Monday, January 30, 2023

01/30 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: Sickening Behavior over Israeli Massacre; Bassem Eid: Palestinians must confront the violence in our culture; Iran’s Jihad on British Soil

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Sickening Behavior over Israeli Massacre
Israeli Jews were murdered outside a Jerusalem synagogue on Friday night, the start of the Jewish Sabbath. As is commonplace among Palestinian Arabs after they have murdered Israeli civilians, jubilant celebrations broke out in their communities with crowds chanting in support of the killing of Jews.

Western leaders have helped incentivize these killings for decades. Once again, we have witnessed the nauseating spectacle of Western governments - which sanitize, fund and pump up the genocidal Palestinian Arab cause - expressing shock and sympathy with Israel over these attacks. The Biden administration continues to fund the Palestinian Authority despite the PA's "pay-to-slay" policy of rewarding the families of terrorists for every Israeli Jew they murder, and despite its never-ending incitement to murder Jews.

Medieval demonization of the Jewish people pours out of the PA. Yet the U.S. and the rest of the West refuse to acknowledge that the war against Israel is caused not by the absence of a Palestinian state but by Jew-hatred. As Israel's Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli correctly observed: "I see the Palestinian Authority as a neo-Nazi entity in its essence and outlook. It is an enemy that is antisemitic to its core."

Last week, the IDF killed nine Palestinian terrorists in Jenin who had been plotting yet another imminent terror attack. Yet to the West, the fact that Israel only ever takes such action to defend itself against murderous attack is presented as a "spiral of violence." Israel's self-defense is presented instead as aggression that causes the attacks.
Bassem Eid: After massacre at Jerusalem synagogue, Palestinians must confront the violence in our culture
Friday night's massacre of civilians outside a Jerusalem synagogue was celebrated by Palestinians. There is something deeply broken in a Palestinian street culture that honors violence against innocents, a culture in which some were filmed dancing in the streets and handing out candies after the 9/11 terror attacks. Multiple generations of Palestinian young people have been taught to hate Jews and Israel's allies. Too much of the Western world has coddled this perverse cycle. Enough is enough. Palestinians and all those who truly support us must stand for humanity.

All humanity should recognize the difference between a preventative assault on a terrorist cell in Jenin on Thursday and the massacre of civilians near a house of worship on Friday. Yet Palestinian culture has somehow come to tolerate such chilling slaughter.

It's time to admit that Palestinian institutions are broken, and that they have developmentally harmed generations of Palestinian men and women, boys and girls, by whipping them into a constant froth with violently antisemitic educational and media content that celebrates "martyrdom" attacks against Israelis. The Palestinian Authority provides a financial incentive for terrorism by providing pensions to the families of those who attack Israelis.
JPost Editorial: Those funding antisemitic Palestinian textbooks must be held accountable
The schools teach the impressionable youth that there is no difference between the “martyr” who is killed in a gun battle with Israeli soldiers and those who attack civilians or blow up buses. Any Jewish or Israeli target is celebrated equally.

Last September, some 150 schools in east Jerusalem went on strike to protest having to use Israeli textbooks, where martyrdom and hate would not be the norm. At the time, Arab parents and activists accused Israel of pushing its identity on the local school system.

Israel has been working slowly for years to try to implement an education program that would replace the Palestinian curriculum taught in the schools. Israel knows very well that the widespread culture of hatred against Israelis and Jews within Palestinian culture begins when children are very young.

Every country has educational systems that may celebrate national heroes. But Palestinian education and society at-large are unique in how it celebrates those who murder civilians. This is a system that hands out candies when someone murders children and targets people enjoying themselves after a Shabbat meal.

The impact of being raised for decades with a worldview of celebrating the killing of civilians, encouraging martyrdom and pledging allegiance to erase a state and people who are their neighbors can’t be underestimated.

It’s a wonder that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians raised in this system never carry out attacks. But as can be seen from the footage over the weekend, the sentiment that a good Jew is a dead Jew is not a marginal thought in Palestinian society.

The rising violence in the West Bank demonstrates that those foreign bodies that fund Palestinian textbooks must demand accountability. Otherwise, there will be many more 13-year-old terrorists opening fire on innocent Israelis.


Israeli President Herzog: "Casting Doubt on the Nation-State of the Jewish People's Right to Exist Is Not Legitimate"
Israeli President Isaac Herzog addressed the European Parliament on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 26, 2023:

"I stand before you today as the President of the State of Israel, the democratic nation-state of the Jewish People, but my heart and thoughts are with my brothers and sisters killed in the Holocaust, whose only crime was their Jewishness."

The story of the Holocaust is "the story of the monstrous, deranged obsession to totally exterminate a nation with roots stretching deep into history....Existence was a crime punishable by death."

"The Holocaust was not born in a vacuum. We must never forget that the Nazi death machine would not have succeeded in realizing its nightmarish vision had it not met soil fertilized with Jew-hatred....Nazi ideology intensified traditional antisemitism and...fanned the flames of hatred....Even before a single extermination camp was built, in the minds of the masses, the Jew was already human dust, sub-human."

"I wish to underscore the fine line between criticism of the State of Israel and negation of the State of Israel's existence. It is, of course, OK to criticize the state that I head....Israeli democracy certainly excels in fierce and penetrating internal criticism."

"However...criticism of the State of Israel must not cross the line into negation of the very existence of the State of Israel....Casting doubt on the nation-state of the Jewish People's right to exist is not legitimate diplomacy! It is antisemitism in the full sense of the word, and it must be thoroughly uprooted."
Richard A. Epstein: Israel’s Proposed Judicial Reforms Aren’t ‘Extreme’
These decisions superficially read like legal opinions but are, in effect, political judgments. They involve sensitive matters of national security and sovereignty that everywhere else are decided by the elected branches of government. A proposal that lets a majority of the Israeli parliament overturn these decisions can hardly be regarded as antidemocratic. Indeed, it is a core feature of Canada’s constitution.

The economists insist that credit agencies will downgrade Israel’s rating as a result of these reforms, citing Poland as an example. S&P downgraded Warsaw’s rating based on concerns over checks and balances in 2016. Their letter argues that the proposed reforms will lead to higher borrowing costs that will choke the high-tech industry, a pillar of Israel’s economic growth.

But the economists ignore the crucial truth that the reforms will bring Israel’s judicial systems more in line with Western norms. Their letter cites Nobel Laureate Douglass North’s claim that unchecked concentrations of power are bad for economies, implying the Knesset would become too powerful. But North was talking about the importance of stable institutions to promote entrepreneurial activity, not an oversized version of judicial supremacy. Like many public-choice economists, he was a strong defender of the rule of law, which isn’t the same thing as the rule of lawyers—or of unelected judges.

Whatever their imperfection, Israel’s new judicial reforms are another step in its journey toward concordance with more traditional conceptions of balanced government. In Marbury v. Madison, Justice John Marshall explained that “it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is” and not what the law ought to be. A similar sentiment found its genesis with Judah ben Tabbai in the first century B.C. Israelis would do well to heed the rabbi’s exhortation: When judging, do not act as an advocate.


Seth Frantzman: Blinken’s Egypt visit is important for Israel, MidEast, US ties
IN FOREIGN policy, it crafted its own path: Outreach to the Assad regime and working closely with Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf. It is concerned with what is happening in Libya as well as security in the Horn of Africa.

There are US voices that are critical of Egypt’s current government – and they are not concerned just about human rights. Not so long ago, Qatar-backed media was constantly backing the Brotherhood, which Egypt deems a terrorist group.

The Erdogan government in Turkey was hostile to Egypt as well. Some Egyptians believed that the US had made mistakes in 2011-2013, which led to chaos in the region. This means there are mutual concerns in Cairo and Washington about the trajectory of relations, which mirrors, in some ways, the Riyadh-US relationship, where a once strong bond has become strained.

Blinken said that he is interested in human rights and also strengthening regional and global security, something Egypt will be keen on. Blinken will be in Egypt till Monday and will meet with Sisi, Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, and senior Egyptian officials, the State Department announced.

Libyan elections will be discussed as well, in addition to the “ongoing Sudanese-led political process.” Then, Blinken will travel to Israel.

This makes Egypt the curtain-raiser for the meetings in Jerusalem. Egypt has historically played a key role in talks with Palestinian factions and manning the tensions between the two sides.

Blinken last met Sisi in Washington in December. US President Joe Biden also met Sisi in November on the sidelines of the COP 27 event in Egypt’s Sharm e-Sheikh in Sinai. At the time, President Biden expressed the US’s solidarity with Egypt in the face of the global economic and food security challenges caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine, as well as his support for Egypt’s water rights.

The American-Egyptian meetings will be watched closely in the region. Qatar will be on the lookout, and so will Hamas in Gaza, to see what might come out of them. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, including Israeli peace partners in the UAE, will be attentive as well. UAE-based Al-Ain media noted that the Libyan issue is at the top of its list; Egypt has backed eastern Libyan leader Khalifa Haftar, but the US and others back the government in Tripoli. Can there be a restoration of “civilian-led rule” in Libya? This remains to be seen.
Blinken Lauds Abraham Accords But Says ‘Not a Substitute for Progress Between Israelis, Palestinians’
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pulled no punches Monday at a news briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, bluntly expressing the enduring view of the Biden Administration that despite the murder of seven Israelis outside a synagogue this past weekend, and the plethora of other terror attacks on Israelis before and since, and despite Israel’s progress integrating into the region with its neighboring Arab nations,

“These efforts are not a substitute for progress between Israelis and Palestinians.”

The two men met for more than an hour Monday afternoon in Jerusalem on the first day of Blinken’s two-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, prior to issuing joint statements to the media. They took no questions and left immediately following the briefing.

“It’s the responsibility of everyone to take steps to calm tensions rather than inflame them,” Blinken told reporters upon his arrival in Israel. “That is the only way to halt the rising tide of violence that has taken too many lives, too many Israelis, too many Palestinians.”

Blinken arrived mid-afternoon from Cairo, where he spent the first day of his visit to the region meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and other regime officials.

The Secretary is scheduled to meet with President Isaac Herzog on Monday evening. He will travel on Tuesday to the Palestinian Authority capital city of Ramallah to meet with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas and other government officials.
US Visa Waiver Guarantees ‘Palestinian-Americans’ Entry into Israel
Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen (Likud) on Monday announced that his office received the US data on visa refusals to Israelis in 2022, based on which it appears that Israel can join the American visa exemption program, and in a few months, Israeli citizens will visit the United States without the need for a visa.

According to the data the Americans provided the foreign ministry, less than 3% of Israeli citizens who applied for a visa to the United States in 2022 were refused. This figure is a significant step on the way to Israel’s joining the US entry permit exemption program.

But there’s a catch: one of the conditions of the visa waiver is reciprocity. As the US embassy announcement reads: “Reciprocity in travel is a basic requirement to enter this program. We ask for equal treatment and freedom of travel for all citizens of the United States regardless of national origin, religion, or ethnicity, including Palestinian-Americans who wish to enter or pass through Israel.”

This is sure to trouble Israel’s security apparatus because it means that any person with American citizenship who holds an American passport will be able to fly to Israel for short-term visits of less than 90 days, including trips to and from Judea and Samaria.

The foreign ministry expects the visa waiver to go into effect this year, although Israel still has to complete the necessary legislative procedure and establish the needed computer systems to allow Israel to enter the program.
In meeting with CIA chief, Abbas calls for pressure on Israeli government
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met in Ramallah on Sunday with the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) William Burns.

The meeting came on the eve of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Israel and the West Bank, where he too is scheduled to meet with Abbas.

Abbas briefed the CIA director on the “dangerous developments and the Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people,” the PA’s official news agency Wafa reported.

It said Abbas stressed the importance of urgent intervention to pressure the Israeli government to halt its “unilateral measures and abide by the signed agreements.”

Abbas also affirmed the need to restore a political horizon on the basis of international legitimacy in order to achieve security and stability for all in the region so that the Palestinians would be able to establish an independent state with east Jerusalem as its capital on the pre-1967 lines, according to Wafa.


Seth Frantzman: Is Turkey trying to put Jews in the middle of Sweden-Ankara tensions?
Sweden has been at the forefront of tensions in Turkey due to Ankara claiming to be angered over the burning of a Koran by a far-right extremist in Stockholm. Now, pro-government and state media in Turkey appear to be trying to put Sweden’s Jewish minority, Jewish history and Israel in the middle of the controversy.

It is not fully clear how the Koran burning came about or who backed it, but Turkey has used it as an excuse to prevent Sweden from joining NATO. Turkey had already objected to Sweden joining the alliance, claiming it wanted numerous “terrorists” deported. But it has now upped its rhetoric.

Ankara is currently in the middle of an election season, and its AKP ruling party wants to use the anti-Sweden feelings to fuel its platform, which includes defending Islam and Muslims.

AKP is rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. Historically, it has also stoked tensions with Israel, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even comparing Israel to Nazi Germany in 2018 and 2019.

Today, Turkey and Israel have reconciled, but that doesn’t stop Turkey from exploiting the Jewish people’s suffering in its fight with Sweden.

For instance, in the wake of the Koran burning, Turkey first condemned Islamophobia and claimed that holy books must not be insulted. Then, it changed its narrative. It turned out that a local activist in Sweden – to get back at a far-right person for burning the Koran – burned the Torah.

This is a classic Islamic tactic – to try to “get back” at Europe for insulting Muslims by attacking Jews. For instance, when the media in Europe ran cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad, Iran held Holocaust denial contests.

Instead of showing tolerance in the face of Islamophobia, the Islamist governments attack Jews.

Turkey’s state media TRT is part of this machination as well.
Israel's nightmare: What is going on in northern West Bank? - analysis
The IDF estimates that Palestinians who have been illegally crossing the border know that Israel’s rules of engagement have become tougher. This means that anyone who crosses illegally and tries to run is likely to be immediately wounded in the legs.

While the goal of soldiers in such cases is to prevent intruders from escaping arrest by firing at their legs, the IDF’s view is that Palestinians know no one’s aim is perfect, and they could be killed accidentally. That means illegally crossing the barrier is both harder and more deadly.

It will take about 12 to 18 months to finish the barrier. That means there are still plenty of holes and that Israel will be vulnerable for the foreseeable future, even if it is less vulnerable than before. This is where the regular night raids come into play. Regular night raids in West Bank

The Post has learned that looking down from “the 30,000 feet” big-picture level, part of the current strategy of the IDF’s West Bank commanders is to bring the fight to terrorists’ home turf, rather than wait for them to bring it into the West Bank or within the Green Line.

PART OF the idea is that fewer Israelis will be killed as a result of catching terrorists before they even try to break through the barrier. IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) intelligence units have reached new highs for locating terrorists before they are fully ready to carry out an attack.

Another piece is the hope that the broader Palestinian community will lose patience with the terrorists and demand quiet.

The IDF also believes it has learned a variety of lessons about how to combat Palestinians in their villages without losing soldiers. Not only do IDF forces have armored vehicles, but they also maneuver in ways to make it difficult to fire on soldiers who enter a targeted residence.
Bill revoking 'pay-for-slay' terrorists' citizenship heads to Knesset vote
A bill to revoke Israeli citizenship from terrorists who have received monetary compensation from the Palestinian Authority was approved by the Internal Affairs and Environment Committee on Monday morning, after which it will be put before the Knesset plenary.

The bill, which passed with broad support from coalition and opposition Knesset members, establishes a relationship between terrorists and the PA, which would allow their deportation to Palestinian territories in the West Bank or Gaza.

The decision to revoke citizenship would, according to the bill, be introduced by the interior minister. The Justice Minister would then have seven days to respond, and the court would have 30 days.

According to the committee’s legal adviser, Tomer Rosen, the approval of the attorney-general to revoke citizenship of a terrorist would not be required since “there is strong evidence that proves both the breach of trust and the relationship to the Palestinian Authority.”

According to the committee, it would be enough to establish that there was just one payment from the PA for the law to apply. Data showed that about 70% of terrorists receive compensation from the PA, the committee stated.

Members further noted that Israel was not the only country to pursue revocation of terrorists’ citizenship.
Jonathan Tobin: Israel’s critics continue to hold the Jewish state responsible for Palestinian terror
Throughout the course of the Palestinians’ century-long war on Zionism, the narrative about their terrorist campaigns against the Jews with whom they had no intention of sharing the land has always been framed as a “cycle of violence.”

That was as true for the pogroms launched against Jewish communities in the 1920s and 1930s as it was for the massacre in Jerusalem—on International Holocaust Remembrance Day—of seven people, and the wounding of three others, by a Palestinian Arab.

The violence has always been rooted in the Arab claim that Jewish presence in the ancient Jewish homeland is a crime that must be expunged. But somehow, each instance of bloodshed can always be explained, rationalized or even excused as a response to some specific action, gesture, or even the mere possibility of either on the part of Jews.

Unsurprisingly, this was what the international media did in relation to the heinous mass killing that took place in the Neve Yaakov neighborhood of Jerusalem on Friday night. Much of the press (i.e. Vox)—as well as apologists for the war on Israel, such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.)—claimed a moral equivalence between the act of wanton murder at a synagogue and the Israel Defense Forces operation earlier in the week by to capture a cell of Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists in Jenin, during which nine were eliminated.

But more than just a fallacious attempt to depict what’s going on as a mere tit-for-tat between two equally intransigent sides in the conflict, the immediate context for the misleading coverage is the ongoing effort by the opposition to Israel’s government and its foreign cheerleaders.

The New York Times’ summary of the week’s events combined the “both sides” cliché with an equally tendentious assertion—in a story headlined “Amid Spasm of Violence, Israel’s Far-Right Government, Raises Risk of Escalation”—that what had happened was a product of a democratic Israeli election. In this telling, and despite disclaimers acknowledging that terrorism didn’t start the moment that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s allegedly extremist coalition took office a few weeks ago, the problem is primarily Israel’s fault.

The argument is that by giving a stable majority to the Likud Party and its religious partners, the Israeli electorate set in motion a series of events that fuels the “cycle of violence.” It assumes that the rhetoric of some of the coalition members, in particular Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, is both unacceptable and responsible for provoking Palestinian terrorism.

This is absurd.
Daniel Greenfield: Who was really behind the Jerusalem terror attack
The last time attacks on this scale took place was when 11 Israelis were killed in three attacks in late March 2022. Those attacks also came after the P.A. had suspended “security coordination” a month earlier, and overlapped with the Negev Summit featuring Arab leaders and Secretary Blinken.

What’s happening is not random terror, it’s carefully calculated terror, executed, as usual, through plausibly deniable attackers who will be rewarded, or whose families will be rewarded, by the PLO’s “pay-to-slay” fund.

The P.A. made a show of suspending its mostly worthless “security coordination” before launching terror attacks to show that it can turn the violence on and off.

But not all of the pressure is coming from the outside.

The attacks were launched less than a month after the new Israeli government was sworn in. The Netanyahu government has pledged to reform the country’s leftist judiciary, which enables terrorism.

A generation of Israelis has grown up in a state of siege because the terrorists waging war on the country enjoy extensive foreign support from Iran, the European Union and the U.S. State Department, as well as domestic support from the Israeli left, which uses its official and activist arms to undermine the fight against terrorism in every possible way.

The left was able to legitimize the PLO and give it control of sizable parts of Israel by crippling previous efforts by conservative governments to defeat the terrorists and expel them from Israel. Long after their terrorist deal fell apart into treachery and rocket attacks on Israeli cities, they still rely on using the terrorists as their “stick” to defeat conservatives and retain institutional power.

The Jerusalem shootings took place far from the stomping grounds of the Tel Aviv ruling elite, such as Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who came out against the death penalty for terrorists, enabled the previous government’s dirty Hezbollah deal, claimed that judicial reforms threaten “democracy” and tried to stall action against the home of the latest terrorist.

The dead in Jerusalem were mainly Mizrahi, descendants of Middle Eastern Jewish refugees, often poorer and more likely to live near Muslim areas and become targets of violence.

They are representative of the “two Israels”: the one that seeks a deal with the terrorists and the one that seeks to defeat them. The new Netanyahu coalition was elected by those voters, Mizrahi, Orthodox Jews, people living in development towns and in Judea and Samaria, in Jerusalem and in the not so nice parts of Tel Aviv and Haifa, who want to beat the terrorists.

And they want to roll back the power of the leftists who have enabled a generation of massacres, who imported terrorists into the country, armed them and promised that it would lead to peace and improve Israel’s position in the world, when just the opposite has happened.

These are the real Israelis, the ones who confronted the reporters exploiting their deaths in Jerusalem and who went to the polls to be heard above the lies of the elites. Their deaths are of far less interest to the elites than the media outrage over judicial reform, cuts in subsidies for Kan’s leftist public broadcasting and an end to an environmental tax on disposable utensils.

That is what is at stake here.
Israel mourns the 7 victims of the Jerusalem massacre

Will terrorist violence escalate into another intifada?

1st responder to both weekend terror attacks in Jerusalem on i24NEWS

Middle East governments join condemnation of Israel terror attacks

Jerusalem synagogue massacre: Iraq condemns, then rescinds

Gallant: Terrorists will be brought to court or the cemetery
All Palestinian terrorists will be held to account, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned on Sunday following two shooting attacks in Jerusalem on Shabbat.

“Every terrorist will be brought to court or to the cemetery,” he said.

While Israel wants calm restored, he continued, it is nevertheless determined to quash terrorism.

“We will undertake offensive actions against those who try to hurt our children,” said Gallant. “We will fight forcefully and decisively against terrorists and their enablers—including, if needed, the demolition of the homes of terrorists or revoking the rights of the families of terrorists.

“We will not allow blood to be spilled. We will do what is necessary to bring them to justice,” said the defense minister.

He stressed, however, that Palestinians who reject the murder of Jews will be fully free to pursue better lives.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called for new measures to combat terrorism, including expanding the number of civilian gun permits and revoking the identity cards and residency status of terrorists’ families.
Condemning Terrorism in Jerusalem—and Efforts to Stop It
On Friday night, a Palestinian opened fire at a group of Israelis standing outside a Jerusalem synagogue, killing seven and wounding several others. The day before, the IDF had been drawn into a gunfight in the West Bank city of Jenin while trying to arrest members of a terrorist cell. Of the nine Palestinians killed in the raid, only one appears to have been a noncombatant. Lahav Harkov compares the responses to the two events, beginning with the more recent:

President Joe Biden called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to denounce the attack, offer his condolences, and express his commitment to Israel’s security. Other leaders released supportive statements as well. Governments across Europe condemned the attack. Turkey’s foreign ministry did the same, as did Israel’s Abraham Accords partners the UAE and Bahrain. Even Saudi Arabia released a statement against the killing of civilians in Jerusalem.

It feels wrong to criticize those statements. . . . But the condemnations should be full-throated, not spoken out of one side of the mouth while the other is wishy-washy about what it takes to stave off terrorism. These very same leaders and ministries were tsk-tsking at Israel for doing just that only a day before the attacks in Jerusalem.

The context didn’t seem to matter to some countries that are friendly to Israel. It didn’t matter that Israel was trying to stop jihadists from attacking civilians; it didn’t matter that IDF soldiers were attacked on the way.

It’s very easy for some to be sad when Jews are murdered. Yet, at the same time, so many of them are uncomfortable with Jews asserting themselves, protecting themselves, arming themselves against the bloodthirsty horde that would hand out bonbons to celebrate their deaths. It’s a reminder of how important it is that we do just that, and how essential the state of Israel is.
By Ending Security Coordination with Israel, the Palestinian Authority Is Shooting Itself in the Foot
The Palestinian Authority (PA) announced the end of security coordination with Israel, but Israel can maintain its security even without the assistance of the PA.

The Israel Security Agency does an excellent job and relies only on itself. The cessation of security coordination will worsen the situation on the ground for Palestinians and severely damage PA rule.

U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken arrives in Israel this week to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to calm tensions and put an end to the recent violence.

One of the main issues that the Blinken will discuss will be the Palestinian Authority’s announcement of the cessation of security coordination with Israel.

Abbas chose to announce his decision in a vague way that would allow him to subtly retract. His spokesman, Nabil Abu Roudeineh, announced that security coordination no longer exists as of now but refrained from explicitly stating that the PA had stopped it.

In practice, PA officials claim that regular meetings between IDF officers and Palestinian security forces officers have been stopped, but both sides understand that it is only a matter of time until contacts resume, as soon as the situation calms down.

The PA is trying to claim to the Palestinian street that the cessation of security coordination is the Achilles’ heel of the Israeli security establishment and that if it ceases coordination, Israeli security will be seriously harmed. However, this is not the case.

It is true that security coordination with the Palestinian Authority helps Israel in its war against terrorism in Judea and Samaria. However, since the Oslo Accords and until today, Israel relies only on itself in this area. We have already seen the “revolving door” policy of Yasser Arafat, who arrested terrorists and immediately released them. In this regard, Abbas is not like Arafat, but Israeli governments have since learned to trust only Israeli intelligence.

The Israel Security Agency does an excellent job in the war on terrorism regardless of the security coordination with the PA. Therefore, the PA will lose more than Israel if it stops the security coordination. The PA maintains the security coordination mainly to ensure the continuation of Abbas’ rule.

The PA is very dependent on Israel in the field of security regarding the movements of PA Chairman Abbas inside and outside of Judea and Samaria. All senior PA officials hold VIP certificates that allow them to pass through IDF checkpoints and enter Israel and also to travel abroad.
U.S. Criticizes Palestinian Move to Suspend Security Ties with Israel
Palestinians have warned that the new measures to fight terrorism that were approved by the Israeli security cabinet on Saturday night won’t stop the violence, but would further deteriorate the situation.

The Palestinian Authority, whose leaders held another meeting in Ramallah to discuss the latest developments in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, condemned the measures, dubbing them collective punishment and a breach of international law.

A Palestinian official denounced the “racist” measures and said that PA President Mahmoud Abbas will raise the issue with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during their meeting in Ramallah later this week.

“The new punitive and racist measures will lead to an explosion, not only in the Palestinian territories, but the entire region,” the official cautioned. “The Israeli government has waged war on the Palestinian people.”

The measures announced by the security cabinet include sealing the home of the terrorist in the Friday night attack in Neve Ya'acov ahead of imminent demolition; revoking National Insurance rights and additional benefits for the families of terrorists that support terrorism, and legislation on the revocation of Israeli identity cards of these families.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf on Thursday criticized the Palestinian decision to cut off security coordination with Israel after Israeli forces killed several Palestinians during a raid. "We don't think this is the right step to take at this moment. Far from stepping back on security coordination, we believe it's quite important that the parties retain and, if anything, deepen security coordination."
Israeli measures will lead to more violence, Palestinians warn

Terror in Jerusalem, Counter-Terror in Jenin, and False Moral Equivalency
One pathetic trick for covering up the morally indefensible nature of a fatal terror attack is to draw a false equivalence to deadly counter-terror activity.

Attempting to explain away the horrific Palestinian terror attack on Israeli Jews outside a Jerusalem synagogue Shabbat evening, MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin excels at this morally bankrupt maneuver, tweeting: “Just a reminder, as the Western media now begins to urgently and extensively cover the attacks in Jerusalem, in which at least 8 Israelis were killed, that 30 Palestinians (9 on Thursday alone) who have been killed in 2023.”

While Mohyeldin’s public disservice announcement is particularly explicit, it’s in no way original. In fact, it perfectly encapsulates the gist of coverage in several leading media outlets reporting on Friday night’s Palestinian attack in which a 14-year-old boy and a couple who ran outside to assist the shooting victims were among the seven civilians brutally shot dead.

Thus, in reporting on the high fatality figure in Friday night’s Palestinian terror attack, the most deadly since 2008, multiple media outlets — per Mohyeldin’s instructions — hurried to note the nine Palestinians killed in Jenin Thursday. Simultaneously, like Mohyeldin, they egregiously omitted the key fact that at least seven of them were affiliated with designated terror organizations and violently clashed with Israeli troops engaged in a counter-terror operation.

As members of terror organizations fighting Israeli troops, these fatalities are not remotely in the same category as innocent bystanders struck down on their way to prayer or Torah class, good Samaritans who selflessly rush into danger to help their neighbors shot on the street, or unfortunate soles merely passing by on motorcycle.


Rashida Tlaib Pays Lip Service to Israeli Terror Victims, ‘Honors’ Palestinian Terrorists
Following the horrendous terror attack outside a Jerusalem synagogue Friday night, in which seven Israeli Jews were murdered by a Palestinian gunman, the Biden administration and US politicians from both sides of the aisle were quick to unequivocally condemn the wanton slaughter and express their unbridled support for the Jewish state.

However, for Michigan Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, the massacre in the Israeli capital presented her with the opportunity to invoke an amoral equivalence between Palestinian terrorism and Israeli counter-terrorism, all while never explicitly condemning the attack. Join the fight for Israel’s fair coverage in the news

A few hours following the attack, Tlaib tweeted from her congressional Twitter account:
Tonight, far too many families, both Palestinian and Israeli, are going to bed broken, without loved ones. If there is not immediate de-escalation, I fear countless more families will suffer the same fate.


While paying lip service to the Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism, Rashida Tlaib implicitly compared them to the nine Palestinians who were killed the day before during a firefight that erupted as Israeli security forces sought to apprehend members of a Jenin-based terror cell, the vast majority of whom were identified as members of local terror groups.

Careful to maintain her reputation as one of the most anti-Israel members of Congress, Tlaib doubled down on her victimization of Palestinian terrorists by tweeting at the same time from her personal account:
I may be the only Palestinian American in Congress, but I will never stop reminding folks that our country is funding an apartheid regime that is killing Palestinian children & families. We honor the victims of the Jenin massacre by telling the truth about the apartheid gov’t.


As Israel Endures New Wave Of Terror, Canadian Media Misleads
Reporting for CBC The National on the 27 on the massacre of Israelis outside a Jerusalem-area synagogue, Petricic claimed that the attack occurred “on a road in the middle of a Jewish settlement in east Jerusalem, an area claimed by Palestinians, but occupied by Israel.”

However, as HonestReporting notes: “Neve Yaakov is not a ‘settlement’ outside Jerusalem but is rather one of the neighborhoods that make up the Jerusalem municipality. While it is true that Israel gained control over that area following the Six-Day War, Neve Yaakov does not have the legal status of a ‘settlement’ and is a fully integrated municipal neighborhood. It should also be noted that Neve Yaakov sits on land that was purchased by the Jewish community in the early 20th century and served as a Jewish agricultural center until it was depopulated during the Israeli War of Independence.”

Over at CTV National News on January 28, Quebec Bureau Chief Genvevieve Beauchemin mentioned Israel’s raid in Jenin that saw 9 Palestinians killed, but failed to mention that 7 were terrorists and that Israel had sought to prevent a deadly attack on Israeli civilians. The day prior, CTV Parliament Hill reporter Kevin Gallagher also failed to mention that 7 Palestinian terrorists were part of the casualty toll of the Israeli raid on CTV National News. Gallagher also said that 30 Palestinians were killed by Israel this year in similar incursions, but failed to mention that Israel says that most of the dead were terrorists. As a result, CTV viewers were left with the false impression that Israel has killed 30+ presumably innocent Palestinians this year. Meanwhile, on Global National on January 27, Anchor Dawna Friesen also made this misleading statement about the deaths of 30 Palestinians, neglecting to mention that terrorists make up the majority of the casualties according to Israel and also failed to mention that 7 of the 9 Palestinian deaths in the Israeli raid in Jenin included terrorists from Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah.

HonestReporting Canada has filed complaints with CBC, CTV and Global News and has brought our concerns to the attention of Canada’s largest broadcasters calling for corrective action to be taken and for some introspection to ensue, so that journalists can better understand how their reporting mislead Canadians about Israel’s right to self-defense and prevented an accurate and contextualized understanding of recent hostilities between Israel and Palestinian terrorists.


Ramallah Gov. demonizes Israeli government: “These are Nazi gangs”

Footage of 13-year-old Palestinian terrorist waiting in ambush and attacking Jews

Tunisian politician:Goal is to liberate Palestine from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River

Abbas to released Israeli Arab murderers:“We are proud of you… You are [role] models of this nation”



Iran, Russia Link Banking Systems Amid Western Sanctions
Iran and Russia have connected their interbank communication and transfer systems to help boost trade and financial transactions, a senior Iranian official said on Monday, as both Tehran and Moscow are chafing under Western sanctions.

Since the 2018 reimposition of US sanctions on Iran after Washington ditched Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the Islamic Republic has been disconnected from the Belgium-based SWIFT financial messaging service, which is a key international banking access point.

Similar limitations have been slapped on some Russian banks since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

“Iranian banks no longer need to use SWIFT … with Russian banks, which can be for the opening of Letters of Credit and transfers or warranties,” Deputy Governor of Iran‘s Central Bank, Mohsen Karimi, told the semi-official Fars news agency.

While Russia‘s central bank declined to comment on the deal signed on Sunday, Karimi said “about 700 Russian banks and 106 non-Russian banks from 13 different countries will be connected to this system”, without elaborating on the names of the foreign banks.

Iran‘s Central Bank chief Mohammad Farzin welcomed the move. “The financial channel between Iran and the world is being repaired,” he tweeted.

Since the start of the Ukraine war, Tehran and Moscow have acted to forge close bilateral ties as both capitals attempt to build new economic and diplomatic partnerships elsewhere.
Iran’s Jihad on British Soil
In response to the Islamic Republic’s execution of a British-Iranian dual citizen, the UK’s foreign office placed new sanctions on the regime last week. Moreover, on January 12 the House of Commons passed on nonbinding resolution urging the government to declare Tehran’s elite paramilitary group—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—a terrorist organization, and to treat it as such. David Patrikarakos explains the IRGC’s significance, and what it has been up to within Britain’s borders:

[W]hat makes the IRGC so potent, beyond mere military prowess, is its ideological mission—which has only grown over the past few decades. If the group’s centrality emerged with the foundation of the state, it only increased in 1989 when Ali Khamenei succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader. Khamenei was determined to use the IRGC to . . . spearhead one of post-revolutionary Tehran’s key ideological tenets: exporting its Islamic revolution across the Muslim world. For this task, he set up a division known as the Quds (Jerusalem) Force, whose official objective is to “liberate” Jerusalem through the destruction of the state of Israel.

The Quds Force has become the engine of Iranian offensive operations across the Middle East—murdering its way across Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, to name just a few countries. And in all the theatres in which it operates it does so not just as a military outfit, but a political one, too.

In the UK, the IRGC can rely on a lattice of ostensibly religious and cultural institutions to further its ideological and criminal aims. Much of its propaganda, which is designed to nurture homegrown extremism, poses a threat to Britain’s national security and promotes the Guard’s ideology in mosques, charities, and schools.

An analysis of the IRGC’s training manuals used to radicalize recruits reveals that the group’s ideology promotes both violence and a clear doctrine of extremism underpinned by a misreading of Islamic texts similar to [those of] terror groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda. The materials make armed jihad against “enemies of Islam”—identified as non-Muslims and opponents of the regime (including Muslims)—an imperative for adherents, and explicitly calls for killings of Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians.
Seth Frantzman: Iran drone attack is the latest frontier of Middle East drone wars - analysis
Israel, which has been facing Iranian threats for decades, now finds its concerns validated. Other countries now know the Iranian drone threat is important. The drones now threaten ships in the Gulf of Oman, and they threaten Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Israel and US forces in Syria.

Last week, drones in Syria targeted the US garrison at Tanf – likely a drone attack by pro-Iranian groups. The claims that drones were used in Iran to strike Isfahan show how drones are now used everywhere in the region and that, in a rare incident, are used to take out a drone or munitions factory linked to Iran’s manufacturer of the hardware.

We are now reaching the era where countries will use drones against drones.

In the past, pro-government Iranian media accused Azerbaijan of hosting Israelis and posing a threat to Iran because of Azerbaijan’s proximity. This seems to indicate that Iran views Baku with suspicion.

Iran’s allies in Iraq have made similar claims in the past about drones flown from Azerbaijan.

“Shia militants in Iraq claimed that Israel has used drones launched from Azerbaijan to attack targets in the north and center of the country – areas which regional officials say have become transit hubs for weapons being sent to Iranian positions near Israel,” The Guardian reported in 2019.

There will be increased drone threats to countries in the region, in addition to rumors being spread about where and how drones are used. This will lead to more paranoia in Iran and also could fuel Tehran’s attempt to retaliate for the Isfahan incident. Iran will likely use its own drones for any kind of retaliation. In the past, it struck at ships in the Gulf of Oman and used drone bases in Chabahar for those attacks.

The Iranian-backed Houthi group in Yemen, which also has drones, recently bashed Israel during a rise in tensions with the Palestinians. The abilities and widespread use of drones in the Middle East now mean that more tensions and battles will be conducted with these systems, including many incidents where the type of weapon used and who is behind the attack is not clear.

Iran, for instance, thrives on sending its drones to Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq and lets them be unleashed by local proxies. That is also why it sent them to Russia.
In 3rd attack in hours, aircraft said to strike Iranian truck on Syria-Iraq border
Unverified media reports claimed Monday that unidentified aircraft struck a truck near the Syria-Iraq border, hours after a similar strike was reported overnight Sunday and a separate attack in the morning hours.

The Syrian opposition online outlet Naher Media said the truck that was hit in the city of Abu Kamal was loaded with weapons and ammunition destined for Iranian militias. The claim could not be independently verified.

According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor with questionable veracity and unclear funding, one person was killed in the attack Monday afternoon, bringing the toll of the three recent attacks in the area to 11.

The organization, run by a single person, has regularly been accused by Syrian war analysts of false reporting and inflating casualty numbers as well as inventing them wholesale.

There were no further details on the apparent attack, but images circulating online showed smoke rising from the area.

The incident came after Arab media reported Sunday night that unidentified aircraft had struck a convoy of Iranian trucks at the al-Qaim crossing on the Syria-Iraq border, where frequent Iranian military activity has been reported.

Pro-Iran factions, including Iraqi groups as well as Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group, have a major presence around the Iraq-Syria border, and are heavily deployed south and west of the Euphrates in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province. Iran is believed to frequently truck weapons to Hezbollah from Iraq and via Syria.




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