Monday, February 14, 2022

From Ian:

Recent antisemitic events should serve as a wakeup call for Israel
Colleyville, Whoopi Goldberg, Amnesty International. These are just some of the names and headlines that have been circulating around the world and the hot topics of conversation in the Jewish community. Whether the nature of these incidents, verbal or otherwise, was antisemitic and what the ramifications will be for the Jewish community as a whole and Israel, in particular, has been the discussion held around many a Shabbat table in the last few weeks.

So often, these kinds of conversations wind up circling back to rising antisemitism in the diaspora and the diaspora Jewish community’s response, how they should fight back or even, at least within Israel, asking what Jews are still doing living outside of Israel. It’s time that we, in Israel, start to change our perspective.

Once upon a time, when Israel was still a newly born state, fighting every day for its survival, Israelis viewed Diaspora Jews as their saving grace. They looked to them for support, lobbying, assistance with government relations and money. Israel relied on them to help in their struggle and continued existence, and diaspora Jewry readily accepted that role. But somewhere along the way, there was a shift. Israel is no longer the brand new “little engine that could.” Instead, Israel became the Start-up Nation, a nation of strength, a nation of fighters and tech and innovation. And slowly, Israel stopped relying on Diaspora Jewry and started taking their support for granted. Sadly, in addition to the change on Israel’s side, change was also seen on the Diaspora side. No longer was support for Israel unquestionable. Jews around the world have become more critical and questioning – especially among the younger generations. Now, diaspora Jewry is facing a rise in antisemitism – something that until now, young Jews have yet to contend with and face. In many cases, this antisemitism stems directly from anti-Zionist and anti-Israel sentiments and diaspora Jews are automatically the target for those attacks.

This rise in antisemitism and ignorance surrounding its nature has already woken up diaspora Jewry, we in Israel must wake up now. We need to take responsibility for our brothers and sisters around the world, just as they once took responsibility for us. We need to find ways to build a bridge and connect with them. We need to encourage the strengthening of Jewish and Israel education in diaspora communities so that the younger generation remembers what their ancestors fought for all those years ago and be ready to take up the fight themselves.
Case Study The Anatomy of ONE of Amnesty’s Falsehoods
There’s nothing new in Amnesty International’s latest report seeking to delegitimize Israel’s existence.

The dogma of anti-Israelism — not criticism of Israel, but opposition to the survival of the Jewish and democratic state — is many decades old. Palestinian leaders violently opposed immigration by the children of Israel to the Land of Israel before the State of Israel even existed. In 1948, the Arab world went to war to prevent a United Nations compromise calling for both a Jewish and an Arab state on the coveted territory. And for decades, the Palestinian national movement has viewed the struggle against Jewish self-determination as, in the words of historian Benny Morris, a “zero-sum game: if the Jews win, we are lost.”

While Middle Eastern fundamentalists continue to issue pithy calls to “wipe Israel off the map,” radical NGOs have taken the longer route, using reams of paper and scores of footnotes to demand the same. Now, even organizations that were once mainstream have radicalized and joined that number.

This drift to radicalism, too, has been years in the making. In 2009, Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, issued a stunning rebuke of the organization he created, lamenting that it had lost perspective, abandoned its mission, and risked undermining its own reputation, largely because of its unjustifiable obsession with Israel.

Long before that, and certainly before 2010 when Salman Rushdie charged Amnesty International with “moral bankruptcy,” Amnesty officials expressed similar concerns. In 1970, the group’s US chairman Mark Benenson publicly slammed the organization, charging that its reporting on Israel “reveals the zeal of the prosecutor, convinced of the defendant’s guilt,” and “omits material which would help the defense.”

Two years later, after Amnesty appeared to shrug at the massacre of Israeli Jews by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics, Gidon Gottlieb, Amnesty’s representative to the UN, resigned, citing his colleagues’ “moral obtuseness” and the organization’s “climate of tolerance from inhuman acts by ‘the underdog.’”

Anti-Israel extremism and rejectionism have been the consistent background music accompanying conversations about the Jewish state, and before that about Jewish immigration to the Levant. Amnesty might have brought some new tinsel to the party. But the bubbles are flat, the ashtrays are full, and the phonograph keeps spinning the same, stale tune.
Several fatal flaws in Amnesty's 'apartheid' smear
While much has been written refuting Amnesty’s report accusing Israel of imposing an apartheid regime on Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, their argument, in its declarative accusation cited below, is also a priori flawed on at least three accounts:
Israeli authorities impose a system of domination and oppression against the Palestinian people in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), and against Palestinian refugees.

The first flaw is the use of the term “Palestinian” to refer to Arab Israelis. This represents the frequent attempt by anti-Israeli NGOs – in this case Amnesty – and media outlets to use the term “Palestinians” i.e., Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank – to describe Arab Israelis – i.e., Arab citizens of Israel. This is an attempt to create a completely false equivalence.

The Atlantic magazine recently presented the results of research demonstrating that, in fact, Arab Israelis, by a large majority, do not consider themselves of Palestinian nationality (to the extent that a stateless group can be considered a nation, of course), but either just “Arab” or “Arab-Israeli” .

Moreover, there is a growing trend among Israeli Arabs to hold a positive view of Israel, which of course for good reason was never the case in apartheid South Africa.


Israel’s Islamist kingmaker talks compromise, apartheid and the future
Israel’s Ra’am Party leader Mansour Abbas prefers to focus on the future, not the past.

“You can’t go back … to make changes, to come to compromises, to try and heal all the wounds,” said Abbas. The past, he continued, should be learned from, so that “in the future, we will be able to heal the wounds and correct the stereotypes people have, and to create a future.”

This was the theme Abbas returned to time and again as he addressed a U.S. audience last week for the first time since his stunning and historic choice in June to help form an Israeli government in June. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy said the Feb. 10 Zoom session, in which Abbas, head of the Islamic Movement-aligned Ra’am Party, spoke in Hebrew, was believed to have drawn the largest online audience for any of the think tank’s programs.

The United Arab List Party (Ra’am) is the first Arab party in history to join an Israeli government coalition.

“The discourse of the [Israeli] Arab parties has been a discourse of opposition. We have seen ourselves always as the opposition to whatever there is. It doesn’t matter who is in government—left or right—we have always seen ourselves in opposition and we’ve always said, we want to see change, and then we will see how we can develop a partnership,” he said.

“Now, Ra’am says the exact opposite. It says, actually, that it is impossible to proceed towards a change like this only on one side. We say that you cannot expect a change if we are always opposed to each other and never are in touch with each other,” said Abbas, describing his thinking as his faction became the first Arab party to join an Israeli government,” he continued.

Abbas cited the difficult give-and-take in Israel’s brittle governing coalition, which effectively has a mere two-seat majority in the Knesset and which contains centrist and leftist elements, together with right-wing parties. It requires coalition discipline on virtually all matters, including those that can be difficult for an Arab party to accept.


Seth Mandel: The peacemaker vs. the striped pants boys
On Aug. 13, 2020, the Abraham Accords were signed at the White House, normalizing Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates. Others followed: Bahrain, Kosovo, Morocco, Sudan. Virtually overnight, the entire strategic picture of the Middle East and of Jewish-Arab relations began to change in ways few thought possible. Luckily, those few were the ones handling Mideast diplomacy during the Trump administration’s four years in Washington.

One of them was David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 2017 to 2021. His new memoir, Sledgehammer, is not merely a readable account of historic peacemaking; it is also a manual for navigating the State Department’s long-standing obstructionism toward anyone with an original idea or a drop of sympathy for the Jewish state.

Though Friedman’s knowledge of the region and its history matches or exceeds that of his predecessors, he was dismissed as “unqualified” because he did not go through the requisite brain-deadening reeducation by international-relations professors, whose Arabist affectations were frozen in amber some time in the 1950s. Nor did Friedman spend his professional years in Foggy Bottom, absorbing groupthink and developing the approved posture of aggressive ignorance. Friedman, an Orthodox Jewish attorney from Long Island who earned Trump’s trust by successfully representing him in various disputes, was not looking to ingratiate himself with what Harry Truman called “the striped pants boys.” Past ambassadors saw him as a threat and came out against Friedman’s nomination. Democratic senators and congressmen disgraced themselves by questioning Friedman’s loyalty. And then Friedman did the very thing that his critics were terrified he might do: He succeeded.

Even when Friedman would convince the president to take a specific course of action, other advisers would try to tap on the brakes. A key goal of Friedman’s was to fulfill U.S. law and move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s actual capital, Jerusalem. There was plenty of internal resistance to this move, despite it being a common promise for presidential candidates to make. The only argument against recognizing Jerusalem as the capital was a manufactured fear of Palestinian violence. This was enough to dissuade every president before Trump, but Trump didn’t believe that U.S. policy should be subject to the heckler’s veto.
Israeli Prime Minister to Make First Visit to Bahrain on Monday
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will travel to Bahrain on Monday in the highest-level visit since the countries established relations under a 2020 US-sponsored deal based in part on shared worries about Iran.

Bennett will meet with Bahraini Crown Prince and Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa, his office said.

“The leaders will discuss additional ways to strengthen bilateral ties…especially the advancement of diplomatic and economic issues, with an emphasis on technology and innovation,” it said in a statement.

The two-day trip to Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Gulf headquarters, comes amid heightened tensions after missile attacks on neighboring United Arab Emirates by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis. Israel also normalized ties with UAE in 2020.

Israel has stepped up cooperation with the Gulf states. Manama hosted Israel’s defense minister on Feb. 2 and has said an Israeli military officer will be p
Seth Frantzman: Association of Gulf Jewish Communities celebrates one year anniversary
“The growth of Jewish life in the Gulf Cooperation Council over the past year is nothing short of miraculous,” according to Houda Nonoo, former ambassador of Bahrain to the United States and currently an AGJC board member. “As we mark the first anniversary of the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities, we are celebrating an unprecedented partnership between the Jews of the Gulf.”

The organization was announced last year on February 15. It was formed by Jewish communities in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar. At the time, the creation of the umbrella group came in the wake of the Abraham Accords, which were announced in August and signed in September 2020.

That fall saw the first flights, and soon envoys were exchanged and many other “firsts” were taking place. However, for Jews in the Gulf, there were also major milestones. Hanukkah has now been celebrated twice openly in the UAE, and high-level Israeli officials have visited the Gulf. “We have celebrated many life-cycle events, including a bar mitzvah and wedding in Bahrain,” Nonoo said in a phone interview this week. “As a result of more Jewish individuals and families moving into the region, we are celebrating the Jewish holidays together, gathering each Friday before Shabbat for a special Zoom where we say prayers together, hear a dvar Torah from Rabbi [Elie] Abadie.


NGO: Pillay is biased against Israel, must be ousted from UNHRC probe
Legal expert Navi Pillay has a long history of bias against the Jewish state and should be removed from her position as chair of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s commission of inquiry against Israel, the non-governmental group UN Watch said on Monday.

The Geneva-based NGO sent a letter to Pillay and to the president of the UNHRC, asking for her recusal. It also requested a legal opinion on the matter from the UN Legal Counsel Undersecretary-General Miguel de Serpa Soares.

It also asked that her application to become a member of the probe be made public.

In its 30-page petition, the NGO stated, “UN Watch (petitioner) requests that Navi Pillay recuse herself from the Commission of Inquiry (COI)... on grounds that her numerous prior public statements... evince demonstrable bias against Israel including on issues specifically related to the case and controversy that is the object of this inquiry.”

Pillay, the NGO continued, “cannot impartially investigate Israel for alleged war crimes, human rights abuse and racism, when she has a long record of one-sided settlements that single out Israel for condemnation over alleged war crimes, human rights abuses and racism."

A native of South Africa, Pillay has served as the former High Commissioner of Human Rights, as a judge on the International Criminal Court and as the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Last year, she was appointed to head a three-person commission of inquiry, which is an open-ended probe into alleged Israeli human rights violations and possible war crimes.

The first report is due out this July, during the UNHRC’s 50th session. Israel fears the COI will charge it with the crime of apartheid.

UN Watch has argued that Pillay has already stated that she believes Israel is guilty of apartheid and therefore cannot head that probe.


Israeli 'freedom convoy' heads to Jerusalem to protest COVID mandates
Vehicles set off on Monday morning from cities across Israel to participate in a "Freedom Convoy," calling on the government to lift the state of emergency declared due to the pandemic, according to the event's organizers.

The convoy, which includes trucks, tractors, cars and motorcycles, plans to travel to the Knesset in Jerusalem and dozens of bridges throughout the day. It is organized around a central message: "Take back the wheel" – meaning undoing the state of emergency and repealing the so-called "major corona law" granting the government special powers to deal with the spread of the virus, organizers said in a statement.

The project, inspired by the Canadian Freedom Convoy, was organized by laypeople and funded via a crowdfunding campaign.

The convoy has five additional goals beyond repealing the major corona law, according to the release: returning children to their normal routines, including an end to the mask mandate; a complete opening of the economy, including getting rid of testing and other COVID safety requirements; full disclosure of contracts and protocols that have been withheld from public review and consumption, such as the full contract between the Israeli Health Ministry and pharmaceutical giant Pfizer; ending the violation of individual privacy through street cameras or other illegal surveillance; and respecting individual human rights unconditionally by the government regardless of vaccination status.

"The recent morbidity wave has exposed government shortcomings and poor management of the crisis, which in turn has created a crisis of confidence," according to the organizers. "Many government forecasts have failed to prove true; many promises haven't been kept and citizens are realizing that their elected members in the Knesset are detached, improvising with illogical regulations, driven by personal interests and not by the wellbeing of the public. The role of the government is not to rule but to serve its citizens."

As of Monday morning, meanwhile, the Health Ministry's website's latest figures on the spread of the virus showed 18,023 new cases as of Sunday morning and a total of 284,805 active cases in the country. Of those cases, 1,056 were listed as being in serious condition, with 349 of those patients in critical condition and 285 on ventilators. Since the start of the outbreak, a total of 9,544 people are reported by the ministry to have died due to the virus or virus-related complications.

The number of Israelis who were tested on Sunday stood at 68,993 with 26.12% returning a positive result. As of Monday morning, 46,006 Israelis were in quarantine.
2 arrested in firebombing of Jewish home that set off Sheikh Jarrah clashes
Israeli security forces have arrested two suspects in the firebombing of a Jewish home in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, police announced Monday.

No one was home during the incident over the weekend, which has helped escalate tensions in the flashpoint neighborhood and sparked new clashes on Saturday and Sunday. A police officer who entered the burning house was lightly hurt from smoke inhalation.

Officers found eight Molotov cocktails, gloves and a knit cap while searching the home of one of the suspects, according to a police statement, which said the Shin Bet security service took part in the arrests.

The suspects, both in their 20s, were taken in by the Shin Bet for questioning. Authorities did not say where they were from. The investigation was ongoing.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz hailed the arrests.

“Terrorist activities and violence will be met with a firm response against whoever initiates them,” Gantz wrote on Twitter. “The State of Israel will exercise its sovereignty and maintain law and order in Jerusalem and everywhere under its authority.”


PA official to ‘Post’: Israel, US weakening Palestinian leadership
The Israeli government’s measures and the US administration’s “hesitancy” are weakening the Palestinian Authority on a daily basis, a PA official said Monday.

The Israeli government’s measures and “violations” have made the PA lose its credibility among the Palestinians, Ahmad al-Deek, senior political adviser to PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki, said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

“The Israeli government says that it wants to strengthen the Palestinian Authority,” he said. “However, the [Israeli] government’s measures and actions on the ground are actually weakening the Palestinian Authority.”

Echoing growing disappointment in Ramallah with the government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Deek said the Palestinians have still not seen any confidence-building measures by Israel.

“Where are the confidence-building measures that they talk about every now and then?” he asked. “These measures don’t exist. The [Israeli] government is stating day and night that it won’t negotiate with the Palestinians. It is closing the door to a political process with the Palestinians, while also eliminating the Palestinian issue.”

“Unfortunately, what we see from the Israeli government so far is that it is a government of settlement and settlers,” he added. “It is proceeding with implementing the ‘Deal of the Century,’ predetermining the future of Jerusalem and gradually annexing the West Bank. It is continuing to implement expansionist colonial projects.”

The “Deal of the Century” refers to former US president Donald Trump’s plan for Mideast peace, which has been categorically rejected by the Palestinians as a “conspiracy designed to liquidate the Palestinian cause.”
Interior minister bars firebrand Arab Israeli cleric from leaving country
Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked on Monday signed an order prohibiting extremist Muslim cleric Sheikh Raed Salah from leaving the country.

Security officials had advised Shaked to take the measure in order to stymie Salah’s ability to renew his activities for the Islamic Movement, according to Hebrew media reports.

Salah has long been one of Israel’s most prominent Islamists. He led the Islamic Movement’s radical Northern Branch until it was banned by the government in 2015 for its alleged terror ties. Israeli authorities charged that the Northern Branch had helped incite a wave of stabbing attacks and car-rammings against Israelis.

Salah was arrested two years later and eventually convicted of incitement to terror, as well as supporting a banned organization — in this case, his own movement.

He was released in December last year after serving 17 months and given a hero’s welcome in his hometown of Umm al-Fahm in the north of the country.

Salah was incarcerated for praising a 2017 attack by three Arab Israeli terrorists at the holy Temple Mount site in Jerusalem’s Old City; the assailants gunned down two Druze police officers before being killed by Israeli forces.
Egypt Steps Up Gaza Role
Egyptian flags and billboards praising President el-Sissi have sprung up across Gaza as Egypt has sent crews to clear rubble and is promising to build vast new apartment complexes. "Gaza is a reminder to everybody, effectively, that you can't really do anything without Egypt," said Hafsa Halawa, an expert on Egypt at the Middle East Institute in Washington. Egypt is now subsidizing the construction of three towns that are to house 300,000 residents, according to Naji Sarhan, deputy director of the Hamas-run Housing Ministry.

The Egyptian presence is palpable. Nearly every week, Egyptian delegations visit Gaza to inspect the work. Egyptian flags and banners of Egyptian companies flutter atop bulldozers, trucks and utility poles. Dozens of Egyptian workers sleep at a makeshift hostel in a Gaza City school. Five days a week, Egyptian trucks filled with construction materials flow into Gaza through the Rafah crossing.

The growing Egyptian role gives Cairo a powerful tool to enforce Hamas' compliance with the truce with Israel. It can close Rafah whenever it wants. Israel's current government has taken steps to improve living conditions, including issuing 10,000 permits for Gazans to work inside Israel.


Pentagon Report: Iraq’s Security Forces Overrun by Iranian-Backed Militants
Iraq’s security forces are overrun by Iranian-backed militants, the Pentagon disclosed for the first time publicly in a report indicating Tehran’s anti-American militias have long been cashing in on U.S. taxpayer funds.

"Iran and Iran-aligned militias continue to have strong ties to some elements of Iraq’s traditional security forces," the Pentagon’s inspector general informed Congress in a new report on U.S. military operations in the region. Iraq’s federal police and emergency response division, both overseen by Iraq’s Interior Ministry (MOI), as well as the Iraqi Army’s fifth and eighth divisions "are the units thought to have the greatest Iranian influence." However, "officers sympathetic to Iranian or militia interests are scattered throughout the security services."

The report marks the first unclassified admission that Iran controls and directs large swaths of Iraq’s security infrastructure, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon. Though Iran’s influence has been an open secret for decades, the Pentagon continued to provide funding to Iraq’s MOI, which is siphoned to the country’s Badr Corps, an Iran-created fighting force that was absorbed into Iraq’s security infrastructure after the U.S. invasion of the country in 2003.

The high-ranking presence of the Badr Corps in Iraq’s security forces has long been a source of concern for Iran hawks in Congress. But the Pentagon’s first public acknowledgment of their power is renewing calls for the Biden administration to cut off funds to Iraq’s MOI and designate the Badr Corps as a terrorist group due to its ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

"The DoD’s Inspector General report proves what we’ve known for too long—Iraq’s federal police and MOI have been infiltrated by Iranian-backed militias," Rep. Greg Steube (R., Fla.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Free Beacon. "President Trump’s [National Security Council] warned of this exact scenario and made efforts to cut off funding. With this report in hand, it’s time Congress finally take action to defund any U.S. support going to Iraq’s MOI and federal police forces. Our U.S. taxpayer dollars have no place in the hands of the Iranian regime."

While the Trump administration privately raised concerns about the Badr Corps and Iran’s growing presence in Iraq’s security forces, it was not able to cut funding due to objections from the Pentagon, according to sources familiar with the matter. Despite their ties to Iran, the Badr Corps and other Iranian militia groups in Iraq are seen as central to the battle against ISIS, a rival terrorist faction.

"It was always surprising that DOD justified paying the MOI given their control by Badr Corps and the IRGC," one former Trump administration official who handled Iran and Iraq policy told the Free Beacon. The official requested anonymity in order to openly discuss the sensitive topic.

With the Biden administration in the final stages of inking a new nuclear accord with Iran, it is unlikely the United States will cut funding to the MOI and Badr Corps.


PreOccupiedTerritory: Iran Worries Biden Will Forget Today’s Concessions By Tomorrow (satire)
Negotiators on behalf of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed anxiety today in a message to Teheran that the US president’s mental decline might impair or undermine negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s pursuit of atomic weapons, in particular that his diminishing cognitive capacity will consign any progress from one day to the next to oblivion, forcing the negotiating teams to cover the same points again and again.

A leaked communiqué to the Supreme Leader from his representatives in the Austrian capital, where Iran and various powers are attempting to reach agreement on the scope of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, contains multiple instances of the negotiators’ worries over Joe Biden’s possible dementia or other age-related, memory-compromising condition, in that such a condition effectively erases any concessions the negotiators have extracted from the US during the previous session. The concerns emerged following multiple consecutive meetings in which US negotiators struggled to conceal that their instructions included statements by Biden that he would have to consult with President Barack Obama, since he, Biden, was only vice president.

“We glimpsed at least one note from a ‘Dr. Jill’ allowing the president to participate in a strategy session,” the communiqué read, in part. “Requests for us to restate our position from the previous day – in effect, from several weeks ago, since this futile exercise must take place every day – now form a routine element of the proceedings, and we find ourselves rehashing the same points, all, apparently, in keeping with the updates requests and instructions from the White House.”

The message from the Iranian negotiators also acknowledged that some of the difficulty stems from American negotiators jumping ahead to offer concessions that the Iranians have yet to demand, a move that both confuses the latter and raises suspicions that the Biden administration does not take the talks seriously. That possibility prompts worries in Teheran and Vienna that the US acknowledges any concessions it makes will face cancellation as soon as a Republican successor assumes the presidency in January 2025 – a prospect that the Biden administration’s disastrous decisions have only made increasingly likely – because Biden lacks the Congressional support necessary to secure a lasting American commitment to whatever deal emerges from the talks. Biden’s and the Democratic Party’s missteps have also put the party’s majority in both houses of the legislature in peril.








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