Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Jana Zakaneh

Showing posts with label Jana Zakaneh. Show all posts

Thursday, December 15, 2022

12/15 Links Pt1: Europe is waking up and seeing NGO corruption; Francesca Albanese: Special Rapporteur to Demonize Israel; Irish UNIFIL peacekeeper killed by gunfire in Lebanon

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: Why Qatar’s involvement in EU scandal may impact Middle East

This kind of bargaining, using money to get influence, appears to have now brought Qatar into scandal in Europe. But Doha has seen this happen before with controversy over the World Cup and also other controversies in the US, and it has generally sailed on without much effect on its overall relations.

The EU scandal seems to reveal that Qatar targeted members of the European Parliament from southern Europe and also people who are involved in human-rights and other left-leaning causes. This means that someone decided that the best people to target in influence peddling were left-leaning voices, those connected to socialist or other similar parties.

But why would these voices be open to dealing with Qatar, a state that openly suppresses gay rights and is authoritarian? This is one of the perplexing aspects of how Doha has portrayed itself over the last two decades, via media such as Al Jazeera, as being different than it is.

Even though Qatar is an authoritarian monarchy that not only backs far-right extremists in the Middle East, but also theocracy and suppresses workers’ rights, it is able to sell itself to left-leaning voices in the West through a complex blend of preying on Orientalist ideas and pretending that its suppression of rights is merely its “culture.”

Once Doha has pretended that its authoritarianism and support for extremists is “culture,” then it claims that any critique of its policies is “Islamophobia.” This tends to buy quiet from critics and also enables its influence to continue.

On the one hand, accusations that Qatar was involved in another corruption scandal are not unique. Many countries try to exploit Western democracy through media influence-peddling and corruption. For instance, for many years, countries sought to influence Washington’s foreign policy by plowing money into think tanks in and around DC. Then those countries would get the think tanks to hire former government officials and get the officials to help lobby for them. This would be passed off as merely “policy” discussions, but the discussions would always have an agenda.

For instance, when it came to Qatar, the goal would be to get think tanks to critique other Gulf states but never critique Qatar. This kind of lobbying isn’t always corruption, because sometimes it can be done openly. A country can plow money into a think tank, or it can have its supporters do this for it. It can also register its lobbyists.

NGO Monitor: Europe is waking up and seeing NGO corruption

What would've happened if they checked?

Had the EU officials checked (i.e., NGO due diligence), the officials and Brussels-based journalists, who also completely missed this story, would have found that the Sekunjalo Development Foundation (SDF) is based in South Africa, and has considerable baggage, including reports of Qatari funding. SDF is the “philanthropic division” of the powerful Sekunjalo Group’s investments and business deals, and related involvement should have raised numerous red flags in Brussels.

Among other entanglements, the group has worked with the Gupta family, which has been deeply implicated in the corruption cases against former South African president Jacob Zuma. And as the owner of Independent Newspapers & Media SA, Sekunjalo was accused of agreeing to Chinese censorship demands on reporting the mass internment of ethnic Uighurs. China is reportedly involved in numerous business arrangements with the South African firm.

ALL OF this information was readily available to the European officials involved with the NGO Fight Impunity, had they bothered to examine the details.

In contrast, as long as NGOs and their funder-enablers view “civil society” as a religion, complete with a halo effect protecting these groups and the funding process from critical analysis, the doors to corruption and abuse will continue to be wide open.

Perhaps this high-level scandal in the EU will finally result in a fundamental and overdue policy change, including regarding the wholesale funding of the small network of Palestinian and Israeli political NGOs, some of which are linked to terror groups. This change should begin with opening up the documents and meeting protocols in which NGO funding is decided, allowing for analysis of possible insider influence and corruption in the grant-making process involving tens of millions of euros.

In parallel, Europe needs to create mechanisms for NGO oversight, ending the free pass that allows these groups to exert political influence without accountability.

Like other major crises, the EU’s corruption scandal linking Qatar funding and the NGO facade is also an opportunity for repairing broken and dysfunctional mechanisms. The “weaponization of NGOs” is not limited to autocratic regimes far from Europe.

German ambassador to Israel praises anti-Israel NGO

In a series of tweets, Germany’s ambassador to Israel, Steffen Seibert, and its envoy to Ramallah, Oliver Owcza, lauded the anti-Israel NGO Ir Amim in comments regarding their tour with the group on Tuesday.

According to a 2021 report by the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, Ir Amim slammed Israel’s security barrier while “omit[ing] the context of Palestinian terror attacks and Israeli national security concerns.”

NGO Monitor noted that Ir Amim argues that the security barrier “extracts neighborhoods from the city [Jerusalem] with the goal of reducing the portion of Palestinians” and that the “barrier’s demographic rationale therefore outweighs its security rationale.”

“Ir Amim frequently accuses Israel of attempting to ‘Judaize’ Jerusalem and promotes the Palestinian narrative on the city, including claims that ‘government powers are being handed over to the settler organizations’ and archeological digs have become an important ‘tool in the fight for control’ over Jerusalem,” NGO Monitor said.

Berlin’s ambassador wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: “Accompanying @GerRepRamallah Oliver Owcza on an insightful tour with @IrArmin’s Judith Oppenheimer to focal points like [the eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods of] Silwan & Givat Hamatos.”

12/13 Links Pt1: Jonathan Tobin: The Triumph of Trump’s Amateurs; Ruthie Blum: The making of a Palestinian martyr; Would Iran give a nuclear bomb to al-Qaeda?

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: The Triumph of Trump’s Amateurs

And yet the conflict served an unexpectedly creative purpose. It provided the leverage the United Arab Emirates needed to justify its decision to normalize relations with Israel. In the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United Nations, published an op-ed blasting the annexation idea. But while ostensibly critical of Israel, the column offered the possibility that the Arab world would open its arms to the Jewish state—because putting off annexation indefinitely would provide a rationale for normalization by Arab nations that were eager for an excuse to ditch the Palestinians.

Kushner and his chief aide, Avi Berkowitz, with the enthusiastic support of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (who had replaced Tillerson in 2018), went to work securing what would become the Abraham Accords. The UAE went first, but the Kushner-Berkowitz team also got Bahrain and then Morocco (at the cost of American recognition for its occupation of the former Spanish Sahara) to join in.

The establishment of Israeli diplomatic relations with these countries was by any objective standard a historic achievement. It added to the total of Arab nations that recognized Israel after more than seven decades of the Jewish state’s existence; only Egypt and Jordan, both former direct combatants in the wars against Israel, had normalized relations before this point. Even more important, as Kushner’s book makes clear, the normalization was also done with the acquiescence of Saudi Arabia. The accords demolished the claims that peace with the Arab world could only follow a resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians.

Trump’s amateurs proved that John Kerry’s notorious 2015 answer of “no, no, no, no,” when he was asked about the possibility of a wider peace, had been a function of the foreign-policy establishment’s tunnel vision and not a reflection of diplomatic reality. It provided the template for future peace agreements along the same lines with other Arab nations and could, in theory, prod a new generation of Palestinian leaders to seek an agreement with Israel and the United States that would be similar to the Peace Through Prosperity formula.

That the amateurs had arrived at this point by an indirect route, and only after years of struggle both inside the U.S. government and in futile attempts to engage the Palestinians, doesn’t detract from their achievement. But so deep is the contempt for Trump and Netanyahu within the ranks of the Washington establishment, and so entrenched are their preconceived notions about the Middle East, that not even the reality of the Abraham Accords and their significance are enough to change minds.

With the same cast of characters who so conspicuously failed in the Middle East under Bill Clinton and especially Barack Obama now back in control of American foreign policy, the familiar refrains about Israel needing to make concessions to encourage the Palestinians are once again in vogue. Though the Palestinian reputation for intransigence has made it difficult for even President Joe Biden’s team to find any meaningful way to appease Abbas and Company, Trump’s successor has failed to follow up on the Abraham Accords, thus squandering the opportunity for more peace deals and a united front against Iranian aggression and nuclear threats.

That is why the four books by Trump’s amateurs deserve to be read—and, despite their pedestrian renderings of everyday diplomacy (and Kushner’s deeply unattractive efforts at revenge and score-settling), understood as a useful guide to how Washington can break its addiction to policies that have been tried and proven to fail. Their authors may suffer from the opprobrium that the educated classes attach to anyone connected to Trump. But their successes deserve to be remembered and honored, and they stand as a lesson to all who will follow in their footsteps.

Ruthie Blum: The making of a Palestinian martyr

Her grieving uncle’s contradictory accounts of the night in question were just as big a giveaway, albeit unintentional. He told one outlet that his niece had been at home minding her own business when the sound of gunshots overhead spurred her to race to the roof. He was quoted on Twitter as claiming that she had gone to the roof to find her missing cat.

Both stories are revealing; most young girls would have responded to the noise of gunfire, all-too-familiar in Jenin, by cowering under their beds, not rushing to get in on the action. It’s puzzling that no adult blocked her exit from the apartment under the circumstances.

As Israeli soldiers and Border Police were in pursuit of terrorists, three of whom were known to be plotting imminent attacks, residents of the area hurled rocks, Molotov cocktails and explosives at them. Experience has taught both the murderers and those seeking to arrest them that rooftops are the best perch for this. IDF snipers were thus appropriately positioned.

The one who ended up shooting Zakarneh was simply doing his extremely difficult, dangerous job—in pitch darkness, no less. Had the young woman not been next to the targeted terrorist, filming the exchange to post on social media for propaganda purposes, she would still be alive and well.

But, then, mobs of hate-filled Palestinians would have been robbed of the ritual of carrying her flag-draped body through the streets of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) city that has become a key base for arms-hoarding and terrorist activity against the “Zionists.” It’s par for the making of a martyr, whose family will be rewarded with a generous monthly stipend from the P.A.

That’s a given, as is the vile way in which the whole scenario will be depicted in Gamba’s report.

Amb. Alan Baker: The Annual UN General Assembly Resolution Calling on Israel to Give Up Nuclear Weapons – “Much Ado about Nothing”

As part of the annual three-month “Israel-bashing” festival at the United Nations General Assembly, an automatic majority of 146 states adopted, on 7 December 2022, one of its annual resolutions calling upon Israel to renounce possession of nuclear weapons and to place its nuclear facilities under international supervision. Only six states voted against the resolution – Canada, the U.S., Palau, Micronesia, Liberia and Israel.

Anyone familiar with the annual ruminations and musings of the UN General Assembly should not be surprised or even bothered by the automatic repetition of old, archaic resolutions, year after year, singling out Israel for all the various ills of the world.

Apart from elements within Israeli media seeking to sensationalize and dramatize such resolutions, as well as some politicians and officials unfamiliar with the machinations of the UN, no one gets excited or bothered by such resolutions.

Even within the UN itself, the annual festival in the General Assembly of “Israel-bashing” resolutions based on an automatic, politically driven majority has for decades become a routine and unavoidable annoyance and irritant for all except the Arab and African states that sponsor them. Such resolutions certainly do not and are not intended to advance the cause of Middle East peace. Nor do they achieve anything other than stain the reputation of the organization.

They are endured by most states that, out of political correctness and fear of Muslim backlash, simply go along with them and even support them, knowing that they are meaningless.

Substantively and legally speaking, such resolutions, like all General Assembly resolutions, have no binding legal authority and represent nothing more than the collective, partisan political viewpoint of the automatic majority of states that regularly vote against Israel, no matter what the subject.

Sham Bilal Abdullah Hamdan

Do you recognize this photo of a baby girl in Gaza? Of course not - her murder was barely reported.

Arabic websites are screaming about the death of Jana Zakarneh, 16, who was killed during a firefight when IDF troops were shooting at armed terrorists on rooftops, where she was watching the fighting and taking photos.

Here is a photo of the IDF she sent to a friend before her death, apparently from the roof of her building. It is possible that the IDF thought she was a spotter. It is possible that she was a spotter. (h/t Abu Ali Express)

The photo and timestamp shows that the unlikely and contradictory explanations that her family told reporters for her going to the roof (she went without her phone to check out the fighting, she went to get her cat, she was only on the roof for a few minutes) are lies.

Nevertheless, Palestinian media is up in arms about what they are calling a cold blooded execution.

So their media must really care about their children, right?

Except they don't.

On Saturday night, someone broke into the house of a family in the Bir al-Naja neighborhood in Gaza. He assaulted a mother and, according to sources, tossed a four month old baby, Sham Bilal Abdullah Hamdan, out of the third story window, killing her. Gaza police are investigating.

Most Palestinian Arabic media didn't even publish this horrific story. One of the few that did, Ultrapal, has complained that most Palestinian media doesn't report on the many murders that take place in the territories.

Of course, this post is the first time this story is being published in English - even though it happened more than two days ago, the crime is particularly heinous, and the victim is a beautiful baby girl, all elements of a notable story.

The two incidents prove once again that Palestinian media, and international media, don't care about Palestinian children who are killed - even under the most horrific circumstance - unless their deaths can be blamed on Jews.

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