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Thursday, December 18, 2008

The truth about the "truce"

I just went back and noted on my November "cease fire" calendar the days during November and the end of October that Israel allowed goods to enter Gaza.

The world has a short memory and seems to think that Israel has been starving Gazans for months. Israel's Foreign Ministry, however, keeps track (usually on a weekly basis) of the goods that were sent into Gaza. For example:

The week of September 7-12, 2008
299 trucks unloaded goods at Sufa crossing.
390 trucks unloaded goods at Karni crossing.
Over 19,655 tons of goods were delivered to the Gaza Strip, including about 2442 tons of cement, and the rest humanitarian aid such as food, medicines, agricultural equipment, and school supplies.
Erez crossing: 97 patients and escorts crossed into Israel for medical treatment.

Fuel (Nahal Oz):
121,000 liters of gasoline
1,199,920 liters of diesel fuel for transportation
2,509,610 liters of heavy diesel fuel for the power station
1,228 tons of cooking gas

In the early days of the truce, when there was still sporadic rocket fire, Israel would routinely close the crossings for a day after every rocket and reopen the crossings the next day. During September and October, when rocket fire virtually ceased, Israel shipped goods almost every weekday except for Jewish holidays. The aid that was shipped was of a much greater variety and quantity than was shipped before the "truce." Looking at the numbers, one can see that each truck from Israel contains between 10 and 20 tons of aid. (Compare the one ton of aid that the Free Gaza freaks say they brought on their last ship to the 5000 tons of aid Israel sent through in December, even in the midst of the rocket barrages.)

In other words, Israel kept to its terms of the truce; increasing the amount of goods to Gaza and only stopping them when rocket fire resumed. Hamas and their useful idiot Western friends are pretending that the current limits on aid are something new, when in fact this has been Israeli policy throughout the six months of the so-called cease-fire.

The cause and effect is clear and consistent: when rockets aren't being shot, Gazans get aid. It is as simple as that, and these facts are documented. Those "peace activists" who pretend to care about Gazans and yet stay silent about the rockets care neither about Gazan lives nor about peace.

The tattered, fake "cease fire" officially ends on Friday.

March 2009 rocket calendar

Q=Qassam (may include Katyusha-style rockets)
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
F=Fatality (F=Gazan, F=Israeli)
(G)=Grad (included in Qassam count, not consistent yet)

M*- Apparently upgraded 120mm mortars
MS=Mortar landing short
P - unnamed "projectiles"
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims

* - Fatal non-rocket attack

K=Katyushas from Lebanon

Mortars are severely undercounted since they simply don't make the news any more.

I'm going to hold off on reporting on humanitarian aid unless Israel starts to withhold it in reaction to rocket attacks. You can otherwise assume that aid gets sent six days a week.

March 2009

All previous calendars here.

Reuters' concept of a "cease-fire"

In an egregious display of redefining a phrase, turning facts around and supporting terror, Reuters reports that those peaceful Palestinian Arabs are considering "extending" their "cease-fire" to include the West Bank:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas are to sound out militant groups on extending a ceasefire with Israel from Gaza to the West Bank, officials said on Wednesday.

Seven paragraphs later:

Olmert spokeswoman Miri Eisin brushed aside the proposal for a wider ceasefire. "We need to see that you can actually implement the ceasefire (in Gaza) before we can consider an extension," she said.

She said Israel has not responded to rocket fire since the ceasefire in Gaza took effect. "It's about time Palestinians deliver on a promise instead of just Israel delivering on ours."

Even if a ceasefire were extended, Eisin said Israel would not back away from its demands that the new Palestinian government recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept interim peace deals.

"Those principles are not for negotiation," she said.

Abbas wants to widen the ceasefire to include a cessation of Israel's West Bank raids and Palestinian attacks from the territory as part of a deal that would free a captive Israeli soldier and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Four paragraphs later:

The November ceasefire largely halted confrontations with Israel in Gaza, although some factions have continued firing rockets into the Jewish state sporadically.

Let's analyze this article, shall we?

Reuters' Nidal al-Mughrabi starts off with the assumption that there has been a cease fire in Gaza since November. A few paragraphs later (not quoted here), he admits that Islamic Jihad never accepted the cease fire. A bit later he quotes an Israeli spokeswoman saying that there was never a cease fire although Israel has refrained from reacting to rocket attacks. And finally in the last paragraph he says that the ceasefire "largely halted" confrontations, although there have been "sporadic" rocket attacks.

As is usual in the wire services, the author is twisting facts and positioning them in such a way as to make it appear that Palestinian Arabs are acting peacefully and that Israel and the PA are equally aggressive and/or restrained. This is the "even-handed" analysis that must shine through in all of AP's and Reuters' articles because their pro-Arab propaganda must outshine the facts, lightly sprinkled within their rhetoric.

There is no cease fire. There never was a cease fire. Palestinian Arab rocket attacks on Israel INCREASED since November compared to earlier months in 2006. Not only Islamic Jihad but Fatah as well have been shooting rockets, almost daily, into Israel. Israel has largely not responded to these attacks but that has not affected their frequency. There were almost-daily rockets throughout December and almost-daily rockets throughout February (I didn't keep a calendar for January.)

There is functionally no distinction between suicide bombings that target innocent civilians and rocket attacks that target innocent civilians - both are terror attacks. The fact that Mughrabi downplays hundreds of rockets and pretends that they are part and parcel of a "cease fire" shows how twisted his facts truly are.

Reuters and Nidal al-Mughrabi are deliberate apologists for terror and they feed hundreds of daily newspapers regular reports that are as skewed and dishonest as this one.

June 2009 rocket calendar

Q=Qassam (may include Katyusha-style rockets)
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
F=Fatality (F=Gazan, F=Israeli)
(G)=Grad (included in Qassam count, not consistent yet)

MS=Mortar landing short
P - unnamed "projectiles"
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims

* - Fatal non-rocket attack

K=Katyushas from Lebanon

June 2009

All earlier rocket calendars here.

7/1 2M
7/16 1Q
8/9 1Q, 2MS

Qassam Rocket calendar - March

As with the February calendar, the numbers for each date represent the number of Qassams fired on that day. The numbers in parentheses are those I saw reported by Palestinian Arab media, outside of parentheses are those reported in Israeli media.

March

Qassam Rocket calendar - February

Here is my best shot at keeping track of when rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza so far this month. On the 8th, 10 were claimed to have been shot by Islamic Jihad but only four or so were recorded as having landed.

The numbers in parentheses are from Palestinian terror group claims, not from Israeli confirmed sources.

Remember that Israel still regards this as being "calm" and has only rarely responded to Gaza terror since the "cease fire" announced in November.

February 2007 Qassam attacks

March calendar here.

Goldstone and diplomacy

Richard Goldstone was interviewed in Tikkun magazine last week:

Q: What are the specific steps that Israel could have taken to stop the shelling of southern Israel before commencing an attack on Gaza?
RG: Well, it could have used greater pressure by diplomatic means. They could have used the security council for that purpose. Israel could have put the security council on notice and said "if you don't stop this, if you don't do something to stop it, we will have to resort as a last resort to military means." But in our report we didn't question the right of Israel to use military force.

Q: Do you think Israel could have succeeded in stopping the bombing of Sderot had it gone to the Security Council?

RG: Well, I don't know. If it didn't work, then I have got no doubt that Israel was entitled to take a strong action to put a stop to the firing of rockets and mortars and has a duty to its own population to protect them.

Military force should be the very last resort. I think it is arguable here that other diplomatic means could have worked. If they didn't work then the last resort is to use force, and whether it is military or policing action force, Israel was entitled to take active steps.

In a previous interview Goldstone also said that he felt that Israel should have gone to the Security Council to stop the rockets.

As Yaacov Lazowick points out, Israel did do exactly that.

Since September of 2000 Israel has written dozens upon dozens of official letters to the UN complaining about incessant terror attacks including rocket attacks. The earliest mention I see of specific Qassam attacks is from 2003, although I'm sure there are earlier ones; in the context of the suicide bombing campaigns (that the UN did nothing to stop) the Qassam references are a bit harder to find. But from 2005 and on, Israel has brought Qassam attacks to the attention of the Security Council and these letters are available in the UN archives. For example, from 2006:

Identical letters dated 3 October 2006 from the Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General and the President of the Security Council

I write to inform you of the continued firing of Qassam rockets into Israel by Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip over the weekend.
On the eve of 30 September 2006, three civilians were moderately injured after a Qassam rocket was fired by Palestinian terrorists at the southern Israeli city of Sderot. Another 10 civilians were treated for shock in the aftermath of the terrorist attack. Reports of this attack were conveyed orally to the Department of Political Affairs, as well as to the presidency of the Security Council, on Sunday, 1 October 2006.

Nonetheless, the firing of Qassam rockets continued into the holiday of Yom Kippur, which was observed in Israel yesterday. Synagogue services in the Sderot area were rudely interrupted by the blare of sirens, as Qassam rockets launched from inside Gaza pierced Israel’s southern skies. Fortunately, no one was hurt during the attacks.

The unceasing terrorist attacks, and in particular the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year in the Jewish calendar, are an affront to the sovereignty of the State of Israel. Furthermore, the continuation of Palestinian terror and violence deteriorates the prospects for peace in the region. If such terrorist attacks continue, Israel will be forced to exercise its right of self-defence.

I should be grateful if you would arrange to have the text of this letter circulated as a document of the General Assembly under agenda items 13 and 14, and of the Security Council.

(Signed) Dan Gillerman
Ambassador
Permanent Representative

I count over 20 such letters since 2005. This doesn't count the many other mentions that Israel made of rocket attacks in various UN sessions, nor the official letters written about other terror attacks that also mentioned rockets and mortars.

In short, Israel has used every diplomatic means at its disposal to stop Qassam rocket attacks...for years. Goldstone's ignorance of that fact is, unfortunately, typical.

Today, the Arabic press is reporting that Hamas is actively trying to stop Qassam rockets from being fired from Gaza.

From Ma'an:

The Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip has actively prevented armed groups from launching shells from into Israel over the past few days, according the London-based newspaper Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday.

Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat’s Arabic website quoted sources in the resistance groups in Gaza saying, “Hamas security services have detained two militants while they were preparing to fire homemade projectiles towards Israel. They were questioned and released after a couple of hours.”

Hamas security confiscated the projectiles and warned the militants of carrying out new attempts, the sources added. Hamas has also prevented major factions like the Islamic Jihad from launching attacks, according to the sources.

“Hamas wants a de facto ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, and fears that the ceasefire will collapse if militant groups resume attacks against Israeli towns,” the sources added.

Hamas government official Ahmad Yousef confirmed in a recent interview with Ma’an that authorities are actively maintaining a ceasefire.

So, what was more effective in protecting Israeli citizens from incessant and constant Qassam rocket attacks...diplomacy or military action? Even as Goldstone claims that Israel would have been entitled to take military action had it done what he wasn't aware it had done, he has no clue on how it could have been done effectively:

Q: So once deciding to attack, the question gets raised: Is there any way to fight a war against terrorists that would not result in deaths and casualties of civilians, assuming that urban terrorists have located themselves in the midst of the population?
RG: You know, commando actions could have been taken.

This is what happens when you send someone to investigate military actions who knows nothing about the military. Commando actions? Against Qassam rockets?

In the minds of some wishful thinkers, it is possible to have a surgically clean war, where infinite intelligence and infinite technology can pick out the bad guys (only the bad guys who are actually in the process of shooting at you, of course) and not damage any property that belongs to civilians.

Israel, the one nation that spends a higher percentage of its military budget (and solders' time) on protecting enemy civilians than any other nation in history, gets slammed for not doing it better. The fact that no one can come up with any way to actually do it better is apparently not relevant.

Is Israel winning the media war?

Backspin has solicited bloggers, asking how Israel is doing on the PR front.

The short answer is that Israel is doing a stellar job in the media war, and it is still losing.

For long-time critics of Israel's hasbara, this operation has been huge improvement. The Twitter page, the IDF Spokesperson's blog, the IsraelPolitik blog, the YouTube page, the pro-active sending of articulate spokespeople from across Israel's political spectrum to TV news and talk shows - all of these are way overdue and, more importantly, they have not made mistakes. On the contrary, Israel's PR is now releasing relevant videos the same day, not weeks later; they are answering questions and refuting false allegations in real time and not after the falsehoods have had the chance to dominate for three or five news cycles.

My only criticisms of Israel's PR efforts is relatively minor:

- The Foreign Ministry home page is still very poorly organized and hard to navigate. That should be the central repository of relevant materials, but as it is, it is much less useful.

- I would also love to retire my rocket calendar, and I knowI am undercounting - especially in regard to mortars and Grads. The Israeli government should have a searchable database with accurate information on Qassams, mortars, Grads, and variants like the "rocket mortars," plus all terror attacks, dates, injuries, victim names, pictures, and links. If I could do as much as I have done in minutes a day, they could do it right.

These quibbles notwithstanding, it has been incredible to see things done right. There is no doubt that Israel's current hasbara efforts have been effective and that they help fair-minded people understand what is going on. Personally, they also help free me up from spending time trying to counter basic arguments and going on to more creative ways of helping spread the truth.

Unfortunately, I cannot say that they are "winning," and in fact it is impossible to win at this time. The sheer number of rabidly anti-Israel news and Web 2.0 outlets and anti-Israel protests and letters to the editor - all parroting the same lies to their varied audiences - makes "winning" a most difficult proposition. A simple word search of the word "Zionist" in Google news unleashes a torrent of vitriol, anti-semitism and pure loathing. Nothing that Israel does can combat the sheer amount of hatred that exists.

I have no doubt that most European governments (and a fair number of Arab regimes) are privately very happy that Israel is going after Hamas, and they hope that this will become a great victory against Islamic terror. Yet most of the European heads of state are not going to publicly "take sides." The conditioning from years of ingrained bias makes support of Israel quite unpopular. They are hoping that Israel ignores the media-fueled hate and "international rpessure" and does what has to be done. But they cannot avoid being a part of that same pressure, which feeds the anti-Israel media, and continues the cycle.

That doesn't mean that Israel's hasbara efforts are useless. They are very effective, and admirable. But to say that Israel can "win" the PR war in one battle is very premature. It would take years of Israelis unapologetically stating their case, over and over again, without the dissent that causes such cheer in the Israel-bashing press, before anyone can consider thinking about a "victory."

Only when the environment is changed to where Zionists in major European cities can rally for Israel with no fear of being physically hurt by anti-semites, only when there are just as many passionately pro-Israel people on message boards and talkbacks as Israel-bashers, can we start talking about a PR win in the West.

August rocket calendar

G=Grad
Q=Qassam
M=Mortar
P=Unidentified projectile (includes mortars)
R=Unidentified rocket
S=Fell short in Gaza
E=fell in Egypt
F=Fatality (Green-Gaza, Red-Israel)
[] - Palestinian claims

August 2011

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
	1 1Q	2	3 2G	4 1Q	5	6
7	8 3M	9	10	11	12	13
14 1Q	15 1G	16	17	18 4G	19 30R	20 64R F _F_
21 35R 5M 8RE 1GS	22 6Q 1G	23 [6M]	24 1RE 17R 2M	25 5R	26 2Q	27
28 1G 1Q	29 1Q	30	31 2Q

April rocket calendar

G=Grad
Q=Qassam
M=Mortar
P=Unidentified projectile (includes mortars)
R=Unidentified rocket
S=Fell short in Gaza
F=Fatality (Green-Gaza, Red-Israel)
[] - Palestinian claims

April 2011

Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
					1	2
3	4 1Q	5 1Q	6	7 45P (1G) 4Q	8 22M 4Q	9 38R (15G) 20M
10 13R	11	12	13 [2P]	14	15 2G	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30

May 2009 rocket calendar

Q=Qassam (may include Katyusha-style rockets)
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
F=Fatality (F=Gazan, F=Israeli)
(G)=Grad (included in Qassam count, not consistent yet)

MS=Mortar landing short
P - unnamed "projectiles"
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims

* - Fatal non-rocket attack

K=Katyushas from Lebanon

May 2009

April 2009 rocket calendar

Q=Qassam (may include Katyusha-style rockets)
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
F=Fatality (F=Gazan, F=Israeli)
(G)=Grad (included in Qassam count, not consistent yet)

MS=Mortar landing short
P - unnamed "projectiles"
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims

* - Fatal non-rocket attack

K=Katyushas from Lebanon

April 2009

January Rocket Calendar

Q=Qassam (may include Katyusha-style rockets)
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
F=Fatality (F=Gazan, F=Israeli)
(G)=Grad (included in Qassam count, not consistent yet)

M*- Apparently upgraded 120mm mortars
MS=Mortar landing short
P - unnamed "projectiles"
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims

* - Fatal non-rocket attack

K=Katyushas from Lebanon

Mortars are severely undercounted since they simply don't make the news any more.

Yellow=day Israel sent aid to Gaza

January 2009

Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
				1	2	3
				59Q (9G) 5M	41Q (4G) 5M	28Q 10M
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
50Q 5M	39Q(4G) 5M	30Q 3M	24Q(8G) 1M	30Q 4K	30Q (7G)	16Q (4G)
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
28Q (3G)	20Q (3G) 3M	18Q 5M	11Q 5M 3K	29Q (3G)	21Q (3G) 4M	27Q 4M
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
("CeaseFire") 13Q (3G) 4M		8MS
25	26	27	28	29	30	31
(1QS)		*	1Q (7M)	1Q	(1M)	1G
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
4Q 8M	3M 1Q	1Q(1G)

A day without yellow doesn't necessarily mean the crossings were closed; I just may not have seen the reports of them being specifically open.

January 27 the crossings were closed immediately after a fatal attack on an IDF patrol outside Gaza during the day, but goods didget transferred in the morning.

All previous calendars here.

February Rocket Calendar

Q=Qassam (may include Katyusha-style rockets)
QS=Qassam landing short in Gaza
M=Mortar
F=Fatality (F=Gazan, F=Israeli)
(G)=Grad (included in Qassam count, not consistent yet)

M*- Apparently upgraded 120mm mortars
MS=Mortar landing short
P - unnamed "projectiles"
(Paren) indicates unconfirmed Palestinian claims

* - Fatal non-rocket attack

K=Katyushas from Lebanon

Mortars are severely undercounted since they simply don't make the news any more.

Yellow=day Israel sent aid to Gaza

February 2009

Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
4Q 8M	3M 1Q	1Q(1G)	1M		2Q
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
2Q		(crossings closed election day) 1Q	3M		3Q	2M
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
1Q	2Q		1Q	4Q 1M 1QS	1Q 10M	1Q 2M 1K 1KS
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
1Q	2Q		2Q	3Q	1Q	10Q (2G)

A day without yellow doesn't necessarily mean the crossings were closed; I just may not have seen the reports of them being specifically open.

All previous calendars here.

05/27 Links Pt1: IMF Realism About the West Bank and Gaza; ISIS: The Borg of the Middle East

From Ian:

Michael Totten: The Borg of the Middle East

ISIS has conquered Syria’s spectacular Roman Empire city of Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage site long known affectionately as the “bride of the desert,” and in all likelihood is gearing up to demolish it. We know this because they’ve done it before. ISIS used hammers, bulldozers, and explosives to destroy the ancient Iraqi cities of Hatra and Nimrud near Mosul, and they did it on video.
“These ruins that are behind me,” said an ISIS vandal on YouTube, “they are idols and statues that people in the past used to worship instead of Allah. The Prophet Muhammad took down idols with his bare hands when he went into Mecca. We were ordered by our prophet to take down idols and destroy them, and the companions of the prophet did this after this time, when they conquered countries.”
Muslims have ruled this part of the world for more than 1,000 years. All this time, they’ve been unbothered by the fact that Palmyra, Hatra, and Nimrud include pagan monuments, temples, statues, and inscriptions that predate Islam. Only now are these places doomed to annihilation. ISIS is more belligerently Philistine than any group that has inhabited the region for a millennium. The only modern analogue is the Taliban’s destruction of the ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan with anti-aircraft guns, artillery shells and dynamite in March 2001, mere months before their al-Qaida pals attacked New York City and Washington.
This attitude toward history harks back less to the seventh century than to the twentieth, when Pol Pot reset the calendar to Year Zero after the Khmer Rouge seized power in Cambodia, and when Mao Zedong’s Chinese Cultural Revolution murdered millions in the war against everything “old.”

JPost Editorial: Unhealthy resolution

WHO’s annual assembly last week condemned Israel for “violating the health rights of Syrians in the Golan.”
This is a travesty in every conceivable aspect. While the bloodbath in the region continues unabated, the international forum has found nothing else worth focusing upon but Israel. Only Israel was singled out by the WHO assembly.
This comes despite the fact that Israeli medics and hospitals provide indisputably altruistic treatment to spiraling numbers of civilians and enemy combatants from Syria, fleeing that country’s killing fields. The most cutting- edge medical care is given critically wounded victims who reach the Golan border.
But most disheartening of all is the fact that this disgraceful resolution was adopted in Geneva by a whopping majority of 104 to 4, with 6 abstentions and 65 no-shows. Israel, unjustly accused and unjustly convicted in another UN kangaroo court, was condemned even by European delegations, which purport to occupy the high moral ground – although they ought to know all about blood libel.
Gallingly, the Syrian government – which has been mass-murdering its own citizens – submitted a document that urged WHO to “intervene immediately and take effective measures to end inhuman Israeli practices that target the health of Syrian citizens.”

Elliott Abrams: IMF Realism About the West Bank and Gaza

The report then usefully compares the Palestinian situation to that in other countries that were dependent on aid—but made real progress.
Several countries with similarly high aid flows have successfully reduced aid dependency. Examples include Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda and Botswana. Ghana, Mozambique and Rwanda still receive very high aid flows today, but aid ratios to government spending have fallen in all three countries in recent years. Botswana was one of the poorest countries in the world at the time of its independence in 1966, when it relied on grants from Britain for development and most of its recurrent spending. Although aid provided critical resources in the early years of independence, its role declined over time, and by 2006/7 it accounted for less than 2 percent of GDP.
Why recount all of this?
In the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations the United States has sought a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the PLO, and failed to achieve this time after time. There has been a real opportunity cost from this search for a final status agreement complete with handshakes on the White House lawn and Nobel prizes. The cost has been that we focused solely on the diplomatic process and largely ignored real life as it is lived by Palestinians, and might be improved. The IMF report shows that much could be done, even within current constraints, to improve the Palestinian economy. It’s undramatic, the details are boring, and some of the analyses are technical. No prizes, no time on the evening news. But that is how Palestinian institutions will be built, and how the institutions of a state must come into existence—not at the State Department and not at the United Nations.
The IMF report is a reminder that speeches, great conferences, and dramatic donor pledges (that are never met) do not benefit the Palestinians. And of course efforts to hurt the Israeli economy through boycotts will not help but will actually harm the Palestinians as well. It is long past time to take a more serious approach, and the IMF’s report shows some ways this could be done if the genuine goal is progress rather than taking credit and casting blame.

04/19 Links Pt1: How Palestinians Desecrate Everyone's Holy Sites, Including Their Own; A Revived Iran Deal Is Bad News for Democracy

From Ian:

How Palestinians Desecrate Everyone's Holy Sites, Including Their Own

"We salute every drop of blood spilled for the sake of Jerusalem. This blood is clean, pure blood, shed for the sake of Allah. Every martyr will be placed in Paradise, and all the wounded will be rewarded by Allah." — Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, MEMRI, September 16, 2015.

The small number of Jews who have peacefully toured the outdoor Temple Mount area in the past few years have never even set foot inside the Aqsa Mosque or on the nearby Dome of the Rock. The Jewish visitors do not go there to assault or humiliate Muslims. They go there as part of organized tours that are coordinated with the Israeli authorities.

Blinken's remarks show that he considers the construction of new homes for Jews more dangerous than the murder of Israelis on the streets of Israeli cities.

This is all happening while the Biden administration airily disregards endless Palestinian blood libels and vicious incitement against both Israel and the Jews.

Prominently, Blinken did not threaten to suspend US financial aid to the Palestinians over the payments to the families of terrorists who murdered Jews and the ongoing incitement to attack Israelis.

Take note: as long as Blinken considers the construction of apartments for Jews a greater threat than shooting and stabbing Israeli men and women at shopping malls and bars, the Palestinians will not cease their blood payments and murderous incitement.

Unless the US administration makes it unmistakably clear that the Palestinians will pay dearly for continuing to reward terrorists and their families, the Palestinians will not even slow down either desecrating holy sites or committing their terror attacks.

David Singer: Jew-hatred in Jerusalem

Jordan’s failure to promote interfaith relations between Muslims and Jews has once again witnessed rioting on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

More than 400 Arabs were arrested and more than 150 wounded by Israeli police – reacting to lethal rocks and other objects being stockpiled inside the Mosque and stones being thrown at Jews worshipping below at Judaism’s holiest site – the Western Wall.

Jordan and Israel committed to undertake the following obligations under the terms of article 9 of their 1994 Peace Treaty:

1.Each Party will provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance.

2.In this regard, in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.

3.The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.

Jordan has done little to promote interfaith relations with Jews – whilst actively promoting interfaith relations with Christians.

Hamas-Led Militant Groups Create Strife at Al-Aqsa Mosque

Having partially succeeded in creating a short-lived crisis on Friday, militant groups refrained from responding militarily after their self-imposed red lines were crossed by Israeli police activity on the grounds and inside Al-Aqsa Mosque.

It remains unclear if it was behind the scenes mediation, effective handling of the rioting or both that prevented the clashes from snowballing into a wider conflict.

However, a Western official who spoke to FDD’s Long War Journal cautioned there could be more violence in the coming days.

Hamas often exploits events in the West Bank and Israel. Added to the recent anti-terrorism operations by Israeli security forces that has claimed the lives of a number of militants, manufacturing a crisis at Al-Aqsa Mosque benefits Hamas by further destabilizing the already tense security situation left in the wake of four high-profile terrorist attacks inside of Israel.

Though Palestinian militant organizations seem to have been careful in not responding militarily from Gaza, it’s unlikely these conditions will remain if further violence continues.

Hamas official Zaher Jabarin echoed this assessment on Hezbollah-linked Al-Mayadeen on Sunday when he warned that if Israel continued to cross red lines at Al-Aqsa Mosque, the organization would respond militarily.

Zaher added the response would not necessarily come from Gaza or the West Bank, suggesting the Resistance Axis in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen or Iraq could also launch an assault.