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Friday, September 16, 2022

09/16 Links Pt1: IDF purity of arms and Palestinian Authority bloodlust; Abu Mazen is trying to blackmail Israel; Chile apologizes after president refuses Israeli ambassador's credentials

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: IDF purity of arms and Palestinian Authority bloodlust
WITHOUT SKIPPING a beat, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf told reporters in a phone briefing on Wednesday that “the security conditions on the West Bank do concern us greatly, but they also concern Israel and they also concern the Palestinian Authority.”

Never mind that the PA is at fault for those conditions, which make a mockery of the rules of Israeli engagement that place heroes like Falah in extra peril.

“Our part in this is to ensure that, to the greatest degree possible, security cooperation is robust and continuing,” she said, adding incomprehensibly, “but those other things are done around and outside that security cooperation that sustains it.”

She went on to spew the same old platitude, proven time and again to be totally false, about how improving “economic conditions” in the West Bank and Gaza “can help and sustain improvement in security conditions.”

Not a word about PA and Hamas terrorism. Perhaps Lapid and Gantz didn’t mind so much, since they tend to agree with her overall assessment.

They also must be patting themselves on the back for responding so forcefully about the IDF doctrine that Foggy Bottom slightly eased up on its criticism. Ironically, it did so before Falah was killed, through US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides and State Department spokesman Ned Price.

“Israel is a sovereign country and will make their own decisions,” Nides said on Monday at The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in New York.

“No one knows the IDF’s processes and procedures better than the IDF,” Price told the press during his daily briefing on Tuesday. “And so, it is not on us or any other country or entity to say precisely what the IDF or any military or security organization around the world should do.”

On the other hand, he stressed, “It is incumbent on us to continue to underscore the importance that we place on mitigating civilian harm and taking steps, including revised policies and procedures, that would mitigate the possibility of civilian harm.”

Falah is but a single casualty of Israel’s gargantuan efforts over the years to avoid hurting civilians, including those used by terrorists as human shields. May he rest in peace, while the IDF remembers that it’s at war.
Abu Mazen is trying to blackmail Israel
On Wednesday, terrorists in the West Bank opened fire at an IDF checkpoint, killing Bar Falah, a thirty-year-old major. Falah’s comrades quickly killed the shooters, one of whom was a Palestinian Authority (PA) security officer. Last week, thanks to good luck and the vigilance of police, a major terrorist attack in Tel Aviv was thwarted. Yoni Ben Menachem believes these and many other recent incidents are not so much the result of the aging PA president Mahmoud Abbas losing his grip on the reins of power, but of his decision to resume violence:

Abbas is trying to blackmail Israel and the U.S.; he sees the new wave of terrorism that broke out independently in the field as a lever of pressure on Israel in everything related to creating a “political horizon” and renewing negotiations about the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Abbas, who has reached the end of his political career, is not interested in calming the situation. So long as the armed terrorists do not threaten the Muqata in Ramallah, [the Palestinian equivalent of the White House], and he has American and European backing as well as that of moderate Arab countries, he feels that this is the right time to squeeze major concessions out of Israel. . . .

Next week the PA president will go to New York to deliver his annual speech at the UN General Assembly. The PA has been engaged in a political campaign for several weeks now with the aim of obtaining the agreement of the United Nations to recognize “Palestine” with full membership in the organization. Today it has the status of an observer state. Israel strongly opposes this move. President Biden also opposes it, and last week he sent Barbara Leaf, a U.S. assistant secretary of state, to Ramallah. Abbas refused to meet with her, but in a meeting with Hussein al-Sheikh, [his deputy and likely successor], she clarified her position that the U.S. might veto the Palestinian request in the Security Council.

Abbas is playing with fire and if he doesn’t come to his senses he may end his rule just like Yasir Arafat: Operation Protective Shield in 2002 resulted [effectively in the end of Yasir Arafat’s political power]. If Abas pushes Israel into a corner, another IDF operation in Judea and Samaria in the style of Protective Shield may bring him closer to the end of his rule.
Mark Regev: Israel can engage with Mahmoud Abbas despite Holocaust revisionism
Over the years, Abbas has repeatedly revisited such themes. In 2018, at a meeting of the Palestinian National Council, he stated that European Jews were massacred because of their “social role related to usury and banks.”

Unfortunately, Abbas’s comments are reflective of a Palestinian society plagued by antisemitic stereotypes, where spurious references to the Holocaust are pervasive.

It is not just the ubiquitous charge that the IDF acts with Nazi-type brutality, or that the crimes of the Holocaust are deliberately magnified for political purposes; rather, it is widely accepted that the Palestinians themselves, and not the Jews, are the ultimate victims of the Holocaust.

In this skewed narrative, the Palestinians lost their homeland to pay for Europe’s crimes against the Jews, as if their political leadership was on the right side of history during the genocide.

Forgotten is Grand Mufti Amin Husseini, the preeminent Palestinian political leader of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, who was the Arab world’s chief Nazi exponent and spent World War II in Berlin, broadcasting Hitler’s propaganda to the Middle East.

Husseini was aware of, and supported, the Holocaust, encouraging Bosnian Muslims to volunteer for the Waffen SS. At the end of the war, he fled Europe to escape prosecution by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. He eventually surfaced in Gaza in 1948 to be elected president of the All-Palestine Government, despite his notorious Nazi affiliations.

The current Palestinian leader has nothing critical to say about Husseini’s wartime activities; instead, Abbas prefers to propagate bogus theories of Zionist-Nazi collaboration. But while Abbas’s revisionism is very real, he nonetheless can be seen as one in a long list of unsavory characters with whom Zionists have negotiated.

Zionist negotiations with antisemites, pogrom participants
In 1903, Theodor Herzl, the father of political Zionism, met with tsarist interior minister Vyacheslav Plehve, who many held responsible for the Kishinev pogrom. Herzl had few illusions about his counterpart, but the goal was to enlist Russia’s support for a Jewish state that could absorb the masses of persecuted Jews of the tsarist empire.

In 1921, Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky met with the Ukrainian leader Symon Petliura, who had been accused of complicity in pogroms in which thousands of Jews were murdered. Jabotinsky sought Petliura’s support for the establishment of Jewish military units that could protect Ukraine’s Jews from future pogroms.

Most well known, in 1933, Haim Arlosoroff, the head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Department, negotiated an arrangement with Germany’s new Nazi regime. The Ha’avara Agreement enabled the emigration of some 60,000 German Jews to Mandatory Palestine, saving their lives.

THE AFOREMENTIONED negotiations provided Israel’s enemies with ammunition for allegations of Zionist collusion with antisemites. Such accusations were a staple of Soviet anti-Israel propaganda throughout the 1970s and 1980s (when Abbas wrote his PhD in Moscow) and were echoed by the hard left across the West, reemerging in the UK in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.

Zionists weren't complicit, they practiced realpolitik
But rather than proving a nefarious complicity between Zionists and Jew-haters, these diplomatic efforts by Zionist leaders merely demonstrate the omnipresence of political realism in all international relations. This type of realpolitik, decried by the Soviets when exercised by Zionists, was a practice in which they themselves were consummate specialists.


Jordan Peterson: Arabs vs Jews? Maybe Not | Ambassador Ron Dermer
The numerous heated and hotly debated conflicts surrounding Israel are almost always threatening to boil over and cast the Middle East into unceremonious chaos. Ambassador Ron Dermer sits down with Dr Jordan B Peterson to discuss the issues, the misnomers, and the underlying truths surrounding one of the most resilient peoples and countries in history.

Ron Dermer is an American-born political consultant who served as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2021. As Prime Minister Netanyahu’s top advisor, Dermer was a driving force behind many of the era’s most important diplomatic developments, such as the monumental Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel’s relations with several Arab nations.

Dermer earned a degree in Finance and Management from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from Oxford University. After moving to Israel, Dermer became a columnist for The Jerusalem Post and served as a close advisor to Natan Sharansky. In 2004, he co-authored with Sharansky the best-selling book, “The Case For Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror,” which has been translated into ten languages.


Embassy of Israel (Irish Times): A simplistic attitude to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
Sir, – Kathy Sheridan (“We look away from some conflicts because we are human”, Opinion & Analysis, September 14th) takes a familiar and simplistic attitude to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, blaming everything on the Israeli side.

She states that “Ireland largely ignores the conflict” when the opposite is clearly the case: the Irish media and Irish politicians give very disproportionate attention to this conflict, far more than they do to conflicts and territorial disputes or human rights issues elsewhere in the world, such as in China, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia and in Africa.

Indeed, for some Irish activists and commentators Palestine and Israel are a veritable obsession. All too often, as in her article, the perspective is extremely biased against Israel and ignores the complexity and roots of the conflict.

For example, Kathy Sheridan says that Palestinians are “the largest and longest case of displaced persons in the world today”. But why is it still the case? The world has known many displaced people in its history, including 40 million to 60 million after the second World War and 900,000 Jews that were expelled from Arab countries where they have lived for thousands of years, and many more. All of them found a new home, and became part of society. Unfortunately there is a cold reasoning behind the existence of them as “refugees” – cold financial considerations and as a tool against Israel. Many Arab countries could have absorbed them a long time ago but the funding that the countries receive through the the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) incentivises them to keep the status quo and allows them to “Help their brothers” and “hold the torch” of opposing the very existence of the state of Israel.
Amid Wave of Palestinian Terror, Leading US Diplomat Reaffirms Commitment to Two-State Solution
United States Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf on Wednesday reaffirmed President Joe Biden’s support for the two-state solution despite rising Palestinian violence in Judea and Samaria.

Leaf, speaking at a press conference regarding her recent trip to the Middle East and North Africa, stressed the administration’s commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel “so that Israelis and Palestinians can live safely and securely and enjoy equal measures of freedom, security and prosperity.”

She added that Washington is encouraging security cooperation between the two sides “to the greatest degree possible.”

The administration is focused on bettering economic conditions in the Palestinian-controlled territories, Leaf noted, saying this “can help and sustain improvement in security conditions.”

She listed a number of administration projects designed to boost “economic growth and greater opportunities for Palestinians,” including $100 million promised by Biden during his visit in July to an eastern Jerusalem hospital network, the extension of 4G cellular service to Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip, and expanding operational hours and capacity at the Allenby Bridge crossing between Jordan and Israel.


House Foreign Affairs Committee marks up bill to monitor UNRWA’s educational material
A bill to hold accountable the U.N. Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) for educational material it provides in Palestinian schools was marked up by the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday.

If passed, H.R. 2374, also known as the Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act, aims to create a system to ensure that UNRWA’s educational material does not incite hate, anti-Semitism, or encourage Palestinian children toward violence through educational material such as textbooks provided to students at UNRWA’s Palestinians schools.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), an agency set up to handle the needs of Palestinians, is partly funded by American foreign aid.

The bill was drawn up by Jewish Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) but is widely supported by both parties. It is supported by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) and draws on the organization’s research. The organization also visited Washington D.C. this week to present its research to committee members and officials in the U.S. State Department. The research showed examples of Israel being erased from maps and encouragement of jihad, things that pro-Israel organizations have complained about for decades.

“Led by Rep. Brad Sherman, the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee has joined the European Union parliament, and other governments and legislatures around the world, in declaring that teaching antisemitism, hatred, and removing peace-making from textbooks by the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA will not be tolerated,” said IMPACT-se CEO Marcus Sheff in the release.
King Charles III's halachic gesture towards UK’s Chief Rabbi
A special meeting of senior British faith leaders with King Charles III will take place earlier than planned, due to the fact that it was meant to occur close to the entrance of the Shabbat - a fact that would mean that Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis won’t be able to participate.

King Charles is due to participate in a long list of events commemorating his late mother Queen Elizabeth II. According to The Guardian, as the Prince of Wales, he will travel by helicopter to Wales on Friday with his wife Camilla, and later on will travel to Llandaff Cathedral “for a service of prayer and reflection,” according to The Guardian. When he returns to Buckingham Palace, the King is expected to host faith leaders.

The Jerusalem Post has learned that the event was supposed to take place at 6:00 p.m. while the Shabbat begins at 6:50. According to the halacha (Jewish law), travel isn’t allowed once the Sun sets Friday evening till Saturday night.

Representatives from the palace have contacted the Chief Rabbi’s office and informed them that the event was expected to take place too close to the entrance of Shabbat - and therefore they decided on their own, to make the event an hour earlier, at 5:00 p.m. The Rabbi’s staff were astounded by what they called “an amazing gesture,” made by the King and his staff.

Even though the event will take place earlier than planned, the Rabbi will immediately need to leave the event, in order to try and pave his way through the heavy Friday traffic, to his home in North London.


In grave breach of protocol, Chile’s president refuses credentials of Israeli envoy
In a severe diplomatic incident, Chile’s president, a bitter critic of Israel, on Thursday refused to accept the credentials of new Israeli Ambassador Gil Artzyeli.

President Gabriel Boric’s spurning the Israeli envoy appeared to be a grave breach of diplomatic protocol and threatened to cloud relations between the two countries.

Boric rebuffed Artzyeli after being angered by the Israeli military killing a 17-year-old Palestinian during clashes with gunmen in the West Bank overnight, Ynet reported.

Artzyeli had been scheduled to present his credentials to Boric as a formality, but the Chilean government informed him that the ceremony had been canceled because of Israel “killing children in Gaza,” the report said.

Artzyeli had already arrived at the president’s residence for the ceremony, Walla reported.
Israel to reprimand Chilean envoy after Boric's presidential snub
The Foreign Ministry summoned Chile’s ambassador to Jerusalem for a reprimand after Chilean President Gabriel Boric, who has a history of supporting boycotts against Israel, refused to accept new Israeli ambassador Gil Artzyeli's credentials.

“Israel views Chile’s bizarre and unprecedented behavior with severity,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon said on Friday. “This seriously harms relations between the countries. Chile’s ambassador to Israel was summoned to the Foreign Ministry director-general on Sunday for a reprimand.”

Artzyeli was already at the presidential palace for his scheduled presentation of credentials to Boric, when Chilean Foreign Minister Antonia Urrejola informed him he would not be seem that day. The ceremony was postponed to October.

Government sources told Chilean news site Ex-Ante that Boric decided not to see the ambassador was "because today is a very sensitive day due to the death of a minor in the Gaza Strip."

The teenager in question was, in fact, killed in IDF actions against terrorists in the West Bank, not Gaza.
Chile apologizes after president refuses Israeli ambassador's credentials
The Foreign Ministry of Chile apologized Friday morning after President Gabriel Boric refused to accept the credentials of incoming Israeli Ambassador Gil Artzyeli and reportedly accused the Jewish state of "killing children in Gaza."

Boric also lamented the death of 17-year-old Palestinian Oday Salah, who was killed on Thursday in an exchange of fire with IDF soldiers who were in the area to map the homes of two Palestinian gunmen who carried out a deadly attack along the West Bank security barrier a day earlier.

It was later decided to push the ceremony of presenting the credentials to October.

Boric, who became president last year, has a history of anti-Israel rhetoric and is a known supporter of BDS.

Several years ago, the local Jewish community presented him with a traditional Rosh Hashana gift of honey, and Boric responded by tweeting: "The Jewish community gave me honey to emphasize its commitment to a more accepting, supportive and respectful society. I thank you for the step, but you can start by demanding that Israel return the Palestinian territory it occupies illegally."

Chile is home to some half a million Palestinian immigrants, most of whom are Christian. The country's Jewish population, in comparison, numbers only tens of thousands.


Manhunt underway after Israel teen was injured by gunfire in Karmel
A shelter-in-place order has been issued in the town of Karmel, south of Hebron Thursday night as a manhunt is underway for a suspected terrorist who shot and wounded an Israeli teen.

According to the Jerusalem Post, the victim, who was approximately 18 years old, was transported to a hospital by Magen David Adom.

MDA paramedic Elad Pass told the Post that the victim suffered gunshot wounds to his upper body but was fully conscious and communicated with first responders while they worked to stop the bleeding before evacuating him to Beersheba’s Soroka hospital.

Pass said that the victim’s condition was moderate and stable.


Has the Palestinian leadership lost its credibility?
The 22-year-old man, who refused to be named, said that the latest upsurge in armed attacks against the IDF and settlers marks the beginning of a new intifada.

“I expect the new intifada to start from Nablus and Jenin,” he said. “It has actually started. We see daily attacks against the army and settlers. The young men are setting fire to military outposts and settlements. They are shooting almost every day at the soldiers.”

He added that he and his friends were also very angry with the PA for its ongoing crackdown on Palestinian activists in the West Bank.

“The Palestinian Authority is making a huge mistake by arresting Palestinians who belong to Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad,” he said. “We should all be united in the fight for Palestine and Jerusalem. Why are they arresting their own people? I can understand why Israel wants to arrest us. But why are our security forces arresting and torturing Palestinians?

“The Palestinian Authority wants to suppress the people; they don’t want any resistance [against Israel]. That’s why the Palestinian leadership has no credibility. The young men are frustrated and angry. I believe that we are headed towards another intifada.”

The fiery rhetoric and threats made by the young residents do not seem to be shared by older people in Nablus.

“I prefer a weak Palestinian Authority to the return of the pre-Oslo Accords era,” explained a 64-year-old businessman from the city.

“These young men don’t know what it means to live under the military occupation. Do they want the Israeli army to control our schools, hospitals and universities? I’m not sure that even the Israelis want to return to those days.

“That’s why we need to find a way to calm down these young men and prevent the Palestinian Authority from collapsing. Neither Israel nor the Palestinians have an interest in the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.”•


MEMRI: Iranian Regime Uses Palestinians To Accomplish The Goals Of The Islamic Revolution – Destroying Israel By The Sword Via A Multi-Arena Struggle – Part II
Around Qods (Jerusalem) Day, which the Iranian regime marked this year on April 29, 2022, the regime mouthpiece Kayhan daily discussed at length Iran's policy of encouraging the Palestinian military struggle against Israel, including within Israel itself. In several editorials, some with an antisemitic tone, it called on the resistance forces – among them Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Iraqi Al-Nujaba movement, and particularly on the Palestinians and their organizations – to take military action against Israel.

On its front page, Kayhan highlighted a video in Hebrew by the Iraqi pro-Iran Shi'ite militia Al-Nujaba depicting a missile attack on Israel launched simultaneously from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza (see below). Furthermore, in an antisemitic editorial titled "[Israel] May Be [Destroyed] Without A War," the newspaper described Zionism and Zionist ideology in antisemitic terminology taken from Nazi propaganda: as "ratlike," as bacteria that spread evil, corruption, and plunder, and as strife- and discord-mongers who aim only to rob and loot the Muslims and who work together with Satan and even teach him. Kayhan attributed other traits to the Zionists that antisemites have historically attributed to Jews, such as controlling global media, in addition to linking today's Zionists "who love to kill innocent people" with the Jews of the past whom it claims killed a prophet. It also praised Hitler for expelling the Jews from Germany and for the Nazis' racial laws.

Other regime representatives, including Mohammad Hassan Akhtari, a senior official in the Office of the President, Hajji Sadeqi, Khamenei's representative in the IRGC, and Mohammad Eslami, director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), as well as Iran Police commander Hossein Ashtari, all called for the destruction of Israel and boasted of Iran's activity to accomplish this goal.

This report, the second in a series, will present the calls by mouthpieces of the Iranian regime for the destruction of Israel through military struggle.[i]
Iranian Dissidents Sue Ebrahim Raisi for Torture
A group of Iranian dissidents and former hostages is set to sue the hardline regime's president, Ebrahim Raisi, in a landmark case in federal court alleging torture and other human rights crimes.

The case will be filed ahead of Raisi's travel to the United States to attend annual U.N. proceedings in New York City, according to information about the case provided to the Washington Free Beacon by the National Union for Democracy in Iran, an advocacy group comprised of pro-democracy advocates.

The plaintiffs include Mehdi Hajati, a former city councilman in Iran; Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian academic formerly taken hostage by Iran; and Hamid Babaei, a Belgium-based Iranian dissident also held hostage in the country. "The complaint will allege violations of the Torture Victim Protection Act and torture, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault and battery, and false imprisonment," according to the advocacy group. The plaintiffs are being represented by Iranian-American human rights attorney Shahin Milani.

The lawsuit is likely to increase controversy surrounding Raisi's visit to the United States later this month to attend the U.N. General Assembly. The Biden administration decided to grant Raisi a visa to enter the United States, even as members of Congress from both parties pushed the administration to bar him from U.S. soil.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) is spearheading legislation that effectively blocks the Biden administration from giving Raisi a visa, the Free Beacon reported on Wednesday.


Iran wrestler accused of boycott against Israeli wrestler by overeating
The former head coach of Iran’s national Greco-Roman wrestling team and a prominent British-Iranian analyst slammed the Islamic Republic for using dirty tricks to force its wrestler to boycott his Israeli competitor on Thursday in Belgrade, Serbia.

“Iranian wrestler, Amir Yazdani was due to face an Israeli opponent at Wrestle Belgrade. If he refused Iran wrestling federation would have been banned like Judo. Instead, they overfed him so he didn’t qualify at the weigh-in. Once again Iran managed to get out of a sticky situation, “ wrote Potkin Azarmehr, a British-Iranian critic of the Islamic Republic on Twitter.

Who is Iranian wrestler Amir Mohammad Yazdani?
Amir Mohammad Yazdani, the 70-kilogram wrestler of the Iranian national freestyle team, was slated to wrestle Israeli Josh Finesilver. Yazdani was considered the favorite to win the weight class at the world championships.

"It is not the head coaches and athletes who make decisions, but the Iranian security officials who give orders and have the final word in this regard. These security officials are present at all sports competitions including during all foreign travel. In sports camps, dormitories, or at international competitions, they repeat the red lines of the regime,“ Sardar Pashaei, the former head of Iran's national Greco-Roman wrestling, told The Jerusalem Post.

Pashaei added, “They remind the athletes that they are never allowed to be friends or even shake hands with Israeli athletes. I don't remember any international competition where the security agents didn't make it unpleasant for us." It's up to the Olympics

"The International Olympic Committee and the World Wrestling Federation have turned a blind eye to this. They look the other way. Unless this ridiculous policy changes, Iranian athletes should be banned from attending international competition events," added Pashaei.

Sources in Belgrade told the Post that Yazdani and the Iranian coaches 'put on a theater performance' by making it seem the world-class wrestler sought to make weight.

The sports journalist Blaine Henry reported via The Fight Library that “While it’s not official and Iran is possibly doing this to avoid punishment by the IOC, state [Iran] media Press TV said it was purposefully done so Yazdani to avoid facing an Israeli opponent.”




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