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Thursday, March 24, 2022

03/24 Links Pt1: What Zelenskyy got wrong about Israel; Putin Misunderstands History. So, Unfortunately, Does the U.S.; Condition of 2 Israeli women hurt in Be'er Sheva attack stabilizes

From Ian:

Lahav Harkov: What Zelenskyy got wrong about Israel
In Israel, one of the most-shared videos in recent weeks shows a Ukrainian soldier named Alex revealing the contents of his military backpack. After waving his night-vision goggles at the camera, he pulls out a Ukrainian-language translation of Golda, a 2009 biography of Kyiv-born former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

Alex, who is not Jewish, explains that he intends to take the book with him into battle. He says his nickname is Zion, “because I am a Zionist”.

Golda Meir is very popular in Ukraine these days, with a version of her saying about Israel and Arabs still circulating on social media: “If Russia lays down its weapons, there is no war. If Ukraine lays down its weapons, there is no Ukraine.” Yet in his speech to the Knesset on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy quoted a different Meir remark: “We intend to remain alive. Our neighbours want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.”

Had Zelenskyy continued in this vein, his speech may have had a warmer reception. Israelis, even those who weren’t yet born in 1973, have a sense of what it’s like to be attacked by larger armies who think their country should not exist. The Israeli army’s ethos is largely about being a smaller, scrappier and smarter force that can successfully take on those who seek to annihilate us. So when Ukrainians quote Golda Meir’s pithy remarks, it resonates in Israel, because we understand — first-hand or through our close family members — what Ukraine is experiencing.

Israelis also see parallels between Ukraine and its current situation because, as politicians in Jerusalem often say, Israel must be able to “defend itself, by itself”. While grateful for military aid from the US, Israel never expected other countries’ soldiers to take part in its wars. Many of its politicians and pundits — myself included — watched the world do next to nothing when Russia amassed its tanks on the border, concluding it was yet further proof that Israel can and must rely on itself. Plus, as Zelenskyy could have pointed out, Russia is an ally of Iran, which is bent on Israel’s destruction.

But rather than highlight this, Zelenskyy chose to focus much of his speech on the Holocaust, a rare misstep in his video tour of parliaments. Israelis, of course, know all about the horrors of the Holocaust. They know, for instance, that it was not a war between the armies of two nations. Rather, it was Nazi Germany’s attempt to erase all Jews from the earth. It was industrial-scale genocide, with gas chambers, death marches and — as at Babyn Yar in Kyiv, which Zelenskyy mentioned — the mass execution of thousands of people lined up in front of ditches.
Niall Ferguson: Putin Misunderstands History. So, Unfortunately, Does the U.S.
Remember, both sides get to apply history. The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is a master of the art, carefully tailoring his speeches to each national parliament he addresses, effectively telling one country after another: “Our history is your history. We are you.” He gave the Brits Churchill, the Germans the Berlin Wall, the Yanks Martin Luther King Jr., and the Israelis the Holocaust.

Putin applies history in a diametrically opposite way. “The president has completely lost interest in the present,” the Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar argued in a recent New York Times piece. “The economy, social issues, the coronavirus pandemic, these all annoy him. Instead, he and [his adviser Yuri] Kovalchuk obsess over the past.”

I can see that. Putin’s recent pseudo-scholarly writing — on the origins of World War II and “On the Historical Unity of the Russians and Ukrainians” — confirm the historical turn in his thought.

I disagree with the former Russian foreign minister, Andrey Kozyrev, who told the Financial Times that, for Putin and his cronies, “the cold war never stopped.” That is not the history that interests Putin. As the Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev told Der Spiegel, Putin “expressed outrage that the annexation of the Crimea had been compared with Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. Putin lives in historic analogies and metaphors. Those who are enemies of eternal Russia must be Nazis.” Moreover: The hypocrisy of the West has become an obsession of his, and it is reflected in everything the Russian government does. Did you know that in parts of his declaration on the annexation of Crimea, he took passages almost verbatim from the Kosovo declaration of independence, which was supported by the West? Or that the attack on Kyiv began with the destruction of the television tower just as NATO attacked the television tower in Belgrade in 1999?

Yet such recent history is less significant to Putin than the much older history of Russia’s imperial past. I have made this argument here before. Fresh evidence that Putin’s project is not the resurrection of the Soviet Union, but looks back to tsarist imperialism and Orthodoxy, was provided by his speech at the fascistic rally held on Friday at Moscow’s main football stadium. Its concluding allusion to the tsarist admiral Fyodor Ushakov, who made his reputation by winning victories in the Black Sea, struck me as ominous for Odesa.

The Chinese also know how to apply history to contemporary problems, but they do it in a different way again. While Putin wants to transport post-Soviet Russia back into a mythologized tsarist past, Xi remains the heir to Mao Zedong, and one who aspires to a place alongside him in the Chinese Communist Party’s pantheon.


Melanie Phillips: U.S. Attacks Bennett as Soft on Russia But Is Happy for Moscow to Broker the Iran Nuclear Deal
With the Western world transfixed by the horrors in Ukraine, Israel finds itself singled out for criticism and misunderstanding in equal measure. Israel depends on Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, turning a blind eye to the frequent Israeli sorties into Syria to destroy Iranian weaponry being transported there to attack Israel from just across the border.

Despite this, the Biden administration has made a point of pressuring Israel to adopt Western sanctions against Russia. While Israel hasn't officially joined the sanctions campaign, it is ensuring that its financial institutions won't provide a sanctions bypass. Israeli banks have severed relations with sanctioned Russian banks.

But America is being staggeringly two-faced. While pressuring Israel to impose sanctions, it is using Russia to broker the nuclear deal with Tehran (which refuses to negotiate directly with the U.S.). Under the reported terms of this deal, the Biden administration will make Putin the effective gatekeeper for Iran's nuclear program. Worse still, the U.S. proposes to enable Russia to set up a sanctions evasion hub in Iran, where Russia's state-controlled energy company, Rosatom, is set to cash in on its $10 billion contract to expand Tehran's Bushehr nuclear plant.

Ukraine's fate demonstrates that, when a despotic power has nuclear weapons, the world's ability to stop its atrocities is all but paralyzed. Despite this, the Biden administration is set upon a course that will enable terrorist Iran to become a nuclear power.


Crying Racism while Denying Reality
The world is shocked by the suffering of the Ukrainian population and is opening its arms to millions of its refugees. Yet the region's Arabs complain that the world denies their suffering and closes its gates to refugees, claiming this shows racist differentiation.

However, the Arabs and their apologists ignore the differences in the circumstances that created their plight and in their collective behavior. The Ukrainians were forced into refugeedom because their predatory neighbor conspires to enslave their homeland. The Arabs were conquered usually as a result of their violence, and were forced into refugeedom by barbaric wars waged to oppress their neighbors.

The Ukrainian refugees are not expected to threaten the quality of life of the countries that have taken them in, to behave with unusual violence, to identify with their enemies, or to maintain a lifestyle that is in opposition to the core values of society.

By contrast, a large portion of Arab immigrants to Europe brought with them the values and non-pluralistic lifestyles that wrought destruction on their homelands: violent behavior, a tendency toward mass, violent riots, the oppression of women, and the legitimization of terrorism. The Arab writers ignoring these circumstances present the differentiation in treatment of various refugees as racism - refusing to take responsibility for their conduct and its consequences. The Palestinian public, which turns terrorists into exemplary figures and generously funds them and their families, is surprised when victims of that terror treat their sons with suspicion.

Immigrants from India are welcome in Britain. They have the highest employment rate and the lowest poverty rate of all minorities there despite not having blonde hair and blue eyes.
Russia-Ukraine war: Mariupol says 15,000 deported from besieged city to Russia
Ukrainian authorities in besieged Mariupol said on Thursday about 15,000 civilians had been illegally deported to Russia since Russian forces seized parts of the southern port city.

Ukrainian officials say civilians trapped in Mariupol, which is normally home to about 400,000 people, face a desperate plight without access to food, water, power or heat.

Local authorities said on Sunday that thousands of residents had been taken by force across the border but did not provide a more precise figure. Russian news agencies said at the time that buses had carried several hundred people that Moscow calls "refugees" from Mariupol to Russia in recent days.

"Residents of the Left Bank district are beginning to be deported en masse to Russia. In total, about 15,000 Mariupol residents have been subjected to illegal deportation," the Mariupol City Council said in a statement issued on Thursday.

Russia denies targeting civilians in what President Vladimir Putin calls a "special military operation" to demilitarize and "denazify" Ukraine – which, along with the West say Putin launched an unprovoked war of aggression.

Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk told a video briefing that Ukrainian authorities were continuing efforts to secure an agreement from Russia to open a safe corridor to and from the southeastern coastal city.

Each side has blamed the other for the repeated failure to agree on arrangements to evacuate civilians from Mariupol, control of which would help Russia secure a land corridor to the Crimea peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address to Italy's parliament on Tuesday that there was "nothing left" in Mariupol after weeks of Russian bombardment.

A Reuters team that reached a Russian-controlled part of the destroyed city on Sunday described a wasteland of charred apartment blocks and bodies wrapped in blankets lying by a road.
ICC prosecutor calls for international support in Ukraine war-crimes probe
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Thursday asked a coalition of countries to back his war crimes investigation in Ukraine, saying "things can get worse" unless the international community acts now.

ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan was speaking to a meeting of a British-led coalition in The Hague, including prosecutors and justice ministers from 38 countries that have offered the court financial, military and legal assistance.

Khan opened a formal inquiry into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine on Feb. 28, four days after Russia invaded its smaller neighbor.

US President Joe Biden and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky accuse Russia of targeting civilians and violating the laws of war. Moscow denies the allegation and says it is carrying out a "special military operation" to disarm and "denazify" Ukraine. Kyiv and the West say Putin launched an unprovoked war.

The ICC, a global court established to prosecute individuals for crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes, will examine possible atrocities on both sides of the conflict, looking back to Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the ICC, but Kyiv has authorized the court to investigate its territory and a team of investigators is collecting evidence in Ukraine.

On Thursday, Khan called on nations to come together to hold accountable those responsible for war crimes.

"If we seize this moment collectively if we can fortify the rule of law... It is to the benefit not only of this office, or to the ICC, but to the whole international legal order," Khan said.

"If we do not collectively step up. ..things can get worse and history will not judge us well and victims around the world will not judge us well."


US announces fresh sanctions on Russian lawmakers, oligarchs, defense establishment
The United States on Thursday announced a fresh wave of sanctions against Russian lawmakers, oligarchs and defense companies in response to the invasion of Ukraine, the White House said.

The measures, which involve freezing US-held assets, single out 328 members of Russia’s lower house State Duma and 48 defense companies “that fuel (President Vladimir) Putin’s war machine,” according to a statement released as US President Joe Biden attended summits in Brussels focused on the war.

Also targeted is Herman Gref, chief executive of Russia’s largest financial institution Sberbank.

“I’m announcing additional sanctions on over 400 Russian elites, lawmakers, and defense companies in response to Putin’s war of choice in Ukraine,” Biden tweeted.

“They personally gain from the Kremlin’s policies, and they should share in the pain,” he said.

A joint statement issued by the US Department of State and the Department of the Treasury said that the sanctions would also target Russia’s defense establishment with “long-lasting” effects.

“An important component of today’s action is designating Russian defense companies that are part of Russia’s defense-industrial base and that produce weapons that have been used in Russia’s war of aggression,” the statement read.

“By cutting off dozens of Russian defense companies from the US financial system, today’s action will have a deep and long-lasting effect on Russia’s defense-industrial base. We are targeting, and will continue to target, the suppliers of Russia’s war effort and, in turn, their supply chain,” it added.
Ukrainian Israeli Tatiana Kumok Who Was Arrested by the Russians: They Use Nazi Methods
Tatiana Kumok, a Ukrainian-Israeli who was arrested with her parents in the city of Melitopol, where she has lived for the past six months, said on Wednesday: “Yesterday my father closed his newspaper, after 31 years. It has become very dangerous for journalists here.”

She accused the Russians of using “Nazi methods.”

Tatiana, 40, is a fashion designer, divorced without children. Her father is Ukrainian and Jewish, her mother Russian and non-Jewish. Tatiana made her first Aliyah to Israel in 2000. She stayed in the country for about a year and returned to Ukraine. Then, about ten years ago, she went back to Israel again and about six months ago returned to Melitopol and opened her own business there.

According to her, after the Russians had invaded her city, in southern Ukraine, “they demanded that the newspaper write what the Russians want, and he decided that if it was impossible to write the truth, then it would be better to close down.”

Tatiana and her parents were arrested on Monday by Russian forces, and released shortly thereafter. She believes the Russians targeted her father. “He is already retired, but he owns a print shop and a local newspaper,” she said. “The newspaper building is close to city hall. The Russians took over both buildings and the journalists started working from home.”

When her father was ordered to publish information provided by the Russians, he first played for time, telling the invaders he had to figure things out, think about it, “until, on Monday morning, my father called my mother, told her they had taken three journalists from their homes, and warned her he was next in line. That was indeed the case.”
Chabad counselors suspend lives to save Ukrainian campers, some behind Russian lines
Last week, Menucha Hanoka was awoken by her newborn baby in her Pasadena home at 3 am.

As she picked up her child, the 26-year-old Chabad youth director instinctively glanced at her phone.

There were 6 missed calls from the same number. They weren’t from a close girlfriend looking for a late-night chat. Nor was her mother trying to contact her in the middle of the night.

It was an 8-year-old girl stuck in a Kharkiv metro station, desperately trying to reach Hanoka, safe in California 10,000 kilometers away from the Russian assault on Ukraine.

“I called her back,” she told The Times of Israel by phone on Friday. “Her mother had fallen and hurt her foot, and they were stuck in the metro station. They had no money for a taxi to get to the train to get out of Kharkiv. There was bombing all over, she said they had been there for two days, no food, nothing, and her mother couldn’t walk.”

Hanoka knew the girl from Camp Yeka, a program Hanoka runs in Ukraine with other young Chabad men and women. Since 2001, the Yeka program — named after Yekaterinoslav, the city now known as Dnipro, where the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe grew up –has provided summer, winter, and Passover camps for Jewish Ukrainians.

Hanoka was able to send money to the girl through Rabbi Moshe Theler in Berdychiv, the father of one of the Yeka counselors, so they could take a taxi to the train station. The girl and her injured mother traveled to Dnipro, where she received medical care in a hospital.

The Yeka counselors were able to arrange payment for the treatment as well.

The volunteers eventually got the mother and daughter on an evacuation bus, which brought them to Moldvoda on Thursday.


HRC Rebuts Columnist's Using Boycott of Russian Goods as Opportunity to Attack Israel In Vancouver's Georgia Straight Newspaper
In a recent March 5 opinion column in the Georgia Straight newspaper, columnist Gurpreet Singh took the British Columbia government’s pulling of Russian alcohol from provincial shelves as an opportunity to parrot BDS talking points against Israel.

Lamenting that Israeli wines and liquors are still sold in British Columbia stores, Singh provided a litany of baseless claims to buttress his argument that Israel is deserving of widespread condemnation and sanctioning.

Read HRC’s rebuttal that was published on March 23 on The Georgia Straight website, or as appended below:

Mike Fegelman: Jewish people’s history in the land of Israel stretches back three thousand years
In the mid-1960s, psychologist Abraham Maslow famously wrote “I suppose it is tempting if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” His adage, now more than a half-century old, could just as easily have been written today about anti-Israel activists, who seem to look for an opportunity to drag Israel into any subject.

In an opinion column in the Georgia Straight on March 5 entitled “B.C. government’s decision to ban Russian liquor exposes its doublespeak on human rights”, Gurpreet Singh discussed the recent decision by the British Columbia government to ban Russian alcohol from the province’s liquor stores in protest of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But Singh’s column was not largely about Russia or Ukraine, but it also focused on Israel, and why Russian alcohol could be banned, but not alcohol from the Jewish state.

“…such massive outrage remains missing whenever Palestinians come under attack from Israel. Even as the Israeli occupation of Palestine continues for years, Canadian politicians have largely looked away. B.C. politicians are therefore no exception,” Singh wrote.

When Singh later observed that “the Israeli occupation of Palestine continues for years”, he apparently takes this statement as an indisputable fact that requires no supporting evidence.

There is a reason Singh provides only rhetoric, not facts when accusing Israel of occupying Palestinian land: because it is empty rhetoric utterly devoid of supporting evidence.


If Israel doesn't wake up, Negev will become its own state
The deadly stabbing spree in the southern city of Be'er Sheva on Tuesday took place between two very large and populated shopping centers.

No less than four people lost their lives in the horrendous attack, which could be a small and bloody glimpse into a possible future that awaits the Negev if our government fails to wake up. One does not have to be a great expert on Bedouin affairs or an academic researcher to understand that there is an increase in the popularity of religious extremism among the Bedouin society - be it in their towns or scattered settlements in the south. You can simply drive through Bedouin towns such as Laqiya, Hura and Rahat and see the seemingly unceasing construction of more and more mosques.

These houses of worship organize and coordinate innocent social activities aimed at keeping teenagers and young people away from the streets and violent gangs, but they are also an indication of a much broader phenomenon: The strengthening of religious institutions and Islamism. This phenomenon has served to create an assortment of extreme and ever-expanding fringe Islamist groups among Bedouin society in the south.

Every police officer serving at one of the south’s stations, or Shin Bet operative working with the Bedouin community, knows this worrying trend has been going on for over a decade. Many Bedouins end up marrying women from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, who then give birth to Bedouin Israelis who end up identifying with their Palestinian relatives in the Palestinian territories.
Condition of 2 Israeli women hurt in Be'er Sheva attack stabilizes, officials say
The condition of two women who were seriously wounded in the deadly terror attack in Be'er Sheva, which claimed the lives of four people, has stabilized, medical officials said Wednesday.

The Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva, where the two women are being treated said they are currently hospitalized at hospital's Cardiothoracic Surgery Ward and their injuries are described as moderate.

The hospital added that several patients were admitted in the hours following the attack and were treated for shock.

Hila Avisror, one of the wounded, celebrated her 40th birthday when and was on her way to do some shopping at the Be'er Sheva mall when the terrorist, Mohammad Abu al-Kian, attacked her with a knife.

The attacker managed to stab Avisror while she was trying to escape and reach her partner's car. Amit, her son, told Ynet on Wednesday that she is "doing better than yesterday".

Amit said that he spoke with his mother this morning. "There are moments that she can talk to us, we let her sleep and rest at night, but this morning we talked to her, mostly my dad", he said, "she remembers most of what happened".

"She was stabbed at the entrance to a store. My dad was in the car, I don't now how she managed to run to the car after being stabbed twice. She told my dad to just drive. She preferred to get far away from there. After some time my dad took off his shirt and stopped her blood, until MDA arrived," said her son.

According to Amit, one of the stab wounds punctured his mother's lungs. "Initially it seemed that her condition was worse [than it actually was]. There was a feeling of relief this morning. I knew that her condition improved, I knew that she's in relatively good shape," he added. "The situation is a bit less horrible than what we first thought."

Unfortunately, four other people did not manage to survive the killing spree, making the terrorist attack the deadliest in the past five years. The first victim, Doris Hachbas, a 49-year old from a nearby town, was murdered inside a clothing store.
Officials From Hometown of Bedouin Terrorist Condemn ‘Awful’ Attack: ‘We Have to Work Together’
Officials from the Bedouin town of Hura, the home of a terrorist who murdered four people in Beersheba on Tuesday, condemned his deed and distanced it from their community, which sees the attack as a “black stain,” Israeli news site Walla reported.

Mohammad Ghaleb Abu al-Qi’an, 34, once a high school teacher, previously served a four-year prison sentence for attempting to join the Islamic State terrorist group. He was released in 2019 and shot dead by an armed civilian during Tuesday’s killing spree.

Ishaq Abu al-Qi’an, the vice-chair of Hura’s municipal council, said on Wednesday that all residents of the town deplore the attack.

“On the street and in every house, and every woman and every child, unequivocally condemn this awful incident,” he said. “It is our obligation to condemn terrible acts like these.”

“In Hura, we are angry about the incident and feel the pain of the families of the murdered,” he asserted. “I say to the residents of Beersheba that they can live in quiet and sleep soundly. Beersheba is the home of us all.”

“This is the act of a single person,” he emphasized, and all people have “to continue living together.”

Nafez Abu al-Qi’an, the council’s security chief and a distant relative of the terrorist, called it “a black day for the family.”
Israel Plans 10 New Negev Towns After Beersheba Attack
Israel’s Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked and Housing Minister Ze’ev Elkin revealed plans on Wednesday to construct 10 new communities in the Negev — just one day after a fatal attack in the country’s south.

On Sunday, five of these communities — known as the “Mevo’ot Arad settlements” — are expected to be approved by the government, according to Israel’s Channel 12 news.

They will be constructed in areas north of Arad and east of Beersheba, a city where one day prior an armed assailant killed four people in a combined car-ramming and stabbing attack.

Elkin said that the new proposal for additional settlements will help to ensure the security of the Negev.

“The establishment of new settlements will move residents from the center of the country south, [which will] strengthen the Negev economy and increase security throughout the region,” the official said.

Shaked praised the initiative, and explained it “has strategic and national importance in strengthening the settlement of the Negev,” according to The Jerusalem Post.

“Creating ten new communities is Zionism in all its glory,” she added.
PMW: PA hypocrisy: Honor terror in Arabic and secretly condemn it in English
Yesterday, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that the Palestinian Authority has been the driving force behind the recent wave of eight stabbing attacks since the start of March in Israel. The Palestinian terror climaxed in the horrific attack on Tuesday in which four Israelis were murdered.

As reported yesterday, the PA and Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah have been calling continuously for “popular resistance,” the PA term for knife and car ramming terror. To show their support for terror, not only didn’t the PA condemn any of the previous attacks – it publicized unqualified support for the terrorists, and condemned Israel for killing them to stop the attacks. Moreover, official PA TV and the official daily newspaper honored the terrorist murderer yesterday as a “Shahid” - Islamic Martyr.

Yet, when Palestinian Minister of Civil Affairs Hussein al-Sheikh met with Israeli Minister of Public Security Bar-Lev an hour after Tuesday’s terror attack, he told him he “was shocked” by the attack:
"This meeting opens with Hussein Al-Sheikh's saying at the very beginning to Minister Bar-Lev: "I am deeply shocked by this terror attack."

[Israeli TV KAN News, March 23, 20022]

Significantly, his condemnation was only said to the Israeli minister and was not publicized in any Palestinian Arabic media, nor was the murder of four civilians condemned by any official PA source. PMW has translated al-Sheikh’s condemnation intended for Israeli ears into Arabic for Palestinians to hear and placed it in Hussein al-Sheikh’s twitter feed. PMW is calling on him to publicly condemn the terror in Arabic as well, to show that his condemnation is sincere.


"Hackers Hit IDF’s Work Permits Computer, Dispense Papers to Hundreds of PA Arabs"
Hackers have succeeded in breaking into the IDF’s Civil Administration computer that issues entry and work permits to residents of the Palestinian Authority, and dispensed thousands of unauthorized yet perfectly passable permits, Israel Hayom reported Wednesday, citing sources in the construction industry (which is ultimately the main employer of PA Arab workers – DI).

It is suspected that criminals who are scalping work permits to PA Arab day laborers have broken into the IDF system, identified files of contractors who do not employ workers from the Palestinian Authority, and illegally registered hundreds of workers in the names of these employers. This allowed them to scalp those work permits, offering Arab workers a way to enter Israel illegally.

Beyond the fact that this is a criminal offense, and the workers are consequently employed without insurance, the practice poses danger to Israel’s security.

The Employer Website operated by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) started operating in September 2021. The suspicion arose among contractors after they had recently received notifications from the Population and Immigration Authority that they were late in turning in the information needed to create payslips for their PA workers.

By law, the Population Authority issues the payslips and not the employer.
Why do environmentalists ignore Palestinian abuses?
The Sierra Club, one of America’s oldest and most influential environmental groups, has reversed its recent cancelation of its trips to Israel. That brings the brief controversy to an end—but it leaves open the bigger, unanswered question of why so many environmentalists turn a blind eye to Palestinian Arab ecological abuses.

During the same week that the Sierra Club episode was unfolding, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority coincidentally reported that “hundreds of Palestinian hunters in the West Bank routinely kill wildlife including ibex and deer, porcupines, partridges, and falcons, and many rare animal species that are facing the threat of extinction.”

“In many areas there's almost no wildlife left," said Erez Bruhi, the Nature Authority’s enforcement officer. “There is competition between the villages regarding who can hunt more porcupines. They send each other pictures and videos to show proof of who's better. Deer hunting is the hardest. They go out wearing camouflage."

Bruhi said his officers had recently found nineteen (!) live deer in Arab homes. “They keep them for fun. They use them as pets, until they start to get wild, [then] they make kebabs out of them."

If Israeli hunters were driving animals to extinction and using them for dinner, do you think groups like the Sierra Club would remain silent? Somehow I doubt it.

But the hunting issue is just one part of a much more extensive pattern of abuse of the environment in and around the territories governed by the Palestinian Authority. A study by the BESA Center, a leading Israeli think tank, found that “water shortages in the Palestinian Authority are the result of Palestinian policies that deliberately waste water and destroy the regional water ecology.”
Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: The 'Criminal' Pastor Who Met with the Rabbi
Appeals by heads of the Christian community in Bethlehem for the release of Shahwan from prison have been completely ignored by the PA leadership, which appears afraid of a backlash from Islamists and other radical groups if it dares to release the pastor. The appeals have also been ignored by many journalists who mostly chose to focus only on stories that reflect negatively on Israel.

Even more alarming is that the Palestinian Authority, which now has close relations with the Biden administration, is punishing a Palestinian Christian for the "crime" of meeting with a Jew.

If the PA is going to incarcerate every Palestinian who meets with settlers or does business with Jews, it will have to build enough prisons to hold tens of thousands of its people. Moreover, if the PA considers meetings with Jews to be a crime punishable by imprisonment and hard labor, why are its leaders continuing to hold public and secret meetings with Israeli officials?

If PA President Mahmoud Abbas himself is prepared to travel to the Israeli city of Rosh Ha'ayin to meet with Israel's Defense Minister Benny Gantz, whom the Palestinians have repeatedly condemned as a "war criminal," why isn't a pastor allowed to meet with a rabbi?

This incident is yet another example of the endemic hypocrisy of the PA regarding its dealings with Israel.

The Beit Al-Liqa incident is also further proof of the PA's discrimination and mistreatment of the Christian minority.

It is much easier for the PA to arrest a Palestinian pastor than, say, the head of a Muslim clan. The Christians are not going to take to the streets to riot and attack Palestinian security officers when one of their men is arrested. Muslims, by contrast, would not hesitate to attack the PA and confront its security forces.

All this is happening while the Biden administration continues to engage with the PA about the need to revive the peace process and the PA's purported commitment to the so-called two-state solution, while ignoring the persecution of Christians and major human rights violations committed by the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian film depicting nudity sparks outrage in Arab world
A new Palestinian film that includes images of full frontal nudity has sparked outrage in the Arab world, with some calling to boycott the project.

The thriller "Huda's Salon" - directed by Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival last year, surprising many with graphic scenes of nudity.

In the film, actress Maisa Abd Elhadi from Nazareth appears completely naked alongside actor Samer Bisharat, who is also fully nude in the scene.

Although critically acclaimed in Toronto, now that the film has been making rounds at festivals in the Middle East, the audiences have been left less than enthusiastic, with conservative elements accusing the creators of desecrating Islam and violating the fight against "the Israeli occupation".

The scene, which doesn't include intercourse depicts how Israeli security services recruit informants using sexual blackmail.

The film revolves around a young mother from Bethlehem, who during a visit to her barber is drugged by the female owner of the salon - named Huda - stripped of her clothes and photographed with a stranger fully naked.

Huda then tries to force Rim to work for the Israeli security service, while the Palestinian Authority is working in the area to track down all informants.

Rim finds herself stuck between local law enforcement officials who wish to punish her, the Shin Bet that keep blackmailing her, and her estranged husband and family who disowned her.

The film appears to criticize the conservative, Palestinian society, its leadership, and Israeli security services for using unethical tactics.

After the film premiered at the Beirut Women's Film Festival, it was slammed for its "pornographic" content and evoked unfavorable responses of Palestinian officials.

"The problem is not the story or the idea, but the way it was executed. It is not necessary to present these images in such detail, for instance, how she is sedated and how they remove her clothes from," social activist Fouad al-Hofash wrote on his Facebook page.


Abbas loyalists lose Bethlehem University election
For the first time in many years, a list affiliated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction has lost the student council election at Bethlehem University.

The defeat came on the eve of the second phase of the municipal elections, which are scheduled to take place on Saturday in major Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

The results of the Bethlehem University election are regarded as a serious blow to Abbas and the PA and Fatah leadership.

In the past, Fatah-affiliated lists at other Palestinian universities were defeated by supporters of Hamas, the terror group controlling the Gaza Strip.

Arab students seen on the campus of the Bethlehem University, a Catholic co-educational institution, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Hamas continues to enjoy a large popularity among Palestinians in the West Bank, especially university and college campuses.

The results of the student council election at Bethlehem University are seen by Palestinian political analysts as a sign of the widespread discontent with the PA and its ruling Fatah faction.






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