Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Palestinians

Showing posts with label Palestinians. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

NYT op-ed says not to coddle an honor/shame society - but for Russia, not for Palestinians or Iranians

There's a very interesting op-ed by Peter Pomerantsev in the New York Times that says how the West should understand Vladimir Putin:

To humiliate people is to exploit your power over them, making them feel worthless and dependent on you. It is clear, then, that the Russian military seems intent on humiliating Ukrainians, taking away their right to independence and their right to make their own decisions. ...

Kremlin propaganda claims Russia revels in isolationism, but it is also addicted to seeking approval from abroad.

And Mr. Putin’s success as president of Russia has rested for some time on his ability to mete out daily humiliations to Russians and then act as if he feels their rage as they do, as if he alone knows where to direct it — toward the West, toward Ukraine, anywhere except toward the Kremlin.

Mr. Putin likes to perform both sides of the humiliation drama: from the seething resentment of the put-upon Russian everyman to cosplaying Peter the Great. This allows him to appeal to Russians’ deep-seated sense of humiliation, which the Kremlin itself inflicts on people, and then compensate for it. It’s a performance that taps into the cycle of humiliation and aggression that defines the experience of life in Russia, and now Ukraine is the stage.

This is similar (although not identical) to how the Arab world had traditionally looked upon Israel, and how the Palestinians still do. The honor/shame society is not only obsessed with looking honorable and avoiding shame, but also to inflict shame on enemies. They honestly do not understand why Israelis aren't depressed at seeing Israeli flags burned.

Pomerantsev says that the West needs to understand the mentality in order to counter it:

In the face of such threats, it can be tempting to try and placate Russia. The editorial board of The New York Times has said that Ukraine will likely have to accept territorial compromises. Mr. Macron has said that the West should avoid humiliating Russia. Such proposals are fundamentally misguided: Russia’s sense of humiliation is internal, not imposed upon it. To coddle the Putin regime is merely to participate in the cycle. If you yearn for sustainable security and freedom, abusive partners and predators cannot be indulged.

Absolutely. And this applies to Iran as well as Palestinians. When the EU foreign policy chief says the current text of the Iran nuclear deal is the best possible outcome, he is coddling Iran. When the West makes it appear that the Palestinian issue is the most important problem that must be solved before other Middle East problems, they are indulging a corrupt and would-be genocidal regime that would destroy Israel in a second if it had the strength to.

You don't compromise with bullies, terrorists and those who support them. It should be obvious to all. And that applies to Iran and Palestinians as well as Putin's Russia.

(h/t Scott)

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On Monday, hundreds of Palestinian lawyers protested Mahmoud Abbas' sweeping powers:

Hundreds of Palestinian lawyers held a rare street protest Monday against what they described as the Palestinian Authority's "rule by decree", condemning president Mahmud Abbas for governing without a parliament.

The Palestinian Legislative Council -- created under the Oslo Peace Accords with Israel -- has been inactive since 2007, meaning Abbas has led without a functioning parliament for nearly all of his tenure as president.

But a new leadership at the Palestinian Bar Association has sought to pressure the PA.

The draft Palestinian constitution allows for presidential decrees "if necessary", in cases where the PLC cannot act, but lawyers said Abbas has gone too far.

According to estimates by Palestinian legal experts, Abbas has issued some 400 presidential decrees while in office.

He officially dissolved the PLC in 2018.

The article doesn't come close to describing Abbas' control of all the branches of the Palestinian government.

In order to "legally" dissolve the PLC, he needed the Palestinian Constitutional Court to make that decision. And guess who appointed every member of that group in 2016?

Yes, it was Abbas himself.

So Mahmoud Abbas controls, either directly or by proxy, the legislative, executive and judicial branches of the Palestinian Authority.

But his powers don't end there, because the PA is not independent - it reports to the PLO, which is still legally considered the "“Sole Legitimate Representative of the Palestinian People” - and whose chairman is also Mahmoud Abbas.

This is all documented. It is no secret that Abbas controls everything.

Yet Western media almost completely ignores this basic fact. Abbas is never referred to as a dictator - except by Hamas media.

The reason, as always, is that pointing out the corruption of the Palestinians seems to weaken the overarching narrative of an evil Israeli oppressive presence that controls every aspect of Palestinian life, and that narrative must be protected as much as possible.

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

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A referendum on a new constitution for Tunisia was said to have easily passed, and this has now officially ended the hopes of the Arab Spring, as it has demolished all democratic reforms and has given its president sweeping, dictatorial powers.

It also calls for the destruction of Israel.

In the preamble, it says:

We, the Tunisian people, reaffirm our belonging to the Arab nation and our keenness to adhere to the human dimensions of the Islamic religion. ...We adhere to international legitimacy and support the legitimate rights of peoples who, according to this legitimacy, have the right to decide their own destiny, the first of which is the right of the Palestinian people to their stolen land and the establishment of their state on it after its liberation, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.

This isn't referring to "occupied territories," rather it is saying that Tunisia supports Palestinian claims to all of Israel, which they consider "stolen land."

I am not aware of any other constitution that urges the destruction of another nation.

However, Palestinians and their supporters are disappointed - because they had urged the President of Tunisia to also include a clause that would make normalization with Israel illegal and he didn't.

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!

The Jewish Agency's history destroys the "Palestine was an Arab state" narrative

The Jewish Agency is in the news:

Russia is threatening to ban a major Jewish nonprofit agency that helps people emigrate to Israel from operating in the country, a sign of the Kremlin’s deteriorating relationship with Israel and of the far-reaching fallout from the war in Ukraine.

Russia’s Justice Ministry is seeking to liquidate the Russian branch of the nonprofit, the Jewish Agency for Israel, which operates in coordination with the Israeli government, according to a notice from a Moscow court.

The article notes:

The Jewish Agency, founded nearly a century ago as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, was instrumental in helping establish Israel in 1948, and has facilitated the emigration of millions of Jews from around the globe.

This is not true. It was originally founded in 1908 as the Palestine Office, part of the Zionist Organization - in Hebrew, המשרד הארץ-ישראלי, HaMisrad HaEretz Yisraeli, "Office for the Land of Israel."

In 1921, the name was changed to the Jewish Agency for Palestine, in Hebrew "הסוכנות היהודית לארץ ישראל", HaSochnut HaYehudit L'Eretz Yisra'el, literally the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel."

Here is a pin that the Jewish Agency used to distribute:

Apparently, the original name in Hebrew stuck for a while though, as this 1936 letterhead from Berlin shows:

Here is an immigration certificate for a lucky Jew from Poland in 1938 that uses both the "Jewish Agency for Palestine" and "Palestine Office" names, but in Hebrew it is always Eretz Yisrael.

After the War of Independence, it was renamed again, to the Jewish Agency for Israel - but in Hebrew, there was no reason to rename it.

Because before 1948, the translation of "Palestine" was "The Land of Israel."

Today's "Palestine" has nothing at all to do with Palestine before 1948. Every map, every reference to it was always to the Land of Israel (or, in English, the Holy Land.) Palestinian Arabs did not want to be called "Palestinian" - but Jews proudly did.

Palestinian Arabs, at least through the 1920s, also had a name for the land. But it wasn't "Palestine." It was "Suria El Jenobia" - Southern Syria.

The only people who wanted an independent Palestine were the Jews. And the Jewish Agency, an organization hated by anti-Zionists, helps prove it.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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American Muslims rate the Palestinian issue as higher importance than genocides in China, Myanmar

CAIR, the Council of American Islamic Relations, released a poll of American Muslims ahead of the midterm elections.

The poll asked them, "What are the most important, Muslim-related, foreign policy issues to you in this election year?" They could choose as many topics as they wanted.

Here were the results:

Israeli occupation of Palestine 90.5%

Chinese Genocide of Uyghur Muslims 87.4%

Oppression of Muslims in India 80.8%

Burma Genocide of Rohingya Muslims 75.8%

Starvation in Afghanistan 67.4%

Discrimination against Muslims in France 61.9%

Conflict in Yemen 59.6%

Conflict in Syria 54.5%

Indian occupation of Jammu and Kashmir 37.5%

Civil war in Libya 31.6%

Security in Somalia 29.1%

Presidential Coup in Tunisia 24.2%

Tens of thousands of Muslims have been killed in Myanmar (Burma), Libya, and Yemen, and hundreds of thousands in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims have been ethnically cleansed from Myanmar. A million Muslims are incarcerated in China. A million Muslims are on the verge of starvation in Afghanistan. Yet when American Muslims only have to check a box to say they are concerned about these issues, they claim that the Palestinian issue is more important to them than direct physical threats to the lives of millions of Muslims.

Moreover, look at the questions they didn't ask: Palestinians are discriminated against in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are still refugees from Syria, living in camps in Lebanon and Jordan. But these issues are so unimportant to CAIR that they are not even asked about!

The American Muslims polled don't care about Palestinians - unless their oppression can be blamed on Jews.

These priorities cannot be explained by concern about Muslim lives, or by concern about Palestinian lives.

The only explanation for this twisted set of priorities is Muslim American antisemitism.

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!

The number of Palestinians working in Israel and settlements skyrocketed in the first quarter

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics reported that the number of Palestinian workers in Israel and working in Israeli settlements increased by a huge amount in the first quarter of 2022 compared to the previous quarter.

The increase was so large that it more than made up for the decrease of people employed in Palestinian-controlled areas.

The number of Palestinian workers in Israel and the settlements skyrocketed from 153,000 to 204,000, an increase of 33% in a single quarter. Of those the number of workers in settlements - which the PA officially tries to ban - went up from 22,400 0to 31,000 people, an increase of 38%.

At the same time, the number of workers within the Arab areas of the West Bank and Gaza decreased from 939,000 to 904,000 in the first quarter.

The survey didn't mention the average wages of the workers in the West Bank and Gaza. Over the past few years, the daily wage was far less than half that of workers in Israel, which was NIS 268 ($78.80) a day in this report. In 2020, the average Palestinian wage was NIS 104 a day.

If we assume that this number has increased to NIS 112, that means that fully 35% of the total income for Palestinians comes from Israeli employers.

The PCBS didn't mention workers from Gaza. Today it was announced that Israel would increase the number of worker permits from Gaza by 3500.

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!

Thomas Friedman almost gets it right about the Abraham Accords

You know things are weird when Thomas Friedman is practically the only voice of relative sanity at the New York Times.

The left-leaning media has been trying very hard to ignore the Abraham Accords as a meaningless event from the Trump era. This is to placate the Israel hating contingent who have been positioning it as yet another manifestation of Zionist evil.

Thomas Friedman, for all his faults, sees how big a deal the new peace deals are.

[S]omething big seems to be stirring. Unlike the peace breakthroughs between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Lebanon’s Christians and Israel and Jordan, which were driven from the top and largely confined there, the openings between Israel and the Gulf States — while initiated from the top to build an alliance against Iran — are now being driven even more from the bottom, by tourists, students and businesses....

If the Abraham Accords do thrive and broaden to include normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, we are talking about one of the most significant realignments in modern Middle East history, which for many decades was largely shaped by Great Power interventions and Arab-Israeli dynamics. Not anymore.

Today, “there are three powerful non-Arab actors in the region — Iran, Turkey and Israel — and they have each constructed their own regional axis,” argues Itamar Rabinovich, the Israeli Middle East historian, who just co-wrote “Syrian Requiem,” a smart history of the Syrian civil war. Those three axes, Rabinovich explains, are Turkey with Qatar and their proxy Hamas; Iran with Syria and Iran’s proxies running Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen; and Israel with the U.A.E., Bahrain and tacitly Saudi Arabia and Oman.

It’s the interactions of these three axes, says Rabinovich, that are really driving Middle East politics today. And because the U.A.E.-Israel axis brings together the most successful Arab state with the most successful non-Arab state, it’s radiating a lot of energy.

With Israel and the U.A.E., “what you are seeing are two ecosystems fusing together,” says Gidi Grinstein, head of Reut, the Israeli strategy institute. Israel is a society that for many years faced hostility from its neighbors and had no oil. “So, over the years, Israel learned to go from isolation and scarcity to abundance and global influence by developing its own explosive innovation economy in areas such as water, solar, cyber, military, medical, finance and agriculture.”

The U.A.E., by contrast, is transitioning from decades of oil abundance to an era of oil scarcity by building its own ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship in the same fields as Israel.

The U.A.E.’s population consists of one million citizens and nine million foreigners, most of them low-wage, non-unionized laborers from India and other parts of South Asia and the rest professionals largely from America, Europe, India and the Arab world. The U.A.E.’s growth strategy for the 21st century — of which the opening to Israel is a key part — is to become THE Arab model for modernity, a diversified economy, globalization and intra-religious tolerance.

To that end, in November the country announced a major liberalization of its Islamic personal laws — allowing unmarried couples to cohabitate, which, among other things, makes the U.A.E. more accepting of gay and lesbian people; criminalizing so-called honor killings of women who “shame” their male relatives — as well as made divorce laws much more equitable for women and loosened restrictions on alcohol.

The U.A.E. is still an absolute monarchy, and a multiparty democracy is not on the menu. But greater gender equality, a more open education system and religious pluralism are. It still has work to do in all those areas, though — witness the embarrassing saga around the leader of Dubai, whose daughter is reportedly being held hostage in her father’s palace. But the U.A.E.’s new social laws constitute a big leap forward in its quest to attract the talent needed for a non-oil economy.

All the neighbors are watching, and they are particularly watching how Iran and Saudi Arabia react.

If you are a Lebanese Shiite living in the poor southern suburbs of Beirut having to scramble every day to barter eggs for meat — as the economy teeters on collapse — you’re asking, Why are we stuck with Iran and its axis of failing proxies like Hezbollah, which just keep letting the past bury our future?

That is a dangerous question for Iran and Hezbollah. And more Lebanese are asking every day.

The importance of the accords has been obvious to anyone who isn't saddled with a reflexive anti-Israel ideology. Which is exactly why articles like this have been few and far between in mainstream media.

Friedman, being Friedman, still has his own baggage, still trying to resurrect vestiges of the Saudi peace plan that he relentlessly pushed in 2002.

The U.A.E., Bahrain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia need to understand that they have more leverage now to influence Israeli-Palestinian relations than they realize. Israel does not want to lose them. Imagine if Saudi Arabia agreed to join the Abraham Accords, but only on the condition that it could open the Saudi Embassy to Israel in Israeli West Jerusalem while, at the same time, opening an embassy to the Palestinians in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Just that one move would help preserve the possibility of a two-state deal, would revitalize the 2002 Saudi peace initiative and would further isolate Iran’s axis of failure. And Israel would find it very hard to reject.

Friedman still doesn't get that the Palestinians themselves have made the Palestinians irrelevant, and the Arab states no longer want to coddle them when they can't get their own act together, split between the old guard that wants to destroy Israel politically and the terrorists who still dream of destroying Israel militarily. The Gulf states realized that Israel is not only a permanent part of the Middle East but it is an ally that they can have a mutually beneficial relationship with, and they are disgusted that Palestinians who could have taken advantage of that dynamic instead rejected it time after time - while demanding more money.

Nevertheless, Friedman does a good job here in laying out how earth shattering the new alliances are, and the Israel haters really cannot argue.

500 dead - and hypocritical "pro-Palestinian activists" are silent

You know how all the Israel-haters pretend to be "pro-Palestinian"?

Here's more proof that they are anything but.

It appears that as of today, more than 500 Palestinian Arabs have been murdered in Syria by Bashir Assad's regime.

(Calculation: 482 documented on October 7, 8 killed last Friday, 12 killed today.)

Have any of the supposedly "pro-Palestinian" groups, like "Ship to Gaza" or "Miles of Smiles," said anything about this?

Have there been any press releases from passionate advocates of the "Palestinian cause" about "genocide" being perpetrated by the Syrian regime?

Have you read any articles written by them about how terribly Syria is treating Palestinian Arabs?

No, of course not. No fundraising, no speeches, no tours of college campuses, no flotillas, no op-eds - nothing.

Here's another interesting proof of Arab hatred for their Palestinian brothers that "pro-Palestinian activists" completely ignored, buried at the end of an AP article yesterday:

The U.N. refugee agency said Thursday the number of Syrian refugees who have fled their country's civil war and found shelter in Egypt has now topped 150,000 — a significant jump from last month's figure of 95,000.

The director of UNHCR in Egypt, Mohamed Dayri, said that despite the growing number of refugees in Egypt, only 4,800 Syrians have registered with the agency in Cairo. He called on Egyptian authorities to help UNHCR deal with the "rising emergency" of Syrian refugees here.

...[Dayri] said that the U.N. is urging Egypt to maintain an "open door policy" not only for Syrians, but also for Palestinian refugees in Syria who also are fleeing the civil war.

"The Palestinian refugees should be treated equally like Syrians who are fleeing violence and insecurity," Dayri said.

It doesn't take much reading between the lines to see that Egypt is not treating Palestinian Syrian refugees as they are treating the rest; it is possible that Egypt is not even allowing any of them to enter Egypt.

And it is not only Egypt. Other countries are singling them out too:

Syria's roughly 500,000 Palestinians "have been been thrust into the crisis since June and July," Radhouane Nouicer, the UN Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, said at a Cairo press conference.

"Many of them have been displaced like Syrians and we are trying to encourage neighbouring countries to adopt an open door policy with them, like Syrians," he said, adding that he hoped Palestinians would not be forced out of Syria.

He is apparently referring to Jordan and Lebanon, although probably those fleeing to Iraq are having similar issues.

UNHCR knows this, and of course the Palestinian Arabs who tried to flee to Egypt know this, but I have not seen a single article anywhere that discusses the extent of Egypt's discrimination against Palestinians.

In the end, the "pro-Palestinian activists" don't give a damn about their Palestinians. Like the Arab leaders for the past 65 years, they only want to use them as pawns to destroy Israel.

And their silence when hundreds of Palestinians are killed and tens of thousands singled out by their Arab hosts is all the proof you need of their hypocrisy.

Of course, the media is also burying the stories of discrimination against Palestinian Arabs by Syria's neighbors, even after UN officials point it out explicitly. No follow up questions, no independent investigations as to the extent of this discrimination and the hypocrisy of Arab governments who pretend to support Palestinians but treat them differently than every other Arab.

The myth of the "pro-Palestinian" rallies

The media loves to cover demonstrations, the more colorful and loud the better. And there has been ample opportunity to show lots of demonstrations about Gaza these past couple of weeks. The only problem is that the vast majority of the protesters don't really care about "Palestinians." When thousands of Palestinian Arabs were killed during Black September in 1971, there were no crowds at Jordanian embassies. When hundreds of Palestinian Arab civlians were killed in a single day in Lebanon in1975, no one protested. When thousands of Palestinian Arab civilians were murdered by Syrian-backed militia in Lebanese camps in 1985-86 (including Sabra and Shatila!), there were no demonstrations. When hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were expelled from Kuwait in a single week in 1991, there were no rallies. When Hamas and Fatah fought only two summers ago, killing hundreds in a month, the so-called "peace camp" was silent. Only when Israel gets involved in a conflict do these "activists" come out of the woodwork. Ignoring the many conflicts around the world, their fake indignation is ignited at the thought of Israel defending itself. Muslims who barely go "tsk, tsk" when Arabs kill each other are driven to a frenzy when Israelis finally decide to act after years of provocation. International ANSWER, the Communist party behind a large number of Western anti-Israel demonstrations, has nothing that is "pro-Palestinian" on its website; only diatribes against Israel and the United States. The current rallies aren't pro-Palestinian or even anti-war - they are purely anti-Israel, with more than a little anti-semitism. They are not crying over civilian deaths, they are gleefully calling Zionists "Nazis." They aren't demanding human rights; they are demanding Israel's destruction. The media is part of the problem when they refer to these demonstrations as being "pro-Palestinian." They don't give a damn about Palestinian Arabs, they never have and they never will.