Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
Launched by the Middle East Forum in Fall 2016, the Israel Victory Project maintains that peace can only be reached when the Palestinians are forced to concede the futility of their century-long rejectionism and accept Israel’s right to exist. To advance this goal, the Forum created an Israel Victory Caucus in both the U.S. Congress and the Knesset, as well as apprised key members of the Trump administration of the concept, in order to promote legislation and policies that will supplant the failed Oslo “peace process” with persistent pressure on the Palestinians to come to terms with Israel’s existence. Such measures can range from stopping financial support to the Palestinian Authority so long as it continues to pay lifetime allowances to families of killed and/or jailed terrorists, to ending the “Palestine refugee” farce, to harnessing the widest international backing behind Israel’s political stance and sustained military effort to defeat Palestinian terrorism.
Gregg Roman, director of the Middle East Forum, was interviewed by Land of Israel podcast host Eve Harrow on July 3rd’s Knesset meeting of the joint US-Israel program, the Israel Victory Caucus.
Palestinian rejectionism is two parts Palestinian, one part international community, and one part lack of Israeli strategy. Palestinian’s rejectionist Waqf-Fiqh mentality (“waqf” is the Islamic holy trust, and “fiqh” is Islamic legal doctrine), with its Islamic concept of never relinquishing lands that were once in Muslim hands, can be challenged by citing the precedent of the Balkans, and ancient Andalusia, now Spain, where Muslims gave up lands in 1492. The second rejectionist idea, “samud,” (steadfastness), encourages Palestinians to wait millenia, if need be, to defeat the Israelis, but Palestinians want to better their lives now and partake in the benefits of Israeli innovation. Third, the international community (and far left) indulge Palestinian “no’s” with donations that perpetuate the rejectionist cycle, but there are organizations working to separate monies for strictly humanitarian concerns apart from the political ones. Fourth and final is the Israeli security apparatus, fearing escalation or increased risk, which prefers keeping the status quo, instead of bringing about a resolution to the conflict on Israel’s terms.
Palestinian Commentator Tawfiq Abu Shomar on PA TV: The Israelis Portray Their Fallen Soldiers as Civilians, Whereas We Portray Our Innocent Children as Fighters pic.twitter.com/yD2hnFo63W
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) July 17, 2018
A falcon was discovered near the Gaza border on Monday with strings attached that contained flammable material.
The falcon was found dead, hanging by the attached string from a burned tree near the Nahal Habesor riverbed.
It was not immediately clear if the bird was launched from Gaza to spark fires in Israel, as Gazans have done hundreds of time in recent weeks with kites and balloons, or if the predatory animal attempted to attack a balloon or kite carrying an incendiary device and became ensnared in its attached strings.
The falcon was found on a day when firefighters battled 15 separate fires started by Gazan kites and balloons in the border region.
Nature and Parks Authority officials who examined the bird said it wore a harness, suggesting it was a trained hunting bird, and strengthening speculation that it was deliberately sent to start fires, the Ynet news site reported.
Tuesday, July 17, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, July 17, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, July 17, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Many international legal scholars oppose US recognition. Some posit that the US has not recognized territory captured by military means since World War II, and such a move would add to a growing trend of America reshaping its relationship with post-World War II norms, possibly prompting more international instability. Eugene Kontorovich, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern University and director of the international law department at Jerusalem’s Kohelet Policy Forum, contends those scholars have short memories. He will testify to that effect before the subcommittee next week in Washington, D.C.Congress Wants Recognition of Israeli Sovereignty Over Golan Heights
“America recognized Vietnam as being the sole country in the Vietnamese peninsula. How did that happen under international law if there used to be a South Vietnam that was taken over militarily by North Vietnam?” Kontorovich said in a telephone interview. “Not to mention the State Department has expressed openness and sympathy to leaving West Sahara under Moroccan sovereignty, and Morocco got that by invading and conquering in 1975 and that wasn’t a defensive war, like the Six Day War.”
To support their position on the Golan, international law experts cite the October 1970 UN General Assembly Resolution 2625, which says: “no territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal.”
Here too, Kontorovich finds a weak link in their arguments. “Based on my research, it is very hard to find clear recognition of such a norm in fighting a defensive war, so I can’t see this applying to Israel retroactively.”
The standards for Israel are always different, of course. Also, the Trump administration may be hesitant to grant Israel another unilateral prize following the May embassy move to Jerusalem, so as not to prejudice Arab reaction to its own upcoming framework on Arab-Israeli peace.
However, Kontorovich contends he sees no downside for the US if it were to recognize Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights. “It’s easy to say the whole Arab world will be angry, but most of the Arab world is against the Iranian axis, of which Syria is part, and I think they would support anything that makes that axis weaker.”
Congress is renewing efforts to press the Trump administration into recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the contested Golan Heights region on Israel's northern border with Syria, bucking efforts by GOP leadership to kill the effort, according to conversations with lawmakers.MEMRI: Columnist In Kuwaiti Daily: 'The Jews Are Known For Loathsome Traits... Deeply Rooted In All Jews, Forever And Ever'
The House's National Security Subcommittee, led by chairman Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) will hold a hearing Tuesday to examine how recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the territory could bolster U.S. national security efforts to stem the flow of terrorists in the Jewish state and elsewhere in the region by giving the Jewish state unilateral control over the Syrian territory, where Iranian-backed fighters and other jihadists have been spotted since the start of a bloody civil war.
The push to have the Trump administration formally recognize Israel's sovereignty over the territory comes following a Monday afternoon press conference between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladamir Putin, where the two leaders discussed efforts to decrease tension in Syria.
When DeSantis and other Republicans pushed a congressional resolution recognizing Israeli control over the Golan Heights in May, it was nixed by GOP leadership who were seeking to prevent such a vote on the heels of the Trump administration's successful effort to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The resolution had won support from Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and others.
DeSantis expressed disappointment at the time in comments to the Free Beacon.
"I don't know why my Golan Heights amendment was not made in order and thus denied a vote," DeSantis said. "It was a germane amendment that would have provided the House with a chance to add clarity to the broader U.S. policy vis-a-vis Syria. How could we even contemplate supporting anything other than the application of Israeli sovereignty to such a strategically significant area, especially given the plethora of malevolent forces that undermine security in the region?"
In an antisemitic column published January 10, 2018 in the Kuwaiti Al-Anba daily, Bassem Al-Shati, who is also a lecturer at the Religious Faith and Preaching department at Kuwait University, quoted extensively from the Quran to prove, he said, that the Jews are cheating, corrupt, miserable, aggressive, and envious murderers of the prophets and are also responsible for all the corruption and licentiousness in the world. He added that the Muslims must protect themselves against these traits in the Jews.WATCH: Ocasio-Cortez Attacks Israel Then Admits She Has No Idea What She's Talking About
The following are highlights from his column:
"The Jews are known for loathsome traits, mentioned by Allah in His Book [i.e. the Quran]. These traits are deeply rooted in all the Jews, forever and ever, and the Muslims must protect themselves from them. These traits include fraudulence, treachery, and violating contracts and agreements. Allah said: 'So for their breaking of the covenant, We cursed them and made their hearts hard. They distort words from their [proper] usages... [Quran 5:13].' History attests that they have violated contracts and agreements. They violated the contract with the Messenger of Allah [Muhammad] and more than once attempted to kill him. The last time [they tried this], they served him poisoned lamb as an offering. He chewed a piece of it, and then suffered years from this poison."
To view a MEMRI TV clip of a version of this story told to children, click here or below:
"What is happening to our brothers in Palestine is the greatest witness to the Jews' violation of contracts. There is no use in signing contracts or agreements with the Jews, because they recognize only the language of force...
"They [the Jews] are murderers of the prophets, peace be upon them. They killed Yahya,[1] Zacharia, and other prophets and messengers. Allah said: 'They have been put under humiliation [by Allah ] wherever they are overtaken, except for a covenant from Allah and a rope from the Muslims. And they have drawn upon themselves anger from Allah and have been put under destitution. That is because they disbelieved in the verses of Allah and killed the prophets without right. That is because they disobeyed and [habitually] transgressed [Quran 3:112]'.
"The imam Ahmad said in his collection of traditions [of the Prophet Muhammad] according to a hadith by Abdallah bin Mas'oud[2] that the Prophet said: 'The one who will be punished with the harshest possible punishment on Judgment Day are those who were killed by a prophet or killed a prophet [that is, the Jews].'
New York socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attacked Israel in a recent interview on PBS's "Firing Line," calling them the occupiers of Palestine and later admitting that she has no idea what she is talking about regarding Israel.
Ocasio-Cortez's remarks came in response to a question from host Margaret Hoover, who asked her to explain comments she made about Israel after she attacked them for defending themselves against an attack from Hamas terrorists.
Ocasio-Cortez, who called the shooting a "massacre," said that she thinks that Israel has the right to "exist," adding, "but I also think that what people are starting to see, at least, in the occupation of Palestine, is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition. And that, to me, is just where I tend to come from on this issue."
Hoover then pressed Ocasio-Cortez, "You use the term 'the occupation of Palestine.' What do you mean by that?"
The 28-year-old socialist struggled, "Um... I think what I meant is ... like ... the settlements that are increasing in some of these areas and places where Palestinians are experiencing difficulty in access to their housing and homes."
Hoover: "Do you think you can expand on that?"
Ocasio-Cortez fumbled, "Yeah... I mean, I think ... I'd ... also just— I am not the expert on geo-politics on this issue."
July 15, 2018 Ocasio-Cortez: “I’m not the expert on this geo-politics (Israel/Palestinian) issue.”
— The Right Wing M 🇺🇸 (@TheRightWingM) July 16, 2018
May 14, 2018 Ocasio-Cortez: “ Israel massacred Palestinian protesters” pic.twitter.com/q8S4avp94r
Monday, July 16, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Monday, July 16, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Abbas' Fatah is encouraging Palestinian parents to teach their children about a terror bombing in which 15 Israelis were murdered and over 60 wounded in 1975.Seized archive shows Iran nuke project was larger than thought, had foreign help
In a post on Facebook, Fatah writes about the terror attack in which terrorist Ahmad Abu Sukkar filled a refrigerator with explosives and had it driven to the center of Jerusalem where it was detonated:
"Share so that our children will know about it."
Fatah for years has glorified this murderous attack as the "refrigerator operation."
Fatah also honored the terrorist himself by posting three photos of him:
Posted Text: "38 years since the refrigerator operation, which caused the death of 13 Israelis (sic., 15) in Jerusalem's markets
Share so that our children will know about it From the memory:
The refrigerator bomb operation, Jerusalem, 1975
The Palestinian National Liberation Movement - Fatah
The operation was carried out by Ahmad Jabarah Abu Sukkar, born in July 1936. He was taken captive long after the operation and sat in the Israeli prison for 27 years."
[Official Fatah Facebook page, July 5, 2018]
The archive of Iranian nuclear documents seized by the Israeli Mossad from a Tehran warehouse in January shows that Iran’s program to build nuclear weapons “was almost certainly larger, more sophisticated and better organized” than was suspected, unnamed nuclear experts were quoted as saying in the New York Times on Sunday, after being shown selected documents from the haul by US reporters.NYTs [$]: How Israel Stole Iran's Nuclear Secrets
One of the Iranian documents specifies plans to build a first “batch of five weapons” and discusses sites for possible underground nuclear tests, the Times reported, after one of its reporters was given limited access to the haul last week, along with a reporter from the Washington Post, and another from the Wall Street Journal.
“None were built, possibly because the Iranians feared being caught, or because a campaign by American and Israeli intelligence agencies to sabotage the effort, with cyberattacks and disclosures of key facilities, took its toll,” said the Times.
“It’s quite good,” Robert Kelley, a nuclear engineer and former inspector for the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, told The Times dryly, after being shown some of the documents. “The papers show these guys were working on nuclear bombs.”
The documents also reinforce Israel’s contention that Iran remains determined to attain a nuclear weapons archive, despite its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal (the JCPOA), the US reporters noted.
The materials they were shown include documentation that names current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a member of the “Council for Advanced Technologies” that approved the rogue nuclear weapons program, the Washington Post said, and indicate “a supporting role by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as the Quds Force.” Previously released documents indicate that the Iranian army was charged with overseeing the conversion of low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade fuel suitable for nuclear bombs.
The Mossad agents moving in on a warehouse in a commercial district of Tehran on Jan. 31 knew they had exactly 6 hours and 29 minutes to disable the alarms, break through two doors, cut through dozens of giant safes and get out of the city with a half-ton of secret materials. When time was up, they fled for the border, hauling 50,000 pages and 163 compact discs of memos, videos and plans.
Last week, at the invitation of the Israeli government, three reporters were shown key documents from the trove. Many confirmed that Iran had worked in the past to systematically assemble everything it needed to produce atomic weapons. "The papers show these guys were working on nuclear bombs," said Robert Kelley, a nuclear engineer and former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency.
American and British intelligence officials, after comparing the documents to some they had previously obtained from spies and defectors, said they believed the trove was genuine.
The Iranian program to build a nuclear weapon was almost certainly larger, more sophisticated and better organized than most suspected in 2003, according to outside nuclear experts consulted by The Times. The documents detailed the challenges of integrating a nuclear weapon into a warhead for the Shahab-3, an Iranian missile.
Clearly, the Israelis had inside help. They had learned which of the 32 safes held the most important information. They studied the alarm system, so that it would appear to be working even though it would not alert anyone when the agents arrived.
Among the most fascinating elements are pictures taken inside key facilities in Iran, before the equipment was dismantled in anticipation of international inspections. One set of photos shows a giant metal chamber built to conduct high-explosive experiments, in a building at the Parchin military base near Tehran.
Monday, July 16, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Divest This, Opinion
Monday, July 16, 2018Elder of Ziyon
This policy paper reflects on the structural character and history of Islamophobia arguing that the Islamophobia industry corresponds to and overlaps with a powerful Israel lobby industry, a network of Zionist groups that is well-funded and politically well-connected. The goal of this Islamophobia/ Israel lobby industry is to utilize racism and fearmongering relying on their powerful funders and political connections to silence, intimidate and bully scholars, educators and advocates for justice in/for Palestine in McCarthyist-style attacks against dissenting voices.To say that the "Israel Lobby" (which she purposefully conflates with any pro-Israel organization) is inherently Islamophobic is scurrilous and false.
Drawing on my scholarship in Arab, Muslim, and Palestine studies and critical race theory and my lived experience as Director and Senior Scholar of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies program at San Francisco State University,7 I offer here an anatomy of this industry, its connections and funding, as well as its goals. I do so to illustrate that this Israel lobby industry is not a grass-roots movement but rather a well-planned, well-connected, and powerful force that intentionally utilizes multiple forms in its racist and xenophobic arsenal to weaponize attacks against Muslims and Arabs, including Palestinians. I then focus on the Islamophobic, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian framing that grounds this industry and highlight in particular the gendered and sexualized Orientalist imagery enlisted by this industry to promote its agenda.
This structure of the industry also makes clear the overlapping network of Islamophobia and Israel lobby industries. This network is made up of a small number of individuals who sit on each other’s boards and rotate positions. For example, Daniel Pipes, named as a leading Islamophobe by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), sat on the board of Scholars of Middle East Peace. The co-founders of AMCHA also served on that board. Pipes was connected to the Clarion Project, on whose board Frank Gaffney served. Pipes acted as an intermediary, parsing out funding while receiving funds from eight of the 11 major donors cited by the IJAN Report. While the Islamophobia and Israel lobby industries cannot be classified as a grass-roots movement, the resources placed at these industries’ disposal makes their impact quite devastating in their campaigns to destroy careers and create a chilling effect among academics and campus advocates. In addition to their funding, the Islamophobia and Israel lobby industries are well connected politically to the highest echelons of the U.S. government. For example, Shelden [sic] Adelson is a major donor to the Israel lobby industry to the tune of $50 million and was the largest individual donor to the Donald Trump presidential campaign to the tune of $100 million. During the 2017 presidential inauguration, Adelson sat a few feet away from Donald Trump. Trump has appointed several supporters of Israeli settlements and right-wing government to his administration, including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman; and his special representative to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, Jason Greenblatt.This is tin-foil hat level conspiracy theory, that should be enough by itself to cause SFSU to consider whether they want to employ someone with so little regard for actual research.
The coverage, including that of the New York Times, the main U.S. paper of record, of the execution-style murder of three Arab Muslim youths — Deah Barakat, a Syrian, and two Palestinian women, Yusor Abu Salha and Razan Abu Salha — in Chapel Hill, N.C., in February 2015, presented the killer, Craig Stephen Hicks, as a forward-thinking man who supported abortion rights and as an advocate of gay and women’s liberation. The implicit subtext was that of a renaissance man who could not be perceived as a white supremacist killer. Combined with the news reporting that the killing was a result of a parking dispute, the media message directs readers toward empathy with Hicks and away from seeing him as an Islamophobic killer or from understanding Islamophobia as a structural societal context that allows such crimes to occur.The New York Times article did no such thing. It quoted his wife about his support for liberal causes, and it quoted Muslims about how he was a cold blooded bigot. It also quoted the police as saying that it appeared to be a parking dispute. Perhaps new facts were uncovered after that article, but at the time there was nothing wrong in its coverage - yet the Carter Center is happy publishing that the New York Times is Islamophobic, when not one NYT editor would ever consider publishing anything close to that.
Monday, July 16, 2018Elder of Ziyon
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