Minnie Driver has stepped down from her role as Oxfam Ambassador because of allegations that staff for the charity — in Haiti and other countries — paid vulnerable people for sex.
In 2014, Oxfam threw Scarlett Johansson under the bus because of her association with SodaStream, an Israeli company that employed hundreds of Palestinians and served as a bellwether for peaceful co-existence between Palestinians and Jews.
Johansson refused to be bullied, and likewise stepped down from her Oxfam position. I am proud to have worked directly with Scarlett’s people during that fiasco.
A bit of justice for Oxfam? Perhaps. But no justice for Haitians who were abused — or for Palestinians who lost jobs and friends they treasured.
Akoob claims that maybe South Africa can learn from Israel while simultaneously boycotting Israel — simply by taking Israeli design specifications, but never interacting with Israeli scientists or engineers.
Again, Akoob gets it wrong: according to a whole range of scientists, experts, and engineers (as summarized in this report from the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs), there is simply no substitute for working together when it comes to water.
Based on all these misstatements of fact, Akoob concludes:
South Africa does not need the help of Israel to solve our drought.
And just to make her point, Rumana Akoob is — apparently — willing to bet the very safety of the South African people on her views.
If Poland wants to demonstrate it really did have nothing to do with the Holocaust, it’s going a mighty strange way about it.
A new law passed by the Polish parliament criminalizing any suggestion that Poland was involved in the Holocaust has produced a crisis in Polish-Jewish relations described as the most serious since the fall of communism in 1989.
Poland is well known for its sensitivity to the false description of Nazi concentration camps on its soil as being “Polish camps.” But the new law goes much further.
It makes it a criminal offense for anyone to accuse Poland of being “responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich... or other crimes against peace and humanity or war crimes...”
This is in effect to criminalize telling the truth about Polish history. For there is ample evidence of Polish complicity in the extermination of the Jews.
Poles often shopped Jews to the Nazis; the historian and survivor Emanuel Ringelblum has noted that Polish police “played a most lamentable role in the extermination of the Jews of Poland... [and were] enthusiastic executors of all the German directives regarding the Jews.”
The US Senate is preparing to vote on the Taylor Force Act that links US financial assistance to the Palestinians with a verifiable end to the Palestinian Authority’s policy of “martyr payments” to convicted terrorists and their families – and the final version of the bill leaves the PA with little room to maneuver if it wants to continue receiving US aid.
Named in memory of the former American army officer stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in Tel Aviv in March 2016, the Taylor Force Act passed the House of Representatives by unanimous consent in December 2017. At the time, some supporters of the legislation expressed concern about exemptions that were introduced for certain infrastructure projects in the PA, as well as a “sunset clause” that would require the Act to be renewed six years from now.
The Senate version of the legislation, however, contains no sunset clause and only one exemption – for the East Jerusalem Hospital Network, a grouping of six hospitals that operates independently of the PA and receives a portion of the annual $75 million the US spends on providing power and specialized medical services to Palestinians.
Notably, the legislation contains stringent reporting requirements from the US State Department in ascertaining whether the PA has taken credible steps to end the “martyr payments” – dubbed by critics as “pay-to-slay”– along with any laws legitimizing these payments. Crucially, the secretary of state is instructed to present an annual unclassified report to Congress on several key matters emerging from the legislation.
In many ways, the situation today recalls the situation in 1992. In 1992, the US was sponsoring peace talks between Israel and its Arab neighbors in Washington. Without informing the Americans, after taking office in 1992, the government of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres began carrying out secret talks with the PLO under the auspices of the Norwegian government in Oslo.
After the first Oslo deal was concluded in August 1993, Rabin sent Peres and then-Foreign Ministry legal adviser Joel Singer to the US to brief then-secretary of state Warren Christopher on the agreement. Rabin hoped Christopher would agree to present the deal as an American peace plan. Rabin believed that the Israeli public would be more supportive of a deal with an American imprimatur.
In a 1997 interview with Middle East Quarterly, Singer described the meeting with Christopher. Singer recalled that as Christopher read the agreement for the first time, a shocked look came over his face. “His lower jaw dropped, and for the first and last time in my life, I saw Warren Christopher smile.”
But Christopher rejected Rabin’s request, all the same.
“Secretaries of state are not supposed to lie,” he told Peres and Singer.
Just as the Clinton administration was not willing to take the lead on a new strategic trajectory that placed Israel and the PLO on equal footing, so the Trump administration is not willing to initiate a new post-Oslo Middle East.
That is Israel’s job today just as it was Israel’s job in 1993.
A close reading of Netanyahu’s statement to the Likud Knesset faction makes clear that he understands this basic truth. And a close reading of the statements and counter-statements from Jerusalem and Washington following his briefing to the Likud Knesset faction indicates that if and when Netanyahu embarks on a new course, like Bill Clinton and Warren Christopher in 1993, Trump and his advisers will not stand in his way.
Foreign observers may have a hard time squaring Benjamin Netanyahu’s international stature as a statesman with his suddenly vulnerable position at home.
Abroad, both those that hate the Israeli prime minister and those that admire him view him as a successful leader. His diplomatic skills have transformed Israel from an international pariah, at the mercy of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the international left, to a rising star on the international scene.
Economically, Netanyahu is credited worldwide with shepherding Israel from a sclerotic socialist backwater in the early 1990s into a first world economy and a global leader in innovation and technological advancement.
In the context of these extraordinary achievements, and as Israel faces mounting security challenges from Iran in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza — challenges amplified last Saturday with the violent clashes between Iran and the Syrian military and Israel — the police’s sudden announcement that they recommend indicting Netanyahu for bribery seems incongruous.
But as Tip O’Neill, the late, long-serving Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, famously said, “all politics is local.”
This truth was borne out in spades on Tuesday night in Israel, when the Israeli police announced that they are recommending that Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit indict Netanyahu on two counts of bribery and two counts of breach of trust in two separate investigations.
The reason these events are happening is because Netanyahu is hated by Israel’s entrenched elites, who benefited most from the way things used to be. And they would like very much to unseat him and replace him with someone who would change the direction of Israel’s foreign, defense and economic policies.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is a powerful NGO, with a massive budget, close links to Western governments, and significant influence in international institutions. Its publications reflect the absence of professional standards, research methodologies, and military and legal expertise, as well as a deep-seated ideological bias against Israel.
HRW’s review of “Israel and Palestine: Events of 2017” (a chapter in HRW’s 2017 annual report), reflects these same methodological flaws, resulting in a highly skewed representation of Israeli domestic and international law.
The following systematically analyzes the various claims made by HRW in its report. The factual and legal arguments presented demonstrate that NGO is not advocating for universal human rights, but is instead focused on delegitimizing Israel.
VI. SECURITY CONCERNS
Claim
“Tensions around the Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount compound in July-August 2017 triggered an escalation in violence. Israeli security forces used lethal force against demonstrators and against suspected attackers in the West Bank and at the Gaza border.”
NGO Monitor Analysis
Shamelessly, HRW fails to note that the “tensions around the Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount compound” were sparked by a terrorist attack on the Temple Mount – in which three Palestinian terrorists shot and killed two Israeli police officers. The ensuing “tensions” were a direct result of incitement by the PA, Hamas, and other terrorist organizations. For instance, following the terror attack, on its official Facebook page, Fatah glorified the terrorists, stating that “We must guard the flowers of the Martyrs (quote from poem by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish -Ed.) And we must live as we wish.”
Claim
“Israel maintained onerous restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the West Bank, including checkpoints and the separation barrier, a combination of wall and fence in the West Bank that Israel said it built for security reasons.”
NGO Monitor Analysis
HRW’s statement minimizes and questions Israel’s security concerns. Doing so is a typical component of HRW’s reporting on Israel, which routinely erases Palestinian incitement and terror attacks (see example above). HRW’s practice may also stem from the fact that several of the Palestinian NGO with which it consults are linked to the PFLP terrorist organization. HRW negates the fact that the security fence and checkpoints were established in response to a wave of suicide bombings and shooting attacks that took the lives of thousands of Israelis and Palestinians in the early 2000s. The subsequent reduction in the number of terror attacks is testament to the effectiveness of these measures.
The Felesteen newspaper, which is affiliated with the Hamas terrorist organization, on Wednesday published an interview with Omar Shaker, director of the Palestine and Israel department of Human Rights Watch.
Felesteen regularly publishes content that supports actions of “Palestinian resistance” which are defined by Israel, the United States and the European Union as acts of terrorism, including stabbings, ramming and suicide attacks, and calls for the destruction of the State of Israel.
Hamas is blacklisted by the West as a terrorist organization.
Shaker noted in the interview that under international law, “settlements in the West Bank” are “not only violations (of international law) but war crimes." He called for an end to the “settlement”, "collective punishment" such as imposing a closure on towns and villages, setting up roadblocks and demolishing houses.
"In essence, the settlers live on Palestinian land," he charged.
Israel’s blockade on Gaza has nothing to do with Israel's security, Shaker claimed, but rather stems from political considerations, since Israel "wants to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza."
"Israel controls the borders and the sea and the air, meaning it is responsible for almost everything in Gaza, entry and exit of people, and the entry and exit of goods. Israel prevents exit from Gaza except in exceptional cases," he said.
Is it really any surprise after Oxfam's antisemitic background that they also have this scandal? The entire board should resign in shame.
What a scandal for our times. Oxfam, that upholder of modern-day virtue, unassailable in its righteousness, buried for seven years that its aid workers exploited young girls. The men abused their power to have sex with desperate victims of the Haiti earthquake — the very people they were supposed to protect.
Michelle Russell of the Charity Commission is clear about the deception. ‘We were categorically told by Oxfam; there were no allegations of abuse of beneficiaries. We are very angry and cross about this.’
Nor was this a one-off. Helen Evans, the charity’s global head of safeguarding, begged senior staff, ministers and the Department for International Development to act. She had uncovered sexual abuse allegations both abroad — three in one day — and in Oxfam’s charity shops. Nothing was done.
This is the same Oxfam that recently blamed capitalism for world poverty and set up deck chairs in Trafalgar square to protest against corruption and tax havens. Now the virtue signallers are hoisted on the shard of their own fallibility. Compared with the emerging sins of our aid agencies, tax havens look almost benign.
Sadly Oxfam is not alone. Andrew Macleod, former chief operator of the UN Emerging Coordination Centre, contends paedophiles and ‘-predatory’ sex abusers use the halo of charity work to get close to desperate women and children. ‘You have the impunity to do whatever you want. It is endemic across the aid industry and across the world.’ He warns the infiltration of the aid industry by paedophiles is on the scale of the Catholic church — if not bigger. The difficult truth is that ‘child rape crimes are being inadvertently funded in part by the United Kingdom taxpayer’.
Oxfam sex abuser of underage relief victims briefed Mia Farrow in Chad
During an interview on official PA TV in 2013, Mahmoud Abbas was asked about his family history and how they became refugees. In his spontaneous answer documented by Palestinian Media Watch, he did not say that Israel expelled the Arabs of Safed, but, just the opposite. He admitted that the Arab residents of Safed left of their own accord "in a disorderly way."
The reason Abbas cites for the Arab unprompted exodus is also significant. He admitted that the Arabs of Hebron and Safad committed massacres (pronunciation in Arabic: Madhbaha) against their Jewish neighbors in 1929. The Arabs of Safed, Abbas explained, "were afraid that the Jews would take revenge for the massacre [of Jews] in 1929."
However, a children's program recently broadcast on PA TV, taught that "Mahmoud Abbas' family was forced to leave," because the "occupation gangs," the euphemism for the new State of Israel, "ruled" the country and stole "from him, his family, and his friends all of their dreams, their homes, and their lands."
Interestingly, Mahmoud Abbas when speaking at the UN (Sept. 26, 2013) likewise falsified his history claiming to have been "thrown into exile:"
Excerpt from Abbas' speech at the UN, Sept. 26, 2013: "I am personally one of the victims of the Nakba (i.e., 'the catastrophe,' Palestinian term for the establishment of the State of Israel), among the hundreds of thousands of my people uprooted in 1948 from our beautiful world and thrown into exile." [Official PA news agency WAFA, English website, Sept. 26, 2013]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous testimonies from Palestinian refugees, Arab officials, and the official PA media, explaining that the Arab exit from the new state of Israel was the result of demands of Arab leaders, the Jordanian army, the Arab Liberation Army, and Arab regimes, as well as fear of revenge, as in the case of Mahmoud Abbas.
With the Syrian rebels on the run and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gaining momentum, Iran is seeking to rewrite the “rules of the game” governing Israel’s actions in Syria. Last weekend’s clashes on Israel’s northern border occurred within this context. An Iranian drone breached Israeli airspace, Israel retaliated by bombing multiple targets deep in Syrian territory, and Syria then shot down an Israeli fighter jet.
Before last Saturday, Israel had established an expectation that its strikes on Iranian-Hezbollah weapons convoys and production facilities in Syria would not be met with an effective military response; Syria and Hezbollah couldn’t afford war with Israel, nor did they have the capabilities to seriously retaliate. This state of affairs was obviously disruptive for Iranian designs in the region and a bitter pill for the Assad regime to swallow.
By launching a sophisticated unmanned aerial vehicle into Israeli airspace on Saturday, Iran set off a chain reaction, which led the Israeli Air Force to strike Iranian and Assad regime positions in Syria, including the Iranian command center from which the drone was being remotely piloted. This gave the Assad regime an opportunity to set a new precedent by firing on Israeli jets over Israeli territory, downing an Israeli F-16, and provoking further Israeli Air Force strikes on Syrian targets.
Because it was the first time in over three decades that an Israeli jet was brought down by enemy fire, the immediate response by some analysts was to declare that the conflict in the region had entered a “new strategic phase.” The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said, “The era of hit and run is over,” in reference to Israeli airstrikes on Syrian soil. Even the Israeli news site Walla made the foreboding prediction that this was a sign of ominous things to come along Israel’s northern front.
They are wrong. The loss of one Israeli jet should not be exaggerated; it is not a watershed moment that will alter the strategic balance in the Middle East. After all, the Syrians and Russians have lost numerous aircraft over the course of the civil war in Syria (including recently), and that has hardly ushered in an era in which they do not control the skies over their respective areas of influence.
ABSTRACT: With Prime Minister Netanyahu just reaffirming that Israel will strike both Iranian and Syrian targets as needed - most recently, after an Iranian drone briefly entered Israeli airspace, and an IAF F-161 plane was shot down - Israeli defense planners must also plan assiduously for more catastrophic future engagements. At some more-or-less determinable point, even an outright use of nuclear weapons against or by Iran might not be out of the question. In this regard, Israel's ritually traditional and legally correct reaffirmation of its legitimate rights to reprisal could sometime need to be augmented,inter alia, by substantially more far-reaching acts of "anticipatory" self-defense.
"For By Wise Counsel, Thou Shalt Make Thy War." Proverbs, 24,6
For the moment, of course, an Israel-Iran nuclear war is logically out of the question, and thereby not meaningfully subject to any tangible calculations. After all, Iran is not yet an operational nuclear power, and there is literally no point in presuming any useful possibilities for systematic or genuinely scientific investigation. Nonetheless, in prospectively existential matters, prudence can (and should) take assorted innovative forms, and the July 14, 2015 Vienna Pact (JCPOA) concerning Iranian nuclear weapons will not constrain Tehran indefinitely.[1]
Inevitably, therefore, Jerusalem will have to plan accordingly, including at least residual preparations for a still-suitable but plausibly limited preemption option.
This assessment is pertinent because, at this already late date, launching any tactically comprehensive preemption against pertinent Iranian weapons and infrastructures is likely no longer achievable. In this connection, even back in 2003, when my own Project Daniel Group had offered a very early report on Iranian nuclearization to then-Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, Iranian targets were already more daunting than was Iraq's Osiraq reactor on June 7, 1981.[2]
The episode raises serious questions about Ellison’s judgment and his real ideological convictions.
Ellison has spent much of his political career running away from Farrakhan. His ties to the group almost derailed his first congressional run, in 2006. After it emerged that he had worked with the Nation of Islam for at least 18 months in the 1990s, Ellison wrote a letter to the Jewish community distancing himself from Farrakhan and denouncing his “anti-Semitic statements and actions.” Ellison reiterated his opposition to the group’s “anti-Semitism” and “homophobia” in 2016 when he contested the DNC leadership.
But revulsion at his former associates in the Nation of Islam didn’t stop Ellison from breaking bread with Farrakhan in 2013–bread that was provided by the Tehran regime. So which is the real Ellison: The one who drafts earnest letters of apology to Jewish groups? Or the one who, as recently as 2013, saw it fit to dine with Farrakhan under Iranian auspices?
The Ellison-Farrakhan-Rouhani shindig is also a reminder that progressive Democrats had no compunction about hobnobbing with representatives of an anti-American terror state–until recently, that is. Today, Ellison is among the party’s loudest tub-thumpers regarding claims of Trump-Russian “collusion.” Yet he met privately with the Iranian president two years after the Obama administration’s Justice Department uncovered a plot by the Tehran regime to assassinate the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil.
Ellison does not appear to have done anything illegal in meeting with Rouhani. Nor does this revelation neutralize or invalidate concerns about Russian interference in the 2016 election. But Republicans and conservatives can be forgiven for wondering if the Democrats’ newfound and highly selective hawkishness is a genuine effort to reckon with national-security realities or a ploy in a political game.
A months-long spy operation funded by Qatar's Al Jazeera news network targeting American Jews and pro-Israel groups is fueling a new congressional effort to force the Middle Eastern news outlet to register as a foreign agent under U.S. laws, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.
Al Jazeera, the Qatari government's state-sponsored news organization, recently conducted a months-long spy operation on a slew of American pro-Israel officials and organizations as part of what Al Jazeera says is an upcoming documentary on supposed Jewish influence in the U.S. government.
The spy effort has prompted Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) to begin circulating a letter to his colleagues urging support for an effort to force Al Jazeera to register as a state-backed foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, multiple sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed to the Washington Free Beacon.
The effort is being fueled by Al Jazeera's effort to secretly record American Jews and Israel supporters, according to sources who familiar with the letter.
As part of the upcoming documentary, a mole paid for by Al Jazeera infiltrated these organizations and recorded pro-Israel advocates discussing efforts to combat anti-Semitism and boycotts of Israel.
Ahead of Al Jazeera running this production, it has sent several letters to subjects who were secretly recorded asking them to respond to a range of allegations that the Qatari outlet claims confirm that American Jews are working to influence the American government and block global efforts to boycott Israel, known as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS.
The release recently by the IDF and Defense Ministry archives of interviews with me and the late Lt.-Gen. Dan Shomron, who was defense minister and chief of staff at the time of the Gulf War, has rekindled the debate about whether Israel should have responded to the Iraqi missile attacks during the Gulf War. Thirty-nine Scud missiles were launched from western Iraq against Israeli targets during the five-and-a-half weeks of the war. Only six landed in populated areas, causing considerable property damage and the loss of a single life.
Throughout the war US president George H. W. Bush did his utmost to keep Israel from responding. US deputy secretary of state Larry Eagleburger and undersecretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz arrived in Israel four days before the aerial bombing of Iraq began, on a mission to convince us not to launch a preemptive attack and to stay out of the war. They assured us that the US armed forces would within days eliminate the danger of Scud attacks against Israel, while Israeli participation might well lead to a break-up of the coalition and ensuing difficulties. Should the US not be successful in eliminating the Scud threat to Israel, they said, the US would acquiesce to an Israeli response.
As it turned out, all American attempts to hit the Scud launchers failed, and throughout the war Scuds kept falling on Israel. Raytheon Patriot anti-aircraft missiles sent to Israel by the US, despite a number of attempts, failed to intercept a single Scud. Nevertheless, Bush in almost daily calls to prime minister Yitzhak Shamir urged him to keep Israel out of the war despite Iraqi “provocations.”
Israeli participation could lead to a break-up of the coalition, he insisted.
In an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times, the longtime PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat declared the U.S. ineligible to broker talks between Israel and the Palestinians given, among other sins, its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Noting Erekat’s two-decade history of prevarication—including his absurd and libelous claims of a “massacre” in Jenin in 2002—Elliott Abrams explains why Erekat cannot be taken seriously. The column, writes Abrams, is in fact about something else entirely:
Erekat returns in the Times to the usual, and sad, Palestinian victimhood trope, criticizing President Trump for failing to recognize “the painful compromises the Palestinians have made for peace, including recognizing Israel and trying to build a state on just 22 percent of the land in the historic Palestine of 1948.” It is striking to call those “compromises”: the first requires Palestinians to do no more than recognize reality, and the second to make their best efforts on behalf of their people. Trying to build a state that can live in peace and engage in economic and social development would not normally be called a huge sacrifice.
Erekat’s message in the Times is that peace efforts must now be multinational, with the United States joined as equal partners by the European Union, Russia, India, Japan, South Africa, and China. PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will soon address the UN Security Council on this point. Good luck with that. There is zero chance that such a group could be formed or could possibly do anything to promote a peace agreement. This is not a serious proposal for moving toward peace but a fantasy designed to forestall any real pressure on the PLO for compromises it does not wish to make. . . .
Erekat concludes by writing that “we are planning to move toward national elections in which all Palestinians, including our diaspora, can take part, with the goals of better representation, more support for our refugees, and strengthening our people’s steadfastness under occupation.” But Abbas has refused to hold elections in the area he controls, the West Bank, since 2006, despite repeated promises to do so. Note that his “national elections” will include the diaspora. This suggests that the “national elections” will not be Palestinian Authority presidential and parliamentary elections that could threaten Abbas’s hold on power. . . .
For the past two decades, the anti-Israel rhetoric of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership has radicalized many Palestinians, to a point where they are no longer willing to accept any form of compromise or peace with Israel.
By accusing the Trump administration of hostility to the Palestinians, the Palestinian leadership has delegitimized the US to a degree where many Palestinians now feel that Americans are legitimate targets for violence and terror attacks.
How, exactly, do these condemnations conform with Abbas's other claims that he seeks to resume peace talks with Israel? The mask on Abbas's face has fallen once again. That mask has, in fact, been falling for many years. Perhaps one day the world will even see that.
Gaza is broke. As Monday’s front-page New York Times feature explained at length, the conflict between the Gaza Strip’s Hamas overlords and the Fatah party that runs the West Bank has resulted in a cash crunch that has left many of the area’s two million people without money. Along with Gaza’s inadequate infrastructure, the resulting poverty from this crisis contributes to a general picture of despair for many Palestinians.
Of course, the notion that everyone in Gaza is starving is an exaggeration. As journalist Tom Gross points out, Gaza’s thriving malls continue to operate, as does its water park, restaurants, and hotels — inconvenient facts that are missing from the Times story and most of the coverage of the current crisis.
But even if we concede that the talk of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza is probably exaggerated, there’s no question that most of the people there are poor and have little hope of improving their plight.
This means, as it almost always does, that Israel will be blamed for this awful situation. Since most of the world believes that Israel is still “occupying” Gaza, and is therefore responsible for the coastal territory’s problems, it is only natural that the worse things get there, the more opprobrium will be directed at the Jewish state in international forums and the press.
This is wrong — but not just because Israel hasn’t occupied Gaza since 2005.
It is also interesting to record how the demonstrators twist the events. They had chosen to come onto a campus to disrupt an event. The campus security tried, and partially failed to contain the protest. One demonstrator was not permitted inside because he held a megaphone. An instrument clearly designed (outside a door of an event) to disrupt. This became the tweet of the night:
So as Jewish students are huddled in a room, struggling to hear what their invited speaker against a background of vocal hate, the demonstrators portray themselves as the victims. In the footage, the security man explicitly references the megaphone (see under his arm). The person tweeting this is Ayo Olatunji, who is part of the UCL student union, and was part of the UCL protest and disruption in late 2016. More of a concern was this tweet by Ayo:
He claims he was denied, not because of his behaviour, his intent, or the need to uphold free speech, but because he is black. I saw this weaponisation of racism at Cambridge with Malia Bouattia, and recently being used at Warwick by Nicola Pratt. A truly divisive strategy. There is of course nothing about his colour mentioned in the footage.
The protestors have complained to the university. They are in ‘outrage’. Why? Just as I described their dissatisfaction at events at UCL two week ago: ‘They are disappointed that they are not allowing them to do what they want to do. To permit their demonstration, to deny the other, to allow them entry to the building, to let them disrupt the event, to deny the speaker the platform in the first place. They want to be armed with a security force to impose their demands. A fascist mentality. ‘
What of the Jewish students?
This is all intimidation. And it works. The university is not capable of fighting a war for the Jewish students, because this is not a battle of students. Palestine Solidarity Campaign advertise it, Friends of Al Aqsa live stream it, off-campus ringleaders turn up to assist in the organisation.
How many of those Jewish students who may have been intimidated by yesterday’s events, will not attend another meeting of its type? Will supporters of those Jewish students now look over their shoulder and say to themselves ‘it is not worth it’? How many of those who organised the event, will not organise another? Will invited speakers not want to come?
Intimidation works because it works through intimidation, not debate. Non-democratic forces are undermining our academic spaces. Values of equality, democracy, free speech are all under threat. When you have Jewish students forced to leave a room surrounded by haters screaming ‘shame’, alongside posts on Facebook calling these students ‘cockroaches’, then you have to accept you are in dangerous territory.
Our statement about the event we hosted tonight featuring former #Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, Dan Meridor. We must continue to protect free #speech on campus & defeat #intolerance.
Mahmoud Abbas’s blatantly skewed account of the nature of Zionism and the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict should bring Israel’s policymakers and opinion shapers to enunciate anew the story they tell their own people and the world at large.
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the January 14 meeting of the PLO’s Central Council lasted two hours. Apart from the phrase “May your house be destroyed,” which became the headline for the speech, Abbas’s “historical” survey of the chronicle of Zionism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has drawn most of the Israeli criticism. According to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the survey underscored the root of the conflict: “The Palestinians’ rejection of the existence of a Jewish state in any borders.”
For the Palestinians, too, particularly the younger among them, much of the speech must have sounded like a tiresome history lesson. Yet political speeches of this kind often have more than one audience in mind. In this case, Israeli society with its various factions and leaders, along with the international community, was the main audience. Appealing to fashionable legal and moral fads, particularly in Western Europe, Abbas again set forth the supposedly problematic aspects of Zionism. His “historical survey” undoubtedly fails the minimum test of facts, but it is uncritically accepted in many circles. This poses a real challenge to Israeli policymakers and opinion shapers.
By every historical account, the Zionist revolution – the incredible ingathering of the exiles and the establishment of the flourishing and highly successful state of Israel – is a unique and unprecedented phenomenon. Those who insist on viewing it as yet another immigration wave among the 20th century global population movements fail to grasp the real nature of this revolution. In this respect, Abbas touched the key issue that, in his eyes, made the Palestinians the main victim of Zionism: if the Jews yearn for a safe haven, and the international community wants to provide them with one, why does it have to be in Palestine, at the Palestinians’ expense? (h/t Elder of Lobby)
This is part of a wider Iranian plan not just to besiege Israel but also to achieve ascendancy over the Sunnis, including de facto control of Lebanon, increased dominance in Iraq, the destabilisation of Yemen, attacks on Saudi Arabia and aggression against international navies in the Gulf. Iran’s project has been largely facilitated by President Obama’s Middle Eastern policies, including his nuclear deal, which emboldened the ayatollahs and released billions of dollars to fund their aggression while paving the way to a nuclear-armed state.
Iran’s latest aggression against Israel could well lead to another conflagration. The IDF is braced for retaliation, mobilising forces and reinforcing air defences along the Syrian and Lebanese borders. Israel is not looking to escalate but Iran could be and a mistake or misreading by either side could trigger open war.
For years Israel has warned of the consequences of Tehran’s aggression, which could result in civilian deaths on a huge scale. Although President Trump is holding Iran to account, Israel’s warnings have been largely ignored by the West and the United Nations. Britain and the European Union could play an effective role in containing Iranian aggression but their answer is appeasement. Instead of sanctioning Iran and supporting Israel they mouth platitudes about restraint by both sides, which further emboldens Tehran. They prioritise saving the flawed nuclear deal that provides cover for their unprincipled trade links with Iran over saving the lives of innocent people.
A Palestinian diplomat speaking to students at the United Nations headquarters in New York told them the Palestinians were proud to be throwing stones at Israeli forces and will continue teaching their children to do so.
In a recording obtained by Ynet, Abdallah Abushawesh, who serves as a senior adviser to the UN's Development Group and as a member of the Palestinian UN mission, is heard saying in broken English, "We are very clever and very expert at throwing the stones. We are very proud to do that. We will not stop to learn our kids (to do that)."
To the sound of sniggering from his listeners, Abushawesh went on to say that every Palestinian caught throwing stones by Israel gets sent to jail. "We are very proud that we are stone throwers. I'm one of them. Now I became a little bit older, but I stay resistant in the name of my kids," he continued.
The Palestinian diplomat later told the students about his own past as a stone-thrower during the first intifada. "I was in high school. I never missed an opportunity to throw stones. This is our life. We develop our resistance every day. We're proud of it," he said.
Abushawesh was speaking to a group of international relations students from McGill University who were at the UN for a tour and a series of meetings as part of their program.
I am not alone in thinking the BBC is not objective in its coverage. Even Lord Grade, the corporation’s former chairman, has accused the corporation of bias against Israel and said the BBC failed to give viewers ‘the wider context’ about the Palestinians.
This is not true of all BBC output: BBC Arabic will (like other Arabic language media) sometimes report on Gaza’s more prosperous side (see for example, this BBC Arabic report on restaurants in Gaza), in a way that most Western media (including the BBC in English) will not. Yet many Western journalists (and some diplomats) seem bent on painting a distorted picture of everyday life in Gaza, in what can only be seen as an attempt to portray Israel as some kind of monster-oppressor. (With Israel demonised in this way, no wonder anti-Semitic feelings in Britain are now running at an all-time high).
If the situation in Gaza is as bad as many Western journalists and diplomats claim, then why is Gaza’s life expectancy (74.2 years) now five years higher than the world average? I don’t recall any Western reporter mentioning that life expectancy there is higher than, for example, in neighbouring Egypt (73 years). Indeed, life expectancy in Gaza is almost on the same level as wealthy Saudi Arabia, and higher for men than in some parts of Glasgow.
In recent years, it has been difficult to escape reports of the dire situation in Gaza; former US president and Nobel peace prize laureate Jimmy Carter, for example, told us that ‘the people in Gaza … are literally starving’. Only three weeks ago, the lead front page story of the international edition of the New York Times contained further warnings about the risk of starvation. Meanwhile, Qatar’s own Al Jazeera is broadcasting analysis of the thriving consumer sector in Gaza’s economy, complete with restaurant owners discussing the expansion of their business to keep up with demand, and shots of plentiful fruit and vegetable markets.
Gaza’s thriving economy: Al Jazeera shows a side to Gaza that Western media won’t
Day in and day out, two men—two crucial world leaders—remain under a constant barrage of verbal attacks. They are subjected to an obsessional, unhinged and unprecedented stream of abuse, distortion, character assassination and malicious fantasies.
If you haven’t guessed, they are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald J Trump. The campaign against them signifies a cultural disorder in the West that borders on the pathological.
Netanyahu certainly has his faults. One might list arrogance, moral cowardice and his tendency to be a control freak. He doesn’t take criticism well. He has failed to organize his government to deal with the psy-ops war waged so devastatingly against Israel in the court of Western public opinion. And maybe, who knows, some of the multiple corruption charges against him will stick.
Yet his achievements are formidable. Netanyahu enabled Israel to survive the sustained attempts to weaken it by President Barack Obama, arguably the most hostile American president to date regarding Israel. Netanyahu has led the Jewish state to become a dynamo in the fields of technology and R&D in large measure because of his liberalization of the Israeli economy. He has opened up new alliances through the pivot to Asia. He has held the line against the Palestinian /European axis of attrition. And he is riding the wave of a new regional order involving alliances with Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
In Israel and among the Western intelligentsia, however, it’s hard to overestimate the loathing he provokes. His achievements are ignored or blatantly dismissed. Instead, he is blamed (ludicrously) for preventing a solution to the Middle East impasse. No less risibly, he was held responsible for Obama’s hostility for eight years running. He is said to be an incipient dictator, a racist ethno-nationalist and an “alt-Zionist.” These are not criticisms; these are ravings.
Over in the United States, Trump certainly has his faults. One might list his zero concentration span, his disregard for detail, his carelessness with accuracy, his reckless and compulsive tweeting, his coarse and bombastic talk, and his failure to take criticism.
Yet his achievements after only one year in office are formidable. He presides over a booming economy with huge job growth; he is restoring the rule of law to immigration; he’s rolling back regulation; he’s made stellar appointments to the judiciary; he’s forcing Saudi Arabia to reform; and is confronting Iran, the United Nations and the Palestinians.
It’s impossible, however, to overestimate the contempt and horror with which he is viewed. He is accused of being racist and anti-Semitic, of undermining the rule of law, of behaving like Mussolini. While not a shred to evidence supports the claims against him of colluding with Russia, there is mounting evidence that elements of the FBI and justice department under the Obama administration have acted illegally against him.
In December, Nikki Haley, the current U.S. ambassador to the UN, denounced the world body for its condemnation of America’s recognizing of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Her performance put many in mind of a 1975 speech given by her late predecessor, Daniel P. Moynihan, assailing the UN’s infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. Six years later, Moynihan returned to the same themes in a seminal Commentary essay, “Joining the Jackals,” in which he skewered the then-outgoing Carter administration for abstaining from two anti-Israel votes at the Security Council and for the generally craven attitude of its UN delegation. Greg Weiner, the author of a biography of Moynihan, revisits the statesman’s career in Turtle Bay and his commitment to Israel and to the West—and to the meaning of words. (Interview by Jonathan Silver. Audio, 31 minutes. Options for download and streaming are available at the link below.)
Israel’s position today is analogous to Hitler having positioned 150,000 missile batteries in, say, Ireland, all pointing at Britain; and then advancing into France and reaching the Normandy coast, all the while steadily embedding his forces in the Channel Islands.
Britain finally went to war when Hitler invaded Poland. Even in appeasement Britain, no-one suggested it should have waited until the Nazis reached the French coast before it decided to fight them. Had it do so, Britain along with Europe would now be a Nazi dictatorship. Yet people expect Israel to sit on its hands while genocidal fanatics intent on its destruction encircle it unimpeded.
Just as with Hitler’s intentions in the 1930s, the Iranian regime’s implacable intention to exterminate Israel has been ignored, downplayed or denied. Now the significance of the Iranian drone is being downplayed, mischaracterised or denied.
No civilised country wants war, and Israel will do everything it can to avoid an all-out conflict. But Iran is already at war with Israel – a war Iran has initiated. The question today is whether the strength and accuracy of Israel’s response to the drone will deter Iran from further aggression.
There will be a far greater chance of averting all-out war if Britain and Europe finally come to their senses and start holding Iran’s feet to the fire rather than seeking to sanitise, excuse and reward it at every opportunity.
The answer to the question, however, depends on what Iran was intending when it dispatched its drone into Israel. From the information that has so far been made public, it is impossible to tell.
We must hope Israel itself knows the answer, and that it will do accordingly whatever it needs to do. Western nations may disapprove; but in the past when Jews faced extermination, these western nations chose to look the other way. And when today Israelis are murdered by Arab or Islamic fanatics these western nations still look the other away or, worse still, blame Israel for its own victimisation.
These nations may afford themselves the luxury of setting the value of Jewish lives at zero. But the State of Israel was founded on the principle “never again”; and if needs be it will also say, just as the defiant British soldier declared in the famous David Low cartoon in that darkest hour: “Very well, alone”.
These developments represent a strategic setback for the United States and its allies. America had an opportunity to prevent this outcome during the previous six years. The Obama administration’s expressed policy at the time, however, was to respect Iran’s “equities” in Syria. This opportunity was squandered and the position of Syrian anti-Iranian forces is far weaker today. But the overriding US interest in Syria has not changed: disrupt this Iranian territorial link and degrade Hezbollah and the IRGC and their weapons capabilities in Syria and Lebanon. This is a priority that the United States still can, and should, pursue, even if it requires a more direct involvement today than it would have a few years ago.
The Iranian forces are vulnerable. They are overstretched and, in certain cases, they are operating in exposed terrain. The new military structures they are building are equally exposed. Israel has been exploiting these vulnerabilities to target military installations, bases, and weapons shipments, as well as senior IRGC and Hezbollah cadres. The Russian presence has not deterred the Israelis. The United States should reinforce this Israeli policy by adopting Israeli red lines as its own. And, using the considerable elements of US power in the region, it can expand this campaign against Iran’s and Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, arms shipments, logistical routes, and senior cadres. Local Syrian groups in eastern and southern Syria, and their sponsors, should also be empowered to take part in this endeavor.
Having the United States behind this policy strengthens Israel’s position vis-Ã -vis the Russians and provides it more room to maneuver, especially in the case of a conflagration with Hezbollah that expands to Lebanon. Throughout the Syrian war, the US position has held sacrosanct Lebanese stability, even as Lebanon was the launching pad for Hezbollah’s war effort in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and even as the group multiplied its stockpile of missiles aimed at Israel. Should the targeting of IRGC and Hezbollah assets lead to an escalation that encompasses Lebanon, the United States should offer full backing to Israel as it destroys Iran’s infrastructure in Lebanon and degrades its long arm on the Mediterranean. Lebanon’s stability, insofar as it means the stability of the Iranian order and forward missile base there, is not, in fact, a US interest.
The Trump administration’s anti-Iran posture and its recognition that Iran is an adversary, not a partner, is a much-needed corrective to the previous administration’s policy. The profound strategic challenges and geopolitical shifts which resulted from Obama’s policy of realignment with Iran severely complicate the task of pushing back against Tehran in the region and significantly narrow US options. The moment calls for strategic clarity and a set of policies that rise to the nature of the challenge. While there’s room for measures that work over the long term, the United States also needs other options to address immediate priorities.
Netanyahu’s last meeting with Putin was on January 29. In media briefings before and after their meeting, Netanyahu said that he spoke to Putin about three issues. First, due to Israel’s success in blocking Iran from transferring precision-guided missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon through Syria, Iran is now building missile factories for Hezbollah inside of Lebanon. Netanyahu pledged to destroy those factories.
In his words, “Lebanon is becoming a factory for precision-guided missiles that threaten Israel. These missiles pose a grave threat to Israel, and we cannot accept this threat.”
Second, Netanyahu warned Putin that Israel will not accept Iranian military entrenchment in Syria through the construction of permanent bases, among other things. Netanyahu explained, “The question is: Does Iran entrench itself in Syria, or will this process be stopped. If it doesn’t stop by itself, we will stop it.”
Third, Netanyahu spoke to Putin about improving Obama’s nuclear deal with the Iranian regime.
Russia is both a resource and a threat to Israel. It is a resource because Russia is capable of constraining Iran and Hezbollah. Israel treated Russia as a resource Saturday, when in the wake of its violent confrontations with Iran, which included Israel’s Air Force’s first combat loss of an F-16 since the 1980s, Israel turned to the Russians with an urgent request for them to restrain the Iranians.
Russia is a threat to Israel because it is Iran’s coalition partner. Until Russia deployed its forces to Syria, it appeared that the regime and its Iranian overlords were losing the war, or at least unable to win it. After Russia began providing air support for their ground operations, the tide of the war reversed in their favor.
At any rate, Israel is in no position to persuade Russia to abandon Syria. Russia’s presence in the region limits Israel’s actions but also guarantees that Israel will continue to act, because its vital interests will continue to come under threat and intermittent attack.
In all, the situation in Syria is and will remain unstable and exceedingly violent for the foreseeable future. Syria is not only a local battlefield where various Syrian factions vie for control over separate areas of the country – although it remains such a local battlefield.
On Saturday, February 10, 2018, Iran launched an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) from Syria, which violated Israeli sovereign airspace. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) dispatched an Apache attack helicopter to intercept the UAV and destroyed it. “The UAV was detected long before crossing Israeli territory” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, Head of the International Branch.
In response, Israeli Air Force aircraft targeted the control vehicle from which the UAV was operated in the Syrian T-4 Airbase near Tadmor. During the attack, multiple surface-to-air missiles were launched at IAF aircraft and hit an F-16I fighter jet. The two pilots were forced to eject and parachuted to safety in Israeli territory.
In total, the IDF targeted 12 military objectives, including 3 aerial defense batteries and 4 Iranian targets that are part of Iran's military establishment in Syria. “We carried out a wide-scale attack on the aerial defense system - radars, rockets, batteries, posts, and we performed a substantial strike, which as can be seen - they are trying to hide” says Brig. Gen. Amnon Ein Dar, Head of the Air Group in the IAF. According to Brig. Gen. Ein Dar, it is “the biggest and most significant attack the air force has carried out against Syrian air defenses since 1982.”
"What we've known for a long time is now clear to everyone: Iran wants to establish a front in Syria that is aimed at harming Israel. We are not looking to escalate the situation, but we have abilities that we are not afraid to use,” said Maj. Gen. Yoel Strick, Head of the Northern Command.
For a long time Iran and the Quds Force have been operating, with the backing of Syrian forces and the approval of the Syrian regime, from the Syrian T-4 Airbase near Tadmor. pic.twitter.com/U9H33vDF4O
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said airstrikes targeting key Iranian military facilities in Syria over the weekend inflicted heavy damage on the Iranian and Syrian militaries, and vowed that Israel would act decisively to counter any further provocations.
“Yesterday we dealt a serious blow to the armies of Iran and Syria,” Netanyahu told ministers at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. “We made it unequivocally clear to everyone that our rules of engagement have not changed in any way.”
“We will continue to strike back at any attempt to harm us,” Netanyahu said, according to a statement. “This has been our policy and will remain our policy.”
The wave of Israeli airstrikes came after the IDF intercepted an Iranian drone that had infiltrated its airspace and an Israeli F-16 was downed upon its return from Syria on Saturday. It was Israel’s most serious engagement in neighboring Syria since fighting there began in 2011 — and its most devastating air assault on the country in decades.
The IDF said it destroyed the drone’s Iranian launching site along with four additional Iranian positions and eight Syrian sites, including the Syrian military’s main command and control bunker.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria through a network of activists on the ground, said Sunday that at least six Syrian troops and allied militiamen were killed in the airstrikes. The six included Syrian troops as well as non-Syrian allied troops, the Britain-based Observatory said.
On February 10, 2018, an Apache helicopter successfully intercepted an Iranian UAV that was launched from Syria and infiltrated Israel. The aircraft was identified by the Aerial Defense Systems early on and was under surveillance until the interception. In response, IDF attacked the Iranian aircraft's launch components in Syrian territory.
Later, also in response to the Iranian UAV that was launched at Israeli territory and was intercepted by the IDF, Israeli Air Force (IAF) aircraft targeted 12 targets in Syria, including three aerial defense batteries and four Iranian targets that are part of Iran's military establishment in Syria.
During the attack, multiple anti-aircraft missiles were fired at IAF aircraft. The two pilots of an F-16 jet ejected from the aircraft as per procedure, one of whom was seriously injured and taken to the hospital for medical treatment.
“The Syrians and the Iranians, from our point of view, are playing with fire. The Syrians are playing with fire when they allow the Iranians to attack Israel from their soil. We are willing, prepared, and capable to exact a heavy price on anyone that attacks us. However, we are not looking to escalate the situation,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, Head of the International Media Desk.
The IDF sees the Iranian attack and the Syrian response as severe violations of Israeli sovereignty. The IDF will continue to act against any attempt to infiltrate Israeli airspace and will act with determination to prevent any breach of Israeli sovereignty.
In a major flare up on Israel’s northern border, Israel carried out a large-scale attack against Syrian air defenses and Iranian targets in the war-torn country after an Israeli F-16 crashed during operations to strike Iranian targets in Syria early Saturday morning.
The operation, which was carried out by eight Israeli jets struck 12 targets in Syria, including thee Syrian SA5 and SA17 air defense batteries and four Iranian targets.
According to Syrian media reports, Israel struck the Abu Al-Thaaleb airbase near the town of Kiswah, which is home to Syria’s 1st armored division and part of the Islamic Republic’s buildup in Syria.
The Israeli attack was met with anti-aircraft fire, triggering air raid sirens in the Golan Heights and upper Galilee, warning residents of potential rocket strikes. According to IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis, several missiles hit open areas in northern Israel.
“Iran and Syria are playing with fire,” he said. "The results of our strikes are not yet fully known to them (Iran), and they may be surprised when they discover what we targeted."
Early on Saturday morning, an Iranian drone, which was launched from a Syrian base in the Homs desert, was identified approaching Israeli airspace by the IDF around 4 a.m., setting off alarms across Golan Heights and the Jordan Valley. The drone entered Israel via Jordanian airspace and flew for a minute and a half before it was intercepted by an Israeli Air Force Apache helicopter near the town of Beit She’an.
“We waited for it to cross into our territory,” said IAF chief of air staff Brigadier General Tomer Bar who stressed that it was important for Israel “to get our hands on the drone that was operated by the Iranians.”
“It was the most extensive attack against Syrian anti-aircraft batteries carried out by the IAF since 1982,” Brig.-Gen. Bar stated, stressing that, nonetheless, “we consider this to be a fully successful operation. Israel’s air superiority was not affected today.”
Tensions have been rising along the northern border recently, as Israel has warned repeatedly against Iranian efforts to set up weapons production facilities in Lebanon and establish a presence near the Israeli border with Syria.
According to unconfirmed reports, Israel has carried out dozens of airstrikes on the Syrian armed forces and their allies since the civil war broke out there in 2011.
The prime minister and senior defense officials have said that the country takes action in Syria when a “red line” is crossed, generally meaning in retaliation to deliberate or accidental attacks on Israel from southern Syria or when advanced weapons are being transferred to the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group.
There have, however, been reports of additional Israeli actions that do not appear to have been in response to a violated “red line,” including in attacks against suspected chemical weapons facilities.
Early Wednesday morning, according to Syrian reports, Israeli aircraft bombed a military scientific research facility outside Damascus, which is suspected of both developing chemical weapons for Assad and assisting Iran and Hezbollah in improving their missile technology.
Netanyahu has said that if Iran continues to try and entrench itself in Syria, Israel will “stop it.”
When Rep. Keith Ellison ran for Democratic National Committee chairman, he faced questions about past associations with the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in December 2016, Mr. Ellison angrily accused his critics of a “smear campaign” for “talking about something that happened in 1995,” when Mr. Ellison was 32. It turns out Mr. Ellison—who lost his bid but is now the DNC’s deputy chairman—wasn’t telling the full story.
In 2006, during his first run for Congress from Minnesota, Mr. Ellison conceded he had worked with the Nation of Islam for 18 months before the October 1995 Million Man March. In a letter, he assured Jewish groups: “I reject and condemn the anti-Semitic statements and actions of the Nation of Islam [and] Louis Farrakhan. ”
A decade later, during the DNC leadership contest, he accused Mr. Farrakhan and his organization of sowing “hatred and division, including, anti-Semitism, homophobia and a chauvinistic model of manhood. I disavowed them long ago, condemned their views, and apologized.”
In September 2013, however, Messrs. Ellison and Farrakhan dined together. The occasion was a visit by Iran’s newly elected President Hassan Rouhani to the United Nations. Mr. Rouhani invited Muslim leaders from around the U.S. to dinner after addressing the U.N. General Assembly. Contemporaneous news reports placed Mr. Farrakhan at the dinner. Unreported by mainstream outlets was the presence of Mr. Ellison, along with Reps. Gregory Meeks of New York and Andre Carson of Indiana. (All three are Democrats; Messrs. Ellison and Carson are Muslim.)
The Nation of Islam website documents the event, noting that Mr. Rouhani “hosted the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, Muslim leaders from different Islamic communities and members of the U.S. Congress at a private meeting . . . at the One UN Hotel in Manhattan Sept. 24, 2013 across the street from the UN headquarters.” The Final Call, a Nation of Islam publication, added that “ Keith Ellison of Minnesota . . . participated in the dialogue” after dinner and includes photos of Messrs. Farrakhan and Ellison at the tables. The Michigan-based Islamic House of Wisdom also reported on the meeting, with additional photos. (h/t MtTB)
Given that Obama repeatedly denounced Farrakhan in the years since and is no longer president, the photo’s release did not cause much of a stir. But unlike Obama, many of the other politicians in that meeting with Farrakhan are still in office, and have not denounced the man the Southern Poverty Law Center calls “an anti-Semite who routinely accuses Jews of manipulating the U.S. government and controlling the levers of world power.” And on Monday, one of Farrakhan’s congressional friends opted to vocally defend him.
“I personally know [Farrakhan], I’ve been to his home, done meetings, participated in events with him,” Democratic Rep. Danny Davis told The Daily Caller’s Peter Hasson. “I don’t regard Louis Farrakhan as an aberration or anything, I regard him as an outstanding human being who commands a following of individuals who are learned and articulate and he plays a big role in the lives of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people.”
In actuality, Farrakhan is a racist and homophobic cult leader who blames Jews for everything from the slave trade to 9/11. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League have exhaustively documented Farrakhan’s viciously anti-Semitic outbursts. Here is Congressman Davis’s “outstanding human being” in his own words:
“You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell.” (Saviours’ Day Speech, Chicago, 2/25/96)
“Did you know that Jesus had a real problem with the Jewish community? They had power, the rabbis of that day, over the Roman authorities just as they have power today over our government.” (Remarks at Indianapolis Convention Center, Indianapolis, Indiana, 12/1/13)
Twenty-one members of the Congressional Black Caucus facing questions about their ties to Nation of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan have all refused to condemn the hate group leader.
The CBC, it was recently revealed, held a secret meeting with Farrakhan in 2005 but hid it from the public to avoid controversy. Twenty-one members of the caucus today were part of the caucus at the time of the secret Farrakhan meeting. All 21 declined to denounce Farrakhan when asked by The Daily Caller.
The Nation of Islam is so extreme that even the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center recognizes it as a hate group, citing the group’s “theology of innate black superiority over whites and the deeply racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay rhetoric of its leaders.”
Farrakhan has praised Hitler, claimed Jews are “Satantic” and said that white people “deserve to die,” among other racist and anti-Semitic statements.
The 21 CBC members, all Democrats, include high-profile Trump critics like Maxine Waters and Al Green, who have long demanded the president’s impeachment.
US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman tore into the Haaretz daily Friday after the left-wing outlet ran an op-ed criticizing his financial support for the settlement enterprise.
“What has become of .@Haaretz ? Four young children are sitting shiva for their murdered father and this publication calls their community a ‘mountain of curses.’ Have they no decency?” he tweeted.
The “mountain of curses” remark with which Friedman took particular issue was a play on words by columnist Gidon Levy referring to the Har Bracha, or “Mount of blessing,” settlement.
The northern West Bank community was home to Rabbi Itamar Ben-Gal, a 29-year-old father of four who was stabbed to death by an Israeli Arab terrorist outside the Ariel settlement on Monday.
A day after the murder, Friedman recalled having donated an ambulance to Har Bracha years ago “hoping it would be used to deliver healthy babies.”
“Instead, a man from Har Bracha was just murdered by a terrorist, leaving behind a wife and four children. Palestinian ‘leaders’ [sic] have praised the killer. Praying for the BenGal family,” his Tuesday tweet concluded.
In his Haaretz column, Levy addressed the ambassador’s tweet, taking issue with his donation’s beneficiaries.
“With Friedman’s ambulance or without it, Har Bracha is a mountain of curses. It was a settlement established, like all the others, to poke a stick in the Palestinian eye and drive a stake into any chance of an agreement,” Levy wrote, highlighting the settlement’s location deep inside the northern West Bank.
Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken replied to Friedman’s tweet Friday, posting to the social media network that “Gideon Levy is right. As long as the policy of Israel that your Government and yourself support is obstructing peace process, practical annexation of the territories, perpetuating apartheid, fighting terror but willing to pay its price, there will be more Shivas.”
Video: The Assault on the Jewish Connection to Jerusalem - Dore Gold (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
At a meeting of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation last December, Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, said that Jews are really excellent at faking and counterfeiting history and religion. I was struck by that because I refuse to assault the principles of their faith. They can say whatever they want about their faith as long as they don't try and assault my faith. Part of the tragedy of the current period is this overall assault on the connections between Israel, the Jewish people, and Jerusalem.
In October 2016, UNESCO asserted that the Temple Mount was connected to Islam, but it refused to acknowledge any Jewish connection whatsoever - or for that matter any Christian connection - to the Temple Mount. In the resolution adopted in Paris, it used only the Islamic term for the Temple Mount - Haram al-Sharif, but the actual terminology "Temple Mount," which had been used by international organizations for years, suddenly vanished. A few months later in December 2016, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2334 which called the Old City of Jerusalem, the Western Wall, and the Temple Mount "occupied Palestinian territory."
The entire international community met together after World War I and said the Jews have a right to reconstitute their ancient homeland. That ought to be worth something. Israel is the only country in the international system whose historical rights were confirmed by both the League of Nations and the United Nations. To completely dismiss the rights of Israel is to dismiss how our rights have been understood by the international community for more than a century.
The cardinal question is who is going to protect Jerusalem in the future. Will it be national movements that doubt the legitimacy of various faiths' connections to Jerusalem, or will it be national movements that understand that there are other national groups that have connections to Jerusalem. If Jerusalem is important to people, if freedom of religious expression is important to people, then only a free and democratic Israel will protect Jerusalem for all the great faiths.
According to a 2016 Haaretz interview with Adnan Ghosheh, a senior water and sanitation specialist at the World Bank, the Gaza Strip will become uninhabitable for human beings by 2020.
This grim forecast is supported by the Institute for National Security Studies in a report titled "Water and Energy Crisis in Gaza: Snapshot 2017."
According to the report, the "lack of clean water for domestic use and unsafe sanitary conditions pose a serious public health threat to the two million people living in the Gaza Strip. By now, large amounts of untreated wastewater have already crossed Gaza's borders and created additional repercussions for several neighboring communities in Egypt and Israel, with Israel at one point forced to close two of its beaches."
When unlimited drinking water flows from the taps in Ashkelon, just north of Gaza, it is too easy to accuse Israel of unjustly dividing this precious resource, as self-righteous Israelis, and Europeans, sometimes do. These voices continue to condescend, absolving the local leadership of any responsibility. But it is the Palestinian leaders who actually bear the blame for this disgraceful situation.
The fact is that the deterioration of Gaza's water aquifers is a perfect reflection of the deterioration of the Oslo Accords. It is not a military or diplomatic issue, but rather a refusal to take any responsibility for providing basic infrastructure that is essential for maintaining the most fundamental aspects of life – preventing disease and death. If only they dug sewer tunnels for the betterment of Gaza rather than terror tunnels to the detriment of Israel.
In a 1970 article, pioneering Polish-Jewish historian Szymon Datner estimated that 200,000 Jews died at the hands of Poles during World War II. Attempting to flee the Germans’ cattle cars and camps, they found their deaths after being handed over to the authorities, informed upon while in hiding, or through murder by their Polish neighbors.
From 1942 to 1945, according to Datner’s calculations, of the 250,000 Jews who attempted to escape the Germans in occupied Poland, only 10-16 percent survived.
A Jewish Holocaust survivor himself, Datner eventually became the head of the Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw and worked as a historian for the precursor to Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). But were he alive today, he would potentially be prosecuted for his scholarly findings.
On February 6, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed into law amendments to the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation Act.
Among its amendments is this controversial section of the bill: “Whoever claims, publicly and contrary to the facts, that the Polish Nation or the Republic of Poland is responsible or co-responsible for Nazi crimes committed by the Third Reich… or for other felonies that constitute crimes against peace, crimes against humanity or war crimes, or whoever otherwise grossly diminishes the responsibility of the true perpetrators of said crimes – shall be liable to a fine or imprisonment for up to 3 years.”
With its vague language, this amendment could be read as mandating that Datner, a respected historian who worked for the institute the bill is named for, be locked up.
A former prime minister entered Poland’s fraught debate over a new law that prohibits discussion of Polish collusion with the Nazi Holocaust, bluntly telling a leading newspaper that “of course” there were cases of Poles collaborating in the extermination of the Jews.
“Of course Poles took part,” former Polish premier WÅ‚odzimierz Cimoszewicz told the newspaper Rzeczpospolita on Wednesday.
Emphasizing that “today’s generation is not responsible for what happened,” Cimoszewicz — a social democrat politician who was Poland’s prime minister during the mid-1990s and also served as the country’s foreign minister — urged Poles to talk “openly and honestly” about the experience of Nazi occupation.
Among the historical examples he cited were the “tens of thousands” of “szmalcowniks” — Poles who informed on Jews or extorted their property. At least 60,000 Jews had been denounced by Poles to the Nazi Gestapo, Cimoszewicz said.
Ninety percent of Poland’s pre-war Jewish population of 3 million was murdered following the Nazi German invasion of September 1939.
The former prime minister also noted that more than 6,000 Poles had been honored as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Israel’s Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. “We are all obliged to remember these heroic people, but we must not allow their heroism to cover the crimes and wickedness of a much larger group of Poles,” he continued.
“Antisemitism was and remains endemic in our country,” Cimoszewicz said.
Cimoszewicz accused Poland’s nationalist government of deliberately exaggerating the damage to Poland’s reputation through the use of phrases like “Polish death camp” to describe Auschwitz, the slave labor and execution factory constructed and operated by the Nazi German occupiers near the town of OÅ›wiÄ™cim in the south.
The International March of the Living, an educational initiative that has brought more than 250,000 participants to visit concentration camps in Poland, has announced that it will continue its trip in 2018, despite the organization’s opposition to a new Polish law criminalizing statements such as “Polish concentration camps,” or similar statements linking Poland to the heinous crimes against Jews in World War II.
Instead, the organization is calling for “for an open discussion and dialogue on all aspects related to the history of the Holocaust in Poland and Europe, which is also the position of the government of Israel.”
In a statement, March of the Living said, “Like in years before, more than 12,000 participants, Jews and non-Jews alike, including thousands of non-Jewish Polish students, and students from other nations, will take part in the passing the torch of memory from survivors to the next generation. On each trip, the survivors share their precious stories in the very places they transpired, with their students who commit to becoming the bearers of their memories.”
Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, International March of the Living President, said, “We believe it is our sacred responsibility to carry the torch of Holocaust memory and we remain committed to teaching the importance of understanding the past as a means of protecting the future. Now, as much as ever, we believe our mission is of the utmost importance.”
The organization notes that despite the law — which has been panned by Israeli officials — that “great progress has been made in the arena of Polish-Jewish relations and in the relationship between Poland and the State of Israel,” since the inception of the March of the Living program.
Dozens of Holocaust survivors protested outside the Polish Embassy in Tel Aviv on Thursday, demonstrating against a new law in Poland that criminalizes suggestions of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
The demonstrators carried signs with slogans such as: “No law can erase history” and “Poles, we remember what you did.”
The demonstrators broke into the compound of the embassy singing Am Yisrael Chai, “The people of Israel live.”
The protest was organized by the Haifa-based Yad Ezer La-Haver foundation, which runs a home in that city for Holocaust survivors.
The Jerusalem Post’s Hebrew-language sister publication Maariv reported that survivor Shalom Steinberg, 95, from Haifa, shouted: “You should be ashamed. I escaped from Auschwitz and weep every night from the things I went through there. Many people like me did not survive, and we will not forget that the Nazis massacred us on your Polish soil.”
Motke Lieber, another Holocaust survivor, added: “How can it be that such a law is passed when the Poles did not help us, and certainly not the Germans?”
The U.S. government has traced some of the $1.7 billion released to Iran by the Obama administration to Iranian-backed terrorists in the two years since the cash was transferred.
According to knowledgeable sources, Iran has used the funds to pay its main proxy, the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah, along with the Quds Force, Iran’s main foreign intelligence and covert action arm and element of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The U.S. money supplied to Iran as part of an arms settlement dating back to the 1970s also has been traced to Iran’s backing of Houthi rebels seeking to take power in Yemen. Iran has been supporting the Yemen rebels as part of a bid to encircle and eventually take control of Saudi Arabia.
The intelligence tracing the American funds to Iranian-backed terrorists is likely to further fuel President Trump’s effort to undo the Iran nuclear deal, the Obama administration’s main foreign policy initiative codified in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the Iran nuclear deal is called.
Despite promises to reject the deal during the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump announced in January the U.S. would not pull out of the Iran nuclear accord for now. But the president criticized the transfer of money to Tehran and signaled that Washington is going after Iran’s funding of terrorism.
“The enormous financial windfall the Iranian regime received because of the deal — access to more than $100 billion, including $1.8 billion in cash — has not been used to better the lives of the Iranian people,” Mr. Trump said Jan. 12. “Instead, it has served as a slush fund for weapons, terror, and oppression, and to further line the pockets of corrupt regime leaders.”
An article in the official PA daily acknowledged that 161 Palestinians were killed while carrying out stabbing attacks during the Palestinian wave of terror in 2015-2016 during which 40 people were murdered by Palestinians and over 500 wounded.
Palestinian Media Watch documented at the time that the PA falsely claimed that Israel "fabricated" the stabbing attacks, and "planted knives" next to the dead bodies of "innocent Palestinian victims" after having "executed" them in "cold blood."
One cartoon tweeted by Abbas' Fatah Movement in November 2015 visualized the PA libel showing an Israeli soldier dropping knives near the bodies of dead Palestinians: [Fatah Twitter account, Nov. 1, 2015]
The recent article in the official PA daily recognizes the fact that 161 Palestinians were killed while attacking Israelis with knives: "The Al-Aqsa uprising in 2015 (i.e., Palestinian terror wave, 40 murdered) that broke out spontaneously against the Israeli occupation's insistence on interfering in the affairs of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and continuing its Judaization. It continued for approximately one year, and during that year 250 [Palestinian] civilians died as Martyrs (Shahids), 161 of them while carrying out stabbing operations against the occupation's soldiers and its settlers."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 28, 2018]
Palestinian terror wave (2015-2016) - Palestinian violence and terror attacks against Israelis, including stabbings, shootings, throwing Molotov cocktails, and car rammings. It started in September 2015 and until and including July 2016, 40 people were murdered (36 Israelis, 1 Palestinian, 2 Americans, and 1 foreign worker from Eritrea) and over 500 wounded.
One of the stranger aspects of the Super Bowl LII broadcast on Sunday was the Turkish Airlines sign on the NBC Sports desk during the pre-game show.
NBC also ran a commercial for Turkish Airlines. Starring television celebrity surgeon Dr. Oz, the ad, like previous years’ Turkish Airlines Super Bowl ads, was an advertising work of art. It was brilliantly written and beautifully produced. It’s hard to imagine the average viewer would feel anything other than attracted to Turkey after watching it.
There is nothing wrong with a business or civic group advertising its message. But the uneasiness the ad caused many viewers was reasonable. Turkish Airlines is not a private business. The Turkish government owns a controlling 49.12 percent of the airline. And the Turkish government is not demonstrating affinity with America, let alone with American sports, these days.
To the contrary, although it’s a member of NATO, everywhere you look, Turkey is actively harming American interests.
For example, Turkey has led the diplomatic onslaught against America since President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem on December 6.
Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan hosted a conference of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in December to criticize the U.S. and was an outspoken advocate of the U.N. General Assembly’s resolution to condemn the American move.
And just last Tuesday, Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) held an America-bashing conference in Istanbul.
As John Rossomando reported for the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) on Monday, the U.S. deported one of the speakers at the conference, Sami al-Arian, in 2015 after he served his prison term for funding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terror group.
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