Showing posts sorted by date for query obama. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query obama. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Friday, February 26, 2021

  • Friday, February 26, 2021
  • Elder of Ziyon
Here are two headlines published last Sunday, from Times of Israel and i24News:



 
These reports say that, according to a letter written by the PA to the Biden administration, Hamas has committed to a two-state solution and to peaceful resistance.

I've already mentioned that Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh has said quite clearly last Saturday that it still supports terror and absolutely does not accept Israel in any way. 

The US is insisting that all parties for any Palestinian election adhere to the principles of the Quartet (US, UN, EU and Russia) established in 2006. The position of the Quartet  has been "all members of a future Palestinian Government must be committed to non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations."

The first page of the letter that the PA is said to have sent the US is on the Amad.ps website, and it shows that the Palestinians are still the masters at making credulous Westerners believe that they are saying things they are not saying at all. 

There is no contradiction between the letter sent to the Biden administration and Hamas' intransigent statements from last Saturday. There is no compatibility between this letter and the US position of what the Palestinians must commit to. And yet, Israeli media and apparently the Biden administration is willing to be fooled by the doubletalk in the letter and pretend that it says what it most definitely does not. 

The letter, filled with misspellings, says:

The following consensus (attachment 1) were reached by all political factions including Hamas at the meeting of all general secretaries of Palestinians political factions in 3 September 2020.
1. Commitment to international law standards.
2. Commitment to a Palestinian State based on the boarders of 1967 and East Jerusalem as its capital.
3. Commitment to the PLO as the political umbrella and the legitimate sole representative of the Palestinian people.
4. Commitment to the Principal of peaceful transfer of power through elections
5. Commitment to Popular Resistance (peaceful)


Not one of the Quartet conditions are met by this letter!

Non-violence: Hamas said that it supports comprehensive resistance "in all its forms," and one of its manifestations is popular resistance. It is still committed to terrorism. 

Recognition of Israel: The PA says that Hamas accepts a Palestinian state - but nowhere does it say or even imply that Hamas recognizes Israel or a two state solution. Hamas said it holds firmly to the principle of "non-recognition of the legitimacy of the occupier." Meaning, if the Palestinians manage to gain a state in any part of Palestine, Hamas will accept it, but it is still committed to destroying Israel.

Acceptance of previous agreements and obligations: It says nothing about that in this letter, only a vague "commitment to international law standards," which is meaningless.  Since there is no consensus of what international law actually is, they can claim to be committed to it with their own interpretations - for example, that Israel is obligated to allow "return" of millions of Palestinians. This is in no way an affirmation of committing to the Oslo accords, and in fact Hamas' leader  has explicitly rejected them as well in that same speech. 

This is a test of the Biden administration, to see if it is truly committed to the principles the US has insisted upon for any potential Palestinian government. So far, based on reporting about this letter, the Biden administration is flunking the test.

Not surprisingly, the PA has played this exact game during the Obama administration, with no pushback then either. 

Then again, when one party wants to gaslight and the other wants to be gaslit, there isn't much you can do.



Thursday, February 25, 2021

From Ian:

BDS Is Anti-Semitic
I rarely ever feel comfortable talking about Israel in a university setting, despite the fact that the land of Israel is such a dearly held part of my Jewish identity. I have always found it interesting that sweeping dismissals of this part of my Jewish identity, the part that is tied to Israel, are so very welcomed in certain academic and progressive circles. In these groups, it feels like everyone else has the right to defend their cultural, ethnic and religious identities except for the Jew.

On Feb. 9, 2021, the student government at the University of California, Irvine voted 19-3 to pass a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution. BDS stands for the boycott of, divestment from and sanctions on the current Jewish state of Israel. The BDS movement will not be satisfied until there is no Jewish state existing within the land of Israel.

From a principled perspective, the notion of divesting from one nation in the name of helping an entirely separate nation strikes me as odd. Why divest from Israel to help under-resourced Palestinians? Why not invest directly in Palestinian aid or grassroots movements?

It is a lack of satisfactory answers to these questions that leaves me and many other Jewish people feeling like these movements are more about opposing Jewish self-determination than they are about supporting Palestinian liberation.

Calling for the mass boycott of Israel is a way to publicly stand against the existence of a Jewish nation in a land that Jews are indigenous to. In doing so, the movement is denying a huge part of the Jewish identity from having an acceptable place in social life. If that is not anti-Semitism, what is?
David Collier: Na’amod – toxic anti-Zionism with no students to be seen
Nobody should be in any doubt that the group called Na’amod are at the core – an anti-Zionist organisation that was set up to undermine Jewish community support for Israel. They are targeting our children and their focus on the ‘occupation’ and ‘Gaza’ is little more than a strategic deflection.

If you mistakenly think Na’amod is some innocent student ‘anti-occupation group’ – you will be shocked to find out what they are really about – and who is helping to fund their attacks on the Jewish institutions (such as on the JNF, Zionist Federation or the Board of Deputies). Want to know more – Read on.

Talking about Na’amod
I rarely acknowledge Na’amod – it is a Jewish-led organisation that sits to the left of the left on the political spectrum. Like most astroturf groups they need external attention to survive. It is why for Na’amod, provocation is a primary strategy.

This is what they do. They provoke – Zionists respond – they play the victim – they get attention. When you respond to them – when you speak their name – you give them oxygen.

It is why I never rise to their bait – never allow them to dictate the narrative. This article on Na’amod is different. It had to be written as a vital part of our community conversation.

The journey begins last Tuesday. I tuned in to an Oxford University Zoom talk by Jamie Stern-Weiner. It was about the history of the IHRA definition of Antisemitism and his entire argument was to suggest the examples included in the IHRA definition were never properly adopted by the IHRA as part of the definition itself. A pointless exercise that included cherry-picking comments from those involved when it suited him – and ignoring them when it did not.

Unlike the Jewish, academic, anti-Zionist old guard, such as Jonathan Rosenhead, Stern-Weiner is a fresh face. Yet the talk was incredibly boring. His delivery is poor and he fails to spark any interest or emotion in what he has to say. Unlike fanatics such as Tony Greenstein, he remains coherent but after a while I just found myself zoning out. He has the air of a man who thinks he is intellectually superior. Weiner’s problem is that he isn’t as clever as he thinks he is.
It's Time for Black People to Reclaim the Term "Apartheid"
As a young black South African, I am reminded that our parents and grandparents were compelled to live under the viciously discriminatory system of apartheid. Precisely because we South Africans know intimately what apartheid involved, we have a duty to question whether it is an appropriate term to be used in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Apartheid was about race, not religion or nationality, the domination by one race over another. By contrast, Arab citizens of Israel enjoy the same rights and freedoms as Jewish Israelis. Comparisons between the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the bantustans in apartheid South Africa are absurd. As foreign governments refused to recognize them, economic aid was withheld, while the PA has received billions of dollars in aid from international governments. It already looks after a range of functions in Palestinian society, including policing functions and healthcare.

Unlike black people in apartheid South Africa, Arabs in Israel are entitled to vote in national elections and elect their own representatives. They currently have the third-largest party in the Israeli Knesset. In Israel, Arabs are found in the highest ranks of political, civil and even military life. Arabs in Israel enjoy more freedom than those living in the rest of the Middle East.

Those who apply the term "apartheid" to the Israeli-Palestinian impasse are guilty of cultural appropriation by denying the uniqueness of the racism and hatred that we faced and overcame with much blood and tears.
10 Things You Never Knew About Israeli Arabs
From Ian:

Israel in Talks to Establish Four-Nation Defense Alliance With Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Bahrain
Jerusalem is currently in talks with the kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates on establishing a four-nation defense alliance, according to an exclusive i24 News report.

While Jerusalem does not have official diplomatic relations with Riyadh, foreign media report that the two countries have long-standing clandestine ties.

However, the UAE and Bahrain signed a historic normalization deal with Israel in September 2020 known as the Abraham Accords.

The reported defense alliance talks likely come in response to the “growing Iranian threat” in the region, specifically regarding its budding nuclear program along with its expanding influence in the Middle East with countries like Syria and Iraq.

News of the reported talks comes as the Biden administration sends signals to Tehran and world powers that it is ready to rejoin the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, brokered by former President Barack Obama, which Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vehemently opposed at the time.
A decade on, Iron Dome has intercepted 2,500 rockets, and counting
Ten years have passed since the Iron Dome air-defense system, produced by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, made its first revolutionary interception of a Gazan rocket in Israeli skies in 2011. Since then the system has conducted more than 2,500 successful real-world interceptions, preventing large-scale carnage in Israeli cities.

It has achieved an interception rate of more than 90% and is considered an essential element of Israeli security, on standby against enemy arsenals threatening the Israeli home front from north to south.

While Iron Dome is indispensable today, it had to overcome some preconceived notions about the role of air defense in security before first making its appearance.

"A soccer team that goes to the field without a goalkeeper loses," Brig. Gen. (ret.) Shachar Shohat, Rafael vice president and marketing and business development manager of the company's Air and Missile Defense Division, said.

Shohat, who previously served as commander of the Israel Air Force's Air Defense Array, described Rafael as the national combat laboratory that has become a "symbol of innovation" in the world of Israeli security, winning 50-plus Israeli defense prizes for significant contribution to state security.

"Employees at Rafael, who go to work in jeans and sandals, are creating true added value to Israel's national security," he said. "They do it with a spark in their eyes from the founding of the state until this day."
Caroline Glick: Interview with CBN on the Biden administration, Iran and Israel

The Tikvah Podcast: Richard Goldberg on How Iran is Already Testing the Biden Administration
President Biden has been in office for just over one month, but when it comes to his administration’s relationship with Iran, the honeymoon is already long over. Just in the past few weeks, Iran has launched rockets at American assets in Iraq, refused to allow in-person inspections by International Atomic Energy Agency officials of its nuclear facilities, and extorted sanctions relief from South Korea by taking an oil tanker hostage. Through all these actions, Tehran is trying to determine the Biden administration’s objectives, probe its limits, and assess its political will.

Now it’s up to the new American team to lead a response, and to declare—in its words and actions—to the world, and especially to the Iranians, what the United States wants to do, what it can aide, and what it will not accept. On this week’s podcast, the national-security expert Richard Goldberg joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to explain the Biden administration’s early moments of decision on Iran and to project what the short and long term consequences of those decisions might be.


abuyehuda

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column


Joe Biden has been in office for about a month. I have my doubts about the degree to which Joe himself is running things, but because he has always bent pragmatically to the winds of political (and perhaps personal) advantage, it’s not really important. Someone is making policy, in particular policy that concerns Israel. The course set by the Biden Administration appears to be almost 180 degrees from that taken by Donald Trump, and promises to bring back the sharp disagreements between the two nations that characterized the Obama period. He has already brought back most of the same people.

There are two main areas with which Israel must be concerned: the Palestinian and Iranian arenas. The Palestinian question seems to be on the back burner now, perhaps because everyone realizes that no solution is likely. But the Iranian desk is buzzing with activity. Obama’s people had four years to lick their wounds and plan for a rematch. Now their time has come, and they are moving swiftly.

Indeed, it has recently been revealed that during the Trump Administration, John Kerry and Robert Malley met with Iranian and EU officials and advised them to ignore overtures from President Trump’s people to fix the defects in the deal, and wait for their team to return with the expected Democratic victory. Seeing no alternative, Trump took the US out of the deal in 2018 (several European nations remain in it with Iran).

Biden’s declared Iran policy seems to be more or less the same as Obama’s, and it will be implemented by the same people: Malley, Jake Sullivan, Wendy Sherman, and Anthony Blinken. Before his appointment, Malley’s “International Crisis Group” prepared a report that recommended that the new administration should “move swiftly to revive the nuclear agreement on its existing terms.”

This is the deal that provided for an inspection regime with holes big enough to drive a truck through, which had sunset clauses that in effect guaranteed that after a certain point Iran’s weapons development would be legitimate, which revoked UN prohibitions on missile development, and which suffered from numerous other flaws – to the point that Binyamin Netanyahu risked an open break with the US, its essential ally and prime supplier of critical military equipment, in order to oppose it.

The new administration has already begun to make concessions to Iran in order to initiate a process of mutual moves to restart the deal. It removed the designation of Iran’s proxy Houthi rebels in Yemen as terrorists, and announced that it would no longer support Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against them. Biden also reversed Trump’s “snapback” to honoring pre-2015 UN sanctions on Iran.

Iran, for its part, has said that it wants to see all sanctions lifted and the deal reinstated at the point Trump left it. It’s not clear what the Iranians would do with the prohibited high-enriched uranium and even uranium metal that they have produced in violation of it since then.
Biden’s policies, from Israel’s point of view, are extremely dangerous. And the political situation in Biden’s Democratic Party is becoming more and more anti-Israel, as it moves to the left. There is little to restrain the administration, and there are forces pushing it to take positions even more disadvantageous to Israel.

The evaluation in Israel is that we cannot simply leave it to the US and trust that everything will be fine. A return to the deal without significant changes – which nobody thinks the American negotiators can, or even want to, obtain – will ultimately result in a nuclear Iran. On the other hand, direct opposition to the US could leave Israel in trouble, a result of the excessive dependence of the IDF on American aid. Israel is locked into extremely complex weapons systems that in many cases are integrated with our own systems, and switching to (for example) Russian systems, or even trying to develop our own, would be a very long, difficult process.
Caroline Glick thinks that Israel can maintain good relations with the US while working to decrease dependence, and establish relationships various political factions in the US as well as with other allies who are not happy with the prospect of Iranian nuclear hegemony.

I am afraid this is wishful thinking. Everything she suggests about developing our allies, and so forth, is worth doing, but there is no way Israel can avoid direct conflict with the American administration if it will not “concede either its sovereignty or its core interests to satisfy an administration committed to policies that harm both,” as Glick puts it. In my opinion, a confrontation is unavoidable, even if our PM does not travel to the US and speak to a joint session of Congress, as Netanyahu did in 2015.

I can see one way out of the dilemma. That is to present the Americans with a fait accompli that will at the same time send an unmistakable message that Israel cannot accept a nuclear Iran, and that will significantly set back the Iranian project. I mean, of course, military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. And the sooner – before the US becomes fully enmeshed in negotiations with Iran – the better.

Although there is no doubt it will anger those in the American administration who are more anti-Israel than worried about Iran’s expansionism, it will speak to those who have a realistic attitude and understand that the primary goal is to keep Iran from going nuclear. The Rob Malleys will not approve. The Tony Blinkens might. You may recall the condemnation of Israel that followed her destruction of Saddam’s reactor in 1981; ultimately, almost everyone agreed that it was a good thing.

This time the job is much more difficult. Is it possible to carry it out without too much damage from the certain retaliation? Is there a way to neutralize Iran’s ability to retaliate? What are the probabilities?

These are questions that I can’t answer. They are questions for our Chief of Staff, and I believe the Prime Minister has already asked them.

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

From Ian:

Jpost Editorial: Why is KKL-JNF's plan to buy Palestinian land in West Bank controversial?
KKL-JNF, which was established in 1901 to buy and develop land for Jewish settlement and is famous for the millions of trees it has planted throughout Israel, serves as the Jewish people’s custodian for some 15 percent of the land in the country. In this role, it has in the past purchased land in Judea and Samaria and been involved over the Green Line since the 1967 Six Day War, buying at least 65,000 dunams across the West Bank including in the communities of Itamar, Alfei Menashe, Einav, Kedumim, Givat Ze’ev and Otniel. In other words, buying land is what it does.

While it may be true that KKL-JNF’s expansion of activities in the West Bank could complicate Israel’s ties with the Biden administration, as critics of the plan have claimed, this is a question for the government of Israel of what it wants to do. Indeed, State Department spokesman Ned Price said in response to the plan, “It is critical to avoid unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut the efforts to achieve a two-state solution. This includes annexation, settlement building, demolitions, incitement and payments for terrorists.”

But while the State Department is voicing the views of the US, the KKL-JNF plan is in line with existing Israeli government policy which is not aimed at unilaterally establishing new facts on the ground, but rather at expanding and developing existing Jewish communities. This is something that Israel has always done and will need to continue doing to enable a quality of life for residents of existing communities in Judea and Samaria.

Although the Israeli government – under pressure from the US – can freeze settlement expansion as it has in the past, it cannot prevent existing communities from meeting the needs of their growing populations. This was once termed “natural growth,” and has been largely accepted by the international community, including the US, as legitimate and not in violation of the status quo. We do not expect the Biden administration to adopt the peace plan put forth by the Trump administration under which all settlements were meant to remain and the land to be annexed by Israel, but natural growth of existing communities should not be impaired.

KKL-JNF has the right to approve the plan, and instead of criticizing the organization, Zionist groups should see it as a way to better the everyday lives of Israelis living in the land of Israel, something KKL-JNF has done since its inception.


Blinken: US to run for UNHRC seat, abolish anti-Israel bias
The United States plans to run for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday as he decried the 47-member body's bias against Israel and called for its Agenda Item 7 to be abolished.

"I’m pleased to announce the United States will seek election to the Human Rights Council for the 2022-24 term," Blinken said as he spoke at the virtual high-level meeting of the 46th session which opened Monday and ends on March 23.

Former US president Donald Trump exited the UNHRC in 2018, abandoning the US seat, to protest the council's bias against Israel, which is the subject of more resolutions than any other country.

US President Joe Biden rejoined the council, but as a participant and not a voting member. The US can regain its seat only through elections held annually by the UN General Assembly in New York.

"We humbly ask for the support of all UN member states in our bid to return to a seat in this body," Blinken said.

He lauded the UNHRC for its important work in highlighting global human rights abuses, but chastised it for its treatment of Israel.

"We urge the Human Rights Council to look at how it conducts its business. That includes its disproportionate focus on Israel," Blinken said.

"We need to eliminate Agenda Item 7 and treat the human rights situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories the same way as this body handles any other country," he said.

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: Joe Biden’s Emerging Folly in the Middle East
APolitico report published Monday revealed that Joe Biden’s administration wants to rid itself of the troublesome Middle East. In terms of global priorities, one Biden adviser confessed that the region “is not in the top three.” The new administration would prefer to focus on instability in the Western Hemisphere, containing threats and pursuing diplomatic initiatives in Europe, and, of course, finally pivoting to Asia. “They are just being extremely purposeful to not get dragged into the Middle East,” another adviser said. But the Middle East has a habit of dragging the United States back in, and a heedless effort to withdraw from the region is one of the easiest ways to stumble back into open-ended commitments.

The Biden administration encountered one of the first tests of its resolve to disengage from Middle Eastern affairs earlier this month following a deadly rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in which one civilian contractor was killed and nine others were wounded, including a U.S. service member. The Shia militia Saraya Awliya al-Dam, which maintains close links with Tehran, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Biden administration responded in a “measured” way, according to the New York Times. It does not want to see a nascent attempt to restart negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program derailed by this Iran-linked provocation. But that indefatigable commitment to the pursuit of “rapprochement” with Iran and its proxies has only invited more rocket attacks.

On Monday, locals observed as rockets were fired at the U.S. diplomatic presence in Baghdad within the so-called “Green Zone.” It’s the third attack on Western diplomatic stations in Iraq in a week. Iraq has responded by requesting a larger NATO military presence in the country, and NATO will oblige. In the coming weeks, the Atlantic Alliance will increase its deployments in Iraq from 500 to approximately 4,000, and the Pentagon is not ruling out additional deployments to supplement the Western presence there.

Iranian strategy may seem counterintuitive on its face; why would a rogue state desperate for the rewards associated with the resumption of diplomatic talks risk it all by testing the new administration so brazenly? But Iranians can read American news media, too. If Tehran believes that the Biden administration wants out of the region so badly that it will not absorb the costs associated with sticking around, why not test that proposition? Iran’s long-term objective isn’t just relief from economic sanctions, after all—its regional dominance, with the U.S. all but out of the picture.
Biden squanders leverage Trump stockpiled on Iran in pursuit of a defective nuclear deal
Unfortunately, we’ve seen this movie before. As the Obama administration courted Tehran for nuclear talks from 2012 to 2015, it restricted its counterterrorism and counternarcotics policies toward the regime’s proxies like Hezbollah. As Politico exposed in 2017, U.S. efforts against Hezbollah lessened as the importance of getting a nuclear deal with Iran grew.

The desire to achieve and maintain the Iran nuclear deal also had other negative regional effects. Some of those in the Obama administration arguing for a more robust Syria policy in support of protestors and against the atrocities of President Bashar al-Assad — Tehran’s man in Damascus — were overridden since targeting his regime would have necessarily aggravated the Islamic Republic.

Absent any reciprocity, the Biden administration reversed the Trump administration’s restoration of U.N. penalties on Iran’s military-related procurement and proliferation.

The Biden administration’s eagerness for diplomacy will likely be read by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as a vulnerability to exploit. And in response, Tehran will do what it has done for decades: intensify its aggression and only back down if presented with no other alternative.

Iran is watching Washington begin to dismantle maximum pressure in favor of “maximum diplomacy.” Absent a willingness to add to or even maintain existing sanctions, as well lacking broader efforts to tackle the clerical regime’s regional threat network, such an approach is indeed possible to prejudge: It will end in failure.
Joe Biden Must Respond to Attacks By Iran’s Iraqi Proxies
In addition to holding the Iranian regime to account for last week’s attack—something which Secretary Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab both promised to do to the perpetrators—a renewed effort to bring Iranian compliance for nuclear non-proliferation should undoubtedly include robust measures put in place to curb Iran’s ballistic missile development.

While the break-out time for developing a nuclear weapon once Iran reaches 20 percent uranium enrichment (which they have assured under the guise of national sovereign law to implement from February 23 unless U.S. sanctions be lifted) is only a mere three and a half months, Iran will still require the delivery capability which will truly enable the regime to be a nuclear military power.

Only three weeks ago Iran tested a new rocket with improved technology which could be used in its missile program. The new Zuljanah rocket, developed to send satellites 310 miles into orbit, is easily transferable to Iran’s military missile program run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Any renegotiation of the JCPOA by the United States must factor in the requirement to limit Iran’s ballistic missile program, and Britain will be instrumental in helping shape this policy with fellow JCPOA signatories. Curbing Iranian uranium enrichment is only one side of the nuclear coin; the other lies in restricting the ballistic missile program needed to operationalize a nuclear warhead.

Due to the consistent pressure which Iran is applying on the new administration, time is running out for President Biden to show a stronger hand needed to deal with this repeated Iranian aggression. This includes publically acknowledging the role in which Tehran has over sponsoring and controlling the Shia Iraqi militias which continually cause the biggest source of U.S. and British casualties in Iraq. With the recently announced significant uplift of NATO troops to Iraq, this is not the time for appeasing an aggressive Iranian regime.
Netanyahu: Iran Will Fail like Haman Did 2,500 Years Ago
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the story of Purim and the downfall of Haman the wicked who sought the Jewish nation’s destruction to warn Iran against threatening Israel with nuclear weapons.

Speaking on Tuesday at the state memorial ceremony for Yosef Trumpeldor and his comrades who fell in defense of Tel Hai in the north, Netanyahu declared that “on the eve of Purim, I say to those who seek of our souls, Iran and its proxies in the Middle East: 2,500 years ago another Persian tyrant tried to destroy the Jewish people and just as he failed then – you will fail today.”

Purim, celebrated this year on Thursday through Sunday, marks the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, an Achaemenid Persian Empire official who plan to annihilate all the Jews and failed, as recounted in the Book of Esther.

“We will not allow your extremist and aggressive regime to acquire nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told Iran. “We did not make the journey of generations through thousands of years back to the Land of Israel, to allow the hallucinatory regime of the ayatollahs to end the story of the resurrection of the Jewish people.”

Rejecting a renewed agreement with Iran, Netanyahu underscored that Israel “does not rely on any agreement with an extremist regime like yours. We have already seen the nature of agreements with extremist regimes like yours, in the past century and also in this century, with the North Korean government. With an agreement and without an agreement – we will do everything so that you do not arm yourself with nuclear weapons.”


Netanyahu’s cautionary remarks came just hours after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran will continue its 20% enrichment of uranium, and will increase enrichment up to 60% “based on the country’s needs.”

Monday, February 22, 2021

From Ian:

National Review: Biden’s Policy of Weakness Toward Iran
Instead of signaling to the Iranians, as President Trump did, that the U.S. will hold them directly accountable for the actions of the militias under their control, the new team appears to have let it slide without a direct warning to Iran.

And as Yemen’s Houthi rebels continued their assault on civilian areas, Biden lifted the Foreign Terrorist Organization designation of the Iran-backed group.

Worst of all, though, the Biden administration has extended this olive branch to Tehran following a report this month revealing that the International Atomic Energy Agency found new Iranian uranium-metal production in excess of JCPOA limits. Meanwhile, Iran is threatening to curtail IAEA inspections following a February 23 deadline set by parliament if the U.S. doesn’t cave.

Contrary to what some Iran appeasers argue, this bad behavior is not the result of the Trump-era maximum-pressure campaign. Tehran is escalating now because it sees an opportunity to strong-arm Biden into lifting sanctions first.

Since Thursday, the calls for talks by Jake Sullivan, Blinken, and the president himself have been taken less as a sign of magnanimity than of weakness. Already, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif has reiterated his demands for sanctions relief as a prerequisite for any talks about U.S. reentry into the JCPOA.

At least the administration hasn’t budged on sanctions — yet. But unless Biden is forceful in pushing back on Iran’s tests of his resolve, yet more will come and perhaps force the kind of crisis that the president wants to avert.


PMW: How much did PA spend on terror salaries in 2020?
Since the beginning of 2020, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been trying to hide the financial record of its payments to the Palestinian terrorist prisoners and released terrorists (together hereinafter “the terrorist prisoners”). In 2018 and 2019, the PA monthly budget performance reports clearly listed the transfer expenditures of the “Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs,” which was primarily the payments to terrorist prisoners, as 502 and 517 million shekels respectively. In 2020, the budget category of the “Ministry of Prisoners’ Affairs” (later by the PA called the Commission for Detainees’ Affairs) was removed altogether. However, throughout 2020, numerous statements by PA and PLO officials confirmed that the PA continued to pay hundreds of millions of shekels a year in terror rewards. Consequently, it was clear that the PA had decided to pay terrorists in a roundabout way so that there would be no reference to the salaries at all in their budget.

Palestinian Media Watch has examined the PA’s financial reports throughout 2020 and can now report both where the payments are being hidden, and that the amount the PA spent on terrorists salaries in 2020 was no less than 512 million shekels.

The salaries the PA paid to terrorists in 2019 via the Ministry/Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, were paid in 2020 through the PLO. Under the budget listing of PLO “transfer expenditures” the PA’s payments through the PLO rose more than 300% in 2020, from 161 million shekels to 673 million shekels. The additional expenditure - 512 million shekels - is the minimum amount the PA paid to the terrorist prisoners and released terrorists in 2020.

Why did the PA make this accounting change in 2020?
As a recipient of international funding, the PA must show full transparency and publicly list all its expenses, whereas the PLO is not accountable to anyone for how it spends its money. The PA wants to prevent the international community from seeing listings like the one below in its “budget performance report” of 2019, which shows 517 million shekels for salaries to terrorist prisoners listed under the “Commission of Detainees’ Affairs”. (Note: the 517 million shekels in the right column are the salaries to terrorists, while the 619 million shekels in the left column is the full budget of the Commission in 2019.)
Palestinian COVID vaccine plan faces large funding gap, World Bank says
The Palestinians' COVID-19 vaccination plan faces a $30 million funding shortfall, even after factoring in support from a global vaccine scheme for poorer economies, the World Bank said in a report on Monday.

Israel, a world leader in terms of vaccination speed, could perhaps consider donating surplus doses to the Palestinians to help accelerate a vaccine roll-out in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, the bank said.

"In order to ensure there is an effective vaccination campaign, Palestinian and Israeli authorities should coordinate in the financing, purchase and distribution of safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines," it said.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) plans to cover 20% of Palestinians through the COVAX vaccine-sharing programme. PA officials hope to procure additional vaccines to achieve 60% coverage.

Cost estimates suggest that "a total of about $55 million would be needed to cover 60 percent of the population, of which there is an existing gap of $30 million," the World Bank said, calling for additional donor help.

The Palestinians began vaccinations this month and have received small donations from Israel, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

Sunday, February 21, 2021

From Ian:

Julie Burchill: The hatred of the stupid for the smart
Why do so many students hate Jews? Especially now. You’d think with so much spare time on their hands — all those sob stories about being denied the full Uni Experience of staying drunk on cheap students’-union booze 24/7 and becoming more intimately acquainted with each other and the cast of Neighbours than with their own blood relatives during communal hangover days — they’d be buckling down and using these months to do some work now that they’re prevented by law from getting together and bonding over bullying the Chosen. But no, it seems that for many of them, all that time is being used to put in the extra hours on Jew-baiting duties.

Following a report from a small group of academics at UCL, its Academic Board has passed an advisory resolution calling on the university to ‘retract and replace’ the international definition of anti-Semitism which it adopted in 2019. Rebecca Lyons, vice-president of UCL’s Jewish Society, said: ‘The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism directly codifies what it means to be anti-Semitic, thereby shielding Jewish students from acts of intolerance and hatred. The removal of the definition leaves us exposed and unsafe on campus.’

Who can call this hyperbole when a supporter of the move chose the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day to state ‘I am confident that long will pass Israel’s time, as South Africa passed before it, and we’ll laugh at these days when people actually took this state seriously’? As ever, Jews are being told what is and what is not anti-Semitism, by both their teachers and their fellow students — an unimaginable situation if it were applied to other ethnic minorities.

It’s tempting to think that this is all about Palestine, but that lets those who turn the Socialism of Fools into a campus caper off the hook. A Gentile friend told me of her experience at Dundee University (twinned with Nablus!) in 2015:

‘My best friend was in with the Free Palestine gang and thought I was weird for finding them so appalling. She was eventually enlightened when Trump was running for election — and they basically wanted him in because he was portrayed as a Nazi, so they said “At least he might finally deal with the Jews”. She finally saw what I was talking about, the basic anti-Semitism of these people hiding behind anti-Zionism. Nevertheless, I ended up having to go to the police when a good part of the campus turned on me.’

It’s all about the brains, in my opinion; see the crazy percentage of Nobel Prizes won by this extraordinary people. Anyway, academic anti-Semitism existed long before Israel was reclaimed. The thick children of the bourgeoisie have always known that they can’t keep up with these under-privileged over-achievers, so they get spiteful. Thus no sooner had the musty right-wing prejudices against Jews been overcome, with the end of quotas on the number of Jewish students accepted into the top universities, than what I’ve previously coined ‘Fresh’n’Funky anti-Semitism’ was there to take the weasel wheel under the guise of being pro-Palestinian.
Temple University Must Take Action Against Marc Lamont Hill
Temple University professor Marc Lamont Hill, who was fired from CNN in November 2018 for his clarion call to destroy Israel, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is reiterating that call. This time, he has written a book, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics, and has been promulgating his violent ideas in a series of interviews.

As Hill speaks about his book, in which he calls for “justice” for the Palestinian people, he disregards the history of the Jewish people, including their exile from the land of Israel, their millennia of persecution in the Diaspora, their endless longing to return to their ancestral homeland in Zion, and the presence of Jews in the land of Israel since biblical times. In doing so, he chooses to dismiss the existence of Jewish peoplehood, and instead, arrogantly and naively defines Jews as “a religion and a faith,” as he did during an interview with Carmen Perez Jordan on Feb. 18.

Hill’s refusal to acknowledge historical facts is coupled with his dismissal of contemporary realities, as he laments the plight of the Palestinian people but does not acknowledge the UN Partition Plan of 1947, Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, or the terror with which Israeli citizens have lived for decades at the hands of Palestinians. His simplistic bifurcation of the resulting complex and multi-dimensional social and political situation into a “good guys and bad guys” scenario says more about Hill’s desire to lambast the Jewish people of Israel than it does about the conflict.

Indeed, watching and listening to Hill propagate antisemitic tropes as he promotes his book has been both illuminating and deeply disturbing. On one occasion, he mocked what he regarded as Israel’s demand for exceptional treatment — reminiscent of the antisemitic view that Jews regard themselves as the “Chosen People.” (Ironically, he was discussing Israel’s right to exist, a subject that originated when Israel’s legitimacy was called into question as an attack by Israel detractors like Hill, not as a unique demand by Israel.) On another occasion, he spoke about Israel as having stolen land from the Palestinians, using the words “transfer of people out of their homeland” and “dispossession,” eliciting the stereotypical image of the thieving, greedy Jew.
Michael Che Makes An Anti-Semitic Joke on “Saturday Night Live” That’s Already Getting Social Media Criticism
SUNDAY 10:30AM UPDATE Just as I expected, there’s been an avalanche of criticism on social media overnight. But there have also been plenty of Tweets supporting Che by people who are either anti-Semitic or clueless. Che didn’t say, “the Israeli half.” He said “the Jewish half.” There’s a difference, even if he’s unaware of it. His joke was directed at a religion, not a state or government. That he didn’t understand that distinction is where the problem lies. And will perpetuate more anti-Semitism. I’m usually a fan of Che. But he’s made a big error that must be rectified.

SUNDAY 12:38AM Comedian Michael Che is already getting blasted midway through “Saturday Night Live” for an anti-Semitic joke.

During “Weekend Update,” Che joked that half the people in Israel had already been vaccinated and “I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half.”

Lorne Michaels, who is Jewish, cannot be happy. (He might not be happy about some other references to his personal wealth during the segment.)

Che is getting a ton of criticism and anger on Twitter right now. But even worse– the anti-Semites are coming out, applauding the line. What a stupid thing he did. I think this will not be the end of it.

One Tweeter said: Michael Che perpetrated an anti- Semitic anti- Israel trope with his vaccine joke. Just as a fact check – Israel vaccinated 1/2 of its population of Israeli citizens – Arab, Jewish and Christian. Shame on you.

Another: WTF, SNL. Your no-reason quip about Israel only vaccinating Jews is not only a lie, but it perpetuates anti-semitism. Cheap shot that does more damage than the momentary, paltry laugh you got for that sorry excuse of a joke.
SNL's Michael Che makes joke about Israel not vaccinating Palestinians 2/20/2021

Saturday, February 20, 2021

From Ian:

Washington Free Beacon Editors: A Headlong Rush to Surrender
The former defense secretary Robert Gates famously wrote that Joe Biden "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." If the early days of his presidency are any indication, Biden is determined to prove him right.

Out of the gate, the administration is demonstrating to the mullahs in Tehran that it so badly wants back into the flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that it is willing to ignore Iran's terror attacks on American citizens and soldiers.

Administration officials have been virtually silent about Monday's attack by an Iranian proxy on American forces in Iraq except to say that such behavior "will not be tolerated." In a sop to Tehran, the State Department declined to name the group that took credit for the attack, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, ostensibly because it would throw a wrench into their efforts to re-enter the Iran deal.

The Biden administration is doing more than demonstrating the hollowness of its tough talk. It is rewarding Iranian aggression with an olive branch: Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday told European foreign ministers that the United States was now ready to talk with Iran. According to the New York Times, the Iranians are not through playing hard to get and have offered no indication they will accept the offer. Why not let Biden twist for a few more days to see what further inducements the administration might offer and to savor the humiliation?

They will find a way to return to the Iran deal, to remove the sanctions on Iran even as it persists in terrorizing the region, and to torment Israel as payback for the real and perceived slights of the Obama years.
U.S. and European Government Leaders Slam ICC Investigation into Israel
The International Criminal Court's decision to initiate an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes threatens to undermine the body's judicial integrity and is driven by groups that seek to delegitimize the world's only Jewish state, according to a group of former senior government and military officials from the United States and Europe.

The ICC's recent decision to pursue charges against Israel represents an "unprecedented campaign of delegitimization against Israel waged by the enemies of the Jewish State and supported by numerous international institutions," according to a letter sent by these government officials on Friday to newly installed ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan. The Friends of Israel Initiative, an international coalition of former military and government officials that advocates on Israel's behalf, organized the letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The Biden administration and Israel have already condemned the investigation, claiming the court has no jurisdiction to investigate the alleged crimes. Friday's letter by the Friends of Israel Initiative is the most coordinated public rejection of the investigation to date and is signed by several of the most prominent global leaders, including former U.S.-Iran envoy Elliott Abrams, former British Army commander Col. Richard Kemp, former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, former Spanish prime minister José Maria Aznar, former Australian prime minister John Howard, and former president of Uruguay Luis Alberto Lacalle, as well as former foreign ministers of Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands, among others.

The former officials call on Khan to abandon the investigation, which was launched by ex-ICC chief Fatou Bensouda at the urging of many well-known anti-Israel groups, including some that are tied to terrorism. The former officials maintain that the court has no jurisdiction to prosecute Israel's alleged crimes and that Israel is under no obligation to comply with the investigation since it is not party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC.

"The request for an investigation was made by an entity [the Palestinian Authority] which is not a sovereign state within the terms of the Rome Statute, under which only sovereign states may delegate jurisdiction to the Court over their territory," the letter states. "In assigning itself jurisdiction, the ICC disregards and undermines the Oslo Accords, an internationally binding set of agreements that remain in force and continue to be recognized by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority."
Exclusive: IAEA Found Uranium Traces at Two Sites Iran Barred it From
The UN nuclear watchdog found uranium particles at two Iranian sites it inspected after months of stonewalling, diplomats say, and it is preparing to rebuke Tehran for failing to explain, possibly complicating US efforts to revive nuclear diplomacy.

The find and Iran’s response risk hurting efforts by the new US administration to restore Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal, which President Joe Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump abandoned.

Although the sites where the material was found are believed to have been inactive for nearly two decades, opponents of the nuclear deal, such as Israel, say evidence of undeclared nuclear activities shows that Iran has not been acting in good faith.

Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Kazem Gharibabadi, declined to comment, as did the IAEA itself.

A senior Iranian official said: “We have nothing to hide. That is why we allowed the inspectors to visit those sites.”

Iran has set a deadline of next week for Biden to lift sanctions reimposed by Trump, or it will halt snap IAEA inspections under the deal, which lifted sanctions in return for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program. Next week is also when the IAEA is expected to issue a quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear activities.

Friday, February 19, 2021

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Christian Leaders Remain Silent as the Church Recycles Its Oldest Hatred
The WCC’s Zoom event was reported last week in the Algemeiner by Dexter Van Zile, the specialist in Christian affairs for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA) and who has long charted the conflation of Christian anti-Semitism with anti-Israel incitement.

In a subsequent article this week, Van Zile reports that the WCC has now tried to distance itself from Chikane’s remarks by claiming that he was from the African National Congress and therefore wasn’t speaking on behalf of the WCC when he made his comments.

He wrote that theologian Gerald McDermott expressed strong disagreement with Chikane’s statements and declared that he was “out of touch with the situation on the ground.”

In such circumstances, that would seem to be a considerable understatement. The situation on the church’s ground is that influential Christian organizations continue to pump out inflammatory falsehoods about Israel and Zionism which don’t just demonize and delegitimize Israel but draw upon the church’s own theology to demonize the Jewish people.

The most shocking aspect of this is that with just a handful of exceptions, the churches remain mute about it.

Church leaders usually flatly deny that Christian supersessionism has any contemporary resonance. Yet you don’t have to scratch very hard below the surface of the anti-Israel utterances by Western church leaders to pick up the supersessionist allusions.

It’s true that some of the most passionately pro-Israel people in the world today are Christians, in America and elsewhere. But these tend to be the biblically faithful. The obsessive animus against Israel and Zionism, along with its supersessionist underpinning, is mainly to be found among liberal Christians.

And their influence — through Christian NGOs and a wide range of other public and cultural institutions — is immense.

It’s not just that they influence other Christians. Even in relatively godless places like today’s Britain, the assumption that Christians stand for truth, justice and compassion means that even secular people tend to believe what they say. The pernicious falsehoods that such Christians pump out about Israel are therefore regarded as unchallengeably true.

Extreme as it was, Chikane’s diatribe on Zoom illustrated an even more unpalatable state of affairs — the silent acquiescence of church leaders in the contemporary mutation of Christianity’s own murderous history, and its virulent spread into the cultural arteries of the West.
Caroline Glick: One week in progressive America
Progressive America also targets American Jews through its Israel-anchored anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionism does not simply reject the moral basis for Israel's existence and support systemically discriminating against and eventually eliminating it. It also supports ostracizing American Jews who support Israel and barring them from expressing their views in public. That is the actual purpose of the BDS campaigns that at least two senior Biden administration officials – Maher Bitar and Reema Dodin – led in their student days.

Today, anti-Semitism is not a bar for advancement in progressive circles. To the contrary, it is an asset. Consider the big promotion that Cong. Ilhan "It's all about the Benjamins baby" Omar just received.

When Nancy Pelosi gave Omar a seat on the prestigious House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2019, the move provoked both anger and fear among many American Jews. They were angry because Omar, with her long record of anti-Jewish pronouncements would certainly use her position to advance her anti-Semitic positions. And they were scared because the fact that Pelosi appointed Omar over a loud chorus of objections was a sign of the power of progressive anti-Semites in the Democrat party.

When this week Pelosi appointed Omar chair of the subcommittee for Africa, global health and human rights. Outside a few conservative Jewish groups, the move met with no opposition. And there is a reason for that. Two years on, anti-Semitism is so ingrained in progressive circles that objecting to it is enough to get you tagged as a racist.

To drive this point home, last week the Jewish Democratic Council of America – the Jewish arm of the Democrat Party – hosted an online discussion of Biden's appointment of outspoken Israel haters and Palestinian terror supporters. Barack Obama's ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro was one of the participants. Shapiro insisted angrily that Jewish criticism of these officials is "racist." He added, "There is unfortunately this bias, this prejudice against Arab and Muslim Americans, particularly if they're working on issues related to the Middle East."

In other words, like objectivity and merit, in Work America, substantive criticism of others based on their actions and statements is now "racist." Fighting anti-Semitism is racist. Fighting hatred is racist. Fighting ignorance is racist.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. And scrutiny of the Democrats will likely make it difficult for them to maintain their Senate and House majorities in 2022. But the damage progressives are already causing to public health, to America's standing in the world, to American schoolchildren, and to American Jews will take more than one election to repair.
On BBC, David Baddiel encounters SOAS professor excusing Palestinian Holocaust denial
A broadcast last month on BBC 2 (“Confronting Holocaust Denial with David Baddiel’) included one extremely telling exchange we want to highlight. Baddiel is a British Jewish comedian and writer, who recently published a book on antisemitism.

At 33 minutes into the broadcast, Baddiel notes that, based on global polling, Holocaust denial (those who believe the Holocaust has been exaggerated or is entirely a myth) is extremely low in Europe, including the UK, with the percentage of people subscribing to such beliefs in the low single digits. The highest rate of denial is found, according to the data, in the Palestinian territories, where 82% of the population denies, to varying extents, the Holocaust.

Baddiel seeks to get answers for the extraordinary high rates of Holocaust denial amongst Palestinians, and visits SOAS professor Gilbert Achcar, who published a book titled ‘Arabs and the Holocaust’.

Here’s the exchange between Achcar and Baddeil:
Achcar: I don’t think you can generally, without some degree of… ..pathology, to be frank with you, be a Holocaust denier in Europe. But you can be perfectly sane, mentally, and be a Holocaust denier in the Middle East because of ignorance on the topic and therefore adherence to a view that says, well, the Israelis, the Zionists, have inflated the figures and all that, in order to blackmail Western governments. Whereas, imagine yourself in Gaza, if you are a Palestinian, and being pounded and having had all these wars waged by the Israeli state, killing thousands of people, destroying and all that. When you live there, Holocaust denial is an attitude. It’s not something that… It’s not a belief of people, it’s more a kind of provocative attitude. You are oppressing me every day, how can I hurt you? By denying..

Baddiel: A central part of your identity?


Achcar: Yeah.
From Ian:

The Biden administration’s moral compass on Israel - opinion
It’s been less than a month since new US President Joe Biden has taken over the reins in the White House. And while it seems that Israel and the Middle East are currently not the administration’s top priority as the COVID-19 pandemic remains front and center, the initial hints of changes in policy when it comes to the Jewish state should not be ignored.

This past Thursday, State Department spokesman Ned Price, who serves under current Secretary of State Antony Blinken, was asked about reports that the JNF (KKL-JNF) was considering implementing a new policy to officially purchase private Arab land in Judea and Samaria in order to expand Jewish communities there.

It should be noted that according to an official KKL-JNF press statement, not much will change even if the organization makes things “official” since, “Throughout the years and till this very day, KKL-JNF has been operating in all parts of the land of Israel, including Judea and Samaria.”

Regardless, Price responded:
“We believe it is critical to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and that undercut efforts to advance a negotiated, two-state solution. And unilateral steps might include annexation of territory, settlement activity, demolitions, incitement to violence, the provision of compensation for individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism... ”

It’s disappointing that the failed two-state solution approach might be revived, but perhaps even more disheartening is that Price called for refraining from “settlement activity” in the same breath as compensation for acts of terrorism.

In other words, in the new administration’s view, building kindergartens for Jewish children in Judea is just as big of a peace deterrent as the Palestinian Authority’s “Pay for Slay” program in which terrorists are incentivized and rewarded, along with their families, for murdering Israelis.
Biden Nominee for Top State Dept Post Contributed to Book About How ‘Israel Lobby’ Controls American Politics
President Joe Biden's nominee for a top State Department position played a key role in assembling a book on the nefarious influence of the "Israel lobby" while working for an organization that promoted claims about Jewish media control and dual loyalty to Israel.

As a staffer at the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Uzra Zeya compiled research for a book that argues that "the Israel lobby has subverted the American political process to take control of U.S. Middle East policy" by establishing a secret network of "dirty money" PACs that bribe and extort congressional candidates into taking pro-Israel positions. Zeya, a former U.S. diplomat who was nominated for undersecretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights, worked for the Washington Report and its publishing group, the American Educational Trust, in 1989 and 1990. The news outlet is staunchly anti-Israel and has published articles questioning the national loyalty of American Jews and opposing taxpayer funding to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Zeya's work for the Washington Report and American Educational Trust raises questions about her views on Israel and could become an obstacle during her confirmation hearings. Biden's recent hiring moves on foreign policy and conflicting statements from staffers have made it unclear how his administration plans to approach Israel policy issues. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki recently declined to denounce the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, contradicting statements condemning the movement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the Washington Free Beacon recently reported. Biden also tapped anti-Israel activist Maher Bitar for a top intelligence post and is reportedly considering Matt Duss, an outspoken critic of Israel, for a State Department position.

Sean Durns, a research analyst at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, called the Washington Report a "fringe organization" that has "published content with anti-Semitic themes," including claims that the Mossad was behind the JFK assassination and the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Organizations like the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs have a history of propagating fringe and sometimes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and I think it's absolutely fair for questions to be raised in any sort of potential hearings," said Durns.
David Singer: Action – not platitudes– is required from Jordan’s King Abdullah
Jordan’s King Abdullah continues to engage in platitudes – rather than concrete action - as he pontificates but does nothing to help resolve the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict.

Jordan – called Transjordan between 1922 and 1949:
- Comprises 78% of the territory of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine
- Is the key to resolving the long-running conflict.

Abdullah recently repeated one of his favourite mantras – insisting that peace should be:
"based on the two-state solution that guarantees the establishment of an independent, sovereign, and viable Palestinian state on the 4 June 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital, living in peace and security alongside Israel, in accordance with international law, recognized terms of reference, and the Arab Peace Initiative."

This solution could have been implemented at any time between 1948 and 1967 after Transjordan had conquered and occupied East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria (aka the 'West Bank' since 1950):

Driving out all the Jews living there and refusing to allow their return and
- Unifying those territories with Transjordan into a single territorial entity – renamed “Jordan”.
- That 19 years window of opportunity was squandered after Jordan lost those territories to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War. That opportunity is not going to return – no matter how many times Abdullah continues to repeat it as the solution.

Abdullah also asserts:
“The Palestinian cause is central to Jordan, and we continue to stand alongside our Palestinian brethren with all our power and capabilities as they seek to gain their just and legitimate rights. We are constantly communicating and coordinating with them in this regard”

Talk is cheap – action is necessary.

Abdullah could with the stroke of a pen – preferably with Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) approval - restore Jordanian citizenship to his “Palestinian brethren” living in the West Bank – a status they enjoyed from 1950 until Jordan revoked their citizenship on 28 July 1988 under article 2 of the Jordan: Disengagement Regulations for the Year 1988:

Thursday, February 18, 2021

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: New hate-mongering scandals at UN agency that Biden means to send millions
President Biden, in his obsession with reversing every Trump policy, means to reinstate funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars a year for an agency that teaches Palestinian children to hate “the Enemy” Israel and believe “Jihad is the road of glory.”

UNRWA began producing its own educational material last year to aid at-home learning during the pandemic — and some of its content is more venomous than Palestinian Authority propaganda.

The Jerusalem-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education blew the lid off the scandalous teaching materials in November, revealing they glorified terrorism in the cause of destroying Israel. Canada and Australia opened investigations, but UNRWA claimed it had dealt with the matter internally and replaced the “inappropriate” material.

It didn’t. Though UNRWA blocked access to its material, IMPACT-se found it and released a report Wednesday showing the agency still teaches hate and intolerance to more than 320,000 Palestinian children.

A math problem asks students the number of martyrs from the first intifada. A grammar exercise includes the sentences “The Occupier commits all kinds of torture” and “We are an occupied people.” An Arabic-language lesson has kids write out a text read by a family member that says that “our Arab relatives have sadly recognized our Enemies and began interacting with them,” referring to the Abraham Accords, and insists one day “our Enemies will be banished, God willing, as failing losers.”
Castles in the Air? The American Return to the UN Human Rights Council
The Biden Administration has decided to bring the U.S. back into the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), first as an observer until the end of the year, and presumably as a member beginning in 2022. Secretary of State Blinken explained: "The best way to improve the Council, so it can achieve its potential, is through robust and principled U.S. leadership."

Yet the evidence provides little ground for optimism. In 2009, President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, expressed similar hopes, which were quickly and decisively proven to be unfounded. As a Council member, the U.S. was unable to steer the UN framework into confronting, or even addressing, the horrendous human rights abuses in Syria, Venezuela, China and elsewhere.

In parallel, the anti-Israel demonization exceeded even the previously absurd levels. When the U.S. voted against the latest anti-Israel resolution, it made no difference in the outcome. And when U.S. raised objections after anti-Semitic slurs or the use of the term "Zionist entity" from an Iranian or Syrian official, nothing happened. The structure of the UNHRC is largely impervious to change, reflecting the built-in majority for autocrats and dictatorships.
Netanyahu mourns radio host Limbaugh as ‘a great friend of Israel’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mourned Thursday the death of the US conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh in a tweet from his official account.

“I send my heartfelt condolences to the family of Rush Limbaugh,” Netanyahu wrote.

Though Limbaugh was not focused on foreign policy, he was still staunchly pro-Israel, seeing the country as an ally against terrorism. Netanyahu said, “He was a great friend of Israel and he stood by us through thick and thin, always firm, never wavering.”

“We shall miss him dearly,” Netanyahu said.

In 2001, Limbaugh urged the George W. Bush administration to allow Israel to crush its enemies, citing America’s own suffering following the 9/11 attacks that year.

“Bush is right about ‘defeating’ the Taliban, al Qaeda and other terrorist networks,” Limbaugh wrote at the time. “It is, therefore, necessary that in the pursuit of real and lasting peace, Israel also be free to destroy its enemies — meaning the terrorists and, yes, their sponsors, who are at war with her, and that she do so before they obtain devastating weapons of mass destruction.”

Limbaugh died at the age of 70 Wednesday of lung cancer. He had announced the diagnosis in February 2020.

Zev Chafets, a Jewish biographer who earned rare access to Limbaugh for his 2010 book “An Army of One,” said Limbaugh’s outsize influence and his friendliness with Israel set an example for other talk radio conservatives.

Unflinchingly conservative, wildly partisan, bombastically self-promoting and larger than life, Limbaugh galvanized listeners for more than 30 years with his talent for vituperation and sarcasm.
From Ian:

Iran's Soleimani set up centers to monitor Jews for Zionism - report
The Iranian regime Islamic scholar Ahmed Abedi declared in a bombshell report in early February on Noor TV that the late IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani created centers to spy on Jews in the Islamic Republic.

"Regarding the Jews in this country who spy for Israel, [Soleimani] established centers for monitoring the Zionist spies. He established many such centers,” said Abedi, according to a transcription of the Iranian Noor TV broadcast by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an independent, nonpartisan press-monitoring organization.

The US military killed Soleimani in a January 2020 drone attack. Soleimani was the commander of the Quds force for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The US government accused Soleimani of being the architect of the murders of over 600 Americans in the Middle East. There is estimated to be less than 10,000 Persian Jews in Iran. Iran has a population of nearly 83 million.


JCPA: “The Yemeni Maneuver” – Biden Administration Gives a Free Pass to Iran
Iran has an interest in continuing the fighting in Yemen, which, since the Saudi-led Arab coalition forces were sent to the country has not led to any substantial change in the situation on the ground. The Houthis continue to control most of the territory they have captured, including the important Red Sea port city of Al-Hudaydah and the capital Sanaa. Beyond testing various weapons, the fighting allows Iran to continuously exhaust and attrite Saudi Arabia, its sworn Sunni rival.

The U.S. decision to remove the Houthis from the terror list and halt some Saudi military aid used to attack Houthi targets in Yemen with U.S.-made precision-guided munitions plays into Iran’s hands at the sensitive timing of the possibility of the United States rejoining the nuclear agreement. The decision raises doubt about the seriousness of the United States’ policy statements to “expand and strengthen” the Iran deal to address the issues of ballistic missiles and Iran’s “destabilizing actions in country after country” – two key issues in which Iran “specializes” and which it “exports” Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.

A Test for the Biden Administration in Iraq as Well
To illustrate the depth of Iran’s dilemma for American reintroduced policy in the region, pro-Iranian Iraqi Shi’ite militia linked to Hizbullah-Iraq – Saraya Awlia al-Dam – claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on the Erbil Airport and the adjacent U.S. military base on February 16, 2021. Fragments at the target indicate that 24 Fajr-1 (107 mm) Iranian made rockets were fired. The U.S. Secretary of State denounced the “outrageous attack”10 in which a civilian contractor was killed, and a U.S. service member and five more contractors have been injured. Secretary Blinken acknowledged that in the past, Shiite militias under Iran’s control carried out similar attacks in Iraq, “but for now it is too early to determine who is behind the attack” and that “the incident is under investigation.”11

It is possible that the action is another part of the pressure being exerted by Iran on the United States in the region, and it puts the American administration to its first serious test regarding its willingness to use force against Iran and its allies in the area, alongside its intention to return to the framework of the nuclear agreement.
JINSA PodCast: Crisis in Yemen: Analysis of an Ongoing Civil War
There’s an ongoing crisis in Yemen, financed and fueled by Iran. The Houthi movement, formed around Yemen’s Zaidi Shia Muslim minority, has seen an opening to try to take control of the country amidst the disorganized Hadi government. Why did the Trump Administration designate the Houthis to be a terrorist organization, and why did the Biden Administration reverse this policy? What does Yemen’s civil war have to do with the Iran nuclear deal? All of these questions—and more—are answered in this week’s episode. Erielle interviews Mohammed Alyahya, the current Editor-in-Chief of Al Arabiya in English.


The Tikvah Podcast: Shany Mor on What Makes America’s Peace Processors Tick
The peace process between Israel and the Palestinians has in the last several decades sucked up more American attention, time, and resources than nearly any other conflict in the world. Presidents, cabinet secretaries, national-security officials, and diplomats have poured themselves into solving the problem. These resources have been expended not only because of how Americans perceived the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’s strategic importance to the United States, but perhaps more so because it is a conflict that engages and symbolizes the way Americans see themselves acting in the world.

Despite that huge effort, Americans haven’t succeeded in bringing the Israelis and the Palestinians to any kind of settled arrangement. Furthermore, as the Israeli researcher Shany Mor wrote in this month’s essay in Mosaic, American policymakers seem insistent on returning to the same frameworks of analysis and strategy that have failed systematically time and again. Now Mor joins Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver to explain what’s gone wrong, and to talk about why so many American peace processors think the way they do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

From Ian:

Clifford May: Despots dominate UN agencies
He [Blinken] added: "When it works well, the Human Rights Council shines a spotlight on countries with the worst human rights records and can serve as an important forum for those fighting injustice and tyranny."

But when has the UNHCR ever worked well? Can you think of one country whose record on human rights has improved thanks to the UNHRC? Does anyone believe that the UNHCR's occasional resolutions on North Korea keep Kim Jong-un awake at night? Here's a clue: At a UNHRC session last month, the North Korean envoy took the stage to accuse Australia of "deep-rooted racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia."

Blinken said he believes that "the best way to improve the Council is to engage." But the Obama administration, in which he served, spent eight years engaging with the UNHRC to no effect.

And, again, why not at least demand a few fundamental reforms in exchange for American participation?

For example, why not insist that the UNHRC stop treating Israel as its whipping boy, year after year issuing more condemnatory resolutions against the Jewish state than any other country? The UNHRC aims to de-legitimize Israel, even as Iran's rulers threaten and incite genocide against that nation – a violation of international law about which the UNHRC is silent.

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I understand President Biden's desire to shore up the international order which, not so long ago, could be characterized as liberal and based on equitable rules. But a growing number of the organizations that give the international order structure and substance are now dominated by despots.

That has increased the peril to the world's health, while both distorting and eroding the very concept of human rights. You think most people around the world see through the lies? I'd be pleased to see evidence to suggest that.

Must we continue funding these organizations? Should we consider establishing alternatives? Are we not at least able to disabuse ourselves of the quaint notion that American engagement alone will – as if by wizardry – transform them?
Ruthie Blum: When abundance breeds contempt
In a recent phone call, a friend complained about the pressure that the Israeli government, media and much of the public have been applying to citizens who refuse to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

As someone who felt that she had been virtually "bullied" into getting inoculated, she was protesting, in particular, the latest carrot-and-stick element of the campaign to rid the country of coronavirus: a proposal to grant certain privileges to those possessing the Health Ministry double-dose certificate.

Among the epidemiological benefits being discussed – aside from the existing exemption from quarantine after exposure to infection – are unhindered entrance into malls, theaters, stadiums and other venues when they reopen.

"Why does it matter whether everyone complies?" she asked, pointing to the warning by officialdom that even after full vaccination, the virus can still strike and be spread. As a result, we've been told, mask-wearing and social distancing will continue to be required for a long time.

She clearly hadn't heard the more encouraging research revealing a serious drop in viral load after a single shot – indicating not only a less severe reaction to infection but a lower chance of transmitting the virus to others. Nevertheless, she is not alone in her resentment on behalf of the anti-coronavirus-vaxxers.

This might seem odd to foreigners envious of the fact that more than half Israel's 9-million-strong population has already received the first dose of the vaccine, and about a quarter has gotten both shots, which means that the country is moving steadily towards Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's stated goal of inoculating everyone over the age of 16 by the end of March.
Superman Was There When Jews Needed Him Most
In the Spring of 1938, Cleveland was abuzz with talk of “The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run.” He was never apprehended, although Cleveland’s Public Safety Director — Eliot Ness, of Untouchables fame for nabbing Al Capone — tried his best.

Instead, the date became famous when two teenagers from Cleveland, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who had worked together on their high school newspaper, saw the first publication of their comic strip — subsequently named “Superman.”

Siegel had never quite recovered from seeing his father die of a heart attack after being beaten up in the family store. Shuster earned nickels delivering newspapers.

Their hero, newspaperman Clark Kent — otherwise known as Superman from planet Krypton — was the creation of two Depression-era Jews, the children of poor immigrant parents.

Jerry Siegel later described his motivation for creating the character as, “Hearing and reading of the oppression and slaughter of helpless, oppressed Jews in Nazi Germany … [and] seeing movies depicting the horrors of the downtrodden.”

But did his unconscious inspiration reach further back to the avenger of Jews, the Golem of Prague? And like Moses’ parents, Superman’s parents had launched him, alone on a perilous journey, to escape doom. Superman’s birth name on Krypton was Kal El — in Hebrew, “Voice of God!”

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