Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Al Monitor

Showing posts with label Al Monitor. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 07, 2023

The crime of "Judaizing" - what's old is new again

Times of Israel has an interesting article about how crypto-Jews in Mallorca would continue to celebrate Purim by calling it the "Feast of St. Esther."

A brave woman named Ana Cortés admitted to the Church that she was still celebrating Jewish holidays and studying (illegal) Jewish texts.

The crypto-Jews of Mallorca paid a heavy price for clinging to their Jewish faith. Pedro Onofro Cortés was burned at the stake. Ana Cortés was sentenced twice for the crime of “Judaizing” or secretly practicing and teaching Judaism, once in 1677 and again in 1688.

Indeed, historical works about the Inquisition mention the "Judaizing" charge brought against crypto-Jews.

Today, the same term "Judaizing" is still being used as an epithet - when referring to Israel "Judaizing" Judaism's holiest city.

Just as it was then, the term is used by antisemites to make it moral crime to keep Jews or the Jewish capital - Jewish.

It was an insult then and it is an insult now. And in both cases, it is only antisemites who use the term as an epithet.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

There's another Mediterranean natural gas agreement where Israel seems to have been out-negotiated - in Gaza

From all appearances, the new Lebanese-Israeli maritime border agreement seems to indicate that Israel has given up significant positions for very little return.

David Schenker summarizes in the Wall Street Journal:

During negotiations, mediated by the Biden administration, Israel conceded the entirety of its claims to the 330-square-mile zone to Lebanon in return for a 3-mile internationally recognized buffer zone adjacent to the shoreline. The remainder of the zone goes to Lebanon, which will also have the right to exploit a natural gas field known as Qana, which extends south of the frontier, and an obligation to remunerate Israel for the extracted gas there.

The contours of the proposed deal are stunning. ...As per the new agreement, Lebanon will attain virtually 100% of its initial negotiating position.

It’s a remarkable turn of events, especially given Beirut’s profound lack of leverage.

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist organization, also played an important if indirect role in the talks. The organization has threatened to attack the Energean floating production system rig in Israel’s Karish field, south of the 23 line, if the ship started to extract gas prior to reaching an agreement on the maritime border. Before Hezbollah’s warning, Israel announced that pumping would start in September. In the absence of a deal, extraction didn’t commence.

Israel's logic seems to be that if Lebanon becomes a partner in selling natural gas, Hezbollah is far less likely to start another war. But Israel is permanently giving up hundreds of square miles of maritime rights for an assumption of logic on the part of a group that slavishly does whatever Iran tells it to do. And Hezbollah has a history of not giving a damn about Lebanon when it makes its own decisions.

It turns out that there was practically a mirror image of these negotiations happening on Israel's other maritime border, with Egypt. Al Monitor reports that Israel appears to have given up on its maritime rights in the sea off the Gaza coast as well:

Egypt succeeded in persuading Israel to start extracting natural gas off the coast of the Gaza Strip, after several months of secret bilateral talks, according to information provided to Al-Monitor by an official in the Egyptian intelligence service and a member of the PLO Executive Committee.
It comes after years of Israeli objections to extract natural gas off the coast of Gaza on security grounds...
The member of the PLO Executive Committee told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that Egypt informed the PA of Israel's approval to start extracting Palestinian gas off the coast of Gaza. He pointed out that this came after political pressure exerted by European countries on Israel to meet their needs for gas alternatives to Russian gas.
The PLO official said that under the agreement, Egypt and Israel would supervise the extraction process, and that part of the gas will be exported to Egypt, and the bulk of it will be exported by Israel to Europe through Greece and Cyprus. The financial revenues from the process of exporting Palestinian gas will return to the treasury of the PA, with part of these revenues allocated to support Gaza’s economy.

The details are fuzzy, but it is apparent that there are commonalities between the Lebanese and the Egyptian/PA agreements: Israel agreed to both under pressure from world powers, Israel abandoned its long standing positions protecting its own rights, and Israel hopes that these agreements will reduce the chances of war without her enemies Hezbollah and Hamas making or even hinting at a single promise.

Avoiding war is of course important, but assuming that making agreements with parties who are adjacent to irrational enemies will avoid war with those enemies is a hell of a stretch, especially one to give up permanent rights for.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

AP implies that Breaking Dawn was a means for Lapid to gain wartime credibility and Knesset seats

An AP dispatch about the Gaza fighting this past weekend throws in a conspiracy theory:

Israel said it took action against the militant group because of concrete threats of an imminent attack, but has not provided details. Caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who is an experienced diplomat but untested in overseeing a war, unleashed the offensive less than three months before a general election in which he is campaigning to keep the job.

There two sentences meant to give the impression that the fighting wasn't necessary and the caretaker government made up an excuse to look macho and gain power in the next elections.

It is beyond absurd. An article in Al Monitor by Ben Caspit on Friday described the events leading up to the initial bombings:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation came after several days of tension on the Gaza border, over the arrest of in the West bank of a senior Islamic Jihad member.

In fact, at the start of the week, Israeli security forces appeared to have scored yet another victory over terrorism with the arrest of the Islamic Jihad’s West Bank commander Bassem Saadi. The Aug. 1 raid by Israeli commandos and Shin Bet agents in the Jenin refugee camp was complex, with Israeli forces coming under brutal fire that forced them to hole up with Saadi in his home until a rescue team arrived to extricate them unharmed.

Saadi’s arrest was intended to deal a severe blow to the terrorism that swept through Israel from late March to early May, much of it carried out by Palestinians from the Jenin area. In political terms, the successful raid appeared to signal yet another upbeat week in the fortunes of Yair Lapid, the caretaker neophyte prime minister struggling to position himself as a viable alternative to “Mr. Security,” former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the Nov. 1 elections.

However, as always in Israel and the Middle East, any victory can turn into a fiasco within a heartbeat, every ending is a new beginning and nothing ever turns out the way it was meant to. The footage of Saadi being dragged on the floor by Israeli troops accompanied by an attack dog generated a widespread storm, especially in the Gaza Strip, where Islamic Jihad is headquartered....

Hours later, Israeli intelligence had already detected the deployment of Islamic Jihad teams along the Gaza border, toting anti-tank rockets and other weapons, in search of targets on the Israeli side. The head of the military’s Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Eliezer Toledano, ordered the closing of all roads along the border vulnerable to rocket attack. Residents of the kibbutzim and other communities in the area were instructed to remain indoors until further notice.

The spring terror attacks, Israel's going after Islamic Jihad leaders in Jenin to stop them, the events of this past week in the "Gaza envelope," Islamic Jihad's open threats over the past week - none of this is mentioned by AP.

And this is just what we know. Why would Israel reveal intelligence information about an imminent attack?

At the same time, how does it make any sense that Israel would start a potential war for political purposes? Most citizens are reservists in the army - no one would be happy if they thought they'd have to go away from home and potentially fight for a mere political stunt. That would backfire pretty spectacularly.

Similarly, no Israeli government would put its residents at risk from hundreds of rockets - Iron Dome is good but not perfect and people get injured scrambling for shelter even if it was perfect. Israelis wouldn't stand for that, either.

To float such an idea is to say that Israeli politicians are willing and eager to put their own constituents' lives at risk for political gain.

Practically, Lapid's party Yesh Atid has 17 seats in the Knesset; it is part of a coalition with other parties who also want to lead the next government. Why would they go along with this conspiracy to keep Lapid in office? Why would they remain silent about it?

AP is publishing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

But this is the subtle antisemitism that pervades international media coverage of Israel. If the reporter can't figure out why Israel is doing something, or is offended that Israel doesn't share enough intel, it must be that Israel is up to something underhanded. Certainly Israel cannot be telling the truth, even though lying would hurt them far more.

And as with other cases like the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, the media does not look for any evidence that would contradict their gut feeling that the Jews are certainly the guilty party and are always up to something. The only theories worth exploring are the ones that suggest that the Jews are acting odiously.

(h/t Irene)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

"Pro-Palestinian" activists don't care about Palestinian racism

Here is one of the postponed/canceled events for "Israel Apartheid Week" at Lancaster University:

Notice that the theme of the event was supposed to be "United Against Racism."

Which is funny, because the intended speaker has written about racism - Arab racism against black Palestinians.

On his Facebook page, in Arabic, he wrote last month:

About three years ago, I read an article in the Al Monitor newspaper titled "Black Palestinians Shrug Off Racism"… After I read the article, I was angered, thinking "What?! We don't have racism in Gaza!" So I decided to write an article that would refute the original article. Then I began to conduct interviews with some dark-skinned youth, and I was shocked to find that yes, indeed, we do have despicable racism in Gaza, and dark-skinned people suffer because of our racism.

After I published the article, I was surprised to see that it reached the (Ministry of) Interior, and the criticism began to pour down on me, as well as accusation of being a traitor, and (people said that) I am trying to distort Gaza's image… And no one thought or felt even once what the wronged people (i.e. the black Palestinians) feel because of our racism.

The Al Monitor article mentions "According to Gaza Through History, a book by Ibrahim Sakik, wealthy families in the Gaza Strip participated in the slave trade hundreds of years ago." But there is not a single book about the history of black Palestinians.

The Israel haters say they are against racism, yet they know quite well that Arabs are racists - but that fact cannot be publicized because anyone who is brave enough to say a word is threatened by the Hamas or PA governments!

In fact, Palestinians learn when they are young that they are not allowed to criticize their own people or government at the risk of imprisonment and social stigma. The only people who can be insulted are Israelis and whatever Arab nations that seem to be aligned with Israel.

A society that cannot handle criticism can never grow. The Israel haters are doing their Palestinian pets no service when they censor any criticism of them - censorship that in the past has extended so far as to hush up stories of Western female "peace activists" being raped by Palestinians.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Iraq strips Palestinians of their rights. NGOs silent.

There are about 4000 Palestinians left in Iraq, a fraction of the number who used to live there.

From Al Monitor:

The Arabi21 news website revealed Dec. 20 that Iraqi President Fuad Masum had approved Law No. 76 of 2017, which stripped Palestinian refugees living in Iraq of their rights and classified them as foreigners. The law came into effect after being published in the Iraqi Gazette.

The new law replaced Law No. 202 of 2001, issued by former President Saddam Hussein, forcing the Iraqi state to treat Palestinians as equals to Iraqis, with all privileges and citizenship rights, such as tax exemption, opportunities to work in government departments, and access to education and health care services.

Mohammed Mshenesh, a Palestinian researcher on refugee affairs, told Al-Monitor, “The new law will deprive Palestinian engineers, doctors and teachers the ability to become members of Iraqi trade unions," thus preventing them from practicing these professions, "and whoever wants to start a commercial project will have to comply with the foreigners law, which requires the presence of an Iraqi sponsor and the approval of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Ministry of Interior. This will increase the Palestinians’ suffering and push the few left to leave Iraq.”

If the law were to be applied in early 2018, the number of Palestinians in Iraq would decrease even more; they would leave in search of safety, especially since they would be prevented from investing and deprived of employment in the private sector. The law would also prevent them from owning property or joining trade unions, and it would force them to pay full college tuition.

Thamer Mashineesh, the president of the Iraqi Palestinians Association, told Al-Monitor, “The Iraqi law ends the permanent residency of Palestinians in Iraq, so they are now required to renew their residency through consulting the official agencies. They could risk being expelled from Iraq if they were to commit any violation. This could threaten their rights to compulsory and university education, which evidently affects their education and gradually turns them into an ignorant community. In addition, all health care services would decline and they would be unable to pay for expensive surgeries, increasing their daily suffering.”

A law specifically targeting and discriminating against Palestinians.

In an Arab country.

Which has been mentioned in Arabic news media for nearly three weeks.

And this is the first English language article I've seen about it.

Somehow, the dozens of researchers at HRW and Amnesty, not to mention the "pro-Palestinian" NGOs who know Arabic. have not made a big deal out of this.

If they care so much about Palestinians, then why, oh why, do they ignore the news when their fellow Arabs are their oppressors?

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.