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Sunday, January 10, 2021

01/10 Links: What Amnesty International gets wrong about Israel’s vaccine programme; Is J Street Misrepresenting Its Real Mission?; How is technology and data helping Israel become the first country to vanquish Covid-19?

From Ian:

What Amnesty International gets wrong about Israel’s vaccine programme
Meanwhile, the Ramallah administration was lagging behind. Having squandered sackfuls of public money over the years on everything from mansions for its leaders to payments for terrorists, while propped up by billions of aid dollars, its finances were not in good shape. And it suffered from a fundamental lack of coordination between different arms of the government.

Corruption, factionalism, a lack of proper elections – Mahmoud Abbas is currently 16 years into a four-year term – and incompetence had resulted in a government that often struggled to meet the basic needs of its citizens.

Speaking off-the-record as Israel moved towards vaccinating a million-and-a-half people, a senior PA official said earlier this week that given the sluggish progress, he would not rule out asking the Jewish state for help. When asked whether he had done so already, he paused before muttering: ‘yes and no’.

In truth, Palestinian liaison officials had already quietly contacted Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) department to request the vaccine. The Israelis had agreed to help. Assisting the Palestinians made sense, since it was vital to maintain a degree of goodwill in coordination between the two sides on the West Bank.

According to Israel’s state broadcaster, ‘dozens’ of doses were then secretly delivered into Palestinian hands, enough for the most prominent members of the leadership – though exactly who received the jabs remains unknown. The operation was shrouded in secrecy. Partly, this was due to Palestinian shame at going cap-in-hand to Israel. Partly, it was to avoid appearing nepotistic and incompetent to ordinary Palestinians who were waiting with mounting frustration for news about the vaccine.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health had no idea about the secret delivery. In a statement, it denied that the episode had taken place. Then, in a sign of the confusion at the heart of government in Ramallah, it conceded that Israel had made an ‘informal’ offer of 20 doses on a trial basis – though it claimed that the Palestinians had turned the proposal down.

Seen in this light, the picture bears little resemblance to the narrative pushed by the likes of Amnesty International. The Palestinians neither expected nor requested help from Israel. They held no sense of grievance, even as hand-wringing commentators from overseas sought to stir up resentment by reporting that a great injustice had been done.

Palestinians appear to be seen by some as an infantilised people in need of Western intervention. But this is certainly not how they see themselves.
The Media’s New Anti-Israel Slander — Vaccines
Israel’s extraordinary success in speedily vaccinating its population has been lauded globally. As of this writing, almost 13% of Israelis have already received the first COVID-19 vaccine — well over a million people in just a couple of weeks.

However, while many in the media are looking at Israel’s vaccination drive as an example to be followed, others are using it as one more excuse to bash the Jewish state.

Media outlets including the Washington Post, NPR, and the notoriously anti-Israel British paper The Guardian have run spurious and arguably libelous headlines asserting that Israel is preventing Palestinians from being vaccinated. “Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers” read one Guardian headline.

Unfortunately, due to the media’s obsession with proving Israel’s bad faith and the Palestinians’ victimhood, they cannot praise Israel without a backhanded snipe at the Jewish state.

However, the truth of the matter is that this story about Israel supposedly withholding coronavirus vaccines is simply another malicious media attack.

First, regardless of all the good that Israel does in the world, inevitably the haters step forward to paint Israel as evil. They cannot afford for Israel to receive credit, because it will demolish the fallacious anti-Israel foundations they have built.

Former Knesset member Einat Wilf put it best on Twitter when she wrote: “Israel advances status of GBTQ? ‘Pinkwashing.’ Israelis lead world as vegans? ‘Veganwashing.’ Israel sets up first mobile hospital in devastated Haiti? ‘Harvesting organs.’ Israel is global vaccination leader? ‘What about Palestinians?’”
Amb. Alan Baker: Is J Street Misrepresenting Its Real Mission?
According to its website, the Congressional lobbying organization calling itself “J Street” was established “to serve as the political home and voice for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” through “organizing pro-Israel and pro-peace Americans to promote U.S. policies that embody our deeply held Jewish and democratic values and that help secure the State of Israel as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people.”

In its founding aims and principles, J Street declares its overriding aim as “reshaping political perceptions of what it means to be pro-Israel.”

The first and evidently central provision of J Street’s basic principles acknowledges that Israel faces enemies, and J Street expresses support for Israel to defend itself and live in security and peace within internationally recognized boundaries.

However, J Street’s political manifesto detailed on its website would appear to run counter – and even to undermine – any such sentiments.

On the one hand, J Street presents itself and is perceived by many naïve elements within the Jewish and non-Jewish communities as a genuine lobbying organization with the veneer of supporting Israel and expressing concern for its welfare. But, on the other hand, one can nevertheless see, behind the misleading platitudes and sweeping statements in its manifesto, that J Street’s substantive political viewpoint is openly radical and partisan, identifying itself clearly with the Palestinian narrative, and aligning itself with other openly critical-of-Israel organizations such as the Israel Policy Forum, Brookings, and the International Crisis Group. J Street has failed to welcome and promote the normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states, apparently because they downgrade the urgency J Street feels for a Palestinian state. The organization has actively lobbied against military aid to those Arab states that normalized relations.

Saturday, December 19, 2020

12/19 Links: Problem-solver Jared Kushner’s biggest win was Middle East peace; Obama trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes — lefty media didn't notice; Occupied Territories Bill in Ireland Is Dead on Arrival

From Ian:

Problem-solver Jared Kushner’s biggest win was Middle East peace
Of all the problems President Trump threw at senior adviser Jared Kushner, developing a peace plan for the Middle East was the toughest, a win that has eluded administrations for years.

For the Jewish adviser, bringing peace to Israel was personal. And any victory would provide the administration with an everlasting legacy in the region and the world.

He ignored the ridicule of former administration officials when he took a different and secretive path, as he had on several other projects.

“If you look up the definition of an impossible objective in the dictionary, people say Middle East peace. It's almost a metaphor for impossibility,” he told Secrets.

Kushner built a plan that had a big economic and prosperity push, and while many in Washington brushed it off, it has taken root in the region.

And it set the stage for the Abraham Accords, which has led four former foes ⁠— the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco ⁠— to sign peace agreements with Israel.

“We took a very different approach, and this isn't a rebuke of Democrats, it's a rebuke of maybe more of the foreign policy people who've come before because they're Republicans and Democrats, and for years, they did this dance and didn't get results. Then, those were the people who criticized me the loudest for doing things differently than the way they did. I was like, 'Wait, so you want me to accomplish a different result than you got, but you want me to do the exact same way that you tried?'” he said.

Joel Rosenberg, a bestselling author, editor of All Israel News and All Arab News, and a roving diplomat, called Kushner one of “the most innovative and successful Middle East peace brokers in history.”
FDD: Occupied Territories Bill in Ireland Is Dead on Arrival
Amid a COVID-19-induced economic recession, Irish independent Senator Frances Black has revived a draft law targeting Israel after a previous failed attempt. The Occupied Territories Bill, if enacted, could have disastrous consequences for U.S. economic relations with Ireland – and Ireland itself.

The Occupied Territories Bill seeks to criminalize trade in goods and services produced in Israeli settlements. When the bill was initially introduced in January 2018, it triggered a sharp denouncement from the Irish government and U.S. policymakers.

During the 32nd session of the Irish parliament, which was dissolved in January 2020, the bill reached the seventh of 10 steps toward becoming law. Unpassed bills typically lapse at the end of Ireland’s parliamentary session and must begin the process anew in the subsequent session. However, Black succeeded in now having the bill reinstated at the same stage during the 33rd session.

If enacted, the bill could force U.S. companies with an Irish division or subsidiary to choose between one of two costly options: violate Irish law by continuing to do business with companies and persons in Israeli settlements, or violate U.S. law by participating in a foreign boycott not endorsed by the U.S. government. Major U.S. companies, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, employ over 155,000 people in Ireland. All four of these corporations have substantial research and development centers in Israel. Not only would these and other U.S. companies risk running afoul of U.S. federal law prohibiting compliance with an unsanctioned boycott, they would also be violating nearly two dozen U.S. state laws that prohibit unauthorized boycotts against Israel.

The bill has already received sharp criticism from officials of Ireland’s two leading political parties, as well as bipartisan criticism from the U.S. Congress. Earlier this year, Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin of Ireland’s Fianna Fail party asserted that the bill would violate EU trade regulations by undermining the European Union’s exclusive right to determine trade policy for its member states.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney of the Fine Gael party has made similar assertions. In addition, Irish Attorney General Séamus Woulfe weighed in that the bill would be “impractical” to enforce.
Obama trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes — lefty media didn't notice
The words leap out and grab you. Former President Barack Obama characterizes no other world leader in anything like the terms he reserves for former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

In his recent memoir, Obama tells us that Sarkozy is a “quarter Greek Jew.” Little wonder, then, that Sarkozy has “dark, expressive, Mediterranean features,” which resemble the exaggerated, often distorted figures “of a Toulouse-Lautrec painting.”

Little wonder, too, that he is “all emotional outbursts and overblown rhetoric,” while his conversation, which reflects unbridled ambition and incessant pushiness, “swoops from flattery to bluster to genuine insight.”

One might have thought Obama was deliberately directing at Sarkozy the insults notoriously hurled at Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), the first person of Jewish birth to become Britain’s prime minister. The colonial administrator Lord Cromer said of Disraeli that he was driven by “a tenacity of purpose” that was “a Jewish characteristic.” With his swarthy, “Oriental features,” Disraeli was consumed by an “addiction” to the “passionate outbursts” and “excesses of flattery” that were the hallmarks of his “nimble-witted” race.

Cromer’s taunts, which Obama so uncannily echoes, were hardly unusual. On the contrary, the traits Obama attributes to Sarkozy — from oily complexion to pushy, self-centered assertiveness — were at the heart of the anti-Semitic caricature of the Jew that crystallized, with murderous consequences, in the 19th century.

That history makes calling Sarkozy a Jew vastly different from noting, say, that Angela Merkel’s father was a Lutheran pastor; and if anti-Semitism involves using the label “Jew” to evoke, emphasize or explain an interrelated complex of unattractive attributes, Obama’s description of Sarkozy is unquestionably anti-Semitic.

Yet from The New York Times to The Washington Post and beyond, not one of the gushing reviews considered Obama’s statement even worth mentioning.

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

12/16 Links Pt1: Sohrab Ahmari: Trump’s peace deals mean the anti-Israel boycott movement is dead; Gulf normalization isn’t about fearing Iran, it’s about embracing Israel

From Ian:

Sohrab Ahmari: Trump’s peace deals mean the anti-Israel boycott movement is dead
The BDSers achieved a measure of success, in Europe especially. Performing artists would often cancel concerts in Israel under BDS pressure — and sometimes lead the charge, as in the case of the likes of Tilda Swinton, Roger Waters and Coldplay’s Chris Martin. European theaters would refuse to host Jewish (not even Israeli) film festivals, even as BDSers preposterously insisted that their movement isn’t anti-Semitic. Western universities or individual departments would mount academic boycotts of Israel. Then, last year, in perhaps the most alarming move, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU states must label West Bank products as “made in settlements.”

Was Israel’s economy ever in serious peril? Probably not. Europe remains the Jewish state’s biggest trade partner, though boycotts and labeling could bite if widened to include firms that operate in Israel or Palestinian territories. The real danger, however, was moral-cum-political. If BDS succeeded, it would make permanent Israel’s status as an abnormal country, rather than a normal fixture of the Mideast map. That would demoralize the Israeli people and compound the hostility they already face in global forums like the United Nations.

Well, so much for all that. Today, a little more than a year since the EU labeling decision, you can find Israeli products — prominently displayed, sometimes with Israeli flags to promote them — on the shelves of grocery stores in the United Arab Emirates.

How far can BDS go in a world where once-sworn enemies of the Jewish state enjoy Israeli citrus products and myriad cultural exchanges? Who exactly do Western champions of the Arabs represent, when the Arabs themselves want to live peacefully alongside Israel and accept the Jewish state’s fundamental legitimacy? Isn’t it more than a bit condescending for, say, Roger Waters — place of birth: Great Bookham, Surrey, England — to tell Arabs whom they can do business with?

To be clear, I’m not suggesting BDS will disappear tomorrow. The wider Arab world is making peace with Israel, but Palestinian leaders aren’t about to give up what is admittedly a very nice grift: billions of dollars in international aid in exchange for refusing to accept reality. BDS helps lend a veneer of global credibility to their rejectionism. And fanatic college professors and students can always use “anti-Zionism” to mask old-fashioned hatred, singling out one state and one state only — the one that happens to be Jewish — for opprobrium.

But the fact remains that the Abraham Accords have revealed a silly side to the BDS movement: For God’s sake, when Sudan, once one of the world’s most virulently anti-Israel states, has made its peace with Jerusalem, BDS looks like a boutique cause for gentry leftists, the kind who put their pronouns in their Twitter bios. The real world — and the Middle East — have just moved on.
Sudan revokes citizenship of Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, dealing blow to terror groups
In a blow to the Islamic movement in Gaza and other terror organizations, Sudan is revoking the citizenship of former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal along with 3,000 other citizenships that were granted to foreigners, according to several reports in Arab media.

The Sudanese government made this change as part of its being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, in a clear indication that it will fight terrorism rather than support it. The news was widely reported in Sudan and other Arabic media.

Earlier, Meshaal had expressed his dissatisfaction with the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel.

After the demise of the previous Sudanese regime, which was supportive of Islamist and terrorist movements including Hamas, the new government has been attempting to change Sudan’s image as a shelter and conduit for terrorists. The revoking of citizenship from foreigners with links to Islamic and terrorist movements is a step in that direction.

Sudan is also now requiring a visa for Syrians before entering the country in order to prevent the flow of terrorists into Sudan.

In recent decades, Sudan was designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States for hosting Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other wanted terrorists. Hamas used the country as a funnel for smuggling Iranian weapons to Palestinians in Gaza between 2009-2012.

Sudan was removed from the list of state sponsors of terror after the new regime has made efforts in combating terrorism in cooperation with the American administration under the supervision of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Gulf normalization isn’t about fearing Iran, it’s about embracing Israel
“You think you have chutzpah? We have chutzpah.”

It was an unexpected line from a senior Emirati official, delivered recently in an off-the-record video conference call between current and former Israeli and Emirati officials.

The conversation had turned to business ties, innovation and the cultural differences between the two countries. The official wanted to explain something important about the new Israeli-Arab normalization agreements that Abu Dhabi had helped start: not only why they are happening, but why they seem so inexplicably warm and genuine.

The United Arab Emirates is most visible in this regard, but it isn’t the only one. Bahrain, too, is investing in a warm peace. And Sudan, while agonizing over the step itself — a breach of decades of ideological commitments vis-à-vis the Palestinians — has shown signs of wanting the normalization to reap more benefits than mere diplomatic contact or its removal from the US terror sponsors list.

There is no shortage of benefits that have accrued to the countries that normalized relations with Israel in the waning days of the Trump administration. The Emiratis asked for F-35s, the Moroccans recognition of their claim over Western Sahara, the Sudanese an end to their 27-year stay on the terror list and protection from lawsuits linked to the previous regime.

Thursday, November 26, 2020

11/26 Link Pt2: Obama’s revisionist ‘Promised Land’; 22% of hate crimes in Europe in 2019 were against Jews, report shows; Exporting Racism: The latest slander against Israel

From Ian:

Obama’s revisionist ‘Promised Land’
I have never criticized former U.S. President Barack Obama publicly—neither during my time in the Knesset nor anywhere else—despite my having disagreed with many of his policies. I am of the strong opinion that Israelis should not engage in or interfere with American politics, and I regularly offer a blanket thank you to all American presidents, including Obama, for their economic and military support for Israel.

However, his memoir, A Promised Land, is filled with historical inaccuracies that I feel the need to address. His telling of Israel’s story (at the beginning of Chapter 25) not only exhibits a flawed understanding of the region—which clearly impacted his policies as president—but misleads readers in a way that will forever shape their negative perspective of the Jewish state.

Obama relates, for example, how the British were “occupying Palestine” when they issued the Balfour Declaration calling for a Jewish state. But labeling Great Britain as an “occupier” clearly casts doubt on its legitimacy to determine anything about the future of the Holy Land—and that wasn’t the situation.

While it is true that England had no legal rights in Palestine when the Balfour Declaration was issued in 1917, that changed just five years later. The League of Nations, precursor to the United Nations, gave the British legal rights over Palestine in its 1922 “Mandate for Palestine,” which specifically mentions “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

The League also said that “recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”

The former president’s noted omission of the internationally agreed-upon mandate for the British to establish a home for the Jews in Palestine misinforms the reader, who will conclude that the movement for a Jewish state in Palestine had no legitimacy or international consent.

“Over the next 20 years, Zionist leaders mobilized a surge of Jewish migration to Palestine,” Obama writes, creating the image that once the British illegally began the process of forming a Jewish state in Palestine, Jews suddenly started flocking there.


Supreme Court Blocks Cuomo’s Limits On Synagogues, Churches in Thanksgiving Ruling
The Supreme Court sided with a coalition of Orthodox Jewish groups and the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn Thursday in an emergency appeal that alleged New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D.) COVID-related worship restrictions discriminate against Jews and violate the First Amendment.

The vote in the early Thanksgiving morning ruling was five to four, with Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberal trio in dissent. "Statements made in connection with the challenged rules can be viewed as targeting the ‘ultra-Orthodox Jewish' community. But even if we put those comments aside, the regulations cannot be viewed as neutral because they single out houses of worship for especially harsh treatment," the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion.

Cuomo's contested regulations establish three kinds of hotspot zones with corresponding restrictions. In red zones, where transmission is highest, church attendance is capped at 10. In less severe orange zones, that number is 25, while houses of worship in yellow zones may open at 50 percent attendance. A portion of Brooklyn and about half of Queens are currently in yellow zones.

"It is time—past time—to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues, and mosques," Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in defense of the ruling.

Saturday, November 21, 2020

11/21 Links: Anti-Israel UN Resolutions are literally dumbfounding; Netanyahu, Rivlin welcome end of Pollard’s parole, await his arrival in Israel

From Ian:

Anti-Israel UN Resolutions are literally dumbfounding
Do United Nations diplomats ever read the numerous anti-Israel resolutions put in front of them? Or do they automatically raise their hand in a five-decade automatic knee-jerk reaction?

I ask because I read some of the conditions of a recently approved stab at Israel on 18 November 2020.

This draft resolution had to do with treating Jewish homes in Judea and Samaria and our capital, Jerusalem, as if they belong to a non-existing country and that Israel has no right to our ancient land and our homes.

This draft resolution passed with a 156-6 majority. The minority countries were Israel, the United States, Canada, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Nauru.

Why do tiny Pacific islands seem to possess more common sense than all the European countries, or even Australia and New Zealand?

Again I ask, did the diplomats that approved the motion read the wording before they raised their hands? Or were they following official guidance from their capitals?

This was a resolution that has been approved annually for decades, so perhaps they can be forgiven for overlooking the wording. Wording that talks about recognizing Palestinian “sovereign rights” to the “natural resources” of the 'West Bank' and east Jerusalem.

What sovereign rights does a non-existing country possess?

As they refer to the so-called 'West Bank', could they be indicating that this territory belongs to Jordan, a country that once claimed this land as theirs? After all, the term “West Bank” refers to the other side of the River Jordan.
Trump’s core righteousness shines through Pompeo's anti-BDS and pro-Jews in Yesha speech
Beyond that, Secretary Pompeo stated that any entity that continues supporting “BDS” — calls to boycott, divest from, or to sanction Israel — will be deemed outright anti-Semitic and will suffer the full ramifications of American financial and other pressure for that hatred banned by our laws.

The thing about “BDS” — a movement founded and created by Arab terrorists and their supporters in Europe and America, and fostered throughout American campuses by Jew-hating Leftist professors and their ignorantly moronic student minions who do not know the difference between the Mideast and the Midwest — is that the same haters and criminals who would boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel never advocate BDS against a China that religiously persecutes and imprisons its Uighyur Muslim minority, suppresses and crushes freedom in Hong Kong and throughout its Communist mainland, and that knowingly criminally exported to the world the worst pandemic of the past hundred years. Imagine that: no BDS against China, but BDS against Israel.

There can be no clearer example of outright virulent Jew-hatred than that: applying one standard — tolerance and gleeful acceptance — for Communist murderers, international criminals, tyrants and dictators who persecute religion and speech . . . and simultaneously applying a completely different standard — zealous hatred and brutal economic warfare — against Jews.

BDS is the anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred of today. Obama and His Fraudulency went along with it and never stood up to it. By contrast, Trump and Pompeo — with no conceivable political benefit to be accrued, only the motivation of common decency — now have placed the force of American law to crush it

Trump’s and Pompeo’s decency and friendship never will be forgotten. That 83 percent favorability among Orthodox Jews will stand in good measure for the next Trump presidential term, whether it commences by court orders in January 2021 or by popular and electoral vote four years from now. His Fraudulency will be gone before we know it. The Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria — now 800,000 strong and growing by leaps and bounds every day — is eternal.

And this was written before Jonathan Pollards' parole restrictions were not renewed.

Thursday, November 19, 2020

11/19 Links Pt2: Arnold Roth: Put justice back on the agenda: Sec. Pompeo, it's not too late; CNN’s shameless assault on the memory of the Holocaust; Douglas Murray: The Nobel Peace Prize has become an ignoble joke

From Ian:

Arnold Roth: Put justice back on the agenda: Sec. Pompeo, it's not too late
We did something yesterday that we have never done before.

We ordered a display advertisement to appear on the front-page of a major print newspaper - today's (Thursday’s) Jerusalem Post. Our message is on its front page.

The timing of our ad is intended to coincide with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Israel that began yesterday afternoon (Wednesday November 18).

Our hope is that he will see it at breakfast. And that perhaps he will think about the images we included, as well as the scriptural quote at the top of the text: “Justice, justice thou shalt pursue”.

The words from Deuteronomy (Devarim in Hebrew) will be recited in the annual cycle of Torah reading when we get to Parshat Shoftim, the weekly portion called “Judges”. That happens next in August 2021. By coincidence, the same week will include the twentieth anniversary of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre.

There are two images in our Pompeo advertisement. One shows Malki. The other is of the devastated Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem, minutes after a bomb placed by Ahlam Tamimi exploded inside.


Brendan O'Neill: CNN’s shameless assault on the memory of the Holocaust
Such moral instability has been widespread among the anti-Trump elites these past four years. Trump is ‘literally Hitler’, in these people’s eyes. ‘Donald Trump is a fascist’, serious outlets have suggested, denuding that word of all meaning. A British MP spoke of Trump in the same breath as ‘fascist dictators Mussolini and Hitler’.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Trump was running ‘concentration camps’ on the America-Mexico border and, for good measure, she said the phrase ‘Never Again’ has to ‘mean something’. That’s a phrase used about the Holocaust. AOC was suggesting that something akin to the Holocaust happened in the US under the Trump administration. No doubt she and her fawning followers think such Holocaust-talk lands a blow against Trump, but the truth is it lands a far greater blow on the memory of the Holocaust, which once again is reduced to a mundane event, like temporarily placing illegal immigrants in a camp.

Even historians who ought to know better embraced the Trump-as-Hitler meme. Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler, says he was initially reluctant to talk to the media about Trump’s ‘fascistic tendencies’, because however bad Trump might be, ‘he did not seem bent on genocide’. Then he changed his mind and declared that Trump seems to be working from the ‘playbook of Mein Kampf’.

All these people – and this includes the many anti-Trump protesters who waved placards mentioning Hitler and the Holocaust – seem alarmingly unaware of how much damage they have done to historical memory. Holocaust Relativism is a close cousin of Holocaust Denial. As the Open University’s guide to the Holocaust rightly says: ‘Relativising the Holocaust has been one of the classic techniques of some of those engaged in Holocaust Denial.’ Much of the new anti-Semitism is drenched in Holocaust Relativism. From left-wing anti-Semites to radical Islamists, the cry often goes out: ‘Why do we talk about the Holocaust so much? It wasn’t that special. Bad things happen all the time.’ Amanpour and a host of other anti-Trump obsessives in the media and political elites are unwittingly stirring up this cynical and often racist minimisation of the Holocaust with their cheap, ahistorical shots at Trump.

We hear a lot about the political wreckage left by Trump after his four years in the White House. But one of the worst kinds of damage done over the past four years was to the memory of the Holocaust, and it was done by Trump-bashers. Their reduction of the Holocaust to a political plaything, an exclamation mark to emphasise just how much they hate Trump, has been devastating to the cause of truth. Restoring the reality of the Holocaust will be essential if we are to defend truth in the 21st century and challenge the racist minimisation of the new anti-Semites.
Douglas Murray: The Nobel Peace Prize has become an ignoble joke
For those of us who have long been suspicious of the Nobel Peace Prize, there is nothing quite like the sight of the prize committee struggling to rein in one of their former honourees. Last year, the committee gave its award to Abiy Ahmed, the Ethiopian Prime Minister. In the citation, it especially noted Mr Ahmed’s laudable efforts “to achieve peace and international cooperation”.

That citation might now need to be carefully edited, since Mr Ahmed has declared war on the leaders of the Tigray region and Ethiopia looks like it is sliding into a wider conflagration. Last year’s Peace Prize recipient has this year refused all requests for dialogue and attempts to de-escalate the conflict. Some critics are even making claims of ethnic cleansing.

Yet in some ways Mr Ahmed stands in a long and ignoble Nobel tradition. This is not the first time that the committee would appear to have backed a wrong-un. Aung San Suu Kyi was given the award in 1991. Now she is an international pariah accused of defending genocide in Burma. In 1994, the committee gave the Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat, then probably the most notorious terrorist in the world. True this was a few years after the first “Intifada”. But having collected his gong and his Nobel loot (not the only loot Arafat managed to acquire in his criminal career), he gave it a couple of years before declaring another Intifada. Just having the gong doesn’t appear to bring about peaceful instincts. Surprising that.

A friendly observer might put this down to bad luck on the part of the Nobel committee: an over-eagerness, perhaps even a blind desire to see the best in people. But any reasonable critic would have to admit that there has been something off with the prize for years. It has become a victim of John O’Sullivan’s law: that all institutions that aren’t statedly conservative drift Left-wards as the years go on.

In 2009, the committee famously gave the prize to Barack Obama, when he was not yet one year into office, and when he had still not achieved anything of note. But the Nobel committee seemed to want to congratulate Obama on just being Obama. In the same way that a few years ago almost every award in the world was given to Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner, simply for being stunning and brave. If you are a Left-wing politician like Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize has become just another of those gongs you collect on your endless victory laps of the world.

Monday, November 16, 2020

11/16 Links Pt1: Where is the EU aid to the Palestinian Authority going?; Is Hezbollah’s ammonium nitrate linked to plot against Jews in Argentina?

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: We can't ignore the funding of terrorism any longer - opinion
The effects of Iranian-sponsored terrorism have been felt around the globe, through Hezbollah attacks in place as diverse as Argentina and Burgas, Bulgaria, to attacks regularly taking place against targets in Saudi Arabia.

Israel has not made any official comment regarding the targeted killing, but that is in keeping with its policy in such cases.

The report itself serves Israeli interests even without an official statement: Firstly, it sends another strong message to Iran that Israel is closely monitoring what goes on in the Islamic Republic and able to take action there. This targeted assassination, not the first, follows a series of mysterious fires and explosions at Iran’s nuclear facilities earlier this year and the heist of its nuclear archives from a Tehran warehouse in 2018, for which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credited the Mossad.

Both issues – Iran’s nuclear aspirations and its backing of global terrorism – remain high on Israel’s agenda and the government is clearly concerned that the incoming US administration under Joe Biden, unlike Trump, will not see eye-to-eye with Israel on how to confront Iran. Israel, of course, is not alone in its concerns regarding the Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia, a frequent Iranian target, is also concerned that Biden might roll back the US policy on Iran. Similarly, the recently signed Abraham Accords between Israel and Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates are also seen as being based on similar concerns about Iranian intents. Iran has created a crescent of terrorism that expands from Tehran to Beirut and as far south as Yemen.

If Iran is serving as a safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists in addition to backing other terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, this should concern all decent peace-loving people everywhere – especially as Iran continues to advance its nuclear weapons capabilities.

No government can afford to ignore the deadly implications of the combinations of terrorism and nuclear weapons. When Iran receives funds through the lifting of sanctions, the world must ask where this money is going and what it is supporting.
PMW: Where is the EU aid to the Palestinian Authority going?
In May 2020, Palestinian Authority Chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, declared that the PA and the PLO no longer see themselves bound by the agreements signed with Israel. Implementing this decision, the PA has refused to accept tax monies that Israel collects and transfers to the PA. These funds provide for half of the PA’s annual budget. The unilateral decision to refuse the tax income has once again plunged the PA into a self-made financial crisis. In order to deal with the ramifications of the decision, the PA decided to cut the salaries of all of its civil servants by 50%.

Since the beginning of 2020, the European Union has provided the PA with hundreds of millions of euro in aid. Of that aid, over 90 million Euro was given to the PA, designated, according to EU press statements, for the payment of salaries to “civil servants mostly in the health and education sector in the West Bank.”

In November 2019, European Member of Parliament Carmen Avram submitted written questions to the European Commission seeking to ensure that the EU aid to the PA was not being used to fund the payment of salaries to terrorists. The March 2020 response of the commission explained the mechanism by which the EU ostensibly tracks the final beneficiaries of the EU aid saying:

“The Palestinian Authority provides a list of eligible beneficiaries which is checked by EU-contracted independent auditors against a list of eligibility criteria as well as a second check of individuals considered to be associated with any terrorist organisations or activities. No payments are made to any beneficiaries falling within these categories.”

According to this answer, the EU thinks it knows exactly which civil servants are the recipients of the EU aid.

Since the EU is providing a considerable amount of funding to these specific civil servants, one would assume that their salaries have not been affected by the PA decision to cut all salaries. But this does not appear to be the case.
Gov’t not enforcing transparency law on NGO foreign funding
The government has not enforced its law requiring organizations mostly funded by foreign government entities to submit special reports and disclose its funding publicly, a Knesset Research and Information Center report found.

The requirement was legislated in the 2016 NGO Law, which was highly controversial and drew international criticism. At the time, a US State Department spokesman said the law poses dangers to a “free and functioning civil society,” and the EU said “the reporting requirements imposed by the new law go beyond the legitimate need for transparency and seem aimed at constraining the activities of these civil society organizations.”

Yet, despite the pitched Knesset battle to pass the law and then-justice minister Ayelet Shaked’s defense of it to her counterparts abroad and in the international media, the Associations Registrar, a department in the Justice Ministry, has done nothing to enforce the law.

Knesset Research and Information Center report, ordered by Yamina MK Bezalel Smotrich, found that the Associations Registrar does not take any particular action to oversee the law’s implementation, beyond its general supervision of NGOs.

In 2019, only 118 (0.3%) of 39,399 NGOs registered in Israel reported foreign entity funding, a decrease from the previous two years; in 2017 there were 204.

One complaint from a member of the public on undisclosed foreign funding of 13 organizations found that 11 of them were violating the law, but the Associations Registrar did not take action to enforce it.

Saturday, November 14, 2020

11/14 Links: Israeli agents killed al-Qaeda’s No. 2 on Iran street, at behest of US: NYTs; ‘Borders On Holocaust Denial’: CNN Blasted Over Shocking Segment Comparing Trump To Nazis Purging Jews

From Ian:

Israeli agents killed al-Qaeda’s No. 2 on Iran street, at behest of US: NY Times
Israeli operatives gunned down al-Qaeda’s second-in-command on a Tehran street in August at the behest of the United States, the New York Times reported on Friday.

Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who used the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was accused of being one of the chief planners of devastating attacks on two US embassies in Africa in 1998.

He was killed on August 7, the anniversary of the attacks, the report said, citing unnamed intelligence officials.

The attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 and injured hundreds more.

A former Israeli intelligence official told the newspaper that Al-Masri is also accused of ordering the 2002 attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya which killed 13 and injured 80.

Al-Masri was driving his sedan close to his home when two Israeli agents on a motorcycle pulled up alongside his vehicle and fired five shots from a silenced pistol, killing al-Masri and his daughter, Miriam, who was married to Osama bin Laden’s late son Hamza bin Laden.

The assassination has not been publicly acknowledged by the US, Israel, Iran or al-Qaeda.

The US was keeping tabs on al-Masri and other members of the terrorist group in Iran for years, but it’s unknown what role the US played in the killing, if any.

Al-Masri was one of the earliest members of al-Qaeda and likely the next to lead the terror group after its current chief, Ayman al-Zawahri.
TV: Al-Qaeda No. 2 was planning attacks on Israelis, Jews when killed in Tehran
The Al-Qaeda No. 2 reportedly shot dead by Israeli agents in Tehran in August was planning attacks on Israeli and Jewish Diaspora targets when he was killed, Israel’s Channel 12 news reported Saturday night.

Earlier Saturday, The New York Times reported that Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, aka Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was killed by Israeli agents at the behest of the US on August 7. Iran denied the Times story, claiming it was “made up information.”

“Abu Muhammad al-Masri had recently begun planning attacks against Israelis and Jewish targets in the world,” the Israeli TV report said, quoting unnamed Western intelligence sources. This further underlined why the US and Israel had a “shared interest” in his elimination, it said. The US was seeking him for orchestrating two devastating attacks on embassies in Africa in the 1990s, while Israel alleges he oversaw the 2002 suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Kenya in which three Israelis were killed.

The killing of al-Masri was the result of a huge, year-long operation, that went off without a hitch, the Israeli report said. The New York Times story said he was shot dead in Tehran by two Israeli agents on a motorbike, who fired five bullets at close range.
Iran denies Israel killed al-Qaeda’s No. 2 in Tehran: ‘A Hollywood scenario’
Iran said Saturday that a New York Times report that al-Qaeda’s second-in-command was secretly killed in Tehran this summer by Israeli agents was based on “made-up information” and denied the presence of any of the group’s members on Iranian soil.

Iran’s foes, the United States and Israel, “try to shift the responsibility for the criminal acts of [al-Qaeda] and other terrorist groups in the region and link Iran to such groups with lies and by leaking made-up information to the media,” foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement.

Khatibzadeh accused the US and “its allies in the region” of having created al-Qaeda through their “wrong policies” and advised US media to “not fall into the trap of American and Zionist officials’ Hollywood scenarios.”

The New York Times reported Friday that Abdullah Ahmad Abdullah, indicted in the United States for the 1998 bombings of its embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, was shot and killed in Tehran in August by two Israeli operatives on a motorcycle at Washington’s behest.

The senior al-Qaeda leader, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was killed along with his daughter, Miriam, the widow of Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, the Times said, citing intelligence sources.

Washington accused Tehran of harboring al-Qaeda members and of allowing them to pass through its territory in 2016, an accusation denied by Tehran officials at the time.
Are Israel and the US planning to attack Iran?
In 2008, after the election that brought former US president Barack Obama to power, there were some officials in Israel who were confident that the previous president, George W. Bush, would not leave office with Iran’s nuclear facilities still standing. They were wrong. Iran’s nuclear facilities are not only still standing; they have grown in quality and quantity.

This is important to keep in mind amid speculation – once again during a presidential lame duck period – that in his last few weeks in office, Donald Trump will either order US military action against Iran or give Israel a green light, as well as some assistance, to do so on its own.

The speculation has a number of catalysts. First was the firing of Mark Esper as secretary of defense this past week and the replacement of him and other top Pentagon officials with Trump ideologues. Some media outlets in the US have raised the possibility that Trump wanted to get Esper out of the way, so he could more easily carry out controversial military moves.

In addition, there is no doubt that there is a lot of coordination already taking place on Iran. Elliott Abrams, the administration’s top envoy on Iran, was in Israel this week for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be here next week for three days to continue those conversations; and on Thursday night, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi held a video call with his US counterpart, chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley.

And then there was the interview that H.R. McMaster, Trump’s former national security adviser, gave to Fox News on Wednesday in which he raised the possibility that Israel – fearful of President-elect Joe Biden’s Iran policies – would attack Iran in the twilight of Trump’s term in office.

For veteran Israel-Iran watchers, this feels like a rerun of what happened in 2008 as well as in 2012 when Israel also seemed on the verge of an attack. While ministers later confirmed that Netanyahu had in fact wanted to launch an attack in 2012, he ultimately failed to muster support in the cabinet, so the IDF had no choice but to back down.
Europe's battle against Islamist terror – Jerusalem Studio 557
France has become a major battleground in the fight between governments of Europe -whose populations are mostly Christian, and Islamist terrorists - who are out to impose their ideology by all means possible.

The recent brutal attacks in France and Austria have reignited dialogue among European leaders to combat (what they term) political Islam.

Is it just a security problem, or a more fundamental one?

Will the measures taken by French and other authorities decrease the friction, or only increase it?

Panel: - Jonathan Hessen, Host. - Amir Oren, Analyst. - Dr. Ely Karmon, Senior researcher - The Institute for Counter Terrorism, IDC Herzliya - Colonel Richard Kemp, former British infantry commander and head of international terrorism intelligence team at the British Cabinet Office.
Israel signs official contract with Pfizer worth NIS 800 million
Israel signed a formal contract with Pfizer Inc. on Friday to receive eight million doses of its coronavirus vaccine candidate, if successful.

The Pfizer vaccine will cost the country NIS 800 million, Ynet reported – NIS 100 per dose or NIS 200 per person, as every person needs two doses to be protected.

Israel is meant to provide Pfizer with a NIS 120m. cash advance as early as this week and an additional NIS 680m. in January, when the vaccines are supposed to start arriving.

“This is a great day for the State of Israel and a great day on the way to our victory over the coronavirus,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday. “Today we see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

The contract, which was signed by Health Ministry Director-General Chezy Levy, Health Ministry Accountant Hassan Ismail and Pfizer’s vice president Janine Small, does not include any commitment by Pfizer to supply the vaccines to Israel. Rather, wrote Ynet, the contract includes only an intention to do so “according to circumstances.”

Israel was eager to get the Pfizer vaccine after the company announced last week that an interim evaluation of its Phase III study found the candidate to be 90% effective.

Wednesday, October 28, 2020

10/28 Links Pt1: US to extend bilateral agreements with Israel into Judea and Samaria, Golan; Nikki Haley Recalls Trump’s Jerusalem Decision: ‘If Not Me Then Who? If Not Now Then When?’

From Ian:

US to extend bilateral agreements with Israel into Judea and Samaria, Golan
The United States and Israel will eliminate territorial restrictions for bilateral agreements in a ceremony on Wednesday.

The move will build upon a policy shift made by U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this past November, in which America no longer recognizes Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria as illegal under international law.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman are slated to participate in a signing ceremony at Ariel University in Samaria.

The agreement will immediately expand scientific and academic cooperation to include projects within Judea and Samaria, and the Golan Heights—disputed territories under Israeli control. The United States recognized Israel’s full sovereignty over the Golan Heights in March 2019.

Israel captured Judea and Samaria, in addition to the Golan, from Jordan and Syria, respectively, during the defensive Six-Day War in 1967.

Israel formally annexed the Golan Heights in 1981. Judea and Samaria remain disputed territories and were divided into non-contiguous zones (“Area A,” “Area B” and “Area C”) of varying Israeli or Palestinian administrative and security control under the 1993 Oslo Accords


Friedman: US-Israel ‘righting old wrongs’ by extending W. Bank agreements
Extending agreements between the US and Israel to the West Bank, Golan and east Jerusalem bolsters the ties between the countries, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said in a ceremony removing the only territorial limitations in agreements between Washington and Jerusalem on Wednesday.

“We are righting an old wrong and strengthening yet again the unbreakable bond between our two countries,” Friedman said at a signing ceremony with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Ariel University in Samaria.

Netanyahu and Friedman signed new versions of three agreements on research cooperation, which erase a line that says "cooperative projects sponsored by the Foundation may not be conducted in geographic areas which came under the administration of the Government of Israel after June 5, 1967, and may not relate to subjects primarily pertinent to such areas.”

The first agreement, signed in 1972, was the Binational Science Foundation, followed in 1976 the Binational Industrial Research and Development Foundation (BIRD), and then the Binational Agricultural Research and Development Fund (BARD) in 1977. All three had large endowments that provided grants to American and Israeli academics and companies for research and technology.

They also signed a new Science and Technology agreement, meant to increase government-to-government cooperation at the highest levels, which also does not have geographic restrictions.

Friedman said that BIRD, BARD and BSF, as originally written, “were subject to political limitations that did not serve the goals sought to be achieved.”
Trump: Up to 10 countries set for peace with Israel, ‘largely after’ elections
US President Donald Trump said Tuesday that there are up to 10 countries that he expects to soon normalize relations with Israel, but that the developments would largely happen after next week’s presidential elections.

Asked if there were more countries in the Middle East that would follow the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan who all recently opened diplomatic relations with Israel, Trump said there were more on the way, without specifying exactly how many or which countries they were.

“We have five, but really have probably nine or ten that are right in the mix, we’re going to have a lot, I think we’ll have all of them eventually,” he told reporters at Andrews Air Force Base before hitting the campaign trail.

“The beauty is there’s peace in the Middle East with no money and no blood,” he continued. “There’s no blood all over the sand. We have five definites and I think we’ll have another five pretty much definites. And all of them, the big ones, the smaller ones.”

Asked if agreements would come before or after the November 3 election, Trump said “largely after.”
Debate moderators ignored Trump’s ‘greatest achievement’: Bolt
Donald Trump came along and managed to “do the unthinkable” by brokering peace between the Israelis and the Arabs by simply bypassing the Palestinians, according to Sky News host Rowan Dean. President Donald Trump has recently brokered a third historic peace deal this time between Israel and Sudan, after previously negotiating deals between Israel and the UAE, and Bahrain. Mr Dean said bypassing Palestine to broker these deals is the “genius of Donald Trump”. "The Democrats have no solutions for the problems in the world,” he said. “You need people like Donald Trump who just cut through all the sort of red tape and get to the bottom of the nut of the problem and solve it.”

Thursday, October 08, 2020

10/08 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: It's Time for Trump to Soberly Confront the Rising Turkish Threat; Noah Rothman: Biden’s Repudiation of Obama’s Foreign Policy; Israel and Jordan sign historic airspace agreement

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: Biden’s Repudiation of Obama’s Foreign Policy
In 2013, Obama invited Moscow to play peacemaker in the Syrian conflict, and his administration insisted—all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding—that Russia had successfully negotiated the liquidation of Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpile. The fateful move preserved the Assad regime, set the stage for Russian military intervention in the conflict in 2015, and preserved the conditions that eventually gave rise to the Islamic State. Only after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 did the Obama administration reluctantly impose targeted economic sanctions. But Obama dismissed the invasion and annexation of sovereign European territory as a sign that Russia was a mere “regional power” exerting “less influence” on the global stage. The extent of Russia’s geopolitical ambitions would not become clear to the president until Moscow brazenly interfered with the 2016 election cycle—too late.

By contrast, and despite President Trump’s sordid compulsion to praise Vladimir Putin, this administration preserved Obama-era sanctions on Moscow and tightened the screws. This White House imposed Magnitsky Act sanctions on Russia’s Putin-linked elite—sanctions that the Obama administration lobbied Congress against. The Trump administration provided lethal arms to the Ukrainian government, expelled Russian diplomatic personnel, and seized Russian consular property. The U.S. military under Trump has engaged in set-piece land battles with Russian mercenaries in Syria. This administration oversaw the expansion of the NATO alliance, despite covert Russian action intended to derail that effort, and abandoned the defunct 1987 intermediate-range nuclear-forces treaty, a compact to which even the Obama administration conceded only the United States was beholden.

If Joe Biden has determined that it is in America’s interest to get tougher on the rogue regimes that govern these two states, that’s great. There is, however, precious little evidence to suggest that Biden has had a genuine change of heart.

The former vice president has, in fact, pledged to end Cuba’s economic and diplomatic isolation, which he claims stifles Cuban entrepreneurs and strengthens the regime in Havana. His vague but detectable hostility toward fracking would relieve the economic pressure America’s virtual energy independence has imposed on the Kremlin. He has tacitly endorsed a de facto partition of Syria, pockets of which would be administered by Russia and the Western coalition—a move that would legitimize Russia’s troop presence in the Levant and commit the U.S. to an open-ended conflict in defense of no well-defined interest.

Though he didn’t do much to prove his thesis, Diehl is right: Joe Biden does seem to have learned from past mistakes. In the case of these two pariah regimes, those mistakes were Barack Obama’s, not Donald Trump’s.
In Phone Call, Israel’s Netanyahu and Russia’s Putin Discuss Iranian ‘Aggression’ in Middle East
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone on Wednesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to a statement put out by Netanyahu’s office, the two leaders talked about “regional security issues, the Iranian aggression and the situation in Syria.”

“They also discussed advancing bilateral cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus,” it added.

A Kremlin statement listed Netanyahu as one of a dozen world leaders who called Putin on Wednesday to wish him a happy 68th birthday.

“In every conversation, the leaders touched upon the development of bilateral relations as well as topical regional problems,” the Kremlin said.
Caroline Glick: It's Time for Trump to Soberly Confront the Rising Turkish Threat
All of these aspects of Trump's foreign policies are vital for developing and maintaining a successful U.S. policy toward Erdogan's Turkey, as Erdogan exposes himself as a foe interested in pitting all sides against one another to enable his efforts to construct a new Ottoman Empire. Many commentators advocate expelling Turkey from NATO. But it isn't clear that a head-on confrontation with Erdogan would neutralize him. It could well empower him by helping him to rally the Turkish public behind him at a time when Turkey's economy stands on the brink of collapse.

Given Erdogan's multipronged aggression, the first goal of a realistic policy would be to diminish his power by severely weakening Turkey economically. This may mean imposing economic sanctions on Turkey for its aggression against Greece and Cyprus. Or it may mean simply giving Turkey a gentle push over the economic cliff.

Without raising the issue of removing Turkey from NATO, the U.S. can simply not sell Turkey advanced platforms while demonstrating its support for Greece and Cyprus, as well as Israel and its Arab partners.

True, China is already seeking to supplant the U.S. in sponsoring the Turkish economy and selling Turkey arms—but by keeping Turkey in NATO, the U.S. still has more leverage over Turkey than China.

A passive-aggressive policy for diminishing Erdogan's power and the threat he can mount is right up Trump's alley. Trump doesn't often directly attack his opponents. He embraced North Korean leader Kim Jong-un even as he imposed the harshest economic sanctions ever on North Korea and redesignated it a state sponsor of terrorism. He has acted similarly with Putin and with Erdogan himself.

Erdogan's belief that he can rebuild the Ottoman Empire while attacking EU and NATO members, the U.S., its key allies in the Middle East as well as Russia, owes to his narcissism that Obama and Biden did so much to feed.

With Erdogan now openly threatening multiple U.S. allies, it is increasingly apparent that the largest and fastest rising threat to stability and peace in the Middle East is Turkey—and the victor in next month's U.S. presidential election will have no lead time to deal with it.

Trump's reality-based foreign policy, his preference for indirect confrontations and empowerment of U.S. partners to defend themselves from aggression, rather than dictating their actions or fighting their battles for them, give the president the flexibility to diminish Erdogan's maneuver room, his economic independence and his popularity at home—while also empowering U.S. allies directly affected by the strongman's aggression to stand up to him effectively, with or without direct U.S. involvement.
Tarek Fatah: Expel Turkey from NATO
Turkey's Erdogan denounced the call for a ceasefire and, according to reports, has lent its US-supplied F-16s to Azerbaijan's forces along with drones that are equipped with Canadian technology.

This forced Ottawa to act. On Oct. 5, Foreign Affairs Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne halted all military export permits to Turkey.

The reaction by Turkey was swift. The foreign ministry in Ankara accused Ottawa of "double standards" arguing: "There is no explanation for blocking defence equipment exports to a NATO ally while."

NATO ally? That's quite rich for Turkey's pan-Islamists to invoke NATO as their defence.

The only role Turkey has played in NATO since the collapse of the USSR is that of a Fifth Column. A country that has been a conduit for ISIS jihadis, the Muslim Brotherhood. A country that deploys refugees to threaten Europe and Greece while occupying Cyprus and festering war in Libya, is no NATO ally.

Time has come for Canada to ask for Turkey's expulsion from NATO. Turkey is a menace to Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Syria and Libya. It has eyes on Bulgaria, Rumania and the Balkans, which it had to relinquish in the Lausanne Treaty that is approaching its centennial.

Don't be surprised if Erdogan annuls the century-old treaty to re-establish the Ottoman Caliphate that will make Central Asia its Turkic backyard after Armenia, the only obstacle, is eliminated.

Tuesday, September 08, 2020

09/08 Links Pt2: Israel, UAE to sign deal at White House ceremony next Tuesday; Where do you draw the line with anti-Semites?; Unpleasant news for Thomas Friedman

From Ian:
Israel, UAE to sign deal at White House ceremony next Tuesday
Israel and the United Arab Emirates will sign their historic deal normalizing relations at a White House ceremony on September 15, a senior White House official confirmed to The Times of Israel on Tuesday.

US officials said senior delegations from both countries would likely be led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Emirati Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayad, the brother of the Abu Dhabi crown prince.

The officials, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the ceremony would either be held on the South Lawn, the Rose Garden or inside, depending on weather.

Netanyahu’s office issued a statement in the premier’s name on Tuesday evening confirming his attendance. “I am proud to travel to Washington next week, at the invitation of President Trump, and to attend the historic White House ceremony establishing the peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates,” the prime minister said.

Numerous Arab diplomats, including from countries that don’t have formal ties with Israel, are expected to attend the ceremony, in a bid to show that the agreement enjoys widespread support, the Walla news site reported.

The ceremony will come just a month after the agreement to establish full diplomatic relations was announced on August 13. The deal delivered a key foreign policy victory to US President Donald Trump as he seeks reelection, and reflected a changing Middle East in which shared concerns about archenemy Iran have largely overtaken traditional Arab support for the Palestinians.

According to Walla, Israel and the US are still working toward a diplomatic breakthrough with another Arab state before the signing ceremony, though it is unclear if this will be possible.
Jonathan S. Tobin: Where do you draw the line with anti-Semites?
What do you think would happen if President Donald Trump decided to meet with the family of a shooting victim, and it turned out his father was a neo-Nazi? It would be front-page news in the country’s leading newspapers and be discussed pretty much continuously on CNN and MSNBC. Whatever the other circumstances surrounding the incident, such a meeting would be rightly seen as showing Trump’s indifference to hate.

What do you think would happen if his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, did something just like that? The mainstream media would ignore it. Those who brought up the issue or even asked questions about it would be branded as “right-wing” provocateurs or denounced as trying to divide the country on race.

That was what happened when Biden met last week with the family of Jacob Blake, an African-American man who was left paralyzed when he was shot by a police officer in Kenosha, Wis., after resisting arrest.

Since the death of George Floyd, all incidents involving police shooting African-Americans have become the focus of intense scrutiny as the nation debates the questions of racism and alleged police brutality. Outrage about these shootings has propelled the Black Lives Matter movement to the center of public attention, as well as leading to protests, riots and violence.

In the days since the shooting of their son, both of Blake’s parents had made many public appearances. His father, Jacob Blake Sr., spoke at the March on Washington on Aug. 28 at which Dr. Martin Luther King’s 1963 event was commemorated. In his remarks, he pronounced America “guilty” of racism and other crimes in a speech that was widely broadcast and published in leading newspapers. Indeed, as The Washington Post put it, the Blake family represented the feelings of all African-Americans.

But a few days later, when the elder Blake’s views became known to the public, the same news media that was transfixed by his angry speech in Washington lost interest in him.
Unpleasant news for Thomas Friedman
Does the level of the Kinneret have anything to do with the prospects for peace in the Middle East? Thomas Friedman would like you to think that it does.

Friedman has been the foreign affairs op-ed columnist for The New York Times since 1995. That means that for the past 25 years, he has enjoyed one of the most prominent and influential platforms in public discourse. Not only are his columns read by movers and shakers around the world, but he is also frequently interviewed on national television and radio shows, and invited to speak at major public forums and events hosted by Jewish organizations that should know better.

I say “that should know better” because in his writings about Israel, Friedman sometimes crosses the line in ways that would earn other pundits pariah status in the Jewish world. In 2004, he wrote that Israel “had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office.” In 2011, Friedman claimed that the standing ovations Israel’s prime minister received in Congress were “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.” In 2013, he asserted that “many American lawmakers [will] do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations.”

Despite those Pat Buchanan-like sentiments, Friedman has managed to maintain his status as a prominent opinion-shaper. Partly that’s because as long as he has the imprimatur of The New York Times, he is considered legitimate. Partly it’s because every once in a while, Friedman writes something mildly critical of the Palestinian Arab leadership; that gives him a fig leaf to pretend that he is “even-handed” and not an Israel-basher.

So, Friedman is taken seriously in many quarters when he periodically proffers some new Arab-Israeli “peace plan.” Since all of his plans involve Israel retreating to its nine-miles-wide pre-1967 borders—what diplomat Abba Eban called the “Auschwitz borders”—the only way Friedman can pitch his latest version as “new” is to come up with some new reason why the plan is (supposedly) so urgent.

Earlier this year, Friedman wrote that climate change should be the urgent new factor in Mideast diplomacy. Mother Nature will overwhelm the various political and military conflicts, he declared. His proof? “In the summer of 2018, the Sea of Galilee was so low from droughts and water withdrawals for rising populations that it was threatening to become another saline lake, like the Dead Sea.”

The solution, according to Friedman, is to pressure Israel to permit the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state—and then Israel, Jordan and “Palestine” can form “a confederation of their sovereign entities based on sea and sun.”

Ironically, less than a year before Friedman unveiled his sea-and-sun plan, a headline in Ha’aretz (no doubt Friedman’s favorite Israeli newspaper, given its slant) announced: “Lake Kinneret Is the Fullest It’s Been in Five Years, and There’s More to Come.”

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

08/19 Links Pt2: Democratic convention brings back former Women's March leaders accused of anti-Semitism; The ADL is targeted for not being woke enough for extremists

From Ian:
Democratic convention brings back former Women's March leaders accused of anti-Semitism
The Democratic National Convention utilized two of the former leaders of the Women's March, both of who faced allegations of anti-Semitism during their time on the board.

Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour participated in separate convention events on Monday and Tuesday, respectively. Mallory spoke on Monday at a virtual meeting of the Democratic Black Caucus while Sarsour addressed the convention’s Muslims and Allies Assembly.

Joe Biden's presidential campaign, in response to an attack from President Trump's reelection campaign, reaffirmed the former vice president's stance on Israel and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which calls for a boycott of Israeli goods in order to pressure the country's government to improve the quality of life for Palestinians.

“Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel and a vehement opponent of anti-Semitism his entire life, and he obviously condemns [Sarsour's] views and opposes BDS, as does the Democratic platform,” Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said, according to CNN’s Jake Tapper. “She has no role in the Biden campaign whatsoever.”

Bates also pointed to the official Democratic platform, which includes the declaration: “We oppose any effort to unfairly single out and delegitimize Israel, including at the United Nations or through the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.”

Biden Campaign Repudiates Linda Sarsour, Condemns BDS Movement
Prominent anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour appeared on Tuesday on the live stream of the Democratic National Convention’s Muslim Delegates Assembly.

Sarsour — who acted as a surrogate for Bernie Sanders during the primaries — remarked, “The Democratic Party is not perfect, but it is absolutely our party in this moment.”

Following Tuesday’s event, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden repudiated Sarsour, with a spokesman for his campaign stating, “Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel and a vehement opponent of antisemitism his entire life, and he obviously condemns her views and opposes BDS, as does the Democratic platform.”

“She has no role in the Biden campaign whatsoever,” the spokesman added.


Dozens of State Legislators Slam Democratic Socialists of America for ‘Blatantly Antisemitic Litmus Test’ of New York City Council Candidates
Dozens of members of the New York State Assembly have condemned the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for issuing what they called a “blatantly antisemitic litmus test” to prospective City Council candidates.

The DSA’s questionnaire to candidates included the line, “Do you pledge not to travel to Israel if elected to City Council in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation?”

“Even though foreign policy falls outside the purview of municipal government, gestures like travel to a country by elected officials from a city the size and prominence of New York still send a powerful message, as would the refusal to participate in them,” the questionnaire added.

The next question was an aggressive near-endorsement of the antisemitic BDS campaign, reading, “Do you support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement? If not, why?”

Friday, August 14, 2020

08/14 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Harris, Omar and the party's great march leftward; NY Democratic Socialists asks City Council candidates to pledge no Israel visits

From Ian:
Caroline Glick: Harris, Omar and the party's great march leftward
Under the leadership of Obama White House alumni Jonathan Greenblatt, in recent years the ADL has tried to reinvent itself as a progressive group that focuses mainly on criticizing the other side of the political divide.

The ADL's fervent efforts to ingratiate itself among progressives places in stark relief the "Open Letter to the Progressive Community" signed by more than a hundred groups calling for ostracizing it. It shows that today's Democrat party is unwilling to accept Jews or politicians who are both progressive and pro-Jewish.

This brings us to Omar's primary victory. It wasn't particularly surprising that Omar won the poll. Her national profile has made her a lightning rod in national politics. While as a bigot she is justifiably hated by many, leftist donors and activists adore her and back her as an anti-Semite.

While predictable, three aspects of her win are particularly significant. First, the main difference between the Omar and the progressive black opponent she defeated is that unlike Omar, Antone Melton-Meaux isn't an anti-Semite. Rather than drawing praise from progressives for his lack of bigotry, Melton-Meaux was decried by progressive activists who accused him of being controlled by Jews.

The second significant aspect of Omar's win is that despite her open anti-Semitism, her reelection bid – and that of her anti-Semitic comrade Rashida Tlaib – was endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi even donated $14,000 to Omar's campaign from her political PAC. Pelosi was long viewed as a friend to both American Jews and to Israel. The fact that she monetarily supported an out and out anti-Semite speaks volumes about the direction of the party.

The final significant aspect of Omar's win is that it was a testament to the rapidly growing power of the radical left in the Democrat party. Two years ago, four female radicals with harshly anti-Israel positions were elected as first-time lawmakers. The joined together, called themselves "The Squad" and proceeded to drain all the air out of the policy discourse in their party.

As the Squad members rose in power and prestige, moderate Democrats insisted their voice was out of synch with their actual power. To be sure, the moderates argued, the likes of Omar and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have the loudest microphones, but they represent but a fraction of the party's Congressional delegation.

So far, Tlaib and Omar handily won their primaries and three new candidates with their same brand of radical, anti-Israel positions just won their primaries replacing moderate lawmakers who either retired or were defeated. These victories point to two things. First, the squad has already nearly doubled its numbers in one Congressional term, and two, they have become, without a doubt, the rising force – and with Pelosi's backing, the dominant force in the Democrat party.

In light of all of this, it is self-evident Omar's primary victory was far more significant than Biden's selection of Harris as his running mate. Biden and Harris, weather vanes both, will not lead their party. They will follow their party's grassroots and donors as they lead the Democrats every further along on their great march into the anti-Semitic leftist abyss.
NY Democratic Socialists asks City Council candidates to pledge no Israel visits
Lots of candidates for New York City Council are expected to seek an endorsement from the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, a rising force in city politics, in next year’s elections.

To apply for the endorsement, the candidates will have to decide if they will pledge not to travel to Israel if elected.

According to a screenshot of a candidate questionnaire from the DSA posted to Twitter by local reporter Zack Fink, candidates are being asked to “pledge not to travel to Israel if elected to City Council in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation.” (The party did not immediately confirm that it had distributed the survey.)

The group also asks candidates if they support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is part of the New York City DSA chapter’s platform.

Some candidates declared their answers already on Twitter. “Easy: 1. No. 2. No,” Eric Dinowitz, a teacher (and son of a state Assemblyman) who is running for City Council in the Bronx, posted late Thursday.

The questionnaire comes after pro-BDS activists were vindicated this month when Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who have voiced support for the BDS movement, both won their Democratic primaries. Both represent overwhelmingly Democratic districts where they are likely to be reelected to Congress. A third congressional candidate who has indicated support for the BDS movement, Cori Bush in Missouri, also defeated a longtime incumbent in her primary.

With 35 out of 51 city council seats up for election this year due to term limits as well as open elections for citywide offices like mayor and comptroller, citywide elections in New York City next year present a rare opportunity to reshape most of New York City’s government.

The DSA is considered to be a rising force in New York City after helping Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeat incumbent Joe Crowley in 2018. In this year’s Democratic primary, DSA member Jamaal Bowman defeated Eliot Engel, a longtime incumbent and champion of Israel. Far from pledging to boycott Israel, Bowman has indicated his backing, last week telling City & State, “I am in full support of Israel.”


Jonathan S. Tobin: Can a Jewish leader coexist with an anti-Semitic extremist?
As it turns out, it isn't Rodney Muhammad who is on the spot in the controversy about the NAACP and anti-Semitism. The people who should really be worried about the controversy engendered by Muhammad are the Jewish members of the national board of the NAACP, like Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who are being discredited by the organization's failure to draw a line in the sand about Jew-hatred.

Muhammad is the Philadelphia chapter president of the venerable civil-rights group who sparked controversy last month with a blatantly anti-Semitic Facebook post. The post combined pictures of African-American celebrities who had recently made anti-Semitic statements, and included the image of a Nazi-style caricature of a hook-nosed Jew above a fake quote from Voltaire that said: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." The obvious point was the false claim that powerful and sinister Jewish forces are working to suppress criticism of their fiendish hold on society by courageous but oppressed black people.

While Muhammad was bitterly criticized by various Jewish groups, as well as local politicians and public figures, he doesn't seem so concerned about his future as a public figure, even after such a gross display of prejudice. The national leadership of the NAACP was slow to issue a statement about the incident and when it did, its condemnation stopped well short of demanding Muhammad's resignation or his firing by the Philadelphia chapter.

As the African-American newspaper The Philadelphia Tribune reported, local black leaders such as Bishop J. Louis Felton, the first vice president of the Philadelphia chapter, said they had not received any instructions or guidance from the group's national office. Instead, the Tribune reported that NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson would be meeting with Muhammad, as well as local community and faith leaders, to "open a dialogue and continue the educational conversations." But the time for dialogue about this scandal is over. That statement could be reasonably interpreted as an indication that the national leadership has no interest in breaking with Muhammad, despite the fact that a state board could vote to The reluctance of the NAACP to take swift and decisive action is disappointing. Jews were active in the organization's founding. And there is a direct precedent in which the NAACP was faced with a similar situation in the not-too-distant past.

In August of 2000, Lee Alcorn, president of the group's Dallas chapter, sparked controversy by denouncing the selection of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) as the Democratic candidate for vice president. Alcorn said he opposed Vice President Al Gore's running mate because "if we get a Jew person, then what I'm wondering is, I mean, what is this movement for, you know? … So I think we need to be very suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with money and these kind of things."

NAACP president Kweisi Mfume responded immediately. He not only condemned Alcorn's remarks as "repulsive, anti-Semitic, anti-NAACP and anti-American," he also immediately suspended him from the organization.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

08/13 Links Pt2: Ancient Muslim Texts Confirm the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem; Al-Jazeera Unmasked: Political Islam As A Media Arm Of The Qatari State; An Antisemitic ‘Peace’ Organization Strikes Again

From Ian:
JCPA: Ancient Muslim Texts Confirm the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem
The Palestinian Lie about Jerusalem Has Legs
“A lie,” according to the well-known saying, “has no legs,” but that does not mean lies do not need them.

The “Al-Aqsa is in danger” libel rests on a huge false leg that, in the end, will collapse. The lie would not have survived so long without it. Today, the Palestinians and many Muslims charge that Israel “seeks to destroy al-Aqsa” and build the Temple in its stead on a site where no Temple ever stood; that the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount is al-miza’um, that is, “supposed,” “fraudulent,” “invented,” or “imaginary;” that the Jews have no connection to the Temple Mount or, for that matter, to the Western Wall.

This is a libel on top of a libel, a double lie. The many Muslims who are convinced that al-Aqsa is in danger are now also convinced that “their” al-Aqsa stands on a place where “our” Temple never stood – the latter being nothing but a fabrication.

Some of the legitimacy that terrorism draws from the libel rests on that added lie. It is more legitimate to libel and murder Jews, so as “to protect the captive al-Aqsa and free it from the Jews who are plotting to destroy it,” if Israel and the Jews who “conspire to attack the site,” have only a false and concocted connection to it. Thus, the lie that undergirds the libel also bolsters the legitimacy to murder in its name. From the standpoint of the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” terrorists and their supporters, they do not murder only those who seek to wrest the Mount from their hands. As they see it, they are also murdering the falsifiers of history, who have no link to the site at all. They also want the Mount to be “liberated” psychologically so that their historical and religious narrative will prevail. This chapter (the appendix of the book) aims to refute this lie as well and to prove that it is nothing but a broken prop.

To grasp the magnitude of the lie, one must go far back on the path the Muslims themselves trod over the past 1,350 years, the path from which they have strayed only in recent times. Despite the misrepresentations and the sweeping denial that many Muslims now adopt regarding the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and to the Temple that stood there, they themselves were the ones who, up until the Six-Day War, identified the Mount – unequivocally – as the site of Solomon’s Temple and as the place where David said his Psalms. Furthermore, Solomon and David, as important prophets in Islam, are seen as the ones who laid the foundations on the Temple Mount for the building of the mosques there. Nevertheless, today, Muslim clerics and leaders remove the Jewish Temple from the Mount and “transfer” it to places like Mount Zion, Nablus, and even Yemen.

Moreover, many of the names and terms the Muslims have used over the years for the Temple Mount, particularly “Beit al-Maqdis,” which is a translation of the Hebrew name Beit haMikdash, derive from the Jewish designation for the site, where the two Muslim shrines were built around 1,350 years ago. Today, Muslims commonly use the name Beit al-Maqdis for Jerusalem, but in the ancient past, they used the name for the Temple Mount itself. The Jewish people and the State of Israel do not, of course, need the Muslim sources – which, for more than 1,350 years, have identified the Temple Mount as the site of the Temple – to prove their connection to the place. Given, however, the dispute on this issue and the resolutions hostile to Israel in the international arena, which espouse the new Muslim narrative, it is worth presenting the primary Muslim documentation and sources for the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, and the Temple. Today, many Muslims erase this reliable documentation from memory. From such forgetfulness, the path is short to denial, and this gives rise to a lie. On this lie now rests the libel from which the “Al-Aqsa is in danger” terror derives its inspiration and legitimacy to murder Jews.
MEMRI: Al-Jazeera Unmasked: Political Islam As A Media Arm Of The Qatari State
Al-Jazeera Arabic channel's promotion of a very tangible and identifiable editorial line is patently obvious to anyone who has watched it over time. Being pro-Islamist (particularly in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood) and anti-West have been benchmarks of its programming and its news coverage from the beginning. That is not to say that these are the only causes the network has trumpeted through the years, but these have been the building blocks for everything else. Both Islamism and anti-West sentiment featured on the channel are often rife with antisemitism. Many strands of this Islamism embrace openly hostile attitudes regarding "the Other," a category that can include all sorts of people, from non-Muslims, to Middle East secularists to gays.

Al-Jazeera's basic affinity for Islamist groups spills over repeatedly over time into giving other groups along the Islamist spectrum, up to and including Al-Qaeda and ISIS – a sympathetic hearing beyond what its regional rivals at Al-Arabiyya and Sky News Arabia would ever do.

While Qatar has at times gone on the record to try to distance itself a bit from the network it created, over secondary issues such as the hiring of Qatari citizens,[58] it has demonstrated its constant support by spending hundreds of millions of dollars over more than two decades faithfully bankrolling a media outlet that has been remarkably consistent in its editorial line. This is eminently logical, given the channel's dogged support in hammering daily Qatari foreign policy points, from North Africa to Pakistan.

The fact that Al-Jazeera became, not surprisingly, one of the points of contention in the ongoing struggle between Qatar and its rivals in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, that exploded in 2017, means that the network is here to stay. Al-Jazeera will remain what it has always been, even though it has lost some of its luster over the past three years. The network that has been so influential for so long has become a bit predictable, not just on Islamism but because of the relentless focus on the ongoing blood feud with Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and Cairo.

Without radically transforming Al-Jazeera or its editorial line, Qatar has tried to hedge its bets by funding and creating Al-Araby Television out of London since 2015.[59] Al-Araby seeks to propagate a more secular, pan-Arab voice than Al-Jazeera, still nationalist and broadly aligned with overall Qatari foreign policy goals but without the well-worn Islamist baggage. The idea is akin to the creation of leftist/secular Palestinian liberation groups in addition to Islamist ones. If Al-Jazeera is in a way a vision of Hamas on TV, then Al-Araby is Qatar's version of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Different approach, same ultimate goal.

But historically, on issues that Qatar seems to care the most about – political Islam across the world, support for Hamas, for Erdogan's Turkey, and most importantly, for not criticizing Qatar, its rulers, and its policies – there is no daylight between Al-Jazeera and the government in Doha. That is the surest way of gauging the steadfast and enduring official connection between the goals of the network and the goals of the state of Qatar. The convergence of a documented state funding stream and a broad policy direction between the state and the broadcaster is indisputable.
Tel Aviv Municipality lit up with UAE, Israeli flags following deal
Following the announcement of a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the Tel Aviv Municipality was lit on Thursday evening with the colors of the UAE and Israeli flags.

Earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's son, Yair Netanyahu, published a message on Twitter, referring to Huldai's decision to light up the municipality with the Lebanese flag following the devastating explosion that shook Lebanon a few days ago.

"If Ron Huldai doesn't light up the municipality building with the UAE flag tonight or tomorrow night, then you can understand just how much the Left cares about peace," Yair wrote.

Huldai, in turn, did decide to light up the building on Thursday evening with the UAE flag.

"I congratulate the prime minister for the double accomplishment of reaching peace with the United Arab Emirates and canceling the plan of annexation. Both actions are important for the security of the State of Israel," Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said in a statement.

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