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Tuesday, April 17, 2018

From Ian:

BESA: Hamas' Dirty War Against Israel
Throughout all the military confrontations Hamas initiated against Israel in 2008-09, 2012, and 2014, as well as in the recent "March of Return," it has systematically disseminated outright fabrications and distortions and manipulated Western and social media. Hamas presented the march as a peaceful demonstration initiated by suffering citizens to protest their awful economic and social conditions. Hamas also accused Israel of committing war crimes by intentionally shooting and killing demonstrators. The truth is exactly the opposite.

The march was initiated and organized by Hamas, not by oppressed citizens. Hamas invested millions of dollars in building an infrastructure for the demonstrators, and called for breaking the border fence and infiltration into Israeli territory. If Hamas had been permitted to accomplish this goal, the life and property of Israeli citizens living a few meters from the fence would have been in danger. These were not peaceful demonstrations.

Hamas deployed operatives among the demonstrators and ordered them to throw firebombs, shoot at Israeli soldiers, put explosives on the fence, cross into Israel's territory, and, if possible, kill or kidnap soldiers and citizens. They also wanted as many Palestinians as possible to be killed, including women and children, in order to obtain favorable media coverage.

Hamas is lying and cheating about the reasons for the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It annually spends hundreds of millions of dollars on operatives, rockets, attack tunnels, and violence. If Hamas had spent that money on economic and social development, Gazans would now live in a better economic environment. The recent deterioration in the Gazan economy resulted from a bitter feud between Hamas and the PA, not from any Israeli action.

The media in the U.S. and Europe, including the elite press of the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, CNN, and BBC, largely accepted the manipulations, lies, and fabrications of Hamas without much questioning or reservation. They conveniently removed any reference to Hamas' motivation, aggression, war crimes, and manipulations.

Iran Would Destroy Syria to Get Vengeance on Israel
Tehran's steadfast support for Syria's Assad is not driven by the geopolitical or financial interests of the Iranian nation, nor the religious convictions of the Islamic Republic, but by a visceral and seemingly inextinguishable hatred for the State of Israel. As senior Iranian officials like Ali Akbar Velayati, a close adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have said, "The chain of Resistance against Israel by Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, the new Iraqi government and Hamas passes through the Syrian highway."

Though Israel has virtually no direct impact on the daily lives of Iranians, opposition to the Jewish state has been the most enduring pillar of Iranian revolutionary ideology. Whether Khamenei is giving a speech about agriculture or education, he invariably returns to the evils of Zionism.

The number of Syrian deaths since 2011 is many times greater than the number of Palestinians killed in the last 70 years of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, while many more Syrians than Palestinians have been displaced. Indeed, since 2011 far more Palestinians have been killed by Assad (nearly 3,700) than by Israel.
"Syria is occupied by the Iranian regime," said former Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab. "The person who runs the country is not Bashar al-Assad but [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander] Qassem Suleimani."


Pragmatic: relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters : practical as opposed to idealistic.
Merriam-Webster
To be a pragmatist is to be a realist, someone who understands that there are times that one's idealism or ideology has to give way to different means, even if contrary to that ideology, if one is going to achieve a successful end.

And that is what the new philosophy of Hamas is all about - at least that is what The New York Times believes.

This week, David Halbfinger - who took over last year as the new Jerusalem Bureau Chief for The New York Times - reported that Hamas Sees Gaza Protests as Peaceful — and as a ‘Deadly Weapon’. Halbfinger went on to write approvingly of the Gazan riots controlled by the Hamas terrorists:
Its experiment with popular resistance may or may not be wholehearted, but it is indisputably pragmatic. [emphasis added]
Pragmatic?

picture
Hamas logo


Now keep in mind that when Halbfinger started his new position, Times International Editor Michael Slackman and Deputy International Editor Greg Winter wrote of him in their announcement of Halbfinger’s appointment that
He has written hard-hitting investigations of corrupt public officials and businessmen, murderous prison guards, law-breaking Hollywood moguls...
No one would claim Halbfinger's writing of Hamas to be hard-hitting or as particularly 'investigative' for that matter.

In his article about the riots last week, Halbfinger described the "protest" as "generally nonviolent." He also summed up that a riot replete with throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, tire burning, explosives and attempts to infiltrate the fence separating the rioters from nearby Israeli communities was "for Gazans, even a tentative experiment with nonviolent protest is a significant step" -- even while granting that Hamas "seeks Israel’s destruction, has always advocated armed struggle."

Getting back to Halbfinger's description of Hamas as "pragmatic," a search of the New York Times website for articles containing both the words "Hamas" and "pragmatic" turned up 247 hits - not exactly scientific, but here are some of the articles that came up:

For 2017 three articles come up on the first page or two of results:

New Hamas Charter Would Name ‘Occupiers,’ Not ‘Jews,’ as the Enemy
Ian Fisher and Majd Al Waheidi, March 9, 2017
Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that has governed the Gaza Strip for a decade, is drafting a new platform to present a more pragmatic and cooperative face to the world, Hamas officials confirmed on Thursday. [emphasis added]
Actually, the Hamas charter did not change, Hamas still vows to destroy Israel and continues to encourage terrorist attacks against civilians. Yet the word "pragmatic" is not used sarcastically.

In Palestinian Power Struggle, Hamas Moderates Talk on Israel
Ian Fisher,May 1, 2017
Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said the group had to move beyond its original charter to achieve its goals. “The document gives us a chance to connect with the outside world,” he said. “To the world, our message is: Hamas is not radical. We are a pragmatic and civilized movement. We do not hate the Jews. We only fight who occupies our lands and kills our people.” [emphasis added]
Again, the article does present both sides on the Hamas claim of pragmatism, but the idea is not directly challenged.

Hamas Offer Reflects Pressure From Egypt and Fatah
David M. Halbfinger, September 19, 2017
Mr. Abbas’s quick and positive reply on Monday — he spoke by telephone with Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political director, and promised to follow up after returning from the United Nations gathering in New York — prompted some to ask whether renewed Egyptian diplomatic assertiveness and pragmatic new Hamas leadership had managed to turn a page on the long-running rivalry.
Here, Halbfinger goes so far as to present Hamas pragmatism as fact, for which there is precedent 11 years earlier:

Pragmatic Hamas Figure Is Likely to Be Next Premier
Greg Myre, February 17, 2006
Hamas plans to nominate Ismail Haniya, viewed as one of its less radical leaders, for prime minister, The Associated Press reported, citing a Hamas official in Damascus.
Does anyone today consider Haniya "pragmatic" or a "moderate"?

photo
Ismail Haniya. Source: Haniya


Maybe claims of Hamas pragmatism are the stubborn insistence that the predicted moderation of Hamas upon assuming power is finally beginning to materialize. But if so, it will take more than praising Hamas terrorists as pragmatists.

Mark Twain once described pragmatism like this:
The man who sets out to grab a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful.
photo
Mark Twain. Photographer: A.F. Bradley. Public domain

Hamas has had several useful lessons after having been repulsed by Israel on multiple occasions and to a degree neutralized, being pressured by Egypt and after having failed to get the international support and recognition that its fellow terrorist group, Hezbollah, has achieved.

No doubt Hamas has learned a lesson, but what The New York Times and Mr. Halbfinger have failed to do when referring to Hamas as pragmatic is to make clear whether Hamas is in fact being pragmatic in its ends - moderating its declared goal of the destruction of Israel - or whether it is merely being pragmatic in the means to achieve that goal.

Over and over, what self-confident journalists call pragmatism in Hamas is what with hindsight is just deception.

But what about The New York Times description of Israel?

When referring to Israel as pragmatic, The New York Times has - on occasion - used the term sarcastically, critical of whether there is a sincere change of heart.

That is especially true when describing Netanyahu:

What Does Netanyahu Really Want?

Gal Beckerman, December 8, 2016 - Review of "The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu" by Neill Lochery
Pragmatism doesn’t tell us much. Every successful politician is pragmatic, if this simply means reading and responding to your public. What Lochery fails to explore are the consequences of Bibi’s “pragmatism” in a place like Israel. Because, in practice, pragmatism for Netanyahu means twisting every which way to avoid confronting the problems of the occupation. [emphasis added]
photo
Benjamin Netanyahu. Credit: State Department photo/ Public Domain



Netanyahu Names Avigdor Lieberman Israeli Defense Minister as Party Joins Coalition
Isabel Kershner, May 25, 2016
For all of Mr. Lieberman’s bluster, many Israeli analysts predict that he will become more pragmatic once he takes office. [emphasis added]
Hamas disproved those who predicted political responsibility would soften their ideology and rhetoric, but that did not stop the pundits who predicted that Lieberman would soften his views.

When Netanyahu won in 2009, there were those who insisted that if pragmatism was not inherent in the newly elected leadership, perhaps it could be chemically induced, especially if Western values could somehow rub off on the Palestinian Arabs:

Netanyahu to Form New Israel Government
Isabel Kershner, February 20, 2009
A broad government joined by the center and left would likely promote a more pragmatic agenda and avoid friction with Israel’s most important ally, the United States...
Ms. Livni has staked her political career on promoting negotiations with the more pragmatic, Western-backed Palestinian leadership for a two-state solution.
photo
Tzipi Livni. Public domain


But on the same day:

Netanyahu, Once Hawkish, Now Touts Pragmatism
Ethan Bronner, February 20, 2009
To many here, it is increasingly likely that Mr. Netanyahu’s government will consist exclusively of parties from the right, which oppose a Palestinian state and favor expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, making it much harder for him to exercise his pragmatic penchant.
Whatever Bronner's feelings about Netanyahu's "pragmatism," the editor who wrote the headline would have nothing of it.

But 11 years earlier, during Netanyahu's first term in office, there was no sarcasm:

Without Joy, Netanyahu Wins Vote to Adopt Peace Agreement

Deborah Sontag, November 18, 1998
The Israeli Parliament approved the American-brokered peace plan today by a significant majority, reflecting the widespread, pragmatic acceptance here of partitioning the Land of Israel. [emphasis added]
and a few weeks earlier:

Returning Home, Netanyahu Faces The Real Battle
Deborah Sontag, October 26, 1998
At the airport in Tel Aviv, despite the chilly reception from the settlers, Mr. Netanyahu received not only a formal brass-band welcome but also a genuinely enthusiastic one from Cabinet ministers and from the rank and file of his Likud Party. This suggested that he has successfully moved his political camp onto new ideological terrain where territorial compromise with the Palestinians, long anathema, has been accepted as a pragmatic reality. [emphasis added]
Yet there may have always been a wariness of Netanyahu's polemical prowess:

Israel's Likud Passes Torch, Naming Netanyahu Leader
Clyde Haberman, March 26, 1993
No modern politician here has logged more time on American television than Mr. Netanyahu, explaining in idiomatic English Israel's positions on international terrorism and the Persian Gulf war. And no Israeli politician has adopted a more American campaign style, from his crafted sound bites to his cross-country barnstorming by bus.

So successful is he at reducing his pragmatically hawkish opinions to manageable television proportions that some in Likud -- allies as well as foes -- worry that he is prey to accusations that he is not a deep thinker. One task before him now, these Israelis say, is to prove that he is more than glib.

Similarly, Rabin's electoral victory, ending 15 years of Likud governing was a victory for...pragmatism:

Israel's Likud Passes Torch, Naming Netanyahu Leader
Clyde Haberman, June 28, 1992
Forget for a moment about which parties landed on top and which on the bottom in Israel's national election last week. The real winner was pragmatism and the big loser uncompromising ideology. [emphasis added]
Haberman went so far as to see
...the complex combination of events behind the upheaval that ended 15 years of Likud governance, threatening that party's stability and dashing the conventional wisdom that Israel's political drift is inexorably rightward.
photo
Yitzhak Rabin,  Source: Israel Defense Forces. Public domain
So much for that idea.

One can appreciate the frustration of The New York Times.

(Maybe they are the ones who need to be more...pragmatic.)




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.

Saturday, April 14, 2018

From Ian:

Iranian drone shot down in northern Israel in February was armed with explosives
Israel revealed on Friday that an Iranian drone shot down in Israeli airspace in February after launching from an airbase in Syria was carrying explosives. The base was attacked on Monday, allegedly by Israel, in a strike that reportedly targeted Iran’s entire attack drone weapons system — prompting soaring tensions between Israel and Iran.

The Iranian drone shot down in February was carrying enough explosives to cause damage, military sources said. Its precise intended target in Israel was not known, they said.

The February incident marked an unprecedented direct Iranian attack on Israel. Israel’s acknowledgement of the nature of the drone’s mission “brings the confrontation” between Israel and Iran “into the open” for the first time, Israel’s Channel 10 news noted Friday.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a speech on Holocaust Remembrance Day this week to warn Iran: “Don’t test the resolve of the State of Israel.”

Iranian officials, for their part, have been vowing a response to the Monday airstrike, and an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on Thursday threatened Israel with destruction.

The alleged Israeli attack this week on the base from which the drone was despatched is understood to have targeted Iran’s entire drone weapons system at the Syrian base, which was protected by surface-to-air missiles and other defenses, the TV report said.
David Horovitz: Attack drone revelation shows grave, immediate, adjacent threat to Israel: Iran
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long warned of the danger posed to Israel not many years hence by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. As of Friday night, Israelis are contemplating the danger posed right now by a non-nuclear Iran that is working to entrench itself in Syria.

Two months after an Israeli Apache helicopter shot down an Iranian drone dispatched from Syria, 30 seconds after it crossed into Israeli airspace, Israel’s military censors on Friday finally allowed local media to report that the drone was not merely taking surveillance footage, but was carrying explosives and was primed to attack and damage an unspecified target somewhere in Israel.

The timing of the revelation — which was accompanied by the Israeli Air Force’s release of footage showing the Apache downing the infiltrating Iranian drone — was plainly linked to a potent attack, carried out pre-dawn Monday, that reportedly caused substantial damage to a facility Iran has been building at the T-4 air base in central Syria, and from which that drone was launched on February 10.

While Jerusalem has been silent, the Monday raid has been widely attributed to Israel — by Russia, Syria, Iran and some in the US. At least seven Iranian military personnel were killed in the raid. Iran has threatened retaliation. A top Iranian aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that Iran could destroy Haifa and Tel Aviv. Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Netanyahu not to cause
destabilization in Syria. And so, if anyone was asking why Israel would have risked the repercussions of a raid like Monday’s, Friday’s revelations evidently provided at last part of the answer:

Iran is now sufficiently emboldened as to directly attack Israel. The February drone attack was the first direct Iranian confrontation with Israel, after years of it employing Lebanese and Palestinian proxies to target the Jewish state from Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. That attack had real cost for Israel, which lost an F-16 in retaliatory raids later that same day.
Seth J. Frantzman: Three weeks: How Gaza’s mass protests are failing to make an impact
The “Great March of Return” protests that Hamas and Gaza activists launched on March 30 saw their lowest turnout in three weeks and the smallest number of casualties in clashes with Israeli forces, with one Palestinian killed and 528 reported injured on Friday.

Israeli authorities have been steadfast and on message about the protesters being a cover for violent action, while Hamas and the local activists have attempted to keep up the momentum. The proportion of those injured by live fire has declined by half, indicating a major reduction not only in the size of the protests but the level of violence along the border.

On the eve of the third Friday of mass protests in Gaza, the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza published a list of casualties from the past two weeks, stating that 3,078 Palestinians had been injured, including 1,236 from live ammunition. It claimed four people had lost legs. Of those injured 445 were under 18 and 152 were women. Thirty had been killed. It also said 30 paramedics had been injured and 14 journalists, including Yaser Murtaja who was shot on April 6.

This Friday the protests didn’t reach the levels they had in the past. Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman tweeted that “from week to week there are fewer riots on our border with Gaza. Our resolve is well understood from the other side.”

The IDF tweeted that 10,000 had participated in the “rioting” on the border. It also posted a photo showing a “terrorist wielding an item suspected of being an explosive device” while crouching next to journalists and a handicapped person.


Friday, April 13, 2018

From Ian:

Palestinian "March of Return" Seeks to Undo the Reality of Israel
Had the Arabs accepted the 1947 UN partition plan, there would have been two states - the larger one Palestine, the smaller one Israel. The Jewish leaders accepted the proposal, reluctantly, but the Arabs rejected it and chose to launch a war that, despite all odds, resulted in the creation of the Jewish state. Seven decades later, the major stumbling block to peace remains Arab resistance to a Jewish state in the region, regardless of its borders.

The "March of Return" is not just an effort to mourn the Arab defeat but an attempt to undo it. Rather than face the reality of Israel, Hamas seeks to destroy it through violent means. Despite claims that the border protests are peaceful, the goal is to break through the physical barrier and wreak havoc on Israel's citizens.

Most Israelis hate the violence but are not ready to allow the state's borders to be breached so that their sworn enemies can come in and kill them. What country would?

While I have much empathy for Gazans who live in poverty, they should be venting against Hamas, which spends precious resources on digging tunnels and stocking up on rockets to attack Israel rather than attending to the needs of its people.

After the Holocaust and the decimation of the great majority of European Jews, the Jewish leaders of Palestine wept but did not whine. They proclaimed a state and fought valiantly to make it a reality. Palestinian leaders lost that war of aggression and still blame everyone but themselves for their predicament.

In the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, one side seeks peace and pursues the future with optimism, despite serious challenges, while the other seeks revenge and focuses on the past with bitterness and regret.

Official Palestinian TV Broadcasts Holocaust Denial
Two days before Holocaust Remembrance Day, an official Palestinian Authority (PA) TV channel broadcasted claims that Jews “colluded with Hitler.”

On April 10, 2018, PA TV aired an interview with Hani Abu Zeid, a Palestinian political analyst and commentator. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a non-profit that translates Arabic, Persian and Russian media, reported on the incident:

Hani Abu Zeid: "The [Israeli] soldier, the officers behind him, and even the Israeli war [sic] minister, and above him, Netanyahu should stand trial as war criminals. The accumulation of cases, one after the other... The Israelis will end up shedding tears of blood [out of regret] for their current conduct. They used to cry about the false Holocaust in the days of Hitler, the scope of which was not that large. I'd like to point out..."

Interviewer: "The [Holocaust] is a lie that they spread worldwide."

Hani Abu Zeid: "Yes, it was a lie, and many Israelis, or many Jews, colluded with Hitler, so that he would facilitate the bringing of settlers to Palestine."

As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has noted: “Holocaust denial and minimization or distortion of the facts of the Holocaust is a form of antisemitism.”

Yet, Holocaust denial remains commonplace in much of the Arab world, including in Palestinian society and culture. PA President Mahmoud Abbas, for example, claimed in his doctoral dissertation—done under Soviet auspices—that the Holocaust was exaggerated.
What is the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Really About and How Will it End
Dr. Einat Wilf, former member of Israel's Parliament (Knesset), giving a definitive explanation as to the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how it will end.


Monday, April 09, 2018

From Ian:

PMW: Murder of 11 was "greatest and most wonderful quality operation," says Fatah in video and Facebook post
In March 1975, eight terrorists traveled by boat from Lebanon to a Tel Aviv beach. They took over the Savoy Hotel and took guests as hostages. The next morning, while Israeli forces tried to free the hostages, the terrorists murdered eight hostages and three soldiers. Seven of the terrorists were killed.

For Abbas' Fatah Movement this attack was the "greatest and most wonderful quality operation." In a video and post on Facebook, Fatah's Nablus branch honored the terrorists who carried out the attack as "heroic" and "pure."


The video shows pictures of each of the terrorists who committed the Savoy terror attack posing with weapons, as well as the planner of the attack, arch-terrorist Abu Jihad who the PA has credited with planning attacks in which they claim 125 were murdered.

Text on screen: "Heroes of the Savoy self-sacrificing operation March 5, 1975
Heroic Martyr Abdallah Khalil Abdallah Kleib
Heroic Martyr Ahmed Hamid Ahmed Abu Qamar
Heroic Martyr Khader Ahmed Jarram
Heroic Martyr Muhammad Diya Al-Din Al-Hilwani
Heroic Martyr Musa Al-Abd Abu Thuraya
Heroic fighter Musa Jum'a Hassan
Heroic Martyr Naif Najd Ismail Al-Saghir
Heroic Martyr Omar Muhammad Mahmoud Al-Shafai
The one supervising the operation, Martyr leader Khalil Al-Wazir

May Allah's mercy be upon our pure Martyrs
Long live the memory - the revolution will continue!
Group picture of those who carried out the self-sacrificing Savoy operation"
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Nablus District Branch, March 6, 2018]

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that PA District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh Laila Ghannam honors the Savoy murderers with a wreath of flowers on their grave every year.


Honest Reporting: The Gaza Clashes: What’s Really Happening
Re-cap of events
  • On April 1, we posted this explanation and analysis of the events up to that date. It was immediately clear that the “protests” also included molotov cocktails, burning tires, rock throwing, and in one case even live gunfire at the IDF. There were ongoing attempts by rioters to breach the border fence and enter Israel.
  • Of the 30,000 Palestinians present, 16 were reportedly killed by IDF sniper fire. The figure later increased to 19.
  • It was well known since April 1 that at least ten of the casualties had clear affiliations to terror groups, including Hamas. An analysis of open-source information from Palestinian media brought that number up to 15, and HonestReporting was the first to publish that new information on April 5.
  • Another protest/riot on April 6 brought 20,000 people and new violence: including the burning of what may have been 10,000 tires, and further attempts to both attack IDF soldiers and to infiltrate Israel under the resulting smokescreen. Meanwhile, and this is not a joke, Hamas is now blaming Israel for what it claims is a “shortage” of tires in Gaza. Seriously. You couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.
  • A number of Palestinians criticized Hamas for publicizing the deaths of its members, including holding military funerals and rallies. The main objection can be summarized as follows: by revealing that so many of the deaths were actually terrorists, Hamas undermines the PR illusion that this was a “peaceful protest.”
  • As of yesterday morning, Haaretz put the total number of Palestinian casualties at 29, while a slightly later AP story puts the number at 32. One casualty was Palestinian photojournalist Yaser Murtaja. Though the not all the facts are known yet, this story is making some strong waves in the press. The IDF says it is investigating and that it does not deliberately target journalists. Most of the information known so far is from the Hamas controlled Gaza Ministry of Health or from Hamas itself.
Col. Kemp: SHOULD BRITISH FORCES HIT BACK OVER CHEMICAL ATTACK?
If the latest chemical attack in Syria is verified, the US should hit back and Britain must play a leading role.

President Trump’s cruise missile strike following a Sarin nerve agent attack one year ago failed to deter Assad which means much stronger action is needed this time.

Russia’s presence makes the risks of escalation greater. Assad is counting on that to deter Western retaliation.

We should not fear Russia but we should avoid hitting their forces on the ground in Syria.
Why should we take such risks? As a permanent member of the UN Security Council we have global responsibilities – including prevention of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.Rightly outraged by Russian use of nerve agent against one person in Britain, we cannot confine ourselves to ineffective speeches in the Security Council while the world’s most violent despot gases hundreds of his own people.

There are even bigger stakes. President Obama’s failure to enforce his red line against Syrian chemical weapons use in 2013 emboldened not only Assad but also Russia.

Putin’s aggression in the Ukraine and his intervention in Syria were the consequences.

Sunday, April 08, 2018

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Why Israeli Rule in the West Bank Is Legal under International Law
An interview with Professor Eugene Kontorovich by Sarah Haetzni-Cohen
A version of this interview first appeared in Hebrew in Makor Rishon on March 23, 2018.

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

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

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

The UN General Assembly’s declaration on November 29, 1947, was a recommendation for partition rather than an operative resolution. What actually defined the situation was what the Mandate did, and it neither accepted the recommendations nor put them into force. During the War of Independence, Jordan and Egypt conquered territories from Israel illegally, and it was almost universally agreed that neither Jordan nor Egypt had any legitimate claim of sovereignty over Judea and Samaria or Gaza. But Israel did. When Israel liberated the territories in 1967, it renewed its control over lands that it had sovereignty over based on the Mandatory borders.
Why Does The Left Get A Pass On Anti-Semitism?
This week, an assemblywoman from Brooklyn — the New York City borough with approximately 2.7 million people, not some far-flung hamlet in flyover country — went on an near-hour-long rant in which she accused Jews of conspiring to gentrify her district and steal her home. In the midst of this outburst, Diane Richardson reportedly referred to one of her rivals as the “the Jewish senator from southern Brooklyn.”

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

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

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

But when identity politics and class warfare propel your movement, as it does the progressivism that’s becoming increasingly popular on the American Left, it’s almost inevitable that the Jews, who’ve tended to successfully navigate meritocracies, will become targets. This hate has traveled with socialists since Karl Marx first declared that “Money” was the god of the Jews.
JCPA: The Hamas Gimmick that Failed
The “Friday of Tires” protest failed to achieve its main objective, which was to impede the actions of IDF marksmen on Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip.

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

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

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

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

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



Saturday, April 07, 2018

From Ian:

US blocks Arab-led UN call for independent probe of Gaza protests
The United States for a second week in a row blocked a UN Security Council statement supporting the right of Palestinians to “demonstrate peacefully” and endorsing Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ call for an independent investigation into deadly protests in Gaza.

Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour told reporters at UN headquarters in New York on Friday evening that 14 of the 15 council nations agreed to the statement, but the United States, Israel’s closest ally, objected.

Mansour called the US rejection “very irresponsible,” saying it gave Israel “the green light to continue with their onslaught against the civilian population” in Gaza.

In response, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said the council “should condemn Hamas, which uses children as human shields while risking their lives, and must call for the end of these provocations which only increase the violence and tensions.”

Tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered along the Gaza border on Friday, burning tires and throwing firebombs and rocks at Israeli soldiers, who responded with tear gas and live fire, the army and witnesses said, as Palestinians held a second “March of Return” protest.

Mansour said that nine Gaza civilians were killed and over 1,000 wounded in the clashes, and again urged the UN Security Council to demand an independent investigation into the deaths.

He told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York that one child was among the dead and a large number of children were injured, at least 48 according to one report. He said his information came from the Hamas-run Health Ministry and Red Crescent officials in Gaza.
Haley Touts Israel and Cuba Policies: ‘Leading From Behind Is Over’
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley spoke at Duke University Thursday and credited the Trump administration with strengthening American leadership role at the U.N.

She criticized previous administrations for being too deferential to international opinion, saying she is not hesitant to resist the majority at the U.N. She described how the U.N.’s Security Council and Human Rights Council regularly single out Israel but leave authoritarian regimes alone.

"Soon after coming to the U.N. last year, we decided we weren’t going to silently accept that anymore. Israel is our great friend," Haley said to applause. "And Israel is a lonely voice for democracy and human dignity in the Middle East."

"We’ve made these changes to have the back of our friend and ally Israel, absolutely, but we’re also sending the message that the era of the United States leading from behind is over," she added.


US slams Gaza leaders who send children to border, ‘knowing they may be killed’
The White House on Thursday called on Palestinians to engage in solely peaceful protests and stay at least 500 meters from Gaza’s border with Israel, on the eve of fresh demonstrations supported by Gaza’s Hamas terrorist rulers along the border.

While the UN issued a warning to Israel to use “extreme caution” in facing the mass protests, US President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy Jason Greenblatt put the onus squarely on Palestinians.

Greenblatt said protesters “should remain outside the 500-meter buffer zone; and should not approach the border fence in any way or any location.”

He added, in a statement: “We condemn leaders and protestors who call for violence or who send protestors — including children — to the fence, knowing that they may be injured or killed. Instead, we call for a renewed focus by all parties on finding solutions to the dire humanitarian challenges facing Gazans.”

Earlier on Thursday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres urged Israel to exercise “extreme caution,” and to allow Palestinians to protest peacefully along the border.

“I particularly urge Israel to exercise extreme caution with the use of force in order to avoid casualties. Civilians must be able to exercise their right to demonstrate peacefully,” Guterres said in a statement.

Explosives hurled at IDF troops guarding Jewish worshipers in Nablus
A Palestinian hurled explosives at Israeli soldiers protecting a crowd of Jewish worshipers in the West Bank city of Nablus overnight Wednesday-Thursday, causing no injuries or damage, the army said.

A thousand Jewish worshipers flocked in the early hours of Thursday to Joseph’s Tomb for Passover prayers under military escort.

In a statement, the military said that before the worshipers entered the site, observations indicated “suspicious activity” in addition to the explosives that were hurled. Soldiers arrested three suspects and found weapons, including rifle magazines, bullets and a knife on a nearby roof.

The worshipers, who included the head of the Shomron Regional Council Yossi Dagan, prayed, sang and danced at Joseph’s Tomb, believed to be the burial site of the biblical figure.

Thursday, April 05, 2018

From Ian:

Eli Lake: Palestinian Casualties Are No Accident for Hamas
Leave it to Hamas to make nonviolence violent.

This is what happened over the weekend as thousands of Gazans swarmed the Israeli border crossing on what they called a "march of return." It's not just that the Israeli Defense Force claims to have video showing peaceful marchers interspersed with militants wielding Molotov cocktails and burning tires. The organizers of this civil disobedience, Hamas, are themselves devoted to bloodshed.

As the Qassem Brigades helpfully announced on Sunday, five of the 16 marchers killed during the march were members of this Hamas militia -- which shares a name with the short-range rockets its members launch at Israeli towns and cities. You may remember them. In 2014, their kidnapping and murder of Israeli teenagers sparked the last major war between Israel and Hamas.

In case the point was missed this time around, the statement from the Brigades promises: "The blood of the pure martyrs will not go to waste. The enemy will pay a price at a time and place and in a way that the resistance decides.”

None of this is to say that Gazans do not have legitimate grievances. They face a triple blockade from Israel to its north, Egypt to its south and the Palestinian Authority, that last year sought to choke off the strip from the electric grid in Israel. The fact that at least 16 Palestinians were killed in the march compounds this suffering.

And that suffering demands attention from people of conscience. But this attention should not treat the arsonist like the fire victim. The arsonist is the march's organizer, Hamas. For this group, any Palestinian casualties in the march were a feature and not a bug. Like its tactics in previous Gaza wars, where it launched rockets from apartment buildings and schools, Hamas seeks Palestinian casualties to earn legitimacy for its armed struggle.
Honest Reporting: Exposed: More Palestinian ‘Victims’ Identified as Terror Org Members
Total of 15 persons with actual military identification. Another 4 whose connection to military activity has not been proven.

Note: Failure to find any connection publicly in the Palestinian media does not mean that they are not military activists.

Another important factor to consider when examining the identity of the dead and their affiliation is the fact that out of the 19 killed, it is possible to clearly identify 15 military activists, i.e. around 80% of those killed at a minimum.

The entire Gaza Strip has fewer than 70,000 military operatives, including from all the various organizations. Gaza has a population of 2 million today. That is, the percentage of military activists out of the total population is lower than 3.5%.

Thus, the dry facts show that although the share of military activists in the population is only 3.5%, in practice, 80% of those killed are military activists. That is 23 times the rate of their percentage in the population. This high rate among those killed is even more amazing given the fact that they were dressed in civilian clothes and could not be identified in advance as military activists.
New Reports: 80% of Gaza Casualties are Terrorists


Ahead of fresh standoff, Hamas reveals payouts to injured protesters
Hamas has distributed payments to Palestinians injured in protests in the border region between the Gaza Strip and Israel and to the families of those killed, according to a report on the Islamist movement’s official website.

Palestinians critically and moderately wounded in the protests respectively received $500 and $200, while families of Palestinians killed were given $3000, Hamas spokesman Hazim Qassim is quoted as saying.

Since the start of the six week-long, Hamas-backed protests in the border region last Friday, which has been dubbed the “The Great March of Return,” the IDF has killed 21 Gazans, including 12 individuals whom Israeli authorities identified as militants.

The IDF has described the protests as “violent riots,” asserting that many protesters have thrown Molotov cocktails and rocks at its soldiers, opened fire on them, attempted to infiltrate Israel’s borders and set tires on fire. Videos shared on Facebook and Twitter appear to show some protesters participating in violent actions, while several others did not.

However, several human rights organizations have said that the IDF has targeted “unarmed civilians.” Adalah — the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said in a statement last Friday that Israel opened fire on “unarmed civilians” and violated international legal obligations to distinguish between civilians and combatants. Videos shared on Twitter and Facebook appear to show Israeli soldiers shooting Palestinians who do not seem to present any imminent threat to their lives.

Qassim said the payments were made as a part of Hamas’s “social and national responsibility to strengthen the steadfastness of our people in its struggle for return, freedom and breaking the siege.”


Friday, March 30, 2018

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Western Media Are Hamas's Partners in the War Against Israel
On Friday, the Palestinian terror group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, is inaugurating what it is calling “The March of Return.”

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

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

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

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

So this brings us to the second question.

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

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

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

Given widespread assessments that Iran is keen to start a new round of war between Israel and its terror proxies, Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is possible that Hamas intends for this lethal propaganda stunt to be the initial stage of a larger war. By this assessment, Hamas is using the border operation to cultivate and escalate Western hostility against Israel ahead of a larger shooting war.
Evelyn Gordon: Use UNRWA’s financial crisis to end its shameful apartheid system
The status quo is also bad for Israel—and not just because of the anti-Israel incitement taught in UNRWA schools and Palestinians’ use of UNRWA facilities as weapons depots. By denying Palestinians the ability to assimilate into Jordan and the P.A., UNRWA effectively tells them that “returning” to Israel is their only hope of escaping refugee status. Nurturing such fantasies of mass relocation merely perpetuates the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; peace is obviously impossible if Palestinians condition it on turning Israel into a Palestinian-majority state.

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

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

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

UNRWA reform is no less critical. And after 70 years of stasis, it’s clear nothing short of a financial crisis has any chance of bringing it about.
Melanie Phillips: Corbyn isn’t the cause of Labour’s antisemitism – he’s its product
This lie embodies the deeper calumny that the Jews falsify history to serve their own interests by oppressing and dominating another people. The “dispossession” lie thus leads directly to the deranged and paranoid conspiracy theories about the Jews with which the left is now riddled.

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

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

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

He is its product.

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

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

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

The Conservative Party may be in power in Britain, but the Left controls the universities, the BBC and the artistic and cultural world. It is Britain itself that’s no longer safe for Jews.
Melanie Phillips: OPEN AND SHUT CASE
An open letter backed by more than 2,000 supporters of Jeremy Corbyn has claimed that the Jewish community’s protest against antisemitism in the Labour Party was the work of a “very powerful special interest group”, the Independent reports.

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

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

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

I think that is what is called an own goal.

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

From Ian:

PMW: PMW Exclusive: PA publishes new budget; continues to defy US and Europe by rewarding terror
- 7.47% of the PA's operational budget is for salaries to terrorist prisoners, released terrorists, and payments to families of "Martyrs" and wounded

- The PA has 2 budget categories rewarding terror; together they equal 44% of anticipated foreign aid

- New in 2018 Budget: For the first time since 2014, the PA is directly paying the Commission of Prisoners, which pays the salaries to terrorist prisoners; as a result, the PA now fits Israel's criteria to be declared a terror organization

Total PA 2018 operational budget: 16.559 billion shekels ($4.76 billion)
Salaries to terrorist prisoners: 550 million shekels ($158 million)
Payments to families of "Martyrs" and wounded: 687 million shekels ($197 million)
Total expenditure in budget categories rewarding terror = 1.237 billion shekels ($355 million)
For comparison: PA Ministry of Health which serves the entire population of 5 million has a budget of 1.787 billion shekels, a mere 44% more than 1.237 billion shekels serving the recipients in the two budget categories rewarding terror

In the same week that the United States passed the Taylor Force Act, which cuts off nearly all US aid to the Palestinian Authority if it continues paying salaries to terrorist prisoners and allowances to families of terrorist "Martyrs," the PA publicized the main parts of its 2018 budget. In open defiance of the US, other donor countries, and Israel, the PA's new budget shows it is continuing to reward terror. The amount the PA has budgeted to spend on the two categories that reward terror (salaries to prisoners and allowances to families of "Martyrs" and wounded) is 7.47% of the total operational budget. The amount equals 44% of the funding the PA hopes to receive in foreign aid in 2018, which is 2.79 billion shekels according to the budget.
Murder of 11 at Savoy hotel in 1975 was “greatest and most wonderful quality operation,” says Fatah


Congress threatens to cut UN funding for voting against Israel
United Nations agencies that single out Israel may soon be on the hook to lose a certain portion of US funding.

According to a little-noticed provision in the massive government spending bill that President Donald Trump signed into law last week, UN agencies and entities that act against the United States or its allies, including Israel, could lose 5% of their US contribution.

The new law requires the secretary of state to consult with the US ambassador to the UN to determine if an “agency or entity has taken an official action that is against the national security interest of the United States or an ally of the United States, including Israel.” Israel is the only US ally that is explicitly named in both the bill’s text and its accompanying report language.

In an effort to sway UN policy, the law stipulates that the UN agency must take steps to change the policy in question before receiving the withheld funds. Otherwise, the funds are subject to reprogramming for other international organizations.

Josh Reubner, the policy director for the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a coalition of groups supporting Palestinian statehood, denounced the new law as “yet another example of how the United States bends over backward to shield Israel from valid criticism at the UN.”

“It also shows how the Republican-led Congress is closely coordinating with the Trump administration to make good on its threat to punish the UN for criticizing Israel’s separate-and-unequal policies toward Palestinians,” added Reubner.

But US lawmakers and successive US administrations have long held that the UN singles Israel out for unfairly harsh treatment relative to other countries. Nonetheless, the Trump administration is considering options to make the UN more favorable to Israel.
'There's a tendency in Israel to demonize Sweden' (not satire)
Sweden’s ambassador to Israel on Tuesday claimed there was a tendency in Israel to “demonize” his country and in particular foreign minister Margot Wallstrom.

In an interview with i24news, the ambassador, Magnus Hellgren, also insisted he doesn’t see the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic.

Relations between Israel and Sweden have been tense in recent years. Wallstrom in particular has come under fire for her harsh anti-Israel comments.

In 2014, then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman denounced Sweden’s decision to recognize the Palestinian Authority (PA) as "the State of Palestine", saying that “relations in the Middle East are a lot more complex than the self-assembly furniture of IKEA”.

Wallstrom later replied and said she would be “happy” to send Liberman some IKEA furniture “and he will also see that what you need to put that together is, first of all, a partner.”

Following that incident, Wallstrom accused Israel of being “extremely aggressive” and accused the Jewish state of “irritating its allies”.

In December of 2015, she attacked Israel again, claiming during a debate in parliament that Israel was “executing” without trial terrorists who carried out stabbing attacks in Israel.

Saturday, March 24, 2018

From Ian:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By saying that the US will present its plan “when circumstances are right,” Greenblatt said that there is no US ultimatum to the PLO. If Abbas doesn’t want a deal, they will wait him out and offer it to his successor, or his successor’s successor.
Taylor Force Act Signed Into Law As Part of Spending Bill
The Taylor Force Act was signed into law on Mar. 23, as it was included in the $1.3 trillion spending bill to fund the government.

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, March 22, 2018

From Ian:

IDF Blog: The Intel operation behind the attack on the Syrian nuclear facility in 2007
For two years, the Military Intelligence Directorate worked with the Israeli intelligence community to collect information about the growing Syrian nuclear facility. It began with a hunch and a collection of sensitive information, continued with the recognition of suspicious buildings, and ended with the identification and destruction of the nuclear facility. Here’s the intelligence process behind the operation, step-by-step:

The beginning stages of intel-gathering

After major discoveries were made from 2005 until the beginning of 2007, it was determined that Syria was acting secretly within the nuclear field.

The Military Intelligence Directorate began to take-on the challenge: the Research Department of the Directorate established a large-scale team to analyze indications of Syrian nuclear efforts and strategies. Later on, the intelligence collection units outside of the military assisted in gathering information.

During this period of time, the Military Intelligence Directorate collected a number of key details that became the grounds for the attack:

  1. Towards the end of 2004: Military intelligence and the Mossad collected information that foreign specialists were aiding a nuclear project in Syria.
  2. January 2006: This was the first time it was suggested that a nuclear facility was being established in Syria. This was an important turning point in the understanding of it. Following this, the Military Intelligence Directorate collected vital information regarding the beginning process of a nuclear facility.
  3. April 2006: A nuclear facility was identified as a result of research conducted by the Military Intelligence Directorate and intelligence community.
  4. November 2006: Additional activity in the nuclear field was observed. With time, more aspects of Syrian nuclear efforts were revealed, specifically intensive contact with nuclear elements necessary for the operation of a nuclear facility.
Palestinian claim to Dead Sea Scrolls may be next up at UNESCO
The next “prize” the Palestinians will likely claim as their own at UNESCO will probably be the archeological site of Qumran and its Dead Sea Scrolls, Shimon Samuels of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said on Wednesday.

He spoke at a panel on the denial of Jewish history in international organizations at the Foreign Ministry-sponsored sixth Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem.

Samuels chronicled the Palestinians’ success at having attributed to themselves biblical and cultural sites, including Jewish ones, on the World Heritage List since joining the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a member state in 2011.

The World Heritage Committee ascribed to “Palestine” Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity in 2012; the agricultural terraces of Battir, site of the ancient Jewish fortress at Betar, in 2014; and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs in 2017.

The Palestinian Authority has a tentative list of 13 additional sites it seeks to register at UNESCO.

Out of that list the Palestinians are next likely to seek cultural ownership of the Qumran Caves and Dead Sea Scrolls, said Samuels, who is the director of international relations for the Wiesenthal Center.

This request may come up at the next meeting of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee this July in Bahrain, he told the conference.

Saturday, March 17, 2018

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Ellison ‘Has to Be Fired Immediately’ From DNC
Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz on Friday said Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) should "be fired immediately" as Democratic National Committee deputy chairman for falsely claiming he had ended his relationship with Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan.

Dershowitz joined "Fox & Friends" to discuss his new book, The Case Against BDS: Why Singling Out Israel for Boycott Is Anti-Semitic and Anti-Peace. Co-host Steve Doocy introduced the topic of Farrakhan's contraversial relationship with some members of the Democratic party, first playing a compilation of clips where the Nation of Islam leader slams Jews and white people as "satanic" and deserving to die.

"I hear the Jews don't like Farrakhan, so they call me [Adolf] Hitler. Well that's a good name. Hitler was a very great man…Your country has been taken from you by the synagogue of satan… The satanic Jews… Because you see white people deserve to die… White folks are going down," Farrakhan said.

Co-host Ainsley Earhardt asked Dershowitz, a lifelong Democrat and supporter of Hillary Clinton, whether he thought that more Democrats should speak out against Farrakhan and separate themselves from his views.

"I think Keith Ellison has to be fired immediately as the deputy chairman of the DNC. Not only has he become close to Farrakhan, but he's lied to the American public about ending his relationship with Farrakhan," Dershowitz said. "We know that he continued to meet with Farrakhan even after he said he longer met with him. This is the leadership of the Democratic Party. Farrakhan is a bigot. He is far worse than David Duke. Why? Because Farrakhan has a large following. David Duke is a joke.


Karl Marx’s Jew-Hating Conspiracy Theory
When God became sidelined as the source of ultimate meaning, “the people” became both the new deity and the new messianic force of the new order. In other words, instead of worshipping some unseen force residing in Heaven, people started worshipping themselves. This is what gave nationalism its spiritual power, as the volksgeist, people’s spirit, replaced the Holy Spirit. The tribal instinct to belong to a sacralized group took over. In this light, we can see how romantic nationalism and “globalist” Marxism are closely related. They are both “re-enchantment creeds,” as the philosopher-historian Ernest Gellner put it. They fill up the holes in our souls and give us a sense of belonging and meaning.

For Marx, the inevitable victory of Communism would arrive when the people, collectively, seized their rightful place on the Throne of History.11 The cult of unity found a new home in countless ideologies, each of which determined, in accord with their own dogma, to, in Voegelin’s words, “build the corpus mysticum of the collectivity and bind the members to form the oneness of the body.” Or, to borrow a phrase from Barack Obama, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

In practice, Marxist doctrine is more alienating and dehumanizing than capitalism will ever be. But in theory, it conforms to the way our minds wish to see the world. There’s a reason why so many populist movements have been so easily herded into Marxism. It’s not that the mobs in Venezuela or Cuba started reading The Eighteenth Brumaire and suddenly became Marxists. The peasants of North Vietnam did not need to read the Critique of the Gotha Program to become convinced that they were being exploited. The angry populace is always already convinced. The people have usually reached the conclusion long ago. They have the faith; what they need is the dogma. They need experts and authority figures—priests!—with ready-made theories about why the masses’ gut feelings were right all along. They don’t need Marx or anybody else to tell them they feel ripped off, disrespected, exploited. They know that already. The story Marxists tell doesn’t have to be true. It has to be affirming. And it has to have a villain. The villain, then and now, is the Jew.
'Jerusalem is not holy to Muslims, enough with this lie!'
Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein spoke on Thursday night at the National Council of Young Israel's annual dinner, debunking the myth that Jerusalem is holy to Muslims.

"Jerusalem was the capital of Israel, under King David, 3,000 years ago," Klein said. "It was never, ever, the capital of any other nation except Israel. When the Arabs conquered Palestine in 716, they made Ramla their capital, not Jerusalem."

"The Jewish holy books mention Jerusalem 700 times. it is never, ever mentioned in the Quran. Even about Mohammed allegedly going from Jerusalem to heaven, in the Quran...this is described as a dream. He simply has a dream, and it says he went 'from the farthest place to heaven.' ... And the nearest place, in the Quran, is Palestine. So clearly, it was not from Jerusalem."

Klein also noted that the Arabs, historically, have not cared enough to invest in Jerusalem.

"When the Arabs controlled Jerusalem from 1948-1967, when Jordan controlled it, they built everything of importance in Amman, not in Jerusalem," he said. "They allowed it to be a slum. There was no water, no electricity, no plumbing there. They destroyed the 58 synagogues in eastern Jerusalem."

Calling on his listeners to help debunk the lies, Klein said, "We must now tell everyone: It is not holy to Muslims, enough with this lie! Enough with the lie of occupation, there is no occupation, this is Jewish land, enough of the lie that settlements are the reason we have no peace. Settlements comprise 2% of all Judea and Samaria, there hasn't been a single new settlement built since 1993."

Friday, March 16, 2018

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: Understanding Israel’s Love Affair With Trump
Bipartisanship was the watchword at last week’s AIPAC conference, but it’s no secret that pro-Israel Democrats have trouble swallowing Israelis’ enthusiasm for President Donald Trump, whose approval rating in Israel hit 67 percent even before he decided to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They can understand Israel’s joy over that decision. But they can’t understand its seeming disregard of Trump actions that harm Israel, like abandoning Syria to Iran and Russia or divulging classified Israeli intelligence to Russia’s president.

The explanation is simple, but unfortunately, Democrats won’t like it: Barack Obama set the bar for US-Israeli relations so low that there’s literally no Israel-related issue on which Trump has been worse than his predecessor. And there are many on which he’s been not just modestly better, but spectacularly so.

In Trump’s negative column, Syria is “Exhibit A.” Anyone who has heard Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lately knows that Iran’s growing presence there is a top security concern. Moreover, thanks to Russia’s presence in Syria, Israel can’t handle this problem alone; Russia is way out of its weight class. Consequently, it needs America’s help, which hasn’t always been so forthcoming.

Nevertheless, it’s not Trump who abandoned Syria to Iran and Russia; that was Obama’s decision. When Syria’s civil war first began, America could have prevented Tehran and Moscow from moving in at relatively low cost. But by the time Trump took office, both were well-entrenched; ousting them now would be far more difficult and costly.

Granted, there are still things America could do — and Israelis wish America would do them. But thanks to Obama’s choices, low-cost solutions no longer exist. In this situation, many US presidents would have opted for inaction. Certainly, Trump’s Democratic rival would have; as Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was party to his decisions. So despite their dismay about the current situation, Israelis can’t blame Trump for this.
A New Entebbe Movie, Hijacked by Bad Ideas
The answer, to all but high-minded screenwriters intent on making serious movies about moral conundrums, is not too complicated: as long as there are bad guys with guns trying to kill us. In 7 Days, however, the bad guys aren’t that bad—they’re German intellectuals, which means that, periodically, they must put aside their AK-47s and debate the dialectical nature of history.

The villain-as-grad-student paradigm isn’t inherently terrible, nor is it historically inaccurate. Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann, the plane’s two German kidnappers, were, by many survivors’ accounts, prone to lengthy conversations about justice and virtue and other abstractions, and there is something about the airless, dusty African terminal, with ultimatums afoot and the clock ticking down, that could’ve made for a fine piece of existential, almost abstract, theater. One can imagine an Entebbe film that, secure in the knowledge that we all know the action-packed fairy tale by now, would abandon the explosions and the gunfire for two hours of tense dialogue, a sort of Twelve Angry Men between hostages and their tormentors.

And, at times, that appears to be just the movie the actors portraying Böse and Kuhlmann—Daniel Brühl and Rosamund Pike—have in mind. When Kuhlmann telephones a lover back home in Germany and wearily recounts the hijacking, she seems eager to escape not just Uganda but the film itself, both of which deprive her of a role that much transcends a few angry shouts and nervous convulsions.

You can hardly blame her. Like much of Hollywood these days, 7 Days believes that a movie’s primary responsibility is to make progressive statements, not unfettered art. The message is the medium, and the message is best delivered in bursts of political speechifying. Sadly for the bien pensants, however, we unwashed masses go to the movies to be entertained, not educated, which leaves the film in a bind. Disinterested in the true depths of terror, and disdainful of the sheer kineticism of a good action sequence, it opts for something in between. The film’s climactic scene, for example, the raid on the terminal, is shot in infuriating slow-motion and cross-cut with a modern dance performance, forcing you to embrace its sophomoric war-as-metaphor theme one last, frustrating time. Whereas Chuck Norris, the hero of a previous Entebbe-inspired magnum opus, once blasted baddies with his rocket-launching dirt bike, lithe ballerinas now throw themselves on a bare stage. Catharsis is not permitted. Neither is fun.
Col Richard Kemp: Aussie Diary
He died in 1900, but my great grandfather, Archibald Richardson, outback explorer and early Rockhampton pioneer, is even today spoken of with respect in central Queensland. To me though he is a grave disappointment. I’ve been bragging about being descended from a criminal transported to the Australian colonies. But I learn from the Rockhampton Historical Society that Richardson made the journey of his own volition, destroying any street cred I had down under.

Shortly after I arrive in Sydney news breaks that Israeli intelligence foiled an Islamic terror plot to blow up a passenger plane flying out of here last year. I know of many other times Israeli intelligence has saved the lives of Australians – as well as Brits, Americans and Europeans – in our cities and on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. The Israelis are not alone in their impressive track record against jihadists. The ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence system enables seamless cooperation between Australian, New Zealand, British, US and Canadian services. Asio and Asis, like their MI5 and MI6 counterparts in the UK, have prevented many more terrorist plots than have succeeded.

In TV and radio studios I’m asked the question: what do we do about Islamic State returners? My answer is the one I give in Britain: ban them. They chose to join an orgy of mass murder, torture and rape in the Middle East; let the ones we cannot kill with airstrikes rot there rather than return and threaten people here. To snowflakes who complain this breaches their human rights, I reply that no sane government would allow the rights of these savages to take priority over those of their innocent Australian victims.

Europe could learn a thing or two from Australia about putting a stop to the mass illegal immigration that jihadist groups use as a cover to infiltrate terrorists into our countries. But Australia’s successful strategy is too politically incorrect for the lily-livered European politicians who prefer to appease would-be attackers and their sympathisers. One of the main architects of that strategy is General Jim Molan, the distinguished soldier who was also chief of operations for the coalition in Iraq. I catch up with him in Canberra the week he takes his seat in the Senate.

Thursday, March 15, 2018

From Ian:

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

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

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

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

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

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

In another Fatah post, terrorist Hammad was praised as a "prince" and "the sniper from Wadi Al-Haramiya":
Dr. Martin Sherman: Gaza - let their people go!
The crisis in Gaza is not one that funding can solve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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