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

Saturday, February 29, 2020

From Ian:

US, Taliban sign historic deal aimed at ending war in Afghanistan
The United States signed a peace agreement with Taliban militants on Saturday aimed at bringing an end to 18 years of bloodshed in Afghanistan and allowing US troops to return home from America’s longest war.

Under the agreement, the US would draw its forces down to 8,600 from 13,000 in the next 3-4 months, with the remaining US forces withdrawing in 14 months. The complete pullout, however, would depend on the Taliban meeting their commitments to prevent terrorism.

President George W. Bush ordered the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Some US troops currently serving there had not yet been born when the World Trade Center collapsed on that crisp, sunny morning that changed how Americans see the world.

It only took a few months to topple the Taliban and send Osama bin Laden and top al-Qaeda militants scrambling across the border into Pakistan, but the war dragged on for years as the United States tried to establish a stable, functioning state in one of the least developed countries in the world. The Taliban regrouped, and currently hold sway over half the country.

The US spent more than $750 billion, and on all sides, the war cost tens of thousands of lives lost, permanently scarred and indelibly interrupted. But the conflict was also frequently ignored by US politicians and the American public.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the ceremony in Qatar, where the Taliban have a political office, but did not sign the agreement. Instead, it was signed by US peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Pompeo called on the Taliban to “keep your promises to cut ties with Al-Qaeda.”
Martin Kramer: The Trump Plan Will Be "Transformative" for Palestinians
Martin Kramer, chair of the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Department at Shalem College in Jerusalem and the Koret Distinguished Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, spoke to Middle East Forum Radio host Gregg Roman on February 5 about President Trump's "deal of the century" plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to Kramer, the importance of the Trump proposal "transcends whether either of the parties accept it" because "it's not a peace plan, it's a partition plan ... the proposal of a third party, looking from the outside, that has some authority." The Palestinians refused to accept partition plans put forth by the British in 1937 and by the United Nations in 1947, yet both had "historic effects," notably culminating in the establishment of Israel. The details of these plans were largely irrelevant – it was their underlying assumptions and core principles that proved enduring.

The same is true of the "deal of the century." Details of the plan are flexible and sure to be superseded by future negotiations. The important focus should be on the assumptions and principles of the plan.

A key assumption of the Trump initiative, according to Kramer, is that "history only goes in one direction." Previous peace plans, he noted, were based on expectations of "massive movement of peoples" as part of a final settlement – removing thousands of settlers from their settlements in today's Israel and absorbing a large number of descendants of Palestinian refugees from other countries into the West Bank and Gaza – which "is not going to happen."

A core principle of the Trump plan is that "everyone stays in place" – a reality that Palestinians must eventually come to accept. "Much of the responsibility for the predicament of the Palestinians today relies not just on them, but on their ... supposed friends who ... promised they would deliver to them on fantasies which were completely detached from reality."
Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: No secret talks with Trump administration
The Palestinian Authority on Saturday denied having any contacts with the US administration regarding US President Donald Trump’s recently unveiled plan for peace in the Middle East.

The denial came in response to remarks by US Ambassador David Friedman, who told the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera network that the Trump administration has “back channels” talks with some Palestinians.

Friedman did not reveal the identity of the Palestinians involved in the alleged talks with the US administration.

He also said there is recognition that some parts of the Trump plan are good for the Palestinians, such as the two-state solution, a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem, connecting the West Bank with the Gaza Strip and investment in infrastructure and increasing the size of land offered to the Palestinians.

The PA, which has been boycotting the Trump administration since December 2017, when the US president recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, reiterated its rejection of the Trump plan and denied having back channels with the US administration.

“I dare Friedman to reveal a name of a single Palestinian official who is in contact with President Trump’s administration,” said PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat.

Referring to Friedman’s talk about a Palestinian capital, Erekat said that the Trump plan “specified that Abu Dis and Kufr Aqab can be named as Palestine’s capital.”

Erekat added: “East Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, is the Old City of Jerusalem, including Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Musrara, and Salah Edin Street. Lies and distortions of one of the authors of the conspiracy of the century are doomed to failure.”



Friday, February 28, 2020

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: From Aalst to America: The post-modern, anti-Jewish reconfiguration of the West
This eruption hasn’t been created by Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn; nor, as some believe, by the populism of Donald Trump or Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Victor Orbán.

Populism is not in itself an extremist movement (although some bits undoubtedly are). It is rather a response to the extremism that has overtaken the entire progressive movement, and which represents the idea of the West as intrinsically evil and sinful.

Sanders and Corbyn, who are both undoubtedly extreme, are not the cause of the phenomenon, but the product of a broad cultural shift. When Bernie Sanders called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a reactionary racist” in Tuesday’s Democratic presidential candidates’ debate, the audience broke into applause.

The real cause of the descent into anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist hatred is secular liberalism, and the cultural fissure that has opened up along fault lines stretching back to the 18th-century Enlightenment.

This proclaimed the death of God and the enthronement instead of the autonomous individual freed from biblical moral codes. This led to the destruction of hierarchies of values without which there can be no morality, the replacement of duty by man-made and highly contingent human rights, and the collapse of truth and reason.

The result is the moral and philosophical carnage we see all around us. There’s the psycho-pathological unmooring of individuals caused by the undermining of the family. There’s the abolition of objectivity in the universities by moral and cultural relativism.

And there’s the apocalyptic environmental movement, which mirrors the belief by medieval, Jew-massacring Christians that fallen humanity must be punished for its sins to bring about the perfection of the world—and which has sanctified as its prophet a psychologically damaged child.

Better advocacy for Israel, necessary as that is, will not address this anti-Jewish derangement. That’s because what’s driving it is the repudiation of the Jewish precepts at the heart of the Christian West. And the problem—and tragedy—for the Jewish people is that so many of those subscribing to this liberal onslaught are themselves Jews.

The Aalst Carnival shows how quickly we forgot 'Never Again'
When I look at disturbing displays like those at the Aalst parade, I don’t just see modern-day antisemitism; I see a societal willingness to ignore religiously motivated hate, akin to that shown in the Weimar Republic and elsewhere throughout pre-war Europe. The promise of “never forget” means that we must remember the Nazis’ violence against Jews, and also those non-violent tactics which enabled the Holocaust.

We must keep in mind that hatred toward Jews quickly morphs into hatred toward other minority groups. Hate has no borders, and those with antisemitic beliefs can easily target other vulnerable people. If we turn a blind eye to antisemitic tropes today, there’s no telling what we might permit tomorrow, and soon, violence is at hand.

Indeed, antisemitic beliefs similar to those widespread in Western Europe are responsible in part for motivating some of the worst mass violence against Jews in recent years. The Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooter shared Holocaust-denial memes, and posted about Jews exercising control over major world events, like immigration.

The Poway shooter published a manifesto espousing the white genocide conspiracy theory, and one of the Jersey City shooters was connected to the Black Hebrew Israelites, many sects of which have been designated hate groups for their antisemitic beliefs and practices.

Antisemitic tropes and stereotypes do not always lead directly to murder, but there is an inescapable correlation between their perpetuation and violence targeting Jews. It is for this reason most of all that the international community, as well as leaders throughout Belgium, both national and local, must not afford antisemitism any public forum, whether in the name of free expression, humor or any other excuse used to justify hate.

Only by taking decisive and immediate action can we fulfill the promise of “never again.”
The Gay Rights Movement Has an Anti-Semitism Problem
My identity as a Jew and my identity as a gay man are inseparable. Contrary to traditional beliefs regarding religion and sexuality, I believe these two parts of myself enhance each other rather than compromise each other. The LGBTQ Jewish community carries a long history of excellence. We are writers, activists, artists, politicians, academics and teachers. The convergence of identity and the greatness that has been born from this community are special to me. From Rabbi Sandra Lawson to Troye Sivan to Efrat Tilma, queer, Jewish expression seems to be stronger than ever.

Yet, despite this representation, blatant anti-Semitism currently wreaks havoc in the LGBTQ community.

The first time I heard the word “pinkwashing” was when I mentioned to a friend that I was interested in attending the Tel Aviv Pride Parade last summer. My friend supported me but warned me against posting any photos of the parade online, as I would be accused of pinkwashing. I asked her what she meant. “Pinkwashing?” she said. “When Zionists pretend that Israel is the pinnacle of human rights because of how they treat gays? To distract from the way they treat Palestinians?”

This was the first time I heard this term, but it certainly was not the last.

The “anti-pinkwashing” movement is gaining traction in the gay community. My friend was correct in her description: Its mission is to end government-sponsored exploitation of gay constituents so as not to distract from inexcusable corruption or wrongdoing. On paper, the movement seeks to separate nationalism from queer liberation and to honor the voices of queer, oppressed people worldwide. But in reality, the movement tethers the identities of gay Israelis to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and undermines their autonomy simply because they are citizens of the Jewish state. To the devout gay rights activist, any display of Jewish gay pride is now conditional; it must totally and officially distance itself from the Jewish state to be valid.

From Ian:

UNRWA’s Future Reconsidered
The British Government has given more than £300million to a UN aid programme whose schools teach six and seven years olds the words for ‘martyr’ and ‘attack’, while the textbooks it uses glorify jihad and falsely teach of a Jewish plot to kill the Muslim prophet, Muhammed.

UNRWA, the UN aid body established to support Palestinians, has been dogged by repeated allegations of mismanagement which led to the USA withdrawing all funding in 2018. Following further allegations of misconduct in 2019; Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands froze funding to the body. In contrast, the UK increased its annual contribution by over $25 million between 2017 and 2018.

Despite the UK’s continued support for UNRWA, allegations that educational materials provided by the body include extremism have dogged the organisation. UNRWA blames the disturbing material within its schools on the local authorities whose educational ministries determine curricula within their respective jurisdictions. While UNRWA claims to routinely review its materials, the report argues that the problem is longstanding and measures to end the problem have been subsequently reversed.

The report details other charges against UNRWA, including that:
- In 2012, its staff union elections returned Hamas candidates in 22 of 27 available positions.
- Dozens of UNRWA employees have celebrated the stabbings of Israelis, posting videos of extremists calling for the murder of Jews and for an ‘intifada’ or uprising against Israel. Examples include an UNRWA teacher who posted photographs of Adolf Hitler on Facebook, praising him as “our beloved”.
- In 2005, it was estimated that 46 UNRWA school graduates have gone on to become suicide bombers. In 2002, its Jordanian director admitted that the majority of Palestinian suicide bombers were graduates of UNRWA schools.
- In 2008, after Awad al-Qiq, a science teacher and headmaster of an UNRWA school, was assassinated it was revealed that he was a leading rocket maker for Palestinian Islamic Jihad. One of the founders of PIJ was Mahmud Khawaja, who was an UNRWA worker.

Not only is UNRWA routinely exploited by extremists but the report argues that its structures inhibit steps towards peace. UNRWA’s unique definition of ‘refugees’ has meant that the number of ‘refugees’ eligible for its assistance has ballooned from 711,000 Palestinians displaced in 1948 to 5 million today leading to a culture of victimhood and resentment in ever larger pools of people.
The UN Against the Palestinian People
In a blatant capitulation to the BDS movement, the UN Human Rights Council published a list of 112 Israeli businesses linked to Jewish West Bank neighborhoods in an effort to stigmatize those businesses and encourage their boycott. This highly politicized decision will not hurt Israel, as it was intended to do, but will instead undermine the livelihood of the many Palestinians who — due to the lack of sufficient employment opportunities in Palestinian-governed areas — earn their living by working for those very Israeli businesses.

The UN has thus inflicted yet another economic blow in a series of such blows suffered by the Palestinian people. The Palestinian Authority (PA) declined an invitation to participate in the US-led economic conference in Bahrain in June 2019, and rejected the economic incentives offered in President Trump’s “Deal of a Century” without even hearing them. Trump’s proposal, dismissed by the PA out of hand, included, among many other benefits, plans to naturalize Palestinian refugees currently living in subsistence conditions in surrounding Arab states. The UN only adds to the Palestinians’ suffering by causing harm to one of their sources of income.

The PA’s wholesale violation of the Oslo Accords of the 1990s only worsened the economic position of the Palestinians living in today’s areas A and B. Many of them still reminisce about the more prosperous days when Israelis would come to their villages as well to Gaza to buy Palestinian products. All that changed with the stroke of a pen when the Accords birthed the PA and granted it authority over economic and social policy in areas A and B.

The establishment of Palestinian economic autonomy was intended to improve the prospects for prosperity and significantly improve the Palestinians’ quality of life. Despite good intentions, exactly the opposite came to pass. The PA’s incompetent and corrupt governance led to the deterioration of Palestinian quality of life and increased poverty while allowing cronies to steal public resources and exchange political favors for personal benefit. It’s no wonder that many Palestinians long for the days before Oslo.
David Singer: Sanders and Bloomberg Boost Hopes for Netanyahu Election Win
Democratic Party contenders for the American Presidency – Bernie Sanders and Michael Bloomberg – have unwittingly given Israel’s Prime Minister – Bibi Netanyahu – an unexpected boost to becoming Israel’s next Prime Minister on 2 March.

During a nationally-televised Democratic Party Presidential contenders’ debate – Sanders made this inflammatory claim:
“I am very proud of being Jewish. I actually lived in Israel for some months. But what I happen to believe is that, right now, sadly, tragically, in Israel, through Bibi Netanyahu, you have a reactionary racist who is now running that country.”

This “reactionary racist” just happens to be Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister – victorious after six election campaigns conducted in fully democratic and openly transparent elections. Sanders’ comment doesn’t say much for his opinion of the majority of Israelis whose votes have kept Netanyahu there.

Bloomberg was motivated to chime in with his take on Israel:
“Well, the battle has been going on for a long time in the Middle East, whether it’s the Arabs versus the Persians, the Shias versus the Sunnis, the Jews in Israel and the Palestinians, it’s only gone on for 40 or 50 years.

Number one, you can’t move the embassy back. We should not have done it without getting something from the Israeli government. But it was done, and you’re going to have to leave it there.

Number two, only solution here is a two-state solution. The Palestinians have to be accommodated…”

The conflict between Jews and Arabs in former Palestine has been going on for 100 years – not 40 or 50 years. Brainwashed by Arab propaganda, Bloomberg had erased the origins of the conflict which began with the San Remo conference and Treaty of Sevres in 1920 and the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.


Bloomberg – in mentioning the need for a two-state solution – was apparently ignorant of the fact that the Palestinian Arabs had been allocated 78% of Palestine in 1922 – which subsequently became a sovereign state renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan in 1946 – today called Jordan.

For someone aspiring to be America’s next President, Bloomberg displayed an appalling lack of knowledge about this long-running and unresolved conflict.

Thursday, February 27, 2020

From Ian:

The 11% Majority
Bernie didn’t just oppose America’s Cold War excesses. He was often on the other side. America’s actions in Vietnam, he told a classroom of impressionable youngsters in 1972, were “almost as bad as what Hitler did.” In 1980, when Americans were tying yellow ribbons to express solidarity with our diplomats held hostage in Iran, Sanders aligned himself with the Socialist Workers Party, hosting an event at which its presidential candidate condemned “anti-Iranian hysteria around the U.S. hostages.”

As mayor of Burlington, Sanders earned the sobriquet “Foreign Minister” for the series of Potemkin village tours he took of America’s socialist adversaries abroad. When a constituent wrote a letter complaining about his words of praise for the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime, which had incarcerated thousands of political prisoners and forcibly relocated native tribes, Sanders responded, “The temporary suspension of certain civil liberties is considerably more complex than your letter indicates.” Sanders is like the guy we all knew in college with the Che Guevara T-shirt. Except, at 78, he’s still that guy.

When Alexander Solzhenitsyn moved to Vermont, Sanders never once met with the man whose personal testimony of the gulag won him the Nobel Prize for literature. But he did make time to travel halfway across the world to yuk it up with Solzhenitsyn’s jailers in the Soviet Union. After venturing to Cuba, a one-party state that interned homosexuals in concentration camps, Sanders returned awestruck. “I did not see a hungry child,” he gushed. “I did not see any homeless people. Cuba today not only has free health care but very high-quality health care.” (Indeed, Cuban health care is so “high-quality” that a cancer-stricken Fidel Castro summoned a Spanish doctor to treat him.)

While ritual self-flagellation is always demanded of Joe Biden for his single vote authorizing the Iraq War, Sanders’ opponents are oddly reluctant to ask him about his decadeslong record of propagandizing on behalf of leftist tyrants and mass murderers. Nor can these political commitments be waived off as mere youthful indiscretions. Sanders instinctually sides with any foreign head of state or revolutionary leader deemed “progressive,” no matter how autocratic or ruthless.
Sanders and the breach of the political dam
Although he criticized Israel over numerous issues in the late 1980s and early 90s, in this election campaign the senator from Vermont has embarked on a path of utter extremism (representing an escalation even in terms of his 2016 performance, when he vied for the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton). Amid the backdrop of this increasingly acerbic trend, which pushes Sanders closer to the militant and anti-Semitic fringes of the Democratic party, spearheaded by Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, it must now be asked: Is the era of fundamental bi-partisan consensus regarding Israel over? Is the special relationship with Israel no longer an integral part of the collective American ethos?

After all, since Israel became a strong partner and important strategic asset for the US some six decades ago, declaring support for the Jewish state has become an inseparable component of every American politician's toolbox, irrespective of party affiliations. Today, however, the dam has been breached. The fact that a leading Democratic candidate so readily castigates (and not for the first time) the prime minister of Israel, calling him a "reactionary racist," and also indicates his intention – if, of course, he's elected president – to move the US Embassy back to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem, makes it abundantly obvious that a prominent faction within the Democratic camp has fundamentally shifted its approach to Israel. It is within this prism that we must view the liberal wing's dangerous maturation and ultimate separation from its Israeli ally (and from the political center), the roots of which stretch all the way back to the 1980s and which have become increasingly intertwined in recent years with the contrarian and belligerent rhetoric of Jeremy Corbyn – who represents a type of role model for Sanders, and not just in terms of Israel.

Meanwhile, the Republican party in recent decades has become the sturdy backbone and anchor of support for Israel and the special relationship with it; evidenced by the eight years of George W. Bush's presidency, not to mention the three years of Donald Trump's current term. Simultaneously, the Democratic party has been in the process of drifting to the fringes, with Sanders the most outspoken and obvious symbol of the overt turn away from Israel and the strategic partnership with it predicated on shared values; and he is certainly not an outlier in the current liberal landscape.

Within this context, we must look at reality square in the eye and recognize the fact that underground political streams long bubbling beneath the surface have erupted mightily to the fore of American politics, mortally threatening the broad security blanket against any challenge Israel has had to face over the decades. If and how quickly this tsunami completely drowns out the centrist faction of the Democratic party fighting to stave Sanders off (for example, Michael Bloomberg and Joe Biden) – and drags us toward any number of unsavory scenarios – is, of course, a separate question that will soon be answered.

David Collier: SOAS opens its doors to EUROPAL and neo-Nazi antisemitism
SOAS are hosting a purveyor of Nazi and KKK antisemitic theory on March 7. The event is billed as a student workshop offering advocacy for ‘Palestine’, however this Hamas linked group -EUROPAL – has previously published a booklet pushing hard-core neo-Nazi antisemitism

SOAS is known as a hotbed of antisemitism. It has the dishonour of being a university in central London where Jewish students have said they are ‘scared to wear the star of David and speak Hebrew’. For years SOAS has been at the forefront of hostile campus activity. I have seen too many toxic events to list them all – terrorists are honoured there and platforms given to an endless stream of antisemitic speakers.

But surely – there has to be a line they won’t cross – even at SOAS? It seems not. In two weeks they are hosting an event by an organisation -EUROPAL – that has been caught before spreading antisemitism. To turn disrespect for Jews into absolute mockery – EUROPAL are on campus at SOAS to teach students about – yes, you guessed it – antisemitism.

The all-day event – due to be held on March 7 – is described as a ‘student workshop’ – teaching other students how to be better advocates for ‘Palestine’. It is co-hosted by the SOAS Palestine Society. The first two sessions to be presented are about method, delivery and BDS – which means they will be full of the usual lies and propaganda we are all used to. It remains heart-breaking that students are fed this type of ahistorical and demonising garbage in a place of learning – but nothing new for SOAS. The real problem arises in the third session – which is about ‘antisemitism’:

EUROPAL are teaching students about antisemitism, which means that this event isn’t about the history of a conflict, or anti-Israel advocacy, but rather explicitly talking about anti-Jewish racism. So who are EUROPAL and why are they qualified to hold events about antisemitism?

From Ian:

The UN, where rights abusers get to be on the human rights council
The Trump administration withdrew from the UNHRC nearly two years ago, citing the parade of dictators that have turned the body into what Nikki Haley, then the U.S. ambassador to the UN, described as a “self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights.” Haley also cited, not unreasonably, the UNHRC’s singular obsession with Israel.

But the Americans are missed—at least by those human rights activists who still try to use the forum of the UNHRC as a means to sanction and hold to account the world’s most brazen human rights criminals.

Last week, UN Watch—led by Montrealer Hillel Neuer—joined with two dozen other human-rights NGOs in bringing several hundred human rights activists here for the 12th annual Geneva Summit on Human Rights and Democracy. It was an opportunity for dissidents, campaigners, former political prisoners and politicians to take stock, swap notes and meet with diplomats.

It’s a wonder that any of them bother to come to Geneva at all.

The suffering of the Syrian people at the moment is as dire as it has been since a democratic reform movement sprang up in 2011. Syrian president Bashar Assad responded by destroying entire cities, resorting in dozens of cases to chemical weapons like sarin and chlorine gas. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs counts at least 560,000 children among the 948,000 Syrians driven north by Assad’s militias and the Russian air force since December.

“There should definitely be an urgent session on the situation in Idlib,” Neuer told me, “but the UNHRC just shrugs its shoulders. The council will not act with urgency on Syria.”

There is a slim chance of some movement on Venezuela, however. It took eight years of NGO lobbying for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to conduct its investigations last year, but the lobbying did produce some results. And UN Watch has managed to pull together a petition with more than 125,000 signatures calling for Venezuela’s dismissal from the council.

There are several ordinarily dependable member states on the council this year—Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Ukraine, for instance. But these days, almost everyone is keeping their heads down.

Even the most outrageous human rights abuses get overlooked, and sometimes, the world’s worst human rights abusers receive praise here. Last year, China won accolades from more than 50 countries, many of them Muslim-majority states, for its “counterterrorism” initiative in Xinjiang, where more than a million Muslims have been interned without trial in re-education camps.

As for the democracies, they’re intimidated. “The Human Rights Council only really has the power of shame, but the democracies have stopped issuing resolutions,” Neuer told me. “They’ve been made timid by Russia, by China, and by Turkey, and they don’t want to be embarrassed if they put forward a resolution and it fails. It’s a nice life here. The ambassadors go skiing on the weekends. But they’re afraid.”

Palestinian commentator: BDS hurts us
Bassam Eid is a Palestinian author and commentator, who may be seen frequently on Israeli television. While he is critical of various Israeli policies, he also speaks out frequently against corruption in both the Palestinian Authority and Gaza. On Tuesday evening, at the Fairbanks Country Club, in this affluent community wedged between northern San Diego and Rancho Santa Fe, Eid condemned the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement as being harmful to ordinary Palestinians.

He cited the case of Soda Stream, a company which had located a plant in the disputed territories and which had employed 1,500 Palestinians. After BDS launched an international boycott against the company—supposedly to help the Palestinians—the company relocated from the territories to southern Israel. That put 1,500 Palestinians out of work. As for Soda Stream, Eid said, it is making three times as much money in its new location as it did in the territories. So, he asked a gathering sponsored by StandWithUs, who did BDS help? Certainly not the Palestinians.

“BDS is using the Palestinians for their own agenda; they are just victimizing us,” Eid declared to local contributors of StandWithUs, which combats BDS and other ant-Israel initiatives on campuses across North America.

Ordinary Palestinians, according to Eid, don’t care about settlements, nor the political struggle to create a new state. “Palestinians are seeking dignity, not identity,” he said. “What they want is a job, and education for their children.” For them, he added, “a homeland is a place where you find dignity, justice, and freedom.”

He heaped scorn on Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority. “Who does he represent?” he asked. “His two sons and his wife,” he answered. “The majority of Palestinians have lost trust in him. We know that the leadership is corrupt, but we (although not Eid himself) are not allowed to speak about it.”

He noted that once it was proposed that the minute Israel made peace with the Palestinians, 54 Arab and Muslim countries would normalize relations with Israel. However, even without that peace, he said “it is already happening.”
JPost Editorial: Remembering Egypt's Mubarak's legacy in Israel
Egypt bid farewell on Wednesday to its longtime former president Hosni Mubarak, who ruled the country with an iron first for 30 years until he was ousted in 2011’s popular uprising, an early victim of the so-called Arab Spring. He spent many of the subsequent years in jail and military hospitals before being freed to his home in 2017.

Three days of national mourning were declared, and Reuters reported that horses drew Mubarak’s coffin, draped in the Egyptian flag, at a mosque complex, followed by a procession led by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, top military officials, Mubarak’s sons, Alaa and Gamal, and other Egyptian and Arab dignitaries. Mubarak’s coffin was to be airlifted to the family burial grounds, state television reported.

Mubarak’s legacy is clouded by the repressive manner in which he ruled the impoverished country of over 97 million people, but tempered by the chaos that followed his ouster. How he will be perceived in the history books in coming generations is still a question mark.

But in his relationship with Israel, Mubarak’s legacy is already written in stone.

Considered a war hero for his role in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Mubarak ironically ended up rigorously guarding the tenuous peace between Egypt and Israel that was forged by his predecessor Anwar Sadat in 1979.

As Herb Keinon wrote in Wednesday’s Jerusalem Post, Mubarak understood the peace treaty’s importance and utility to the Egyptian economy, yet he also wanted Egypt to regain the stature it lost in the Arab world by signing the treaty. Therefore, he fulfilled the security commitments under the accord to the letter, but at the same time did nothing to try to imbue the treaty with anything that would lead to normal relations between the two countries.

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

From Ian:

Matti Friedman: Israel’s Rihanna Is Arab and Jewish
In 2017, fresh off a gig opening for Radiohead in the U.S., the pop star sang at Israel’s official Independence Day celebration, an unusual gig for an Arab artist. The invitation came from the Likud culture minister, Miri Regev, a sharp-tongued hard-liner whose family roots are in North Africa, like those of many Likud voters. Ms. Regev has said that Arabic music “has something to offer Israeli culture.”

If you can understand why it makes sense for that statement to come from a right-wing politician and not from the left, you understand something tricky and important about Israel. The Israelis who are closest to the Arab world — the Jews whose families are native to that world — tend to lean to the political right, in part because they were treated with disdain by the left, and in part because Arab Muslim societies marginalized them, expelled them, seized their property and then, after 1948, subjected their new state to wars and a siege that has gone on for more than 70 years.

Israel’s founders always wanted the country to be European, and its Middle Eastern side was long kept in the cultural basement. This was reflected in the status of mizrahi music as a fringe scene scorned by critics and trafficked on bootleg cassettes. But in the past decade or two, Israel’s old elite, which was rooted in Eastern Europe and inspired by the socialist ideal of the kibbutz, has aged out of relevance, and the country’s repressed Middle Eastern soul has surged into the vacuum.

This helps explain why Israeli politics and culture — and pop music — are increasingly discordant for Westerners. There’s a renewed interest in the Jewish sages and religious poetry that flourished in the Islamic world, for example, like the liturgical form known as piyyut, which now shows up not just in college courses but on Top 40 radio. Even an Israeli supermarket aisle is confusing for a shopper expecting what a North American would consider Jewish food: the shelves are heavy on couscous, eggplants and the rest of the pantry of the Levant. There’s more and more about Israel that’s easier to grasp if you’re a Muslim from Beirut than if you’re a Jewish New Yorker. This is a key trend in the country right now, and Nasrin’s riding it.

Yaron Ilan, an influential mizrahi radio host, sees a generational change. People around his age, 50, still call the music mizrahi or Mediterranean. “They still think of the Mediterranean sound as something different from Israeli music,” and that has changed among younger listeners, he said. To them, what Nasrin is singing is Israeli music — and she’s doing it not in small clubs in south Tel Aviv but in the Menorah Arena, the biggest indoor venue in the city.

If Nasrin is representative of the hybrid culture emerging here, there’s one part of her biography that’s truly unique: her decision not just to sing in Hebrew but also to actually embrace Judaism. (h/t Zvi)
A President Sanders will be anti-Israel? Jewish group has an answer
The Republican Jewish Coalition continued its attacks on the Democratic frontrunner, independent Senator Bernie Sanders, warning that voting for him would be "insane" because of his views on Israel.

The Republican Jewish Coalition, which has been one of Israel's strongest defenders in American politics and strongly endorsed President Donald Trump's peace plan for the Middle East earlier this month, called the video "Bernie Sanders – Insane," just days after it warned that his emergence as the clear favorite following the Nevada caucuses was a highly worrisome development.

"How bad would Bernie Sanders be for Israel?" the video asks, as dramatic music is played in the background and Sanders waves to the crowd.

The video then goes on to list Sanders's many controversial remarks, including his reference to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as racist. The video ends with, "Voting for Bernie Sanders would be insane."


Sanders: I'd consider moving embassy back to Tel Aviv
Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders said on Tuesday that, if elected president, he would consider moving the US embassy in Israel back to Tel Aviv from Jerusalem.

"The answer is it's something we would take into consideration," said Sanders at a Democratic primary presidential debate in South Carolina, when asked to comment on concern among American Jews that he’s not supportive enough of Israel. He then proceeded to once again criticize Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

"But here's the point, I am very proud of being Jewish. I actually lived in Israel for some months. But what I happen to believe is that right now sadly, tragically in Israel through Bibi Netanyahu, you have a reactionary racist who is now running that country," he added.

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg also weighed in on the issue and said, “You can’t move the embassy back.” Instead, he said, “The answer is to obviously split it up.”

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said moving the embassy is not a decision for the US to make and added, “We should let the parties determine the capitals themselves.”

US President Donald Trump relocated the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, months after recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – a decision which angered the Palestinian Authority (PA).



From Ian:

Israeli Historian Benny Morris: The Palestinians Don't Want to Share the Country with the Jews
In the wake of the failed Camp David and Oslo Accord, and following the brutality of the second intifada, Morris has grown pessimistic about the prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and his views have taken a rightward turn. Citing the belief that Palestinians will never support a two-state solution, he has called himself a “Cosmic Pessimist.”

J. spoke with Morris ahead of his upcoming book tour to the Bay Area. His latest book, his first on a subject other than Israel, Palestine or Zionism, is titled “The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities.” Co-authored with Dror Ze’evi, it tells the history of atrocities, including the Armenian genocide, by the Ottoman regime from 1894 to 1924.

Did you support his strike against Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian military leader?
Yeah, sure, no problem killing Soleimani. Soleimani was a killer, a man who organized killings, and a soldier in a war. And soldiers in a war are open to being killed. That’s what war is about.

What is your view on the Iran nuclear deal?
I think the Americans should have held out. The Americans had all the cards. The Iranians were better negotiators and the Americans should have held out for a much better deal.

But the deal was signed. It was a mistake, but it helped, maybe, slow down the Iranian nuclear project. I fear that withdrawing from the deal may lead to a quickening of the Iranian nuclear project, which will again confront Israel with a choice: either attacking the Iranian nuclear facilities, or the Americans attacking the nuclear facilities, or just allowing the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon, as America has allowed North Korea to do. Once they have nuclear weapons, just like North Korea, they will become invulnerable. That’s the problem. And then they will do what they like in the Middle East.

With the Trump peace plan, it seemed like the administration was trying to strong-arm the Palestinians in some way. What did you make of the proposal?
Well, the Palestinians can’t agree to it. Look, I don’t think the Palestinian leadership, and Palestinians, basically, in their hearts, I don’t think they want to share Palestine with the Jews. That’s the basic thing. So it doesn’t really matter what plan they’re offered. Trump’s plan, Clinton’s plan in 2000. They say no. They don’t want to divide the country with the Jews. This is the basic thing.

If you don’t accept what I’m saying, and believe that they are willing to reach some sort of two-state deal, then this is a two-state deal they can’t accept, because it doesn’t really offer them a state. So even at minimum, what he’s offering is a long shot. But as I say, it doesn’t really matter that much because I don’t think they’ll agree to a two-state solution of any sort.
Ben-Dror Yemini: How did Western media become Gaza's useful idiot?
Israel granted work permits to Gaza Palestinians, expanded the fishing zone, and allowed the cash to flow from Qatar - all to no avail. The rocket fire from Gaza continues.

Defeating Islamic terror is considered legitimate anywhere else in the world, but what the U.S. and NATO can do, Israel cannot - even when fighting a jihadist group that controls Gaza.

Jerusalem simply cannot ignore international pressure. As soon as images depicting the aftermath of Israeli raids appear on media outlets, demands for a cessation of hostilities begin.

The West is ignorant of the true face of Hamas. It is an anti-Semitic organization that calls for the destruction of Jews; its official media outlet teaches children about the need to kill Jews.

Meanwhile, its religious leaders call for Rome to be captured in the interest of Islamic hegemony, much as the Islamic State ideology prescribed.
The Palestinians Need to Accept the Reality of Jerusalem and Israel
Israel isn’t going anywhere, and Jerusalem will always be its capital. Period.

Every head of state that visits Israel meets the prime minister in Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv, and has always done so. And while most of these world leaders won’t acknowledge as much publicly, Jerusalem has been the recognized capital of Israel for 3,000 years, since the time of King David. Nor is there one scrap of archaeological evidence to suggest otherwise.

During American presidential campaigns, candidates always acknowledge that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, but until President Trump broke that mold in 2017, they had never acted on that conviction upon winning the White House.

Trump’s decision to finally fulfill the promise of his predecessors to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital was, as he himself stated, merely a recog

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Sanitizing Soros through guilt by association
The law professor Alan Dershowitz has thrown a legal hand-grenade into America's political civil war by claiming to have evidence that former President Barack Obama "personally asked" the FBI to investigate someone "on behalf" of Obama's "close ally," billionaire financier George Soros.

He made his cryptic remark in an interview defending US President Donald Trump against claims he interfered in the prosecution of his former adviser, Roger Stone.

Dershowitz, a confirmed liberal, drew the ire of the left by joining Trump's impeachment defense team – not because he's a Trump fan, but because he cares about upholding the rule of law and the US constitution, which he believes (with good evidence) are being trashed in the anti-Trump witch-hunt.

Now, though, Dershowitz has crossed yet another line. For to criticize Soros, the principal funder of treasured activist causes, means automatically turning into a bogeyman of the left.

Predictably, therefore, Dershowitz has been painted as a wild conspiracy theorist. Other critics of Soros, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, find themselves labeled anti-Semites.

J’Accuse! Our Dreyfus and Theirs
Two months after its shellacking in the United Kingdom’s general elections, the Labour Party continues to remind British voters of why they chose the “anyone-but-Jeremy-Corbyn” option.

Last week, it was the turn of John McDonnell — Corbyn’s main lieutenant and a stalwart of the party’s far-left — to plumb the depths of illogical, offensive, and plain ignorant political rhetoric. Speaking immediately after a visit to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in the grim surroundings of south London’s Belmarsh prison, McDonnell produced an unforgettable soundbite. Just not in the way he intended.

“I think this is one of the most important and significant political trials of this generation, in fact longer,” said McDonnell, referring to the possibility that Assange will be extradited to the United States to face 18 charges related to national security violations, of which 17 are covered by the Espionage Act.

Warming to his subject, McDonnell then ventured, “I think it’s the Dreyfus case of our age.”

Perhaps McDonnell believed that this comparison would send journalists scurrying onto Google for a quick refresher course on “Dreyfus,” and that he would consequently be congratulated for having offered such a thoughtful, historically resonant observation. No such luck.

Diligently performing their duties as representatives of the Jewish community, organizations including the Community Security Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust swiftly countered McDonnell’s claim. Whatever Assange might be, they said, he is no Dreyfus.

This, by the way, is not a slight towards Assange. Even if you temporarily forget McDonnell’s breathtaking gall in appropriating one of the seminal episodes of modern antisemitism to make his point that Assange is facing a show trial, on a purely empirical level, the comparison with Dreyfus is hopeless.
U.S. Criticizes French Failure to Try Jewish Woman's Killer
The U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism implicitly criticized the decision in France not to try a man who killed his Jewish neighbor.

Elan Carr referenced the decision on the killer of Sarah Halimi during a conference Monday on anti-Semitism organized by the European Jewish Association in Paris.

In December, a judge decided not to try Kobili Traore of killing Halimi in 2017 while shouting about Allah. The judge cited psychiatric evaluations saying Traore’s consumption of marijuana before the incident led to a “delirious episode” that made him not legally responsible for his actions. But the judge also said that Traore, who is in his 30s, killed Halimi because he is an anti-Semite.

The ruling provoked outrage by French Jews. Last month, President Emmanuel Macron said that “there is a need for a trial” for Traore.

“You don’t dismiss hate crime charges for issues like the consumption of marijuana,” Carr said, referencing his credentials as a former prosecutor in Los Angeles. “It doesn’t explain away hate crimes that need to be prosecuted to the utmost severity of the law.”

The conference, titled “Jews in Europe: United for a Better Future,” was held at the European Center for Judaism, a $17 million community center opened in October.

Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association, said the building and growing engagement with Judaism by many European Jews is making him “hopeful of the future of Jews here” despite the challenges.

From Ian:

Avi Issacharoff: Despite attempt to change rules with Syria strikes, Israel’s Gaza policy failing
The latest round of violence between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group has not yet ended, but already there are a few things that stand out as different from previous rounds.

Syria commanders no longer immune
Israel may have chosen to strike various targets in the Gaza Strip, including rocket-launching cells, but the main response was far away, on the Syrian front, where many PIJ targets near Damascus were hit.

This is a surprising step, designed to make PIJ decision-makers think twice and thrice before attempting another attack. The military and the government are trying to set up a new equation by which escalation with Israel will hurt not only Gaza but also PIJ leaders in Syria, who have thus far enjoyed a degree of immunity from Israeli strikes.

This may not be the first time Israel attacked PIJ targets in Syria, but this time it is a direct reaction to rockets launched at Israel.

PIJ is doing quite a bit to lead to this escalation. The violence began Sunday early morning with the attempt to place a bomb next to the border fence and continued after the terrorist was killed and his body was dragged back to Israel by a military bulldozer. After a brief lull, the violence renewed Monday afternoon.

Even by its own standard, PIJ went overboard with its response, considering it all started with a cell trying to lay an explosive device. Having launched dozens of rockets into the night and on Monday, it is clear the organization seeks to drag the whole of Gaza into war — despite this being one of the better periods the Strip has experienced recently in terms of Israeli concessions.

Rocket attacks target Israeli south despite reported ceasefire
Terrorists in the Gaza Strip fired rockets at the city of Sderot and nearby communities on Monday night, some 20 minutes after a ceasefire was reportedly due to go into effect at 10 p.m.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from the attack. Residents of the area reported seeing multiple Iron Dome interceptor missiles fired into the sky.

Over the course of Sunday and Monday, some 90 rockets were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip — most of them by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group — and approximately 90 percent of those heading toward populated areas were intercepted by the Iron Dome system, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

In response to the attacks, the Israeli military launched multiple rounds of retaliatory air raids against Islamic Jihad bases in the Gaza Strip, as well as one airstrike on a squad it said was preparing to launch rockets, injuring four.

Just before the ceasefire was meant to begin, terrorists in the Strip also fired a number of rockets at the Eshkol region of southern Israel. One rocket struck inside a community in the region, causing no injuries, but light damage to a nearby building, which was hit by shrapnel.

In light of the ongoing attacks from Gaza, the military ordered schools to remain canceled Tuesday in Gaza periphery communities, including the city of Ashkelon, representing some 55,000 students.
‘I Shake in My Hands and Legs’: Child From Israel’s South Describes Rocket Trauma
A child from Israel’s south recounted on Monday the traumatic fear and terror she was facing as rocket fire from the Gaza Strip pounded the region once again, saying the air raid sirens made her “shake in my hands and legs.”

Dozens of rockets have been fired from Hamas-ruled Gaza into southern Israel over the past two days. While there have been no casualties thus far, the psychological and economic impact is severe.

Schools were closed in the Gaza border area on Monday, as were main highways and train lines.

Those businesses still open had almost no customers, as residents stayed in their homes close to bomb shelters and fortified rooms.

The IDF has undertaken retaliatory attacks against Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which it blamed for the rocket fire, in Gaza and Syria.

Roni, an eight-year-old second grader from the border city of Sderot, which has absorbed thousands of rocket strikes over the past two decades, was in a store with her grandmother buying a Purim costume when the warning sirens sounded.

“When I was with grandma in the store, a red alert caught us,” she told Israeli news site N12. “Immediately we got under the table that was in the store. I was under stress.”

“Every red alert makes me shake in my hands and legs. Every boom terrifies me,” she said.

“My big sister has a bat mitzvah soon and I hope there won’t be another red alert,” Roni added.

“At school they try to give us tools to deal with the fear with the help of games, and I hope that when I’m grown up I can be a dancer without sirens in the background,” she said.

Monday, February 24, 2020

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: UNESCO Affiliate at An-Najah University Honors Terrorists
In August 2018, An-Najah University in Nablus held a ceremony to recognize 61 prisoners incarcerated in Israel’s Nafha Prison who had completed a course in international law and human rights. According to the university, the ceremony was organized by the UNESCO Chair on Human Rights and Democracy and Peace at An-Najah, in cooperation with Fatah, Fatah’s youth and student movement, and the Palestinian Authority Minister for Prisoners’ Affairs.

Course instructors included:
- Yasser Abu Bakr – Responsible for a 2002 terror attack in Netanya in which two Israeli civilians were murdered, including a 9-month-old girl. In 2004, Abu Bakr was sentenced to 115 years in prison.
- Nasser Awiss – Responsible for the murder of at least 14 Israeli civilians, in at least 4 terror attacks. In May 2003, he was sentenced to 14 life sentences.
- Izaddin Hamamra – Convicted in 2004 of recruiting suicide bombers for two bombings in Jerusalem, in which 19 Israelis civilians were murdered. Hamamra’s cell also planned bus hijackings.
- Khaled el-Karam – A law student at An-Najah. According to Palestinian media, he was arrested in May 2017 and sentenced to 15 months in prison by an Israeli military court. He also delivered remarks at the 2018 ceremony.

Responding to media coverage of the program, UNESCO attempted to distance itself from the program, claiming that “UNESCO does not fund UNESCO Chairs. It is the responsibility of the university hosting a UNESCO Chair to provide all the resources required – human, financial etc. – for the UNESCO Chair to carry out its work….The diploma/certificate-awarding training is not a UNESCO program and we have no role or contribution to it. Rather it is training provided by the university with the support of the UNESCO Chair. Chairs can contribute to such training but awards, diplomas, and certificates can be issued only by the university, not UNESCO.”

According to UNESCO, it chairs exist in over 700 institution, located in over 116 countries. These devote special attention to “key priority areas related to UNESCO’s fields of competence – i.e. in education, the natural and social sciences, culture and communication.”

UNESCO chairs are active in Israeli institutions, such as Ben Gurion University, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv University, Haifa University, the Technion, and others.

David Collier: The ethnic cleansing of Jews and left wing hypocrisy
Talking about the historical ethnic cleansing of Jews from the whole of North Africa and the Middle East is an easy method of proving the antisemitism within the Palestinian cause. This example started with a simple tweet. A tweet that clearly points out that whilst Arabs make up more than 20% of Israel’s population, the rest of the Middle East and North Africa has virtually no Jews in it anywhere. Given some of these areas, like Morocco and Iraq had large Jewish populations – it becomes obvious that the Jews were ethnically cleansed from the MENA region.


The tweet was popular – it was retweeted 2500 times and received over 6300 likes. Its message is clear and easy on the eye. There were a million Jews who lived in places such as Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Tunisia. In one way or another the Arabs in the region turned on their Jews, persecuted them and in most places drove them out. An act of quintessential antisemitic persecution. So when people reference ethnic cleansing in relation to the Arab / Israeli conflict – there is ONE obvious ethnic cleansing we really have to discuss. These people were not part of a civil conflict, they considered themselves at home and identified – as Jews always do – with the host nation. There were not even violent groups amongst them. They were simply othered, persecuted and driven out from their homes – often forced to leave all their posSessions behind.

Ethnic cleaning – a simple equation
A simple equation then for the human rights activist. *If* the people who hold aloft the ‘Palestinian cause’ do it because of ‘human rights’, *then* the very least of expectations, the lowest of bars, would also have them sympathising with these Jewish victims of ethnic cleansing. If this does not occur, we have solid evidence that their support for the Palestinian cause is not driven by human rights issues at all.

The obvious conclusion
The first thing to remember is that this all came from one simple tweet. It isn’t the result of deep digging or long-term research. When you post something about the persecution of Jews – this is what you receive in response. This brutally exposes a clear and blatant truth. None of this has anything to do with international law or concern for human rights. These activists fail the most basic of tests. They simply do not care about people being persecuted. When the ethnic cleansing of Jewish people from Arab lands is placed before them – they respond with whataboutery, insults and antisemitism. If you need proof that the Palestinian cause is more about antisemitism than human rights, just look at the response to this tweet. It is *always* worth remembering this when you hear them talk about how much they care.

From Ian:

Netanyahu threatens war as sirens continue to wail in southern Israel
Rockets fell near a playground in the college-town of Sderot as well in a yard of a residential home. There were no reports of physical injuries. In Netivot, rocket shrapnel fell near a house.

The PIJ claimed responsibility for the rocket fire on Monday afternoon, saying that the launches were in response to the killing of two PIJ terrorists in Damascus. "In the Al-Quds Brigades, we confirm that we are ready to confront any aggression and let the enemy know that if it continues, we will respond with full force and might," said the military wing of the terrorist group in a statement.

After a barrage of rockets was fired towards the city of Netivot in southern Israel, Hamas warned that the response to the Israeli strikes in Gaza came within a unified understanding between all the factions in Gaza that "Palestinian blood is a red line." The terrorist group warned that if the IDF expanded its strikes, Israel would face "resistance like it's never seen."

Since yesterday, over 60 rockets were fired from Gaza to southern Israel, prompting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to warn that Israel may launch a broader campaign against Hamas in Gaza if it does not totally stop firing rockets.

“I am not hurrying into war. I know the price that our soldiers and the families of the fallen pay,” Netanyahu, whose brother Yoni was killed in action, said.

Still, the prime minister said that if there is no choice: “Woe to Hamas and Islamic Jihad when that day comes! It’s their choice.”
“We will do what it takes to bring back total security for the residents of the south,” he vowed.

"If you don't shoot them, we will shoot you. I'm talking about a war," Netanyahu said earlier on Army Radio. "I only go to war as a last option, but we have prepared something you can't even imagine."

His interview was interrupted by fresh sirens warning of incoming rockets.
Over 40 Gaza Rockets Fired At Israel; A Playground Suffered a Direct Hit




Normal Places Have Snow Days, Israel's South Has Rocket Days




Sunday, February 23, 2020

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: A secret Mossad Qatar trip, Hamas outreach to Egypt and Iran’s threat
In Saudi Arabia, Al-Arabiya is very interested in what a previously unknown “Mossad trip to Qatar” means for the region. “Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas, and they intended to cut ties with it,” the network reported, while noting that the recent Israeli discussions with Doha about continuing to fund Gaza are noteworthy. Hamas also thinks they are noteworthy, bragging over the weekend that it met with Qatar’s envoy Mohammed al-Emadi and $15 million was distributed in Gaza.

In Israel, the Mossad-Qatar-Hamas story was revealed by Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman over the weekend and was reported locally. The story goes that Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and IDF Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Herzi Halevi met with top Qatari officials. Halevi was in the news before, in January, when he commented on the killing of IRGC general Qasem Soleimani. “We must look at the assassination as part of a fight between Iran and the US over Iraq’s character.” Halevi is known for his achievements in a three-year term running Military Intelligence. He has spoken about using deterrence in a way that does not escalate a situation and of the importance of information supremacy over Israel’s enemies, according to an article at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in 2018. This is a key to Israel’s “campaign between the wars” in which Israel must prepare for future struggle with Iran and its allies.

Israel now has a dedicated headquarters for the “third circle” threat of Iran in light of the IDF’s new Momentum plan. It is worth understanding this larger picture to understand some of what Hamas is up to in Gaza. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad both are supported by Iran. PIJ is an Iranian proxy whereas Hamas is more an ally. But Hamas has been isolated over the years and also failed to achieve results in confrontation with Israel. Over 2,600 rockets fired over the last two years achieved little, and its “Great March of Return,” launched in 2018, also failed. In March 2018, two years ago, Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah survived an assassination attempt in Gaza. Today, Hamas is bragging about opposing the US “Deal of the Century.”

It is important to consider the calculus to see the larger picture of Qatar’s role in Gaza. Qatar has supported Gaza for more than a decade. The Emir of Qatar even visited Gaza in 2012. In January 2019, the third $15 million payment via Israel and Hamas to Gaza was made by Qatar as part of a deal in 2018. Mohammed al-Emadi has been Doha’s point man throughout. He has visited Israel more than two dozen times, according to a Reuters interview in 2018. He also cited talks between Israel and Hamas in that year. Qatar has said its aid to Gaza helps prevent a conflict. Emadi has ruffled feathers in Gaza sometimes due to his outspokenness.
Netanyahu promises sovereignty over Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and to the Jewish community of Hebron.

He spoke during a visit to the nearby West Bank Kiryat Arba settlement, where he also stated that he was authorizing the elevator project for the tomb, that would allow those with disabilities to visit the cave.

All West Bank settlements are slated to become part of sovereign Israel under US President Donald Trump’s peace plan, but according to the map, the status of Jewish Hebron is unclear.

Prior to Netanyahu's speech at a celebratory event to mark the inauguration of a new neighborhood in Kiryat Arba on Sunday, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the Yamina Party, addressed the crowd. Bennett spoke of the need to clarify with the Trump administration that the Tomb and Hebron's Jewish community would be part of sovereign Israel under the "Deal of the Century."

Bennett said that a Jewish state without the Tomb of the Patriarchs is like Washington without the Lincoln Memorial. He also spoke against the portion of the Trump plan that calls for the creation of a Palestinian state.

The defense minister noted that "the plan speaks 159 times of a Palestinian state and references Israeli sovereignty" only 13 times.


UK left activists attended events with far right antisemites
Former Labour party members have regularly met elements of the far right to discuss and propagate antisemitic conspiracy theories, an undercover investigation has found.

Infiltration of the conspiracy theorist group Keep Talking found that Jeremy Corbyn supporters and confidantes of former Labour MPs have attended meetings addressed by Holocaust deniers.

During one gathering in London last year, suspended Labour supporters heard James Thring, an infamous antisemite linked to the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, speak openly and unchallenged about Holocaust denial.

A covert recording of Thring at the meeting captured him claiming that no deaths were recorded at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, where 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were systematically murdered.

“The archives from the listening posts show no evidence that they heard anything about deaths in Auschwitz; we didn’t know that this was going on … because it wasn’t,” Thring can be heard saying.

Nick Lowles, chief executive of Hope Not Hate, which along with the Jewish charity Community Security Trust monitored Keep Talking over three years, said: “Our investigation shows what the politics of some of the far left and the far right have in common – antisemitism. It’s important that these groups are not just seen as eccentric or harmless; they give conspiracies a space to survive and grow and they encourage people to keep disseminating falsehoods.” (h/t Zvi)

Saturday, February 22, 2020

From Ian:

Lurid Antisemitic Propaganda Channel ‘TruNews’ Gets Booted by YouTube
A far-right, viciously antisemitic website that made headlines last November when it was revealed to have received media accreditation from the White House has been kicked off the YouTube platform.

TruNews, founded by Pastor Rick Wiles, was permanently banned from YouTube on Thursday, after repeatedly violating the website’s rules regarding hate speech.

US Jewish leaders welcomed the ban on the outlet, which actively promotes a diet of Holocaust denial and antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Jonathan Greenblatt — CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) — said on Twitter that he hoped other social media platforms would follow YouTube’s example by removing TruNews-related accounts.

Wiles infamously let rip against what he called a “Jew coup” on his talk show last November, as impeachment proceedings against US President Donald Trump were launched in Congress.

Wiles raved: “That’s the way the Jews work, they are deceivers, they plot, they lie, they do whatever they have to do to accomplish their political agenda.”

He continued: “People are going to be forced, possibly by this Christmas, to take a stand because of this Jew coup in the United States. There will be a purge. That’s the next thing that happens when Jews take over a country, they kill millions of Christians.”

The White House has consistently denied that it had provided TruNews with press credentials.
UK to review funds for Palestinian schools using textbooks encouraging violence
British officials have pledged to urgently review the tens of millions of dollars in aid the UK provides to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, after an investigative report found that a majority of the funds have been going to schools in the West Bank and Gaza Strip which use textbooks that incite violence against Israelis.

According to a Friday report in the UK-based Daily Mail, the Department for International Development and its secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, vowed to raise the issue with the Palestinian Authority, adding that London was working to carry out an independent review of the Palestinian textbooks.

“The UK Government has a zero tolerance approach toward incitement to violence,” a spokesman for the department told the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail report included several examples of alleged incitement uncovered in textbooks used at schools funded by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). In one math textbook for nine-year-olds, students are asked to add up the number of martyrs from Palestinian uprisings, accompanied with images of their funerals. In another, 11-year-olds are taught Newton’s Second Law of Physics with a depiction of a boy pointing a slingshot at Israeli soldiers.

Other photos showed Palestinians using slingshots against Israeli forces and quizzed students on their potential use and effectiveness, as well as precautions to employ while using them.

Textbooks were found to praise Palestinian “martyrs,” including Dalal al-Mughrabi, who led the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre during which Palestinian terrorists hijacked a bus and murdered 38 Israelis.

The materials revealed by the Daily Mail appeared to have been provided to the paper by the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based right-wing think tank that was quoted in the article and which has released a report of its own calling for funding to UNRWA to be reconsidered.

The UK has given some $427 million in aid to UNRWA over the past five years with another $84 million pledged for the coming year. Roughly 62 percent of that funding goes to schools in the Palestinian territories, which could be using such textbooks.

Kuwait Airways under scrutiny after refusal to fly Israeli from London Heathrow
The Lawfare Project has filed a new complaint again Kuwait Airways for continued discrimination after Orna Schneider, an Israeli woman, was barred from traveling from London Heathrow to Bangkok after she presented her Israeli passport to airline staff.

Kuwait is one of many countries that either do not recognize Israeli passports, passports with Israeli visas or do not allow Israelis to visit there. The countries include Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, among others.

Though Kuwait Airways, which is the national airline carrier of the Gulf state, is outside of the their country's jurisdiction at London Heathrow traveling to Bangkok, the airline extended their authority and carried out the government's wishes by turning Schneider away from her flight.

"At this point, it is clear that Kuwait Airways’ hate for Israelis supersedes their desire to stay in business. If they simply end their illegal boycott of Israeli passengers, they’d be free to fly their planes wherever they want. [This will continue] as long as Kuwait enforces this discriminatory policy, in clear violation of national and international anti-discrimination laws," said Executive Director of the Lawfare Project Brooke Goldstein.

The Lawfare Project has been working since 2017 to hold Kuwait Airways accountable for breaching United States and international anti-discrimination laws. Due to this action, Kuwait Airways no longer runs inter-European flights or routes to JFK, according to the Lawfare Project.

“This is about an institutional policy of discrimination against a protected group under the provisions of the Equality Act 2010. If a carrier refused to carry any other minority group in the UK they would be closed down without hesitation. It is wholly unacceptable that the prejudices and discriminatory practices from a foreign country should be imported into the UK," said Robert Festenstein, Principal at RHF Solicitors and legal counsel on the case.

Friday, February 21, 2020

From Ian:

David Collier: How many more school textbooks are spreading lies and hate?
School based revisionist history and antisemitism took centre stage again yesterday as more evidence of the rancid distortions that are freely taught to our children came to light. In a sign of how bad things are – this news didn’t even break in the UK.

I first got hold of the story through a post published on the US based blogger ‘JewishChick’s Facebook page. She had uploaded an image of what seemed to be a school textbook posing a question for students – asking whether Israel bore ‘long term’ responsibility for the 9/11 attacks:

I tracked it down. Hachette UK, which owns ‘Hodder Education’, published the book ‘Understanding History: Britain in the Wider World, Roman Times – Present’. The book was co-written by Michael Riley, Alex Ford, Kath Goudie, Richard Kennett and Helen Snelson, all people engaged in teaching history in the UK. It is for KS3 (ages 11-14) and seems to have been well received by teachers and students alike:

The book only referenced Israel once – on pages 240-241 – in a section about causes of 9/11. Popular publisher – popular book – outrageous question. How is it possible that this has been published, distributed, taught in schools AND yet it still took an American blogger to tell us about it? Where are our own guards?

For 1000s of years people who have had control of children’s education have found ways to tell lies about Jews. Today they do it through demonising Israel. Just a few months ago Pearson’s were forced to take a revisionist textbook off the shelves – and now this. How many more are out there? Children who are taught this stuff – are going to become adults – with opinions, votes and power.
John McDonnell attacked for 'deeply offensive' comparison of Julian Assange to falsely persecuted Jewish soldier
After visiting the imprisoned Wikileaks founder at Belmarsh, Labour’s shadow Chancellor said his planned extradition was “the Dreyfus case of our age”.

This refers to Alfred Dreyfus, a French army officer who was tried and convicted in 1895 on false charges of treason, with many believing he was court martialled just because he was Jewish.

He was later exonerated thanks to a long campaign, which included the publication of J'Accuse by the novelist Emile Zola, criticising his prosecution.

Mr McDonnell’s comparison drew condemnation, with Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust tweeting: “Dreyfus was a French artillery officer falsely accused of treason because he was Jewish.

“Go figure how or why John McDonnell could make such an inappropriate comparison with the Assange case.

“Outrageous, ridiculous and so deeply offensive.”

Mike Katz, national chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, posted: “What an absolutely ridiculous and offensive thing to say.

“Though I can see how you could confuse Dreyfus, a loyal soldier wrongly accused of treason because he was a Jew, with an entitled bloke who hid in a foreign embassy to evade extradition on a rape allegation.

“If you view *everything* through an anti-American lens, obviously.”

Euan Philipps, spokesperson for Labour Against Antisemitism said: “It is deeply offensive of John McDonnell to compare Julian Assange to Alfred Dreyfus, and Mr Assange’s imprisonment to the Dreyfus Affair – a case that directly inspired a resurgence in the Zionist movement.”
Jewish leaders criticise McDonnell claim Assange case ‘the Dreyfus of our age’
The controversial case – which inspired Roman Polanksy’s 2019 drama “An Officer and a Spy” – divided public opinion and sparked a national debate on race.

Dreyfus’ plight inspired the acclaimed novelist Emile Zola, best known for his book Germinal, to pen an incendiary letter on the subject, accusing his contemporaries of antisemitism.

“I think it’s the Dreyfus case of our age,” McDonnell told reporters.

“The way in which a person is being persecuted for political reasons, for simply exposing the truth for what went on in relation to recent wars,” he said.

The remark sparked outcry from Jewish leaders, with Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, calling the comparison “inappropriate …. outrageous, ridiculous and so deeply offensive.”

A statement from the Antisemitism Policy Trust on Thursday called the remark “crass and offensive” and said McDonnell “should know better.”

Joining a chorus of criticism, Mike Katz, the chair of the Jewish Labour Movement said it was “an absolutely ridiculous and offensive thing to say” in a tweet on Thursday.

A statement from the Community Security Trust claimed it was a “disgraceful false equivalence to one of the key learning moments of modern Jewish history.”

From Ian:

Who Will Protect the Children of the Holy Land From Palestinian Adults Who Serially Brainwash Them to Hate?
According to a new report by a coalition of NGOs, an estimated 10,000 children are trained in Hamas’ terrorist camps each year, and at least 160 have died digging terror tunnels into Israel. Those statistics alone should ring alarm bells about the generational child abuse of Palestinian children.

But that’s not how Congresswoman Betty McCollum (D-MN) sees it. Her US House “Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act” — seeks to protect Palestinian children from Israelis, not Palestinian adults — among them terrorists.

Barring an unforeseen miracle, another generation of kids will be brainwashed in school by war curriculum and trained to spend their summers learning how to shoot with live ammunition or filling booby-trapped balloons with explosives targeting Jewish kindergartens, fields, and nature preserves:

UN Watch identified 40 Palestinian teachers who use Facebook to encourage their students to model themselves into the next generation of Palestinian terrorists. Here are just three examples:

- Ghanem Naim — whose students venerate him as “Dear Professor” — posted pictures of Hitler identified as “our beloved” and “Hitler the great.”
- Teacher Khader Awad indoctrinates his students with an image of a Jew with three guns and a knife trained on his head over the Hebrew caption: “Blood = Blood. #Kill Them.”
- A post by “senior UNRWA” teacher Mohammad Alsayyed praised the “awesome kidnapping” of three Israeli teenagers killed in a Hamas terrorist operation which precipitated the 2014 Gaza war.

For years, such teachers were largely funded by hundreds of millions of American dollars and international largess given to the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to care for “Palestinian refugees” — chief among them hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children enrolled in schools where they supposedly receive “a modern secular education.”

Palestinian Child Soldier Week Launched to Combat Child Abuse
This past week, about 30 NGOs joined the Coalition to Save Palestinian Child Soldiers to raise public awareness and to put an end to the use of Palestinian children as soldiers against Israel. Too often, Palestinian children (as well as children around the world) are used as political pawns during war and conflict. In fact, the United Nation reported about 300,000 children used as soldiers from 20 countries around the world. About 40% of child soldiers are young girls, who are often used as sex slaves and taken as “wives” by male fighters.

Palestinian children are often used as human shields to carry out terror attacks by Hamas operatives. Terror groups like Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine exploit Palestinian children and raise them to become combatants, human shields, rioters, laborers, support staff, and even suicide bombers. These groups, along with the Palestinian Authority have allowed antisemitic propaganda to seep into their education system by providing school textbooks that teach Palestinian children to kill Israelis and become martyrs. In the Gaza strip, Hamas trains about 10,000 children and teens every year in terrorist “summer camps”. These training boot camps are practical lessons that are meant to be implemented in warfare and battle. fight and die alongside adult militants and terrorists. Hamas and other terror groups fully use trained child soldiers for battle, with the knowledge and intention that these children will die alongside adult militants and terrorists.

The international community has turned a blind eye to the abuse of Palestinian children as soldiers by these militant and terrorist groups and it’s time for the world to hold these perpetrators accountable.

Join the campaign now:


The rise of Trump’s new pro-Israel and anti-Iran intel director - analysis
Some critics assert Grenell lacks intelligence credentials. Grenell, however, has been immersed in intelligence and counter-terrorism matters for years. He is a veteran diplomat and foreign policy expert.

His years as ambassador to Germany coupled with his time as the longest serving US spokesman at the UN have equipped him to confront threats to the US and its allies.

Writing in the Washington Examiner, Tom Rogan, said, "In Grenell, Trump now has a smart, loyal voice to guide him on matters of national security. But the intelligence community also gets something: a leader with Trump's ear, and someone who is keen to impress. Both sides, then, can forge common ground in America's interest.”

Grenell will become the first openly gay cabinet member in the history of the US. Last year, the new intelligence director launched an international campaign to decriminalize homosexuality across the world.

Rogan, the political journalist, said that “appointing Richard Grenell as the new acting director of national intelligence. It's bad news for Iran, Huawei.”

Grenell will continue as US ambassador to Germany. That means the political camp – and it is not minor – that supports communist China’s Huawei network for Germany, Iran’s totalitarian regime, and Vladimir Putin’s Russia Nord Stream 2 energy project for the federal republic will not be pleased.
Rubin Report: US Ambassador: The Insane Ways The UN Wastes Money (Pt.2)| Richard Grenell
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report talks to Richard Grenell (US Ambassador to Germany) about what it’s like to be the US Ambassador to Germany under President Trump. Richard also gives an insider’s look at how the UN really operates. He describes what he sees as the extreme waste due to the UN general assembly policy of distributing resources like jobs evenly whether or not countries have people with the necessary skills or not. People end up being hired who don’t have the necessary skill set to fill quotas, and money and resources are wasted. Richard also discusses how Donald Trump has been successful at being a disrupter and breaking up groupthink. Richard details what he calls the Trump doctrine to foreign policy and whether or not it’s effective.


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

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