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Wednesday, January 15, 2020

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:
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.”

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:
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.”


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.

Friday, January 10, 2020

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:
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.

Thursday, January 09, 2020

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:
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.

Thursday, December 05, 2019

12/05 Link Pt2: Bari Weiss: Inconvenient Murders; Corbyn fans accidentally admit he's racist; The Tikvah Podcast: Why No One Cares about Violence Directed at the Orthodox

From Ian:
Bari Weiss (published in the NYTs): Inconvenient Murders (free link)
Two years ago, a 27-year-old man named Kobili Traoré walked into the Paris apartment of a 65-year-old kindergarten teacher named Sarah Halimi. Mr. Traoré beat Ms. Halimi and stabbed her. According to witnesses, he called her a demon and a dirty Jew. He shouted, “Allahu akbar,” then threw Ms. Halimi’s battered body out of her third-story apartment window.

This is what Mr. Traoré told prosecutors: “I felt persecuted. When I saw the Torah and a chandelier in her home I felt oppressed. I saw her face transforming.”

One would think that this would be an open-and-shut hate crime. It was the coldblooded murder of a woman in her own home for the sin of being a Jew. But French prosecutors decided to drop murder charges against Mr. Traoré because he … had smoked cannabis.

If France’s betrayal of Sarah Halimi is shocking to you, perhaps you haven’t being paying much attention to what by now can be described as a moral calamity sweeping the West of which her story is only the clearest example. A crisis, I hasten to add, that’s perhaps less known because it has been largely overlooked by the mainstream press.

The most generous read of this enormous blind spot is that the story is not always straightforward; there have been some laudable steps to fight back. On Tuesday, for example, the French Parliament formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism when it passed a motion declaring anti-Zionism a form of Jew-hatred. Yet on the same day, more than 100 Jewish gravestones were found spray-painted with swastikas in a cemetery near Strasbourg — a potent reminder that governments are only as good as the culture and the people upholding them.

So allow me to put it plainly: We are suffering from a widespread social health epidemic and it is rooted in the cheapening of Jewish blood. If hatred of Jews can be justified as a misunderstanding or ignored as a mistake or played down as a slip of the tongue or waved away as “just anti-Zionism,” you can all but guarantee it will be.
The Tikvah Podcast: Avital Chizik-Goldschmidt & Batya Ungar-Sargon on Why No One Cares about Violence Directed at the Orthodox
A Jewish man hit in the face with a brick. An observant woman’s wig pulled off her head. An Orthodox mother and her baby assaulted in the street.

These incidents took place not in 19th-century Russia or pre-war Germany, but in Brooklyn—which has one of the densest Jewish populations in America—in 2019. The recent spike in anti-Semitic attacks in New York against the most visibly Jewish members of our community, the ultra-Orthodox, is a worrying sign in a nation experiencing rising levels of Jew-hatred. Yet the mainstream press and many on the political Left, groups otherwise worried about the supposed rise of racism and bigotry in America, seem blithely unconcerned.

In this podcast, Tikvah’s Jonathan Silver is joined by two Jewish journalists who have given these attacks the attention they deserve. Avital Chizik-Goldschmidt is the life/features editor at the Forward and Batya Ungar-Sargon is the Forward’s opinion editor. Founded in 1897, the Forward has long been a voice of the Jewish Left. Yet among progressives, few have been as honest and clear-eyed as our guests about the ideology that blinds the many on the Left to anti-Semitism directed at the ?aredi community. In this conversation, Chizik-Goldschmidt and Ungar-Sargon discuss the nature of the recent violence in Brooklyn and Monsey, what might be causing it, and why so many in the media have ignored this slow-moving pogrom.
Losing the Semantic War on ‘Palestine’
Referring to the Israel-Palestine conflict also reinforces the idea that the dispute is over land. Often misleadingly described as a fight by two peoples over one land, the reality is more complex, as it involves politics, psychology, history, and religion. In recent years, the Islamization of the conflict has eclipsed other factors, as many Palestinians reject the historical Jewish connection to the land and will not contemplate Jews living on Islamic territory or ruling over Muslims.

The most pernicious aspect of the reference to “Palestine” is to create a false equivalency with the sovereign nation of Israel. Israel is a democracy that shares the values and interests of the West. Palestine does not exist; it may one day in the future, but for now, there is only the Palestinian Authority, which is autocratic, denies its people their basic rights, and does not share the values or interests of the West.

The equation is also a political statement that accepts the position that a Palestinian state already exists. One could argue this is reasonable given that “Palestine” is recognized, according to Wikipedia, by 138 of the 193 member states of the United Nations. That legitimacy is undermined, however, by the fact that the European Union, the United States, and other democracies such as Australia, Japan, Canada, and Mexico do not recognize a Palestinian state.

This usage is another reason for concern about the campus situation. Professors are knowingly presenting their students with this specious formulation, with all the aforementioned implications. Students are ill-equipped to challenge this narrative on the merits and will likely be castigated as anti-Palestinian if they try.

It is unlikely anything could have been done to preempt the shift in language, and now it is yet another genie that cannot be put back in the bottle. The usage is widespread. Still, it is important to point out the bias, inaccuracy, and misleading nature of the word “Palestine” when used in the context of the conflict with Israel.

Friday, August 16, 2019

08/16 Links Pt2: Campus Lies About Israel; Max Blumenthal is a Useful Idiot; Jewish group exploits Holocaust memory to fight migrant detention crisis. It’s dishonest and unJewish

From Ian:
David French: Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib Partnered with Vicious Anti-Semites to Plan Their Trip to Israel
This should be a national scandal.

To the extent that I care at all about Israel blocking entry to two U.S. congresswomen who partner with anti-Semites who seek its destruction, I agree with critics who argue that Bibi Netanyahu should not appear to bow to Donald Trump’s tweeted demands and that blocking Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from visiting Israel handed them a short-term propaganda victory. But that’s not the most important part of the story.

The most important element of the story is the fact that two American congresswomen shunned a bipartisan congressional delegation to Israel to go on an independent trip to Israel sponsored by vicious anti-Semites. Another important element of the story is that, as of today, the mainstream media have whitewashed Omar and Tlaib’s vile associations.

Writing yesterday, the Washington Post said that “Omar and Tlaib’s trip to Jerusalem and the West Bank was planned by Miftah, a nonprofit organization headed by Palestinian lawmaker and longtime peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi.” The New York Times described it as an organization “headed by a longtime Palestinian lawmaker.” In its editorial, the New York Times editorial board identified it as a group “that promotes ‘global awareness and knowledge of Palestinian realities.’”

This is a whitewash. Thanks to a Twitter thread from the Washington Examiner’s Seth Mandel — who pointed to multiple additional sources — I started looking at the articles and views published on the Miftah website, and it was like peeling an onion of evil. There was layer upon layer of vile anti-Semitism.

First, the group actually published blood libel, posting an article that accused “the Jews [of using] the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.” When pro-Israel bloggers condemned the article, Miftah first claimed that the attacks against the piece were part of a “smear campaign” and minimized the reference to blood libel as merely “briefly addressed.”

It was just a light sprinkling of blood libel. Move along, nothing to see here.




Useful Idiot
Again and again, in The Management of Savagery, Blumenthal insists that Assad’s enemies in Syria are at least as bad as he is; that those enemies have been funded and abetted by the West; that other tyrants in the region are, likewise, no better than Assad; and that Assad and his circle have long been the targets of “armed Sunni Islamist groups,” presumably because Assad does not share their backward theocratic views. It is interesting to observe that whereas Blumenthal, prior to his Moscow trip, almost invariably stood up for Islamic theocracies, he now sees things the other way around and is willing to speak critically about “Islamists.” He is willing to do this, that is, so long as he can cast them as the tools or allies of the U.S., or the West generally, against Assad and Putin. The one constant in his view of these matters is that he has always been more critical of the U.S. and other Western liberal democracies than of any tyrannical Middle Eastern regime, whether theocratic or secular.

More than any other American writer who has reached his level of notoriety, Blumenthal has proven consistently to be too hard-left even for some of the banner names of the hard left. “Pro-Assad, pro-Maduro, pro-Putin—literally nothing redeemable about this fellow and his moronic second-campism,” tweeted the British writer James Bloodworth, an old Trotskyite and longtime Guardian contributor, on June 9. The good news is that more and more respectable members of the journalistic profession have woken up to the fact that Blumenthal’s work is simply not to be trusted—that he is not a legitimate reporter but a propagandist. The bad news is that he is still able to get his books published and still has readers who, heaven help them, take his writings seriously.

Perhaps even more striking to contemplate are the emails released by WikiLeaks in which Sidney Blumenthal proudly shared his son’s writings with Hillary Clinton, who responded by praising them and even passing some of them around to her State Department colleagues. This included the epilogue to his Israel-bashing Gomorrah. “I loved the epilogue but it stopped abruptly and I can’t pull up the rest so I’m anxiously awaiting for the rest,” Hillary Clinton wrote to Sidney. “Pls congratulate Max for another impressive piece. He’s so good.”

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is a Max Blumenthal!

Campus Lies About Israel
Review of 'Israel Denial' By Cary Nelson
Anti-Zionism is thus anti-Semitism’s moral salvation, its perfect disguise, its route to legitimation,” writes Cary Nelson in Israel Denial, a book about the faculty campaign against the Jewish state. In a year that’s been rife with an old hatred rearing its ugly head in new and myriad ways, it’s profoundly refreshing to see an academic so clear-headed about the overlapping nature of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The past decade has seen an increasing number of Jews publicly expressing their internal conflicts over Israel, with a growing number of progressive Jews identifying as anti-Zionist, and using their own membership in the community to suggest that hatred toward Jews and hatred toward the Jewish state are in no way linked.

This is a lie. Nelson, a professor emeritus of English and Jewish culture and society at the University of Illinois, explains how. “Anti-Semitism,” he notes, “enables and underwrites castigation of Israel whenever it is based on practices typical of other countries, not different from them.” Thus when Israel acts in an entirely unremarkable fashion, Jew-hatred inspires critics to react as if the Jewish state has committed unspeakable horrors.

What’s noteworthy about Nelson’s full-throated defense of Israel is that he is decidedly not on a mission to represent the country as perennially innocent. Rather, Israel Denial serves up all the nuance that dovish groups like J Street promise but never quite deliver. Early on in the book, Nelson makes quite clear how anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism intersect with each other. But he doesn’t shrink from informing the reader that anti-Semitism is “certainly not the only motivation fueling opposition to Israel.” He states that “Israel discriminates against segments of those under its control,” and that “Israel’s human rights record in areas over which it exercises control is imperfect.” But his broader point is that no country could ever live up to the impossible standards of progressive perfection expected of Israel.

Monday, July 08, 2019

07/08 Links Pt2: Jewish Identity excluded from Identity Politics; Hate and poison wrapped in cotton candy at the PalExpo; How Anti-Semitism in Britain’s Labour party made me feel Jewish again

From Ian:
Jewish Identity excluded from Identity Politics
Unlike their Israeli counterparts, US Jews seem to suffer from identity erosion influenced by declining observance, substandard Jewish education, and the sacralization of liberal politics. Though many claim their Jewishness requires them to reject Trump, they conflate identity with secular ideals that defy Jewish tradition. Liberals can dislike Trump for any reason or none at all, but they cannot claim their disdain is Judaically-mandated. Nor can they ignore how Trump has reversed his predecessor’s course of demeaning Israel, enabling Islamic radicalism, empowering Iran, and whitewashing leftist anti-Semitism.

Jewish history is replete with examples of those who rejected heritage and community. During the Hellenistic period, many emulated Greek culture and repudiated their ancestors, while during medieval times some accepted baptism and sought to lead others astray. The apostate Nicholas Donin in 1240 denounced the Talmud to Pope Gregory IX, inflamed Dominican ire, and instigated public disputations and Talmud burnings. Similarly, Johannes Pfefferkorn in 1509 advocated expelling Jews from German lands, kidnapping and baptizing their children, and burning Hebrew texts. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many joined European radical movements, abandoned Judaism, and discouraged education and observance.

Whereas yesterday’s apostates renounced religion and culture, today’s progressives claim fealty to tradition while falsely equating Jewish identity with non-Jewish priorities. They misuse terms like “tikkun olam” and “Mussar” to imply Judaic authenticity, though doing so only illustrates their distance from tradition. True tikkun olam involves the promotion of societal harmony through Halakhic observance, while authentic Mussar calls for ethical character development through Torah study, mitzvah observance, and personal introspection. Neither promotes ideals that are alien to Judaism.

Many American Jews today know little of their heritage and attempt to fill the gaps with agendas that bear no resemblance to the Judaism of their ancestors. Though Jewish voters can certainly support any policies their consciences may dictate, tradition does not require them to be liberal Democrats – or conservative Republicans.

As for President Trump, they can support or oppose him for any reason. But they cannot claim that hatred for the man reflects Jewish virtue – and certainly not in light of his support for Israel and condemnation of global anti-Semitism. Nor can they oppose him based on dubious claims of prejudice, especially when they ignore or excuse flagrant anti-Semitism within the Democratic Party. Whatever moral authority they claim to possess is only diluted when they condemn Jew-hatred where it doesn’t exist but grant a pass where it does. (h/t Yerushalimey)

Caroline Glick: Associated Press Targets Jewish Americans Who Support Israel
Last week, the Associated Press ran a hit job on a successful American businessman. Simon Falic and his two brothers own the Duty Free Americas chain, a private company that runs duty free stores in airports throughout the United States and Latin America.

They also happen to be Jewish. Simon Falic in particular is a powerful advocate for Jewish causes worldwide and for the State of Israel.

Through their family foundation, Simon Falic and his wife donate to dozens of organizations in Israel. The causes they support run the gamut from medical research to Jewish education. They support synagogue construction and refurbishment; archaeological excavations and preservation of archaeological sites; battered women’s shelters and day care centers; and the construction of new Jewish communities in Israel.

AP’s hit piece centers on Falic’s charitable work.

The title of the article gave the game away. It read, “U.S. duty free owners give millions to settlements.”

The obvious question is: so what? There is nothing even vaguely illegal about Falic’s charitable undertakings. And indeed, the article doesn’t accuse him of committing or facilitating any crime.

Instead, the article’s immediate purpose is to “out” Falic as a Zionist Jew and make his support for Jewish national rights and national self-determination in the Jewish homeland stink of fascism and zealotry.
David Collier: Hate and poison wrapped in cotton candy at the PalExpo
The ‘PalExpo’ came back to London for 2019. A large, two day ‘celebration’ of Palestinian culture, history and arts. It is extremely clever marketing. In theory there is nothing wrong with Palestinians holding an exhibition of culture, but the show was built for a far more sinister purpose than teaching dabke. There are two parts to the PalExpo and whilst the main exhibition hall had a range of activities from vase painting to date picking, a chain of political talks delivered the lies and the constant drumbeat of delegitimisation. Even the children’s games they had spread out pushed little but decontextualised propaganda. For example a ‘bowling alley’, where the skittles represent the wall, and they carried logos of companies that people are meant to boycott. A real game for kids:

And this is not to mention the exhibits on the settlements, checkpoints and so on. They even had a UN tent from 1949. It is an exercise in how to use cotton candy as a means of delivering poison.

The deception works well. Many of those I spoke to outside could not understand what there was to protest. It is just a ‘cultural exhibition’, they said. And asked ‘why are you protesting against it’? Did they not see who was speaking inside and what they were telling the audience? The reality is that many of these people do not realise how lost they are to the propaganda. When they hear the Palestinian narrative, when they look at the maps and listen to their ‘history’, they have so completely lost themselves inside it all, they see all opposition as nothing more than those ‘few’ in power trying to shut down the ‘truth’. It is all about the dead children and the hateful army that deliberately kills them. There is nothing beyond that.

This was not my first PalExpo. In 2017, they unceremoniously threw me, my wife and my son out following complaints about my presence from some attendees. We were mid-meal when we were told to leave. It is perhaps worth mentioning that since then, two of those involved have been expelled from the Labour party. In 2017 it was at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference centre. This year, the PalExpo was in Olympia London. The main organisers, Friends of Al Aqsa, had only taken part of Olympia for PalExpo and even then, the venue was far too large for the crowd. I am sure they will spin the numbers, but they were certainly well down on 2017. On Saturday they claimed it was over 10,000 which is absolute poppycock:

Apart from inside the main auditorium during the more important sessions, the place seemed sparsely populated. Many of the exhibits had no queue at all:

The cotton candy was for the families, almost exclusively Muslim, who had come to experience a ‘day out’ with their children. But the more serious stuff was taking place in one of the four rooms they were using for the talks. Inside these, the demographic was different, it was far more mixed with a majority of ‘white’ Corbynista types taking up the seats. It was almost as if two separate events were taking place. And whilst the anti-Israel media outlets are distributing images of the central hall during the final event because it was full, the truth is that the sparse numbers were visible almost everywhere:
Arab Knesset member calls for Israel boycott at Palestine Expo
Arab-Israeli Member of Knesset Yousef Jabareen called for a boycott of Israel while speaking at the Palestine Expo conference over the weekend.

The London-based conference that took place over Saturday and Sunday was the largest of its kind in Europe, focusing on Palestinian culture, history and arts, according to its website.

"The international community has all the tools to deal with war crimes – to boycott settlers, to boycott settlement products, to boycott international companies," said Jabareen at the conference, which was recorded by Kan.

"There needs to a more mass mobilization of our people on the ground, in Gaza but also in the West Bank," continued Jabareen. "[Israel] is exactly like the South African Bantustan. And it's a combination of apartheid and occupation."

Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan (Likud) tried to prevent Jabareen from participating in the conference, because his funding came from an organization with ties to BDS, the Middle East Monitor. Ultimately, Erdan was unsuccessful.

Friends of Al Aqsa, the organizer of the event, is also a supporter of boycotting Israel.

Saturday, June 01, 2019

06/01 Links: Ruthie Blum: Right from Wrong: Electing to defend Israel from Iran; Douglas Murray: Why this year’s al-Quds Day march could be different; Jerusalem: The Beating Heart of Jewish History

From Ian:
Ruthie Blum: Right from Wrong: Electing to defend Israel from Iran
Since replacing Olmert in 2009, then, Netanyahu has had to greenlight airstrikes on these convoys. Oh, and on Iranian targets in Syria, as well.

While on the subject of the Islamic Republic, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday tweeted a characteristic attack on the Trump administration, accusing it of “economic terrorism [that] is hurting the Iranian people and causing tension in the region.”

He began his assault with a lie, of course, claiming that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “long ago said we’re not seeking nuclear weapons – by issuing a fatwa [religious Islamic decree] banning them.”

The story of this alleged fatwa was created by Iranian honchos for consumption by Western patsies as far back as 2005, and was reiterated prior to every summit held with and about Tehran. Former US president Barack Obama not only lapped it up, but spread it repeatedly to justify his appeasement of and capitulation to the mullah-led regime.

In 2015, mere months before reaching the deal with the devil, Obama declared: “Since Iran’s Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, this framework gives Iran the opportunity to verify that its program is, in fact, peaceful.”

Yet, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) had written six exhaustive reports – one of which was released days before Obama made that statement – proving that such a fatwa never existed.

Luckily, Trump is not Obama. He believes what he sees, not the lying eyes of wishful thinkers and evildoers. And what he is witnessing are Iranian warships in the Persian Gulf threatening American interests.

Trump might not have needed a push from Netanyahu to grasp the gravity of a nuclear Iran, especially one with long-range ballistic missiles at the ready. But he appreciates the existence of a steadfast ally on the front lines, fending off Iran’s proxies on a daily basis.

Netanyahu’s adversaries at home and abroad are gleefully trying to portray Israel’s current political crisis as a failure of his leadership – or an attempt on his part to escape possible indictment – rather than what it is: an electoral system sorely in need of reform.

Indeed, Netanyahu’s critics refuse to acknowledge the real reason that he has been prime minister for the past decade. No other party chair on the scene at the moment inspires confidence that, under his or her watch, the country would be secure enough externally to withstand its internal strife.
Douglas Murray: Why this year’s al-Quds Day march could be different
This weekend might provide an interesting spectacle. On Sunday the annual al-Quds Day march sets off in London from outside the Home Office. Of course al-Quds Day is the day inaugurated by the late bigot Ayatollah Khomeini, and his initiative allows peace-loving Khomeinists to stroll along the streets of London (among other capital cities) calling for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Historically the event has always attracted controversy, not just because it is organised by the farcically misnamed ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ but because the speakers and organisers routinely make their intentions perfectly clear. Two years ago one of the speakers on the Al-Quds Day platform declared that ‘Zionists’ were responsible for the then very recent tragedy at Grenfell Tower. This is par for the course. The only people who would be attracted to the Al-Quds Day march are Muslim and non-Muslim anti-Semites. Those who it has attracted in the past have included the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn.

But the reason why this year is interesting is because of a rare positive development in the UK. In February I wrote about the British government’s announcement that it was intending to proscribe the terrorist group Hezbollah in its entirety. Up until then the British government had attempted to insist that there was a distinction between the political and military wings of Hezbollah, which is like pretending that there is a difference between the military and social action wings of ISIS.
Remember the Farhud, 78 years on
On the 78th anniversary of the Farhud on 1 and 2 June 1941, we recall the most traumatic event in the collective memory of Iraqi Jewry. It took place on the Jewish holiday of Shavuoth: 180 people were brutally murdered, thousands were wounded and raped, and shops and synagogues were plundered and destroyed. Here is an account prepared by the Museum of the Jewish People (Bet Hatfutsot) and reproduced in Haaretz:

The attack on the city's flourishing, peaceful Jewish community is usually referred to as the trigger for the Iraqi aliyah to Israel. But seldom is the question asked: How could such a pogrom have occurred in the first place in Iraq – a place where Jews had lived in peace for centuries, a country that did not seem to suffer anti-Semitic norms?

An examination of the historical background reveals the Farhud's causes: the opposing interests of the Iraqi government and the British Empire, Nazi Germany's influence, internal Arab movements, and a struggle between groups of Iraqi intellectuals. The unfortunate Jews were caught in the middle.

Historian Nissim Kazzaz has researched Iraqi Jewry and managed to put the Farhud in its historical context. Until the 1920s there was no significant evidence of anti-Semitism in Iraq. Old restrictions from the Ottoman era were abolished during the 20th century and the establishment of the British Mandate after World War I soon changed the Jews situation for the better.

Yet World War I had other outcomes as well. The Iraqi elite were introduced to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged text that was partly translated from the original Russian into Arabic. New movements were rising in that period in Iraq, some of which argued that as long as the Jews did not hold national inspirations, they were part of the Iraqi nation without obstacles.

Thursday, May 09, 2019

05/09 Links Pt1: The Middle East Anti-Peace Movement; Col Kemp: Trump is right – the Iran deal is dead, and it's time to contemplate the unthinkable

From Ian:
A Looming Crisis in the Mideast
After raining down some 600 rockets that killed four Israelis this past week, the Netanyahu government responded with overwhelming force, deploying jet fighters to carry out multiple air strikes, killing 23 Gaza residents including a pregnant woman, according to Palestinian Authority officials. (The pregnant women and her child, however, are now confirmed as having been killed by a Palestinian rocket that feel short.)

And, so, the cycle of violence makes another cruel revolution. What makes the events of the past week different from earlier rockets-and-retaliation episodes? The reaction of Arab intellectuals and other thought leaders in Muslim world.

Consider the tweet of Dr. Turki Al-Hamad, a well-known Saudi author and thinker. He tweeted: "It's a repeating loop: rockets [are fired] from Gaza into Israel, Israel bombs [Gaza], someone or other mediates, the fighting stops – and the common Palestinian folks pay the price. This is 'resistance,' my friend. Iran and Turkey are in trouble, and the Palestinians are paying the price."

Note his use of scare quotes around resistance and his willingness to blame Iran and Turkey, two Muslim-majority nations, instead of the Jewish state. This marks a real rhetorical change.

And many influential Arab voices echoed the thoughts of Dr. Al-Hamad.

Muhammad Aal Al-Sheikh, a frequent contributor to the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah, tweeted: "The Persian ayatollahs have instructed their servants, Hamas, to escalate [the conflict] with Israel, and they obeyed. The result is seven Palestinians dead, versus one Israeli wounded. [The death toll increased after his tweet.] The Persians are tightening the pressure on the U.S. and Israel in retaliation for Trump's decision, and the victims are the people of Gaza."
Khaled Abu Toameh: The Middle East Anti-Peace Movement
[The Jordanian mayor] went on to say that he believes in the "liberation of Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River" – meaning that he supports the elimination of Israel.

The campaign against the Jordanian mayor is the direct result of anti-Israel incitement in Jordan and most of the Arab and Islamic states. While some of the leaders of these countries may appear to be relatively moderate in their views towards Israel, their people continue to reject any form of normalization with the "Zionist enemy."

For decades, Arab and Muslim leaders have been radicalizing their people on a daily basis against Israel. They have delegitimized Israel in the eyes of their people to a point where they can no longer be seen talking to or making peace with Israelis.

One is left wondering how any Arab leader would accept any peace plan with Israel when a mayor is being widely condemned and shamed for being caught on camera in the company of Israelis.

In order to achieve peace with Israel, Arab and Muslim leaders need to start preparing their people for peace, and not inciting them against Israel.

The War for the Golan Heights
When Syrian and Egyptian forces launched simultaneous attacks on Israel on Yom Kippur of 1973, the IDF found itself woefully unprepared. The high command, just ten days before the war began, finally acted on repeated warnings of imminent war and ordered Colonel Avigdor Ben-Gal to move his tank brigade from the Sinai to the Golan Heights; the last units were still arriving when the fighting began. Even with Ben-Gal’s tanks, Israel had a single, understrength division on the Golan, which faced an onslaught from three battle-ready Syrian armored divisions. Abraham Rabinovich tells the story of how Ben-Gal’s troops held the line:

The Syrians calculated that Israeli reserve units could not reach the Golan in less than 24 hours. Damascus expected to capture the Heights before then. Until Israel’s reserves joined the battle, the main burden of holding the enemy at bay would fall upon young conscripts—draftees—and their regular army commanders.

Informed by [his superiors] at 10 a.m. on Yom Kippur of the warning [that Syria would attack], Ben-Gal summoned his battalion and company commanders by radio to a meeting at the main army base in the northern Golan, Nafakh. . . . The officers would meet again at 2 p.m., by which time the situation might be clearer. With that, the brigade commander drove to the front. . . . The officers were just arriving for the 2 p.m. meeting when MiGs dropped bombs on the camp. “Everyone to your tanks,” Ben-Gal shouted. A sentry already lay dead at the gateway. . . .

After days of [intense fighting], Ben-Gal’s control was unraveling as officers were hit and orders not passed on. There appeared to be no alternative but to have the tanks fall back. Even if they managed to outrace the Syrians to a new line, however, they would not be able to hold it for more than half an hour, he estimated, in the absence of proper defensive positions. He decided on a last desperate bid to shore up the collapsing line. . . .

The bid worked, and the remnants of the brigade managed to hold the northern Golan for five days, at which point reinforcements arrived and the Syrians retreated. Three-quarters of Ben-Gal’s tank crews were killed or wounded; he managed to get the survivors a one-day respite before beginning a counterattack.

Thursday, April 18, 2019

04/18 Links Pt1: The False ‘Nakba’ Narrative; The UN and Israel in the Nikki Haley Era; PLO Position Paper Confirms There's No Partner for Peace

From Ian:
The False ‘Nakba’ Narrative
The term “Nakba,” originally coined to describe the magnitude of the self-inflicted Palestinian and Arab defeat in the 1948 war for Israel’s survival, has now become a synonym for Palestinian victimhood — with failed aggressors transformed into hapless victims and vice versa. Israel should do its utmost to uproot this false image by exposing its patently false historical basis.

Nowadays, the failed Palestinian Arab attempt to destroy the state of Israel at birth, and the attendant flight of some 600,000 Palestinian Arabs, has come to be known internationally as the Nakba.

This, ironically, was the opposite of the original meaning of the term, when it was first applied to the Arab-Israeli conflict by the Syrian historian Constantin Zureiq. In his 1948 pamphlet The Meaning of the Disaster (Ma’na al-Nakba), Zureiq attributed the Palestinian/Arab flight to the stillborn pan-Arab assault on the nascent Jewish state, rather than to a premeditated Zionist design to disinherit the Palestinian Arabs:

When the battle broke out, our public diplomacy began to speak of our imaginary victories, to put the Arab public to sleep and talk of the ability to overcome and win easily — until the Nakba happened … We must admit our mistakes … and recognize the extent of our responsibility for the disaster that is our lot.

Zureiq subscribed to this critical view for decades. In a later book, The Meaning of the Catastrophe Anew (Ma‘na al-Nakbah Mujaddadan), published after the June 1967 war, he defined that latest defeat as a “Nakba” rather than a “Naksa” (or setback), as it came to be known in Arab discourse.

In 1948, the term “Nakba” was glaringly absent from Arab and/or Palestinian discourse. Its first mention — in George Antonius’s influential 1938 book The Arab Awakening — had nothing to do with the (as yet non-existent) Arab-Israeli conflict, but rather with the post-World War I creation of the modern Middle East (“The year 1920 has an evil name in Arab annals: it is referred to as the Year of the Catastrophe or, in Arabic, Aam al-Nakba”).

The UN and Israel in the Nikki Haley Era
For decades, U.S. presidents were intimidated by the argument that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would trigger violent explosions throughout the Muslim world. Trump and key colleagues doubted this, and they turned out to be right. Violent reaction in the Palestinian territories was limited, and there was virtually none elsewhere in Arab and Islamic countries.

In international relations, challenging longstanding beliefs often frightens those who embrace conventional wisdom. This embrace makes such beliefs conventional, but it does not always make them wise.

In her speeches, votes, and actions at the UN and in Washington, Nikki Haley helped usher in a new era in U.S. policy toward the Arab–Israeli conflict. She upheld the prediction she made after her first UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East: “I am here to say the United States will not turn a blind eye to this anymore. I am here to emphasize that the United States is determined to stand up to the UN’s anti-Israel bias.”

It’s a new era because Haley challenged and disproved some important basic assumptions about Middle East policy. It turns out that the United States can support Israel strongly and still work closely with Arab states to promote common interests such as opposing Iranian threats. The Arab street is not narrowly Israel-minded and is not as volatile as long believed. The sky won’t fall if the U.S. stops funding UN sacred cows such as UNRWA. Even if future U.S. administrations revert back to the policies of the past, these old assumptions will remain disproven. That is a valuable accomplishment that will last long after Nikki Haley’s UN tenure.
Ruthie Blum: Don’t worry about what the neighbors might think
In addition, the letter went on, “[Annexation] will create intense divisions in the United States and make unwavering support for Israel and its security far more difficult to maintain.”

This plea, dripping with nauseating false piety, would be laughable if it weren’t so vile.

In the first place, the only “undermining” and “eradicating” going on in Israel are being done by the PA. Secondly, the BDS movement uses any excuse to engage in “efforts to isolate and delegitimize” the Jewish state. That’s its whole purpose, of course.

Third, it is a complete lie that annexation would divide the United States and make its support for Israel “more difficult to maintain.”

America is already divided, as is Israel, between those who favor appeasing enemies while reprimanding friends, and those who espouse the opposite view. Jewish liberals and Israeli leftists who fear offending murderous Palestinians and hateful boycotters belong in the former category.

To be fair, Jews have a long-standing tradition of identifying with their captors. Many Israelites rescued from Egyptian bondage complained to Moses that conditions under slavery were better than their trek through the desert to arrive at the Promised Land. If those whiners had had their way, we would not be celebrating the Passover holiday that begins this Friday.

The other tendency of Diaspora liberals – to flinch whenever Israel asserts its heritage and power – stems from “mar’it ayin,” a concept in Halachah (Jewish law) according to which even legitimate actions are prohibited when they could be misconstrued by other people as impermissible. In other words, it’s the Jewish legalization of worrying about what the neighbors might think, and changing one’s behavior to stave off possible disapproval.

Thankfully, Netanyahu disregards mar’it ayin when making decisions for the country, whether Jews across the ocean like it or not.

Friday, April 05, 2019

04/05 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: From the Golan to Brexit, 'compromise' is a fig-leaf for surrender; The Palestinian Arabs, the West's useful idiots

From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: From the Golan to Brexit, 'compromise' is a fig-leaf for surrender
It is particularly stomach-churning for the British to lecture Israel with false allegations about breaking international law given Britain’s appalling history of doing precisely that in pre-Israel Palestine. Moreover, the parallels between what it did then and what’s happening in Britain now are striking.

In both cases, British politicians betrayed their most solemn promises. In Palestine, the British broke their promise to facilitate Jewish immigration; over Brexit, MPs are intent on breaking their election promises to honor the referendum result.

In Palestine, the British tore up international law by rewriting the Mandate to carve out from the homeland promised to the Jews territory they then offered to the Arabs bent on blocking that Jewish homeland. And currently, MPs are trying to block Brexit by tearing up parliamentary rules and the constitutional balance between government and back-benchers.

Both these British betrayals have entailed pernicious consequences. Rewarding the Arab aggressors incentivized the war against the Jewish homeland, which continues against Israel to this day.

And if Brexit is stopped, the political cataclysm that will probably ensue makes it more likely that a Corbyn-led government will come to power.

The prospect of the Marxist, terrorist-supporting, antisemitism-facilitating Corbyn becoming prime minister should terrify anyone who cares about Western security, freedom and the rule of law.

Which leads to a further reflection. Many have pointed out that, throughout history, all who have tried to destroy the Jewish people have not only failed but ended up being destroyed themselves.

Perfidious Albion betrayed the Jewish people when it closed the doors of Palestine to European Jews attempting to flee Nazi Europe. It thus connived at the slaughter of the Holocaust.

The Jewish people not only survived, but out of the ashes of that catastrophe have created a vigorous, flourishing and optimistic country. Now Britain may be in the process of destroying itself. Go figure.
The Importance of the Golan Heights
Ever since the inconclusive end to the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, analysts have predicted another round was bound to happen sooner than later. Iran is now able to extend the Lebanese front against Israel to Syria. For Iranian leaders—pledged to eventually wiping Israel off the map—their expanded ring around northern Israel and the Golan provides an expanded opportunity to strike at Israel should the Jewish state act against their nuclear program. Had Israel given up the Golan Heights in previous negotiations, Iran would also be poised on the strategic high ground, putting Israel at an even greater disadvantage.

Russia sees value in the Golan Heights for quite a different reason from Iran. They are anxious to cash in on international reconstruction funds meant to rebuild Syria. The problem is that the United States won't allow funding to flow through Assad. Putin is also interested in increasing his Middle East portfolio and standing. He likely sees the possibility of hosting a peace conference with Israel and Syria as a panacea. The process itself would legitimize Assad's rule in the eyes of the international community, open up the spigots for international funding, and increase Russia's regional role. More recently, Putin indicated he would like to play host to Palestinian-Israeli peace talks.

Israel, however, already reached several agreements regarding how far Russia would keep Iranian or Iran-backed forces from Israel but has proven incapable of enforcing them. Until Iran is removed from Syria, or until a prohibitive cost is imposed on Israel, Jerusalem is likely to keep treating Syria as an extension of Iranian territory, which means one can expect Israel to continue to strike at Iranian logistical lines, weapons transfers, and at any high-ranking member of the IRGC, Quds Force, or Hezbollah who feels lucky enough to poke his head up.

Leading Republican senators will try to pass a resolution in support of the Trump administration's recognition of Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights. This effort is currently being led by Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.). The president, however, has the right to proclaim the territory as Israeli on behalf of America. But as seen with President Trump's decision to undo the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran, what is given by one American president can be taken away by another.
Giulio Meotti: The Palestinian Arabs, the West's useful idiots
We are used to calling the Palestinian Arabs' Western supporters “useful idiots”, those voluntarily embarked in the sea of pro-Palestinian propaganda. We might do well to rethink the roles. It may be possible that the Palestinian Arabs are the West's useful idiots in its war against Israel.

The Palestinian Arabs are used only when Israel can fit the role of the “oppressor” and the “occupier”. The same screaming headlines didn't appear when in Gaza, for a couple of weeks, the population protested against Hamas in the biggest demonstrations in its twelve years of Islamic dictatorship, with thousands of Palestinian Arabs taking to the streets to protest against living conditions.

Hamas arrested dozens of protesters, beat activists and violently repressed local media covering the riots. The marches on the border with Israel were so “spontaneous”", as the media around the world have defined them, that during the rallies inside Gaza the border was deserted.

Hamas was busy repressing its own population. A symbol of protest was a woman, shot in a video that has become viral: “The children of Hamas' leaders have houses and jeeps and cars, they can get married, while ordinary people have nothing, not even a piece of bread," she said, with a fearlessness born of desperation.

Thursday, April 04, 2019

04/04 Links Pt1: Inside the 37-year search for IDF soldier Zachary Baumel; Survey: Majority of Israelis see healthy Arab-Jewish relations; Iran responsible for deaths of 608 American troops in Iraq

From Ian:
Israel’s Unfailing Commitment to Bring Its Soldiers, and Their Remains, Home to Their Families
Yesterday, the news broke that the remains of the IDF soldier Zachary Baumel—declared missing-in-action in 1982 during the First Lebanon War—have been returned to Israel. While Baumel has long been presumed dead, his name is well known to Israelis, who do not easily forget those who have been captured or gone missing while defending their country. The IDF even employs a special unit, known as EITAN, to find them, and it investigates cases going all the way back to the Jewish state’s first war. Matti Friedman, writing before the return of Baumel’s corpse, describes the unit’s operations:

In the offices [of] EITAN, there are 95 files still open from the 1948 war. A team of about 50 active researchers is tasked with closing them—a hybrid outfit of detective-historians, not regular soldiers but rather reservists called up for a few weeks a year. In their real lives, some of the researchers are academic historians. Others are policemen or computer programmers. The necessary personality type ranges from patient to pedantic. They might spend years on one case. The rule is that they can never give up. . . .

In the Jewish tradition, families must have a grave where they can mourn, explained [Nir Israeli, the unit’s commander]. And they need closure. “This is a commitment we make to our soldiers: we sent this person, and we have to bring him home.” Sometimes [Israeli] tries to demonstrate this value by bringing young soldiers along in his search parties. In a recent sweep to find the remains of four Givati Brigade soldiers who went missing in a skirmish with the Egyptians in 1948, for example, he used soldiers from the modern-day incarnation of the same military unit. (They found traces of the battle, such as old bullets, but no bodies.) . . .

Each file is periodically opened and reviewed for clues—something that might be apparent to a fresh pair of eyes, a hint that that might have evaded researchers in the past. . . . EITAN researchers manage to close a few files a year. In May, for example, after years of searching, they found the body of a thirty-four-year-old fighter, Libka Shefer, who was killed in an Egyptian assault against a kibbutz in southern Israel in 1948. Seventy years after her death, she was finally buried under her own name.

Fallen MIA IDF Commander Returns Home
Sergeant 1st Class Zachary Baumel’s last words to his parents were “Don’t worry, everything is okay, but it looks like I won’t be home for a while.” After 37 years, Sergeant 1st Class Zachary Baumel has finally returned home.

In 1982, during the First Lebanon War, Sergeant First Class Zachary Baumel, an IDF tank commander, went missing in action (MIA). Today, we finally brought this fallen soldier home to Israel for a proper burial.

For decades the Israeli intelligence community and the MIA Allocation Team have undertaken various intelligence, research, and operational efforts in order to locate and recover the remains of those who are MIA.

The IDF’s Military Intelligence Directorate initiated Operation Bittersweet Song, and following a month’s long process which was just completed in the past few days, the body of Sergeant First Class Zachary Baumel was located, identified, and recovered.

Battle of Sultan Yacoub
On the night of June 10, 1982, the IDF’s 362nd Armored Battalion entered the Beqaa Valley in the eastern region of the Sultan Yaaqoub sector in Lebanon. The Israeli battalion found itself facing the Syrian 1st Armored Division alongside forces from Palestinian terrorist organizations.
Sgt. 1st Class Zachary Baumel has returned home


Inside the 37-year search for IDF soldier Zachary Baumel
Over the course of nearly 37 years, Israeli intelligence officers searched for the remains of fallen tank commander Zachary Baumel, who went missing in the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yacoub against the Syrian army in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

This week, nearly four decades later, Sgt. First-Class Baumel’s body was returned to Israel and will be brought to a Jewish burial at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl military cemetery on Thursday evening.

In Israel, the bittersweet news was greeted with a sense of awe and pride at the lengths the military was prepared to go for its fallen soldiers. Baumel’s father, Yona, died in 2009 without learning of Zachary’s fate, but the rest of his family, including his 90-year-old mother Miriam, now have some form of closure.

“We want all IDF soldiers to know that when they enlist, the State of Israel will do everything it takes, if they — heaven forbid — fall captive or go missing, in order to bring them home,” Lt. Col. Nir Israeli, the head of the Israel Defense Forces’ missing soldiers unit, told The Times of Israel Wednesday.

In total, there are 176 IDF soldiers who are designated as killed-in-action but whose exact burial places are not known, the majority of them — 95 — from the 1948 War of Independence, Israeli said.
Searching for Israel's Missing Soldiers for 37 Years
In the world of intelligence, the saying goes, reality often exceeds the imagination, and yet – the operation to return Zachary Baumel’s remains to Israel, in a mission that spanned the globe, can easily be considered one of the most impressive in the country’s history.

Israeli officials have long known where Baumel was buried. The matter of our missing soldiers was also raised on many occasions with foreign governments, primarily in the midst of peace talks with Syria and the Palestinians. After the Oslo Accords were signed, Yasser Arafat even transferred one of Baumel’s dog tags to Israel, but nothing more ever materialized. Syria has always said it would agree to resolve the mystery, but only parallel to receiving the Golan Heights in return, as part of a peace agreement between the countries.

A little over a year ago, the issue was again raised by then-Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. If the reports are true that Russia was involved in the operation, we can assume that Lieberman spoke with his counterpart in the Russian defense ministry, Sergei Shoigu. It appears that this time the response was different, and the Russians agreed to lend a hand. Either way, Israeli officials began working vigorously. In a series of intelligence operations, the Military Intelligence Directorate and Mossad pinpointed Baumel’s exact resting place. All the information was gathered into a classified file under the codename “Bittersweet Song.”
Russia, Syria and the Return of a Fallen IDF Soldier
37 years after Israel's first war with Lebanon in 1982, the Israeli Defense Forces said on Wednesday that the body of fallen soldier Zachary Baumel had been transferred to Israel. Baumel's funeral will be held at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl military cemetery on Thursday night at 7:00pm local time. The IDF spokesperson said Baumel's body was returned aboard an El Al flight through an anonymous third country intermediary in operation undertaken by Israel's intelligence agencies. Five more Israeli soldiers went missing in Lebanon on June 11, 1982 during the Sultan Yaaqub battle including Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, whose whereabouts remain unknown. 20 Israeli soldiers were killed during the exchange of attacks with Syrian forces at the start of the First Lebanon War. Baumel's burial is set to take place this week.


Wednesday, April 03, 2019

04/03 Links Pt2: Sorry You’re Offended, But ‘Palestine’ Does Not Exist; Trump exposes United Nations as world's epicentre for Jew-hatred; 3 liberal US Jewish groups back anti-BDS congressional resolution

From Ian:
Sorry You’re Offended, But ‘Palestine’ Does Not Exist
In progressive America, an official elected in a predominantly Jewish district in the country’s largest city can be punished for asserting an indisputable historical fact if it happens to offend the sensibilities of hard-left activists. In this case, Kalman Yeger, a councilman from Brooklyn, in a back-and-forth about Rep. Ilhan Omar, tweeted that, “Palestine does not exist. There, I said it again. Also, Congresswoman Omar is an antisemite. Said that too.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio quickly issued an ultimatum to Yeger demanding he apologize, or else. After he refused, NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson booted Yeger from—what I assume is a wholly useless—city immigration committee. “I found Council Member Yeger’s comments completely unacceptable…” Johnson explained. “They were dehumanizing to Palestinians and divisive, and have no place in New York City.”

Yeger’s statements might be debatable—perhaps some of you don’t find Omar’s numerous attacks on American Jews anti-Semitic—but the other contention is a historical and present-day reality. Despite this, nearly every media story covering the kerfuffle frames the councilman’s contention about the status of the West Bank and Gaza as some kind of appalling attack on decency. What other Howard Zinn-like historical fantasies must we adopt to participate in debate?

“Now, if he comes out and he apologizes, and says, ‘Look, I was wrong and I realize what I did was hurtful and I’ve got to change,’ different discussion,” de Blasio said. Pointing out that there’s no nation called Palestine might be provocative and argumentative, but the contention is no less accurate because of the emotional reaction it provokes. The American left’s censorship mission creep already deems numerous words and ideas off limits if enough people act insulted. Now, they’re trying to impose limits on speaking out about incontestable geopolitical truths.

Where exactly is your ‘Palestine,’ Mayor de Blasio?
He did not play by the rules, as dictated by the Democrats, so New York City Councilman Kalman Yeger has been bounced off the council’s immigration committee.

That’s his punishment for saying “there is no Palestine,” and then refusing to apologize, and if they could send him to a Soviet-Mao style “re-education camp,” they would.

We don’t have reorientation gulags here yet, but it’s coming, and already exists on campus. Free speech for me, but not for thee.

One man speaks up and it’s like he disturbed a wasps-nest.

Mayor de Blasio and other Democrats felt that Yeger’s tweet was an insult to Palestinians everywhere – though in real life there are Palestinians nowhere.

We touched on this a while back in the column, “Even the Beatles preceded the Palestinians,” and here is part of what we wrote:

“Say this for Arafat, he knew how to put one over. He knighted himself and the rest of his gang ‘Palestinian’ and the world said, sure, why not?

“Anything that antagonizes the Jews is a sale.

“Since then…since 1964…the ‘Palestinians’ have been the world’s number one concern, even though they have been nothing but a headache and exist in no history books. Nothing to be found about them before June 2, 1964. That’s when the Arab League certified them as the PLO.
Twitchy: Manhole cover proves that Palestine’s sewage system is older than the ‘Zionist terrorist illegal occupation’
All we know about Abbas Hamideh is what we learned from his Twitter bio, which states that he doesn’t compromise on one inch of Palestinian land, and also apparently lives in Cleveland.

If that’s true, we’re guessing someone else took this picture proving that Palestine’s sewage system predates the illegal Israeli occupation of the land.

The Jerusalem Post’s Lahav Harkov looked into the history on display here and found some inconvenient truths.


Our next exhibit: that Post-it Note that says “Palestine” stuck on a world map in Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s office.

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

03/26 Links Pt1: Daniel Pipes and the Israel Victory Project; Caroline Glick: Why Trump Recognized Israeli Sovereignty over the Golan Now; IDF Takes Down Dozens of Hamas Terrorist Targets in the Gaza Strip

From Ian:
Daniel Pipes and the Israel Victory Project
Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank, is considered one of the world’s foremost analysts on the Middle East and Muslim history. Since 1994, the Forum, through its various projects, has promoted American interests in the Middle East and protected Western values from Middle Eastern threats.

The Israel Victory Project, which calls for a Palestinian defeat in the place of what the Forum considers failed diplomacy, is today the Forum’s most high-profile campaign.

Explains Pipes, “The reigning assumption for 30 years has been that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be resolved through negotiations, diplomacy mediation, compromise and painful concessions. It has not worked.” Rather, Pipes, suggests “a completely different approach, which looks at the historical record and notes that conflicts generally end when one side gives up.” A loss on the battlefield, says Pipes, does not necessarily mean defeat.

“The Six-Day War in 1967 was perhaps the greatest military victory in recorded history, but it did not lead to a sense of defeat. The only way for the conflict to be resolved is for one side to give up.”

Pipes points out that his proposal is not anti-Palestinian.

“If the Palestinians give up, they would gain even more than Israelis because the Israelis live in a functioning advanced, democratic, law-abiding country; Palestinians live in something quite worse. Only when the Palestinians abandon their irredentist claim on Israel can they make progress and build their polity, economy, society and culture.” Any resolution of the conflict, says Pipes – whether Israeli sovereignty on the West Bank, complete withdrawal from it, or something in between – is better achieved once the Palestinians accept Israel as the Jewish state.

Caroline Glick: Why Trump Recognized Israeli Sovereignty over the Golan Now
Former Obama administration officials, and the left-leaning Israeli media, interpreted President Donald Trump’s March 21 decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights as a bid to help Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral prospects ahead of Israel’s Knesset elections on April 9.

But while the timing of the announcement — formalized Monday — may help Netanyahu and his Likud Party vis a vis his main opponent, former Israel Defense Force Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and his “Blue and White” party, in all likelihood the timing of Trump’s statement was a function of recent developments in Syria.

The war in Syria broke out in 2011. It pitted the regime of Bashar Assad and his sponsors – the Iranian regime and Iran’s proxy forces, including Hezbollah and Shiite militias manned by Afghans, Pakistanis and Iraqis — against Sunni opposition forces, largely dominated by jihadist groups.

During the Obama administration, the U.S. shifted from diffident support for the Sunni rebels through CIA programs and support for Turkish operations to train and equip them, to opposition to the Sunnis and support for Iran. The shift in U.S. policy owed to the rise of Islamic State as the dominant Sunni force in Syria in 2014, and to U.S. efforts to appease Teheran in the framework of U.S. nuclear talks with Iran ahead of the 2015 nuclear deal.

From Israel’s perspective, the main threat the war posed was the prospect that through the regime, Iran would take direct control over Syria and use it, along with Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, to wage a major war against Israel. To thwart that prospect, Israel supported Sunni militia fighting the regime along its border in the Golan Heights, and conducted repeated airstrikes against Iranian targets, particularly weapons shipments in Syria that were destined for Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

In 2015, the strategic balance of powers in Syria shifted decisively in favor of Iran and Assad with the arrival of Russian forces. Russia’s decision to engage directly in the war on behalf of the Iranian side meant that Assad would survive.
Trump was right to recognize Israel’s claim to the Golan Heights
Amid all of the breathless commentary on a report from special counsel Robert Mueller that has yet to see the light of day, the real news today came at the joint press conference between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

When the two leaders confirmed reports that the United States will recognize Israel’s right to the Golan Heights, they also struck a blow for real-world facts on the ground being superior to decades of diplomatic fiction.

When Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Tom Cotton, R-Ark., early this year urged Trump to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over parts of the Golan Heights, I argued: “Control of the heights is tremendously important for the safety of people living in the northern part of Israel. If hostile powers control the heights, they can use the advantages of the elevation to rain attacks on the Israelis below. That’s exactly what Syrian artillery did to Israeli farmers in the 1950s and 1960s. Israel particularly fears Iranian presence on the heights through its proxy, the terrorist organization Hezbollah.”

Israel has controlled key portions of the Golan Heights since capturing them during the Six-Day War in 1967. That war began after repeated attacks on Israel, including from the Golan Heights, by Palestinian terrorists, followed by Egypt’s blockade of an Israeli port and by a joint mobilization of most of Israel’s Arab or Islamic neighbors. Acting in defense, Israel crushed the joint militaries of those nations and kept captured territories so as to make new aggression against Israel far less likely to meet success.

Israel went from control to full annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981, with no effective pushback from Syria since. In effect, therefore, all Trump did on Monday was recognize a territorial reality in effect for nearly 52 years and a political reality in effect for 38. Those are among the reasons why, as Ben Hubbard reported in the New York Times, the official recognition of Israeli sovereignty there “was met across much of the Arab world with a shrug.”


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