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Sunday, May 19, 2019

From Ian:

The real winner of Eurovision was Israel
Israel’s Eurovision entry barely made a dent on the scoreboard but there’s no doubt that the Jewish State was the real winner of the Eurovision Song Content 2019.

Israel was hosting the competition for the fourth time in history but for the first in twenty years – and in an era where Eurovision is simulcast on YouTube and more and more countries have joined the contest, in an age of age of instant responses and scrutiny via social media with a global viewing audience that has swelled to 200 million people.

Eurovision is always loud, often garish and I admit to watching some of the songs with the “Mute” button pressed - but to be the host is a big deal and for Israel more than most. It also requires a lot – and Israel more than delivered. When Netta Barzilai triumphantly lifted the trophy last year, questions and concerns loomed: Which city would host? Would the contest be derailed – or even cancelled – by BDS, the anti-Israel boycotters? Could Israel do it and not go bankrupt in the process, or would the whole thing be a disaster?

Israel can feel vindicated on every level.

Tel Aviv was the natural home for camp, party-loving Eurovision with no disrespect to any other city including the capital. Jerusalemites also hosted Eurovision celebrations and the tourism influx was a boon to Jerusalem as it was to Tel Aviv and elsewhere with thousands of visitors converging on the Jewish State. In 2018, tourism was at an all-time high with 4.1 million people coming to Israel, up 14% on the previous year; with the Eurovision boost, 2019 could surpass even that.

And to answer the question of if geographically-small Israel could host a major event, the largest music competition in the world, the answer this week is a resounding: YES. Israel’s national broadcaster, Kan put on a slick, polished, dynamic production. The stage looked every bit as fabulous as previous venues. Outside the concert hall, Tel Aviv’s Eurovision Village was heaving all week and the positivity of the event resounded.
Fans sing along to most pro-LGBT Eurovision, though winning song isn’t kitschy
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest went to the Netherlands and its 25-year-old Dutch singer Duncan Laurence, with his solo piece “Arcade.”

The country hasn’t won the Eurovision since 1975, and Laurence was a fan favorite from the start, although he was told in rehearsals that he needed to look more closely at the camera to engage the television audiences.

Laurence’s song is a sweeping ode with a strong refrain to love and loss, and was in stark contrast to many of the other songs, which were high on camp, kitsch and dance tempos.

Fans loved “Arcade,” but they didn’t sing along or clap to it, simply because it’s not that kind of song. And Eurovision fans love a good refrain and an opportunity to clap in time.
Fans at the Eurovision press screening in the Tel Aviv Expo on May 18, 2019 (Jessica Steinberg/Times of Israel)

Despite the nature of the winning song, Saturday night’s show may have been the campiest Eurovision yet, with France’s gay Muslim singer Bilal Hassani bringing his message of tolerance, the bondage-happy trio Hatari from Iceland with their techno punk thrust, the presence of Israel’s Dana International and Austria’s Conchita Wurst, and Madonna’s monk-like choir wearing gas masks for her rendition of her new song, “Future.”

It was a show that thrilled the many LGBT fans who converged on the Expo Tel Aviv venue and are among the most die-hard Eurovision fans; many of them had carefully learned about the contestants from each country, even memorizing the words to the songs.

Petra Marquardt-Bigman: Anti-Israel bias at Human Rights Watch (Part 2: Two decades of anti-Zionism)
Conclusion – HRW’s anti-Israel bias is beyond repair

Just following some of the leading HRW officials on Twitter and looking for their pronouncements on Israel would provide almost daily new evidence that they don’t even bother to pretend to be impartial and fair.

But I think all you really need to know about HRW and its attitude to Israel is that almost 20 years ago, when peace still seemed possible and a U.S. president did all he could to achieve it, HRW decided to endorse Palestinian demands for a “right to return,” thereby endorsing Palestinian demands to transform the world’s only Jewish state into yet another Arab-Muslim majority state.

For all practical intents and purposes, HRW has therefore been an anti-Zionist organization ever since. As far as HRW is concerned, Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is a violation of Palestinian human rights.

Whether Omar Shakir sits in an office in Jerusalem or in New York will not make a difference to his output, and whoever might replace him will obviously also toe the HRW line on Israel. At the same time, I don’t quite see why Israel should give a work permit to employees of foreign NGOs who come to work for the demise of the Jewish state. By trying to force Israel to host a longtime anti-Israel activist, HRW has provided a stark reminder of its bias and its arrogant attitude that it has no need to even pretend to be impartial.

But this is arguably not only about Israel. If an organization is so shameless about its bias towards one country, it seems reasonable to question how much ideological fixations affect its work on other countries. The apparently widespread idea that an organization working on human rights must be assumed to reflect the highest ethical standards and should be automatically exempt from scrutiny and criticism is certainly not justified.

In addition, HRW staff will also use their social media clout to tout political viewpoints that may not have all that much to do with their work.

Rashida Tlaib’s recent revolting effort to rewrite history by claiming Palestinians provided a safe haven for Jews during and after the Holocaust provides a good example. As of this writing, the timelines of Sarah Leah Whitson and Omar Shakir feature a combined 15 re-tweets—in just 24 hours—in defense of Tlaib. But perhaps Tlaib, just like HRW, has the human right not to be criticized, especially not by Israel supporters, who, as Ken Roth has decreed, come up only with “lies and deception” or “lies and obfuscation.

Anti-Israel bias at Human Rights Watch is so pervasive, and has gone on so long, that it is beyond repair. HRW should be disregarded as a legitimate neutral voice on anything related to Israel. (h/t IsaacStorm)
John Podhoretz: Herman Wouk, 1915-2019 Entertainment with a deeper purpose.
In 2013, I commissioned and published an apology to a writer who I felt had been mistreated in the pages of COMMENTARY—and by my father, no less!

“How This Magazine Wronged Herman Wouk” was the name of the article by Michael J. Lewis, and the occasion for it was the fact that the then-97-year-old Wouk had just published a new novel called The Lawgiver—a comic epistolary novel, no less, concerning the making of a movie about the life of Moses in which Wouk himself appears as a character. As Lewis wrote, “Wouk adapts the form to the modern world of instant messaging, faxes, and Skype, and pulls it off successfully—a startling achievement by an author who was born two years before the United States entered World War I.”

Wouk, who died Friday just two weeks shy of his 104th birthday, was extraordinary not only for his age, his durability, and the freshness of his ageless mind, but for his career as a popular novelist determined to explore themes of the deepest seriousness with all their moral complexities for a mass-market audience.

It was, I have to say, the very reason his work came in for scornful or dismissive treatment in the pages of COMMENTARY. The New York literary highbrows may have delighted in the frivolities of Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley, but they stood at the gates with buckshot at the ready against the philistine hordes of popular culture when the barbarians sought venture onto the turf of the Great Novel or the Great Play. Wouk’s breakthrough work, The Caine Mutiny, sold millions and was made into a successful movie and a smash-hit play, but in these pages it was found wanting as a seafaring tale next to Herman Melville—which is rather an impossible standard to which to hold a book that deserved and deserves to be measured on its own merits.

And when Wouk was garlanded by the middlebrows of the news magazines and the Book of the Month Club audience with the publication of his most ambitious novel, 1955’s Marjorie Morningstar, which was also an enormous bestseller, this meant war. The book came under withering assault from a 26-year-old whippersnapper named Norman Podhoretz for its “indigestible prose.”

Saturday, May 18, 2019

From Ian:

Jonathan Spyer: Arab Spring: the Second Coming?
The camp of the generals is the camp of stability, the status quo, and of alliance with the West. The other side is with the notion of Islamic revival to the perceived glories of the Islamic past. Its partisans and allies are by definition the enemies of the West and Israel. The very fact of Jewish sovereignty in Jerusalem is seen as a reminder of how low the Islamic world has fallen.

But it is worth noting that neither of these sides is for civil society, institutions, secularization, representative government. The forces that do support all these exist but are immensely weak. For as long as this remains the case, the Arabic-speaking world is likely to remain under-developed and dysfunctional – whether generals or Islamists have the upper hand in any particular context.

Remedying the poverty of choices facing Arab publics is, of course, a matter that only Arabic-speaking societies ultimately can address. Until they do so, it will be in the interest of western governments to support the conservative and authoritarian forces preventing the disaster of further victories for political Islam.

As noted above, the Israeli interest in both Libya and Sudan is not in doubt. In Sudan, the departure of President Omar al-Bashir is entirely positive from the Israeli perspective. Under al-Bashir’s 30-year rule, Sudan made itself available as a conduit for the transfer of Iranian weapons to the Gaza Strip, and acted as a portal for the entry of the Revolutionary Guards into Africa (the IRGC began to train Sudan’s army, and Sudan offered naval facilities for Iran’s use). For economic reasons, al-Bashir reversed course in 2015. But al-Bashir’s relations with Turkey and Qatar and the army’s support from Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia mean that his departure remains without doubt a net positive from the Israeli point of view.

In Libya, similarly, the victory of Haftar, backed by UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, would be a net positive for Israel – it would prevent the emergence and entrenchment of an ally of Turkey, Qatar and the Muslim brotherhood on the coast facing Europe. Though in this case it should be noted that even if Haftar takes Tripoli, Libya will be far from a return to stability under authoritarian rule. The south of the country remains largely ungoverned and penetrated by elements of the Islamic State. The West, meanwhile, harbors powerful Islamist militias with considerable public support who are likely to attempt a continued insurgency against Haftar even if his forces take the capital.
Palestinian activists don’t understand why they can’t enter the US
In December 1992, about nine months before the first Palestinian-Israeli peace accords were signed on the White House lawn, Hanan Ashrawi met with president George H.W. Bush in the Oval Office.

Now, 26 years later, she can’t even enter the United States.

Ashrawi, a longtime Palestinian spokeswoman and a current member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, tweeted Monday that her application for a US visa was rejected.

“It is official! My US visa application has been rejected,” she wrote. “No reason given. Choose any of the following: I’m over 70 & a grandmother; I’ve been an activist for Palestine since the late 1960’s; I’ve always been an ardent supporter of nonviolent resistance.”

Ashrawi is the most recent and most prominent of at least three Palestinian activists to be barred from entering the United States this year. In February, activist Osama Iliwat was denied entry at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York and sent home. In April, Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, was not allowed to board a flight to the United States at the direction of the US government.

Iliwat and Barghouti held valid US visas. In March, Iliwat was told he was being deported due to a desire to immigrate to the US, which he calls spurious. Like Ashrawi, both Barghouti and Iliwat said they do not know why they were denied entry. Iliwat told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Customs and Border Protection officials questioned him over the course of eight hours about his activism before canceling his visa.


Australia’s ruling Conservative coalition elected to surprise third term
PM Scott Morrison praises ‘miracle’ victory after opinion polls favored opposition; Labor party had vowed to reverse Jerusalem recognition

Opinion polls prior to Saturday’s election had suggested that the coalition would lose and that Morrison would have had one of the shortest tenures as prime minister in the 118-year history of the Australian federation.

In December 2018, Morrison’s government recognized West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move the Labor party vowed to reverse if elected.

His declaration was received with disappointment and even bitterness by the Israeli government, which considers the entire city its capital, and had hoped Canberra would follow the American example. US President Donald Trump on December 6, 2017, recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, without making a geographical distinction or taking a position on the city’s borders. On May 14, 2018, the US relocated its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Morrison, who initially said he was “open-minded” to moving his country’s embassy as well, in December announced the establishment of a “Defense and Trade Office” in Jerusalem instead. It opened quietly in March, without senior officials from either country in attendance.

Earlier this year, Morrison said that Israel is “a beacon of democracy in the Middle East.”

Friday, May 17, 2019

From Ian:

Foreign Ministry against UNRWA: 'We'll keep telling the truth'
Even as the winds of war seem to have temporarily subsided in Gaza, Israel’s Foreign Ministry and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees continue to butt heads over the agency’s conduct during the most recent round of violence between Israel and Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza.

Tensions began when UNRWA’s Commissioner General Matthias Schmale on May 4, intimated on Twitter that Israeli airstrikes were hindering UNRWA sponsored events to “celebrate children and their sports and fun activities.”

“Surrealistic #Gaza day: went to 2 marvelous @UNRWA events to celebrate children & their sports and fun activities & then to honor sanitation laborers followed by good working lunch with colleagues; in parallel sounds of bombs all day & we seem yet again close to war. Madness!” Schmale tweeted.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon, angry at Schmale’s one-sided depiction of events, responded to Schmale on Twitter: “The terrorists shooting the rockets are all probably @UNRWA graduates. You must be really proud of them.”

In response, Schmale emphasized he was against the firing of rockets at Israel.

“I unequivocally don’t support shooting rockets. And your unsubstantiated & defamatory claim is unworthy of a government spokesman. The children I meet in our schools all the time are no terrorists; they are peace-loving kids hungry to learn & to live a dignified life!”



What Are Palestinian Children Reading in Their Textbooks?
The EU is investigating the problematic Palestinian textbooks that are being used to teach 1.3 million Palestinian children. CEO of the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education speaks, Marcus Sheff speaks with Nurit Ben and Calev Ben-David about the recent findings from this report.


Israeli ambassador's 'Bible speech' at U.N. goes viral
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon's speech several weeks ago has taken on a new life on social media and YouTube as translations into different languages have propelled the "biblical speech" well beyond the walls of the United Nations building.

Wearing a kippah and reading from the Bible, Danon defended Israel's right to the land of Israel.

Since then, translations into Spanish, Polish, French, Portuguese and Turkish have swept the internet. Last week, on Israel's Independence Day, CNN brought Danon on to discuss the speech where he reiterated the Jewish state's historical and moral claims to the country that many local Arab residents would like to see as Palestine.

A Palestinian media outlet published a lengthy editorial decrying the speech.

”From the book of Genesis; to the Jewish exodus from Egypt; to receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai; to the gates of Canaan; and to the realization of God’s covenant in the Holy Land of Israel; the Bible paints a consistent picture. The entire history of our people, and our connection to Eretz Yisrael, begins right here,” Danon stated at the UN Security council in New York.

He continued referencing the Balfour Declaration of 1971, the League of Nations mandate of 1922, and the United Nations charter of 1945 as all legitimizing Israel's right to self-determination.

"The speech has resonated thanks to the strength of the truth. Its success has been welcome news as we conveyed to the world the strength of the eternal connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel," Danon stated about the speech going viral.


Thursday, May 16, 2019

From Ian:

Madonna confirmed at last for Eurovision performance in Tel Aviv
Madonna’s producers said in April the star would perform at the contest in Tel Aviv, which was designated the host city after Israeli singer Netta Barzilai won in Portugal last year.

Her participation brought a flurry of protest from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which has for years been pushing for investors and artists to shun Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians, among other critiques.

“I’ll never stop playing music to suit someone’s political agenda nor will I stop speaking out against violations of human rights wherever in the world they may be,” Madonna said, in a statement carried by US media Tuesday.

She brings with her an entourage of 135 people, including the rapper KoVu, 40 backing singers, 25 dancers and a team of technicians, according to reports citing the Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, said to be footing a large part of the bill for her performance.

Twenty-six out of an original 41 contestants will battle for first place in the three-and-a-half-hour live broadcast, which kicks off Saturday at 9 p.m. Israel time.

Madonna will perform in the interval.

Shalva band readies for guest gig after nixing Eurovision bid over Shabbat
The Shalva Band, which dropped its widely supported bid to represent Israel at Eurovision after organizers refused to budge on the group’s request not to perform on Shabbat, rehearsed Wednesday for a performance as guest artists at the song contest’s semifinals on Thursday evening.

“We are very excited to get on stage with smiles on our faces,” band member Yair Pomberg told Channel 12 news. “We are going to do the best possible job we can.”

His bandmate, Yosef Ovadia, told a press conference that the group has wide-ranging support ahead of their performance.

“I think that what we are going to do here at the second semifinal of the contest — I feel that the people of Israel and the people of the world are with us,” Ovadia said.

The band — made up of musicians with disabilities, some of whom are observant Jews — was named as a finalist on the reality TV show “Rising Star,” which determines Israel’s entry for the annual song contest taking place this week in Tel Aviv.

The group quit the show over the prospect of being forced to break the Jewish day of rest if selected as the winner.
Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams filming Eurovision movie in Tel Aviv
The 2019 Eurovision in Tel Aviv is undeniably star-studded. But on the sidelines of the show are two more world-famous celebrities: Rachel McAdams and Will Ferrell.

The duo are in town to shoot an upcoming Netflix film about – you guessed it – the Eurovision. Ferrell is the brains behind the movie, titled Eurovision, and it is being directed by David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers).

In addition to Ferrell, McAdams is appearing in the film, and even took a photo with Eurovision co-host Assi Azar on the sidelines of the contest this week.

Unlike most Americans, Ferrell is a fan of the European singing extravaganza, as he was introduced to it by his Swedish-born wife, Viveca Paulin. Ferrell was also in attendance at the Eurovision last year in Lisbon, Portugal, where Israel’s Netta Barzilai took home the top prize. Netflix announced the Eurovision satire film last summer, and Dobkin and McAdams signed on earlier this year.
PMW: Fatah calls to boycott Eurovision, adopts BDS campaign
Israel is hosting this year's Eurovision song contest, and millions across the world are watching the semi-finals this week, before the grand final on Saturday. Angry that Israel is hosting one of Europe's most important cultural celebrations, Abbas' Fatah Movement has been calling for a boycott of the event. Knowing the world's sensitivity to images of dead children, Fatah presented the libelous cartoon above of a microphone made of a rifle, and with bullets and a Palestinian child shot dead, lying in a pool of blood, as if the child had been intentionally murdered by Israel, under the hashtag #BoycottEurovision2019.

Similarly, the official Palestinian Authority daily printed this cartoon of the word "Eurovision" with a Palestinian boy being hung from a treble clef that replaces the "v" in "Eurovision."

However, it is Hamas that bears full responsibility for the civilian deaths and murdered children in the Gaza Strip because it places its missile launchers in residential areas, and proudly boasts of using civilians as human shields, as documented several times by Palestinian Media Watch.

BDS-campaigners have also called on pop star Madonna not to perform at Eurovision in Tel Aviv. Madonna is scheduled to sing during the finals on Saturday. Joining the BDS-call, Fatah posted several images under the hashtag #MadonnaDontGo, among them:
Blast from the Past: Israel's First Eurovision Win
Israel's first win of Eurovision came in 1978, followed up by another victory in 1979. Izhar Cohen, who won it for Israel the first time, remember it quite well. Our Tracy Alexander has the story.


Wednesday, May 15, 2019

From Ian:

The Gaza Conundrum Israel has many options, none good
The IDF’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) currently facilitates the entry of thousands of truckloads of goods to enter the Gaza Strip every day, even as a military blockade remains in place to block dual-use materials and sophisticated weaponry from the Gaza Strip. In other words, Israel has two policies. One is to isolate Hamas, and the other is to allow services to be rendered to the Gazan people.

Israel, for the sake of calm, has even engaged with the Turks and the Qataris, despite both countries’ avowed anti-Zionism and support for Hamas. It has permitted them to provide funds and other assistance to the coastal enclave. Gaza’s suffering continues, however, because Hamas continues to divert funds for commando tunnels, rockets, and other tools of war. And under Hamas rule, there is not much political space to challenge these policies. Anti-Israel sentiment is the only permissible form of protest. This has only served to further radicalize a population that has for years been fed a steady diet of hate.

The Israelis since 2007, along with the Egyptians since 2013, have endeavored to reshape the political landscape in Gaza. This is the first and best choice from Israel’s perspective. But so far, they have failed. The viable alternatives to Hamas are the sclerotic Palestinian Authority, radical Salafi groups, and Iran-backed PIJ. There could be others, such as the supporters of Mohammed Dahlan, the former Gaza strongman who went into exile in the UAE after the Hamas military takeover in 2007. But we know little about Dahlan’s ability to organize politically, or whether Gaza would reject his transplanted leadership after so many years away, like an artificial heart.

The obvious alternative to all of this is re-occupation. This would be deeply unpopular in Israel. It’s unthinkable to many. Of course, the Israelis controlled Gaza from 1967 until 2005. The Israelis never coordinated their departure with Palestinian counterparts, and it looked as if they were pulling out under fire from Hamas rockets and other attacks. This perception contributed in part to the Hamas electoral victory in 2006. That election led to the political standoff that gave way to the civil war in which Hamas overtook the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Fourteen years after the Gaza withdrawal, the rockets are still falling. Twelve years after Hamas took power, the group remains entrenched. Eight years after the deployment of Iron Dome, the Israelis are arguably safer, but they are back where they’ve always been: on the Gaza border, mulling their next move.


Noah Rothman: Who Really Wants a War in the Middle East?
According to the intelligence that prompted this latest buildup of U.S. forces in the region, the only party that wants a conflict is the Iranian regime. Tehran’s objective “is to prod the United States into a miscalculation or overreaction,” the Times reported. American officials are reportedly aware that Iran’s objective is to force the U.S. to execute a limited strike on Iranian targets while avoiding an all-out ground campaign the regime would not survive, thereby whipping up anti-American sentiment and increases internal political cohesion now strained by economic hardship.

You don’t have to take the White House’s word for it. On Monday, the White House got the casus belli it is supposedly spoiling for. According to the U.S. assessment, Iran or its proxy forces were responsible for an assault on two Saudi oil tankers, a United Arab Emirates tanker, and a Norwegian-flagged vessel anchored in UAE waters. A team of Iranian-linked saboteurs allegedly used explosives to blow large holes in the hulls of these ships below the waterline, taking them out of commission and causing global oil prices to spike by 2 percent. The threat to international commerce and global maritime navigation posed by this attack is more than enough to justify a retaliatory response, but the Trump administration’s reaction has been restrained.

Those who accuse the Trump administration of engineering a military confrontation with Iran are asking you to ignore your own eyes and ears in service to their conspiracy theory. No president would disregard an imminent threat to U.S. interests and personnel. The attack on four ships in the UAE suggests that threat is real and urgent. It more than justifies the White House’s efforts to deter further provocations of the sort the West would have no choice but to respond to with proportionate force.

If there is to be war, it would mean the end of the administration’s efforts to undermine the Iranian regime from within—a prospect administration officials are telling anyone willing to listen that they want to avoid. It must be a source of frustration that so few of their critics seem to care. They much prefer a simpler narrative in which the tyrannical and terroristic Iranian regime is the victim—all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
JCPA: The Real Catastrophe for the Palestinians
By all measurements, the situation of the Palestinians in the West Bank, and definitely in Israel, is much better than in any Arab country.

The essential fact is that there are Arab Knesset members. The Israeli Knesset is the only parliament in the world where there is a conspicuous and proud representation of Palestinian parliamentarians. They do not have such representation in Jordan or even in Ramallah or Gaza. Only beneath a picture of Theodore Herzl and the Israeli flag in the Israeli parliament can Palestinian parliamentarians speak and act freely – some Israelis complain too freely – and even in defiance.

Secondly, Israel is the only country in the Middle East that absorbed refugees fully. It is not well known, but there are Palestinian refugees from the villages that were abandoned during the war, who were absorbed into other towns and villages in Israel. Israel has given them full citizenship, and they are citizens with equal rights who can vote for the Knesset. Jordan also granted Palestinians citizenship, but not complete. There is no statistical data on this, but most Jordanian citizens of Palestinian origin are not allowed to vote for the Jordanian parliament, which is far from representative of the true numbers of Palestinians among the population.

Finally, in these times, a real Nakba is taking place, but not in Israel.

Monday, May 06, 2019

From Ian:

As ceasefire goes into effect, PM says Gaza campaign not over
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday commented on reports of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire deal in Gaza, after two days of fighting in which four Israelis were killed, saying that Israel was readying for further confrontations with terrorist groups in the coastal enclave.

“Over the past two days, we have hit Hamas and Islamic Jihad with great force, attacking over 350 targets and terrorist leaders and activists, and destroying terrorist infrastructure,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

“The campaign is not over and requires patience and judgment. We are preparing to continue,” the prime minister added. “The goal was and remains to ensure the peace and security of the residents of the south. I send condolences to the families and wish a speedy recovery for the wounded.”

A spokesperson for Hamas similarly said, in response to the prime minister’s statement, that although the recent flareup in violence had come to an end, the wider conflict would continue.

“The resistance managed to deter the IDF,” said Sami Abu Zuhri, according to the Kan public broadcaster, referring to the Gaza terror groups. “Our message is that this round is over, but the conflict will not end until we regain our rights.”

The ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza terror groups went into effect at 4:30 a.m. Monday, according to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups, ending two days of intense fighting that saw more than 600 rockets fired at Israel and four Israeli civilians killed.

Over two days, in response to the rocket fire, the Israeli military conducted hundreds of strikes from the air and land, including one highly unusual targeted killing of a terrorist operative who the IDF said funneled money from Iran to terror groups in the Strip.

Palestinian medical officials reported 29 dead since Friday, including at least 11 terrorists, The Times of Israel confirmed.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas, Islamic Jihad again celebrate ‘victory’ - analysis
Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials see the ceasefire agreement that was reached with Israel early Monday as a “big achievement.”

In their view, the last round of fighting, during which the two groups fired hundreds of missiles towards Israel, has “deterred” Israel and forced it to commit to the implementation of previous Egyptian-sponsored understandings, which include easing restrictions imposed on the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

According to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, this time they received assurances from Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations that Israel will fulfill its obligations under the previous understandings reached earlier this year.

The two groups claimed that Monday’s ceasefire agreement requires Israel to stop shooting at Palestinians during the weekly protests near the border with Israel, also known as the Great March of Return; the implementation of the previous understandings, especially with regards to easing the blockade on the Gaza Strip; allowing international relief organizations to assist families whose houses were destroyed in the last round of fighting; an end to Israeli targeted assassinations and expanding the fishing zone for Palestinian fishermen.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad feel that the price they paid for launching hundreds of missiles toward Israel during the two days of fighting was relatively small compared to the losses and damage inflicted on Israel.

As far as they are concerned, the fact that none of their senior leaders was killed is sufficient to celebrate victory. Also, the fact that Israel did not launch a ground offensive in the Gaza Strip is seen by the two groups as proof that Israel is afraid of an all-out war with the Gaza-based groups. Each round of fighting that ends with Hamas and Islamic Jihad remaining the two dominant forces in the Gaza Strip is also seen by the two groups as a type of victory.

“The Palestinian resistance groups succeeded in deterring Israel and forcing it to implement the Egyptian-brokered understandings,” said Musab al-Braim, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian groups, he said, are now expecting Israel to step up the pace of implementing the understandings, especially in light of the “assurances” reportedly provided by Egypt, Qatar and the UN.



Amb Danon on CNN: When Hamas is exterminated, the people in Gaza will celebrate


Sunday, May 05, 2019

From Ian:

At least three Israelis dead, dozens wounded after barrage of rockets
Three Israelis have been killed and dozens have been wounded since Hamas and Islamic Jihad began sending non-stop barrage of rockets into Israel over the weekend.

A rocket was fired towards Ashkelon on Sunday afternoon, hitting a factory in Ashkelon, injuring three people. One was rushed to the hospital in critical condition and later died of his wounds. Two more people are still considered to be in critical condition.

A 60-year-old man was directly hit by a Hamas rocket and killed Sunday in the southern city of Sderot, near KIbbutz Yad Mordechai. The man was driving in his car and the rocket hit his vehicle just as a bus full of soldiers were passing by.

The man was evacuated to Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon, where he was pronounce dead - two others were reportedly injured in the attack. Following the death, the road the driver was traveling on, Route 34 as well as Highway 232 have been shut down to traffic.

The direct hit took place as President Reuven Rivlin was touring Gaza border communities.

"When we arrived, we saw a vehicle completely crushed after it was hit by a rocket, a 60-year-old man was lying next to the car unconscious," said Ravit Martinez, a Magen David Adom paramedic.

"He suffered from a shrapnel wound in the thigh and lost a lot of blood. We attempted to give him life-saving medical treatment...on the way we had to perform CPR and evacuated him to the hospital as he was in critical condition," the paramedic said.
A premeditated Ramadan offensive
The fact that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad fired some 300 rockets toward Israel even as their senior leadership convenes in Cairo for talks shows that this latest escalation premeditated. It began with the trickling of rockets early last week, followed by incendiary airborne devices, provocations along the Gaza Strip fence, and then the latest barrage.

As Hamas prepares for the holy month of Ramadan, which begins this week, it would like to extract more concessions from Israel and present them to Gazans a victory vis-à-vis Israel. Its chief goal is to make Israel transfer more cash from Qatar so that it can pay its employees running the Gaza Strip.
The fact that the Qatari intermediary has not shown up in the region proves that funds have already been transferred. But Hamas wants more funds, and Israel has so far vehemently refused.

Senior Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar, unlike Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, knows how to read Israeli society, having spent decades locked up in an Israeli prison. He knows Israel will shy away from a full-fledged confrontation in the Gaza Strip just before Independence Day and the Eurovision Song Contest. That is why Sinwar took a calculated risk by telling his operatives to launch rockets on Israel even while he was away in Cairo.

It is still unclear how this latest escalation will end, but what is clear is that Israel’s killing of two Hamas operatives on Friday after two Israeli troops were shot on the Gaza fence, was not the trigger for the massive rocket barrage.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad started a fire
The Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization – the second largest armed faction in Gaza – is responsible for the latest escalation in Gaza and Israel.

In recent weeks, PIJ, whose rocket arsenal is larger than that of Hamas, has conducted a string of attacks that it did not take responsibility for. The goal of these attacks appears to be the sabotage of Egyptian-led efforts to stabilize Gaza.

PIJ’s attacks include the launching of a rocket on April 29, which exploded in the Mediterranean Sea near a southern Israeli city. More recently, on May 3, the PIJ conducted a sniper attack on Israel Defense Forces soldiers on the Gaza border, during a Hamas-organized border riot. That shooting wounded an Israeli officer and a female soldier. It is that event that triggered the current flare-up. Starting on Saturday, hundreds of rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza.

Israel accused the PIJ’s commander in northern Gaza, Bahaa Abu Al Ata, of being behind the April 29 rocket attack, which no group took responsibility for.

One possibility is that PIJ’s Syria-based radical secretary-general, Ziad Nakhala, who is extremely close to Iran and a frequent visitor to it, passed along orders to the faction’s commanders in Gaza to keep attacks on Israel going.

Egypt has worked hard to push Gaza away from the brink – efforts that the PIJ, Iran’s direct proxy, is apparently trying to undo.

Friday, May 03, 2019

From Ian:

Israel Will Not Be Forced to Pay for the Murder of Its Own Citizens
The Palestinian Authority is again crying wolf over the financial crisis it is currently facing. Let there be no mistake: this is a fake, self-created crisis that is a direct result of the PA's "pay for slay" policy. Since its creation, the PA has paid monthly salaries to imprisoned terrorists and allowances to the families of dead terrorists. These are not dependent on social need but are simply financial rewards for terrorism. Moreover, if a terrorist spends five years in an Israeli prison, he is entitled to a guaranteed "pension" for life.

In 2018, Israel passed legislation according to which any sum expended by the PA on "pay for slay" during a given year would be deducted from the tax revenues Israel transferred to it the following year. Accordingly, in February 2019, the Israeli cabinet decided to deduct $11.7 million a month from tax transfers to the PA - the sum the PA had publicly admitted to paying to terrorist prisoners.

While this monthly deduction was no more than 6.2% of the total amount to be transferred, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas decided to plunge the PA economy into the abyss by refusing to accept any tax revenues. True to form, instead of castigating the PA for squandering billions on incentivizing and rewarding terrorists, French President Macron, the EU and the UN are pressuring Israel to capitulate to Abbas' blackmail and find a way to give the PA all the funds.
Abbas Is Trying to Scare Israel and the World
The Palestinian Authority is refusing to accept any funds transferred from Israel because Israel has begun deducting the value of stipends the PA pays to terrorists and their families. As a result, the PA is now telling the world it faces economic collapse. PA President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to scare Israel and the world community into believing the result will be chaos and terror. The PA leadership is emulating Hamas' behavior by threatening that a humanitarian disaster will ensue unless more financial aid is rendered.

One way to reject the forthcoming American peace proposal and yet not be blamed is to engineer an economic crisis that diverts attention from continuous Palestinian intransigence regarding any and every attempt at peacemaking.
Israel is doing more than its share to bolster the Palestinian economy - providing jobs to Palestinians in the Israeli labor market; supplying water, electricity and health services to Palestinians; and keeping Hamas from overthrowing Abbas' PA.

While it is best for all concerned to ensure a decent standard of living for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, it is highly unlikely that the PA will collapse since it is a source of significant income for Abbas and his coterie.
Dr. Martin Sherman: Let the PA collapse
PA collapse as an opportunity, not a threat

In this regard, there should be a sea-change in the prevailing perception of the significance for Israel of the collapse of the PA and with it, of the entire mendacious Oslowian edifice.

After all, if the only way for the PA to endure is for Israel to collaborate in the financing of the slaughter of its own citizens by transferring “pay-to-slay” funds to perpetrators of terror, grave doubts must be cast on the prudence—indeed, the sanity—of sustaining this state of affairs.

Moreover, for Israel to back down on this issue would not only greatly undermine its credibility—and hence its deterrence capabilities—but would constitute a sharp slap in the face for its staunch allies in the US Senate, who passed the Taylor Force Act to curtail American support for the PA—unless it halts payments to perpetuators of terror and/or their families.

It is generally considered that the imminent financial collapse of the PA comprises a threat to Israel, heralding increasing instability and security problems.

Although this may be true to some extent in the short run, it must be rejected as a long term constraint on Israeli strategic thinking. Indeed, rather than a threat, the impending collapse of the PA should be perceived as an opportunity to extricate the nation from the hazardous cul-de-sac into which the deceptive Oslo process lured it.

Sunday, April 28, 2019

From Ian:

By its own standards, the New York Times deserves blame for the Poway synagogue shooting
Does anyone else remember when a New York Times editorial blamed Sarah Palin for the shooting of Gabby Giffords because of a bulls-eye on a map?

The New York Times published a hideous, obviously anti-Semitic cartoon the day before a gunman entered a Chabad synagogue in suburban San Diego, killing one person and injuring 3.

Rabbi Yonah Fradkin, executive director of Chabad of San Diego County, says in a statement that Lori Kaye, 60, of Poway was killed. He says those injured in the shooting Saturday were Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, Noya Dahan, 8, Almog Peretz, 34.

By the standards that a 2017 New York Times editorial published after Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson attempted a mass assassination of members of the GOP House caucus, the Times bears some responsibility.

In 2011, Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl. At the time, we and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map that showed the targeted electoral districts of Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.

Keep in mind that an unsigned editorial means that it is the product of editorial board itself, not just one op-ed writer, and is this the Times’ official position
Strategic Affairs minister: Times cartoon inspired synagogue shooter
In a Facebook post about Saturday’s synagogue shooting near San Diego, Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan claimed that the shooter had been influenced by a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon that appeared in the New York Times earlier this weekend.

Erdan wrote that anti-Semitism in political cartoons extended beyond the pages of newspapers and turned into the “blood of Jews” being spilled in synagogues or other places “identified as Jewish.”

“That is always the true motive for terrorism and murder against our people – not ‘the territories’ or ‘concessions,’ – hatred of Jews,” Erdan wrote.

“The loathsome terrorist who carried out the murderous act in the California synagogue and killed the late Lori Gilbert Kaye was inspired to kill by the same anti-Semitic motives in the cartoon published in the New York Times – [accusations] that the Jews run the world, that the prime minister of Israel runs the world. The Israeli prime minister is portrayed as a guide dog leading a blind man. How much hatred and incitement that illustration contains,” he wrote.

“So people are saying that the newspaper supposedly apologized and that the cartoon’s publication was an ‘error in judgment.’ … You wouldn’t accept such a limp-wristed condemnation of racism and incitement if it were directed at any other minority,” Erdan continued.

Imam Tawhidi: Enough is enough, the war on Jews has to stop
Once again, the world witnesses another attack on Jewish people, this time by a white supremacist. It was only six months ago when we mourned the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States, which resulted in the killing of eleven people and injuring seven others.

Today however, the question isn't "why did it happen?", but perhaps: How we got here in the first place?

It was the last day of Passover. Members of the California Jewish community had gathered at Congregation Chabad in Poway, north of San Diego, when John Earnest, 19, opened fire at the congregants, claiming the life of an innocent 60-year-old woman. Three others were wounded, one of them a 57-year-old Rabbi.

While genuine condolences poured in to condemn the antisemitic attack, another group decided it was a good time to reveal their hypocrisy.

Let's start with the NYT, a left-leaning newspaper that's slowly becoming known for its antisemitism. Only three days ago, the NYT internationally printed an antisemitic cartoon of President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The cartoon presents Trump as a blind Jew that is being guided by Netanyahu, an Israeli dog. The NYT then retracted the cartoon, and issued a non-apology. It's one thing to criticize Netanyahu and Israeli policy, and it's another thing to dehumanize an individual simply because he is Jewish.

Giant media corporations have the audacity to publish such content because they know that there is an audience willing to support their antisemitism, and in many cases, these audiences include somewhat influential figures like members of the KKK. Leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan for example, is a self-confessed antisemite. In one of his sermons, he states: "I'm not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite."
PMW: PLO: Mass murder of Christians by Muslims in Sri Lanka is same as Jewish presence on Temple Mount
The PLO sees Jews visiting the Temple Mount - Judaism’s holiest site - as similar to Muslims massacring Christians in churches in Sri Lanka during Easter.

The Palestinian National Council - the PLO’s legislative body - has compared “the deviant ideology” behind the mass murder of hundreds of Christians by Muslims in suicide bombings in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday to “the ideology that causes settlers to break into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.”

In a strategy to try to keep Jews away from the Temple Mount, the Palestinian Authority and its leaders have declared the entire Temple Mount a part of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and exclusively an Islamic site. To support this claim they vilify any presence of Jews on the mount as a “desecration," “defilement," "break-in," or “invasion” of the mosque.

This PA ideology has led to the odious comparison. The Palestinian National Council announced that the murder of more than 250 people in churches and hotels in Sri Lanka is similar to Jews visiting the Temple Mount.

The PNC described the attacks in Sri Lanka as “immoral and contrary to religious and human values,” and similar to the ideology that makes Jewish “settlers” “break in” to the Al-Aqsa Mosque:
“[The PNC] added that the deviant ideology that caused these people to commit their despicable crime against the churches in Sri Lanka is the same ideology that causes settlers to break into the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, do as they please with it, attack the Muslim worshippers, and prevent them from worshipping freely during the Hebrew Passover holiday (refers to West Bank and Gaza Strip crossings being closed during the holiday due to security concerns -Ed.).”
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 22, 2019]

Thursday, April 25, 2019

From Ian:

What Doesn’t Cause Islamist Terrorism
The suicide bombers in Sri Lanka were affluent and well educated. That should tell us something about the war on terror.

In 2015, then-State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf suggested that potential terrorists would not join the Islamic State if they had better job opportunities. "We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium- to longer term to go after the root causes that lead people to join these groups, whether it's lack of opportunity for jobs," Harf said on MSNBC. "We can work with countries around the world to help improve their governance. We can help them build their economies so they can have job opportunities for these people."

Harf is actually right—well, in the narrow sense that combatting Islamist terrorist groups is about more than military strikes. She is woefully—and dangerously—wrong, however, about more jobs being a solution. Yet the view she articulated is not hers alone. Her former boss, Barack Obama, similarly claimed that "extremely poor societies … provide optimal breeding grounds for disease, terrorism, and conflict." Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security's program on "countering violent extremism," or CVE, which the Obama administration established to counter radicalization within vulnerable communities, adheres to the same belief. How? CVE treats jihadists like members of street gangs or the mafia—as disgruntled, perhaps defenseless individuals who traveled down a dark path but can return to the light. And creating a better quality of life—a decent job, a reliable income, more responsibilities—is key to that return. In many cases, this framework would, for example, help gangsters who grew up poor with few opportunities. Not so much for the people who join ISIS.

Recent events show why this approach is misguided for Islamist terrorists. On Wednesday, Sri Lankan authorities revealed that most of the suicide bombers who murdered more than 350 people in coordinated attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday were affluent and well educated. "They're quite well educated people," Ruwan Wijewardene, Sri Lanka's state minister of defense, said of the attackers, adding that many came from "middle class" backgrounds. "We believe that one of the suicide bombers studied in the U.K. and then later on did his post-graduate in Australia before coming back to settle in Sri Lanka."

Two of the brothers who carried out the bombings came from one of the wealthiest Muslim families in the capital, a family that, according to a neighbor, was "very well connected, very rich, politically connected as well." The Daily Mail reports they are "the sons of millionaire spice trader Yoonus Ibrahim and were privately educated in Colombo." Another terrorist had a law degree, and two others were married—not the hopeless loners that one often imagines as suicide bombers.

Kingston University and Suicide Bombers
In 2003, Asif Hanif – Britain’s first jihadist suicide bomber – murdered three people at Mike’s Bar in Tel Aviv. He had attended Kingston University. This week, a second alumnus of Kingston University, Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed, committed a horrifyingly bloody massacre in Sri Lanka.

A significant number of takfiri jihadist terrorists have passed through British universities over the past couple of decades. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who had been a member of UCL’s student Islamic Society and its president in 2006-7 before graduating in 2008, joined al-Qaeda under the guidance of Anwar al-Awlaki and tried to bring down an American airliner in 2009 with a bomb concealed in his underpants. Kafeel Ahmed, a former president of Queen’s University Belfast’s Islamic society, tried to blow up a nightclub in London and then set fire to himself, fatally, in Glasgow Airport in 2007. Yassin Nassari, a former president of the University of Westminster’s student Islamic society, was convicted of smuggling missile blueprints into the UK in 2007. Waheed Zaman, the former president of the London Metropolitan University Islamic society, was convicted of conspiracy to murder in 2010 in a plot to place bombs on several airliners travelling from the UK to North America.

More recently, in April 2019 the BBC reported that no fewer than seven students from the University of Westminster alone had allegedly joined ISIS.

Whenever an atrocity is committed, it is natural to ask: why? What could drive a human being to slaughter his neighbours?

Ideology clearly plays an important part. Humans are, at least in part, rational. We do things for reasons which appear good to us. The beliefs which we hold, guide our actions.

In the case of Asif Hanif, evidence emerged which indicated that he had a connection to Al Mujhajiroun: the splinter group of Hizb ut Tahrir which has emerged as a nexus in many terrorist attacks. With Abdul Mohamed, the picture is not yet clear. We don’t know what meetings he attended, with which preachers, and during which period. Therefore, at present, it is proper to make only the most general of points about ideology and radicalisation.
Two teenage Westminster Synagogue members named among victims of Sri Lanka bombing
Tributes have been paid to a Jewish brother and sister who were among more than 300 people killed in Easter Sunday's bombings in Sri Lanka.

Daniel and Amelie Linsey, who were members of Westminster Synagogue, were among eight Britons killed in the attack.

Shul president Lord Leigh paid tribute to them in the House of Lords on Wednesday.

He noted Amelie had been batmizvah there just last March, "reading with poise, maturity and warmth from our Torah scrolls"

He said Daniel was "especially interested in Jewish festivals" and had helped the synagogue to prepare for Purim.

"We have pledged as a community to offer our love and support and do everything we can every step of the way," he said.

"The Jewish community is used to counselling mourners who have been affected by a terrorist bomb. This is another chapter in that sad and sorry book."
Israel Advocacy Movement: Sri Lanka terror attack - Christian lives matter


Wednesday, April 24, 2019

From Ian:

The false distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
It was once said that every Jewish holiday could be summed up with the same nine words: ‘They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat’. Now it only takes eight: ‘A Labour spokesperson apologised for any offence caused’. On Friday, the Labour party tweeted warm wishes to Jews celebrating Passover. At this stage, most Jews are glad to receive any communication from Corbyn supporters that doesn’t ask where the Rothschilds were on 9/11, but the well-meaning post contained a blunder: the accompanying graphic showed the Star of David, a cup of wine and… a loaf of bread.

Under halakha — Jewish religious law — bread is the ultimate forbidden food during Pesach. It is chametz (leavened) and Jews must abstain in memory of the slaves who fled Egyptian bondage so quickly their bread didn’t have time to rise. No doubt Labour moderates think the Israelites should have ‘stayed to fight’ until the yeast kicked in and Tom Watson triggered a leadership contest against Pharaoh. Whoever is in charge of tweeting Labour’s Yom Kippur message would be advised to delete any pictures of bacon rolls from their phone.

Why is this facepalm different from other facepalms? It’s a relatively minor one compared to most of Labour’s behaviour towards Jews. Unfortunately for Labour, it comes after a ComRes poll showing 51 per cent of Britons believe Labour has a ‘serious’ anti-Semitism problem and 55 per cent say it makes Jeremy Corbyn ‘unfit’ to be prime minister. Unfortunately for Jews, the same pollster puts Labour 10 points clear of the Tories. The British people are on the brink of knowingly electing an anti-Semitic government and our radio phone-ins are chocked on the ethics of policemen skateboarding with anarchists.

Do the Jews have a future in the UK? The confluence of Corbynism, an alt-right that has moved from the tweets onto the streets, the forgotten threat of Islamist terrorism and a simmering hostility to kosher slaughter methods will make the coming years the most trying British Jews have faced since the war. For some gathered around seder tables over the weekend, the words ‘next year in Jerusalem’ will have prompted thoughts practical as well as spiritual. Moving to Israel involves many sacrifices but at least once there existential angst comes with an air force.

George Steiner, the Prophet of Progressive Anti-Semitism
In the 1970 T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures delivered at Yale, the literary critic George Steiner offered a compelling explanation for the persistence of anti-Semitism: The Jews suffered for millennia as retribution for introducing the “Ideal” into Western culture. With its idealism and ethical imperatives, the revelation at Sinai “tore up the human psyche by its ancient roots,” depriving its inheritors of not just the material God and the image, but also “natural consciousness,” and “instinctual polytheistic needs.” Jews, the original Puritans, rejected the satisfaction of both the body and the image, for the purity and ascetic life dictated by the divine Word. From this perspective, Judaism represents the earliest celebration of the absolute, the West’s punishing superego, demanding idealism and self-denial, which was later incarnated in primitive Christianity and Messianic socialism, also founded by Jews, Jesus, and Karl Marx, in whose visions the Ideal persists “with terrible tactless force.” By Steiner’s lights, Hitler’s “jibe” that the Jews “invented consciousness” explains the tenacity of Western hatred of the Jews.

Western hatred of the Jews thus begins with anxiety about Jewish claims to exceptionalism. There can only be one bearer of the ideal: The city on the Hill is not Jerusalem, but Rome, later London, and even later still, Boston. In this form of anti-Semitism, which Steiner both described and in some ways endorsed, Jews are loathed because they represent a reminder of their antecedent claim to the Ideal—a claim that causes such anxiety that it must be extirpated. Non-Jewish messianic movements reject the notion of Jewish exceptionalism, because they are the exceptional ones. The continued existence of the Jews, and the resurgence of Israel, are troubling reminders that that the Jews were first to be singled out as God’s “chosen people.”

Steiner’s writings on the State of Israel provide an early primer on the dynamics of the specific form of secular anti-Semitism that has captivated so many progressives in academia and among the rank and file of the British Labour Party, as well as, increasingly, among American progressives. For Steiner, nationalism is a “madness,” as is the “vulgar mystique of flag and anthem.” But it is Israel’s “barbed wire and watch-towers of national dogma” that represent a “rhetoric of self-deception as desperate as any contrived in the history of nationalism.” For Steiner, and in this, contemporary progressives follow him, Israel must bear all the sins of the nation-state. The Greek dramatist Aeschylus in his celebration of Athens—the Oresteia—avows that the city-state is founded on blood: For contemporary progressives, as for Steiner, only Israel, the nation-state ne plus ultra, has blood on its hands. (h/t Yerushalimey)
‘I have no patience for bullies.’ Nikki Haley says the United Nations targeted Israel
Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley called her veto vote that paved the way for the United States Embassy in Israel to move to Jerusalem “one of my proudest moments.”

“What I saw at the Security Council reminded me of what it felt like to be bullied when I was a kid. I have no patience for bullies. They were kicking Israel just because — without facts,” she said during the session with Hillel Neuer, the executive director of United Nations Watch.

Haley spoke during an on-stage interview in Montreal at the Shaar Hashamayim synagogue April 10.


She told the 1,200-person audience she doesn’t think U.N. resolutions are effective.

“I don’t think they matter,” she said, speaking of one of the main tools the U.N. General Assembly or Security Council uses to give an opinion.

Member states are not actually required to abide by U.N. resolutions, according to the U.N.

When she vetoed a resolution that would have condemned the United States for moving its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Haley told the crowd, “I felt like I was fighting for the truth and for what was right. And I was mad. Every country has the sovereign right to put their embassy wherever they choose. The U.S. always chooses to have its embassy in the capital. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The rest of the world can’t hide what we know as fact. The president had great courage to do it.”

“The Arab countries have a lot of oil and a lot of money, and they started picking up all these other countries to vote with them. If you actually go into the quiet corners of the U.N., most countries don’t hate Israel, most envy Israel,” she said.

Monday, April 15, 2019

From Ian:

JCPA: Has the Body of Israeli Hero Eli Cohen Been Recovered?
The Syrian opposition issued reports that the remains of the Israeli spy Eli Cohen had been delivered to the Russians, and they also gave details about the remains of Israelis buried in Syria, in general.

There has been no clear Israeli denial of these reports. If Cohen’s remains have indeed been transferred, they will have to undergo Israeli identification. Meanwhile, the Syrian opposition also issued new information on how Syrian intelligence has been guarding the remains of Israelis in Syria at President Bashar Assad’s bidding.

Israeli intelligence agent Eli Cohen

The Syrian opposition reported on the remains of Israelis and how the Syrian regime has been tending to them.

The first report was issued on Twitter on April 14, 2019, by someone in the Syrian opposition, and it concerned the remains of the Israeli spy Eli Cohen.

The tweet stated:
There are unverified leaks within Damascus itself about a coffin that was transferred with the Russian delegation that left Syria. The leaks say the coffin may contain the remains of the Israeli spy Eli Cohen. We are awaiting verification.

No other source has verified this tweet, which was first publicized in Israel by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. It, too, however, has not been denied clearly by Israel.

Subsequently, the Syrian-opposition website Orient Net posted a detailed report on the remains of Israelis buried in Syria.
Rumors on Eli Cohen’s remains spread in Arab media
Rumors circulated Sunday night that a Russian team, possibly assisted by Syrian opposition groups, had extricated the remains of venerated Israeli spy Eli Cohen, taking them from Syria in a coffin and preparing to return him to Israel.

The legendary “our man in Damascus,” Cohen spied on the Syrian military establishment for four years after befriending top-level Syrian officials and celebrities under the alias Kamel Amin Thaabet. After being discovered, he was tortured by the Syrians before being executed on May 18, 1965.

In Israel, his name became synonymous with self-sacrifice and heroism, the information he provided having been fundamental to Israel’s decisive victory in the Six Day War.

Israeli officials have kept silent regarding the reports, which came in just two weeks after Sgt. 1st Class Zachary Baumel was buried on Mount Herzl, 37 years after he went missing during a battle of in Operation Peace for the Galilee.

Baumel was also exhumed by Russia and his personal effects were honored in a special ceremony in Moscow attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since Cohen’s execution, widow Nadia Cohen has been working to bring his remains home but to no avail. In 2008, a former bureau chief of former Syrian leader Hafez Assad said no one knew where Cohen was buried, because the grave had been relocated when officials became concerned that Israel would find it.

Last year, Nadia was presented with her late husband’s wristwatch by the Mossad intelligence agency, an article which had been retrieved in a special operation.
PMW: PA: Zionism = Antisemitism
With victimhood being the most prominent component of Palestinian identity, and with the world increasingly condemning Antisemitism, the Palestinian Authority has decided to embrace Antisemitism as a new category of Palestinian victimhood. The PA Foreign Ministry has announced that since Palestinians are "Semites," any policies that harm Palestinians are expressions of Antisemitism. Since the PA sees Zionism as victimizing Palestinians - "Zionism is hostile to Palestine" - they conclude that Zionism inherently is Antisemitism. Moreover, American policy critical of the Palestinian Authority, is likewise Antisemitism.

This creative new Palestinian victimhood category announced by the PA comes in response to the American position expressed recently by Secretary of State Pompeo: "Let me go on record: Anti-Zionism IS Antisemitism."

According to the PA's new announcement, anti-Zionism cannot be Antisemitism because Zionism itself, by hurting Palestinians, is Antisemitism.

The following is an excerpt from the article in the official PA daily:
"The [PA] Ministry of Foreign Affairs... said that... American Secretary of State [Mike] Pompeo has voiced a series of false positions... Pompeo has allowed himself to remove the Palestinians and the Arabs from the Semitic race by stating that 'Anti-Zionism or objection to Israel's existence as the homeland of the Jewish people, is a type of Antisemitism that is escalating (see note below -Ed.).'

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized that hostility towards the Palestinian people is Antisemitism, and that the ugly, recurring, and deliberate Antisemitism that [US President] Trump's administration is committing against Semitic Palestine is also Antisemitism. In addition, the American administration has no right to ignore the fact that Semitism is not exclusive to the original Jews, but also includes the Arab Palestinians, and therefore any manifestation of hostility towards Palestinians is an explicit manifestation of Antisemitism. Moreover, since Zionism is hostile to Palestine, its people, and the establishment of a national homeland for the Palestinian people on the land of its homeland, this makes Zionism itself antisemitic."
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, March 29, 2019]

Wednesday, April 03, 2019

From Ian:

After 37 years, the body of Sgt. Zachary Baumel has returned to Israel
Close to 40 years after he was went missing in action following the Battle of Sultan Yacoub, the body of Sgt. Zachary Baumel has been returned to Israel for burial.

Baumel’s body was repatriated to Israel via a third country several days ago aboard an El Al flight following an operation by Israeli intelligence agencies. He was identified by his DNA at the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, as well as by the Chief Military Rabbi Brig.-Gen. Eyal Karim, IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Ronen Manelis said on Wednesday.Manpower directorate head Maj.-Gen.Moti Almoz personally informed the Baumel family that he had been identified.

The battle of Sultan Yacoub, a skirmish between the IDF and the Syrian army, took place on the sixth day of the First Lebanon War in June 1982 in the Bekaa Valley.

At the end of the battle, the battalion and additional forces had suffered 20 dead and more than 30 wounded. Eight IDF tanks also remained in Syrian hands, two of which had three missing IDF soldiers who had been involved in two separate incidents about three kilometers apart: Sgt. Yehuda Katz, a gunner in one tank crew, and Baumel and Sgt. Zvi Feldman in another tank.

“This was a long-term effort by the intelligence community and the Missing Persons Division during which various operational activities were carried out to locate the missing soldiers, "the military said, adding that the military is “committed to continuing the efforts to locate Sergeant Yehuda Katz, Sergeant Tzvika Feldman and all the missing soldiers and captives, and all fallen IDF soldiers whose burial places are unknown.”

Manelis wouldn’t say where Baumel had been buried for all these years, but in September, Russia claimed that its military worked with Israel on an operation to locate the remains of the fallen IDF soldiers that were in Syrian territory, which had been under the control of Islamic State.



Palestinian Attacker Shot Dead After Trying to Stab Israeli Man
A Palestinian tried to stab Israelis with a knife in the West Bank on Wednesday and was shot dead by one of them, the Israeli military and a witness said.

A Palestinian official, however, questioned the Israeli account of the incident at Hawara junction, near Nablus.

The West Bank, among territories where Palestinians seek statehood, has seen surges of street attacks on Israeli residents and soldiers since US-backed peace talks stalled in 2014. Palestinians claim Israel’s armed response has been excessive.

Yehoshua Sherman, a West Bank resident, told Israel Radio that he was driving slowly through the intersection with his daughter when a Palestinian charged at their car.

“He jumped at me with a knife, trying to open the doors,” Sherman said. “I drew my handgun…wound down the window and shot at him from inside the car.”

A second motorist also fired at the Palestinian, hitting him, Sherman added.

The Israeli military said in a statement: “A terrorist was shot by a civilian and neutralized after he tried to carry out a stabbing attack.”


Saturday, March 30, 2019

From Ian:

Ben Rhodes Blames Jewish Donors for Obama Not Being More Anti-Israel
Ben Rhodes, a former national security aide to President Barack Obama, told the New York Times this week that the “donor class” had prevented Obama from taking more anti-Israel steps than the administration had wanted to take.

Rhodes spoke to author Nathan Thrall for a feature article titled, “How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics.” The headline describes “politics,” but Thrall focused on policy debates within the Democratic Party, which has seen the rise of an assertive anti-Israel constituency in recent years. That constituency has included overtly and unabashedly antisemitic critics, largely but not exclusively from the Muslim community.

Thrall writes about the “boycott, divestment, sanctions” (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel as apartheid South Africa was once isolated — a comparison that BDS critics find not only factually wrong, but also offensive.

Enter Rhodes — one of the architects of the Iran nuclear deal, which was vehemently opposed by Israel and by pro-Israel Americans. He blamed Jewish donors for the Obama administration’s supposed restraint towards Israel:

According to Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national-security adviser and one of Obama’s closest confidants, several members of the Obama administration wanted to adopt a more assertive policy toward Israel but felt that their hands were tied. “The Washington view of Israel-Palestine is still shaped by the donor class,” Rhodes, who does not support B.D.S., told me, when I met with him at the Obama Foundation in October. “The donor class is profoundly to the right of where the activists are, and frankly, where the majority of the Jewish community is.”

Rhodes’s claims were echoed by “[a]nother former member of the Obama White House,” who told Thrall that the Obama administration had prevailed upon the United Nations Security Council to delay a vote against Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) to after the 2016 election. (The resolution also declared Israel’s presence in eastern Jerusalem — including the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, inhabited by Jews for millennia — to be illegal.)

Thrall noted: “The fear of losing Jewish donors as the party moves left on Israel may well be overstated.” He also observed that many Jewish donors to the Democratic Party have left-wing views on Israel. Yet the antisemitic canard that Jews use money to control U.S. foreign policy persists within the Democratic Party at the highest levels, and is used by insiders like Rhodes as an excuse — a scapegoat — to deflect criticism of insufficiently radical policy stances.

Notably, Rhodes was appointed by President Obama to the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council in the closing days of his administration. It was a controversial appointment, given Rhodes’s role as the “Iran deal salesman,” and Iran’s leading role in promoting Holocaust denial worldwide as an official ideology.



Author of NYT Anti-Israel Piece Works for Group Funded by Qatar
The author of this Sunday's New York Times magazine cover story about the campaign to boycott, divest, and sanction the state of Israel works for an organization whose major donor, Qatar, is also the largest state funder of the terrorist group Hamas. Other significant donors to the author's organization, the International Crisis Group, are leading supporters of the anti-Semitic boycott movement the author describes in his piece.

The publication of the article, "How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics," represents another salvo in the New York Times‘ continuing promotion of anti-Israel writers and views.

The author, Nathan Thrall, is tied to a large network of BDS supporters that are funded into the millions by the Qatari government, which has long been engaged in efforts to spy on the American Jewish community and pro-Israel officials. Qatar's foreign influence operations in Washington, D.C., have flown mostly under the radar, but are part of a larger proxy battle being waged by wealthy Middle Eastern governments eager to peddle influence in powerful D.C. circles.

Thrall, who the Times presents as a disinterested expert, serves as director of the Arab-Israeli Project at the International Crisis Group, or ICG, a left-leaning advocacy organization that has received around $4 million from the Qatari government in the just the last year. Qatar's donations represent around 23 percent of ICG's total budget. Qatar is not mentioned in Thrall's 11,500-word piece.
Is The Left's Anti-Semitism A Problem For Leftist Jews?


The Economist apologizes for headline tagging Ben Shapiro as 'alt-right sage'
The Economist labeled Ben Shapiro an “alt-right sage” in a headline, then apologized after the right-wing pundit protested the characterization.

The British weekly’s apology was added Thursday to a profile about Shapiro that originally carried the headline “Inside the mind of Ben Shapiro, the alt-right sage without the rage.” It also called Shapiro “a pop idol of the alt right.”

After an exchange on Twitter between Shapiro, an Orthodox Jew, and Anne Mcelvoy, one of the article’s two authors, The Economist changed the headline to “Inside the mind of Ben Shapiro, a radical conservative.” The apology said the references to the alt-right — a loose right-wing movement that includes white nationalists and anti-Semites – was made “mistakenly,” adding “In fact, he has been strongly critical of the alt-right movement. We apologize.”

Founded in 1843, The Economist is one of the world’s most reputed [and anti-Semitic] periodicals.

In the exchange, Shapiro wrote: “This is a vile lie. Not only am I not alt-right, I am probably their leading critic on the right. I was the number one target of their hate in 2016 online according to ADL data. I demand a retraction.”

He added: “If you lump me in with people who are so evil I literally hire security to walk me to shul on Shabbat, you can go straight to hell.” (h/t Elder of Lobby)
The ‘Wag the Dog’ conspiracy that never happened - analysis
The 1997 movie Wag the Dog stars Robert De Niro and Dustin Hoffman as a political strategist and a film director enlisted to do damage control in light of a sex scandal involving a president running for reelection. They concoct a fake war in Albania, releasing footage of fictional battles, destruction and a photogenic orphan.

When Palestinian terrorists shot rockets into central Israel and completely destroyed a house in Moshav Mishmeret, injuring all three generations of one family, some thought that instead of condemning Hamas for targeting infants, toddlers and their grandparents, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the real problem here.

A conspiracy theory in the style of Wag the Dog began to be floated in news outlets of varying levels of respectability – like the UK’s Independent – and on the social media accounts of anti-Israel organizations that Netanyahu wants a war, because it’ll somehow help him ahead of the April 9 election. They claimed that Netanyahu intentionally sparks wars right before elections to help him win.

“History shows a terrible pattern of Netanyahu heightening violence right before Israeli elections,” Jewish progressive group IfNotNow tweeted.

“We cannot give in to this pattern of fear – it keeps fascist leaders like Netanyahu in power.”

This claim is not only false, but is preposterous for many reasons.

First, the dry facts: the only wars – really operations – that have taken place while Netanyahu was in power were Pillar of Defense in 2012 and Protective Edge in 2014.

Protective Edge began eight months before the 2015 elections. It’s true that in Israel’s chaotic political system, an election could break out at any time, but July 2014 wasn’t a time when it seemed particularly likely. And the coalition was relatively united after the operation, reflecting a public rallying around the flag. It took a few more months for Netanyahu to summarily fire ministers in his coalition and trigger an election.


Tuesday, March 26, 2019

From Ian:

Combating the anti-Zionist facade
A conversation with Elisha Wiesel is like stepping into a Talmudic debate. Quietly spoken and urbane, he gives deep thought before delivering considered answers.

Despite his famous father’s larger-than-life legacy, he is his own man with his own ideas and strong opinions. He will take part in the March of the Living for the first time this year and is acutely aware of its significance – not simply from a personal perspective but as a powerful tool to strengthen Jewish identity and also create a deeper and more nuanced appreciation of Israel.

We live in an age in which we hoped that antisemitism would dissipate, where the world would take a step back and realize that words and actions have consequences, sometimes genocidal ones. But Europe and the United States are grappling with increasing levels of antisemitism, and one feature in particular caught Wiesel’s attention.

“What’s notable about the strain of antisemitism at the moment is that it is being masked as anti-Zionism and it is being embraced by the Left – and in America that is tragic. We are talking about causes where the Jewish people have been so closely aligned.

“Take the Black Lives Matter movement. It is incomprehensible to me that they have incorporated language from Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Where is the connection? It is disappointing. If you look at the history of the NAACP, US Jews were there from the beginning. That BDS is being swept into BLM saddens and disappoints me.”

The BLM movement began in 2013, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, who shot and killed African-American teen Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. But its progression to becoming a more significant actor on the national stage followed the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9, 2014. At the same time, the BDS movement’s response to Operation Protective Edge drew the attention of the Black Lives Matter leadership, and it was at this point that two seemingly disparate issues converged into a fight, as the leadership of the movements’ saw it, against oppression.

Talking about the BLM and BDS movements brought the conversation to college campuses, where standing up as a proud Jew has become more challenging.

Lyn Julius: Palestinians Share Responsibility for Jewish Refugees, Too
Not long ago, I heard emeritus professor of Tel Aviv University Asher Susser give a talk on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He came to the following conclusion: The conflict is insoluble because the Palestinians and Israelis have two irreconcilable narratives. And the Palestinians will never give up their so-called ”right of return.”

Yet as I pointed out to him, two sets of refugees arose out of the conflict: one Arab and one Jewish.

The Jewish refugee issue has been solved, but there was an incontrovertible (and irrevocable) exchange of roughly equal refugee populations between what is now Israel and the Arab world. Such exchanges happened in the India-Pakistan conflict, and between Greek and Turkish Cyprus.

End of story.

Professor Susser acknowledged that Israel would never accept five million Arab refugees (this number, uniquely among all other refugees in the world, includes the descendants of the original refugees). The responsibility, he said, should be shared with the Palestinians and the other Arab states.

Maybe the professor was playing Devil’s advocate, but his reply is one I have heard from Arab sources: What have the Palestinians got to do with Jewish refugees?

When I replied that the Mufti of Jerusalem embodied Palestinian antisemitism, inciting the 1941 Farhud massacre of the Jews in Iraq, the professor countered by saying the Mufti was just one man, and there were other causal factors behind the Farhud.

Yes, the Palestinian Mufti was just one man. But he was the de facto leader of the Arab world, where popular opinion was overwhelmingly pro-Nazi. He aligned himself with pro-Nazi nationalists to overthrow the Iraqi government. He took refuge in Berlin with 60 other influential Arabs, and broadcast virulent anti-Jewish propaganda over Radio Berlin with a view to facilitating the extermination of the Jews not just in Palestine, but across the Arab world. Palestinian and Syrian pro-Nazi nationalists had taken control of levers of power in Iraq, and they too bore responsibility for inciting anti-Jewish hatred.

Hero pilot from hijacked Entebbe flight dies at 95
Michel Bacos, the pilot of the Air France flight from Tel Aviv which was hijacked in 1976 and landed in Entebbe has died at age 95.

Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, where Bacos lived, announced the news on social media on Tuesday.

"He refused to abandon his passengers, who were taken hostage because they were Israeli or of Jewish origin, risking his own life," Estrosi wrote. "Michel bravely refused to surrender to antisemitism and barbarism and brought honor to France."

On June 27, 1976, Bacos was the captain of Air France Flight 139, from Tel Aviv to Paris, with a stop in Athens. After the plane departed Greece, four hijackers took control of the cockpit and forced Bacos at gunpoint to head for Benghazi, Libya, and then Entebbe, Uganda.

The terrorist "sat behind me with his gun pointed at my head," Bacos told Ynet in 2016. "Every time I tried to look in a different direction, he pressed the barrel of his gun against my neck."

Several days later, the terrorists split up the hostages between those who were Israeli or Jewish and those who were not. Bacos demanded the hijackers give him access to both groups.

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