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Friday, August 13, 2021

08/13 Links Pt1: France to boycott UN anti-racism conference, citing previous antisemitism; New report digs into Hezbollah's vast 'land of tunnels'

From Ian:

Bernard Henri Levy: Why Durban IV must be boycotted - opinion
Something shameful is in the works.

It’s the UN General Assembly’s plan to mark the 20th anniversary of the Durban Conference, on September 22.

What was the Durban Conference?

On paper, it was the name of a UNESCO conference held in the eponymous city in South Africa, at which the world was supposed to recommit to the fight against “racism, xenophobia and intolerance.”

But in reality, it was the occasion of an inexcusable three-faceted failure.

First, as soon as the Palestinian question took center stage (which was very early on), the stigmatization of Israel became the leitmotif of the proceedings.

Yasser Arafat denounced “apartheid.”

Fidel Castro feigned alarm at a “genocide.”

The sinister 1974 resolution equating Zionism with “racism” was resurrected, despite having been repealed in 1991.

The struggle against “occupation” was turned into the mother of all present and future political battles.

And some of the six thousand NGO representatives invited to the event slid easily from rabid anti-Zionism to good old-fashioned antisemitism. Jewish delegates were insulted.

People wearing yarmulkes were threatened, harried by cries that they “didn’t belong to the human race.”

Stands sprang up selling The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in various languages.

Demonstrations led by groups of radical Islamists, with whom antiglobalists militants did not seem to mind mingling, marched to shouts of “One Jew, One Bullet” behind placards proclaiming that Hitler should have “finished the job.”

It was Act I of neo-antisemitism. Never had we witnessed its full expression on such a scale and with such dark force.
France to boycott UN anti-racism conference, citing previous antisemitism
French President Emmanuel Macron will boycott a United Nations conference on the fight against racism next month over concerns about “antisemitic statements” at previous editions, the presidency said on Friday.

The follow-up meeting of the Durban Conference, named after the South African city where the first edition was held in 2001, is scheduled to bring together world leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September.

But the format has been controversial since its inception, with critics, led by Israel, charging that the first edition in Durban was tarnished by virulent and undisguised antisemitism.

Several countries, including France, also boycotted follow-up meetings in 2009 and 2011.

The United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, Israel and numerous other European countries have already announced they are boycotting this year’s meeting.

The French presidency said in a statement that Macron “has decided that France will not take part in the follow-up conference due to take place this year as he is concerned by antisemitic statements made within the Durban Conference.”


David Singer: Hussein and Abdullah's difference of opinion
It is rare for CNN host Fareed Zakaria to issue an apology – but he did so after interviewing Jordan’s King Abdullah II last week.

Zakaria had wrongly attributed the following comments to prominent Israeli diplomat Dore Gold when questioning the King:

“Jordan needs to start thinking of itself as the Palestinian state. In other words, there is a two-state solution, the Palestinian state is Jordan.”

Abdullah’s response to Zakaria was dismissive:
“Jordan is Jordan. We have a mixed society from different ethnic and religious backgrounds… it is our country. The Palestinians do not want to be in Jordan; they want their lands, they want their football team, they want their flag to fly above their houses.”

The facts:
Jordan – then called Transjordan - was founded on 77% of the territory contained in the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (which was to be the Jewish National Home) - following the San Remo Conference and Treaty of Sevres in 1920 and the 1921 Cairo Conference.

The planned reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Transjordan was postponed or withheld under article 25 of the Mandate with the result that no Jews live there today – the population being entirely Arab.

Transjordan achieved independence in 1946 – changing its name to Jordan in 1950 after unifying its territory with Judea and Samaria (aka 'West Bank') and East Jerusalem conquered by Transjordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Only Great Britain and Pakistan recognised Transjordan’s decision.
Caroline Glick: What Hezbollah learned last week
Hezbollah learned something else, as well, from the government's statements and actions in the aftermath of its missile attack. It learned that Bennett, Gantz and Lapid don't understand the political realities in Lebanon and as a consequence their strategy for fighting Hezbollah, when and if they ever do, will only advance Hezbollah's interests.

Defense Ministry sources told the Breaking Defense website that ahead of a future assault, Israel "has prepared a collection of targets in Lebanon, including critical infrastructure whose destruction is designed to put political pressure on Hezbollah."

But as we saw last weekend, Hezbollah is immune to political pressure, because it controls Lebanon through force. The missiles were launched against Israel by a mobile missile squad operating from a Druze border village. The local villagers responded with fury to the use of their lands as a launching pad. They attacked the missile crew and seized their missile launchers. Members of the missile squad were detained and their launchers was seized.

But three days later, the vaunted LAF, working with Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, released the squad members and returned the missile launcher to Nasrallah's field commanders. Whether they like it or not, Jumblatt and the LAF recognize that they cannot get into a fight with Hezbollah. The terror army is too powerful. Attacking civilian infrastructure in Lebanon to put political pressure on Hezbollah is like attacking a school in Afghanistan to put pressure on the Taliban. They couldn't care less. And anyway, if Israel destroys Lebanese infrastructure, the Biden administration will finance its reconstruction.

Early this week, Raisi hosted the heads of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Tehran. According to reports of the meeting, its purpose was to intensify military cooperation between Iran and its Palestinian proxy armies. The IDF reportedly is operating under the assumption that in the next war, Israel will be attacked simultaneously from the north and south by Hezbollah and Hamas.

There is one thing that the government can do to reduce the chances of war, or at a minimum, increase the chance that if war does indeed break out, Israel will emerge stronger and its enemies will be weakened.

If the government cancels its "zero surprises" commitment to Washington and acts unilaterally against Iran, or against its proxies (or both), or if it simply defends the property rights of Jews in Jerusalem and announces that it will refuse the administration's plan to open a consulate to the Palestinians in its capital, it will change the dynamic that is catapulting it into a war it is ill-prepared to fight or win. Unfortunately, given the government's behavior and its temperament, there is little reason to believe that this will happen.
The Caroline Glick Show: Ep 17: How Lebanon became a strategic threat to Israel | Guest: David Wurmser
In this week's episode of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour, was filmed at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC. This week, Caroline spoke with David Wurmser, a former senior official in the Bush administration who was directly involved in US policy during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. The two discussed Lebanon's transformation from a terrorist nusiance into a strategic threat to Israel following Israel's withdrawal in 2000. Lebanon became a template for jihadist doctrine against Israel and the US. The joint Israeli-American failure to understand the strategic lessons of Lebanon stand at the center of US failure in Iraq and the continued empowerment of Iran and its proxies. This conversation may be the most important discussion of Lebanon and the West that you have ever heard. Watch, listen and share!

It was a great show, watch or listen to the whole thing (or selected segments). Share it with your friends and family and be sure to subscribe.


New report digs into Hezbollah's vast 'land of tunnels'
A new report released on Thursday by the Alma Center, which researches security challenges to Israel from Lebanon and Syria, exposed what it described as a large-scale inter-regional Hezbollah tunnel system in different parts of Lebanon. The tunnel system is designed to move personnel and weapons around and out of the sight of the Israel Defense Forces.

Some of the tunnels are large enough for pick-up trucks with multi-barrel rocket launchers – like the one used by Hezbollah to fire on Israel last week – to move dozens of kilometers underground, according to the report, meaning that the truck can fire on Israel, vanish into a tunnel and re-emerge dozens of kilometers away.

The network of tunnels could be connecting the Beirut area, Hezbollah's central headquarters, and the Beqaa area, Hezbollah's logistical operational rear base, to southern Lebanon, according to the report.

"In our estimation, the cumulative length of all the tunnels can reach up to hundreds of kilometers," it wrote. Like Hamas tunnels, the Lebanese tunnels contain underground command and control rooms, weapons and supply depots, field hospitals and shafts used to fire a wide range of rockets and missiles.

The shafts "open for a short period of time for the purpose of firing their armament and are then immediately shut closed for the purpose of reloading the hydraulic launcher with new ordinance," it added. 'This has been happening in Lebanon for a long time'

Maj. (res.) Tal Beeri, head of the research department at Alma, said the tunnel network in Lebanon is similar to the strategic network built by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, only larger.

"What we saw in Hamas in Gaza is a small example of what Hezbollah has in Lebanon," stated Beeri, who served for 20 years in the IDF's Military Intelligence Directorate.

"Hamas didn't invent tunnels," explained Beeri. "Usually, Hamas is the last in the food chain when it comes to new tools used by the radical axis. The discovery of the tunnel network in Gaza leads to the conclusion that this has been happening in Lebanon for a long time. The Iranians and North Koreans are mentors for both organizations. Hamas are the ones copying here. Hezbollah are usually the pioneers. So imagine what is happening in Lebanon now."

Regarding the Lebanese tunneling network project, said Beeri, "we assess that this began possibly before 2006, but there is no doubt that it gained significant momentum after that year."
Ruthie Blum: Bennett should beware of CIA director William Burns - opinion
Never mind that these moves were in the interest of America, as well as Israel. The refusal of the Left to acknowledge the evil of the PA is as old as its mantra about a “two-state solution” that Abbas never wanted in the first place.

Burns didn’t have anything original to contribute to the already humdrum discussion. He did manage, though, to highlight a stance that proved to be completely mistaken.

“It is tempting to think that shared animus toward Iran and Sunni Arab terrorists would give some Arab states an interest in working with the [Benjamin Netanyhau-led] government and the Trump administration to muzzle Palestinian political aspirations,” he stated smugly. “The growing intersection of interests between Israel and Arab states is a good thing, and a long-standing objective of US policy. But it is not a substitute for Israelis and Palestinians dealing directly with one another. Whatever the leaders of Arab states might whisper in private, there is zero chance that they would offer serious support for any peace plan that does not include a credible path to Palestinian statehood.”

In conclusion, he maintained that the “illusions of the ‘deal of the century’ seem only partly born of arrogance and the magical properties of fresh thinking. There is also an element that is purposeful and willful, apparently designed to make it impossible to resurrect hopes for two states for two peoples.”

ONE MIGHT possibly forgive Burns for not having believed that peace deals would soon be busting out all over the region, thanks to Trump, Netanyahu and the rulers of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco.

He cannot be excused, however, for his failure to see through Abbas’s ploy: pretending to strive for statehood as a way of remaining relevant—and rich—both at home and abroad.

Bennett used to know this about Abbas and the apologists, Burns among them, who’ve been keeping the suit-and-tie-clad terrorist in business for decades. The Israeli public must not allow the members of the nascent coalition to cause him to forget that “cooperation” is Biden-administration code for pressuring Israel to make dangerous, nonreciprocal concessions.
Report: CIA director met with PA's Abbas to discuss restarting peace process
Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns met with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian intelligence chief Majid Faraj Thursday, the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Akhbar newspaper reports.

The meeting was prompted by a report by United States diplomat Hady Amr, who visited Ramallah several weeks prior and alerted Burns of the PA's severe economic crisis.

Besides discussing ways of improving the authority's economic situation, the three discussed the resumption of the peace process between Palestinians and Israel, according to anonymous sources cited by the paper.

The officials also spoke of ways to improve the security coordination between Ramallah and Washington, stop Abbas' rival Hamas from taking over the PA leadership, and prevent another intifada.

Al-Akhbar also reported on Thursday that following a faction meeting, Hamas decided it would take violent means against Israel unless it allowed Qatar to transfer $30 million to the Gaza Strip.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar met on Sunday with United Nations Middle East coordinator Tor Wennesland to discuss the matter. The Gazan commander briefed reporters on the failure of the talks with the UN envoy and accused Israel of extortion, urging Palestinians to resist.
Beinart Targets Israel’s Nuclear Weapons in Latest New York Times ‘Guest’ Essay
Beinart omits that Iran threatens America and Europe, not only Israel.

What’s more, the idea that Israel’s nuclear weapon would “deter” Iran is questionable. Iran funds suicide bombers. That provides an outlook into their death-cult ideology. As the eminent Princeton historian of the Middle East Professor Bernard Lewis memorably and with characteristic eloquence put it, for Iranian fanatics, mutual assured destruction “it not a deterrent, it is an inducement.”

The executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Robert Satloff, tweeted that Beinart was “blurring the distinction between Israel’s nuclear deterrent and Iran’s exterminationist nuclear project.” Said Satloff, “I don’t think I’m alone in wondering whether Peter Beinart prefers a nuclear-free Middle East or an Israel-free Middle East.”

President Trump’s ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, tweeted, “Hard to imagine a more venal anti-Israel piece than this drivel. Only in Beinart’s bizarre and upside-down worldview is Israel’s nuclear status relevant to US policy on Iran.”

A former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, tweeted, “Beinart’s ‘honest discussion’ must distinguish between Israel that doesn’t threaten to destroy another country and Iran that does, between the Jews who experienced the Holocaust and Iran that denies it, and between Israel, a target of terrorism, and Iran, its largest sponsor.”

Since Israel is not a party to the Iran nuclear talks, one wonders why Israel’s nuclear capabilities are even at issue. Why not propose scrapping America’s nuclear arsenal, too? At least the US, unlike Israel, was a party to the Iran nuclear deal. It would be absurd — leaving the US vulnerable to any number of other nuclear powers, from Pakistan to Russia and China, that go entirely unmentioned in Beinart’s article. The only nuclear weapon Beinart wants to make a headline of is Israel’s. It’s a peculiarly weak argument, with or without the “contributing opinion writer” title.
Bennett Folds Under US Pressure, Cuts Down Settlement Construction to 2,000 Units
The Subcommittee on Objections in the Supreme Planning Council in the Civil Administration will convene next week, after an eight-month lull. It will debate—in coordination with the Biden administration—the approval of construction plans in various planning stages of a little more than 2,000 Jewish housing units in Judea and Samaria. This figure is at least 2,000 units shorter than the original plan, and it coincides with the Defense Ministry’s approval of 1,000 building permits for PA Arabs residing in Area C which is under full Israeli control.

The committee meeting, which was originally supposed to discuss the approval of construction plans for more than 4,000 housing units for Jews in Judea and Samaria, is only taking place because of pressure from Yesha Council on Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. The settlers’ leadership has been demanding to set a date for the discussion, following the agreement between former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President Donald Trump approving the issuing of building permits in Judea and Samaria every quarter.

If you’re a fan of calendars and the way they intertwine with global politics, you’re in for a treat. It turns out that this period of eight months during which the Subcommittee on Objections has not been convened parallels perfectly the time that passed since President Joe Biden’s inauguration. The subcommittee last met in January and approved only 792 housing units. Since then, thousands of housing units in various planning stages have accumulated in Yesha, and they’re awaiting approval. So in recent weeks, PM Bennett’s office has been working with the White House to receive our American allies’ approval to convene the committee. I kid you not.

Apparently, receiving Washington’s approval for what goes on in Israeli construction five minutes from Kfar Sabba required two gestures on the Lapid-Bennett-Gantz government’s part: first, let 1,000 Arab homes bloom on Israeli soil; and second, cut down the Jewish homes from more than 4,000 to about 2,000.
A bird’s-eye view of the settlement enterprise after Area C announcement
The Clinton administration systematically condemned all construction in Judea and Samaria, acted to curtail it, and challenged our legitimacy. The Bush administration was also not a big fan of our construction. The eight years of the Obama era brought building freezes and more delegitimization. The Trump administration brought a welcome change of perception, but we were always left with “What will happen post-Trump?” In that light, let us reexamine the US decision to recognize Israel’s plan to develop approximately 2,000 housing units, without condemnation, appeal or attack from the Biden administration. We have waited for this moment for over a quarter of a century! We have wished for the day when Washington would not claim that the settlements are an enemy of peace, when they would stop shouting every time we tried to build. The day has finally come! Why are we not celebrating this monumental achievement that goes back to the days of Trump and Netanyahu, but remains alive and well even under new leadership?

At the same time we must examine the decision to approve the construction of 1,000 housing units for Palestinians in Area C. The Yesha Council and other organizations have repeatedly asked the government to take responsibility and exercise sovereignty in Area C. The government has finally responded, explaining where building is permitted and where it is not. Jewish towns deserve to build in order to address natural growth and the challenges of the housing crisis, and our Palestinian neighbors deserve the same. And since we are the sovereign, it is our responsibility to grant them these rights. Of course the decision to approve Palestinian construction means that we must also fight and oppose illegal construction. Until now the Palestinians had no lawful way to build, and so fighting illegal building was impossible.

Last night’s decision marked Washington’s acceptance of our new government. Our democratic coalition government, which consists of left-wing parties, such as Meretz, Labor and others, is demonstrating that both Jews and Palestinians in Judea and Samaria are here to stay, and that it is time to learn to work together.

Historian Yaakov Hisdai once said, “Strategy is a method of achieving goals, and the more alternative ways it offers, the better.” I have written about the strategic goals of the settlement movement and the Yesha Council. The problem remains that the council fails to see the broader picture, the bird’s-eye view. Council members oppose these decisions despite the fact that they promote the very goals of the Yesha Council. We can’t allow the settlement movement to become one that does not miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. This happened during their campaign to apply sovereignty “in Ma’aleh Adumim first.” It happened with Trump’s Deal of the Century. And it is happening now. Only if we look from a bird’s-eye view will we understand that these decisions will benefit us all.
AFP Arabic Stops Mislabeling Northern Israeli Communities 'Settlements"
After failing to set the record straight last May when Agence France Presse's Arabic service repeatedly referred to Jewish communities in northern Israel as "settlements," the Arabic-language wire reports no longer misidentify these locales within Israel's pre-1967 lines.

Throughout last week’s round of escalation between Israel and Lebanon, AFP's Arabic coverage consistently refrained from using this term when mentioning Kiryat Shmona, calling it “a town” instead. In comparison, between May 14 and 19, AFP referred to nearby Metula as “a settlement” no less than three times.

Notably, in recent months CAMERA Arabic prompted several Arabic news outlets to correct the “settlement” terminology with regards to Jewish communities inside Israel’s internationally recognized territory: BBC, Reuters and EuroNews.
More of the same in BBC reports from Silwan
Hill then promoted the bizarre notion that Silwan is “sacred ground” before bringing in an interviewee who is not connected to the issue of the illegal construction that is supposedly the topic of her report.

Hill: “This is a battle for sacred ground. A few Jewish families live among the Palestinians here with security provided by the State of Israel.”

Lurie: “The heart and soul of the Jewish people is here in Jerusalem.”

Hill: “Daniel Lurie wants to see more Jewish families moving into Silwan. His organisation Ateret Cohanim recently claimed back an old synagogue complex.”

“Recently” is in fact six years ago when Ateret Cohanim won a court case concerning that synagogue. Hill made no effort to inform her audiences that the reason there is an “old synagogue” in Silwan is because part of it – Kfar HaShiloach – was a Jewish village, built in the early 1880s, until its Jewish Yemenite residents were ordered by British mandate forces to leave in 1938 due to Arab rioting.

Lurie: “The prophet spoke two thousand years ago that we were going to come back here. Anyone who wants to live in the Jewish state with Jewish people: a hundred percent. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I’ll put the blue and white carpet; I’ll roll it out in front of them with pleasure. But the second he wants to kill me, that type of Arab is not welcome in this Jewish homeland.”

Hill then closed her uninformative report:
Hill: “The dispute over this valley has been going on for decades and in truth there’s little hope of resolution. All the new Israeli government can do is try to stop it escalating into serious violence. The Dejani family worked through the night to destroy their house, in a city divided over how to build its future.”

Clearly BBC audiences learned nothing new about the problem of illegal building in some Jerusalem neighbourhoods or the Jewish history in some of the areas the corporation insists on portraying as “East Jerusalem”. Hill’s reports are just one more chapter in the BBC’s long-standing amplification of a narrative concerning Jerusalem long promoted by political NGOs that has been adopted by many a BBC correspondent based in that city in the past – and present.
Biden supports the occupation
The Biden administration has announced that it supports “The Occupation.”

No, not that “occupation,” it’s the British-American occupation of territory which belongs to the nation of Mauritius.

Yes, the same Biden administration that opposes Israel’s “occupation” of Judea-Samaria and that demands creation of a Palestinian Arab state there, has now publicly declared its support for the colonialist, imperialist, and possibly racist occupation by Britain of islands belonging to the Indian Ocean country of Mauritius.

It’s an occupation in which the United States is complicit because the British allow the U.S. to maintain a military base there. So, since the U.S. benefits from this particular occupation, suddenly all those high-sounding principles that our State Department regularly hurls as accusations against Israel— “self-determination,” “illegal occupation” and all the rest—are out the window.

Mauritius was just one of the many small countries around the world that British colonialists illegally occupied and exploited for centuries. And guess who’s going along with this British-American Occupation? That’s right—all the folks who rail about “colonialism,” “imperialism,” “racism” and “occupation” when it comes to Israel.

Bernie Sanders. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. J Street. Ben & Jerry’s. Not a word from any of them about The Occupation—that is, when a Democratic administration is the party to blame. They’re only interested when they can blame Israel.

The name “Mauritius” is familiar to those who know the history of England’s attempts to keep Jews out of the Land of Israel. In 1940, some 1,600 Jews whom the British caught trying to enter the ancient Jewish homeland were deported to Mauritius, which is 1,200 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa.
Crisis in Tunisia: The Brotherhood’s trail of failures
Looking at the intricacies of the Tunisian political scene, we see that the country is experiencing an exceptional situation that is unlike that of any other Arab country.

Some even consider the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia to be not like other branches scattered in several Arab countries. They believe that this Brotherhood branch has gained different experiences as a result of their leaders having stayed in Western capitals for many years.

But the Tunisian experience since 2011 has shown that Tunisia’s Brotherhood carries the same organizational genes as their counterparts in Egypt, Gaza, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere.

They have been entangled in deep and constant political conflicts since the return of those leaders who were supposed to have learned some lessons from Western political experiences. Especially in terms of pluralism. But the reality has been revealed, with their first political experiment, by their insistence on going it alone in power.

The Tunisian people, with all their political forces, proved to be well aware of this. As a result, the Brotherhood quickly turned to a scenario of pulling others down. They clash sometimes with the President of the Republic, sometimes with other partisan and political forces.

Then, they ended up clashing with the people themselves and trying to sacrifice them to mask their inability to assume their political responsibilities and respond to the aspirations of Tunisians.

In the wake of the president’s decisions, Tunisian Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi acknowledged in a statement “the limited potential of the state and the deterioration of the national economy and public finances.”
Israel to permit entry of Gaza merchants for first time in 18 months
Israel will allow the entry of merchants and businessmen from the Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing for the first time in some 18 months, the military announced Friday.

The permits for 1,350 Palestinians comes after several days of quiet along the border.

Starting Sunday, 1,000 Palestinian merchants and 350 businessmen, provided they are vaccinated or recovered from COVID-19, will be permitted to enter Israel.

After the outbreak of the virus, the pedestrian border crossing between Gaza and Israel was closed down, preventing the traders from continuing their operations, causing a significant impact to Gaza’s already faltering economy.

Many Palestinian merchants regularly traveled from Gaza to the West Bank by traversing Israel before COVID-19 hit the region.

Palestinian Authority health minister Mai al-Kaila on Thursday said some 100,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses were to be transferred from the West Bank to Gaza. So far 11.2% of the Palestinian population in both regions have been fully vaccinated, according to Reuters.
Skepticism Greets UNRWA ‘Neutrality Training’ Proposal for Staff Pushing Antisemitism on Social Media
An international NGO whose recent report exposed the antisemitic hatred expressed on social media by some employees of UNRWA during the Israel-Hamas conflict in May has rejected a proposal for “neutrality training” by the head of the UN agency.

In its report published earlier this month, the Geneva-based UN Watch found 113 instances of incitement to violence by employees of UNRWA — the UN humanitarian agency dedicated to the descendants of Palestinian refugees of the 1947-48 war — in clear violation of the agency’s rules, according to the report.

Among the social media posts cited by UN Watch was one from math teacher Nahed Shrarawi, in which she shared a video that included an image of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler along with inspirational quotes. Another UNRWA teacher in the West Bank, Husni Masri, shared a post promoting conspiracy theories about Jews, including that Jewish people want to rule the world and destroy Islam and were responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to UN Watch, such hatred among UNRWA’s 30,000 staff members is a far greater problem than the report shows, as the incidents included in the report pertain only to those with Facebook accounts and who openly identify as agency employees.

On Thursday, UN Watch said that it “rejected” a proposal from UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini to engage staff in “neutrality training.”

“Facing serious allegations about widespread support for antisemitism and terrorism among its educators, UNRWA is burying its head in the sand, falsely pretending that these are isolated cases,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said in a statement. “The opposite is true.”


GOP Lawmakers Blast EU for Sending Senior Official to Iranian President’s Inauguration
A group of Republican lawmakers blasted the European Union for its decision to send a senior official to the inauguration of Iran’s new hardline president, Ebrahim Raisi.

The EU sent Enrique Mora, the political body’s point man for ongoing discussions with Iran over its nuclear program, to attend Raisi’s swearing-in ceremony last week. Mora’s attendance at the ceremony came just days after Iran carried out a deadly drone strike on an oil tanker in the Persian Gulf.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) and seven of her GOP colleagues called the EU decision "disgraceful" in a letter sent Thursday to the body’s high representative and vice president of the European Commission, Josep Borrell Fontelles. The lawmakers say the EU is providing legitimacy to an election that was widely panned as rigged. They also say the decision disregards Raisi’s role in mass human-rights abuses, including his decision to approve the extrajudicial killings of dissidents in the late 1980s, which earned him the moniker of the "Butcher of Tehran."

"It is disgraceful and disheartening that the European Union continues to tout its support for human rights and democratic principles abroad, yet it simultaneously legitimizes Ebrahim Raisi's election. Raisi is a murderer who killed thousands of his own people and came to power in an election that was neither free nor fair," Tenney and her colleagues wrote. "High Representative Borrell should uphold the European Union’s human-rights principles and stand with the Iranian people rather than honor and empower their corrupt and abusive leaders."

The letter comes as the EU facilitates ongoing discussions between Iran and the Biden administration over its contested nuclear program. European powers want to see America rejoin the nuclear deal that President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018. A renewed agreement would unwind tough American economic sanctions on Tehran and allow Europe to conduct business with the hardline regime.
As Cyberattacks on Ships Surge, Israeli Threat Experts and Ex-Navy Officers Team Up to Make Seas Safer
Of all the cyberthreats facing the Jewish state, those targeting Israel’s waterways can be especially devastating. Some 95% of the country’s imports like energy, food, and industrial and defense goods arrive via maritime freight, with virtually none coming across the land borders with its Middle East neighbors.

Meanwhile, as the global shipping industry has increasingly sought to computerize its operations to be more competitive, the risks from cyberattacks have magnified. More dependence on computerized remote management systems has also opened a Pandora’s box of vectors — which hackers can exploit to afflict ships, ports and maritime infrastructure.

In July, a group of former Israeli navy officers at Israel Shipyards Ltd. and cybersecurity experts at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) started a cooperation to develop solutions tailored to vessels, with the vision to make the seas a safer place.

“For Israel, the protection by sea in terms of the trade coming via the oceans and the seas are crucial resources, so we believe that this is strategic for the state of Israel,” Oded Breier, Israel Shipyards’ VP of marketing and sales, told The Algemeiner.

“We also understood that we need to find a way to be more competitive, and therefore, we understood that this is a field that everybody is talking about, but they are not so familiar with.”
Repeat omission in BBC account of the inauguration of Iran’s president>
The “key points” section of the BBC’s guidance document on removal of online content provides a view of how the corporation regards the reports it publishes online:
“The Editorial Guidelines state, “The archive of the BBC’s online content is a permanent public record and its existence is in the public interest. The online archive particularly news reports, should not normally be removed or amended.” To do so risks erasing the past and altering history.”

However, the public interest is obviously not served when the “permanent public record” produced by the world’s largest broadcaster itself alters what will become history by erasing key elements of a story.

For example, on August 5th the BBC News website published one report about the inauguration of the new president of Iran: “Iran’s new hardline President Ebrahim Raisi sworn in”.

At no point in that report are readers of that report (present or future) given any information about the 260 Iranian and foreign attendees at that ceremony inaugurating a president the BBC describes as having been “heavily criticised over his human rights record”.

The much criticised presence at that ceremony of a senior EU diplomat is not documented in the BBC’s article. Neither is the fact that the inauguration was attended by representatives of several terrorist organisations.







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