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Friday, February 19, 2016

From Ian:

Writer Houellebecq: Palestinians have lost legitimacy
Famed French writer Michel Houellebecq defended Israel in an interview he gave to the popular magazine Le Point, which devoted a journalistic project to the Jews of France.
According to news site Walla, Houellebecq – who is not Jewish – has identified as pro-Israeli for several years. He reconfirmed this position in the interview, and explained: "Israel is more moral than the Palestinians. At first I was neutral, but the Palestinian suicide bombings shocked me. Unlike the Israelis, who strike at pre-marked targets, the Palestinian attacks are blind, and that is much less moral. The end does not justify the means, and that is why the Palestinians have lost legitimacy in my eyes."
Houellebecq blamed the French Left for turning Israel into an enemy and inciting French Muslims against it. Intellectuals, journalists and radical leftist politicians, he said, are the ones responsible for the tension between the Muslim and Jewish communities in France.
"What connection is there between Muslims in France and the Palestinians?" he asked. "Why do the Muslims in France not raise a hue and cry about what is happening to their brothers in Africa and Asia, but only (do so) about their Palestinian brothers? It is only the fault of the radical Left's anti-Israeliness and its connection to Islam."
Caroline Glick: Israel’s dangerous consensus
Recently I found myself in a chance conversation with a former head of the Mossad’s Directorate of Operations. The former master spy, whom I had never met before, knew that I am a journalist.
He was aware of my political views.
Directing his remarks at a friend of mine, he declared that 99 percent of Mossad and Shin Bet officers are leftists. He then added triumphantly that according to a former commander of the air force whose name he cited, 99% of the air force’s pilots are similarly leftists.
Initially, I dismissed his comments as obnoxious chest-beating by a man who felt like irritating a group of right-wingers.
But given the source, it is impossible to simply brush off what he said. And to be clear, far more troubling than the prospect that Israel’s security establishment is uniformly leftist is the notion that there is any intellectual or ideological uniformity of any kind in the ranks of our defense community.
But given our defense community’s record in recent years, there is ample reason to believe that there is more than a grain of salt in the spy chief’s boast.
Consider Israel’s handling of Gaza.
21-Year-Old Israeli Killed in Palestinian Stabbing Spree in West Bank Supermarket
Two Palestinian teenage terrorists on Thursday stabbed two Israelis at a supermarket north of Jerusalem.
The Israeli victims, ages 21 and 35, were evacuated to a Jerusalem hospital. The 21-year-old later died from his wounds. The attackers, Bassem Subach and Omar Salim, both 14, were also taken to the hospital after being shot by armed civilians at the scene of the attack—the Rami Levy supermarket in the Sha’ar Binyamin area.
The civilians who stopped the attackers, Ben Hamo and Hanamel Even Chen, recounted the attack in interviews with Israel National News.
“I came to shop at Rami Levy, I was in the aisle of aluminum foil and the like, Shabbat candles, and suddenly I heard shouts and immediately I understood that an attack was happening,” Hamo said.
“I ran in the direction of the shouts, I saw a terrorist in front of me with a knife in hand approaching me,” he said. “I told him, ‘Stop, throw away the knife.’ He took another step, I shot him with a precise bullet to bring him down.”

Saturday, February 13, 2016

From Ian:

CAMERA: Palestinian official takes time off from glorifying terrorists
H.E. Shukry Bishara, a finance minister for the Palestinian Authority (PA), omits much while claiming that “Aid to Palestine promotes peace and prosperity” (February 9)—perhaps omissions and distortions are essential to his fallacious argument.
Bishara claims that “Palestine” is “a dedicated partner for peace.” Yet, the PA has continued to celebrate terrorists who murder Jews. Five days before Bishara’s commentary was published in The Hill, PA President Mahmoud Abbas—currently in the tenth year of a single elected five-year term—hosted 11 families of terrorists in his office. Palestinian leaders rewarding terror is the rule, rather than the exception.
On Oct. 13, 2015, the PA Ministry of Education announced that it would plant olive trees and place signs with the names of Palestinian terrorists killed while attacking Israelis, among them Muhannad Shafeq Halabi, who murdered two Israelis and stabbed a two-year old child in what official PA media celebrated as a “martyrdom operation.” Halabi was also posthumously awarded a law degree and soil from the al-Aqsa mosque was brought to his grave by Abbas.
Besides offering praise, memorial degrees and tributes, the PA has incited terror attacks against Israelis. In a Sep. 16, 2015 speech that preceded the current “stabbing intifada,” Abbas said, “We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every Martyr (Shahid) will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah.” This exhortation, played on official PA TV and featured on the PA’s Web site, can hardly be considered the words of a “partner for peace.”
When not glorifying or inciting terrorists, the PA is paying them.
CAMERA Letter Refutes False Commentary by Hill Contributor
Josh Ruebner offers to give Sen. Tom Cotton a geography lesson because the Arkansas Republican opposes discriminatory labeling of imports from Israeli settlements (“The West Bank and Gaza Strip are not Israel, Sen. Cotton,” February 8). It's Ruebner who needs a vocabulary lesson.
Ruebner, of the “U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation,” refers to “the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank (including East Jerusalem)….” But he also says “the ultimate disposition of these Palestinians lands can only be determined through bilateral negotiations.” If they're “Palestinian lands,” their disposition's already been determined. If their “ultimate disposition … can only be determined through bilateral negotiations,” then the territories in question are disputed, not Palestinian.
Ruebner notes that “in 1967, the United States played a seminal role in getting the United Nations to adopt Security Council Resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw ‘from territories occupied' in that year's war, which include the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” Resolution 242 does more than call on Israel to withdraw from some but not necessarily all territories it won in self-defense in 1967. It calls for “secure and recognized boundaries,” which Israel's pre-'67 armistice lines with Jordan on the West Bank and Egypt in the Gaza Strip manifestly were not. Israeli withdrawal, whatever its degree,is envisioned as the result of successful negotiations deciding the disposition of the territories, not something required prior.
Meanwhile, the resolution's co-author, U.S. Undersecretary of State Eugene Rostow, noted Jews as well as Arabs have claims in the territories. As for “the illegality of Israeli settlements,” as Ruebner puts it, the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, Article 6, calls for “close Jewish settlement” on the land west of the Jordan River. The mandate, including Article 6, is upheld by the U.N. Charter, Chapter XII, Article 80. The United States long ago endorsed Great Britain's exercise of mandatory powers, including Article 6 (Anglo-American Convention, 1924). Claims to the contrary, whether made by Ruebner, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, or even U.S. administrations may be propagandistic, diplomatic, or political, but not legal.
Ben-Dror Yemini: Perpetuating the conflict
If a member of France's National Assembly had dared visit the Sint-Jans-Molenbeek neighborhood in Brussels, the home of some of the November 13 Paris terror attack perpetrators, and observe a minute of silence with the families of the murderers, he would have had to flee directly to Syria. He'd only be able to return to France in handcuffs. Excuses like "you have to understand the cultural context" would have been rejected out of hand. But MK Ayman Odeh dares complain about Israeli democracy. He's got some nerve.
The outrage at the three Balad MKs was not about their humanitarian mission to return the bodies of the terrorists and comfort bereaved families. The outrage exploded because of their show of solidarity with the families of the murderers, which was also expressed in a minute of silence in their memory. Odeh, by the way, claims there was no minute of silence. Really? Jamal Zahalka told Danny Kushmaro: "There was a minute of silence, as is the Palestinian custom."
MK Haneen Zoabi explained after the visit that the important thing was the struggle against the occupation. Indeed. Like her party members, she is talking about the 1948 occupation, not the 1967 one. She rejects the Jews' right to have a state of their own. She doesn't just support the "resistance," she also encourages it. And she, the so-called secular woman, also called to "put religious ceremonies and religious institutions in the center of the struggle," as well as "to cancel the security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority and replace it with resistance."
And to those who insist on not getting it, "the resistance" ("al-Muqawamah") is also, and perhaps mostly, terrorism against Jews. And according to Zoabi, "there is no such thing as Palestinian terrorism." Not even the murder of the three yeshiva students. There's only a "legitimate struggle" and "resistance." It's no wonder Hamas views her as a heroine. Zoabi and her friends insist on perpetuating the conflict and perpetuating terrorism, they've been the Palestinians' catastrophe for the past 100 years of conflict. They're leading them from one disaster to the next, and they insist on carrying on.

Tuesday, February 09, 2016

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Syria and the real demographic threat
Unfortunately, despite the collapse of Syria and Iraq, and despite the rising threats to Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon, for the most part, Israeli analysts continue to base their view of Israel’s options moving forward – particularly in relation to the Palestinians – on a regional map that is no longer relevant.
Sunday the Labor Party endorsed party leader Isaac Herzog’s plan to unilaterally withdraw from much of Judea and Samaria. Given the regional population changes, the notion that Israel can transfer more land along its eastern flank to the chronically unstable, and hostile Palestinian Authority today is reckless at best. For all their weaknesses, both the Jordanian and Lebanese regimes are far stronger than the PA. And they have been unable to stop the refugee flows across their borders.
It is impossible to imagine that a Palestinian state on the western side of the Jordan River could block refugee flows from the east, particularly when the Palestinians demand the free immigration of millions of ethnic Palestinians from Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
The demographic transformation of Jordan and Lebanon in recent years shows that the greatest demographic threat to the remaining states in the region is not natural growth, but refugees from states that have collapsed. The integration of Palestinians into Israel is far less dangerous to the long-term survivability of Israel than the influx of millions of refugees from neighboring states into a Palestinian state on the western side of the Jordan River.
In the hopes of keeping the Syrians displaced by the war in their country from turning to Europe for refuge, last week Western countries held a donor conference for Syria in London.
Speaking at the conference King Abdullah warned that Jordan is at a “boiling point,” and told the West to commit to donating $1.6b. over the next three years before the “dam bursts.”
Unfortunately, the dam is already leaking. And if Israel doesn’t want to be flooded as well, the time has come to understand that old thinking about demography – and just about everything else – is no longer relevant.
3 Arab MPs suspended from Knesset following PMW report
3 Arab MPs suspended from Knesset after PMW exposed their meeting families of terrorists and their standing for "a minute of silence for the souls of the "Martyrs"
Two Israeli Parliamentary committees met yesterday in response to Palestinian Media Watch's report on Thursday, which exposed that three Arab MPs from the Balad Party met with families of terrorist murderers and stood for "a minute of silence for the souls of the "Shahids" (Martyrs). A video of the father of Baha Alyan - murderer of three Israelis, was posted by the Balad Party on its Facebook page, where the terrorist was referred to as "The Shahid (Martyr) Baha Alyan."
The Knesset House Committee met first and invited PMW director Itamar Marcus to present the information documenting the meeting of the Arab MPs. The Committee passed on its recommendations to the Knesset Ethics Committee which voted to suspend two of the MPs, Hanin Zoabi and Basel Ghattas, for 4 months each, and the third MP, Jamal Zahalka, for 2 months.
As part of his testimony, Itamar Marcus stressed the severity of the Balad Party's referring to the murderers as Shahids. He first explained the Islamic meaning of the words, citing a sermon from PA TV in which the PA Minister of Religious Affairs explained that: "The Shahid has merit with Allah, a merit that no one else has..."
PMW report triggers political storm in Israel
Palestinian Media Watch sparked a political storm in Israel on Thursday by releasing a report in Hebrew that documented that three Arab members of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, met with families of terrorists who recently attacked and murdered Israelis.
The meeting with the terrorists’ families was condemned all across the political spectrum from Prime Minister Netanyahu who said “those who comfort terrorists’ families don’t deserve to be Members of the Knesset,” and other heads of government, to leaders of the opposition parties (Their statements appear below). PM Netanyahu also asked the Attorney General and the Parliamentary Ethics Committee to investigate the Israeli Arab MPs.
As the political storm continued, PMW Itamar Marcus was invited to speak today in the House Committee of Israeli Parliament, which met to discuss different courses of action to take regarding the Israeli Arab MPs who met with terrorists’ families. Marcus showed committee members the original documentation exposing the meeting and showed additional documentation of Arab MPs defending the meeting.
Israeli TV interviews Itamar Marcus - PMW report sparks political storm in Israel


Monday, February 08, 2016

From Ian:

UN chief heckled at NY synagogue during Holocaust speech
UN Director General Ban Ki-moon was met with jeers and heckling Saturday at the Park East Synagogue in New York, where he delivered an address in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Congregants at the Manhattan synagogue accused the UN chief of justifying terror, with some saying his comments attributing a wave of near-daily Palestinian attacks to “frustration” was like rationalizing the 9/11 attacks, the Walla news site reported.
Two weeks ago, Ban’s comments — that “it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism” — drew a furious response from Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused him of “stoking terror.” The UN has “lost its neutrality and its moral force, and these statements by the secretary-general do nothing to improve its situation,” he said in an angry video statement.
Ban subsequently reiterated his harsh criticism of Israel’s policies in the West Bank, but stressed that his words under no circumstances amounted to a justification for terror attacks.
Ban did not mention Israel in his speech on Saturday.
Israeli envoy Danon: Palestinians citing UN Secretary General to excuse terror
In a speech at the monthly Security Council debate on the Middle East earlier this month, Secretary- General Ban Ki- Moon, addressing the issue of Palestinian terror, said that “as oppressed peoples have demonstrated throughout the ages, it is human nature to react to occupation, which often serves as a potent incubator of hate and extremism.”
Ban made his remarks on the same day that terrorist victim Shlomit Krigman, 23, was buried in Jerusalem. The young woman was fatally stabbed on Monday evening by two Palestinian terrorists.
"Palestinian terrorism is using your words to excuse its actions," Danon wrote in response to the statements made by the Fatah spokesperson.
"Your words have created two categories of terrorism: Terror against Israel, and then the rest of the world," Danon explained.
Danon explained to the Secretary General that an additional terrorist attack had been executed in Israel's capital city of Jerusalem since his statements, and that only the bravery of Hadar Cohen, a 19 year old police officer, prevented a large scale attack by paying the price of her life.
"Since when is it the job of the UN to find justifications for terror?," asked Danon. "Since when does the UN create two categories for terrorism and its victims?"
In closing, Danon wrote, "I urge you to retract your statements and to make it clear that there is no justification for the bloodshed of Israeli victims."
Jewish boy, 11, stabbed and wounded in Ramle
An 11-year-old Jewish boy was stabbed and wounded Monday in an attack in the central Israeli town of Ramle.
The attacker fled the scene, apparently toward the Jawaresh neighborhood of the city.
The boy was hospitalized with moderate injuries, the Magen David Adom emergency service said. The child said that the assailant was an Arab. A 17-year-old Arab youth was arrested a short time later on suspicion of carrying out the attack.
The victim said he was walking down the street when an Arab teen asked him for a lighter, and stabbed him when he answered he did not have one.

Tuesday, February 02, 2016

From Ian:

The emotional post that conquered Israelis' hearts overnight
Dafna Meir's young daughters win second, third place in gymnastics competition - then break down in tears after returning home.
Natan Meir, the husband of terror victim Dafna, published an emotional Facebook post last night, which has already received numerous shares and reached Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Dafna Meir was recently murdered in her Otniel home.
"My sweet daughters, Noa (11.5) and Ahava (10.5) competed in an internal gymnastics competition in Otniel today. They both won medals for second and third place. Two mothers, loving neighbors, escorted them and greatly cheered them up," he wrote.
"When evening came, so did the tears - their mother wasn't able to see this achievement. Where is her hug? Why isn't she here to see? I suggested that I would post a picture of them with their medals so they could receive a warm embrace and love from the entire Jewish People."
Caroline Glick: The IDF's misplaced trust in the PA
In the past, both Abbas and his predecessor Yassir Arafat assessed at various points that they were better off cooperating with Hamas against Israel than with Israel against Hamas. Their decisions in 1996, from 2000 to 2007, and intermittently ever since, have had little to do with Israel's positions. Indeed, their shifts from Israel to Hamas have often occurred at times when Israel did the most to support them.
As for Abbas's control over his forces, this too can change on a dime. For years, Palestinian sources have insisted that these forces feel no intrinsic loyalty to Abbas. They stay with Abbas because he pays them.
Ideologically, these men under arms are free floaters. Nothing they believe is a bar for shifting their loyalties to Hamas. More to the point, all the US financial transfers to the PA security forces won't stop any of the US-trained Palestinian forces from moonlighting as Hamas, Fatah or Hezbollah terrorists. They've done it in the past and they will do it again.
The instrumental, and necessarily temporary nature of Palestinian security cooperation with the IDF tells us three things.
First, the IDF needs to ditch its current counterterror strategy which is based on the wrongheaded assumption that we can rely on the PA security forces. Central Command needs to develop contingency plans for neutralizing these forces. These contingency plans don’t need to be made public. But to the extent that aspects of the plans can be quietly implemented, they should be implemented as quickly as possible.
Second, IDF commanders need to stop praising these hostile forces. At some point in the not so distant future the IDF will be required to fight these forces. When that day comes, the IDF's enthusiastic tributes to their great cooperation with these terror-supporting forces will come back to haunt us. How will we be able to explain why our actions are necessary to allies to whom we have praised these hostile forces? This brings us to the final thing we need to recognize about these Palestinian forces. It was a major strategic blinder for Israel to support the US's decision to train them. By supporting the US training program, Israel has given the US an incentive to deny the hostile nature of these forces.
Even worse than guaranteeing that the US will be unwilling to accept that in training these forces its military built a terror army, is that threat these forces pose. Today seven US-trained Palestinian combat battalions are deployed close to Israel's major urban centers. Their fighting skills far surpass anything Israel has had to deal with in campaigns to date against Palestinian terror onslaughts.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas: The "Merchants of War" Who Seek to Destroy Israel
The myth that Hamas uses tunnels to smuggle food and other necessities to the "besieged" Gaza Strip has been buried under the rubble of the tunnel that collapsed last week east of Gaza City.
The incident, in which seven members of Hamas's armed wing, Ezaddin Al-Qassam, were killed when the tunnel they were working in collapsed, provides further proof that the Islamist movement has stayed true to its charter, which calls for the total destruction of Israel.
The Hamas men who were killed in the tunnel collapse belonged to the movement's elite "Tunnel Unit." According to Ezaddin Al-Qassam, the men were busy repairing one of the tunnels (damaged during the 2014 war with Israel) when it collapsed due to severe weather conditions.
Contrary to popular belief, the tunnel was not being renovated to allow Palestinians to smuggle basic goods from Egypt to the Gaza Strip. This was one of many tunnels that Hamas has dug over the past few years to infiltrate Israel and carry out terror attacks.
Hamas makes no secret of the goal of its renovations. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar readily admits that the tunnels are being rebuilt to target Israel.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

From Ian:

Anne Bayefsky: UN fails to learn lessons of Holocaust. It focuses on showmanship
Analogizing Palestinians to the Jewish victims of the Nazis: that’s how the UN is marking this week’s “International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.” The epicenter of modern antisemitism on a global scale is not somewhere over there, but in the middle of Turtle Bay.
For public tour groups, and their busloads of impressionable American students from around the country, the UN ‘s permanent “Palestine” exhibit has now been arranged to be within a few feet of the UN’s permanent Holocaust exhibit.
This week’s activities follow suit.
On January 25, 2016, a temporary exhibit called “Holocaust by Bullets” was opened in the UN visitors’ lobby. The painstaking research of the French organization Yahad-In Unum substantiates how two million Jews were shot to death in the presence of normal folks all over Europe.
But “Holocaust by Bullets” follows the UN’s December exhibition, which is titled “Palestinian Children: Overcoming Tragedies with Hope, Dreams, Resilience and Dignity.” That month-long display in the visitors’ lobby consisted of scenes of Palestinian children suffering from “devastating” wanton, unprovoked Israeli “operations.”
Father Patrick Desbois opened Yahad-In Unum’s exhibit by explaining that his team locates the bodies of Nazi victims and then honors the dead. He is driven to ensure that Europe does not bury “all its values” by building its future on unacknowledged and unvalued human beings in mass graves.
Palestinian UN representative Riyad Mansour opened December’s exhibit with a different set of values – incitement for Palestinian children to kill more Jews. As Mansour explained: “we are so proud that in this popular uprising, the backbone of this uprising are the youth of Palestine.”
Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt: We have gone back to the Middle Ages and face religious war with the fascists of radical Islam
If the 20th century could be characterised as a battle between territories, then I believe the 21st century has seen a return to the religious wars of the Middle Ages. The rise of Isil has followed fifteen years since 9/11 where Islamic religious terrorism has become the premier menace to democracy. In fact, the attacks on 9/11 ended the 20th century, in which secular totalitarian ideologies, such as Nazism and Communism challenged the existing world order and world peace.
One of the many challenges this new war poses is that it goes against the tolerant, inclusive society that has developed in the Western World over the last fifty years. For that reason, the first reaction of many is to divorce terrorism from religion. Many feel that the only way to protect religious freedoms is to deny radical elements. We need to understand the fact that there are radicalised aspects within many faiths, in particular Islam. Its fascist offshoot, Isil, is a strain of Islam and must be treated as such. These interpretations of Islam must be denounced but we must realise that we have now entered a religious war.
Islam, as it is practised today in some parts of the Middle East, is similar to Christianity in the premodern times, it has not yet developed or learnt to integrate into society. Therefore, by definition, it is entirely medieval and contrary to the basic tenets of a liberal state or democracy. But it would be ridiculous to assume that more than one billion Muslims are radical and dangerous. Instead we need to learn to differentiate between those strains that have developed and those strains that are a genuine danger to the developed world.
MEMRI: For International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei Publishes Holocaust Denial Video
Today, January 27, 2016, International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei published on his official website a three-minute video clip titled "Are The Dark Ages Over?" In it, he expresses doubt about whether the Holocaust actually happened, rages about Europe's ban on public questioning of the validity of the Holocaust, and hints at a conspiracy on the part of Western Europe and the U.S. – which champion freedom of speech yet at the same time prevent open discussion of whether the Holocaust happened, and rages about Europe's ban on denying the Holocaust.
Khamenei attacks what he calls the hypocrisy of the West that champion the value of freedom of speech yet prevent any discussion of whether the Holocaust actually happened. This silence about the Holocaust that is imposed by the West on their citizens, he hints, is a conspiracy by the Western countries and the Zionist regime, aimed at establishing falsely, justification for Israel's existence, as it expels the Palestinians.
He then calls on the Muslim ummah, in a religious message, to come together to fight Israel and her Western patrons, because it is they who are perpetrating the real "Ignorance" – Jahiliyya – a reference to the era of ignorance that preceded the advent of Islam.
The clip also features images of leading European Holocaust deniers such as Roger Garaudy, Robert Faurisson, and David Irving, and highlighted the alleged persecution of them by Western authorities.
Supreme leader of Iran marks Holocaust Memorial Day by publishing Holocaust denying video
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, has marked Holocaust Memorial Day by publishing a Holocaust denying video on his official website.
While nations around the world remembered the millions of people who were killed in Auschwitz and other concentration camps, Iran’s hardline leader questioned whether the Holocaust “is a reality or not”.
Khamenei's website promotes the video with a banner across its homepage, featuring a montage of images, including one of Adolf Hitler.
Wednesday was also the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland where more than one million people were killed during World War Two. The majority were Jews and the former extermination camp is the world's biggest Jewish cemetery.
Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis attempted to annihilate all of Europe’s Jews. In one of the largest genocides in history, approximately six million Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime and its collaborators.
Khamenei's message comes as President Hassan Rouhani tours Italy and France, attempting to drum up trade and diplomatic links after his country signed a historic deal to limit its nuclear ambitions.

Monday, January 25, 2016

From Ian:


Palestinian twin sisters accused of making bombs for attacks
Israeli security forces arrested 18-year-old bomb-making twin sisters from Shwaika, outside the Palestinian city of Tulkarem in the West Bank last month, the Shin Bet security service announced Monday.
Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Shin Bet officers discovered pipe bombs and other explosive materials in the home of Diana and Nadia Hawila in late December 2015, officials said.
In addition, they found knives, Hamas headbands and “equipment for riots,” the Shin Bet said in a statement, though it did not claim that the twins were, in fact, Hamas members.
“This investigation again shows the motivation to carry out terror attacks, especially among those who are not a part of terrorist organizations, including women,” the Shin Bet said.
In interrogation, Diana Hawila admitted that she had purchased the fertilizer and other chemicals necessary to create the explosives.
She learned how to create bombs by watching instructional videos online, according to the Shin Bet. Diana also watched Islamic extremist videos that encouraged women to take part in terror attacks against Israelis and Jews, which “strengthened her decision to act,” the Shin Bet said.
Teen stabber had ‘urge’ to act, says relative
A relative of a 13-year-old Palestinian girl, who was shot and killed on Saturday when trying to knife a security guard at a West Bank settlement, said she had an “urge” to act and was influenced by other terrorists.
At the same time, other family members of Roqaya Abu-Eid questioned why she had been killed rather than subdued. Her father said there had been no need to kill her.
Abu-Eid was shot by a civilian security guard at the entrance to Anatot, near Jerusalem, when she rushed at him with a knife, police said. She lived in the nearby Palestinian village of the same name.
Israel Police said after an initial investigation that the girl had fought with her parents and stormed out the family home with the knife, declaring that she wanted to die, a claim rejected by her family.
A teenage relative told Channel 2 on Sunday that she had been inspired to carry out the attack by seeing other incidents.
Israel strikes Hamas terror target in Gaza in response to rocket fire
The Israel Air Force struck a Hamas military compound in the center of the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Monday in retaliation for a Gazan rockets fired on the Southern region of Israel.
The rocket was fired from the Gaza strip at southern Israel on Sunday evening setting off the color red sirens in the Sha'ar Hanegev region, sending local residents fleeing for cover.
The rocket exploded in an open area, failing to cause injuries and there was no damage, the army said.
In the response a few hours later, IAF aircraft struck a Hamas military installation, the IDF Spokesperson’s Office said.
On Saturday night, Gazan terrorists fired a rocket towards Israel. The rocket landed inside Gaza in open territory. The color red siren was not sounded.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

From Ian:

PMW: ‎“Hitler was not morally corrupt, he was daring” says Fatah leader
"Hitler was not morally corrupt, he was daring," according to Fatah leader and Central Committee Member Tawfiq Tirawi. After these words the moderator on independent Ma'an TV stopped the interview saying: "Let's drink some tea and take a break. It would be a pity to be put in jail because of this interview."
Fatah Central Committee Member Tawfiq Tirawi: "There is a difference between an officer's discipline and loyalty to a leader. The leader could be morally corrupt."
Ma'an host: "And how would you know?"
Tawfiq Tirawi: "You have to know. Is there anyone who does not know his leader?"
Ma'an host: "The German people did not know that Hitler was morally corrupt."
Tawfiq Tirawi: "He was not morally corrupt."

Ma'an host: "The French think that de Gaulle was half a prophet. Churchill, I don't know what his story was, but people see him as one of the most important statesmen."
Tawfiq Tirawi: "Let us talk logically. Hitler was not morally corrupt. He was daring."
Ma'an host: "Is that the way to talk? I say: Let's drink some tea and take a break. It would be a pity to be put in jail because of this interview. We will drink tea and take a break. Let's leave Hitler."
[Ma'an TV, independent Palestinian channel, Jan. 16, 2016]
Senior Fatah official:‎ "Hitler wasn't morally corrupt, he was daring"

Khaled Abu Toameh: Netanyahu in Otniel: Boundless Palestinian hatred caused by incitement
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the town of Otniel, south of Hebron, on Tuesday morning and slammed the Palestinian Authority for the incitement that propelled a 15-year-old boy to murder a 38-year-old mother of six there.
“Whoever wants to see the truth about the roots of the conflict between us and the Palestinians should come to Otniel and see here a wonderful family that only wants coexistence and peace,” he said, after paying a shiva (mourning period) call to the family of Dafna Meir, murdered on Sunday by the 15-year-old terrorist arrested earlier in the day.
“They should see the young people, inflamed by incitement, who come to murder women here, a mother of six, and in Tekoa, a pregnant woman; they come to murder them and say, ‘We will destroy you all, in Tel Aviv and Jaffa as well,’” the prime minister continued.
On one side there is “humanity and a desire for coexistence, and on the other side boundless hatred,” he added. “That hatred has an address: it is the incitement of the Palestinian Authority and other actors, such as the Islamic Movement and Hamas. The time has come for the international community to stop its hypocrisy and to call the child by its name.”
Two More Middle East Martyrs
That’s a lesson the Obama administration has steadfastly refused to learn in its seven years in office. More than any other of his predecessors, President Obama beat up on Israel over the presence of Jews in the West Bank and broke new ground by also stigmatizing the Jewish presence and the building of homes in Jerusalem. The Obama administration sent the message that Jews in the West Bank were illegitimate and the result is that the Palestinians haven’t been forced to reassess their obsession with driving them out of their homes and instead make peace. Worse than that, they’ve refused to understand that the Palestinians make no real distinctions between the “occupation” of the West Bank and the “occupation” of pre-1967 Israel.
Unless and until Palestinians stop seeing the murder of Jews, whether in Tel Aviv or in the Hebron hills, as not merely defensible but laudable, there will be no peace and their lives won’t get better. That’s because, so long as they are trapped in the mindset of a century-long war on Zionism, they will continue to allow their political leaders to refuse to make peace and to mire their society in hate and corruption.
Until then Israelis, even the majority that would happily trade land for true peace, know that any more territorial concessions will only lead to more terrorism and death as the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza did. So long as Palestinians prefer to make martyrs — a true martyr in the form of a woman who died defending her children and a false on in the form of her heartless murderer — to making peace the rest of the world should refuse to play along with their propaganda demonizing the Jews of Otniel or those of Tel Aviv. Instead, they should realize that the hate that drives these Palestinian murderers is no different from the Islamists that murdered the people of Paris and San Bernardino.

Monday, January 11, 2016

From Ian:

Why Sanctions Are Pointless: Or, How Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs and Coca-Cola Broke the Arab Boycott
Everyone loves sanctions. But privileged Russians still enjoy imported French cheeses, and Iran’s Republican Guard is profiting handsomely from running a black market in sanction-busting imports. Even BDS may not be the dire threat that both its fevered proponents and its enemies like to imagine. Why? Because the truth is that sanctions are not really that hard to evade, and boycotts are not that hard to break. I know, because I helped to break the Arab boycott of Israel with the reluctant leverage of the Coca-Cola Corp. and the enthusiastic support of Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs.
I was trained as an economist, and in 1964 the government of Israel asked me to take a leave from the daily Maariv, then Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper, to serve at our consulate in New York City on finding ways around the refusal of any Arab country to trade with our new nation. It had been almost a quarter of a century since I had enjoyed “The pause that refreshes” while visiting Beirut with my parents, so a thirst for Coca-Cola was hardly a habit with me or my countrymen. We all lived on short rations. Supplies of imported food and other essentials were limited during the struggle to build our nation, defend ourselves, and absorb millions of immigrants. When Coke first applied to open a bottling plant only a year after we gained our independence in 1948, it was refused as an unnecessary luxury.
But our soft drink companies yearned for a local franchise to bottle and sell Coca-Cola. This was regarded worldwide as a license to print money and usually ended up in the hands of someone with a great deal of political pull—in Hebrew protexia, or in the vernacular “Vitamin P.” Thus I became aware of the taste for Coca-Cola only after I arrived in arrived in New York to join the Israeli Economic Mission with the rank of consul.
Our mission was to convince American businessmen to ignore the Arab threat to seal off their much larger market from any company that did business with us. We also tried to drum up foreign investment in Israel, another move that would trigger the boycott. We asked Jewish-American importers to pressure their foreign suppliers to sell to Israel by warning that they would offend their customers if they refused to do business with Israel.
Douglas Murray: Germany Just Can't Get It Right
The late Robert Conquest once laid out a set of three political rules, the last of which read, "The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies." This rule comes in handy when trying to understand the otherwise clearly insane and suicidal policies of Chancellor Merkel's government in Germany. These policies only make sense if the German government has in fact been taken over by a cabal of people intent not on holding Germany together but on pulling it entirely apart. Consider the evidence.
There can be few other explanations for why Chancellor Merkel's government last year let in more than one million people (about 1.5% of the current German population) without having any idea of who they were, where they came from or what they think. No democratic leader could possibly push through such a startling measure. How else can you explain why a country that in the 20th century had such a gigantic anti-Semitism problem, would import so many people from those areas of the world which, in the 21st century, now have the same gigantic anti-Semitism problem?
A document that was leaked late last year from the German intelligence service warned that the country is "importing Islamic extremism, Arab anti-Semitism, national and ethnic conflicts of other peoples..." How to explain a government and security service policy which allowed this to happen? Or a Chancellor who, when asked a very lightly critical question about all of this by a concerned German citizen, responded with a long disquisition that failed to answer even one part of the pertinent point?
More up-to-date, it is worth considering events since New Year's Eve. As the world now knows, that was when around 100 women were subjected to rape, harassment and sexual molestation by a huge crowd of migrants in the centre of the city of Cologne. It has now emerged that the first response of the Cologne police to this major incident was to hold back information about the identity of the attackers. Whether the police thought they could get away with that or not, this lie has now poured fuel onto the flames of public anger by demonstrating that the police, like the government and much of the media, are intent on misinforming the public about what is going on in their country, rather than keeping them truthfully briefed about it.
David Collier: When human rights no longer matter to NGO’s
As soon as the program was broadcast, the backlash started. On the programme itself, Illana Dayan, the shows anchor, had invited Gideon Levy, a frequent commentator on human rights to respond, and rather surprisingly, Levy’s main concern seemed to be that the show had been broadcast at all. Levy has since written an article in Haaretz saying that the show ‘should be ashamed of the report it aired which depicted human rights activists as dangerous, while ignoring the occupation.’ Rather incredibly, Levy begins to suggest the entire piece is taken out of context and ending in rather dramatic and ironic fashion, he suggests that by highlighting these actions to the world, the show has done a disservice. Here is Gideon Levy publicly claiming that some people assisting human rights abuses should not be put on TV.
And Gideon Levy is far from alone. 972 Magazine, an online outlet that spends its entire existence knocking Israel and talking up human rights, suddenly becomes blind to actions that clearly contravene the UN’S Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today (10/1) they ran a piece by Haggai Matar, attacking those who publicised the actions of the activists. Suddenly, when analysing the words of a man who seemed to be rejoicing at the violent fate that would befall the land seller, there is a ‘but’ and an ‘however’. Incredibly, the criticism is reserved for the source of the recording, rather than the men who conspired to perhaps have someone killed. It seems that for these left wing ‘moralist thinkers’ that when it comes to human rights, some people’s rights are more important than others.
These are not the only two examples. Ever since the broadcast, the show has been attacked endlessly from sources desperate to protect the image of the NGO’s, movements that propose their very raison d’être is to protect human rights. But it isn’t just those making noise that we should focus on, it is those remaining quiet. Groups who describe themselves as being on the far left of the political spectrum, those that frequently hide behind or use the material provided by these NGO’s have temporarily stopped posting and tweeting. They have nothing to say. Media outlets like the Guardian and Independent, who would have been banging down the doors if the situation was reversed, are ducking under cover until the furore dies down. They do not want to attack ‘their own’.
We have always known this hypocrisy existed. We are well aware that these groups, these media outlets, these individuals, work in unison and are driven by personal bias and hatred towards Israel rather than a true sympathy for the Palestinians. It would have been nice to see one, just one, stand up and give the unequivocal condemnation they always demand of others. Instead we are left with those attacking the messenger, weak attempts at diverting focus and an entire part of the political spectrum simply disappearing for a while. No, this is not a surprise, but it is solid evidence that the hatred we see directed towards Israel every day, is simply that, blind hatred. Hatred that emanates from a bunch of very vocal but equally morally deficient hypocrites. It is worth remembering that next time you see one of their reports.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

From Ian:

Police open criminal investigation of far-left Israeli activist
The Israel Police have opened a criminal investigation into a far-left activist who was shown on an investigative journalism TV program last week boasting about how he helps Palestinian security forces find Palestinians who sell land to Jews.
In the hidden camera footage aired by Channel 2’s “Uvda” on Thursday night, Ezra Nawi can be seen boasting about how the Palestinian land owners are tortured and later killed after taken into custody by the Palestinian Authority’s Preventative Security Service.
“Straight away I give their pictures and phone numbers to the Preventive Security Force,” Nawi is heard saying in reference to the Palestinian Authority’s counterintelligence arm. “The Palestinian Authority catches them and kills them. But before it kills them, they get beat up a lot.”
The footage was part of a segment on Uvda about a group of Israelis who posed as far-left activists in order to infiltrate Israeli human rights NGOs working in the West Bank.
Guardian once praised Israeli ‘activist’ who helps kill Palestinians selling land to Jews
In 2009, the Guardian published an official editorial titled ‘In Praise of Ezra Nawi’.
Nawi is a Jewish Israeli ‘human rights activist’ with the group Ta’ayush, a “grassroots movement of Arabs and Jews working to break down the walls of racism and segregation”.
Prior to the editorial, the Guardian had published an op-ed by contributor Neve Gordon which was even effusive in its praise of the “pro-democracy, human rights activist”.
Fast forward to 2016.
Uvda, a respected news magazine on Israel’s Channel 2, just revealed that two Israeli “human rights activists” – including Ezra Nawi – bragged, in an exchange caught on film – that they “entrapped” Palestinians interested in selling land to Jews and subsequently turned them in to the Palestinian Authority.
Remarkably, they turned these Palestinians in even though they acknowledged – in the video secretly recorded by another NGO – that they likely faced torture or murder by the Palestinian secret police.
Haaretz outs IDF hero who infiltrated B'tselem, Ta'ayush
The Haaretz newspaper has exposed the alleged identity of the young man who infiltrated leftist groups as part of an investigative report that was aired on Channel 2 last week.
The man, who was planted in the leftist groups by a group called Ad Kan, recorded the most damning documentary materials aired on the show, by use of a hidden camera. His identity was kept secret on the show, and the IDF, too, refrained from making it public when he was awarded the Chief of Staff's citation for his courage in Operation Protective Edge.
According to the Channel 2 report, the man – who was referred to by the pseudonym "Arik," was the one who asked the IDF to keep his name secret, in order to make it possible for him to continue to infiltrate the leftist groups.
The investigative report has severely damaged the groups' image as being concerned with "human rights," by exposing that senior members of B'tselem and Ta'ayush have been informing on Arabs in Judea and Samaria who wish to sell land to Jews, in the knowledge that this leads to their arrest and torture by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which issues death sentences to people who sell land to Jews.

Friday, January 08, 2016

From Ian:

Reporter Calls Out Obama Admin for Living in Foreign Policy 'Fantasy World'
Discussing North Korea's recent claim that it tested a nuclear weapon, Lee posed this question to State Department spokesman John Kirby:
“Every time this happens, we hear from people in this administration, and other governments as well, that we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state. And yet it is. You also say this about other things too. You say you will never accept Crimea as a part of Russia. And yet it is. Isn’t it time to recognize these things for what they are and not live in this illusion or fantasy where you pretend that things are, are not?”
Kirby astonishingly responds that "The short answer is no."
"It's preferable to live in a fantasy world?" Lee counters.
Kirby stumbled for a long awkward stretch before finally saying, "At this level of foreign policy, you know, you... you have to make choices. And uh, you don't have to accept everything, even at face value."
"You have to accept reality," Lee interjected.
"No. We're not going to accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state. We're not going to recognize that. We are, however, going to deal with -"
AP’s Lee Calls Out Obama Administration For Living In A Fantasyland Of Their Foreign Policy Failures


Melanie Phillips: Turning enemies into friends and friends into foes
Last Tuesday, Iran unveiled a new underground missile depot, with state television showing Emad precision- guided missiles weapons that the US says are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Like its ballistic missile tests last October and November, these violate UN Security Council resolutions.
For this and other flagrant breaches of trust, the Obama administration has done nothing. Having suggested it would implement sanctions against the bodies it held responsible for aiding the missile program, it promptly retreated after a reported intervention by the State Department following Iranian objections.
Iran is confident that Obama will lift sanctions whatever the regime may do, since if Iran walks away from the nuclear deal this would strip away the figleaf of progress and destroy Obama’s presumed legacy. Consequently, the only binding part of this non-deal deal has become the lifting of sanctions. Obama has effectively become Iran’s hostage.
As a simultaneous consequence of this farce, the US has also lost its leverage over Saudi Arabia which almost certainly will now seek to develop or buy nuclear weapons of its own. To defuse this powder keg, the US should now cancel the Iranian nuclear deal. This would start to rein in Iran and bring Saudi Arabia down from the tree up which it has climbed.
It is said that Obama thought strengthening Shia Iran would produce a regional balance of power with Sunni Saudi Arabia, and usher in an era of peace and stability. Instead, he has pushed Iran and Saudi Arabia to the brink of war with each other, ushered in a nuclear arms race between the two and brought the world much closer to the edge of the apocalypse.
Awarding polemics
Olof Palme was a charismatic and well-spoken Social Democrat who became prime minister of Sweden in 1969. Palme was known for being both anti-American and anti-capitalist; and throughout his political career he fostered a close relationship to the Palestine Liberation Organization and became a personal friend of Yasir Arafat's, whom he invited to Sweden for numerous official visits. During Palme's time as prime minister, Swedish foreign policy was laced with a staunch anti-Zionism, and from then on, the Swedish government has given generous Swedish aid to the PLO.
After Palme's death in 1986, an award was created in his name, and every year the Olof Palme Prize, and the accompanying $75,000, is given to someone who is said to have done good work for human rights and democracy in the world. This year, the Palme Prize was awarded to Israeli journalist Gideon Levy and Palestinian Lutheran Bishop Mitri Raheb, for their "fight against occupation and violence," according to the jury.
Levy is a journalist at the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, and his attacks on Israel and the IDF are often published in Swedish media as a representation of middle-of-the-road sanity. Raheb is a pastor in the Lutheran church in Bethlehem who is known for preaching the so-called "replacement theology," wherein Christianity is believed to have replaced Judaism, making the Jewish faith -- and its claim to the Jewish homeland -- obsolete. Raheb is known across the world for his hate-propaganda toward Israel and the fact the he preaches a theology that nullifies any Jewish religious or historic heritage, including that of the land of Israel. These two men are being honored for their "courageous and indefatigable fight against occupation and violence, and for a future Middle East characterized by peaceful coexistence and equality for all," as the Olof Palme Memorial Fund phrased it in a statement released on Thursday. (h/t Yenta Press)

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

From Ian:

US spied on Netanyahu during Iran deal talks, WSJ reports
The U.S. administration continued to spy on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu even after U.S. President Barack Obama announced two years ago he would curtail the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program on friendly heads of state, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
The NSA's foreign eavesdropping included phone conversations between top Israeli officials and U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing current and former U.S. officials.
White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Netanyahu's campaign against the nuclear deal with Iran, according to the unnamed officials cited by the Journal.
According to the report, NSA eavesdropping suggested to the White House that Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations, which they learned through Israeli spying operations.
The Journal reported that the NSA's "targeting of Israeli leaders and officials also swept up the contents of some of their private conversations with U.S. lawmakers and American-Jewish groups."
Asked for comment on the Journal report, a White House National Security Council spokesman said: "We do not conduct any foreign intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and validated national security purpose. This applies to ordinary citizens and world leaders alike."
Israel: We don’t spy on US, and expect US not to spy on us
Intelligence and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz on Wednesday maintained that Israel does not spy on the US and said it expects Washington to uphold the same standards.
The Likud minister was responding to a report in The Wall Street Journal that said the White House instructed US spies to eavesdrop on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials earlier this year in an effort to counter campaigning against the Iran nuclear deal, despite having promised to curtail listening in on foreign leaders.
The National Security Agency’s spying dragnet was cast so wide it caught conversations Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders had with US officials and Jewish American leaders. This led to what one source called an “oh shit moment,” because of fears that “the executive branch would be accused of spying on Congress,” according to the report.
“Israel does not spy on the US, and we expect that our great friend, the US, will treat us in a similar fashion,” Katz told the Ynet news website. “If the information on the subject turns out to be true, Israel must file a formal protest with the American government and demand it stop all activities of this kind.”
Nonetheless, Israel’s former ambassador the US Michael Oren said Wednesday that Israel assumes that the US, and others, attempt to spy on it. “It’s not very nice, but that is the assumption,” Oren, now a Kulanu MK, said on Channel 2.
If he had something absolutely confidential that he had to convey to the prime minister, Oren added, “I got on a plane.”
LISTENING IN: Congress reportedly caught up in NSA spying on Israelis
According to the paper, the enhanced monitoring of Netanyahu began, with the assent of lawmakers from both parties, late in Obama's first term out of concerns that the Israeli leader would pursue a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
The sweeping up of conversations between Israeli officials and U.S. lawmakers began in earnest earlier this year, ahead of a March visit to Capitol Hill by Netanyahu to speak out against the developing Iran nuclear deal, and continued through this past September, when the deadline for Congress to block the deal passed.
The Journal, citing U.S. officials, reported that Netanyahu's office repeatedly attempted to learn details about changes in U.S. positions during the sensitive nuclear talks. Israel's ambassador to the U.S., Ron Derner, was described as coaching unnamed Jewish- American groups to press members of Congress, especially Democrats, to oppose the deal.

Monday, December 28, 2015

  • Monday, December 28, 2015
  • Elder of Ziyon
Hamas' Qassam Brigades announced that field commander Abdul Rahman Saleh, 29, of Khan Younis, was killed today after the collapse of a "resistance tunnel."

Here he is in happier times:


"Resistance tunnels" usually mean either tunnels under Gaza cities where weapons and explosives are hidden or tunnels being built towards Israel for kidnap operations. There are still a few tunnels that are used to smuggle weapons from Egypt, though, despite the crackdown by Egyptian authorities.

(h/t israelftw)


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Wednesday, December 23, 2015

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: The 2015 Dishonest Reporting Awards
The year began with Islamic terror in Paris, but was dominated by the Iranian nuclear talks and strained US-Israeli ties. A wave of Palestinian stabbing and car-ramming attacks began with the Jewish new year. As 2015 draws to a close, Islamic terror has struck the West again, with Paris suffering even more bloodshed.
The 2015 Dishonest Reporting Awards
1. Best Reason to Handle Palestinian Sources With Care: The Gaza Flood Libel
2. Most Bigoted Journalist: Kitty Holland
3. Worst Abuse of Anonymous Sources: Haaretz
4. Smear of the Year: Fareed Zakaria
5. Most Unholy Row: New York Times
6. Great Moments in Self-Embellishing: Brian Williams
7. Dumbest Twitter Rant: Jim Clancy
8. Most Maddening Map Misrepresentation: MSNBC
And who is the overall Dishonest Reporter of 2015? We’ll announce that next week, so stay tuned! Without further ado, here are the runner-up winners.
NGO Monitor: Deck the Halls with Exploitation: How Anti-Peace NGOs Abuse and Misuse the Message of Christmas
Similar to previous years, many politicized NGOs and well-known charities have been exploiting the 2015 Christmas season with anti-peace campaigns, some of which glorify terrorism.
Groups such as Sabeel (funded by Sweden, via Diakonia, and the Netherlands via ICCO and Kerk in Actie), War on Want (funded by UK, EU, and Ireland), Adalah-NY, Kairos Palestine, and Amos Trust are again using religious and holiday themes to demonize Israel. These organizations utilize inflammatory and offensive rhetoric in their Christmas carols, holiday messages, appeals, and religious imagery.
At the same time, their messages strip the context, omitting references to deadly Palestinian terrorism and other violence against Israelis. They fail to condemn the escalation of attacks against civilians in the last quarter of 2015 – stabbings, car rammings, and drive-by shootings. For example, many of these so-called Christmas messages allege that the security barrier causes harm to Palestinians, while failing to mention its role in protecting civilians against terror attacks.
The abuse of Christmas messages is part of a broad international campaign of political warfare conducted against Israel in some churches. Palestinian Christian NGOs, such as Sabeel and Kairos Palestine, provide the theological and ideological frameworks for these attacks.
In Christmas message, Abbas calls on world to protect Palestinians from Israel
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday accused Israel of continuing to “consolidate an Apartheid regime by accelerating policies which destroy the two-state solution.”
Abbas’s latest accusation came in a “Christmas Message” in which he repeated other charges against Israel, such as the construction of an “Annexation Wall” and the uprooting of “historic olive trees” near Bethlehem.
“Jesus is a symbol for all Palestinians,” Abbas said. “Palestine and its people take pride in being the birthplace of Christianity and having the oldest Christian community in the world.”

From Ian:

Why Palestinians Love Baby-Killers
Samir Kuntar murdered four Israelis. One of his victims was a four-year-old girl, Einat Haran. Kuntar smashed her skull. Kuntar was killed this week in Syria while helping President Bashar Assad commit war crimes against his own citizens.
Senior Palestinian official Sultan Abu Al-Einein evidently believes that murdering Jews is not a "despicable crime," but killing an arch-terrorist such as Kuntar is a "despicable crime."
When the Western-backed Palestinian Authority openly endorses terrorists and names streets, squares and schools after them, Palestinian leaders are sending a message to their people that murdering Jews is a noble and dignified act. This show of solidarity with a baby-killer is the direct result of ongoing incitement against Israel and Jews in mosques, the press and social media in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In this sick, twisted society that the Europeans have bought and paid for, anyone who murders Jews is considered a role model. Anyone who supports peace with Israel is denounced as a "traitor."
Douglas Murray: The Establishment Is In Denial — Yet Again
Worst was in the wake of November’s atrocity in Paris when the story went around from the Wall Street Journal to the Huffington Post and the Daily Mail that one of the suicide bombers at the Stade de France football stadium had been stopped and turned away by a Muslim security guard called Zouheir. The story was reported around the world and heralded across social media. Amid a night of bloodshed which allegedly had nothing to do with Islam here was a security guard who had everything to do with Islam saving hundreds of lives. This seemed such a good meme that it became one of the most popular “stories” of the night on Twitter. Except that it turned out — as the BBC was unusual in being good enough to concede — that the tale was fabricated. There was a guard in the stadium of unknown religion called Zouheir but he had been elsewhere on the night and had not seen any bombers. He had relayed part of a colleague’s story to a reporter. Why had this all become about him? For the simple reason that people wanted it to be.
The point is that all these things are varieties of self-distraction. They are things we have set up to stop us coming to the conclusions based on the evidence before us. Parliament discusses sending a few planes to bomb IS, but is aware that this minimal action could cause maximal pain at home. The media reports the terrorist attacks while scouring to find a news story that will show Muslims in a good light.
Many worthy sentiments may be mixed up in all this. But at the root of them, living through them and watching this doubt from the top to the bottom, it is hard not to reflect that we are living in the in-between years. At some point the atrocities will come here again and only then will we again be able to see that these years were largely wasted.
Ted Cruz to Obama: Shut Down DC's Terror-Supporting Palestinian Office
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is demanding that the Obama administration close the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) office in Washington for “celebrating the murder of Jews,” “glorification of terrorism,” and paying salaries to jailed Palestinian terrorists.
The United States government has an obligation to publicly denounce the PLO’s actions and should immediately revoke its waiver,” reads a letter signed by 30 Republican lawmakers and sent to Secretary of State John Kerry by Cruz and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC).
The letter, released Monday, further states that Israel has “seen a dramatic increase in deadly attacks carried out by Palestinians sympathetic to the message of hatred and intolerance proclaimed by leaders” of the PLO.
The PLO has been banned by Congress from maintaining a D.C. office. However, the legislation allowed the president to temporarily waive the requirement and since 1994 this waiver has been in effect.
But Republican lawmakers are insisting that the waiver be revoked due to a string of terrorist attacks “directly connected to the Palestinian government’s teaching of hate and glorification of terrorism.”
US State Department rejects lawmakers' calls to close PLO office
State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau confirmed that the department had received the letter and said Kerry would respond to it.
"We believe that closing the PLO office would be detrimental to our ongoing efforts to calm tensions between Israeli's and Palestinians, advance a two-state solution and strengthen the US-Palestinian partnership," Trudeau told reporters.
She said every US administration since 1994 had used the waiver to keep the PLO office open.
"We believe the PLO has a valid place ... and we'd oppose those efforts" to close the office," Trudeau said, adding that Kerry had condemned the attacks.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

From Ian:

The United States and Islam: What Is Going On?
The irony is that no major power in recent history has gone out of its way as has the United States to help, respect, please and, yes, appease Islam. And, yet, no other nation has been a victim of vilification, demonization, and violence on the part of the Islamists as has the U.S.
The politically correct crowd has turned Islam into a new taboo. They brand any criticism of Islam as racist, ethnocentrist or simply vile, all crammed together in the new category of "Islamophobia." Is it Islamophobia to question a religion whose Middle East leaders often preach "Death to America" and hatred for Western values?
More prevalent than Islamophobia is Islamophilia, as leftists treat Muslims as children whose feathers should not be ruffled. The Islamophilia crowd invites Americans and Europeans to sacrifice part of their own freedom in atonement of largely imaginary sins against Muslims in the colonial and imperialist era.
Many Muslims resent the kind of flattery that takes them for idiots at a time that Islam and Muslims badly need to be criticized. The world needs to wake up and ask: What is going on?
Why Western Leaders Refuse to Call Jihadist Terror by Name
Above all, we should never say that upholding Western values like universal human rights, even by force in some cases, is sometimes desperately needed by those many Others who suffer oppression, violence, terror and genocide.
Ask Nadia Murad Basee Taha, a Yazidi woman who recently testified before the UN Security Council about her unimaginably brutal treatment at the hands of the Islamic State. She pleaded with the council to intervene. I doubt that Taha would agree with gender theorist Judith Butler that jihadi movements like, say, Hamas, should be considered part of the “global left.”
Some observers – many in Israel – believe that now that terrorism has struck Paris and California, the West will wake up and realize that democratic values need active defense. But it’s doubtful whether such optimism is warranted. When the democracies’ immune systems are so slow to wake up from their beauty sleep, democracy’s enemies fill the vacuum. When the political left and center are so preoccupied with cleansing their own conscience, the extreme right rises in their stead.
This is true in the international arena, where reactionary powers like Russia and Iran are filling the void that the Obama administration has left in the Middle East. Meanwhile, in domestic politics, people like Marine Le Pen or Donald Trump are poised to reap the sour fruits of public fears.
Those who have been so careful not to criticize the Other because of their inflated fears of being labeled bigots have opened the door to real bigots. It’s doubtful whether they have rendered good services either to themselves or the Others they proclaim so loudly to care about.
PMW findings used to confront PA officials
A delegation of Australian and British politicians visiting Israel and the Palestinian Authority used Palestinian Media Watch's findings to challenge and question PA officials. After confronting the PA officials, Australian MP Glenn Sterle "strongly recommended a briefing from Palestinian Media Watch before any meetings with the PA," The Jerusalem Post reported.
The Australian and British delegation had heard a presentation by PMW director Itamar Marcus, which, among other things, documented the PA's practice of glorifying terrorists who have killed Israeli civilians. After the PMW presentation, the delegation met with PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah and PA Minister of Education Sabri Saidam. The British and Australian delegates confronted and questioned the PA officials about the PA practice of naming schools and sporting events after terrorists and their educating Palestinian children and youth to hate Israelis and Jews.
PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah denied that any schools in the West Bank are named after terrorists, despite the fact that PMW has clearly documented this. Hamdallah even "defend[ed] the practice of 'honoring' terrorist-suicide bombers," Australian MP Glenn Sterle said. Hamdallah had further told the delegation to "check their information." [The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 15, 2015]
After the meeting with the Australian-British delegation, the PA Minister of Education Dr. Sabri Saidam said that he "was surprised by the group's 'explosive, blunt and rude' questions about Palestine's education system." "There was a lot of incitement I would say on behalf of the delegation meaning or implying that the Palestinians are the ones terrorizing Israel," Saidam said. He complained that Australian Federal Industry Minister Christopher Pyne had not discussed education with him but instead about "political difficulties." Minister Saidam stated that Minister Pyne "had a list of questions and they were misinformed." [SBS News, Dec. 16, 2015]

Wednesday, December 09, 2015

From Ian:

Terrorist privilege
Two people take 14 lives in California.
Fourteen beautiful people: A woman from Iran, another woman whose family fled Vietnam, a Mexican man. They slaughter the diversity that makes America great. These victims did community service and cared for others.
And what happens? The murderers almost become the victims in the narrative.
No one protests against the extremism and hatred the perpetrators had for others. No one is particularly angry at them. People are outraged at gun laws.
Newspapers run editorials about guns.
A newspaper bashes politicians for offering prayers. US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump makes an outrageously discriminatory remark about Muslim immigrants, and suddenly he is accused of being the reason that “jihadists demonize the US.” There is more anger about climate change and the rise of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing Front Nationale in France than there is hatred for the perpetrators and ideology behind the Paris attacks.
Douglas Murray: ‘Victim blaming’ after terrorist attacks is a pernicious new trend
The term ‘victim blaming’ is most commonly used to describe people who claim that a woman walking out in a short skirt is ‘asking to be raped.’ But even this claim is not quite as gut-wrenching as the claim that some people are ‘asking to be killed’ or once killed are effectively ‘guilty of their own murder.’
This most malicious form of ‘victim blaming’ was rolled out in the American press at the weekend by the interestingly named Linda Stasi. In a column in Saturday’s New York Daily News Ms Stasi wrote about one of the 14 people massacred in an Isis-inspired attack in San Bernardino, California (a terrorist attack so terrible that it has made even President Obama admit that a certain type of terrorism might exist. Anyhow – Ms Stasi’s piece is a quite remarkable exhibit on the moral insanity of our time.
Last week after having apparently pledged allegiance to Isis, a husband and wife called Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook walked into a party at Farook’s own workplace in San Bernardino and began gunning down the guests. The couple – now designated as ‘terrorists’ by officials – were then killed in a shoot-out with police. A subsequent search of their home turned up an arsenal of weaponry. So far so bad. But these are strange and confusing times for some people, and Ms Stasi is perhaps the most confused of all.
Little girl demonstrates art of stabbing: “Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab!”
Palestinian Media Watch documents the Palestinian Authority and Fatah leadership's messages to its population, showing both the PA ideology as well as how it directs the population to act. The current Palestinian terror wave is an excellent example of how the Palestinian population has responded to the leadership's message. Mahmoud Abbas and other PA leaders sparked the current terror and violence by frequently reiterating the PA libel that Israel is planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and they called on Palestinians to "defend it," "bless[ed] every drop of blood spilled" for it, "congratulated" the murderers and much more. Responding to the call, and following the praise and support from PA and Fatah leaders, among them Abbas, who referred to stabbings as "peaceful popular uprising," Palestinians are - independent of the leadership - inciting to murder on social media, including encouraging people to slit the throats of Jews, and committing murder themselves.
The following are examples of social media murder promotion by Palestinians on Facebook.
One video shows a little girl glorifying stabbing. She is asked:
Man: "What do you tell [Palestinian] youth in the West Bank?"
Girl demonstrates with a long knife: "Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab!"

[Facebook page of the Jerusalem Intifada's Young People Coalition, Nov. 12, 2015]
Video on Palestinian Facebook page - Little girl encourages stabbing Jews


Sunday, December 06, 2015

From Ian:

Why does the British Royal Family visit Saudi Arabia but not Israel?
A trip to Jerusalem by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1994 illustrates some of the difficulties.
His mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, is buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and Prince Phillip went to visit her grave.
The princess is revered in Israel because she opened the doors of her Athens palace to a Jewish family seeking refuge from the Nazis during the Second World War.
She is counted as one of the "Righteous Among Nations", an Israeli title given to those who saved Jews from Nazi death camps. Today, she is honoured at Israel’s national Holocaust memorial alongside Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who rescued hundreds of Jews and inspired the film Schindler’s List.
But despite Israel’s warm feelings towards his mother, Buckingham Palace said the Duke’s visit was private and he was not there in an official capacity.
The contorted explanation mirrors Jerusalem’s own tortured geography. The Mount of Olives is in the eastern side of the city, which Israel captured in 1967. Israel claims East Jerusalem as part of its “complete and united” capital, but Britain considers the area to be occupied territory.
Any Royal visit would also have to be balanced by meetings with the Palestinian Authority, which brings a new set of sensitivities. Boris Johnson discovered the possible pitfalls last month when he was forced to cancel meetings in the West Bank after angering Palestinians by denouncing calls for a boycott of Israeli goods.
Some Israelis have long believed that the Foreign Office blocks any Royal visits because of its supposed domination by Arabist diplomats.
Legal Insurrection: Matisyahu rocks Ithaca – Huge Win for Artistic Freedom
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been targeting American Reggae musician Matisyahu because he is Jewish and refuses to denounce Israel.
In the summer of 2015 an international firestorm of controversy erupted after BDS succeeded in getting Matisyahu banned at the Spanish Rototom Reggae festival. The ban was reversed only after an international outcry, including denunciations by the Spanish government and a leading Spanish newspaper that the action amounted to religious discrimination.
So when Matisyahu booked an appearance in Ithaca, NY, as part of his world tour, it was not long before the local BDS crowd, including our own BDS “star,” sought a boycott of the event and planned a protest.
But it didn’t work.
There was a substantial backlash in favor of artistic freedom. Ithaca resident Linda Glaser wrote a powerful op-ed in The Ithaca Journal, Let Jewish artist perform in Ithaca:
Artistic freedom is the right of every American, as it is based on the First Amendment right of freedom of speech. The Ithaca Coalition for Unity and Cooperation in the Middle East (ICU-CME) supports the right of American musician Matisyahu to perform and to be heard free from intimidation at the State Theatre of Ithaca.
Untrue statements are being spread by the Ithaca Committee for Justice in Palestine about Matisyahu to justify their discrimination against him. Because he is a prominent Jewish artist who refuses to take an anti-Zionist position, BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) supporters around the world are attempting to block his cultural and artistic expression.
As Matisyahu has said, “I have always believed in the power of music to unite all people, regardless of religion, politics or geography.”
We urge the Ithaca community to stand for artistic freedom and reject the boycott of American musician Matisyahu.

I attended the concert last night, and it was great.
Mordechai Kedar: There is a partner
In addition, Israel has to remain in control in the villages and surrounding areas of Judea and Samaria in order to prevent the formation of a terrorist contiguity uniting the discrete city-emirates, but Israel can then offer citizenship to the residents of these villages who make up only about 10% of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria. The other 90% can stay in their independently run city-states.
These are the broad parameters of a program based on the "partner" to be found in each city-emirate, the natural, traditional leadership of the large clans in each city. Israel must negotiate with each emirate and reach an agreement with each one on the issues of electricity, water, waste, roads, industry, agriculture, traffic, security, the use of ports and airspace, and the boundary lines of each. If the emirates wish to form a federation, so be it. That doesn't pose a problem as long as their territories are not allowed to be contiguous.
The PLO, the organization that runs the Palestinian Authority, never agreed to the existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish state, and is therefore not a partner for peace. Israel, however, has a partner in each Judea and Samaria city. Israel must bring about the collapse of the PLO and PA, the two entities preventing a lasting peace agreement with the residents of Judea and Samaria, who will then be able to establish thriving emirates on the lines of Dubai, if not even better.
The PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad want only wars, death and destruction, while peace between Israel and the Emirates will lead to growth and prosperity.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

From Ian:

PMW: Palestinian women are unique, make "cries of joy" upon son's death, says PA minister
The Palestinian Authority Minister of Women's Affairs, Haifa Al-Agha, who is herself a woman, recently praised Palestinian women pointing out their "uniqueness" compared to all the other women of the world because they rejoice upon the news of the death of their sons:
"[PA] Minister of Women's Affairs Haifa Al-Agha... noted the Palestinian woman's uniqueness, which differentiates her from the women of the world, as [only] she receives the news of her son's Martyrdom with cries of joy." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Nov. 7, 2015]
This official PA promotion of Martyrdom (Shahada - Death for Allah) as an ideal and the praise of mothers who do not show sorrow but make "cries of joy" when their sons die, was voiced by the PA minister during the current wave of terror attacks. Many young Palestinians have been killed as they stabbed or attempted to stab Israelis. By praising mothers for their "cries of joy," Minister Al-Agha is sending a message to PA society to attack Israelis without fear of death because Martyrdom for Allah is said to be the highest value and highest achievable status.
The minister also added that Palestinian women are noteworthy not only because they celebrate death but because they fight as well:
The death knell for Women's Studies
The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) has just voted to support a boycott of…ISIS.
No, just joking. The boycott is against Israel - only.
The recommendation was developed in 2014 by Feminists for Justice in Palestine and draws on a “transnational, intersectional feminist framework” which emphasizes an “indivisible sense of justice.”
Please don’t ask me to explain such self-important and obscure language.
The good news: Although NWSA claims that, in 2014, 2500 of their members “stood in unison in support of freedom and justice in Palestine,” in late November of 2015, only 35% of the voting membership (or 653 members) bothered to vote.
JCPA: Amb. Alan Baker: 10 Things to Know about the UN Partition Vote of November 29, 1947
1. It was a historic resolution that expressed the then-prevailing view of most of the major states of the United Nations, which voted in favor of it.
2. It established the principle of two states for two peoples.
3. It recognized the uniqueness of Jerusalem and the Jewish people’s bond to the city.
4. Had the Arabs agreed to live with the resolution as the Israelis did, despite its drawbacks from the standpoint of both sides, we would be in a different situation today with far fewer bereaved families on both sides.
5. Because of the Arabs’ rejection of it and in light of their decision to fight its implementation, the resolution has not assumed any validity except for the historical symbolism of its basic content.
6. The significance of its nonimplementation is that all the previously existing historical and legal rights as recognized by the Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and the San Remo Resolution have remained in force.
7. From that time to the present, negotiation mechanisms prescribed by Resolution 242 (1967), the Camp David accords (1979), and the Oslo agreements (1993-1999) have not been completed and no solution has been agreed upon.
8. Therefore, all the claims about Israel’s rights (and also, of course, about the Arabs’ rights) are still valid and remain unchanged until agreement on a permanent settlement is reached.
9. Therefore, any assertion by the United Nations and the Europeans about the territory belonging to the Palestinians in fact contravenes the symbolic basis of the partition resolution.
10. The time has come for the states to recognize this and stop contravening that symbolic basis.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Anthropologists take money from repressive regime, while Yahoo clarifies relationship
I wrote a few days ago about an irony of the American Anthropological Association seeking to boycott Israeli academic institutions while taking donations from Intel and Yahoo!, companies with high-profile operations in Israel and extensive academic ties there. Some of those donors have responded – and further financial ironies have emerged
A Yahoo spokesman contacted me today to clarify that the company made a single, one-time donation to the AAA, at time when they did not know about any boycott plans. “Yahoo has at present no intention of further sponsoring” any AAA projects, he said.
The AAA does have some foreign institutional members (though currently no Israeli ones). Among them is the state-run Zayed University, in the United Arab Emirates, where “political dissent is not tolerated and there are severe restrictions on freedom of expression.” As for academic freedom:
The government restrict[s] academic freedom, including speech both inside and outside the classroom by educators, and censored academic materials for schools. The government required official permission for conferences that discussed political issues.
One of the famous quips from the American Studies Association’s boycott was the explanation by its president of why Israel was singled out for boycott: “you have to start somewhere.” For the AAA starting by excluding institutions from a country with no member institution would not seem like a reasonable or non-capricious place to start.
UPDATE:
Intel has also sent a statement about its relationship with the AAA:
Intel made two small donations to the American Anthropological Association (AAA) during the past six years, but is not and has never been a member of AAA or a significant donor, and has no ongoing relationship with the AAA.
The description of Intel’s donation as “significant,” which I had quoted, was the AAA’s. According to the AAA, Intel was a sponsor of the Annual Meeting in 2013. They were also listed by the AAA in their highest donor category (“Benefactors”). By the tone of Intel’s statement, I do not think that will be the case in coming years.
Eugene Kontorovich: How to fight labeling
The European Commission's labeling is not about promoting "the two state solution" and it's not about "consumer protection." It is about a single-minded demonization of Israel.
The EU claims that "Made in Israel" labels mislead consumers about products' "country of origin." Yet the EU is not merely seeking a different geographical designation. Surprisingly, according to the EU rules, if "Made in Israel" is the problem, then "Made in the West Bank" or even "Made in Occupied Palestinian Territories" is not an acceptable answer.
Indeed, the EU notice specifically says that such alternative geographic indications cannot be used, though they entirely address the objection about geographic/territorial mislabeling. Instead, the EU notice also requires such products also be labeled "Israeli settlement" products. This is an extraordinary and unique step. "True origin" requirements for labeling are always and only about the country or territory goods comes from.
"Israeli settlement" labeling, however, is not about the geographic area. "Israeli settlement" is not a place on the map. The EU has replaced geographic indications -- labels about where something was made -- to something labels about who or how goods were made.
How EU Officials Resemble Stabbers
EU bureaucrats won’t like the comparison, but in one significant respect, the officials who approved discriminatory labeling requirements for Israeli products earlier this month bear a marked resemblance to the Palestinians who have been knifing Jews throughout Israel for weeks now. Clearly, there’s no similarity between labeling requirements and murder; the two aren’t remotely comparable. But the underlying attitude is remarkably similar: Neither the EU bureaucrats nor the Palestinian stabbers seem to care how many Palestinians they hurt as long as they can hurt a few Jews in the process.
Both the stabbings and the labeling promise to wreak havoc on the Palestinian economy – or to be more specific, on the ability of thousands of Palestinians to support themselves and their children. With regard to the violence, this ought to be self-evident. In an article earlier this month, for instance, reporter Brett Kline described the despondent mood in tourism-dependent Bethlehem now that clashes between slingshot-wielding Palestinians and Israeli soldiers have driven the tourists away. But the angriest comment, Kline reported, came from Hamadah, a construction foreman working in the Betar Ilit settlement:
He has just been informed that following the attempted stabbing of a soldier at the entrance to the settlement by a 22-year-old mother of two from Husan village across the road, work has been suspended indefinitely. And residents of Husan, home to thriving construction material depots and auto repair shops, cannot leave the village.
“What was she thinking,” he fumes, referring to the stabber. “Who the hell is she? … The woman is being fed in hospital. But how will I feed my family?

Indeed, the situation has gotten so bad that Palestinian businessmen in Hebron have begun trying to stop the violence on their own. And it could easily get worse. Last week, following a deadly attack in Tel Aviv perpetrated by a Palestinian who had just received a permit to work in Israel, the Israeli government suspended 1,200 other recently issued entry permits pending a security review. Should more permit-holders perpetrate attacks, Israel could eventually be driven to bar Palestinian laborers almost entirely, as it did during the second intifada. The impact on the Palestinian economy would be devastating: According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 92,000 Palestinians work in Israel (not including the settlements). That’s 13 percent of all employed Palestinians in the West Bank.

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