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Friday, February 12, 2021

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The ICC's European puppet masters
More than 60% of the ICC's budget is funded by European governments. Germany is generally the ICC's largest or second largest funder. A German government representative quoted in a Reuters' report of Israel's request said that Germany "couldn't imagine" scaling back, much less defunding of the political court.

So without the actions of European governments like Germany, Holland, Switzerland, France, Norway, Britain and Sweden, and without the EU as a whole – the ICC would never have opened its bigoted proceedings against Israel, the purpose of which is to reject Israel's right to exist. At every point, the Europeans had the power to prevent or end the ICC's bigoted treatment of the Jewish state. And at every point, the Europeans took active steps to ensure that the targeting would continue. Indeed, by funding and directing the efforts of the likes of NGOs Breaking the Silence and Al-Dameer, (which is affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group), the Europeans were the puppet masters directing the passion play.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas criticized the ICC's ruling move in a statement he put out shortly after it was announced. Maas didn't condemn the immorality of pursuing fake war crimes allegations against an innocent nation. Rather, Maas's criticism focused on the fact that despite the efforts of the ICC and the UN, the fact remains that "Palestine" is not a state. "The court has no jurisdiction," he tweeted, "because of the absence of the element of Palestinian statehood required by international law."

This is, to be sure, the key legal problem with the ICC's ruling. But the much larger problem with the judges' decision is that the investigation is a politically motivated effort to cause material harm to Israel, as the Jewish state. Israel abides scrupulously by the rules of war, and everyone knows that. The reason German politicians like Maas should oppose the ruling is because the court's behavior is part of a larger effort to undermine international acceptance of the Jewish people's right to their state. But then, as a major funder of both the ICC and the NGOs behind the fictitious, libelous allegations, and as a state that failed to oppose the Palestinians' legally groundless bids for the status of state at the ICC and the UN, Maas clearly doesn't have a problem with the immorality of the enterprise. To the contrary, he is playing a key role in moving it forward.

In a way, the ICC's efforts to harm the Jewish state is a modern-day version of the Dreyfus trial. The Dreyfus trial was an anti-Semitic reaction against France's decision to grant the full rights of citizenship to French Jews in the framework of the Emancipation. Anti-Semitic officers in the French General Staff needed a scapegoat to blame for acts of treason they had committed. By choosing Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew, for the role, the officers enjoyed the cover and support of powerful anti-Semitic clerics, anti-Semitic intellectuals and newspaper publishers, and anti-Semitic politicians. All of the figures involved realized that by framing Dreyfus "the Jew," they advanced their efforts to discredit the idea that Jews could be full partners in French public life.

The big difference between the people that produced and directed the blood libel against Dreyfus 125 years ago and the people that are producing and directing the blood libel against Israel today is that in France at the turn of the 20th century, people were proud to attack Jews openly. Today, their contemporary successors prefer a passive aggressive approach. They pretend to oppose the efforts to delegitimize and criminalize the Jewish state while they pay for and direct them.
Melanie Phillips: The absurd malevolence of the International Criminal Court
Yet western liberals maintain that the Palestinian cause is a worthy one. That’s why the US Secretary of State Tony Blinken says the Palestinians are “entitled” to a state.

It is in fact hard to envisage any group that’s less entitled than the Palestinians, who are not only bent upon colonial occupation of Israel but support the murder of Israelis and preach deranged hatred against Jews.

Meanwhile, the British government continues to peddle the legal fiction that Israel is in illegal occupation of the “Palestinian” territories.

The west’s support of such falsehoods and injustice has incentivised the Palestinians’ rejectionism, terrorism and war against Israel. It has further encouraged them to try to bring about Israel’s destruction through “lawfare,” the strategy of deploying international law as a weapon of destruction and of which their case before the ICC is a major offensive front.

But there’s a deeper issue still which will make both the British and the Biden administration reluctant to admit the fundamental nature of the ICC’s flaws.

This is their commitment to the ideology behind its foundation — the belief that crystallised after the Holocaust that there had to be a way of bringing to justice human rights abusers who were immune from redress in their own countries. This impulse fuelled the post-war development of international law and trans-national legal tribunals.

But laws draw their legitimacy from being passed by nations rooted in specific institutions, history and culture. Without the anchor of national jurisdiction, laws can turn into instruments of capricious political power.

The ICC has no such national jurisdiction but is made up of many nations. That’s why, from its inception, it was in essence a political court.

That’s why it’s an existential foe of Israel — the principal target of some of the world’s many human rights abusers who have grasped that international law provides them with a potent weapon.

And these make common cause with American Democrats and the western political establishment through their belief in liberal universalism, the doctrine that trans-national institutions trump the authority of national ones.

The legal and moral illiteracy of the ICC’s ruling is not a temporary blip. It follows from the campaign that lies at the very core of liberal universalist beliefs: to negate the authority of the sovereign nation.

As early opponents of international law realised, however, only a sovereign nation can properly defend itself. That’s why Israel knows it must always rely only on itself. It’s a lesson that many liberal western politicians have yet to realise.
David Singer: The “State of Palestine” remains a United Nations mirage
The International Criminal Court (ICC) Pre-Trial Chamber 1 decision that the ICC has jurisdiction to investigate alleged war crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem has infuriated Israel – but should bring no joy to Hamas, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) or the United Nations which continues to support the PLO’s claim for the creation of a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan.

The ICC Prosecutor believes:
‘there is a reasonable basis to believe that members of Hamas and Palestinian armed groups […] committed the war crimes of: intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects (articles 8(2)(b)(i)-(ii), or 8(2)(e)(i)); using protected persons as shields (article 8(2)(b)(xxiii)); wilfully depriving protected persons of the rights of fair and regular trial (articles 8(2)(a)(vi) or 8(2)(c)(iv)) and wilful killing (articles 8(2)(a)(i), or 8(2)(c)(i)); and torture or inhuman treatment (article 8(2)(a)(ii), or 8(2)(c)(i)) and/or outrages upon personal dignity (articles 8(2)(b)(xxi), or 8(2)(c)(ii))’ (para 94)

The Prosecutor further concluded in para 94 that these potential cases would be currently admissible for prosecution once jurisdiction was established.

The Court noted:
“The identification of potential cases by the Prosecutor and her evolving investigation, which is likely to be protracted and resource-intensive, entails that the question of jurisdiction under consideration has concrete ramifications for the further conduct of the proceedings. The initiation of an investigation by the Prosecutor also means that States Parties are under the obligation to cooperate with the Court pursuant to part 9 of the Statute. It is, therefore, all the more necessary to place the present proceedings on a sound jurisdictional footing as early as possible.”(para 86)

The PLO and Hamas will be kept very busy answering the ICC Prosecutor’s enquiries regarding those Palestinian war crimes identified in para 94.

The Court further emphasised that:
“the present decision is strictly limited to the question of jurisdiction set forth in the Prosecutor’s Request and does not entail any determination on the border disputes between Palestine and Israel. The present decision shall thus not be construed as determining, prejudicing, impacting on, or otherwise affecting any other legal matter arising from the events in the Situation in Palestine either under the Statute or any other field of international law.”(para 60)

Any expectation Israel will return to the negotiating table after the PLO’s flirtation with the ICC is hard to visualise.

Thursday, February 11, 2021

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky with Gil Troy: The Doublethinkers
It was easy enough to remind myself and them who was really free and who is a scared doublethinker. All I had to do was tell some joke about the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev. Thank God, there were plenty of yarns about his arrogance, his crudeness, his senility. One kidded about him forcing Soviet cosmonauts to outdo the American astronauts who landed on the moon by rocketing to the sun, then reassuring them they wouldn’t be incinerated because they’d be launched during the night. As I’d tell my interrogators a joke, I’d laugh. And, as normal Soviet doublethinkers themselves, they would want to laugh. But they couldn’t, especially if two of them were there together. Laughter would end their careers.

So they’d covered up that temporary glint in their eyes with a tantrum. They’d pound the table, shouting, “HOW DARE YOU?”

“Look,” I’d say to them calmly, “you can’t even smile when you want to smile. And you claim that I’m in prison and you’re free?”

I did this to irritate them, because they spent so much time trying to irritate me. But, mainly, I was reminding myself that I was free, as long as I could laugh or cry in accordance with my own feelings.

Over the last three decades in freedom, I have noticed that—with apologies to Tolstoy—every dictatorship is oppressive in its own way, but the doublethinkers’ mental gymnastics are all alike. The feeling of release from the fear and giddy relief when crossing the line from doublethink to democratic dissent is also universal across cultures. This understanding prompted the Town Square Test I use to distinguish between free societies and fear societies: Can you express your individual views loudly, in public, without fear of being punished legally, formally, in any way? If yes, you live in a free society; if not, you’re in a fear society.

In the West today, the pressure to conform doesn’t come from the totalitarian top—our political leaders are not Stalinist dictators. Instead, it comes from the fanatics around us, in our neighborhoods, at school, at work, often using the prospect of Twitter-shaming to bully people into silence—or a fake, politically-correct compliance. Recent polls suggest that nearly two-thirds of Americans report self-censoring about politics at least occasionally, essentially becoming a nation of doublethinkers despite the magnificent constitutional protections for free thought and expression enshrined in the Bill of Rights

To preserve our integrity and our souls, the quality of our political debate and the creativity so essential to our cultural life, we need a Twitter Test challenging bottom-up cultural totalitarianism that is spreading throughout free societies. That test asks: In the democratic society in which you live, can you express your individual views loudly, in public and in private, on social media and at rallies, without fear of being shamed, excommunicated, or cancelled? Ultimately, whether you will live as a democratic doublethinker doesn’t depend on the authorities or on the corporations that run social media platforms: it depends on you. Each of us individually decides whether we want to submit to the crippling indignity of doublethink, or break the chains that keep us from expressing our own thoughts, and becoming whole.


Coffin Problems
Luck was a defining factor in determining the fate of many in the Soviet Union, and it is the common vein that unites the subjects of this story. Yet the stories recounted here are not representative. Such stories can never be completely told because the Soviet system intentionally left much undocumented. Critical marks on examinations were often written in erasable pencil. Written exams were eschewed in favor of oral ones. Some who lived through the period do not feel they have anything to add; others may find the experience too painful to contemplate, much less talk about. Even among the small cohort described here, there is consensus on a few things but not on many others.

Kac quit his job in 1976 and applied for an exit visa to Israel. He received permission to leave quickly. He secured a position immediately at MIT where he remains today. Zelmanov eventually secured a role at Novosibirsk State and left in 1990. For his breakthrough work on a century-old problem, he was awarded a Fields Medal in 1994—the mathematical equivalent of a Nobel Prize.

Eliashberg was less lucky. He became a refusenik after his visa request was denied in 1979. He had returned to Leningrad before applying, and was forced to support himself at various temporary jobs. This promising mathematician found himself working as a night watchman at a car garage in the city. One of his friends put his own career on the line in order to secure for Eliashberg a job in an accounting software company. He remained there until 1987, when he was finally able to leave the Soviet Union. He was not sure if he would be able to rehabilitate himself as a mathematician. But he succeeded. In the decades since, he has won many of the most prestigious awards in mathematics including the Veblen, Crafoord, and Wolf prizes. Today, he is on the mathematics faculty at Stanford.

For her part, Julia Rashba recalled a poignant moment in the elevator with the MGU examiner who had failed her on the entrance exam. In many ways, she felt unprepared for what had just happened to her. She had experienced anti-Semitism in her childhood with bullies and cruel taunts. Once, as a little girl, she ran away from a day camp where the bullying was too much. She was not aware that the sorts of anti-Semitism that lived in adult institutions would be less benign. She was raised, however, to believe that even in such a discriminatory system, where her own father had experienced nearly insurmountable travails to rise to the top of the Soviet physics establishment—that she needed only to work hard and act with integrity and things should work out.

They had not. The examination she “failed” was not even for medical school, it was for a chemistry program that offered some biomedical tracks. She had hoped that she could contribute to medicine as a scientific researcher, even if she would not be allowed to be a clinician. The system would not even allow this tenuous finger hold on her dream. She recalls that the examiner, perhaps seeking absolution for the shame of what he had just done, quietly apologized and asked for her forgiveness. She refused.
Eli Lake: America in the World: Sheltering in Place
That exchange tells us a lot about the Quincy Institute. The think tank’s foreign policy agenda and arguments echo the anti-interventionism of the 1930s. Most of its scholars are more worried about the exaggeration of threats posed by America’s adversaries than the actual regimes doing the actual threatening. In May, for example, Rachel Esplin Odell, a Quincy fellow, complained that Senator Romney was overstating the threat of China’s military expansion and unfairly blaming the state for the outbreak of the coronavirus: “The great irony of China’s military modernization is that it was in large part a response to America’s own grand strategy of military domination after the Cold War.” In this, of course, it resembled most everything else.

The institute has hired staff that come out of the anti-neoconservative movement of the 2000s. Here we come to a delicate matter. The anti-neoconservatives of that era flirted with and at times embraced an IR sort of anti-Semitism: the obsession with Israel and its influence on American statecraft. Like the America Firsters, the anti-neoconservatives worry about the power of a special interest — the Jewish one — dragging the country into another war. A few examples will suffice. In 2018, Eli Clifton, the director of Quincy’s “democratizing foreign policy” program, wrote a post for the blog of Jim Lobe, the editor of the institute’s journal Responsible Statecraft, that three Jewish billionaires — Sheldon Adelson, Bernard Marcus, and Paul Singer — “paved the way” for Trump’s decision to withdraw from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal through their generous political donations. It is certainly fair to report on the influence of money in politics, but given Trump’s well-known contempt for the Iran deal, Clifton’s formulation had an odor of something darker.

Then there is Trita Parsi, the institute’s Swedish-Iranian vice president, who is best known as the founder of the National Iranian American Council, a group that purports to be a non-partisan advocacy group for Iranian-Americans but has largely focused on softening American policy towards Iran. In 2015, as the Obama administration was rushing to finish the nuclear deal with Iran, his organization took out an ad in the New York Times that asked, “Will Congress side with our president or a foreign leader?” a reference to an upcoming speech before Congress by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The National Iranian American Council’s foray into the dual loyalty canard is ironic considering that Parsi himself has been a go-between for journalists and members of Congress who seek access to Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister.

This obsession with Israeli influence in American foreign policy is a long-standing concern for a segment of foreign policy realists, who believe that states get into trouble when the national interest is distorted by domestic politics — an affliction that is particularly acute in democratic societies which respect the rights of citizens to make their arguments to the public and to petition the government and to form lobbies. The most controversial of the realists’ scapegoating of the domestic determinants of foreign policy was an essay by Stephen Walt and John J. Mearsheimer (both Quincy fellows) that appeared in the London Review of Books in 2005. It argued that American foreign policy in the Middle East has been essentially captured by groups that seek to advance Israel’s national interest at the expense of America’s. “The thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the ‘Israel Lobby,’” they wrote. “Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country — in this case, Israel — are essentially identical.”

Walt and Mearsheimer backed away from the most toxic elements of their essay in a subsequent book. The essay sought to explain the Iraq War as an outgrowth of the Israel lobby’s distortion of American foreign policy. The book made a more modest claim about the role it plays in increasing the annual military subsidy to Israel and stoking American bellicosity to Israel’s rivals like Iran. They also took pains to denounce anti-Semitism and acknowledge how Jewish Americans are particularly sensitive to arguments that present their organized political activity as undermining the national interest. Good for them. But the really important point is that events have discredited their claims. The all-powerful “Israel Lobby” was unable to wield its political influence to win the fight against Obama’s Iran deal. It was not able to stop Obama’s public pressuring of Israel to accept a settlement freeze. Decades earlier, it had not been able to thwart Reagan’s sale of AWACs to the Saudis. Anyone who believes in an omnipotent AIPAC is looking for conspiracies.
From Ian:

Truth behind killing of Iran nuclear scientist revealed
The Iranian nuclear scientist who was shot dead near Tehran in November was killed by a one-ton automated gun that was smuggled into the country piece-by-piece by the Mossad, the JC can reveal.

The 20-plus spy team, which comprised both Israeli and Iranian nationals, carried out the high-tech hit after eight months of painstaking surveillance, intelligence sources disclosed.

The Tehran regime has secretly assessed that it will take six years before a replacement for top scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is fully operational.

Meanwhile, Israeli analysts have concluded that his death has extended the period of time it would take Iran to achieve a bomb from about three-and-a-half months to two years — with senior intelligence figures privately putting it as high as five years.

The disclosures come as the JC gives the fullest account yet of the assassination that made headlines around the world and significantly degraded Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.


Richard Kemp: The International Criminal Court Threatens Middle East Peace
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has long had its sights on what it no doubt considers an unholy trinity: Israel, the US and Britain.... First, these are the three Western democracies most active in using legitimate military force to defend their interests. This is anathema to the left-liberal doctrine of ICC officials and their soul-mates in such morally dissipated places as the UN Human Rights Council. Second, they wish to virtue signal, deflecting criticism that the court is biased against African states....

Yet by its charter, dealing with countries that lack the will or capability to bring their own to justice is the sole purpose of the ICC. This does apply to some states in Africa and elsewhere but demonstrably does not apply to Israel, the US or Britain, each of which have long-established and globally respected legal systems.

The ICC's design against Israel is the latest in a long history of endeavours to subjugate and scourge unwilling Jewish people deemed incapable of regulating themselves. When you examine the unexampled contortions the court has gone through just to get to this point, you have no choice but to question whether antisemitism is the motive.

The effects of the ICC's decision will be profound. This is only the end of the beginning. Unless halted, investigations into spurious allegations of war crimes will go on for years, perhaps decades, creating a global bonanza for all who hate Israel, including at the UN, the European Union, various governments and in universities and so-called human rights groups.

But the most detrimental effect of the ICC's decision will be felt by Palestinian Arab people who, for decades, have been abused as political pawns by their leaders and who would be the greatest beneficiaries of any peace agreement with Israel. The ICC's ruling makes such a deal even more remote today.

In an unprecedented move early last year Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Australia, Canada, Uganda and Brazil petitioned the ICC, of which all are members, arguing that a formal investigation could not be launched as the Palestinian Authority does not meet the definition of a state under the Rome Statute that established and governs the court.

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

“American Jews voted for this,” is something I’ve taken to writing as a preface to every article I share on social media detailing the ways in which the Biden administration is bad for America, for Israel, and for the free world at large. I do this, in part, because I am angry. Angry at this betrayal of brother for brother, prioritizing hatred of the Orange Man over the welfare of the Jewish State. Angry at this very large subset of Jews who care more about criminals who enter their country illegally than they care about the Jews of far-off Israel. Most of all, I am angry at American Jews for being blind to the threat of Iran that looms over us all, choosing fluffy social justice issues over this major existential threat.

I am angry and I want them to know it. So I tell them, at every chance I get, “American Jews voted for this.”

I’ve pointed my finger and said “American Jews voted for this,” when the Biden administration announced its intention to restore aid to UNRWA, whose schools are hotbeds of incitement that teach Arab children to hate and kill Israeli Jews. UNRWA schools have even been used to house the missile launchers that fire rockets at the one million Jewish civilians of Southern Israel, which includes my children and grandchildren. UNRWA is thoroughly disreputable with serious allegations of corruption at the highest level. But that didn’t stop Biden from appointing former UNRWA official and “Palestinian-American” Maher al-Bitar to be director of the NSC intelligence service. 

American Jews voted for this.


“American Jews voted for this,” I said when Biden predictably appointed Robert Malley as US envoy for Iranian affairs. Malley wants to end the sanctions and return to the JCPOA. This wrongheaded policy of appeasement—of making funds available to the cash-strapped mullahs—only hastens Iranian nuclear breakout time.  The appointment of Malley undoes everything the Trump administration did to contain Iran. Yet American Jews voted for Biden even while he promised to reinstate this self-destructive policy—a policy that empowers an enemy sworn to the goal of first obliterating Israel and then the United States.

When the Biden administration rejoined the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), something he had promised to do during his campaign, I said it again: American Jews voted for this. The UNHRC is a body made up of representatives from some of the worst human rights-abusing countries, for instance Pakistan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China, Indonesia, Venezuela, and Russia. The main purpose of this body of evil is to censure Israel for imaginary infractions, which was the reason President Trump pulled the US out of the council: the UNHRC is clearly antisemitic in its singular focus on and hostility toward the Jewish State.

Last year in fact, the UNHRC published a blacklist of companies it said raised “particular human rights concerns” due only to the location of these businesses in Judea and Samaria, indigenous Jewish territory for thousands of years. A vote for Biden was, in reality, a vote for a return to the UNHRC, an antisemitic body purporting to care about human rights as it looks daily for new ways to punish Israel. American Jews looked the other way, if they looked at all. American Jews voted for this.

The Matter of the Houthis

Then there’s the matter of the Houthis. While the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Houthis, the Biden administration has already moved to suspend some of these sanctions. That’s because Iran is sending lots of sophisticated weaponry to this Yemen-based militia group and training Houthi militants in their use. And Biden, you see, is loath to upset Iran.

The Trump administration designated the Houthis a terrorist organization. Biden, on the other hand, is reviewing this designation. Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, said he has “deep concern about the designation” of the Houthis as a terrorist organization. The Biden administration's “review” is part and parcel of a return to the bad old days of the Obama administration and the JCPOA appeasement policy in which America pretends it can mollify the mullahs by funding their nuclear ambitions. American Jews voted for this and it literally makes no sense. It’s suicide.

The Biden administration is, in fact, an extension of the Obama administration’s “abnormal Middle East strategy,” in which enemies are strengthened, and friends are punished. In voting for Biden, American Jews voted for strengthening Iran and punishing Israel. Because that is how much they hate Donald Trump. For hatred of this one man, they threw the Jews of Israel under the bus. They empowered an Iran that promises to wipe out both Israel and America.


Duss is "Infected with Jew-Hatred"

When rumors emerged that Bernie Sander’s top aide, Matt Duss, was to be hired by the State Department, I said it again: “American Jews voted for this.”

“Duss,” said the Free Beacon, “will join a growing roster of Biden administration hires who have displayed a deep animus toward Israel, promoted boycotts of the Jewish state, and advocated for a Palestinian ‘right of return’ that would destroy the country’s Jewish composition.”

No less than the Simon Wiesenthal Center described Duss as "infected with Jew-hatred.” But American Jews voted for Biden, knowing that Joe would need to placate the influential, far left, Israel-hating wing of the Democratic Party. What better way to do this than to hire far left, Israel-hating hacks to serve in the Biden administration? American Jews voted for this, as well.

Iran's New Rocket: The Zuljanah

When Iran tested a new rocket on February 1, a rocket capable of hitting Britain, I gritted my teeth and thought (and said), “American Jews voted for this.” The rocket launch was an Iranian threat timed to coincide with Biden’s assumption to power. The intent was clear: Iran is telling Biden to lift the sanctions and reinstate the JCPOA. In effect, the mullahs are saying, “Give us money or we will blow some country—Britain or perhaps Israel—to smithereens.”

Iran's newest rocket, the Zuljanah

And of course, Iran knows that Biden is rehiring all the Obama appointees so intimately involved in appeasing Iran the last time around. Iran knows that Biden coming to power is the same as Obama assuming power. The mullahs have already played this game. They know the rules, and how to win—how to get more money to make more weapons. American Jews voted for this, as well.

During the election campaign, Biden promised he would open the PLO mission in Washington. Already, the PA is in talks with the State Department on how to make that happen without the PA having to pay the $650 million it owes after being found guilty in 2015 by a New York jury, for no less than seven terror attacks. A survivor of one of these attacks, Alan Joseph Bauer, described his personal connection to the lawsuit, “In March of 2002, a Palestinian policeman, Muhammed Hasheikah, detonated himself on King George Street in downtown Jerusalem. I had two screws pass through my left arm, and our son, then aged 7, had the head of a Philips screw pass fully through his right brain.”

Biden intends to empower the terrorists responsible for this and countless other abhorrent antisemitic attacks, by reopening the PLO mission. He is, moreover, trying to find a way to do so without making the PLO pay the monies it owes to its victims. American Jews voted for this.

"Amcha"

When I met first Dr. Elana Heideman, of the Israel Forever Foundation, she talked to me about the possibility of writing a story for her website. She mentioned that she didn't care whether I was religious, or what my politics might be, all she cared about was whether I had something positive to say about Israel. It was such a simple concept, so sweet and clean. 

She explained that the one thing we all shared was a love of Israel. And she told me that once upon a time, Jews in the Old Country had a way of identifying each other. They'd come up to a person and whisper, "Amcha."*

Amcha. A hidden way of asking: "I'm Jewish. Are you? Is it safe to speak?"

By asking, you were declaring your Judaism. And that was a bit of a risk. But it was a good feeling to find others like you in a world that hated your people. You felt warm and safe in the knowledge of that.

What happened to that simple way of showing up for each other, of caring for each other in a world that hates and wants to kill Jews, just because they are Jewish? When did we stop being a part of each others' lives, each others' worlds?

This is what angers me most of all about the American Jewish vote. This lack of connection, the lack of being there for their own kind in a time of crisis. It makes me think that maybe they aren't really Jewish after all, for all their talk about "tikkun olam."

Did Hatred Overrule Their Common Sense?

There is much more to say on this subject than can be contained in a single article. But there is enough here to ask the obvious questions: Did American Jews know the full import of what they were voting for, when they voted for Joe Biden? Did they care? Or did their hatred for the Orange Man and his difficult personality overrule their common sense?

Where did that feeling of connection to their people go? What happened to the concept that we are your people, and you are ours? What happened to common cause?

Did American Jews know, when they voted for Biden, that they were prioritizing animus for a single person over being actually complicit in the institutionalized hatred of an entire people: their own, "amcha?" Were they the victims of a media colluding with the left to hide the truth of what all of what a Biden administration would mean to Israel and the Jewish people? I don't see it, because ultimately I believe that every voter is responsible for learning all the facts--for digging deep and discerning the truth. Especially when it affects your people, "amcha."

And so, in order to make things entirely clear to them, I will say it often, and I will say it aloud, “American Jews voted for this. You threw us under the bus, and with us, yourselves."

I couldn’t make them see it then, and I couldn’t make them see it back when they voted for Obama, twice. I couldn’t make them see the wrongness of their vote, how it hurts us, how it hurts them and divorces them from their own people, their nation, and the world.

But maybe I can make them see it now, after the fact. Which is why I will keep saying this mantra and writing these words. “American Jews voted for this."

And I promise you, I will not stop.

*Lit. "Your Nation" as in: "I'm part of your nation, I'm Jewish."



From Ian:

Israelis, Palestinians want separation, skeptical of solutions - study
Israelis and Palestinians want to separate from one another, but the major political solutions to the conflict do not appeal to them, according to an in-depth study by the RAND Corporation released to The Jerusalem Post.

The research found that, overall, “mistrust, broadly defined, is likely the greatest impediment to peace.”

RAND, a leading global policy think tank, conducted the peer-reviewed research via 33 focus groups from 2018 to 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic, collecting detailed views of over 270 individuals. This widely used research approach combines quantitative data and qualitative insights, and is meant to complement the many random-sample polls taken on these topics.

Seeking “to assess whether there were any viable alternatives to the current status quo” between Israel and the Palestinians, the researchers found that Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs, West Bank Palestinians and Gazan Palestinians were more likely to be uncertain about any of the five alternative solutions to the conflict offered – two-state solution, confederation, one-state solution, Israeli annexation of area C, or the status quo – than they were to support them.

The questions allowed for uncertainty and support at the same time, yet the only option a majority of Israeli Jews found to be acceptable was the status quo, and none were supported by a majority of any of the other populations.

“There is widespread skepticism that any alternative would be feasible,” the report states. “There was widespread distrust among Israelis and Palestinians of their own leadership, the leadership of the other side, and the people from the other side. As a consequence, there was great skepticism that a deal could be reached and that either side would abide by the terms of the deal.

“In addition, the majority of Israelis and Palestinians in our focus groups indicated that none of the alternatives would end the conflict,” the researchers wrote.
Gil Troy: American Jews: Why are you AWOL on Iran? - opinion
Dear Liberal American Jews,
Congratulations. Many of us democracy-loving Israelis cheered America’s political resilience as power transferred peacefully on January 20, defying Donald Trump’s rantings. And many of us join you in wishing President Joe Biden good luck. But we’re nervous too. We’re not sure Biden has Israel’s back regarding our greatest enemy: Iran. Heck – we’re not sure if you have our back regarding Iran either.

It’s confusing. Much of Biden’s foreign policy team boasts about having crafted the shameful, dangerous Iran deal Biden vows to restore. Yet he said “no” to lifting sanctions to woo Iran to negotiate. Biden’s persuadable. So why are you, our key allies, American Jews AWOL? Why are you still fighting the now-blessedly-less-relevant Trump wars, dodging this nuclear-powered battle between democracy and dictatorship, which could determine the future of the Jewish state, the Jewish people, the West itself?

Clearly, Iran isn’t on your mattering map. You refuse to acknowledge how dangerous the Iranian regime is – to America not just Israel; how urgent the issue is; and how harmful – not just useless – Barack Obama’s 2015 JCPOA agreement with Iran was.

I know I am being too Israeli; inconvenient and impolite. Trump’s polarizing presidency has made everything Obama did above criticism and any position Trump took beneath contempt. But in recovering from Trump’s assault on democracy, America needs nuanced thinking, not partisan cheerleading. Restoring a commitment to truth in all its messiness requires some self-criticism and intense debate among the “good guys” too. The Republicans have proven what constant toadying to a president does to your party, your country, your soul. Why be Biden’s lapdogs – especially when he may appreciate lobbyists demanding a hard line with the mullahs?

So ask yourself two questions: 1) Israelis are crazily polarized too – isn’t Israel’s left-to-right military and political consensus rejecting the Iran agreement striking? 2) Isn’t it even more striking that so many Middle Eastern enemies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE so feared Obama’s softness toward Iran that they buried decades-old hatchets and started cooperating?
  • Wednesday, February 10, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon

From the start, the "pro-Palestinian" movement has not been pro-Palestinian at all. It has been anti-Israel. And its supporters, no matter how educated or articulate, are so consumed with hate for the Jewish state that they literally cannot tell the difference between the two concepts.

Noura Erakat, the "human rights attorney" and assistant professor at Rutgers University, wrote an op-ed for NBC News that crystallizes this basic fact  - and thereby reveals a major reason why the Palestinians have remained stuck in limbo for so long.

Notwithstanding several early steps that distinguish him from his predecessor, President Joe Biden promises to continue [Trump’s] legacy. It’s true that the new administration intends to reinstate critical U.S. humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees and will reopen the PLO mission office in Washington, D.C. Just Monday, it announced that it will rejoin the U.N. Human Rights Council, from which the Trump administration withdrew mostly in protest of its scrutiny of Israel.

But none of these policies, welcome though they are, will challenge the oppressive status quo sustained by the United States. Worse still, the Biden administration will uphold several of the Trump administration’s most damning precedents.

These examples are most revealing:

The new secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has made clear that the administration will not move the U.S. Embassy from Jerusalem back to Tel Aviv; it will maintain, and celebrate, Israel’s normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan without ensuring a single enduring concession for the Palestinians; and it will continue to provide Israel with unconditional military support in the amount of $3.8 billion annually — a precedent established by Biden’s former boss, President Barack Obama.

Late last week, the Biden administration also expressed “serious concerns” over the International Criminal Court’s effort to exercise jurisdiction over Israeli officials to prosecute them for war crimes, and is even considering maintaining the Trump administration’s sanctions on the court’s leading personnel.

She brings three examples of what she considers anti-Palestinian policies: keeping the embassy in Jerusalem, supporting peace between Israel and Arab states, and maintaining military aid that gets spent in the US.

None of these policies hurt Palestinians. None of them affect Palestinian lives at all, except for Gaza terrorists who want to murder Israeli civilians with rockets. None of them are speedbumps towards a Palestinian state.

They do support Israel as a sovereign nation – which this “human rights lawyer” considers “damning.”

The rest of the article is more of the same, complaining that a definition of antisemitism that includes demonizing the Jewish state’s very existence is somehow anti-Palestinian.

Erakat is so filled with hate for Israel that she literally cannot tell the difference between “pro-Israel” and “anti-Palestinian,” nor the difference between “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-Israel.” She fully subscribes to a zero-sum mentality that what is good for Israel is automatically bad for Palestinians – and, worse, that nothing can be considered good for Palestinians unless it is also bad for Israel.

The UAE and Bahrain (and to an extent Morocco and Sudan)  have abandoned the zero-sum mentality. No one can call them “anti-Palestinian” although the Gulf Arabs are justifiably critical of the current Palestinian leaderships.  They see Israel not as an enemy but as a partner that can help them thrive; not as a open Jewish wound in the Arab Middle East but as a permanent feature that improves the region and that can lift up Arab states.  Instead of zero-sum, they seek a win-win. The zero-sum mentality that they maintained for so many decades did not help them – or the Palestinians – one bit.

The zero-sum mindset is childish and counterproductive. If there is one lasting change from the Abraham Accords, it is that this puerile way of thinking is finally on the wane in the Middle East.

As long as the Palestinians – including their Western “defenders” – cannot grasp that basic concept, they will never get anywhere.



Tuesday, February 09, 2021

  • Tuesday, February 09, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon


Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a wide ranging interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN yesterday. Blitzer touched on every issue that is important to Israel, and Blinken's answers were mostly encouraging - within the framework of the conventional wisdom of the Democratic party. 

The problem is the framework itself.

QUESTION: A State Department spokesperson has given the Trump administration credit for what’s called the Abraham Accords, the normalization deals that Israel worked on thanks to the Trump administration, with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, but at the same time you’re saying it can’t be a substitute for Israeli-Palestinian peace.  So how exactly are you going to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, first, Wolf, yes, we applauded the Abraham Accords.  This is an important step forward.  Whenever we see Israel and its neighbors normalizing relations, improving relations, that’s good for Israel, it’s good for the other countries in question, it’s good for overall peace and security, and I think it offers new prospects to people throughout the region through travel, through trade, through other work that they can do together to actually materially improve their lives.  So that’s a good thing.  But as you said rightly, that doesn’t mean that the challenges of the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians go away.  They don’t.  They’re still there.  They’re not going to miraculously disappear.  And so we need to engage on that.  But in the first instance, the parties in question need to engage on that.

Look, the hard truth is we are a long way I think from seeing peace break out and seeing a final resolution of the problems between Israel and the Palestinians and the creation of a Palestinian state.  In the first instance now, it’s do no harm.  We’re looking to make sure that neither side takes unilateral actions that make the prospects for moving toward peace and a resolution even more challenging than they already are.  And then hopefully we’ll see both sides take steps that create a better environment in which actual negotiations can take place.
The State Department is leaning back towards the failed idea that Israel/Palestinian peace is the most important concept. The Abraham Accords destroyed that paradigm - the old thinking said that peace with the Arab world was linked to peace with Palestinians, the "linkage" myth, and the Accords shows that this isn't true. By definition, peace between Israel and Palestinians has been shown to be less important.

Blinken now sees no relationship between Israeli-Arab peace and Israeli-Palestinian peace. But that's not true either. Palestinian intransigence is fueled by their conviction that world pressure will bring Israel to its knees, and now that Trump is gone they are waiting for the Biden administration to pressure Israel like Obama did, and for it to partner with Western European states to push the Palestinian demands - 1967 "borders" being only the first demand. 

When Blinken says that neither side should take unilateral actions against peace, he is almost certainly not talking about Palestinian land grabs that happen every day - only Israel asserting its rights in Judea and Samaria. It is a troubling reversion to old thinking.

QUESTION:  I know that you, the Biden administration still supports what’s called a two-state solution —

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  That’s right.

QUESTION:  — Israel, a new state of Palestine.  But I understand that President Biden still hasn’t even spoken with Prime Minister Netanyahu; is that right?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, they spoke actually during the transition.  I think one of the first calls that the President had was with the prime minister.  I’ve talked to my Israeli counterparts on multiple occasions already.  And you’re exactly right about the two-state solution:  The President strongly supports it.  It is the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, and the only way to give the Palestinians a state to which they’re entitled.

QUESTION:  But is there a reason as President he still hasn’t spoken with Netanyahu?  He’s spoken with so many other world leaders.

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Oh, I’m sure that they’ll have occasion to speak in the near future.
Some think that the symbolism of Biden not calling Netanyahu is important. I don't. Unless he calls Abbas first, this is not something to waste time on.

QUESTION:  Anxious to get your yes or no on some specifics, very sensitive issues.  You’ve said the United States will keep the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem.  It used to be in Tel Aviv.  Do you regard Jerusalem as Israel’s capital?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  I do, yes.  And more importantly, we do.

QUESTION:  As part of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, would you support a Palestine having its capital in East Jerusalem?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Look, the – what we have to see happen is for the parties to get together directly and negotiate these so-called final status issues.  That’s the objective.  And as I said, we’re unfortunately a ways away from that at this point in time.
This is the correct answer. The Europeans also say they don't want unilateral moves  - and then they unilaterally say what the final agreement should look like. Trump destroyed the lie that Israel's capital is not Jerusalem and Biden is not going to go back to the fiction that every previous administration had that Jerusalem would become an international city.

QUESTION:  The Trump administration, as you know, also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria back in 1967.  Will your administration, the Biden administration, continue to see the Golan Heights as part of Israel?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Look, leaving aside the legalities of that question, as a practical matter, the Golan is very important to Israel’s security.  As long as Assad is in power in Syria, as long as Iran is present in Syria, militia groups backed by Iran, the Assad regime itself – all of these pose a significant security threat to Israel, and as a practical matter, the control of the Golan in that situation I think remains of real importance to Israel’s security.  Legal questions are something else.  And over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we’d look at.  But we are nowhere near as that.
Here's another example of using the wrong framework. The Biden administration is not going to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan, but they will not prioritize Israel giving the strategic area back to Syria. But this is problematic.

Blinken claims that human rights is now a centerpiece of foreign policy. This statement undermines the human rights of the Arabs who live in the Golan. As long as they are concerned that they could revert to living under Syrian rule, they are not free. They are worried about being executed as traitors or spies under Syrian rule. They will remain in this limbo until the world recognizes that Israel's control of the Golan is not only legal but just.

Of course, all of this is trivial next to the question of Iran.

QUESTION:  You’re facing a stalemate apparently when it comes to Iran, the Iran nuclear deal.  Iran’s ayatollah says the U.S. needs to lift sanctions before it returns to the deal.  President Biden says he won’t lift sanctions first.  So what happens now?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  Well, look, the President’s been very clear about this.  If Iran returns to compliance with its obligations under the nuclear agreement, we would do the same thing, and then we would work with our allies and partners to try to build a longer and stronger agreement, and also bring in some of these other issues, like Iran’s missile program, like its destabilizing actions in the region that need to be addressed as well.

The problem we face now, Wolf, is that in recent months Iran has lifted one restraint after another that was – they were being held in check by the agreement.  We got out of the agreement, Iran started to lift the various restraints in the agreement, and the result is they are closer than they’ve been to having the capacity on short order to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon.  The agreement had pushed that past a year.  According to public reports now, it’s down to three or four months and heading in the wrong direction.

So the first thing that’s so critical is for Iran to come back into compliance with its obligations.  They’re a ways from that.  But if they do that, the path of diplomacy is there, and we’re willing to walk it.

QUESTION:  So they’ve got to take the first step, and then the U.S. will respond.  Is that right?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  That’s – the President’s been clear about that.  They need to come back to compliance, and if they do, we will look to do the same thing.
This is much, much better than Biden's campaign promises to return to the JCPOA. But it is not nearly enough.

The Biden administration needs to enroll the European signatories to the JCPOA to do their job. They haven't left the agreement that Iran is proudly violating. They have not invoked the sanctions that were supposed to be automatic with Iranian violations. Their cringing acceptance of Iranian violations is the reason Iran feels that it has the upper hand.

The West needs to renegotiate the Iran agreement from a position of strength. That means getting the western Europeans on board and having a united front on sanctioning Iran for its violations. 

The US is now saying the right things but it sure looks like one day soon Iran and the US will announce the simultaneous removal of sanctions and the US returning to negotiate what would be an identical agreement with Iran that Obama did - and then gaslighting Americans into believing that it is an ironclad agreement that stops Iranian nuclear weapons development. 

Also, while it is hard to prove 100%, Iran's cash crunch has hurt Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terror groups. Lifting sanctions without addressing those issues, and others like Iranian development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, is the opposite of promoting peace.

The old frameworks about Iran and the Middle East kept peace further away. The return to the failed frameworks is the real danger, and saying the right things in the wrong framework is putting lipstick on a pig.





Monday, February 08, 2021

From Ian:

Only an Israel victory over Palestinian Lawfare will stop the ICC process
Israel should see this as just another front in the over-100-year war against Jewish sovereignty in its ancestral and indigenous homeland, and respond accordingly.

It should use all of its tools available to defeat the Palestinian Arabs on this and every front.

The Palestinians have taken off their gloves, if they ever even had them on. Israel should do likewise.

Bringing Israel or Israelis into the international dock is more than a declaration of war, it is an aim to defeat Israel by other means. It is an attack on those who protect us. Its chilling aim is to weaken our defenses and make every Israeli more vulnerable.

We can not sit idly by, merely condemning and talking about hypocrisy.

We must act, and act now.

We must break the Palestinian Authority leaders’ will to continue this process. They can stop it at any time, and they should be pressured intensely and ruthlessly to do so.

Only overwhelming strength will win the day on this battlefield that the Palestinians have chosen for us and achieve an Israel victory.

The ball is now in the court of Israel’s decision-makers. Harshly worded press releases and empty threats will not protect our soldiers.

Only an Israel victory will.


Eugene Kontorovich: The ICC's unique approach to Israel

US rejoins UN Human Rights Council, reversing Trump's withdrawal
The Biden administration has reestablished ties with the United Nations Human Rights Council three years after former United States president Donald Trump exited the contentious body over its anti-Israel bias.

“The United States will engage with the Council as an observer,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement he issued Monday. When the Trump administration left the UNHRC, it had been one of 47-member states with that held three years terms on the council, which gave it voting power.

It not only gave up its seat, but severed all ties and refused to publicly engage in meetings.

Blinken clarified that the US is now reestablishing those ties, but in an observer capacity, and not as a member state, a move that can happen only when annual elections are held by the UN General Assembly.

The US “will have the opportunity to speak in the Council, participate in negotiations, and partner with others to introduce resolutions,” Blinken said.

“It is our view that the best way to improve the Council is to engage with it and its members in a principled fashion,” he added.

“We strongly believe that when the US engages constructively with the Council, in concert with our allies and friends positive change is within reach,” Blinken said.

“We recognize that the Human Rights Council is a flawed body, in need of reform to its agenda, membership, and focus, including its disproportionate focus on Israel,” Blinken said.

“However, our withdrawal in June 2018 did nothing to encourage meaningful change, but instead created a vacuum of US leadership, which countries with authoritarian agendas have used to their advantage,” he added.
US pendulum swings back into the UN Human Rights Council - analysis
Ever since the United Nations Human Rights Council was established 15 years ago, the American position on it has swung back and forth like a pendulum, staying out, joining, leaving, and now rejoining.

The problems at the UNHRC run deep. UN Watch, an NGO promoting UN reforms and transparency, has a database that shows just how badly the UNHRC has failed to do its stated job.

The UNHRC’s Executive Board is currently made up mostly of non-democratic countries, including notorious human rights violators like Venezuela and Pakistan, among others. At the UNHRC dictatorships are allowed to take leading positions.

Israel remains the only country about which the UNHRC has a permanent agenda item. Since the council was established, it condemned Israel 90 times, Syria 35 times, North Korea 13 times, Iran 10 times and Venezuela twice. Among the countries that have never been condemned by the UNHRC are China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Zimbabwe.

The UNHRC has held eight special sessions on Israel, as opposed to one on Libya, two on Myanmar and five on Syria, and has had eight commissions of inquiry on Israel, as opposed to one on North Korea and two each on Libya, Myanmar and Syria.

And the number of inquiries and special sessions is not the only issue; it’s their content. The UN’s expert on “Palestine” is only supposed to investigate Israel’s supposed violations, and not the Palestinian Authority and Hamas abuses of Palestinians and Israelis.

Every US administration since the UNHRC’s establishment in 2006 has admitted that it is a deeply problematic institution. The question is, in what way should the US use its considerable influence and budget in relation to the Council.

Sunday, February 07, 2021

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: This flawed decision turns the ICC itself into just one more Israel-basher
It is both tragic and ironic that the State of Israel, one of the founding fathers of the vision of creating an independent International Criminal Court after the unimaginable atrocities committed against the Jewish People during the Holocaust, has now become the target of that very International Criminal Court.

As one of the leading countries actively involved, from the start, in the negotiation and drafting of the founding document, the Statute of the ICC, it is all the more ironic that Israel now finds itself being accused by the Court based on Palestinian political manipulation.

What was intended to be an independent juridical body devoted to preventing impunity enjoyed by the most serious and atrocious war criminals, by bringing them to justice, is now being politically manipulated against the one state that since the early 1950s has consistently advocated the establishment of such a body, the State of Israel.

The irony is all the more evident given the legal acrobatics by the politically oriented and politically influenced prosecutor of the Court and the majority of judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber, in their obstinate and flawed insistence on attributing elements of statehood and sovereignty to a Palestinian entity that is distinctly, and by all international standards, not a state.

Nor does such entity have any sovereign territory, and thus, even according to the Statute of the ICC, cannot be the subject of the Court’s jurisdiction. The Palestinians have absolutely no standing in the court.

This ironic situation is not surprising given the prevailing international atmosphere of incitement and hostility towards Israel throughout the UN system.

However, what is shocking is the fact that the one international juridical institution that was hoped and intended by its founders, and stated in its founding document, to be “an independent, permanent International Criminal Court…with jurisdiction over the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole,” has allowed itself to be politically manipulated and abused.


Six actions Biden should take to hold the ICC and Palestinian leaders accountable
Though the Biden administration also condemned the ICC decision, there are indications that it wants to reverse the strong policies against the ICC adopted by its predecessor, the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Instead, however, Washington should take the following actions to impose consequences on the ICC and the Palestinian leadership:

First, it should implement Trump’s Executive Order 13928 to impose additional sanctions, such as the blocking of property and revoking of visas of “ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members” who are part of this decision against Israel.

Trump firmly asserted that “any attempt by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute any United States personnel without the consent of the United States, or of personnel of countries that are United States allies and who are not parties to the Rome Statute or have not otherwise consented to ICC jurisdiction, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”

His administration then imposed sanctions on ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and her aide, Phakiso Mochochoko, for launching an illegitimate investigation into alleged “war crimes” by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Israel expressed support for the U.S. sanctions. But the European Union, along with more than 70 countries, announced opposition to them.

Unfortunately, the Biden administration is now reviewing those sanctions, and may acquiesce to the pressure campaign to lift them as part of a softer approach to the ICC. This would be a big mistake.

Second, the Biden administration should use Trump’s E.O. 13938 to impose sanctions on individual P.A. leaders who have been materially assisting or providing support for this charade against Israel. After acceding to the 2015 Rome Statute, P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas appointed a 45-member “higher national supervising committee,” chaired by the late PLO Executive Committee Secretary General Saeb Erekat, to pursue legal action against Israel in the ICC.

Erekat told Palestine TV that the committee was made up of the “the complete spectrum of Palestinian political factions,” including Hamas, the PFLP and DFLP—and that P.A. Foreign Minister Riyadh al-Maliki served as its official liaison to the ICC.

In other words, the P.A. has been collaborating with members of State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations that seek the destruction of Israel to provide material against it to the ICC. This is in addition to public statements by Abbas, al-Maliki, P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and Hamas encouraging and lauding ICC actions against Israel.
ICC, ICJ push Joe Biden into Donald Trump’s shoes - analysis
In less than a week, the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice have shockingly put US President Joe Biden into former president Donald Trump’s shoes on the international law scene.

Last week, the ICJ issued a jurisdiction ruling against the US sanctions program on Iran. Then, over the weekend, the ICC issued a jurisdiction ruling against Israel in the six-year running war crimes controversy.

US reactions from the State Department to both rulings were highly critical.

To the layperson, the criticism might have sounded the same for the ICJ and the ICC as what would have come from the Trump administration. Israel would be happy if the US does not get too chummy with the ICC and the ICJ, since Jerusalem also supports US sanctions on Iran.

That is not all.

True, the Biden administration has reaped global praise for signing a range of executive orders re-joining the Paris climate treaty, erasing Trump-era prohibitions on immigration and travel from certain Muslim countries and a more positive tone toward the UN and the EU.

But 17 days into his administration, Biden has neither rescinded Trump-era financial and visa sanctions against the ICC nor has he rescinded the executive order that could allow him to use such sanctions further in the future.
Kamala Harris signed letter in May against ICC's ‘dangerous politicization'
The bipartisan letter Harris signed last May when she was a senator, urged then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo to “stand in full force against any biased investigation of Israel” by the ICC. The leading signatories were Senators Ben Cardin of Maryland, a Democrat, and Rob Portman of Ohio, a Republican. Close to 70 more senators, including Harris, joined them.

The letter came six months after ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced that she thought there was “a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation” into crimes by Israelis and Palestinians.

That announcement “constitutes a dangerous politicization of the Court and distorts the purposes for which the court was established,” the Senators wrote, pointing out that it was meant to be a court of last resort for prosecuting serious international crimes.

“ICC actions currently underway could lead to the prosecution of Israeli nationals despite the fact the ICC does not enjoy legitimate jurisdiction in this case,” the letter reads. “Both Democratic and Republican administrations have refused to join the Court in part because they feared its politicization and misuse.”

The Senators pointed out that “Palestine” does not meet the criteria for statehood and that Israel – as well as the US – are not members of the court, and that the court’s own rules “prohibit it from prosecuting cases against a country that has a robust judicial system willing and able to prosecute war crimes of its personnel,” which Israel has.

“By accepting Palestinian territorial claims over the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, the Prosecutor is making a political judgment that biases any subsequent investigation or trial,” the letter states. “Establishing the boundaries of any future Palestinian state is a political decision that must be determined through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Any ICC determination regarding its jurisdiction over the disputed territories or investigation of Israel would further hinder the path to peace.”

US President Joe Biden has used executive orders to overturn dozens of former US president Donald Trump’s policies, but lifting sanctions on ICC officials is not one of them.

Saturday, February 06, 2021

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: ICC investigation into Israeli 'war crimes' an immoral decision - editorial
The International Criminal Court at The Hague made a terrible decision on Friday in announcing that it had legal justification to open a war crimes investigation against Israel.

In a majority ruling published on Friday, following a six-year review by the chief prosecutor, the ICC judges said that, “The Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine... extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

Granting itself jurisdiction over the territories paves the way for the court – set up under the Rome Statute of 2002, which Israel and the US did not ratify – to investigate Israel and, if it wants, the Palestinians, for alleged war crimes. These could include past Israeli military operations like Protective Edge in 2014 against terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip as well as settlement construction in the West Bank.

As expected, Israel and the United States responded harshly to the court decision.

“Today, the International Criminal Court has proven once more that it is a political body and not a judicial institution,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday.

“This is refined antisemitism,” Netanyahu said. “This court was created to prevent horrors like the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish nation, and now it is attacking the only country of the Jewish nation.”

He added that the court “casts these delusional accusations against the only democracy in the Middle East” while refusing to “investigate the real war crimes committed by brutal dictatorships like Iran and Syria on a daily basis.”

In the US, State Department Spokesman Ned Price said the Biden administration is committed to Israel’s security, and objects to the court’s decision.

“As we made clear when the Palestinians purported to join the Rome Statute in 2015, we do not believe the Palestinians qualify as a sovereign state, and therefore are not qualified to obtain membership as a state, or participate as a state in international organizations, entities, or conferences, including the ICC,” Price said.

“The United States has always taken the position that the court’s jurisdiction should be reserved for countries that consent to it, or that are referred by the UN Security Council,” he added.


Melanie Phillips: Why can those on the left never see their own antisemitism?
In his new book Jews Don’t Count, David Baddiel observes that people on the left don’t treat the problem of antisemitism on the same level as prejudices over race, sexuality or gender.

I personally started to detect a double standard over antisemitism in the 1980s, when I wrote that antisemitism had become “the prejudice that dare not speak its name”.

This was when the left was calling Israelis “Nazis” for trying to root out from Lebanon the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s terrorist infrastructure. It was when people started saying openly: “Jews make so much money / they’re so clannish / they always stick together against everyone else”.

Merely to mention the word “antisemitism” among left-wingers, though, caused an instant glacial chill, provoked eye-rolls or produced the charge: “You’re using antisemitism to sanitise Israel’s atrocities”.

It wasn’t until the issue so spectacularly blew up in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party that this last accusation was itself finally acknowledged as a form of Jew-hatred. And it was only then, because Corbyn was so left-wing he was deemed beyond the pale, that Jews began to feel it was safe to use the a-word.

So why does the left deny or marginalise the antisemitism amongst it? And why are many Jews still so nervous about provoking a bad reaction if they talk about this on the left other than in the context of the Corbynised Labour Party?

One obvious factor is that, in progressive circles, Marxist assumptions have been absorbed often without their provenance being recognised. Like Marx himself, many left-wingers believe capitalism is evil and white, that capitalism is run by Jews, that money is power and that Jews have so much money and power they run the capitalist world.
Michael Doran [WSJ]: In the Mideast, Biden Returns to Abnormal
Joe Biden implicitly campaigned on Warren G. Harding’s 1920 promise of “a return to normalcy.” But his administration is returning to Barack Obama’s abnormal Middle East strategy. A normal policy would respect the fundamental commandment of sound statecraft: Strengthen friends and punish enemies. It would distinguish between them by asking two simple questions: Which states have tended to shelter comfortably under the American power umbrella? And which have instead sought to destroy the American order? Israel, Turkey and the Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, have functioned as pillars of the postwar American order. By contrast, for the past 40 years Iran has tirelessly opposed the American security system.

Three details of Iran’s strategic position could make it more dangerous in the near future. First, the Persian Gulf contains five of the world’s 10 largest proven oil reserves, and Iran threatens to dominate the region. Second, Tehran is increasingly allied with both Russia and China. Third, outreach to Iran by the U.S. has deeply angered most of America’s Middle Eastern allies.

A normal policy would seek to contain Iran. Every president since Jimmy Carter regarded Iran as a threat—except Mr. Obama. His flagship policy was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, to which Mr. Biden is dedicated to return. The JCPOA won’t contain Iran. Its sunset clauses create a clear path for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. By lifting sanctions, it supplies the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with cash.

Mr. Obama also dispensed with traditional military deterrence. Tehran saw a green light to expand and arm its militia networks. By the time Mr. Obama left office, Tehran held substantial sway over four Arab capitals: Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Sana’a. Donald Trump returned to containment. While revitalizing deterrence and imposing sanctions, he also supported military and intelligence operations by allies, especially Israel, against Iran and its proxies. A new coalition of regional states developed and was formalized in the Abraham Accords.
JINSA PodCast: Vaccinating in Israel: A Genuine Success Story
Professor Eugene Kontorovich of George Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School joins host Erielle Davidson to discuss Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination program and what has made it so successful. Professor Kontorovich discusses the international treaties that govern Israel’s current vaccine distribution regime and corrects misinformation surrounding its vaccine program, including what international law says about Israel’s responsibilities and abilities to vaccinate Palestinians.

Friday, February 05, 2021

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Obama's third term
The Biden administration has resumed funding UNRWA, reopened the Palestinian mission to Washington and recommitted itself to the “two-state solution.” It has thus re-empowered the Palestinians’ agenda of demonising and blackmailing Israel in order to destroy it, and afforded the Palestinians status while they do so.

It has also said it wants to return to the disastrous 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, brokered by former President Barack Obama, whose terms allowed the regime to obtain nuclear weapons with only a short delay while enabling money to pour in to fund its war against Israel and the west.

Although the administration is currently saying that Iran must first return to “full compliance,” the regime’s continuing breach of that deal by increasing its number of advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium suggests it believes that America will soon cave in.

This is doubtless due to Biden’s instant moves against Iran’s foes in the Gulf. These moves include America’s “temporary” pause on the sale of F-35s to the United Arab Emirates and its “re-examination” of the Trump administration’s designation of the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, against whom Saudi Arabia is fighting, as a terrorist organisation.

Even more telling are some of Biden’s appointments. The new American envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, whitewashed Yasser Arafat’s duplicity at Camp David and, as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has observed, “has a long track record of sympathy for the Iranian regime and animus towards Israel”.

More sinister yet is the appointment of Maher Bitar as senior director of intelligence at the National Security Council. A long-standing anti-Israel activist, he spent years promoting the BDS movement and its campaigns. As a student in 2006, he was on the executive board of the poisonous Muslim Brotherhood-linked Students for Justice in Palestine, which hounds Jewish students on campus and disseminates antisemitic propaganda.

As Daniel Greenfield pointed out on FrontPage.org, while studying in Britain at Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre Bitar wrote in a paper that Israel’s “political existence as a state is the cause for Palestinian  dispossession and statelessness”.

In other words, far from advocating a two-state solution, Bitar thinks that Israel —America’s key ally in the Middle East — should not exist at all.

Yet this individual will now handle some of the most heavily classified intelligence available to the United States. He will decide what information America’s intelligence community shares with foreign intelligence services.
Yisrael Medad: Palestinians are back on the State Department docket
At the U.S. State Department press conference on Feb. 2, a question was posed by Said Arikat of the Al-Quds daily newspaper. Incidentally, if you do not know, among other things this particular journal carries some very anti-Semitic caricatures, as well as other images not favorable to the United States.

His question:
… last Tuesday, U.S. envoy to the United Nations told the Security Council that the United States is going to restore aid to UNRWA, the work and relief agency, and will probably open the consulate in East Jerusalem as well as reopening the office here in Washington for the Palestinians. My question to you: Is there a timetable, one? And on UNRWA aid, considering that the United States was the largest contributor, so will that be retroactive? I mean, that’s close to like $900 million since 2018.

Retroactive? Those funds were withheld because of bad management, anti-Semitic promotion and terror-support that was confirmed in reports. Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

State Department spokesman Ned Price’s answer was:
The United States does intend to restore humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people. We’re not doing that as a favor, but because it’s in the interest of the United States to do so … the suspension of aid to the Palestinian people has neither produced political progress nor secured concessions from the Palestinian leadership. Of course, it has only harmed innocent Palestinians.

He added:
The United States will reinvigorate our humanitarian leadership and work to galvanize the international community to meet its humanitarian obligations, including to the Palestinian people.

Interestingly, Erikat’s own report on that exchange (here in Arabic) is headlined “US State Department Spokesman: Resuming support for the Palestinians is in our strategic interest.” Erikat added “strategic” for good measure, highlighting it in his tweet. A proper academic study of his reporting, perhaps, would be an interesting project for the future.

As for Price’s “innocent,” let’s leave that to the Hamas recruitment agencies, and those of the Islamic Jihad and additional terror groups in Gaza, which fire rockets at Israeli civilian targets, dig tunnels to facilitate the invasion of Israel, and send incendiary kites and balloon bombs aloft. But indeed, what interest is it to for the United States to continue a fiction (millions of refugees) so as to enable a non-productive economy (relying on aid handouts instead) and to ignore the Palestinian Authority’s continued policies of anti-normalization, diplomatic rejectionism, denouncing the Abraham Accords (see next question) and continuing terror incitement?
Caroline Glick: Biden's drive to war in the Middle East
This policy is irrational even when assessed from within the closed cognitive circle of the Biden/Obama team. They intend to make an irrevocable concession to Iran – billions of dollars of revenue which will flow into its coffers once the sanctions are removed. And in exchange they are asking Iran to make a revocable gesture. Iran reinstated its nuclear enrichment at Fordo and raised its enrichment level to 20% at the drop of a hat. If it turns the switches off to get the sanctions relief, it can turn them right back on after the money starts to flow.

This will almost certainly happen in June at the latest. On June 18, Iran will hold presidential elections. President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif will both leave office. All of the current viable candidates hail from the Revolutionary Guards Corps and they can all be guaranteed to abandon the JCPOA. So at best, the JCPOA's remaining shelf life is four months.

Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, Malley and their colleagues all must be aware that this is the case. The fact that they are moving ahead with their failed strategy all the same indicates that they are ideologically committed to their plan and will stay with it even as it drives the region to war.

This brings us to Israel. During the Trump years, Israel and the US were fully coordinated in their joint and separate actions to undermine Iran's nuclear program and its operations in Syria and Iraq. As a senior official in Trump's National Security Council explained recently, "Working together the intelligence agencies of both countries were able to accomplish more than they could on their own."

Obviously, those days are over now. And as Biden's team makes its presence felt fully, Israel's options for blocking Iran from becoming a nuclear power are diminishing.

When IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi announced last month that he had ordered the relevant IDF commanders to prepare operational plans to strike Iran's nuclear installations, most commentators assumed his target audience was the Iranian regime. Others argued he was issuing a warning to the Biden administration. The former claimed he sought to force Iran back from the nuclear brink. The latter argued he was demanding the Biden administration take Israel's positions seriously before it moves ahead with abrogating the sanctions.

But in the face of the Biden team's strategic fanaticism and Iran's race to the nuclear finishing line, it's at least equally likely that Kochavi's intended audiences were neither the Iranians nor the Americans. Instead, he may well have been telling the Israeli public to be prepared for what is coming. And he may also have been telling Israel's regional partners that the time for joint action is now.

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