Friday, November 01, 2019

  • Friday, November 01, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
A year ago, the PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Palestinian Legislative Council - against Palestinian law - in his never ending effort to ensure his power is as complete and unquestioned as possible.

The PLC was an elected body, and in 2006 most Palestinians voted for Hamas members in the PLC.

The PLC, however, had not met since that election. Abbas made sure of that. So for 12 years it did literally nothing.

But when Abbas dissolved it, it triggered one other event: the salaries that the PLC members received were cut.

So now in Hamas media there is a sob story about how distinguished members of Hamas who have been spending the past decade plus getting full salaries for doing literally nothing are now forced to find work!

Mahmoud al-Khatib, a member of the Legislative Council from Bethlehem, had to open a falafel shop.

Al-Khatib revealed other sad stories of people who suddenly lost their incomes for watching TV all day. One was forced to sell some of his land. Another resorted to selling eggs.

Other Hamas members appealed to the Palestinian Authority to pay them salaries as former prisoners, so they could maintain their lifestyle of doing nothing for money. But the PA has been quietly cutting "pay for slay" to Hamas members so they were rebuffed.

This is a completely dysfunctional society. The PA is corrupt, Abbas is an unrepentant dictator, Gazans are suffering collective punishment from Fatah, Gaza is run by terror groups (and so is the PA territories) - and Hamas newspapers are upset that people who do nothing are forced to make a living.



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  • Friday, November 01, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
Haaretz has a fascinating article about the amount of support the Netanyahu governments have given to Israel's Arab minority, a story that the Western media is simply unaware of (besides some bloggers...)

Ron Gerlitz says he will never forget that dramatic week at the end of 2015. A few months earlier, as codirector of the Jewish-Arab nonprofit organization Sikkuy – The Association for the Advancement of Civic Equality, he had been called to the Finance Ministry. He was informed that the ministry had conducted a comprehensive, secret study of budgetary discrimination between Israel’s Jewish and Arab communities, which it wanted to address. The solution would be a plan aimed at equalizing the government budgets in an unprecedented way. This would involve not a one-time payment to the country’s Arab communities, as had been made in the past, rather it would change the budgeting mechanisms fundamentally, so that the population would receive its fair, proportionate share of support in some areas, like public transportation, but a favorably disproportionate amount in other areas, as part of a process of affirmative action.
...
The cabinet met on December 27, 2015, to vote on the scheme, known formally as Resolution No. 922: a five-year Economic Development Plan for the Arab Sector. The ground had been prepared. But that morning, the Hebrew edition of TheMarker published an article titled “Right-wing government involved in largest plan for Arab community ever – 15 billion shekels.” The Likud ministers withdrew their support for the move, worried about what their voters would say.

The sponsors of the resolution persisted and an amended version of it was voted on three days later, on December 30. It also failed to pass, this time because of a demand by some ministers to condition any affirmative action involving Israeli Arabs on their doing national service. Levy, Saif, Gerlitz and Benjamin Netanyahu himself almost gave up, yet the prime minister managed to convene the cabinet again, that same afternoon. It was the third such meeting within a week on the same topic – something that usually only happens in wartime.

Today, the 46-year-old Gerlitz, who left his post at Sikkuy last month, says that he is certain Netanyahu really wanted the resolution to be approved because he made the cabinet meet the two additional times until they finally passed it – without the national-service clause.

“That was exceptional,” he says. “Netanyahu could have caved in to the ministers’ opposition and not passed the plan, postponed further discussion until 2016, made massive changes to it or conditioned its passage on all kinds of demands of the Arabs. And yet he insisted that it be pushed through with barely any conditions, as the budget division had delivered it. People at the cabinet meetings say the opponents of the plan did a lot of shouting. ‘I haven’t been in a nursery school like this for some 60-odd years,’ Netanyahu said, rebuking the ministers who were loudly arguing against it.’”
This is Netanyahu pushing against most in his own party on a plan to help Arabs - and getting them to agree, unanimously.

Does this sound like the Bibi we read about in the media?

And these initiatives have concrete results:
...Over the past seven years, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of Arab students enrolled in universities and colleges in Israel has risen by 80 percent. Over five years the number of Arabs studying computer sciences, and the number of Arab students pursuing master’s degrees (in all fields) have both jumped 50 percent, while the number studying for a Ph.D. has soared 60 percent.

In the last decade, the number of Arabs working in high-tech has increased 18-fold, and one-quarter of them are women. By 2020, it is estimated that Arabs will make up 10 percent of the country’s high-tech work force, according to Tsofen, an organization that serves to connect members of that community with Israel’s high-tech employers. The proportion of Arab doctors in Israel has climbed from 10 percent in 2008 to 15 percent in 2018, and 21 percent of all male doctors are Arab, according to the Health Ministry. Educational institutions in Arab locales are receiving unprecedented levels of funding – including 130 million shekels ($37 million) for informal-education programs. Moreover, public transportation is finally making inroads into the smaller Arab towns, to the point where the Bank of Israel recently declared that the gap in access to such transport between Jewish and Arab locales with fewer than 20,000 residents has shrunk considerably.
Why would a person that much of the West is convinced is a racist do such a thing? The article has some guesses:
There are differing opinions as to why Netanyahu backed the plan, Gerlitz continues: “Maybe he was simply pursuing Israel’s economic interests. Maybe it was important for him to go along with Kahlon, Gamliel and the budgets department people who were all pushing for the plan. Another theory that got some backing is that he wanted to offset the negative impact of his anti-Arab incitement to keep things from getting out of hand.”
Perhaps there is another possibility, one that Haaretz and the Left cannot fathom.

Maybe Netanyahu isn't a racist. Maybe he is a moral human being who wants to see a strong Israel with a flourishing Arab minority.

A racist would not be secretly doing things to help the people he or she hates. Bibi's aid to Arab communities was done without the media being aware of it for the most part, and the story above shows what happened when it was exposed - the exposure was a setback for implementation of the plan, because some people in Bibi's coalition are indeed anti-Arab.

Which brings us to the real answer.

Netanyahu has a vision for Israel's strength and security for the next century. That is, and has been, his paramount goal. He cannot accomplish that goal without winning elections - the opposition parties simply do not share his strategic vision, if they have one at all.

To win elections, Bibi has to sometimes appeal to the less liberal elements of his party and of Israeli society. If he doesn't win, in his mind, Israel loses.

Bibi's supposed "racism" is public - he doesn't give a damn if people think he is racist because if he doesn't win, nothing can be done to help Israel in his mind. His true attitudes towards Arabs are revealed by what he does behind the scenes, and the anecdote that the article begins with shows that he has done far more to help Arab society in Israel than any previous prime minister from any party.

The weaker his political position, the more he uses racism as a tool (among many) to get re-elected.

Netanyahu is a politician, and for the past decade, he's been a very good one. His political instincts are what helps him accomplish his vision for Israel. His vision for Israel is a state where the Arabs are treated as equals and given all the same opportunities as Jews in a Jewish state.

It sure is a better explanation than the ones floated in the article.

In 2016, Bibi visited an Arab school and gave advice to the first graders:
I remember when I came to first grade; I was very excited. It is very exciting. “Welcome first grade” was written on the blackboard. It took me a little while to be able to read the words. Afterwards it was “Hello second grade” and ‘”Hello third grade” – and so it went and this is what awaits you. Boys and girls, I want each and every one of you to do two things: First, learn. Second, be good children. Listen to your parents and your teachers. I want you to listen to me because I want you to learn – learn to write, learn to read, learn Hebrew, Arabic and English. I want you to learn mathematics. I want you to learn science. I want you to learn history – history of the Jewish People, the history of your public. I want you to learn the truth, and the truth says that we were destined to live together. I want you to be doctors, scientists and writers, and be whatever you want to – and are able to – be. I want you to be loyal citizens, integrated into the state of Israel; this is your state. I am truly excited for you. Learn well. Go back home and do what mother and father tell you. May you be successful.
This is probably as accurate a picture of Netanyahu's desire for Arabs in Israel as has ever been written.




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Thursday, October 31, 2019

  • Thursday, October 31, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon


Right after the reading of the book "P is for Palestine" - the book that glorifies terrorism by saying "I is for Intifada" - in Highland Park NJ two weeks ago, I received an email describing some of the things that happened inside the actual reading by the author, Golbarg Bashi. I didn't report it because it is the sort of story that could easily have been changed in the retelling. Here is what it said:

In the end, three children and their parents showed up, with the boys wearing kippot.
One of the boys was asked by Bashi, "What is your favorite book?" His answer "The Mishna ! ". When she followed up to ask him what book he was reading, he said "Bava Metzia ! "
The Mishna is the basis of the Talmud, and Bava Metzia is the volume of Talmud that religious Jewish kids usually learn in fifth grade.

It's a funny story. And it turns out that Bashi confirmed it in her account of the reading.
Here I am reading and engaging with 3 innocent children who were accompanied by their Zionist fathers and a grandmother to Sunday's event at Highland Park Public Library in the State of New Jersey. I had been informed by the head of the library that all seats in the reading room had been immediately reserved in person by Zionist Highland Park Library Card holders on the day registration for the event opened up.

Still, the 3 innocent children who attended the reading (albeit under the unfortunate watchful and weary eyes of their Zionist families--two fathers, and one grandmother) brought a genuine smile to my heart.
When the people registered for the event, did they have to answer a question whether they were Zionist? Does Dr. Bashi have a Zionist detector?

No, of course not. Any religious Jew is obviously a Zionist. Bashi just doesn't want to say "Jewish." Their children, however, are "innocent" of the crime of Zionism.
The 6 year-old little boy was sharp, engaged and so cute! His brother in 5th grade spoke of his love of sports and the NFL, and someone named Adam who plays for the NFL (when I asked him if the NFL is basketball, he patiently explained that the NBA is basketball) and told me his favorite subject in school right now, takes place during second period and currently involves a particular mode in Jewish religious ethics, named "mitzvah" or "the obligation to return lost objects to their owner." The 5th grader enlightened me on what applies within mitzvah and what one must do when finding e.g. a lost purse as opposed to a pencil belonging to an unknown person on the street.
 Bashi misunderstood - the kid said something like "I'm learning Bava Metzia about the mitzvah of returning a lost object" and Bashi thought he meant that a mitzvah was defined as returning a lost object.

The kid seems to have accurately summarized parts of the Talmud for the author. I wonder if Bashi knows that! "Talmud" is an evil word in Arabic media.
They asked fun questions, were incredibly attentive, and had the most creative suggestions on words that start with certain letters of the alphabet. For example for the letter A, our 5th grader suggested that the certain Adam who plays for the NFL and [אַבְרָהָם,] Avram (Prophet Abraham or Ibrahim (to Muslims), the name of the first monotheistic Prophet, and of great significance to millions of people who adhere to Abrahamic religions, namely Muslims and Christians. We talked more about Prophet Abraham and that he is buried in Al-Khalil/Hebron which makes the city and the entirety of Palestine, so precious).
Of course, under Muslim rule, Jews couldn't visit the place where Abraham - or Isaac, Jacob and their wives - are buried. Only since 1967 have Jews been able to visit, and now half of the site is off-limits nearly all year to Jews.

Too bad no one asked about that.

But someone did bring up something similar:
Upon reading the page for B is for Bethlehem, the 5th grader's father sternly instructed him to ask if Jews can also live in Bethlehem. . .
Did she answer? I don't know. But the answer is a resounding "no."

Which would be called apartheid if it was a Jewish town...

You can still read my more cynical - yet accurate - illustrated version of a Palestinian alphabet book here.



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From Ian:

Despite terror ties, SJP 'antisemitic force' active at Harvard, Columbia
The National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is an “antisemitic force on campus,” according to a new 96-page report about the organization.

The document, published by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) in advance of NSJP’s annual conference being held November 1-3, tracks the history of the organization and highlights how NSJP “promotes antisemitic rhetoric” and is “associated [with] violence and terror, ideologically and politically.”

The study, titled “National Students for Justice in Palestine and the Promotion of Hate and Antisemitism on the University Campus: The Threat to Academic Freedom,” is authored by Charles Asher Small, David Patterson and Glen Feder.

“For centuries, the most violent antisemitic attacks on Jews, including expulsions and pogroms, were rationalized by a need to bring justice to other groups,” said ISGAP chairman Natan Sharansky. “Today, the new antisemitism is brought to the world of academia under the pretext of justice for Palestinians.”

In the report’s foreword, Sharansky says that demonization, delegitimization and double standards against Jews are now being applied to the Jewish collective in the State of Israel.

“All those who value both justice and academic freedom should be resistant to it,” he said.

The report cites dozens of incidents, mainly on social networks, in which traditional antisemitic tropes are used by NSJP local chapters.

In 2017, for example, Students Supporting Israel at City College in NY described on their Facebook page a reaction by SJP members to the visit of Dani Dayan, the Consul General of Israel in New York. According to the post, “Comparisons to Hitler and Nazis were hurled by students… Rather than listening to what the speaker had to say, they put their antisemitic hate on blast, demonizing the Jewish State of Israel and all who would support it.”

Harvard’s NSJP chapter, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, posted on their Facebook page in 2012 that “Zionism is racism. Women who immigrated from Ethiopia eight years ago say there were told they would not be allowed into Israel unless they agreed to be injected with the long-acting birth control drug Depo Provera, according to an investigative report aired yesterday on Israel Educational Television.”

Stony Brook University’s SJP also had multiple inflammatory posts, including one noting that “together, we can create a domino effect to ensure Zionism is an extinct ideology.”
A Beginner’s Guide to the SJP National Conference
In a surprise to nobody, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) announced that its upcoming National Conference, set to commence on November 1, will be held on the University of Minnesota Campus in Minneapolis (UMN). Why is this unsurprising? Because Minneapolis happens to be the district of antisemitic Congresswoman Rep. Ilhan Omar, a prominent figure in the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) against Israel.

This is not a coincidence. In fact, the very first goal stated on the conference website is to capitalize on shifts in the political climate, represented by the elections of BDS supporters Rep. Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib. However, the REAL shift in the political climate- one that SJP themselves have played a substantial role in- is the resurgence of the world’s “oldest hatred” in the US, under the guise of BDS.

Countless articles and in-depth studies have delineated the various calls for violence by SJP leadership, as well as their intimate connection with Palestinian terror organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the PFLP, all of whom thrive off an ideology of Jew-hatred. It’s not just the leadership which is guilty of purveying antisemitism, but many student members of SJP as well. How many times must an SJP chapter host convicted terrorists like Rasmeah Odeh at their events before they are called out for their antisemitism? How many social media posts fawning over convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti and PFLP founder George Habash must be shared by official SJP accounts until the tech overlords ban SJP from their platforms? How many t-shirts glorifying PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled must be sold at their events before the world opens its eyes?

In the past few years, several analyses have been published revealing the link between BDS activity on campus and antisemitism. According to a Brandeis University study, one of the strongest predictors of hostility towards Israel and Jews on campuses is the presence of an SJP chapter. Furthermore, the campus antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative found that antisemitic activity was 8 times more likely to occur on campuses where anti-Zionist student groups were present.

This brings us back to the SJP National Conference, the epicenter of left-wing antisemitism. We will not be privy to real time updates from the conference since access is heavily restricted, and the speaker list has yet to be announced. But If history is any indication, the conference will be replete with the usual delegitimization and demonization of the Jewish State. They will sell paraphernalia with slogans advocating violence; they will compare Israel to Nazis; and they will host terrorists.

  • Thursday, October 31, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
Here are students listening to a lecture at a university.:



Well, the university is in Gaza, the sponsor of the talk is the Islamic Association at Al-Aqsa University.

The topic was "Our Jihad: The time is coming," to celebrate the anniversary of the Islamic Jihad terror group and of Israel's assassination of its founder.



Dr. Riad Abu Znada told the group, "We stand today to commemorate the major symbol of Palestine,  a commando who sacrificed everything to instill the idea of ​​jihad and resistance in our minds."

Another speaker said the state of conflict with "the occupation" will remain in place until Israel ceases to exist.

Who says Palestinians aren't progressive? Chances are we will see lectures like this in universities worldwide, soon enough!




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Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory


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Monsters IncRamallah, October 31 - Academics and political advocates focusing on the Middle East in general and Palestinian issues in particular have expressed puzzlement that a groundbreaking 2001 film exploring Israel's exploitation of Palestinian children's terrified reactions to its monstrous presence to produce electrical power attracts little to no attention from important audiences.

Monsters, Inc. launched in 2001 and at the time made significant cultural impact, but, activists observe, has had no measurable lasting effect on the discourse around Israel-Palestine, a fact that has prompted them to wonder whether sinister, repressive forces have managed to silence such a powerful public relations tool.

The 90-minute documentary follows the events over several days in a secret Israeli facility that processes Scream, a form of energy  that Israeli soldiers and agents extract from innocent Palestinian children by scaring them. Over the last several decades, cumulative Israeli atrocities and crimes have resulted in more resistant, harder-to-scare children, forcing Israel to resort to more and more extreme measures to secure fuel for its increasing energy needs. The forecast shortfall in energy production leads Israels leadership to new depths of crime and depravity involving the abduction of Palestinian children for experimental new scream-extraction methods that demonstrate no regard for whether the child lives or dies.

"This should have been a watershed moment in the history of the conflict," observed Omar Barghouti, who has campaigned for years to get companies, artists, and institutions to boycott Israel over its treatment of Palestinians, all while earning a postgraduate degree at Tel Aviv University. "This film had a brief moment when the whole world was abuzz with it, but that seems to have faded, and that's unfortunate. No one talks about Palestine except for every organ of the UN, a disproportionate number of NGOs, and tens of thousands of political and cultural figures."

Some academics believe that while overall the documentary tells a solid story of Israeli evil and Palestinian innocence, it took some liberties with the presentation. "The whole fantasy sequence where everything is resolved through laughter is a nice dream, but that should have been left out as unrealistic," remarked commentator Reza Aslan. "The only way to stop the real Scream Extractor from terrorizing Palestinian children is to destroy Israel, because there's always some Jewish tentacled beast trying to oppress and control while looking respectable and moral. I also suspect those of us who might otherwise have been more vocal have been silenced by the Mossad-trained CDA."

"Also, for some reason everything was in English. That was a weird choice."



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From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: EXCLUSIVE: Excerpt From Ambassador Nikki Haley’s Upcoming Book, Slamming Media And Obama Administration
On Thursday, The Daily Wire obtained an excerpt from Ambassador Nikki Haley’s upcoming book, With All Due Respect. Haley is widely perceived to be among the leading Republican candidates in 2024 and beyond; her approval numbers as of April 2018 were unprecedentedly high, with a 75/9 split among Republicans, 55/23 split among Democrats, and 63/19 split among independents. The excerpt demonstrates just why Haley was so popular with Americans across the political spectrum: she was extraordinarily willing to speak hard truths to countries with malign practices and intent, and she stood strongly with American allies in her position as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The excerpt opens with Haley explaining that when she first arrived in her new position, she made sure to break with foreign policy tradition by taking her first meetings with the members of the U.N. Security Council. Instead, she writes, “We decided to send a message by going another way. I thought it was important to visit our friends first.” After meeting with the British and French ambassadors, therefore, she next “ditched protocol and met with the ambassador from Israel, Danny Danon.” Haley explains:

Seeing Danny in person gave me an opportunity that I had wanted for some time: to know what the passage of Resolution 2334 had been like from his perspective. Danny said he knew something was going on in those last weeks of the Obama administration, he just didn’t know what. He and his colleagues tried for days to reach out to Ambassador Power and everyone they knew in Washington. No one would take their calls. No one would return their messages. The United States had literally stopped talking to Israel.

The most painful part of our conversation was Danny’s recounting of the vote itself. When a non–Security Council member country, like Israel, is the subject of a Security Council vote, its ambassador sits at the huge C-shaped table with the Security Council members. So when Resolution 2334 was passed, Danny was right there. Disgustingly, all the ambassadors at the table stood up and applauded after the vote was tallied. The audience cheered. And in the middle of it all was the Israeli ambassador, remaining seated while the council applauded his country’s humiliation. As Danny told me about it, all I could think was how that feeling was all too familiar to me. I know what it feels like to be dif­ferent, humiliated, and ostracized for being who you are.

Greenblatt's Legacy: The Administration's Peace Vision
U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason D. Greenblatt will leave his post at the end of October.

Greenblatt repeatedly took the Palestinian Authority to task over its duplicity, such as over its "pay-to-slay" policy of paying Palestinian terrorists and their families.

He asked the UN Security Council, "How is it that we can't find an international consensus that the Palestinian Authority rewarding terrorism and the murder of Israelis using public funds, some donated by countries in this very room, is abhorrent and must be stopped?"

"There is no easy answer as to how to balance the absolute imperative of protecting Israel's security - a principle on which the United States will never compromise - with Palestinian aspirations," he said in June. "Yesterday's peace plans have been unable to create a path to a brighter and more prosperous future while addressing the many challenges to overcome."

One of his legacies is a semantic shift in the vocabulary of U.S. negotiators. Greenblatt has refused to use the word "settlements" for Israeli communities beyond the Green Line, and has instead called them "cities" and "neighborhoods."

Greenblatt told the UN Security Council, "It is true that the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority continue to assert that east Jerusalem must be a capital for the Palestinians. But let's remember: An aspiration is not a right....Aspirations belong at the negotiating table. And only direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians can resolve the issue of Jerusalem if it can be resolved."
The Balfour Declaration and the Jewish Threat that Made Britain Honor It
November 2 marks the 102nd anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, about which I have previously written at length in Mosaic. There, I focused on how the actors who brought the declaration into being assured it would have international legitimacy, and on the tragic failure of Britain and the international community to keep their promise to the Jewish people in the aftermath. Here I want to reflect on an overlooked rationale proposed by the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann to give the declaration some staying power after the world war would finally end.

Historians have long been preoccupied by this question: why did the war cabinet of Prime Minister David Lloyd George issue the November 2, 1917 declaration in the first place? After all, it seemed so improbable, both at the time and in retrospect. That sense of improbability was well expressed by the Hungarian Jewish writer Arthur Koestler, who called the declaration “an act dangerously outside the cautious routine of diplomacy. The whole thing was unorthodox, unpolitic, freakish.” Given that impression, the document quickly invited obsessive speculation as to the real motives behind it, and initially the speculation ranged very widely.

The guesswork would subside when Britain opened its archives in the 1970s. We now know that, far from being “unpolitic,” the Balfour Declaration was very politic indeed. The bottom line was this: the British war cabinet thought a declaration supporting a Jewish national home in Palestine would make for good propaganda among the Jews of Russia and America, who had been tepid in their support of the Allies in a war that had been dragging on for three long years. The Jews, so the reasoning went, would be fired by the prospect of a Jewish Zion, and would use their influence to keep Russia firmly in the fight and persuade the United States to step up.

The war cabinet also thought that official British sponsorship of Zionism would give England an edge over France in the inevitable postwar wrangle over the disposition of the territories of the Middle East. By assuming the noble burden of helping the Jews, Britain would extricate itself from its promise to share Palestine with France as stipulated in the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement—a deal that Lloyd George wanted to break for reasons of postwar imperial strategy.

To summarize: the Balfour episode was a matter of realpolitik all along. True, some have argued with surface plausibility that both Lloyd George and foreign minister Arthur Lord Balfour were motivated at least in part by religious sentiment. That they held such sentiments is not in doubt; but no evidence of this shows up in the cabinet papers themselves. Rather, British officials debated Palestine as they debated India or Egypt, that is, as an element in their thinking about how best to preserve and, if possible, expand the presence of the British empire on the world map.

  • Thursday, October 31, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon
I reported last week about PLO representative to the UK, Husam Zomlot, giving a speech in Berlin where he admitted that Palestinians never wanted to a state in anything less than 100% of the land from the river to the sea.

He's very proud of this speech where he brags about Palestinian intransigence. His Facebook timeline shows the same video of his speech over twelve times!

Zomlot used to be the PLO representative to the US before that mission was closed down. The US never recognized the PLO as a state, but the PLO falsely referred (and still refers) to him as an "Ambassador."

You know who else referred to him falsely as an ambassador?

J-Street, at last year's conference.






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  • Thursday, October 31, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

In September, Mahmoud Abbas announced at the UN that he intends to schedule elections as soon as he returns to Ramallah. "I have decided, upon my return from this international gathering, to announce a date for the holding of general elections in Palestine – in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip," he said.

Five weeks later, no such date has been announced.

What did happen is that Abbas appointed a committee with only members of his Fatah party, not to schedule elections but to "study" the elections. “We will discuss the elections, preparations for holding it and measures that will be taken to achieve this goal,” Abbas said.

I didn't bother to report about this because this is all a game. Abbas doesn't plan on holding elections - he is planning to use the pretense of elections to achieve more power.

This game has been played before. Abbas agreed with Hamas on elections in 2014 and 2018 and nothing happened.

There are two impossible challenges to overcome, which Abbas knows quite well.

One is that Hamas will insist that any elections include voting for members of the Palestine National Council, which is not a body of the PA but the legislative arm of the PLO.

The PA reports to the PLO. The PLO is where all the power is, and Abbas is the chairman. Members of the PNC aren't elected but appointed - by Abbas' party Fatah.  At the last PNC meeting last year - the first such meeting since 1996 - Abbas filled the PNC's Executive Council with loyalists.

The PLO is not a democracy by any definition. Abbas will never allow members of the PLO's PNC to be elected because he has absolute power over it.

The other challenge is that Abbas is insisting that Arabs in Jerusalem be allowed to vote - in Jerusalem. Israel will not allow that to happen. Of course, Israel cannot stop them from traveling to Area A or B where they can vote - Jerusalem Arabs are the only people in the world who can freely travel to both Israel and the entire West Bank. But the PLO wants to use this pretense of elections as a political weapon to pressure Israel to give up some sovereignty over Jerusalem.

In other words, getting Israel to cede even a little sovereignty is more important than holding the elections.

Today, we are already seeing the backtracking from Fatah. Jamal Muheisen, member of Fatah Central Committee, said there are "obstacles" to a presidential decree on elections, blaming Hamas for not agreeing to certain administrative details. The other obstacle is that the PLO is contacting friendly countries to pressure Israel to allow voting for Palestinian elections in areas that Israel considers part of Israel.

This election sham also proves that Abbas is a liar in another way:

After the last elections in 2006, Abbas promised he won't run for re-election. 

In 2009, Abbas promised he won't run for re-election.

In 2011, Abbas promised he won't run for re-election.

Yesterday, Fatah spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi said, “We confirm that our candidate is President Abbas in any upcoming presidential elections.”

Why does the media still believe anything this man says?




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  • Thursday, October 31, 2019
  • Elder of Ziyon

The playbook of Palestinian officials for many years was to threaten the world, saying that if Palestinians don't get their political demands met by other nations pressuring Israel, then there would be massive waves of terrorism and instability.

The effectiveness of these regular threats have gone way down. But they can't get rid of old habits.

The latest naked threat to world security comes from the Palestinian Authority foreign ministry. It issued a statement that "the international community's silence on the Israeli occupation and its settlers against our people, land and sanctities directly threatens international peace and security and opens the door to regional and international chaos that are difficult to control or anticipate its repercussions."

You want to ignore us? Then we'll instigate some violence, directly or indirectly. You won't ignore us then!

ISIS used to be the unsaid party that would somehow increase its terror attacks on behalf of Palestinians. PA negotiator Saeb Erekat threatened that Arab people would attack all their US embassies and it would instigate "chaos, lawlessness and extremism"  if the US moves its embassy to Jerusalem.

Arab countries have lost interest, and the international community has other priorities. Yet the Palestinians stick to the same tired playbook.





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Wednesday, October 30, 2019


 Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column


I know that I sound like a broken record. OK, none of you are old enough to know what that sounds like. How about a scratched CD, one that plays the same phrase over and over and over: Bibi, Gantz, Lieberman, Lapid: get your acts together. It is a matter of life and death.

I have sometimes sounded smug when I criticize the USA, my former home, for descending into madness. On the one hand you have the spitting and cursing leftist “resistance” to Trump, who find an angle to criticize everything that he does, accuse him of every imaginable crime, boo him at baseball games, and would certainly murder him if they could. On the other side are his partisans, to whom every action he takes, no matter how ill-considered, is portrayed as a stroke of genius. Normal mortals may not be able to see it, but there is a Plan.

That’s just the politics. Culturally, people are obsessed with race and gender in ways that defy reason, there is a strong current to throw away the idea of free speech, and – yes – they are beating up and shooting Jews there, too.

Israel, I used to suggest, is different. We aren’t crazy. We are a small country that makes the best of its opportunities, with competent leaders. We can’t afford an army like the US has, but ours is still the best in the region, because Jews are smart and know how to innovate. Aren’t we the “startup nation?” Haven’t we found a way to be both a Jewish state, a refuge for persecuted Jews the world over, while still maintaining halfway decent relations with the 20% of our population that are Arabs? Aren’t we, despite all the challenges, a democratic state?

Well, boker tov [good morning] Eliyahu as they like to say here to someone who finally understands the obvious. We are just as crazy as America. Our political and social fabric is tearing here just as badly as it is over there, and we seem to be just as clueless about how to mend it.

The behavior of Bibi, Gantz, Lieberman, and Lapid, whose almost unbelievable selfishness, egotism, and stubbornness has prevented the establishment of a government after two elections, and which threatens to produce a third (and probably equally inconclusive) one is deplorable – and intolerable. Israel is on the verge of war with Iran and its proxies, a multi-front, complicated war with an intelligent and creative enemy, one which will certainly exact a high price in blood from us. We are, it seems, unprepared, and it will take a supreme effort and expense to get prepared in time. And yet, the squabbling continues! How can they not understand this?

To the Left, it is all about Bibi’s alleged criminal activities and the Right’s “attack on democracy,” which means an attack on those unelected elements that lean Left and have so much influence, including foreign-funded lobbyists. But Bibi has been subjected to a campaign of fishing expeditions and illegal leaks to the media about them almost since he took office; something that played a large role in bringing about the current stalemate.

Today, Minister of Justice Amir Ohana referred to the “symbiosis” between the police investigators, the prosecution, and the media in connection with the leaks, which have never been investigated. Ohana is a Netanyahu appointee, but he’s quite right. Whether or not Bibi turns out to be a witch, he has been and continues to be the subject of a witch hunt (an interesting analysis of the charges against him is here).

On the other hand, Bibi has used more force to crush opposition to him in his party than he has to stop Hamas from setting wildfires in the area adjacent to our border. I can’t count all the ministerial portfolios that he is holding at once. Once perhaps the most competent Prime Minister in Israel’s history, his obsession with his legal problems and his inability to delegate responsibility seems to have neutralized him.

Yesterday’s big news was that a couple of Netanyahu’s aides allegedly paid a Bratslaver sound truck, one of those that drives around playing joyous music, stopping from time to time to allow the occupants to come out and dance in the street, to park in front of the house of Shlomo Filber, a State’s Witnesses in one of Bibi’s criminal cases. Instead of joyous music, they broadcast accusations that Filber was a liar. The police, investigating the incident, are alleged to have improperly taken the telephones of the perpetrators, and downloaded their content. The USA has nothing on us for craziness.

Social problems are multiplying. Young people still can’t afford apartments. The Haredi Rabbinut continues to embitter the lives of thousands of Israelis. The healthcare system is falling apart from a shortage of doctors, nurses, and money. Arab citizens of Israel elect politicians to the Knesset who oppose the existence of a Jewish state. Nothing is done to remove the infiltrators from South Tel Aviv. Nothing is done to prepare for the inevitable powerful earthquake. As happens in third world countries, money flows into the pockets of the elite, while public needs receive less and less attention.

I’d call for a military coup if the worthless opposition party weren’t already heavily laden with former Chiefs of Staff. Or a revolution, if I didn’t know that historically revolutions tend to end up with the most extreme, brutal factions in charge.

Really, all we need is a competent government, made up of people who put the needs of the state and its people first. Is that too much to ask?







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From Ian:

Seth Mandel: This Jew doesn't tremble
How To Fight Anti-Semitism is tightly argued and clocks in at just about 200 pages. What it’s able to accomplish in that time is remarkable, but it really shines in two areas. The first is dispensing with the lazy defense of anti-Zionism as distinct from anti-Semitism. As Weiss shows, it really is a form of anti-Semitism.

Israel “exists. It is not an abstraction.” So pointing to the history of Jews opposed to the theoretical Jewish state in the early part of the 20th century is dishonest. The latest polls find 95% of Jews have favorable views of Israel, so the number of Jewish anti-Zionists is practically a rounding error. There’s a reason for this: Since Israel’s founding in 1948, being an anti-Zionist has meant not merely opposing the establishment of a Jewish state but supporting the existing Jewish state’s destruction. “The kumbaya of the anti-Zionist dream guarantees a very bloody reality, and anti-Zionists should be forced to defend it,” Weiss writes. Anti-Zionists are conspicuously focused on being “anti” the existence of only one state: the Jewish one. While Weiss acknowledges that some legitimate criticism of Israel gets unfairly labeled as anti-Semitism, she notes that it is more often the case that anti-Zionists are trying to launder Jew-hatred as criticism of Israeli policy. “To be an anti-Zionist in Poland before the Holocaust is one thing. To be one today is something else entirely,” she says. “It is not to be ideologically opposed to an idea. It is to be against the largest Jewish community on the planet.”

Weiss has famously become the target of an insane degree of online spite — not from random folks on the internet but from fellow journalists and commentators, as well as activists. Her book shows why: She consistently forces her antagonists to face the realities of their positions instead of letting them hide behind abstractions.

The other great triumph of the book is the final chapter, which fulfills the promise of the title: “How To Fight.” She tears into the defensiveness that leads so many Jewish Americans to fight on their accusers’ terms. She approvingly quotes a former Columbia student (Weiss is also an alumnus): “A man calls you a pig. Do you walk around with a sign explaining that, in fact, you are not a pig? Do you hand out leaflets expostulating in detail upon the manifold differences between you and a pig?”

Weiss counsels Jews to stop negotiating the terms of their own existence. She also quotes former British Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: “Non-Jews respect Jews who respect Judaism, and they are embarrassed by Jews who are embarrassed by Judaism.” Likewise, she asks readers to call out anti-Semitism, “especially when it’s hard” to do so. That means criticizing minorities, such as Ilhan Omar, who regularly use anti-Semitic tropes, rather than letting the fear of being called a racist intimidate you into silence.

Weiss tells readers to “expect solidarity.” As Jabotinsky recognized a century ago, it’s not “equality” if you’re not given equal standing. “We should not make a deal that requires us to erase ourselves,” Weiss writes. She advises other members of the tribe to “lean into Judaism,” not toward secularization and assimilation.

When, in 1982, then-Sen. Joe Biden tried to cajole Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin by holding U.S. aid to Israel over Begin’s head, the prime minister reportedly responded, “I am not a Jew with trembling knees.” Bari Weiss has picked up Begin’s baton in compelling fashion with a timely warning against a Judaism that trembles at the knees.
JCPA (Dore Gold ): The Attempt to Revive the False Charge that Israel Is Racist
Every few years a voice emerges which seeks to brand Israel or its leaders as racist. The most famous case was the decision of the UN General Assembly in 1975 to brand Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, as racism.

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Chaim Herzog, speaking in the name of the Jewish people, responded by saying that the resolution was based on hatred, falsehood, and arrogance, as he tore the resolution in half. In 1991, the General Assembly formally revoked the resolution, largely as a result of diplomatic efforts of the United States.

Tragically, the issue has been reawakened in the context of the 2020 American presidential campaign, with the charge by Senator Bernie Sanders that the Israeli government under Prime Minister Netanyahu is racist. Israel does not want to get drawn into American domestic politics. But Israel cannot, indeed Israel must not, let such lies stand without a response.

It is Israel which reached out into Ethiopia during the 1980s to assist 120,000 of their Jewish brothers and sisters to cross Sudan and start new lives in Israel. During the Syrian civil war, it was Israel that quietly opened its borders to Syrian refugees in order to provide them with urgent medical care. Anyone visiting Hadassah Hospital, or for that matter any Israeli hospital, will witness how thousands of Arab and Jewish patients are cared for by Arab and Jewish doctors.

Israeli medical teams led the effort to defeat Ebola in West Africa, with mobile clinics which were flown in. Ironically, it was Prime Minister Netanyahu who put Africa at the top of Israel's priorities, with his repeated visits to the continent, starting in 2016.

Peace will eventually prevail in the Middle East, but it will be delayed if falsehoods about Israel continue to be spread and the Jewish state is defamed by those who should know better.


Bernie Sanders burns Israel
Abbas has used foreign aid to:
🇵🇸 Amass a $1 billion
🇵🇸 Buy a $50 million jet
🇵🇸 Build a $17 million palace
Hamas have used foreign aid to:
☠️ Fire 20,000 rockets at Israel
☠️ Build terror tunnels
☠️ Fund lavish lifestyles
Bernie wants to give Gaza aid instead of Israel.



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