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

Tuesday, January 09, 2018

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Time to shame those who spread prejudice
That would be helpful in stopping the most egregious antisemitic bigotry, which should be as unthinkable as speakers insulting or defaming black people. It is shocking that university authorities stand by while thugs disrupt pro-Israel speakers, as happened in 2016 when Hen Mazzig, a gay IDF veteran, was prevented from speaking at University College London by a violent mob.

But much obnoxious activity takes the form of falsehoods about Israel’s behaviour or Jewish history. These may be anchored in antisemitism but they are not in themselves irrational. They are simply lies and distortions. Trying to prevent them from being expressed, at all, risks crossing the line into censorship. Academic debate, after all, involves testing possible falsehoods to destruction in order to arrive at the truth.

The core problem lies not with the students putting on these vile meetings but the professors and lecturers who teach courses in which the narrative of lies about Israel is presented as academically sound — and then stand by while Jewish students are abused.

Irrational prejudice is immune to reason. False claims, though, can be disproved and those who promulgate them can be held up for public scorn. The focus, therefore, should be on universities and teachers who facilitate this. Instead of protesting from the back foot against these meetings taking place, defenders of the Jewish people need to go on to the offence.

They should be staging their own meetings setting out the facts that these universities are denying. They should be calling out specific universities and named professors and lecturers for incompetent scholarship, discriminating against students for telling the truth about the Middle East, substituting falsehoods for facts, facilitating incitement against Israel and Jews — and sometimes being funded thus to subvert academic standards by huge donations from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states.

The universities are temples of reason which, on Israel among other issues, have been hijacked in order to deny rational thought and promote instead hate-mongering lies, propaganda and prejudice. We therefore need not less but more and different speech which can turn this bigotry into a boomerang.

Paris Kosher Store Set on Fire on Anniversary of Hypercacher Massacre
A kosher grocery store in the southern Parisian suburb of Creteil was set ablaze and completely gutted early Tuesday morning, three years to the day after the 2015 attack on a Hypercacher kosher superette in the Porte de Vincennes suburb of Paris, which followed the Charlie Hebdo shooting two days earlier. The same Islamist gunmen who murdered eight Charlie Hebdo staff members, two police officers and two bystanders, then murdered four Jewish hostages in the Hypercacher, and police ended the siege by storming the store and killing one gunman.

This Tuesday, the attacked kosher store was also vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti, according to Creteil prosecutor Laure Beccuau, who told AFP “The damage is believed to be very severe.”
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The kosher grocery was completely destroyed in the fire, with the shelves blackened and charred, according to AFP.

The store, Promo & Destock, on René Arcos Street in Creteil, is owned by a Muslim. On Wednesday last week, it and another kosher store next door were vandalized with swastikas. The second kosher store caught some of the fire Tuesday morning.

Israel’s ambassador to France Aliza Bin Noun called the fire a “shameful provocation.”

An estimated 23,000 Jews live in Creteil, whose overall population is about 90,000.

From Ian:

Netanyahu: Israel thwarted 'major' terror attacks in Europe involving planes
Israeli intelligence has thwarted mass terrorist attacks in Europe that “involve civil aviation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, in a possible reference to September 11-type attacks planned against European targets using hijacked aircraft.

Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem to ambassadors of NATO countries, said that the world is threatened by radical Sunni groups, initially led by al-Qaeda, but now by Islamic State, and radical Shi'ites led by Iran.

“When we talk about ISIS, it's important to understand that Israel helps Europe in two fundamental ways,” Netanyahu said.

“The first is that we have, through our intelligence services, provided information that has stopped several dozen major terrorist attacks, many of them in European countries. Some of these could have been mass attacks, of the worst kind that you have experienced on the soil of Europe and even worse, because they involve civil aviation. Israel has prevented that, and thereby helped save many European lives.”

He did not elaborate. Netanyahu has said numerous times in the past that Israeli intelligence has helped thwart numerous terrorist attacks in Europe.
JPost Editorial: Shut down UNRWA
The US under the leadership of President Donald Trump is rightly reconsidering the logic of funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine – at least as it operates presently.

Some $125 million, which makes up about a third of the United States’ annual support for the organization, has already been frozen.

Judging from a tweet by Trump that preceded the decision to freeze aid, it seems the US president wants to make funding conditional upon Palestinian cooperation in helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump’s concern is legitimate. UNRWA, which has been around since 1949, was supposed to be a temporary solution, until the “Palestinian refugee problem” was sorted out. But with the Palestinian Authority refusing to cooperate with the US in solving the problem, there is little reason for the US to continue footing the bill for the agency indefinitely.

We can think of a few additional reasons why UNRWA – which employs 11,500 employees in Gaza alone – should be radically revamped, if not disbanded altogether.

The first problem is that UNRWA perpetuates the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. While the original Palestinian refugees from 1948 – both those who left their homes willingly and those who were forced – might legitimately have deserved refugee status, why should their grandchildren or great-grandchildren share that status? Most other refugees are cared for by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, and their status is not passed on to grandchildren or great-grandchildren. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have their own agency.

This leaves millions of Palestinians in a state of limbo. Instead of getting on with their lives, the Palestinians in places like Gaza continue to grasp a false dream of one day returning to Jaffa, Haifa or Jerusalem. This also allows the kind of apartheid that takes place in Lebanon, where more than one million Palestinians live without official status. They do not have Lebanese citizenship and are confined to dismal refugee camps where terrorism and crime thrive. But because they are refugees, the Lebanese government can wash its hands of having to integrate them into society.

All this can change if UNRWA is reformed or shut down. While UNRWA is an organization that nominally is dedicated to transforming refugees into fully self-sufficient individuals, it has allowed the myth of the “right of return” to persist. Within UNRWA it is heretical to say that repatriation to Israel is unrealistic.
Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017
The Palestinian Authority paid terrorists and their families over $347 million last year, according to its own records, the Defense Ministry reported to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday.

The average income of a Palestinian is $580 per month, which is what the PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to three to five years in prison.

The PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to 20 years or more in prison – in other words, those who committed more severe crimes, and likely were involved in killing Israelis – five times that each month for the rest of their lives.

Terrorists who are Israeli citizens receive a $145 bonus, which, when added to the amount PA pays for the most severe crimes, comes to over $2,900, more than the average Israeli income of around $2,700 per month. There are also increases in pay for being married and for each child a terrorist has.

Palestinian terrorists' income per month. (JPOST STAFF)Palestinian terrorists' income per month. (JPOST STAFF)

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said, “The PA pays over a billion shekels a year to terrorists and their families, thus encouraging and perpetuating terror.”

“The minute the amount of the payment is decided according to the severity of the crime and the length of the sentence – in other words, whoever murders and is sentenced to life in prison gets much more – that is funding terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. There is nothing that better illustrates the PA’s support for terror. We must stop this,” Liberman said.

Defense Ministry drafts bill to cut PA funds over terrorist stipends
The Defense Ministry on Tuesday publicized a draft bill that would deduct welfare payments paid out by the Palestinian Authority to Palestinian prisoners and their families from the tax revenues Israel transfers annually to the PA.

“The Palestinian Authority pays over a billion shekels a year to terrorists and their relatives, thereby encouraging and perpetuating terrorism,” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said in a statement. “The moment the payments are set based on the severity of the crime and the prison sentence, namely that those who murder and are sentenced to life receive a lot more, this is [tantamount to] funding terror attacks against Israelis.”

The bill, which targets cash payments by the PA to jailed or injured terrorists and their relatives, will also apply to Palestinians who committed other crimes for which they are being compensated by the PA, the ministry said in a statement.

The Palestine Liberation Organization gives monthly payments to all Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel, no matter the reason for their incarceration, and also to families of so-called “martyrs” — a term used by the PLO to refer to anyone killed by an Israeli, whether the person was killed attacking Israelis or an innocent bystander.

Monday, January 08, 2018

From Ian:

David Harris: Ten Ways That Israel Is Treated Differently
The recent focus on the Jerusalem issue is a telling reminder that Israel is treated according to a totally different standard than other countries in the international system.

Of course, Israel deserves attention and scrutiny — as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment — nothing more, and nothing less.

Yet here are ten ways that Israel is constantly treated differently from all other countries on earth.

First, Israel is the only state whose capital city, Jerusalem — with which the Jewish people have been umbilically linked for more than 3,000 years — is not recognized by almost all other countries.

Imagine the absurdity of this. Foreign diplomats live in Tel Aviv, while conducting virtually all of their business in Jerusalem, where the prime minister’s office, the Knesset, the Supreme Court, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are located.

In fact, look at the listings of world cities, including places of birth in passports, and you’ll see something striking — Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; Pretoria, South Africa; Lima, Peru; and Jerusalem, sans country — orphaned, if you will.

Second, Israel is the only UN member state whose very right to exist is under constant challenge.

Notwithstanding the fact that Israel embodies an age-old connection with the Jewish people, as repeatedly cited in the most widely read book in the world, the Bible; that it was reborn based on the 1947 recommendation of the UN; and that it has been a member of the world body since 1949, there’s a relentless chorus denying Israel’s very political legitimacy.
Cary Nelson: Judith Butler Plans a Stealth MLA Presidency
Although half the hour was spent challenging and berating me, the core strategy Butler and the other senior member there, David Palumbo-Lio of Stanford, were using was nonetheless clear. After more than a decade of debating anti-Israel resolutions, MLA members had their fill. In June 2017 they voted by a 2-1 margin to bar further academic boycott resolutions. MLA’s Executive Director Rosemary Feal immediately pointed out that nothing prevented a vote on a resolution to overturn the 2017 vote, but the BDSers preferred to ignore this option, as it was clear they would lose such a contest. Unwilling to see themselves as a radical fringe group indulging in sour grapes complaints, they were left with one way to explain their loss: as they asserted repeatedly this evening, they were cheated.

“All we wanted was a level playing field,” Palumbo-Liu declared, “but we didn’t get one.” Incredibly, he revived his 2014 accusation that MLA Members for Scholar’s Rights had obtained outside Zionist funding to copy the email addresses of 20,000 MLA members. He was well aware of my public reply at the time because he responded to it: I had paid a student $650 to gather the emails. I didn’t need to contact Baron Rothschild for funds through a seance. But now he lied and complained I never answered him, even though he answered my reply, just as he lied recently in claiming he had run for the MLA Executive Council on an explicit BDS platform. In fact he had run on a stealth platform claiming he was seeking to help grad students and never mentioned Israel.

Members had only received pro-boycott materials, and we wanted them to hear our case. The MLA refused to distribute our anti-boycott dossier. We used the same emails once more in 2017. Palumbo-Liu and Butler both insisted this was unethical, despite MLA assuring members we had followed the rules. Butler incredibly added that the 2017 resolution violated the US Constitution by supposedly restricting speech. Of course speech in 800 MLA sessions was unrestricted, as was anything else anyone wanted to say from sea to shining sea. Members had democratically voted to stop squabbling about Israel and instead focus on humanities disciplines in crisis and exploited academic labor. But for a BDS disciple like Palumbo-Liu that was a cowardly distraction. Seeing it as the only hope for a newspaper headline he resigned from MLA’s Executive Council in January, absurdly protesting that his academic freedom had been violated.

What Butler and Palumbo-Liu managed to do this evening was to convince a group of young faculty and students that only a corrupt conspiracy could have defeated them in their effort to demonize the Jewish state. Their opponents were unethical and unscrupulous. At the end, Butler turned and pointed to me to conclude: “We need to overcome those who are dedicated to making the fight unfair.”
West Bank: Ancient sites destroyed 'as ISIS did in Syria and Iran'
Numerous archaeological sites throughout the West Bank are being destroyed and robbed by Palestinians and according to an Israel News Company report, this is a common phenomenon. Hebrew University archaeology doctoral student Haggai Cohen Klonymus described to the Israel News Company how tractors and bulldozers arrived at an archaeological site where the ancient city of Archelaus once stood, digging away at the ancient site.

The Palestinian assailants completely level the compound in order to locate hidden archaeological treasures to sell in the antiquities market. “It was flat and in a very short period of time, they lifted the entire area with tractors,” Bar Ilan University archaeology doctoral student Assaf Avraham told the Israel News Company. Other sites are deserted and filled with holes and trash after the wreckage.

Klonymus explained the deteriorating situation of the historical sites in the report, stating that a complaint was filed, but that there is only one inspector for all of the West Bank’s archaeological sites, who is responsible for the antiquities robbery and destruction issue. “Just as ISIS destroyed sites in Iran and Syria that were thousands of years old, the same situation is occurring here,” Klonymus said to the Israel News Company. “This is a deliberate and systematic destruction of an archaeological site without anyone responding to it. It’s just a tragedy.”

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: UNICEF and its NGO Working Group: The Campaign to Blacklist the IDF
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
UNICEF spearheads a campaign to have Israel included on a UN blacklist of “grave” vio-lators of children’s rights.The list appears as an annex to the UN Secretary-General’s annual report on Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC). This political agenda is a primary facet of UNICEF’s activities relating to Israel, completely inconsistent with its mandate of “child protection” and from its guidelines for neutrality and impartiality.
  • UNICEF-oPt’s partners (“working group”) for this campaign are radical advocacy non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These anti-Israel NGOs play an integral role in carrying out UNICEF’s campaign and receive substantial funding from UNICEF to do so.
  • The UN blacklist consists almost entirely of terror groups and militias from failed states. In essence, by pushing for the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) inclusion on the list, UNICEF and its NGO partners are claiming that Israel’s army is equivalent to ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda.
  • Several of the Palestinian groups – including Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), which plays a leading role in this campaign – have reported links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – listed as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel. UNICEF-oPt states, “UNICEF has a clear policy that is does not fund support (sic) organizations which are listed as terrorist organizations by the United Nations” – a list that excludes Hamas, the PFLP, and Islamic Jihad.
  • Several UNICEF-oPt NGO partners recommended inclusion of the IDF on the UN blacklist, but absurdly claimed they lacked sufficient evidence to recommend inclusion of the PFLP or Hamas.
  • A key component of the UN’s Children and Armed Conflict campaign is to end the exploi-tation and use of children as combatants and child soldiers. Although Palestinian armed groups routinely use children in this way, there is little evidence that UNICEF-oPt funding is devoted towards exposing or ending this practice. In fact, a UNICEF Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) bulletin admits that “In Gaza, the Working Group was not in a position to document cases of child recruitment and use of children in armed conflict owing to a number of factors, including security and protection risks related to collecting comprehensive and detailed information” (emphasis added). This admission of an inability to carry out the core mission of its UN mandate in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza calls into question the necessity and utility of continued funding for the agency in the region.
  • Other UNICEF-oPt partners are NGOs that seek to marginalize Israel through BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) initiatives. One such contributor is the World Council of Churches’ EAPPI program, which is heavily involved in church-based BDS and whose non-professional volunteers purport to collect data for a UNICEF database.
  • UNICEF-oPt’s NGO partners publish misleading and false reports on the treatment of Palestinian minors involved in attacks and arrested by the IDF, rife with distortions and in-accuracies and devoid of necessary context. These same erroneous and unverified claims are then laundered through a UNICEF database to a variety of UN publications, lending them legitimacy and prominence.
Click to Read Full Report in PDF Version
UNICEF acting to add IDF to list of 'grave violators of children's rights'
The NGO Monitor report further shows how UNICEF opted to ignore violations of children's rights by Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip, when it admitted "the working group was not in a position to document cases of child recruitment and use of children in armed conflict owing to a number of factors, including security and protection risks related to collecting comprehensive and detailed information."

The anti-Israel organizations behind the UNICEF working group have in recent years published false and misleading reports on the IDF's arrest and purported abuse of Palestinian minors involved in attacks which were later entered into a UNICEF database, lending them legitimacy.

A number of these organizations, including the Defense for Children International- Palestine, have ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has been recognized as a terrorist organization by Israel, Canada, the EU and the U.S.

In response to a query from NGO Monitor, UNICEF Palestine did not deny that the organization had ties to terrorist groups.

"UNICEF has a clear policy that it does not fund … organizations which are listed as terrorist organizations by the United Nations."

Among those organizations excluded from the world body's terrorist list are Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Other organizations involved in efforts to include the IDF in the U.N. blacklist actively promote the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
UNICEF Being Fed False Info By Anti-Israel Hate Groups To Target IDF
NGO Monitor states, “UNICEF’s role in this process includes giving legitimacy to false and distorted claims made by the NGOs, which are fed through a UNICEF database to a variety of U.N. publications.” NGO Monitor notes that three groups passing information to the working group are linked to The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Those groups allegedly include Addameer, which NGO Monitor states is an affiliate of the PFLP; the Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), which had a board member who helped launch grenade attacks against Israeli civilians in 1968, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, whose founder was imprisoned by Israel for membership in the PFLP.

Rep. Ron DeSantis, (R-FL), stated that Israel is a “staunch defender of human rights,” and warned the U.N. there might be financial consequences if the IDF was blacklisted. He added, “For the United Nations to even consider such action following their condemnation of President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is further proof of the U.N.’s anti-Israel bias. ... The United States should take any punitive action against Israel into consideration when determining who is deserving of foreign assistance.”

Groups already on the blacklist include ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Interestingly, one of the violations listed by the U.N. is “recruitment or use of children as soldiers.” One wonders why the U.N. has not seen fit to list the Palestinians and Hamas, who have used children as human shields and suicide bombers.

Sunday, January 07, 2018

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Antisemitism in America
Though America has never been completely immune to antisemitism, its very essence as a nation of immigrants that was always united around a set of democratic principles, never claims of “blood and soil” or a totalitarian ideology, is a centerpiece of its blessed exceptionalism.

A recent Anti-Defamation League annual report tracking manifestations of the world’s oldest hatred, however, points to worrying trends.

Data released in November and presented to the Knesset’s Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Committee last week show a 67% increase in antisemitic incidents across the US from January 1 to September 30, 2017, compared to the same three quarters in 2016. A total of 1,299 antisemitic incidents were reported in that 2017 period, including physical assaults, vandalism and attacks on Jewish institutions.

According to FBI data from 2016, Jews were targets of 684 of the 1,273 anti-religion incidents tallied by the FBI, even though Jews make up just 2% of the US population.

And, as ADL’s Israel director Carol Nuriel noted, many expressions of hatred toward Jews go unreported, either because the victims don’t report them, or because some incidents are not readily identifiable as antisemitic in nature.

What is perhaps unique to antisemitism as opposed to other forms of bigotry, racism or xenophobia is its prominence not only on the hard Right but also among progressives who either hide their antipathy toward Jews behind criticism of Israel and the “Israel lobby” in Washington, or join ranks with those who do because they have a distorted perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Some Democratic congressmen have in the past cooperated with organizations such as the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Code Pink, Jewish Voice for Peace and American Muslims for Palestine – all groups that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

This does not make these congressmen antisemites, but their willingness to work with organizations that have more sympathy for a Palestinian political leadership that glorifies terrorism and terrorists, than for Israel, a state that strives to maintain democratic principles under the most difficult conditions, sends a problematic message and fosters a toxic intellectual environment for discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar: The Obama Riots
Possible scenarios
The future can have any of the following in store

1. Things can go back to the way they were: The regime survives because it uses its superior strength against the masses on the streets, the demonstrators tire of the struggle and go back to their unhappy lives. Khamenei,Rouhani and their cohorts launch balloons of empty promises into the air, the depressed and exhausted public continues its miserable life and waits for the next opportunity.

2. The regime collapses and a group of exiled anti-Islamist politicians returns to Iran and assumes responsibility for the country: Iran stays united, but the Arabs in Achwaz, the Baouch and the Kurds, each in their own region, demand independence. The new regime agrees to wide-ranging autonomy for these groups and puts an end to their ongoing struggles against the central government. The new leaders work to have Iran rejoin the family of nations, Iran renews diplomatic relations with Israel, the US and Europe.

3. The regime collapses, the current leader flee in order to keep their heads on their shoulders: Iran breaks up into smaller states that reflect its ethnic makeup. Persians, Azers, Arabs, Kurds, Baluch, Lur, Qashkai and others, achieve statehood on the lines of what has happened to Iran's northern neighbor. The USSR was divided into individual states along ethnic lines and in each new state, the local elite rose to run each country in a fairly organized fashion.

4. The regime declares war against the Saudis and other outsiders: The last few days have had the Iranian leaders blaming "outside interests," a thinly veiled accusation aimed at the Saudis, the US and Israel, for heating up the area.. The Iranian masses are not buying this excuse and realize quite well that the regime is attempting to draw a picture of external plots against the country in order to convince the public to cease protesting and unite to protect their country from outside threats. If the Iranian regime ever realizes that its way of running the country is going to have to end, it may drag all those who rejoice in its downfall into an inferno. The regime might strike the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, it might tell the Hezbollah to launch a rocket attack against Israel as Saddam Hussein did in 2003. The last vestiges of the regime might even damage Iran's oil fields to keep them out the hands of the opposition.

The world must be prepared for the fourth scenario, although the probability of its occurrence is low, because it is a very dangerous possibility which can plunge the entire world into a severe energy crisis. Iran could decide to exact revenge for Saudi involvement in the Yemeni, Syrian and Iraqi wars and the "Iranian Spring" (according to the Ayatollahs' version of events) by bombing the Saudi oil fields. If the Saudis are attacked, Mahmoud ben Salman will want to do the same to the Iranian gas and oil fields. If this scenario comes to pass, the price of gas and oil will go off the charts for a while.

The situation is Iran is unclear and extremely volatile. Even if the regime survives the riots, the next round of street violence is only a matter of time. There will be an outburst every few years until the Ayatollah's regime collapses entirely. This is the lot of every dictatorial regime – history is replete with examples such as Nazi Germany and the USSR. Sooner or later, a regime lacking legitimacy from its citizens and whose existence is based on the employment of power against its own countrymen, is destined to fall.
Bret Stephens: Finding the Way Forward on Iran
One of the reasons why easing sanctions on Iran was never likely to soften the regime is that the people who stood to gain from commercial ties with foreign companies are the same people most invested in the preservation of the regime and its system of preferences. There’s no trickle-down economy in the Islamic Republic.

But it also means that the kleptotheocracy is uniquely vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy. All Islamist movements take the concept of justice (as opposed to freedom) as their organizing political concept, and all of them ignore it at their peril. The Iranian regime’s problem is that it has spent nearly 40 years making its hypocrisy plain to all of its people, save those who profit from it.

This is an opportunity for the free world to exploit. Ken Weinstein of the Hudson Institute has argued that the U.S. government “should release details on the billions in stolen assets” held by the I.R.G.C. and the supreme leader. That — and making sure ordinary Iranians learn about them, one scandalous disclosure at a time — is the right idea.

Another right idea, this one from Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is to once again put Setad, along with its scores of front companies and subsidiaries, under U.S. sanctions for corruption. The Obama administration did such a thing in 2013, only to reverse course as part of the nuclear deal.

In 1982, Ronald Reagan praised Poland’s Solidarity movement for remaining “magnificently unreconciled to oppression.” Turns out, it’s true of Iranians today. A West that wants to help them can begin by exploiting the internal contradiction that defines the regime that oppresses them and which may yet prove its undoing.

Saturday, January 06, 2018

From Ian:

MEMRI: 'Fatah Day' At Bir Zeit University: Fatah Youth Activists Wear Dummy Explosive Belts, Threaten Israel With 'Volcano Of Fire'
Amid tension with the U.S. over President Trump's announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the Fatah movement – both its leadership and its activists in the field – has also escalated its rhetoric against Israel, with emphasis on encouraging armed struggle (see also MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 7259, Fatah Social Media Accounts Glorify Armed Struggle Against Israel, Incite To Violence, January 2, 2018). One expression of this was a mass rally and parade held by Fatah's youth movement in Bir Zeit University on January 3, 2018, as part of events marking Fatah Day, i.e., the 53rd anniversary of Fatah's founding. The participants in the rally and parade wore military uniforms, and some were masked and wore shrouds and dummy explosive belts. One of the signs they carried bore Yasser Arafat's slogan, "millions of martyrs are marching on Jerusalem."

This report presents examples of incitement to armed struggle against Israel, including suicide attacks, at the Fatah Day events in Bir Zeit and in recent posts on Facebook pages affiliated with the movement and its activists.

Fatah Day Parade At BirZeitUniversity: "Millions Of Martyrs Are Marching On Jerusalem"

The Fatah Youth rally and parade at BirZeitUniversity were attended by several hundred students, many of them masked, decked in uniform and carrying Fatah flags. Some wore white robes resembling shrouds and dummy explosive belts, and held up copies of the Quran. Photos of this Bir Zeit event were posted on the Fatah's official Twitter page and on Facebook pages affiliated with the movement.[1] The message conveyed by the event was one of support for armed struggle, such as Fatah's actions before the Oslo Accords and during the second intifada.

Inside the Trump Team’s Push on Israel Vote That Mike Flynn Lied About
The last-ditch lobbying effort to scuttle a 2016 United Nations resolution on Israel by then-President-elect Donald Trump and top aides was more extensive than has been reported and went right up to the last moments before the vote, according to people familiar with the effort:
  • One transition member called the U.S. State Department’s 24-hour operations center for the phone numbers of officials, but the department declined to provide them.
  • Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, called the British ambassador to the U.S., Kim Darroch, urging the U.K. to delay the vote.
  • Mike Flynn, soon to be national security adviser, reached Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis about the vote while the minister was at a loud holiday party in Madrid.
  • Nikki Haley, now the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., tried to contact then-Ambassador Samantha Power, but she declined to take or return the call, telling her staff that Ms. Haley’s outreach was inappropriate.
  • Mr. Trump himself on the day of the scheduled vote told Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi that putting the resolution to a vote would damage Egypt’s standing with his administration.
  • About two hours before the scheduled vote, Mr. Flynn called Malaysia’s Permanent Mission to the U.N., but mission staff refused to connect him to their representative.
  • As diplomats gathered in the Council chamber to vote, the cellphone of Uruguay’s deputy ambassador rang, and it was Mr. Flynn asking to table the resolution. The ambassador declined. The resolution passed.
Caroline Glick: Trump kicks America’s Palestinian habit
It was probably a coincidence that US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley hailed the Iranian anti-regime protesters and threatened to end US financial support for UNRWA – the UN Palestinian refugee agency – and the Palestinian Authority more generally in the same briefing. But they are integrally linked.

It is no coincidence that Hamas is escalating its rocket attacks on Israel as the Iranian regime confronts the most significant domestic challenge it has ever faced.

As IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said this week, Iranian assistance to Hamas is steadily rising. Last August, Hamas acknowledged that Iran is its greatest military and financial backer. In 2017, Iran transferred $70 million to the terrorist group.

Eisenkot said that in 2018, Iran intends to transfer $100m. to Hamas.

If Iran is Hamas’s greatest state sponsor, UNRWA is its partner. UNRWA is headquartered in Gaza. It is the UN’s single largest agency. It has more than 11,500 employees in Gaza alone. UNRWA’s annual budget is in excess of $1.2 billion. Several hundred million each year is spent in Gaza.

The US is UNRWA’s largest funder. In 2016, it transferred more than $368m. to UNRWA.

For the past decade, the Center for Near East Policy Research has copiously documented how UNRWA in Gaza is not an independent actor. Rather it is an integral part of Hamas’s regime in Gaza.

UNRWA underwrites the jihadist regime by paying for its school system and its healthcare system, among other things. Since 1999, UNRWA employees have repeatedly and overwhelmingly elected Hamas members to lead their unions.

In every major missile campaign Hamas has carried out against Israel since the group seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, UNRWA facilities have played key roles in its terrorist offensives. Missiles, rockets and mortars have been stored in and fired from UNRWA schools and clinics.

UNRWA teachers and students have served as human shields for Hamas missile launches against Israel.

UNRWA ambulances have been used to ferry weapons, including mortars, and terrorists.

UNRWA officials have served as Hamas mouthpieces in their propaganda war against Israel.

Friday, January 05, 2018

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The Iranian rebellion the world wants to ignore
Elsewhere the silence indicates the dream-puncturing of an entire political class. In 2015 the UN security council agreed a deal with Iran to limit elements of its nuclear programme for a period. Iran’s incentives included a freeing up of trade and a delivery of billions of dollars in cash. For their part, companies and governments across Europe hoped to get their own cash bonanzas in the wake of that deal. Such deals always compromise the people who make them. One of the chief defenders of the 2015 deal, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, has spent recent days being studiously silent on the uprisings in Iran. When President Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital she couldn’t tweet enough condemnations of his action. Yet five days into the protests in Iran, she hadn’t even said that she is watching events closely. Europe’s leading foreign affairs ideologue needs Iran’s governing status quo to stay in place so that nothing about her own deal, future cash prize or putative Nobel award is in any way disturbed.

Even if the regime is one day toppled — far-off though that day looks at the moment — there are enough rival factions within Iran to make the result as unpredictable as it was for many people in 1979. Back then the New York Times published a memorable piece by Richard Falk (formerly of the UN, now professor emeritus at Princeton University) assuring readers that the depiction of Ayatollah Khomeini ‘as fanatical… and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false.’ He later added that ‘Khomeini’s Islamic republic can be expected to have a doctrine of social justice at its core; from all indications it will be flexible in interpreting the Koran.’ Charitably we might say that Iranian politics has long been hard to read. The classified advice of the CIA in August 1978 was that ‘Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.’

Many people will dream their own dreams about the latest events in Iran, as experts and amateurs did in 1979. But for some people in the West — notably the Iranian regime’s paid and unpaid defenders — the mission right now will be to defend and otherwise cover for the regime. They will point out that the House of Saud isn’t at all nice: as though that is contested, or presently relevant.

If the Iranian people want freedom from the mullahs and can seize it for themselves, then we should wish them solidarity and luck. They will need it — for every succeeding stage, as well as this one. They are facing a regime that is not just the region’s chief destabiliser and terror sponsor, but a brutal theocracy. And that regime will certainly remain in power so long as the rest of the world remains as confused, compromised, sympathetic and supine as it has been in recent days and years.

PodCast: Iran's Uprising: Is this a rebellion the world wants to ignore?
With Douglas Murray, Nazenin Ansari, Nigel Jones, Sam Leith, Mark Mason and Freddy Gray.


Melanie Phillips: The Iranian uprising and Europe’s shameful silence
Obama believed the only reason Muslims attacked the West was that it had oppressed them. If the West offered Iran the hand of friendship, he suggested, it would turn into a model global citizen.

So he was determined to empower Iran, and Britain and the EU – driven as ever by a combination of greed and funk – fell into line behind him.

Obama thus bent over backward to give Iran a free pass. According to Politico, his administration stymied an FBI-led operation to shut down Hezbollah’s drug-running, terrorism- financing racket.

In the 2016 prisoner swap deal with Iran, he released several men who his own law enforcement agencies believed posed a danger to national security.

And in the 2009 Green Revolution, Obama abandoned the Iranian people by refusing to give the protesters support.

All of this was to secure the nuclear deal – which has merely empowered Iran to use the money released by sanctions relief to strengthen its terrorist infrastructure and step up its malign and aggressive meddling in the rest of the region.

The Iranian protesters offer the one hope that a catastrophic conflagration can be averted by regime change from within.

But the Western Left doesn’t want them to succeed – because that would shine the harshest possible light on the moral bankruptcy of the Obama administration that the Left supported to the hilt.

More unthinkable still, it would mean giving some credit to Donald Trump. But the Left’s unhinged hatred of the US president will allow nothing – not even the liberation of an oppressed people and the safety of the world – to challenge their unshakable conviction that he can never do a single thing that is good.

If the Iranian uprising is stamped out, it will be because of the absence of support from Britain and Europe. Their silence makes them complicit with a genocidal regime at war with the West and has caused them shamefully to betray a brave people fighting for its freedom.
Hillel Neuer on Radio Sweden - "Margot Wallström's position on Iran is troubling"
Jan. 4, 2018 - UN Watch, an NGO which scrutinizes the United Nations, has criticized Sweden's foreign minister Margot Wallström for not condemning Iran strongly enough over its violent response to protests in the country. UN Watch has also criticised Sweden's lack of commitment to an emergency UN Security Council meeting on the situation in Iran. Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, told Radio Sweden: The position of the Swedish foreign minister is troubling. There are hundreds of thousands of people affected by what's happening in Iran and Iran is involved in conflicts across the region. Neuer claims Sweden is neglecting its duty to advocate for human rights, but in a statement to Radio Sweden, Margot Wallström's press secretary said that she was among the first foreign ministers to comment on the situation in Iran. He added: Discussions are currently underway regarding whether the situation in Iran should be brought up in the UN Security Council and, if so, in what format. Wallström’s office insisted that Sweden's position on the matter is as yet undetermined and that a vote on whether to call a Security Council meeting is expected later today. On Thursday afternoon, Wallström took to Twitter again to express concern over the deaths, mass arrests and restrictions on the internet in Iran.


From Ian:

Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Trump's bold moves just might jolt the Palestinians to finally negotiate with Israel
President Trump has sent a loud and clear message to leaders of the Palestinian Authority: Stop treating the United States like a giant ATM, withdrawing billions of dollars in aid without engaging in peace negotiations with Israel and being willing to make mutual compromises.

Has this message upset Palestinian leaders and their supporters? Absolutely.

But maybe – just maybe – President Trump’s bold and unconventional message will act like a shock treatment and jumpstart new talks between Palestinians and Israelis. If this happens – and it is far from certain – the president’s departure from past policies could go down as an historic turning point in what seems like a never-ending and frozen “peace process.”

The State Department reports that America has provided more than $5.2 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Palestinians since 1994, including $290 million in 2016.

In addition, the U.S. has provided billions more to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), which has aided Palestinian “refugees” in several countries in the Middle East since 1949. This aid includes $355 million from American taxpayers in 2016 alone. America also provided an additional $55 million to Palestinians in 2016 for law enforcement.

The term “refugees” includes children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of people who left Israel when the nation became independent 70 years ago.

The president tweeted Tuesday: “… we pay the Palestinians HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel…. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”

President Trump’s tweet comes on the heels of his announcement last month that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – and our United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s threat to make deep cuts to America’s financial contributions to the world body.
Fight against incitement
As Palestinian leaders call for more violence and Palestinians burn American flags alongside effigies of U.S. President Donald Trump on the streets, the prospects for peace appear more distant than ever.

But Palestinian terrorism did not begin with Trump's Dec. 6 declaration recognizing Jerusalem as the official capital of Israel. It has been ongoing since the 1920s and it is fueled by violent indoctrination spread by the Palestinian leadership. It is only via incitement and indoctrination that innocent Palestinian children grow up to become terrorists.

More must be done to prevent the Palestinian children of today from becoming the terrorists of tomorrow.

The only way to stop young, impressionable Palestinian children from supporting terrorism in the future is to ensure that UNRWA schools no longer indoctrinate children into supporting terrorism.

Recently, the Center for Near East Policy Research published a comprehensive study on Palestinian school textbooks. The study argues that indoctrination continues to be a systematic problem in the Palestinian Authority school system.
Sexual Harassment East and West
"I say that when a girl walks about like that, it is a patriotic duty to sexually harass her and a national duty to rape her." — Nabih Wahsh, Islamist lawyer, on Egypt's al-Assema TV, October 19, 2017.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 sparked off increasingly revolutionary movements across the Islamic world, and in the process saw women in many countries denied the freedoms they had started to acquire under earlier regimes. The veil returned widely, notably in Turkey, following the growing power of authoritarian and fundamentalist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with women's rights being increasingly denied.

We urgently need to drop our unwillingness to contrast Western and Islamic values -- whether regarding violence, treatment of religious minorities, anti-Semitism, or treatment of women. There are also growing numbers of Muslims, as we are seeing today in Iran, who find wider Islamic attitudes abhorrent and work hard, mostly against the odds, to bring their faith closer to modern values.

Thursday, January 04, 2018

From Ian:

IsraellyCool: The Palestinian Search for Peace
Fresh from his lung transplant in the US and follow-up treatment in Israel, Saeb “Massacre” Erekat had the chutzpah to once again rant on about supposed Israeli occupation, apartheid and heinous crimes.

Erekat slammed the American president for being unreasonable with the Palestinians and accused Trump, by his actions, of encouraging “the Israeli occupation to consolidate its occupation and apartheid regime.”

“Now, he is threatening to starve Palestinian children in refugee camps and deny their natural rights to health and education if we don’t endorse his terms and dictations,” Erekat said, referring to Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“Instead of treating the Palestinians with fairness, President Trump has chosen a game of blame rather being an honest broker,” Erekat said. “His statements against the Palestinian people have encouraged Israel to continue its heinous crimes and violations of International Law.”


But I think fellow palestinian propagandist Hanan Ashrawi takes the cake with her response.

“President Trump has sabotaged our search for peace, freedom and justice. Now he dares to blame the Palestinians for the consequences of his own irresponsible actions!”

Yup, she really did claim that the palestinians – despite decades of rejecting peace offers and engaging in terrorism) have been searching for peace all this time.

Melanie Phillips: Our Crazy World - the Iran uprising
Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the Iran uprising, the excommunication from liberal Eden of Professor Alan Dershowitz and the inversion by the left of truth and lies.


From Ian:

Natan Sharansky: The West Should Stop Dithering and Show Its Support for the Protesters in Iran
An opinion piece in the New York Times recently argued that the best way for the U.S. government to help the Iranian protesters is to "Keep quiet and do nothing." It is vital to understand why failing to support the protesters at this critical juncture would constitute a moral and strategic mistake.

In 2009, when Iranians came out in large numbers to denounce their country's rigged presidential election, the response they received from the American government was decidedly tepid. This policy of non-interference discouraged protesters and reinforced the regime.

My experiences as a political prisoner and my decades of involvement with democratic dissidents around the world have shown me that all democratic revolutions have some elements in common. It is the drive of ordinary citizens to free themselves from government control over their thought, speech and livelihoods that has propelled dissidents and revolutionary movements around the world.

Any regime that refuses to respect its citizens' most basic rights, and especially the right to think and speak freely, can maintain its power only by intimidation and force. Revolutions take place when enough people simultaneously cross that fateful line between silent questioning and open dissent. Once they do so, the regime can no longer contain the upsurge of opposition and must either begin to liberalize or collapse.

World powers should warn Tehran - and thereby reassure protesters - that it must respect its citizens' rights if it wishes to continue receiving benefits from their countries. Articulating a clear policy of linkage would put pressure on the regime to make genuine changes and give hope to protesters that their sacrifices will not be in vain.

It is time for all those who value freedom to state clearly that the Iranian people - like all people - deserve to be free, and that when they fight for this right, those of us who already enjoy it will stand unequivocally by their side.

Iran’s Endgame In Gaza
One week of popular protests in Iran has brought into stark focus the country’s deep internal divisions, along with widespread resentment towards the mullahs, which have remained relatively dormant since regime forces brutally quashed the Green Revolution in 2009. What started last Thursday in the city of Mashhad as a small economic rally—with participants primarily venting frustration over the lack of trickle-down effect from some $100 billion in sanctions relief granted to Tehran in the 2015 nuclear deal—has morphed into nationwide, deadly demonstrations against the rulership of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Across Iran chants of “death to the dictator” have become common refrain as pictures of the ayatollah are set on fire. Among the many grievances being aired is anger over the Islamic Republic’s deep military, and thus financial, involvement in conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, in addition to support for Lebanese-based Hizbullah. Somewhat less pronounced is the regime’s bankrolling of the Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, although protesters have reportedly recited slogans such as ‘Let go of Palestine’ and ‘Forget Palestine’ while invoking the Gaza Strip in particular.

In this respect, relations between Shiite Iran and Sunni Hamas have thawed since the former froze ties with Gaza’s rulers after they refused to support the Assad government at the onset of the Syrian war. Now, Tehran’s renewed funding of Hamas is part and parcel of the Islamic Republic’s attempt to increase its regional influence and, on the micro level, its presence along Israel’s borders. The latter entails accelerating Hizbullah’s militarization in Lebanon and establishing a permanent presence in Syria, including the entrenchment of Shiite proxies in the Golan Heights.

According to Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser (ret.), former director general of the Israeli Ministry of International Affairs and Strategy, Iran’s growing involvement in Gaza is based on a convergence of interests. “On the one hand, Hamas has become weaker as it lost the ability to rely on its usual supporters, while its effort to forge unity with the Palestinian Authority appears to have failed. “On the other hand,” he explained to The Media Line, “the Iranians want to increase the strength of the ‘resistance’ axis that opposes Israel and promotes radical Islamic ideology and Hamas can be a useful ally in this cause.”
Sohrab Ahmari: More Iran Nonsense From the New York Times
Thomas Erdbrink is at it again. The New York Times Tehran bureau chief told readers in November that Donald Trump’s tough rhetoric had pushed the Iranian people into the arms of a regime they detest. Iranians begged to differ: A few weeks after Erdbrink’s story appeared, hundreds of thousands of them poured into the streets in opposition to clerical rule.

Confronted with this apparent discrepancy between reality and his thesis, Erdbrink filed a December 29 dispatch–from Niseko, Japan–that described the protests as “scattered” and concerned mainly with the “government’s handling of the economy.” Meanwhile, in actually existing Iran, the protests had spread from Mashhad, in the northeast, to some two-dozen cities. And the protesters were chanting “Death to the Islamic Republic,” “Death to [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei,” and “Death to the Principle of the Guardianship” of the mullahs–not “Death to Inflation.” Erdbrink could have gotten wind of these slogans via Twitter and other social media outlets. Instead, he mostly relied on quotes from regime figures and pro-regime think-tankers keen to frame the uprising as apolitical.

Nearly a week since the protests erupted, Erdbrink remains committed to his earlier conclusions. Witness his January 2 dispatch, this time from the Iranian capital. “Hard-Liners and Reformers Tapped Iranians’ Ire. Now Both Are Protest Targets,” reads the headline, and the body of the article suggests that the current revolt was instigated by these two competing factions inside the regime.

The Tehran regime is invested in the hard-liners-versus-moderates-and-reformers narrative. It is a classic good-cop-bad-cop routine with many useful applications in foreign diplomacy. Numerous Western statesmen and intellectuals have fallen for it since the regime’s founding in 1979. Back then, another writer for the Times, Princeton’s Richard Falk, wrote of how the Ayatollah Khomeini’s “entourage of supporters is uniformly composed of moderate, progressive individuals”–shortly before the Khomeinists staged a decade-long orgy of torture and summary execution. Ever since, finding and supporting regime moderates has been a cornerstone of U.S. and European policy toward Iran.

Wednesday, January 03, 2018

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: Regime Change Is the West’s Best Hope for Iran
If the regime in Iran collapsed, there’s every reason to believe that Tehran would reassess its options. If the demonstrators have their way and compel a provisional Iranian government to abandon its support for terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and rogue states like Syria, the threat posed by Israel’s nuclear arsenal (which it has possessed since at least 1968) diminishes significantly. Likewise, Iran’s regional non-nuclear competitors in the Arab World—chiefly Saudi Arabia and its allies—can be checked as effectively by conventional forces as they would be with a nuclear arsenal. Incentives provided to Tehran in the form of aid to induce verifiable nuclear disarmament and to transition toward a republican government would also facilitate this process.

To the self-described foreign-policy rationalists who engineered the Iran nuclear deal and now brood in exile, this all sounds like so much fancy. “Realistically, the best-case scenario is not that Iran becomes a Western-style liberal democracy, but rather that it follows the China model,” wrote current New York Times foreign affairs columnist Max Fisher, “of gradual economic and diplomatic opening, along with loosening some social freedoms.” Indeed, we have seen some social freedoms restored in the Islamic Republic—the abolition of the penalty of arrest for women who decline to wear the hijab, for example—but only as a result of protesters setting fire to government offices. Fisher’s isn’t just a failure of imagination disguised as sober calculation; it’s bet-hedging. No one will fault you if the government in Tehran collapses and you didn’t see it coming. Who could have? But if you were to advocate, much less hasten, the regime’s collapse and it survives anyway, your reputation as a policymaker or analyst might not.

Cracks are beginning to show as enraged demonstrators beat at the Islamic Republic’s foundations. Like the Soviet Union, Iran’s is a repressive regime that sacrificed its legitimacy long before its citizens took to the streets in revolt.The Iran deal has provided Iran with lucrative new trade arrangements and access to assets lost to it in 1979, but it has not induced a change in its confrontational posture toward the West. Nothing will. There will need to be new management in Tehran.
Eli Lake: The West Can Help Iranians Take Back Their Country
There is currently a Change.org petition urging Obama to speak out in favor of the demonstrations. That is a good start. But the former president should do more. He should devote his good offices to publicizing the cause of Iranian freedom. No American can lead Iran’s opposition, but Obama’s unique understanding of grassroots activism puts him in an ideal position to lead the Western cause of solidarity. He could organize lawyers, newspaper editors, teachers, librarians and human rights groups to partner Iranians under siege, following the Jewish-American movement to allow Soviet refuseniks to emigrate.

With all of this in mind, it’s also important to avoid past mistakes. Let’s start with hubris. Iranians will be the authors of their liberation. No State Department or CIA program will bring freedom to Iran. The expert class that has gotten so much of Iran wrong in recent years should step aside and listen to those Iranians driven out of their home country who live today in the West.

So far, the movement in Iran appears to have the advantage of being leaderless. Unlike the Greens of 2009, there are no Iranian leaders who have emerged as the personality or face of this new opposition. Let’s leave it that way. People’s Mujahedin leader Maryam Rajavi, or supporters of the Pahlavi dynasty that fell in 1979, should not be treated as leaders or spokesmen for this organic uprising. They seek to impose an agenda on a movement they did not create. Don’t let them do it.

The same goes for those who have emerged as a de facto lobby for President Rouhani and his faction within the Iranian regime. This network, based primarily in Washington, includes the National Iranian American Council, the Ploughshares Network and the many journalists and experts titillated by U.S.-Iranian diplomacy. For years they told us Rouhani was a reformer. Today they whisper that these demonstrators are really a ploy of Rouhani’s “hardline” opposition. They celebrate “elections” that have the legitimacy as those for student government. They want Trump to be silent today.

Finally, it’s important to not be discouraged. I hope the unrest in Iran spreads and the fanatics, thieves and terrorists who have infantilized Iranians for 38 years are toppled. But it’s likely the unrest today is the beginning of a longer process. This regime has survived mass demonstrations and riots before and restored the fear necessary to continue its misrule. It’s the West’s job in these coming weeks to support our real allies, the Iranian people demanding freedom.

Obama Betrayed Iranian People; Trump Stands with Them
As a long-time Iranian, I can tell you that the support of the US and President Trump is invaluable to the ordinary Iranians: they feel helpless and alone in the face of the monsters who have been oppressing them for so long.

On Persian social media outlets and apps such as Telegram, which is extremely popular among Iranians, people are cheering the US support. People are asking the US to support them in other ways as well, in addition to helping them bypass the internet-blocks and shut-downs that the Iranian regime recently implemented.

If the Iranians succeed in changing this Islamist regime, it will bring down the highest state sponsor of terrorism, the leading regime in human rights violations, the top state sponsor of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitic propaganda. Iran, with its current regime, is a danger not just to its long-suffering people, but to everyone. These protesters, who are flooding the streets and demanding that their voices be heard, are committing acts of heroism that will be felt throughout the world and throughout history.

From Ian:

Trump threatens to cut off US aid to Palestinians over Jerusalem dispute
Acknowledging his push to broker peace in the Middle East has stalled, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority, asking why Washington should make “any of these massive future payments” when the Palestinians were “no longer willing to talk peace.”

In a tweet, the president dismissed Palestinian fury over his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, saying he had planned for Israel “to pay” in future negotiations for his declaration. But Palestinian intransigence was now preventing any progress on peace talks, he said

Washington was paying the Palestinian Authority hundreds of millions of dollars a year “for nothing,” he wrote, complaining that the US received “no appreciation or respect” in return.

“They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel,” he said. “We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more.”

“But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace,” he went on, “why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”


US warns it won’t fund UN refugee agency if Palestinians reject talks
Speaking with reporters Tuesday at UN headquarters, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley stressed the US remains committed to reaching a peace deal, and indicated it would cut off aid if the Palestinians refused to engage in peace negotiations.

Responding to a reporter’s question on whether the US will continue to provide funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to millions of Palestinian refugees, in light of a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution last month condemning the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Haley said Trump was prepared to cut aid to UNRWA if the Palestinians refuse to return to peace talks.

“I think the president has basically said that he doesn’t want to give any additional funding until the Palestinians are agreeing to come back to the negotiation table,” Haley said. “We’re trying to move for a peace process but if that doesn’t happen the president is not going to continue to fund that situation.”

“The Palestinians now have to show their will — they want to come to the table. As of now they are not coming to the table but they ask for aid. We’re not giving the aid,” added Haley. “We’re going to make sure they come to the table and we want to move forward with the peace process.”

The US was the biggest donor to UNRWA in 2016, giving $368,429,712. It is also the largest overall supplier of financial support for the Palestinians.
EXCLUSIVE - U.N. Palestinian 'Refugee' Agency Defends Budget After Census Finds Nearly A Third Less ‘Refugees’
I24 News added the census was “conducted by 1,000 Lebanese and Palestinian employees and was taken over the course of a year.”

In his statement, UNRWA’s Gunness said that “UNRWA looks forward to analyzing the survey results in detail and to discuss their policy implications with the Lebanese authorities, the Palestinian community, donor countries and the broader UN family.”

He stressed that the census “does not cover all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon – it covers those in the camps and gatherings.” However, the census was reported as a thorough accounting of most Palestinian “refugees” living in Lebanon.

Gunness added: “UNRWA continues to operate facing a large shortfall in its budget. UNRWA urges all donor countries to provide the funding needed in order to maintain and actually strengthen its capacity to assist and protect Palestine refugees in Lebanon.”

The U.S. is UNRWA’s single largest donor, providing about $300 million annually.

The definition of a Palestinian “refugee” and the actual numbers have long been the subject of debate.
Trump’s Mideast policy: Diplomatic Darwinism in the quest for the ultimate deal
US President Donald Trump’s bombshell tweets late on Tuesday demonstrated once again just how unpredictable the leader of the free world is.

In under 100 words, he questioned America’s longstanding financial support for the Palestinian Authority, contradicted his own position on Jerusalem, and indicated that Israel would have to “pay” in future peace negotiations.

With a president as impulsive as Trump, nothing is impossible. Tomorrow he really could, as he threatened on Twitter, announce that the US will cease funding the PA or demand painful concessions from Israel, or declare he is abandoning his pet peace project altogether.

At this point it appears more likely, however, that US officials will somehow try to downplay the president’s surprising tweets, indicating support for the status quo and vowing that the White House will continue unabated in its efforts to bring about a lasting peace.

Still, Trump’s tweets do provide fascinating insights into how he views international relations and the application of his “America First” foreign policy in the Middle East. It’s all quid pro quo, a system of bilateral transactions in which the strongest player dominates weaker ones. Call it diplomatic Darwinism.

Tuesday, January 02, 2018

From Ian:

Time for the US to Send a Message by Cutting UN Funding
The obvious purpose of the GA vote was to give certain members of the international community an opportunity not only to reject Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but to effectively reprimand the United States. The fact that Egypt, which receives $1.3 billion annually in US foreign aid, first authored the resolution makes this blatant display of anti-Americanism all the more egregious. The US must act to disincentivize UN members states from future attempts to neutralize its Security Council veto, and to try to humiliate it in the General Assembly.

The US provides 22% ($4 billion) of the UN’s mandatory contributions — far exceeding the contributions from other major countries — for administrative and programs costs, as well as for peacekeeping operations. The remaining $6 billion in US support are voluntary contributions that fund organizations such as UNICEF, the World Food Program and UNRWA (whose existence likely perpetuates the Palestinian conflict).

On December 24, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley offered an initial response to the resolution: that the US will cut the UN’s 2018-19 fiscal year operating budget by $285 million. Admittedly, this reduction is intended to “increase the UN’s efficiencies while protecting [American] interests.” Though a step in the right direction, more needs to be done to discourage the UN’s recent behavior.

The US, in the world of international relations, cannot always expect an unambiguously causal relationship between financial support and policies it wants. However, when illiberal actors hijack the UN, and pursue extraordinary measures to actively interfere with internal US policies, it is time to impose a consequence: reduced funding to the United Nations.
'The Palestinians have lost the support of the Arab world'
Middle East expert and senior lecturer at Bar Ilan University, Arutz Sheva weekly columnist Dr. Mordechai Kedar says that the Palestinian Authority is losing support in the Arab world, claiming that former allies are growing “sick of the Palestinians,” as they find support for PA efforts against Israel contrary to their national self-interest.

Interviewed by Channel 20, Kedar says that the Arab world is increasingly impressed by “Israel’s internal stability, its democracy - which even allows all sorts of thugs to say they don’t want to enlist - and the fact that Israel is comprised 20% of Arabs, and not one of them is fleeing. They even know that the Palestinians, who live under Israeli ‘occupation,’ live much better than all the other Arabs in the Middle East. They understand that Israel is something that doesn’t mesh with what they were taught about it - it is something different.”

Kedar explained that the Arab world was growing annoyed with PA efforts against Israel in light of US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“What happened was that Trump warned that he would stop funding countries that voted against the US - in Egypt, nobody wants to lose their food just because the Palestinians want Jerusalem. Therefore, in this matter the Palestinians have succeeded in annoying many Arabs in the Middle East, to the extent that people say, ‘Why do we have to be held captive by the Palestinians in the peace process with Israel? If it’s in our interest to have peace with Israel, let’s get on with it, and let the Palestinians break their backs with Israel.’”

“In my opinion, the Palestinians have lost the Arab world to a large extent, and the whole Palestinian national project stands on brink of collapse, because Trump pulled the PA ‘Jerusalem card’ - which has no substance - from their tower of cards.”
JPost Editorial: Wanted: Palestinian pragmatism
Washington has largely remained silent in the face of extreme Palestinian reactions to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Hardly a peep was heard from the Trump administration when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared that the US, by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, had disqualified itself as a fair broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is despite the fact that the US transfers hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the PA every year.

Nor was there a reaction when Fatah officials such as Jibril Rajoub announced that American Vice President Mike Pence, who was supposed to visit the region in December, had become a persona non grata in areas controlled by the PA. Rajoub asked other Arab leaders to follow suit. Yet this snub was largely ignored by the US. Pence’s office said that his visit was canceled due to an important vote on US tax reforms.

While the US has remained restrained, the barrage of attacks from the PA has not let up. The official Fatah Twitter account continues to share outrageous posts since Trump’s decision, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch.

On December 14, for instance, a tweet was sent out that juxtaposed a picture of Trump with one of Hitler and added, “I don’t see any different [sic], do you?” Then, during a sermon on December 20, Mahmoud Habbash, Abbas’s adviser on religious and Islamic affairs, condemned the US by saying Trump’s recognition was “rubbish” and worth less than “the urine of one Jerusalem child.”

There was no sign that – as US officials originally hoped – the extreme initial reactions from the PA to Trump’s decision were quieting down.

Despite pressure from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and perhaps other Arab countries such as Jordan and Egypt, Abbas and other Palestinian leaders refuse to tone down their attacks on the US and take seriously a peace deal now being hammered out by the Trump administration.

From Ian:

PMW: "We shall not retreat" – the PA’s daily battle cry for violence
Nearly every day since Dec. 12, excluding the days around Christmas and New Years, the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida has published a full-page of pictures of protests including rioters throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks at Israelis. The only text on the pages is a giant headline repeated each day: "We shall not retreat." The locations of each event also appears on each picture, nearly are of which are from different Palestinian cities.

One page, from Dec. 18, shows pictures of peaceful demonstrations against US Pres. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from different countries around the world (Libya, Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Montenegro).

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the Palestinian leadership and Fatah have been attempting to incite more violence against Israel ever since US Pres. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The following pictures are further evidence:

Caroline Glick: The Iranian explosion of truth
The $100 billion in sanctions relief Iran received in the wake of the nuclear deal enabled the regime to give hundreds of millions of additional dollars each year to its proxy militias and armies in Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

It is self-evident that if the protesters get their way and the ayatollahs are overthrown, that money would stop flowing to Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and the Shi’ite militias in Iraq. Instead, that money, and billions more, would be spent developing Iran.

There are many ways that the nations of the world can help the protesters in Iran. The US and Iran’s other targets can expose the financial corruption in the Islamic Republic, including the bank account information of everyone from Supreme Dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei down to local Basij commanders. They can broadcast anti-regime information into Iran through multiple platforms outside the regime’s control. They can bypass the regime and unblock Twitter, Facebook, Telegraph and other social media platforms.

Aside from that, the Trump administration can take immediate steps to constrain even further the regime’s access to the international monetary system and force European and US firms to cancel their multi-billion dollar deals with the regime.

There are many reasons to fear that the protests will fail to achieve their goal of overthrowing the regime. The regime is already sending its forces out to repress the protesters through killing and mass arrests.

But even if the protesters’ prospects of success are small, there is no excuse for not supporting them, as constructively, enthusiastically and unconditionally as possible. There is certainly no excuse for working to preserve Obama’s foreign policy legacy at the expense of a popular uprising that has the potential to avert a world war.
Peter Kohanloo, Sohrab Ahmari: An Iranian Revolution of National Dignity
Iran is convulsing with the largest mass uprising since the 2009 Green Movement. Demonstrations that began last week in the city of Mashhad, home to the shrine of the eighth Shiite imam, have now spread to dozens of cities. And while the slogans initially addressed inflation, joblessness, and graft, they soon morphed into outright opposition to the mullahs. As we write, the authorities have blocked access to popular social-media sites and closed off subway stations in the capital, Tehran, to prevent crowd sizes from growing. At least 12 people have been killed in clashes with security forces.

What is happening in the Islamic Republic?

After nearly four decades of plunderous and fanatical Islamist rule, Iranians are desperate to become a normal nation-state once more, and they refuse to be exploited for an ideological cause that long ago lost its luster. It is a watershed moment in Iran’s history: The illusion of reform within the current theocratic system has finally been shattered. Iranians, you might say, are determined to make Iran great again.

Their movement is attuned to the worldwide spirit of nationalist renewal. From the U.S. to India, and from South Africa to Britain, political leaders and the voters who elect them are reaffirming the enduring value of the nation-state. Iran hasn’t been immured from these developments, as the slogans of the current protests indicate. No longer using the rights-based lexicon of votes and recounts, Iranians are instead demanding national dignity from a regime that for too long has subjugated Iranian-ness to its Shiite, revolutionary mission.

It’s notable, for example, that protestors chant “We Will Die to Get Iran Back,” “Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My Life Only for Iran,” and “Let Syria Be, Do Something for Me.” Put another way: The people are tired of paying the price for the regime’s efforts to remake the region in its own image and challenge U.S. “hegemony.” Some have even taken to chanting “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul,” expressing gratitude and nostalgia for the Pahlavi era, which saw the modern, pro-Western nation-state of Iran emerge from the shambles of the Persian Empire.

Monday, January 01, 2018

From Ian:

Even the Beatles preceded the Palestinians
Since then…since 1964…the “Palestinians” have been the world’s number one concern, even though they have been nothing but a headache and exist in no history books. Nothing to be found about them before June 2, 1964. That’s when the Arab League certified them as the PLO.

That’s when they became a “people” -- a people still in search of an ancestry. So far, no luck.

Abbas keeps trying. He names himself and his “people” heirs to every ancient civilization on record.

But there is not even a single page about them; not in the Hebrew Bible, or the Christian Bible. The Koran never heard of them, and neither did Josephus.

Consider the Beatles. They made their splash February 7, 1964. That’s four months BEFORE the “Palestinians” got noticed...
If the 1960s are your idea of “ancient times,” okay; consider the Beatles. They made their splash February 7, 1964.

That’s four months BEFORE the “Palestinians” got noticed and they, The Beatles, never asked for favors besides “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

It’s the song that launched them on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” (Originally known as “Toast of the Town.”) Anybody remember Ed Sullivan? Of course not.

Yes, Millennials, we did have TV back then, though to change channels Americans had to get up off the couch. Imagine such a thing!

Since math is not my strength, I will trust you to check my figures, to which I say that the “Palestinian people” have been around for 54 years.

For that, they want their own country deep in the heart of Israel, where the Jews go back 3,800 years – and a share of Jerusalem, Israel’s capital for 3,000 years.
Hezbollah and Hamas rank at top of Forbes’ ‘Richest Terror Groups’ list
Eight of the ‘Top Ten’ terror groups in terms of income are Muslim, with Hezbollah and Hamas ranked #1 and #3 respectively.

One of the more far-reaching consequences of former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is on display in Forbes Israel’s latest ranking of the richest terrorist groups in the world, as in 2017 Iran-backed Hezbollah leaped to the top of list with a whopping $1.1 billion in revenue.

That is not to say that all their income stems from Iran. Terrorist organizations in general also fund their purchase of arms, training and salary payments to their members from such criminal activities as drug smuggling, money laundering, kickbacks, kidnappings, ‘protection’, etc., just as organized crime does.

But the nuclear deal, it should be recalled, allowed for the release of billions of dollars into Iran’s state coffers from the lifting of internationally imposed sanctions, and the unfreezing of its assets abroad. This, in turn, allowed the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism to open the spigots to its proxies, and the results can clearly be seen by comparing this year’s “Top Ten” list with the previous one, made in 2014. Lebanese group Hezbollah, which has been fighting in Syria for years for Iranian ally Bashar al-Assad, was then ranked fourth, with $500 million – only half of what it has today.

Hamas has $700 million
The Gaza Strip’s Hamas, meanwhile, is now in third place, having actually dropped a rung from 2014. (The Taliban now occupy second place, with a revenue of $800 million). Forbes lists them as currently receiving about $700 million a year, vs. a billion dollars three years ago. They have two well-known state sponsors, Qatar and, again, Iran. But in the decade since it took over Gaza, Hamas also became expert in extracting money from its own citizens.

According to Forbes’ 2014 report, Hamas makes most of its money from a sophisticated tax system aimed at, among other things, pocketing large portions of the international aid that flows into Gaza. It also runs hundreds of businesses, controls several banks, and has levies on all consumer goods entering the Gaza Strip. All in all, the report says, about 15% of Gaza’s economy ends up in this organization’s pocket.
Riyadh chess champion criticizes Saudi visa discrimination against Israeli players
Winner of the world speed chess championship in Riyadh, grandmaster Magnus Carlsen from Norway, said in an interview with the Norwegian NRK broadcasting network that if the Saudi visa issue is not regulated until next year, Saudi Arabia should not host the next tournament. “I really hope they solve the issue of visas for all countries,” said Carlsen.

The four-day chess championship ended December 30 amid controversy surrounding Riyadh’s refusal to provide visas for Israeli players. Seven Israeli chess players reportedly requested visas for the event. Head of the English Chess Federation Dominic Lawson said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia should be stripped of the right to host chess championships. "This contract for the World Rapid Chess Championship was signed on the understanding that the Saudis would ensure that Israeli masters would be able to play,” Lawson said.

Criticism surrounding the tournament also concerned the Kingdom’s treatment of its women. This year will reportedly be the first-year female chess players were not forced to wear an Islamic abaya garment to the games; instead, they were apparently permitted to wear a long blouse. Ukrainian chess champion Anna Muzychuk told reporters she decided to turn down a chance to participate in the event due to Saudi human right violations and its treatment of women. (h/t Zvi)

From Ian:

PMW: Murderers of 179 Israelis honored by Fatah including 4 female suicide bombers
The official Facebook page of Abbas' Fatah Movement celebrated Fatah's 53rd anniversary by glorifying eight terrorist murderers from its ranks, four of them female suicide bombers. Fatah posted photos of the killers with the same text and logo on Dec. 30, 2017:

"The Palestinian National Liberation Movement - Fatah
Mobilization and Organization Commission - Communications Office
The 53rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution"


The following are the photos of the terrorist murderers posted on Fatah's official Facebook page, with PMW explanatory notes:

Khalil Al-Wazir - Abu Jihad - former head of the PLO's military wing, was responsible for the murder of at least 125 Israelis, according to the PA's news agency Wafa.
Text:
"Heroic Martyr (Shahid)
Fatah Movement Central Committee member,
Khalil Al-Wazir 'Abu Jihad'"


The number "53" represents the 53rd anniversary of the "Launch" of Fatah. In the upper right corner is the Fatah logo that includes a grenade, crossed rifles, and the PA map of "Palestine" that presents all of Israel together with the PA areas as "Palestine".
JPost Editorial: Support the Iranian people
There was a time not so long ago when Israel and Iran were allies. And if one day the Iranian political leadership will go, there is no reason why Israel and Iran cannot once again collaborate.

A free, democratic, and independent Iran would give full expression – not only to the richness of Persian culture, one of the oldest on the planet – but could also tap into the extraordinary talents and energies of this remarkable people. Imagine the synergies of combining Israeli and Iranian abilities.

The only way there is even an outside chance of this happening, however, is if the US under Trump’s leadership, along with other nations, make it clear to Iran that they will not tolerate continued repression of the Iranian people.

As part of restoring the deterrence lost during the Obama era, the US should meet every case of repression with clear consequences, whether in the form of renewed sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or the curtailing of imports, or the suspension of business ties.

You might not be able to tell by reading leading newspapers or watching the major TV news outlets, but we could be witnessing unprecedented signs of change in Iran. World leaders should, through both words and deeds, take advantage of this propitious time.
The Regime Chants "Death to America", Iranians Chant "Death to Mullahs"
Now, people are demanding not just limited reforms but regime change. After almost four decades of living under a theocracy -- with Islamist mullahs controlling them, rampant corruption, and the regime's persistent dissemination of propaganda -- the people have reached the boiling point. The government has been doing all it can to stoke the flames of hatred, but has been trying to deflect it to "Death to America" and "Death to Israel".

Protesters, risking their lives, have been chanting, "Death to Khamenei" -- a serious crime according to the clergy, and punishable, according to the Sharia law of the regime, with death.

People are also chanting, "Death to Rouhani", "Shame on you Khamenei, step down from power", "Death to the Dictator" and "Death to the Islamic Republic". Protesters are tearing down the banners of Iran's Supreme leaders, Khomeini and Khamenei.

Chants being heard all over the nation are, "Forget about Palestine, forget about Gaza, think about us", "Death to Hezbollah", "The people live like beggars / [Khamenei] lives like a God," and "Leave Syria alone, think about us instead".

The outcry leaves no question about the needs of the people, and the real voice of Iran. Demonstrators are making a clear distinction between the Iranian people's desired policies and those being carried out by the regime. All political and economic indications are that protests in Iran will continue to grow.

The Trump administration in the United States is taking the right side by supporting the Iranian people; they are the principal victims of the Iranian regime and its Islamist agenda.

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