Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 01, 2020

Could it have really been a remote controlled machine gun on a remotely controlled truck that killed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh?

Iran's Tasnim news agency is reporting that thge assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was done essentially by remote control.

No hit man was involved in the recent assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of burial of the late Iranian scientist on Monday, Ali Shamkhani said the distinguished figure was assassinated in a complicated operation that involved electronic equipment without any assassin at the scene.

Israel's Kan network correspondent Amichai Stein quotes the Iranian Fars news agency saying:

According to Fars - Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and his wife drove to their home in the suburbs of Tehran last Friday, accompanied by three security vehicles. In the middle of the trip, a remote control weapon opened fire, and Fakhrizadeh went out to check what had happened. Fakhrizadeh thought that it was his car that had actually collided with something. From the moment he left, he was shot at by an automatic machine gun that was on top of a nearby Nissan vehicle. After he was hit, the Nissan vehicle with the machine gun on it exploded.....The owner of the vehicle on which the machine-gun was installed left Iran on October 29.

If this report is true, it means that both the Nissan truck and the machine gun were remotely controlled.

Is that possible?

Israel does have plenty of experience with remote controlled and autonomous vehicles.

The Daily Mail reports that Israel designed a remotely controlled pickup truck with a machine gun:

The IDF showed off this technology in 2016, when it was fitted into Ford F-350 pickup trucks that were designed to conduct border patrols.

The trucks, dubbed Border Protector Unmanned Ground Vehicles, are equipped with an array of sensors and cameras that allowed people to drive them remotely.

At the time they were unveiled the trucks were unarmed, but the IDF said it was hoping to arm the vehicles some time in early 2017.

'We will get a machine gun on the vehicle that will be operated from a control room,' an IDF official told Fox News at the time.

The IDF said the vehicles have been operational since 2015, and would later incorporate driverless technology.

And remote controlled machine guns? Israeli arms developers have gone beyond that with Rafael's Samson Remote Controlled Weapons Station, known as Katlanit. One version of it, the Mini Samson ROWS (shown here) can hold 12.7 mm and 14.5 mm machine guns as well as 40 mm grenade launcher, and the weapons weigh between 140–160 kg - which would easily fit on a Nissan pickup truck.

If this hit was really done remotely, it looks like the nation that sponsored the assassination - presumably Israel - built special equipment just for the occasion. The technology is easily within Israel's capabilities but hiding that weaponry on a standard pickup truck and running it remotely via satellite adds quite a bit of complexity. Smuggling such a weapon to Iran is almost as impressive as the technology.

I'm not sure why Tehran would lie about this, unless it is embarrassed that it couldn't find any shooters and is using this as a cover story. But to tell its own people that Israel was able to get such equipment into Iran and execute someone definitely makes any potential targets far more concerned about how easily they could get killed.

On the other hand, if Israel really decided to do the hit remotely, that is an enormous amount of trust in technology for eliminating such a target. Iranian claims that Fakhrizadeh went out of his car to check what happened and was then shot - and that he was in a bulletproof car - indicates that if he hadn't left is car he might still be alive, and it seems unlikely Israel would have taken such a chance. Also, the side of the car he was in shows that the small window in back was shattered, but one would expect the entire side of the car to be riddled with bullets if it was a machine gun, and there is no evidence of that.

One other point: an operation like this would take probably years from conception through building the specialized equipment and smuggling it into Iran to appropriate agents, along with long-term surveillance of Fakhrizadeh's habits (or inside information about them.) Iran may claim that their nuclear program is peaceful, but Israel wouldn't spend that much time and money on a unique method of assassinating someone unless it was very sure that the target was extraordinarily valuable. This much effort indicates that the assassination set back Iran's nuclear weapons program significantly.

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NPR reports on, and criticizes, Israel's advisory for citizens visiting the UAE and tourism operators in Israel:

Don't promote democracy, talk about the royal families or comment on treatment of foreign workers.

Israel is advising tourism professionals and businesspeople to avoid discussing those and other sensitive political topics with residents of the United Arab Emirates, as it protects its new peace deal with the Gulf Arab country and promotes new daily flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv, launched last week.

"United Arab Emirates: Do and Do Not," the tourism ministry's 29-page Hebrew-language advisory published Nov. 8, is the first public Israeli government comment on the issue of Emirati political freedoms, but it stops short of criticizing alleged abuses.

"The United Arab Emirates is not a democratic country and it is not acceptable to speak about democracies as a preferred model of government," the advisory says. It also recommends "not to speak to Emiratis about the royal families," "avoid speaking about local politics" and "avoid speaking about government or state policy towards foreign workers."

The ministry says the guidelines are not government policy but cultural sensitivity tips aimed primarily at Israeli tourism operators preparing to receive Emirati visitors, whenever Israel lifts its COVID-19 ban on incoming tourism.

... Analysts and activists in both Israel and the Gulf criticized the Israeli approach.

"Gulf citizens are worldly and engage in the topics that the Israeli government is steering its tourists from," says Bader Al-Saif, a Kuwait-based fellow with the Carnegie Middle East Center. "It's how one engages in these topics that would matter."

"The message is: be silent. If you want to go to the UAE, and have a collaboration with them, don't talk about anything that would light a fuse," says Eitay Mack, a left-wing Israeli human rights lawyer.

Every country has travel advisories. The US State Department warns visitors against making derogatory comments about the UAE. It adds, "The UAE has strict laws regarding use of the internet and social media. Individuals have been arrested and criminally convicted for posting information on social media sites that local authorities determined was disturbing to the order of the UAE. Users of social media should be cautious about online posting of information that might be deemed to insult or challenge the local or national government. Individuals should avoid posting insults or derogatory information about governments, institutions, or individuals."

The UK similarly has lots of travel warnings for the UAE: "Posting material (including videos and photographs) online that is critical of the UAE government, companies or individuals, or related to incidents in the UAE, or appearing to abuse/ridicule/criticise the country or its authorities, or that is culturally insensitive, may be considered a crime punishable under UAE law."

Canada: "It’s illegal to criticize or disrespect the UAE’s ruling families or political system."

So why is Israel singled out for criticism? NPR gives a laughable excuse: "The State Department's travel advisory for U.S. citizens in the UAE offers similar advice on behavior and dress, and warns travelers they could be arrested or deported for 'making derogatory statements about the UAE, the royal families, the local governments or other people.' But unlike Israel, the U.S. has also reported human rights concerns there."

The US is required to monitor human rights issues in all countries to adhere to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and the Trade Act of 1974. That has nothing to do with giving advice on dealing with various local customs for travelers. Israel doesn't have that obligation.

The UK issues a human rights report calling out abuses by specific countries - but doesn't say a negative word about the UAE. Canada doesn't even do that.

Where are the NPR stories about them?

The Israeli document is more comprehensive than a travel advisory, since it is also geared towards Israeli tourism professionals that will host UAE citizens. But this is advice on how to be polite with an expected influx of tourists with a culture that Israelis are not familiar with yet, not a warning not to discuss sensitive topics. NPR is framing this as if this pamphlet means that Israel is complicit with UAE's human rights abuses, and that is beyond dishonest.

This NPR report is a perfect example of media bias against Israel, blaming Israel for doing what every other Western nation does.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)

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11/30 Links Pt2: David Collier: ‘the wrong sort of Jew’ – the left’s latest antisemitic conspiracy theory; Tlaib Promotes Slogan Associated With Calling For Elimination Of Israel

From Ian:

David Collier: ‘the wrong sort of Jew’ – the left’s latest antisemitic conspiracy theory

Last week one tweet by ‘Double Down News’ was shared 2000 times and received 3400 likes. It was an upload of a 9-minute video of Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi from Jewish Voice for Labour. On YouTube, the same video was watched over 120,000 times in 4 days.

Above the video ‘Double Down News‘ used the headline -‘Meet the Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn’t Want You To Know Exists‘. Putting aside the fact that Idrissi and all of her JVL buddies have been given more than their fair share of mainstream media platforms, the underlying accusation here is stark. Zionists control the media. Why else would anti-Zionists not be given a platform? In other words, this is an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

The recent video even starts with Wimborne Idrissi saying she has been called the wrong sort of Jew. Except nowhere in any of the google searches was there any indication Idrissi and co regularly face such an accusation. All of the ‘wrong sort of Jew’ results were of Jews on hard-left websites batting away at an accusation that does not really exist.

They built the straw man and are now busy playing victims as they publicly demolish it.

The video by ‘the wrong sort of Jew.’ In just nine minutes, Naomi Wimborne Idrissi takes the viewer through most of the rancid arguments we have come to recognise in the fight against antisemitism. The pillars of hard-left antisemitic – anti-Zionist discourse.

That Jewish people are weaponising antisemitism and are harming the fight against real antisemitism. Idrissi distorts the truth by implying that the Jewish community is evenly divided. She is well aware that her opinion resides in a fringe minority group. She deals in historical distortion by decontextualising pre-Holocaust anti-Zionism. Raises the antisemitic idea that the treatment of the Palestinians by Israeli forces is comparable to the way Jews were treated by the Nazis. Touches on freedom of speech and truth – which is ludicrous hypocrisy coming from a spin artist who publicly calls for no platforming those she opposes. Tell viewers that media has ‘sidelined and ignored’ left wing Jews because they support Palestine. Which is a blatant lie. Takes ownership for the historical Jewish fights for justice. Finishes off by saying that her group are the decent ones – people who want justice and peace. Which means that 93% of Jews must be indecent and against justice and peace.

A vile cocktail of lies and distortion.

J’accuse: In the shadow of Dreyfus at the European Union

On August 21, it was announced that the employee would be fired on 1 September. She was left with the cancellation of her medical insurance amid the COVID -19 pandemic.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center for over a year has acted in support of a Spanish Jewish employee, tenured since 1996 and now a senior official of the European Commission. In 2013, she was transferred to the EU diplomatic service, European External Action Service (EEAS), to work in the Middle East (Israel and Palestinian Territories).

One of her colleagues informed her that their Division Head allegedly suspected her of spying for the Mossad. She was thus transferred to the Turkish Division, entrusted with counterterrorism files.

According to her lawyers, then began a “slanderous... defamatory... campaign with antisemitic overtones.” She was again suspected of passing information to Turkish representatives. In 2016, she was dismissed “in the interest of this service.” Thus a long and painful process began. The story appeared in last week’s Paris Match weekly (Belgian edition). The author, Frédéric Loore, gave the official an anonymous identity, the nom-de-plume of “Eva.” Loore suggested that his article was fit for the cover of a novel by John Le Carré.

He questioned: “Has the EEAS been infiltrated by a Mossad mole or have some of its managers engaged in harassment on the grounds of antisemitism? Was there a Mata Hari in the ranks of the service in charge of the European Union’s foreign and security policy? Or was it a fabricated plot to get rid of a cumbersome senior civil servant of Jewish descent?”

“Eva” had sought an investigation to find out on what these gratuitous accusations were based. “In the end, it was carried out only to harm me... After six years, they still refuse to tell me who accused me of these facts and on what basis,” the employee said.

Alan Baker: The Audacity of Belgium

In an official announcement by the “Belgian Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs” department, on Nov. 6 the Belgian government voiced its condemnation of the demolition by Israel of structures built illegally and without any planning and zoning approval in parts of the disputed territories administered by Israel. The buildings were constructed with Belgian funding.

According to this official announcement, “Belgium supports such infrastructure projects because they meet urgent needs. They are always carried out in accordance with international humanitarian law … the demolition of infrastructure and housing is contrary to international humanitarian law, in particular, the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel’s obligations as occupying power, and UN Security Council resolutions.”

Belgium’s heavy involvement in illegal construction in violation of the planning, zoning, and construction regulations and requirements applicable in what the Palestinians and Israelis have denominated as “Area C” is made clear in the announcement:

“Since 2017, at the initiative of Belgium, a group of partner countries affected by similar actions has systematically intervened with the Israeli authorities to ask them to stop the demolitions and to repair the affected projects or to compensate for the damage suffered.”

Belgium’s audacity in demanding compensation is equaled by its blatant disregard of the legal infrastructure agreed upon between Israel and the Palestinians, applicable in the areas in which Belgium is so actively involved in illegal construction.

Israel Advocacy Movement: Israelis and Palestinian clash over Sheikh Jarrah

The pending eviction of the al-Kurd family from Shiekh Jarrah has made headlines for 40 years. In this video, we reveal the truth behind the headlines.

A couple of antisemitic Arab cartoons

Here are two recent cartoons from Felesteen.

This one is entitled "The Zionist Lobby," showing the entire world is just an attachment to the Zionist keychain.

And this one is "Trump's Legacy," showing Donald Trump hypnotizing the Arab world while the evil religious Jew sneaks away stealing the Dome of the Rock.

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This is an except of a much longer speech by David Ben Gurion to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, at the YMCA in Jerusalem, on July 4, 1947.

And now I put the question to you: Who is prepared and able to guarantee that what happened to us in Europe will not happen again? Can human conscience, and we believe that there is a human conscience, free itself of all responsibility for that catastrophe? There is only one safeguard: a Homeland and Statehood! A Homeland, where a Jew can return freely as of right. Statehood, where he can be master of his own destiny. These two things are possible here, and here only. The Jewish people cannot give up, cannot renounce these two fundamental rights, whatever may happen.

The problem of Jewish-Arab relations is not merely the problem of Jews and Arabs in Palestine. It is the problem of the relations of the Jewish and Arab peoples as a whole. Their national aspirations in that broader sense are not only compatible but complementary.

Nobody can seriously claim that a Jewish Palestine could in any way endanger or harm the independence or unity of the Arab race. The area of Western Palestine is less than 1% of the vast territory occupied by the Arab States in the Near East, excluding Egypt. The number of Arabs in this country is less than 3% of the number of Arabs who have gained their political independence. The Arabs in Palestine, even if they were a minority, would still be a part of that large Arab majority in the Middle East. The existence of Arab States to the north, east, and south of Palestine is an automatic guarantee, not only of the civil, religious and political rights of the Arabs in Palestine, but also of their national aspirations.

But a Jewish Palestine, a populous, highly-developed Jewish State has something of great value and importance to offer, not only to the Arabs in Palestine, but to those in the neighbouring countries as well. Even the small beginnings of the Jewish State, where Jews have occupied and developed only a small fraction of the country, have already had a marked effect on the advancement of the population in Palestine. Even now the position of the Arab peasant and farmer in Palestine is superior to that of the Arab peasant and farmer in Arab States. Our national aim cannot be achieved without great constructive work, agricultural, industrial, material and cultural, and this must, by its nature, raise the economic and social standards of all the inhabitants of the country. We cannot fully utilize the water resources of Palestine, which are now being wasted, without providing larger irrigation possibilities for the Arab fellah as well. We cannot introduce modern methods of cultivation without the Arabs learning from that example. We cannot organize Jewish labour and improve conditions of work without similarly organizing the Arab worker and improving his conditions.

As long as the government is in foreign hands, the impact of our development on Arab advancement is small. The theory of holding the balance between Jews and Arabs, which in practice meant curbing and obstructing our work, was not only injurious to us but to the Arabs as well.

One may rightly ask: Why is it that a million Arabs can be safely left in a Jewish State and why should not a million Jews be left in an Arab State? If the Jews and the Arabs who are in Palestine ,were all the Jews and all the Arabs that exist in the world, this would be a very logical and conclusive argument. There would then be no reason whatsoever why one should prefer an Arab to a Jew or a Jew to an Arab, and only numbers would count. But one cannot ignore the fact that both communities living in Palestine are merely fragments of larger communities living outside, and both of them belong to these larger units and their fates are inextricably bound up with the larger units. By depriving the Jews in Palestine of a national home, by preventing them from becoming a majority and attaining statehood, you are depriving not only 600,000 Jews who are here, but also the millions of Jews who are still left in the world, of independence and statehood. In no other place can they have the desire or the prospect of attaining statehood.

In depriving the million Arabs of the same prospect, you do not affect the status of the Arab race at all. An Arab minority in a Jewish State would mean that only a certain number of individual Arabs would not enjoy the privilege of Arab statehood, but it would in no way diminish the independence and position of the free Arab race. The Arab minority in Palestine, being surrounded by Arab States, would remain safe in national association with their race. But a Jewish minority in an Arab State, even with the most ideal paper guarantee, would mean the final extinction of Jewish hope not in Palestine alone, but for the entire Jewish people, for national equality and independence, with all the disastrous consequences so familiar in Jewish history.

The conscience of humanity ought to weigh this: Where is the balance of justice, where is the greater need, where is the greater peril, where is the lesser evil and where is the lesser injustice?

The fate of the Jewish minority in Palestine will not differ from the fate of the Jewish minority in any other country, except that here it might be much worse.

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11/30 Links Pt1: Why Iran Is Getting the Bomb; Col Kemp: The Killing of a Nuclear Scientist May Save Countless Lives; Saudi Arabia officially approves Israeli flights over its airspace

From Ian:

Lee Smith: Why Iran Is Getting the Bomb

Barack Obama will never forgive Benjamin Netanyahu for being right about the Iran nuclear deal. In his new memoir, Promised Land, Obama writes that the Israeli prime minister’s “vision of himself as the chief defender of the Jewish people against calamity allowed him to justify almost anything that would keep him in power.”

In fact, Netanyahu put his job on the line by doing something few Israeli voters support—he challenged an American president and potentially endangered the U.S.-Israel relationship. In March 2015, he went over Obama’s head to make his case to the representatives of the American people and told Congress that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would give Iran a clear path to the bomb. Since many restrictions were due to expire by 2025—the so-called “sunset clauses”—Iran would have an industrial-scale nuclear weapons program in about a decade.

“We’re being told that the only alternative to this bad deal is war,” Netanyahu told Congress. “That’s just not true.”

Netanyahu was right. Donald Trump pulled out of the JCPOA in May 2017 and there was no war. Trump sanctioned the Tehran regime into penury and instead of war, Iranian demonstrators took to the streets to protest against those who’d squandered the country’s wealth by funding international terror.

In January, the president ordered the killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani. Middle East experts warned that he’d woken a sleeping giant and the region would shortly go up in flames—but again, there was no war. In fact, the Trump White House’s clear stance against the world’s leading sponsor of terror made room for peace in the Middle East. In the summer, the Abraham Accords gave Israel new regional partners, with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan all agreeing to normalize relations.

Obama’s Iran deal was the costliest mistake of his presidency for the peoples of the Middle East. The premises on which it was based were proved false. And yet Joe Biden can’t wait to reenter the JCPOA, with Secretary of State-apparent Antony Blinken pledging to keep “non-nuclear sanctions” intact, signaling his clear intention to lift nuclear-related sanctions against Iran.

The only thing that could interfere with such wonderful plans, the press warns, is an impending Trump strike on Iran, which might come any day now. According to The New York Times, Trump asked his cabinet for military options after the U.N. reported that Iran had exceeded its limit of enriched uranium.

Does that mean Trump or Bibi is actually on the verge of attacking Iran? Of course not. On both the American and the Israeli fronts, Trump administration policy was to get American troops out of global hot spots as fast as possible—not start wars. What the war drums means is that the phony communications infrastructure that marketed the Iran deal from 2013-2016 is up and running again.

Richard Kemp: The Killing of a Nuclear Scientist May Save Countless Lives

Under the slogan "Death to America", Iran has been at war with the US, Israel and their Western allies since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, using proxy groups to kill hundreds of Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and other places; and to launch terror attacks across the Middle East, Europe, the US and Latin America.

Mr Fakhrizadeh was a brigadier general in the IRGC and therefore not only a senior military commander in a country at war with the US and its allies but also a proscribed international terrorist.

Iran will never abandon what it considers its absolute right to become a nuclear-armed state, not under the current regime nor any future regime.... It has lied to the IAEA and the archive even sets out in detail the ways in which it has deceived the inspectors.

Despite claims to the contrary, the JCPOA was never going to prevent a nuclear armed Iran... Its sunset clauses meant that at best the deal might have delayed Tehran's acquisition of nuclear weapons for a few years.... Any return to the JCPOA by a Biden White House, as is being pushed by Mr Brennan and other prospective administration officials, will not see a strengthened deal but more likely an even weaker one.

Mr Brennan and the European supporters of his argument seem to believe that Iran can be contained by appeasement and negotiation rather than military strength and political will. The path advocated by the proponents of appeasement can only lead to infinitely greater bloodshed, violence and suffering than the death of a proscribed terrorist on the streets of Iran.

WSJ($): Another Bold Strike Against Iran

If Tehran's most prized personnel can be killed and its guarded facilities damaged, and it can do little in response, then the clerical regime's haybat, its unchallengeable awe, is degraded for all to see.

For a regime that knows the extent of popular anger against it, that is a perilous situation.

America's will to intervene in the Middle East is declining rapidly, and Israel's position is significantly stronger than it was in 2012, when President Obama began secret negotiations with Tehran in Oman.

The absurd Arab arguments against the IHRA working definition of antisemitism

As mentioned in my previous post, 122 Arab intellectuals wrote a letter to The Guardian opposing the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.

Let's look at their arguments.

1. The fight against antisemitism must be deployed within the frame of international law and human rights. It should be part and parcel of the fight against all forms of racism and xenophobia, including Islamophobia, and anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism. The aim of this struggle is to guarantee freedom and emancipation for all oppressed groups. It is deeply distorted when geared towards the defence of an oppressive and predatory state.

This is doubletalk. The socialists who advance this argument divide the world into "oppressor" and "oppressed," and Jews end up on the "oppressor" side - both because of their perceived "whiteness" and because of how they look at Israel, as the "oppressive and predatory state." So the very framework that is supposed to protect Jews is being used by the Arabs and socialists to attack Jews who believe that Jews are a people and a nation.

2. There is a huge difference between a condition where Jews are singled out, oppressed and suppressed as a minority by antisemitic regimes or groups, and a condition where the self-determination of a Jewish population in Palestine/Israel has been implemented in the form of an ethnic exclusivist and territorially expansionist state. As it currently exists, the state of Israel is based on uprooting the vast majority of the natives – what Palestinians and Arabs refer to as the Nakba – and on subjugating those natives who still live on the territory of historical Palestine as either second-class citizens or people under occupation, denying them their right to self-determination.

Arabs misdefining Zionism is as offensive as Arabs misdefining antisemitism. Zionism is not based on "subjugating" anyone, and Zionism views Jews as the natives of the land. Israel is not "an ethnic exclusivist and territorially expansionist state."

If Arabs need to lie to justify their anti-Zionist arguments, that indicates that their arguments are based on a far more fundamental hate. Which itself shows that the IHRA working definition is quite accurate.

3. The IHRA definition of antisemitism and the related legal measures adopted in several countries have been deployed mostly against leftwing and human rights groups supporting Palestinian rights and the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, sidelining the very real threat to Jews coming from rightwing white nationalist movements in Europe and the US. The portrayal of the BDS campaign as antisemitic is a gross distortion of what is fundamentally a legitimate non-violent means of struggle for Palestinian rights.

This is because one does not need an updated definition of antisemitism to fight against neo-Nazi and white supremacist antisemitism. The entire purpose is to identify and call out antisemitism that is hiding behind the facade of anti-Zionism - which is that this letter justifies.

4. The IHRA definition’s statement that an example of antisemitism is “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” is quite odd. It does not bother to recognise that under international law, the current state of Israel has been an occupying power for over half a century, as recognised by the governments of countries where the IHRA definition is being upheld. It does not bother to consider whether this right includes the right to create a Jewish majority by way of ethnic cleansing and whether it should be balanced against the rights of the Palestinian people. Furthermore, the IHRA definition potentially discards as antisemitic all non-Zionist visions of the future of the Israeli state, such as the advocacy of a binational state or a secular democratic one that represents all its citizens equally. Genuine support for the principle of a people’s right to self-determination cannot exclude the Palestinian nation, nor any other.

There is nothing odd about saying that singling out the Jewish state as uniquely racist or evil is antisemitic. The assertion that Zionism is inherently racist, or that it demands ethnic cleansing, or that it excludes Palestinian rights is an absurd lie - yesterday was the anniversary of Palestinians rejecting a state that the UN suggested for them in 1947.

This paragraph shows exactly why anti-Zionism is antisemitism - because it treats Jewish nationalism as uniquely exclusivist when it is exactly the same as any other nationalism.

5. We believe that no right to self-determination should include the right to uproot another people and prevent them from returning to their land, or any other means of securing a demographic majority within the state. The demand by Palestinians for their right of return to the land from which they themselves, their parents and grandparents were expelled cannot be construed as antisemitic. The fact that such a demand creates anxieties among Israelis does not prove that it is unjust, nor that it is antisemitic. It is a right recognised by international law as represented in United Nations general assembly resolution 194 of 1948.

The history of the "right to return" shows quite definitively that its purpose is to destroy the Jewish state, not to provide rights for Palestinians. As early as October, 1949, Egypt’s foreign minister Muhammad Salah al-Din said, “…in demanding the return of the Palestinian refugees, the Arabs mean their return as masters, not slaves; or to put it quite clearly – the intention is the extermination of Israel.” In 1960 Egypt’s Nasser said, “If the refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.” Prime Minister of Lebanon Abdullah el-Yafi stated in 1966, “The day on which the Arabs’ hope for the return of the refugees to Palestine is realized will be the day of Israel’s extermination.” If Arabs cared about Palestinian human rights they would insist that Palestinians be given full rights in their host countries while they are there - but these hypocrites writing this letter don't say that. (The last sentence is a lie as well, as we have documented many times.)

There is one more point that applies to this and to the other arguments: the bizarre assumption that it is impossible to support Palestinian rights without calling the Jewish state racist or Nazi or evil. That is not only an insult to anyone's intelligence - it is an insult to the Palestinian Arab cause itself.

6. To level the charge of antisemitism against anyone who regards the existing state of Israel as racist, notwithstanding the actual institutional and constitutional discrimination upon which it is based, amounts to granting Israel absolute impunity. Israel can thus deport its Palestinian citizens, or revoke their citizenship or deny them the right to vote, and still be immune from the accusation of racism. The IHRA definition and the way it has been deployed prohibit any discussion of the Israeli state as based on ethno-religious discrimination. It thus contravenes elementary justice and basic norms of human rights and international law.

This is a straw man. Beyond that, the IHRA example was that "the State of Israel is a racist endeavor" which is much different from saying that some things it does can be construed as racist, since that would fall under the exception of "criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic." So, yes, if Israel would decide to deport Arabs for no reason, criticizing it is not antisemitic - and I would be the first to criticize it.

7. We believe that justice requires the full support of Palestinians’ right to self-determination, including the demand to end the internationally acknowledged occupation of their territories and the statelessness and deprivation of Palestinian refugees. The suppression of Palestinian rights in the IHRA definition betrays an attitude upholding Jewish privilege in Palestine instead of Jewish rights, and Jewish supremacy over Palestinians instead of Jewish safety. We believe that human values and rights are indivisible and that the fight against antisemitism should go hand in hand with the struggle on behalf of all oppressed peoples and groups for dignity, equality and emancipation.

"Jewish privilege"? "Jewish supremacy"? Wow - the argument against using the IHRA definition embraces antisemitic tropes!

Which is hardly surprising. Because as this letter shows, Arab anti-Zionism is based on antisemitism, and the only argument they really have is to redefine antisemitism to exclude Arabs and Leftists from the charge.

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No one can seriously separate the origins of today's anti-Zionism from antisemitism

The Guardian published a letter from 122 Arab academics, journalists and "intellectuals" arguing against using the IHRA working definition of antisemitism because they want to distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

Instead of demolishing the letter point by point, let's look at the history of today's anti-Zionism and see how it is indistinguishable from antisemitism.

There are four main strains of anti-Zionism that have popped up ever since modern Zionism emerged. The only three that remain are based on antisemitism.

The four strains are traditional antisemitism extended to anti-Zionism, Jewish anti-Zionism, socialist anti-Zionism and Arab anti-Zionism.

Right-wing antisemites were, and are, naturally anti-Zionist. Hitler's Mein Kampf contained a number of anti-Zionist passages. Modern neo-Nazis liberally quote left-wing anti-Zionists. Their hate for Israel is animated by their hate for Jews.

Jewish anti-Zionism (outside the fringe Neturei Karta) really only existed before the establishment of the modern state of Israel. They opposed the establishment of a Jewish state for various political, philosophical, religious and practical reasons, but once Israel was reborn nearly all of their arguments became moot.

Today's Jewish anti-Zionism is nearly all socialist anti-Zionism, which is the most prevalent kind in the West today. It's origins are purely antisemitic. I recently wrote about antisemitism behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970s, where the charges against "Zionism" were identical to Protocols of the Elders of Zion propaganda that the Nazis used. There is no difference between the socialist antisemitism of the 20th century and today's socialist "anti-Zionism" except that today's socialists hide it better and use antisemitism as a means to attack the Right. Still, there is very little literature from the Left criticizing the more blatant antisemitism of their philosophical forebears, which shows that they really aren't against antisemitism as they claim - their core arguments against Zionism have not changed since the 1950s.

The style of anti-Zionism relevant to this letter is Arab anti-Zionism.

The Arab opposition to Zionism was based fully on the disgust at the idea of Jews who were looked upon as weak, pathetic second-class citizens and dhimmis in the Arab world rising and taking political power and controlling land in the Middle East.

Arabs were not opposed to non-Arab Ottomans controlling the region, and they opposed European control but were generally able to accept it as a de facto admission that Christian Europe was too powerful to oppose.

But Jews? That was wholly unacceptable. And it is because they were Jews not taking their proper place as obedient, controlled minorities who had little recourse when Arabs decided to attack as they did every once in a while.

It is absurd to separate Arab anti-Zionism from antisemitism. I just wrote about how Jordan banned Jews - not Zionists, but Jews - from visiting any Jewish holy sites the entire time they were under Arab control.

This is hardly the only example. Antisemitism was so entwined with Arab anti-Zionism in the 1950s and 1960s that no one took seriously the occasional Arab objections that they didn't hate Jews.

Here is a summary of official antisemitic propaganda in the Arab world from Middle East Review in 1961.

Here's another example of how Arabs viewed the remaining Jews in their countries after the Six Day War as assumed to be ungrateful enemies and not regular citizens:

There was no distinction made or even attempted between Jews and Zionists. Only in response to Western distaste at the obvious Jew-hatred did Arab nations start to tone down that part of their hate in public.

But the history of Arab anti-Zionism is that it is based on Jew-hatred.

So this letter to The Guardian is meant to whitewash the history of Arab Jew-hate as the motivating factor behind Arab antisemitism. It takes some of the socialist arguments that they have no problem with Jews, but it is rewriting history.

The proof is obvious: neither today's Arab anti-Zionists nor the socialist anti-Zionists are willing to condemn the antisemitism of their predecessors. Antisemitism is inherent to those philosophies.

Today's apologetics don't change that.

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When Jordan banned Jews (not Israelis, Jews) from the Kotel and all other holy spots

It is not well known that during Jordan's illegal annexation of the West Bank, they banned Jews from visiting the Western Wall and other Jewish sacred shrines.

Not Israelis - but Jews.

From the New York Times, January 4, 1964:

All of Jerusalem is holy to three religions—Christian, Jewish and Moslem, and some of the religious sites in and around the Holy City are shared by two or even all three of the religions.
....

For the Jews, the holiest place is the Wailing Wall, where —until excluded after the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 — they lamented the destruction of the great Herodian temple of 40 B.C.

...
Another holy site shared by the three religions is the tomb of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, which is situated at Hebron, south of Jerusalem. Christians and Moslems still go to the big mosque in Hebron to pay their respects to the patriarchs. Since the Arab-Israeli war it, too, has not been accessible to the Jews.

...

Somewhat in dispute is the Tomb of Rachel, the wife of Jacob. According to tradition, Rachel died here in childbirth and Jacob erected a memorial over her grave.

Still visible is the place on the wall where the Ten Commandments and prayer shawls were believed to have been hung. The Jews have not been permitted to visit the tomb since 1948.

The following month, this was reiterated:

The head of the largest organization of Orthodox rabbis in the country appealed to President Johnson tonight to use his influence in the United Nations to get permission for Jews to worship at the Wailing Wall in the old section of Jerusalem occupied bv Jordan.

Specifically, Rabbi Abraham N. AvRutick, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, urged both the Federal Government and the United Nations to enforce a provision in the Jordan‐Israel armistice agreement “which affirms the Jewish right to access to the Wailing Wall, and to all sacred Jewish sites and shrines in old Jerusalem.”
...
The rabbi also cited the Israeli practice of permitting Christians to go through the Mandelbaum Gate on sacred Christian holidays to visit holy sites in Jordan.

Rabbi AvRutick voiced regret that Jews were denied the same privilege in Jordan. He listed various sacred Jewish religious shrines, adding that “no Jew has been permitted to visit the graveside of his parents on the Mount of Olives in old Jerusalem.”

See also here, where the Agudath Israel organization in the US petitioned the UN to allow Jews to visit the Kotel, the Tomb of the Patriarchs, Rachel's Tomb and other holy places.

The Jordanians were zealous in barring Jews from visiting the holy places in the Old City. One amazing example happened in 1959, when a member of Canada's Parliament was not allowed to visit the Old City along with his fellow MPs because he was Jewish:

A member of the Canadian House of Commons was denied permission yesterday by the Jordanian authorities to enter the Jordan-held Old City of Jerusalem to inspect the Holy Places because he was a Jew.

Leon D. Crestohl, of Montreal, who is a member of the nine-man Canadian parliamentary delegation currently visiting Israel, was barred by the Jordanians when he sought to accompany the delegation on a tour of the Holy Places. Mr. Crestohl urged his fellow delegation members to make the tour without him.

“I am delighted that my colleagues have enjoyed a pilgrimage to the Holy Places,” he said later, “but I am disappointed that I was denied the same privilege to visit the Jewish Holy Places to which all faiths enjoy a recognized form of access according to the armistice agreements.”

Not only was a member of Canada's Parliament banned because he was Jewish, but the government of Canada did not even condemn Jordan's official antisemitism - and neither did Crestohl.

There is only one exception I am aware of, when Jordan allowed Jews to come over for twelve hours in 1957, as I wrote in this post from 2010. Jews who had used to live in the Old City were so loud in their crying over the many destroyed synagogues that is caused an incident and Jordan shut the doors again.

This was state-sanctioned antisemitism, and Jordan made no apologies for it. In fact, it was ready and willing to create international incidents to defend its right to discriminate against Jews.

To think that today's anti-Zionism is any different from the antisemitism that spawned it is just gaslighting.

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Kuwaiti newspaper makes up another "scoop" that people believe (Israel failed to assassinate Nasrallah)

We haven't heard from Kuwait's Al Jarida newspaper in a while, but it has a long history of reporting spectacular scoops from Israel.

With only one problem - they are all completely made-up.

That doesn't stop the paper from being quoted in mainstream media, including Israeli media, as if a made-up story is worth reporting on. As if this newspaper has better connections in the Israeli intelligence community than....Israeli newspapers.

The latest "scoop" that came over the weekend was that Israel supposedly failed to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah, in an operation called "Plan B." The supposed operation also was sai to target a bunch of people in Iraq.

In this case, the "scoop" supposedly came from Iranian sources, not Israeli - like a similar story that Al Jarida published over the summer that the Mossad had failed in a very similar assassination attempt against Nasrallah's son.

It still amazes me that the media often reports these stories straight without mentioning that Al Jarida and Kuwaiti media altogether has a track record of lying.

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11/29 Links: Melanie Phillips: The Prospective Return of Global Appeasement; Iran's tough year makes the world a safer place; Hamas bans WB dairy products from entering Gaza

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Prospective Return of Global Appeasement

This week, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized Biden’s prospective team for living in a “fantasy world.” He said, “They led from behind, they appeased. I hope they will choose a different course.”

Biden’s choice as ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who was an assistant Secretary of State under Obama, declared this week that multilateralism and diplomacy were back.

In response, Pompeo snapped that the Trump administration had developed “coalitions that actually deliver real results and reflect the reality on the ground,” and that America’s best interests were not served by “multilateralism for the sake of hanging out with your buddies at a cool cocktail party.”

Opponents of appeasement are often called warmongers. Winston Churchill, who during the 1930s fruitlessly warned that Hitler’s aggression needed to be curbed, was dismissed as such until his country realized almost too late that Hitler had Britain in his sights, as well as half of Europe.

The fact that Biden’s team consists of so many Obama-era retreads is causing concern among those Americans who understand the harm Obama inflicted upon their nation’s foundational principles.

They are no less concerned that Biden would essentially continue Obama’s strategy to reduce America’s standing in the world and thus weaken both the United States and the West that it leads.

It was a strategy that, under Obama, empowered those bent upon evil. Rational people everywhere, in the developing world no less than the West, should shudder at its prospective return in America.

Pompeo Passes Torch to Biden Admin Touting a Fundamentally Realigned Globe

These policies make sense to Israel and their Gulf partners, Pompeo said.

"It fits with their understanding of the risk to their people," Pompeo said. "So whether it’s in the Gulf states or Israel, I think they have come to appreciate that the policies that this administration put in place are the ones that are best for them, for their relationship and partnership with the United States of America."

"I’m confident more will follow," Pompeo said of other Arab nations likely to make peace with Israel.

The peace accords also are a sign of deeper U.S. ties with Israel’s traditional enemies, Pompeo said. The UAE, for example, is in line to receive more than $20 billion in U.S. weapons, including 50 F-35 Lighting II aircraft, MQ-9B drones, and advanced munitions systems—a massive military package that only would have been approved for Israel in years past.

While Pompeo was assailed in the media for stepping foot in disputed areas of Israel, peace talks with Arab nations continued. The BBC, for instance, wrote, "Trumplomacy: Mike Pompeo eyes history on Israel swansong trip." The article accused Pompeo of inflaming Palestinian leaders and positioning himself as a contender in the 2024 presidential election.

Asked about these critics, Pompeo described the reports as "longing for a time that is based on fantasy, when in fact, I think the world has moved away from that understanding that the lefties at the BBC hold so dearly."

Pompeo said he is not focusing on what is to come next year, but spending his final months in office ensuring President Donald Trump’s "America First" policies continue to challenge the conventional foreign policy establishment.

"We didn’t spend any time talking about what the—what might happen in January of next year," Pompeo said. "We spent a lot of time thinking about what we ought to do in November of this year and how we ought to continue—collectively, not just the United States, but continue collectively—to increase security in the region and get an even broader coalition."

Why Is the Palestinian Authority Donating to U.S. Universities?

The Palestinian Authority (PA) seems to have no shortage of funds to pay terrorists in Israeli jails and the families of suicide bombers. In 2019, the PA distributed approximately $148 million to prisoners, a 3 percent increase from 2018. Meanwhile, the PA lacks funds to combat the coronavirus and has cut salaries to government employees, including teachers (who are paid less than the terrorists), and other civil servants. Palestinians and Americans might, therefore, be surprised to learn that the PA has money to spare to donate to American universities.

A new study that I compiled for the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise found that U.S. institutions received more than $10 billion in foreign gifts from Arab sources from 1981 to October 2020. While it is not surprising the wealthy Gulf countries were responsible for the lion’s share, it was startling to see the non-existent “State of Palestine” made nine gifts worth $4.5 million in the last four years. While the amount may sound relatively trivial, the impact can be exponential.

The universities that received gifts from “The State of Palestine” may feel obligated to report the money as the donors wish, but doing so in this case compromises their integrity by legitimizing the Palestinian claim to being a state, one that is not accepted by the United States government. Since no such state exists, the record should say Palestinian Authority. Furthermore, given that the PA relies largely on foreign aid to subsist and is in dire financial straits, questions arise as to where it came up with this money, why it chose to spend it in the United States, and whether the Palestinian public is aware of how its money is being used.

Until 2020, the Department of Education (DoE) did not report how foreign gifts were used by universities and, even now, many are not explained. Of the 259 PA gifts listing a purpose, roughly 177 were for some type of financial aid for Arab students. Only one of the foreign gifts was identified with a political purpose — a $643,000 contribution to Brown in 2020 from “The State of Palestine” to provide support for a professorship in Palestinian Studies within its Center for Middle East Studies.