12/29 Links Pt1: Glick: Facing a Tamimi government; The Palestinian masquerade; U.S. Envoy: Palestinian Reaction to Trump Announcement Is Ugly, Anti-Semitic

From Ian:

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Caroline Glick: Facing a Tamimi government

As Arnold Roth, whose daughter Malki was among the seven children murdered at Sbarro, reported on his website, Jordanian Prince Ali’s wife, former CNN reporter Princess Rym Ali raised donations from the governments of Europe, Australia and Canada to establish a journalism school in Amman. On every page of the Jordanian Media Institute’s website, Ahlam Tamimi is presented as a “Success Model.”

Three of Ahlam’s victims were US citizens. King Abdullah has rejected repeated US requests to extradite her for trial.

Back in Nabi Saleh, Nariman and Bassem and their kids man the barricades against Israel, for their sponsors.

In 2012, Bassam was convicted of inciting a riot against IDF soldiers. An observer from the EU was present throughout his trial.

Then-EU foreign affairs commissioner Catherine Ashton touted Bassem as a “human rights defender.”

Bassem and Nariman are “volunteers” in B’Tselem’s “camera project.”

B’Tselem, an anti-Israel political warfare group funded by the EU, EU member governments, the State Department and far-left American groups, distributes video cameras to Palestinians and trains them to use them. It then posts their films online to advance its one-sided propaganda offensive against Israel.

In 2015, a consortium of anti-Israel groups including Amnesty International, Code Pink and Jewish Voices for Peace brought Bassem Tamimi to the US on a speaking tour.

In one particularly hair-raising episode, reported by Legal Insurrection at the time, Tamimi addressed an audience of third-graders in Ithaca, New York.

He urged the children to support terrorism against Israel and to join the war against the Jewish state.

Videos of Ahed were a prominent component of his presentation.

The Turkish government is also a big supporter of the Tamimi brood. After a past video of Ahed hitting and cursing Israeli forces was posted online, she and her parents were brought to Ankara to receive recognition from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a very real sense, the Tamimi family is at the nexus of a global war against Israel.

The Tamimis have connections with nearly every government and group involved in that war. The Israeli and American Left, the EU, Jordan and Turkey and of course Hamas and the PLO all support them. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

The Palestinian masquerade

As part of his diplomatic-political address, Abbas presented his captive audience with his take on the historical and theological basis for the war between Islam and the Jews. His remark, outlining the raison d'etre of this conflict, was tacked on to his main address like a footnote.

"This land is the birthplace of Jesus," he said. "Jesus Christ was a Palestinian, take note of that."

"Yes, believe in our right and God's promise to us, that this holy Palestinian city, since it was founded by the Canaanite Jebusites 5,000 years ago, was and will be the only capital of our independent state, under the sovereignty of the state of Palestine."

"This is also a good opportunity to note that I don't want to discuss history or religion, because there is no one better at falsifying history or religion than them [the Jews]. But if we read the Torah, it says that we, i.e., the Canaanites, lived here before Abraham and haven't left since that time. It hasn't been interrupted. That's in the Torah. If they want to fabricate, 'to distort the words from their [proper] usages,' as God said [a reference to Sura 4 of the Quran that mentions Jews who falsified the Torah]. I don't want to get into religion. We don't want the issue to become a religious issue. We just want to prove that we are here, and we have an eternal right to this city [Jerusalem] and to other cities."

3.
So according to Abbas, Jesus was Palestinian and Jebusite Jerusalem was never the capital city of any nation other than the Palestinians since time immemorial. Furthermore, the Palestinians are actually Canaanites, and God promised them this holy city before Abraham came along, and so on.

We are laughing now, aren't we? It's not just one lie, but a culture of lies. The Arab leader's simple ability to stand in front of the world and lie in a way that almost seems like he is trying to convince himself. Jerusalem has always been the capital of the Palestinian nation? Really? But no nation ever ruled here other than the Jewish nation and its various Jewish kingdoms!

MEMRI: Senior Jordanian Columnists Warn Against Cancelling Peace Treaty With Israel

U.S. President Donald Trump's December 6, 2017, announcement of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and his plan to move the American embassy there ignited a vast wave of protests against the U.S. and Israel across Jordan. These demonstrations included calls to cancel the agreements signed by Jordan and Israel, including the peace treaty.[1]

Loud calls to revoke the peace agreement with Israel and to cease normalization with it were also voiced in the Jordanian parliament. In its session on December 10, 2017, which was dedicated to Trump's announcement, the parliament empowered its legal committee to reexamine the agreements with Israel, including the peace treaty, and to document all of Israel's legal violations and present them to parliament so that a decision may be taken on this issue. On the following day (December 11), the committee met with Justice Minister 'Awad Abu Jarad to request all the material on the signed agreements with Israel,[2] and one day later it reconvened to discuss the matter.[3]

At the same time, 14 MPs submitted to the government a memorandum calling to "promote legislation to cancel the Jordan-Israel peace agreement due to Israeli violations of it" and due to the American announcement about Jerusalem.[4] On December 17, several MPs signed another memorandum calling on the government to terminate the leasing to Israel of the Al-Bagoura and Ghamar areas on the Jordan-Israel border, claiming that it is an infringement of Jordanian sovereignty and the rights of its citizens in those areas.[5]

Calls to revoke all agreements with Israel were also posted on social media, under existing hashtags such as "#Wadi Araba [peace agreements] will be cancelled" and "#boycott the Zionists," which were brought back into use, and under a new hashtag, "#Cancel it," which went viral within hours.[6] One Jordanian tweeted: "Jordanian members of parliament and decision-makers! Cancel the Araba [peace] Agreement, cancel the gas [import] agreement [with Israel], and sever all overt and covert relations [with it]. Out! Out, the Zionist embassy."

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11/29 Links Pt1: The miracle of Israel lives on 70 years later; Oren: John Kerry has 'acrid & obsessive' place in his heart for Israel

From Ian:

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The miracle of Israel lives on 70 years later

While much of the public debate is couched in terms of borders and settlements and sovereignty over Jerusalem, the larger truth is that Palestinians have pursued Israel’s destruction with more zeal than they applied to building their own state.

While you would never know it from most coverage in the American media, a two-state solution was offered to both Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, but neither would say yes. To do so would have meant signing their own death warrants at the hands of fellow Arabs committed to Israel’s destruction.

The result is that many Palestinians remain scattered in “refugee camps” around the region established nearly 70 years ago, unwanted by their hosts while serving as political pawns. In their own self-governed territories, they are bitterly divided and impoverished, with much of the population living on international handouts and a fantasy that a Palestine without Jews is inevitable.

At times, there have been brief interludes of hope that internal change was coming. Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, told an Israeli journalist that he believed the Arabs’ 1947 rejection of the partition was a mistake that he hoped to correct.

That was six years ago. Since then, Abbas, finishing the 13th year of a four-year term, has done little to turn that idea into reality.

As I prepare for an upcoming trip to Israel and the West Bank, my third visit to the region, I expect to find an even more dynamic Jewish state, where even the constant threat of catastrophe does not interfere with a zest for life.

Then again, that’s Israel. A miracle among nations.

To get a state, Palestinians should do what the Zionists did

Seventy years ago, the United Nations created Israel. At least, that’s how Turtle Bay’s boosters and Israel’s critics remember it.

In reality, the UN General Assembly’s vote of Nov. 29, 1947, to partition Palestine merely recognized reality. The Jews had built their state; the UN acknowledged this fact. And getting the history right is essential to any hope of lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Early Zionists started arriving to join their fellow Jews in their ancestral land at the end of the 19th century. Bit by bit (or “a dunam here, a dunam there,” as their slogan went) they built up not only their numbers but their institutions. By the partition vote, there was a state in place.

This week that historic vote is commemorated twice, demonstrating the difference between two national movements.

At the Queens Museum, the site of the 1947 tally, Israelis and Americans (including Vice President Mike Pence) reenacted the drama on Tuesday. They also tried to revive the euphoria among Zionists, as they celebrated around the world, from New York to Tel Aviv.

At Turtle Bay, meanwhile, the General Assembly will solemnly mark the date on Wednesday, as it does every year, by conducting an “international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people” — remembering one of the only consequential decisions the UN ever took by celebrating those who rejected it.

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10/27 Links Pt1: When it comes to Israel, the Arab world isn’t a good sport; Toameh: Militias vs. Palestinian "Reconciliation"

From Ian:

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When it comes to Israel, the Arab world isn’t a good sport

Last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel’s relations with the Arab world were better than ever.

“There is cooperation in various ways, on various levels, but is not yet out in the open. But what is not yet out in the open is much greater than in any other period in Israeli history. This is a major change,” he gushed.

Indeed, there has been much security cooperation and intelligence sharing since Israel and the pragmatic Arab regimes found common enemies in Iran and radical Sunni Islamists. But even as Netanyahu seems to talk about it all the time, his Arab partners insist everything remain hush-hush.

For the time being, Arab countries are refusing to recognize the State of Israel and reject any overt manifestation of collaboration with the Zionist entity — no exceptions, no common courtesies, no fair play.

That’s why on Thursday, when an Israeli athlete won a gold medal at a judo tournament in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Israel’s national anthem wasn’t played and its flag wasn’t hoisted. Indeed, due to the Emirates’ boycott of Israel, the Israeli judokas in the tournament competed under the “flag” of the International Judo Federation (IJF).

After Herzliyah native Tal Flicker beat Nijat Shikhalizada of Azerbaijan to take the gold, the “national anthem of the International Judo Federation” was played in the hall. Meanwhile, Flicker mouthed his own “Hatikvah,” giving his Israeli compatriots a modicum of pride.

Boycott-defying judo champ says he sang Israeli anthem ‘from the heart’

Israeli judoka Tal Flicker, who won a gold medal on Thursday at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam judo tournament, said he defied the host Arab state’s boycott on displaying Israeli symbols and playing Israel’s national anthem at the victory ceremony by shutting out the “background noise” and singing “Hatikvah” himself.

As tournament organizers played the anthem of the International Judo Federation’s (IJF) when Flicker stood on the podium with his medal, he sang the Israeli national anthem.

“The world federation anthem that they played was just background noise,” he told Channel 2 news. “I was singing ‘Hatikvah’ from the heart.”

“I’m proud of my country,” he said. “The whole world knows that we’re from Israel, knows who we represent.”

Flicker’s win in Abu Dhabi added to two previous championship victories he has already achieved this year.

He was born in 1992 in the central city of Herzliya, where he was also raised.

UAE judoka refuses to shake hands as Israeli beats him in Abu Dhabi tournament

A judoka from the United Arab Emirates refused to shake the hand of the Israeli rival who defeated him at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam judo tournament Friday, a day after the UAE refused to play the Israeli national anthem or fly the Israeli flag for medal-winning Israeli athletes at the competition.

Israel’s Tohar Butbul, competing in the men’s lightweight (66-73 kg) category, came up against the UAE’s Rashad Almashjari in the first round. After being defeated by Butbul, Almashjari refused the customary handshake with the Israeli.

Butbul went on to win a bronze medal in his category — by defeating Italy’s 2016 Olympic gold medalist; it was Israel’s third medal in the competition.

The no-handshake episode was reminiscent of one that occurred during the 2016 Summer Olympics, when Egyptian judoka Islam El Shahaby refused to shake hands with Ori Sasson after being defeated by the Israeli, and only begrudgingly made the obligatory end-of-match bow after being being called back to the mat by the referee.

BBC News and BBC Sport ignore Judo tournament anti-Israel bigotry

A major Judo tournament organised by the International Judo Federation is taking place in Abu Dhabi between October 26th and 28th.

However – and not for the first time – members of the Israeli team taking part in that tournament have been barred from displaying the Israeli flag.

“The blue-and-white delegation to the final Grand Slam competition of the year is set to include 12 athletes, but Israel Judo Association chairman Moshe Ponte was informed by the organizers that they won’t be able to have the Israel flag on their judo uniform, as they do in every other event across the world. Instead of having ISR (Israel) by their names on the scoreboard and on their backs, they will have to take part in the contest as representatives of the IJF (International Judo Federation). The national anthem will also not be played, should an Israeli win a gold medal.”

The BBC Sport website (which usually displays an interest in reporting bigotry and discrimination in sport) has no coverage of that story either on its home page or on its Judo page. The BBC News website’s Middle East page similarly did not find this story of blatant discrimination in sport newsworthy.

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10/24 Links Pt1: Fatah's partnership with Hamas, Neither will give up violence; Netanyahu to visit India in January

From Ian:

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PMW: Fatah seeks "true partnership" with Hamas; Neither will give up violence

Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub says the unity agreement with Hamas does not mean that Hamas has to give up its use of "resistance," i.e., the PA euphemism for violence and terror against Israel, since Fatah itself "has not given up and will not give up the resistance."
Rajoub explained in an interview on the Lebanese TV channel Al-Mayadeen that Fatah wants to achieve "national unity" based on "true partnership" with Hamas:

Al-Mayadeen TV host: "What has actually changed? Why will the reconciliation [with Hamas] eliminate the resistance, or the idea of resistance (i.e., violence)...?"
Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub: "First of all, Fatah has not given up and will not give up the resistance. We are ready to enter a dialogue [with Hamas] and to refine our positions in order to reach a general agreement... We want to achieve national unity [with Hamas] on the basis of true partnership." [Lebanese TV channel Al-Mayadeen's YouTube channel, Oct. 6, 2017]

Another Fatah Central Committee member, Azzam Al-Ahmad, elaborated on this, explaining that Fatah has not changed its principles which remain "popular resistance, armed struggle, and negotiations." "Popular resistance" is a term Palestinian leaders at times use to refer to violence. During the PA terror wave of 2015-2016, Palestinian Media Watch reported that Mahmoud Abbas used the term "peaceful popular uprising" to describe Palestinian terror that had murdered 14 Israelis by stabbings, car rammings and shootings.

Fatah uses the concept "armed struggle" to describe organized terror using rifles and bombs, as was done in the PA terror campaign from 2000-2005, in which over 1,200 Israelis were murdered.

Seth Frantzman: What Iraq’s recent moves against Kurds mean for Israel and region

On Sunday, Iraq Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi began a historic visit to Saudi Arabia, where he is meeting the king of Saudi Arabia and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

It came at the same time that Iraq is strengthening its control over disputed areas seized from the Kurdistan Regional Government over the last week. The intentional weakening of the Kurdistan region comes less than a month after it held an independence referendum and has wide implications for the region. This affects Israel as well because of Jerusalem’s opposition to Iranian hegemony.

The main affect of Iraq’s decision to take back disputed areas from the Kurdistan region has been to reduce the areas the Kurds controlled and liberated over the last three years battling ISIS.

In addition Iranian influence has played a central role through Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani’s role in advising and attempting to broker a deal with some Kurdish officials to give up control around Kirkuk.

Despite conflicting accounts from different Kurdish and Iraqi officials, the result was that the Kurdish Peshmerga withdrew in the face of overwhelming firepower the Iraqi army brought to bare, including US-made tanks and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias such as Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq.

This has weakened the Kurdistan Regional Government’s hand after the referendum, depriving it of a major city and half its oil revenue. The Peshmerga, lauded as a partner for fighting Islamic State, were not able to stand up to the partly US-trained Iraqi army, which has re-drawn the power relationship between Erbil and Baghdad.

While the US is concerned about clashes between Kurdistan forces and Baghdad and called on both sides to “cease all violence,” it is not making the crises a priority. Instead the priority lies in Riyadh.

The US is working to bring Baghdad to Riyadh and encourage it to grow closer to the Saudi alliance system in the region, the Iranians have other plans.

The time has come for FIFA to kick terrorism out of football

On October 27, the FIFA Council is set to meet in Kolkata, India.

Alongside the other issues, it is worth paying special attention to the agenda items titled “Monitoring Committee Israel-Palestine” and “First Report of the Human Rights Advisory Board.”

The first item will discuss FIFA’s insistence on entertaining the baseless, and purely political, demand of the Palestinian Football Association (PFA) to sanction the Israeli Football Association (IFA) for allegedly breaching FIFA’s statutes.

The claim is that the IFA is in breach of FIFA’s statutes since six of its registered clubs play in Judea and Samaria, in what the PFA refers to as “its territory.”

The claim is both factually and legally baseless. From a factual point of view, according to FIFA’s own website, the IFA inherited the status of the Palestine Football Federation (PFF) that was accepted to FIFA in 1929. The PFF was set up by the famous Jewish sportsman Josef Yekutieli and comprised mainly Jewish clubs that played against the British. When accepted into FIFA, the Zionist movement’s PFF was granted exclusive rights to organize football in all of mandate Palestine, including Judea and Samaria.

The control of the area of Judea and Samaria was only temporarily stripped from the IFA, in 1948, when five Arab states invaded the nascent Jewish state.

The illegal occupation of the area by the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan finally ended in 1967 when Israel, and the IFA, regained control of the area.

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09/23 Links: Iran tests missile capable of reaching Israel; Dershowitz: Plame Knew What She Was Tweeting

From Ian:

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Valerie Plame Wilson Tweets ‘America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars’

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson tweeted out an anti-Semitic article that claimed Jews were the cause of America's wars.
"America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars," she tweeted.

America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars https://t.co/oUH7b0QPMt
— Valerie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame) September 21, 2017

The linked story from the media site, Unz Review, asked, "Shouldn't [American Jews] recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?"
The author argued Jews will soon cause a war with Iran as well. "What makes the war engine run is provided by American Jews who have taken upon themselves the onerous task of starting a war with a country that does not conceivably threaten the United States," he wrote.

"The issue that nearly all the Iran haters are Jewish has somehow fallen out of sight, as if it does not matter," he continued. "But it should matter."

"For those American Jews who lack any shred of integrity, the media should be required to label them at the bottom of the television screen whenever they pop up, e.g. Bill Kristol is ‘Jewish and an outspoken supporter of the state of Israel.'"

Alan Dershowitz: Plame Knew What She Was Tweeting

I actually read the Philip Giraldi article before I was aware of the Plame tweet. I read it on a neo-Nazi website, where Giraldi's articles are frequently featured. That's where Giraldi's articles belong – on overtly anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi websites. For Plame, a former CIA operative, to claim that she was unaware of the anti-Semitic content of Giraldi's article is to blink reality. Plame had to know what she was doing, since she was aware of Giraldi's bigotry. Her apologies ring hollow. Her true feelings were revealed in what she said before she realized that she would be widely condemned for her original re- Tweet. She must now do more than apologize. She must explain how she came upon the article? Who sent it to her? Does she regularly read bigoted website? Why is she reading and re-Tweeting a known anti-Semite? What are her own personal views regarding the content of the Giraldi's article.

The Plame incident reflects a broader problem about which I have written [A new tolerance for anti-Semitism, by Alan M. Dershowitz, published by Gatestone Institute, 2017].There is a growing tolerance for anti-Semitism. Even when some people themselves do not harbor these feelings, they are willing to support those who do, as long as the anti-Semites are on their side of the political spectrum. This is an unacceptable approach, especially in the post-Holocaust era. Unfortunately, Valerie Plame is the poster child for this growing tolerance. She must be called out on it, as must others who follow the same path of bigotry.

The problem exists both on the hard right and the hard left. Both extremist groups see the world in racial, ethnic and religious terms. Both engage in identity politics: the hard left gives more weight to the views of certain minorities; while the hard right gives less weight to the views of these same minorities. Both are equally guilty of reductionism and stereotyping. Neither group is prepared to judge individuals on their individual merits and demerits. Both insist on judging entire groups and of stereotyping.

American Jews—like other Americans -- are deeply divided on important issues, such as the Iran deal, the current prospects for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, and the Trump administration's foreign policies. To generalize about "Jews" is both factually and morally wrong.

What the hard right and hard left share in common is special bigotry toward Jews: the neo-Nazi right hates the Jewish people; and the hard left hates the nation state of the Jewish people and those Jews who support it. Both views are bigoted and must not become acceptable among centrist liberals and conservatives.

Israeli Warplanes Strike Hezbollah Weapons Depot outside Damascus

Israeli warplanes attacked a Hezbollah weapons depot outside of Damascus in the early hours of Friday morning, The Times of Israel reported.

According to reports in Arabic media outlets, the three separate strikes were carried out near Damascus International Airport, an area which is a stronghold of the Iranian-backed terrorist organization.

“Israeli warplanes targeted with rocket fire a weapons depot belonging to Hezbollah near the airport,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Images of the alleged Israeli strikes surfaced on social media, which show fire and smoke rising from the area around Damascus airport.

There have been no confirmations or denials from Israel, Syria or Hezbollah on any of the reports.

Israel has for years carried out airstrikes in Syrian territory to contain and destroy the military infrastructure of its enemies, including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, as well as Hezbollah outposts.

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09/01 Links Pt2: Palestinian cleric who called Holocaust a fairy tale to meet UK MPs; Glick: The strategic case for Kurdistan

From Ian:

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Caroline Glick: The strategic case for Kurdistan

If the leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan aren’t intimidated into standing down, on September 25, the people of Iraqi Kurdistan will go to the polls to vote on a referendum for independence.
The Kurds have been hoping to hold the referendum since 2013.
Whereas Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu restated his support for Kurdish independence earlier this month in a meeting with a delegation of visiting Republican congressmen, the Trump administration has urged Kurdish President Masoud Barzani and his colleagues to postpone the referendum indefinitely.
US Defense Secretary James Mattis, who visited with Barzani in the Kurdish capital of Erbil two weeks ago, said that the referendum would harm the campaign against Islamic State.
In his words, “Our point right now is to stay focused like a laser beam on the defeat of ISIS and to let nothing distract us.”
Another line of argument against the Kurdish referendum was advanced several weeks ago by The New York Times editorial board. The Times argued the Kurds aren’t ready for independence. Their government suffers from corruption, their economy is weak, their democratic institutions are weak and their human rights record is far from perfect.
While the Times’ claims have truth to them, the relevant question is compared to what?
Compared to their neighbors, not to mention to the Times’ favored group the Palestinians, the Kurds, who have been self-governing since 1991, are paragons of good governance. Not only have they given refuge to tens of thousands of Iraqis fleeing ISIS. Iraqi Kurdistan has been an island of relative peace in a war-torn country since the US-led invasion in 2003.
Its Peshmerga forces have not only secured Kurdistan. They have been the most competent force fighting ISIS since its territorial conquests in 2014.

My experience in Israel: It is not what you see on TV

I recently traveled to Israel as part of a study abroad program through the American University in Washington, DC. As a master’s student concentrating on peace and conflict resolution and as a Kurd from northern Iraq, I was curious about the intense hostility toward Jews in the Middle East, the negative bias in the mainstream media and the continuous antisemitic lectures and activities on college campuses, including my own university.
My trip to Israel was unique. I was able to travel there through the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Having departed from the Sulaymaniyah International Airport in the KRI, I was sent off with a smile among my fellow Kurds without any shame, despite the fact that a trip to Israel is taboo among Middle Easterners.
Upon arriving at Ben-Gurion Airport, I was briefly held back by security due to concerns about a first-time traveler to Israel coming from an Arab state with no diplomatic relations (Iraq). This was understandable and expected, I too expect heavy screening towards foreigners entering the KRI due to the hostility of the region. I successfully and peacefully passed through airport security with a visa that would allow me to stay beyond my permitted time.
My first interaction with an Israeli was with a taxi driver driving me to my hotel. His conversations were animated, his politics realistic. He said he doesn’t care what religion one believes in, he just wants to live in peace. I tested the waters and told him I was Kurdish and he was very excited.
His eyes lit up and he immediately called for establishing a Kurdistan without my prodding. “That was easy,” I said to myself.
My time in Tel Aviv was brief, a little over a week. But what the city offered was unprecedented to me, especially in the Middle East. It is modern, filled will young Israelis enjoying life at the beaches, nightlife spots, restaurants. It is also historical and diverse. I witnessed Muslims and Jews intermingling, mosques calling for prayer, Arab families enjoying their time together on the beaches after breaking their fast. No one bothered others; everyone minded their own business. I tried hard to discover instances of negative interactions between the two peoples, but they even smoked hookah together at the local café.

Palestinian cleric who called Holocaust a fairy tale ‘to meet MPs’

The Holocaust denying former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who has called for Britain to be destroyed, is set to visit Parliament next week.
Sheikh Ekrima Sabri will be in Britain from 11 to 15 September, as guest of pro-Palestine group EuroPal to discuss the “recent escalation” in Israel with MPs.
Sabri has a history of anti-Semitic and terrorist-supporting views, which led to his removal as Jerusalem’s Islamic leader by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2006.
He threatened that Jewish prayer at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount would “prompt massacres” and lead to “rivers of blood”. And during interview with Italian newspaper la Repubblica, Sabri flatly denied the Holocaust, stating: “Six million Jews dead? No way, they were much fewer. Let’s stop with this fairy tale exploited by Israel to capture international solidarity.”
A petition has been launched by Christian United For Israel UK (CUFI UK) urging Home Secretary Amber Rudd to ban him. France blocked his entry in 2012. You can view the petition here.
CUFI UK executive director Des Starritt said: “At a time of increased fear of Islamic extremism in our country, it is inconceivable that our Government would grant a radical hate preacher such a platform. This strikes a message of double standards. It implies terrorism against Jews is acceptable.”

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08/10 Links Pt1: Hanan Ashrawi: Queen of delusion; Palestinians Try to Make Jerusalem ‘Judenrein’

From Ian:

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JPost Editorial: Queen of delusion

According to PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi, Israel holds the Palestinian people captive, denying its historical rights and the imperative to get real about peace. Her weekly diatribe happened to coincide with Jordanian King Abdullah’s first visit to Ramallah in five years, which demonstrated that the rest of the Arab world could not care less about history.
The telegenic Ashrawi is often trotted out for a public display of the kinder, gentler Palestinian nationalist, but in fact she is a protégé of the late Columbia University scholar and anti-Zionist Edward Said. As the holder of a PhD in medieval and comparative literature from the University of Virginia, she might be expected to be a voice of cultural enlightenment, if not reasonableness.
However, in accordance with the Palestinian tradition of never failing to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, she instead pushes antisemitic tropes masked as anti-Zionism.
Google lists more than a few sites of “famous Ashrawi quotes” that illustrate her consistent misrepresentation of fact in aid of the establishment of a Palestinian state. She began her deluded efforts with a breathtaking statement about the some 800,000 Jews who fled persecution from Muslim countries for refuge in the new State of Israel.
In Ashrawi’s historical analysis, these Jews were only “emigrants,” who had left their ancestral homes voluntarily.
Jews lived happily among their Muslim neighbors and were brought to Israel to usurp “ancestral” Palestinian lands as part of a plot by “Zionists.”

Shmuley Boteach: Palestinians Try to Make Jerusalem ‘Judenrein’

One reason the Taylor Force Act is so vital is that it would send a message to Abbas that the United States, at least (sadly, the rest of the world has not seen the light), will no longer put up with his doublespeak. He may dress in a suit but his actions mirror his fatigue-wearing predecessor.
Equally important is moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The president must fulfill this campaign promise to send another message to the Palestinians — namely, that Jerusalem will remain the indivisible capital of Israel.
For those unaware of history and misled by claims that East Jerusalem is “Arab” and therefore should belong to the Palestinians, I would point out that before 1865 the entire population of Jerusalem lived behind the Old City walls in East Jerusalem. When the UN voted to partition Palestine, a thriving Jewish community was living the eastern part of Jerusalem, which contains many important Jewish sites, including the City of David, the Temple Mount, and of course the Western Wall. This is also the home of Hebrew University and the original Hadassah Hospital. The only time this area of Jerusalem was exclusively Arab was between 1949 and 1967, when the Jews were forcibly expelled under Jordan occupation, a time when the Western Wall was desecrated and Jews of course were barred from prayer.
I will always remain hopeful that a solution can be found that will allow Jews and Palestinians to live together peacefully. One-sided compromises, such as those made during the Oslo period, only embolden the Palestinians to believe they can “liberate” all of “Palestine,” which includes Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem – East and West.
I feel sorry for the many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who want nothing more than to live their lives in peace, and would gladly compromise to achieve independence. Alas, unlike Israel, the PA is not a democracy and the people remain hostages of their radical leaders. It is hard to envision peace so long as Palestinians are taught to hate in their schools, encouraged to become martyrs by their preachers and media, and rewarded for murder by their leaders.
Regardless of these provocations, Jews will not be driven from their capital or their homeland. Jerusalem will never again be Judenrein.

PA: Israel 'falsifying' Jerusalem's history

The Palestinian Authority (PA) government, headed by Rami Hamdallah, on Tuesday warned against Israel's “escalating policy” following UNESCO's recent resolutions recognizing the Muslim right to the Temple Mount and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hevron, while ignoring the Jewish connection to those sites.
An official statement released after a meeting in Ramallah said that celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the "occupation" of Jerusalem included a light and sound show in Silwan which, the statement claimed, was based on "falsification of the historical narrative of the Holy City."
The statement further claimed that Israel is re-implementing a policy of removing Arab residents from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, including a decision to evict several families over a claim that the building in which they live belonged to a Jewish family before 1948.
The PA government noted that the escalation of the Israeli government’s “settlement” activity requires the immediate intervention of the international community in order to put an end to it and requires international protection for the Palestinian people and its holy sites and serious action by the Arab and Islamic nation.

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08/06 Links: Israel slanderer waits for Israeli transplant; Stone-throwers ambush bus filled with children

From Ian:

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Israel slanderer waits for Israeli transplant

Legal human rights organization Shurat Hadin, joined by 50 IDF reserve officers and soldiers, wrote to the Health Ministry and the National Transplant Center requesting that PA diplomat Saeb Erekat be removed from the waiting list for transplants in Israel.
About 50 soldiers and officers who fought in Operation Defensive Shield and who hold organ donor cards today petitioned the Health Ministry and the National Transplant Center to immediately remove Saeb Erekat from the list of transplants in Israel, due to the fact that Erekat has repeatedly slandered IDF soldiers, called for the boycott of the State of Israel, campaigned for sanctions against it, and led the BDS movement to isolate and harm the State of Israel.
Yesterday the media reported that an application had been filed on behalf of Saeb Erekat, a senior PA official, for a lung transplant in Israel.
In the wake of Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and the reserve soldiers battle in Jenin in which 13 IDF soldiers were killed, a propaganda film by director Muhammad Bakri, entitled Jenin Jenin, was released. The film purports to provide prima facie evidence of war crimes committed by the IDF in Jenin which turned out to be wholly spurious, as was decided by the Central District Court.
Erekat took a large part in disseminating the blood libel embodied in the film, which portrayed the story as if a massacre took place in Jenin. He appeared at the time in the various media, mainly on foreign television channels, and disseminated the lie of the massacre.
In addition, in November 2010, Erekat wrote a letter praising the planner of then Minister Rechavam Ze'evi's assassination, and in December 2015 he paid a condolence visit to another terrorist family who carried out a shooting attack against IDF forces.
In addition, Erekat is an enthusiastic supporter of the boycott movement against Israel - BDS. He has visited EU representatives in the past because they did not support BDS, and asserted that all their support for the two-state solution is meaningless if they do not support the boycott of Israel.

Seth Frantzman: Israel is at its most and least integrated moment in the Mideast

The discussion in Israel, from the Right to the Left, is primarily an internal one. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel has shared interests in Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Egypt, it isn’t because he enjoys meeting with leaders from there, it’s simply a statement of fact. One gets the feeling that previous generations of Israelis, with the exception of the cultural Eurocentric elites, felt more a part of the Middle East, more comfortable in it. That is ironic, since Israel was more isolated in the 1950s, surrounded by real Arab armies. Today Israel has peace with two Arab countries, and relationships with others, yet it is less integrated in the region in some ways.
Israel was always going to be a janus-faced country because of its nature. Founded primarily by Eastern European Jewish nationalists, it was a gathering place for Jews from the Middle East and has the food, music and culture of the region ingrained in it. Many of its cultural elites still see the region as “primitive” and their cultural leanings are toward Europe. It’s no surprise some of them and their children emigrate to places like Berlin.
In the 1960s many Arab nationalists believed Israel was a colonial implant in the Middle East and would go the way of Algeria. They didn’t understand that it was not colonial in foundation, but seeking to reconnect an indigenous people with their land. The problem the indigenous people have had is that some of them do not feel comfortable in the land.
Ben-Gurion thought the problem was an education system in need of modernizing “primitives.” He was wrong. The problem was creating an education system that roots people in the Middle East and makes them feel a part of it and teaches them to respect and be interested in it. After all, Israelis are all supposed to learn Arabic in school, but few of them actually end up understanding it.
That in itself is a symbol of how it is more integrated, but also less integrated.

Forward: ZOA head more worrying for Jews than Linda Sarsour

A recent piece published by the Forward claims that Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) president Morton Klein is more worrying for Jews than controversial Palestinian Arab-American firebrand Linda Sarsour.
"As leader of the Zionist Organization of America, Klein has embraced and defended alt-right figures like Bannon and Gorka for their unabashedly pro-Israel-at-any-costs position, cozying up to anti-Semitic forces if it advances the ZOA’s ardent Zionist goals." wrote Forward editorial fellow Steven Davidson in an article titled "19 People Jews Should Worry About More Than Linda Sarsour."
"It would require a book replete with exclamation points to fully explain the dangers of an ostensibly Jewish organization aligning with xenophobic elements to accomplish narrow political goals."
Also present on Davidson's list are Hamas head Ismail Haniyeh, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah,and former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke. Bottoming out the list was United States President Donald Trump, whose campaign Davidson wrote "either rode the coattails of the alt-right or allowed the alt-right to follow his nativist coattails."
Davidson had penned the article as a defense for Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian Arab-American activist who has turned into the face of the anti-Trump movement. Many of her comments have made Jews uneasy, such as saying that "nothing is creepier than Zionism" and claiming that supporting Israel and being a feminist are incompatible.

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07/15 Links: Why Radiohead is more important than Roger Waters; How Al Jazeera Inspires Terrorists

From Ian:

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Alan Dershowitz: So Now American Zionists Want to Boycott Israel

I strongly support greater separation between religion and state in Israel, as Theodor Herzl outlined in his plan for the nation-state of the Jewish People in Der Judenstaat 120 years ago: "We shall . . . prevent any theocratic tendencies from coming to the fore on the part of our priesthood. We shall keep our priests [by which is meant Rabbis] within the confines of their temples." It was David Ben Gurion, Israel's founding Prime Minister, who made the deal with the Orthodox Rabbinate that violated Herzl's mandate and knocked down the wall of separation between religion and state. He allocated to the Chief Rabbinate authority over many secular matters, such as marriage, divorce and child custody. He also laid the groundwork for the creation of religious parties that have been a necessary part of most Israeli coalitions for many years.
So, do not blame Israel's current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for the recent capitulation. His government's survival depends on his unholy alliance with allegedly holy parties that threaten to leave the coalition and bring down his government unless he capitulated. The alternative to a Netanyahu government might well be far to the right of the current government, both on religious matters and on prospects for peace. Reasonable people may disagree as to whether Netanyahu did the right thing, but I believe that given the choice between the current government and what may well replace it, PM Netanyahu acted on acceptable priorities.
This is not to say that I am happy with the end result. As a post-denominational Jew, I want to see a part of the Western Wall opened to conservative and reform prayer. I also want to see conservative and reform and modern orthodox rabbis deemed fully competent to perform rituals including marriage and divorce. I will continue to fight for these outcomes, and I think we will ultimately be successful. But in the meantime, I will also continue to fly El Al, contribute to Israeli hospitals, attend APAC events, and encourage Americans to support Israel, both politically and financially. To do otherwise is to engage in a form of BDS – the tactic currently employed by Israel's enemies to delegitimate the Nation state of the Jewish people. Supporters of BDS will point to these benign boycotts as a way of justifying their malignant ones. If BDS is an immoral tactic, as it surely is, so too is punishing the people of Israel for the failure of its government to be fully inclusive of Jews who do not align themselves with the ultra-Orthodox.
Tough love may be an appropriate response in family matters, but boycotting a troubled nation which has become a pariah among the hard-left is not the appropriate response to the Israeli government's recent decisions regarding religion. The answer is not disengagement, but rather greater engagement with Israel on matters that involve world Jewry. I, too, am furious about the arrogant and destructive threats of the ultra-Orthodox parties in the current government. I, too, would prefer to see a coalition that excluded the ultra-Orthodox parties. I, too, would like to see a high wall of separation that kept the Rabbis out of politics. But I do not live in Israel, and Israel is a democracy. Ultimately it is up to the citizens of Israel to change the current system. The role of American Jews is limited to persuasion, not coercion. In the end, we will be successful in persuading the Israeli people to take the power of religious, coercion out of the hands of the ultra-Orthodox minority because that would not only be good for secular Israelis – who are a majority – but also for religious Israelis. History has proven that separation of state from religion is better not only for the state, but also for religion.

Ken Loach accused of exempting himself from cultural boycott of Israel

Ken Loach has been accused of seeing himself as exempt from the cultural boycott of Israel that he promotes, after claims that he allowed his films to be distributed in the country without objection.
Loach has vocally condemned artists who perform in Israel as supporting an “apartheid regime” and his long-standing producer insisted it was down to a “mistake” that the Palme d’Or winning I, Daniel Blake is currently showing in Israeli cinemas.
The contentious issue of Loach’s films being screened in Israel emerged after the director’s searing condemnation of Radiohead’s decision to play a concert in Tel Aviv later this month. Loach accused the band of ignoring Palestinian communities and supporting a system of apartheid by refusing to commit to the cultural boycott of Israel.
Rebecca O’Brien, Loach’s producer, said the distribution company Wild Bunch, had done the deal “accidentally” and without the knowledge of Loach or his production company Sixteen Films.
“We have asked Wild Bunch before not to sell to Israel,” O’Brien said. “But what happened this time – and what has happened before – is that during Cannes, things happen very fast and a junior member of the company went and sold it to Israel in the heat of the moment, forgetting we had asked for it not to be sold there.”
Claims that the distribution rights for Israel were sold “accidentally” were however dismissed as “absurd” by Loach’s long-term Israeli distributor Guy Shani, the head of Shani Films and also the owner of Israel’s Lev cinema chain.

How Al Jazeera Inspires Terrorists

The Qatari-funded news network al Jazeera has inspired terrorists world wide, and continues to promote an extremist ideology to viewers, more than 80 percent of whom expressed support for ISIS, according to a new video issued by the United Arab Emirates, one of several Arab countries currently boycotting Qatar over its continued financial support for terror groups.
The UAE and other major Arab nations such as Saudi Arabia have ceased all ties with Qatar until the country fulfills a list of demands that includes cutting ties to terror groups and shutting down al Jazeera, which these nations say is promoting Islamic radicalism across the region and elsewhere.
"Al Jazeera Supports Terrorism," declares the latest video, which is being publicized by the UAE’s foreign ministry.
Al Jazeera has long faced accusations that it promotes terrorism and distorts regional news events, such as the conflict with Israel. Al Jazeera has been caught staging deaths in Egypt and elsewhere and trying to pass off the false scenes as news.
Former al Jazeera employees are currently suing the network over its support for the Muslim Brotherhood and allegedly misleading employees about the network’s extremist ties.

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07/11 Links Pt1: Phillips: ISRAEL WON! NOW GET OVER IT; 120,000 Palestinian Children Attend Summer Terrorist Camps

From Ian:

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New Knesset lobby unveils plan for peace: Total Palestinian surrender

Israel has already defeated the Palestinians. All that’s left is for them to surrender.
That, at least, was an argument being made in Jerusalem this week. Led by the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum, pro-Israel leaders and analysts gathered here to highlight local support for their aim of reframing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict internationally.
“After more than a century, the conflict is really over,” Daniel Pipes, the forum’s president, told JTA. “As an American, I would like my government to say to the Israeli government, ‘Do what you need to do to convince the Palestinians they lost.’”
Pipes on Sunday night held an English-language event at the Begin Heritage Center to cheer Tuesday’s launch of a Knesset lobby committed to forcing the Palestinians to admit defeat. He said he hoped the Knesset Israel Victory Caucus — along with a public opinion poll he released Sunday to JTA — would help them convince US policymakers to “let Israel win.”
In an article in the December 2016 issue of Commentary, Pipes described the things Israel might do to “encourage Palestinians to accept Israel and discourage rejectionism.” They include charging the Palestinians Authority for material damage from terrorism; blocking Palestinian Authority officials from returning to the West Bank if their colleagues incite violence; quiet, anonymous burials for Palestinians killed attacking Israelis, and shutting off water and electricity supplies to punish violence by Palestinians.
“Inducing a change of heart is not a pretty or pleasant process,” wrote Pipes. However, he continued, “Wars usually end when failure causes one side to despair, when that side has abandoned its war aims and accepted defeat, and when that defeat has exhausted the will to fight.”

Melanie Phillips: ISRAEL WON! NOW GET OVER IT

The Middle East Forum held a meeting in Jerusalem last night to discuss Daniel Pipes’s “Victory Caucus“, his project for breaking the Arab-Israel impasse. He urges that the conflict should be reframed as a war which Israel has won and the Arabs have lost rather than a never-ending impasse with demands upon Israel for negotiations, peace processes and compromises. I spoke briefly at this meeting. You can watch my comments on this clip from the Facebook Live video below. You can also watch the video of the whole meeting here. A transcript of my remarks follows beneath the clip.

If the Palestinians Care about Peace, Why Do They Pay Salaries to Terrorists?

All over the world, people take the side of the Palestinians without knowing much about them and their collective beliefs and intentions. Palestinians who go abroad looking for praise and propaganda seem pleasant. They don’t find it hard to convince innocent Westerners that they have justice on their side.
But sometimes, even in the Middle East, a window opens and the truth peeks out. At the moment, the struggle over official payments to Palestinian terrorists provides an exceptionally useful vantage point.
For many years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) or one of its offshoots has been paying regular salaries to the families of dead or imprisoned terrorists. The 2016 PA budget says it now pays relatives of “martyrs” the equivalent of $183 million a year and families of imprisoned terrorists $135 million. According to the Times of Israel, the Palestinians have paid out $1.12 billion during the last four years to terrorists and their families. The money, all in U.S. dollars, comes from foreign aid grants.
The new administration in Washington has decided this practice should end. At his meeting in Bethlehem with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the PA, Donald Trump said: “Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded or rewarded.”

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07/06 Links Pt2: Linda Sarsour Calls For ‘Jihad’ Against Trump; The UN’s Destructive, and Self-Destructive, Obsession with Israel

From Ian:

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WATCH: Women’s March Organizer Linda Sarsour Calls For ‘Jihad’ Against Trump

Linda Sarsour attends a rally to protest the executive order that President Donald Trump signed clamping down on refugee admissions and temporarily restricting travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries in New York City on January 29, 2017.
Speaking at the Islamic Society of North American Convention last weekend, Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour ripped into the Trump administration and called for “jihad” against Trump. ISNA itself has a long history of ties to Islamic extremism. As Jordan Schachtel of Conservative Review notes, Sarsour began the speech by thanking Siraj Wajjah – a man “listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.”
It got worse from there.
She ranted: Why sisters and brothers, why are we so unprepared. Why are we so afraid of this administration and the potential chaos that they will ensue on our community?...I hope, that when we stand up to those who oppress our communities, that Allah accepts from us that as a form of jihad....We are struggling against tyrants and rulers not only abroad...but here in the United States of America where you have fascists and white supremacists and Islamophobes reining in the White House.
She concluded, “Our number one and top priority is to protect and defend our community. It is not to assimilate and to please any other people in authority. And our top priority…is to please Allah, and only Allah.”
Sarsour, who was called a “Champion of Change” by the Obama White House, has a long history of speaking kindly of shariah law and terrorists. Sarsour stated that underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was a CIA agent; she supports attacks on the Israeli Defense Force; she stated that “the sacrifice the black Muslims slaves went through in this country is nothing compared to Islamophobia today”; she stated that Brigitte Gabriel and victim of Islamic genital mutilation Ayaan Hirsi Ali didn’t deserve to be called women, explaining, ‘I wish I could take their vaginas away – they don’t deserve to be women.”

The UN’s Destructive, and Self-Destructive, Obsession with Israel

On Tuesday, the United Nations Social, Educational, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) passed a resolution condemning Israel, despite UNESCO’s being an ostensibly apolitical body. This resolution, hardly the first of its kind, typifies the UN’s perverse fixation on Israel, which, as Joshua Muravchik chronicles in a brief history, has existed nearly since the world body’s inception and interferes with its ability to do much else. The story begins with the UN’s approval of a plan to partition Palestine and the Arab world’s response: waging precisely the sort of aggressive war the body was formed to prevent:
Sadly, the UN did nothing to defeat this aggression or others that were to follow in other parts of the world. As a result, the world body grew up devoid of its intended purpose. In its place, member states have pursued a variety of other goals, chief of which have been decolonization, development, peacekeeping, and, remarkably, castigation of Israel. . . .
Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that upon taking up his duties as chief U.S. ambassador to the UN in 1975, he was startled to discover that Israel was “the center of the political life” of the world body. Moynihan arrived just months after the first UN appearance by Yasir Arafat, chief of the PLO. The event marked a turning point in the UN’s treatment of Israel that ramifies to this day. . . . The PLO then was a long way from becoming the organization that signed the 1993 Oslo Accords with Israel and joined long-term negotiations toward [an ostensible] peaceful settlement. Rather, it was riding the crest of a campaign of international terrorism carried out not only on Israeli soil but also in skies and airports and streets around Western Europe and the Middle East.

Melanie Phillips: The radical difference between antisemitism and Islamophobia

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Watch me here explaining to Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network what I think is the crucial distinction between antisemitism and Islamophobia.

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05/30 Links Pt1: What not signing a Jerusalem embassy waiver would really mean; Terrorism Is Not Random

From Ian:

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Eugene Kontorovich: What Trump not signing a Jerusalem embassy waiver would really mean

On Thursday, President Barack Obama’s last waiver pursuant to the Jerusalem Embassy Act will expire. Absent a new waiver by President Trump, the provisions of the law will go into full effect. Trump promised during his campaign to move the embassy, a policy embodied both in federal law and the Republican Party platform. But since he came into office, Trump’s promise seems to have lost some momentum.
This piece will examine the mechanics of the Embassy Act waiver — it is not actually a waiver on moving the embassy. The details of the law make it a particularly convenient way for Trump to defy now-lowered expectations and not issue a waiver on June 1.
First, some context. Many commentators have sought to cast a possible Trump waiver as proof that Obama’s Israeli policy is really the only possible game in town. But whether or not a waiver is issued, Trump has succeeded in fundamentally changing the discussion about the U.S.-Israel relationship. Waivers under the 1995 act come twice a year, and for the past two decades, they have hardly warranted a news item. Under the Bush and Obama administrations, they were entirely taken for granted.
Now everyone is holding his or her breath to see whether Trump will sign the waiver. If he does, it will certainly be a disappointment to his supporters. But it will not be the end of the show — he will have seven more waivers ahead, with mounting pressure as his term progresses. Under Obama, speculation focused on what actions he would take or allow against Israel (and even these waited until very late in his second term).
The waiver available to the president under the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 does not waive the obligation to move the embassy. That policy has been fully adopted by Congress in the Act (sec. 3(a)(3)) and is not waivable. Of course, Congress cannot simply order the president to implement such a move, especially given his core constitutional power over diplomatic relations.
But Congress, having total power over the spending of taxpayer dollars, does not have to pay for an embassy in Tel Aviv. The Act’s enforcement mechanism is to suspend half of the appropriated funds for the State Department’s “Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad” until the law’s terms are complied with. The waiver provision simply allows the president to waive the financial penalty.
What this means is that by not signing a waiver, Trump would not actually be requiring the embassy to move to Jerusalem, moving the embassy or recognizing Jerusalem. That could give him significant diplomatic flexibility or deniability if June 1 goes by with mere silence from the White House.

Obama treated Israel ‘as part of the problem,’ says ex-envoy Oren. With Trump, ‘it’s love, love, love’

As a noted historian, former Israeli ambassador to the United States and current Knesset member, Michael Oren has been grappling with the question of how Israel should be presented to the world for years.
Last year, shortly before being appointed deputy minister for public diplomacy, Oren was invited for a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss just that.
“Delegitimization, the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement… What are we doing wrong? What could we be doing to present Israel better?” Oren, speaking to a crowded auditorium of English-speaking Israelis at a Times of Israel event Sunday night, recalled Netanyahu asking him.
Oren said he told the prime minister that he believed Israel was fighting the war of words with the wrong weapons. While “the other side” has a simple narrative peppered with buzzwords like “occupation,” “colonialism,” “oppression,” and “apartheid,” Israel, according to Oren, had yet to work out how to present a succinct and salient argument to counter its critics. Israel was falling behind in the battle for hearts and minds because it has not succeeded in creating a positive counter-narrative, Oren argued.
Tasked by Netanyahu with forming that narrative, Oren at first approached public relations experts, he recounted, but soon realized that traditional PR methods were the wrong approach to hasbara, or pro-Israel advocacy.

JCPA: The Psychological Profile of the Palestinian "Lone Wolf" Terrorist

A series of psychological measures was administered to Palestinian residents of a refugee camp as well as a neighboring village, with subjects asked to rate both themselves as well as how they imagined actual perpetrators of "lone wolf" violence would see themselves. Our sample included many in both groups who actually knew "lone wolves." Our goal was to construct a psychological profile of the young Palestinian "lone wolf" based on the descriptions of those who knew him or her best, namely peers.
We found distinct differences between the Al-Aroub refugee camp and the nearby village of Beit Ummar. The Beit Ummar subjects saw themselves no less "nationalistic" regarding the rights of Palestinians than they saw terror operatives being, while at the same time were more tolerant of Jewish rights and less tolerant of violent behavior towards Jews.
The refugee camp residents appear to have more closely identified with those that perpetrate attacks, while Beit Ummar residents see themselves as more psychologically intact, less hopeless, less violent in school settings and more moderate in their beliefs related to incitement. We found that many Palestinian Arabs see the "lone wolves" as psychologically distressed individuals who are not solely driven by ideology.

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05/22 Links Pt2: Pierre Rehov: The U.S., Churchill and the Middle East; It’s Time To Pass The Taylor Force Act

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Pierre Rehov: The U.S., Churchill and the Middle East

In addition, a new strand of American foreign policy is now opening up. Recently, Israel celebrated the 69th anniversary of its independence, and this week Israel will mark 50 years since the reunification of Jerusalem, liberated in 1967 from its illegal capture by Jordan in 1948, followed by Jordan's ethnic cleaning of Jews and the illegal confiscation of their property. The White House announced the resumption of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, provided that it ceases to finance and incite terrorism by making its child-killers national heroes and wage-earners funded by the West
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will no longer be able to continue to pretend to prepare his people for peace while at the same time calling for murder. About 10% of the Palestinian budget is spent on the salaries of terrorists imprisoned in Israel, and the prisoners' families.
Abbas evidently omitted this "detail" in his statements to the press during his recent visit to the White House.
Trump has apparently decided that on his visit to Israel this week, he will not announce the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem -- a move that will only make him look less strong to Arab leaders. They may not like all promises that are kept, but they do deeply respect and trust those who keep them. If promises are not kept to a friend, the thinking goes, why would they be kept to us? They will therefore be less happy with any promises to counter Shiite threats -- considerably more important to them than the location of an embassy. As Plato, Churchill and even Osama bin Laden understood, people respect only a strong horse, especially when one's adversaries can only survive by creating conflicts to distract their citizens from unaccountable governance. As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu observed:
"Israel has clearly stated its position to the US and to the world multiple times. Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem won't harm the peace process. The opposite is true. It will correct a historic injustice by advancing the [peace process] and shattering a Palestinian fantasy that Jerusalem isn't Israel's capital."
By recognizing the rights of Jerusalem's historical occupants of 3,000 years -- despite the lies of UNESCO and other UN organizations engulfed by the Arabs' automatic majority -- Trump could well demonstrate a new force that would elevate him to the same stature as Churchill, who said he regarded Islamism as the "greatest retrograde force of all time." No wonder Obama did not want his bust.

Michael Lumish: UC Berkeley Pits Liberalism Against ‘Islamophobia’

When one asks if terrorism and Islamic supremacism inspire Western anti-Muslim bigotry, the response is to accuse the questioner of “Islamophobia.” The problem, we are to believe, is not terrorism or the spread of Islamic supremacism into Europe. On the contrary, according to the general attitude of the conference, these are merely the natural responses of a people oppressed under the weight of voracious white, Western, racist, colonialist, imperialist aggression.
In other words, the real problem is not Osama Bin Laden, but George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
What is perhaps most disconcerting about the conference was the tendency to embrace anti-Semitic anti-Zionism while claiming to oppose ethnic prejudice. A perfect example of this was the use of anti-Semitic cartoonist Carlos Latuff to promote the event. Latuff specializes in demonizing Israeli Jews as violently inhumane creatures in much the same way the Nazis did with European Jews in the early to mid-twentieth-century. This is akin to promoting racist caricatures of African-Americans while professing to fight racism. It is inconceivable that Bazian and other conference organizers would use Latuff’s vile work unknowingly. Their actions reveal their intent to legitimize anti-Semitism by using it at a UC Berkeley event ostensibly dedicated to fighting racism.
Ultimately, UC Berkeley’s “Islamophobia” conference contradicted itself in at least two ways. Foremost was the morally reprehensible act of espousing anti-Semitism in order to combat anti-Muslim bigotry. The other was its insistence that the larger Muslim world, comprised of 1.6 billion people, about one-quarter of the world’s population, are fundamentally victims of aggressive Europeans imperial excess. Centuries of Muslim empire-building aside, playing the victim card simply allows Bazian and his colleagues to continue their aggressions against the West under the guise of moral purity.

Ben-Dror Yemini: An American president in the service of BDS

As times goes by, the chance increases that Israel will eventually miss former US President Barack Obama, despite his conduct on the Iranian nuclear issue. While he made quite a few mistakes, he was a friend. He strengthened the Israeli-American security cooperation and approved multi-year aid which no other president before him had approved.
When he visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority in March 2013, he presented a political vision which most Israelis would embrace. In Ramallah, in front of the Palestinian political echelon, he said: “We seek an independent, a viable and contiguous Palestinian state as the homeland of the Palestinian people, alongside the Jewish state of Israel.” Who needs the “nationality law” when we have Obama?
Two draft agreements were presented as part of former Secretary of State John Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy. The first, which was presented in January 2014, received quite a lot of support from Israel’s decision makers. Then-Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman gave his full backing to Tzipi Livni, who led the negotiations, and even stated: “Kerry’s proposals are the best Israel could hope for.” It wasn’t much different from the Clinton Parameters.
Peter Beinart, the guru of the Jewish Left in the United States, wrote at the time that “Kerry’s peace mission should worry liberal Zionists,” as it was not generous enough towards the Palestinians. That was foolish. Three days after the article was published, on March 17, 2014, Obama presented a peace plan to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It had everything in it, including Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital. It didn’t do any good. Abbas said no.
And US President Donald Trump? His understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is likely no different from his understanding of other international issues, which isn’t much. His diplomatic vision is: “Do whatever you like, one state, two states.” Never before has an American president given equal importance to a solution presented by the BDS movement, which is in fact the solution of Israel’s radical right as well—one state.

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05/17 Links Pt2: New Film ‘In Our Hands’ brings Six Day War to the big screen; Holocaust protest Linda Sarsour at CUNY event

From Ian:

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Holocaust survivors attempt to prevent Linda Sarsour from CUNY event

A group of about 100 Holocaust survivors wrote a letter to New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo asking him to stop anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour from speaking at a City University of New York graduation next month.
Despite a public outcry and strong opposition from Jewish leaders, CUNY has chosen to maintain its invitation for Sarsour to speak to graduates of its School of Public Health and Health Policy, scheduled for June 1.
Sarsour, who was among the organizers of January’s Women’s March on Washington, has stirred controversy by speaking against Israel. In a recent interview, she said one cannot be part of the feminist movement unless he or she is critical of Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank. Sarsour was also highly criticized for publicly supporting convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh at a conference advocating for the boycott of Israel last month.
“What Linda Sarsour advocates for – boycotts against Jewish businesses in Israel and random acts of violence against the innocent – are no different than the things that we personally experienced,” the survivors wrote in their letter. “This is a frightening reality that we hoped we would never see again.
“But what makes matters worse is to again see good people and respected institutions responding with indifference,” they added.
“Nothing good can come of Ms. Sarsour telling young people, with CUNY’s imprimatur, that violence against the innocent for any reason at all is acceptable or courageous.”

JPost Editorial: Tempest in tea pot?

What happened to all the criticism of Sebastian Gorka, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser on counterterrorism? Why have all his critics disappeared?
We ask, because for the last month this paper has come under a fierce volley of criticism for agreeing to host Gorka – who holds the title of deputy assistant to the president – at its annual conference in New York City last week.
The attacks came from across the political spectrum, but mostly from left-wing, progressive organizations whose criticism was based on a series of articles in the Forward that alleged Gorka had secret ties with a far-right Hungarian group and neo-Nazi affiliate.
One head of a US-based Jewish organization told the paper that hosting Gorka made The Jerusalem Post no better than Jews who acquiesced to the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s in Germany. No less.
As the Post’s editor-in-chief Yaakov Katz wrote a few weeks ago, the paper had asked the White House to send an official representative to its conference. Gorka was selected, and because of the reports about him and the emotions he stirred within the Jewish community, the paper felt it was not only appropriate to have him speak, but also its duty.
During his on-stage interview, Gorka dismissed the allegations against him and challenged his critics to find even “one sentence that is antisemitic or anti-Israel” that he, himself, ever uttered. “Nobody,” he said, “has found one [such] sentence that I have said in the past 46 years.”
Gorka then told how his father helped Jewish neighbors throughout World War II. In 1944, during Germany’s occupation of Budapest, Gorka said his father “escorted his fellow Jewish schoolmates – who were forced to wear the Star of David – to school every day and back to stop local German forces from assaulting or spitting on them.”
The week before the conference, reports surfaced that Gorka was on his way out of the White House. Gorka’s dismissal – according to The New York Times, The Daily Beast and CNN – was imminent.
But he is still in his position; still working in the White House. As he said at our conference: “The White House works like a well-oiled machine... I will be there for as long as the president has use for me.”

The 2016 African Debate Champion shares his thoughts on Israel

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05/05 Links Pt2: Phillips: Melanie at Berkeley; Sanders rejects BDS in interview with Al Jazeera

From Ian:

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Melanie Phillips: Melanie at Berkeley

Third fact. There was never a Palestinian nation or a Palestinian people. No Arabs ever considered themselves to be Palestinians. They thought of themselves as part of an Arab nation. There was no identification with the land known as Palestine. After all, the name itself was entirely artificial. Judea, the land of the Jews, was only called Palestine by the conquering Romans who wanted to erase its Jewish identity.
When in the 1920s the League of Nations decided to resettle the Jews in the land, the Arabs living there at the time considered themselves pan-Arab or southern Syrian. There was NO distinctive culture, language, literature, history or tradition based on the area known as Palestine, other than that of the Jews.
Many people who lived there then weren’t even Arabs at all. A 1920 British government handbook noted: ‘The people west of the Jordan are not Arabs but only Arabic-speaking. The bulk of the population are fellahin… [agricultural labourers of diverse backgrounds]. In the Gaza district they are mostly of Egyptian origin; elsewhere they are of the most mixed race.”
Many of those who now claim Palestinian ancestry going back through the centuries are instead the descendants of those who poured into Mandate Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s, many of them illegally, on the backs of the returning Jews who were seen as bringing work and prosperity with them.
There’s no such thing as Palestinian national identity, and the Arabs have always admitted this. In 1937, the Syrian leader Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi said: “There is no such country as Palestine. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. ‘Palestine’ is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it.”
In 1946 the Arab historian Professor Philip Hitti observed: “There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not”.
In 1977 Zahir Muhsein, a member of the PLO executive committee, said: ”The Palestinian people does not exist…Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.”
The so-called Palestinian agenda always been to destroy the Jewish homeland. Which is why Mahmoud Abbas says the Palestinians will never accept Israel as a Jewish state. Which is why their maps and insignia depict Palestine as incorporating the whole of Israel. Which is why they teach their children to hate Jews, steal their land and destroy the Jewish homeland. To understand the present, we have to understand the past.

Mottle Wolfe: Mr. Terrorist Goes to Washington (and weekly re-cap)

Mottle and Brian John Thomas (Brian of London) catch you up on the news from Israel and around the world.
In this episode: Mahmoud Abbas visits Trump at the Whitehouse, Hamas releases their new and improved ‘moderate’ genocidal new platform, UNESCO show once again just how irrelevant they are, and Israel gets a dose of Bieber fever!

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05/03 Links Pt2: Abbas To Trump: 'Palestinian' Children Raised In 'Culture Of Peace'; Media Goes Kumbaya For Hamas

From Ian:

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Abbas To Trump: 'Palestinian' Children Raised In 'Culture Of Peace' (not satire)

“We are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace,” said Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday, during a joint presentation alongside President Donald Trump.
Watch the segment below, or watch the entire event here.
Speaking Arabic due to insufficient fluency in English, Abbas described the “Palestinian people” as something other than regional Levantine Arabs. “Palestinians,” he continued, constitute a distinct nation entitled to self-determination and independence via statehood on Israeli and disputed territories.
Abbas spoke of “occupation” while describing “Palestinians” as a people:
“Mr. President, it’s about time for Israel to end its occupation of our people and of our land. After fifty years, we are the only remaining people in the world that still live under occupation. We are aspiring and want to achieve our freedom, our dignity, and our right to self-determination and we also want for Israel to recognize the Palestinian state just as the Palestinian people recognize the state of Israel.”
A future “Palestinian” state, said Abbas, must be built upon disputed territories east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, which he referred to as “the border of 1967.” Its future capital city, he added, must be “East Jerusalem” in accordance with the “two-state solution.”
Abbas described “Palestinians” as “suffering,” later attempting to link Islam with Judaism and Christianity via grouping of “the three great monotheistic religions.”
Islamic terrorist groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS), said Abbas, have nothing to do with “noble religion” of Islam.

10 Things You Need To Know About Mahmoud Abbas

Donald Trump is hosting Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas today, in the Palestinian leader’s first official visit to the White House under the new administration. In honor of the meeting, we collected a number of important facts on the work of the PA Chairman in the past and present. The following facts, should they arise during the meeting, will likely cause a great deal of discomfort on the Palestinian side.
1. Mahmoud Abbas was an active terrorist.
Abbas was one of the planners and primary funders of the massacre of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich 1972. One of the planners of the horrific slaughter, Abu Daoud, testified that Abbas was responsible for funding the massacre. Not only does the Palestinian leader not regret his role in the murder of the Israeli athletes — he brags about it. Last September, the official Facebook page of the Fatah movement, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, described the murderous attack as an “heroic operation”, and described it as a demonstration of “the meaning of the courage and power of the Palestinian resistance fighter and his self-sacrifice for the homeland and for the cause.”
3. Abbas is a Holocaust denier.
In his doctorate, called The Other Side: The Secret Ties Between the Nazis and Zionism (Arabic), Abbas questions the historical truth of six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. He noted in his thesis that “there are rumors” that the number of victims reached six million. However, Abbas claims, no-one can confirm this number: “The number of Jewish victims might be six million, and it might be much smaller, perhaps even less than a million.”
Furthermore, Abbas is deeply invested in conspiracy theories about an alleged Zionist-Nazi collaboration, and writes that the heads of the Zionist movement “granted legitimacy to every racist in the world, and especially Hitler, to do as they wish with the Jews in their power with the long-term aim of those Jews immigrating to Palestine.”
It should be noted that it was Haj Amin al-Husseini, considered the leader of the Arabs of the Land of Israel in WWII, who closely collaborated with Hitler — with the aim of exterminating the Jewish population in the Land of Israel and throughout the Middle East. These solid facts do not of course appear in Abbas’s false doctorate.

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04/29 Links: N. Korea threatens Israel; Trump proclaims May Jewish American Heritage Month

From Ian:

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N. Korea threatens Israel after Liberman calls Kim a madman

North Korea threatened to punish Israel and accused Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Saturday of “rash and malicious” statements that insulted its leadership, after he criticized the Asian nation and called its leadership “extremist and insane.”
In an official foreign ministry statement, Pyongyang said Liberman has challenged North Korea by making “rash and malicious” comments against the nation.
“Our consistent message is to mercilessly punish those who offend the dignity of our leadership,” the statement said.
“We warn Israel to think twice about the implications of its defamation campaign against us.”
The statement further condemned Israel for its nuclear policy, and accused the Jewish state of abusing the rights of Arabs across the Middle East.
“Israel is the only illegal possessor of nuclear weapons that enjoys the support of the United States, but Israel is attacking North Korea for possessing nuclear weapons,” the statement read, going on to claim this was a cynical move intended to distract from Israeli “occupation” and “crimes against humanity.”
On Thursday Liberman said Pyongyang “seems to have crossed the red line with its recent nuclear tests,” adding that its nuclear weapons program posed more of a threat to world order than Iran or any terrorist group.

At UN Security Council, Tillerson Presses for Economic Sanctions on North Korea

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson took the escalating threat of a nuclear North Korea to the United Nations Security Council Friday, urging member countries to financially cut ties with Pyongyang and freeze access to funds that could be used to build up that nation’s nuclear arsenal.
Tillerson called on the international community to fully implement U.N. sanctions and to suspend or downgrade diplomatic ties as well with North Korea.
“With each successive detonation and missile test, North Korea pushes northeast Asia and the world closer to instability and broader conflict," Tillerson said. "The threat of a North Korean attack on Seoul or Tokyo is real."
Tillerson added that it was “only a matter of time” before Pyongyang takes aim at the United States and said the international community must take concrete steps now in order to prevent North Korea from making good on threats.
“Business as usual is not an option,” Tillerson told 15 top diplomats at the U.N. meeting.
The secretary of state’s comments capped off an intense week in Washington that included closed-door briefings between the Trump administration and U.S. lawmakers over the escalating threat.

John Bolton: If North Korea Gets Nuclear Missiles, ‘Iran Could Have That Capability the Next Day by Writing a Check’

Breitbart News National Security Editor Frances Martel joined the conversation to ask Bolton about the deep relationship between the nuclear issues in Iran and North Korea, which are generally treated as entirely separate matters in media coverage.
“The media don’t get the connection, and that in part is because the national security bureaucracy doesn’t get, or doesn’t want to talk about, the connection,” Bolton replied, portraying it as “a classic bureaucratic example of what they call silos.”
“You’ve got the people dealing with Iran there in one silo, you’ve got the people dealing with North Korea in another silo. They might as well be on different planets,” he explained.
“But the fact is, again, from publicly available information going back 30 years, we know that the North Koreans and the Iranians have been in close cooperation on the development of ballistic missiles for that entire period. North Korea sold Iran the first SCUD missiles that were the basis for the Iranian missile program. They’ve cooperated in multiple ways since then. It makes perfectly good sense for that to happen. They’re both using the same Soviet-era SCUD missile technology for their missile programs, so they’ve got a common scientific and engineering base. Their objectives for the missile programs are exactly the same. It’s to deliver nuclear weapons, not launch communications or weather satellites. On that score, it’s just absolutely clear,” Bolton said.
“It is less clear in terms of publicly available evidence on the nuclear side, but I think there is substantial reason to believe there’s close cooperation there as well,” he continued. “The reactor that Israel destroyed in Syria in September of 2007 was being built by North Koreans. It was a clone of the North Korean Yongbyon reactor. Most people don’t think Syria had the financial wherewithal to pay for building that kind of reactor, and the North Koreans don’t do anything for free, so where did the money come from? I think it probably came from Iran.”
“I think there are a lot of other connections that have been noted, the Iranian scientists in North Korea and vice versa. Forget the Iran nuclear deal for a minute – it’s entirely foreseeable that the day North Korea gets the capability to drop a nuclear warhead on the United States via ballistic missile, Iran could have that capability the next day by writing a check in the right amount of money, so this relationship is extremely important,” he warned.

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03/16 Links Pt1: Israel: Hiding Evidence of Its Own Innocence; PMW: Fatah Votes for Terror

From Ian:

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Hiding Evidence of Its Own Innocence

I’m not naïve enough to think that better PR would solve all of Israel’s international relations problems. But there’s no question that incompetent PR makes its situation much worse. As one example, consider Tuesday’s shocking revelation: Within about 24 hours of the most high-profile civilian casualty incident of the 2009 Gaza war, Israel had obtained evidence casting doubt on its responsibility for that death. But it sat on this evidence for more than eight years, finally releasing it only as part of a defense brief in a civil suit by the victims’ father.
The incident in question took place on January 16, 2009, when Israeli troops fighting in Gaza came under sniper fire. The troops fired two shells at an observation post that seemed to be directing the snipers. The observation post was located on the third floor of a building which, unbeknownst to the soldiers, was also the home of a well-known doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish. Three of Abuelaish’s daughters were killed, along with one of his nieces; several other family members were wounded. Abuelaish, who worked in Israel, maintained good relations with Israelis and advocated for Israeli-Palestinian peace, later became famous worldwide when he published a book about this incident and his response to it, called I Shall Not Hate.
Israel was blamed worldwide for the Abuelaish casualties and never publicly challenged the assumption of its guilt. Yet it now turns out that within a day after the incident, it had evidence indicating that its shells may not have caused the carnage.
The evidence came in the form of laboratory tests conducted on six pieces of shrapnel extracted from the two casualties treated in Israel (the other wounded weren’t brought to Israel, nor were any of the dead, so no shrapnel from the other victims was available). The tests showed that alongside traces of various explosives used by both the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas, at least one fragment contained an explosive called R-Salt, which isn’t used by the IDF but is commonly used in improvised explosive devices in Gaza. Moreover, all six fragments contained potassium nitrate, another substance not used in IDF weaponry that is used in Hamas’s homemade Qassam rockets.

PMW: PMW Releases Report in US Congress: Fatah Votes for Terror

Palestinian Media Watch's founder and director Itamar Marcus is presenting PMW's new report Fatah Votes for Terror to the House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East today, Thursday March 16, in Washington D.C. The report documents that Fatah and many of the leaders who were elected to its Central Committee at the Seventh Fatah Conference openly support terror, and did so actively during the terror wave of 2015-2016.
PMW Special Report: Fatah Votes for Terror
Special Report on Members Elected to the Fatah Central Committee in December 2016
Click to view full report in pdf
Introduction
The Seventh Fatah Conference ended in December 2016with elections for the 18-member governing body, the Fatah Central Committee. Twelve members were reelected and six new members joined the committee. In addition, Mahmoud Abbas was reelected separately as chairman, and he also has the right to appoint four additional members. This report examines Fatah's attitudes to terror during the wave of Palestinian terror 2015-2016, and focuses on the attitudes of those elected members of the Central Committee who have spoken publicly, including Mahmoud Abbas, as well as Fatah leaders who were Central Committee members during the terror wave, but were not reelected at the Seventh Fatah Conference.
This report documents how the Fatah Movement responded to individual Palestinians murdering Israeli civilians in stabbings, shootings, and car ramming attacks, during the terror wave from September 2015 to mid-2016. 40 people were murdered in these attacks (36 Israelis, 1 Palestinian, 2 Americans, and 1 Eritrean) and hundreds wounded.
The report also includes Fatah's responses to the terror on the Fatah-run TV station Awdah and its official social media.

The Palestinian Economy Is a Protection Racket Financed by International Donors

While the current state of the Palestinian economy is nowhere near as bad as one might think from reading the Western press, writes Hillel Frisch, it is beset by serious problems:
According to the standards of the World Bank, West Bankers are middle-class and Gaza residents lower-middle-class. [But] it is a matter of serious concern that neither in Gaza nor in the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority is [there] a functioning domestic economy. By far the most important element propping up Palestinian economic welfare levels is financial aid [from] donors such as USAID, the EU, and church-related organizations, which underwrites roughly one-third of the [Palestinian] gross national product in the West Bank and considerably more in Gaza. . . .
[T]he substantial economic aid the PA receives from the EU, USAID, and individual EU member states enables it to reward incarcerated terrorists, terrorists released from prison, and the families of terrorists both living and dead with generous stipends and financial support. . . . Such support acts as an incentive to commit acts of terrorism and lowers deterrence against those who would commit such acts even without incentives.
Yet the problem is even broader. The most important group of actors on the Arab side—the PA, its militia Fatah, and Hamas—have perfected a deadly political economy rather than built a functioning one. It is the use of force, or the threat of the use of force, that assures the flow of aid from international actors, many of whom want to pacify the situation. The [donors] thus become accessories to a form of protection racket that demands, “Support me or I’ll attack Israel and its Jewish citizens.” The EU, anxious lest Israel retaliate and create a refugee problem whose imprint will be felt in Europe, plays the game and pays up.

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