Tuesday, February 01, 2022

02/01 Links Pt1: Why Amnesty’s “Apartheid” slander makes peace and two-states harder; Beyond Crooked. Meet the Amnesty judges and jury; US bans ‘Death to America” Iranian wrestler

From Ian:

Amnesty report is part of a coordinated diplomatic lynching against Israel, says EJC President Kantor
The European Jewish Congress (EJC) has attacked a new Amnesty International UK report which accuses the State of Israel of being an “apartheid state” as unprofessional, inaccurate and malicious.

The report, titled: “Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel system of domination and crime against humanity”, was to be released for publication on Tuesday, 1st February.

“There is nothing new in Amnesty’s sudden discovery of the word ‘apartheid’, in relation to Israel,” EJC President Dr. Moshe Kantor said. “They are in lock step with anti-Israel and antisemitic activists in a coordinated diplomatic lynching against the Jewish State, and the mere concept of Jewish self-determination and collectivity.”

“It is clear from the tone and language used that they are seeking the end of Israel, and are using all of their supposed good name and diplomatic capital to launch a full-frontal attack against the Jewish State. That they use the terminology of ‘apartheid’ while Israel’s Arab citizens sit in the Knesset, are ministers in Israel’s current government and sit as judges on the country’s Supreme Court, shows just how disingenuous and twisted this imagery is. These are extremist political activists disguised as human-rights advocates, and their obsessive focus on Israel should dispel any notion of objectivity, neutrality or accuracy.”

“This report will become a weapon used against Jews around the world,” Dr. Kantor continued. “We have seen that every time that there are high-profile attacks against Israel with these types of scurrilous lies, people think Jews everywhere should be made responsible for it. As a result, Jewish students and members of the academia will be forced to express fealty to these distortions, and attacks against Jews and Jewish institutions will increase. None of the authors of the report will be able to ignore the direct line from their work with a rise in antisemitism.”
WSJ Editorial: The ‘Apartheid’ Libel of Israel
The report treats Israel’s founding as the original sin from which all other offenses flow. In the 27-page executive summary alone, we counted at least 26 references to 1948 or 1947-1949. Amnesty’s message is that Israel was created as an apartheid state and continues as such today.

This is a libel that distorts history. Israel was founded in the wake of the Holocaust with broad international support. The Jews who settled in historic Palestine had to fight to survive against Arab militias and national armies that wanted to push them into the sea.

Amnesty makes no attempt to explain Israel’s laws and practices in the context of the many wars Israel has had to fight since 1948. It mentions in passing that Hamas sends missiles into Israel from Gaza with no regard to its targets. But then it quickly moves on to denounce how Israel defends itself against these indiscriminate attacks.

The report glides over the Oslo accords of the 1990s as if they were merely one more opening to subjugate Palestinians. The accords were an historic concession by Israel to recognize a Palestinian state if peace could be negotiated. The report ignores that Hamas, which controls Gaza, is sworn to destroy Israel and that Israel has no choice but to impose security measures to protect against terror attacks.

Above all, the report all but ignores that Israel is a democracy that accords more rights to Arabs and Palestinians than does any other state in the region. Arabs participate in elections, hold seats in the Knesset, and one Arab is now a cabinet minister. The Palestinians in the West Bank could have their own state with comparable rights if they had accepted the concessions that Israel offered, under U.S. auspices, in the 1990s and again in 2000. Their leaders refused and the ugly stalemate continues.

The Amnesty report is especially ill-timed in an era when Israel and Arab states are negotiating new deals for commerce and travel since the Abraham Accords. A fair assumption is that Amnesty’s drafters hope to block such progress by inflaming world opinion with the “apartheid” slander. Amnesty also calls on the United Nations to sanction Israel, and the International Criminal Court to investigate and hold Israelis criminally responsible.

We assume the Biden Administration will denounce this calumny and oppose all efforts to use it as a cudgel against America’s best friend in the Middle East.
NY Post Editorial: Amnesty International’s latest Israel smear
Amnesty International UK waited until after Holocaust Remembrance Day to publish its latest report on Israel — which depends on ignoring that history and Palestinian efforts to repeat it.

Expect the media to be all over it, since Amnesty is, for the first time, officially accusing Israel of “apartheid” (joining Human Rights Watch, which made the same obscene jump last year).

Anti-Zionist activists and politicians love using the word to smear Israel’s citizenship laws and national-security policies — to delegitimize the Jewish state by equating it with South Africa’s old racist regime.

Amnesty has only accused one other country of current apartheid policies, by the way: Myanmar, which is regularly genocidal against the Rohingya minority. Not China, Iran or Syria, which also seek to wipe out minority populations.

Anti-Zionist activists and politicians often use the word “apartheid” to demean Israel’s citizenship laws and national-security policies.

The report reviews Israel’s history since independence, pointing to a skein of examples that supposedly prove the “apartheid state” canard.

But what a lot of history Amnesty ignores. The Holocaust appears only in discussing Israel’s 1952 proffer of citizenship to any Jew who wanted it. It mentions “expulsion” — without noting, for example, Jews getting the boot from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt.

Yasser Arafat does not appear. It mentions Hamas 25 times but no specifics of its political and military programs that openly aim at Israel’s annihilation. References to Egypt’s “tight” restrictions on the Rafah border crossing don’t explain the “why” — namely, that nation’s desire to prevent terror attacks on both sides of that border. It describes the unprovoked May 2021 indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli citizens as just “armed hostilities [breaking] out.”


Seth Frantzman: Why Amnesty’s “Apartheid” slander makes peace and two-states harder
It used to be that human rights groups focused on particular discriminatory policies in the West Bank or Jerusalem. Now all these policies are treated as the same thing.

One eviction in Jerusalem is “apartheid.” Amnesty calls the Negev, the “Naqab” and refers to “expropriation” of 1948, indicating that the concept is to turn the clock back to 1947. This is an extraordinary attempt to re-write history.

It is tantamount to claiming that Pakistan and India are “apartheid” states unless they agree to be one state again, along with Bangladesh. It is tantamount to claiming that all the former states of Yugoslavia, from Macedonia to Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia must now reunify or they will all be defined as “apartheid” because they are “fragmented” and because each discriminates in favor of its own national group.

Apartheid’s new definition is basically meant to define as commission of “a crime” any state that has a national religion or ethnic group that receives some unique rights.

It is also now aimed at preventing the concept whereby peoples may prefer to be independent than live under binational state creations.

The Palestinian right to a state of their own, an Arab state as envisioned at the UN in 1947, is now stripped from Palestinians.

The existence of a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state is now considered “apartheid.” This means that even if Israel wanted to improve any discriminatory situations, there’s no route out of the apartheid definition.

This gives no incentive to peacemakers or peace voices in Israel or among Palestinians. Shoe-horning the Gaza Strip back under Israeli rule and forcing annexation of the West Bank and dismantling of Israel as a Jewish state is the only way to exit the new “apartheid” definition.

Since Israel won’t do that and the international community doesn’t want the conflict that would come along with such a disaster, the “apartheid” claim has essentially shackled Israel and the Palestinians together in order to destroy both Israel and any Palestinian autonomy that now exists.


David Collier: Beyond Crooked. Meet the Amnesty judges and jury
There are too many ‘unfit’ people to list here (it is why it took a 207 page report to do it), but I want to show one more image because it highlights the Amnesty problem more than any other. If for well over a decade Amnesty has been explicitly employing anti-Israel obsessives – then what about all of the people who are actually in need of Amnesty’s help?

The MENA region is full of despots. The role of Amnesty’s Deputy Director for the MENA region is to highlight the abuse that occurs there. This is a summary of his FB posts taken in 2019:

Not a single post relating to Iran, Syria or Saudi Arabia was found. Israel, a nation involved in a conflict that claimed about 90 casualties in 2019 took 100% of the attention of a MENA Director for Amnesty. That is the true crime here. A total betrayal of Amnesty donors – and even more tragically – of the people in need they are meant to be helping. Amnesty has just turned into an obsessive and antisemitic organisation.

Would you trust a report about Israel written by people like this? Would you accept their judgement? Amnesty is only the sum of the people that work for it and what is written above is only a fraction of what I found when I investigated Amnesty’s bias.

I write this today as Amnesty publish another report on Israel. If you want to see a take down of the latest Amnesty report – you can read what CAMERA and NGO Monitor have to say.

But if there is just one report you read today make sure it is the one which thoroughly exposes Amnesty’s crooks. And believe me – however bad you think Amnesty has become – it is worse.


Edwin Black: Another desperate—and fake—Israeli Apartheid Report readied for the airwaves
Acceptance of Amnesty’s report depends upon an uninformed public unaware of the facts. For example, the report spotlights the discredited notion that innocent Arabs are being evicted from their ancient homes in the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. By now it has been well documented that Jews legally purchased and properly registered the land in the 1800s from the Ottoman authorities to worship close to revered Rabbi Simon the Just’s tomb.

The Jewish neighborhood housed forty families until Jordan’s illegal 1948 invasion, when it stole the land and then illegally gave it away. When Israel reclaimed the stolen land after the Six Day War in 1967, those recent Arab tenants stayed on, paying a pittance of rent until it became more profitable to pretend that they owned the tracts—causing protracted legal action and judgments they ignored, subsequently leading to eviction. This becomes apartheid in the hands of Amnesty—but in reality, it’s actually a garden variety landlord–tenant case.

Likewise, Amnesty does not want anyone to remember that approximately half of Israel’s population is not descended from the likes of far off Miami and Brooklyn but from the likes of regional climes such as Morocco and Baghdad from where Arab states expelled some 850,000 Jews stateless and penniless, largely into Israel, in the biggest and most public ethnic cleaning in history.

Nor does anyone mention that until 1964, Jewish Zionists in their internationally recognized homeland were globally referred to as “Palestinians,” and the Arabs were referred to as “Arabs.” Then in 1964, the KGB and the Arab League created the Palestine Liberation Organization. Those two sponsors helped the Arabs commit identity theft and then expropriate the term “Palestinians” for themselves. Prior to 1964, there is not a single diplomatic paper, UN resolution, newspaper headline, piece of known correspondence, photographic image, or any other documentation that refers to Arabs as anything other than “Arabs,” although references to Jews as Palestinians is abundant.

So, if on February 1, editors collude with Amnesty International and run headlines in synchrony complaining of an imaginary apartheid in a land where Arabs and Jews earn equal wages, and where Arabs can achieve in society in a way that they cannot anywhere else in the Middle East —including the Palestinian Authority for that matter, and wield political power disproportionate to their numbers, then it will be a triumph for the Orwellian nature of media narratives in our times.

But for those who can get sufficiently beyond the fake narrative to open a book or check the facts, the headlines they see will be just another attempt to not only display a shiny object during these tense times, but actually create an object where none exists.


Amnesty International Creates New Definition of ‘Apartheid’ to Call For ‘Dismantling’ of Israel
Indeed, Amnesty International had to resort to formulating a totally new definition of what it calls “the crime of apartheid” in order to place Israel in the docket.

On page 37 of its report, Amnesty concedes that it “does not seek to argue that, or assess whether, any system of oppression and domination as perpetrated in Israel and the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] is, for instance, the same or analogous to the system of segregation, oppression and domination as perpetrated in South Africa between 1948 and 1994.”

That the OPT designation is in and of itself biased is an irony apparently lost on Amnesty’s staff.

Instead, Amnesty manipulates reality through its reliance on bits and pieces of text from the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Drafted in the 1970s, only about half of the countries in the world signed on to this document. Meanwhile, modern, western liberal democracies — including the United States and the United Kingdom — did not adopt it.

Additionally, Amnesty in its report used elements of the Rome Statute, which was also adopted by about half of existing nations but, tellingly, is strongly opposed by world powers including the US.

In doing so, Amnesty constructed a new definition of apartheid that, obviously, has not been adopted by any country.

In April 2021, Human Rights Watch (HRW) employed a similar method when it accused Israel of “committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.” HonestReporting detailed the problems associated with this Orwellian tactic.

In a video, we also explained how HRW’s and, now, Amnesty’s actions put the world’s most vulnerable populations at risk.


Amnesty’s Language Games
On February 1, Amnesty International released a slanderous report accusing the Jewish State of “apartheid.” Prior to its publication, a leaked “embargoed” copy made its rounds and was widely condemned for the extreme rhetoric and positions, including an unambiguous line in the report that succinctly captured the thrust of Amnesty’s report:
“This system of apartheid originated with the creation of Israel in May 1948…”

Considering Amnesty’s recommendations section includes “dismantling this appalling system of apartheid,” the implication is crystal clear. Amnesty thinks the Jewish State needs to be dismantled.

However, in the publicly released version, Amnesty changed the line following widespread condemnation. In the English version, the line now reads:
“This system of apartheid has been built and maintained over decades…”

Importantly, this cosmetic change does not impact the overall message of the report, which condemns the very idea of a Jewish and democratic state as being inherently racist. The report still calls for this “apartheid” to be dismantled, and the report repeatedly makes clear it considers all of the Jewish State to be apartheid.

Notably, however, Amnesty did not change the line in every version of the report. The original language – specifically referencing the year 1948 – remains in both the Spanish and the Arabic versions of the report.


Israel blasts Amnesty for accusing it of apartheid

Outrage over anti-Israel report could cost Amnesty its tax-exempt status
In the wake of the report, right-wing organization Btsalmo called on Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman to drop Amnesty International's tax-exempt status in Israel

According to the advocacy group, the goal of the tax exemption is to allow Israelis to donate to worthy public causes in lieu of their owed taxes. "Does the finance minister believe that defaming and boycotting Israel is a worthy public cause that Israelis should fund," the organization wrote in a public letter to Lieberman through its lawyer Michael Litvak.

Litvak further claimed that Amnesty has repeatedly called for boycotting Israel and even for an arms embargo on the Jewish state, as well as helped the UN in formulating blacklisted entities beyond the Green Line.
Amnesty International’s Big Lie about Israel
Amnesty International has a long history of leveling maliciously false charges against Israel (eg here, here, here, and here), and its leader Agnès Callamard had to apologize after her bizarre anti-Israel tweets were publicized. So it’s only fitting that in its latest report alleging Israel is an apartheid and illegitimate state, the very first line is a blatant and malicious lie, a quotation from Benjamin Netanyahu mangled so that it seems to support such charges:
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

“Israel is not a state of all its citizens… [but rather] the nation-state of the Jewish people and only them”

Message posted online in March 2019 by Israel’s then prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu
Amnesty repeats this claim later in the report, citing an Instagram post by Netanyahu. Why is Amnesty’s quotation a lie? Because this is what the then-Prime Minister actually said about the nation-state issue, responding to a post by Israeli actress and model Rotem Sela:
Dear Rotem, an important correction: Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People – and them alone. As you wrote, there’s no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel – they have the same rights as us all and the Likud government has invested in the Arab sector more than any other government.

That is, to indict Israel as apartheid, Amnesty omits the next line of Netanyahu’s post, in which he makes it clear Israel is not apartheid, and that Arab citizens can and do have equal rights.

It’s obvious why Amnesty engaged in this deception – including the line would have undermined their false case against Israel. So, like the professional propagandists that they are, they simply omitted what was inconvenient.

If – in the first line of their report – Amnesty International can’t even quote a short statement by Netanyahu correctly and in context, how can anyone trust them on more arcane or involved issues, turning on critical issues of fact or international law?
Amnesty’s apartheid slur is an attack on Jewish self-determination
The apartheid allegation has its roots in Soviet propaganda during the Cold War designed to deny that Zionism was the Jewish movement for national self-determination and liberation after suffering millennia of racism culminating in the Holocaust, and instead turn reality on its head and frame Zionism as a racist, colonialist and imperialist ideology, and Israel as an illegitimate state.

Amnesty calls for Israel, a state threatened by terrorist organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah, and by aggressive states expressing genocidal intentions like Iran, to be the subject of a “comprehensive arms embargo” that would weaken its ability to protect its civilians. It calls for the “right to return to millions of Palestinian refugees”, not to a new Palestinian state but to Israel itself, which would mean that instead of a Jewish state and a Palestinian state, with self-determination for both peoples, there would be two majority-Palestinian states. It attacks Israel for making its Arab citizens exempt from military service, when in fact this exemption is a privilege and Arabs can and do volunteer to serve in the IDF if they want to.

The delegitimisation of Israel as “apartheid” won’t succeed because it is so far from the truth.

Amnesty International has a legitimate role in holding all governments and powers to account for human rights violations. It doesn’t have a legitimate role in deciding that the Jewish people are not entitled to national self-determination and a state where they are the majority, when the existence of such a state is the Jewish people’s only guaranteed shield against pogroms and genocide.
'Amnesty paves way to Israeli prosecution:' Palestinians applaud report
The Palestinian Authority, Hamas and several Palestinian factions on Tuesday welcomed Amnesty International’s report that accuses Israel of “apartheid,” saying it paves the way for filing “war crimes” charges against Israel with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“The State of Palestine welcomes the report by Amnesty International on Israel’s apartheid regime and racist policies and practices against the Palestinian people,” the PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement published immediately after the controversial report was released.

“Amnesty International joins a long list of distinguished Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights organizations and experts in exposing Israel’s colonial occupation for what it is: an institutionalized system of oppression and domination over the Palestinian people, designed to legitimize its colonial settlement expansion, deny the Palestinian people their inalienable right to self-determination, and erase Palestinian history, present, and future in their homeland,” the statement read.

It described the report as “a detailed affirmation of the cruel reality of entrenched racism, exclusion, oppression, colonialism, apartheid, and attempted erasure that the Palestinian people have endured since the [1948] nakba [catastrophe].”


Israel said ready to sell Iron Dome to UAE, build regional defenses against Iran
In the wake of a missile attack launched during President Isaac Herzog’s landmark visit to Abu Dhabi, apparently by the Iran-backed Houthis, Israel is reportedly planning to advance the sale of missile defense systems to the United Arab Emirates.

Channel 13 news reported Monday that talks were underway for the sale of a number of weapons systems to the UAE, which would both warn of incoming fire and intercept it. Abu Dhabi is currently operating a South Korean missile defense system.

The report said the sale of the Iron Dome missile defense system to the UAE could mark the beginnings of a regional defense system that would help give Israel advance warning of any potential attack by Tehran.

However, according to Channel 12 news, a decision has not yet been made by Israel whether the Iron Dome system will be sold to the UAE or to Saudi Arabia. Israel has denied previous reports that it has already provided Riyadh with the defense system.

A ballistic missile was fired at Abu Dhabi on Sunday, apparently by the Houthis, an Iran-backed Yemen group. The missile was intercepted and the UAE’s defense ministry said there were no injuries or damage, with the remnants of the missile falling in unpopulated areas.


‘UAE a Jewish Settlement Controlled by Jews,’ Says Houthi Health Minister
Health Minister of the Houthis Taha Al-Motawakel said in a sermon on Jan. 21 in Sanaa, Yemen, that the United Arab Emirates is a Jewish settlement and that the Emirati “Bedouins” do not have the brains to have built a “major economic and technological center.”

According to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) report, the sermon aired on the Houthi channel Al-Eman TV and quoted Motawakel as saying that UAE affairs are managed by Jews who invested in the country rather than Israel to protect it from conflict with the Arabs.

“Do the Bedouins have the brains to build such towers and companies and have all those billionaires, oil drilling, transportation and tourism? This is not something that was pulled off by those Bedouins. It was the Jews who established the UAE,” he said.

He also claimed that the United States and Israel are behind the attacks against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.

Motawakel also threatened Israel with drones and missiles.

“Israel knows that [our] drones that flew 2,000 kilometers from Yemen [to Saudi Arabia] can fly to Tel Aviv and other plundered areas in Israel. … That is, in Palestine. … So the Jews know how dangerous the Yemenis are, with their [drone] planes and ballistic missiles,” he said.
Two IDF officers dismissed over death of elderly Palestinian-American
Two Israeli military officers will be dismissed from their positions immediately and a third – a battalion commander – will be formally censured over the death of an elderly Palestinian earlier this month that the IDF says was a result of “moral failure and poor decision-making.”

Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad, 78, of Jiljilya, a village north of Ramallah, was found dead on January 12 after he was detained by Israeli troops on his way home.

He had been arrested by troops belonging to the Netzah Yehuda Battalion at an impromptu checkpoint on his way home. He then began to shout at them, drawing attention to the troops who did not want other residents to know that a surprise inspection was taking place.

In order to quiet him down, one soldier put his hand over his mouth and then put a cloth gag over his mouth that he immediately pulled off. Troops then zip-tied As’ad’s hands behind his back and brought to an abandoned courtyard.

As’ad was detained along with several other Palestinians in an abandoned home, handcuffed, blindfolded and gagged for around half an hour. Believing that As’ad had fallen asleep and not seeing any signs of distress, troops did not call for medical assistance and did not attempt to wake him before they left.
Haaretz Clarifies on Death of Palestinian-American Omar As’ad
Haaretz is the second media outlet to correct in recent days after publishing the unfounded claim that elderly Palestinian-American Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad died while in Israeli military custody. Following the United Press International correction last week, CAMERA’s Israel office prompted correction of the lead article which appeared on today’s front page of the English edition (“Report: Death of Palestinian was moral lapse,” and online here), which claimed that Omar As’ad “died while in custody, allegedly without any attempt at medical intervention by the soldiers guarding him.”

The Hebrew version of the same article, in contrast, does not state that As’ad died while in custody. Indeed, there is uncertainty about when he passed away.

As the Associated Press reported today: “It’s unclear when exactly he died. He was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead after the other detainees found him unconscious.”

Evidently, the soldiers certainly did not act as they should, as the army itself found. But that failure doesn’t negate the fact that the English edition claim overstepped the known facts when it asserts that he died “while in custody.”
Israel to free Spanish aid worker jailed for funding Palestinian terror group
An Israeli parole board judge agreed Tuesday to the early release of Spanish aid worker Juana Rishmawi, who was jailed in November for illegally funding a Palestinian terror group, her lawyer said.

Attorney Avigdor Feldman said he expected Rishmawi to be freed within a week, provided the state does not appeal the parole board decision to release her early from her 13-month sentence.

“This was the right decision. It was supposed to be made a month ago and the prosecution or the state has no grounds to appeal this decision,” Feldman told AFP.

“I hope she will be released [within the] next seven days.”

Rishmawi was sentenced in November after a military court convicted her of working with an organization that it said was funding the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftist group blamed for previous attacks on Israelis.

She had already spent some months in custody awaiting trial which were counted towards her sentence, her lawyer said.
Israel razes home of Hamas terrorist who killed Eli Kay in Jerusalem attack
Security forces demolished on Tuesday the home of a Palestinian terrorist who killed a South African immigrant to Israel in a deadly terror attack last November in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Fadi Abu Shkhaydam opened fire at a number of Israeli men in the alleyways of the Old City, killing Eliyahu Kay and injuring four others, two of them seriously. Border Police officers returned fire, killing the attacker.

On Tuesday, officers demolished the interior of Abu Shkhaydam’s home and sealed the entrance — a practice sometimes used by security forces when an attacker lives in an apartment rather than a house.

Police said around 150 officers were involved in the operation to demolish the home. In a statement, police said that the officers came under attack on the scene, and that “means of dispersal” were used.

The military initiated the process of demolishing Abu Shkaydam’s home in East Jerusalem’s Shuafat refugee camp shortly after the attack. His family appealed the decision in court, but their requests were rejected.


MEMRI: Palestinian Authority (PA) President Abbas Awards Posthumous Medal To Fatah Official Khalil Nazzal, Who Accused Israel Of Inflating Numbers Of Holocaust Victims To Justify Its Crimes
On January 29, 2022, the Palestinian Embassy in Warsaw, Poland held a memorial ceremony marking the first anniversary of the death of Khalil Nazzal, who had been the secretary of Fatah's Poland branch. In attendance were Arab ambassadors, representatives of the Palestinian community, and representatives of the local Fatah branch, along with relatives of Nazzal.

At the ceremony, Palestinian Ambassador to Poland Mahmoud Khalifa posthumously awarded a "medal of excellence" on behalf of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas to Nazzal's widow Dr. Najwa Abu Yasin, "as a mark of appreciation for his national and professional path, for his efforts in the service of our people and the Palestinian communities of Europe, and in appreciation of his role in strengthening Palestine-Poland relations." Khalifa also highlighted Nazzal's "national stature," calling him "a pioneer among the protectors of the Right of Return."

In February 2020, MEMRI published a translation of excerpts from an article by Nazzal that appeared in the PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida in January of that year, in which he stated that that Israel "inflates" the number of victims of the Holocaust in order to "blackmail the world and force it to accept" its policy. Israel, he said, had unjustly appropriated the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust, and even exploited it, to justify its injustice of the Nakba against the Palestinian people.[1]
PMW: PA terrorist prisoners refuse medication, yet the PA blames Israel when prisoners are sick
One of the most common Palestinian Authority libels is that Israel does medical experiments on Palestinian prisoners. The PA disseminates the additional lie that Israeli pharmaceutical companies test drugs on prisoners.

This PA libel was so successfully disseminated that Palestinian prisoners who are sick are now refusing medication for fear that they are guinea pigs in an Israeli pharmaceutical company drug trial. Since there is no truth to this libel, the PA leadership is unnecessarily causing great suffering and damaging the health of the prisoners.

The top Palestinian official dealing with prisoners - director of the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, Qadri Abu Bakr, explained the terrorist’s dilemma. While announcing that prisoners are refusing treatment, Abu Bakr had the audacity to libel Israel further, saying in the same interview that “there is clear [medical] neglect [by Israel] of the prisoners.”

The following are the PA libels and the Palestinian suffering it has caused as repeated by Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr:
Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr: “There is clear neglect of the prisoners… Let’s say the prisoners who become sick, many of them – as is known from the prisons – refuse to take medicine, because they fear that the medicine they are receiving from the [prison] management will worsen their condition more and more. In the past they took an aspirin for everything because aspirin doesn’t cause harm... Currently they [Israeli doctors] are giving the sick [large] quantities of medicine, and according to how the prisoners feel, it is like they are a test lab for the Israeli pharmaceutical companies. Therefore, there is great abstention from taking the Israeli medicine, other than in rare cases.”

[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, Jan. 17, 2022]




PreOccupiedTerritory: My Name Is Mahmoud, And I Like To Cosplay As Indigenous by Mahmoud Abbas, President, Palestinian National Authority; Chairman, Fatah; Chairman, Palestine Liberation Organization (satire)
Nice to meet you all! My name is Mahmoud, and my favorite pastime involves assuming the trappings of an ancient people with unique cultural ties to this land, when in fact the vast majority of my would-be nation boasts ancestry with little connection to this geographical entity. But it’s fun to pretend!

If you like, you may call me Abu Mazen – “father of Mazen.” I had a son, unfortunately deceased, and that kind of honorific developed in Arab culture long ago. You know, the people who swept out of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries of the Common Era and conquered vast territory, colonizing it all up the wazoo and imposing Islam and the Arabic language wherever they went. Still, I have a good time playing make-believe with my people’s indigeneity to “Palestine,” a term even we Arabs and Muslims didn’t use to refer to the Holy Land until the twentieth century. It’s a foreign term – but that’s OK, because we’re just pretending!

Sometimes, though, we pretend a little too hard, and convince even ourselves that the pretense reflects reality, and that’s when we get into all sorts of trouble. Our make-believe is so compelling that we don’t even believe the real indigenous people when they claim ancient attachment to the land! We get violent and throw tantrums and make tons and tons of noise. Mine! All mine! You can’t have any! Go away!
Emily Schrader: We must listen to Iranian feminists who protest forced hijab
In the midst of the recent hostage-taking in a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, the media intentionally withheld information about the attacker, Malik Faisal Akram, in order to be politically correct. The result was a bizarre combination of headlines that seemed to intentionally minimize the antisemitic nature of the attack. In one instance, the AP selectively referenced the FBI’s statement and claimed that the attacker, which many news sources referred to only as a British man, was not focused on the Jewish community when he entered a synagogue armed during Shabbat services and took Jews hostage. Sadly, the phenomenon of political correctness in the press and popular culture isn’t unique to the issue of antisemitism.

Feminist leaders like Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American journalist, have been facing immense pushback from both the press and western feminists over her campaign against the forced hijab and other forms of oppression against women in Iran. After sharing the story of her choice to not wear a hijab and warning of the outrageous consequences for women in Iran who choose not to cover their hair, she was censored repeatedly. As well, she was told her story and activism demanding equality for women would contribute to Islamophobia.

In response, Alinejad launched the #LetUsTalk campaign, which pushes back against the censorship of Middle Eastern women fighting for women’s equality. However, despite the fact that Alinejad showed up to the Women’s March five years ago in solidarity, none of the women there would join her in her fight for freedom of choice. “I found that hardly anyone was willing to support my campaign against compulsory hijab, lest they be accused of promoting Islamophobia,” she wrote in The Washington Post.
US bans ‘Death to America” Iranian regime wrestler from match in Texas - report
The US state department barred the head of Iran’s national wrestling federation, Alireza Dabir, who called for “Death to America” with violence, from entering America for a slated dual meet between the US and Iranian national wrestling teams on February, 12 in Arlington, Texas.

The Iranian regime-controlled Fars News reported on Tuesday that Dabir, a wrestling coach and a wrestler were not granted visas by the US state department. Fars News is affiliated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a US-designated terrorist organization.

The Iranian-American journalist and women's rights campaigner Masih Alinejad tweeted that "Death to America' getting Alireza Dabir, Iran’s wrestling chief from coming to America. He also defends war criminal Gassem Soleimani in this video.

The Jerusalem Post in January reported that Dabir holds a US green card and urged the violent destruction of the US. Dabir said that the dual meet will be cancelled if he is not issued a visa. Dabir claimed after the media reports about his US green card that he returned the immigration card.









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