Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: StateDept

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Wednesday, November 30, 2022

11/30 Links Pt1: Murdering Jews Should Be as Unacceptable as Murdering Druze; Biden Rewards Palestinians for Terrorism, Incitement; UNRWA Finds ‘Man-Made Cavity’ Under Gaza School

From Ian:

Israel’s UN ambassador: Mideast Jews were victims of the ‘real Nakba’

Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan inaugurated an exhibit on Tuesday highlighting the expulsion of Jews from Middle East countries, calling the story of these Jewish refugees the “real Nakba.”

The Palestinians have long used the Arabic term “Nakba,” or catastrophe, to describe Israel’s creation and the resulting displacement of some 700,000 of Palestinian Arabs during the 1948 war initiated by Arab nations to destroy the nascent Jewish state.

Marking the 75th anniversary of the U.N.’s adoption of a resolution to create Israel, Erdan said that “those who really suffered from ‘Nakba’ following the decision were Jews—almost a million were expelled from Arab countries and Iran. Since the vote [on Nov. 29, 1947,] which the Arabs rejected, the United Nations has been telling a completely false story about the ‘disaster’ the Palestinians brought upon themselves,” he added.

While the vast majority of Jewish refugees from Arab countries were absorbed into Israel, the United Nations, by contrast, created the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to tend uniquely to Palestinian refugees. Today, the organization recognizes some 5 million Palestinians as “refugees,” having effectively transformed the status into a hereditary trait applicable only to Palestinians.

“A day after the [partition] decision, Jews were violently and cruelly expelled from Arab countries and Iran. This year, after a long struggle, we managed to place an exhibition with photos that document the story of the real Nakba. I will continue to fight for the truth and against the false narrative that the Palestinians and their supporters spread,” said Erdan.

#OTD, as we celebrate 75 years since the #PartitionPlan, I am at the United Nations, with a reminder that, 75 years later, whereas #Israel continues to say Yes to peace, the Palestinian leadership is still saying: No, No, No! @The_ILF pic.twitter.com/ICXyh8Z8yM
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 29, 2022

75 years ago today, the UN General Assembly voted on and passed Resolution 181. Watch the historic vote that laid the groundwork for the establishment of the State of Israel: pic.twitter.com/nouCKB91bS
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) November 29, 2022

On this day in 1947, the UN passed #Resolution181, paving the way for the establishment of the State of Israel as well as an Arab state, with Jerusalem under international control.
33 countries voted in favor; 13 voted against; and 10 abstained. pic.twitter.com/NI0yznDRJU
— Israel War Room (@IsraelWarRoom) November 29, 2022

11/29 Links Pt1: The Palestinians had a great Thanksgiving; Israel not so much; Female Israeli soldier wounded in West Bank car ramming attack; Israeli Children Attacked by Terrorists in Hebron

From Ian:

The Palestinians had a great Thanksgiving; Israel not so much

Over Thanksgiving week, the administration announced the creation of a special representative post focused solely on the Palestinians. This will be an enormous upgrade in relations. A State Department official said, "As the president reiterated in Israel and the West Bank, we remain committed to reopening our Consulate General in Jerusalem and to the vision of a two-state solution."

While the Palestinians are cosseted and rewarded for intransigence and violence, the Biden administration is attacking Israel by upgrading Israel's enemies, undermining its ability to defend itself and calling its democratic bona fides into question.

First, the administration called the Abraham Accords "normalization agreements," rather than the historic peace accords they are. But that was a minor slap compared to the gifts Israel's chief nemesis Iran received. The administration lifted sanctions on Iran's proxy terror organization, the Houthis. It pressured South Korea to free up more than a billion dollars in frozen Iranian funds. It provided sanctions waivers that allowed Iran to sell more oil to China – a boon for both countries.

And the administration did all of this while the US sat outside the room in Vienna where talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear accord are underway. The US, in other words, acted like the pariah Iran should be, and allowed Russia, China and the EU to offer Iran "inducements" to rejoin an agreement Iran has been violating for years. There has been no penalty for stealing US technology, putting it in Iranian drones and exporting the drones to Russia in violation of U.N. sanctions.

In addition, Iran's proxy Hezbollah was gifted with a maritime gas agreement between Israel and Lebanon brokered by the US The Biden administration put heavy pressure on Israel's outgoing government to reach a deal before the Israeli elections. Worst of all was that Israel received unspecified American "security assurances" should Hezbollah attack. This undermined Israel's decades-long policy that it would "defend itself by itself" and not ask the US to provide American soldiers for its security.

The administration also undermined Israel's position as a democratic ally by announcing the opening of an FBI investigation into the battlefield death of an Al Jazeera journalist, having previously accepted the findings of Israeli and Palestinian investigations and declaring the case closed. The announcement brought cheers from the PA, which demanded that the case go to the International Criminal Court.

The only saving grace was that US Ambassador Thomas Nides and President Joe Biden later said they had no idea such an investigation had been ordered by the attorney general. Really? President Biden didn't know? The US has a rogue attorney general?

The Palestinians had a very good Thanksgiving week. The Israelis much less so. Most Americans were too busy to notice.

A Book of Psalms saved a victim's life in Jerusalem terror attack

A man who was seriously injured in Tuesday’s Jerusalem bombing was spared from what could have been a fatal fate by none other than his book of Psalms – or Tehillim in Hebrew – which blocked a shard of debris from piercing his body, said Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

The victim, a 62-year-old man, arrived to Shaare Zedek hospital in serious condition and underwent a series of operations to remove shrapnel from his body.

While the man was recovering, visitors were stunned to discover that he had a book of psalms in his possession that was pierced almost entirely through by a shard of debris resulting from the explosion. The shard hit the back cover of the book and penetrated nearly all the way through – though stopping just short and potentially saving the man’s life.

Coincidence or divine intervention?
The shard penetrated the book up to the 124th chapter of the Psalms before stopping at the line: "Our soul is like a bird that escaped from a box of hardships."

The psalm that the shrapnel stopped is obviously very notable, as the message in the psalm is about being saved from hardship. The bus station bombing in Jerusalem on Tuesday killed two, including a 16-year-old boy, and wounded 18 others – including the fortunate man who had this book of psalms with him.

The IDF’s Judea and Samaria challenge: A spike in attacks and anti-terror raids

‘A synergy of explosive factors can produce a new intifada’
According to Col. (res.) David Hacham, a senior research associate at the MirYam Institute and a former adviser on Arab affairs to seven Israeli defense ministers, the dramatic rise in terrorist incidents is linked to a number of factors.

He detailed the first two as follows: “A rise in violent clashes between the IDF, as well as Israelis in Judea and Samaria, and Palestinians, often leading to casualties. A rise in tensions surrounding the Temple Mount and ongoing Palestinian incitement encouraging violent passions around this issue based on claims that Israel is changing the status quo. This can form a big potential for escalation because it plays on very sensitive strings.”

Terror factions led by Hamas have been promoting murderous incitement on social media using the Temple Mount issue as a key theme to call for attacks on Israelis.

A third factor, said Hacham, is the ongoing and escalating succession battle within Fatah over who will succeed Abbas. “The combination of these elements leads to an atmosphere filled with gasoline fumes, and can lead to an explosion and a new intifada, he warned.

“Other factors include the sense among Palestinians of a lack of any progress in the diplomatic process with Israel and the sense that the PA is unable to make Israel budge here. The Palestinians fear the formation of a new right-wing Israeli coalition that will promote the building of settlements, legalize outposts, build new bypass roads, and create an obstacle to the establishment of a future Palestinian state,” said Hacham.

“They fear the next government will not take the Palestinians into account at all. On the Palestinian side, Abbas, 87, is tired and sick. He is trying to prepare the ground for his chosen successor, Hussein al-Sheikh, whom he appointed as PLO Executive Committee secretary-general in May 2022,” he continued.

Israel has to keep its finger “closely on the pulse of every event in Judea and Samaria, which is at the gates, inside our home. It has to be able to detect and move to prevent negative events such as a Hamas takeover,” Hacham stressed.

Al-Sheikh, unpopular on the Palestinian street, would only acquire legitimacy if he won elections like Abbas did in 2005 to become PA president. “Here, there is an Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian interest to prevent a civil war between Palestinians and to avoid a scenario in which the militias of the candidates fight each other, which could be dangerous for us,” Hacham added.

11/15 Links Pt1: Israel’s Partial Victory; Three killed, three wounded in Samaria terror attack; assailant shot dead; American Rabbis Blast Biden Admin for Funding Palestinian Terrorism

From Ian:

Daniel Pipes: Israel’s Partial Victory

These developments have two main implications for Israel.

First, Israel won a victory over the Arab states, with their far larger populations, resources, economies, and diplomatic heft, a signal accomplishment that deserves far more attention than it has received. In 1994, for example, then–IDF Chief of Staff Ehud Barak argued that “in the foreseeable future, the main threat to the State of Israel is still an all-out attack by conventional armies.” This year, Israeli strategist Efraim Inbar insisted that the “idea that Jewish and Arab states will coexist peacefully…ignores the reality on the ground.” Granted, no Arab state signed a document of surrender or otherwise acknowledged defeat, but defeat was their reality. After going into battle with guns blazing in 1948, expecting easily to snuff out the nascent State of Israel, rulers in Cairo, Amman, Damascus, and elsewhere incrementally realized over a quarter-century that the scorned Zionists could beat them every time, no matter who initiated the surprise attack, no matter the terrain, no matter the sophistication of weapons, no matter the great-power allies. The fracturing of Arab-state enmity constitutes a tectonic shift in the Arab–Israeli conflict.

That said, lasting victory can take many decades to be confirmed. Russia and the Taliban looked defeated in 1991 and 2001, respectively, but their resurgences in 2022 put these in doubt.1 A parallel revival seems unlikely for the Arab states, but the Muslim Brotherhood could again take over Egypt, Jordan’s monarchy could fall to radicals, Syria could become whole again, and Lebanon could become a unified state under Hezbollah rule. We can say with confidence that the Arab states have been defeated at least for now.

That defeat raises an obvious question: Does it offer a model for Palestinian defeat?2 In part, yes. If states with large Muslim-majority populations can be forced to give up, that refutes a common notion that Islam makes Muslims immune to defeat.

But in larger part, no. First, Israel is a far more remote issue for residents of Arab states than for Palestinians. Egyptians tend to care less about making Jerusalem the capital of Palestine than installing proper sewer systems. Civil war has consumed Syrians since 2011. Second, states compromise more readily than ideological movements because of rulers’ multiple and competing interests. Third, governments being hierarchical structures—and especially the Arabs’ authoritarian regimes—a single individual (such as Anwar al-Sadat or Mohammad bin Salman) can, on his own, radically change policy. No one disposes of such power in the PLO or Hamas. Thus are state conflicts with Israel more tractable and more prone to change than the Palestinian conflict.

Fourth, despite claims about imperialist aggression directed against them, large Arab states never convincingly portrayed themselves as victims of little Israel, something the even littler Palestinians have done with great skill, making themselves the darlings of international organizations and senior common rooms alike, giving them a unique global constituency. Finally, long-ago peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan and the recent Abraham Accords have great importance in themselves but have next to no role in diminishing perfervid Palestinian hostility toward Israel. Likewise, the Palestinians’ groupies—Islamists, Tehran and Ankara, global leftists—completely ignore the accords. If only victimized Palestinians matter, the retreat of Arab states is irrelevant.

For these reasons, Arab states withdrew after just 25 years of leading the charge against Israel, but Palestinians keep going at 50 years.

The Abraham Accords at Year Two: A Work Plan for Strengthening and Expansion

Two years on, Jerusalem’s agreements with multiple Arab states have started to prove their durability; yet, argues Meir Ben-Shabbat, much still must be done to deepen these newly established relationships and to broaden them to include more countries. Ben-Shabbat notes those factors that have slowed such developments and suggests what both the U.S. and Israel can do to encourage them. He also stresses the role of Muslim-majority countries outside the Middle East:

While it is not counted among the Abraham Accords countries, Chad should also be noted in this survey of Israel’s changing relations in the region. Led by the late Idriss Déby, this nation made its way to Jerusalem on its own, neither with a regional framework nor a supportive U.S. position. Diplomatic relations were resumed in November 2019 but kept at a low profile. In May 2022 Israel’s ambassador to Senegal presented his letter of accreditation to Chad’s current president, Déby’s son Mahamat. The focus now should be on building trust in the peace process by manifesting the fruits of peace to the people in Chad. If the people see the balance sheet of normalization with Israel as negative, this could increase the risk of negative momentum, which could block and harm the achievements of the Abraham Accords.

Ben-Shabbat has several recommendations as to how Jerusalem and Washington can proceed in other arenas, among them:

First, do not take the Abraham Accords for granted or assume they are irreversible. The acts of signing the Accords did generate a true sense of celebration, gave rise to a new spirit, mobilized fresh energies, restored optimism, and offered new hopes. But as in matrimony, real life begins after the party, including the challenges of consolidating the relationship, enhancing and expanding it, preserving its vitality, its spirit, and its passion.

Second, change course on Iran. The U.S. administration should take the next steps from its current, growing expression of frustration and displeasure with Iran, given its involvement in the war against Ukraine. A firm approach toward Iran . . . would serve the broader interests of the American administration and respond to the main challenges the West faces: weakening Russia’s ability to pursue the war, taking actions to resolve the global energy crisis, reversing the Gulf states’ drift toward Russia and China, blocking Iran’s destructive ambitions, and enhancing the process of normalization.

American Rabbis Blast Biden Admin for Funding Palestinian Terrorism

The United States’ largest rabbinic public policy organization says the Biden administration is facilitating terrorism against Israel by injecting nearly half a billion dollars into Palestinian government organizations that incite violence against the Jewish state.

The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), a pro-Israel advocacy group representing more than 2,000 American rabbis, slammed the State Department on Monday for its allotment of U.S. tax dollars to the Palestinian government, which is funding a program known as "pay to slay," in which money is funneled to convicted terrorists and their families.

The CJV says the State Department is engaged in a "blatant double standard" on support for terrorism, given its recent comments accusing Israeli politician Itamar Ben-Gvir of "celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization." State Department spokesman Ned Price called Ben-Gvir "abhorrent" for his recent attendance at a memorial event for murdered religious leader Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose far-right views spawned an eponymous radical organization that the United States designated a global terrorist organization.

The State Department’s willingness to criticize Ben-Gvir—who has repeatedly condemned Kahane’s more radical views—while refraining from offering similar criticism of Palestinian terrorism is evidence of the Biden administration’s bias against Israel, according to the rabbinic group.

"The State Department is funding the [Palestinian Authority’s] ongoing support for terror while rushing to wrongly condemn Ben-Gvir for attending a memorial service for someone who died over three decades ago," Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, CJV’s Israel regional vice president, said in a statement provided to the Washington Free Beacon. "This reflects both an egregious violation of American law and a blatant double standard, at odds with the State Department’s proclamations of neutral and fair treatment. We can and should expect better from the U.S. government and its officials."

Price, in remarks late last week during the State Department’s daily press briefing, said that "celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization is abhorrent; there is no other word for it. It is abhorrent." The State Department spokesman went on to criticize Israeli "right-wing extremists" and accuse them of promoting "violence and racism."

Price did not acknowledge the Palestinian government’s role in inciting and orchestrating deadly terror attacks on Israeli citizens, fueling the CJV’s calls of a "double standard."

11/14 Links Pt1: Gleefully abandoning Israel; Why the Palestinians Snubbed the Israeli Left; Zelensky aide; Ukraine’s vote against Israel at UN ‘a grave mistake’

From Ian:

Gleefully abandoning Israel

Kasher's post was so incendiary that Facebook removed it for violating rules of decent conduct. But Kasher didn't let up. He continued to expectorate that "a Jewish people with this face is not my Jewish people, and not the Jewish people among which I wish to be counted as a son." As a result, he announced that he now prefers not to be called a Jew but rather only "a person of Jewish origin."

He then went on to reject "invalid" calls for unity with the two camps he views as mutations. "The differences between me and the people of the mutations are not marginal and should not be ignored for the sake of a higher goal," he wrote. "There is no true unity and there never will be."

What makes Asa Kasher's diatribe so disturbing is its source. Until now, Kasher had been considered one of this country's respected and reasonable thinkers, someone who authored the IDF's code of ethics in warfare and who defended its targeted assassination policies in academic and legal forums worldwide. He is an Israel Prize laureate. Now it seems that Kasher has lost his bearings in a haze of hatred and self-hatred.

Religious Zionist Party Chairman Bezalel Smotrich responded to Kasher's remarks, saying they saddened him. "People like Asa Kasher, whose wisdom, integrity, and morality I wanted to appreciate, are now unmasked as lacking national responsibility, personal integrity, and minimal morality."

Addressing his "brothers on the Left," Smotrich said his camp was "given a mandate to promote what we believe is right and good for the State of Israel. We are positively going to fulfill this mandate. But you should know that your attempts at intimidation are baseless and unnecessary. No one is going to destroy democracy, turn Israel into Iran, harm someone's individual rights, or force Israelis to change their personal lifestyle."

My conclusion is that "Ben-Gvir-Phobia" (as opposed to reasonable concern about his rise) is a purposefully blown-out-of-proportion fear of the Right that serves as cover for people who apparently weren't comfortable with staunch Zionist and real Jewish identity to begin with. It leads to off-the-rocker reactions like those of Friedman and Kasher, who seem only-too-happy to jettison their associations with Israel and Judaism.

We shouldn't go there. Israel's democratic and Jewish discourse is sound even as it tends towards the conservative side of the map, and Israel's religious, defense, and diplomatic policies will not easily be hijacked by Ben-Gvir-ism. The radicals that truly worry me are those that seek to crash Israel's diplomatic relations and Israel-Diaspora relations with false, apocalyptic prognostications of Israel's descent into barbarism.

Perhaps the best advice is to ignore angry self-declared prophets like Friedman and Kasher. Perhaps I shouldn't have written about them at all. I am certain that they do not represent mainstream opinion in either the American-Jewish or Israeli communities. The Israel they fabricate and scorn ain't the real, responsible and realistic Israel I know.

Ruthie Blum: Let’s replace the term ‘national unity’ with ‘majority rule’

It’s no wonder, then, that the “anybody but Bibi” bloc disintegrated as soon as the latest election campaign kicked off. Grasping that the best he could hope for—even with the virulent anti-Zionist parties’ support—would be to prevent Netanyahu from being able to form a coalition, Lapid’s goal was to remain interim prime minister for as long as possible until a sixth round of elections.

He thus discouraged voters from opting for smaller left-wing parties. The upshot was that Meretz didn’t pass the threshold and Labor garnered only four mandates. He also colluded with the far-left Jewish-Arab Hadash-Ta’al Party not to join forces with its radical Islamist counterpart, Balad, which then didn’t make it into the Knesset.

Then there was Gantz, who ran against, rather than with, him. To do this, he established a party whose name in English, hilariously, is “National Unity.” Neither this nor his enlisting of former Israel Defense Forces Chief-of-Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot as a draw helped him come close to surpassing Lapid, let alone Netanyahu.

The icing on the “unity” cake was on display during the coalition consultations with Herzog. The only parties to recommend Lapid were his own, Yesh Atid, and Labor, headed by Merav Michaeli, who publicly blamed Lapid for the electoral defeat.

Angry at her for having dared to cross him in this manner, he stormed out of the Knesset last Sunday when she took to the podium to deliver a speech at the ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The “unity” was heartwarming.

To be fair to Lapid, who is about to assume the role of opposition leader, “unity” is a meaningless concept in general, unless applied to a specific tenet or circumstance at a given time. The same goes for Netanyahu’s newfound coalition, which undoubtedly is and will continue to be fraught with frequent squabbles.

Still, the contrast in this respect between the outgoing and incoming governments is stark. Whereas the sole glue for Lapid’s coalition was anti-Bibi animosity, Netanyahu’s espouses a set of values and objectives shared by a higher percentage of the population.

Whether this constitutes “unity” is questionable. But it’s what democracies call “majority rule.”

PreOccupiedTerritory: People Who Think Actual Terrorist Arafat Changed Ways Refuse To Accept Former Kahanist Has Moderated (satire)

The evolution of a far-right figure who, among other beyond-the-pale rhetoric, once expressed admiration for a man who massacred dozens of Palestinians at prayer, into an influential kingmaker who professes a shift to more tolerant views, has prompted skepticism among his political opponents, many of whom had little problem believing that the mass-murderer Yasser Arafat sincerely disavowed violence, despite the latter’s flagrant use of such means to achieve his political ends after signing peace agreements.

Numerous commentators, politicians, and other public figures in Israel have spent months, some even years, denouncing Itamar Ben-Gvir as a fascist Islamophobe who must be kept as far from governmental power as possible – warnings that have taken on greater urgency since the alliance of his Otzma Yehudit Party and the Religious Zionism Party garnered fourteen seats in elections two weeks ago, putting Ben-Gvir in position to extract policy and personnel concessions from Binyamin Netanyahu, the prospective prime minister of an emerging right-wing coalition. Ben-Gvir has in recent years renounced some of the extreme positions that characterized his activism in prior decades, such as calling Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a traitor and threatening harm to him; Rabin was assassinated in 1995 by another extremist with views that overlapped Ben-Gvir’s. That political evolution, however, has failed to sway Ben-Gvir’s critics, who find unconvincing his protestations of moderation, even as many of them make excuses for the arch-terrorist who ran the Palestine Liberation Organization and commitment to pursue his political aims through negotiation rather than terrorism, but disregarded that commitment repeatedly.

“A leopard can’t change his spots,” insisted Zehava Gal-On, whose far-left Meretz Party failed to meet the electoral threshold of 3.25% of the vote, and will be absent from the Knesset for the first time in more than thirty years, but for some reason journalists keep seeking out her opinion despite its questionable relevance. “Arafat was totally different. He renounced violence and I believed him. Anything that happened afterwards was just technicalities, necessary sacrifices for peace. Doesn’t count.”

Yisrael Medad writes an important piece in the Jerusalem Post:

Said Arikat is the Washington Bureau Chief of the Al Quds daily newspaper and ...is a long-time Washington-based journalist.

True to his newspaper’s self-assumed role as trumpeting an ideological presentation of pro-Palestinianism, Arikat has, to his credit, maneuvered himself into an ideal position through his presence at US State Department press briefings.

There, he never fails to present the various spokespersons at the podium with carefully worded questions that usually trumpet a propaganda angle, inserting doubtful “facts.” He always leads those spokespersons to utter conclusions that would both aid the cause of Palestine while deviously demonizing Israel.

If anything, Medad understates the issue. Every day, it seems, the State Department spokesperson calls on this relatively obscure reporter, and every day Said Arikat uses that opportunity to put rabid anti-Israel lies - and sometimes, antisemitic lies - on the official public record, pretending that he is simply asking questions.

I've noted before how Arikat once implied that Israel controls members of Congress and has them do their bidding. I've also written about how he (and others) have tried to leverage US support for Ukraine's self-defense as being the same thing as Palestinian terror attacks, using the word "resistance" for both of them.

But Arikat's propaganda is inserted into most briefings.

When the US says it is against collective punishment, Arikat asks whether Israel closing its borders on election day is "collective punishment."

He framed a question about Israel killing six known terrorists in Nablus as "Ned, the past few days have witnessed an increased assault by the Israeli occupational army into towns and villages, killing a number of people, killing six people last night alone in a home."

Or, this cunning question, knowing that the US considers the West Bank to be occupied, Arikat tries to extend that: "Do you dispute that the Palestinians are militarily occupied, that Israel has annexed Palestinian land? Do you dispute that? Do you dispute that they have forcibly removed populations? "

These examples are only from the past month.

The State Department spokesperson usually ignores or correctly responds to these, but the fact remains that not only are these questions on the record, but the other reporters in the room and those watching the live webcasts hear one-sided anti-Israel propaganda, brought to them by the US State Department.

Arikat has every right to be there and to ask questions, even to spout lies. But, as Medad points out:

What is lacking at these press briefings, these challenges of American foreign policy and the prejudicial framing of the stories, is the voice of Israeli journalists and American Jewish media representatives. No one is there to politely, but authoritatively, ask questions predicated on the true circumstances.

They could request information on acts – or lack thereof – on the part of Mahmoud Abbas’s regime. They could ask why the Taylor Force Act is basically a dead letter. Or why President Biden, on his recent trip to Jerusalem’s Augusta Victoria Hospital, refused an Israeli escort, or whether the hundreds of millions of dollars his administration has pledged actually accomplish anything positive.

There are major Jewish media outlets, such as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and the Jewish News Syndicate, as well as national and Washington local Jewish weeklies like the Algemeiner, The Jewish Press and The Jewish Week.

There are Israeli newspapers, and radio and television correspondents based there. Can’t they regularly send a reporter, or pool a reporter, to cover the State Department beat? Even a college intern?

That is the question. The State Department should be asked about what they are doing to bring Ahlam Tamimi to justice and why they fund Jordan despite their obligations to extradite her. They should be pressed on responding to Mahmoud Abbas' praise of the most obscene terrorists. They should be asked to comment on daily incitement in official Palestinian media, including antisemitism.

I'm sure that a Jewish philanthropist could fund the salary of a reporter to attend State Department briefings and ask tough questions from the other side. It is an easy and obvious thing to do. So why isn't it happening?

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!

They Say Biden Only Criticizes Israel Behind The Scenes -- The Same Place He Undermines It (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

President Joe Biden called Netanyahu to congratulate him on his victory, as he returns to serve as prime minister of Israel.

It only took a week, but a lot was made of the fact that a number of world leaders lost no time in contacting Netanyahu to wish him well, while Biden -- who likes to brag about his friendship with Bibi -- seemed to be deliberately delaying his congratulations.

And maybe he was.

In February 2021, CNN reported that Biden took his time after winning his own election before contacting Netanyahu -- and that was because Netanyahu had taken his time contacting Biden on winning the election in 2020.

And so it goes.

But we are told that Biden and Netanyahu are actually good friends -- after all, Biden tells us so himself. He has claimed that he once gave Bibi a photo inscribed with the words:

“Bibi I don’t agree with a damn thing you say but I love you.”

Whatever that means.

During Biden's last visit to the Middle East, he visited Israel and met with Netanyahu, even though he was no longer prime minister at the time, and shook hands with him, saying “You know I love you.” Ha'aretz reported that a member of the US delegation met with a senior Israeli figure and told him that Biden's comment had nothing to do with affection --

When the president tells Netanyahu, “You know I love you,” the interlocutor from Washington explained, the implicit continuation of the sentence is: love aside, but you know I don’t want to see you return.

In any case, no matter how the media and the pundits choose to describe their relationship, Biden supposedly limits his criticisms of Netanyahu and Israel to private communications, while publicly providing unwavering support for the Jewish state. Yet that has not prevented Biden from publicly calling Netanyahu "counterproductive" and "extreme right."

That may be something to keep in mind when Netanyahu confides to Mark Levin that

[Biden] always says, 'Bibi, I love you, but I don't agree with a word you're saying' — [and] I say to him, ‘Joe, sometimes I reciprocate that.'"

Netanyahu and Biden apparently each can give as good as they get.

And when it comes to Israel, not all the things that Biden says about the Jewish state are complimentary.

Two years ago, Channel 13’s Nadav Eyal provided excerpts from a classified memo detailing a meeting Biden had with Golda Meir in 1973. The media's major focus was on the revelation that Biden relayed to her the conversations he had with Egyptian leaders who told him that they respected Israel's military superiority. Weeks later, Egypt attacked Israel. Obviously, Biden is not responsible for Israel's lack of preparation and military intelligence at the time.

However, there are some other comments Biden made that seem to have been overlooked.

Speaking directly to Golda Meir, Biden not only claims that Israel has an outsized influence on the Nixon administration against its will, but also claims that the US Senate is afraid of crossing American Jews.

There is a certain brazenness there that would make Ilhan Omar jealous.

But Biden is known for his odd comments and gaffes. What about what he has actually done since taking office -- what do his actions indicate about his attitude towards Israel and what Netanyahu can expect?

Just last November, it was reported that the Biden administration wanted to reopen the US consulate for the Palestinian Arabs in its original location in Jerusalem, despite the fact that the establishment of such a consulate in Jerusalem would be a violation of the Oslo Accords.

This is the same Biden who in support of the Jerusalem Embassy Act in 1995, said

Mr. President, it is unconscionable for us to refuse to recognize the right of the Jewish people to choose their own capital. What gives us the right to second-guess their decision? For 47 years, we, and much of the rest of the international community, have been living a lie.

Yet here was the Biden Administration trying to create conditions that would imply a division of Jerusalem between Jews and Arabs.

Eugene Kontorovich put it in stronger terms:

"The US does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic connections with the PA [Palestinian Authority]. If that is all they wanted, they could easily do this by opening a mission in Abu Dis or Ramallah -- where most other countries conduct their relations with the PA... the purpose of opening the consulate is to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem."

Actually, Biden himself was explicit when he visited Abbas during his visit to the Middle East:

Jerusalem is central to the national visions of both Palestinians and Israelis, to your histories to your faiths to your futures. Jerusalem must be a city for all its people.

One month later, the Biden administration seemed to have shelved the idea.

Another area that reflects Biden's attitude towards Israel is the appointments he makes to fill positions that influence policy in the Middle East.

o In February, the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor invited nonprofit groups to apply for grant money in order to "strengthen accountability and human rights in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza." Not only would this strengthen those seeking to delegitimize Israel, but the appointee to head the program was Sarah Margon -- the former Washington director at Human Rights Watch who has openly supported boycotting Israel.
o  The White House appointed George Salem as chairman of the U.S. Agency for International Development's Partnership for Peace Fund board. Salem lobbied for the Palestinian government from 2015 until late 2021 and was registered as a foreign agent for the Palestine Monetary Authority. Under Abbas, the Palestinian government has been known for the way it has mishandled foreign aid -- especially exploitation of those funds for the pay-to-slay program.
o  The Biden administration appointed Elizabeth Campbell as a deputy assistant secretary of state at the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. She is the former director of UNRWA, criticized for its use of textbooks promoting hatred of Jews and of terrorism in Palestinian schools.
o  Hady Amr serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs and Press and Public Diplomacy in the Biden administration. He is also in charge of US negotiations with Israel and Palestinian organizations. He was the lead author of a report published by the Brookings Institution in December 2018 that said that the US must "reconnect" with Hamas, "create a Palestinian unity government integrating Hamas" and "compel Israel to make major concessions" even if this would "endanger Israel" -- concluding that "should Israel prove uncooperative with American efforts, the United States could signal it will move ahead anyway."
o  Biden's nominee for a top role at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Tamara Cofman Wittes, was director of the Middle East Policy Center at the Brookings Institution. She promoted articles that criticized the Abraham Accords and discouraged Arab countries from normalizing ties with Israel before the 2020 election. She tweeted that peace between Israel and the UAE was a ‘new Naksa,' a setback. She also retweeted an article that called the Abraham Accords misogynistic, a “triumph for authoritarianism.”

ZOA head Morton A. Klein has his own list of anti-Israel appointees that Biden put into key positions within his administration.

Reema Dodin [deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs]—who justified and even encouraged suicide bombings against Jews, organized anti-Israel rallies and spread Medieval-style blood libels, including the false claim that Israel denies Palestinian Arabs food, water and medical treatment; Maher Bitar [National Security Council official]—who organized the Palestine Solidarity Movement anti-Israel boycott conference at Georgetown University, at which he ran a session on how to demonize Israel; Karine Jean-Pierre [White House Press Secretary]—who helped orchestrate Democratic presidential candidates’ boycott of a major pro-Israel conference; Wendy Sherman [United States Deputy Secretary of State]—who negotiated the terrible Iran deal, praised secret concessions to Iran and downplayed PLO suicide bombings and other terror attacks on innocent Israelis; Avril Haines [Director of National Intelligence]—who signed a vicious letter falsely accusing Israel of violence, terrorism, and incitement; apologist for Hamas and Iran Robert Malley; and numerous others.

Klein also recalls that Biden praised Rashida Tlaib last year:

I admire your intellect, I admire your passion, I admire your concern for so many other people. You’re a fighter and God thank you for being a fighter.

He also notes that Biden resumed funding to Palestinian projects, in violation of the spirit -- if not the letter -- of the Taylor Force Act.

In fact, last month it was reported that the legal advocacy group America First Legal, a group of conservative lawyers and activists, filed a FOIA request for internal documents about US funding for the Palestinian Authority. The group claims that the Biden administration is violating US law by providing more than half a billion dollars to the PA. They claim the documents they are demanding will show an illegal effort "to undermine Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem."

And let's not forget about Biden and Iran.

Remember the tension we saw between Netanyahu and Obama?
The next 2 years might just make Netanyahu nostalgic for those days.

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Where is the State Department outrage at Mahmoud Abbas personally honoring child-murderers?

Times of Israel reports:

US State Department spokesman Ned Price condemned far-right MK Itamar Ben Gvir’s attendance at a memorial event for Meir Kahane on Thursday, in what was the first public rebuke from the Biden administration of the Religious Zionism-Otzma Yehudit lawmaker aiming to become Israel’s next public security minister.

“Celebrating the legacy of a terrorist organization is abhorrent. There is no other word for it. It is abhorrent,” Price said when asked during a press briefing about Ben Gvir’s participation in the memorial event hours earlier. Price was referencing the Kach group that the American-born rabbi founded in 1971 and its offshoot Kahane Chai.

If celebrating the legacy of Meir Kahane is abhorrent, then certainly the State Department would be even more appalled at....Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas.

Because by any metric, Abbas has celebrated and praised far worse people than Meir Kahane.

For example, Abbas has repeatedly praised the rabidly antisemitic Nazi collaborator Mufti of Jerusalem.

Apologists might argue that Abbas was not praising the Mufti's antisemitism and the pogroms he organized, but only his leadership of Palestinians.

But Mahmoud Abbas has personally honored many, many people whose only accomplishments in life have been killing Jews. And not just Jews - Jewish children.

Here is Abbas in a private meeting with Amna Muna, who pretended to be a teenage girl to seduce a 16 year old Israeli boy in a chat room to meet her - and she had him brutally murdered.

The video of the meeting is still on Abbas' own YouTube channel! He is proud of her - today.

That is not the only child murderer Abbas has honored. In a 2008 visit to Lebanon, Abbas went out of his way to visit and pay homage to one of the most notorious terrorists in Israeli history, Samir Kuntar.

Abbas also planned to honor another child murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, who was behind the Sbarro pizza shop bombing - he changed his mind after Israeli outrage.

Abbas has honored Maryam Farhat, whose only accomplishment in life was to raise three Hamas terrorist sons, one of whom murdered five students studying in a yeshiva.

And Abbas eulogized Ahmad Abu Sukkar, saying his life was "a journey of struggle full of exceptional giving and devoted activity for Palestine and for the freedom and honor of our people."

Sukkar murdered 15 people in a Jerusalem bombing in 1975, including an 11-year old boy and girl.

Of course, Abbas also has personally met with and praised plenty of other famed Palestinian terrorists.

Meir Kahane didn't kill anyone. But Mahmoud Abbas celebrates Palestinians who have directly murdered Jewish men, women - and children.

When will the State Department describe Mahmoud Abbas as "abhorrent"?

(h/t Dovid L)

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Is the US State Department taking Jerusalem out of Israel again?

Under the Obama administration, virtually all mentions of "Jerusalem, Israel" were scrubbed from the State Department websites, and the city became merely "Jerusalem" - without a country attached.

This was fixed during the Trump administration when the US Embassy was moved to Jerusalem, but last year I found some indications that the policy was regressing back towards the Obama-era policy of not recognizing that Jerusalem was in Israel.

Here is some more evidence that things are going backwards.

The form to get visa services allows you to choose a country and then it lists what cities there are consulates and embassies. Here's what it says for Israel:

Tel Aviv is the only city in Israel. If you want services from the US Embassy for Israel in Jerusalem, you must choose the non-existent country of Jerusalem:

It looks like the State Department never updated the address of the Embassy to say what country it was in.

From what I can tell, according to the State Department, the US Embassy to Israel is in Jerusalem, but the "US Embassy Jerusalem" is not in Israel.

This should be clarified.

(h/t Avi)

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False claims of Nazi spies masquerading as Jews provided excuse to limit Jewish immigration to America during the Holocaust

The Ken Burns documentary that started being broadcast last night, The US and the Holocaust, has prompted me to dig up little known stories about how the US severely limited Jewish immigration.

One reason that the US gave for limiting immigration was the fear that some of the immigrants were in fact Nazi spies.

The New York Daily News reported on November 26, 1940 - a year before the US entered the war - about a secret Gestapo school in Prague to train spies to act as Jews for espionage purposes.

The article makes it clear that this fear would end up dooming thousands of Jews.

I cannot find any independent report during or after the Holocaust about this supposed "Jewish institute."

There are cases of Nazis who masqueraded as Jewish refugees in Europe. One such ring was reported in Holland and the Dutch authorities easily discovered them, as JTA reported:

The disclosure that Nazi agents masquerading as refugees had helped the Nazi parachutists landing in the Netherlands recalled today that the Dutch authorities had several months ago discovered a group of such agents through the medium of botched circumcisions.

Last February the Paris newspaper L’Ouevre reported that 16 Nazi spies who entered the Netherlands in the guise of Jewish refugees — even taking the precaution of being circumcised — were unmasked when it was determined through a rabbi that they were not circumcised according to the Jewish ritual.

According to the report, the Gestapo had selected 16 men who looked as Jewish as possible, had them attend synagogue services for several weeks to acquaint ports stamped with “J” (Jew) and sent them into Holland.

The Netherlands anti-espionage service, suspecting that they were spies, arrested the men. After examining them, the authorities called a rabbi and, without informing him about the details of the case, asked him to ascertain whether they had been circumcised in the Jewish manner. He reported that they were not.

But (so far) I cannot find any such case in the US. The closest was the case of Herbert Karl Friedrich Bahr, a German-born American citizen who arrived in the US on the Swedish-American liner SS Drottningholm in 1942. The media originally said that he pretended to be a Jewish refugee but that wasn't true, as JTA reported at the time:

The Nazi spy, Herbert Karl Friedrich Bahr, who was arrested aboard the diplomatic exchange ship Drottningholm, will face a speedy trial, it was announced today. Full information of the arrest released here indicated that the 29-year-old spy was posing as a “friend of Jews in Germany,” and not as a Jewish refugee as was generally reported yesterday when the news of his arrest was made public by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Inquiry at the FBI office here elicited the information that Bahr was provided by the Nazi military espionage office with full information concerning a Jewish family in Germany in order to be able to explain to U.S. authorities how he happened to be in possession of $7,000 in American currency. He was instructed by the Nazi espionage headquarters to say that a Jewish friend of his in Germany, a member of the old Social-Democratic party, had been beheaded by the Nazis, that the man’s wife had sold a valuable stamp collection for $7,000 and given him the proceeds to take out of the country for her.

In 2015, the Smithsonian Magazine wrote an investigative report on Bahr and noted that in fact the rumors of Nazis posing as Jews to spy on the US were essentially baseless:

Government officials from the State Department to the FBI to President Franklin Roosevelt himself argued that refugees posed a serious threat to national security. Yet today, historians believe that Bahr's case was practically unique—and the concern about refugee spies was blown far out of proportion.

In the court of public opinion, the story of a spy disguised as a refugee was too scandalous to resist.

Immigration restrictions actually tightened as the refugee crisis worsened. Wartime measures demanded special scrutiny of anyone with relatives in Nazi territories—even relatives in concentration camps. At a press conference, President Roosevelt repeated the unproven claims from his advisers that some Jewish refugees had been coerced to spy for the Nazis. “Not all of them are voluntary spies,” Roosevelt said. “It is rather a horrible story, but in some of the other countries that refugees out of Germany have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they found a number of definitely proven spies.”

Here and there, skeptics objected. As the historian Deborah Lipstadt points out in her book Beyond Belief, The New Republic portrayed the government’s attitude as “persecuting the refugee.” The Nation didn’t believe that the State Department could “cite a single instance of forced espionage.” But these voices were drowned out in the name of national security.

Government agencies like the State Department used spy trials as fuel for the argument against accepting refugees. But late in the war, government whistleblowers began to question this approach. In 1944, the Treasury Department released a damning report initialed by lawyer Randolph Paul. It read:

“I am convinced on the basis of the information which is available to me that certain officials in our State Department, which is charged with carrying out this policy, have been guilty not only of gross procrastination and wilful failure to act, but even of wilful attempts to prevent action from being taken to rescue Jews from Hitler.”

The FBI, State Department and media couldn't resist pushing the narrative of Jewish spies, the result being that tens of thousands of Jews who could have been saved in the US were murdered instead.

One other point: It would have been easy for the FBI to hire religious Jews to vet the immigrants to ensure that at least the religious ones were who they said they were. But it seems that the antisemitism of the day precluded considering American religious Jews as truly American and trustworthy for such a task.

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Why no investigation into the THIRTEEN journalists killed by US troops in Iraq in only two years?

Axios reports:

Israel on Wednesday rejected the U.S. call for it to review the Israel Defense Forces' rules of engagement in the West Bank as part of accountability steps for the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Tuesday that the Biden administration will continue to press Israel “to closely review its policies and practices on rules of engagement” of the IDF in the occupied West Bank.

He said this is needed in order “to mitigate the risk of civilian harm, protect journalists and prevent similar tragedies."

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid expressed "sorrow" over Abu Akleh's death on Wednesday but said "no one will dictate our rules of engagement to us, when we are the ones fighting for our lives."

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that the "IDF’s chief of the general staff, and he alone, determines, and will continue to determine the rules of engagement in accordance with our operational needs and values of the IDF."

"These instructions are implemented in a strict manner by soldiers and their commanders. There has not been, and there will not be any political involvement in the matter," Gantz said.

Is the US in a position to lecture Israel about rules of engagement and protecting journalists in wartime?

Based on statistics from the US occupation of Iraq, not at all.

No less than 13 journalists were killed by US troops in Iraq from March 2003 to August 2005, according to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The details show a pattern of apparent recklessness and impunity that is worse than anything Israel has ever done, with investigations either finding no fault, or not released, or not done to begin with.

Some details:

Tareq Ayyoub, Al-Jazeera, April 8, 2003, Baghdad: Ayyoub, a Jordanian working with the Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera, was killed when a U.S. missile struck the station’s Baghdad bureau. U.S. Central Command (Centcom) said that U.S. forces were responding to enemy fire in the area and that the Al-Jazeera journalists were caught in the crossfire. Al-Jazeera correspondents deny that any fire came from their building, (and) Al-Jazeera officials pointed out that the U.S. military had been given the bureau’s coordinates weeks before the war began. In October 2003, six months after the bombing, a U.S. military spokesman acknowledged to CPJ that no investigation into the incident was ever launched.

Taras Protsyuk, Reuters, and José Couso, Telecinco April 8, 2003, Baghdad died after a U.S. tank fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad where most foreign journalists were based during the war. Directly after the attack, Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, confirmed that a single shell had been fired at the hotel from a tank in response to what he said was rocket and small arms fire from the building. Journalists at the hotel deny that any gunfire came from the building. A CPJ report concluded that the shelling of the hotel, while not deliberate, was avoidable since U.S. commanders knew that journalists were in the hotel and were intent on not hitting it. On August 12, 2003, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) issued a news release summarizing the results of its investigation into the incident. The report concluded that the tank unit that opened fire on the hotel did so “in a proportionate and justifiably measured response.” It called the shelling “fully in accordance with the Rules of Engagement.”

Mazen Dana, Reuters, August 17, 2003, was killed by machine-gun fire from a U.S. tank while filming near Abu Ghraib Prison, outside Baghdad, in the afternoon. The soldier in the tank who fired on Dana did so without warning, while the journalist filmed the vehicle approaching him from about 55 yards (50 meters). U.S. military officials said the soldier who opened fire mistook Dana’s camera for a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launcher. There was no fighting in the area, and the journalists had been operating near the prison with the knowledge of U.S. troops at the prison gates. On September 22, the U.S. military announced that it had concluded its investigation into the incident. A spokesman for Centcom in Iraq told CPJ that while Dana’s killing was “regrettable,” the soldier “acted within the rules of engagement.”

Ali Abdel Aziz and Ali al-Khatib, Al-Arabiya, March 18, 2004, were shot dead near a U.S. military checkpoint in Baghdad. The crew arrived at the scene in two vehicles and parked about 110 to 165 yards (100 to 150 meters) from a checkpoint near the hotel. Technician Mohamed Abdel Hafez said that he, Abdel Aziz, and al-Khatib approached the soldiers on foot and spoke with them for a few minutes but were told they could not proceed. As the three men prepared to depart, the electricity in the area went out and a car driven by an elderly man approached U.S. troops, crashing into a small metal barrier near a military vehicle at the checkpoint. Abdel Hafez said that as the crew pulled away from the scene, one of their vehicles was struck by gunfire from the direction of the U.S. troops. Abdel Hafez said he witnessed two or three U.S. soldiers firing but was not sure at whom they were firing. He said there had been no other gunfire in the area at the time. A statement posted on the Combined Joint Task Forces 7’s Web site expressed “regret” for the deaths and said the investigation determined that the incident was an “accidental shooting.” Press reports quoted U.S. military officials saying that the soldiers who had opened fire acted within the “rules of engagement.”

Asaad Kadhim, Al-Iraqiya TV, April 19, 2004 and his driver, Hussein Saleh, were killed by gunfire from U.S. forces near a checkpoint close to the Iraqi city of Samara. On April 20, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said that coalition forces at the checkpoint signaled the journalists to stop by firing several warning shots. When the vehicle ignored those shots, Kimmitt said, forces fired at the car. Cameraman Kamel told the AP that no warning shots had been fired at their vehicle. It is unclear whether an investigation was conducted and what its outcome was.

Maha Ibrahim, a news producer for the Iraqi television station Baghdad TV, was shot and killed by U.S. forces fire in Baghdad as she drove to work, June 25, 2005. Staff at the Baghdad TV station said Ibrahim’s car was hit by what they described as random fire from U.S. troops who were attempting to disperse people from a road along which they were traveling. On June 29, 2005, CPJ called on U.S. military authorities to launch an immediate inquiry into the shooting death. It is unclear whether an investigation was conducted or what its outcome was.

Ahmed Wael Bakri, a director and news producer for Al-Sharqiyah, was killed by gunfire as he approached U.S. troops June 28, 2005 according to Ali Hanoon, a station director. Hanoon said Bakri was driving from work to his in-laws’ home in southern Baghdad at the time. U.S. soldiers fired at his car 15 times, and Bakri died later at Yarmouk Hospital, he said. The Associated Press, citing another colleague and a doctor who treated the journalist, reported that Bakri had failed to pull over for a U.S. convoy while trying to pass a traffic accident. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad issued a statement of condolence to the family and the station, the BBC reported. “We were deeply saddened and hurt by Mr. Wael al-Bakri’s death and as is the case with incidents of unintentional killing, the investigation is ongoing and we are trying our best to find out the details of the accident,” the statement said. It is unclear whether an investigation was conducted or what its outcome was.

Waleed Khaled, a soundman for Reuters, was shot by U.S. forces several times in the face and chest as he drove with cameraman Haidar Kadhem. Four days later the U.S. military confirmed its troops had killed Khaled. On September 1, the U.S. military in Iraq announced that the unit involved in the shooting of Khaled had concluded its investigation and that troops’ response was “appropriate,” Reuters reported. According to Reuters, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said that Khaled’s car “approached at a high rate of speed and then conducted activity that in itself was suspicious. There were individuals hanging outside with what looked to be a weapon. It stopped and immediately put itself in reverse. Again suspicious activity. Our soldiers on the scene used established rules of engagement and all the training received … (and they) decided that it was appropriate to engage that particular car. And as a result of that the driver was indeed killed and the passenger was hurt by shards of glass.”An army spokesman told Reuters that the report was not formally completed and was not available for release.

That is a lot of journalists killed, most of them while the US was following its own rules of engagement. Have those rules been reviewed by an independent investigation?

I'm not saying that the US rules of engagement are inadequate. Some of the incidents appear to be very problematic. But those rules are certainly are not more stringent than Israel's.

It is insolent for the US to demand Israel review its policies without showing any proof that the US has something to teach Israel about walking the line between the safety of its soldiers and the safety of civilians. On the contrary - the US sends its own experts to Israel to learn how to minimize civilian casualties during battles, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has praised Israel for not only that but also for adjusting and learning from experience to always do a better job.

(h/t Ben Dror Yemini)

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Palestinian reporter sneaks antisemitism into @StateDept briefings (@StateDeptSpox)

Said Arikat is the Washington bureau chief for the Palestinian Al Quds newspaper. Every day, he attends the State Department press briefings, and more often than not he asks a question or two.

The questions themselves are often loaded; they are attempts to drive a wedge between the US and Israel, or to put unfounded accusations against Israel on the record. Arikat tries to get the spokesperson to condemn Israel for anything and everything conceivable. Generally, the spokesperson - currently Ned Price - does not take the bait.

Yesterday, however, Arikat sneaked some antisemitism into a follow-up question about the Iran deal:

Last question. Are you concerned with the level and intensity of Israelis rallying opposition to this deal? I mean, this is – this comes out in modes of expression or statements by Senator Cotton, for instance, or Senator Lindsey Graham, or Senator Ted Cruz, and so on. Or are you just fine with that; they do whatever they want?

His question presupposes the idea that Israel controls many prominent members of the Senate. Furthermore, it assumes that no one would oppose the Iran deal based on their own analysis; the senators are slavishly following the dictates of the Jewish state.

The "they" in the final phrase is referring to Israel, not the senators - is the US fine with Israel freely controlling much of Congress?

This is not a hard hitting question by a journalist trying to uncover the truth. This is propaganda, an attempt to normalize anti-Israel and antisemitic attitudes in the US. The audience is the other reporters and the people who watch the briefings; Arikat wants them to subconsciously accept the idea that the US has a "Zionist occupied government." And every day, he is given a platform to do exactly that - a platform provided by the US government itself.

Ned Price brushed aside the question as if Arikat was asking whether the senators can do whatever they want, not Israel: " I’m going to let lawmakers speak for themselves." This was not the proper response. Arikat's antisemitism should have been called out, immediately and forcefully.

Because otherwise, it takes root and grows.

(h/t YMedad)

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