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Thursday, May 13, 2021

05/13 Links Pt1: Phillips: Hamas commits war crimes. Israel is blamed. Of course; Glick: What Stands Behind the New Palestinian War Against Israel?; Biden Has Emboldened Israel’s Enemies

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Hamas commits war crimes. Israel is blamed. Of course.
Over the past few hours, fresh barrages of Hamas rockets from Gaza have been raining down over Israel. Most have been intercepted by the country’s Iron Dome defence system. But at least 20 Israelis have been wounded in Ashkelon, and a five-year-old boy was killed by a direct rocket hit on a house in Sderot. The boy’s mother was seriously wounded, a five-year-old is moderately wounded and four others are lightly hurt. Rockets have also been fired at the town of Dimona, site of Israel’s nuclear reactor.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have fired more than 1200 rockets at Israel since Monday evening. Dozens of Israelis have been injured. A five year-old girl was critically injured when a rocket fell next to a bus in the Tel Aviv suburb of Holon.

At present, there are seven Israeli dead from the rocket attacks, including an Israeli Arab man and his 16 year-old daughter in a house near Lod.

There have been Arab riots and countless attacks on Jews in numerous cities. Israeli women out for a jog have been attacked, Israeli cars have been stoned and there have been attempts to lynch some of the drivers.

As the Times of Israel has reported, in the town of Lod on Tuesday night three synagogues and many cars were firebombed and shop windows smashed by Arab mobs. One Israeli was seriously injured when a slab was thrown at his car. People were too frightened to go to the bomb shelters for fear of being set upon. The violence was described by the town’s mayor as “civil war,” and he compared it to the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom in Nazi Germany.

A Jewish man in his 30s was in critical condition yesterday evening after he was attacked by a mob of Arab demonstrators in the city of Acre. Police said he was attacked in his car by Arab Israeli protesters armed with sticks and stones.

Now some Jewish extremists have reacted by attacking Arabs in Bat Yam and Tiberias. In Bat Yam, a Jewish mob pulled an Arab driver out of his car and beat him up. Police have been making arrests, but clearly this is a further appalling and potentially devastating development. The Sephardi Chief Rabbi, Yitzhak Yosef, has put out out a statement imploring Jews not to turn violent against Arab citizens, and the ultra-nationalist member of Knesset Bezalel Smotrich has also emotionally urged Jews never to commit such acts.

This Jewish violence is shocking, tragic and indefensible. But compare these urgent Jewish appeals for it to stop with statements by Fatah, the party headed by Mahmoud Abbas and which runs the Palestinian Authority. Like Hamas in Gaza, Fatah has been inciting violence against Jews non-stop for weeks, calling for holy war and inflaming murderous hysteria with utterly false claims that Israel intends to invade the al Aqsa mosque.
Bari Weiss: The Bad Optics of Fighting for Your Life
For the past few years, leaders within the American Jewish community have been deeply worried about whether the Democratic Party, with the wind now in the sails of the Squad, would go the way of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. That question now seems tragically parochial.

The world has gone Corbyn. Look online. When Andrew Yang, the frontrunner in the New York mayoral race, tweeted on Monday “I’m standing with the people of Israel,” AOC rallied the online hordes. The anodyne statement was, she said, “utterly shameful,” and the pile-on ensued. By Wednesday, Yang had all but apologized. The ratio is the new veto. How pathetic.

It turns out America didn’t need a Corbyn. We just needed a Twitter and a few reckless demagogues in Congress. And now supporters of Israel, including many Jews, are so scared of getting bullied online that they’ve just decided to sit in silence, hoping the lies will dissipate on their own.

They won’t.

The truth needs people who are willing to stand up for it. It needs people willing to publicly resist moral perversion and nihilism. People willing to fight for a sane future.

That’s why I’m writing this. And it’s why we’re trying to start a family.
Caroline Glick: What Stands Behind the New Palestinian War Against Israel?
Since its first days in office, the Biden administration has taken actions and issued statements to signal that it is replacing Trump's support for Israel with support for the Palestinians. President Joe Biden restored U.S. funding to the PA despite its unceasing support for, and funding of, terrorism. Biden also reinstated U.S. funding of United Nations agencies, such as UNRWA, that work with Hamas and disseminate Nazi-like anti-Semitism. Biden announced the U.S. intends to rejoin the UN Human Rights Council, an organization whose primary function is to demonize and condemn Israel.

During the weeks leading up to the outbreak of Arab violence against Jews in Jerusalem, the Biden administration said nothing about the Palestinian incitement. On the contrary, in a series of statements by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and State Department spokesmen, the administration adopted the anti-Semitic Palestinian narrative that the Jewish property owners in Sheikh Jarrah should be denied possession of their properties simply because they are Jews.

In a stunning statement Tuesday, as Hamas rained down rockets on Israeli civilian targets and the Israeli military responded with surgical air strikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza, State Department Spokesman Ned Price drew a moral equivalence between Israel and the Palestinians. Price said: "Israel has the right to defend itself and respond to rocket attacks. The Palestinian people also have the right to safety and security, just as Israelis do."

The message Price sent to Hamas, Fatah and the Israeli Arabs assaulting Israeli Jews is that the U.S. is on their side. They can attack Jews and blame Israel and the Jews for their aggression, and the Biden administration will fund them, defend them and even adopt their anti-Semitic narratives. Palestinians are now certain they will be rewarded, not punished, for their aggression.

So long as this remains the Biden administration's position, we can expect the latest Palestinian war against Israel to continue. Indeed, so long as this remains the administration's policy, the danger that the Palestinian war will escalate into a regional onslaught against Israel by Iran's proxies across Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen will only increase.


The Caroline Glick Show: Episode 5 - The New Palestinian Terror War on Israel has Begun
Monday night, the Palestinian and Israeli Arab attacks against Israel Jews that had been escalating in recent days reached the level of all-out war. Arab Israeli attacked Israeli Jews throughout the country. Hamas shot 200 rockets and missiles at southern Israel in 12 hours and then another 137 rockets in a five minute period on Tuesday. Caroline and her co-host discussed the causes of the rising violence and identified two - incitement by Fatah and Hamas and the Biden administration's embrace of the Palestinians' anti-Semitic narrative that blames the Jews for the violence that is perpetrated against them. They discuss the historic and regional contexts of the events now unfolding and what needs to happen for peace to be restored. Caroline even quoted from her book The Israeli Solution. Tune in, subscribe to our channel and share our broadcast with your friends to help us get out the truth that the media is distoring.




NR Editors: Biden Has Emboldened Israel’s Enemies
For four years, Israel had a reliable ally in the White House. Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, made it clear that the U.S. supported Israel’s right to self-defense, and cut aid to the Palestinians that has been traditionally used to incite terrorism. He also recognized that Iran was a significant threat, and ratcheted up sanctions as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign. While Democrats howled that these actions would set the region in flames, it actually led to historic peace deals between Israel and Arab states.

Biden has sent the actual opposite signals. He restored the incitement money to the Palestinians to signal closer ties and at the same time has shown a desperation to return to the disastrous Iran deal. His administration has signaled a willingness to even lift sanctions aimed at its sponsorship of terrorism.

Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that Palestinians have felt emboldened to step up attacks against Israel, and that Iran has been so ready to call on its proxies to carry out these attacks. During the Obama administration, the race to sign on to a nuclear deal meant that the U.S. ignored Iran’s malign influence on the rest of the region, and the terrorist regime has every reason to believe that the same would be the case with Biden.

For days, as violence escalated, Biden hid behind lazy both-sides language in statements conveyed through his press team before finally acknowledging in person on Wednesday afternoon, in response to a reporter’s question, that “Israel has a right to defend itself when you have thousands of rockets flying into your territory.” This was a welcome development, but if Biden seeks to change the dynamic in the Middle East, he needs to more emphatically convey to Iran and its terrorist proxies that they will get nowhere through targeting innocent civilians.
Biden’s Middle East Failure
These events make clear that Tehran feels no pressure to demonstrate goodwill to the Biden administration, preferring confrontation and violence. It cannot be a coincidence that these events are unfolding in the midst of the administration’s campaign to reenter the nuclear deal.

No matter how many times the pattern repeats itself, JCPOA supporters refuse to learn that Iran repays engagement with contempt, not good behavior, and that the Iranians know a dupe when they see one. Looking at you, Rob Malley.

Elsewhere in the region, the Hamas terrorist organization is demonstrating the same astute appreciation for weakness. A month after Team Biden announced its intention to restore U.S. aid programs to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and resume funding for UNRWA, Hamas rockets are raining down on Israel. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is glorifying the behavior and encouraging the attacks.

The Biden administration pledged to revive aid to the Palestinians—and to jump back into the nuclear deal—to advance peace.

In both cases, the administration has been repaid with violence and humiliation.
Biden’s Handlers Get the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict They Wanted
On his new Save America website, former President Trump stated the obvious that the elites wish us to overlook: “When I was in office we were known as the Peace Presidency, because Israel’s adversaries knew that the United States stood strongly with Israel and there would be swift retribution if Israel was attacked. Under Biden, the world is getting more violent and more unstable because Biden’s weakness and lack of support for Israel is leading to new attacks on our allies.”

Weakness and lack of support for Israel, and open support for the Palestinian jihad. The Washington Free Beacon reported last March that “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.”

And it didn’t. Biden’s handlers gave $235 million to the Palestinians in April. So now you can see your taxpayer dollars at work, funding the bloody Palestinian jihad against Israel, thanks to Biden’s handlers. Meanwhile, in an example of a frequent leftist tactic, the complete inversion of reality, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Ramallah) tweeted: “American taxpayer money is being used to commit human rights violations. Congress must condition the aid we send to Israel, and end it altogether if those conditions are not followed. Statements aren’t working @SecBlinken. Enough is enough.” American taxpayer money is indeed being used to commit human rights violations, but not in the way Tlaib has in mind.

The kind of people that Tlaib and her colleagues in the American left are fronting for are epitomized by Hamas Political Bureau Member and former Minister of the Interior Fathi Hammad. According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Hammad said on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV Friday: “People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives. With your hand, cut their artery from here. A knife costs five shekels. Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads]. It costs just five shekels. With those five shekels, you will humiliate the Jewish state.”
Ben Shapiro: Why Rockets Are Raining Down On Innocent Israelis

Israel Advocacy Movement: What's really happening in Gaza

Starts 37:00

The Joshua and Caleb Network: On the Heels of a Terrorist (the story behind the Tapuach Junction attack)
A lot is going on in Israel. A brutal terrorist attack that happened last week was one of the first sparks of violence that ultimately resulted in hundreds of rockets landing in Israel. On today’s show, we take you behind the scenes of this terrorist attack.

A Palestinian pulls up to a bus stop and opens fire. Three people were shot, one died a few days later, and the other two are still recovering from their wounds. The terrorist fled in his car and eluded security forces for several days. The story behind this attack, where the murderer lives, and what his motives were, just might shock you.

In today’s show, we take you to the scene of the terrorist attack. Then we follow the escape route to the town where the terrorist ditched his car. Then we talk to Marc Provisor, security expert, and a neighbor to the terrorist. Afterwards, we visit the newly founded settlement of Evyatar, meet with Nati Rom, and see first hand how the Jewish people respond to terrorism.


Biden Breaks Silence as Hamas Terror Missiles Blast Israel
The latest spate of violence comes against the backdrop of the Biden administration's efforts to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. The sides are inching closer to a deal that could provide the region's top terrorism funder with billions of dollars. While proponents of the new deal claim this money will not be spent on terrorism, Iran's actions over the past several years show otherwise. Much of that money granted under the original accord was spent arming Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), among others.

Just days before the violence broke out, a PIJ official disclosed that his organization is primarily funded and armed by Iran.

"The mujahideen [terrorists] in Gaza and in Lebanon use Iranian weapons to strike the Zionists. We buy our weapons with Iranian money. An important part of our activity is under the supervision of Iranian experts," PIJ leader Ramez Al-Halabi was quoted as saying on May 7 during an interview on Iraqi TV.

Victoria Coates, a former senior official on the Trump administration's White House National Security Council, told the Free Beacon that Biden's rush to restart Palestinian aid and march back into the nuclear deal is empowering Israel's enemies

"In just 100 days, the Biden administration has empowered Tehran and by extension emboldened their proxy Hamas while putting Israel back in a position of moral equivalence with the Palestinian Authority—and this is the predictable, if lamentable, result."

Coates said the former administration's unambiguous support for Israel "sent a crystal-clear message to the region of where we stood," a message that Iran and its regional terror groups understood.
Cruz calls Israeli-Palestinian clash a 'direct result' of Biden's ambiguous stance
Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican, said Wednesday that President Biden bears responsibility for the eruption of hostilities in the Middle East, blaming the Democrat’s “ambiguous” stance on Israel for emboldening Hamas.

Mr. Cruz credited former President Trump’s staunch support for Israel for creating “a flowering of peace in the Middle East,” including the historic 2020 Abraham Accords, blaming the turnaround on Mr. Biden for undermining Israel with moves such as seeking to reenter the Iran nuclear deal.

“The conflict we are seeing is the direct result of the tragic mistakes of the Biden foreign policy,” Mr. Cruz said. “And when you are ambiguous, when you are agonizing, when you undermine our support for Israel, what happens is it encourages the terrorists who attack and launch the kind of missile and rocket attacks we’re seeing right now.”

Israel launched airstrikes Monday against Hamas targets in Gaza after militants fired rockets at Jerusalem, escalating tensions that began weeks ago with Palestinian clashes with Israeli security forces over control of holy sites in East Jerusalem.

“It is exceptionally dangerous, and unfortunately I fear there is a good chance it will get worse, because Biden is not going to change and is going to continue for four years to systematically undermine Israel,” Mr. Cruz said.
Joel Pollak: Biden Sends Anti-Israel Official, Hady Amr, to Israel to Encourage 'De-escalation'
As Breitbart News reported earlier this year, Amr has accused Israel (falsely) of “ethnic cleansing,” and appeared in the past to justify Palestinian violence against Israelis.

Moreover, as Daniel Greenfield of Front Page Magazine has noted, “one of Amr’s constant policy concerns in recent years was urging the United States to give Hamas a seat at the table in negotiations between Israel and Palestine.”

Hamas is the Palestinian terrorist organization that rules Gaza, and which has launched over 1,000 rockets against Israeli civilians this week.

Biden has urged both sides to “de-escalate,” rather than standing firmly on Israel’s side against Palestinian terrorism.

Several Biden administration officials have anti-Israel records. The president has not yet appointed a U.S. ambassador to Israel; former President Donald Trump had appointed and confirmed an ambassador by March of his first year in office.
Delay in Passing Hamas Sanctions Bill Is ‘Inexcusable,’ Says Rep
The House's delay in passing a bill to increase sanctions on Hamas is "inexcusable" after the terrorist group's attacks on Israel this week, Rep. Brian Mast (R., Fla.) said Tuesday.

Mast urged Congress to reconsider an act he cosponsored that aims to kneecap Hamas's financial backers. The legislation, called the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act, tasks the U.S. government with identifying and financially isolating any individual or company bankrolling Hamas. Mast's bill, an earlier version of which passed the House unanimously in 2019 but died in the Senate, would require the support of both Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Gregory Meeks (D., N.Y.).

"Over the past few decades, Hamas, [the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine], and their affiliates have murdered hundreds of Israelis and dozens of Americans," Mast said. "These terrorist groups are motivated by hatred of Jews and western liberal values. … We should allow no delay in getting this bill to the Senate and onto the President so that he can apply the necessary pressure to stop these groups from terrorizing the Region."

Mast's request that Congress reconsider the bill comes as violence against Israel reaches its highest point since 2014. On Monday and Tuesday, Hamas, which is backed by Iran, fired more than 1,000 rockets at Israel, largely at civilian targets. Although the Israeli missile defense system has intercepted the majority of the terrorist rockets, the attacks have killed at least 5 and injured more than 200 within Israel.

Republicans blasted the Biden administration for its slow response to condemning the attacks, which included the first violent action on Jerusalem in more than six years. Some Democrats condemned Israel's actions as an "assault" on Palestinians, with Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) accusing the country of "ethnic cleansing."
Biden Pressed to Cancel Iran Talks as Tehran-Backed Terrorists Attack Israel
The Biden administration is facing new pressure from Congress to immediately end its negotiations with Iran in the wake of continued missile attacks on Israel by Tehran-armed-and-funded terrorist groups.

More than 40 Republican senators led by Marco Rubio (Fla.) petitioned the White House late Wednesday to "immediately end negotiations with Iran, and make clear that sanctions relief will not be provided," according to a copy of that letter exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. "The United States must not do anything to enrich Israel's enemies, such as by offering sanctions relief to a regime that seeks to destroy Israel," they write.

The 44 senators—including foreign policy leaders like Jim Inhofe (Okla.), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Bill Hagerty (Tenn.), Ted Cruz (Texas), and John Cornyn (Texas)—say the Biden administration should abandon its diplomacy with Iran to send a message that terrorism will not be tolerated by America. The letter sends a clear message that the majority of Republicans serving in the Senate see the Biden administration's diplomacy with Iran as a danger to U.S. national security, as well as the alliance with Israel.

Israel has been hit with more than 1,000 missiles during the past two days, all of them fired by the Iranian-backed terror groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Leaders of both groups recently bragged that Iran is funding and arming them with weapons significantly more sophisticated than the crude rockets typically shot at Israel. Since the violence erupted earlier this week, both terror groups successfully launched missiles into major Israeli cities, putting millions of civilians at risk. At least six Israelis have been killed so far and more than 200 wounded.


Erdogan: International community must teach Israel a ‘strong lesson’
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tells Russian President Vladimir Putin that the international community should teach Israel a lesson about its conduct toward the Palestinians.

That’s according to the Turkish Presidential Communications Directorate, which says the two leaders talked by phone Wednesday about the escalating confrontation sparked by tension over Jerusalem.

The statement says Erdogan stressed the need for “the international community to give Israel a strong and deterrent lesson” and pressed for the United Nations Security Council to rapidly intervene with “determined and clear messages” to Israel. The statement says Erdogan suggested to Putin that an international protection force to shield the Palestinians should be considered.


Soros-funded Climate Change Activist Group 'Sunrise Movement' Backs Palestinians Against Israel
The left-wing climate change activist group known as the Sunrise Movement tweeted its support for the Palestinians against Israel on Tuesday, as hundreds of rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists rained down on Israel’s major cities.

The well-funded group, backed in part by left-wing billionaire George Soros, said nothing about Palestinian terror attacks on Israeli civilians, mob violence against Jews in Israel, or environmental damage caused by fires set by Palestinian incendiary balloons.

Instead, the Sunrise Movement tweeted a thread declaring its “solidarity with Palestinians,” adding: “Climate justice cannot exist without collective liberation, and collective liberation is only reached when people are freed from colonial and imperial violence worldwide.”







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