Please don't rock the boat. Don't stray from the path that has proven to be effective. Too many have died, too many lives ruined. Please,stay with the initiative that has ushered in one of the most peaceful times in recent history.
Why did previous administrations fail while the last administration slowed the cycle of violence and offered unprecedented hope for a true and lasting peace?
1. Examining the claims. Palestinian negotiator's claims were generally accepted outright, without much research into their validity, or consideration for the inevitable consequences of accepting such demands. This led to negotiations that started at a place much too steep for Israeli negotiators to even consider realistic talks. A basic and objective check on these claims would have quickly resulted in the nullification of many of them.
For example the demand for "the right of return". Well, why was it that so many Arabs left Israel in the first place? Were any even forced out? Why did Arab nations require the incoming refugees to remain in refugee camps, kept in squalid conditions, while other refugees have long ago been settled and rebuilt their lives?
Even the basic claim to "restore" the "Palestinian State" raises many red flags. Was there ever really a Palestinian Arab nation? Did they ever have rulership anywhere? Or perhaps it is all a pretext to simply gain valuable land? Perhaps the "poor Palestinian people" cause, is a multi billion dollar money maker where leaders like Arafat, Abbas and Hamas get filthy rich by inciting others to violence, continuously fueling the flames of hatred, while staying safely behind the scenes. Have you checked why they are sitting on billions of dollars? Why PA schools books are filled with antisemitism?
#OTD 1 year ago, US released its ‘Peace to Prosperity’ Plan, the most detailed & realistic plan for peace, taking account #Israel’s security concerns & connection to the land, with #Palestinian aspirations. I hope Biden Adm. builds on this, not reverts to failed policies of past. pic.twitter.com/qb8fAqGABq
Israel's March 23 elections are being presented as a simple referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The media and Netanyahu's opponents would have us believe that there is no ideological struggle. It's all just a question of whether you love or hate Bibi.
But this is untrue. The coming elections are primarily about ideology. To understand why this is the case, we need to look no further than President Joe Biden's appointments.
This week the White House announced that Maher Bitar has been appointed to serve as the senior director for Intelligence at the National Security Council. The position is one of the most powerful posts in the US intelligence community. The senior director is the node to which all intelligence from all agencies flows. He decides what to share with the President. And in the name of the President, he determines priorities for intelligence operations and collection.
The senior director of intelligence also determines what information the US intelligence community will share with foreign intelligence services. Likewise, he decides how to relate to information that foreign intelligence agencies share with the Americans.
As one former senior national security council member explained, "The senior director for intelligence controls the information everyone sees. And by controlling information, he controls the conversation."
Usually, the sensitive position is reserved for a CIA officer who is detailed to the National Security Council. Bitar, however, is not an intelligence professional. He is an anti-Israel political activist.
A blast outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi on Friday damaged cars but did not cause injuries, police said.
Israeli authorities were treating the explosion as a suspected attack aimed at the embassy, The Times of Israel has learned, and was stepping up security precautions at missions around the world.
The district around the embassy was sealed off after the explosion and police and bomb disposal experts took over the scene.
A police statement described it as a “very low-intensity improvised device” that blew out the windows on three nearby cars and said a preliminary investigation “suggests a mischievous attempt to create a sensation.”
The New Delhi Television news channel said the explosive device had ball bearings wrapped in a plastic bag and was left on the pavement outside the embassy. There was no immediate police confirmation.
The blast in the high-security zone occurred while India’s president and prime minister were attending a ceremony marking the end of Republic Day celebrations. The venue is about 1.4 kilometers (1 mile) from the Israeli Embassy.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed the blast and that no one was hurt.
“The incident is being investigated by Indian authorities who are in contact with the relevant Israeli officials,” the ministry said. “The foreign minister is being updated regularly and has ordered all necessary security steps be taken.”
The BDSers achieved a measure of success, in Europe especially. Performing artists would often cancel concerts in Israel under BDS pressure — and sometimes lead the charge, as in the case of the likes of Tilda Swinton, Roger Waters and Coldplay’s Chris Martin. European theaters would refuse to host Jewish (not even Israeli) film festivals, even as BDSers preposterously insisted that their movement isn’t anti-Semitic. Western universities or individual departments would mount academic boycotts of Israel. Then, last year, in perhaps the most alarming move, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU states must label West Bank products as “made in settlements.”
Was Israel’s economy ever in serious peril? Probably not. Europe remains the Jewish state’s biggest trade partner, though boycotts and labeling could bite if widened to include firms that operate in Israel or Palestinian territories. The real danger, however, was moral-cum-political. If BDS succeeded, it would make permanent Israel’s status as an abnormal country, rather than a normal fixture of the Mideast map. That would demoralize the Israeli people and compound the hostility they already face in global forums like the United Nations.
Well, so much for all that. Today, a little more than a year since the EU labeling decision, you can find Israeli products — prominently displayed, sometimes with Israeli flags to promote them — on the shelves of grocery stores in the United Arab Emirates.
How far can BDS go in a world where once-sworn enemies of the Jewish state enjoy Israeli citrus products and myriad cultural exchanges? Who exactly do Western champions of the Arabs represent, when the Arabs themselves want to live peacefully alongside Israel and accept the Jewish state’s fundamental legitimacy? Isn’t it more than a bit condescending for, say, Roger Waters — place of birth: Great Bookham, Surrey, England — to tell Arabs whom they can do business with?
To be clear, I’m not suggesting BDS will disappear tomorrow. The wider Arab world is making peace with Israel, but Palestinian leaders aren’t about to give up what is admittedly a very nice grift: billions of dollars in international aid in exchange for refusing to accept reality. BDS helps lend a veneer of global credibility to their rejectionism. And fanatic college professors and students can always use “anti-Zionism” to mask old-fashioned hatred, singling out one state and one state only — the one that happens to be Jewish — for opprobrium.
But the fact remains that the Abraham Accords have revealed a silly side to the BDS movement: For God’s sake, when Sudan, once one of the world’s most virulently anti-Israel states, has made its peace with Jerusalem, BDS looks like a boutique cause for gentry leftists, the kind who put their pronouns in their Twitter bios. The real world — and the Middle East — have just moved on.
In a blow to the Islamic movement in Gaza and other terror organizations, Sudan is revoking the citizenship of former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal along with 3,000 other citizenships that were granted to foreigners, according to several reports in Arab media.
The Sudanese government made this change as part of its being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, in a clear indication that it will fight terrorism rather than support it. The news was widely reported in Sudan and other Arabic media.
Earlier, Meshaal had expressed his dissatisfaction with the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel.
After the demise of the previous Sudanese regime, which was supportive of Islamist and terrorist movements including Hamas, the new government has been attempting to change Sudan’s image as a shelter and conduit for terrorists. The revoking of citizenship from foreigners with links to Islamic and terrorist movements is a step in that direction.
Sudan is also now requiring a visa for Syrians before entering the country in order to prevent the flow of terrorists into Sudan.
In recent decades, Sudan was designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States for hosting Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other wanted terrorists. Hamas used the country as a funnel for smuggling Iranian weapons to Palestinians in Gaza between 2009-2012.
Sudan was removed from the list of state sponsors of terror after the new regime has made efforts in combating terrorism in cooperation with the American administration under the supervision of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
It was an unexpected line from a senior Emirati official, delivered recently in an off-the-record video conference call between current and former Israeli and Emirati officials.
The conversation had turned to business ties, innovation and the cultural differences between the two countries. The official wanted to explain something important about the new Israeli-Arab normalization agreements that Abu Dhabi had helped start: not only why they are happening, but why they seem so inexplicably warm and genuine.
The United Arab Emirates is most visible in this regard, but it isn’t the only one. Bahrain, too, is investing in a warm peace. And Sudan, while agonizing over the step itself — a breach of decades of ideological commitments vis-à-vis the Palestinians — has shown signs of wanting the normalization to reap more benefits than mere diplomatic contact or its removal from the US terror sponsors list.
There is no shortage of benefits that have accrued to the countries that normalized relations with Israel in the waning days of the Trump administration. The Emiratis asked for F-35s, the Moroccans recognition of their claim over Western Sahara, the Sudanese an end to their 27-year stay on the terror list and protection from lawsuits linked to the previous regime.
A pharmacist, Nazim Ali, who leads the annual “Al Quds Day” march through London, has been found to have brought the pharmaceutical profession into disrepute following a two-week hearing that culminated today arising from a complaint by Campaign Against Antisemitism.
However, the General Pharmaceutical Council’s (GPhC) fitness to practice tribunal let Mr Ali off with a warning after ruling that his remarks were grossly offensive and that his fitness to practise was impaired, but that his statements were not antisemitic.
Remarkably the GPhC did not present expert testimony from academics or Campaign Against Antisemitism on what constitutes Jew-hatred.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s complaint related to Mr Ali’s actions in 2017, when he led the pro-Hizballah “Al Quds Day” parade for the controversial London-based organisation calling itself the Islamic Human Rights Commission, just four days after the Grenfell Tower tragedy in which over 70 people were burned alive.
Heading the parade, surrounded by the flags of Hizballah, the genocidal antisemitic terrorist organisation, Mr Ali shouted over a public address system: “Some of the biggest corporations who are supporting the Conservative Party are Zionists. They are responsible for the murder of the people in Grenfell, in those towers in Grenfell. The Zionist supporters of the Tory Party. Free, Free, Palestine…It is the Zionists who give money to the Tory Party to kill people in high-rise blocks. Free, Free, Palestine. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
At another point he told marchers: “Careful of those Rabbis who belong to the Board of Deputies, who have got blood on their hands, who agree with the killing of British soldiers. Do not allow them in your centres.”
The events were filmed by members of Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Demonstration and Event Monitoring Unit.
What Nazim Ali said
Nazim Ali’s words were blatantly antisemitic. This is some of what he said – these sentences were the key phrases used by the fitness to practise committee for their deliberations:
#1 It’s in their genes. The Zionists are here to occupy Regent Street. It’s in their genes, it’s in their genetic code.
#2 European alleged Jews. Remember brothers and sisters, Zionists are not Jews.
#3 Any Zionist, any Jew coming into your centre supporting Israel, any Jew coming into your centre who is a member of the Board of Deputies, is not a Rabbi, he’s an imposter.
#4 They are responsible for the murder of the people in Grenfell, the Zionist supporters of the Tory Party.
He also said the BoD had ‘blood on their hands‘, and that Zionists ‘give money to the Tory Party, to kill people in high rise blocks‘.
It is quite plain that even just based on those above, the decision is easy.
#1 Zionists do not have a ‘genetic code’ – Jews do.
#2 The comment about ‘alleged Jews’ is clearly a reference to the antisemitic Khazar myth.
#3 The ‘imposter’ sentence is also a pharmacist publicly arguing against interfaith with 93% of British Jews.
#4 References to Grenfell and murder is classic blood libel. A tragedy happens, the finger points where it always does.
My evidence
I was called to give evidence – and it took 3 long years to arrange the hearing. My recordings from the day were used for the hearing. Although under quarantine I was given an exemption and I was the first witness to give evidence. Ali’s lawyer was then allowed to ask me questions. His first was about my daughter.
For those that don’t know my daughter is currently in Israel preparing to join the IDF. Back in 2017 she had stood with me in that crowd as we listened to Nazim Ali. At the time, her thoughts were only about going to university in the UK. I cannot be 100% sure that what unfolded in the UK during 2016-2019 was responsible for my daughter’s change of heart – but it is hard to believe she would have gone otherwise.
Because the atmosphere in the UK had deteriorated for British Jews and my daughter had decided to leave for Israel – my loyalty was being questioned. The lawyer asked a few more questions and within about 15 minutes it was over. The time had come for the members of the panel to ask any questions – they had none. The prosecuting lawyer had none either.
In early 2016, nearly a year after the initial email had made its rounds, two families totaling 11 people were rescued from the city of Raida. Missry was at dinner when he received the call from Rabbi Sultan. “I excused myself from the table and began to cry.” In March 2016, 18 Yemeni Jews were brought to Israel, culminating a yearlong effort that joined the U.S. State Department and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
But even the joy brought danger. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posed with members of the group and an ancient Torah scroll that was smuggled out of Yemen, in what was soon a widely circulated photo-op. As a result, Libby (Levi) Salem Mousa Merhabi, the Jewish man still in Yemen suspected to have helped smuggle the scroll out, was jailed. He remains there today and his mother continues to beg for his release.
U.S. Rep. Max Rose, whose congressional district (which includes Staten Island and parts of Southern Brooklyn) houses one of the largest Yemeni communities in the United States, sees an opening for progress. “We have an opportunity here as a result of the Abraham Accords for the remaining Yemeni Jews to be put in a better situation,” he told me, stressing that “while the resources from the Sephardic community in my district have been tremendous, we really need to rally the international community as well.”
As of today, an estimated 26 Jews remain in Yemen. This figure does not include a number of women who have been kidnapped as young girls and remain hostages in their own homes, many of them now with children of their own. I recently spoke to one woman who escaped Yemen for London in 2007 before coming to the States. She asked to remain anonymous, so as to not jeopardize the life of her sister, who was kidnapped as a young woman when the family of nine sisters all lived in Raida. But she spoke fondly of her childhood spent in the small village of Beni Abt. The family had some animals, cows, goats, and a few chickens. Her sisters would rise as early as 4:30 in the morning to tend to them. When she was 8 years old, she and two of her sisters moved to Raida. There was a small school where she “learned tehilim all day,” although they never spoke Hebrew outside of school. Her parents joined them in Raida a few years later. They moved into a big house, complete with beds, sheets, showers, and baths—“like here,” she said. “We went to stores and schools. People were nice. There was some violence in the neighborhood, but that was all normal.”
Everything changed after a cousin and sister were kidnapped, “just because they were Jewish.” Her father whisked her and another sister to Sanaa, where they remained in a hotel for four months while he secured visas to the United Kingdom. “I just want to help the people get out,” she told me. “I want to do everything I can.” As it was for the Jews in Syria in the 1990s, the fear of government retaliation is great, and tangible. But make no mistake, the plight of Yemen’s Jews is clear and a global Jewish and governmental response should follow.
A senior United Arab Emirates official on Tuesday shot back at the Palestinian ambassador to France, who had attacked Abu Dhabi over its establishment of formal relations with Israel.
In an interview with French magazine Le Point, Salman El Herfi fired several unusually harsh salvos at the UAE and at Bahrain, another Gulf state currently in the process of normalizing relations with Jerusalem, including saying these countries “have become more Israeli than Israel” and are violating the charter of the United Nations.
“I was not surprised by the statements made by the Palestinian Ambassador to Paris, and his ungrateful discussion of the Emirates,” Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, wrote in Arabic on his Twitter account.
“We have grown accustomed to the lack of loyalty and the ingratitude. We proceed toward the future confident in all our actions and beliefs,” he added.
In the Le Point interview, El Herfi said that the UAE had long abandoned the Palestinian cause and that he wasn’t surprised by Abu Dhabi’s decision to normalize ties with Israel in August.
“The only new thing was the formalization of this relationship. I thank them for having revealed their true face,” he said of the UAE leadership.
“The truth is that the Emirates were never at the Palestinians’ side,” he went on, charging that the UAE froze aid for the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1985.
Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan is merely “a little dictator who wants to become known, and he’s playing with fire,” the veteran Palestinian diplomat said. The UAE’s de facto leader “surrendered to Israel without a fight,” El Herfi added.
He also accused the UAE and Bahrain of violating a long list of Arab League and UN resolutions, even going as far as saying they violated the UN charter by normalizing relations with Israel.
The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday instructed its official spokesmen and representatives around the world not to attack Arab heads of state and Arab countries in the aftermath of the peace agreements signed between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
The instruction came after the PA ambassador to France, Salman el Herfi, launched a scathing attack on UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, dubbing him a “little dictator who wants to make himself known.”
The PA has repeatedly accused the UAE and Bahrain of backstabbing the Palestinians and betraying the Palestinian issue by signing the peace accords with Israel.
Hypocrites… and enemies of the Islamic society- Abbas’ advisor about Arabs who normalize with Israel
PA official: The UAE and Bahrain=worms exposed by the sun, Netanyahu= a distorted copy of Mussolini
Palestinian leaders are continuing to act not only against the advice of [former Egyptian President Hosni] Mubarak and other Arabs, but also against the interests of their own people.
"The Palestinian leadership has lost its credibility in the eyes of the new Arab generation, which is a generation of technology...." — Abdullah Al-Ghathami, professor of criticism and theory at King Saud University, Twitter, September 25, 2020.
Pointedly,.... the Fatah delegation in Istanbul last week met with officials from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, as well as Turkish and Qatari intelligence officers.... and discussed... ways of "coordinating positions to direct blows to the interests of the Arab countries, especially the Arab Gulf states and Egypt."
The report added that "analysts specializing in the Palestinian issue commented that Qatar and Turkey will use Abbas to harm the interests of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Sudan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia."
The report also revealed that Qatar recently gave Abbas and some of his aides more than $50 million for their personal bank accounts inside banks in Israel and the Palestinian Authority areas."
The mobs that perform the unanimous condemnation rituals of today do not follow orders from above. But that does not diminish their power to exert pressure on those under their influence. Those of us who came out of the collectivist Soviet culture understand these dynamics instinctively. You invoked the “didn’t read, but disapprove” mantra not only to protect yourself from suspicions about your reading choices but also to communicate an eagerness to be part of the kollektiv—no matter what destructive action was next on the kollektiv’s agenda. You preemptively surrendered your personal agency in order to be in unison with the group. And this is understandable in a way: Merging with the crowd feels much better than standing alone.
Those who remember the Soviet system understand the danger of letting the practice of collective denunciation run amok. But you don’t have to imagine an American Stalin in the White House to see where first the toleration, then the normalization, and now the legitimization and rewarding of this ugly practice is taking us.
Americans have discovered the way in which fear of collective disapproval breeds self-censorship and silence, which impoverish public life and creative work. The double life one ends up leading—one where there is a growing gap between one’s public and private selves—eventually begins to feel oppressive. For a significant portion of Soviet intelligentsia (artists, doctors, scientists), the burden of leading this double life played an important role in their deciding to emigrate.
Those who join in the hounding face their own hazards. The more loyalty you pledge to a group that expects you to participate in rituals of collective demonization, the more it will ask of you and the more you, too, will feel controlled. How much of your own autonomy as a thinking, feeling person are you willing to sacrifice to the collective? What inner compromises are you willing to make for the sake of being part of the group? Which personal relationships are you willing to give up?
From my vantage point, this cultural moment in these United States feels incredibly precarious. The practice of collective condemnation feels like an assertion of a culture that ultimately tramples on the individual and creates an oppressive society. Whether that society looks like Soviet Russia, or Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, or Castro’s Cuba, or today’s China, or something uniquely 21st-century American, the failure of institutions and individuals to stand up to mob rule is no longer an option we can afford.
Here's Alan Freedman, vice-president of the Australian Jewish Association, ably and justifiably calling out the unconscionable intolerance of today's Woke Warriors:
Which brings me to this horrible piece of Wokism issued some days ago. To read this vomitous statement from the American Reform Movement is to revisit that equally vomitous slogan of crackpot radicals during the 1960s: "we are all guilty". It's not so much a call for bridge-building and compassion, which needless to say are admirable objectives, as a one-sided exercise in self-flagellation and group demonisation.
"Black Lives Matter is Jewish value" the statement declares, going on to castigate "white Jews" for their collusion (more supposed than real), in keeping black Americans down. It's as if the visible Jewish presence in the Civil Rights era never happened. It's as if there are no antisemitic or anti-Israel aspects to the organised Black Lives Matter movement.
Of course "Black Lives Matter", along with the lives of every human being on this earth, of whatever hue our skin happens to be. That's why many of us, Jew and non-Jew, prefer the slogan "All Lives Matter", since all of us are made in the image of our Creator: that is why the concept "All Lives Matter" can be considered a Jewish value.
But try telling that to some of the politically biased bigots both in and outside the Reform movement and you risk being smeared as a racist. They should know that Judaism is not a racist religion and that Jews who harbour contempt for their fellow human beings are, fortunately, few and far between.
As a biracial Jew, there is an expectation that I must have something to say in this historic moment. Unlike at any other time in my life, people are treating my opinion as though it deserves a stage, or a glass case for passersby to take in as they walk through a new exhibition on the lives of various Jews of Color.
When I tell people that I do not have much to say about my experience as a “Jew of Color,” I see faces drop just a smidge. I sense that people want to hear about the time I was rejected because of the color of my skin, or when I was sitting in services at a synagogue and somebody came up and asked what inspired a nice non-Jewish girl like me to visit a synagogue, unaware of the fact that I am an observant Jew.
The truth is that nothing like that has ever happened to me, thankfully. There have been moments when a person’s curiosity got the better of them, and they can’t help but probe into the personal details of my life within a minute of meeting me in hopes of figuring out how somebody who looks like me ended up in a Jewish environment. I’ve heard comments like “Is it hard for you to date in the Jewish world because, you know, you’re not the stereotypical Jew?” or “You can’t meet his family yet because you grew up in a broken home and that’s not something that people in his community are used to” Here’s my personal favorite, which came up while I was living in Israel: “Can you rap for us, you know, like Jay-Z!”
Yes, all of these moments and a few more like them have happened to me, and some of them were painful. But they are not the moments by which I choose to define myself.
My mother is white and my father is black. I have lived as a proud Jew in a variety of Jewish communities, including Kansas, Israel, North Carolina and New York City. Aside from those few standout moments, I have always felt at home in the Jewish world. It is the only world I know and, more than that, it is an expression of all that I am.
The 20th-century German-Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig defines Judaism as a person’s “most impenetrable secret, yet evident in every gesture and every word.” To call myself a Jew of Color would be to ignore that indefinable trait inside of me that is expressed in all that I do and unites me with my fellow Jews throughout the world.
...In 2013, an ADL report claimed that JVP consistently co-sponsors “rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”
In 2017, JVP honored convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh at the 2017 JVP National Membership Meeting.
The group is also known for disrupting and trying to shut down pro-Israel events.
Canary Mission also has a run-down on the leadership of JVP:
Led by Executive Director Rebecca Vilkomerson, JVP consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies.”
Vilkomerson is one of the leading promoters of BDS in the United States. In 2016, Vilkomerson wrote a Washington Post opinion article titled “I’m Jewish and I want people to boycott Israel.” She has also targeted LGBTQ Jews for harassment in order to push JVP’s anti-Israel agenda.
Judith Butler, a professor at UC Berkeley and a leading proponent of BDS, is also on JVP’s advisory board and has called terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah “progressive.”
Daniel Boyarin, a professor at UC Berkeley and a member of JVP’s advisory board, has compared Israelis to Nazis, referred to himself as an “anti-Zionist" and has a sticker on his office door at UC Berkeley calling to “End U.S. Aid to Israel."
You get the picture.
Considering the strong anti-Israel stand of JVP, it is interesting that on the day it announced their list of the candidates it was supporting, Anarcho-Zionist made the following observation:
Those 3 congressmen -- endorsed by both Jewish Voice for Peace and J Street -- are:
o Mark Pocan o Pramila Jayapal o Betty McCollum
Just how does that work?
How can "pro-Israel" J Street support the same candidates as anti-Israel JVP?
First, here is how J Street, itself, describes the virtues of each of these three congressmen:
Rep. Jayapal is a champion of progressive issues, and her stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is consistent with this profile. The Congresswoman supports the Iran nuclear deal and believes the United States has a constructive diplomatic role to play in the Middle East. She also supports a two-state solution. Her upbringing in India, against the backdrop of the Indian-Pakistani conflict, has informed her strong pro-peace perspective. Since being elected to Congress, Rep. Jayapal has been a consistent supporter of J Street’s legislative priorities, and she was an early cosponsor of House Resolution 326, which reaffirms Congress’s commitment to two-state solution and opposes settlement expansion and annexation.
Congresswoman McCollum has been a JStreetPAC endorsee since 2008 and is one of J Street’s most vocal allies on the Hill. Last session, she supported the entire J Street legislative agenda, and this session she was an early cosponsor of H.Res. 326, which gets Congress on the record reaffirming support for the two-state solution and opposing annexation and settlement expansion.
Throughout his time in Congress, Rep. Pocan has been one of the most steadfast supporters of J Street issues. He has consistently voted with J Street’s entire legislative agenda. Rep. Pocan has traveled to Israel and the Palestinian Territories and is a strong advocate for US leadership towards a two state solution. He was one of the earliest cosponsors of House Resolution 326, which reaffirms Congress’s commitment to two-state solution and opposes settlement expansion and annexation.
Notice what J Street doesn't say about any of them:
Not one of them is described as a friend, let alone a strong supporter, of Israel.
But they are all supporters of J Street and its agenda -- and that, of course, is what matters, isn't it?
Betty McCollum is the representative of Minnesota’s 4th district. She is a St. Paul native and was the second Minnesota woman elected to Congress. First elected in 2000, Congresswoman McCollum is a champion for Palestinian rights, including leading the fight to protect Palestinian children from Israeli military detention and abuse by introducing the first legislation for Palestinian rights in the House of Representatives. Throughout her career, she has also championed public education, protecting the environment, and foreign policy centered on human rights.
PRAMILA JAYAPAL WA-07
Pramila Jayapal is the representative for Washington’s 7th district and is the first South Asian American woman elected to Congress. First elected in 2016, Congresswoman Jayapal is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a leader on immigrant rights, labor rights, Medicare for All, College for All, fighting white nationalism, and more. She is a stalwart supporter of Palestinian rights in Congress, including standing up against Israel’s military detention of Palestinian children and Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes, as well as for a resumption of aid to Gaza, and more.
MARK POCAN WI-02
Mark Pocan is the representative of Wisconsin’s 2nd district. First elected in 2012, Congressman Pocan is Co-Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has long been a leader in promoting economic and social justice initiatives. He is a consistent and leading voice for Palestinian rights in the House of Representatives, including breaking the silence around the Israeli military blockade and humanitarian crisis affecting Palestinians in Gaza and protecting Palestinian children.
JVP seems as reticent to brag about how anti-Israel these three are as J Street is silent as to how anti-Israel their stances are.
Let's take a closer look at each of the three.
Pramila Jayapal is a good friend of Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar -- such a good friend in fact that when the 2 were criticized a year ago for their attacks on Israel, Jayapal jumped to their defense on Twitter:
Rep. McCollum has been 'a strong ally of the pro-Israel community'?
Seriously?
Is it any wonder that J Street has been forced to repurpose their endorsements of candidates to reference their support for J Street instead and expunge any claim of support of Israel?
More recently, in 2019, Rep. McCollum introduced the ‘‘Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act’’ (HR 2407), which she claims
is expressly intended to end U.S. support and funding for Israel’s systematic military detention, interrogation, abuse, torture, and prosecution of Palestinian children. This bill not only highlights actions by the Government of Israel that violate international humanitarian law by their treatment of Palestinian children in detention, it affirmatively declares that equality, human rights, and dignity for Palestinians and Israelis are the values the American people expect the U.S. government to advance.
o The bill is based largely on the lobbying efforts and accusations of Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P). DCI-P is closely tied to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), designated as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, Canada, and Israel.
o Citibank, Arab Bank and Global Giving have closed DCI-P accounts due to these PFLP connections. o Many of the citations to UN and other reports in turn simply copy lines from DCI-P publications.
o The new legislation includes several inaccurate factual claims and distortions of international law. o The bill applies standards to Israel that are not applied in the US in general, or in McCollum’s state of Minnesota in particular. o The bill misquotes a number of State Department reports
This is someone that J Street supports -- but not so enthusiastically that they can publicly boast of her as a friend and supporter of Israel.
o supported Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh o supported Islamic Relief, which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood. o criticized California’s Kamala Harris for discussing cooperation between California and Israel on water management, agriculture, and cyber security o accused Harris of “racism” for meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. o retweeted a post from Linda Sarsour supporting Ahed Tamimi, who was jailed for incitement and assaulting an IDF soldier -- and upon release voiced support for suicide bombing.
While we have long championed the value of a wide range of voices in discussion of the conflict and related issues, we cannot endorse candidates who conclude that they can no longer publicly express unequivocal support for a two-state solution and other core principles to which our organization is dedicated.
Fortunately for McCollum, accusing Isreal of apartheid does not contradict any of those "core principles" that J Street is dedicated to!
[Pocan] chose to facilitate a pro-BDS smear campaign using taxpayer dollars without even showing his face at the event...As millions of Jews and non-Jews alike celebrate the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, Congressman Pocan and his J-Street lackeys are spending their time working to undermine the state of Israel.
During the trip, the five met with Shawan Jabarin, whom the itinerary described as the General Director of Al-Haq, for a discussion on “Palestinian political prisoners”.
What the AGI itinerary failed to note, however, are Jabarin’s ties to terrorism.
A member of the PFLP, Jabarin was convicted for his efforts to enlist support abroad for attacks on Israel. He was sentenced to two years in prison, but was released after nine months due to respiratory difficulties.
It is obvious why Jewish Voice for Peace would want to support Jayapal, McCollum and Pocan -- that group and these 3 congressmen are clearly a good fit.
J Street obviously thinks they are a good fit with these 3 too.
It is worth noting that J Street does not need to convince those who strongly disagree with our positions within the American Jewish community or the political sphere. The majority of American Jews and many politicians already broadly agree with us; they just need a movement to validate, organize and amplify their voices. [emphasis added]
The fact that J Street deliberately makes a point of validating and amplifying the views of these 3 politicians demonstrates how badly J Street has stumbled.
Or how cynical J Street really is.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
In Saudi Arabia, Al-Arabiya is very interested in what a previously unknown “Mossad trip to Qatar” means for the region. “Egypt and Qatar are angry with Hamas, and they intended to cut ties with it,” the network reported, while noting that the recent Israeli discussions with Doha about continuing to fund Gaza are noteworthy. Hamas also thinks they are noteworthy, bragging over the weekend that it met with Qatar’s envoy Mohammed al-Emadi and $15 million was distributed in Gaza.
In Israel, the Mossad-Qatar-Hamas story was revealed by Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman over the weekend and was reported locally. The story goes that Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and IDF Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Herzi Halevi met with top Qatari officials. Halevi was in the news before, in January, when he commented on the killing of IRGC general Qasem Soleimani. “We must look at the assassination as part of a fight between Iran and the US over Iraq’s character.” Halevi is known for his achievements in a three-year term running Military Intelligence. He has spoken about using deterrence in a way that does not escalate a situation and of the importance of information supremacy over Israel’s enemies, according to an article at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in 2018. This is a key to Israel’s “campaign between the wars” in which Israel must prepare for future struggle with Iran and its allies.
Israel now has a dedicated headquarters for the “third circle” threat of Iran in light of the IDF’s new Momentum plan. It is worth understanding this larger picture to understand some of what Hamas is up to in Gaza. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad both are supported by Iran. PIJ is an Iranian proxy whereas Hamas is more an ally. But Hamas has been isolated over the years and also failed to achieve results in confrontation with Israel. Over 2,600 rockets fired over the last two years achieved little, and its “Great March of Return,” launched in 2018, also failed. In March 2018, two years ago, Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah survived an assassination attempt in Gaza. Today, Hamas is bragging about opposing the US “Deal of the Century.”
It is important to consider the calculus to see the larger picture of Qatar’s role in Gaza. Qatar has supported Gaza for more than a decade. The Emir of Qatar even visited Gaza in 2012. In January 2019, the third $15 million payment via Israel and Hamas to Gaza was made by Qatar as part of a deal in 2018. Mohammed al-Emadi has been Doha’s point man throughout. He has visited Israel more than two dozen times, according to a Reuters interview in 2018. He also cited talks between Israel and Hamas in that year. Qatar has said its aid to Gaza helps prevent a conflict. Emadi has ruffled feathers in Gaza sometimes due to his outspokenness.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and to the Jewish community of Hebron.
He spoke during a visit to the nearby West Bank Kiryat Arba settlement, where he also stated that he was authorizing the elevator project for the tomb, that would allow those with disabilities to visit the cave.
All West Bank settlements are slated to become part of sovereign Israel under US President Donald Trump’s peace plan, but according to the map, the status of Jewish Hebron is unclear.
Prior to Netanyahu's speech at a celebratory event to mark the inauguration of a new neighborhood in Kiryat Arba on Sunday, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the Yamina Party, addressed the crowd. Bennett spoke of the need to clarify with the Trump administration that the Tomb and Hebron's Jewish community would be part of sovereign Israel under the "Deal of the Century."
Bennett said that a Jewish state without the Tomb of the Patriarchs is like Washington without the Lincoln Memorial. He also spoke against the portion of the Trump plan that calls for the creation of a Palestinian state.
The defense minister noted that "the plan speaks 159 times of a Palestinian state and references Israeli sovereignty" only 13 times.
Former Labour party members have regularly met elements of the far right to discuss and propagate antisemitic conspiracy theories, an undercover investigation has found.
Infiltration of the conspiracy theorist group Keep Talking found that Jeremy Corbyn supporters and confidantes of former Labour MPs have attended meetings addressed by Holocaust deniers.
During one gathering in London last year, suspended Labour supporters heard James Thring, an infamous antisemite linked to the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, speak openly and unchallenged about Holocaust denial.
A covert recording of Thring at the meeting captured him claiming that no deaths were recorded at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, where 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were systematically murdered.
“The archives from the listening posts show no evidence that they heard anything about deaths in Auschwitz; we didn’t know that this was going on … because it wasn’t,” Thring can be heard saying.
Nick Lowles, chief executive of Hope Not Hate, which along with the Jewish charity Community Security Trust monitored Keep Talking over three years, said: “Our investigation shows what the politics of some of the far left and the far right have in common – antisemitism. It’s important that these groups are not just seen as eccentric or harmless; they give conspiracies a space to survive and grow and they encourage people to keep disseminating falsehoods.” (h/t Zvi)
In this day and age, with progressives tending to bestow automatic moral rightness on the weak and to assign automatic moral blame to the strong, the left is inclined to be furious at the very suggestion that the occupied are to blame for the continued occupation. Part of this fury is based on denying Palestinian recalcitrance and rejectionism.
But the other part is actually more poignant: Some on the left believe we must end the occupation regardless of the price we’ll have to pay, since it is an evil one cannot acquiesce to. From this perspective, the infringement on Palestinian human rights is so grave that it undermines Israel’s moral foundation – to the point of voiding its very right to exist. If Zionism rests on the universal right to self-determination, the argument goes, it cannot exist at the expense of another people’s ability to exercise that same right.
I don’t know if the historian with whom I dined subscribes to this extreme view, but I think this is what many who see the “apartheid” argument as closing the case believe.
Still, one is obliged to ask if what we are talking about here is an offense so abhorrent, so inhumanly odious, that one must die rather than commit it. Should we really end the occupation even if it means collective suicide for Zionism and probable death to most of its sons and daughters (or at least to those who cannot afford to emigrate)?
Undeniably, there are crimes one should die before committing. Genocide would probably be the obvious example. But it is hard to stretch this argument to include the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It would seem there is not much moral weight to the idea that we should choose our own death only to save the Palestinians from the consequences of their rejectionism and their turn to murderous terrorism. There is also little point in committing suicide only to replace Israel’s military rule with a more brutal regime that will deprive the Palestinians of human rights to an even greater extent, as Hamas has done in Gaza.
The truth is that, short of attempting to justify collective suicide, the moral argument from “apartheid” has no use. As long as we refuse to die, it will not save us from having to limp along with no full solution in sight to the Israeli-Palestinian quagmire.
We will have to brace ourselves for a long stretch of political awkwardness and moral ambiguity. Which is still far better than jumping together, with our hands at each other’s throats, into the lava around us. The incantation “apartheid” will not make any of those harsh circumstances disappear.
Amid the all-important International Criminal Court debate about whether Israeli settlements are a war crime, almost completely ignored has been the question of Turkey’s occupation of Northern Cyprus.
The Palestinians officially asked for ICC intervention in January 2015, and ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda essentially declared Israeli settlements war crimes on December 20.
In contrast, the first complaint by a Cypriot official, represented by Shurat Hadin, against Turkey’s settlements in Northern Cyprus was filed in July 2014 – half a year earlier than the claims against Israel.
Seven weeks after Bensouda decided against Israel, all that has been said about the Turkish occupation of Cyprus is that a decision is anticipated at some undefined point later in 2020.
How did the Turkish case fall to the back burner as compared to the case against Israel?
Does this unequal situation prove anti-Israel bias by the ICC, as some claim?
The Israel Bar Association will try to represent Israel in the International Criminal Court at The Hague to push against the charges laid by the Palestinians, Israel Hayom has exclusively learned.
The IBA's move is designed to give Israel a voice in the court without having the country officially join.
Israel has refused to sign the Rome Statute and is hence not part of the ICC. The Jewish state also says the court has no jurisdiction on matters pertaining to Israeli territory because Israel is not a party to the convention, but the court has nevertheless begun proceedings that could culminate with a full-fledged investigation against Israel over its actions in the Gaza Strip and in various Palestinian cities.
Israeli leaders have slammed the court for taking that position.
The IBA's governing body approved Monday a motion that could pave the way for the organization to represent Israel in cases concerning the state. "In order to avoid having the Palestinian Authority's position go unchallenged, we have discussed the possibility of becoming an amicus curiae in the court and we have assembled a task force to facilitate that," the motion reads.
Israel is angry at Belgium for what Jerusalem says is a systematic campaign to demonize the Jewish state at the United Nations, including by hosting a “radical” pro-Palestinian activist next week at the Security Council.
In February, Belgium holds the rotating presidency of the council and is using this privilege to invite speakers who, according to fuming Jerusalem officials, hold an extreme anti-Israel bias. They were especially outraged about Brussels inviting Brad Parker, a senior official for a nonprofit called Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), to speak at the council’s session. “Belgium has positioned itself as one of the Security Council member states most hostile toward Israel,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat told The Times of Israel on Thursday. “Inviting a one-sided radical activist such as Mr. Parker to brief the Security Council is yet another negative record.”
Israel’s Ambassador to Belgium Emmanuel Nahshon on Thursday took to Twitter to express regret at Brussels inviting “terror supporters” to the Security Council. “This is extremely disappointing and we will express our outrage in the strongest possible terms.”
Unfortunately, @BelgiumMFA@BelgiumUN has chosen to invite terror supporters to a Security Council debate . This is extremely disappointing and we will express our outrage in the strongest possible terms.
And here is our report on @NGOmonitor, which spreads guilt-by-association allegations to advance its partisan agenda: SHRINKING SPACE: Defaming human rights organizations that criticize the Israeli occupationhttps://t.co/lOwbYKatr3
So I looked at their report. The relevant part says:
The second tactic that NGO Monitor employs to defame Palestinian NGOs is associating them with armed groups, in particular by claiming they have alleged ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is listed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the US and the EU. NGO Monitor says it has exposed ties between Palestinian NGOs and the PFLP. However, it has not presented any evidence that the accused organizations ever participated in terrorist activities or violence. It also has not explained how the organizations’ work – field research, documentation, legal work, international advocacy – is in any way related to terrorism. The accusations are largely based on references to outdated information, on a small number of cases in the 1970s and 1980s, on selective internet inquiries and on guilt-by-association. Employees of those organizations are often accused of being “affiliated”, “linked”, or of having “alleged ties”, sometimes via family relations, with terrorist organizations or their leaders. Apart from very few exceptions, no trials or formal indictments have been initiated by Israeli authorities against employees or board members of Palestinian organizations relevant to NGO Monitor’s accusations and relating to the period of their involvement in the organization.
Moreover, when it claims that 75% of children arrested by Israel are tortured, their methodology is laughable - they look for kids that will say what they want, and if they find inconsistencies in their stories, they go back and prompt the kids to change the stories.
The funny part is that this group accuses NGO-Monitor of bias, but its members seem to all be associated with the NGOs (like B'Tselem) that NGO-Monitor goes after. Moreover, this group, which seems to only have one report issued, accuses NGO-Monitor of no transparency in its sources of funding (which isn't true) - but they told me that they are all volunteers and not funded by anyone. Yet this report says it was funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, associated with Germany's democratic socialist Left party.
In other words, Leftists are defending the leftist/terrorist NGOs whose entire purpose is to bash Israel.
Reporting the ties between the PFLP and various NGOs, including DCI-P, is not meant to show a direct link between the NGOs and specific terror acts. It shows that the groups themselves have an agenda that aligns with that of the PFLP, which as a Marxist/socialist terror group is well versed in using Soviet-style propaganda against Israel - and there is no more effective propaganda nowadays then to accuse Israel of human rights abuses.
NGO-Monitor isn't the only group to show ties between the PFLP and DCI-P. Israel itself has issued a report that shows that (at least until May 2018 when there seems to have been a major re-organization) many senior DCI-P members were also PFLP members.
The anti-Israel Left is purposefully ignoring the facts that NGOs like DCI-P lie, liberally, and they try to cloud the critiques with half-baked information. I've proven the lies - go after my proof if you want to defend a terror-supporting group.
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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.
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"
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.
I almost hate to mention this because the situation is always precarious, but unless I'm mistaken it has been nearly six months since any Israeli was killed in a terror attack.
The last victim was Rina Shnerb, 17, killed by an IED on August 23, 2019.
That attack was done by the PFLP - the same PFLP who is linked to anti-Israel NGO DCI-Palestine in news over the past couple of days. The PFLP is linked to a number of NGOs to use them as another avenue to attack Israel under the guise of human rights.
Needless to say, none of the PFLP-linked NGOs said a word against Rina's murder.
Still, a six month stretch without a terrorist murder in Israel is quite unusual; the last time I can see a stretch that long was seven months between October 29, 2011 (Moshe Ami, 56, rocket hitting Ashkelon) and June 1, 2012 (Staff-Sgt Netanel Moshiashvili, 21, shot on patrol near Gaza).
Let's hope the current streak continues for a long, long time.
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Palestinian leaders were handed a great and unexpected victory in late 2016 when President Obama facilitated the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334. It asserts that there is "no legal basis" for Israeli claims to the West Bank – for centuries known as Judea and Samaria – including even the 2,000-year-old Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, and the ancient Jewish holy sites of the Temple Mount.
If that were true, on what basis would Israelis have a right to anything – even a right to exist?
And if that's the verdict not just of Israel's enemies but even of the "international community" including the US, why should Palestinian leaders compromise? Why accept less than Israel's surrender and a new Jewish exile – to be called, for public relations purposes, an "end to occupation"?
By putting forward a plan that licenses Israelis, should they face continued Palestinian rejectionism, to alter facts on the ground through annexations, President Trump has changed the dynamic – at least for now.
Perhaps the next Palestinian Authority leader will be pragmatic enough to recognize that in the contemporary Middle East, where Iran's Shia imperialists pose an existential threat to their neighbors, it's time to relinquish the dream of a Palestine that is Jew-free from the river to the sea.
That does not mean acquiescing to everything President Trump and Kushner packed into their 180-page plan. It does mean resuming negotiations with Israelis, perhaps putting a counteroffer on the table and, for the first time ever, transitioning from "resisting" the Jewish state to building a Palestinian state – a real state, with functioning institutions, not a failed state kept afloat by the "donor community."
To do that would give birth to something that for generations has existed only in our imaginations: a peace process.
On Wednesday morning, NeverTrump propagandist Bill Kristol told his MSNBC audience that Democratic chances of victory over US President Donald Trump will rise if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defeated in Israel's elections on March 2.
Along the same lines, if Netanyahu fails to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria before the election, not only will he almost certainly lose those elections, his defeat will bury Trump's peace plan and harm Trump's reelection chances.
To understand why this is the case it is first necessary to understand the nature of the Blue and White party and its relationship to Trump and his peace plan.
After Trump's peace plan was published, Israelis discovered significant problems with the map attached to the plan. Among other things, the map places large sections of Highway 60, which crosses Judea and Samaria from south to north outside Israeli jurisdiction. If left uncorrected, the designation will endanger the security of tens of thousands of Israelis whose communities will be rendered isolated enclaves. Since ensuring Israel's ability to defend itself and its citizens on a permanent basis is a major goal of the plan, this omission was obviously an oversight. Netanyahu announced this week that he has assembled a team to work on the map.
So long as the map is not adjusted, members of Likud and other parties in the right-religious bloc Netanyahu leads will be unable to vote in favor of the plan, despite their support for Trump and for the plan overall.
This then brings us to Benny Gantz and his party.
Just before Gantz traveled to Washington to meet with Trump at the White House last Monday, it came out that his top campaign strategists, Ronen Tzur and Joel Benenson had both separately published multiple posts on Twitter viciously attacking Trump. Both men compared him to Hitler, called him a Russian agent and a racist. In other words, both men parroted Democratic talking points against Trump. (After his posts were reported, Tzur claimed that he no longer believed the things he had written.)
Whereas Tzur – like every garden variety Israeli leftist politico – apparently follows the Democrats on everything related to American public affairs automatically, Benenson shapes Democratic positions. Benenson served as Barack Obama's senior political strategist in the 2008 and 2012 elections and as Hillary Clinton's senior political strategist in 2016.
In 2015, Wikileaks published Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta's emails. Several email chains included internal campaign discussions in which Benenson participated. In two discussions, Benenson advised Clinton not to mention Israel in public events.
Now Benenson is directing Blue and White's campaign, and there is little reason for surprise at the seamlessness of his move from Obama and Clinton to Gantz. The Israeli left has been intertwined with the Democratic Party.
Look instead at the reaction by the Palestinians. Not the reaction by the Palestinian Authority, which was merely the latest of their many rejections of a state of their own alongside Israel.
Look at the Palestinians themselves for whom that state is intended. What is their reaction to the offer of more than 80 percent of the land for such a state? They're furious.
This isn't because it's not 100 percent of the land. They're furious at the idea that they might find themselves living in such a state. So furious that they demonstrated in the thousands against the prospect.
Palestinian leaders and their Western supporters are shrieking that the plan would strip the Israeli Arabs in the Jordan Valley and the "Triangle" area of their Israeli citizenship, and transfer them into Palestine by the simply expedient of drawing its border around their villages.
This is untrue. The Trump plan states that they will be able to choose between remaining citizens of Israel and becoming citizens of Palestine. So they wouldn't be "stripped" of their citizenship at all. Changing it would be their choice.
And surely, they would all choose to become citizens of Palestine – the outcome we've been told is the absolute precondition for ending the Arab-Israel conflict?
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Friday, January 29, 2021
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