11/17 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: It’s time for Israel to untie the American apron strings; Netanyahu: Israel-Saudi Normalization Could End Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

From Ian:

Alan Baker: Palestinian leadership venturing into international legal field

In addition to their regular, annual shopping list of false and flawed political allegations directed to the court against Israel, the Palestinians are now requesting that the court, by means of a resolution that they initiated in the UN General Assembly’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee to weigh the legal consequences of prolonged annexation of what they claim to be Palestinian territory.

This is despite the fact that there has never been any internationally accepted legal determination that there exists Palestinian territory, as such. Similarly, this question remains an agreed negotiating issue by the Palestinians themselves, pursuant to the internationally endorsed Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords (1993-95).

In addition, the Palestinian leadership is also asking the Court to examine Israel’s alleged crime of altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, claiming the city to be solely Palestinian.

But more curiously, in this request to the world court, they are attempting to invent what they believe to be a new, curious international status of prolonged occupation. They are asking the court to determine the extent to which such a non-existent status of prolonged occupation has legal consequences for states and the UN.

In fact, no such status is recognized by international law.

Even the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is universally acknowledged to be the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes international humanitarian law, has never determined a time limit for the occupation of territory.

Netanyahu: Israel-Saudi Normalization Could End Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Israel and Saudi Arabia reaching a formal peace agreement would “effectively end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu predicted in a new interview with “Call Me Back” podcast host Dan Senor.

“Understand that the Abraham Accords, the peace treaties that Israel had with four Arab states: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — that didn’t happen without Saudi approval, because at least some of these countries like to know what their big neighbor, Saudi Arabia, is thinking about [the agreements],” Netanyahu, who is likely to head Israel’s next government following elections earlier this month, said. “And I assure you, [Riyadh] wasn’t negative about it.”

Normalization with Saudi Arabia would “open up all sorts of possibilities,” Netanyahu told Senor, the co-author of Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. The current opposition leader cited the physical results of such an agreement — ”connecting the Saudi rail system” — as well as the business perks — giving Saudis “direct accessibility to Israeli innovation and technology” — as benefits of a negotiated agreement between Jerusalem and Riyadh.

Netanyahu also addressed his previous government’s coordination with Russia in Syria, where Russian forces are on the ground — and where Israeli military units have often targeted Iranian and Syrian facilities and weapons transfers.

David Singer: MBS & King Abdullah keep Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine alive

The HKoP solution also offered the Arab populations of Gaza, the 'West Bank' and Palestinian Arab refugees in other locations:
· “a legal identity—a globally respected citizenship that allows a person to operate in the modern world. Labor in this day and age is mobile and having citizenship in a country that facilitates such mobility is critical to human development.”
· “Palestinians in Arab countries like Lebanon can then become citizens of this enlarged kingdom while also getting full residency rights in Lebanon, equivalent to what an EU citizen has in the European Union outside his or her home country. This would allow the Palestinians to gain full civil rights as legal foreign residents without impacting the local political or sectarian balance in these countries. The GCC, the EU, the US, Canada, and others can also help support this solution by granting this Jordanian–Palestinian passport easier access to their labor markets.”


The Saudi proposal’s author - Ali Shihabi – is a confidant of MBS and a member of the Advisory Board appointed by MBS to report to him on the building of a new US$500 billion mega city – Neom - in northern Saudi Arabia bordering Israel.

Shihabi had lamented on the absence of a response from any Israeli politician to his plan on 14 August.

This lack of Israeli interest was ongoing when the 21 September meeting agreed:
“to work with regional and international partners to shed light on the tragic situation of the Palestinians in light of the deadlock in the peace process and the absence of any glimmer of hopeand to urge them to take practical steps to support the resumption of dialogue on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative, United Nations resolutions and relevant peace references, in addition to reviving the diplomatic track to overcome the despair and lack of a vision toward achieving the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and establishing their state with Jerusalem as its capital.”

MBS was not at this meeting but was subsequently appointed Saudi Arabia’s Prime Minister on 27 September.

MBS, King Abdullah, PLO Leader Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh have not rejected the HKoP solution.

MBS and King Abdullah’s non-participation at Algiers offers the glimmer of hope that the Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine can soon become a conflict-ending reality.

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11/12 Links: Lapid slams UN after pro-PLO measure advances, calls move 'prize for terrorist organizations'; To anti-Zionists, Ben Gvir is not a problem, he is an opportunity

From Ian:

Lapid slams UN, calls pro-Palestinian vote 'prize for terrorist organizations'

Israel lambasted the United Nations on Saturday after a key committee approved a draft resolution Friday calling on the International Court of Justice to urgently issue its opinion on the legal consequences of supposedly denying the Palestinian people the right to self-determination as a result of Israel's actions since the 1967 Six-Day War.

The measure was vehemently opposed by Israel, which argued it would destroy any chance of reconciliation with the Palestinians.

"This step will not change the reality on the ground, nor will it help the Palestinian people in any way; it may even result in an escalation. Supporting this move is a prize for terrorist organizations and the campaign against Israel," Prime Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement, adding that "the Palestinians want to replace negotiations with unilateral steps. They are again using the United Nations to attack Israel."

The vote in the General Assembly's Special Political and Decolonization Committee was 98-17, with 52 abstentions. The resolution will now go to the 193-member assembly for a final vote before the end of the year, when it is virtually certain of approval.

The draft cites Israel's supposed violation of Palestinian rights to self-determination "from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures."

It would ask the court for an opinion on how these Israeli policies and practices "affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all states and the United Nations from this status."

The International Court of Justice, also known as the world court, is one of the UN's main organs and is charged with settling disputes between countries. Its opinions are not binding.

"Israel strongly rejects the Palestinian resolution at the United Nations. This is another unilateral Palestinian move which undermines the basic principles for resolving the conflict and may harm any possibility for a future process," Lapid tweeted and thanked that handful of countries that voted against the resolution with Israel. "We call upon on all the countries that supported yesterday's proposal to reconsider their position and oppose it when it's voted upon in the General Assembly. The way to resolve the conflict does not pass through the corridors of the UN or other international bodies," he continued.

Jonathan Tobin: Don’t apologize for Ben-Gvir or anything else about Israel

When Netanyahu became prime minister again in 2009 and in the 12 years that followed, when there was no thought of Ben-Gvir being a minister, the same arguments about Israeli policies being oppressive and alienating American Jews were heard over and over again.

During this time, as the anti-Semitic BDS movement gain footholds on American college campuses and on the left-wing of the Democratic Party, there was no talk about Ben-Gvir or the evils of Israel being governed by right-wing and religious parties.

To the contrary, the so-called centrists of Israeli politics—Lapid and Gantz—were just as reviled by those who spread the “apartheid state” smear as Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are today. The same claims about a mythical old “good” Israel being destroyed were made by those who opposed Netanyahu.

Those who think one Jewish state on the planet is one too many didn’t need Religious Zionists in Israel’s cabinet to be convinced that Israel shouldn’t exist. American Jews who are embarrassed by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were already embarrassed by Netanyahu and even some of his left-leaning opponents in the Knesset. Their failure to magically make the conflict with the Palestinians disappear has been cited by those who note a decline in support for Israel in the years since the collapse of the Oslo peace process, and even before that while the delusion that it might succeed was still alive.

This goes beyond the fact that the claims that Smotrich and Ben-Gvir are fascists is without real substance. As I’ve noted previously, the talk about the winners of last week’s election being enemies of democracy is just an echo of the Democratic Party talking points about Republicans in the U.S. and just as specious. Whatever one may think of either man, their party doesn’t oppose democracy.

None of that matters because this discussion isn’t rooted in the facts about Israel or those who will make up its next government. Rather, it is an expression of unease with the reality of a Jewish state that must deal with a messy and insoluble conflict with the Palestinians as well as one where the majority of its Jews don’t think or look like your typical liberal Jewish Democrat.

Israel-haters will work for its destruction no matter who is its prime minister or the composition of the government. As has always been the case, the anti-Semites don’t need any new excuses for their efforts to besmirch and delegitimize the Jewish state.

One needn’t support Netanyahu or his partners to understand any of this.

Rather than apologizing for Ben-Gvir or the other aspects of Israeli reality that make readers of The New York Times cringe, those who care about the Jewish state and its people need to stop longing for an Israel which looks like them and embrace the one that actually exists. By buying into the disingenuous claims that this government will be less worthy of their support than its predecessors, they are merely falling into a trap set for them by anti-Semites.

Those who support the right of a Jewish state to exist should stop apologizing for it not conforming to some idealized liberal vision of Zionism, and understand that the people who voted for Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are just as deserving of respect and representation as they are.

Fred Maroun: To anti-Zionists, Ben Gvir is not a problem, he is an opportunity

While Ben Gvir calls for Palestinian terrorists to be expelled from Israel, we know that Arab entities (including the Jordan-occupied West Bank and the Egypt-occupied Gaza) indiscriminately expelled all Jewish residents decades ago. We also know that Israel’s enemies are “bent on wiping the Jewish state and its inhabitants off the map” (as Canadian National Post columnist John Robson put it). As racist and as anti-democratic as Israel’s far right is, it is nothing compared to Israel’s enemies. That is of course cold comfort to those who are genuinely concerned about Ben Gvir and his ilk, but it points to a double standard.

Criticizing Ben Gvir and the Israeli extreme right while giving a pass to far worse Palestinian groups is a double standard. It sets high expectations of Jews while setting much lower expectations of others. It is obviously a form of antisemitism.

Using Ben Gvir to demonize Israel is not a new concept. Before Ben Gvir and the Israeli extreme right became popular, it was Netanyahu and his Likud party who were the favorite target of anti-Zionists. Anti-Zionism was not born with Ben Gvir’s entry into Israeli politics, nor was it born with Netanyahu’s entry into Israeli politics. It has existed ever since Israel exists. Anti-Zionism was just as strong, and perhaps even stronger, when Israel was governed by socialists like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir.

In essence, there are two types of criticisms of Ben Gvir. There is the criticism that aims to make Israel better (or at least not worse). This criticism comes from Zionists in Israel and abroad. And there is the criticism that uses Ben Gvir as a new and more convenient way to demonize Israel. This criticism comes from anyone who hates Israel and does not give a fig about Israeli Arabs but looks on with glee as Ben Gvir weakens the fabric of Israeli society.

To Zionists, Ben Gvir is dangerous for several reasons. He is likely to weaken Western support for Israel, he is likely to weaken Israeli democracy, and he is likely to increase Israel’s investment in West Bank settlements which make a one-state bi-national solution increasingly likely. To Zionists, Ben Gvir is a problem. But to anti-Zionists, these are all reasons to celebrate. To them, Ben Gvir isn’t a problem, he’s an opportunity.

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11/09 Links Pt1: Israel Accused of Denying Palestinian ‘Right to Life’ in Speech to UN Commission; Russia gave stolen Western weapons, cash to Iran

From Ian:

Israel Accused of Denying Palestinian ‘Right to Life’ During Activist’s Speech to UN Commission

A Palestinian activist claimed on Tuesday that Israel has removed the “right to life” of Palestinians throughout Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during a speech before a UN panel in Geneva.

“We as Palestinians have basically zero to no rights–even the right to life, the most basic right,” Ubai Al-Aboudi — executive director of the Ramallah-based Bisan Center for Research and Development — told the second day of a five-day meeting of the “UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” created by the global body’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in the wake of the May 2021 war between the IDF and the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza.

“Every political system between the river and the sea violates basic Palestinian human rights,” Al-Aboudi said, using a form of words associated with advocates who seek to end Israel’s existence as a sovereign Jewish state.

Bisan and the other NGOs were outlawed in 2021 by the Israeli government for their connections to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel as well as by the United States and European Union. The groups deny the charges.

Other speakers at the panel denounced Israel in similar terms. Shawan Jabarin, the executive director of Al-Haq, another of the NGOs that was banned, said on Monday said that Israel used “mafia methods” to pursue the groups. Another activist, Hanan Husein, told the parley that “Israel collects its evidence through the use of torture mechanisms, illegal surveillance, evidence planting, and trying people in front of an illegal occupation system that is designed to keep the Palestinian people subjugated to human rights violations.”

Is this serious and on #Kristallnacht? Your organization is ravaged by antisemitism. You have a Commissioner who accused “the Jewish lobby” of controlling the media. As you write this, the @UN_HRC CoI is meeting to vilify Israel of preposterous crimes.

>> DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT << https://t.co/W0K7CRubXH

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 9, 2022

In Germany, Kristallnacht goes by a different name. Here’s why

This week, Jewish communities across the United States are commemorating the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish riots that marked a brutal turning point in the Nazi campaign of persecution.

In Germany, cities and towns also will commemorate this day, but under a different name. They refer to the events of November 9-10, 1938, as “the November Pogrom,” or variations on that term. That’s became to many in Germany, the term “Kristallnacht” — night of shattered glass — sounds incongruous.

“It has a pretty sound,” said Matthias Heine, a German journalist whose 2019 book examined the role of Nazi terms in the contemporary German vernacular. “When you know that it was a very serious and bloody and violent event, then this term isn’t acceptable anymore.”

That autumn night, government-coordinated anti-Jewish riots swept through virtually every town and city across Nazi Germany. Over several days, rioters destroyed hundreds of synagogues, looted thousands of businesses and killed at least 91 Jews; 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps.

It was a turning point in both Jewish and non-Jewish memories, said Guy Meron, historian at the Open University of Israel and the Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.

“Until the pogrom, we still had a Jewish public sphere in Germany: Jewish organizations were active, and in some places in Germany Jews could still feel safe in public life,” said Meron, whose latest book, “To Be a Jew in Nazi Germany,” comes out in English next year.

Israel condemns Tel Aviv conference equating Holocaust with ‘Nakba’

Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday harshly criticized a planned Tel Aviv conference linking the Holocaust and Israel’s War of Independence.

The conference, titled, “The Holocaust, the Nakba and the German Culture of Remembrance,” was organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Israel in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Tel Aviv.

According to the Rosa Luxemburg website, “Almost 75 years after the declaration of the establishment of Israel, remembering in Israel remains a politically contested terrain. Holocaust survivors and their descendants focus on the extermination of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis, while many Palestinians focus on the fateful year of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of people were destined to flight and displacement by Jewish fighters—known in Arabic as the Nakba (catastrophe).”

The ministry issued a statement on Tuesday, expressing “shock and disgust” in the face of the conference’s “blatant Holocaust scorn” and “cynical and manipulative intent to create a link whose entire purpose is to defame Israel.”

Originally scheduled for Nov. 9, the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom, the conference was postponed to Nov. 13 due to the sensitive nature of the date. However, Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachson emphasized that the date was not the issue.

“Our position is that the event is shameful and disgraceful and should not take place on any date in the calendar, and not only on the anniversary of Kristallnacht,” he said.

I wonder what some of these very Survivors would say, if they knew a German funded institute, @goetheinstitut, was seeking to hold an event - on Kristallnacht - comparing their plight in the Holocaust to the so-called 'Nakba'?https://t.co/vh1FHX5mRU https://t.co/n2oYHWhco9

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 9, 2022

KFC Germany encourages customers to 'treat themselves' on Kristallnacht

German fried chicken enthusiasts were shocked to receive a notification on their phones from KFC Germany encouraging them to "treat themselves" on Wednesday, as the anniversary of the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom was commemorated.

"Commemoration of the Reichspogromnacht (the German name for Kristallnacht) - Treat yourself to more tender cheese with the crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!" read the push notification sent to customers' phones.

Almost an hour later, the company pushed another notification apologizing for what it called an "error in our system."

"Due to an error in our system, we sent an incorrect and inappropriate message through our app. We are very sorry about this, we will check our internal processes immediately so that this does not happen gain. Please excuse this error," wrote the company.

Dalia Grinfeld, associate director of European affairs at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) expressed outrage at the notification, tweeting "How wrong can you get on Kristallnacht @KFCDeutschland. Shame on you!"

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10/27 Links Pt1: How Americans, Europeans Embolden Palestinian Terrorism; Republicans must defund the UN and stop appeasement of Iran; Russian official: Chabad Lubavitch is a neo-pagan cult

From Ian:

Bassam Tawil: How Americans, Europeans Embolden Palestinian Terrorism

Instead of assuming its responsibility for halting terrorist attacks from areas under its control, the Palestinians continue to violate the agreements they signed with Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority did not take real measures to stop Hamas from building a massive terrorism infrastructure. Hamas later used its weapons arsenal not only to attack Israel, but also to overthrow the PA regime and seize full control of the Gaza Strip.

The same scenario is now being repeated in the West Bank, specifically in areas controlled by Mahmoud Abbas's security forces.

This is the twisted logic of the Palestinian leadership: Instead of denouncing the terrorists for targeting Israelis, as they have officially and repeatedly committed to doing, they lash out at Israel for defending itself against the current wave of terrorism.

When a senior Palestinian official such as Habbash says that the terrorists are entitled to carry out "resistance" attacks, he is actually telling them to continue targeting Israelis. Such statements are not only a violation of the agreements the Palestinians signed with Israel, but also incitement to launch more terrorist attacks against Israelis.

The Palestinian leadership, in a policy is known as "pay-for-slay," already provides monthly stipends to Palestinian terrorists..... The families of the Nablus terrorists will also presumably benefit from these payments.

The Palestinian leadership's endorsement and glorification of terrorism comes as no surprise. What is surprising – and intensely disturbing – is that those foreign governments that are providing financial and political aid to the Palestinian Authority, especially the Americans and the Europeans, are not calling out Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership for their public support of terrorism and their ongoing breach of the agreements they voluntarily signed with Israel.

"We will not resort to weapons, we will not resort to violence," Abbas declared in his last speech before the United Nations General Assembly, "we will not resort to terrorism, we will fight terrorism." His words were directed to the international community, not to his own people.

The silence of the Americans and Europeans toward the actions and rhetoric of the Palestinian leaders is tantamount to a green light to the Lions' Den and other terrorists to continue their terrorist attacks.

If the Biden administration and the Europeans believe that Abbas or any other Palestinian leader is going to stop a terrorist from murdering Jews, they are engaging in staggering self-deception.

Jonathan Tobin: Republicans must defund the UN and stop appeasement of Iran

While the U.N. as a whole is an ongoing disgrace, last week’s report of the HRC’s Commission of Inquiry on Israel has highlighted the issue of the world body’s anti-Semitism. The HRC can’t be reformed. The only proper response is to do everything possible to shut it down and to punish those of its officials who are responsible for its trafficking in blatant Jew-hatred and its efforts to isolate and destroy the one Jewish state on the planet.

While some find it hard to work up much indignation against the U.N., or regard efforts to rein it as tilting against windmills, the Commission of Inquiry’s effort to aid the destruction of Israel illustrates how dangerous it can be. Indeed, documents like this report are useful tools for the spread of anti-Semitism via the BDS movement and to those wishing to aid the likes of Iran and its terrorist allies, which seek Israel’s extinction. While the administration opposed the Commission’s report, it isn’t prepared to hold those responsible for this outrage by withdrawing from or defunding the HRC.

It’s up to Republicans to pass legislation defunding the HRC and the Commission of Inquiry. More than that, the House, with the backing of Senate Republicans, must use its leverage over the funding of the State Department to ensure that the administration doesn’t find a way to evade restrictions in this realm.

That will require a degree of intestinal fortitude that past GOP congressional leaders have lacked. But what must be understood about this is that by refusing to use its fiscal power, the DC establishment has stood by while this administration uses taxpayer dollars to enable the U.N. to spread anti-Semitism.

If the GOP is serious about stopping Biden’s toxic policies, it can’t waste precious time on rhetorical exercises. 2023 must be the year this comes to an end.

continues a longstanding pattern of unfairly singling out Israel and does nothing to establish conditions for peace.” /2

More on the UN’s Pillay Commission which reports today to the UNGA: https://t.co/lVRGTkoo2s pic.twitter.com/jTaE6SpVKs

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 27, 2022

Today's report to the UN by the Pillay Commission condemns only Israel & underscores why the inquiry is a travesty of justice that is as fair and objective as the Spanish Inquisition. We drafted this resolution to begin the process to disband the inquiry: https://t.co/RZdOBkGw6f pic.twitter.com/5oNQjbH9w6

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 27, 2022

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10/26 Links Pt2: After West Jerusalem shift, will Australian Labor also turn on Israel at the UN?; Will canceling Kanye West turn the tide on anti-Semitism?; What Explains Ireland's Extreme Antisemitism?

From Ian:

Dave Sharma: After West Jerusalem shift, will Labor also turn on Israel at the UN?

The government’s signalling that it no longer considers Israel to be sovereign over West Jerusalem leads to some odd conclusions.

Far from advancing the cause of peace, which Labor professes to support, this reversal only sets peace back. The only states and entities that assert Israel has no claim to West Jerusalem are the same ones that assert Israel has no entitlement to a sovereign state whatsoever: Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is very odd company for the Labor government to be keeping.

Will Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong now refuse to meet Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as countless of their Labor predecessors have done, and as the UAE Foreign Minister did just in September? If Labor considers West Jerusalem to now be disputed territory, this is the only feasible conclusion.

Of equal importance, does this presage a larger shift in Labor’s attitude towards Israel in international forums?

The Howard government in 2004 altered Australia’s voting position on a number of annual, one-sided UN General Assembly Resolutions that single out Israel as the obstacle to peace, whilst remaining silent on the obligations of other parties. Under the Rudd/Gillard governments, many of these positions were reversed, before being reversed again under subsequent Coalition governments. It appears likely that the Albanese government will once again shift these votes.

The bigger question though is whether the government will follow through on the commitment in the ALP’s official platform to unilaterally recognise a state of Palestine, absent the usual criteria for statehood. In 2021, in a motion introduced by Wong, Labor’s national conference adopted this as official policy.

If the Albanese government goes through with this, it would separate Australia from some of its closest allies and partners, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, France, Germany and Canada.

A profound shift such as this would not make the emergence of a future Palestinian state any more likely. But it would break a strong Labor tradition of support for the state of Israel, and harm one of Australia’s closest and most valuable relationships in the Middle East.

Foreign policy should proceed on the basis of established facts and national interests. Labor’s approach risks ignoring both.

Sky News corrects claim that Australia 'recognised Tel Aviv' as capital

We tweeted several Sky News [UK] editors and journalsts before one responded, upholding our complaint regarding an Oct. 19 Sky News article, written by Amarachi Orie, falsely claiming that Australia recognised Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital. The article in question focused on news that officials in Canberra had rescinded the previous government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

However, the country’s decision to no longer recognise Jerusalem didn’t mean that it therefore recognised Tel Aviv as the capital – as the official government statement on the matter from the foreign ministry shows.

David Collier: What Explains Ireland's Extreme Antisemitism?

Collier said there are different causes behind the virulent anti-Zionist/anti-Israel atmosphere in Ireland. The first is the "distinct anticolonial strand going through the whole of Irish politics" which is evident in the rise of Sinn Fein, "historically the Republican Independence Movement" political party. Many Irish people, who "hate England," mistakenly believe "Britain gave the Jews Israel" and are convinced that the Jewish State epitomizes "settler colonialism." Ironically, as Israel was being established post-1945, the Zionists fought to oust the British from its mandate in Palestine.

The second cause of rampant antisemitism in Ireland is found in the country's "strand" of "classic antisemitism," now seen coming from both the "far left and the far right." Collier pointed out that even though the Irish were "officially independent" during World War II, "many of the Irish Republicans sided with the Nazis." The third cause of Irish antisemitism is rooted in the second — particular "ideologies within Christianity", which are "very strong in the Irish Catholic Church." The church is replete with belief in "replacement ideology, supersessionism, or the idea ... the Christians are the new Jews."

That the Jews have returned to their ancient homeland in Israel creates a "major ideological problem" for the Catholic Church, driving it to align with the Palestinians. Collier said that Christian charities will donate to anti-Israel non-governmental organizations (NGO's), some of which are affiliated with Palestinian terrorist groups. He said an exception in Ireland to the widespread antisemitism is that Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and whose predominantly Protestant citizens identify with the British, tend to be pro-Israel.

The fourth and final issue driving Irish antisemitism, Collier said, is attributable to "Islamist extremism." Whereas the U.S. and England experienced Islamist attacks after mistakenly, over the past three decades, "placing the bar for extremism far ... too high," he said Europe is "paying a deep price for it now." In Ireland, which has not experienced a large influx of Muslim migration, the antisemites there share the same "anti-colonial, anti-imperial" messages with Islamists, whom "they've accepted ... wholesale." The Islamists, essentially, are "coming in speaking the same anti-colonial, anti-imperial messaging, that the Irish do." Collier said, "anti-Zionist rhetoric," unabashedly rife on Irish streets, also creates a "hostile environment" for Jewish students on campuses. He said there are mosques preaching hate, Irish universities with Islamist academics, and the local church, all in league "bashing the state of Israel."

Collier believes that Sinn Fein's growing popularity will be accompanied by an "escalation" of antisemitism in Ireland, which he tracks through social media. He is dismayed at the trends because he said Hitler and the Holocaust "didn't just happen." Rather, their emergence can be traced back to "European antisemitism and beyond it, Christian antisemitism."

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10/24 Links Pt1: UN report on human rights in West Bank and Gaza serves only terror supporters; Israel should stay out of the war in Ukraine; Iran thinks it beat 'Zionists,' US hegemony in Lebanon maritime deal

From Ian:

Ben-Dror Yemini: UN report on human rights in West Bank and Gaza serves only terror supporters

How can Pillay, Kothari and Sidoti be appointed to a committee scrutinizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Well, everything is possible when it comes to Israel.

The report’s findings correspond well with the views of the three. Gaza, the report reads, is under occupation. The reason? The closure in the border crossings between Gaza and Israel.

Since the committee is working under the UN, the report could have mentioned the offer the UN itself presented to Gaza leaders - open borders in return for adherence to international rules of conduct.

Other offers could’ve also been mentioned, like that of the EU, which offered Hamas a reconstruction of Gaza in exchange for demilitarization. Hamas rejected every one of them. This is the reason the so-called blockade has still not been lifted. The report has no mention of this, it doesn’t need to because it wants to draw a target on Israel.

Hamas, which is undoubtedly happy with the report, is not even mentioned in it. Other words not mentioned in the report include: “Jihad,” “terror” and “rockets”. The committee’s information sources include many radical Israeli far-left organization and outlets, such “B'Tselem” - mentioned 17 times, “Peace Now” - 12 times, and “Haaretz” - 10 times.

Occupation is the report’s focal point, and it is becoming permanent, the authors claim. Maybe they have a point. But as usual, they ignore every peace offer tabled in front of the Palestinians in recent decades, and no mention of the Palestinians refusing all of these offers.

But not everything in the report is an anti-Israeli propaganda. The criticism against Jewish settlements in the West Bank is justified, but the subject is under great scrutiny inside the Israeli society already. There’s no need for them to take part in it.

Sometimes you need and have to wonder about the ease with which international bodies, among them the UN, cultivate hostile views of Israel, using the excuse of human rights. This new report sets a new bar.

The report is written in a legal manner, featuring notes and footnotes. Some of its claims are true, but even so they don’t undo the fact that the report sets a new record for incitement against Israel, written by a committee made up of three antisemites.

This is what demonization looks like. This is not the way to achieve peace, this is how a UN committee becomes a propaganda machine for supporters of terrorism.

Jonathan Tobin: Israel should stay out of the war in Ukraine

The international community has always opposed allowing Israel to achieve the kind of complete military victory over its enemies that would force them to give up their struggle against its existence. World opinion also dismisses terrorist attacks on the lives of Israelis as being part of a “cycle of violence” that ought to be stopped, regardless of who is in the right.

In contrast, many otherwise sensible people think Ukrainian ambitions for a military victory over Russia should be indulged, including if that means, as even President Joe Biden recently acknowledged, a risk of a nuclear confrontation.

Anger and disgust with Russia are justified, as are economic sanctions, even if they are clearly hurting the West more than the Putin regime. Yet, now that Ukraine’s extinction is no longer possible, a rational rather than an emotional response to the situation shouldn’t involve an open-ended commitment to an endless war that—Zelenskyy’s boasts and Biden’s promises notwithstanding—isn’t going to end in a total Ukrainian victory or anything like it.

Instead of ganging up on Israel in an effort to force it to join a war that has nothing to do with its security, perhaps the virtue-signalers should start considering whether it wouldn’t be more sensible for the United States to begin exploring a way to end the war. Instead, they are supporting policies geared to ensure it goes on indefinitely, and speak as if advocacy for a negotiated settlement is Russian propaganda. They have no coherent exit strategy or achievable goal and accuse those who point out this inconvenient fact of being insufficiently supportive of the cause of freedom.

This fuels the paranoia that helps sustain Putin in Russia and the patriotic fervor that is bolstering Zelenskyy’s maximalist position. It ignores the cost in Ukrainian and Russian lives, as well as the price for American taxpayers who thought they were done financing unwinnable foreign wars.

The idea that Israel should be dragged into this morass simply for the sake of a dubious romanticizing of the conflict, to assert its status as a world power or any other reason is as irresponsible as it is reckless.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Biden Embraces America's Fiercest Enemies: Whose Side Is He On?

[T]he Biden administration was damaging America's relations with its historical friends and allies while sending "positive messages" to America's fiercest enemies and haters. — Dr. Ibrahim Al-Nahhas, Saudi political analyst, Al-Riyadh, October 19, 2022.

[T]he Biden administration has preferred to attack Saudi Arabia than deal with the use of Iranian drones by the Russians in Ukraine... Were it not for American and European leniency, especially since the era of Barack Obama, who tried with all naivety to rehabilitate the Iranian regime, Iran would not have interfered in the internal affairs of Europe and four Arab countries (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen) — Tarik Al-Hamid, former editor-in-chief of the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat, October 19, 2022.

Since Barack Obama admitted erring in his failure to support Iran's protestors in 2009, however, has US policy changed? Apart from painfully feeble lip-service to the protestors in Iran, Biden and his administration, through their inaction, appear still to be totally committed to their initial alliance with Russia and Iran.

Biden and his administration , it appears, would rather align themselves with the mullahs in Iran and the new "Russian-Iranian Axis of Evil," than strengthen their ties with America's longstanding partners, the Arabs in the Gulf.

The winners: Russia and Iran.

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10/18 Links: Australia revokes recognition of western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital; Ruthie Blum: Donald Trump’s justified critique of American Jews; Who waived US law to allow an “alien engaged in terror activity” into the US?

From Ian:

Australia revokes recognition of western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital

The Labor Party-led Australian government on Tuesday officially revoked the country’s recognition of western Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, confirming a Guardian report the previous day revealing that Canberra had walked back the language adopted by former Liberal Party prime minister Scott Morrison.

The Australian Cabinet instead agreed that Jerusalem’s eventual status must be resolved via peace negotiations with the Palestinians that lead to a two-state solution.

“We will not support an approach that undermines this prospect,” Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong was quoted by the Associated Press as saying on Tuesday.

The Labor Party, with Anthony Albanese as prime minister and Wong as the top diplomat, rose to power in May 2022.

According to Monday’s Guardian report, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade recently dropped the following two lines of text from its website:
“Consistent with this longstanding policy, in December 2018, Australia recognized West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, being the seat of the Knesset and many of the institutions of the Israeli government.

“Australia looks forward to moving its embassy to West Jerusalem when practical, in support of, and after the final status determination of, a two-state solution.” The lines were deleted after the Guardian Australia asked the current government questions about the matter.

In response, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid denounced Canberra’s move, saying in a statement that, “Jerusalem is the eternal undivided capital of Israel and nothing will change that.

“In light of the way in which this decision was made in Australia, as a hasty response to an incorrect report in the media, we can only hope that the Australian government manages other matters more seriously and professionally,” Lapid added.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry announced that it would summon Australia’s ambassador over the issue.

Has Australia's Jerusalem reversal harmed Israel? - analysis

Even the United States failed until recently to recognize that Jerusalem was part of Israel. US citizens who wanted to register the birth of their children in that city could not have Israel as the country of birth on their passports.

Barack Obama, when he was president, might have flown to Jerusalem to eulogize veteran Israeli leader Shimon Peres. But the text of the speech he delivered at Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery in the western part of the city, did include Israel as the location in which the address was delivered.

Former US president Donald Trump’s decision in 2017 to declare that Jerusalem was Israel’s capital and to relocate the American embassy there from Tel Aviv in 2018 was seen as a significant step in support of Israel’s hold on its capital city.

Only three other countries have followed the US example; Guatemala, Honduras and Kosovo. Liberia, Togo and Malawi are expected to open embassies in Jerusalem.

Australia’s decision in 2018 to declare that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel helped shore up that move, even if the embassy remained in Tel Aviv. To shore up that declaration it opened a trade office in the city. Some eight other countries have done so as well, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Serbia.

Prime Minister Yair Lapid as well as his predecessors Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett, all campaigned to change Jerusalem’s status in the international arena, with what appeared to be initial successes.

Last year, for example, support for the Jerusalem resolution at the UN dropped; it passed with only 129 votes.

Strong statement by Israeli PM @yairlapid, condemning #Australia’s reversal on #Jerusalem decision and the inexcusable manner in which @dfat @SenatorWong went about it (denying it earlier - when that was flat out lie). #AUSPOL pic.twitter.com/41ZgrlLzw9

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) October 18, 2022

Australia drops recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital

Michael Danby, Former Chairman and Member of the Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee of Australian Parliament, says the hasty decision by the Australian cabinet to revoke its recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel's capital was driven by local political considerations.

Israel slams Australia on 'hasty' Jerusalem reversal

Israel is slamming Australia the administration reversed its recognition of West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel - a decision made by former prime minister Scott Morrison.

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Mahmoud Abbas supports Russia's invasion of Ukraine: "Russia adheres to justice and international law"

Ever since the free world has been condemning Russia for invading Ukraine, modern Jew-haters have been trying to paint Israel as being like Russia.

They tried to compare Ukraine to Gaza. They tried to compare Russia's occupation to Israel in the West Bank. 

Facts, of course, are not part of the conversation. Modern antisemites rely on emotion and analogy, as well as the ignorance of their audience.

But you don't hear much from them lately about this analogy. Because the Ukrainians and the Palestinians aren't following the script.

Ukrainians have compared themselves multiple times with Israel standing up against a hostile Arab world, not with Palestinians. 

And now Mahmoud Abbas, who has pretended to not take sides, has dropped the pretense that he doesn't support Russia.

A month after Hamas leaders met with senior Russian officials (without any negative reaction from Palestinians,) Abbas followed suit and met with Vladimir Putin and other officials.

"Russia adheres to justice and international law, and that is enough for us," Abbas said. 

With this, Abbas has placed a "halal" sticker on Russia's invasion of Ukraine as being legitimate, legal and just.

Palestinian activists for years have been repeating the mantras of supporting "justice" and "international law." Now we see that both major Palestinian parties support Russia's interpretation of those two concepts.

And now the same Palestinian activists who have tried so hard to associate Palestinians with Ukrainians look like idiots because Palestinian leaders themselves fully support Russia's invasion - and occupation - of Ukraine.

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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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10/13 Links Pt1: How to Lose Friends and Influence Over People; Lebanon's Bait-and-Switch Treaty; Israel Passing Intelligence to Ukraine on Iranian-Made Suicide Drones

From Ian:

Yeah, Buoy!!!

The government’s new pitch was that this would be the real benefit of the deal: preserving and enhancing Israel’s security interests through the now-famous buoy line. Barak Ravid, the local Israeli journalistic mouthpiece of the Obama-Biden policy team from the Iran deal days, relayed that government officials who briefed reporters on the deal said that anchoring the “line of buoys” was “very important” because “in the last 20 years the Israeli military operated along this line unilaterally and the Lebanese side had international legitimacy to challenge it.” The deal, however, “will allow Israel to treat it as its northern territorial border.”

In other words, in the two decades up to this moment, Israel has had total freedom to operate in the area to ensure its security against Hezbollah. However, without the deal, the terror pseudo-state to its north would suddenly have enjoyed “international legitimacy” to challenge Israel. That sounds very serious—and certainly warrants ceding territory with potential energy resources under threat of force to a terrorist group that is stockpiling and pointing tens of thousands of rockets at you.

Needless to say, the Lebanese side disagrees with the Israeli reading. Instead, it claims another point on land farther south at Naqoura. Squaring this circle, probably with some creative language, is what the U.S. mediator likely has been busy figuring out.

Meanwhile, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz was spit-balling another set of talkers: “This is an agreement whose essence is economic,” Gantz said last week. “And if it is signed, we, as well as Lebanon and its citizens, who are suffering from a severe crisis, will enjoy it for years to come.” The logic here was that if Lebanon gets its rig in its Block 9 opposite Israel’s rig at Karish, then Hezbollah will have a stake in maintaining calm and smooth operation of both rigs. So, in the future, if Hezbollah attacks Israeli energy infrastructure, Israel can target a gas rig owned and operated by France’s Total—putting France on Hezbollah’s side.

This pretense of hard security and pseudo-deterrence posture rang even more hollow as it clashed with another key government talker: that Israel had to conclude this awful deal ASAP if it wanted to avoid a new war with Hezbollah. An IDF official sent out to make this pitch put it this way: “There is an urgency and a necessity to reach an agreement in the near future and without delay, in order to prevent an escalation of security [dangers], which is [otherwise] highly likely, and to utilize the unique window of opportunity to reach an agreement.”

The logic here was itself unique in the annals of deterrence: If your psychopathic neighbor keeps slashing the tires on your shiny Mercedes, the solution is to buy him a spanking brand-new Mercedes of his own that you can then pretend to hold hostage.

The source of this weird pitch was again the Biden administration. As a senior U.S. administration official relayed through Ravid, the reason Biden wanted Lapid to wrap up the deal within weeks was “because the issue has become urgent and the lack of an agreement could lead to dangerous consequences for the region.”

Yet when U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted that he was troubled by how the Biden administration “pressured our Israeli allies” into a comically terrible deal, the Washington arm of the Obama-Biden messaging machine sprang into action. The progressive lobbying group J Street put out a brief that “fact checked” Sen. Cruz’s ignorant partisanship. Daniel Shapiro, Obama’s former ambassador to Israel who is intimately familiar with the communications environment in Israel, weighed in, regurgitating the same exact talkers and asserting that it was “definitely NOT” American pressure that pushed Israel into this deal.

Yet the reason the Biden administration announced that a gas deal was a key priority was precisely because it’s a deal with Hezbollah. Stabilizing and investing in Iranian regional “equities” is at the core of the Obama-Biden doctrine of realignment with Iran. It’s how you achieve “regional integration”—by publicly showcasing your ability to pressure your allies to prop up Iranian assets, even as the Iranian people are being mowed down in the streets.

How to Lose Friends and Influence Over People

Americans have a reputation, with others and in their own national literature, for being careless and breaking things. Often this is because they are so admirably creative, dynamic, and unattached to the past. But for the last two decades, the epicenter of American carelessness has been the Middle East, an area of the world that seems to encourage fantasies among all Westerners, yet where real-world margins for error are small. The result has been a series of disasters for the peoples of the region and for American prestige. This week brought what looks like another unforced error in policymaking, fed by hubris, fantasy, airy talk, and a refusal to acknowledge reality.

On Tuesday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby announced that President Joe Biden will be reevaluating America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia after OPEC+ announced the previous week that it would cut oil production. Kirby’s announcement followed a statement by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., claiming that Saudi Arabia is helping to “underwrite Putin’s war” through OPEC+. “As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” Menendez said, “I will not green-light any cooperation with Riyadh until the Kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine.”

As a Saudi who loves the United States, and believes deeply that our two countries need each other, the only word that comes to mind regarding the contemporary “reevaluation” of our relations is: obscene.

It was the Obama administration that decided to give Vladimir Putin a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean, which it sold to the American people as a way to “deescalate” the civil war in Syria. As the United States romanced Putin, offering him Crimea and warm water ports in Syria in exchange for pulling Iran’s irons out of the fire over the past decade, U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, and Israel have had no choice but to cope. Last month, while Russian-operated Iranian drones and missiles were pounding Kyiv, Riyadh used its diplomatic leverage to obtain the release of American and British POWs from Putin.

America saddled us with the reality of a neighboring country controlled by Iranian troops and the Russian air force. Worse, as part of its Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Obama administration sent tens of billions of dollars flowing into Iranian coffers—money that was used to demolish Iraq, crush Syria, create chaos in Lebanon, and threaten Saudi territory from Yemen. Iranian rocket and drone strikes on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia are now routine. In response to the barrage of missiles on Saudi infrastructure last year, the Biden administration withdrew U.S. missile defense batteries from Saudi territory.

Having watched Russian forces support or directly commit atrocities against innocent civilians and facilitate the use of chemical weapons for seven years in Syria, the Saudi government was quick to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unlike many in the West, who expected a short, parade-ground war, the Saudis understood full well what Putin was capable of. So did the Israelis.

Why Jerusalem Is the Right Location for the UK's Embassy

Up until 1948, the world generally referred to "Palestinians" as the Jews who lived in what was to become modern Israel. The "Palestinian" flag until 1948 contained a Magen David, the Palestine Post was the region's Jewish newspaper and Palestinian football teams comprised Jews.

Jews were ethnically cleansed from the Old City and eastern Jerusalem by the invading Jordanian and Arab armies in 1948. Jews were the majority of the population of the Old City. Synagogues were desecrated and destroyed and the vibrant Jewish community erased. The Jewish neighborhood of Simon HaTsadik (Simon the Just) became the Muslim area of Sheikh Jarrah.

The default position for the location of an embassy is a country's capital city, and it is for the country itself to decide its location. Israel has declared that Jerusalem is its capital city and this must be respected. The UK already has a consulate in eastern Jerusalem to serve the local Arab communities. Why, therefore, should there not be an embassy in Jerusalem to serve Israeli citizens?

The Abraham Accords and the immense benefits for the region flowing from them has shown that the relocation of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem has had no adverse effect. Neither would the relocation of the British embassy.

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If Russia Really Is Cozying Up To Hamas, Haniyeh Better Run As Fast As He Can (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Just two weeks ago, I wrote about the bond between Russia and Israel, the result of their shared experiences with terrorist attacks against their civilians and because of the large number of Russians living in Israel.

Now it turns out that on September 10, a delegation of Hamas terrorist leaders -- led by leader Ismail Haniyeh -- visited Moscow at the invitation of the Russian government. As a matter of policy, Russia does not see Hamas as a terrorist organization and hosted it back in 2020 and Grigory Karasin, chair of the Federation Council's Foreign Affairs Committee, has described Haniyeh as "one of the most moderate and prudent leaders of Hamas."

In 2017, the Russian ambassador to Israel -- Alexander Shein -- explained in an interview why Russia does not recognize either Hezbollah or Hamas to be terrorist organizations:

We do not consider these organizations to be terrorist. True, they are radical organizations, which sometimes adhere to extremist political views...Russian law - the Supreme Court, following an appeal by the prosecution - defines terrorist organizations as such when they intentionally conduct acts of terror in Russian territory, or against Russian interests abroad - installations, embassies, offices, or citizens. [emphasis added]

Apparently, it escaped Shein's notice that the large number of Russians with dual citizenship living in Israel would qualify as "Russian interests" according to his own definition.

Israel and Russia restored full relations between the 2 countries in 1991, 24 years after Russia broke off relations following the Six Day War. During that time, the US displaced the then-Soviet Union as the major power broker in the region. Since the renewal of relations, Russia has not been silent when Israel was targeted by Hamas.

In 2014, Russia came out in support of Operation Protective Edge, Israel's response to Hamas targeting Israeli civilians with its rockets:

“I am closely tracking what is happening in Israel,” Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked in a meeting on Wednesday with a delegation of Chief Rabbis and representatives of the Rabbinical Center of Europe.

...“I support Israel’s battle that is intended to keep its citizens protected,” he [Putin] said about the Israel Defense Forces’ operation to restore quiet to the region and stop Hamas terrorism.

“I also heard about the shocking murder of the three teenagers,” Putin added about the kidnapping and murder of Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrach and Gilad Shaar, three Yeshiva students in Israel. “This is an unconscionable act and I ask that you bring my condolences to the families.”

Despite the condemnation, Russia has not dumped Hamas as a "friend," instead keeping all ties open, much in the same way that China maintains relations simultaneously with both Israel and Iran.

But what is the point of Russia's personally inviting the Hamas leaders for a visit?

JNS hosted a discussion of the possible reasons for the invitation.

One suggestion was that this was Putin's way of dispelling the current image of Russia as an isolated pariah:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has no one who wants to play with him. So he’s happy to invite anyone. And, not surprisingly, it’s going be someone with whom no one wants to play either.

But that can hardly be the whole answer, since hosting Hamas is hardly a way for a leader to establish his legitimacy and demonstrate that he is in demand.

Another, possibly additional, motivation for the invitation could be a rebuke of Israel. Back in May, Hamas was invited to Russia, shortly after then-Foreign Minister Lapid accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine. But if so, it was not clear what Israel did this time to provoke the invitation this time around.

A third possibility, suggested by Jonathan Schanzer of Federation for Defense of Democracies, is that the invitation is part of a growing alliance that Russia is building:

It appears that Putin is building an axis of like-minded governments and entities, Schanzer said. “It really does look like he is working to create a new revisionist axis that already includes the Iranians, includes China potentially, and includes North Korea.”

“The question is whether this is an effort to legitimize and recruit Hamas to be part of that broader coalition. Or is this for show, or something else entirely?”

For its part, Hamas thinks there is a shift taking place among the world powers, and it wants to get in on the ground floor. At a conference this past June in Gaza entitled Palestinian Sovereignty, the Strategic Variables and Future Paths, Haniyeh spoke about 4 variables towards a new strategic vision:

o  The "success" of the Sword of Jerusalem campaign during the fighting of May of last year
o  America's withdrawal from  the area, a sign of its declining power and influence
o  The Russia-Ukraine war, which supposedly is actually between Russia and the West
o  The Abraham Accords, specifically the military and security alliances with Arab countries

The key variable, according to Haniyeh, is the 3rd one -- the war in the Ukraine:

"This is the broadest and most significant war in the struggle between the world's camps since the end of WWII." Stressing that "after this war the world will no longer be the same," he added: "It will undoubtedly become a multipolar world, and the currently prevailing unipolar era in international and global policy will end. This will certainly be a very important change, and it will impact both our Arab and Islamic region and our [Palestinian] cause and our struggle with the occupation."

Haniyeh is very keen on this up-and-coming multipolar world:

"Haniyeh stated that the Zionist narrative is no longer current, that Israel's status is not what it once was, and that there are important variables to be based on, including openness to large and influential countries such as China and Russia as well as Islamic Iran and all the countries that are confronting the Israel-U.S. policy in the region... [emphasis added]

Haniyeh's speech seems to dovetail nicely with the suggestion that this new multipolar world is something that Russia itself may be pursuing.

But if Haniyeh was expecting a confirmation of his goals against Israel during his visit to Russia, he was disappointed. The statements issued separately by the Russians and Hamas were very different.

Russia's statement emphasized the need to settle the conflict on the basis of a generally recognized legal framework, but Hamas emphasized that all negotiations with Israel have failed and that "resistance" was the only realistic option remaining:

According to the official statement of the Russian foreign ministry, the talks between the ministry officials and the Hamas delegation focused on "the developments in the Middle East, with emphasis on Palestinian affairs. The Russian side stressed the importance of quickly restoring the Palestinian national unity on the basis of the PLO's political program, as well as the need to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of generally-recognized legal framework, which is rooted in the relevant resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly and the Arab peace initiative."

...The Hamas statement, on the other hand, emphasized that the delegation had informed the Russian officials of "the Israeli violations" against the Palestinian people and had stressed the Palestinians' right to "resist the occupation by every possible means, until liberation and return [are achieved]."...The statement said further that Hamas "is working to strengthen its ties with its Islamic and Arab surroundings and with influential international elements that support our people," and added: "The hegemonial status of the U.S. in the world order has harmed the Palestinian cause, and we believe that the shift to a multipolar world order based on just principles will benefit our people and our cause."

Publicly, at least, there seemed to be very little to indicate that Russia considered Hamas to be an asset -- let alone a valued ally. Hamas may very well see the value of a "multipolar world," but that does not mean it will get to sit at the same table with these other countries.

But if that means that this whole exercise of hosting Hamas was intended as a rebuke and warning to Israel, it doesn't appear to have had the desired effect.

Just this week, Israel had its own rebuke for Russia in response to its attempt to annex parts of Ukraine

Israel's Foreign Ministry stated on Tuesday that Israel "recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine," as Russia holds its fifth and last day of referendums as a prelude to it annexing four Ukrainian regions.

Israel "Will not accept the results of the referendum in the Eastern districts of Ukraine," the Israeli statement said, in a rare rebuke of Moscow.

Considering the sensitive agreement between Israel and Russia regarding Israeli flights into Syria in response to Iranian threats, the statement was somewhat unexpected -- especially since it preceded any official statement by Russia and the statement itself was apparently not the result of US pressure.

Israel seems to see Russia hosting Hamas as a rebuke -- nothing more.

As for Haniyeh, he may be jumping the gun when he compares the Russia-Ukraine war favorably to WWII as an opportunity for Hamas to reap the benefits of a new world order. He seems to have forgotten about the other world war, WWI. 

That was when the Ottoman Empire also saw a new world order in the making -- and joined against the allied powers.

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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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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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Russia -- When It Comes To Iran And Israel: Friendship Goes Further Than Partnership (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

In the Middle East, allies and adversaries can change back and forth.

This is true not only among the states in that area but also among the outside countries that vie against each other to either gain a foothold or secure access to resources and technology.

Russia is one example.

When it was the Soviet Union, it was one of the first countries to recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran. But it also was a major supplier of weapons to Iraq during that country's war against Iran, while at the same time providing some weapons to Iran. After the war, the USSR agreed to help Iran complete its nuclear reactor in Bushehr.

Today, Russia is still in the middle of things. It has inserted itself into Syria, which helps Iran's strategy of exploiting that country to supply Hezbollah while also establishing a base of operations against Israel. Yet at the same time, despite its advanced missile systems in place to defend Syria, Russia has an agreement with Israel allowing it to take action against Iranian positions in Syria.

It's complicated.

Ksenia Svetlova, an Israeli politician and journalist, differentiates between Russia's relationship with Iran and Israel:

The Iranians are not Russia’s friends, they’re partners.
We’re not partners (referring to Israel).

Left unsaid is just what Russia's relationship with Israel actually is.

A 2005 Middle East Forum article on Putin's Pro-Israel Policy, noted similar interests between Russia and Israel in the fight against the threat both countries faced against terrorism:

While the United States and other Western governments criticized Russian operations in Chechnya, the Israeli government did not. Rather, Sharansky offered strong support for Putin's hard-line policy of not negotiating with terrorists but defeating them militarily instead. Parallels between Russia's conflict with the Chechens and Israel's struggle with the Palestinians have resonated strongly with the Putin administration.

...Like Palestinian terrorists, Chechen rebels have launched a number of attacks on civilian targets in Russia, including attacks on hospitals in southern Russia during the first Chechen war (1994-96), the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002, and a series of attacks in the summer of 2004 that culminated in the death of hundreds of school children in Beslan. This similarity in predicament seems to have increased sympathy for Israel in Russia.

But beyond the common enemy of terrorists, there is another tie between Russia and Israel which exists even when the issue of Chechnya is not front page news. When Ariel Sharon visited Russia in 2001,

Putin referred to the fact that many Israelis originally came from Russia and other ex-Soviet republics, stating that he wanted them to "live in peace and security," and denounced terrorism, even as he also referred to Russia's "traditionally good" relations with the Arab world and the Palestinian Authority.

When Israel confined Arafat to his headquarters in Ramallah, the terrorist leader turned to Putin to pressure Israel to back off. Instead, Putin was reported to have told him that "combating terrorism and extremism is the most urgent task facing the world community today."

Another angle to keep in mind is that in 2005, Russian ties with Israel were worth in the neighborhood of $1 billion annually.

But on the other hand, Russia still has to deal with the millions of Muslims who live in Russia. That gives Russia a strong motivation to temper its ties with Israel.

But at the same time, that is a danger for Russia as well.

In 2011, Lt. Colonel James Zumwalt criticized Putin's connection with Iran, noting at the time that based on the disparity between Russian and Muslim birthrates, by 2050 Muslims would outnumber native Russians.

More than that is the issue of Iran itself:

Putin naively believes in a non-existent Russian/Iranian bond that places Moscow outside Iran’s crosshairs. But Iran eventually has in mind for Russia the same fate it has for other non-Islamic states—a fate shared by the Caucasus Emirate: i.e., to make the country subservient to shariah law.

As the Soviet Union was falling apart, Ayatollah Khomeini wrote Gorbachev, offering Islamism as a way to "easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system."

What about today?

Capt. (res.) Alexander Grinberg of the IDF Military Intelligence writes that there is no love for Russia among the Iranians themselves:

the vast majority of Iranians traditionally despise Russia and support Ukraine. Countless Iranian youth hate Russia because they see parallels between the Russian and Iranian regimes. Given this context, it is understandable that Iranian leaders dislike being portrayed as Russia supporters.

That is not to say that Iran has particularly friendly relations with Ukraine right now either. Back in 2020, Iran's Revolutionary Guard shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 people on board.

Ukraine is an impediment to ties between Russia and Israel as well, as Israel has carefully supported Ukraine against the Russian invasion while being careful not to do anything that might threaten the freedom Russia has been granting it in its flights over Syria. Russia has even told Iran to move from its positions in Syria in order to avoid giving Israel targets that are close to Russian positions.

Meanwhile, from a business perspective, the governments of Russia and Iran are in competition with each other as they try to find markets for their oil at a time when Russia is being isolated because of its invasion of Ukraine while Iran is trying to find a way around sanctions.

Partnerships in politics do not necessarily extend to partnerships in business.

And yet it is undeniable that the isolation of Russia and Iran is drawing the 2 countries together:

In July, Iran became the world’s largest buyer of Russian wheat. This month, Russia launched an Iranian satellite into space in a rare success for Tehran’s space program. And last week, Iran’s military hosted joint drone exercises with Russian forces, as the U.S. warns Moscow is preparing to receive Iranian drones for use in the war in Ukraine.

This interaction is going beyond an inter-governmental level:

Russians have been flocking to the Islamic Republic in recent months, often to discuss ways to circumvent sanctions, say Iranian businessmen. Russian is often heard in Tehran’s shops and hotels these days, as Iran remains open to Russian travelers who have been cut off from much of the West.

At the city’s grand bazaar, Hossein, a carpet seller, said the number of Russian customers has doubled since February and now make up half its customer base. In the lobby of a luxury hotel in Tehran, the only Europeans were Russians who brought their laptops for a business meeting with Iranians in black suits.

This almost sounds comparable to the descriptions of Israelis traveling to the UAE and investigating possible business ventures and opportunities for commerce.

But unlike the Arab-Israeli friendship that we read about, Russians visiting Iran are doing so out of desperation. 

Svetlova's description still rings true: "The Iranians are not Russia’s friends, they’re partners." 

Predictions over the years that Israel would face isolation and have no friends were wrong. The same cannot be said about Russia and Iran. And the fact that they find themselves in the same boat creates a partnership that will only go so far.

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