Sudanese website: Welcome to the Jews!

With the announcement last week that Israel and Sudan plan to complete a signed agreement this year, Sudanese media has been discussing the pros and cons of normalizing relations with Israel.

Here's one that is very supportive by Salah El-Din Awdah:

And with logic we speak; And logic does not know the language of emotion; Rather, it is the language of the mind. And this language we respond to those who reject normalization.

Whether with Egypt, Morocco, Bahrain, Jordan, or the Emirates, finally with Sudan.

From a religious standpoint, there is nothing that precludes the conclusion of peace treaties with the Jews. Our Holy Prophet himself did it before.

And from a political point of view, every treaty is possible with any side; Politics is the art of the possible.

From a moral point of view, there is no crime in such a step.

Nor can we Sudanese  be more Palestinian than the Palestinians. The Palestine Liberation Organization signed the Oslo Accords with Israel And that during the life of its late leader, Arafat.

My attitude towards the Jews is not new. 

I have praised their democracy as opposed to our government. I have said that they have a million reasons to be proud of it; they describe it as an oasis in the middle of the desert, a democratic and rustic oasis, in the midst of a totalitarian arid desert.

It is strange that among the things that these rejecters blame Israel for is its killing of the Palestinians. They do not blame Islamic regimes for the same thing. 

Israel kills those it considers its enemies and does not kill its people. As for these Muslim regimes, they kill their own people....even killing  because of a veil, as in the Iranian tragedy of Mahsa. Or because of a protest, as in Syria. Or because of a social grievance, as in Al-Bashir’s Sudan. Or because of opposition to the government, as in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Or because of a political dispute, as in Abdel Nasser’s Egypt.

Those who oppose any agreement with Israel belong with all these killers. They are either Baathists, Nasserites, or Bashirites or even Iranians, as the mullahs of Iran arm their people and kill Mahsa without her veil.

Then there is an argument: What do we gain from the relationship with Israel? As if this Israel is a charitable organization and  not a country like the rest of the world. 

We respond to their question with a counter- and logical question: Why do we not ask such a question when establishing a relationship with any other country? Are relations between countries based on this condition?

Welcome to the Jews!

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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!

 

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01/07 Links: Blood libel: Kremlin claims organs harvested by Ukraine end up in Israel; Israel to halt PA construction, withhold funds in response to UNGA vote

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: How can Israel win the Palestinian conflict? Historian explains

Do the Abraham Accords and the focus on Ukraine and China change things? Not really. The Abraham Accords are great, both in of themselves and because they got Netanyahu in 2020 to abandon his plan to annex parts of the West Bank. Ukraine and China reduce the spotlight on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, always a good thing. But Israel’s thriving relations with the UAE and other states barely diminishes the Palestinian campaign of delegitimization. And whenever the Palestinian Authority or Hamas wishes the spotlight to return, it will do so, instantly.

How should Israel handle the international spotlight?
By recognizing it as a fact of life and finding ways to deal with it. When Hamas decides to launch missiles into Israel, it knows it will get clobbered militarily but will gain international political support. Likewise, Israel knows it will get clobbered internationally, so it should take advantage of the crisis to send a very strong message to the Gazan population that it has lost the war. Ultimately, media coverage matters less than winning on the ground.

Practically speaking, how does Israel win?
I prefer to posit Israel victory as a policy goal, without going into detailed strategy and tactics. First, it’s premature to get into specifics. Second, delving into these topics distracts from establishing the policy goal.

That said, Israel has an extraordinary range of levers due to its vastly greater power than the Palestinians – and not just military and economic.

One creative example: Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman would probably love to add al-Aqsa to his collection of Islamic sanctities, especially at a time when Tehran challenges Saudi control of Mecca and Medina. How about Israel opening negotiations on this topic with Riyadh, offering the jewel in the Palestinian Authority’s crown in return for full diplomatic relations and a change in the status quo on the Temple Mount?

Can Israel defeat Hamas without reoccupying Gaza?
Again, I prefer not to discuss strategy and tactics. But, as you ask, here is one tactic: Israel announces that a single missile attack from Gaza means a one-day border closure: no water, food, medicine, or fuel crosses from it to Gaza. Two missiles means two days, and so forth. I guarantee this would rapidly improve Hamas’s behavior.

But isn’t the delegitimization issue a struggle against those in the West, too? Don’t they have to be defeated? Horrors, no. Plus, that would be impossible. But it is also not necessary, for they are mere followers. Imagine the Palestinians acknowledge their defeat and truly accept the Jewish state; this would pull the rug out from leftist anti-Zionism. Sustaining a more-Catholic-than-the-pope stance is tough to keep up. Israel is lucky that its principal enemy is so small and weak.

Over time, do Palestinians increasingly accept Israel?
Former minister Yuval Steinitz just told me that 75% of Palestinians have come to terms with the State of Israel and live normal lives, but I wonder. A recent Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research poll found that “72% of the public (84% in the Gaza Strip and 65% in the West Bank) say they are in favor of forming armed groups such as the Lions’ Den, which do not take orders from the PA and are not part of the PA security services; 22% are against that.”

Yes, there’s a general calm. In the hotel where we are meeting, the Dan Jerusalem on Mount Scopus, the Palestinian staff goes quietly about its work and is not stabbing anyone. But at a time of crisis, say a Hamas rocket attack, I would avoid this or most other Jerusalem hotels.

Israel’s previous leadership seems to accept Micah Goodman’s idea of “shrinking the conflict.” Do you?
No, I see it as just another in a long line of attempts to finesse the difficult work of attaining victory. Prior ideas included expelling the Palestinians either by force or voluntarily, the Jordan-is-Palestine scheme, erecting more fences, finding a new Palestinian leadership, demanding good governance, implementing the Road Map, funding a Marshall Plan, imposing a trusteeship, establishing joint security forces, splitting the Temple Mount, leasing the land, withdrawing unilaterally, and so on. None worked; none will work. Defeat and victory remain imperative.

What about Iran? The Palestinian terrorist groups, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, get support from Iran. If Iran’s regime falls, will that matter?
Regime change in Iran has vast implications for the Middle East but not so much for the Palestinian war on Israel. The mullahs’ political collapse will not close down the Palestinians’ conviction that rejectionism works, that “revolution until victory” will prevail, that they can eliminate the Jewish state. Israel cannot outsource victory.

Blood libel: Kremlin claims organs harvested by Ukraine end up in Israel

A Russian former senior official argued the war in Ukraine became a very profitable battlefield for "black-market transplantologists," in a report picked up by several Russian media outlets.

In an interview with Russian outlet Moskovskij Komsomolets, retired Major General of Police, and ex-head of the Russian Central Bureau of Interpol Vladimir Ovchinsky claimed the Armed Forces of Ukraine are delivered human organs harvested from the dead and wounded in the war, people who are still alive, such as Russian prisoners of war, and even Ukrainian civilians who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

When asked where the organs are transported to, Ovchinsky said: "The most effective and successful 'workshops' are located in four countries - Turkey, India, Israel and South Korea."

"Israel is also a leader in the field of innovative medical techniques, which are used throughout the world. The clinics of this country successfully perform organ transplant operations."

The former advisor to the interior minister of Russia also added that large amounts of medical equipment, including containers for transporting human organs, were sent to Ukraine since the beginning of Russia's invasion.

When asked what they do with the bodies, he replied: "They burn them like in Auschwitz or Dachau, they are after all heirs of Hitler. There is also information about mobile crematoria to burn the remains of people whose organs were removed."

Taxpayer Dollars Could Reach Terrorists Under Biden Admin Aid Changes, McCaul Says

Biden Treasury Department authorizations, announced late last year, rolled back safeguards on U.S. humanitarian aid, a move that is likely to pave the way for millions in taxpayer dollars to reach "designated terrorists, human rights abusers, and violent authoritarian regimes," according to a congressional foreign policy leader.

The authorizations, which will make it easier for aid dollars to be allocated in conflict zones and areas where terrorist activity is taking place are generating concerns in Congress. Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), the incoming chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that in its rush to push aid dollars out the door, the Biden administration is relaxing longstanding safeguards meant to stop taxpayer aid from enriching malign regimes and terrorism supporters.

"By relaxing longstanding basic restrictions on the provision of aid to countries subject to U.S. sanctions, [the] action by the Biden administration increases the likelihood some of our assistance funding will go to designated terrorists, human rights abusers, and violent authoritarian regimes," McCaul said in a statement. "I urge the administration to reverse this decision."

As part of this recalibration, the Treasury Department issued authorizations that will inject U.S. taxpayer dollars into areas that have historically been subject to strict sanctions, including in China, Cuba, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Iran, and other conflict areas, according to congressional officials who reviewed the new initiative.

The Treasury Department changes, these sources said, remove longstanding restrictions that prevent U.S. aid from being injected into sanctioned areas. To skirt these restrictions, the United States will funnel taxpayer dollars to United Nations organizations working in these conflict zones.

The aid policy also protects U.N. organizations from repercussions should U.S. aid dollars end up in the hands of terrorists or other sanctioned entities, like the Taliban or Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in Syria, according to one congressional official tracking the matter.

Samantha Power, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) administrator, acknowledged in a statement issued late last year that the new aid practices will grant blanket immunity to organizations operating in conflict areas.

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Iran pressured its Jewish community to issue a statement against the protests

Times of Israel reported last week:

The small Jewish community in Tehran on Thursday condemned the ongoing anti-regime protests in Iran, which broke out over the death of a young woman held for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.

In a letter, the Tehran Central Jewish Committee said it was standing by the Iranian regime amid a deadly crackdown on protesters.

“This is a condemnation of the recent unrest in the country that led to the death and injury of several people in our country, as well as many financial losses to the country,” the letter said.

“The community declares that it has always obeyed the position of the supreme leader,” it added.

“The community declares that the enemies of the system are creating insecurity by targeting the unity of the people. In recent days, unfortunate events and incidents have occurred in our beloved country, which has hurt the hearts of those loyal to Iran and the holy Islamic system,” the letter said.

The letter sounds like it was written with a gun to their heads.

And that is not far from the truth.

From Radio Farda, three days before this:

A senior member of the Iranian Christian community says that security officials are pressuring religious minorities to remain silent and not participate in anti-government protests.

The semiofficial ISNA news agency quoted Yonathan Betkolia, the head of Assyrian Society of Tehran, as saying that the intelligence and security authorities of the Islamic republic have asked the representatives of Christians, bishops, and Assyrian priests to prevent the participation of Christian and Assyrian citizens in nationwide protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.

If Christian minorities are being pressured by the Iranian regime, you can be certain that the Jewish community is being pressured that much more. 

And the Christians know that if they support the protests, they will be supported by many Christians worldwide. There would be serious public relations consequences. But if the Jews supported the protests, they would be labeled Zionist spies - the Iranians have already ludicrously claimed that Zionists are behind the protests. Israel's hands are tied; they cannot show support for the same reason. 

So we cannot blame the Iranian Jews for pretending to support the regime. Any other decision would be fatal.

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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!

 

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11/05 Links: Dore Gold: UN takes its war on Israel to next level; Doublespeak at Its Worst; ‘Millions’ of Jewish American Dollars Paid to Raise Percent of Arab Vote

From Ian:

Dore Gold: Diplomatic invective: UN takes its war on Israel to next level

One of its commissioners, an Australian named Chris Sidoti, was explicit on this issue. He allowed the UN to quote him, suggesting that states must move from the report that the COI issued to an actual referral to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague. In short, he called for legal proceedings against Israel.

An initial report by the COI made the charge that Israel was “largely to blame for the continuation” of its conflict with the Palestinians. It was no wonder that State Department spokesperson Ned Price concluded that the COI was “unfairly singling out Israel.”

One of the arguments the COI report makes is that the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria “is now unlawful under international law due to its permanence.” In other words, the report is saying that since 1967 the UN could not use that language, but now it feels at liberty to make that legal argument. What exactly changed?

It has already been noted that while the issue of the COI came up, so did the international response to the annexation of four regions in Ukraine by Russia this past October. However, there is no basis for comparing the two territorial disputes. It must always be recalled that Israel moved into Judea and Samaria in a war of self-defense back in June 1967.

Israel’s neighbors, including Jordan, had massed their armies along its borders during the month of May. True, Jordan had annexed Judea and Samaria back in 1950, but no one recognized that action at the time with the exception of Britain and Pakistan. Russia’s current operations in Ukraine were not in self-defense but rather looked like a war of aggression.

Indeed, the great British authority on international law, Elihu Lauterpacht, has drawn the distinction between unlawful territorial change by an aggressor, and lawful territorial change in response to an aggressor. In short, comparisons between Israel back then and Russia today are simply baseless.

The only explanation for what the UN is doing with the COI is the singling out of Israel. It is a kind of diplomatic invective. It is a nasty misuse of international law and practice by taking its struggle with the Jewish state to a new level.

What can Israel do, given the predicament at the UN? There is no question that the singling out of Israel yet again at the UN requires a response.

Doublespeak at Its Worst

And yet, despite the truth of these facts, the narrative one reads and hears in the mainstream media and from pro-Palestinian propagandists never reveals these critical details. The delegitimization of Israel relies on the spurious mantra that Israel was never legitimate, and that the Jewish nation has no valid claim to a country in the land that was previously “Palestine.”

And, as if this is not enough, the anti-Israel narrative maintains that the Arabs of Palestine were illegally dispossessed and that they remain dispossessed — all of them victims of a colonial enterprise executed by non-indigenous outsiders who stole the land from the Arabs.

But nothing could be further from the truth. While it is true that Arabs settled and dominated Palestine — which in the modern period was an ill-defined province of the Ottoman Empire — it was the Jews who were dispossessed, some 2,000 years ago.

And it was the Jews who were a perpetually persecuted minority in the territory which was theirs for more than 14 centuries, beginning with the conquest of Joshua, and ending with the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E., followed by the rout of Bar Kokhba and his rebels in 135 C.E.

And it was the Jews who were associated, throughout the period of their dispossession, with the province known as Palestine — even by Muslim scholars of the Koran, as pointed out by, among others, the widely respected British imam, Sheikh Dr. Muhammad Al-Husseini.

How is it possible that the truly dispossessed can be accused of dispossessing others when they reclaim territory that is rightfully theirs?

What this means is that anyone who proposes Israel’s illegitimacy is simply guilty of Orwellian doublethink — at its worst. As Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s masterpiece “1984” puts it: doublethink is “to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies.”

The truth of the Land of Israel’s association with the Jewish nation cannot possibly be disputed — it is a fact no less true than that the sky is above, and that water is wet.

With far right ascendant in Israel, Blinken tells Abbas US committed to 2 states

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas spoke with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken Friday, demanding the Biden administration “compel” Israel to stop various attacks against Palestinians.

According to State Department spokesman Ned Price, Blinken and Abbas discussed “joint efforts to improve the quality of life for the Palestinian people and enhance their security and freedom.”

Price said Blinken “further reaffirmed our commitment to a two-state solution,” a noteworthy statement as Israel, following this past week’s election, looks set to usher in its most right-wing government ever, including far-right elements.

Blinken “underscored his deep concern over the situation in the West Bank, including heightened tensions, violence, and loss of both Palestinian and Israeli lives, and emphasized the need for all parties to de-escalate the situation urgently,” Price added.

According to the official Palestinian news agency Wafa, Abbas briefed Blinken on “Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people… including the blockades, extrajudicial killings, home demolitions and settlement construction, in addition to settlers’ violence and violations carried out against the ‘occupied’ city of Jerusalem and its Muslim and Christian holy sites.”

The report said Abbas “reiterated his demand for the US administration to compel the Israeli occupation authorities to stop these crimes committed against the Palestinian people, land and holy sites.”

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11/04 Links Pt1: Ruthie Blum: Israel’s right to sideline the Left; No Call to Bibi: Biden Has Yet to Congratulate Newly Elected Israeli Leader; Teenage Israeli girl shot in the head in Kiryat Arba

From Ian:

Ruthie Blum: Israel’s right to sideline the Left

The emerging landslide victory for the camp headed by Israeli opposition leader Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu is causing more than the average stir. Though there’s nothing unusual about a losing side feeling disappointed by an unwanted result at the ballot box, the outcome of Tuesday’s Knesset elections – the fifth round in three-and-a-half years – is generating a level of disgruntlement not seen in the country since 1977.

That was the year when Menachem Begin, founder of the Likud Party now chaired by Netanyahu, became premier. The upheaval ended three decades of Labor Party dominance.

Panic on the Left was palpable and shrill, with detractors calling him a terrorist, likening him to Mussolini and bemoaning Israel’s inevitable downfall at his hands. Not only was the frenzy unwarranted but in retrospect, it was laughable.

Today’s equally undue apoplexy surrounds two phenomena: Netanyahu’s smashing comeback, which his foes had been doing everything to quash, and the meteoric rise to mega-popularity of Otzma Yehudit MK Itamar Ben-Gvir.

At Netanyahu’s behest prior to the election, Ben-Gvir and Religious Zionist MK Bezalel Smotrich merged their factions so as to prevent the possibility of split and wasted ballots. The move turned out to be a brilliant one, as together they garnered a large number of seats.

The haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism also increased their mandates. The upshot is a strong majority for the Right with Netanyahu at the helm. In other words, for the first time in its history, Israel will have an exclusively nationalist and religious governing coalition.

Jonathan Tobin: The panic in the US surrounding Israel’s next government is about politics, not values

As far as many American Jews are concerned, this time the Israelis have gone too far. After more than four decades of tolerating, with decreasing patience and growing disdain, Israeli governments that were led by the Likud Party, the results of this week’s Knesset election go beyond the pale for a lot of liberals.

Their angst is not so much focused on the return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu for his third stint as the Jewish state’s prime minister, even though he is widely viewed by many Jewish Democrats as the moral equivalent of a red-state Republican. The panic about the election results is caused by the fact that the Religious Zionist Party and its leaders, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, will play a leading role in the next governing coalition. The party won 14 seats, making it the third largest in the Knesset and an indispensable part of the majority that Netanyahu is about to assemble.

The prospect of Smotrich, and especially Ben-Gvir, sitting in Netanyahu’s Cabinet has not just set off a bout of pearl-clutching on the part of liberal Jewish groups. It’s also led to the sort of ominous rhetoric describing a crack-up of the relationship between American and Israeli Jews that goes beyond the usual rumblings about the growing distance between the two communities.

There are legitimate questions to be posed about Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Time will tell whether they are up to the challenge of their new responsibilities and act in a manner that helps, rather than hurts, Netanyahu’s efforts to consolidate support for his government at home and abroad. But what no one seems to be considering is whether the rush to judgment about them says more about Diaspora Jewry’s obsessions than it does about the embrace of nationalist and religious parties by Israel’s voters.

The pair are the embodiment of everything that most American Jews don’t like about the Jewish state. Their unapologetic nationalism and perceived hostility to Arabs, gays and non-Orthodox Judaism are anathema to liberal Americans.

But the interesting thing about the statements coming out of groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and more unabashedly leftist organizations is the way they highlight their worries about the new Israeli government by pointing to the supposed threat that the Religious Zionist Party poses to Israeli democracy.

The Return of Bibi Netanyahu

In Israel, just as in the U.S., the Right typically tends to perform better when the public votes on issues pertaining to the economy and, above everything else, crime, public safety, and national security. Israel has generally been in a shakier place, from a public safety perspective, ever since the Jewish state's last full-scale war with Gaza-based Hamas in May 2021. There have been a number of terrorist attacks and shootings, not merely in Judea and Samaria but even in the liberal/secular heart of Israel, Tel Aviv, that have shocked the national conscience. Israeli-Arab violence, and even the occasional vandalism of synagogues, has at times escalated in mixed Jewish/Arab cities. The Israel Defense Forces has also been forced to step up its counterterrorism operations to thwart the now-ascendant jihad waged by the "Lions' Den" militant group, which is based in Nablus.

At the same time, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is still dealing with the domestic fallout of its state-sponsored murder of protester Mahsa Amini, inches ever closer to the bomb. Iran poses a significant threat to the West and to the U.S., but it poses an existential threat to Israel. In fact, it is, at this time, Israel's only true existential threat. And there is no one Israelis trust more to handle the Iran portfolio than Netanyahu, who gave a tremendous speech to the U.S. Congress in March 2015 excoriating the then-ongoing Iran nuclear deal negotiations, oversaw the daredevil Mossad operation to expose and airlift out Iran's nuclear secrets a few years later, and who helped achieve the 2020 Abraham Accords peace with the U.A.E., Bahrain, and Morocco, which is best understood as an anti-Iran regional containment coalition.

Put simply, Israelis finally sobered up and (correctly) realized that Netanyahu is the best person to steward the Jewish state on issues pertaining to law and order, public safety, national security, and even Israel's international diplomacy. Israelis should be applauded for this decision. The so-called international community will undoubtedly blanch at the inclusion of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir in Netanyahu's governing coalition, but, frankly: Who the hell cares? The Israeli people, and only the Israeli people, can deem what is best for them and their country. The Biden administration, and other Western actors, should respect their judgment.

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10/07 Links Pt1: PA summer camps - terror training camps for kids; Blame Biden’s disastrous Iran and energy policies for Lapid’s Lebanon fiasco

From Ian:

PMW Special Report: PA summer camps - terror training camps for kids

In recent months, many young Palestinians have died as “Martyrs” while carrying out terror attacks against Israelis – be it throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks, stabbings or shootings. What is it that make kids want this? The answer is what Palestinian Media Watch has pointed out for years: That the PA and its leading party Fatah – both led by Mahmoud Abbas – as policy encourage kids (and adults) to carry out terror and seek Martyrdom - and thereby become heroes.

Now that the summer holiday is over it is important to examine the values the PA and Fatah decided to bestow on Palestinian kids via their summer camps – one of the “tools” the PA uses to inculcate the ideals of terror against Israel and Martyrdom.

One distinctive PA message was that terrorist murderers are heroes. Being presented with this strong role modeling for decades impacts on kids, and many young Palestinians set out to die as Martyrs, seeking to earn the ultimate glory in Palestinian society.

Announcing the opening of the summer camps, PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports Head Jibril Rajoub explained that 42,000 young Palestinians were to participate in 600 camps. Rajoub stated that:
Fatah Central Committee Secretary and Head of the PLO Supreme Council for Youth and Sports Jibril Rajoub: “The goal of these camps is to serve as a melting pot and formulate the consciousness of these children according to the Palestinian national ideology.”

[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 19, 2022]

Same Rajoub strongly hinted at the content of the teachings in the PA/Fatah summer camps when he in his opening speech singled out terrorist murderer Thaer Hammad who killed 10 Israelis as “deserving of blessings”:
Jibril Rajoub: “[Silwad] is the town of Thaer Hammad (i.e., terrorist, murdered 10), who deserves blessings, and who constituted a milestone in proactive national action. Blessings to him, his family, and our prisoners from Silwad and from throughout the homeland.”

[Facebook page of Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub, July 18, 2022]

Prior to Rajoub’s opening of the camps, a Fatah “registration announcement” for participation in a camp under Fatah’s military unit Al-Asifa explained the camp activities which clearly sound like military training and combat, among them: “military order and discipline, infantry, combat skills and Shooting live ammunition at a shooting range”; (emphasis added)

Melanie Phillips: Democracy’s watchdog has abandoned its role

It has often been said that the media is a pillar of democracy because it keeps our politicians honest.

Lifting the veil of secrecy in which authorities like to cloak themselves, revealing inconvenient truths that expose the inadequacies and worse of government actions and subjecting all politicians to forensic questioning without bias—this is how the media acts in the public interest.

But when the media doesn’t deliver, truthfulness goes out of the window, propaganda and ignorance take over and democracy stumbles.

We see this in much Western coverage of Israel, with newspapers often delivering nothing more than thinly disguised Palestinian propaganda. So, people with no knowledge of Israel or Jewish history get a wholly false impression.

It’s in America, however, that we see most graphically and frighteningly the media’s abdication of its professional role.

The most influential mainstream media outlets have turned into brazen shills for the Democratic Party and became willing accomplices in the attempt to remove President Donald Trump via the bogus Russian conspiracy smear, which involved elements of the FBI, Justice Department and the Democrats.

At same time, the media refused to report troubling revelations of corruption involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter’s dealings with Ukraine, which implicated Biden senior as well.

And they have left Americans largely in the dark about the acute peril into which Biden’s policies are putting America, Israel and the West.

Jonathan Tobin: Blame Biden’s disastrous Iran and energy policies for Lapid’s Lebanon fiasco

Unfortunately, however, the Americans clearly hope that strong-arming Israel in order to help Iran-proxy Hezbollah—which will presumably profit, directly or indirectly, from Lebanon’s natural-gas business—will influence its masters in Tehran to stop stalling and sign a new, and even weaker, nuclear deal with the West.

If this happens after more humiliating U.S. concessions to Iran in the negotiations that will likely resume after the midterms, it ought to get Iranian oil flowing freely to the West. That could impact the price of oil in the long term and help the Democrats’ efforts to hold onto the White House in 2024, even if it also guarantees that the Iranians will eventually obtain a nuclear weapon. It will also constitute a betrayal of the courageous demonstrators who have taken to the streets in Iranian cities to resist the theocratic regime.

Lapid walked into this trap because he is committed to a strategy of avoiding public disputes with Biden at all costs. For months, as the Americans moved closer to an agreement with Iran that he knew was antithetical to any notion of protecting the security of Israel or its Arab allies, he spoke of trying to influence the U.S. not to go down the path of appeasement.

Iran’s hardline stance in negotiations momentarily seemed to vindicate him. Yet, when Biden gave him his marching orders on Lebanon, he appeared to have believed that he had no choice but to blindly obey.

Seen from this perspective, it’s clear that Lapid was not so much surrendering to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as he was to Biden, though the blow to Israel’s national interests was much the same.

It remains to be seen whether Biden will tolerate, even if only for the five weeks until the election, Lapid’s act of political survival in moving away from the Lebanon pact that the U.S. administration has ordered him to accept. What is obvious, however, is that Lapid has not yet learned what Netanyahu came to understand during the course of his 15 years as prime minister.

Managing relations with Israel’s sole superpower ally is the nation’s top foreign-policy priority. And though doing so is vitally important, Washington can’t be allowed to dictate to its small Israeli ally. The true measure of an Israeli prime minister’s diplomatic acumen is not how close he can stay to an American president. The real test is showing that a premier can say “no” to the Americans when it’s absolutely necessary, as it was with respect to the natural-gas-fields dispute.

Lapid failed that test. Biden and his team now understand how far they can push him, even when Israeli security is on the line. That’s a fatal flaw in any leader.

Behnam Ben Taleblu: You cannot stand with Iran’s women while seeking a deal with Tehran

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09/25 Links: Welcoming the year of 5783; Glick: Booking.com and the Anti-Semitic Zeitgeist; Polish venue cancels Roger Waters gigs after Ukraine comments

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Welcoming the year of 5783

Rosh Hashanah 5783 begins at sundown this evening, September 25, and ends at nightfall on Tuesday, September 27. The holiday celebrates not only the Jewish New Year, but also the birth of the universe and the beginning of the Days of Awe – 10 days of repentance and renewal that culminate in Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar.

The past year, 5782, has been a difficult one for Israel and the world. Although we appear to be emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been some disturbing global developments – from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seven months ago to the Vienna negotiations on a new Iran nuclear deal.

Historically, this period will be remembered for the death of Queen Elizabeth II after an almost-record sovereign reign of 70 years (Louis XIV of France reigned almost two years longer) and the beginning of a new era under her son, King Charles III.

In Israel, we are witnessing a turbulent period as the country braces for its fifth election in less than four years (the first was on April 9, 2019). Security has been tightened ahead of Rosh Hashanah as the country also faces a resurgence of Palestinian terrorism. Are there any good news for a change?

On the positive side, the Israeli economy is showing signs of bouncing back. The Central Bureau of Statistics reported, for example, that the employment rate rose in August to the highest level in four years.

Israel’s ties with Arab and Muslim states are advancing well – especially in the Gulf – as evidenced most recently in talks on a free-trade agreement with Bahrain and Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in New York on Tuesday, the first such meeting since December 2008.

Britain’s Prime Minister Liz Truss told Lapid on Wednesday at the United Nations that she is reviewing a relocation of her country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which would also be a welcome development.

Poll: 65% of Israelis Think Country is ‘Good Place to Live’

Nearly 65 percent of the country’s population say Israel is a good place to live, while 33 percent of the respondents think the opposite, according to a poll published ahead of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

The survey conducted by Maariv, showed that the degree of satisfaction is higher among the older respondents: 77 percent of those aged 61 and over said they are satisfied, compared to 51 percent of people under 29.

The positive perception of life in Israel is also more widespread among religious (79 percent) and ultra-Orthodox (69 percent) respondents, compared to 59 percent of people who identify themselves as secular.

The majority of respondents (62 percent) also believe that the State of Israel is immutable, while 23 percent, on the contrary, believe that it faces existential dangers.

Asked about what worries them the most in Israel, 68 percent of respondents said it was the cost of living. It was followed by Palestinian terrorism (32 percent), housing prices (18 percent), crime (13 percent) and political instability (12 percent).

The majority of those worried about terrorism are supporters of Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu (47 percent), while Arab respondents are much more concerned about crime (39 percent) and Jewish-Arab relations (21 percent).

Caroline Glick: Booking.com and the Anti-Semitic Zeitgeist

As for the zeitgeist, repeated surveys of public opinion show Europeans are largely hostile to Israel. For instance, a 2019 survey of European opinion by Bertelsman Stiftung Foundation found that whereas 61% of Israelis were positively disposed toward Europeans, a mere 20% of Europeans held positive opinions of Israel.

Regarding the Netherlands specifically, a 2018 study carried out by Israel’s left-leaning Institute for National Security Studies showed that the Dutch media collectively cover Israel in a manner that delegitimizes Israel’s existence and dehumanizes Israeli Jews. A popular Dutch media tactic for demonizing Israel is to claim that Israel cannot be a democracy, since during the period under review, the Knesset was debating a bill aimed at curbing the hostile activities of Dutch-funded anti-Israel NGOs.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MN) spoke to the now-rising anti-Israel, and increasingly outright anti-Jewish zeitgeist in progressive America on September 20. In remarks to an online forum hosted by a pro-Palestinian group, Tlaib said, “Among progressives, it has become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values, yet back Israel’s apartheid government.” She added, “We will not accept this idea that you are progressive, except for Palestine, any longer.”

Tlaib’s call for pro-Israel Americans to be shunned by progressives was roundly condemned by a handful of predominantly but not exclusively Jewish Democratic lawmakers, who rightly characterized her statement, and Tlaib herself, as anti-Semitic. On the other hand, there were several other lawmakers who participated in the online conference with Tlaib—and none expressed any qualms about her remarks. Moreover, President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and the rest of the Biden administration and Democratic congressional leadership felt no need to condemn Tlaib. To the contrary, they have embraced Tlaib. When Tlaib condemned U.S. support for Israel during last year’s Hamas missile offensive against the Jewish state, Biden gushed over Tlaib; he expressed his “admiration” for the anti-Semitic lawmaker, applauded her “passion” and “intellect,” and called her a “fighter.”

When seen in the broader context of Europe’s political war against Israel and the dominant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish zeitgeist in Europe and progressive America, Booking.com’s action cannot be dismissed as the mere bloviation of overpaid, woke corporate executives. Instead, it must be seen as a sign of what is already happening, and a warning of an even worse situation that perhaps awaits us, as anti-Semitism again becomes the condition for entry into high society in Europe and America.

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09/23 Links Pt1: Phillips: The real reason for the war against Israel and the west; Glick: Israel’s choice: independence or appeasement; Why does the EU support terror-linked NGOs?

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The real reason for the war against Israel and the west

The core reason, however, why the West has gone through the looking-glass over all this is its total incomprehension of anti-Semitism.

No other prejudice shares the characteristics of anti-Semitism: its driving belief that the Jews control the world; that they are leaders of a conspiracy to harm others to serve their own interests; that they are a supernaturally demonic power.

Ultimately, anti-Semitism is a form of lunacy that defies explanation. But the West cannot grasp this, because it believes everything has a rational cause.

So, it seeks to explain anti-Semitism as just another form of racism, the result of jealousy towards the Jews’ astonishing achievements or something the Jews bring upon themselves by being clannish, keeping themselves separate, looking down on everyone else and other supposed offenses.

Similarly, the West tries to explain the Nazi Holocaust not as the result of psychotic anti-Semitism, but rather of Germany’s humiliation and bankruptcy after World War I. It holds that the Palestinians are driven to behave as they do by dispossession and despair. The fact that the Islamist war against the West is fundamentally driven by a religious war against the Jews is simply unknown.

Israel has never accurately presented the war against itself as an Islamic jihad. When asked, some Israelis have said this is because holy war is a supremely fearsome thing. With Israel’s nine million citizens potentially pitched against the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims, the Jewish state prefers to cast the conflict as a nationalistic struggle it can deal with by fighting the fires that break out day-by-day, week-by-week.

The result is that Israel has done a disservice to itself and to the world. It has failed to explain the murderous reach of anti-Semitism. It has allowed the West to undermine its own defenses against a holy war it doesn’t understand. It has enabled a false narrative about the Palestinians to spread without fundamental and essential challenge.

And now an Israeli prime minister has compounded the error.

Caroline Glick: Israel’s choice: independence or appeasement

Caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid and his supporters in the media went berserk Tuesday after Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu spoke out against the gas deal the Biden administration is mediating between Israel and Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.

Since Hezbollah launched two drones against Israel’s Karish gas platform in July, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly threatened to blow up Karish if Israel brings Karish online without first surrendering to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon large swathes of sovereign Israeli land underneath Israel’s recognized maritime economic zone, including the Qana gas field.

Rather than stand with Israel against Hezbollah, the Biden administration is siding with Hezbollah—Iran’s Lebanese foreign legion against Israel. U.S. mediator Amos Hochstein has pressed Israel to surrender to most of Hezbollah’s outrageous demands. And Israel has folded to the combined U.S.-Hezbollah extortion. Lapid has agreed to give “Lebanon” the Qana field. Together with his partner in strategic collapse Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Lapid insists that with the Qana field, “Lebanon” will be economically saved and once that happens, the Hezbollah-controlled country will magically free itself from Hezbollah’s grip and sign a peace deal with Israel.

Netanyahu’s statement popped their balloon. Summarizing the negotiations to date, Netanyahu warned, “Lapid has entirely collapsed to Nasrallah’s threats. Nasrallah threatened him that if we operate the Karish platform before we sign a gas deal with Lebanon, he’ll attack Israel. Lapid got scared and didn’t bring Karish online.

“Now he plans to turn over to Lebanon, with no Israel control or oversight, a gas field valued at billions of dollars that Hezbollah will use to purchase thousands of missiles and rockets that will target Israel’s cities.”

Netanyahu was right, of course, and that is the problem for Lapid and Gantz. For months the media have hidden the dangers implicit in the deal, and sufficed with parroting government talking points. Lapid intended to avoid public scrutiny, ram the deal through before the Nov. 1 elections and declare himself a genius statesman. When Netanyahu exposed the bluff, Lapid threw a tantrum, accusing Netanyahu of harming Israel’s national interests by interfering with the talks.

Mariam Memarsadeghi: The Gender Apartheid State of Iran

When President Barack Obama promoted the original Iran deal, his pitch was that the normalization of ties with the Islamic Republic would improve the welfare and freedoms of ordinary Iranians. The exact opposite happened. Even with injections of billions in cash into the regime’s coffers, the people grew poorer and the state more repressive. The so-called “moderate” former President Hassan Rouhani presided over the killing of over 1,500 protesters. That President Joe Biden wants to obtain a watered-down version of that deal with Raisi in Rouhani’s office, and with the supreme leader still in power, shows the moral vacuity of a foreign policy that aligns itself with the most repressive tyrants on the planet, even as they murder women, gay people, political liberals, journalists, and anyone else who dares to assert the most basic claims to their own humanity.

Biden has been willing to stick Americans with extortionate gas prices in order to fight for Ukraine and trash our alliance with India by sticking up for “human rights” in the subcontinent. But when it comes to Iran, the president of the United States and leading officials in his administration have been eager to abandon young Iranians, women especially, who have been fighting courageously for freedom since 2009. The greatest asset America has for a peaceful Middle East is the Iranian people, and yet the Obama-Biden playbook is predicated on their permanent oppression under the heel of a brutal regime of America-hating, Holocaust-denying, theocratic misogynists who beat women to death for exposing their hair.

There is no telling whether this time the Iranian people will finally win. What is certain is that the Handmaid’s Tale regime that hates women and hates America is still being courted by the Biden administration, which is a failure not just of our morality but of our national interest. When you look at the photographs of beautiful young Mahsa Amini tortured to death, and when you watch videos of the same thugs who killed her attempting to beat her young compatriots for protesting for her life, remember that these are the thugs the United States is attempting to equip with more power, more cash, and more prestige, at the expense of people who desperately want to be free of their tyranny.

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