Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Josh Hammer: The Peace Process That Never Was
In a sane world, partisans of the Palestinian-Arab cause would celebrate the fact that last year, a pro-Israel U.S. president and right-wing Israeli prime minister both agreed to a framework that included the potential for an independent Palestinian state. They, of course, did not. Which brings us back to the present moment.Biden’s ‘Nine-Miles-Wide Plan’
There is a tremendous risk that the Biden-Harris administration is set to reverse the genuine progress of the Trump era, opting instead to raise failed pieties from the dead and reassert them anew. But there is no U.S. national security interest served by a return of pressure on Israel to concede “land for peace” in the absence of any Palestinian concessions. There is no American interest in subjecting Israel to public flogging and bribery, or dangling the sword of Damocles over Israeli military aid.
America’s interest, rather, is better fortified with a strong Israel, one that knows America has its back when it acts against common enemies in Bashar Assad’s Syria, Hezbollah-run Lebanon, within Gaza, or in Judea and Samaria. In a post-JCPOA world, an unapologetically strong Israel means a strong military counterweight to the threat posed by Iran, and a mighty bulwark against Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aspiration to neo-Ottoman hegemony. It means a greater chance of rapprochement between Israel and the Arab nations.
America has much to gain from an empowered Israel, which—paradoxical though it may seem—has quite obviously led to more peace, not less: more regional normalization agreements, better containment of Iran, more security for American interests, and more geopolitical stability. Only a stronger Israel can ever lead to a durable and lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace. As America’s regional interests are supported by Israel’s military, diplomatic, and economic strength, it follows that America’s regional interests are effectively coterminous with a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. The analysis really is that simple.
To the extent that the Biden-Harris administration might change its current course and consider genuine alternatives to the failed “inside-out,” “land for peace” consensus, it has options. One intriguing idea is what Bar Ilan University Professor Morechai Kedar calls the “emirates plan,” modeled after the eponymous Gulf state. Just as the UAE is a loose confederation of disparate Arab tribes, each overseeing its own tribal land, so too could the deeply fractious Palestinians of Judea and Samaria confederate into a series of noncontiguous, Palestinian “emirates” based around the relevant tribes’ home cities. That kind of plan is “based on the sociology of the Middle East, which has the tribe as the major cornerstone of society,” as Kedar has explained. In other words, a plan based on how the Middle East is, not how blinkered Western elites want to believe it could be.
Prevailing leftist orthodoxy holds that everything the dreaded Orange Man did was bad and must therefore be toppled. But the Trump administration, unlike so many of its predecessors, understood something about how the region works, decided to accept that reality, and worked with it. As a result, the region today is more stable, more secure, and more peaceful, and the United States’ own national interest is better served. Biden’s legacy will depend, in part, on his not mucking it up.
The central theme of Biden’s Israeli-Palestinian policy in the short term, according to the Amr memo, will be a series of rewards to be given to the Palestinian Authority, even though the P.A. has done absolutely nothing to merit any of them.Elliott Adrams: A New (or Old) Biden Policy on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?
Despite the P.A.’s financial support for terrorists, harboring of fugitive terrorists, constant anti-Jewish incitement and unrelenting anti-American propaganda, the Biden administration intends to “reset the U.S. relationship with the Palestinian people and leadership” by:
- Sending the P.A. at least $15 million monthly ($180 million annually) as “humanitarian assistance,” starting in “late March or early April.”
- Soon expanding that P.A. aid package to include “a full range of economic, security and humanitarian assistance,” including funds for the corrupt, pro-terrorist UNRWA agency. By “security” aid, Amr undoubtedly means the pro-terrorist, de facto army that the P.A. calls its “security services.”
- Resuming diplomatic contacts with P.A. officials by reopening the PLO embassy in Washington, D.C., and using the old (but still functioning) American consulate in Jerusalem as a de facto embassy to the Palestinians.
- Inviting the United Nations and the Quartet, both of which are militantly pro-Palestinian, to “engage” in the diplomatic process.
- Resuming “country of origin labeling,” which means declaring that goods made in much of Jerusalem, as well as Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights, will be forced to carry “Made in Palestine” labels since the Biden administration has decided that all those areas belong to the Palestinian Arabs.
In return, the Biden administration intends to make two laughably inadequate “demands” of the P.A. First, it will seek “to obtain a Palestinian commitment” to stop paying terrorists, which will probably be as genuine and durable as all the previous P.A. commitments to stop aiding terrorists.
Second, Biden will “emphasize to the P.A.” the need for “reductions of arrests of bloggers and dissidents.” What a joke! The P.A. won’t even be expected to stop arresting dissidents; it just has to arrest a few less.
What’s most important, however, is the end goal of the Biden plan. Amr’s draft says that all of the above steps are “a means to advance the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution … based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps.”
In plain English, that means a sovereign “State of Palestine” in all, or nearly all, of Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip (and part of Jerusalem). The “land swaps” phrase can be disregarded. It’s nonsense; obviously, if Israel and the P.A. ever wanted to “swap land”—which they don’t—they don’t need a plan by U.S. President Joe Biden to do it.
A “reset” of relations with the PA and PLO leadership, especially if Hamas wins a role in the legislature and is given control of some ministries, is going to be difficult and controversial. The memo says “The last Palestinian elections were held 15 years ago, and half of the young population has never had a chance to vote. But the implications of an election remain uncertain: the collapse of a power-sharing agreement after the prior elections led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza.” If I were on Secretary Blinken’s staff, I would kick this memo back downstairs to ask that it take account of all those coming problems, and how Congress will react to them.The Three-State Solution
The second issue is the memo’s assumption that U.S. policy should be built around the two-state solution, as if the Oslo Accords had been signed recently rather than a quarter-century ago. The memo says the Biden administration's goal should be “to advance freedom, security, and prosperity for both Israelis and Palestinians in the immediate term which is important in its own right, but also as means to advance the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution.” The memo is correct, in my view, to see how the Abraham Accords can be used: “In these new normalised relationships, we will look for opportunities to support Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and improve the quality of life for the Palestinian people.”
The memo argues for “rolling back certain steps by the prior administration that bring into question our commitment or pose real barriers to a two-state solution, such as country of origin labelling.” It is plain silly to think that such product labelling is actually a barrier to a two-state solution. What’s more striking is that on this subject there is no new thinking. There is simply a return to position papers from the Obama administration, and to the very old tradition of seeking smooth relations with the PA leadership no matter how bad their treatment of their own people.
But what if Hamas joins the PLO, which signed the Oslo Accords, after the Palestinian elections (likely after the scheduled PLO internal parliamentary elections, for the Palestine National Council, scheduled for August 31). In that case a terrorist group that is completely opposed to Oslo and to the two-state solution would be gaining influence and power in the PLO and the PA. Would it still be sensible to seek closer relations with the Palestinian leadership, and strengthen that “connective tissue?”
Perhaps there are other significant parts of the memo not described by The National, and in any event this is (to repeat) a memo to not from the secretary of state. Nevertheless, it is a rare early insight into administration policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From what it shows, the “new” or “reset” policy will not be very new at all: it will instead be a return to patterns of conduct that were tried and found wanting in the past.
In many ways, to avoid becoming another Gaza, a binational state in the West Bank would need its Jewish minority. The presence of a substantial minority group makes democracy and equal rights a moral imperative; fosters openness, liberalism, and diversity; and promotes cooperation and creativity. Indeed, throughout modern history the Jews have tended to be a “creative minority,” helping the process of liberalization and modernization, with their presence often inadvertently minimizing the possibility of a “tyranny of the majority” that threatens to become oppressive or murderous.
It is true that neither the Jews nor the Palestinians in the West Bank are ready to entertain the possibility of a binational Judea-Palestine at the moment, but there are perhaps certain preliminary steps that could be taken. Israel could, for example, unilaterally freeze settlement expansion, thus reassuring the Palestinians that their majority—which is growing thinner—is preserved. An initiative could then be undertaken to bring the Palestinian Authority and the settlers’ Yesha Council together to work on infrastructure and development, thus building trust and dialogue between the two sides. The Palestinians could stop policies that incentivize violence, such as payments to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists. And Israel could make it clear that it has no intention of annexing the West Bank itself.
This idea must seem, at the moment, to be vaguely akin to madness. But with Israel smoothly forging official ties with much of the Arab world, it is clear that, even against the most fervent convictions of experts and statesmen, the unthinkable can become inevitable very quickly. At the moment, moreover, both the Israeli and Palestinian Authority governments are mired in denial and self-deception. Contrary to what appears to be the vision of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his party, normalization with the rest of the Arab world will not make the Palestinian issue go away. The almost 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank will still be there—annexing them would still be political and national suicide, and a perpetual occupation remains immoral and unmanageable.
At the same time, however, the Palestinian dream of destroying Israel will remain impossible, the encouragement and lionization of Palestinian war crimes and terrorism will still be self-destructive and morally horrific, and the settler population will continue to grow. Both sides, in other words, must admit to reality and attempt to deal with it in a constructive way.
A three-state solution, with a binational state in the West Bank, would no doubt be difficult to establish; but it has the virtue of never having been tried before, and thus never having failed. This means, at the very least, the possibility exists that it might actually work. And for this reason alone, perhaps, it is worth trying.
Palestinians Funneled Hundreds of Millions to Terrorists, State Dept Report Reveals
The Biden administration privately confirmed to Congress last week that the Palestinian Authority has continued to use international aid money to reward terrorists but said the finding won't impact its plans to restart funding.
In a non-public State Department report obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, the administration said the Palestinians spent at least $151 million in 2019 on its "pay-to-slay" program, in which international aid dollars are spent to support imprisoned terrorists and their families. Financial statements further indicate that at least $191 million was spent on "deceased Palestinians referred to as ‘martyrs.’" Despite this practice, which violates U.S. law and prompted the Trump administration to freeze aid to the Palestinians, the "Biden-Harris Administration has made clear its intent to restart assistance to the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza," according to the report.
It remains unclear how the Biden administration will restart American aid without violating a 2018 bipartisan law known as the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits the U.S. government from resuming Palestinian aid until the payments to terrorists are stopped. The latest report on the matter is likely to rankle pro-Israel lawmakers in Congress who see the payments as a gift to the Palestinian government as it continues to sponsor terrorism and foment anti-Israel hatred.
A spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a primary backer of the Taylor Force Act and proponent of continuing the freeze of Palestinian aid, told the Free Beacon the Biden administration is currently planning to skirt American laws barring taxpayer dollars from reaching the Palestinian government.
"Congress correctly and overwhelmingly passed the Taylor Force Act to limit assistance to areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, because the Palestinian Authority just shifts fungible resources to pay terrorists," the spokesman said. "Sen. Cruz is concerned that in the rush to elevate the Palestinians and downgrade the U.S.-Israel relationship, the Biden administration is looking for ways to circumvent the restrictions on American taxpayer dollars going to those areas in ways that will benefit the Palestinian Authority."
Podcast of recent @MirYamInstitute debate “Democracies vs Terrorist Organizations. Who Wins?” with Prof Alan Dershowitz, Prof Michel Paradis, Eli Bar-On and me. @BenAnthony1948 https://t.co/TqT9retEiw
— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) March 23, 2021
Who Is Ahmad Alissa? 21-Year-Old Suspect in Boulder Shooting Is Stable After Sustaining Injury
Colorado authorities released the identity of the alleged Boulder supermarket shooter on Tuesday morning. Ahmad Alissa, 21, is accused of opening fire and killing 10 people during the Monday massacre.Q&A: Ben Cohen asks about the UN's anti-Israel infrastructure
Boulder Police named the Arvada, Colorado, resident as the injured suspect seen in video following the deadly mass shooting Monday at a King Soopers supermarket. The man allegedly opened fire on customers and killed a Boulder police officer, 51-year-old Eric Talley, during the shooting. The deceased victims range in age from 20 years old to 65 years old. A law enforcement press release identified his full name as Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa. A Facebook page appearing to be that of the suspect features posts with quotes from the Islamic Prophet Muhammad.
Alissa was shot during an exchange of gunfire with responding officers and was transported to a local hospital where he was put in stable condition. "The man who gunned them down will be held fully responsible," said Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty during a Tuesday press conference update on the shooting. When asked if the shooter had expressed a motive to police, he replied, "We don't have the answer for that yet."
He will soon be transported to Boulder County jail to await court proceedings. Alissa stands charged with 10 counts of murder in the first degree. Boulder's assault weapons ban, which was implemented in order to curb mass shootings, had been blocked just 10 days before the attack at the King Soopers grocery store. The attack lasted around 20 minutes Monday around 3 p.m. local time. Video and photographs from the scene showed several bodies laying across the grocery store floor.
Court documents obtained by NBC News show the suspect was born in April 1999 [Syria].
UNHRC just adopted resolution on “Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.“
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) March 23, 2021
•19 pars criticize Israel
•1 criticizes rockets on Israel, but doesn't name Hamas
•No mention of Hamas & PA oppression
Shame on France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands for joining the jackals. pic.twitter.com/E5Pr0J5Wla
Also particularly interesting that #Bahrain did not vote at all! Perhaps another of the benefits of the #AbrahamAccords! https://t.co/LlO0WIaKhk
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) March 23, 2021
.@drtlaleng @UN_HRC Why did you participate in this propaganda event? Israel doesn't deny access to healthcare "based on ethnicity, or race," but treats its citizens equally, while Palestinians have their own healthcare system.https://t.co/67fzP7o9ik https://t.co/d3fdWd10nm
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) March 23, 2021
Cyprus to allow Israelis in starting April 1; Greece lifts cap on visitors
Two Mediterranean nations are opening up to Israelis, with Greece removing its tourist cap and Cyprus announcing it will begin welcoming Israeli travelers without quarantine starting April 1.President Reuven Rivlin: Rivlin to 'Post': Israel has never been in a political crisis like now
Cyprus declared in a press release Tuesday that fully inoculated tourists or those with negative coronavirus tests will be able to freely enter the country no need to quarantine.
“Prepare the beaches, hotels and restaurants for Israelis waiting to return and visit Cyprus,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi told Cypriot counterpart Nikos Christodoulides, in reaction to the agreement. “Your recognition of the ‘Green Pass’ will open the skies and restore widespread tourism soon.”
The deal with Cyprus was made a month ago, when its President Nicos Anastasiades visited Israel. The travel agreement was intended as a step toward restoring tourism in both countries — sectors that have been hit hard by the year-long pandemic.
Also Tuesday, Greece lifted its cap on the number of Israeli tourists permitted to enter the country, formerly set at 10,000 travelers a week. All tourists — even those who are fully vaccinated — will be required to present a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of their flight, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said.
Unvaccinated Israelis with negative COVID-19 tests will be allowed to enter but will need to quarantine for seven days upon arrival.
In light of the news, Israeli airlines and tourism companies have been quick to set up daily flights to a number of Greek destinations.
Today, the Israeli people are going to the ballot box for the fifth time since I was sworn in as president, and after the vote I will be required for the sixth, or possibly the seventh, time to decide who to entrust with forming a government.Israel Elections: Voter turnout lowest since 2009, 42.3% as of 4 p.m.
In its 73 years of independence, the State of Israeli has not experienced a political crisis like the one we are currently in. I have not yet completed my seven years as President of the State of Israel, and I am already level with President Chaim Herzog who served for over ten years. During those years, the State of Israel went to elections three times, and President Herzog was called upon five times to decide who should form the government.
In the days after the elections, I will meet the people’s representatives in the Knesset that you are voting for today, and I will ask them which candidate they recommend should be entrusted with forming a government. These people are your representatives. They speak on behalf of you. They are the voice of the public, the voice of the Israeli people. Only you, citizens of the State of Israel, determine the allocation of seats, according to which I can decide.
There were times when the candidate who led the largest party in the elections to the Knesset was the one with the best chance of forming a stable government in Israel, and so they were the ones to get the mandate from the President of Israel. Yet the bitter experience of the last elections has shown us that this is not necessarily the situation. The person entrusted with forming a government will have to form sensible and responsible connections that will save us from this political roundabout and lead us to political stability so that we can get back to restarting processes in this country that is so dear to us all.
A total of 2,782,010 Israeli voters, comprising 42.3% of those eligible, have voted as of 4 p.m., Central Elections Committee Chair Orly Adas announced Tuesday afternoon.
This is an approximately 4.7% decrease in relation to the same time during Israel's last elections.
This is the lowest voter turnout for the same timeframe since 2009, when turnout by 2 p.m. was 34% and total turnout was 65.2%.
Some 200 votes have been counted so far in Ben-Gurion Airport.
Voter turnout could have a big influence on which parties cross the electoral threshold and enter the Knesset. Blue and White, Meretz and the Religious Zionist Party have all been teetering on the brink of the threshold in polls taken last week.
Some expressed concern that because Israelis are heading to polls for the fourth time in less than two years, many eligible voters may not bother going to polling stations due to widespread apathy.
What used to be the major axis of choice in Israeli politics - territorial concessions to the Palestinians - has disappeared. Almost every party, and all with prime ministerial aspirations, reject the "two-state solution" in practice (Lapid) or in principle (everyone else) (2/2)
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) March 23, 2021
Things has changed since #Netanyahu moved his voters with Anti-Arab propaganda.
— Ariel Kahana אריאל כהנא (@arik3000) March 23, 2021
These elections he is tweeting in Arabic a promise for direct flights from TLV to Mecca https://t.co/NLOqqfx0PN
IDF accidentally reveals location of secret bases online
In an apparent blunder of operational security, the IDF Home Front Command published the location of secret IDF bases, Haaretz revealed Tuesday.MEMRI: Article In Qatari Daily Praises Palestinian Terrorist Dalal Al-Mughrabi: She Was 'The Bravest And Noblest Of Women' And A Paragon Of Feminism
According to Haaretz, IDF's Home Front Command uploaded a map of coronavirus testing facilities across the country, which included sites on Israel Defense Forces bases. This not only provided the locations of IDF bases, but revealed previously secret military intelligence and air force bases. The map was created in cooperation with the Health Ministry and made available to Israeli citizens, until it was removed after the newspaper alerted the army to the error.
The map was detailed enough to include boundaries and names of the bases.
When Haaretz reached out to the IDF Spokesperson's Unit for comment, the IDF admitted to the mistake, and said that it was removed from the site and replaced with a version without the sensitive information. Apparently, the locations of the coronavirus testing sites at the secret bases were not placed on the map by military officials.
The IDF usually does not publish the locations or boundaries of its bases out of caution that they may be targeted by rocket fire, Haaretz noted. Further, providing details of secret bases can create operational security concerns for the soldiers on base, as the additional information can be used by foreign intelligence services to target them.
In a March 12, 2021 article in the Qatari daily Al-Arabi Al-Jadid, journalist Nawaf Al-Tamimi, a faculty member at the Doha Institute For Graduate Studies, glorifies Dalal Al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist. Al-Mughrabi was the deputy commander of the March 1978 Coastal Road massacre, in which 35 Israeli civilians were killed, many of them children, and 71 were wounded. Published several days after International Women's Day, Al-Tamimi's article criticizes Google for failing include Al-Mughrabi its Google Doodle video for March 8, 2021, which paid homage to trailblazing women around the globe, and extols her as a pioneering heroine who was a feminist without knowing it. It should be noted that Al-Tamimi repeats a false account of the Coastal Road massacre, widely circulated in Palestinian and other media, which describes it as an attack on soldiers rather than civilians.[1]Abbas Advisers Want State with ‘Soft Sovereignty’
The following are translated excerpts from his article: [2]
"May 8, 1978 was not like any other International Women's Day, at least for one particular woman who was training at one of the bases of the Palestinian revolution in preparation for the day that Palestinian children will be reading about [even] 1,000 years from now. Born in the Shatila refugee camp [in Lebanon] in 1959, this young Palestinian woman, Dalal Al-Mughrabi, did not know much about the feminist movements around the world. Dalal was not a feminist, she was a fida'i who chose to mark International Women's Day by practicing the assembly and disassembly of an AK-47, not by endlessly debating the theories of French philosopher Charles Fourier, who coined the term 'feminism.' Decades before Google and its owners were born, Dalal chose to challenge and rebel against the stereotypical perception of women. This was years before the organizers of International Women's Day would select the theme for 2021 – 'Let's all choose to challenge' – in order to encourage the breaking of gender stereotypes. Even so, Google did not include Dalal Al-Mughrabi among the women presented in the short clip it produced, celebrating the achievements of pioneering women from different cultures and races in various fields.
"Google did not remember the heroine Dalal Al-Mughrabi, even though she was a fighter who was martyred in defense of the most sacred of human rights: the right to live in freedom and dignity on one's soil and in one's homeland. [So] it can't hurt to remind the young people – especially young boys preoccupied with their manliness or young girls mesmerized by the trend of feminism rather than by its essence – that Dalal Al-Mughrabi was born to a family from Jaffa who fled to Lebanon following the Nakba of 1948, and joined the Palestinian fida'i movement while she was still in high school. She joined the Palestinian national liberation movement Fatah, and in 1973 she took part in the defense of the Palestinian revolution in Lebanon. When she was 20, a man named Khalil Al-Wazir, [aka] Abu Jihad [then head of Fatah's military wing and Yasser Arafat's deputy], chose her to be the commander of the Deir Yassin unit, comprising 12 fida'is, who would carry out an operation in the depth of Palestine. [They were to] capture an Israeli military bus and drive it to Tel Aviv in order to attack the Knesset [sic] and pressure the occupation to release Palestinian prisoners… Dalal indeed headed the unit that penetrated [Israel] from Lebanon, by sea, on March 11, 1978, landed on the Palestinian coast, reached the main road [the Coastal Road] to Tel Aviv, captured a bus full of soldiers [sic] and took them hostage… Dalal was martyred along with the 11 fida'is after causing the occupation army heavy casualties…
Two of the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s closest advisers, London-based Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi, are calling on him to adopt a new goal: instead of a full-fledged Palestinian state, he should be striving for “soft sovereignty” with Jordanian and Egyptian involvement in arrangements regarding the future of Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip.Israeli Authorities Seize Gold Bars Smuggled in Tomatoes from Gaza
The two advisers, who have represented Abbas in past secret negotiations with Israel, as they had done Yasser Arafat, admit in a Foreign Affairs essay (A Palestinian Reckoning – Time for a New Beginning) that “the official Arab-Israeli conflict has ended.”
“Rather than insisting on ‘land for peace’ and offering normalized ties only in return for a full Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines, Arab governments have given precedence to self-interest: for Morocco, US recognition of its control over Western Sahara; for Sudan, the removal of US sanctions; for the UAE, access to advanced US arms.”
However, the two authors point out, “redefining ‘peace’ to conform to the needs of Arab governments does not do away with the Palestinians or resolve Israel’s Palestinian problem.” At this point, they cite somewhat inflated figures as to how many “Palestinians” there are in the world (13 million, 7 million of whom reside in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza). And they state bravely: “Dire as Palestinian circumstances may be now, there are no signs of surrender.”
Israeli authorities were successful in thwarting a creative attempt to smuggle gold bars out of the Gaza Strip, possibly meant for terror elements in Judea and Samaria.
Security inspectors at the Kerem-Shalom Crossing thwarted on Monday an unusual smuggling attempt of 13 gold bars, hidden inside boxes of tomatoes, from Gaza into the Palestinian Authority’s territory.
The crates were part of a shipment of 20 tons of tomatoes, destined for export from the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority, and they underwent a routine security check.
During the inspection, the inspectors uncovered 13 gold ingots weighing about 7 kg, which were removed from the bottom of the tomato crates.
The crates of vegetables had a double cardboard bottom, and there the gold bars were hidden, painted black to disguise them, and the edges were hidden in large tomatoes.
The gold was confiscated, and the investigation was handed over to the police and the Shin Bet security agency to try and locate the destined recipient of the gold, with one of the options being gold intended to fund Hamas activities or another terrorist organization in Judea and Samaria.
Masked gunmen in Qalqilya accidentally shoot a bystander as they discharge their weapons in celebration of a recently liberated Palestinian prisoner. pic.twitter.com/R3ga739RWl
— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) March 23, 2021
Jordan Reveals New Defense Pact With US, Allowing More Open Military Access
Jordan released a new defense agreement on Sunday with the United States that allows free entry for US forces, aircraft and vehicles.Turkish Nazi sympathizer has park in Istanbul named after him
Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi told parliament that the pact was “the fruit of long negotiations,” according to an AFP report. “The agreement does not authorize American forces to carry out combat actions within the kingdom,” he told lawmakers, adding that the United States grants Jordan $425 million per year in military aid.
Signed in January, the deal was approved by the Jordanian government last month after skipping parliament.
The report quoted local media website Ammon that said the deal will allow US forces to carry and transport weapons in Jordan.
Islamist lawmaker Saleh al-Armuti criticized the process, according to the report, in that it bypassed parliament and called on the government to cancel the agreement, saying it “violates the constitution and affects Jordan’s sovereignty.”
The Istanbul metropolitan municipality's naming of a park after a writer who showed great sympathy for the Nazi movement's lethal antisemitism, has largely been ignored in the media outside of the Republic of Turkey.
In November, the Istanbul city government named a park after Hüseyin Nihal Atsız (1905–1975) who is considered by experts of Turkey to be a raging racist and antisemite.
“It’s not shocking for those who know Turkey well that Ekrem Imamoglu, the supposedly ‘social democrat’ mayor of Istanbul, supported and approved a bill to name a park in the city after a prominent ultra-nationalist writer and Nazi sympathizer. Turkish ultra-nationalist and supremacist ideology is not a marginal phenomenon, but rather the mainstream,” Dr. Nikos Michailidis Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Mediterranean Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and an expert on Turkey, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
Uzay Bulut, a Turkish journalist and distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, documented a number of Atsiz’s tirades against Jews. Atsiz wrote that "The Jew here is like the Jew we see everywhere. Insidious, insolent, malevolent, cowardly, but opportunistic Jew; the Jewish neighborhood is the center of clamor, noise and filth here as [the Jewish neighborhoods] everywhere else... We do not want to see this treacherous and bastard nation of history as citizens among us anymore."
Atsiz wrote that "The creature called the Jew in the world is not loved by anyone but the Jew and the ignoble ones... Phrases in our language such as 'like a Jew', 'do not act like a Jew', 'Jewish bazaar', 'to look like a synagogue'... shows the value given by our race to this vile nation.”
Saudi Businessman Prince Abdul Rahman bin Musai’d Al Saud: The U.S. Is in No Position to Lecture Saudi Arabia about Human Rights; “You Need Us More Than We Need You” #KSA #Biden #US_Saudi_relations pic.twitter.com/sZdwA7GQar
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) March 23, 2021
