Showing posts with label Nablus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nablus. Show all posts

Monday, August 14, 2023


For years, I have been following the career of Ghassan Daghlas, a man who has been paid by the Palestinian Authority to make up lies about alleged crimes of Israelis in Judea and Samaria.

Over at least the last dozen years, Daghlas has been quoted hundreds of times in the media as he spun lurid tales of Jews attacking Arabs, virtually always without even a photo to back up his stories

Just two months ago, Daghlas claimed that there were 310 separate instances of Jews attacking Palestinians in the territories - in a single day.   Even though these lies are so translarent, he is still quoted as a reliable official by Western media, even a recently as August 4 by AP.

All his years of deceit have now paid off. 


I cannot find any evidence that Daghlas has a shred of experience going any sort of governing or as a manager. Every biography I can find only mentions his role as a monitor of "settlers" in the northern west Bank, nothing else. 

It is clear that Abbas wanted to tighten his grip on local governments as well, after already taking over the executive, legislative and judicial systems of the Palestinian Authority, not to mention heading the PLO that the PA reports to.

Daghlas, an incompetent administrator, will do whatever Mahmoud Abbas tells him to do. 

Naturally, Daghlas says his top priority is "confronting the attacks of settlers and the occupation army." Not developing the economy, or uprooting corruption, or social programs for the needy - but continuing his career of blaming everything on the Jews. 






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Thursday, August 10, 2023



The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics published its labor report for the second quarter, and it shows that the number of Palestinians working in Israel and the settlements increased to 164,000 from 153,000 in the first quarter.

However, this is not the highest number for Palestinians working for Israelis. It reversed a year-long trend of fewer Palestinians working for Israelis.

In the second quarter last year, some 211,000 Palestinians worked for Israelis - 182,000 in the Green Line and 29,000 in the settlements. That number decreased by 13,000 between the second and third quarters.

A drop from 211,000 to 153,000 in less than a year is a dramatic change, before the modest rebound this quarter.

The Israeli GDP has continued to steadily increase during this time period so this drop doesn't seem to be a reflection of more general economic trends. 

It seems likely that as terror attacks increased over the past 18 months that Israeli employers are getting more skittish about hiring Palestinians, worried that some workers might go on a murder spree.

Obviously, only a tiny percentage of Palestinian workers are potential terrorists. But there have been enough incidents of Palestinian workers in Israel who either instigated or facilitated terror attacks in Israel to make Israeli employers think twice before hiring. 

Given that Israeli employers pay far higher salaries than Palestinian employers - this quarter the average daily wage increased to NIS 289, far more than double the Palestinian average - the "heroic Palestinian youth" of Jenin and Nablus appear to be making the lives of ordinary Palestinians worse.

But there are no true brave Palestinian who are willing to say that out loud.



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Wednesday, August 09, 2023

Last year, the IDF killed an 18-year old terrorist, Ibrahim al-Nablusi, who was a leader of the Lion's Den terror cell in Nablus and involved in multiple attacks.

He had been a child soldier, joining a terror group at 15.

Articles about the Lion's Den have implied that it was a home-grown group that just popped up out of frustration with Israel or the PA. Members claimed not to be loyal to any one armed faction.

But today, Islamic Jihad has written a new obituary for Ibrahim al-Nablusi, where they take credit for the creation of the Lion's Den.

Today, Wednesday 8/9/2023, the Al-Quds Brigades - the Nablus Brigade confirmed, on the first anniversary of the martyrdom of Ibrahim Alaa Al-Nabulsi "Abu Fathi", one of the most prominent leaders of the Al-Quds Brigades - the Nablus Brigade and the fighter Islam Muhammad Sabouh, that the blood of the two martyrs will remain a light for the Mujahideen and a fire for the aggressors Zionists at all times .

The battalion revealed for the first time that the martyr, Commander Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, was part of the department for developing military action in Nablus and that he was one of the first leaders in establishing the battalion.

 This makes a lot more sense. The many armed groups that have arisen in the West Bank over the past two years were not spontaneous, but planned - and they were planned by Iran, via Islamic Jihad.

It was in the Palestinian interest to tell Western media that these were organic groups that were created at the grassroots level, and Islamic Jihad had a "department for developing military action" in the West Bank.

More evidence that Iran was behind these groups comes from the Tehran Times "Man of the Year" last year - none other than Ibrahim al-Nabulsi.


Iran's actions in Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza are not haphazard, but they are coordinated and planned to keep Israel under siege and on the defensive.





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Thursday, July 20, 2023

Every month or so, Jewish pilgrims go to visit Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus). 

Under the Oslo Accords, Jews should have free access to the holy site. But Palestinians would rather kill them.

So the IDF has to go in to protect the worshipers, and the worshipers go in the middle of the might, to cause as little of a disturbance to the nearby residents as possible.

Fat chance. Terror groups are hell-bent on blocking the Jews from visiting their holy spot, so they try to stop the pilgrimage - with bullets, with IEDs, and generally turning the city into a mini-war zone.

Every month.

On Wednesday night, one mujahid was killed as he tried to prevent Jews from visiting the site. 

Terror-linked media gleefully brag about how much firepower they use to be active Jew-haters:

The Al-Quds Brigades - the Nablus Brigade responded to the storming of the occupation forces and settlers, by firing heavy salvoes of bullets at them and detonating a number of explosive devices in more than one area in the vicinity of Joseph's Tomb.
Islamic Jihad issued a press release saying that they successfully repelled the Jews:
Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, confirmed that its mujahideen in the Nablus Battalion repelled, tonight, the occupation forces' incursion into the eastern region of the city and the vicinity of Joseph's Tomb, with heavy salvoes of bullets and explosive devices.

The Saraya said in several military reports, "The soldiers of the Al-Mayamin Battalion targeted the occupation vehicles on Al-Hisba Street with heavy bullets, and they were also  able to detonate a number of explosive devices in the occupation vehicles on Amman Street and Al-Hisba directly.

The terrorists up the ante to bury IEDs in the road. Israel brings in armored bulldozers to detonate them.



The only reason there is escalation on the Palestinian side is a burning desire to stop religious Jews - they type they claim that they don't hate - from worshiping. 

The only reason there is escalation on the Israeli side is to continue to protect the Jewish worshipers, and not to knuckle under to terror.

The PA should be the ones protecting the Jews under signed agreements. Obviously, they cannot. And almost certainly some members of the Al Aqsa Brigades are there, shooting at and trying to bomb the Jews, who are also members of PA security forces during the day. 

These are the facts around Joseph's Tomb. It is all antisemitism.  But no media has the guts to report that.



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Friday, July 07, 2023



In my last post, I noted that  UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk was upset that the Jenin raid on terror infrastructure earlier this week went beyond "law enforcement," which he (falsely) claimed is all Israel is allowed to do to combat militants under international law.

This morning, Israeli police from the Yamam counter-terrorism unit tried law enforcement in Nablus. Al Jazeera, which cannot be accused of pro-Israel bias, reported the operation this way:

Two Palestinian youth have been killed after Israeli forces raided the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, officials said.

The raid took place early Friday morning, with some locals describing it as an “invasion”, and resulted in the deaths of Hamza Maqbool and Khairi Shaheen, according to Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher.

Israeli forces raided the city in search of the two men, one confirmed to be affiliated with the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, said Fisher, reporting from the Occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

The men were tracked down to a house in old Nablus. Israeli forces then used loudspeakers to ask the men to surrender themselves, Fisher said.

They were met with the return of improvised explosive devices, which prompted the Israeli army to call for more reinforcements, he added.

“It appears there was some sort of confrontation between the two men in the house and the Israeli army, and the two men in the house were shot dead,” he said.

The men were suspected of carrying out a shooting attack against police this week, according to Israel’s military.
Israeli police cordoned off the area to avoid any danger to civilians. It called on them to surrender. They responded with throwing explosives. Only then did the Israeli forces respond with deadly force.

Here's what Al Jazeera didn't report: 

The men attempted a drive-by shooting of Israeli police on Wednesday.



The men were not "youth" but members of Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades, Hamza Moqbel (34) and Khairy Shaheen (32.) 


And other militants in Nablus attacked the Israeli forces during the operation. 

But that is not the narrative that the Palestinian Authority wants the world to know.

Their official English-language news agency Wafa made up a story that these men, heroic fighters in Arabic, were trying to surrender when they were brutally murdered:
Israeli military units forced their way into the Old Town and cordoned off a house amid the heavy firing of live fire while demanding two youths to surrender. Israeli soldiers opened fire heavily and directly at the youths the second they came out and agreed to surrender, fatally shooting them. They were identified as Hamza Maqbool, 32, and Khairi Shaheen, 34.
The more you research the details of Israel's counterterrorism operations, the more you see how careful they are to not only adhere to the law, but also to go out of their way to minimize civilian harm when often confronting heavily armed terrorists. 

But Palestinian propagandists give a completely different story - and the international media often parrots their lies, despite their long track record of literally making things up. 

It is not unbiased to favor one side of the story when that side has a better record of telling the truth than the other. But the media, wanting to paint one side as victims, does the opposite.

Consistently. 






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Monday, June 05, 2023

Nablus in the 1960s



Excerpts from a story in Rai al Youm from a girl who witnessed the Six Day War in Nablus:

Sirens are blaring and my father is screaming and ordering us to go to the shelter.

The shelter is a garage at the bottom of the house, and we put some necessities in it like first aid and some food and water..

President Gamal Abdel Nasser told us that we will be victorious and we love him. Yes, we love him in all his speeches. We sit and listen to every word of his speech emanating from the radio that is in our salon.

From the morning, patriotic songs resound in the sky.

The Egyptian radio announces that we have weapons. Land, sea and air..and we have the conquering and victorious missiles..and the promising…!! that will reach the depths of the Zionist entity in the homeland..

Ahmed Saeed - who does not know him!! He shouts on the Voice of the Arabs radio station, we will be victorious!! Yes, I am sure that we will be victorious over them. The Arab armies of Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq are ready on land and in the air.

Composers, artists, and poets are also gathered, so the radio building has become like a beehive in the morning, and patriotic songs are ringing loudly. Here it is, Umm Kulthum and Abdel Wahhab, singing a song. I now have a gun.. and what gun..!
 
And Ahmed Saeed is famous for phrases such as “a total war, our goal is to destroy the Israeli myth that says that Israel will remain forever .. and any survival and every one of the millions of Arabs has lived in one and only hope  which is: to die to live and to live to die on the day that Israel is destroyed.”

 Today, victory will be achieved, and this enthusiastic atmosphere was weeks before the date of the fateful fifth of June. Even our poet, Fadwa Touqan, had a symposium in the municipal library, answering the questions of the women of Nablus society after Certain victory How will they celebrate??

The statements that Ahmed Saeed was broadcasting, and even the broken Hebrew that the Egyptian radio was broadcasting from Cairo directed towards Israel, convinced many Israeli civilians that they would confront the powerful Arabs, and they had no choice but to fight, and to fight with all their might.

Out of their fear, they began to appeal to their Arab neighbors to protect them in the event of revenge and the entry of the Arabs into Palestine.

The problem was that the Arabs also believed Ahmed Said and his ilk and convinced themselves that an easy victory was on the horizon. It would eliminate the Israelis...!

What happened??? Ahmed Saeed, where are you?? Foreign radio stations are saying something, and they are saying: The Israeli Air Force has been destroyed. The Egyptian Air Force was destroyed while it was still on the ground on the morning of June 5, 1967, in a lightning attack.

What do you say?? It is not possible that this is the beauty of Eid al-Nasser. He said we will destroy them while we believe him. We named our newborn children after him. Do not believe it??!! Here we are still in the shelter and the news continues from the radio around us.
...
On the third and fourth day, the war ended..! So it is defeat.. it is calamity.. it is humiliation... it is brokenness..!!

On the fifth day, enemy planes dropped leaflets calling on us to surrender, so are we ready to surrender!!?? In the eastern neighborhoods, white sheets began to be unfurled.. and the West followed suit.. Nablus is sandwiched between two mountains from the east and the west.. Oh my God, this is how...

Enter the Jews!! They occupied us...!! My father screamed with tears in his eyes.. We wonder in fear what they look like. Do they look like the monsters we see in the pictures? Do they have horns?? Or what would happen in our house with four girls ..!? We were young girls..we didn't know the truth..

Our father ordered us to cover ourselves...because they might kidnap girls or...or...

Our dear neighbor had binoculars that clearly saw distant objects, and of course, on his high balcony, he began to give the neighbors, through the holes in the windows and windows, signs and explanations of what he saw.

Suddenly, we heard the roar of a tank on our street. How did they arrive so quickly? They saw our neighbor and thought he was sending war signals. They do not know the people of Nablus and their love for gossip. News spread faster than wildfire.

With caution and terror, and from the holes in the shutters on the windows, we saw what we saw.. The soldiers in the neighbor's house were searching and they led them outside and armed them. The father ordered us to lie down on the ground, they will kill them!!! And then our turn will come. We did not yet know that they were cowards.. As soon as they heard a gun shot from another neighbor, they had gathered the soldiers and fled. That was the first time we saw these monsters in human forms..!



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Monday, March 20, 2023



This interview of one of the German victims of a near-lynching in Nablus when they drove a rideshare car with an Israeli flag  has an interesting implication:

I did not know if I would go out alive, because they had so much hate against us....Suddenly they came our of taxis and kind of surrounded us, and we tried to explain in English that we are tourists, we are from Germany, we are both not Jewish so we are not a target for them."
I can't really blame them for saying whatever they needed to in order to save their lives, but I cannot help but think that there is an implication that it is somehow more tragic to kill an innocent German non-Jew than to kill a Jew.





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Sunday, March 19, 2023



News item: 
The latest PCPSR survey of Palestinians shows that 71% supported the cold-blooded murder of the Yaniv brothers, executed in their car in Huwara with multiple gunshots.

Only 21% opposed murdering random Jews.

News item: 
German tourists who used a car share app drove to Nablus to get a coffee, and found themselves under attack because the car had an Israeli license plate. They were lightly injured and the car was heavily damaged.



News item: 
An Israeli man in Colombia was kidnapped by a would-be "date" and had to be rescued by police. Arab media has been very interested in this story, saying this happened "coinciding with the occupation forces committing massacres against the Palestinian people" and that "he got what he deserved."

News item:
A cute Palestinian girl on was shown on TikTok saying that she wants to stab Jews to death, making the videographer very happy.

(h/t Orli Sagi)





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Sunday, March 12, 2023

This frame appears to show a muzzle flash, but the WaPo can't see it.



The Washington Post has an article that they believe damns IDF troops - and they are so excited about it they took away the paywall so everyone can see their computer-modeled 3D analysis.

They did indeed document a war crime, but not the one they are pretending to have uncovered.

Israeli security forces in an armored vehicle fired repeatedly into a group of civilians sheltering between a mosque and a clinic after a Feb. 22 raid in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus, killing two people, including a teenager, and wounding three others, according to witnesses and a visual reconstruction of the event by The Washington Post.
For all the fancy 3-D modeling and hundreds of photos they claim to have used, the newspaper relies completely on one video, taken from above, showing a man with his arm extended with what appears to be a gun, and then running for cover. It is in the third part of this video:


The newspaper tries to claim that there is no evidence that the gunshot one can hear was from that gun, and even says, " The videos reviewed by The Post do not clearly show whether the man had a gun or fired, and none of the witnesses interviewed by The Post said they saw a gunman fire at the Israelis." Yet there appears to be a muzzle flash at the very beginning of the video (see photo above.)  It is ignored by the Post.

They consult two experts about the two bangs heard, who say wildly different things: one says that they are not gunshots at all, and the other says they are gunshots but come from the Israelis, without saying how he could make such a distinction. 

If two experts cannot even agree if a sound is gunfire or not, then what value do they add? The answer is that the WaPo can claim that they consulted audio experts when coming up with their foregone conclusion, even when they don't agree on anything!

When you look at the video of the man who appeared to be pointing a weapon then running to where the civilians are trying to avoid gunfire, it is obvious that he is holding something heavy like a gun. If his hands were empty he would not be running with his arms close together in front of him; his arms would be pumping at his sides the way normal people run.




Moreover, the civilians are running away before the IDF vehicle is shooting anything. (Look at the ones in the sunken plaza.) It appears they are running away from previous Palestinian gunshots, not Israeli.

The nature of open source forensics is that they are necessarily incomplete. We have no idea if there are any gunmen in the building behind the civilians, or on surrounding roofs, or across the street that may have shot the victims. The IDF did certainly fire in this video; we can see that some shots hit the pillar.  But even if the IDF did shoot at the gunman and accidentally hit the victims, it is not a war crime. It is a split-second decision based on the information the soldiers had - they were being shot at, the gunman went for cover behind a stone pillar, and they were responding to the likelihood that the gunman would resume shooting at them as they passed the pillar. It is unclear that the soldiers even saw the civilians on the top of the stairs before the gunman ran to cover behind the pillar.

The entire life and death decision needed to be evaluated and made in fractions of a second.

Under the laws of armed conflict, while the existence of civilians is one factor to be weighed in such a decision,  it is not the only factor. Troops are allowed and expected to defend themselves. A known gunman who runs for cover behind a pillar and who is about to be in line of sight is certainly a legitimate military target. 

In peacetime, police are held to this higher standard of doing everything possible to avoid accidentally hitting civilians even if it means the gunman gets away. For armed conflicts, the laws are different. But the Washington Post doesn't say that  - their entire article is geared towards the idea that the IDF had no right to target an armed man who was hiding among civilians. (And they know quite well that the civilians were not the intended targets.)

Isn't it interesting that the Post spent weeks and used four reporters with several experts consulted, and yet didn't even ask an international law expert whether Israel violated the laws of armed conflict? 

And that brings up the other omission in the Washington Post's coverage: the armed man ran for shelter among civilians, making them into human shields. I mean this literally - he placed himself behind civilian bodies knowing that he was a target, possibly even shoving one person aside. And that really is a war crime!

Apparently,  the reporters know quite well that the IDF didn't violate any laws. And that the Palestinian gunman did. And they don't want their readers to know that.

Remarkably, whenever the news media spends lots of time and money putting together elaborate 3D models of something involving Israel, it is always to say Israel is guilty. They try to replace honest investigations with razzle dazzle. And they are nearly always wrong.

When you put it all together, this article, like the others, is not meant to illuminate the truth, but to obfuscate it. 




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Friday, March 03, 2023




I looked up the history of the Shtayyeh family.

There wasn't as much online as there is from other famous Palestinian families who proudly trace their histories to companions of Mohammed in Arabia.

But about ten years ago, one member of the family seemed to go through social media to see all the the Shtayyehs he could find, and he made a slide show showing dozens of them and a very short bio on each.

While a few live now in Nablus, where Mohammed Shtayyeh was born, the home town of most of them is Damietta, Egypt.

And the Egyptian origin of the family seems likely. A monograph by the JCPA reminds us that Hamas leader Fathi Hammad once said:

Who are the Palestinians? We have many families called al-Masri, whose roots are Egyptian! They may be from Alexandria, from Cairo, from Damietta, from the north, from Aswan, from Upper Egypt. We are Egyptians; we are Arabs. We are Muslims. We are part of you [in mainland Egypt]. Egyptians! Personally, half my family is Egyptian – and the other half are Saudis.
The paper goes on to say that it is well known that Egyptians settled in major cities in Palestine in the 19th century, including Nablus. One of their footnotes says that an Israeli researcher checked the Nablus phone book in 1980 and found 70 entries for the name "al-Masri," "The Egyptian," alone. 

This Arabic article on Arab family name origins freely admits that a great number of Palestinian families immigrated from elsewhere. The head of the Palestinian History and Documentation Center, Khaled Al-Khalidi, notes that original Palestinian family names came from well known Gulf Arab tribes, like Al-Ayyubi, Al-Ansari, Al-Hashemi, and Al-Qurashi. Later families took on named from where they came from, so that's why so many Palestinian families are named after Syrian, Arabian or Egyptian areas (al-Hijazi, al-Halabi [Aleppo], and al-Dimashqi [Damascus], al-Suisi, al-Gharbawi, al-Sharqawi, and al-Araishi.) 

This Palestinian expert freely admits that "the Palestinian people are part of the Arabian Peninsula, and at that time there was free movement, and there were no borders between Arab areas."

To the West, Palestinians claim to be indigenous to the area. In Arabic, they know the truth that many if not most originated elsewhere - and they are proud of it. 







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Wednesday, March 01, 2023

Cartoon with article in The New Arab


MSN, like most media outlets, enters into syndication deals so they can publish articles from other news sources legally. 

Apparently, republishing and amplifying hate doesn't bother them.

Today, MSN published an article by Wael Kandil in The New Arab that calls all Jews in Israel thieves - and worse:
The fact that groups of Zionist settlers attacked the town of Hawara and other Palestinian villages south of the city of Nablus brings the conflict over Palestine back to its roots at the beginning of the last century: gangs of foreign looters coming from abroad attack lands and homes to forcibly seize them from their original inhabitants, expel them from them, and make them their home and residence.

Burning is a creed of the Zionist colonizers, burning people, trees and stones, as they did recently, on the evening of the Aqaba summit, by attacking the towns and villages of Hawara, Burin, Qaryut and Za’tara south of Nablus, under full guard and support from the occupation army.

Pictures of the most recent Holocaust send footage of old Zionist massacres and holocausts from its archives, to find a perfect match between the atrocities of the Stern Gang, the Haganah, and the Irgun against the Palestinian people ...

Every Israeli settlement is a confiscated Palestinian village, and every dwelling of an Israeli is a stolen Palestinian house, and every civilian is a more brutal and ferocious fighter against truth, against justice, and against logic, and then every meter of Palestinian land remains a house of war, imposed by the occupiers, and set its barbaric laws and conditions.
He doesn't say "Jews," but he doesn't have to. With a wink, he says all "Zionists" who returned to their ancestral home are arsonists, looters, and thieves who are inflicting a Holocaust on Palestinians.

Kandil has 1.7 million followers on Twitter. 

Hate for Jews is mainstream in Arabic media, and now Microsoft is adding fuel to the fire.




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Tuesday, February 07, 2023

Last night, another Palestinian under 18 who was a member of an armed group was killed - and he will be counted as one of the "children" Israel "murdered" this year.
Hamza Al-Ashqar, 17, was killed in Nablus while shooting at soldiers

As is often the case with child soldiers killed who had been recruited by terror groups, part of Palestinian media emphasizes that he was a "child" while the other part proudly mentioned that he was a "heroic fighter." It all depends on the audience and which narrative will incite more people to be angry.

Al-Ashqar was a member of the Lion's Den and apparently one of the Fatah armed groups. Fatah issued an obituary, "With more pride and esteem, the Fatah movement mourns in the camp of the new soldier, the martyr hero Hamza Amjad Al-Ashqar, who was assassinated by an Israeli sniper, while he was a frontman defending the soil of the homeland to join the planet of martyrs."

It is becoming more obvious that Palestinian terror groups are purposefully recruiting children to be killed, since the Western media rarely mentions that they are child soldiers. As far as so-called human rights NGOs, I have yet to see a single one of them condemn the recruitment of child members of terror groups. 

It is a winning formula, so why not recruit more teenage cannon fodder?




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Wednesday, January 04, 2023

From Ian:

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can't be solved, only ended - opinion
It’s not about what Israel does, but about what Israel is and represents. That’s why many oppose Israel and support its enemies.

Attempts to find “solutions” were based on leftist assumptions that in order to have peace, Israel must make compromises and concessions. This was the basis of the Oslo Accords that legitimized the PLO and created the Palestinian Authority. The “peace process” was a hoax, a hype to bring Arafat and the PLO back to Israel and empower them.

This confused way of thinking persists. It is the basis of what is called the “two-state-solution,” (2SS) an independent Arab Palestinian state based on the 1949 Armistice lines, and support for United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

In response to threats from the EU, UN, and even the Biden administration, Israel concedes, which always leads to more problems. The IDF, COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) and police destroyed Jewish property for no rational reason and restrict building in settlements. Israeli leaders (including Netanyahu) went along with the fraud of trying to appease the Palestinians and those who supported them. Why should this absurdity continue? Who does it serve?

Jews who live in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem are not “occupying Palestinian territory.” It is not “illegal,” and there is no basis for this accusation. Jews should be protected and encouraged wherever they live. That’s what Zionism means. That’s what the new government will hopefully do. Some are opposed, and some call for a “civil war.”

Our recent elections indicated that most Israelis want a realistic agenda that ensures their safety and security. Dealing with Palestinian terrorism is our first and foremost concern, and – as many understand, the PA/Hamas are unwilling and unable to stop it. Palestinian identity was and is based on a “one-state solution” – “from the river to the sea.” This goal, enabled and facilitated by the Oslo Accords, is why resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains elusive.

The most practical and realistic alternative to the 2SS is to recognize Jordan as the homeland of the Palestinians – all of those who want to live in peace. Engaging in and supporting terrorism and seeking Israel’s destruction is simply not an option. The conflict cannot be resolved, but it can be ended by understanding why it exists.
UNRWA paving the road to conflict
The 67 nations and 33 agencies which aid UNWRA do not demand a change in its policies that support the perpetuation of conflict. Op-ed.

Realizing the extent of incitement in UNRWA schools and summer camps, the Trump administration cut US funding to UNWRA in 2018 for lack of “accountability.” The Biden administration has resumed funding but only under the condition that its education curriculum is for peace.

Israel’s Ambassador to the United States and the UN, Gilad Erdan called for “countries to freeze contributions until UNRWA teachers expressing support terror are fired”. But the funding continues.

In 1967, following Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, when the IDF took control of the Arab populations of Judea and Samaria and Gaza, school textbooks used by Palestinian Arabs rejected Israel’s existence and incited violence. But, then placed under Israeli administration of COGAT,(Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories), new text books were implemented.

However, the signing of the Oslo accords on September 13, 1993, which would give the Palestinian Authority control over education in territories which they administered as a result of the agreements, saw a steady deterioration in the curriculum. Incitement to violence against Israel again abounded in what was supposed to be the beginnings of a process of reconciliation. With the OSLO Accords came the deterioration of UNWRA sponsored institutions, as anti-Israel propaganda proliferated in the territories.

Since Oslo, donor countries have not demanded accountability. Journalist, David Bedein who heads the Israel Resource News Agency and the author of ‘UNRWA Roadblock to Peace’, stated that when he posed the question to thirty-five of the sixty-seven nation which fund UNRWA, as to how they track the funds and where they are going, “they replied that they rely upon the rigorous oversight of UNRWA.”

Today, UNRWA facilities primes tomorrow’s generation for conflict. UNRWA should be seeking real solutions to what was the rejection by Arab nations of the partition of the land in 1947, according to UN resolution 181. Their leaders’ statements denying culpability belies their agenda, which is to allow perpetuation of conflict and the continued hope by Palestinian Arabs to flood Israel with refugees.
Iran vows response to Khamenei cartoons in French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo
Iran warned France on Wednesday it would respond after “insulting” cartoons depicting Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were published in the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The weekly had published dozens of cartoons on the same day ridiculing the highest religious and political figure in the Islamic Republic.

The magazine said the cartoons were part of a competition it launched in December in support of the protests triggered by the September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd who was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.

“The insulting and indecent act of a French publication in publishing cartoons against the religious and political authority will not go without an effective and decisive response,” tweeted Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

“We will not allow the French government to go beyond its bounds. They have definitely chosen the wrong path.”

The French magazine said the contest aimed “to support the struggle of Iranians who are fighting for their freedom.”

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

From Ian:

The World Has Forgotten Two Israelis Held by Palestinian Terrorists
Where is Hisham? Where is Avera? It has been more than 3,000 days since Avera Mengistu, an Israeli citizen and member of the Ashkelon Ethiopian community, climbed over the border fence in Gaza and was captured by Hamas. His family has had zero contact with him since.

Roughly six months later, the same fate befell a 34-year-old who is part of Israel’s Bedouin community, Hisham al-Sayed, who crossed over into the terrorist-controlled enclave.What was the reason these young men ended up in the Gaza Strip? They have a long history of suffering from mental illness, and often wandered hundreds of kilometers from their homes.

On September 7, 2014, Avera was highly agitated; his mental well-being had begun to deteriorate after the tragic death of his brother. As a result, Avera left home and began to wander. Video surveillance showed that he took off and walked approximately 10 kilometers, where he was eventually spotted, unusually close to the Gaza border fence, by Israeli soldiers. The soldiers tried to get his attention; instead, he was startled and climbed over the border fence and disappeared into Gaza.

Hisham has a similar story. In the past, he had entered Jordan, the West Bank, and even Gaza, but he was always returned by security personnel who were aware of his mental status and vulnerability. In 2015, however, he was taken hostage by Hamas. Fast forward to now, and Hamas only released a video clip this year, which appears to show Hisham lying in a bed, looking dazed, and wearing an oxygen mask — the first sighting of him since he disappeared seven years ago.

The holding of Hisham and Avera is a human rights violation on several counts.

Firstly, they are civilians who have no part in the war between Israel and Hamas, and cannot be held or treated as enemy combatants.

Secondly, withholding information about captives, as Hamas has done, amounts to an “Enforced Disappearance” and is illegal under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which has been signed by the Palestinians. It also goes against another piece of international law they signed, called The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which provides protections for people with psycho-social, or mental health disabilities, including freedom from inhuman treatment and equal access to justice.

Finally, any detainees have the right to contact their families and receive visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross. All of these international rights are violated each moment that Hamas continues to hold Hisham and Avera hostage. Even the likes of Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, a fierce critic of Israel, has said that “Hamas’s refusal to confirm its apparent prolonged detention of men with mental health conditions and no connection to the hostilities is cruel and indefensible.”
David Singer: Israel set to uncork Hashemite Kingdom genie at UN
The UN stands to become totally irrelevant if it continues to refuse to discuss the Saudi Solution following Danny Danon - Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations – claiming at the first Abraham Accords Global Leadership Summit - that Saudi Arabia may be one of the next nations to normalize relations with Israel.

Danon stated:
“We have been in contact with the Saudis for years. I worked personally with them at the United Nations on matters of regional stability and security. It’s just a matter of time before courageous leaders step out of the shadows and full peace is achieved between all the children of Abraham. .. I expect we’ll see an agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia this year”

This was good news for those seeking an end to the 100 years-old Jewish/Arab conflict – but bad news for the UN which continues to stubbornly support the two-state solution whilst refusing to even acknowledge the existence of the game-changing Saudi Solution since its publication six months ago.

It beggars belief that on 30 November the UN General Assembly adopted five resolutions on the questions of 'Palestine' and the Middle East without one speaker uttering the words. “Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine Solution” - whose successful implementation would see the Arab populations in Gaza, part of the 'West Bank' and the wretched UNRWA camps in Lebanon and Syria becoming citizens of that newly-created territorial entity.

Cheikh Niang (Senegal) - Chair of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People - introduced its annual report containing developments relating to the question of Palestine between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022 – which contained not one reference to the Saudi Solution in its 27 pages.

Israeli Prime Minister designate Bibi Netanyahu has made his intentions crystal-clear:
“I think the big prize is peace with Saudi Arabia, which I intend to achieve if I go back into office… The rise of Israeli power facilitated the Abraham Accords, and the continual nurturing of Israeli power will also nurture a broader peace with Saudi Arabia and nearly all of the rest of the Arab world. I intend to bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to a close.”

The 2022 Saudi Solution offers Israel:
sole sovereignty in Jerusalem,
sovereignty in part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and
abandonment of the 74 years-old Arab claim to return to Israel
The UN must respond to the hope of peace offered by the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine genie.
Abdullah in the middle
Millions of Jordanian citizens descend from families who lived in eastern Palestine when it was ruled by the British Empire or, before that, the Ottoman Empire. Others moved to Jordan, fleeing wars launched by Israel’s Arab neighbors—Jordan among them—in 1948 and 1967. In other words, millions of Jordanians identify as Palestinians.

“While Jordanian officials may not say so explicitly,” Dr. Schanzer writes, “the animosity harbored by Jordan’s Palestinian population toward Israel has a significant influence on the kingdom’s foreign policies.”

A chapter of history Israeli leaders seldom discuss publicly: When the first Arab-Israeli war came to a halt in 1949, Jordanian forces had conquered the biblical lands of Judea and Samaria (quickly renamed “the West Bank”), from which they expelled the Jewish population. Even Jews living in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem were driven out, and their homes and synagogues destroyed.

Upon taking east Jerusalem in the defensive war of 1967, then-Defense Minister Moshe Dayan decided to award a Jordanian waqf (a government-controlled religious entity) authority over the two important Muslim sites—Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock—that stand atop the Temple Mount, the holiest of all Jewish sites. This profound gesture of conciliation has never been fully appreciated, much less reciprocated.

Nor do Jordanians express gratitude for the essential goods Israel currently provides, for example, water (Israel is a world leader in desalination technology) and energy (40 percent of Jordan’s electricity comes from Israeli gas). Israel also cooperates closely with Jordan on “a wide range of security-related issues.”

Dr. Schanzer notes that King Abdullah, in a conversation with former U.S. National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster last May, “voiced concerns that Iranian forces in Syria could soon destabilize his country…Jordan also faces a threat from Iran-backed militias in Iraq to the north. Additional threats loom in the south, with Iranian assets reportedly operating in the Red Sea.”

Though the enemy of Jordan’s enemy should be Jordan’s friend, Dr. Schanzer expects relations with Israel to deteriorate further. He notes the king’s “unabashed distaste” for Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now forming a new government.

Netanyahu, for his part, is undoubtedly reading with distress “reports that Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has been spending more time in Jordan with the approval of the Hashemite Kingdom.”

The king of Jordan is a moderate, modern and savvy sovereign. But without Israeli support, his future and that of his country will be precarious.

And if there is to be peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Jordan will need to join the pragmatic Arab states advocating for a new regional order, one based on stability and prosperity.

For King Abdullah to explain all this to his subjects—penetrating the fog of Palestinian irredentism and rejectionism—will not be easy. But that is his job.

Thursday, December 22, 2022

The messages about a Palestinian killed last night being sent to the West and for internal consumption are quite different.

Under the Oslo Accords, Jews should have free access to  Joseph's Tomb in Shechem (Nablus), but because the PA refuses to follow the agreement, every few weeks scores of Jews visit the tomb in the middle of the night - so as to minimize any impact on area residents - and they are protected by IDF soldiers from the Palestinians who want to stop them from praying.

Make no mistake: the Palestinian opposition to Jews visiting Nablus is pure Jew-hatred. The religious Jews are not coming to build a settlement or to evict Arabs from their homes - they just want to pray and then to go home.

Overnight, Israeli forces protecting the worshipers came under heavy gunfire from the antisemites who hate the idea of Jews visiting a holy spot that existed way before anyone ever heard of "Palestinians." They fired back, injuring several of the militants. One, Ahmed Atef Daraghmeh, died.

Keep in mind that this happened the middle of the night. The only reason anyone would be outside the tomb at the time was to confront and try to block the Jews from worshipping. 

Now, as is so often the case, the messages that the Palestinians send to the world are completely different than the ones they tell themselves.

Palestinian prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh sent a formal complaint to FIFA, demanding that they condemn Israel's "assassination" of Daraghmeh - because he was a member of the Thaqafi Tulkarm football team. Shtayyeh is telling the West that Daraghmeh was an innocent person who was deliberately targeted and murdered by Israel.  

At the exact same time, Hamas media is referring to Daraghmeh as a "mujahid martyr":
 The Islamic Resistance Movement " Hamas " celebrated the masses of our Palestinian people and our Arab and Islamic nation, its fighter martyr, Ahmed Atef Mustafa Daraghmeh (23 years), from Tubas, who rose at dawn today in an armed clash while confronting the occupation forces' incursion into the eastern region of Nablus. 

In a statement today, Thursday, the movement confirmed that the martyrdom of the Mujahid Daraghmeh in the field of pride and honor while he was defending our people sends a message to the brutal enemy that he will not pass safely and our people are alert and ready to respond to the call of the homeland, and that the settlers who brag about storming Nablus with the protection of the occupation forces will find In their faces only bullets.
Daraghmeh lived in Tubas, some 20 kilometers away - meaning that he specifically traveled there just to try to stop Jews from worshiping at their holy site. And as such, he is now a hero.

But good luck seeing any Palestinian or Arab media mention that in English. 

UPDATE: Video of this innocent soccer player taking out and shooting his gun. Not for long. (h/t Adin Haykin)





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Friday, December 02, 2022

From Ian:

Welcome, Bibi: Blinken To Headline Anti-Israel J Street Conference
A State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon that Blinken’s engagement with anti-Israel groups like J Street is an "important part" of the agency’s mission.

"It is routine for the secretary of state to engage with different civil society groups representing a broad array of foreign policy interests, this is an important part of the State Department’s domestic outreach," the spokesman said.

While Blinken is not the first secretary of state to address a J Street conference—then-secretary John Kerry and then-vice president Joe Biden both spoke in 2016—the timing of his address is being viewed as highly symbolic. The Biden administration in December took the extraordinary step of launching a Justice Department investigation into the shooting of a Palestinian-American reporter by the Israel Defense Forces.

Israel in September conducted its own independent review in cooperation with the U.S. State Department, and U.S. lawmakers are accusing the administration—given the president's support for an additional FBI investigation—of kowtowing to radical elements in the Democratic Party who seek to transform Israel into a pariah state.

One senior State Department official told the Free Beacon that "attending this J Street event is like a blatant and obvious attempt to stick Bibi [Netanyahu] in the eye."

"Unfortunately," said the source, who was not authorized to speak on record, "it has the effect of undermining our relationship with Israel, and thus U.S. national security."

It's not the first sign that the Biden administration is less than elated at Netanyahu's reascension to power last month. Biden waited days to congratulate the newly elected Israeli leader, drawing accusations the president was trying to isolate Netanyahu's conservative government before it even was seated.

"The Biden administration is filled with partisans who hate Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu. They banned the use of the phrase ‘Abraham Accords,' couldn't bring themselves to have President Biden call Netanyahu to congratulate him until their silence became comical, and now they're even unleashing the FBI," Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) told the Free Beacon. "So of course Secretary Blinken is going to J Street, an anti-Israel activist group that also criticized the Abraham Accords, loathes Netanyahu, and regularly calls for investigations against Israel. It's both disgraceful and predictable."

One former Israeli government official told the Free Beacon the administration is not even trying to hide its disdain for Netanyahu and his conservative coalition.

"This is simply bad diplomatic strategy," said the source, who would only speak on background so as not to upset either government. "Speaking to J Street may displease the incoming Israeli government, but they're hardly afraid of the lobby. This doesn't send a message of strength but rather one of petulance. Secretary Blinken should know better."
US insists it’s still committed to reopening Jerusalem consulate, but few convinced
The Biden administration’s new envoy to the Palestinians declared Wednesday that the US still plans to reopen its consulate in Jerusalem after nearly two years of delays, but Israeli and Palestinian officials did not appear convinced.

Asked for his response to US Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr’s renewed pledge, a senior Palestinian official speaking on condition of anonymity chuckled. “At this point, we don’t get excited over these kinds of declarations from the Americans,” he said. “With all due respect, we’ll respond when there are facts on the ground.”

Prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has avoided commenting on Amr’s remarks, ostensibly waiting until he is sworn into office, but an official in the Likud leader’s inner circle told The Times of Israel that his boss’s position on the matter has not changed, confirming a report in the Makor Rishon news site.

After vowing during the campaign to reopen the de facto mission to the Palestinians, which his predecessor Donald Trump shuttered in 2019, US President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed Netanyahu in May 2021 that Washington wanted to follow through on the pledge.

The then-prime minister responded by voicing his opposition to the proposal. Netanyahu and other opponents to reopening the consulate have argued that it encroaches on Israeli sovereignty in the city — the eastern portion of which the Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.

The Biden administration did not move on the matter following Netanyahu’s refusal. And if the Democratic president’s hesitance to enter public spats with Israel guided his policy then, that inclination was boosted in the year that followed, when Israel was governed by a unity government led by prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.
David Singer: R.I.P., UN Two-state Solution
The founding document of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in 1964 (PLO) expressly disavowed any claim to sovereignty “over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” and “the Gaza Strip”. It was only in 1968 – after Jordan and Egypt had lost these lands to Israel in the 1967 Six Day War – that the PLO began to agitate for an independent Arab state west of the Jordan River – employing terrorism to try and achieve it.

The PLO strategy failed.

However the long-dormant UN two-State solution was resurrected by the international community in: 1980: Venice Declaration
1993: Oslo Accords
2002: Arab Peace Initiative.
2003: President Bush Roadmap
2011: President Obama
2020: President Trump

Powerful backers indeed – but no such two-State solution has appeared a remote possibility for the last forty years

A radically-different proposal however surfaced in Saudi Arabia on 8 June 2022 that was both revolutionary and ground-breaking: Merge Jordan, the Gaza Strip, and part of the West Bank into one territorial entity to be called the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine – no new Arab State between the River and the Sea.

The UN’s response has been disgraceful.

Instead of welcoming this Saudi proposal and the prospects its successful implementation offers for ending the Jewish-Arab conflict – the UN has failed to even acknowledge its existence - denying it any oxygen, exposure or traction in the UN.

Secretary General Antonio Guterres and UN Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Process Torr Wennesland have made no public comments whatsoever on the Saudi proposal or included any reference to it in their monthly reports to the Security Council since its release. They need to break their silence. Until they do – they remain compromised and conflicted.

A UN closed forum convened on 8 November by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP) with Civil Society Organizations (CSO’s) from “Palestine” Israel and the United States “Advocating for Accountability in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” - - asserted that “Safeguarding the two-State solution” remained their prime objective.

Not one of them apparently mentioned the Saudi proposal - whose successful implementation would put them all out of business by finally ending a conflict that has defied resolution for more than 100 years.

Guterres continued parroting the UN’s commitment to the two-state solution on 22 November -without mentioning the Saudi solution – which needs to be aired and debated in the UN General Assembly, Security Council and CEIRPP and no longer suppressed.

The UN’s 75 years-old failed two-State solution to end the Jewish-Arab conflict has well and truly passed its use by date. The time has come for the UN to adopt the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution to replace it.

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