05/25 Links Pt2: The Media’s Palestine Narrative Reads Like Fan Fiction; CAIR-LA: 'Countering Violent Extremism' Should Target Jews Who Join The Israeli Army; Israel calls on EU to end funding BDS groups

From Ian:

---

The Media’s Palestine Narrative Reads Like Fan Fiction

Take, for instance, the issue of the peace process. Most media outlets have decided on behalf of the Palestinians that they want peace with Israel and are willing to share the land, which Israel won’t allow. That is, despite what Palestinian leaders from Hamas to Fatah say publicly.

News outlets simply rationalize facts away. The Palestinians waving machetes in Gaza don’t really want to kill Israelis; they’re just props. Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Political Bureau chairman who runs Gaza didn’t mean it when he led chants at the May 11 riots: “Khaybar, Khaybar, oh, Jews! The Army of Muhammad has begun to return!” Sure, it may refer to the wholesale Muslim slaughter of Jews near Medina in the year 628 but it’s probably just a figure of speech. It doesn’t matter that he explicitly declared “Palestine is from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River and we shall never, never, never recognize Israel!” I’m sure that’s negotiable and beside the point.

As for Palestinian actions, their internal politics, or their societal struggle, they don’t matter. If there are allegations of corruption involving an Israeli politician, reporters are all over it. If the accusations involve Palestinians, those stories usually fall by the wayside. Outside Israel one likely won’t read about the father of two in Gaza who recently set himself on fire in protest of Hamas’s mishandling of the humanitarian situation. That was how the so-called “Arab Spring” began, with a street vendor in Tunisia who engaged in self-immolation; he was striving to make a point. Yet reporters would likely be tripping over themselves to get the story out if he had blamed Israel instead.

All of this points to what should be painfully obvious by now: After 70 years of a failed strategy to secure their statehood in place of Israel, Palestinian leadership would still rather use its population as cannon fodder for a media stunt and its reconstruction aid for building terror tunnels than devote resources to building the institutions necessary to run a state and provide for its people. The longer Palestinians cling to the mythology that they will kick the Jews out of Jerusalem, flood Israel with millions of refugees, and replace the Jewish state with a state of their own, the more distant the prospects for progress become. That change is even more unlikely to happen while mainstream media outlets remain wedded to the promotion of Palestinian fiction.

Bomb hurled at IDF troops on Gaza border as hundreds protest

An explosive device was thrown Friday at Israeli troops along the Gaza border in the Strip’s north, the army said, as Palestinians took part in weekly clashes near the security fence.

The army said no soldiers were injured by the bomb.

It said some 1,600 Palestinians took part in riots at two locations along the border, where they threw rocks and burned tires. Numerous attempts were made to damage security infrastructure, the army said.

Troops used riot dispersal means and live fire in accordance with IDF regulations, it added.

Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 86 people were injured. Most were treated for tear gas inhalation while some sustained gunshot wounds.

Also during the afternoon several incendiary kites were flown into Israel from the Palestinian coastal enclave, sparking fires. Strong winds hampered efforts to douse the blazes, though all were eventually brought under control.

MEMRI: CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush At Orange County Event: The Governmental 'Countering Violent Extremism' Program Exclusively Targets American Muslims; It Should Target Jewish Kids Who Join The Israeli Army

Hussam Ayloush, Executive Director of the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), spoke at an event titled "Challenging Islamophobia with My Vote" at the Islamic Institute of Orange County (IIOC), California on April 20, 2018. He said that the U.S. governmental Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program exclusively targets American Muslims although white supremacism is the number one cause of "domestic terrorism and violent extremism" in the U.S. "Do you know how many hundreds of Jewish American kids are recruited to join the Israeli occupation army?" he asked, adding: "No one has ever established a CVE program to see why normal American kids leave their homes to become part of an army committing war crimes... They go to the American Muslim community, although the number of Muslims who join ISIS and Al-Qaeda is... tiny." Professor Khaled Beydoun of the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, the other speaker at the event, said that it falls upon the shoulders of the community to spearhead efforts to educate people about Islam and to counter Islamophobia. The event, co-hosted by the IIOC and CAIR, was billed as encouraging Muslim Americans to fight Islamophobia and empower themselves through voting. The event was posted on the IICO YouTube channel.

Having been executive director of Greater Los Angeles chapter of CAIR since 1998[1] Hussam Ayloush is also an active member of various interfaith groups.[2] He has made some controversial statements on social media and on television. Following the December 2015 San Bernardino terror attack, Ayloush said on CNN: "Let's not forget that some of our own foreign policy, as Americans, as the West, have fueled that extremism."[3] In November 2016, Ayloush tweeted an Arabic phrase chanted across the Arab world during the Arab Spring, that translates as "The people want to bring down the regime," and exhorted his readers, "Ok, repeat after me."[4]

In January 2017, on Facebook, he criticized an imam who participated in an inaugural event for U.S. President Donald Trump: "In the face of unreluctant and unrepentant defamation and animosity toward Islam and Muslims... by this Trump team, [this imam's] symbolic participation... does not qualify as engaging or correcting the wrongdoers, but rather enabling them and providing them with a token cover for their bigotry."[5] Following the December 25, 2016 crash of a Russian passenger jet en route to Syria in the Black Sea, Ayloush tweeted: "I'm sad about the crashed Russian military jet. The TU-154 could have carried up to 180 military personnel instead of just 92!"[6] Also, in October 2017, he spoke at a teacher's workshop that some described as portraying Israel as the villain and Palestinians as the victims.

Read More

05/22 Links Pt2: David Collier: Kaddish for Palestinian terrorists; Justin Trudeau Is No Friend of Israel; The Guardian: Israel supporters are morally sub human

From Ian:

---

David Collier: The day that Jewish people said Kaddish for Palestinian terrorists

Mitzvot and terrorists

The event itself began badly and got worse (Jonathan Hoffman’s analysis was published here). There was talk of how Israel ‘murders’ Palestinians. Mention of how protesting Palestinians are just performing a ‘Mitzvah’. Then the names were read out. All of them. Those that brought explosives to the fence, those that died in a firefight with Israeli soldiers. All the names. Including approximately 53 terrorists. Kaddish was said for them all.

The truly sickening thought is this. Imagine the eight terrorists had not been killed by Israeli soldiers at the fence. What if they had killed the soldiers, broken through, reached a neighbouring town and massacred Jewish residents. What then? Then there would have been none of these Jews in Parliament Square. As the Jewish bodies had been buried, these Jews would not have publicly come to mourn and say Kaddish. Think about how twisted that is.

There is little difference between anti-Israel activists holding a vigil for terrorists at SOAS, and the people who said Kaddish at Parliament Square. The actions of those who were responsible for not raising a voice against, or cancelling this event are disgraceful. Some of these people are involved in summer camps that work with children. I wouldn’t want my children near anyone who is connected with this, nor the organisations that allow them to act as ‘influencers’. They wanted to make the community angry. I think it is safe to say they succeeded.

Justin Trudeau Is No Friend of Israel

While 33 ambassadors and dignitaries participated in the recent celebration of the US embassy’s relocation from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, one country was noticeably absent. Though considered by many to be one of Israel’s strongest allies, Canada chose to boycott the dedication.

“We will not be moving Canada’s embassy to Jerusalem,” said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in response to President Trump’s decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital city. Palestinian diplomats welcomed the Trudeau government’s decision not to support the move.

While condemning what he called Israel’s “excessive use of force” in defending itself against violent riots organized by the terrorist group Hamas, Trudeau seemed to take issue with the fact that alleged murderer Tarek Loubani — a Palestinian-Canadian previously arrested in Egypt for his support of Islamic terrorism — was reportedly shot in the leg during the protest.

In stark contrast, Trudeau’s Conservative predecessor Stephen Harper lauded the decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. The Canadian Conservative Party has pledged to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital if they win the general election in 2019.

The video below contains an important message about #Hamas everyone should see and for that I need your help! Retweeting my video is not enough. I urge you to tweet it yourselves in your own words. Here's a draft⮕https://t.co/U5wzvSVrmq
EDIT & TWEET!pic.twitter.com/1iqBCMpyJB

— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) May 21, 2018

Pro-Palestinian Human Rights Organizations Shaft Palestinians and Human Rights

To collect compensation from the Palestinian Authority, however, the victims are required to submit a variety of medical and psychological assessments -- tests often expensive to run and which the Palestinians cannot afford. To help their clients, the Palestinians' attorneys, Barak Kedem and Aryeh Arbus, applied to 15 human rights organizations for assistance -- a "Who's Who" of human rights activism in the Israel-Arab conflict that are always the most vocal in the struggle against the Israeli "occupation," and regularly condemn the plight of Palestinian and Israeli Arabs under Israeli "occupation." These organizations are the greatest activists against demolition of homes belonging to terrorists' families, and the leaders of the fight against the "oppression" of Arabs by the Israel Police and the IDF, which they refer to as "occupation forces."

Each of the human rights organizations approached benefit immensely from the extremely generous support of foreign governments and charities such as the New Israel Fund and other well-known "liberal" foundations. The response the attorneys received speaks volumes:

• The New Israel Fund, B'Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights, and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel were among the groups that completely ignored the pleas of the Palestinian plaintiffs. These organizations, not known for their reticence, were suddenly mute.
• Yesh Din expressed "feelings of anger and pain," but explained that they cannot help because they "represent victims of violations only when they are harmed by Israeli authorities or Israeli citizens."
• Another well-known NGO, Adalah, stated that they "only help Palestinians who are suing the State of Israel."
• Amnesty International replied that their organization "does not have the professional tools to address the needs of these refugees."

All told, 13 of the 15 "human rights organizations" proved that they are, in fact, dedicated to defaming the State of Israel, and have no real interest in defending human rights. Only two organizations -- The Committee for Prevention of Torture and Physicians for Human Rights -- offered assistance of any kind.

Ironically, help also came from two unexpected sources: Honenu, a legal aid society most often associated with right wing causes, and Regavim, a think-tank and lobbying group that regularly finds itself in court to protect Israeli sovereignty. Apparently, these two organizations actually believe that "human rights" is more than a battering ram to be used to defame Israel.

The case of these 52 victims of Palestinian Authority torture is a cautionary tale about the type of state one can expect PA President Mahmoud Abbas and his henchmen to create if they are given the chance. It is also a sad but eye-opening lesson in the cynical use of the mantra of "human rights" as the sheep's clothing worn by the wolves who seek to tear real human rights -- and the countries and organizations that actually do care about them -- to shreds.

Read More

05/10 Links Pt2: Salt Lake Tribune Op-Ed Fits EU Definition of Anti-Semitism; Gaza: Where Terrorists Are ‘Victims’ and Terrorism Is ‘Resistance’; Jerusalem has never been holy to Islam

From Ian:

---

CAMERA: Salt Lake Tribune Op-Ed Fits EU Definition of Anti-Semitism

The Salt Lake Tribune recently published an Op-Ed, penned by one Michael S. Robinson, that can best be described as an anti-Semitic rant, filled with attacks against “the Jews,” falsehoods demonizing Israel, calls for “regime change” targeting the Jewish state and insistence that it was a mistake to establish a Jewish state. This conforms perfectly to the definition of “anti-Semitism” used by the United States and the European Union.

Perhaps one of the most appalling aspects of Robinson’s guest column is his dismissive and demeaning analogy of Jewish Holocaust victims to a young child who has suffered a minor injury in the past:

“…It doesn’t make a naughty child any better when parents decline all discipline, just because little Suzie had a nasty owie two weeks ago.”

Robinson tries to innoculate himself against charges of anti-Semitism by pretending he is merely criticizing the Israeli government and policy:

“I hate Israel — not, of course, its many innocent citizens, but its inhumane and murderous government.”

But he reveals early on exactly what he is trying to conceal – that his is not legitimate criticism of a specific Israeli policy but an attack on “the Jews” in general:

“There seems to be a mindless philosophy that, because the Jews have historically suffered so much, we must never criticize them… “[emphasis added]

Robinson again refers to “The Jews” when he demonizes them as as lacking in “human compassion”:

“Oh, yes, the Jews know all about concentration camps, but they seem unable to muster any human compassion for the suffering of their neighbors.”

Gaza: Where Terrorists Are ‘Victims’ and Terrorism Is ‘Resistance’

"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is one of the worst clichés in the English language. Unfortunately the phrase's logic is applied all too often to the ongoing violence at the Israel-Gaza Strip border. Just look at Peter Beinart's recent column on the riots there. "Why are thousands of Palestinians risking their lives by running toward the Israeli snipers who guard the fence that encloses Gaza?" asks Beinart. "Because Gaza is becoming uninhabitable." And why is the Strip becoming uninhabitable? Because Israel is "denying Gaza's people the water, electricity, education, and food they need to live decent lives."

According to Beinart, the ongoing attempts to damage and breach the border security fence to attack Israel, the rocks and firebombs hurled and shots fired at Israeli soldiers, the firebomb-bearing kites that torment Israeli farmers trying to grow crops, the widespread presence of swastikas at the demonstrations, the anti-Semitic threats against Jews, the horrible ecological effects caused by burning tires to blind Israeli border guards—all actions carried out by Gazans—are reactions of victims motivated by resistance against their oppressors. The fact that most of the rioters who Israelis have killed were terrorist operatives, or individuals affiliated with terrorist organizations, is irrelevant, because it gets in the way of this narrative.

"Hamas is indeed a brutal and destructive force, to both Israelis and Palestinians," acknowledges Beinart. "But Hamas did not force Israel to adopt the policies that have devastated Gaza. Those policies represent a choice—a choice that has not only failed to dislodge Hamas, but has also created the very conditions in which extremism thrives."

This argument is so inaccurate—yet so commonly found in Western media—that it requires a response. One simply needs to look at recent "protests" to see who is really devastating the lives of Palestinians in Gaza, who suffer under the cruel and incompetent rule of Hamas, an Islamist terrorist group that seeks Israel's destruction.

Apology? Abbas again mocks the Holocaust

Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas is apparently incapable of concealing his true views.

Channel 10 News reported on Wednesday that Abbas had held a press conference following a meeting with the President of Chile and spoke about the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust, while comparing their suffering to the suffering of Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria.

"I respect the victims of the Holocaust, which was the greatest and most heinous crime in history, but also express the hope that the suffering of Palestinians who live 70 years in exile and the occupation will end," Abbas said, according to the report.

The report follows last week’s controversy surrounding Abbas’s anti-Semitic speech in which he claimed was that the Holocaust was not the result of anti-Semitism but rather of the Jews “social behavior, [charging] interest, and financial matters.”

The PA chairman’s remarks were met with a flurry of condemnations, both in Israel and abroad.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman ripped Abbas over his remarks, saying the PA leader has “reached a new low in attributing the cause of massacres of Jewish people over the years to their ‘social behavior relating to interest and banks.’ To all those who think Israel is the reason that we don't have peace, think again.”

German’s Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, criticized Abbas as well, writing on Twitter that Germany was responsible for “one of the worst crimes in history and therefore, we must respond resolutely to any anti-Semitic expression.” He linked his comment to Abbas's speech.

Britain similarly criticized the anti-Semitic speech, saying Abbas’s remarks were “deeply concerning” and unhelpful to peace in the region.

Read More

04/26 Links Pt2: Debunking 25 left-wing and Arab myths; Bin Laden's bodyguard walks freely in Berlin, but Jews don't; The origins of Labour’s racism

From Ian:

---

Fred Maroun: Debunking 25 left-wing and Arab myths from a left-wing Arab perspective

Left-wing and Arab enemies of Israel make a number of accusations that they repeat as if they were facts. Here I take apart those myths from a left-wing Arab perspective.

I summarize the facts, but I include many links to other articles that provide further background. Some of the articles referenced are mine, where I reference serious sources not considered pro-Israel, including Haaretz, BBC, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN, and The Huffington Post. I also reference pro-Israel sources that are known for their journalistic integrity, including The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, and The Gatestone Institute.

This article is not for everyone. It is intended only for a narrow audience: People who are willing to base their opinions on facts and not lies. Others are kindly advised to stay away, lest they be contaminated by facts that they would rather continue ignoring.

1. “Israel can end the conflict by withdrawing from the “West Bank””
I would welcome the creation of a Palestinian state, but I would be lying if I said that the possibility is realistic under current conditions. Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and the resulting transformation of Gaza into a terrorist base shows what happens when Israel withdraws unconditionally. Since Israel left Gaza in 2005, many thousands of rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel and many tunnels were built to try to infiltrate Israel. As reported by Haaretz in 2014, an online clock timer showed “how much time has passed since the last rocket was fired; Sadly, this counter never really gets above an hour”.

Israel cannot afford to make the same mistake in Judea & Samaria (the correct name for the “West Bank”) which is much closer to Israel’s large cities than Gaza is. If Israel withdrew from Judea & Samaria unconditionally, it is virtually certain that the newly evacuated land would be controlled by terrorists dangerously hostile to Israel. Until Arabs agree to a reasonable solution that provides Israel the security it requires, Israel’s military presence in Judea & Samaria is fully justified, and even as an Arab, if I want to be honest with myself, I have no choice but to support it. (h/t Gnomercy)

David Collier: The Corbyn v Jews chess match. Gaining time by doing nothing

Singing songs about process

The only possible discussions will be over process. To discuss the speed with which mechanisms will work if we can agree on antisemitism. Yet will will almost never agree and there will always be voices in Corbyn’s ear that reinforce the world vision that he adheres to. Thus antisemitism in Labour will always be just ‘anti-Zionism’, no matter what those pesky Zionists were accused of by the Labour member. Given that Ken Livingstone still hasn’t been expelled and there are demonstrations to re-instate him, the Jewish community and Jeremy Corbyn are not even speaking the same language. In fact, the only notable expulsion, Tony Greenstein, wasn’t even a success. We must remember that the Jews who have Corbyn’s ear – hate Tony Greenstein. For them, this was no sacrifice. They threw something to the Jews that they simply didn’t want.

Corbyn can do no more than give empty gestures even as he backtracks on any progress that is made. Everything is a contradiction. In yesterday’s meeting he apparently refused to adopt the IHRA definition (in full), which many believe had already been adopted. This is where Jeremy Corbyn wants everything – locked in vagueness. In the Evening Standard article Corbyn stated that ‘a genuine two-state solution is essential to lasting peace in the Middle East’ and yet within a paragraph was protecting anti-Zionists who explicitly oppose the very solution he suggests is vital for peace. Corbyn is not a natural two state supporter. He sees the 2SS as the most that can probably be taken back from the European thieves who took the Palestinian land.

The conversation between Jeremy Corbyn and the Jews cannot make sense because Zionism and Jews are intertwined and Zionism doesn’t make sense within Corbyn’s paradigm. Corbyn cannot justify it to himself and he certainly cannot justify it to his supporters. Attacking ‘privileged’ Jews, especially dressed up in the ‘Zionist’ disguise, is almost certainly a vote winner within his faction. The only question is whether anyone else cares enough to not vote for him because of it.

Bin Laden's bodyguard walks freely in Berlin, but Jews don't

Sami A. does not work. He lives in Bochum, Germany. The newspaper Bild just revealed that Sami A. is the Tunisian who belonged to the squad of Osama bin Laden's bodyguards and is under surveillance as an Islamist threat. As an aside, three of the 9/11 pilots, including Mohammed Atta, were based in Germany.

Sami A. only has to show up at the police station once a day. He cannot be expelled according to the German Supreme Court. The judges argue that he could be tortured in his country of origin. Since he lives with his family in Germany, Sami is now a well-paid public danger. And he receives a monthly benefit payment of 1,100 euros. By law, the Tunisian and his wife are entitled to € 194 each. In addition, they get between 133 and 157 euros for each of their four children.

Bin Laden's bodyguard can walk, well paid and undisturbed, in the streets of Berlin today. A Jew wearing a kippah on those streets is risking his life.

Thousands of Islamists today in Germany live in multicultural enclaves such as that of Neukölln, the trendy district of the capital which draws in youngsters and Muslims alike. A few days ago, a small demonstration was held in that largely immigrant Berlin neighborhood. The flashmob in Neukölln proved all the fears that Jewish symbols today in Germany are under threat. Bystanders insulted and spit on participants and tore up an Israeli flag. The organizers ended the protest prematurely.

Read More

04/08 Links: The Hamas Gimmick that Failed; Kontorovich: Why Israeli Rule in the West Bank Is Legal under International Law; Why Does The Left Get A Pass On Anti-Semitism?

From Ian:

---

Eugene Kontorovich: Why Israeli Rule in the West Bank Is Legal under International Law

An interview with Professor Eugene Kontorovich by Sarah Haetzni-Cohen
A version of this interview first appeared in Hebrew in Makor Rishon on March 23, 2018.

Professor Eugene Kontorovich is the head of the international law department of the Kohelet Policy Forum and a fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He teaches at the Law Faculty of Northwestern University. Born in Ukraine, Professor Kontorovich spent most of his adult life in the United States. Several years ago, he moved to Israel with his family.

Q: From the viewpoint of international law, how can the legal position of Judea and Samaria [West Bank] be defined?

Professor Kontorovich: The question that should be asked is: What were the borders of Israel when it was first established? What defines this is the borders at the moment of independence. Israel was created, like most countries, after a successful war where no one came to its aid. In international law, there is a clear rule regarding the establishment of new countries: the country’s borders are determined in accordance with the borders of the previous political entity in that area. So what was here before? The British Mandate. And what were the borders of the British Mandate? From the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

The UN General Assembly’s declaration on November 29, 1947, was a recommendation for partition rather than an operative resolution. What actually defined the situation was what the Mandate did, and it neither accepted the recommendations nor put them into force. During the War of Independence, Jordan and Egypt conquered territories from Israel illegally, and it was almost universally agreed that neither Jordan nor Egypt had any legitimate claim of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria or Gaza. But Israel did. When Israel liberated the territories in 1967, it renewed its control over lands that it had sovereignty over based on the Mandatory borders.

Why Does The Left Get A Pass On Anti-Semitism?

This week, an assemblywoman from Brooklyn — the New York City borough with approximately 2.7 million people, not some far-flung hamlet in flyover country — went on an near-hour-long rant in which she accused Jews of conspiring to gentrify her district and steal her home. In the midst of this outburst, Diane Richardson reportedly referred to one of her rivals as the “the Jewish senator from southern Brooklyn.”

This incident comes not long after a DC Council member named Trayon White Sr., a Democrat who represents the Eighth Ward of the capital of the free world in the twenty-first century, posted a video offering some of his thoughts on how “the Rothschilds” were controlling the climate to squeeze money out of the oppressed.

Both of these people have been treated as raving lunatics, which they might very well be. But a person could easily imagine the fate of any elected official in a large city had he or she aimed similar conspiracies at African-American neighbors. We would almost assuredly be plunged into a national conversation about the shameful bigotry that plagues our cities.

That’s not to argue that we should overreact to these incidents. Although certainly a serious concern, anti-Semitism is a relatively minor problem in American life. It is, however, getting difficult not to notice a trend among liberals of either ignoring, rationalizing, or brushing off anti-Semitism, which seems to be more commonplace on the Left than it has been in a long time.

But when identity politics and class warfare propel your movement, as it does the progressivism that’s becoming increasingly popular on the American Left, it’s almost inevitable that the Jews, who’ve tended to successfully navigate meritocracies, will become targets. This hate has traveled with socialists since Karl Marx first declared that “Money” was the god of the Jews.

JCPA: The Hamas Gimmick that Failed

The “Friday of Tires” protest failed to achieve its main objective, which was to impede the actions of IDF marksmen on Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians did not manage to infiltrate the territory of the State of Israel in their vast numbers, and the Israeli deterrent was preserved.

The Palestinian “Return” campaign has also failed to mobilize Arab states and the West Bank. But there is still a month ahead for the campaign to run, on various notable dates, culminating in Nakba Day on May 14 and 15, the scheduled dates of the transfer of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and Nakba

On May 15, the month-long fast of Ramadan, which is sacred to the Muslims, is set to begin.

According to official statistics released by the Palestinian Health Ministry, 10 Palestinians were killed during the “Friday of Tires” in Gaza. Around 1,400 were injured, 33 of whom were in serious condition.

The second week of the “return” campaign organized by Hamas ended in failure, according to IDF estimations, which the Palestinians do not deny. Only around 20,000 people took part in these events, compared to 40,000 people who participated during the previous week.

Read More

03/30 Links: 12 Gazans said killed, in clashes at massive border protest; Glick: Western Media Are Hamas's Partners in the War Against Israel; Phillips: Corbyn isn’t the cause of Labour’s antisemitism – he’s its product

From Ian:

---

Caroline Glick: Western Media Are Hamas's Partners in the War Against Israel

On Friday, the Palestinian terror group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is inaugurating what it is calling “The March of Return.”

According to Hamas’s leadership, the “March of Return” is scheduled to run from March 30 – the eve of Passover — through May 15, the 70th anniversary of Israel’s establishment. According to Israeli media reports, Hamas has budgeted $10 million for the operation.

Throughout the “March of Return,” Hamas intends to send thousands of civilians to the Israeli border. Hamas is planning to set up tent camps along the border fence and then, presumably, order participants to overrun it on May 15. The Palestinians refer to May 15 as “Nakba,” or Catastrophe Day.

The first question that observers of this spectacle need to ask themselves is whether Hamas believes that it will be able to overrun Israel.

The obvious answer is, of course it doesn’t.

So this brings us to the second question.

If Hamas doesn’t expect its civilians to overrun Israel, what is it trying to accomplish by sending them into harm’s way? Why it the terror group telling Gaza residents to place themselves in front of the border fence and challenge Israeli security forces charged with defending Israel?

The answer here is also obvious. Hamas intends to provoke Israel to shoot at the Palestinian civilians it is sending to the border. It is setting its people up to die because it expects their deaths to be captured live by the cameras of the Western media, which will be on hand to watch the spectacle.

In other words, Hamas’s strategy of harming Israel by forcing its soldiers to kill Palestinians is predicated on its certainty that the Western media will act as its partner and ensure the success of its lethal propaganda stunt.

Given widespread assessments that Iran is keen to start a new round of war between Israel and its terror proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is possible that Hamas intends for this lethal propaganda stunt to be the initial stage of a larger war. By this assessment, Hamas is using the border operation to cultivate and escalate Western hostility against Israel ahead of a larger shooting war.

Evelyn Gordon: Use UNRWA’s financial crisis to end its shameful apartheid system

The status quo is also bad for Israel—and not just because of the anti-Israel incitement taught in UNRWA schools and Palestinians’ use of UNRWA facilities as weapons depots. By denying Palestinians the ability to assimilate into Jordan and the P.A., UNRWA effectively tells them that “returning” to Israel is their only hope of escaping refugee status. Nurturing such fantasies of mass relocation merely perpetuates the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; peace is obviously impossible if Palestinians condition it on turning Israel into a Palestinian-majority state.

Yet the status quo is even worse for millions of Palestinian “refugees,” who are forced into dead-end lives with no hope of ever integrating into the places they should be able to call home.

Admittedly, there’s no guarantee that UNRWA will implement constructive reforms; it might instead slash essential services to blackmail the world into coughing up more money. But even in this worst-case scenario, at least America will no longer be propping up UNRWA’s shameful apartheid system and its perpetuation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. If European or Arab countries want this abomination to continue, let their taxpayers fund it.

There’s also a risk that even constructive reforms could produce enough short-term pain to provoke violence. But Israelis understand that sometimes, you have to do what’s right, even if it comes with a price. That’s why, in a poll published just last week, 69 percent of Jewish Israelis said the U.S. Embassy should move to Jerusalem in May as planned, despite the fact that most believed the move would spark violence.

UNRWA reform is no less critical. And after 70 years of stasis, it’s clear nothing short of a financial crisis has any chance of bringing it about.

Melanie Phillips: Corbyn isn’t the cause of Labour’s antisemitism – he’s its product

This lie embodies the deeper calumny that the Jews falsify history to serve their own interests by oppressing and dominating another people. The “dispossession” lie thus leads directly to the deranged and paranoid conspiracy theories about the Jews with which the left is now riddled.

For this view of Israel is their default position and championing the Palestinian cause is their signature motif. And that means these British “progressives” all support Palestinians who pump out Nazi-style antisemitism, incite the mass murder of Jews and are led by a Holocaust denier, Mahmoud Abbas, who venerates the Arab Nazi ally Haj Amin al-Husseini.

Why then are these Labour “moderates” shocked when Corbyn’s friends spew out identical bigotry against the Jews? The Left thinks it embodies virtue itself and so it is impossible for it to be viciously bigoted toward Jews. But it is.

Corbyn may be an extreme ultra-leftist with the most extreme anti-Israel baggage, but he is not the cause of Labour’s antisemitism.

He is its product.

The Left embraced antisemitism when it embraced Palestinianism. And that’s without factoring in the Muslim voting bloc which is becoming ever more significant for British politics and for the Labour Party in particular, and which is infused with hatred of Israel and the Jewish people.

The antisemitism in Labour’s ranks is an existential crisis not just for the party but for the Left as a whole.

It is a delusion to imagine that purging the most demented antisemites will make the Labour Party safe again for Britain’s Jewish community. It’s not just Jeremy Corbyn who poses such a threat. It’s the party itself and the left wing culture it embodies.

The Conservative Party may be in power in Britain, but the Left controls the universities, the BBC and the artistic and cultural world. It is Britain itself that’s no longer safe for Jews.

Melanie Phillips: OPEN AND SHUT CASE

An open letter backed by more than 2,000 supporters of Jeremy Corbyn has claimed that the Jewish community’s protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party was the work of a “very powerful special interest group”, the Independent reports.

Some 2000 people turned up at Monday’s demonstration. There are around 65 million people in the UK. The Jewish community numbers about 270,000. There are an estimated 2.8 million British Muslims.

The letter says the organisers of the demonstration had mobilised its “immense strength” to “employ the full might of the BBC” in order to launch an “onslaught” against the Labour leader. It also says the organisers sought to use their “history” and ”influence” to “dictate who the rest of us can vote for or how we vote”.

So 2000 people said that those falsely accusing Jeremy Corbyn of facilitating deranged claims that the Jews were an all-powerful and malign conspiracy manipulating events to serve their own interests were an all-powerful and malign Jewish conspiracy manipulating events to serve their own interests.

I think that is what is called an own goal.

Read More

03/24 Links: JPost Editorial: Denying Jewish history; Glick: Checking the smart Abbas; Taylor Force Act Signed Into Law; Sohrab Ahmari: A Hawk Without Illusions

From Ian:

---

JPost Editorial: Denying Jewish history

With statehood evading them – mostly due to their own intransigence – the Palestinians are continuing their efforts to hijack Israel’s and the Jewish people’s national history and treasures in a failed and misguided bid to advance their cause.

According to Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Palestinians are likely to use a meeting of UNESCO this summer to claim that the archeological site of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls found there decades ago actually belong to them.

The Palestinians apparently have a list of 13 sites they want to register under “Palestine” at UNESCO and have already had some success.

The World Heritage Committee ascribed to “Palestine” Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2012; the agricultural terraces of Battir, site of the ancient Jewish fortress at Betar, in 2014; and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs in 2017. And there was of course, UNESCO’s infamous resolution last year that ignored any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

This all comes as another UN agency – the Human Rights Council – is considering a resolution to ban the sale of arms to Israel. As expected, the draft resolution was sponsored by members that are real beacons of peace and human rights – Bangladesh, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, Jordan, Pakistan, Venezuela and the Palestinian Authority.

The sad fact that UN institutions are biased against Israel is well-known and is nothing new. This is a shame on the UN and many of its members. What the Palestinians are now doing – trying to steal the Jewish people’s national history – is something completely different that should make any self-respecting government question whether Mahmoud Abbas really is a proponent of peace as he claims.

Caroline Glick: Checking the smart Abbas

Monday’s speech was not Abbas’s first statement of this sort. In January, he bitterly attacked Friedman and US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley and called for Trump’s “house to be destroyed.”

In the same speech, he said Israel was hooking Palestinian youth on drugs, that Zionism is an imperialist plot cooked up by Oliver Cromwell and that the Oslo Accords between the PLO and Israel are dead.

Taken together, these two speeches make abundantly clear that Abbas has no interest whatsoever in any accord with Israel. Indeed, they show that Abbas remains the same antisemitic terrorist he was when he wrote his PhD dissertation and a bestselling book both proclaiming the Holocaust was a Zionist plot.

But unfortunately with everything having to do with Abbas, Saul Bellow’s famous quip, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep,” seems to obtain at the White House.

Trump’s chief negotiator Jason Greenblatt’s response to Abbas’s diatribe was a textbook case of willful ignorance.

“The time has come for President Abbas to choose between hateful rhetoric and concrete and practical efforts to improve the quality of life of his people, and lead them to peace and prosperity.

Notwithstanding his highly inappropriate insults against members of the Trump administration – the latest iteration being his insult of my good friend and colleague Ambassador Friedman – we are committed to the Palestinian people and to the changes that must be implemented for peaceful coexistence.”

Greenblatt added, “We are finalizing our plan for peace and we will advance it when circumstances are right.”

Greenblatt’s statement demonstrated that the Trump administration will not walk away from the conceptual framework the Clinton administration adopted in 1993. That framework places the PLO – and Israeli concessions to the PLO – at the center of US policy in the Middle East.

By saying that the US will present its plan “when circumstances are right,” Greenblatt said that there is no US ultimatum to the PLO. If Abbas doesn’t want a deal, they will wait him out and offer it to his successor, or his successor’s successor.

Taylor Force Act Signed Into Law As Part of Spending Bill

The Taylor Force Act was signed into law on Mar. 23, as it was included in the $1.3 trillion spending bill to fund the government.

President Trump officially signed the spending bill in a signing ceremony, stating that while he had multiple reservations about the overall bill, it needed to be signed for the defense spending.

When the bill passed the Senate on Mar. 22, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of the authors of the Taylor Force Act, hailed the law as “one of the most significant pieces of legislation I’ve been involved with.”

“The powerful message from the Force family, along with effort from the pro-Israel community led by Sander Gerber, have made this possible,” Graham said.

The Taylor Force Act, named after the United States veteran who was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in March 2016, ends funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) until they stop providing financial incentives for Palestinian to commit acts of terror against Jews.

“The Taylor Force Act was made possible in part due to the work of two of the IAC’s biggest supporters — Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson – representing both sides of the aisle to promote this important legislation,” the Israeli-American Coalition (IAC) for Action said in a statement. “Despite their political differences on some other issues, Mr. Saban and Mr. Adelson worked hand-in-hand to promote broad bipartisan support for this bill and prevent American taxpayer dollars from continuing to subsidize terror.”

Read More

03/23 Links Pt1: Israeli ministers praise appointment of John Bolton; UN demands compensation from Israel for Gaza war; Palestinians call to put US ambassador Friedman on ‘global terror list’

From Ian:

---

Israeli ministers praise appointment of John Bolton

Two ministers from the right-wing Jewish Home party and another from the ruling Likud party congratulated former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton on Friday for his appointment as US President Donald Trump’s new national security adviser.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted that it was a “great appointment” and that Bolton, considered a foreign policy hawk who is opposed to the Iran nuclear deal, was a “stalwart friend of Israel.”

Environment Minister Ze’ev Elkin of Likud said Bolton was “not unknown to Israel.

“He has been, unquestionably, a friend of Israel for many years, including in his position as US ambassador to the UN,” Elkin told Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM. “I have no doubt it will be comfortable for us to work with him.”

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked posted in Hebrew that “President Trump continues to appoint true friends of Israel to senior positions. John Bolton is one of the most outstanding.”

Bringing in Bolton, White House appears to stiffen against Palestinians, Iran

US President Donald Trump’s decision to nominate hawkish former diplomat John Bolton as his national security adviser brings a figure known for pushing for pre-emptive strikes on burgeoning nuclear powers as well as skepticism toward Palestinian statehood into the administration’s powerful inner circle.

On Tuesday, Trump announced on Twitter that former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton would replace H.R. McMaster as his chief in-house adviser on national security issues.

McMaster had been expected to leave later this year, but Bolton’s nomination shocked Washington.

A vocal advocate of the Iraq war, he has also advocated preemptive strikes against North Korea and war with Iran.

With the White House preparing to unveil its Mideast peace plan in the near future, the ascension of Bolton, who has declared the two-state solution dead, could further chill the administration’s chances of getting moribund negotiations off the ground.

While McMaster was not a main player in the Israeli-Palestinian portfolio during his tenure, national security advisers past have been deeply involved. In the Obama administration, Susan Rice and Tom Donilon, both held that role and spent substantial time trying to forge a peace agreement between the sides.

Gatestone Chairman, Ambassador John R. Bolton, Selected by President Trump as National Security Advisor

Gatestone Institute is so proud that its chairman, Ambassador John R. Bolton, will be leading the United States' National Security Council. We warmly congratulate both him and President Donald J. Trump on an appointment that is great for America, great for its allies and great for the free world.

Congratulations to our former UN Watch board member John Bolton on being named next U.S. National Security Adviser. @UN, now you'd really better watch out. pic.twitter.com/AozQSkhLcS

— UN Watch (@UNWatch) March 23, 2018

Palestinians slam Trump national security adviser pick John Bolton

A senior Palestinian official on Friday slammed US President Donald Trump’s choice of John Bolton as his new national security adviser.

Trump on Thursday announced that Bolton, an Iran hawk and former United Nations ambassador, would replace army general H.R. McMaster.

Bolton is known for his strong support for Israel and hostility to the Iranian regime.

He has previously said the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dead.

“This man has a long history of hostility to Palestinians, dating to when he was at the United Nations, where he was protecting Israeli immunity,” senior Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi told AFP, referring to US vetoes of UN resolutions targeting Israel.

With Bolton’s appointment, she said, the Trump administration “has joined with extremist Zionists, fundamentalist Christians and white racists.”

“All this will lead to a devastating reality for Palestine and the region.”

Yisrael Medad: What Does John Bolton Say About Israel?

Last June, Ambassador John Bolton was awarded the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies Guardian of Zion Award.

The Center, affiliated with Bar-Ilan University, conducted the ceremony at the King David Hotel at which my wife and I were privileged to attend. It was established at Bar-Ilan University in 1995 by US Jewish community leaders Ingeborg Hanna and Ira Leon Rennert as an expression of their commitment to the preservation and advancement of Jerusalem's unique heritage. Integrating studies on the history, archaeology, geography, demography, economy and sociology of Jerusalem, the Rennert Center has become the foremost academic center in the international academic community studying aspects of Jerusalem's past and present.

The guests were great, including Caroline Glick among many. Caroline has a post on his 2005 speech at ZOA. The food was excellent. And the atmosphere, as Bolton spoke, became more electric.

I had heard him a few years ago in New York at an event of American Likud.

To understand that, here are some selections from his full remarks:
"I don't believe there is a future for the two-state solution. We have been pursuing it for 70 years without success. I don’t think year 71 of pursuing it will make any change...[we should] advocate[d] for a three-state solution which would merge Gaza with Egypt, and parts of the West Bank with Jordan"

"I don't think there is a viable Palestinian state. I don't think there are institutions on the Palestinian side that can live up to the commitments of a treaty with Israel, that could give Israel or the US or anyone confidence that such a state could provide for the wellbeing of the Palestinian people or could resist takeover by terrorist elements. That's why to me the best solution for the Palestinians is to tie them in to existing economies and societies where the potential for a better life for them and their families is real, rather than pursuing a political objective that ultimately won't work and certainly won't benefit the daily lives of average Palestinians"

"Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. That isn't going to change. And putting the American embassy on a piece of ground well within the existing green line isn't going to offend anybody who is serious themselves about wanting peace. And I have a further objection. I don't think anybody should tell the US where it puts its embassy, anywhere."

Ambassador John Bolton - The President of Red Eye

Read More

03/15 Links Pt1: Murderers are needed, says Fatah, glorifying killer of 10; Dermer: Trump’s Jerusalem move is ‘shock therapy’ for Palestinians; Gaza - let their people go!

From Ian:

---

PMW: Murderers are needed, says Fatah, glorifying killer of 10

Murderer of 10 is "heroic prisoner" "We are proud of you... our people needs men like you"
In letter from prison, murderer called for "resistance" - A Palestinian euphemism for violence and terror

A branch of Abbas' Fatah Movement has announced that the Palestinian people needs murderers. In a post on Facebook glorifying murderer Thaer Hammad who killed 10 Israelis in 2002, Fatah in Bethlehem stated that the people "needs men like you":
"Heroic prisoner Thaer Hammad, we are proud of you. Allah willing you will soon be among us, our people needs men like you."
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Bethlehem Branch, March 2, 2018]

Palestinian Media Watch exposed a video by Fatah, which visually presented murderer Hammad as a successful agent on a military mission. The video glorified the murder of the 10 Israelis as "one of the most famous operations."

Thaer Hammad is serving 11 life sentences for murdering 3 Israeli civilians and 7 soldiers by shooting them with a sniper rifle from a hilltop in Wadi Al-Haramiya between Ramallah and Nablus on March 3, 2002.

In a letter he sent from prison, murderer Hammad called for a return of the "resistance" - a Palestinian euphemism for violence and terror attacks against Israelis:

"Hammad demanded to resume and revive the spirit of the revolutionary movement, from which the Fatah Movement arose, and the idea of resistance, given that it is the ideal way to protect our cause and our existence in the shadow of the great challenges and dangers that surround us." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 7, 2018]

In another Fatah post, terrorist Hammad was praised as a "prince" and "the sniper from Wadi Al-Haramiya":

Dr. Martin Sherman: Gaza - let their people go!

The crisis in Gaza is not one that funding can solve.

The recent spate of reports warning of the looming humanitarian crisis in Gaza shows the magnitude of the failed attempt to give Palestinian Arabs self rule over a quarter of a century.

The US has given over 5 billion dollars to the Gazans in aid, making them one of the countries which receives the most foreign aid funding per capita in the world.

Three major US priorities of interest have not been met. They are:
1. Promoting the mitigation of terrorism towards Israel
2. Self government, stability and prosperity that might make Gazans more amenable to peace with Israel.
3. Meeting humanitarian needs.

None of these priorities have been achieved. The Gazans are governed by a corrupt and uncaring leadership.

The entire civilian infrastructure is on the verge of collapse,with perennial power outages, failing sanitation services, untreated sewage, polluted water, all due to a dysfunctional government - and all of this has nothing to do with Israel.

What is Gaza manufacturing? Missiles. What is it constructing? Terror tunnels.

Quo Vadis, Palestinians?

Palestinian Arabs are constantly urged by their leaders to engage in rage. Indeed, Abbas walked out of the UNSC meeting, not bothering to hear Ambassador Haley’s speech. As the clock ticks with time seemingly not on their side, changing political landscapes in the USA and Europe, frustration by traditional Arab allies nervously watching Iran and with UNRWA being reassessed and seen as part of the problem, Palestinians can only be dismayed as their lives seem to be going nowhere.

The less charitable might say they are going down. Unfortunately rage, greed, misappropriation of international aid and ongoing victimization are not policies, let alone providing a promising future for talented Palestinian Arabs dreaming of a prosperous and peaceful life.

While experts consider various solutions to the Palestinian Arab problem, ranging from a 2-state solution, land swaps, a single state, a Jordan solution, a Gaza- Sinai solution, population transfer with compensation, and other variants,- none of which have satisfied the PA - Chile is an example of what could be possible.

Chile reportedly has the largest Palestinian Arab community outside the Middle East, estimated at 500,000 in a total population of nearly 18 million dwarfing the Jewish community of 25,000. Palestinian Arabs therefore are a much higher proportion of Chile’s population than Jews anywhere in Europe. In France, there are also about 500,000 Jews, but in a population of almost 67 million.

In addition to the despairing educated PA millennials in Judea/Samaria, all but forgotten Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon and Syria have been impoverished and massacred. On the other hand, Palestinian Arabs in Chile continue to enjoy significant success, by any standards.

Palestinian Arabs arrived in Chile in the second half of the nineteenth century, mostly poor and illiterate, having embarked on ships from Haifa, Beirut and Alexandria. This occurred during Turkish Ottoman rule, long before Israel’s establishment in 1948.

Read More

02/23 Links Pt1: US ‘to move embassy to Jerusalem on May 14’ — day of independence declaration; '10 more countries in talks to move embassies to Jerusalem'; Unlike Obama, Trump Walks the Walk on Russia

From Ian:

---

US ‘to move embassy to Jerusalem on May 14’ — day of independence declaration

The US is planning to officially move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem on May 14, 2018 — the 70th anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence, as well as Washington’s recognition of the Jewish state — Channel 10 and Hadashot news reported Friday.

According to Hadashot the embassy will officially announce the plans later in the day. The report was confirmed to Channel 10 by high-ranking Israeli officials.

The Times of Israel has not confirmed the report.

US officials had previously said the move could take many more months, and perhaps years.

Earlier Friday four US officials told The Associated Press that the Trump administration was considering an offer from Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to pay for at least part of the new embassy.

Lawyers at the State Department are looking into the legality of accepting private donations to cover some or all of the embassy costs, the administration officials said. The discussions are occurring as the new embassy clears its final bureaucratic hurdles.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ended weeks of delay by signing off on a security plan for moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city, according to the officials, who weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly and demanded anonymity.

Sheldon Adelson offers to help pay for US Jerusalem embassy — report

The Trump administration is considering an offer from Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson to pay for at least part of a new US embassy in Jerusalem, four US officials told The Associated Press.

Lawyers at the State Department are looking into the legality of accepting private donations to cover some or all of the embassy costs, the administration officials said. The discussions are occurring as the new embassy clears its final bureaucratic hurdles. On Thursday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ended weeks of delay by signing off on a security plan for moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to the holy city, according to the officials, who weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly and demanded anonymity.

In one possible scenario, the administration would solicit contributions not only from Adelson but potentially from other donors in the evangelical and American Jewish communities, too. One official said Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate and staunch supporter of Israel, had offered to pay the difference between the total cost — expected to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars — and what the administration is able to raise.

Under any circumstance, letting private citizens cover the costs of an official government building would mark a significant departure from historical US practice. In the Jerusalem case, it would add yet another layer of controversy to Trump’s politically charged decision to move the embassy, given Adelson’s longstanding affiliation with right-wing Israeli politics.

Hotovely: '10 more countries in talks to move embassies to Jerusalem'

Israel is currently holding talks with 10 different nations over the possible relocation of their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely revealed Thursday.

Following President Donald Trump’s December 6th announcement that he had ordered the US State Department to begin work transferring the US mission to Israel from Tel Aviv to the Israeli capital, just one other country, Guatemala, followed suit.

Later that month, however, Hotovely hinted that other countries may also be interested in transferring their embassies.

On Thursday, Hotovely told American Jewish leaders that Israel is currently engaged in talks with 10 different countries regarding the relocation of their embassies.

Speaking with members of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, currently visiting Israel as part of their annual leadership mission to Israel, Hotovely briefed leaders on the progress made towards securing the embassy relocations.

"We are in a dialogue with over ten countries to transfer their embassies to our capital, Jerusalem," said Hotovely.

"We want to see at least another 10 countries that will transfer their embassies to Jerusalem after the US in the coming years."

Read More

02/06 Links Pt2: Trump Thwarts Irish Effort to Boycott Israel; The Cape Town water crisis — proudly brought to you by BDS; The radical left-wing rejectionist front

From Ian:

---

‘Arafat got a Nobel so BDS nomination no surprise’ say Israel activists

Pro-Israel activists have expressed contempt of the Nobel Peace Prize after the BDS movement received a nomination, pointing to the fact that late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat received the award in 1994.

The leader of the Red Party in the Norwegian Parliament, Bjornar Moxnes, nominated the International BDS movement on Friday, stating: “As a member of the Norwegian parliament, I proudly use my authority as an elected official to nominate the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

“Awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to the BDS movement would be a powerful sign demonstrating that the international community is committed to supporting a just peace in the Middle East and using peaceful means to end military rule and broader violations of international law," Moxnes wrote in a statement published by Inter Press Service news agency.

Many pro-Israel activists took to social media to express their disdain of the nomination.

"The BDS movement is an anti-peace movement, they made this very clear over and over again," Israeli activist Hen Mazzig told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. "They are 'anti-normalization' of the relationship between Jews and Arabs and actively pushing Palestinians and Israelis to fight each other."

On Monday, Mazzig debated Rebecca Vilkomerson, the Executive Director of the far-left organization Jewish Voice for Peace on i24 News.

Jewish Voice for Peace is reportedly among some 20 organizations on a blacklist Israel is compiling as part of its ban on BDS activists.

The US-organization tweeted that the nomination was “wonderful news.”

The Cape Town water crisis — proudly brought to you by BDS

Cape Town 2018 is what happens when a city is more concerned about politics than people. Cape Town 2018 is what happens when national government wants to demonstrate to local government who is boss. Cape Town 2018 is what happens when local government is not equipped to deal with a real crisis. And Cape Town 2018 is what happens when communication falls apart to the point that the noise is so deafening, that no message can be heard.

Cape Town 2018 is also what happens when relevant lifesaving solutions are discarded because of BDS and anti-Semitism.

Cape Town is set to be the first major city to run out of water. The city is experiencing its worst drought in history. Residents are being asked to utilize less than 50 liters (13 gallons) per day and it is unlikely that it will avoid “Day Zero.” The day the taps run dry. It is unimaginable what contingencies can be put in place to deal with the series of events that will follow this day.

We all have that friend. Mine often sends me a WhatsApp simply saying “ITYS!” At first, I had no idea what he meant, until I realized he was saying “I told you so” (but was too busy to type out the sentence). It’s annoying and frustrating and infuriating. Especially when he is right. And maybe sometimes it’s not bad to hear it.

There is no satisfaction in the fact the residents of Cape Town are on the brink of a humanitarian crisis that could have and should have been avoided. Even if we saw it coming.

Trump Admin Thwarts Irish Effort to Boycott Israel, Criminalize Trade

The Trump administration played a key role in thwarting a recent effort by the Irish government to boycott Israel and make it a crime for Irish citizens to purchase products made in contested areas of the Jewish state, a move that would have severely jeopardized Ireland's trade with the United States, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

The Irish Parliament was poised last week to pass a major piece of legislation that would make it crime to engage in trade with Israelis. The bill, which was seen as part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, would have imprisoned Irish citizens who purchased souvenirs in Israel for a maximum of five years and subjected them to a fine of more than $310,000.

Upon learning of the effort, senior Trump administration officials in the State Department are said to have scrambled to open up channels to Irish leaders in a bid to scuttle the bill and avoid a standoff with the Irish government over the measure.

Trump administration officials are said to have made clear to Irish leaders that passage of the bill would put them starkly at odds with the United States and subject them to inclusion on a list of countries supporting boycotts of the Jewish state.

While some Irish lawmakers described the effort as a "crackpot bill," its passage through the Parliament was all but assured until U.S. officials from the Trump administration became involved, multiple sources told the Free Beacon.

Read More

01/28 Links: Amnesty International shows its anti-Israel bias yet again; The UN’s horrid Holocaust hypocrisy

From Ian:

---

NY Post Editorial: Amnesty International shows its anti-Israel bias yet again

The official excuse: Because Amnesty supports the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, “it would be inappropriate [for us] to host an event by those actively supporting” West Bank Jewish settlements.

By which AI specifically meant the watchdog group UN Watch — whose extremely effective executive director, Hillel Neuer, was to take part in the debate with a pro-UN advocate.

Worse, Amnesty suddenly claimed that allowing Neuer to appear at its building would put the work of its people “on the ground . . . at risk.”

By which it probably meant that some of its well-heeled supporters had raised objections. Or maybe the group simply got cold feet over the potential embarrassment of hosting a debate in which Neuer was sure to prevail.

None of this comes as any surprise: Amnesty International has a long record of opposing Israeli policies — but, worse still, of holding the Jewish state to an unfair double standard that would qualify AI for membership on that same Israel-bashing UN Human Rights Council.

Amnesty, like the rest of the left, has an obsessive and unbalanced interest in Israel. It routinely publishes reports denouncing Israeli actions while ignoring the Palestinian terror attacks — including missile fire — that provoke them.

It has demanded that Israel — but not Hamas — be prosecuted for war crimes. And its “people on the ground” have included at least one person who served as a “human shield” against Israeli troops.

Amnesty International has long failed to live up to its own media hype. Maybe its officials should reschedule that debate — and then stay to watch it.

PMW: PA attacks PMW for "wild incitement campaign" against PA radio

The Palestinian Authority has reopened its verbal attacks on Palestinian Media Watch. This follows PMW's repeated exposure of incitement to violence on official PA radio, including the broadcast of a recent song calling for Martyrdom for Jerusalem.

A few days after PMW reported that The Voice of Palestine station had broadcast a song encouraging Palestinians to "redeem" Jerusalem "with your life and blood", the station's Director-General Bassam Daghlas, accused PMW of "waging an incitement campaign" against the station.

"Director-General of [the official PA radio station] The Voice of Palestine Bassam Daghlas said that 'The incitement campaign that the Israeli center Palestinian Media Watch is waging against The Voice of Palestine radio station is not the first case, as it has been subject to similar attacks in the past.' ...
He also emphasized that 'Our media message is clear and will not change, and if they consider playing national songs incitement, they can think what they want."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 25, 2018]

The PA Ministry of Information also attacked PMW, claiming PMW is waging a "wild incitement campaign" against The Voice of Palestine, and that PMW reports are "part of the deceptive Zionist discourse":

"The [PA] Ministry of Information believes that the wild incitement campaign that the Israeli center called Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) is waging against [the official PA] radio station The Voice of Palestine projects on the other... what happens within its own entity [Israel], and that it [PMW] already waged other attacks against the Palestinian, Arab, and international media... The ministry said that the repeated claims of the Israeli center [PMW] are part of the deceptive Zionist discourse - that is full of incitement and that is the sole sponsor of terror and the ugly racism."
[PA Ministry of Information website, Jan, 24, 2018, emphasis added]

The PA has attacked PMW for exposing PA incitement to hate and terror numerous times. Last year, PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi counted PMW among the "toxic organizations," accusing PMW of just waiting "to attack":

The UN’s horrid Holocaust hypocrisy

Thirteen years ago, the United Nations General Assembly designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an occasion for its member nations to commemorate Nazi Germany’s murder of 6 million Jews and millions of others. The UN also urged nations to use the occasion to educate their citizens about the horrors of the Holocaust to help prevent future acts of genocide.

Yet in the intervening years, across Europe and worldwide, we have seen the rise of extremist politics, from the National Front Party in France to extremist electoral gains in Austria, Greece, Hungary and the Netherlands, much of it fueled by anti-immigration rhetoric and intolerance, but also by neo-Nazism and the very same anti-Semitic language and tropes that gave rise to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

During the French elections last year, for example, National Front leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen denied France was responsible for the infamous 1942 roundup and deportation of 13,000 French Jews, reopening old wounds. In Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro, who is increasingly allying with Iran, said that “Israel doesn’t kill in error, it kills in horror.”

Meanwhile, the European Forum on Anti-Semitism, a watchdog group founded in 2008, reported 767 anti-Semitic incidents across the continent in the first half of 2017, a 30% rise from the previous year and the highest number it has since recorded . In Caracas, Venezuela, Foreign Policy magazine reported increasing instances of graffiti with phrases like “be patriotic: kill a Jew.”

Many have raised their voices about this threat — but not the UN. The organization I founded 35 years ago, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, has seen first-hand the impact of a resurgence in anti-Semitism.

Read More

01/19 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Palestinianism is over – someone please tell the British; Ambassador Haley: Palestinians ‘Not Serious in Truly Getting to Peace’ With Israel

From Ian:

---

Melanie Phillips: Palestinianism is over – someone please tell the British

By recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, he explicitly acknowledged the unique historic connection between the Jewish people, Jerusalem and the Land of Israel.

That connection, which predated Islam and the short-lived Arab colonial occupation of the land, destroys the false claim of indigenous Palestinian entitlement upon which the war against Israel has rested.

Trump has also cut in half the funds the US provides for UNRWA, whose unique and false perpetuation of fictional Palestinian refugee status is key to the Arab war against Israel. And if reports are to be believed, his peace plan will offer something well short of a Palestine state.

No less crucially, Abbas realizes that the wider Arab world no longer cares about the Palestinians’ cause. Those Arabs have more urgent considerations, such as stopping Iran from taking over the region, and they need the US and Israel to help them.

The British government is reportedly dumbfounded by Trump’s decision to cancel his visit. Of course it is. Parroting the shallow and vacuous prejudices of the age, it has absolutely no grasp of the significance of the US president it so despises.

Britain now risks being left behind as the world shifts direction. Why should America continue to value its “special relationship” with a Britain that is still fighting the battles it fought so shamefully in 20th-century Palestine to help the Arabs suppress Jewish national self-determination – which even the Arab states no longer support? After that UN vote on Trump and Jerusalem, why should the US think Britain is on its side in the titanic battle for freedom, decency and Western values? And why should President Trump give preferential economic treatment to a country that believes he is quite insane while Mahmoud Abbas is entirely rational? Britain is the mother ship of political liberty and justice in the West. Tragically, though, it has slipped its moral moorings.

Until and unless it puts right its relationship with the Jewish people, it will continue to drift into the gathering storm

Caroline Glick: Israeli obstacles to peace

And then there is the fact that according to Palestinian surveys, more than a million Palestinians in Gaza, Judea and Samaria wish to emigrate. Whole villages around Ramallah are ghost towns because their residents live elsewhere. Why is this not relevant to the likes of Livni and Barak?

Why do the Israeli media fail to report these basic facts rather than make excuses for a tin pot dictator who spends his time inciting the murder of Israelis and pretending that the Palestinians are the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Jebusites and the Hittites, all rolled in one?

According to The Jerusalem Post, Trump intended to cut off US funding of UNRWA entirely this week. But US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster convinced to simply reduce it.

According to the Post, “Israel” sided with the trio. But other reports over the past several weeks made clear that whereas Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu supports ending US support for UNRWA, the IDF General Staff opposes the move. Likewise, the IDF has scuttled repeated congressional bids over the years to end US funding of the Palestinian Authority due to its funding of terrorism and its antisemitic incitement.

The arguments are always the same. UNRWA, like Abbas’s security forces, “stabilizes” the situation.

Is there no one else who might “stabilize” the situation better than they do? Where might the Palestinians be today if the US had cut off their terrorism-encrusted leaders 17 years ago? Is there no option other than empowering regimes and institutions that indoctrinate and work toward Israel’s destruction?

Netanyahu responded to Abbas’s diatribe by saying that in a way, Abbas did Israel a favor. He showed that he really doesn’t care how big or small Israel is. He rejects Israel’s right to exist and objects to its existence regardless of its borders.

Netanyahu’s insight is true as far as it goes. But so long as the same failed and vapid elites who gave us the PLO as our peace partner 25 years ago still call the shots, his insight doesn’t go very far at all.

JPost Editorial: Pressuring Hamas

Hamas’s cynical exploitation of a UN-sponsored cease-fire put in place out of humanitarian considerations enabled its terrorists to surprise and kill Lt. Hadar Goldin and St.-Sgt. Oron Shaul in the Gaza Strip in the midst of Operation Protective Edge.

Three-and-half-years later, Hamas is still taking advantage of Israel’s adherence to humanitarian rules as Hamas continues to disregard those same rules and regulations.

Hamas has no qualms about holding the remains of Shaul and Goldin as bargaining chips in direct violation of humanitarian principles. At the same time the terrorist group submits requests to Israel, many of which are approved, to admit Gaza’s residents – some of whom are relatives of Hamas terrorists – to receive medical treatment.

Hamas also expects Israel to allow visits by family and friends to Hamas terrorists incarcerated in Israeli prisons. And when Israel kills Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorists, the expectation is that Israel will return these bodies.

The absurdity and injustice of this situation is unbearable for Simcha and Leah Goldin, the parents of Hadar.

Read More

01/18 Links Pt2: State Department Hiding ‘Game Changer’ Report on Myth of Palestinian Refugees; Amnesty International Ignores the Weaponization of Palestinian Children

From Ian:

---

State Department Hiding ‘Game Changer’ Report on Myth of Palestinian Refugees

The State Department never acknowledged having completed the report, sources said, and instead classified it.

"State had neglected to tell Sen. Kirk's office," said one source with knowledge of the situation. "It seems that this was intentional."

Once the report's existence was confirmed, Congress, in a 2017 measure, directed the State Department to provide an unclassified version of the report. This, too, was ignored, sources said.

The report is said to confirm that, as opposed to what UNRWA and its supporters claim, the number of refugees is actually in the tens of thousands, not the millions.

Richard Goldberg, a former deputy chief of staff for Kirk, told the Free Beacon that the UNRWA effort was always about exposing the myth that there are millions of refugees who still require aid.

"This is about basic taxpayer oversight of an agency that gobbles up hundreds of millions of dollars ever year," said Goldberg, the author of the original amendment that required the report. "Are we funding a refugee agency or are we funding a welfare agency that nurtures a culture terrorism and violence?"

"There's a moral difference when it comes to U.S. policy and foreign assistance," said Goldberg, now a senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "American aid for true refugees is one thing; American aid to subsidize a culture of welfare and terrorism is entirely different." (h/t Yenta Press)

Hotovely to the BBC: UNRWA perpetuates fake refugees

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) on Wednesday spoke with the BBC about the United States’ decision to cut by half the funding it provides to UNRWA, the UN’s agency for “Palestinian refugees”.

Hotovely rejected the interviewer’s assertion that the American decision is counterproductive, saying, “What is really counterproductive is the role of UNRWA in perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“Back in the 1950s, there were 750,000 Palestinians registered as ‘refugees’. Now, almost 70 years after the war, we’re talking about five million peoples who are registered as ‘refugees’. This is a major failure of the organization which was supposed to resettle those people who lost a war that they started – of course, we’re speaking about their grandparents who started the War of Independence which they lost.”

“There is only one version of history. They started a war after not accepting the idea of the UN Partition Plan. We need to remember that,” she added.

“The Foreign Ministry is very clear about its message: UNRWA should finish its role as an agency which perpetuates fake refugees,” said Hotovely, who also stressed the importance of foreign aid.

“Foreign aid is something that every country should provide according to the needs of the population. We’re absolutely in favor of foreign aid. This is something that is important. Humanitarian aid is important…but you need to make a major distinction between foreign aid which can be delivered by different groups and organizations and the idea that those people are going to keep living a fantasy that they are refugees, because they are not. According to international law, there is no second and third generation to refugee status.”

David Collier: Jews denied entry to eugenics libel event at the University of Warwick

Last night, at the University of Warwick, Faculty arranged a public talk that accused Israel of eugenics. Let us digest a simple truth. Like with most medical or technological innovations, Israel is a global powerhouse in fertility treatment. Every Israeli citizen, regardless of race, religion or colour, receives equal treatment. If you are Muslim and in need of IVF then no citizenship in the world, guarantees you the sort of world-class treatment that being an Israeli does. If you have doubts, talk to Prof. Foad Azem, I am sure he would be happy to convince you.

Eugenics is defined as ‘a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of a human population‘. Eugenics were most famously used as a justification for the racial policies of Nazi Germany. They are clearly associated with the Holocaust. False accusations of eugenics against Israel, places an accusing finger on the biggest victims of 20th century eugenic experiments – the Jews. The Jews are a people who lost one third of their number to genocide. You cannot spread these type of lies, which clearly fall under the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and then ignore complaints about your failure to protect Jewish students. There is something rotten in Warwick.
Dr Siggie Vertommen

The event was a talk by Dr Siggie Vertommen. It was titled ‘Anti-colonial Resistance is Fertile: Sperm Smuggling and Birth Strikes in Palestine/Israel‘. Vertommen is Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at King’s College London. Like many activist academics, Vertommen places her pseudo-science atop a biased and twisted view of Zionism. As Vertommen specialises in ‘the political economy of global fertility chains’ then this is what she places on top of her twisted views of Zionism.

To understand the mindset, Vertommen wrote a piece on the social unrest in Israel in 2011 and 2012. It was published as a chapter in a book. The title was: ‘Help, de onderdrukkers worden onderdrukt! Sociaal protest in Israel‘. This translates as ‘Help, the oppressors are being oppressed‘.

Unpack the title. In Israel, people are oppressors. Not the government, not a political body, not an ideology, but the people. In every other nation, social protests such as this are viewed as being carried out by those fighting for change, as opposition to the status quo. In Israel, they were labelled ‘oppressors’ by Vertommen. It perfectly demonstrates, that for Vertommen, there seems to be no way out for the Israeli whatever their views. It suggests a highly racist mindset.

Antisemitism Rears Its Ugly Head in Puerto Rican Newspaper

Puerto Rico is going through a deep economic crisis, mainly due to heavy public debt. This subject has been addressed in numerous articles that explore causes and solutions to the crisis.

Last Monday, Puerto Rico’s largest daily newspaper, El Nuevo Día, published one more of these pieces. Actually, it wasn’t just one more. Penned by Wilda Rodríguez, it stated that “behind closed doors the most enlightened politicians speak of US power as a parallel government organized by the forces of wealth and violence (war machinery) from Wall Street.”

But these “forces of wealth and violence” to which Ms. Rodriguez referred, weren’t merely abstract figures. Ultimately, she singled out a specific culprit, asserting that “the US Congress will finally do what ‘the Jew’ — as the prototype of the real power is vulgarly called — wants.” And “the Jew,” according to Ms. Rodriguez, couldn’t care less about the situation in Puerto Rico, as “he” is “laden with his heavy itinerary of wars and profits.”

To justify and substantiate these charges, the writer resorted to citing the view of an individual in an opinion column published “more than twenty years ago” by the Israeli newspaper Maariv. Although it is a newspaper well-known in Israel, Maariv is not known abroad. Notably, a translation of the article appears on websites such as the one run by David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and a notorious antisemite.

The original column related that the then-US administration included numerous Jews, a fact that was said to underscore positive change from the past. The tenor of the column was essentially ethnic pride on the part of Jews — a group that had often, including in America, been outside the corridors of power. The antisemitic sites that posted the column twisted it, and claimed that it was proof of malevolent Jewish dominance.

Read More

01/07 Links: Trump Odds-on to Defund UNRWA if PLO won’t Negotiate with Israel; Egyptian Scholar Tells Rowdy Arab TAU Students They Should Thank God for Living in Israel

From Ian:

---

JPost Editorial: Antisemitism in America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This does not make these congressmen antisemites, but their willingness to work with organizations that have more sympathy for a Palestinian political leadership that glorifies terrorism and terrorists, than for Israel, a state that strives to maintain democratic principles under the most difficult conditions, sends a problematic message and fosters a toxic intellectual environment for discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar: The Obama Riots

Possible scenarios
The future can have any of the following in store

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

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

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

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

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

The situation is Iran is unclear and extremely volatile. Even if the regime survives the riots, the next round of street violence is only a matter of time. There will be an outburst every few years until the Ayatollah's regime collapses entirely. This is the lot of every dictatorial regime – history is replete with examples such as Nazi Germany and the USSR. Sooner or later, a regime lacking legitimacy from its citizens and whose existence is based on the employment of power against its own countrymen, is destined to fall.

Bret Stephens: Finding the Way Forward on Iran

One of the reasons why easing sanctions on Iran was never likely to soften the regime is that the people who stood to gain from commercial ties with foreign companies are the same people most invested in the preservation of the regime and its system of preferences. There’s no trickle-down economy in the Islamic Republic.

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

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

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

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

Read More