Friday, July 28, 2023

07/29 Links: Caroline Glick: Present, past and the Tenth of Av; Biden can show his support for Israel by staying silent; Why it would be better for Israel if Iran enriched to 90% now

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Present, past and the Tenth of Av
So, 18 years after the Tenth of Av 5765, the main question that must be answered is why? Why did Sharon order the operation? Why did the left want it so badly?

These questions speak directly to our situation today. In regards to the left, the answer was given by leading writers both before and immediately after the expulsions. And it had nothing to do with security. It had to do with the same issues at the heart of the left’s protests today.

Six weeks before the expulsions, Haaretz ran an editorial explaining their rationale.

“The disengagement of Israeli policy from its religious fuel is the real disengagement currently on the agenda. On the day after the disengagement, religious Zionism’s status will be different. The real question is not how many mortar shells will fall, or who will guard the Philadelphi Route [connecting Gaza with Egypt], or whether Palestinians will dance on the roofs of [the village] Ganei Tal. The real question is who sets the national agenda.”

In other words, Haaretz, speaking for the left, declared it was reasonable to undermine Israel’s national security to maintain the left’s power to set national policy. The best means to preserve that power, the Israeli newspaper argued, was by destroying religious Zionism through a program of expulsion and demonization.

Haaretz’s editorial board wasn’t alone. Opinion-makers from Dan Margalit and Ari Shavit to Yair Lapid jumped on the anti-religious bandwagon using their prominent positions in the media to gin up hatred for the 8,500 Jews of Gaza and their supporters.

Margalit called for the imposition of a numerus clausus against religious Zionists serving in the IDF. Strict limits, he wrote, must be placed on the number of religious Israelis permitted to serve as officers.

Lapid insisted that the Jews of Gaza weren’t his brothers and he wouldn’t have a problem going to war against them.

Shavit wrote the Jews of Gaza deserved no protection from the IDF because as far as he was concerned, they weren’t even Israelis.

So, for the left, religious Zionists—and regular Zionists, for that matter—were their enemy, not the Palestinians shooting their mortars at Israel. The goal of the expulsions was to defeat them in order to preserve the left’s power to dictate national policy.

And what of Sharon? The answer to the riddle of what motivated him leads us again to precisely the point we stand at today.

Just ahead of the 2003 elections, a prosecutor named Liora Glatt-Berkowitz leaked to Haaretz that Sharon and his sons were under investigation for bribery. When she was caught, Glatt-Berkowitz said she had hoped to swing the elections to the left by publishing the information.

Most of the people involved in executing the expulsion plan who weren’t part of Sharon’s inner circle agree that the bribery investigation convinced Sharon to take the step he knew would devastate Israel’s security. Sharon understood that the prosecution and the courts were dominated by hard-left ideologues. To convince them to go easy on him and his sons, he adopted their policies and helped them to destroy their enemies: his voters.

Moshe Ya’alon was IDF Chief of General Staff when Sharon announced the withdrawal and expulsion plan. Ya’alon is now one of the leaders of the left’s anti-government insurrection. But he saw things far differently in the past.

In his 2009 memoir, Ya’alon wrote, “I have no doubt Sharon’s decision derived from external considerations. When he found himself in personal distress because of the criminal investigations against him … Sharon decided to turn the tables and take a dramatic step that blatantly contradicted his worldview and didn’t jibe with his grasp of reality.”

Most historians believe that the destruction of the Second Temple wasn’t inevitable initially. The Jews couldn’t beat the Romans in a frontal battle. But they had sufficient stores of food in Jerusalem to withstand years of siege, during which they could perhaps exhaust the Romans through attrition. The destruction became inevitable, however, when a tiny group of fanatics called the Sicarii burned all the stores of food. The Sicarii wrongly believed that the Jews could defeat the Romans, but the only way to get them to do so was to leave them with no choice other than to fight. Hence, they burned the food.

The question in Israel now is who are today’s Sicarri? The left insists that the Netanyahu government is because it insists on implementing the judicial reform agenda it ran on. The right insists that the leftist elite burning the country in a bid to preserve its power and privilege protected by the judicial system are the Sicarri.

By preserving the memory of the events of the Tenth of Av 5765, we find the answer to the question regarding the Ninth of Av. Jews who want to prevent the destruction of the Third Commonwealth— the State of Israel—must remember that time and that day, and live by its lessons.
President Biden can show his support for Israel by staying silent
The rationale most frequently provided by the White House for the president’s interest is fear that Israel’s democracy will be weakened by speedy parliamentary approval of a law on a vital issue without any support from the opposition, thereby loosening the common bonds between our two great democracies.

But this explanation doesn’t really hold water. It has certainly not been an issue in the past. For example, I don’t recall President Clinton warning Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 30 years ago not to press forward with the Oslo Accord, Israel’s historic but highly controversial peace agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was only approved (via a no-confidence motion) with 61 votes in the 120-member Knesset — a much narrower margin than the judicial reform vote. (I supported the Oslo Accords, by the way, and still do.)

And here at home, passing important legislation without opposition consensus is not much of an issue either. The White House seems quite at ease with Vice President Kamala Harris tying the historical record by so far casting 31 tie-breaking votes in the Senate, including on the administration’s signature achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act.

Democracies sometimes get things done by narrow margins. That’s how our system — and Israel’s — works.

Perhaps President Biden waded into the Israeli political morass in response to pleas from Israelis themselves, maybe even from some current Israeli government officials who despaired of their own ability to affect the course of their domestic crisis. If so, this wouldn’t be the first time Israelis looked to Washington to solve their internal problems. Here, the history is clear even if the lesson usually goes unheeded — it’s not a good idea for either side to wade into the domestic politics of the other. As often as not, well-intentioned intervention can trigger new, bigger problems.

To be sure, there is an important national security rationale for U.S. interest in Israel’s judicial legislation: that Israel’s adversaries not misread dissent for division and miscalculate into conflict. Indeed, there is a legitimate fear that the leaders of Iran, Hezbollah or Hamas see protests by Israeli military reservists, including the vow of many air force pilots to refuse to report for duty, as chinks in the Jewish state’s armor and decide the moment is ripe to put Israel to the test.

But, in this case, the proper response is not for Washington to warn Israel’s government that a parliamentary vote risks the foundational “shared values” of the U.S.-Israel relationship, inadvertently fueling its enemies’ warped rationale for adventurism. Rather, the right approach is to affirm the strength and constancy of American support for Israel, regardless of how it sorts out its constitutional housekeeping.
Biden's Legacy: The Axis of Tyrannies
[T]he weak and possibly compromised administration of U.S. President Joe Biden appears to have enabled and empowered the autocrats of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, all of whom seem to be working overtime to create a new authoritarian world order with themselves at the helm.

Iran, which has already declared a new world order, is, even beyond its accelerating nuclear weapons program, swiftly trying to reshape the world militarily and geopolitically wherever Western nations appear to be losing power. The Iranian regime also appears to be wasting no time indoctrinating it citizens with anti-Western and anti-American points of view.

Since the Biden Administration assumed office in 2021, its vacuum of leadership in the Middle East has led to the increasing influence of China and Iran in the region; the decision by the Gulf nations to dodge the US and tilt towards China, and even to the China-brokered deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran that further sidelines the U.S.

"The Chinese have a strategy they've been following. We kind of wander around from day to day." – Former National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, WABC 770 radio, March 12, 2023.

In November 2022, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed, "Death to America will happen. In the new order I am talking about America will no longer have any important role." The Iranian regime, now that it is aligned with Putin's Russia and the Chinese Communist Party, would probably be delighted to conquer the US.

As the Biden Administration has unfortunately created a leadership vacuum throughout the world, its apparent risk-paralysis and feeble leadership seem quickly to be leading to a new world order led by the Axis of Tyrannies: China, Russia and Iran, with North Korea heading up the rear.


US-Saudi deal to normalize Israel ties may be on the way, Biden confirms
The US-Saudi pact could involve normalization with Israel
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in a piece published on Thursday, said Biden was considering whether to pursue a US-Saudi mutual security pact that would involve Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, one of Biden’s most trusted aides, was in Jeddah this week with Middle East envoy Brett McGurk discussing the possibility of a normalization deal, White House officials said.

US officials see a potential deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia as possible after the administration of former President Donald Trump reached similar agreements between Israel and Morocco, Sudan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates under the rubric of the 2020 Abraham Accords.

In an interview with Fox News published Friday, Netanyahu said an Israeli-Saudi deal “could be very close if the Saudis want it, it’s up to them.”

“I think this is a great thing if we have it. We will have tremendous economic benefits, it will have tremendous strategic benefits. It will be a blow to Iran and a boon to Israel and the US and the Arab world as well,” Netanyahu said.

An Israel-Saudi deal would “be a pivot of history. It will effectively end the Arab-Israeli conflict and enable us to end the Palestinian-Israel conflict,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu has long believed that Israel must first make peace with the Arab world and only then with the Palestinians.

“The Palestinians, who refuse to recognize Israel in any boundary, are only 2% of the Arab world. If we make peace with the other 98%, the Palestinians will stop believing that one day the broad mass of the Arab world will destroy or dissolve Israel and that will bring them into a more realistic position,” he said.

Friedman in his Thursday column, however, suggested that Israel might have to pay a hefty price for such a deal – including a commitment to never annex portions of the West Bank and to halt any settlement construction beyond the built-up areas of existing communities.

He said Israel could be asked to transfer portions of Area C of the West Bank, which is now under IDF military and civilian rule, to areas A and B, which are under Palestinian Authority control.

Netanyahu’s government is unlikely to agree to such steps.


FDD: IDF Intelligence Warns of Growing Threat at Israel-Lebanon Border
Expert Analysis
“The status quo on Israel’s northern border has been relatively peaceful for years, but recent provocations by Hezbollah have disrupted this tranquility. Fueled by Israel’s political instability and a prolonged cycle of violence in the West Bank, Hezbollah and Iran perceive this as an opportune moment to advance their strategy of acting militarily against the Jewish state.” — Joe Truzman, Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal

“Hezbollah rightly calculates that America’s posture in Lebanon constrains Israel and amplifies the group’s deterrence of the IDF. Therefore, the IDF intelligence’s reading that fraying U.S.-Israel ties weaken deterrence against Hezbollah misunderstands America’s posture. The United States is extending a de facto protective umbrella to Lebanon and opposes Israeli military action. Israel and the United States are not aligned in Lebanon.” — Tony Badran, FDD Research Fellow

Hezbollah’s Escalation
For years, the IDF has warned of Hezbollah’s growing military capabilities. Experts estimate that Hezbollah possesses 150,000 rockets and 500 precision-guided missiles aimed at Israel with the intention of overwhelming Israeli defense systems. However, the terrorist group has avoided armed conflict with Israel since the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

That may change. On March 13, a Hezbollah operative crossed the border into Israel and planted a roadside bomb at Megiddo junction that injured an Arab-Israeli driver. Armed Hezbollah fighters erected a tent in Israeli territory on April 8, near the disputed Blue Line, and set up a second tent a week later. On July 6, Hezbollah fired an anti-tank missile at Israel’s northern border, with parts of the projectile landing in Israeli territory. The IDF responded to the attack with artillery.

On July 12, three Hezbollah operatives received non-lethal injuries from IDF stun grenades after attempting to sabotage the security fence between Israel and Lebanon. On July 25, the IDF released a video of Hezbollah members patrolling the Lebanon-Israel border near the Israeli community of Dovev. The IDF did not specify the date the video was filmed, saying only that it happened “last week.”
Nasrallah: Middle East will not rest until 'cancerous' Israel is removed
The entire Middle East will not rest until the "cancerous gland" that is Israel is removed, Hassan Nasrallah said on Saturday morning according to Hezbollah-affiliated media in Lebanon.

The leader of the Lebanese terror organization further warned that Palestinians today "believe more than ever in the resistance and on the axis of resistance." He also reaffirmed that Hezbollah "stands by the Palestinians with everything we possess."

Speaking on National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir's Temple Mount visit on Tisha Be'Av, Nasrallah stated that "the enemy must hear a decisive stance from all Muslims."

Nasrallah to Netanyahu: Beware of any foolishness
During his speech, the Lebanese terror leader also warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to "beware of any foolishness. Netanyahu will hold a meeting with security chiefs Sunday to discuss the recent uptick in tensions on the northern border with the Lebanese terror group.

The Lebanese resistance "will not be complacent and will not abandon its responsibilities of protection or deterrence," Nasrallah said, amid tensions across Israel's northern border with Lebanon.

"[We] will be ready for any choice, and to face any mistake or foolishness," he said in a message to the Israeli prime minister.
Hezbollah uses Ashura religious events to show off ‘modern weapons’
According to Al-Mayadeen, the Hezbollah members were “protecting the march, in which tens of thousands of Lebanese participated, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, to commemorate the tenth of Muharram.”

Hezbollah members posed with weapons including what appear to be large guns that are intended to be used against drones. These “guns” don’t fire bullets but can supposedly neutralize drones using other methods such as jamming.

Rallies for the religious events took place in the Beka’a Valley and also other areas of Lebanon.

Nasrallah claimed that "Hezbollah's position is to defend Lebanon and its people and its oil, gas and water from looting.” This is a reference to how Hezbollah was able to use threats last year to pressure Israel into a US-backed maritime deal. Hezbollah has hijacked the government of Lebanon and gets it to carry out its orders at sea and on land.

Pro-Iran media such as Al-Mayadeen focused on Nasrallah’s threats to Israel. "Beware of any foolishness,” the terrorist leader said, warning Israel several times. "We will go out in our marches in defense of all the oppressed, the tortured and the oppressed, in Palestine, Yemen and Bahrain, and in the whole world,” the Hezbollah leader claimed.

Nasrallah also slammed European countries in the wake of recent Quran burnings in Denmark and Sweden. This has been used by Ira and also pro-Iran groups in Iraq to create new tensions.

Clearly, Iran thinks this issue can bring Hezbollah more support. According to France24 Nasrallah also made anti-gay comments. "In Lebanon, this danger started with some educational institutions and NGOs” he claimed, accusing groups of pushing “same-sex relations to children,” the France24 report noted. “He called on the education ministry to intervene.”

In short, Nasrallah threatened Israel and European countries, made homophobic comments and sent armed men onto the streets to hijack a Shi’ite religious event, all as part of Hezbollah’s overall octopus-like stranglehold on Lebanon.


Abbas hoping to lure Hamas into Palestinian 'unity' gov't in Cairo
Leaders of several Palestinian factions, including Hamas and the ruling Fatah faction, are scheduled to hold a one-day conference in the Egyptian capital of Cairo on Sunday at the invitation of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (who also heads Fatah). At the conference, the Palestinian leaders will discuss ways of achieving national unity and the latest developments in the Palestinian arena.

Abbas is also hoping to persuade Hamas to join a new Palestinian unity government that would end the split between the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Last week, Abbas met in Ankara, Turkey, with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and discussed with him ways of achieving “national reconciliation” between Fatah and Hamas.

A similar meeting of the faction leaders held in 2020 via video conference failed to end the differences between the groups. Then, representatives of 14 factions in Ramallah and the Lebanese capital of Beirut participated in the conference, which ended with a joint communique strongly denouncing the Israeli government and the US administration. The communique also affirmed the Palestinian people’s “right to practice all forms of legitimate struggle [against Israel] and activate the comprehensive popular resistance as the appropriate option for this phase.”

Palestinian officials said they did not expect a breakthrough from Sunday’s conference, especially in wake of the wide gap between Fatah and Hamas. They said that Hamas is unlikely to accept Abbas’s conditions for joining a unity government, which include recognizing United Nations resolutions pertaining to the Israeli-Arab conflict and the agreements signed between the PLO and Israel. Hamas fears that accepting these conditions would be interpreted as recognition of Israel’s right to exist.

Abbas issued the invitation earlier this month during an emergency meeting of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah to discuss Israel’s large-scale military operation in Jenin Refugee Camp. Abbas was scheduled to arrive in Cairo on Saturday and hold talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ahead of the conference.
Abbas in Egypt for Palestinian unity talks being boycotted by Islamic Jihad, PFLP
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas arrived in El Alamein in Egypt Saturday, the news agency Wafa said, ahead of unity talks between Palestinian factions boycotted by the Islamic Jihad terror group.

The Palestinian news agency said that as well as chairing Sunday’s meeting of the heads of Palestinian factions Abbas “is scheduled to meet with his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.”

Last week, PIJ leader Ziyad al-Nakhalah made his group’s participation in the talks conditional on the release of its members and those of other factions detained by PA security forces in the West Bank.

In a statement to AFP Saturday, Islamic Jihad official Mohammad al-Hindi again denounced “continued political detention and prosecution of the resistance.”

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group is also boycotting the talks.

Sunday’s meeting will include the heads of other political factions, including Hamas terror group leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Both Abbas and Haniyeh met in Ankara on Wednesday in the run-up to Sunday’s crucial meeting. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has good relations with both, hosted the talks and said his government will do its best to push for intra-Palestinian reconciliation.

A Palestinian official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, said the talks aim to “end the divisions [between factions] in preparation for a unified Palestinian government and presidential and general elections.”
Tsurkov kidnapping shows who really runs Iraq
The kidnapping of the Russian-Israeli Princeton University doctoral student and Middle East analyst, Elizabeth Tsurkov, in Baghdad is the latest indication of who really runs Iraq.

The Kataib Hezbollah organization, identified by the government of Israel and by people close to Tsurkov as the body responsible for her abduction, is a legal part of both Iraq’s “security forces” and, in a different iteration, of its parliament, and of its ruling coalition. Simultaneously, it is engaged in an ongoing campaign of harassment, kidnapping, and possibly also killing of US and Western targets in Iraq, on behalf of its paymasters and controllers in Iran.

I should probably at this point declare an interest. Tsurkov is not the first Israeli citizen to have enjoyed this organization’s hospitality. That honor, such as it is, belongs, I believe, to myself.

An Israeli journalist who managed to interview, and escape, Kataib Hezbollah
In the summer of 2015, as part of a reporting project on the then little-noted Shi’ite militia mobilization in Iraq, I spent a few days with the organization’s fighters in Anbar Province, western Iraq. I even interviewed Kataib Hezbollah’s legendary founder and leader, Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, at a dusty militia base outside the oil town of Baiji, north of Baghdad.

At the time, the ISIS war was at its height, and Shi’ite militias were oddly and momentarily on the same side as the US-led coalition. They had been mobilized as part of the Popular Mobilization Framework (PMU) to face the ISIS challenge.

The Islamic State in Iraq is a fading memory. This does not mean, of course, that it, or something like it, will not rise again. Iraq’s Sunnis are for now a defeated and apparently largely quiescent population. No one should assume that this stance will last forever. But the Shi’ite-dominated PMU, in any case, is still in existence, is now part of the state security forces, and is growing stronger.

Unlike Tsurkov, I managed to get myself a safe distance from Kataib Hezbollah before it discovered who I was. I have not changed the assessment of the group that I made at that time, gathered from observation of its fighters in action, and from talks with rank-and-file operatives and commanders.
Why it would be better for Israel if Iran enriched to 90% now
With Israel consumed by an intense judicial reform debate, Iran is expanding its nuclear weapons program. The Biden administration continues to promote unofficial understandings with Tehran based on keeping Iranian enrichment at 60% in exchange for the release of billions of dollars. The goal: Kick the Iranian nuclear issue down the road until after the 2024 elections. The proper name for such understandings, which in many ways are far worse than the 2015 JCPOA nuclear deal, should be "false quiet for money", and not "freeze for freeze".

The idea behind these understandings is to freeze Iran's nuclear progress in enriching uranium to 60%, which is very close to what is required technically for Tehran to reach 93%, or weapons-grade enrichment. This gives the mullahs, for the first time, a win-win situation: a de facto green light to 60% enrichment together with massive sanctions relief. Presenting it as understandings rather than an agreement is an attempt by the Biden administration to avoid review by Congress, where it will face fierce opposition.

Israel is better off with an Iranian push to 90% without billions of dollars flowing to the regime and without the illusion that holding Tehran at 60% enrichment is meaningful. No real technical variance exists between 90% and 60% enrichment; the difference in breakout time to a bomb's worth of weapons-grade enrichment is a matter of days or a few weeks. The most dangerous technical threshold has already occurred when the Biden administration did not respond to Iran's enrichment to 20%, which is about 70% of the effort necessary to reach weapons-grade uranium.

For ten months after the US killed Qassem Soleimani, the regime stopped its nuclear expansion. Then it went all out after Biden's election and the end of maximum pressure. When the regime feels American steel, it backs down. When it feels American mush, it pushes forward.
Iranian actress arrested for wishing Netanyahu speedy recovery
Iranian actress Shohreh Ghamar was arrested after writing that she was praying for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's health in an Instagram story, Iranian media reported on Friday.

Ghamar was arrested on suspicion of "publishing offensive content and unsubstantiated claims," according to Mizan, a news agency associated with Iran's judiciary.

The Iranian Fars News Agency shared screenshots of Instagram stories it said were posted by the actress, including one with a photo of Netanyahu with the text "I prayed a lot for your health." The story was posted after the prime minister was hospitalized to have a pacemaker implanted.

Additional screenshots of stories reportedly posted by Ghamar were shared on Iranian social media, including one in which she criticized government officials for threatening to destroy Iran. Fars News Agency additionally claimed that Ghamar called for protests.

Ghamar supported Iranian president in campaign ad
A video of Ghamar starring in a promotional video for Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi's campaign was shared on social media as well, after her arrest. According to Radio Farda, Ghamar also expressed support for the execution of a death sentence against three protesters who took part in protests in 2018.
Adidas is making a stronger statement against anti-semitism in its next Yeezy drop
Adidas has announced the release of a second drop of its Yeezy stock, products developed as part of its now-defunct collaboration with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. The release, scheduled for August 2, will look different from the previous one in May in a number of ways.

While the last Yeezy drop was limited to Adidas’s members-only platform, this next release will also be available on a number of other retailers, but only via their websites. The decision to expand the range of selling platforms is likely due to the success of the previous drop, which led Adidas to improve its full-year outlook, cutting its expected loss from the inventory by 20%.

Adidas halted Yeezy sales after ending its partnership with Ye in October after the musician made anti-semitic remarks and allegations of inappropriate behavior against the musician during his time working with the German sportswear brand. Next of Adidas’s agenda was figuring out what to do with the unsold Yeezy inventory. Doing nothing would have cost the company more than $770 million. But selling the shoes as if nothing had happened would be considered hypocritical, removing the logo from the shoes would be deceitful, and destroying them wasteful. Adidas also worried that giving the shoes away for charity might have simply fueled a black market.

Bjorn Gulden, the former Puma chief who became Adidas’s CEO after the Ye fiasco, presented a solution in May: selling Yeezy while ensuring that parts of the proceeds would go towards non-profit organizations working towards ending racial hatred and anti-semitism. The Financial Times reported earlier this week that Adidas picked five organizations in the US and China as its charity partners, and that the donations amounted to €8.5 million ($9.3 million). Adidas has publicly identified the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Philonise & Keeta Floyd Institute for Social Change as recipients but did not specify the donation’s amount, simply referring to it as “significant.”

With this latest release, Adidas added Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) to its list of charity partners. To support the organization’s work, the company said that a limited number of Yeezy products sold directly by Adidas in North America would feature the organization’s blue pins, released as part of its #StandUpToJewishHate campaign. The company is also inviting submissions from other organizations seeking to propose projects aimed at fighting discrimination and hatred in sports.


Amazon Labor Union Alongside Anti-Zionist Activist Linda Sarsour Accuses Israel of ‘Apartheid’
The Amazon Labor Union, which represents more than 8,000 employees at the tech behemoth, took part in a protest on Wednesday accusing Israel of apartheid and genocide in response to an Amazon contract with the Israeli government.

Videos and photos provided to The Algemeiner show executives from AWS and Salesforce being disrupted at least five times during their keynote address at the Amazon Web Services summit in New York. Dozens of protesters outside the event held signs with slogans including “Zionism is Genocide,” “Israeli Apartheid and Genocide Funded by the US,” and “Amazon Profit$ Off Israel’s Military Occupation.” The organizers claim that Wednesday’s anti-Israel protest was the first time that Amazon tech workers and warehouse workers have protested together.

Another speaker and organizer at Wednesday’s protest, the Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, who has a history of making statements widely considered by Jewish groups to be antisemitic and whose MPower Change organization runs the ongoing #NoTechForApartheid campaign against Amazon and Google, said that she was happy to see Israel’s democracy “crumble from within” amid the judicial reform protests.

“I want you all to know that while the Palestinian people are suffering oppression, brutality, and murder and genocide at the hands of the state of Israel, they’re still resilient,” Sarsour said.

The Amazon Labor Union’s President Christian Smalls on Twitter Wednesday liked and retweeted a post describing the protest as opposing the “Israeli apartheid regime,” while the union’s main Twitter account approvingly quote Tweeted a post from Sarsour’s MPower Change.

The organizers of the protest, which included the Amazon Labor Union, the Alphabet Workers Union and Jewish Voice for Peace, allege that Amazon and Alphabet–the parent company of Google–are participating in Israeli “apartheid” against the Palestinians as a result of a $1.2 billion contract the companies have signed with the Israeli government for cloud computing services. The “Project Nimbus” contract aims to move Israeli government services into the cloud with support from the two tech giants.


Globe & Mail Commentator Calls for Canada to Downgrade Ties With Israel
When the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, passed an important component of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul legislation on July 24, it attracted news coverage around the world, highly unsurprisingly given the ongoing regular protests across Israel against the proposal.

And while many pundits have criticized the legislation, others have dishonestly used the opportunity to call into question Canada’s relationship with Israel.

In a July 28 column in The Globe & Mail entitled: “Canada must rethink its friendship with Israel,” Thomas Juneau, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, called Israel’s judicial overhaul an “assault on democratic norms,” and wrote that it raises “difficult questions for Canada” as it relates to Israel. He later argued that Canada should refuse to deal with some Israeli government ministers, become more vocal in its opposition to Israeli government actions, and even “freeze or reduce co-operation with Israel on some issues.” He also called for Canada to cease voting in favour of Israel at the United Nations (UN), which it regularly does.

Juneau lamented the lack of progress in the two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, and while he acknowledges “the extremist Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip with an iron fist,” and the “fragmentation of the Palestinian leadership” haven’t helped the peace process, he pinned much of the blame on the lack of progress of a two-state solution on Israel, which has “expanded settlements in the West Bank, largely closing the door on a viable Palestinian state.”

While common, claims that Israeli communities in Judea & Samaria (called the “West Bank” by news media outlets) are an obstacle to peace, does not stand up to scrutiny. Not only does Israel possess extensive legal rights to the land in question, but the concept that Israelis living in the lands of their ancestors is as much a hurdle as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA), which widely incite their population against the very concept of peace with Israel, is absurd.

In Hamas’ case, the hateful rhetoric is only the beginning; the Islamist terrorist group has been warring with Israel for decades, including in major rocket attacks on the Jewish State in 2021, and continues to call for the country’s elimination, and in its place, a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy.
Toronto Star Columnist Accuses Israel Of Planning To Annex “Illegal Israeli” Settlements
In a recent July 27 column in the Toronto Star entitled: “Canada’s feeble response gives green light to West Bank annexation,” columnist Linda McQuaig accused the Canadian government of giving a “feeble” response to Israel’s alleged “moves to annex the West Bank” (Judea & Samaria).

McQuaig’s concern is misplaced for several reasons.

Firstly, despite McQuaig’s statement to the contrary, there is no evidence of any looming plans for Israel to “annex” Judea & Samaria. While extending full Israeli sovereignty over the area is undoubtedly a favourable view among many members of Israel’s new government, that is far from equalling an imminent change.

Secondly, and even more importantly, even if Israel did extend full control over Judea & Samaria, it’s argued that this would not be an illegal move, nor an act of land theft against anyone. According to international law professor and scholar Eugene Kontorovich, such an Israeli act would not constitute annexation because no other sovereign country had title to Judea & Samaria.

Furthermore, according to the same international law precedent which gives Israel the right to any of the areas in the Jewish State, the same right extends to the lands of Judea & Samaria. “Because these territories were part of the British Mandate, Israel has as much legal right to them as to Tel Aviv,” Kontorovich argued in 2019.

In her column, McQuaig also made the unsubstantiated claim that “The presence of 700,000 Israeli settlers on Palestinian land — illegal under international law — is a flashpoint for violence.” The presence of Israelis living in their ancient and ancestral homeland is not illegal, but McQuaig’s allegation that their mere presence somehow creates violence is an irresponsible statement.
Israeli Arabs Largely Reject Henriette Chacar’s ‘Context’ on Israeli Arabs
Other surveys have similar findings. For example, a 2017 study by Arik Rudnitzky and Itamar Radai found that only 8.9 percent of Israeli Arabs identify as “Palestinian in Israel/Palestinian citizen in Israel” and 15.4 percent identify as “Palestinian” (“Citizenship, Identity and Political Participation . . . ” p. 22).

A third study, conducted in 2020 by Camille Fuchs of Tel Aviv University, found only 7 percent of non-Jewish people in Israel identify as Palestinian. Similar findings are apparent in the 2017 Shaharit survey.

CAMERA has contacted Reuters, requesting current credible polling data substantiating Chacar’s claim that Israeli Arabs’ self-identification as Palestinian has profoundly grown in the last three years, from less than 15 percent (at best) to well over 70 percent (as “largely” indicates on the whole).

If such substantiation does exist, then the information would indeed be a great scoop representing a significant new phenomenon. If it doesn’t, a correction is in order.

Stay tuned for updates.
Christian Science Monitor Misleads on Benefits for Arab East Jerusalemites
A Christian Science Monitor feature this week about a centuries-old east Jerusalem soup kitchen mixes heart-warming accounts of generosity and a dose of savory food descriptions with a dash of misinformation (“Centuries-old Jerusalem soup kitchen serves up ‘food with dignity‘”).

The article misleads: “As many of the Palestinians in the Old City do not hold Israeli citizenship, they often fall through the cracks of services provided by Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan.”

In fact, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem’s Old City who do not possess Israeli citizenship receive national insurance, medical, educational and other social benefits granted by the Israeli government.

As Times of Israel reported:
Currently, there are more than 350,000 Arab East Jerusalemites, around 37 percent of the capital’s population. As permanent residents, they pay taxes and are entitled to state benefits like healthcare and social security.

The National Insurance branch serving east Jerusalem Arab residents of Israel is located on 16 Bar Lev Street. A photo of the building, with the Arabic writing under the Hebrew, appears at left.

The right to these benefits can be lost if residency is revoked, which happens when residents no longer maintain their center of life in Jerusalem. Such revocations affect a miniscule sliver of the population. Indeed, according to the U.S. State Department’s Report on Human Rights, just 66 Palestinian residents (representing less than 0.02 of the population) of eastern Jerusalem lost their residency in 2022. There have also been a small number of families who lost residency due to a relative’s involvement in security-related offenses.

Even the rabidly anti-Israel Institute for Palestine Studies acknowledges that Palestinian residents of eastern Jerusalem without Israeli citizenship receive National Insurance benefits:
New Study Shows on Twitter, Israel Falsely Accused of Violating Human Rights More than Any Other Country
According to a recent survey conducted by Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), based on a two-year review of posts on Twitter, Israel is accused of violating human rights more than any other country in the world. The report found that Israel faces those accusations on social media 38 times more than Iran, and more than 100 times more than North Korea. Both of those regimes widely abuse their citizen’s human rights, in contrast to Israel, a liberal democracy that guarantees its people’s rights.
Polish city of Warsaw adopts IHRA definition of antisemitism
The City of Warsaw adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism on Friday.

Warsaw adopting the definition adds the Polish city to a growing number of capital cities to do the same. Warsaw now joins Washington, London, Berlin, Paris, and others.

Poland itself previously adopted the definition in 2021.
Defense presses case that mental illness spurred Pittsburgh synagogue shooter
A federal trial for the man who fatally shot 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue approached its conclusion Friday as the defense, trying to persuade a jury to spare his life, pressed its case that mental illness spurred the nation’s deadliest antisemitic attack.

Robert Bowers, a 50-year-old truck driver from suburban Baldwin, was convicted in June on 63 criminal counts for the 2018 massacre at Tree of Life synagogue. The jury has been hearing testimony in the penalty phase of the trial and will decide whether Bowers will receive the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Prosecutors have presented evidence that Bowers was motivated by his hatred of Jewish people when he opened fire at the synagogue on October 27, 2018, killing members of three congregations gathered for Sabbath worship and study. The defense argues Bowers has schizophrenia and acted out of a delusional belief that Jews were participating in a genocide of white people.

On Friday, a defense psychiatrist who met with Bowers 10 times for nearly 40 hours said Bowers saw himself as a soldier of God in a war in which Satan was trying to use Jewish people to bring about the end of the world. Dr. George Corvin, of Raleigh, North Carolina, said it was a delusion brought on by psychosis.

Corvin said Bowers continues to express delusional beliefs about Jews — “disgustingly so” — and that he is incapable of remorse. He said Bowers should be on antipsychotic medication.

Bowers “has a belief that we’re at the end of a war that’s been going on for thousands of years,” Corvin testified. “He still envisions what he did as an unfortunate act of violence at the direction of God — that it will save lives. He believes he’s a tool for God. I know it sounds absurd. It’s psychotic.”
Prosecutors cite Pittsburgh synagogue shooter’s good behavior in plea for death row
A courtroom debate over whether the man who killed 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 should get the death penalty hinged briefly this week over the question of how many federal prisoners are Jewish.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Robert Bowers, who was convicted on 63 counts last month, including 22 capital charges. Bowers’s attorneys have been arguing that the federal Bureau of Prisons would likely consign Bowers to ADX Florence, the notorious Colorado maximum security prison known as Supermax.

Two former Bureau of Prisons officials who now offer paid testimony, principally for defendants, painted a picture on Wednesday and Thursday of an austere and isolated existence at the facility, with minimal interactions with other prisoners or the outside world.

The prosecution argued that Bowers’s confinement at Supermax was not as inevitable as the defense contended, and that he could easily end up at a prison with greater allowances, and might even be eligible for more amenable conditions as he aged. Bowers is 51.

Janet Perdue, who worked for more than 30 years as an administrator in the federal prisons system, said Bowers was a likely candidate for the Supermax because he committed a hate crime that got massive national and international attention. The prison has housed the Boston Marathon and Atlanta Olympics bombers, a founder of al-Qaeda, and, until his death last month, Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber.

“Given that his crime is a hate crime he may become the target of other inmates, I think,” Perdue said about Bowers. “Inmates would not take so kindly to seeing him in an open population and may cause him harm.”

The risk was not just to Bowers’s life, she said, but to the safety of prison officials who would have to respond to an attack.


San Diego Police Investigating Hate Crime Against Orthodox Rabbi
Police in San Diego, California are investigating a hate crime in which an Orthodox rabbi was verbally abused and assaulted by a young male, an ABC affiliated reported on Friday.

On Monday morning, Rabbi Aharon Shapiro, who works for a local Orthodox Union chapter, was shopping for sodas at a 7-Eleven near San Diego State University when someone asked if he was Jewish and then, he told KGTV, “without taking a breath…launched into a tirade against Israel, against the Jews.”

The man, Rabbi Shapiro continued, also said “all Jews should be dead, all Jews deserve to die” before snatching Shapiro’s tzitzits off his garment and running off.

“[The] alleged assault on a San Diego Rabbi that was accompanied by antisemitic slurs is reprehensible and another indicator of the hatred that exists toward the Jewish community,” the San Diego office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tweeted after the incident. “We are grateful that San Diego Police are investigating this incident as a hate crime and call on local leaders to condemn this latest act of hate.”

Monday’s attack on Rabbi Shapiro is not the first antisemitic incident in San Diego in 2023. In May, an unidentified person used their own excrement to vandalize the walls of a University of California-San Diego (UCSD) residential bathroom with swastikas, while in March, a man toppled a decorative menorah mounted on the lawn of Chabad House at San Diego State University, the second time such an incident occurred in two years and third time overall that center had been vandalized.

California had the second most antisemitic incidents in the nation in 2022, according to an annual audit by the ADL, with 508, coming in only behind New York, where there were 518. In 2023, incidents on college campuses have raised concerns about the safety of students.
"Antisemite Rips Mezuzah Off, Trashes Brooklyn Yoga Studio"
NYPD’s 61st precinct announced Thursday that officers are searching for a neo-Nazi thug who ripped a mezuzah from the doorpost and vandalized a yoga studio this week in Brooklyn’s Manhattan Beach neighborhood.

The perpetrator, a tattooed skinhead seen on security photos released by police, scrawled a swastika on a blackboard in the studio, adding next to it, “Nazi punk f—k off” in capital letters.

“Prayer documents” were removed by the vandal at the Yoga Hell studio on East 17th Street, and “religious items were damaged,” during the July 18 incident, police said.

Studio owner Katia Riva said she does not intend to cancel classes at the studio over the incident.


Egypt pressing Israel to increase gas exports
Proponents say increasing gas exports would enhance Israel's status in the region, strengthen the economy and encourage more bids for new exploration licenses.

A decision on Israel's natural gas export permits from Israel is set to be taken, and "Globes" has learned that last Sunday the recommendation by Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Israel Katz was discussed by his top officials. This discussion preceded Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich's response to Moody's warning on political developments in Israel in which he said, "The gas industry is increasing exports to Europe."

Israel's must balance between energy security and strengthening Israel's regional status through gas exports, in particular vis-a-vis Egypt. "Globes" has learned that in a recent meeting between the head of Egyptian intelligence, Abbas Kamal, who is considered the second most powerful person in Cairo after President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Israel's National Security Council head, Tzachi Hanegbi, the Egyptian official pressed Israel to approve an increase in exports. The Egyptians, who are in an economically problematic situation, are interested in Israeli gas both for conveyance through Egyptian liquefaction facilities to Europe (Cairo buys natural gas from Israel for $7.5 per thermal unit, and makes profits in the LNG market) and for its domestic economy.

Egypt's annual gas consumption totals 70-75 BCM (billion cubic meters), with Egypt itself producing about 60-63 BCM. In Israel gas consumption in 2022 was 12.7 BCM, and export volume was 9.2 BCM, including 4.62 BCM to Egypt through the EMG pipeline. These exports are from the Leviathan field, which has maximum annual export production capacity of 12 BCM per year, 11 BCM per year from Tamar and 7 BCM per year from Karish. For the reservoir partners to expand production capabilities, an estimated investment of $3 billion is required for Leviathan and $1 billion for Tamar, and they need to know that they will be able to export more.
What happened to Prisoner X? New film seeks to shed light on disgraced Mossad agent
The question of the true story behind the downfall of Prisoner X — Australian-Israeli Mossad agent Ben Zygier — rattled Israel for much of 2013. But few concrete answers ever arose.

After news broke that Zygier had been secretly imprisoned and then took his own life while behind bars in 2010, contradictory rumors and reports of his activities reverberated around the world. Did he out a Hezbollah double agent? Leak information to Australia? Or Dubai? Did he actually kill himself, or was he murdered in prison?

A new documentary from Israeli Hilla Medalia and Australian Amos Roberts, which premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival earlier this month and will air on Israel’s HOT and Australia’s ABC this fall, seeks to shed some light on the explosive story.

In interviews with friends, journalists, his attorney and through recreated testimony from an anonymous Mossad operative, “Prisoner X” explores how Zygier evolved from a young idealistic Zionist growing up in Melbourne to a young father of two accused of treason and driven to suicide in solitary confinement.

The film tells a dynamic and gripping story for those unfamiliar with the plot, but provides few new details or theories about the life and death of Zygier. So much has been written in the decade since the explosive story was first uncovered, with so many different theories floated, that it is difficult to discern if there was new or simply repackaged information.






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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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