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Thursday, February 03, 2022

02/03 Links Pt1: Amnesty’s ‘apartheid Israel’ calumny; Israel signs security memorandum with Bahrain, its 2nd with an Arab nation

From Ian:

Amnesty to ToI: No double standard in accusing Israel, but not China, of apartheid
Immediately after Amnesty International held a press conference in Jerusalem’s Bab A-Zahara neighborhood on Tuesday, The Times of Israel sat down with the group’s secretary general, Agnes Callamard, and Middle East and North Africa research and advocacy director, Philip Luther, to discuss the 278-page report they had released accusing Israel of apartheid.

The Amnesty International report alleged that Israel has maintained “a system of oppression and domination” over the Palestinians going all the way back to the establishment of the state in 1948, and it meets the international definition of apartheid. The accusation was leveled against Israel both within its borders and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In addition to demanding an end to arms sales to the Jewish state, Amnesty called on Israel’s allies in the West and in the Arab world to “use all political and diplomatic tools to ensure Israeli authorities implement the recommendations outlined in this report and review any cooperation and activities with Israel to ensure that these do not contribute to maintaining the system of apartheid.”

Ahead of the report’s release, Israel called it “false, biased, and antisemitic” and accused the organization of endangering the safety of Jews around the world. “Come on, this is absurd,” US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides tweeted in response to the report.

There are other things singular about Israel too. It’s singular that you have other countries calling for its destruction at the UN. It’s singular that it’s the only Jewish state.

Luther: Correct.

So these are singular things which might explain the obsessive focus on Israel. You say it’s the occupation that is the most pressing issue for UN human rights bodies.

Luther: No, no, it’s not the most pressing, but the thing is, it is a singular issue. Normally, when people go to the UN, they’re reporting on violations that they’re committing within their recognized borders. That is very particular, and therefore you will see mechanisms that will be set up in order to deal with that. And that, I would suggest in terms of the report, its intention, in terms of the Israeli state, is the complexity of laws, policies and practices that is difficult to disentangle.

Therefore, to go back to your question on resources, it is the Israeli state that forces everyone to spend time disentangling it. The Syrian regime is absolutely abhorrent, in all its ways, and you will see far more reports over recent years on Syria and the crimes against humanity there. And it’s chillingly simple. It’s massacres. It’s bombs being dropped on residential areas.

Now that takes less time to disentangle. You still need to get the evidence, but it explains partly why. It’s because the Israeli state has made it so difficult to penetrate. They have tried to create a smokescreen around, and of course there is a democratic system, and there are judicial institutions that of course then call the state to account, or at least challenge their decisions. But that’s what makes it so challenging in some ways then to disentangle them when you put it all together.

So I would put it back on the Israeli state. In some ways, it ends up being a driver of complexity and a driver of resources unnecessarily spent on investigations by anybody, because it’s made so damn complicated.
David Horovitz: Amnesty’s ‘apartheid Israel’ calumny
Yet it is the destruction of Israel that Amnesty International transparently seeks and encourages — by demanding a “right of return” of potentially millions of Palestinians to Israel, rather than their inclusion in their own future state once they’ve come to terms with ours; by calling on the international community to deny Israel the arms it unfortunately requires to defend itself against the region’s aggressors; and by misrepresenting the reality on the ground here in a report designed to weaken international support for and identity with our small nation, surviving and flourishing against all odds.

For those who make the effort to look deeply at our complex reality and its context, Tuesday’s report will only discredit Amnesty International. In those many quarters where people do not make that effort, unfortunately, the selection of Israel as only the second country, after Myanmar, to be branded by Amnesty International as a practitioner of apartheid will do great harm.

Doubtless our critics won’t take his word for it, but it might give them pause were they to learn the identity of that prominent and knowledgeable Israeli whose tweet I quoted above, acknowledging our “many problems” but dismissing the apartheid calumny.

It was Issawi Frej, a Muslim Arab whose grandfather was killed in the Kafr Qasim massacre, and who currently serves as the minister of regional cooperation… in the government of the “apartheid” State of Israel.
Commentary Magazine Podcast: Shamnesty International
Tablet Magazine’s senior writer, Liel Leibovitz, joins the podcast to dismantle Amnesty International’s report alleging that Israel is an apartheid state.




Elliot Abrams: Amnesty International Joins the Anti-Israel Jackals
Amnesty International (AI) has now produced a vicious attack on Israel reminiscent of the Soviet anti-Semitic and anti-Israel tracts from the height of the Cold War in its report, Israel's Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity. If I said that World War II started when "conflict broke out in 1939" rather than saying that it started when the Nazis disassembled Czechoslovakia and invaded Poland, you'd say I was a Nazi propagandist. But that's essentially what AI does in this document. That Israel accepted the UN partition and the Arab states all then attacked it is unmentioned.

In 2005, Israel removed every single Israeli civilian, every soldier, and every military base from Gaza, yet AI refers to it as "occupied" by Israel about a hundred times.

What about the terrible conditions under which AI says Israeli Arabs live? While Arabs are 20% of all Israelis, they are 35% of Israeli pharmacists. Already in 2015, 16% of all medical students in the country were Arab; at the Technion, Arabs comprised 38% of students by 2015, and at Ben-Gurion University, they comprised 31% - hardly a sign of apartheid and oppression.

According to Amnesty, Jews are Israelis; Arabs are "Palestinians." But that is not what Israeli Arabs say: a 2020 poll by the Jewish People Policy Institute reported "a dramatic rise in the share of Arab Israelis who define their primary identity as "Israeli" and a sharp decline in the share who self-identify as "Palestinian."
Yoseph Haddad: Amnesty Tries to Distort My Arab Identity
As an Israeli Arab who grew up in Nazareth, Amnesty International's recent report tries to distort my identity. Israeli Arabs like me live under the democratically elected government of Israel with equal rights like any Jewish citizen. No matter how many times Amnesty International tries to erase my identity to advance their political agenda, that doesn't make it the truth.

I was a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces protecting the north of Israel - where most of the Israeli-Arab community lives - from terrorist rocket attacks by Hizbullah. I was also a commander of dozens of Jewish soldiers. What kind of "apartheid" would let Arabs give orders to Jews?

A recent report by the Israel Democracy Institute showed that the majority of Israeli Arabs identify as Arab or Israeli Arab. Only 7% identify as Palestinian. In our Arab-Israeli community, the majority want to live in peace with Jews. Many already are an integral part of Israeli society.

If Israel has a racial issue with Arabs, why did we then make peace with Morocco, UAE, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain? Why then are there so many Arabs who are part of Israel’s government, making decisions that impact every Israeli? Why are there Arab judges deciding on the fate of Israeli citizens in court?


Headlines with the Haddads - Antisemitism, Iran, and Amnesty
On the premiere episode of Headlines with the Haddads, Emily and Yoseph talk the surge in antisemitism, the increasing aggression by Iran backed militias in the Middle East, and the new Amnesty International report labeling Israel "apartheid"


Attention Amnesty International: The Jewish State’s Existence Is Not a Crime
The recent Amnesty International report about the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories did not take many of us by surprise. Inherently flawed, biased, and inaccurate from start to finish, there was no shock at the way in which Amnesty co-opted the word apartheid for the purposes of criticizing the Jewish State. It’s what antisemites do. Unfortunately, despite the noble intentions of its founders, in recent years, Amnesty’s efforts have increasingly reflected the anti-Israel obsession of the organization’s leadership.

Amnesty, whose broad vision is of course applaudable, has become a hotbed of anti-Israel hatred. Take Saleh Hijazi, the Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa. In theory, his role is to focus on human rights across the region. As anyone familiar with the Middle East will know, this is no small task. Yet, a cursory glance at his Twitter posts reveals what looks like an unhealthy obsession with — and even hatred of — Israel, the sole Jewish state (and of course the only liberal democracy) in the region. While his comments on evil regimes like Iran and Syria are sporadic at best, his criticisms of Israel are incessant. For Hijazi, it seems that Israel is the source of all evil.

The new Amnesty report concludes that “Israel has perpetrated the international wrong of apartheid.” As someone born in South Africa, I am deeply offended by this wildly inaccurate and historically illiterate comparison, and see it as my duty to draw readers’ attention to the malicious falsehoods inherent in this choice of terms. As the US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, responded, “This is absurd.”

Indeed, anyone who has visited Israel — where equal opportunity is afforded to all citizens regardless of their gender, race, or religion — will instantly understand why this poor choice of terms is not only absurd, but also offensive.
Dexter Van Zile: Weaponizing Human Rights to Harass Israel and Jews
The ultimate message of the report is that a Jewish and democratic state is inherently racist and inherently amounts to apartheid. In Amnesty’s attempt to portray Jewish self-determination as an example of the crime of apartheid, the organization creates a unique standard that if applied to other countries would render them criminal states as well. But no such application is in the offing.

And by declaring that the presence of Jews in the West Bank is illegal, the report is actually promoting Mahmoud Abbas’s declaration that “Not a single Israeli” can live in the future Palestinian state. How is that not calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homes? Arabs, who comprise 20 percent of Israel’s population and enjoy rights they would not enjoy in any Arab-majority state, can live in Israel. Why must there be no Jews in a future Palestinian state?

It’s one thing to “simplify” the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but what Amnesty has done with this report is to bastardize, adulterate, and weaponize the principles of human rights to provide cover for Palestinian elites who have used anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hostility to distract the people they govern from their corruption and authoritarianism. And instead of confronting this reality, Amnesty condemns Israeli lawmakers for their insistence that Israel remain a Jewish state, declaring that this by itself codifies the oppression of non-Jews in the country.

Canadian human rights lawyer Irwin Cutler once referred to human rights as a secular religion in the modern world. The tenets of this religion were laid down in the aftermath of the Holocaust that resulted in the murder of six million Jews in Europe. And the adherents of this secular religion rooted in these deaths are now using Jews and their state as a negative foil to highlight their own moral and intellectual superiority.

Where have we seen that before?


The vital lesson of Amnesty's 'apartheid' report
"Instead of seeking the truth, Amnesty echoes the same lies shared by terrorist organizations," Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said in wake of the London-based organizations report accusing Israel of apartheid.

One wonders whether his remark also referred to the Palestinian Authority, which under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas has played a key role in spreading false propaganda against Israel and leads an international legal campaign against Jerusalem, and which praised the Amnesty report and used it to urge the United Nations to impose sanctions on the Jewish state.

There is no point in justifying our position to those whose motives are not necessarily driven by a search for truth and justice. Their venomous criticism of us should rather be seen as an opportunity to see who we can work with, and make firm our beliefs.

Not even a week after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Amnesty UK showed us what modern-day antisemitism is, the kind that disguises itself as pursuit of human rights and justice, that strives to deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination, and that applies a double standard to Israel alone.
Bassem Eid: Amnesty International Video
Amnesty International is lying about Israel. As a Palestinian peace activist and the founder of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, I’m here to set the record straight: Israel is not an apartheid state. Watch my video to learn the facts!


Why Anti-Zionism Is Anti-Semitism
Of the pernicious tropes spawning from our political extremes, the most egregious is the conferral of "white settler" status upon Jews - an indigenous people defined both by religion and by multi-ethnic identity. "White settlers" are apex oppressors on the hierarchy of racial grievances, and Jews - with their inseparable Zionism - do not count among today's trending persecuted groups. This ill-conceived "white settler" trope negates the existence of millions of Jews from Arab lands, and overlooks the reality that Eastern European Jews have never been considered "white," either by self-identification or by anti-Semites.

Anti-Zionism extends beyond mere critique. It denies Israeli legitimacy and the right of Jews to defend a homeland secured through existential wars. It denies Israel's capital, Jerusalem, and sympathizes with bad actors who commit violence against synagogues and Jewish neighborhoods. It denies the noble cause of self-determination for an indigenous people, including their right to self-defense from genocide. Ultimately, anti-Zionism nurtures aspirations to exterminate Jews.

Any denial of Israel's right to exist and defend itself is a denial of the right of Jews to exist and defend themselves.




U.S. Rejects Labeling Israel's Actions toward Palestinians as "Apartheid"
QUESTION: Going with Israel, Amnesty came out with this report accusing Israel of imposing apartheid on the Palestinians with policies of segregation, dispossession, and exclusion that amount to crimes against humanity. What’s the U.S. Government’s response to that? Do you agree with the conclusions of this report, and do you share those concerns about the situation there in Israel?

MR PRICE: Well, Simon, you know that as a general matter we don’t offer public comprehensive evaluations of reports by outside groups. We have our own rigorous standards and processes for making determinations on potential human rights abuses, for documenting what we see take place around the world, including on an annual basis in the Human Rights Report.

What I will say, however, is that we reject the view that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid. The department’s own reports have never used such terminology. We are committed to promoting respect for human rights in Israel and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. We have an enduring partnership with Israel, and we discuss a wide range of issues with our Israeli counterparts, including those related to human rights.

We support the efforts of the Israeli Government, of the Palestinian Authority, alongside human rights activists to ensure accountability for human rights violations and abuses. And we continue to emphasize to Israel and to the Palestinian Authority the need to refrain, as you’ve heard us say repeatedly, from unilateral actions that exacerbate tensions. This includes the annexation of territory, settlement activity, demolitions, incitement of violence, and the providing of compensations for individuals imprisoned for acts of terrorism. We take all allegations of human rights abuses seriously – that is true around the world – including allegations of arbitrary detention, and we continue around the world to urge respect for human rights.

QUESTION: A follow-up on —

QUESTION: Do you think it comes from a place of anti-Semitism to make those accusations? That’s what Israel’s response to Amnesty has been.

MR PRICE: We have had an opportunity to speak about this with our Israeli counterparts. They have conveyed their objections to the report. As we’ve noted, we don’t offer our own public comprehensive evaluations of reports, but we certainly reject the label that has been attached to this.

When speaking about Israel – one other point here – we think that it is important as the world’s only Jewish state that the Jewish people must not be denied their right to self-determination, and we must ensure there isn’t a double standard being applied.
Germany rejects Amnesty’s description of Israel as an apartheid state
Germany said on Wednesday it rejects the use of the term “apartheid” to describe Israel, a day after Amnesty International report accused the Jewish state of discriminatory practices amounting to apartheid both within its internationally recognized borders and in the Palestinian territories.

“We reject expressions like apartheid or a one-sided focusing of criticism on Israel. That is not helpful to solving the conflict in the Middle East,” Reuters quoted Foreign Ministry spokesperson Christopher Burger as saying in a news conference.

His comments followed similar criticism by US officials.

US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides rejected the report, calling its central accusation “absurd.”

State Department spokesman Ned Price said the US does not generally comment on reports by outside groups, but it rejects the view that Israel’s actions constitute apartheid.


South Africans react to the accusation that Israel is an Apartheid state.



Uncritical amplification of AI’s ‘apartheid’ smear from BBC News
No mention is made of the relevant fact that no other refugees in the world are given automatic hereditary refugee status or that a significant proportion of those 5.3 million people hold citizenship in a third country (e.g. in Jordan) and/or live under Palestinian control.

A link to a previous BBC article from April 2021 promoting a similar report by ‘Human Rights Watch’ is provided both in the body of this article and at its end. However the BBC makes no effort to explain the dynamics and aims behind the ongoing campaign to delegitimise Israel by political NGOs including ‘B’tselem’, ‘Human Rights Watch’ (both of which are mentioned in AI’s report, along with a plethora of additional anti-Israel NGOs framed as ‘human rights organisations’) and now ‘Amnesty International’.

A link to the uncredited AI report was added to the BBC’s article some four and a half hours after its initial publication. Most readers will of course not bother to plough through that amended version of the over 200 page report and few of those that do will have the knowledge to assess its claims critically, not least because the BBC has failed to provide such information both in this article and in the past.

Amnesty International was once a respected advocate of human rights. Sadly, that changed years ago and, along with other NGOs such as ‘Human Rights Watch’ which have abandoned their original mission, it has taken up the cause of delegitimising Israel’s very existence.

The BBC has shown little interest in holding the organisations it blandly presents to its audiences as ‘human rights groups’ to account. Instead it continues to provide uncritical amplification for their political agendas in articles such as this, thereby mainstreaming the ‘apartheid’ smear intended to delegitimise the existence of the sole Jewish state.
Amnesty International Accuses Israel of Apartheid; Toronto Star Scribe Shree Paradkar Repeats Claims Uncritically
On February 1, Amnesty International, an organization which has shown a consistent anti-Israel obsession in recent years, released a report accusing Israel of apartheid.

Amnesty’s well known for its anti-Israel animus and has been discredited due to its faulty methodology and politicized smear campaigns. This latest report is far from a surprise and has been described as an effort that demonizes Israel, that denies the Jewish state’s right to exist and that is antisemitic.

It didn’t take long for Shree Paradkar, “Race & Gender Columnist” and “Internal Ombud” for the Toronto Star, to pen a commentary saying Amnesty produced a “bombshell report”, repeating the anti-Israel NGO’s talking points almost verbatim.

Paradkar discussed at length the report’s details about the alleged crimes of Israel’s security measures in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”), but gave no context, examples or statistics to demonstrate how, for example, the security barrier erected by Israel has resulted in a dramatic drop in the number of Palestinian terrorists entering Israel intent on maiming and murdering Israelis.

But despite the claim of “apartheid” lobbed by Amnesty International, there is no evidence to buttress the allegation that Israel is an apartheid state, and in fact, significant evidence exists demonstrating that Israel is the polar opposite of how its detractors depict it.

Under apartheid South Africa, interracial marriages were against the law, and Blacks were forced to live in specific neighbourhoods and suffered manifold abuses to their civil liberties.

Does this resemble Israel at all?


PreOccupiedTerritory: Violence Against Diaspora Jews Weirdly Ineffective In Convincing Them Jews Don’t Need Israel For Safety (satire)
Cairo, February 3 – Opponents of Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland voiced frustration today that their ongoing efforts to demonstrate that Jews do not need that sovereignty, by means of harassing, attacking, and inciting against those Jews everywhere, has borne little practical fruit, with vanishingly few Jews remaining in those lands that spent hundreds or thousands of years treating them as second-class at best, and as fodder for extermination at worst.

Anti-Zionist activists in the Middle East, where thriving Jewish communities existed until the middle of the twentieth century amid rising persecution, expressed puzzlement and disappointment in numerous interviews and discussions this week that their main avenue of endeavor to convince Jews to trust their host cultures to protect them – in the main by confiscating Jewish property, mass-raping Jewish women, imprisoning Jews on trumped-up charges, subjecting Jews to massacres and pillage, and generally making living safely as a Jew in countries throughout the region untenable – has enjoyed precious little success. In fact, the activists acknowledged, such treatment only accelerated the migration of Jews from the lands they had inhabited for up to twenty-five centuries to the reestablished Jewish one.

“Jews don’t need to cause trouble or risk displacing Palestinian Arabs by establishing a state of their own,” argued Moroccan activist Hassan Mubruk. “That’s a point my predecessors and I have made repeatedly, but the Jews refused to listen, and now the region has seen a century of turmoil. As soon as the Zionists declared their statehood more than seventy years ago, our governments stressed that in cogent terms: we nationalized their property, looted their homes, beat them in the streets, and sent them packing with little more than the clothes on their backs – and they spat on our faces by going, by and large, to the Zionist entity, in direct contravention of everything we had worked to instill in them. The lack of appreciation for our concern for their welfare just galls.”
Israel signs security memorandum with Bahrain, its 2nd with an Arab nation
Defense Minister Benny Gantz signed a memorandum of understanding with his Bahraini counterpart on Thursday, formalizing the security relationship after the Gulf country normalized ties with Israel a year and a half ago.

Following the signing, the defense minister met with Bahraini Crown Prince and Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa and then with King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

According to Gantz’s office, the memorandum of understanding “will help advance intelligence cooperation, a framework for exercises, and cooperation between the countries’ defense industries.”

It is only Israel’s second memorandum of understanding with an Arab nation, the first being with Morocco, which Gantz signed late last year.

Gantz signed the agreement with Bahraini Defense Minister Abdullah Bin Hassan Al Nuaimi, alongside Commander-in-Chief of the Bahrain Defence Force Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, at the Bahraini Defense Ministry headquarters in Manama.

“The strategic cooperation that we are bringing to a new high point today with the signing of this agreement and with the important meeting with the king is the continuation of the historic Abraham Accords and of the developing relationship between our nations and people,” Gantz said at the ceremony.
How Netanyahu, Friedman convinced Trump that Abbas doesn’t want peace
Former US president Donald Trump already believed at the beginning of his administration that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not want peace with the Palestinians, former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman reveals in his soon-to-be-released book, Sledgehammer.

Friedman describes in the book – set to be released on February 9 – how he and Trump’s Middle East envoy at the time, Jason Greenblatt, tipped off Netanyahu and worked together to disabuse Trump of that notion.

The ambassador describes a “brilliant move” by the Palestinians ahead of Trump’s visit to the region in May 2017, in which they had “a respected businessman, major philanthropist and active player in the region,” and a Trump supporter, speak to the president on the topic.

That person is Ron Lauder, who once supported Netanyahu but had a falling out with him, though Friedman does not name him in the book.

Lauder told Trump that the Palestinians “were prepared to make peace with Israel on very favorable terms, even to include conceding all of Jerusalem to Israeli sovereignty and giving up the return of refugees, but the problem was that Bibi Netanyahu was unwilling to negotiate peace. The surrogate informed the president that he needed to pressure Netanyahu and embrace Abbas in order to make a deal. Trump bought it... He was going to put the screws to Netanyahu to force a deal.”

Knowing that Abbas would never consider such a deal that Lauder claimed, Greenblatt called Friedman, and they agreed that Netanyahu should be warned that the Palestinians had manipulated Trump.

Netanyahu was “very agitated” by the call, and called Friedman for a meeting.

The ambassador suggested that the Prime Minister’s Office prepare a video that would reveal Abbas’s “true colors.”

Contrary to what journalist Bob Woodward reported in his book Rage – that Netanyahu showed Trump a doctored video – Friedman writes: “I emphasized that this needed to be completely honest – nothing out of context and nothing subject to multiple interpretations.”
Biden Should Be Ashamed of His Treatment of the UAE
"After the terrorist designation was lifted, it is clear the Houthis believed they could resume their terrorist operations because no one was prepared to stop them." — A senior Gulf security official, to the author, January 2022.

Emirati leaders have publicly called on US President Joe Biden to reimpose Washington's terrorist designation against the Houthis, a move Gulf officials say would ultimately disrupt Iranian attempts to supply the rebels with sophisticated weaponry.

In addition, Washington should also pay heed to the Emiratis' request, and that of other oil-rich potential targets in the Gulf, for enhanced defence capabilities to counter the Houthi threat.

At the very least, therefore, the Biden administration should make amends for its ill-conceived decision to lift the terrorist designation against the Houthis, and provide the Emiratis with the sophisticated weaponry they require to defend themselves against the deadly threat posed by the Iranian-backed rebels.

The continuing escalation by Iran and the Houthis is -- as most likely is their intent -- threatening to destabilise the region. If they are not stopped, and quickly, the Biden legacy, along with its catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, will consist of appeasing and emboldening groups that draw on terrorism -- such as the Houthis, the Palestinians and possibly the Taliban -- as well as hostile regimes, including Russia, China and Iran.
Ukraine asks Israel for assistance with air, cyber defenses
Ukraine asked Israel for assistance with air and cyber defenses, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told Israeli media on Wednesday.

Kuleba said there was "very deep cooperation" between the two countries during a press conference. "We are also interested in deepened defense cooperation … in particular related to air defense," he told reporters.

"We would welcome the effort of Israel to play a diplomatic role between Ukraine and Russia," he added.

Meanwhile, Israel's Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told Axios on Wednesday he doesn't believe there will be a violent confrontation between Russia and Ukraine.

"At the moment, the (Israeli) assessment is that we don't see a violent confrontation soon. I also don't think a world war is about to start there," Lapid told Axios.

He stressed that Israel faces a complicated situation due to the large Jewish communities in both Russia and Ukraine.

"We have a duty to act with caution about the Russia-Ukraine crisis that no other country has," he said, according to Axios.
Israel needs the resolve to fight Arab crime despite criticism
I recently had the opportunity to attend a conference organized by MK Yoav Gallant and my organization, Im Tirtzu, that focused on an assessment of Israel’s current security situation. The security under consideration was not the threat from Iran but the threat from within.

The news was not good. There was unanimous concern about the deteriorating internal security picture, given the widespread riots in mixed cities throughout Israel this past May, and continued aggressive and criminal behavior by Bedouin in the Negev and Arabs in the Galilee.

The conference was not a finger-pointing exercise; rather, it was a candid admission of an increasingly dire state of affairs and a clarion call for addressing and redressing the situation. There was a strong sense that we had lost our willingness to exercise our sovereignty, to exert control and to make sure that all who live in Israel understand the rules of the game.

This was not a partisan exercise of blaming the current government, even though the two leading speakers, Gallant and MK Avi Dichter, are both senior Likud members and highly experienced government officials. It has been a long process in development, reflecting a time-honored Israeli propensity to kick problems down the road in the name of maintaining the appearance of calm.
IDF Post Near Nablus Attacked in Drive-By Shooting
There was a drive-by shooting attack on a military post at the entrance to Nablus/Shechem in Judea and Samaria on Wednesday night, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

No Israeli casualties were reported.

IDF troops were searching the area for the assailants, according to a statement from the military.
Russian Jamming System in Syria Said to Cause Interference with Flights to Israel
Airplanes flying into Israel from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea are again experiencing navigation problems, due to a signal spoofing system installed by Russia in Syria, Kan news reported Monday.

According to the report, pilots began having issues a few weeks ago and Israel has sent a message to Moscow informing it that the system is interfering with its civilian airspace.

Russia, however, has reportedly rebuffed the Israeli request, insisting the system is needed to protect its soldiers stationed in Syria.

The interference with the airplanes’ GPS reception appears to stem from a form of electronic warfare known as “spoofing,” which Russia has been accused of doing in the past as a defensive measure, despite the disruptions it causes to nearby aircraft and ships.

The report said Israel was working to “neutralize” the jamming, without elaborating.

According to Kan, the issue is related to a signal jammer installed at Hmeimim Air Base in Latakia, close to where some alleged Israeli airstrikes have taken place recently. However, officials reportedly believe the jamming to be aimed at other targets, with Israel as collateral damage.
Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians lost confidence in 'corrupt' leadership, PLO official tells Post
Veteran PLO official Bassam Abu Sharif criticized the Palestinian Authority leadership for disregarding the decisions of Palestinian institutions to suspend all ties with Israel.

Abu Sharif, who previously served as a senior adviser to former PLO leader Yasser Arafat, told The Jerusalem Post that the PA leadership has turned the decisions into “toilet paper.”

He held the PA leadership responsible for “rampant corruption.”

Abu Sharif’s remarks came on the eve of a meeting of the Palestinian Central Council (PCC), a key decision-making body, scheduled to take place on Sunday.

The PCC, which consists of various Palestinian factions, is expected to approve the appointment of two senior officials – Hussein al-Sheikh and Rouhi Fattouh – to senior positions in the Palestinian leadership.

Sheikh is expected to replace the late Saeb Erekat, who died in 2020, as secretary-general of the PLO Executive Committee.
PA to Provide Financial and Legal Assistance to Jerusalem’s Arabs with Illegal Buildings
The Palestinian Authority stated Wednesday that it attaches extraordinary importance to strengthening “the Palestinians’ standing” in Jerusalem and will provide its Arab residence with economic and legal support for “the preservation of Palestinian assets and presence in the city in the face of the unprecedented Israeli attack on the Arab presence in the city.”

Legal aid will be directed to families whose illegal homes have been demolished due to the lack of building permits and to those facing eviction or demolition orders. They will receive free legal advice, funded by the PA, in order to petition against the demolition of houses, assistance in obtaining building permits, and advice in the field of engineering planning prior to obtaining permits.

To date, the PA has provided NIS 3.6 million in emergency aid to 137 families whose homes are facing demolition. The PA government, through its legal team, is following up on more than 2,000 lawsuits being filed against eastern Jerusalem residents in the courts. The number of cases is growing at a rate of 60 new cases a month, according to the PA.

The Palestinian Authority’s institutions has claimed legal achievements, including the freezing of demolition orders for dozens of houses and the redesign of neighborhood projects that led to the freezing of the demolition of hundreds of houses.

“Dozens of decisions to evict homes in the various neighborhoods in Jerusalem have been frozen and we have recorded success in managing a number of cases related to the issue of property and seizure of real estate on the grounds of bankruptcy,” the PA said in a statement.

The government will also fund the increase in the number of lawyers working to protect eastern Jerusalem prisoners.

The economic assistance will be directed mainly to traders in the east of the city and to support civic institutions that provide services to the population in the fields of education, health, culture, women and youth.
PMW: PA repeats the Big Lie: “Not a single Palestinian has carried out a single operation in order to kill civilians”
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” This sentence describes a core tenet of Nazi propaganda, but it could also be said to apply to the PA’s repetition of insidious lies and libels.

Palestinian Media Watch exposed one such “big lie” told by Nasser Al-Lahham, a regular host on official PA TV, who whitewashed all Palestinian terrorists, claiming they have “refused to kill children and civilians.” Ignoring the entire history of Palestinian terror, in which thousands of Israeli civilians have been targeted and murdered, Al-Lahham even went so far as to say that Israelis seek to kill Palestinian civilians and children.

As if this wasn’t enough, Al-Lahham repeated his lie the following week in an apparent attempt to cement it in public consciousness:
Official PA TV host Nasser Al-Lahham: “I want to again emphasize what I said in previous episodes: Not a single Palestinian has carried out a single operation (i.e., terror attack) in order to kill civilians, but all the operations that the Zionist parties carried out were in order to kill [civilians]… Palestinians kidnap or shoot in the air to express the justice of their cause, while the Israelis shoot to kill.”

[Official PA TV, From the Israeli Archive, Dec. 12, 2021]

Al-Lahham in the previous episode:
Official PA TV host Nasser Al-Lahham: “The Palestinian fighters - from Fatah, the PFLP, the DFLP, and all the factions, with all due respect to them and from the Hamas Movement – they refused to kill children and civilians … Our self-sacrificing fighters, our fighters, and our members of Fatah, the PFLP, and Hamas, and all the self-sacrificing fighters of the Palestinian revolution do not murder children and civilians, while Israel does murder children and civilians.”

[Official PA TV, From the Israeli Archive, Dec. 5, 2021]




NYTs: U.S. and Allies Close to Reviving Nuclear Deal with Iran
The U.S. and its European allies appear on the cusp of restoring the deal that limited Iran's nuclear program, Biden administration officials said on Monday. A senior administration official said the talks had reached the decision-making stage.

Restoring the deal from 2015 would mean all limits on the production of nuclear material would still expire in 2030, at which point Iran would be free to resume the kind of fuel production it has underway now. The new deal would not limit Iran's missile development or halt Tehran's support for terrorist groups or its proxy forces, which have stirred unrest across the Middle East.

Ali Akbar Salehi, former head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said, "it appears that the nuclear negotiations will reach the end result that we have in mind."

Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said, "Any nuclear deal will allow Iran to take patient pathways to nuclear weapons as key restrictions expire and tens of billions of dollars flow into the coffers of the regime to finance its destructive activities."
Israel Allowed US Officer to Observe Long-Range IAF Strike Exercise Involving Iran
For the first time, Israel allowed a US military officer to observe an Israeli Air Force exercise simulating long-range missions, including Iran, Kan news said in a report on Tuesday.

It described an “operational and classified exercise held two weeks ago, with tens of aircraft, in the background of the last round of nuclear talks occurred in Vienna.”

The exercise involved multiple scenarios, the report said, including mid-air refueling, striking distant targets and dealing with surface-to-air missile batteries.

The report also noted that an American-Israeli strategic forum dedicated to the Iranian issue, called “Opal” (“Leshem” in Hebrew), saw an American statement welcoming the presence of the American observer in the exercise.

It said a number of bilateral military joint exercises are scheduled, including “Juniper Corba,” which simulates joint air-defense cooperation in Israel in the event of a long-range missile attack.

The report further cited a senior US State Department official as stating on Monday that the window of opportunity for reviving the nuclear deal with Iran is closing.
Menendez Raises Concerns Over Biden’s Strategy on Iran Nuclear Talks
Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the senate’s top Democrat on foreign policy, expressed serious concerns over the direction of the Biden administration’s ongoing nuclear talks with Iran.

“As someone who has followed Iran’s nuclear ambition for the better part of three decades, I am here today to raise concerns about the current round of negotiations over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and Iran’s dangerously and rapidly escalating nuclear program that has put it on the brink of having enough material for a nuclear weapon,” said Menendez in a speech on Monday on the Senate floor.

The senator, who heads the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee and would have considerable influence over any US agreement to re-enter the nuclear deal, said, “three to four weeks. A month or less. That’s how long most analysts have concluded it would take Iran to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, if they choose to do so. That is not a timeline we can accept.”

“That is why I’m calling on the Biden administration and our international partners to exert more pressure on Iran to counter its nuclear program, its missile program and its dangerous behavior around the Middle East, including attacks on American personnel and assets,” said Menendez.
'State Of Explosion': Leaked IRGC Document Warns Of Rising Discontent In Iran
A “highly confidential” state document leaked to RFE/RL’s Radio Farda warns that discontent is rising in Iran, with society in a “state of explosion.”

The document highlights the clerical establishment’s concerns over potential social unrest due to the deteriorating economy, which has been crushed by crippling U.S. sanctions and years of mismanagement.

The seven-page document allegedly comes from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Iran’s elite military force. It was leaked by Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice), a hacktivist group that has previously disclosed secret documents and videos about the mistreatment of inmates in an Iranian prison.

RFE/RL could not independently verify the authenticity of the document.

The leaked document includes notes from a November 2021 task-force meeting chaired by Brigadier General Hossein Nejat, a senior IRGC commander and deputy head of Sarallah, a key IRGC base that oversees security in Tehran.

The meeting of the Working Group On the Prevention Of A Livelihood-Based Security Crisis was attended by representatives from the IRGC, the volunteer Basij militia, the intelligence bodies, and the Tehran Prosecutor's Office, according to the leaked document.

The meeting notes quote an official from the IRGC’s intelligence wing, who is only referred to as “Mohammadi,” as saying that a survey conducted by the unit shows that public discontent in the country of around 84 million is threatening to boil over.
Iran accused of sowing Israel discontent with fake Jewish Facebook group
A suspected Iranian disinformation unit ran an elaborate network on Facebook targeting nationalist and ultra-religious Jews in Israel in an attempt to stoke division and inflame tensions with Palestinians, according to research shared exclusively with the BBC.

The alleged foreign interference campaign ran across multiple social media platforms posing as an ultra-Orthodox Jewish news group supportive of extreme right-wing groups.

Its goal was to help fuel "religious war" by amplifying "fear, hatred and chaos", according to the Israeli disinformation watchdog FakeReporter, which uncovered the group's suspected Iranian origin.

It is the latest sign of a growing disinformation battleground on social media and messaging apps in Israel. The network became active after last year's flare-up in sectarian violence in the country.

In one case, the network reposted a video of a confrontation between a far-right MP, who was carrying a gun, and a Palestinian car parking attendant, adding the comment: "It's a shame he didn't give him one in the head."

Facebook and Twitter deactivated the group's pages and associated profiles after being approached by FakeReporter. The network remains active on the messaging channel Telegram.







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