem, the U.S. confronts the bigoted double standards of the international community.

President Trump’s decision to formally recognize that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and to announce plans to move America’s embassy to the seat of Israel’s government is one of the best, most moral, and important decisions of his young administration. On this issue, he is demonstrating greater resolve than Republican and Democratic presidents before him, and he is defying some of the worst people in the world.

Think I’m overstating this? Think I’m too enthusiastic about an isolated diplomatic maneuver — especially when that maneuver, to quote the New York Times, “isolates the U.S.” and “has drawn a storm of criticism from Arab and European leaders”? Let’s consider some law, history, and context.

First, sovereign nations are entitled to name their capital, and it is the near-universal practice of other nations to locate their embassies in that same capital. I say “near-universal” because the nations of the world have steadfastly refused to recognize Israel’s capital. They’ve steadfastly placed their embassies outside of Jerusalem. They do so in spite of the Jewish people’s ancient connection to the City of David and in spite of the fact that no conceivable peace settlement would turn over the seat of Israel’s government to Palestinian control — even if parts of East Jerusalem are reserved for a Palestinian capital. Israel’s government sits on Israeli land, and it will remain Israeli land.

Yet the international community condemns America for recognizing reality, for treating Israel the way the world treats every other nation. Why?

From the birth of the modern nation-state of Israel, an unholy mixture of anti-Semites and eliminationists have both sought to drive the Jewish people into the sea and — when military measures failed — isolate the Jewish nation diplomatically, militarily, and culturally. Working through the U.N. and enabled by Soviet-bloc (and later) European allies, these anti-Semites and eliminationists have waged unrelenting “lawfare” against Israel. (Lawfare is the abuse of international law and legal processes to accomplish military objectives that can’t be achieved on the battlefield.)
Danny Ayalon: The Truth About Jerusalem


Melanie Phillips: A historic watershed shames Britain and Europe
It’s a seismic event, a great decision and a historic watershed. This is where blackmail and intimidation are faced down. This is where appeasement ends.

President Trump’s speech recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has signaled that, for America, the century- long Arab attempt to destroy Israel’s legitimacy – the essence of the Middle East conflict – has failed.

Trump was careful and subtle. He did not say all of Jerusalem was Israel’s capital. The US will support a two-state solution if Israel and the Arabs agree to it.

The boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem or the borders of Israel itself will be left to the parties to resolve. And he merely started the process of moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.

It was the balanced, strategic and principled speech of a statesman.

This is not to downplay the risks involved. The incendiary threats of vengeful violence should be taken seriously. But the Arabs need no excuse to try to murder Israelis.

The purse-lipped refusal by Western countries to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital didn’t prevent the Palestinians from hurling rocks from the Aksa Mosque at Jews worshiping below and stabbing them in the street, all in the name of the Jerusalem status quo.
Bennett: Jerusalem was our capital before London even existed


Caroline Glick: Trump’s great and ingenious gifts
With his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump gave a Hanukka gift to the Jewish people. But he also gave a Christmas gift to the American people.

Trump’s gift to Israel is not merely that 68 years after Israel declared Jerusalem its capital, the US finally recognized Israel’s capital.

In his declaration, Trump said, “Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem, the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times.”

By stating this simple truth, Trump fully rejected the anti-Israel legacy of his predecessor Barack Obama.

In his speech in Cairo in 2009, Obama intimated that Israel’s legitimacy is rooted in the Holocaust, rather than in the Jewish nation’s millennial attachment to the Land of Israel. Whereas the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate rooted the Jewish people’s sovereign rights to the Land of Israel in its 3,500-year relationship with it, Obama said that Israel is nothing more than a refugee camp located in an inconvenient area. In so doing, he gave credence to the anti-Israel slander that Israel is a colonialist power.

By asserting the real basis for Israel’s legitimacy, Trump made clear that the Jewish people is indigenous to the Land of Israel. He also made it US policy to view Israel’s right to exist, like its right to its capital city, as unconditional.

Trump’s extraordinary gift to Israel was an act of political and moral courage. It was also a stroke of strategic brilliance.

Thursday, December 07, 2017

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: BDS has failed
It has become abundantly clear that the campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel is losing steam.

Radiohead, Bon Jovi, Elton John, Neil Young, Madonna and Bryan Adams either have already performed here or plan on coming. All of these artists have rejected calls by BDS lobbyists – led by Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters – to skip Israel on their tours.

When singer Nick Cave was in Israel last month, he held a press conference in part to rebut proponents of BDS. “I came to Israel for two reasons,” Cave said.

“One is because I love Israel and Israelis. Two is to take a principled stand against anyone who attempts to shut down, censor, silence or bully musicians.”

On US college campuses, while there is still a toxic atmosphere that makes many students who are openly pro-Israel feel unsafe, pro-Palestinian movements have repeatedly failed to pass resolutions that would force their universities to boycott Israel.

Just last month, the University of Maryland’s student government association rejected a resolution, brought by Students for Justice in Palestine, that accused Israel of human rights violations and that called for the university to divest from a range of American companies investing in Israel. The same dynamic has been played out on other campuses as well.

And while doomsayers have for years warned that Israel faces imminent diplomatic, military and economic isolation and censure for its policies, this has not happened. If anything, Israel has succeeded in cultivating relations with a wider range of nations, not just in Africa and South America but also in Europe. Just last month Israel hosted Blue Flag, an 11-day joint military exercise that brought together the air forces of Germany, Poland, India, France, Italy, Greece and the US. If this is isolation, what do open diplomatic relations look like?

The reason the BDS movement is failing is that it is based on lies and people are not stupid. Anyone with access to the Internet can easily uncover the many inconsistencies and internal contradictions of the BDS movement.
StandWithUs at the Jerusalem Post Diplomatic Conference


BDS: Sudden Converts to Caution
As I write, we do not know what might go into President Trump’s planned announcement on Jerusalem. But on at least some of our college campuses, protests are already being prepared.

At Oklahoma University, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) are set to argue that any declaration, even if it is merely an acknowledgment of Israel’s claim to West Jerusalem as its capital, “will fuel extremism, violence, and tension in Palestine and the Middle East, and the consequences will be costly for all the parties involved.” SJP of the City College of New York quoted American Muslims for Palestine to the effect that any declaration will “unleash chaos in the Arab World.”

This is pretty rich. Students for Justice in Palestine is the campus wing of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS and SJP laud figures like Ali Abunimah, a fixture on the anti-Israel campus speaking circuit, whose apologetics on behalf of Hamas are well-documented, and Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, known mainly for her work as a hijacker. Hatem Bazian, chair of the national board of American Muslims for Palestine, is most recently in the news for sharing a blatantly anti-Semitic tweet. He apologized, but he also has a track record.

Faced in 2015 with an opportunity to condemn violence against civilians during the “knife intifada,” BDS organizations instead issued statements of solidarity. “A new generation of Palestinians is marching on the footsteps of previous generations, rising up against Israel’s brutal, decades-old system of occupation, settler colonialism, and apartheid.” But now, they worry about fueling extremism?
Student Activists Plan to Protest Trump’s Expected Announcement Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital
Student activists around the country are planning protests of President Donald Trump's expected announcement later Wednesday recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and expressing his intention to relocate the U.S. embassy to the city.

In New York City, the Palestine Solidarity Alliance of Hunter College and Jewish Voice for Peace, a far-left organization, are cohosting a protest titled, in Arabic, "We will not abandon Jerusalem."

Hundreds have expressed interest in attending the demonstration. Students from Columbia University, Brooklyn College, and the New School have marked themselves as "going."

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Oklahoma have organized a similar protest for this afternoon.

Trump's move would be in "violation of international law," insists SJP.

The group has claimed, "The demonstration is not associated with our organization or any OU association," though the club is listed as the official hosts of the demonstration and promoted the event on their social media page.

SJP did not respond to request for comment and clarification of its role.

Some 300 people may be expected at an "emergency rally" in Boston organized by the Jewish group IfNotNow, which believes Israel is a "daily nightmare" for Palestinians.


From Ian:

John Podhoretz: Trump’s truth-telling on Jerusalem marks an all-new Middle East
‘This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality,” President Trump said in announcing America’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Never have truer words been spoken, and they were delivered in the best speech Trump has ever given.

What Trump did was stunning. He could just have signed the waiver of the law passed in 1995 compelling the executive branch to move America’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He did it six months ago, just like his three immediate predecessors did every six months since 1996. Or he could have not signed the waiver and simply said he was going to start the process of building the new embassy.

Instead, he called the international community’s seven-decade bluff and ended a delusion about the future that has prevented Palestinians from seeing the world and their own geopolitical situation clearly. It is a bold shift.

The idea that Jerusalem is not Israel’s capital has been a global pretense for decades, including here in the United States. It’s a pretense because Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital from the moment the new country secured a future by winning a bloody war for independence waged against it by Arab nations after they rejected the UN partition of the old British mandate into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

Under the plan, Jerusalem was to be an international city governed by the United Nations. But the Arab effort to push the Jews into the sea — an effort no other nation on earth intervened in to prevent — left a divided Jerusalem in the hands of the Jews in the West and Jordan in the East.

There would be no “international” Jerusalem because the Arabs made sure there could not be one.
Promise Keeper
Not only is President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy there one of the boldest moves of his presidency. It is one of the boldest moves any U.S. president has made since the beginning of the Oslo "peace process" in 1993. That process collapsed at Camp David in 2000 when Yasir Arafat rejected President Clinton's offer of a Palestinian state. And the process has been moribund ever since, despite multiple attempts to restart it.

That is why the warnings from Trump critics that his decision may wreck the peace process ring hollow. There is no peace process to wreck. The conflict is frozen. And the largest barriers to the resumption of negotiations are found not in U.S. or Israeli policy but in Palestinian autocracy, corruption, and incitement. Have the former Obama administration officials decrying Trump's announcement read a newspaper lately? From listening to them, you'd think it would be all roses and ponies in the Middle East but for Trump. In fact, the region is engulfed in war, terrorism, poverty, and despotism; Israel faces threats in the north and south; its sworn enemy, Iran, is growing in influence and reach; and the delegitimization of the Jewish State proceeds apace in international organizations and on college campuses. I forget how the Obama administration advanced the cause of peace by pressuring Israel while rewarding the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Maybe someone will remind me.

One of the reasons the Middle East persists in its decrepit condition is that it has been, for decades, a playground of magical thinking. Whether it is believing that poverty is the cause of terrorism or that the Ayatollah Khamenei is a good-faith partner, whether it is imagining that Assad will go just because we tell him to or that ISIS is akin to a terrorist "JV team," liberal internationalists have all too eagerly accepted an alternative picture of the Middle East that is much more flattering than the actuality. A similar form of doublethink is present in our discussions over Jerusalem. Every Israeli knows Jerusalem was, is, and will remain his capital. Every recent president has agreed with him. And the U.S. consensus has been bipartisan. The last four Democratic platforms have said the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. The Senate voted 90-0 only six months ago urging the embassy be moved to the ancient city. Were we to take seriously neither these platforms nor that vote? Was it all virtue-signaling, a bunch of empty gestures in the kabuki theater of U.S. diplomacy?
Dr. Mordechai Kedar: 20 reasons why every foreign embassy should move to Jerusalem
Arab and Muslim leaders and spokespersons have been trying to frighten the entire world in order to prevent other nations from recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital – Trump's declaration notwithstanding – and from relocating their embassies to Jerusalem. It's time to tell the world what it should have realized a long time ago.

1. Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people's state, is one of the most ancient capitals in the world. It became the capital of Israel's monarchy during the reign of King David – that is in 1003 B.C.E., 2030 years ago, when the capitals of the countries who refuse to recognize it were still boggy swamps, leafy forests or arid deserts. The history of the oldest nations of Europe, the Greeks and the Romans, proves without a doubt that Jerusalem was already the capital of the Jewish nation in ancient times.

2. The Jews are the only indigenous people of the land of Israel and lived in Jerusalem for 1613 years before the birth of Islam, which occurred in 610 C.E. Putting it bluntly, the Jews lived in Jerusalem when Islam's forefathers were still pagan nomads in the Arabian Peninsula, so what gives the Muslims of today the right to oppose Jerusalem's being recognized as the capital of the Jewish state?

3. Can anyone imagine Muslim threats of terror attacks, demonstrations or uncontrolled rioting having enough clout to limit or direct the political decisions made by world powers?

4. Is there any other country in the world that accepts the dictates of other states regarding the location of its capital city? (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Wednesday, December 06, 2017

From Ian:

Full text of Trump’s speech recognizing Jerusalem as capital of Israel
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. When I came into office, I promised to look at the world’s challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking. We cannot solve our problems by making the same failed assumptions and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. Old challenges demand new approaches.

My announcement today marks the beginning of a new approach to conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

In 1995, Congress adopted the Jerusalem Embassy Act, urging the federal government to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem and to recognize that that city — and so importantly — is Israel’s capital. This act passed Congress by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and was reaffirmed by a unanimous vote of the Senate only six months ago.

Yet, for over 20 years, every previous American president has exercised the law’s waiver, refusing to move the US embassy to Jerusalem or to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.
US President Donald Trump holds up a signed memorandum after he delivered a statement on Jerusalem from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House in Washington, DC on December 6, 2017 as US Vice President Mike Pence looks on. (Saul Loeb/AFP)

Presidents issued these waivers under the belief that delaying the recognition of Jerusalem would advance the cause of peace. Some say they lacked courage, but they made their best judgments based on facts as they understood them at the time. Nevertheless, the record is in. After more than two decades of waivers, we are no closer to a lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.


Text of Trump’s official proclamation of Jerusalem as capital of Israel



Shapiro On Fox & Friends: Trump's Jerusalem Decision 'An Act Of Not Only Political Bravery But Moral Courage'
On Wednesday morning, in anticipation of President Trump’s expected announcement that the United States would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro appeared on Fox & Friends and was asked to comment on Trump’s decision. Shapiro lauded Trump, calling the decision “an act of not only political bravery but moral courage to move the embassy.”

Shapiro stated:
It's obviously an act of not only political bravery but moral courage to move the embassy. But just to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — the absurdity of the U.S. policy suggesting that Jerusalem is not Israel’s capital has resulted in idiocies like the fact that my niece, who was born in Jerusalem, it says on her passport Jerusalem and then it doesn’t say which country she’s from.

Jerusalem is only important to the world because of Judaism; it’s important to Christianity because it was first important to Judaism; it’s important to Islam because it was first important to Judaism. Jerusalem is mentioned hundreds of times in the Jewish texts; Jerusalem is in the Israeli national anthem. The culmination of Jewish history, really, was in 1967, with the recapture and the unification of Jerusalem under Judaic rule. The freedom of Jerusalem was only assured, by the way, because of that Jewish rule.

What President Trump is doing is not just a recognition of reality, it’s also an act of political usefulness, because all of the negotiations that have been happening for the past 20 years, for most of my lifetime, all of those negotiations have been preconditioned on stupidity, that Israel was going to give up its eternal capital, which is insane.


Hailing Trump, Jerusalem projects US flag onto Old City walls
The Jerusalem municipality on Wednesday projected the US and Israeli flags onto the walls of the Old City in a show of appreciation over the US President Donald Trump’s expected recognition of the city as the capital of Israel.

From 7 p.m., the red, white, and blue American banner was projected next to the blue and white of the Israeli flag, celebrating the expected announcement. The flags were screened on the 16th century walls from Jaffa Gate in the direction of Mount Zion.

Trump was scheduled to make the controversial announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and his plan to move the US Embassy there from Tel Aviv at around 8 p.m. Israel time, shifting decades of US policy.

The move will address Israel’s long-standing claim to the city as its undivided capital, but leaders around the world have warned it could harm peace efforts and spark violence.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said that Trump’s expected announcement “is a historic declaration that sends a clear message to the entire world that the US stands with the Jewish people, the State of Israel and Jerusalem.”

PreOccupiedTerritory: Jews Arrogantly Continuing To Exist, Prosper (satire)
Despite thousands of years’ worth of efforts to eradicate them and demonstrate the world does not want them, Jews persist in arrogant defiance of popular will by remaining in existence, and in many cases doing well, reports indicate.

Initial efforts to eliminate Jews as a people first occurred during the latter half of the sixth century BCE, historians note, and have continued on and off until the present, but have seen only mixed success at best, owing in part to what scholars call a conceited attitude on the part of Jews as individuals and as a community not to bend to the manifest preferences of those around them that they disappear or be destroyed by violence if possible.

“It’s unheard of for anyone to sustain arrogant defiance for so long,” remarked Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a leading proponent of efforts to convince Jews to consent to extermination, by force if necessary. “It has to give, since arrogance is one of those flaws that eventually destroys you. So it has to be merely a matter of time before the entire flimsy edifice of Jewish pride comes crashing down. Perhaps we can even install a countdown clock in Tehran to help anticipate that day.”

From Ian:

Trump to recognize Jerusalem as capital, plan embassy move, White House confirms
US President Donald Trump will announce in a speech on Wednesday that he is formally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, while asking the State Department to formulate a plan for moving the US embassy there from Tel Aviv, White House officials confirmed Tuesday evening.

The recognition of Jerusalem, widely expected to anger the Arab world and cast a shadow over US-led peace efforts, will also be accompanied by Trump committing to support a two-state solution should both Israel and the Palestinians back it, the officials said, in a likely bid by the administration to balance the announcement seen as heavily favoring Israel. Israel’s leadership has warmly welcomed the anticipated Trump moves on Jerusalem.

Trump will stress that the “boundaries” of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem require negotiation in the context of a peace accord, the officials said, and they added that his moves do not constitute a change to the status quo at the Temple Mount.

“On December 6, 2017, President Trump will recognize that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” one US official said, confirming a series of reports on Trump’s planned speech from the White House, slated for 1 p.m. Wednesday ( 8 p.m. in Israel). The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The White House repeatedly referred to the recognition and embassy move, which will likely take years, as “acknowledging a reality,” noting the city’s role as the seat of Israel’s government but disregarding Palestinian claims there.
Netanyahu: Today, Israel's national identity is recognized
While Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided not to comment on the expected American announcement Wednesday declaring Jerusalem Israel's capital, he posted a video hinting at the upcoming event, saying that on this day, Israel's national identity is "being recognized."

U.S. President Donald Trump was expected to officially announce Wednesday that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that it is making preparations to move its embassy there, breaking with longtime U.S. policy and potentially stirring unrest.

In an impromptu video featuring the prime minister riding in his car to the Knesset, Netanyahu remarked that "our historical, national identity is being recognized in important ways every day, but particularly on this day. I will obviously have something to add to this later today on something having to do with Jerusalem."


Jerusalem Mayor: US Embassy move can be done in '2 minutes'
Moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the holy city could take "two minutes," Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said Tuesday.

Senior U.S. officials have said U.S. President Donald Trump is likely on Wednesday to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital while delaying the relocation of the embassy from Tel Aviv for another six months, though he is expected to order his aides to begin planning such a move immediately.

As an outcry grew across the Middle East and among world powers against any unilateral U.S. decision on Jerusalem, officials said that no final decisions had been made.

Barkat said the United States would only have to convert one of its existing assets in the city, such as its existing Jerusalem consulate.

"They just take the symbol of the consulate and switch it to the embassy symbol – two American Marines can do it in two minutes, and give the ambassador, David Friedman, a space to sit in," Barkat told Israel Radio.

Barkat said that this decision could be implemented immediately, and the process of moving the rest of the employees to provide embassy services could take place in a more structured manner.
Trump Happiness Montage


Tuesday, December 05, 2017

From Ian:

PMW: UK Government contributes to PA payment of salaries to terrorists
The UK Government has decided to grant 20 million pounds to the Palestinian Authority's general budget. According to PA sources, a large part of the grant "will be allocated for the education [sector]." [WAFA, official PA news agency, Nov. 25, 2017]

When deciding to contribute to the PA general budget, the UK Government presumably took into account the fact, as Palestinian Media Watch has shown, that the PA uses no less than 7% of its general budget for both paying salaries to terrorists and their families and for the glorification of terrorists in general.

The Palestinian terrorists who receive salaries from the PA include the members of UK proscribed terrorist organizations and murderers of UK citizens. For example, to-date, Mousab Abu Shkhidem, Nidal Shehadeh, Is'haq Arafe, and Hussein Kawasmeh, the murderers of Mary Jane Gardner, a UK tourist murdered in a terrorist attack in Jerusalem on March 23, 2011 have each received over 33,000 pounds sterling from the PA, for carrying out the attack and being sent to prison. Jamil Tamimi, the murderer of Hannah Bladon, a UK student murdered in Jerusalem on April 14, 2017 has received over 2,500 pounds sterling from the PA, for carrying out the attack and being sent to prison. Kifah Ghneimat and Iyad Fataftah - who on Dec. 18, 2010 near Beit Shemesh attacked and seriously injured UK citizen Kay Wilson and murdered US citizen Kristine Luken - have each received over 41,000 pounds sterling for carrying out the attack and being sent to prison.

A number of Palestinian terrorists have cited the payment of salaries by the PA as the motive for committing terrorist attacks. The salaries have also been used to fund terrorist attacks.

While the international community has demanded that the PA stop paying salaries to terrorists, PA officials have rejected any change of this policy. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas even went as far as to say that "Even if I have to leave my position, I will not compromise on the salary of a Martyr or a prisoner." [Official Fatah Facebook page, July 2, 2017] In addition to the payment of the salaries to terrorists, the PA also constantly glorifies terrorists.
The Taylor Force Act Has Been Gutted
The Taylor Force Act started out as a powerful and long-overdue tool for pressuring the Palestinian Authority (PA) to stop paying terrorists. But the legislation has been diluted, weakened and compromised in so many ways that it is now a pale shadow of its former self. The Taylor Force Act has been gutted.

Known in the Senate as S. 1697, the Taylor Force Act is named after a young Vanderbilt University student — and US Army veteran — who was murdered by a Palestinian Arab knife-wielding terrorist in Jaffa in 2016. The lead Senate sponsor is Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.); Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) initiated the House of Representatives version, H.R. 1164.

The idea behind the bill was to reduce US aid to the Palestinians in proportion to the amount that the PA pays to terrorists.

Thanks to the good work of Israeli Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, we know that the PA has a precise and sophisticated system of providing financial incentives to the murderers of Jews.

An Arab who is imprisoned for attacking (but not killing) Jews receives a monthly salary of $400 from the PA. The amount goes up according to the length of the terrorist’s prison sentence. An Arab who succeeds in killing a Jew receives a monthly salary of $3,400.
FULL Version of KuwaitAirways JewBoycotting @Heathrow


From Ian:

Trump Delays Jerusalem Embassy Move Announcement
President Donald Trump will not announce Monday evening whether he will move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

The president faced a deadline Monday for deciding whether to move the nation’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but White House officials told reporters aboard Air Force One Monday evening that will announce his formal decision “in the coming days.”

Trump was expected to sign a waiver Monday that would push-off the relocation from Tel Aviv for another six months. The president campaigned for the presidency promising to relocate the embassy, a move many have expected since the first day he took office in January.

Congress passed a law in 1995 that ordered the U.S. embassy to be located in Jerusalem, but every U.S. president since the mandate became law has decided to delay it, arguing that a relocation must come through negotiations, not a decree.

Trump is slated to give a speech Wednesday that reportedly will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, that has some fearing violent backlash in the Middle East.

Evelyn Gordon: It’s Time to Prepare a Military Option on Iran
North Korea’s demonstration of a ballistic missile capable of reaching most of the United States prompted gloomy commentary in Israel about the failure to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear program and, by analogy, the seeming impossibility of stopping Iran’s nuclear program. As Haaretz commentator Anshel Pfeffer put it, Kim Jong-un “proved that a dictator who wants a nuclear weapon badly enough,” and is ruthless and determined enough, “will ultimately achieve it.” Yet the North Korean example proves no such thing because it says nothing about the efficacy of the one tactic America never tried: military action, or at least the credible threat thereof.

North Korea has proven, if anyone had still any doubts, that sanctions and negotiations alone can’t stop a determined dictator from acquiring nukes. In contrast, the jury’s still out on military action. It has only been tried twice, both times by Israel, in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007. And it’s still too soon to say conclusively that it worked. But at least so far, neither country has nuclear weapons.

Moreover, many of the arguments against military action are fatuous. Take, for instance, the claim that military action is pointless once a country has the know-how to build a bomb, because “You can’t bomb a people’s knowledge out of existence,” as New York Times columnist Roger Cohen said of Iran. That’s true, but it’s completely irrelevant. Knowledge is only one of many components needed to build a bomb. Get rid of the others–like Iran’s heavy-water reactor, its stockpile of enriched uranium, and its centrifuges for enriching more–and no amount of knowledge will suffice to produce nuclear weapons.

Then there’s the argument that military action does nothing but buy time. That’s far from self-evident. Some countries might conclude that the effort of rebuilding their nuclear program only to be bombed again isn’t worth it. But even assuming that’s true, buying time has also been proven to be the most sanctions and negotiations can achieve (except in the rare cases where countries actually agree to give up their nuclear programs.

Thus the relevant question is which course of action buys more time, because the more time you buy, the better the chances of an unexpected development—say, regime change in Iran—that could lead to permanent success. Israel’s bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, for instance, bought just enough time for Iraq to make a critical mistake nobody could have foreseen: the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, which led to the Gulf War and America’s subsequent imposition of an intrusive and effective nuclear inspection regime.
MEMRI: Amman Friday Sermon by Ahmad Shahrouri: Only the Sword Will Resolve the Struggle with the Zionists
During a Friday sermon at the Al-Zaytoonah University Mosque in Amman, Jordan, Dr. Ahmad Shahrouri berated the "fraudulent politicians" for "wasting a hundred years of the life of the Islamic nation." "Nothing will resolve the struggle but pure swords in humble hands," he said. The November 3 sermon was posted on Dr. Shahrouri's YouTube channel. ...


Monday, December 04, 2017

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Ben Rhodes just blamed Israel and Saudi for MidEast tensions, revealing former Obama admin bias
The new Ben Rhodes tweet sheds light on the Obama administrations biases in the region. Obama has many ideas about the Middle East. In 2016 he had claimed the conflicts in the region were “rooted in conflicts that date back millennia.” He sought to reach out to the region, particularly Muslims, during his Cairo speech in 2009.

He wanted to reduce the US footprint and pulled American troops out of Iraq, withdrawing them in 2011. He always want Iraq to have a pro-Iranian Shia “strongman” in the form of Nouri al-Maliki. In 2010 Obama supported Maliki to be Prime Minister of Iraq, even though his party was not the largest in the country. Washington thought a powerful Shia sectarian government would provide stability. Instead it inflamed tensions and led to ISIS taking over a third of the country in 2014. The US relied on Maliki, even though he was an anti-American fanatic collaborating with Shia militias and terrorists who had targeted US troops. In an interview in 2017 Maliki even accused the US of supporting ISIS, “the US and the Obama administration were behind the creation of ISIS to expel the government.”

Rhodes was involved in these discussions about how the US viewed the Middle East. He told PBS: “We’re not going to do this by ourselves, and we’re not going to do this for the region. We’re not going to have large U.S. forces on the ground to do this. The only way that you’re going to solve this problem is if you get the countries and governments of the region invested in it.”

Rhodes was involved in encouraging the replacing of Maliki in August 2014 as ISIS was overrunning Iraq. “The White House will be very glad to see a new government in place with prime minister Abadi at the lead of that government,” Rhodes said.

He also played a role in Syria after the Arab spring erupted in 2011 and a rebellion began against the Assad regime. Rhodes told PBS: “The president was willing to get engaged in support for the opposition in Syria, but he wanted to make clear that we understood there were limits as to how we could solve this problem with our military, and that we had to be very deliberate and careful when it comes to something like providing military assistance to an opposition group.” (h/t Elder of Lobby)
Eugene Kontorovich: Anti-Israel Activists Subvert a Scholarly Group
Emails unearthed in a federal lawsuit appear to show that the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israel was orchestrated by a small cadre of academics who infiltrated the ASA’s leadership to demonize the Jewish state.

The ASA website says the scholarly group “promotes the development and dissemination of interdisciplinary research on U.S. culture and history in a global context,” but in December 2013 it endorsed an academic boycott of Israel. The ASA’s leadership, called the National Council, backed the boycott resolution and put it to a membership vote. A third of the members voted, and two-thirds of those endorsed the resolution.

Last year four ASA members sued the organization, alleging the boycott violated its bylaws, the District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation Act, and laws prohibiting nonprofits from exceeding their chartered purposes. Even putting legality aside, the boycott was out of step with the principle of academic freedom. The boycott generated an immediate rebuke from the executive council of the Association of American Universities.

The ASA sought to have the suit thrown out, arguing that legal challenges violate the group’s First Amendment rights—a claim commonly made by Israel boycotters. A federal judge rejected that argument in March and allowed the case to proceed.

A central figure in the boycott’s adoption was Jasbir Puar, an associate professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University, according to emails cited in a public filing by the plaintiffs in the case. The emails appear to show that after joining the ASA’s nominating committee in 2010, Ms. Puar actively tried to stack the National Council with boycott backers.
Pro-Palestinian Groups Attack Administration Nominee for Opposing Israeli Boycott
Leaders of major American Jewish organizations are rallying around Kenneth L. Marcus, the nominee for Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights, as pro-Palestinian groups denounce him for opposing the BDS movement.

Marcus, an attorney, previously served in the Department of Education’s civil rights division and then was staff director of the US Commission on Civil Rights, before founding the Washington, D.C.-based Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law in 2011.

The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights is mobilizing its members against the nomination, arguing that Marcus’ efforts against BDS activity on college campuses were intended to “repress college students from organizing for Palestinian rights.”

The anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) recently announced that “over 100 faculty members” at unnamed universities had signed their petition against the Marcus nomination. The petition claimed that because of Marcus’ anti-BDS efforts, “students and faculty [on unidentified campuses] fear studying Palestinian history or advocating for Palestinian rights.” But JVP officials have not responded to multiple requests from JNS.org for a list of the alleged signatories.

And a number of Jewish organizations this week endorsed Marcus.

“B’nai B’rith strongly supports the nomination,” the group’s director of legislative affairs, Eric Fusfield, told JNS.org. “Kenneth Marcus has been a champion of civil rights, especially combating anti-Semitism on college campuses. He understands this pervasive social problem in all its manifestations.”

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 14 years and 30,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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