05/25 Links Pt2: The Torah Heard Round the World; Dear Europe – the Israelis are not your Jews; Roger Waters – getting a taste of his own medicine

From Ian:

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The Torah Heard Round the World

My synagogue is using the scrolls my grandfather once used as a military chaplain in WWII. Now, once again, his Torah brings comfort during a time of danger and uncertainty.

When our family moved to New York, we brought the Torah with us and loaned it to our new shul, the Park Avenue Synagogue, as our Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove instantly understood the significance of this family treasure.

And now the Torah is back in action during a crisis. When I saw Cantor Azi Schwartz holding my grandfather’s Torah snug to his chest, I was overwhelmed by emotions about how our tradition has the capacity to travel over time and space in a troubled world. He has incorporated this scroll into some of the online services that we watch in our virtual world, part of how he brings relief to all of us who are trying to stay healthy and be patient until this viral storm passes so we can return to normalcy. As he held that Torah, the cantor offered a small taste of what so many observant Jews dearly miss, the spiritual wonder of attending services on Friday night and Saturday morning as we connect with our congregational friends and take time away from the demands of the secular world to pray and learn.

And yet, I couldn’t also help feeling that my grandfather’s Torah needs to be returned to a physical home as soon as possible. While the Jewish community is rightly focused on making sure that public health guidelines are followed, we must be prepared, when this pandemic is over, to do everything possible to repair our social fabric, which includes the synagogue, church, and mosque. Jews and other places of social bonds—educational, cultural, and other nonprofit groups—will struggle to survive when this ends.

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the institutions that are so vital to the emotional health of our world—the places where people come together for common interests and experiences, the organizations that offer cultural education and celebration, and the physical religious rooms that help us achieve spiritual vitality. A new normal cannot exist without them. We can’t be virtual forever.

In the years ahead, we must do everything that is necessary to fix the broken spaces where Torahs like my grandfather’s are housed and where we come together as a people to worship. Just as my grandfather did almost 75 years ago, we will need to bring the Torahs back home, as soon as this war is over.

What a Difference a ‘J’ Makes

Not everyone welcomed the visibly distinctive insignia of the Jewish chaplain. Some Protestants, reported the American Israelite in November 1918, bristled at the notion that the Jews had an “emblem peculiar to themselves,” anxious lest they use the war “as a time for their own denominational propaganda work.” A number of American Jews, in turn, bristled at the use of Roman numerals rather than the letters of the Hebrew alphabet to designate the commandments. If, as representatives of the Jewish community claimed, the Ten Commandments was to the Jews (aka the “Hebrews”), what the cross was to Christians, why stop short of heralding it as a Jewish symbol, through and through?

Fear of desecration, of exposing the sacred Hebrew letters to the most frightful of wartime conditions, was one response; the difficulty of procuring Hebrew letters another. Left unsaid but implicit all the same: By WWI, American visual culture, which prized the Ten Commandments, commonly depicted them with Roman numerals, not Hebrew letters. (By then, the “Tablets of the Law” had become as much an American phenomenon as a Jewish one, but that’s another story.)

Though quelled at the time and for several decades thereafter, concern over the nomenclature by which the Ten Commandments was identified repeatedly surfaced. Writing more than 50 years later, in 1972, Rabbi Judah Nadich, General Eisenhower’s adviser on Jewish affairs, called the concern a “perennial” one, while Rabbi Aryeh Lev, director of the National Jewish Welfare Board’s Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy, across whose desk passed any number of suggestions—among them, replacing both the Hebrew letters and the Roman numerals with “short straight horizontal lines”—described it as “really an interesting matter.”

It would take another decade—a total of 65 years—before Hebrew lettering finally made its way onto the Jewish chaplain’s Ten Commandments insignia. In 1983, it became official.

The substitution of a “J” for an “H” and of the Hebrew alphabet for Roman numerals may not appear on anyone’s list of triumphant historical moments or victories. Perhaps they should. Gestures of inclusion and public recognition, these two visual declarations not only stabilized American Jewry’s footing, but also bolstered its confidence, its self-assertion, as a minority culture. By my reckoning, that qualifies as a victory.

📽 VIDEO: President Truman meets with Chaim Weizmann, President of the newly proclaimed State of Israel, at the White House #OnThisDay in 1948. https://t.co/PpC76dXDDL

— AIPAC (@AIPAC) May 25, 2020

Dear Europe – the Israelis are not your Jews

At some point, the people who run the European Union will have to get used to the idea that Israel is here to stay.

So far, it’s been a tough sell, mostly because old habits die hard.

Amid the flurry of denunciations against Israel, for even thinking about going ahead with sovereignty for parts of Judea and Samaria, most telling is this remark from Josep Borrell, EU’s High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, as follows: “We strongly urge Israel to refrain from any unilateral decision that would lead to the annexation of any occupied Palestinian territory, and would be, as such, contrary to international law.”

Regarding international law, the high commissioner is highly mistaken, as we read here from the Gatestone Institute.

From time immemorial, or precisely the Revelation at Sinai, which the Sage Judah Halevi referred to as the defining moment of all world history, the land, all of it, belongs to the Jews, verified over and over again from Balfour, to the League of Nations, to the San Remo Conference, back to The Kuzari and ultimately to the Hebrew Bible.

It is written in parchment. It is written in stone. It is written in the DNA of every Jewish person, man, woman, and child.

So what’s troubling those European commissioners, high and low, particularly from France, and now even the Vatican?

Yes, France, still famous for the Roundup of Paris, which even amazed the Gestapo at how smartly the gendarmes rushed to the task.

Suddenly, the French were more efficient even than the Germans…and today, incidentally, Germany has also voiced “concern” about Israel’s possible move toward partial annexation.

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05/22 Links Pt2: Fighting the academic demonisation of Israel in schools; Who Really Represents America’s Jews?; Jerusalem: 1948, 1967, 2020; Latma 2020, Episode 8

From Ian:

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David Collier: Fighting the academic demonisation of Israel in schools

How do you deal with historical distortion in academic textbooks and propaganda in schools and universities? I would argue that if you want to really fight this fight, then you have to begin by understanding just how widespread the problem really is.

(On Wednesday I spoke as part of a panel on anti-Zionist, antisemitic propaganda in schools. The event was organised and chaired by UK Lawyers for Israel. Also on the panel were Noru Tsalic, Marcus Sheff and Nomi Benari. You can now view a recording of the event online.)
A battle for academic minds

The issue of historical distortion in academic textbooks and propaganda in schools and universities is as important – if not more important – than any of the other battles taking place for accuracy and truth. The children sitting in school will have their minds shaped by the information they are given. And if we take all the classrooms in the UK – including the universities – then sitting in those rooms is almost every single politician who will be lawmaking in the coming generations, alongside every future councillor, union leader, lawyer and teacher.

If lies are told to them unchecked, then we lose the battle for minds even before it is started.

How big a problem is it
In the last few months, two seperate UK textbooks (1 , 2) were checked and were removed from the shelves because of historical innacuracies and anti-Israel bias.

If we seek to put all the blame on the academic author or the publisher we are missing the point. These two books were written by different authors, did not rely on the same source material and went through the editorial checks of two seperate publishing houses.

We are dealing with an ideology, a narrative, a world vision – and much of the modern academic landscape has been swallowed whole.

Whilst I have access to some of what is taking place on campus – much of what is occuring in schools is beyond me. Not only are Jews a tiny minority group in the UK – but we are also highly concentrated in certain areas. This means that outside of our bubble are 1000s of schools which have no Jewish presence at all. Our eyes and ears simply do not reach very far.

What we see is only the tip of the iceberg and the problem extends far beyond textbooks.

Jonathan S. Tobin: Who Really Represents America’s Jews?

The notion that any single organization could represent the views or the interests of American Jews on Israel—or any other issue—has always been risible. Yet this dubious assertion has been the raison d’être of one of the more successful experiments in political activism in American Jewish history.

Born seven decades ago out of a hostile administration’s impatience with the myriad Jewish groups lobbying the State Department about Israel, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations has thrived by claiming to be the central address for American Jewish political interests.

But while the Conference has enjoyed a unique perch in the organized Jewish world, many of the groups who compose its membership are neither “major” in any real sense or, by themselves, particularly influential—let alone representative of American Jewry.

Nor can it be considered the public face of the pro-Israel community. That distinction belongs to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Unlike AIPAC, the Conference can’t mobilize tens of thousands of activists to lobby Congress, attend an annual conference, or help direct campaign donations to friends of Israel or foes of the Jewish state’s critics.

Despite its title, the Conference has also lacked the ability to command its member groups to take action on even the most anodyne issues. All 53 organizations retain complete autonomy of action and are divided along political and ideological lines that allow little room for cooperation.

Yet by cloaking itself in a mythical consensus, the Conference has skillfully inserted itself into policy discussions at the highest level both in Washington and abroad. Its ability to not merely be heard but to have its bland but still assertive brand of advocacy be treated as an important factor in rallying support for the State of Israel in Washington has made it the go-to place for anyone—especially foreign governments—who wishes to sound out the views of American Jewish influencers.

Under the leadership of Executive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein, who assumed the role in 1986, the Conference became less of a club of organizational leaders and more of an aggressive collective putting forward the views of the Jewish community on issues concerning Israel and anti-Semitism at home and abroad.

Gerald M. Steinberg: Jerusalem: 1948, 1967, 2020

As a Jerusalemite, the degree to which the modern history of our city is mangled, distorted, and rewritten by journalists, foreign politicians and diplomats, and less-than-rigorous academics is a major source of frustration, particularly around the celebration of Jerusalem Day.

Almost inevitably, we are told that “East Jerusalem” and the “Old City were captured by Israel from Jordan during the 1967 war, without reference to the status of this city between 1948 and 1967. Outside of Israel, the false narrative portraying Palestinians exclusively as victims and Israel as “occupiers” has replaced the actual history, and substituted propaganda for justice.

The continuing impact of the 1948-1967 Jordanian occupation is central to understanding the broad Israeli rejection of grand peace plans to re-divide this city, including the mirages of “shared sovereignty” and internationalization. While such creative political architecture may sound good, the history of this period should remind us that in practice, such visions will return us to the bad old days,

Jews have lived in Jerusalem continuously, and were the majority population in the decades before the 1948 war. The destruction and ethnic cleansing of the ancient Jewish Quarter in the Old City began following the UN Partition Resolution on November 27 1947. Arab forces blocked the access road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and numerous Israeli efforts to end this blockade failed, with major casualties. As a result, few reinforcements were available, and on May 28, the Jordanian army (also known as the “Arab Legion”) completed the capture of the Jewish Quarter.

The Jordanian commander, Abdallah el-Tal, boasted that “The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion… Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become a graveyard.” (Disaster of Palestine, Cairo 1959) All of the Jewish inhabitants were exiled — the ethnic cleansing was complete. Jews were prohibited from accessing the Temple Mount, destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 AD, or at the Western Wall, which survived the destruction. (These were and remain the holiest sites in the Jewish religion.)

Even after the fall of the Jewish Quarter, the conquerors systematically desecrated all remnants of 3000 years of Jewish Jerusalem. 57 ancient synagogues, libraries and centers of religious study were ransacked and 12 were totally and deliberately destroyed. Those that remained standing were defaced, and turned into barns for goats, sheep and donkeys. Appeals were made to the United Nations and in the international community to declare the Old City to be an ‘open city’ and stop this destruction, but there was no response.

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05/15 Links Pt2: Ruthie Blum: A portrait of viral antisemitism; A Light Unto the Nations: Israel’s Lifesaving Aid in the Face of Global Crises; A Celebration of Israel's 72nd Independence Day #Israel72

From Ian:

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Ruthie Blum: A portrait of viral antisemitism

If history has taught us anything, it is that antisemitism is not simply a mild psychiatric disorder – since Jews are a tiny minority in every country in the world other than Israel, which itself is minuscule in relative terms; it is, rather, a symptom of Stage Four societal cancer. No amount of alcogel can sanitize that dirty little secret.

Which brings us back to the other plague – the one that has most of humanity living in limbo, keeping what is deemed a safe, six-foot distance from strangers, friends and family alike. Oh, and scrubbing our hands like Lady Macbeth, while draped in accessories befitting a brain surgeon.

Whether panic over the coronavirus was or still is warranted remains to be seen. This is something that will not be determined fully until the wave has blown over and/or a vaccine is available. It is difficult, if not impossible, to analyze the data properly in the midst of the commotion.

The same cannot be said about antisemitism. No, hatred of Jews and Israel has a proven record of death and destruction on a mass scale. All additional statistics on that score are the fault of new perpetrators and the passive response to them on the part of the willfully ignorant, apathetic or criminally negligent ostriches among us.

It is hard to fathom how Hitlerian rhetoric and Holocaust imagery elicit less of a reaction than a virus that appears to be running its course.
A common mantra these days is that “We’re all in this together.” Well, if enabling antisemites to disperse their poison beyond borders forbidden to travelers with the sniffles constitutes solidarity, the world really is in the throes of a fatal illness. And that’s not a cartoon characterization of the situation.

Nor is the fact that Jewish scientists in Israel and abroad are working tirelessly around the clock to come up with an antidote to the coronavirus. The rest of us would do well, in the meantime, to focus on finding a remedy for a far greater killer – one that mutates and metastasizes exponentially with each passing minute.

Israel Advocacy Movement: Greatest threat to Jewish existence | J-TV's Ollie Anisfeld and Joseph Cohen


What If Israel Vanished?

There are three main factions within the anti-Zionist, pro-Palestine camp: The Muslim Brotherhood and neo-Ottoman Islamist camp, the Iranian revolutionaries and their “resistance camp” and the Arab nationalists and leftist camp. All have close links with various Palestinian groups.

All three factions, of course, share the anti-Israel rhetoric and dream of regaining Al-Aqsa mosque. Nevertheless, each faction within this eclectic camp has a different outlook for the future of Palestine. Some advocate a future Islamist Palestine that would be part of a grand Ottoman caliphate. Others dream of a revolutionary Palestine loyal to the Iranian Islamic regime. The third group dreams of a leftist nationalist Palestinian utopia.

None of them, however, will ever address the tough questions about their future beloved Palestine. How will they reconcile their conflicting views on the future Palestinian state? How will post-Israel Palestine avoid the fate of post-Saddam Iraq or post Arab Spring Syria? Will the allies of the various Palestinian factions leave the Palestinian people to decide their fate, or will they try to impose their vision in exchange for financial and political support?

Will Hamas, Fatah and the other Palestinian factions that failed to unite under occupation reconcile their differences after “liberation”? Will the Islamists in post-Israel Palestine accept the secularists and liberals, or turn against them as the Mullahs did in Iran, and as Erdogan did in Turkey? How will Islamists treat minorities, such as the Bahai community in Israel? What will the future of their beautiful Temple in Haifa? be? Will the prominent Palestinian diaspora, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and activist Linda Sarsour, leave their prestigious careers in the US and “return” to campaign relentlessly for the “right to return to Palestine” and serve their beloved new state?

These are tough questions, so let’s ask an easier one: Who will control the Al-Aqsa Mosque after the imaginary end of Israel? Hamas? Fatah? Jordan? Turkey? Iran? Will the mostly Sunni Palestinians allow Shia Muslims to practice and celebrate the death of Hussein inside Al-Aqsa Mosque? Or will Shia be labelled “apostates”?

I once asked a hardcore pro-Palestine Islamist those questions. He was angrily dismissive. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “What matters is that we destroy the Zionist State first, then think of the day after.”

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04/04 Links: Israel’s virus death toll rises to 43 with deaths of three more people; The corona pandemic and peace in the Middle East; Virus brings spike in anti-Semitic posts

From Ian:

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Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Rabbi Marvin Hier: The corona pandemic and peace in the Middle East

The rapidly unfolding global tragedy of the CoronaVirus pandemic sheds the light of reality as to why Peace in the Holy Land remains a far-off dream: Israel is confronted by Palestinian leaders who for decades refuse to accept the legitimacy of their Jewish neighbors. They teach their children in word and deed to embrace death over life.

The threat against Israel from Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists has been guided and exacerbated by their paymasters in Tehran whose leaders believe the Jewish state uses “demons”. That regime as well has proven over and over again it also doesn’t give a damn about the lives of its people. For these thugs hate always trumps hope.

But all this doesn’t mean we have to accept that tyrants and terrorists will always dictate the narrative.

We recall that just a few short months ago, we prayed and danced in a Synagogue just across the Gulf from Iran. It was the first minyan in Bahrain’s capital since 1948. (The authors are pictured in the video).

We watch in awe and wonderment as frontline-medical and scientific personnel– Jew and Arab– work and pray side-by-side in Israel’s hospitals, alongside their ambulances, united in the struggle to defeat the unseen enemy that has stolen the joy of this year’s Passover, Easter and Ramadan and that threatens each and every one of us.

So, we tell our friends and ourselves to stop feeling helpless and hopeless.

At this year’s Passover Seder or before it, we should be teaching our cooped-up children to always identify- not with bigots or bullies- but rather with the unsung heroes who selflessly strive to save us and all humanity from the 11th plague.

Israel’s virus death toll rises to 43 with deaths of three more people

Israel’s death toll from coronavirus rose to 43 Saturday, with 7,589 people diagnosed with COVID-19.

Two women were reported to have died of the virus in the morning: an 88-year-old woman at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital and a 67-year-old woman at Beersheba’s Soroka Medical Center. A man, 76, died at Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon close to noon.

The 88-year-old woman was the fifth victim to come from the Mishan assisted living facility in the southern city of Beersheba.

She was later named as Holocaust survivor Dr. Nelia Kravitz, who worked as a physician at Soroka Medical Center for 20 years.
Dr Nelia Kravitz, who died after contracting the coronavirus at the Mishan assisted living facility in Beersheba.(Courtesy)

“It was not possible to contact the Mishan facility, and only later were we informed she was transferred to Soroka. We said goodbye to her over the telephone,” Kravitz’s son Micha told the Kan public broadcaster.

The Health Ministry said Saturday morning that 115 patients were in serious condition, with 98 on ventilators. At least 427 Israelis have recovered from the disease.

Noah Rothman: The Rise of the Immunity Caste

How does this all end, you (and everyone else) ask? Well, the miserable realists answer back, it doesn’t—not until there’s a vaccine, at least.

Given the skyrocketing unemployment rate and the prospect of GDP contraction of between 20 and 30 percent, “for the foreseeable future” is palatable only to those who concern themselves exclusively with public health. If you’re in the business of ensuring there is a society left to reactivate after this initial lockdown has passed, getting people safely back to work is both a priority and a conundrum. How do you reignite the nation’s economic engine without jeopardizing the public and, ultimately, damaging the economy further? The answer to this riddle has some Western political leaders contemplating a fraught stopgap measure: immunity registries.

The advent of approved serological tests that can determine whether someone contracted this unique Coronavirus and developed the antibodies that presumably render them immune to future infection has opened this avenue up to policymakers. Apparently, they’re taking it.

The German government plans to introduce “immunity certificates” to COVID-19 survivors that would allow license holders to reenter society. The U.K., too, will reportedly provide residents who test positive for Coronavirus antibodies with “immunity passports,” liberating recipients from lockdown. For some American policymakers, these seem like worthy models to follow. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, for example, has repeatedly entertained slowly reopening society to “people who can get antibody tests.”

In theory, this would seem to be the best of all the terrible options before policymakers. And for a nation with a history of codified social stratification, it might work. Germany’s experience is amenable to imposing these temporary stations on individuals. Class is an unseen but ubiquitous force in Britain, too. But the United States does not have a similar experience with social castes. Its class structure is permeable; indeed, the country’s national identity is predicated on transcending the categories into which we are consigned by conditions beyond our control. And this new class—the immune—is permeable. But public health officials aren’t going to like how the public goes about penetrating this stratum.

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04/03 Link Pt1: 40 victims of coronavirus, more than 7,000 Israelis are infected; Tom Cotton Says China Is Due for a ‘Reckoning’

From Ian:

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40 victims of coronavirus, more than 7,000 Israelis are infected

The Israel Defense Forces will provide the civilians of Bnei Brak with assistance, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu affirmed Friday, as preparations for traffic restrictions in and around the ultra-Orthodox city were put into place and the Health Ministry announced that more than 7,000 people were diagnosed with coronavirus.

By evening, the National Emergency Authority published a procedure for approving entry and exit from the restricted area on Friday.

Four more people died on Friday, victims 37, 38, 39 and 40 were all elderly people.

The ministry's report showed that some 115 people were in serious condition, including 95 are on respirators.

The government officially decided to crack down on Bnei Brak on Thursday, approving a full military-enforced closure on the city. Armed troops from the IDF’s Paratrooper Brigade began being deployed early Friday to work with the Homefront Command and Netanyahu stressed that the responsibility for enforcing these new restrictions, including enclosing the city, rests with the Public Security Ministry and the Israel Police.

Bnei Brak has more coronavirus per capita than any other city in Israel, the Health Ministry showed. On Friday, 1,061 people were diagnosed with the virus there - up 513 people in the last three days.

Israeli coronavirus fatalities are mostly elderly men, average age 79.8

Most of Israel’s coronavirus fatalities have been elderly men with underlying medical conditions, in line with global averages.

The average age of Israel’s dead was 79.8 years old as of Thursday afternoon. Of the 34 dead, 21, or 64 percent, were men, and 13 were women.

Ninety-four percent of Israel’s fatalities — all but two — are over the age of 60, in line with the average in Europe of 95%.

The vast majority of Israel’s dead had underlying medical conditions, as do most senior citizens. Israeli medical authorities rarely specify which preexisting conditions the fatalities had.

The World Health Organization said Thursday that 10% to 15% of people under 50 with the disease have moderate or severe cases.

Dr. Hans Kluge, head of the organization’s office in Europe, said recent statistics showed 30,098 people had died in Europe, mostly in Italy, France and Spain. More than half of Europe’s dead were over the age of 80.

Kluge said more than 80% of those who died had at least one other chronic underlying condition like cardiovascular disease, hypertension or diabetes.

There are more than 980,000 confirmed cases worldwide, led by the United States with more than 226,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The US has recorded over 5,100 deaths, with New York City, the US epicenter, recording 1,374 fatalities.

The number of deaths worldwide passed 50,000 on Thursday. Over 204,000 have recovered from the illness.

Netanyahu urges wearing masks outside; announces stipends for kids, elderly

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday evening said all Israelis should wear masks when out in public, and promised stipends for Passover for Israeli children and pensioners.

He also introduced strict limitations to travel in and out of Bnei Brak, the ultra-Orthodox city with one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in the country, as part of new directives to stop the spread of the pandemic.

Netanyahu, emerging from voluntary quarantine at his official residence in Jerusalem after an aide tested positive for the coronavirus, said that people who don’t have masks can use an improvised facial covering such as a scarf.

Health Ministry Director-General Moshe Bar Siman-Tov reiterated that Israelis should not rush out to buy masks as they should be left for medical professionals, but can improvise with material and rubber bands.

The most important thing, Bar Siman-Tov said, was that the nose and mouth were covered.

Netanyahu also announced that families will receive a one-off payment of NIS 500 per child (approximately $140), up to the fourth child, ahead of the upcoming Passover holiday. There will also be stipends for the elderly, he said, without specifying the minimum age. He said these payments will be approved via emergency legislation, and that payments will be made directly into bank accounts, with no bureaucratic red tape.

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03/26 Links Pt2: Abolish the World Health Organization; America’s Largest Population of Holocaust Survivors Is Endangered by the Coronavirus

From Ian:

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America’s Largest Population of Holocaust Survivors Is Endangered by the Coronavirus as Crown Heights and Borough Park Shut Down

By last Wednesday afternoon the outer doors of 770 Eastern Parkway were locked, while the doors connecting the complex’s narrow lobby to the rambunctious communal shul for New York’s Chabad Hasidim were chained shut. The unthinkable was occurring. The Mitzvah Tanks sat idle on Kingston Avenue, Crown Heights’ typically lively ultra-Orthodox main street, which is now almost fully emptied of people. The mikvah and the Beit Din were closed, although in the latter case, “drop-off for shaalos can be done in the door slot as always,” per a posted notice. Pallets of paper towels and toilet paper crowded the entrance to nearby Empire Kosher, where the shoppers seemed every bit as fearful of one another—or, perhaps, every bit as wary of revealing their fears to one another—as the people in my local Walgreens a couple neighborhoods north. “You see,” said Dovid Margolin, an editor for Chabad.org and my guide around virus-era Crown Heights last week, “there are no old people here.”

The coronavirus pandemic is perhaps the first total event in human history. There have been other spells of worldwide pestilence and conflict, but this is the only one to occur during a time of instantaneous mass communication and high-speed global travel—and maybe the only one to occur during an era in which there is theoretically a species-wide agreement on the intrinsic value of human life.

And yet the pandemic inflicts miseries that are particular to each place it visits. On Wednesday at 770, there were maybe 15 young men standing around a long table stacked with religious texts. I began chatting with two chavruta partners who were sitting together next to the Eastern Parkway bike path, studying the section of the Shulchan Aruch about religious courts—the pages they might have otherwise been probing if their yeshiva had stayed open (all the religious schools in Crown Heights had suspended operations at noon the previous Friday). They, and the nearby group of 15, were all speaking Hebrew to one another. These were students who had no family in America, nothing to do, nowhere else to go. The resilience of the Crown Heights community, and of Orthodox communities in general, comes from their close-knit, multigenerational families, a ready-made support network when things take an unexpected turn for the surreal. These students only had each other.

Everywhere else in the neighborhood, a visitor could feel the presence of people hiding behind brick walls and closed doors. On Crown Street, someone blasted a recording of the Shema from a high balcony, followed by “Ouf Ghazal” or “Fly, Fledgeling,” a beloved secular Israeli folk song by the late Arik Einstein whose lyrics are an extended metaphor for a parents’ hopes and fears for their young in an unpredictable world. Maybe the listeners found the music heartening—but they were inside, invisible.

Stephen L. Miller: Abolish the World Health Organization

The WHO has become another pointless organization pandering to the world’s worst actors

Since the coronavirus has become a global pandemic, halting the world’s economy in its tracks, Tedros has taken it upon himself to repeat Chinese state talking points about shifting blame for their own role in the spread of the virus: ‘When fighting an outbreak such as #COVID19, we must be guided by solidarity, not stigma. The greatest enemy we face is not the virus itself; it’s the stigma that turns us against each other. We must stop stigma and hate!’

This has been a familiar refrain from the Chinese state, whose government which runs forced labor and concentration camps. China repeatedly eludes scrutiny by the not only the head of WHO but sectors of the American media as well.

Since his appointment as head of the WHO in 2017, with the full backing of China and its vast financial resources, Tedros has come under fire for his role in covering up multiple cholera epidemics in Ethiopia. Shortly after his appointment as WHO D-G, Adhanom bestowed the honor of Goodwill Ambassador on late Zimbabwean president and tyrant Robert Mugabe. It was only after a deluge of outrage from human rights groups and WHO members that Adhanom withdrew the honor.

According to a Washington Post report at the time, Tedros’s decision was based partly on rewarding China for backing his appointment. ‘Some speculate that Tedros’s decision to appoint Mugabe was a pay-off to China, which worked tirelessly behind the scenes to help Tedros defeat the United Kingdom candidate for the WHO job, David Nabarro. Tedros’s victory was also a victory for Beijing, whose leader Xi Jinping has made public his goal of flexing China’s muscle in the world.’

Beijing and Mugabe had an understanding: he would not criticize Chinese colonialism and exploitation of Africa’s resources; they would support him. In December 2015, Mugabe gushed about Xi at the China-Africa summit in Johannesburg. He called the Chinese autocrat ‘a God-sent person’.

But Tedros’s capitulation to the world’s worst actors isn’t the biggest problem with WHO as an organization. WHO slow-walked its coordinated response to the Ebola epidemic in 2015, which killed more than 10,000 people on the continent of Africa alone. The whole organization is evidently unfit for purpose: it needs to be abolished and replaced. Tedros’s goal seems to be turning the WHO into another United Nations, a body that delivers impotent lectures without ever taking politically sensitive decisions. The world demands accountability and action. It demands both come from the country behind this all and its puppet leader at the WHO.

Ummm...World Health Organization doesn’t include Israel in its list of “eastern Mediterranean” countries but of course includes all the countries around it and the Palestinian Territories 🤔 pic.twitter.com/JhGqKUQ0mH

— Seth Frantzman (@sfrantzman) March 25, 2020

May 23, 2017: Thanks to China's lobbying, @DrTedros wins election as WHO chief.

May 24, 2017: @DrTedros meets first with Chinese health minister, pledges allegiance to "One-China principle", promises to "properly handle Taiwan-related issues."https://t.co/EEmwNvQnok

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) March 26, 2020

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02/19 Links Pt1: Danny Danon: Mahmoud Abbas’s map of lies; The moral bankruptcy of a PLO state; Palestinian rights activists moonlight as terrorists

From Ian:

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Danny Danon: Mahmoud Abbas’s map of lies

That Abbas brought his map to the highest level of international diplomacy suggests that he believes that the world is ready to entertain this revisionist history of the Middle East. Sadly, in this regard, he may not be mistaken.

Rewriting history has long been a tactic of overtly anti-Israel and anti-Semitic organizations. On college campuses, anti-Israel groups regularly use a version of this map during the notorious Israel Apartheid Week. The anti-Semitic BDS movement features this graphic in its campaign materials. Al Jazeera, the propaganda arm of Qatar that has a growing audience among younger generations in America, has a “Vanishing Palestine” interactive video as part of its “Palestine Remix” channel.

What is most insidious, however, is the growing use of the map in mainstream venues. In October 2015, MSNBC displayed these maps during a live segment discussing a recent spate of Palestinian violence on the Temple Mount (for which it later apologized). In 2017, Columbia University published the maps on advertisements for a workshop on “Citizenship and Nationality in Israel/Palestine.” Last September, a high school matriculation exam in Finland included the maps.

The use of the “Map of Lies” in mainstream media and academic circles in particular will have the effect of normalizing its content and message.

For Israel and the Jewish people, this presents a real danger. Efforts to delegitimize the Jewish State are growing louder, with the United Nations recently releasing a “blacklist” of Israeli companies that operate in Judea and Samaria being only the latest example of revisionist history having tangible consequences.

One’s interpretation and understanding of the past forms their assumptions about the present and determines their vision for the future. Believing Abbas’s “Map of Lies” will do more than dishonor the past; it will irrevocably damage the cause of peace.

David Singer: Netanyahu Goes into Judea and Samaria where Gantz Fears to Tread

Ambassador Friedman heads the three-man American delegation now sitting down with the three-man Israeli delegation on the Mapping Committee.

Gantz has been powerless to stop the formation and work of the Mapping Committee. Indeed Gantz urged Trump to release his peace plan before the elections. Gantz has not even requested that one of his nominees be part of the Israeli delegation on the Mapping Committee.

In ignoring the Mapping Committee – Gantz is signalling the continuation of his policy opposing Israel extending its sovereignty into Judea and Samaria with America’s approval.
Gantz has made his own policy very clear:
“After the elections, we will work to apply [Israeli] sovereignty on the Jordan Valley. We will do this in a nationally agreed process and in coordination with the international community.”

Believing the international community would ever agree to Israel extending its sovereignty into any part of Judea and Samaria – without swaps of existing Israeli sovereign territory – is totally unrealistic. The international community has been fixated for decades on seeing another Arab State created in the entirety of Judea and Samaria – or in an area of the same size including land currently part of Israel.

Gantz – in limiting sovereignty to just the Jordan Valley – is dashing the hopes of an estimated Jewish population of 464,353 in 131 settlements seeking unification with Israel.

Israeli voters now have a clear choice to end the political deadlock that has followed two indecisive elections held in the past twelve months:
Is it Netanyahu – promising the restoration of sovereignty in parts of the heartland of the Jewish people’s historic and biblical homeland for the first time in 3000 years?
OR
Is it Gantz – promising more of the same in Judea and Samaria that has been going on for the last 53 years?

A third deadlocked election result now seems increasingly unlikely.

The choice is stark and the direction Israel will take for generations to come is at stake.

Palestinian rights activists moonlight as terrorists

One of the most egregious examples is the NGO for Palestinian “prisoner rights” Addameer. Addameer leaders regularly meet with EU officials and are very involved internationally. It even participated in the UN Human Rights Council’s discussions on Israel in 2018, and urges the ICC war crimes probe of Israel. They also hold “educational” events on campuses with students in the US. Multiple Addameer employees and leaders have a long and rich track record of terrorist convictions and, in several cases, have been Addameer employees and PFLP operatives simultaneously. It is problematic, to say the least, for the EU or UN to be advised on their decisions by organizations with such extensive ties to an EU-recognized terrorist organization.

From 2013-2019, Addameer received nearly $2.1 million from the EU and European member states, including Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Spain. The Basque autonomous community alone has given it over $920,000 in grants between 2014 and 2019. From 2014 to 2017, Addameer received $498,700 from the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat (according to their website), a joint funding body financed by Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. With such significant EU investment, heightened transparency is an absolute necessity.

If the EU is not prepared to cut funding completely, they must double down and demand not only that Palestinian NGOs commit to not working with terrorist organizations, but also that they demonstrate complete financial transparency as to how their money is being spent. Palestinian NGOs should also be required to prove, in light of the evidence, that their employees and leaders are not active PFLP members, perhaps by a new disclosure requirement of past and present civil society affiliations.

The fact that the ties between Palestinian civil society groups and terrorist organizations have significantly deepened over the years, and that simultaneously their ties to European countries have also deepened, should alarm anyone. The EU, and other European states, have an obligation to ensure their grants are not being used to fund the expansion of terrorist activities. They also have an obligation to ensure that decisions made at the UN and EU regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not unduly influenced by groups with PFLP ties.

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02/08 Links: The BDS Movement Is Racist and Violent; The Campaign to Sever the Democratic Alliance With AIPAC; MLB will not schedule any more promotions of Roger Waters

From Ian:

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The BDS Movement Is Racist and Violent

Furthermore, the movement may present itself as peaceful, but there have been countless cases of its activists creating hostile and potentially dangerous environments for Jewish people on university campuses. BDS supporters will counter these claims by pointing to the movement’s 2018 Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Yet this nomination means very little. The BDS movement was nominated by Norwegian parliamentarian Bjørnar Moxnes — the chairman of the far-left Red Party, which holds a single seat of 169 in the Norwegian parliament. This nomination is a farce, and means nothing.

What’s more important is BDS’ constant link to known terrorist organizations. One such example of this is the global leadership of the BDS operation — the BDS National Committee’s — membership. which includes the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, which itself includes several groups designated as terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

In addition to this, tens of financial accounts linked to BDS have been shut down in the US and EU in the past few years, due to ties with terrorist groups. In an interview from late 2010, even Barghouti has spoken in support of violent attacks on “settlers” (i.e. civilians), calling them “legitimate targets.”

The BDS movement has consistently been linked with terrorist organizations, and its supporters have become aggressive and violent towards any and all who disagree with their view of Israel. The methods that the movement urges show little regard for hurting civilians, even Palestinian ones — all the while, creating a divide between Israeli people and Palestinians.

There is a good reason why so many world leaders, prominent politicians and government institutions view BDS as toxic, given the actions of its followers. BDS does not belong in any conversation about anti-racism.

The Campaign to Sever the Democratic Alliance With AIPAC

Warren's eagerness to back the AIPAC boycott movement did not come as a surprise to mainstream pro-Israel Democrats, who say they have long been battling efforts by the party's left wing to mainstream anti-Israel causes.

One Jewish Democratic operative with ties to AIPAC told the Washington Free Beacon that IfNotNow's influence on the party is becoming increasingly problematic.

"There are many reasons for [Warren] not to attend AIPAC's Policy Conference, but getting pressured by an extremist group is not one of them," said the source, who would only discuss the matter anonymously. "IfNotNow has no place in anything close to the mainstream political discourse, including within the Democratic primary."

The push to boycott AIPAC is by no means new. Liberal advocacy groups have long viewed AIPAC as overly hawkish on Israel and out of line with the Democratic Party's evolving stance on the Jewish state. Liberal mainstays like the anti-war MoveOn group have demanded Democratic leaders boycott Israel for some time. This has dovetailed with growing support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which seeks to wage economic warfare on Israel.

Support for these movements has been building in the Democratic Party for years, with one of the most notable examples playing out at the 2012 convention, when a majority of Democratic conference goers audibly booed the state of Israel.

An AIPAC spokesman would not comment on the issue when contacted by the Free Beacon.

Tonight, Elizabeth Warren nodded along and smiled as a questioner slandered AIPAC as "an unholy alliance" of "Islamophobes," "anti-semites, and white nationalists" that perpetuates "bigotry"

Without blinking, Warren then agreed to boycott next year's AIPAC conference pic.twitter.com/U2MJ6DCTdZ

— Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) February 7, 2020

AIPAC apologizes for ad slamming ‘radicals in the Democratic Party’

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) issued an apology on Saturday after sponsoring a Facebook ad that slammed “radicals in the Democratic Party” and blamed them for “pushing their antisemitic policies down the throats of the American people.” It also called supporters to sign a letter to Democrats in Congress “don’t abandon Israel.”

According to the Facebook ad details, between 25,000 and 30,000 people saw it and AIPAC paid between $1,000 to $1,500 to promote in on the social media platform, primarily for people ages 55 and above. The ad is no longer active.

“We offer our unequivocal apology to the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress who are rightfully offended by the inaccurate assertion that the poorly worded, inflammatory advertisement implied,” AIPAC said in a statement that was shared on Twitter on Saturday.

“We deeply appreciate the broad and reliable support that Democrats in Congress have consistently demonstrated for Israel. The bipartisan consensus that Democrats and Republicans have established on this issue forms the foundation of the US-Israel relationship,” the statement read.

“The ad, which is no longer running, alluded to a genuine concern of many pro-Israel Democrats about a small but growing group, in and out of Congress, that is deliberately working to erode the bipartisan consensus on this issue and undermine the US-Israel relationship,” the apology continued.

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01/29 Links Pt2: Seth Mandel: The truth about anti-Semitism; Terrorist free in Jordan despite bombing that killed Americans; Cotton accuses a Koch and Soros-backed think tank of fomenting antisemitism

From Ian:

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Philip Klein & Seth Mandel: The truth about anti-Semitism

Unfortunately, de Blasio’s effort to explain anti-Semitism as merely right-wing does not make him unique. As anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head, liberals have gone out of their way to categorize it in a way that fits neatly with their partisan interests.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose campaign has provided a safe haven to anti-Semites of the Left, argued that the spike in anti-Semitic attacks nationwide was “a result of a dangerous political ideology that targets Jews and anyone who does not fit a narrow vision of a whites-only America.”

One of Sanders’s prized endorsements came from Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has brought anti-Semitic conspiracies about all-powerful Jewish puppet masters to the halls of Congress. She has claimed that Israel “hypnotized the world,” that congressional support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins,” and that her critics “push for allegiance to a foreign country.”

Yet Omar’s communications director, Jeremy Slevin, had the temerity to rant on Twitter, “Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force Anti-semitism is a right-wing force.”

If ever there were a reason to kill off the myth that hatred of Jews is an exclusively right-wing phenomenon, it would be the deadly attacks on Jews in the New York area during the holiday season. On Dec. 10, a shooting at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey, killed three. One of the assailants turned out to be a member of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, a revelation that awkwardly forced Rep. Rashida Tlaib to delete a condolence tweet that claimed “white supremacy kills.” On Dec. 28, an African American male invaded the home of a rabbi during a Hanukkah celebration, slashing five with a machete.

From college campuses, to the streets of New York, to the ugly corners of the internet, to the poison coming from the U.K. Labour Party, to the inferno of hatred sweeping through Europe, the targeting of Jews is not confined to any one political group. There are right-wing anti-Semites for sure, but anti-Semitism is also a burgeoning problem on the Left. What’s more, the pure hatred of Jews is often not identified with any ideology at all. It is, as scholars have pointed out for years, a virus that mutates and adapts according to the time and place.

The trope that anti-Semitism is a right-wing phenomenon also made politicians such as de Blasio and Omar appear as if they were living in a parallel universe. A passing awareness of the violent Jew-hatred in Europe explodes the myth. “The identity of the German synagogue attacker may have sounded familiar to American Jews, who have endured multiple attacks by far-right extremists over the past year,” reported the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in October after an armed man tried to break into a synagogue in Halle. “But the suspect’s identity was more surprising for Jews in Western Europe.”

Why? “The murder of two people in Halle on Yom Kippur was the first lethal anti-Semitic assault in decades in that region by a far-right extremist. Most of the terrorist attacks against Jews there over the past 30 years have been carried out by radical Muslims.”

The re-ghettoizing of the Jews

In Toms River, the Orthodox areas see vehicles from the police department on patrols, affording them an extra level of protection as they spend their days in prayer and celebration. In Jackson, Reina and Nixon focused on denying permits for Jews who sought to build sukkot, the small huts Jews put on their porches or in their yards for a week during the holiday of that name.

Sadly, the Toms River approach seems to be more the exception than the rule.

The same sort of denial of a Jew’s right to live wherever he or she might choose played itself out in other New Jersey towns such as Mahwah, where the town council passed two ordinances that one resident characterized as intended to “keep the Hasidic Jewish people from moving into Mahwah.” The state attorney general agreed. Mahwah eventually repealed those ordinances as part of a settlement that also included an agreement to notify the attorney general’s office before passing any further ordinances of that sort over the next four years and to release a public statement that it would enforce laws in a “non-discriminatory manner.”

It also continues to play out in upstate New York towns such as Chester, where Attorney General Tish James just filed suit against the town for what she called a “campaign to deny housing to members of the Jewish community” by “blocking the construction of homes [solely] to prevent a religious group from living” there. At issue is a 117-acre piece of property the town already had granted permits for — before it learned that Hasidic Jews bought the property from the original owner.

That would not do. Former town supervisor Alexander Jamieson said at a May 2018 public meeting that officials are “doing what we can to alleviate 432 Hasidic houses in the town of Chester,” a sentiment echoed by the current supervisor, Robert Valentine, at the same meeting. So, they have been denying the building permits, unapologetic about their intent, with Valentine even telling the New York Times in July that “if there was any way we could choose who could live there, we would do it. But we can’t.”

The concept of the shtetl is a throwback to old Europe. So are special laws designed to restrict where Jews can live and what they can build. Let’s hope America’s flirtation with heading down Europe’s path ends there.

Terror mastermind free in Jordan despite bombing that killed Americans

Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi is the most wanted woman in the world, with a $5 million bounty for information that leads to her arrest or conviction.

Tamimi is accused by U.S. officials of conspiring to use--and using--a weapon of mass destruction, and masterminding a brazen Hamas terrorist attack that killed 15 – including eight children and two Americans, one of whom was pregnant.

Despite being on the run from American authorities, Tamimi has been hiding in plain sight for years-- under the eye of one of the United States' longest and closest allies in the Middle East: Jordan.

This image provided by the FBI is the most wanted poster for Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian woman charged in connection with a 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizza restaurant that killed 15 people and injured dozens of others. The case against Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi was filed under seal in 2013 but announced publicly by the Justice Department on March 14, 2017. (FBI via AP) (The Associated Press)

Despite requests from Washington, the Kingdom has been publicly steadfast in its refusal to extradite Tamimi, who at just 20 years old masterminded the suicide bombing on the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem three weeks before planes struck the U.S on Sept. 11, 2001.

The attack claimed the lives of two Americans, 15-year-old Malki Roth, and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, who was five months pregnant with her first child at the time. In addition to the two murdered Americans and the unborn infant, four more U.S. nationals were among the some 122 injured. At least one of the victims remains in a vegetative state.

For Roth's parents, the fight for some semblance of justice has already been a long one – and the bumpy road stretches on.

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01/28 Links Pt1: Trump peace plan gives Israel chunks of West Bank, creates Palestinian state; ICC gives Israel, Palestinians until March to respond to war crime charges

From Ian:

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Israel Facing Monumental Decisions

Fate has sent Israel a rare set of circumstances that is unlikely to come our way again. The “deal of the century” really is a once-in-a-century opportunity, and Israel must seize it.

In October 1937, David Ben-Gurion wrote to his son Amos: “A partial Jewish state is not an end but a beginning … a powerful lever in our efforts to redeem the land in its entirety.”

US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan, which could potentially rip the Israeli nation’s ancient homeland in two, is also not the end, but rather the beginning.

Israel is facing a Ben-Gurion-style monumental decision: Some 73 years after the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, providence has sent the State of Israel, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a rare set of circumstances that is unlikely to come our way again. The “deal of the century” really is a once-in-a-century opportunity, and Israel must seize it.

The full details of Trump’s peace plan will be revealed soon enough, but if what we know about it so far is true – if Jerusalem, even without the Arab neighborhoods beyond the security fence, remains ours; if the Temple Mount is left under Israeli sovereignty; if all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria fall under Israeli rule, and if the settlement enterprise in historical lands, the cradle of the Israeli nation, will have territorial continuity and become part of greater Israel – than we must say yes to Trump’s plan.

In 1947, too, the partition plan tore the land of Israel in two, leaving the Western and central Galilee, the eastern part of the Negev, including Beersheba, and even Jaffa (as an enclave) within the borders of the proposed Arab state.

In 2020, too, Trump’s plan will tear Judea and Samaria, the heart of our homeland, apart, and leaves about 70% to a future Palestinian entity. But what time and Arab rejectionism did in the past, time and Palestinian rejectionism will do in the future.

Embracing Trump’s plan at this time is just the beginning, even if parts of it are a bitter pill to swallow.

The Deal of the Century

“The Deal of the Century,” if the leaked details are even close to accurate, is a non-starter. That is the simple take-away. But should Israel wait for the Arabs to blow it up on their own? And then what?

The basic contours being leaked about the forthcoming Trump Mideast plan, which he predictably, in his own typically understated modest way, calls “The Deal of the Century,” suggest that:

1. Israel would get to annex all Jewish communities presently established in Judea and Samaria.

2. Approximately 30-40 percent of Judea and Samaria formally would be integrated into Israel, reunifying those lands.

3. The Arabs in Judea and Samaria (“Palestinians”) would get their own independent country in what is left of Judea and Samaria after Israel annexes its 30-40 percent.

4. Hamas would have to be demilitarized.

5. “Palestine” would have to be demilitarized.

6. Jerusalem would be united. Arabs in Jerusalem could deem themselves “Palestinians.”

7. No new Jewish neighborhoods would be allowed to be added to Greater Jerusalem.

8. No new Jewish communities could be created in Judea and Samaria.

9. Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria that presently exist and are being annexed would not be permitted to expand further.

10. “Palestine” would be barred from having a military and would be protected instead by Israel, with “Palestine” paying for the protection.

PMW: PLO calls for terror against Trump's deal: "Escalate the resistance and the struggle... in all its forms"

In anticipation of the revelation of US President Trump’s Middle East peace plan – the so-called “deal of the century” - the PLO, the PA, and Fatah are emphasizing their rejection of the still unknown plan. They have also announced a “day of rage” on the day the plan is revealed, and called for “escalation of resistance” – a Palestinian euphemism for violence and terror.

Abbas’ Fatah Movement posted a photo of a Palestinian rock thrower in a call for violence accompanied by text implicitly encouraging Palestinians to seek death as martyrs for “Palestine”:
Posted text and text on image: “We will redeem you with our blood, #Palestine”
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Jan. 26, 2020]

Similarly, the PLO urged Palestinians to “escalate the resistance and the struggle” against Israel “in all its forms and manners.” Terms like “all forms” and “all means” are ‎used by PA leaders to include the use of all types of violence, including deadly terror ‎against Israeli civilians such as stabbings and shootings, as well as throwing rocks and Molotov Cocktails:
“The [Palestinian] National Council (i.e., the legislative body of the PLO) again expressed its objection to every plan, project, deal, or attempt to harm the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights… The National Council yesterday [Jan. 26, 2020] demanded that the PLO Executive Committee implement all of the National Council and [PLO] Central Council’s decisions – and foremost among them the decision determining that the transition period has ended with all of the political, security, and financial obligations in it towards the Israeli occupation – and also to take all the necessary steps to encourage and escalate the resistance and the struggle against the occupation in all its forms and manners.”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 27, 2020]

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01/15 Links Pt2: In Arab Countries, Restoring Synagogues Means Never Saying Sorry for Past Crimes; Soviet Dissident Recalls Jews And Christians Stood United Against Fear

From Ian:

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What Did Mike Pompeo Mean?

In his November statement, Pompeo noted that the settlements are not “per se” illegal; meaning that they are not in themselves intrinsically illegal. Last Wednesday, the Secretary of State said that the settlements were not “inherently” illegal; meaning in a permanent, immutable, or fundamental way. Kinda sounds like the same idea, different day.

Kontorovich further places great stock in the combined effect of Pompeo simultaneously “disavowing” any and all legal or other reasoning in the Hansell memo concluding that the settlements are, de facto (a third semantic variation to consider), illegal.

As I understand the combined effect, the language remains somewhat equivocal, leaving Pompeo some “wiggle room” for future negotiations, interpretations, whatevers. Per se/inherently a distinction without a difference.

Pompeo explicitly rejects the Hansell memo. But he stops short of an unequivocal declaration on the legality of all settlement activity by qualifying them as not being inherently illegal. Otherwise, why split hairs? Why not just omit “inherently”?

I know from direct experience that there are many Hansell-like memos and “opinions” yellowing in the off-site archives of numerous foreign services. Diplomatic thinking on the issue has been frozen for 40 years, reflecting a blind commitment to the falsehood of chronic Israeli breaches of the Geneva Convention. The fact that Israel defended its eastern border from an unprovoked attack by Jordan, and subsequently trounced the Kingdom’s forces, made the Six Day War a defensive war, which is treated very differently under international law. But that doesn’t fit the upside-down narrative that has captured the imaginations of generations of leaders and foreign policy influencers: that Israel is the aggressor and chief violator of international decency.

Pompeo should be commended for exposing the Hansell sham, but he has by no means slain the beast.

Lyn Julius: In Arab Countries, Restoring Synagogues Means Never Saying Sorry for Past Crimes

Last week, to much fanfare, the largest synagogue in the Middle East was reopened in Alexandria, Egypt. Some 300 guests, including Egyptian Antiquities and Tourism Minister Khaled al-Anany, were on hand for the festive occasion.

The event made headlines from the United Kingdom to China — but only The Jerusalem Post pointed out that just three Jews were in attendance.

According to reports, only a handful of Jews now live in a country which once boasted 80,000–100,000. (Israeli diplomats and Egyptian-born Jews living outside the country are planning their own celebration next month, but these visitors will be returning to their homes in Israel, Europe, and the United States after the party.)

The Eliyahu HaNavi synagogue will never again host Jewish weddings or bar mitzvahs, nor will it ever muster a minyan. It will be no more than a museum to an extinct community, and a perfunctory tourist stop.

The media coverage of the event was typical of a trend hailing the restoration of Jewish buildings in countries with no more than a handful of Jews as somehow indicative of pluralism and tolerance in the Arab world. Even Jews fall for the fantasy, grateful for the slightest acknowledgement that members of the Tribe once lived in these countries.

“I’m very proud of what my country has done, and it symbolizes living together — today there is no difference between Egyptian Muslim, Christian, and Egyptian Jew,” gushed Magda Haroun, leader of the Cairo “community” of two Jews. “It is recognition that we have always been here and that we have contributed to a lot of things, just like any other Egyptians.”

No journalist covering the restoration story bothered to ask why a once-glorious community has been reduced to a handful of souls in Cairo and Alexandria, the youngest of whom (Magda herself) is reportedly 67.

Israeli model says Lebanese designer banned her from show

Arbel Kynan, a top Israeli fashion model, wrote in an Instagram post on Tuesday that a Lebanese designer refused to have her take part in his runway show at the Haute Couture Week in Paris, which starts on January 20, because of her nationality.

“Truthfully... it’s still hard for me to digest....” Kynan wrote. She then told of how she arrived in Paris a few days ago to be photographed by a “very respectable fashion company,” and was told she would also walk the runway in next week’s show, which is a coveted job in the modeling industry.

“Many times, people ask us where we are from, and on the day of the shoot they asked me where I am from and, of course, I answered with a big smile that I am from Tel Aviv.” The shoot continued as usual, Kynan said, and they finished early. According to Kynan, a few days passed, and then on Tuesday, she says, “I received an email from my agency stating that the client is Lebanese and he does not want me to take part in the show, because I live in Tel Aviv, Israel – this is the content of the email I received.”

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01/15 Links Pt1: 4 mortar shells fired from Gaza at Israeli towns; IDF Intel Assessment: Iran Could Have Enough Uranium for Nuke by Spring; Democrats Block Resolution Condemning Iran

From Ian:

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Israeli PM Netanyahu Calls for Snapback Sanctions on Tehran Regime, as Europe Triggers Iran Nuke Deal Dispute Mechanism

Two top Israeli leaders, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and ex-IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, called for further sanctions on the Tehran regime on Tuesday, the same day three European powers triggered the dispute mechanism in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

In a video statement posted on social media, Netanyahu said, “We know exactly what’s happening with the Iranian nuclear program. Iran thinks it can achieve nuclear weapons.”

“I reiterate: Israel won’t allow Iran to achieve nuclear weapons,” he pledged. “I also call on all Western countries to impose snapback sanctions at the UN now.”

Earlier, Gantz — the head of the centrist Blue and White party who is seeking to oust Netanyahu in the upcoming March Knesset elections — said, “The Europeans are beginning to understand that there is no other choice, that the attempts at conciliation with Iran are ineffective, and they are therefore moving toward sanctions, which I applaud.”

PM Netanyahu: "We know exactly what's happening with the Iranian nuclear program. Iran thinks it can achieve nuclear weapons.

I reiterate: Israel won't allow Iran to achieve nuclear weapons. I also call on all Western countries to impose snapback sanctions at the UN now." pic.twitter.com/NWzpNYIqR4

— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) January 14, 2020

New IDF Intel Assessment: Iran Could Have Enough Uranium for Nuke by Spring

The IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate issued its annual assessment for 2020 on Tuesday, warning that Iran might have enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb by this spring.

According to the Israeli news site Mako, the report stated that the US assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani earlier this month would have a deterrent effect, though the situation still required close monitoring.

Despite Soleimani’s death, however, without intervention, Iran could succeed in enriching enough uranium for one nuclear weapon by spring, according to the report. But it will take another two years to be weaponized sufficiently to be placed in a warhead, the report noted.

The report nevertheless theorized that Iran did not actually want to build a nuclear weapon, but rather to obtain better “cards” for negotiations with world powers, within the framework of its primary goal — spreading the “Islamic Revolution.”

Regarding Israel’s other strategic challenges, the assessment held that on the northern front, Syria would continue to be a destabilizing and potentially explosive force. Turkey would further its involvement in the northern arena and Russia would consolidate its power there.

The assessment stated that the ruling Assad regime would decide this year on how to deal with the continuing presence and influence of its ally Iran in Syria. Israel has vowed to prevent Iran from becoming entrenched in Syria and has taken military action against the Tehran regime’s attempts to do so.

Ben-Dror Yemini: The duplicity of Western progressives

For them, the problem is Trump, not the ayatollahs. The statements that they do make are mainly on lifting the Iranian sanctions.
One has to ask how it is that the West produces so many useful idiots, willing propaganda agents of the dark regime, while in Iran itself there is a generation of young people who are fighting against this reign of terror and for freedom and human rights.

Why the hell are Western progressives turning their backs on the brave young people of Iran?

We are used to this phenomenon when it comes to Israel, where progressives support a boycott of the Jewish state and the removal of sanctions on the Hamas regime in Gaza.

And they are not operating in isolation. They receive funding from the European Union as a whole and European countries separately.
This is the paradox of the radicals: progressives supporting the black-hearted and the racist.

They oppose those who are fighting evil elements, and now they are turning their backs on the Iranian protesters.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Some Palestinians Love Soleimani

[Many] Arabs have claimed that they cannot understand why Hamas and Islamic Jihad are mourning an Iranian general responsible for the killing and displacement of thousands of people in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Some Arabs scoffed at the two Palestinian groups for labeling Soleimani as the "martyr of Jerusalem" at a time "when most of his rockets and bullets were being used to kill Arabs and Muslims to implement Iran's scheme of expanding its control to Arab and Islamic countries."

Without Iran's financial, military and political support, Hamas and Islamic Jihad would not have been able to maintain their control over the Gaza Strip.... Hamas and Islamic Jihad have demonstrated that they care nothing for the thousands of Arabs and Muslims killed by Soleimani's Quds Force. As far as these groups are concerned... [t]he end goal for Hamas and Islamic Jihad remains the elimination of Israel....

The ongoing cooperation between Iran and the Gaza-based groups poses an imminent threat not only to Israel, but also to the PA, Egypt and other Arabs who are opposed to Tehran's expansionist schemes in the region.

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01/10 Links Pt2: The True Motives Of Palestinian Leadership, Corruption, And Ethnic Cleansing; Arab States Have Everything to Gain from Normalization with Israel; Turning BDS into 'Buy directly from Samaria'

From Ian:

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The True Motives Of Palestinian Leadership, Corruption, And Ethnic Cleansing

Sadly, Israel has demonstrated more commitment to a Palestinian state than has Palestinian leadership itself. Since 2000, Israel has proposed or accepted four land-for-peace proposals that would have created an independent Palestinian state. The PA has refused all proposals, despite one being so generous as to include all of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and 97% of Judea and Samaria. Palestinian self-sabotages at achieving statehood have been so in vain that Bill Clinton once lamented, “I killed myself trying to give Palestinians a state.”

The PA’s motive, instead of statehood, is corruption — which “thrives” as conflict exists. Conflict fuels international attention and the foreign aid that the PA has exploited to line its pockets and fortify its bureaucracy. In 2015, it was reported that the PA had received $25 billion in foreign aid since 1994. Yet Palestinians “saw no improvement in their living conditions.” This sum should startle: Palestinian foreign aid, when assessed on a per capita basis, exceeds that designated for the Marshall Plan by 25 times. Unlike the Marshall Plan, which propelled Europe’s reconstruction in four years, the “Palestinian Project” has now lasted over a quarter of a century without any end in sight.

So where has the money gone? Corruption. Arafat amassed $10+ billion, “[t]he main source” of which was “the approximately $6 billion contributed … as financial aid.” Further, Arafat’s financial advisor accumulated $500+ million, having had access to “hundreds of millions of [the PA’s] dollars.” Abbas also amassed approximately $100 million, despite being a career politician, and his two sons are millionaires who operate foreign aid contracting businesses. The PA suffers from systemic venality.

Palestinian-Arab leadership has long realized that conflict must exist for it to receive aid. Thus, in 2018, it distributed $330 million worth of stipends to thousands of terrorists and their families, thereby inspiring future generations of terror. PA leadership also realizes that its power remains dependent on keeping the Palestinian people dependent on its reign. Hence, in 2016, “[m]ore than half” of the PA’s spending on Gaza was “spent on wages to PA employees.” Further, between 1999 and 2007, the PA recruited 70,000 new government officials, while spending 70% of the Paris Conference foreign aid package on government salaries in 2008, and 58% of its entire foreign aid for 2001 on PA salaries. Through inciting violence and dependency culture, the PA exploits conflict to preserve its power and wealth.

In sum, Palestinian leadership has long been disingenuous. It wants not peace, but either a “Judenrein Palestine” or a conflict that will enable its corruption, power, and raison d’etre. If the world really wants a solution, it must stop blaming Israel, which has actually tried to establish a Palestinian state, and condemn the true motives of Palestinian leadership.

‘Experts’ Perpetuate Mideast and Palestinian Myths

No matter how many times the think-tank “experts” are proven wrong in their predictions regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, they keep promoting the same old myths.

They must think that the public has a very short memory.

The Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) last week unveiled its recommendations for Israeli policy in 2020. The men and women who make up its roster have impressive credentials in their fields.

Yet remarkably, they keep promoting policy positions that have been discredited again and again and again.

Myth #1: Palestinian Arab terrorism is caused by poverty.

In 2020, “Palestinian disgruntlement will be mainly channeled into international diplomatic moves against Israel, not to violent unrest — unless the economic situation in the territories worsens,” according to the JISS.

Call it the “Barack Obama Theory of the Causes of Terrorism.” In an interview on CBS’s This Morning on December 4, 2015, then-President Obama explained one view of what causes terrorism: “When people are not able to make a living or take care of their families,” they become “desperate,” and “as human beings are placed under strain, then bad things happen.”

Many of the modern-day Zionist pioneers involved in rebuilding the Land of Israel in the late 1800s and early 1900s likewise believed that the Palestinian Arabs would drop their opposition to the Jews once they saw how much they would benefit from Jewish immigration.

Jobs. Running water. Electricity. Trains. They were followed by refrigerators, telephones, mail service, and automobiles. Arabs from Syria, Egypt, and across the Jordan River poured into the country and enjoyed better jobs, better homes, and better food. But it didn’t stop them from hating Jews. In 1920, 1921, 1929, and continuously from 1936 to 1939, Palestinian Arabs shot, stabbed, and bombed Jews throughout the country, even when it undermined their own economic well-being.

John Podhoretz: Tom Cotton on Anti-Semitism

On January 9, Tom Cotton of Arkansas made a speech on the floor of the United States Senate about the shocking rise of anti-Semitic crimes in and around New York City. Everyone should read it. Here it is:
This holiday season, the ancient hatred of anti-Semitism cast a shadow over New York City during Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. The New York Police Department recorded at least nine separate attacks against Jews—more than one attack for each day of Hanukkah. New attacks are reported seemingly on a daily basis.

In Crown Heights, site of the deadly anti-Semitic riots incited by Al Sharpton in 1991, a group of men beat up an Orthodox Jew and attacked another with a chair.

In Williamsburg, another group terrorized an elderly Jewish man on the street. “Jew, Hitler burned you,” one of the criminals reportedly said. “I’ll shoot you.”

And just outside the city, in Rockland County, a man with a machete stormed a Hanukkah celebration in a rabbi’s home and injured five worshippers, leaving two in critical condition. The family of one victim, Josef Neumann, says he may never wake up from his coma.

These heinous attacks are part of a growing storm of anti-Semitism that has made Jewish Americans fearful to worship and walk the streets in their own communities. They come in the wake of the deadly rampage at a kosher market in Jersey City that left four innocent people dead, including a police detective. And of course, they come in the wake of the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in our nation’s history: the massacre of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh by a white supremacist.

According to the FBI, our country suffered a 37 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes between 2014 and 2018. According to the New York Police Department, the city suffered a 26 percent increase in anti-Semitic crimes in the past year alone. That increase is alarming enough. So is the fact that most hate crimes reported in New York are crimes against Jews. And while some of the increase is due to better reporting, much of it is not. Jewish Americans bear witness to this harsh reality.

Anti-Semitism is the ancient hatred, but today it can appear in new disguises. It festers on Internet message boards and social media. It festers in so-called Washington think tanks like the Quincy Institute, an isolationist blame-America-first money pit for so-called “scholars” who’ve written that American foreign policy could be fixed if only it were rid of the malign influence of Jewish money. It festers even on elite college campuses, which incubate the radical Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement—a movement to wage economic warfare against the Jewish state. These forms of anti-Semitism may be less bloody than street crime in New York, but they channel the same ancient hatred, the same conspiratorial and obsessive focus on the Jewish people.

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01/09 Links Pt2: The ICC and the Orwellian denial of Jewish presence in Israel; 'Pompeo drove a stake into a vampire by discarding Hansell memo'; To Stop Hateful Attacks On Jews, Oppose The Ideology Behind Them

From Ian:

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The ICC and the Orwellian denial of Jewish presence in Israel

This leads to the question of determining who was the first occupant, and implying that historical Jewish presence must be denied and further that, as a corollary, Palestinians need to prove that they were the first occupants. The consequence of this narrative is that anything “Jewish” is erased from the history of the country. For example, recently, Palestinian academics denied archeological evidence of Jews in Israel, part of a narrative to portray Jews as recent “invaders.” More generally, this creates an impossible historical conundrum, since the presence of an Arab population emerged as a notable community in the territory of Israel after the Muslim conquests of the 7th century and that, thereafter, this population always cohabited with the remaining Jewish and Christian communities after those conquests.

More specifically, the aspect of this broad narrative relating to the inherent illegality of Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria, implies a certain view of the history of the past century. One could even say that this narrative requires a sort of Orwellian rewriting of the past, to erase key moments that fit uneasily with such a narrative. Indeed, it requires a writing out the recognition of a Jewish right to self-determination that followed the 1917 Balfour Declaration. It ignores the conditions under which Judea and Samaria – as well as Gaza – were occupied respectively by Jordan and Egypt from 1947 to 1967. It ignores the circumstances of the 1967 Six Day War when Israel took control of this territory in a defensive war. It ignores the negotiated terms of the Oslo Agreements in relation to the distribution of authority in Judea and Samaria and the lack of final status of both borders and territories. The wide-sweeping argument of illegality per se also ignores the diverse nature of each individual presence in these territories, in terms of where it is, how it came into existence, what legal authority applies to it, etc.

As in a courtroom, the issue comes down to the identification of competing narratives before the international community acting as a Judge. Each side is therefore faced with the choice of which narrative from which to choose. Some narratives can be reconciled; others cannot. The fact remains that taking the position that settlements are illegal as such, serves a war-like narrative that denies any legitimacy to Jewish presence in the entire territory of Israel, as exemplified by numerous declarations, including a recent declaration by a Fatah official that “Palestinian people will not relinquish a grain of soil from the land of historical Palestine from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River.”

The December 20, 2019, announcement by the ICC Prosecutor that she is ready to open a formal investigation regarding “settlement-related activities” at its core, will undoubtedly be seen as a first narrative victory for those challenging Jewish presence in Israel. This can only be countered if another narrative is presented – not just in public discourse – but at the ICC itself, which provides genuine procedural opportunities for participation in the judicial debate, as we noted in an editorial last September.

'Pompeo drove a stake into a vampire by discarding Hansell memo'

Besides the practical issue of the ICC, multiple lawyers and officials stressed the importance of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement that the settlements are not inherently illegal.

George Mason University law professor and Kohelet legal director Eugene Kontorovich said Pompeo had killed a 1978 US legal memorandum declaring the settlements illegal so completely that it was like driving a stake through the heart of a vampire and burying it deep in the ground.
He reviewed arguments that try to frame the settlements as illegal, saying they were exposed as political by the bizarre “scope of illegality” that they try to use as a tool against Israel.

Kontorovich noted that the Fourth Geneva Convention often cited as the basis for viewing the settlements as illegal is meant to apply only in a time of war, not for more than 50 years and to every house ever built in an area where no one was living but which happens to be generally disputed.

Likewise, former Foreign Ministry director-general and current Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs president Dore Gold said it was “obscene” that the Geneva Convention discussion of the Nazis’ forced deportation of Jews to death camps was now being used against Jews who wish to build homes in their ancestral homeland.

The settlements started as an Israeli security measure to prevent invasions, and UN Security Council Resolution 242 explicitly authorized Israel to remain in control of portions of the disputed West Bank land, Gold said.

Historical 'Jewish presence' key to Israel's territorial claims, US envoy says

US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman reiterated on Wednesday that the Trump administration did not consider Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria as illegal per se, while also noting Israel's ancient ties to the land.

"Judea and Samaria – the name Judea says it all – is territory that historically had an important Jewish presence," Friedman said at a conference in Jerusalem organized by the Kohelet Policy Forum, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting Israel's sovereignty and strength as a Jewish democracy.

"As they say, it is the biblical heartland of Israel. It includes Hebron, where Abraham purchased a burial cave for his wife Sarah; Shiloh, where the tabernacle rested for 369 years before the Temple was built by King Solomon in Jerusalem; Beth El, where Jacob had his dream of the ladder ascending to heaven; Kasr al-Yahud, where Joshua led the Israelite nation into the Promised Land and John the Baptist baptized Jesus, and so many other famous locations.

"After the Ottoman Empire fell, Judea and Samaria, along with the rest of what was then referred to as Palestine, became subject to a British Trust which was subject to the Balfour Declaration, the terms of the San Remo Conference, and the League of Nations Mandate. In simple terms, the British were obliged to facilitate settlement of the Jewish people in this land. That's not to say that Jewish settlement was exclusive, that no one else had the right to live there. But Jews certainly did," he stressed, noting that during the 1967 Six-Day War Israel "recovers Judea and Samaria from Jordan" after it had been under Jordanian occupation for 19 years, after "almost no one recognized its [Jordan's] rights to the territory."

David Singer: Israel’s Next Election Must Focus on Judea and Samaria – not Bibi

Should another election deadlock occur for the third time in twelve months – the proposals presented by the respective parties for Judea and Samaria can be the basis for negotiations to form a Government of National Unity.

There will be critics who claim that Israel should not reveal its cards before negotiations actually begin with Arab interlocutors – that by doing so Israel will stymie itself from demanding more of Judea and Samaria.

All proposals should therefore include a rider that the area proposed is the minimum area of Judea and Samaria willing to be accepted in future negotiations and may be increased should changed circumstances to those now prevailing exist when negotiations are undertaken.

Political parties not prepared to inform voters of their proposals can expect to be given the thumbs down by the Israeli electorate. Those who are open and frank in presenting their proposals should find themselves rewarded by the electorate.

Politicians need to resist the temptation to focus their major attention on preventing Bibi – Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister – from becoming Israel’s next Prime Minister as he personally grapples with three indictments laid against him by Attorney General Mandelblit.

Israel’s national interest must incontrovertibly prevail.

Crunch time for Judea and Samaria has arrived – 100 years after reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Palestine was first proposed internationally at the 1920 San Remo Conference.

Realising that 100 year old dream should be Israel’s paramount objective.

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