Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Syria

Showing posts with label Syria. Show all posts

Friday, June 30, 2023

What are Israel's options on Hezbollah's clear aggression on Israeli territory?

Washington is urging the Lebanese government to pressure Hezbollah into removing an outpost erected in the occupied Shebaa Farms, Israeli media reported on 29 June.

Walla news outlet cited anonymous Israeli and US officials as saying that the outpost represents a “miscalculation on Hezbollah’s part, which does not take into account the potential Israeli response. Therefore, this incident has the potential for serious escalation.”

“Our goal is for the outpost not to be there. We prefer Hezbollah evacuate its people itself over us bombing them. We have made this clear to the US, and the Americans made it clear to the Lebanese,” the report cites an Israeli official as saying.

According to Walla, Hezbollah began erecting the first tent in April. The Israeli army reportedly did not realize this until a second tent had been set up.

Israel tried to handle the situation “under the radar in quiet talks” with UNIFIL for weeks.

Other Israeli media outlets say Tel Aviv set a deadline to remove the tents, and that it would deal with the resistance group “on its own,” sparking fears of a wider confrontation.

Beirut has acknowledged that the outpost is south of the UN-recognized Blue Line, separating Lebanese and Israeli territories.

Last week I wrote, "Israeli territory is being stolen by a terrorist group. It seems unbelievable that Israel would outsource the solution to the impotent UN."

It appears that Israel is treading carefully, not wanting to start a war over this but not willing to back down.

It first gave UNIFIL a chance to get involved and do its job to ensure that all of Southern Lebanon, let alone Israeli territory, is not occupied by an Iranian militia. Israel informed UNIFIL of the tents in April, but they have proven to be worthless:

According to Kan news, which originally reported on the Iranian proxy’s armed presence inside Israel proper, the IDF approached UNIFIL regarding the matter some time ago, but the watchdog only came to the site following diplomatic pressure from Israel at UN Headquarters.
Upon inspection, UNIFIL confirmed that tents set up and manned by Hezbollah have indeed been established on the Israeli side of the internationally recognized Blue Line in the contested Mount Dov region, an area claimed by Israel, Lebanon and Syria and also known as the Shebaa Farms.
In a letter to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan wrote that Hezbollah’s actions constitute a violation of UN Resolution 1701, enacted following the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006 and ratified by both countries. The resolution calls for armed groups besides the official Lebanese military and UNIFIL to remain north of the country’s Litani River.
The letter also contained photographs of the Lebanese position in Israel.
Furthermore, the former public security minister noted that Hezbollah has built 27 outposts along the Blue Line over the past year, and that he expects the UN to take action on the matter, as these positions also violate Resolution 1701.

So now Israel is asking France and the US demand that the Lebanese government get involved.

Israel is trying to allow Hezbollah to "climb down the tree" quietly without being shamed, but patience is running out:

“Our goal is for the outpost not to be there,” an Israeli official was quoted as saying. “We prefer Hezbollah evacuate its people itself over us bombing them. We have made this clear to the US and the Americans made it clear to the Lebanese.”

According to the Ynet news site, Israeli officials believe UN peacekeepers will not be able to act against the post and are looking to the US and France instead. The outlet claimed Israeli officials had set a deadline for the position to be removed, after which it will get rid of the tents itself, a move that could spark a wider conflagration.

Alma Research, which watches Hezbollah closely, believes that the terror group wants a war.

In our assessment, Hezbollah intends to reach an escalation that will lead to a broad military conflict with Israel, out of an internal interest in strengthening its power in Lebanon. Hezbollah is trying to escalate with a defiant presence on the border, the Megiddo attack, firing rockets, and now the placing of tents on Israeli territory. Israel for the time being is not dragged in. Last summer, Nasrallah gave ideological and religious approval for a military conflict and as far as Hezbollah is concerned, he has carried out significant power-building in recent years and is ready for a conflict. Continued provocations or a broad conflict is a win-win for Hezbollah.

The strategy is Iranian, not Lebanese

I believe that Israel's best card to play is the Lebanese people itself. While they hate Israel, they hate Hezbollah and Iran as well, and they do not want to be dragged into a new conflict that only benefits Iran.

The Lebanese media has been muted in this issue. I believe that unless Hezbollah dismantles the tents quickly, Israel should publicly say - but with the intent that the Lebanese hear - that the situation is intolerable and that Israel will bomb the tents on Israeli territory.

Israel should make a public deadline, announce the date that the tents would be bombed, emphasize that these are on Israeli territory, and then bomb them if they are not removed.

Israel must emphasize that it has no intention of attacking Lebanon - unless attacked first. If Hezbollah responds with rockets, the gloves will come off.

The UN agrees where the Blue Line is so Hezbollah's claim that the territory is Lebanese will not impress more residents.

If the Lebanese people publicly call for Hezbollah to withdraw, it would have a hard time pretending that it is defending Lebanese interests.

The entire Shebaa Farms issue is just an excuse by Hezbollah to maintain its massive arsenal for the pretense of "defending Lebanon." Everyone knows it is a joke. But Lebanese lives are in the balance, and it must be made clear to the world that Iran and its Hezbollah proxy are trying to start a war that would only hurt the Lebanese people.

It is clear that Israel cannot allow an enemy to wantonly grab its land. No state would. Israel's patience so far has been somewhere between heroic and foolhardy.

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Hezbollah opens a military outpost on Israeli territory in Shebaa Farms

Israel's Kan News reports:

During a discussion held last week in the Foreign Affairs and Security Committee of the Knesset, it was revealed that a Hezbollah force invaded the sovereign territory of the State of Israel, in the Mount Dov sector, and established an armed military position there. This was announced today (Wednesday) for the first time in the program "Hatze Hayom".

These facts were discovered and discussed by several members of the Knesset in a meeting held last Tuesday in the committee, with the participation of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Members of the Knesset drew the Prime Minister's attention to an unusual and serious incident that is taking place on the northern border.

According to what was said in the discussion, in recent weeks a Hezbollah force crossed the Blue Line on Mount Dov and set up two tents inside Israeli territory. The position is manned by Hezbollah with several armed men on its side (between three and eight) who are stationed in front of the IDF soldiers within the sovereign territory of the State of Israel.

The IDF spokesman's response: "The issue is recognized and being dealt with in front of all the relevant parties."

This IDF response does not fill one with confidence.

After Israel withdrew behind the Blue Line in 2000, certified by the UN, Hezbollah created the fiction that the Shebaa Farms/Mount Dov area that was under Israeli control was still Lebanese and uses that as a pretext to continue building its massive arsenal, to "defend" Lebanon from "Zionist aggression."

Israel captured the area from Syria in 1967. Interestingly, Syria's president has said that that the Shebaa Farms is Syrian, not Lebanese.

Hezbollah has been aggressive in recent years in shoring up its forces on the Blue Line while providing pretexts to UNIFIL that it wasn't changing anything. It seems unlikely that either the UN forces or the Lebanese Armed Forces would do anything to force Hezbollah out of the area; after all, Hezbollah as an armed group is not allowed to exist in the entire southern Lebanon under UNSC resolution 1701.

Israeli territory is being stolen by a terrorist group. It seems unbelievable that Israel would outsource the solution to the impotent UN.

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The Saudis are emerging as the new superpower of the Middle East

The United States has left a leadership vacuum in the Middle east - and the Saudis filling it.

For decades, there has been jockeying on who would be the leader of the Muslim world. Egypt filled the role under Nasser but since then it has been a free for all.

Iran tried to position itself as that leader in the 2000s, but it could not overcome the antipathy from the Sunni majority. Turkey has been making its bid. The UAE, while tiny, has been trying to set a new direction for the Gulf states in a post-oil world.

But over the past couple of years, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the clear leader. The Saudis always wanted a leadership role as well, but until recently their main asset was Mecca, and the religious component was a necessary but not adequate prerequisite for true leadership.

Now, the Saudis are setting the agenda not just as the leaders of the Muslim world but of the entire region.

Up until now, the Saudis have been the passive recipients of US security guarantees. The Obama administration's reckless pursuit of an Iran deal and discarding Saudi concerns taught the Saudis that relying on the US for security and leadership is foolhardy and they need to create their own solutions. The ignominious US abandonment of Afghanistan showed that the days of Pax Americana are long gone.

There has been much media attention to China filling the leadership vacuum, and indeed China has ambitions there, but mostly just to keep things calm to serve their own interests. The Saudis are not being passive anymore. They have been becoming skilled diplomats and working all sides to become congruent with Saudi goals and ambitions. I see the Chinese role in brokering agreements between Riyadh and Tehran as more the Saudis using China to rein in Iran than China showing leadership.

What are the Saudi goals? I believe that the major goal is security. Letting the US, Russia, and China set the agendas for the Middle East guarantees permanent strife for the region with no benefits. The Saudi vision for the region is to reduce risk by ending pointless conflict that only benefitted outsiders.

Refreshingly, the Saudis - along with the UAE and Bahrain - seem to have abandoned the zero-sum mentality that has kept the Arab world behind for so long. They are now seeking win-win solutions that can allow everyone to prosper without the worry of war, with themselves as the leaders.

The Saudi-led rapprochement between the Arab League and Syria is a perfect example. From their perspective, Syria is an evil regime, and there is no love lost between Syria and the other Arab states. Yet nothing has been gained by a decade of shunning them. Better to embrace them and influence them in a bear hug.

To an extent, this may be the Saudi policy towards Iran as well, as the Iranian economy is in terrible shape, and the Saudis are quite publicly telling the world that they have lots of cash. Their buying major soccer stars is a message to their neighbors. The Saudis may see Iran's threats to refine uranium to levels needed for the atom bomb as a bid for influence, and the message back is that Iran can have more influence and economic independence if they join in with the Saudi vision and de-emphasize their nuclear ambitions. (I'm not saying this will work, but if Iran is closer to the Saudi orbit, then Saudi Arabia is no longer a potential nuclear target.)

The Saudi leaders have been wisely investing in a future without fossil fuels, and they are trying to position themselves as an economic powerhouse in the coming decades. The Saudis want to keep the the peace with promises of sharing the economic future, but unlike similar US promises, the Saudis have skin in the game.

In recent weeks there has been more talk of the Saudis making peace with Israel. Again, the Saudi diplomats are in the driver's seat. Instead of the US leading the way, the Saudis are using the carrot of a possible peace deal to get what they can out of the US. They see the Arab-Israeli conflict as a pointless waste of time that hasn't benefitted anyone. On the other hand, they see great potential benefits of Israeli participation in the Saudi vision of the future

In the old Arab mindset, the Palestinian issue was useful: it distracted from infighting and Arab corruption. It was used to create a false sense of Arab unity. In the new Saudi vision, those goals are better addressed by actually trying to build a modern society with transparency and a prosperous future. The Saudis still care about Palestinians but they know that there is no humanitarian disaster and that Palestinians are in no worse shape - and often better shape - than most other Arabs. They will try to leverage peace to get concessions from Israel on the issue, but the Palestinians are an afterthought in the Saudi vision for its role as the leader of the region.

The Saudis want the Middle East to be a player on the world stage in a post-superpower world, and they want to be the ones to set the agenda for the region. So far, they are doing exactly that.

Israel needs to decide on its own vision and determine how close it is to the Saudi version.

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

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Arabic language media deliberately hiding the truth of the PFLP-GC "work accident" that killed 5

This morning, there was a large explosion in a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command location in the Bekaa region in southern Lebanon, near the Syrian border.

The PFLP-GC immediately issued a press release saying that this was an IDF airstrike.

Arabic-language media spread the word about the Israeli aggreesion.

Since then, two things happened:

- The IDF denied doing any activity in Lebanon at all.

- Multiple Lebanese security sources reported what did happen:

Five fighters from a pro-Syrian Palestinian militant group were killed in an accidental explosion at a base in eastern Lebanon, a Lebanese security source said Wednesday.

"An old rocket exploded in an arms depot on the base and five fighters were killed," the security source said, requesting anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

In Beirut, a Lebanese military official said the explosion was the result of a blast within the base, adding that there was no airstrike. An official with a regional group allied with the Syrian government, said the explosion was the result of a “human error” that occurred when militants were handling ammunition. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Yet looking at the last several hours of Arabic media reporting on the explosion and its aftermath, the Israeli denial is barely mentioned on a couple of Western-oriented Arabic sites, and the report about an old missile explosion has been ignored completely.

This is even after wire services like AFP reported on the rocket explosion.

This is not government-level censorship. This is an unofficial policy for Arabic media to censor facts that do not fit the narrative or that can cause unease among some of their readership.

If they even published it as a competing set of claims, as The National (UAE) did in English, any thinking person would see that the PFLP-GC is lying and Israel's denial is truthful - and that means that Arabs are less trustworthy than Jews, which contradicts the mega-narrative of Jews being dishonest and Arabs being honorable and trustworthy.

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Egypt dropped Hebrew flyers to try to demoralize Jews in 1948 - quoting the Quran

In 1948, Egypt dropped flyers to Jews in the Negev in an attempt at psychological warfare.

At 4:00 PM on May 15, 1948, Egyptian planes dropped leaflets in Hebrew on the Jewish communities in the Negev.

An actual flyer has just been published in Arabic media. They note that this flyer was a major failure, as the propagandists had no idea of how Jews think - so they wrote as if they were Muslim, including two quotes from the Quran.

In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful

God said: 'And if they incline to peace, incline to it, and put your trust in God. Indeed, He is the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing.'

With these sacred words from the Qur'an, I address the inhabitants of the settlements (in the Negev), and pledge to treat them according to these sacred words. Our aim is to bring about quiet among you, provided that you act in peace, to save your lives, your property and your children.

Our goal is not to start a war. Only in the case of resistance, which will be useless, and will not last long, and will result in the demolition of the stores and food you have.

So we call on all residents to quietly lay down their arms, to raise a white flag. And that you hand over all the ammunition from mines and every combat means, and collect them in one place without destroying them.

Please execute these commands within one hour of the arrival of this post.

After an hour anyone who does not comply with these orders will be considered an enemy and will want to fight.

God said: 'When he attacks you, attack him. And know that God is on the side of the righteous. --Quran

God honors truthtellers.

I didn't know about this. But I did see that Israel also dropped flyers on the Syrian border in May 1948 as well, and they might have been more effective:

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It appears that the Palestinian prime minister's family originated in Egypt - like many other Palestinians

I looked up the history of the Shtayyeh family.

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

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

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

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

Who are the Palestinians? We have many families called al-Masri, whose roots are Egyptian! They may be from Alexandria, from Cairo, from Damietta, from the north, from Aswan, from Upper Egypt. We are Egyptians; we are Arabs. We are Muslims. We are part of you [in mainland Egypt]. Egyptians! Personally, half my family is Egyptian – and the other half are Saudis.

The paper goes on to say that it is well known that Egyptians settled in major cities in Palestine in the 19th century, including Nablus. One of their footnotes says that an Israeli researcher checked the Nablus phone book in 1980 and found 70 entries for the name "al-Masri," "The Egyptian," alone.

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

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

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

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UN accuses Israel a brand new crime - "domicide" - because Israel must be the worst violator of EVERY crime!

The UN's antisemitic Special Rapporteur for Attacking Israel, Francesca Albanese, tweeted this:

The systematic demolition of Palestinian homes, erection of illegal Israeli settlements & systematic denial of building permits for Palestinians amounts to “domicide”. This is nothing but Israel’s attempt to curtail Palestinians’ self-determination & threaten their very existence.

She links to a report from the viciously anti-Israel Human Rights Council which says:

The international community must take action to stop systematic and deliberate housing demolition and sealing, arbitrary displacement and forced evictions of Palestinian people in the occupied West Bank, UN experts* said today.

In the month of January 2023 alone, Israeli authorities reportedly demolished 132 Palestinian structures across 38 communities in the occupied West Bank, including 34 residential and 15 donor-funded structures. This figure represents a 135 percent increase, compared to the same period in 2022, and includes five punitive demolitions.

“The systematic demolition of Palestinian homes, erection of illegal Israeli settlements and systematic denial of building permits for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank amounts to “domicide”.

Here's the interesting part. The word "domicide" was coined last year by Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.

In his report he defined the term this way:

“The attacking, bombing and shelling of civilian targets, the razing of entire cities and villages – displacing millions into homelessness – have continued unabated despite the development of modern human rights and humanitarian law,” the UN expert said.
While international law outlaws all forms of arbitrary housing destruction, deportation, displacement and forced eviction, the Special Rapporteur noted an alarming continuity of gross violations of the right to adequate housing in times of conflict.
In a path-breaking report, Rajagopal urged States to recognise “domicide” - the systematic or widespread violation of the right to adequate housing – as an international crime of its own standing.

Rajagopal created the term to describe a much bigger issue than just destroying houses here and there. He's discussing the systematic destruction of entire cities and making thousands of people homeless just to hurt people:

“How many more Aleppos, Saanas and Mariupols must we endure? We must not allow those responsible for such egregious crimes to remain in positions of power. They must face international justice,” Rajagopal said.

This scene in Aleppo is what he means by domicide:

In the 17 or so years I've been reading Palestinian media, I have not once seen an article about a homeless Palestinian in the West Bank.

Those who are building illegal houses in Area C already have houses in Palestinian administered areas. They aren't homeless! They are building these illegal, dangerous shacks in order to grab land from Israel - with European support. It is a purely political move. But they have a place to sleep at night even after Israel demolishes their homes. No one is living in a tent or in a car that I have seen.

This is not at all what Balakrishnan Rajagopal had in mind when he created the term.

Once the UN describes a new crime, the modern antisemites must hijack the term to apply it to Israel, of course, and pretend that Israel's demolishing illegally built houses - which is an obligation under the laws of occupation! - is the worst possible example of this crime.

And, let's face it, saying that Israel is guilty of "domicide" sounds so much more dramatic than "enforcing zoning laws."

By hijacking the issue, the UN's "experts" and Albanese have now cheapened the actual crimes of Syria, Yemen and Russia. Because antisemites insist that Jews are the worst people on Earth.

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It only took a day for people to blame Jews for Turkey/Syria earthquake

Maria Dubovikova, "prominent independent analyst and media expert • researcher • RIAC expert • THE RUSSIAN • Ex Al Arabiya / Arab News Columnist" with tens of thousands of followers, has been pushing a conspiracy theory about the Turkey earthquake.

Israel knew about the quake ahead of time and only told her friends.

She removed the Twitter thread but I was able to reproduce it with her Telegram and the Google cache:

Israel was boasting that it has elaborated the system for predicting earthquakes with 80% precision. A week ago, the Western embassies were closed in Turkey, and the Westerners were advised to leave the country ASAP due to the "terrorist attack threat."

Today, Turkey and Syria are hit with an extremely strong earthquake.

My guess is that Israel has informed its western counterparts about the upcoming earthquakes.

The Western supremacists are caring exclusively about their own precious lives, giving a shit about those who are considered inferior to them, those third-rate Arabs and Turks. “There is no need to inform them about the threat. Let them die! Who cares!”

How many lives would be saved, if people were aware of the upcoming threat.

If anybody — Israel, Western powers — was aware of the upcoming earthquake and didn’t urge Ankara and Damascus about it — that’s a crime.

Bearing in mind “coincidence” of the earthquake in Iran and Israeli drone attack. Then the closure of the Western embassies and a call to Westerners to leave Turkey prior to the earthquake.

These are the dots. Connect them your own way.

This is...nuts. It has the same quality as the popular "Israelis warned NYC Jews not to go to work on 9/11" meme.

Yes, last year Israeli researchers claimed that they could predict an earthquake with 80% accuracy - but that was only within 48 hours of the event, not a week ahead. And only antisemites would conflate all Israelis with the Israeli government.

The warnings to embassy personnel came after the Quran burning in Sweden in late January.

Her claim that it is no coincidence that Israel's drone attack in Iran happened around the time of an earthquake is really unhinged. That would mean that the Israelis could accurately predict an earthquake days or weeks ahead of time - to within minutes.

And her Telegram channel also reproduces a map that implies that the US might have exploded nukes under Turkey to cause the quake.

When called out on this obvious antisemitism, Dubovikova said she was half Jewish and had a grandmother in the Holocaust.

I guess she considers that a "get out of jail free" card.

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

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Syria insists it would NEVER accept earthquake aid from Israel. No one thinks this is strange.

From Reuters:

The pro-Assad regime Al Watan newspaper on Monday quoted a Syrian official denying reports it relayed a request for Israeli aid in the wake of the massive earthquake that shook the region.
Earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a request from Syria did arrive and that Israel was prepared to send tents and medical supplies and provide treatment for the injured.

Arabic media reports one of the denials:

The source said, "If Netanyahu had received such a request, it was certainly from his allies and friends in ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist organizations."

The source added to the Syrian newspaper Al-Watan: "The Israeli occupation entity is the cause of woes, wars and tensions in the region, and it is the last one who has the right to talk about providing aid and assistance. It is disgraceful that Netanyahu exploits the catastrophe of the earthquake that struck Syria to mislead public opinion and cover up the expansionist and aggressive policies of the occupation."

Aid-washing!

The highest priority of any government is to protect its citizens. If Syria is telling the truth now, it is saying quite clearly that hating Israel is a more fundamental tenet than saving people's lives.

That's about as good a definition of antisemitism as there is.

It is exactly the philosophy of BDS, who claim to want to boycott Israel at any cost (for anyone but themselves.)

And just like BDS, the insistence that human lives are less important than having nothing to do with the Jewish state is couched in terms of - morality!

Isn't it strange that the rest of the world doesn't think this is strange? Syria and other Muslim nations having an obsessive hate of Israel is accepted as a law of nature.

And, in some ways, that's also a good definition of antisemitism.

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

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Yet more evidence that Israel has the most moral army in the world

From Iraqi News:

Media outlets reported that a fleet of container trucks was bombarded on Sunday after crossing the Iraqi border towards Syria.

Iraqi security sources mentioned that 25 container trucks coming from Iran crossed the Iraqi border towards Syria through an unofficial border crossing.

The sources explained that the unidentified warplanes that bombed the trucks fired warning missiles and waited for the drivers to get out before bombing the trucks.

Who else but Israel would go to such lengths - endangering their mission by lingering in the skies for minutes over an enemy country - to protect human lives?

And the drivers would be considered legitimate targets as support personnel, at least in wartime, although it is possible that they did not know what they were carrying.

Not only that, but it appears that Israel has been adding controls to avoid killing people like this as much as possible. In a very similar air raid in 2015, Israel killed seven truck drivers to stop a shipment of weapons. Quietly, behind the scenes, the IAF figured out a way to do raids like this while giving warnings and saving lives.

This requires layers of bureaucracy, changing training methods, dozens of practice runs - a great deal of time and money to save the lives of people who would be properly considered collateral damage by every other army on Earth.

It would be so easy for the IDF to just say, "Who cares? People will malign us anyway. Why risk our own mission for drivers whose deaths would not be considered war crimes by any objective court?"

The fact that they go to such lengths anyway to save lives when they are nearly universally derided as the worst human rights violators is nothing less than superhuman.

This incident proves that the IDF really is the most moral army in the world.

(h/t Yochanan V)

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

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To understand today's antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism, look to the past

An independent report was released last week looking at allegations of pervasive antisemitism at the National Union of Students (NUS) in the United Kingdom.

The antisemitism is closely linked with anti-Zionism, where Jewish students are lightning rods for students' hate against Israel.

As Spiked Online summarizes the report:

Written by barrister Rebecca Tuck, the report depicts an NUS that views anti-Semitism as a second-order problem, the scale of which is exaggerated by Jewish students. Too many NUS leaders seem to believe that anti-Semitism is far less important than other forms of discrimination.

Tuck’s report is damning. ‘For at least the last decade’, she argues, ‘Jewish students have not felt welcome or included in NUS spaces or elected roles’. Indeed, many Jewish students feel that the NUS treats them as pariahs. In numerous instances, leading NUS members have consciously downplayed the significance of instances of anti-Jewish hate.

Typically, complaints of racism are taken very seriously by the NUS, and in higher education more broadly. The mere hint of racial harassment on campus causes universities to denounce themselves as ‘institutionally racist’. That is, unless the complaint is about an incident of anti-Semitism. Often, the report shows, Jewish students were told that what they saw as anti-Semitism was merely legitimate criticism of Israel. When Jewish students pointed out, to the contrary, that they had been vilified for being Jewish, not their political beliefs, their complaints were downplayed or dismissed.

As Tuck persuasively argues, the NUS has persistently deflected these complaints because of its pro-Palestine stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, in recent years, it has seemed that some leaders of the NUS hold Jewish students answerable for the actions of Israel. This has resulted in an environment that is deeply hostile to Jews.

The offenders always argue back that they are simply pro-Palestinian, not antisemitic (and the Jews should stop being so touchy.)

Once again, history provides us with the answer to that charge.

75 years ago, on January 15, 1948, the Palestine Post had these three small articles on page 3 out of 4.

Just as in the UK today, the objects of attack are all Jews - Jews assumed to be guilty by association with Zionism. It is obvious antisemitism.

Yet also just as in the UK today, all of these episodes would have been dismissed by the anti-Zionists of the time as a normal reaction to the evils of Zionism and having nothing to do with Jews as Jews.

From the perspective of 75 years later, no one can seriously argue that the episodes in Mexico, Syria and Beirut were not pure antisemitism. The attackers at the time didn't even to pretend to distinguish Zionists from Jews - only their apologists did that.

But can anyone doubt that the "anti-Zionist" aggression we see today on campus and elsewhere doesn't have the exact same sources, the same motivations and the same mental processes behind them as those in these three articles?

The only thing that has changed in 75 years is that the modern antisemites try to be more careful in their language to avoid explicitly saying that Jews are their target. (The Soviets turned that into a science.) But the vitriol is the same, the boycotts and marginalization are the same, the threats are the same, and the hysterical hate against a minority is the same.

Sadly, the reactions from the authorities in charge (the President of AUB willing to discuss the demands of antisemites as if they had validity) are the same, too.

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01/02 Links Pt1: UN's advisory board on Israeli 'occupation' is hypocrisy; 'Even animals get better treatment': Tortured by Hamas, man finds refuge in Israel

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: UN's advisory board on Israeli 'occupation' is hypocrisy

It asked the ICJ to define how Israel’s practices affected the legal status of Israel’s “occupation” of territory over the pre-1967 lines, which would include the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), Gaza (from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005) and east Jerusalem.

The UNGA resolution specifically included the “Holy City of Jerusalem” and referred to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, only by its Muslim name of al-Haram al-Sharif.

When a preliminary vote on the request for an ICJ opinion was held in November, 98 countries voted in favor and only 17, including Israel, opposed it.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu credited the drop in support for the Palestinians’ position and the additional support for Israel to his efforts, along with those of President Isaac Herzog, the Foreign Ministry and UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan.
“This is once again a one-sided Palestinian move that undermines the basic principles for resolving the conflict and potentially harming any possibility for a future process. The Palestinians want to replace negotiations with unilateral measures. They are once again using the UN to attack Israel.”
Yair Lapid
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh praised the UN vote as “a new victory for the Palestinians.” Hamas also welcomed the UN vote.

It is a dangerous move that is far from solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is likely to further inflame it, giving the Palestinians no incentive to sit down and negotiate in good faith.

Furthermore, the UN and ICJ are making a mockery of their own mandates and are being hijacked by the Palestinians. This is similar to the open-ended UN Commission of Inquiry into Israel headed by Navi Pillay.

The Palestinian push for the ICJ ruling is part of its ongoing lawfare against Israel. The court must avoid giving the impression of built-in bias against Israel when choosing the panel it appoints.

'Even animals get better treatment': Tortured by Hamas, man finds refuge in Israel

E., a resident of the Gaza Strip, talks to us from an apartment in greater Tel Aviv, where he has been residing for the past week, helped by friends, who have provided him with a roof over his head. E. has been put on Hamas' blacklist after he made several public statements and published posts, in which he dared to criticize Hamas' policy in Gaza. He attacked the Hamas leadership for violating human rights, criticized the discrimination against women in public areas, and expressed his infuriation with the way Hamas' security institutions handle anti-regime activists.

It is quite bizarre that the one who initially defended political prisoners, eventually became one himself. The Hamas' long arm found E. and he very quickly found himself subject to threats, intimidation, and physical and mental harassment.

"In the initial investigations I was severely beaten, with bruises all over my body; it was very brutal. Even animals are not treated this way. One investigator would walk past me, punch me, then another one would come and beat me mercilessly," says E. "In the later investigations, I suffered less physical torture, but more mental torture. They would offend me, curse my mother and father and threaten them. For example, on one occasion they threatened to kill me and told me, 'Tomorrow we will shoot you and throw you to the dogs, and tell everyone that you collaborated with Israel'."

Another time they wanted me to sign a document saying that after I was released I was forbidden from talking to anyone about what they did to me during the investigation, and not to share what I went through with human rights organizations. Each time after you are arrested and released, you have to take painkillers and rest for three to four days to physically get over what happened. Mentally, it stays with you. You can't forget. This is one of the things that made me leave Gaza."

A Journey in search of livelihood
Two years ago, E. was forced to leave the Gaza Strip following an investigation, during which it was made clear to him that the Hamas security forces had information about his plan to initiate mass demonstrations in Gaza. E. went to Egypt, tried to make a living from a restaurant business, and last August he managed to return to his family in Gaza. "I saw that I had returned to the same Gaza, with the same problems. There is no freedom, there are no jobs, and the jobs that are there are given to Hamas and their loyalists. There is no stability in life. The situation is bad and people live from hand to mouth. Everything I earn – it all goes, nothing is left.

"The children grow up, they have needs. You have to buy them clothes for the winter and heat the house. There are so many everyday needs, and then you ask yourself, 'what future awaits them and me? It makes you think, is this how I want to live? It doesn't make sense. The family eats fresh meat only once a week. Some people eat half portions just so that they can get through the day. Every house in Gaza has debts to the electricity corporation and people have to pay off loans that they took.

"It's getting to the point where residents are not using their cars unless there is something essential because they do not want to waste money on fuel. Many factories in Gaza are closed. Business owners are in and out of prison because of debts, but it's not just because of money. It's in almost every area of life. There is no infrastructure and no projects. People avoid going to hospitals because they don't trust the medical treatment there. Hamas doesn't provide services. There is no future."

12/27 Links Pt2: How did black, Jewish communities go from friendship to tension?; Making sense of the great Mizrahi exodus; Dishonest Reporter of the Year Awards 2022

From Ian:

How did black, Jewish communities go from friendship to tension? - opinion

The events over the last couple of months involving the black and Jewish communities have triggered a lot of thought-provoking questions and concerns. During my entire time working for Jewish non-profits, leaders of these organizations encouraged us to use the strong history of solidarity between black and Jewish communities as part of our outreach.

When educating Jewish university students, we always discussed the special relationship between Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Heschel. We used quotes from influential black leaders to showcase how these figures were supporters of Zionism at a time when Israel was vulnerable.

Looking back now, I realize that historically, the relationship between both communities is a lot more complicated, and today is no different. While black and Jewish solidarity during the civil rights movement sounds beautiful, those stories don’t resonate with my generation because it’s not our reality anymore. Historically the black and Jewish communities supported one another, but clearly, things are different now.

So what happened? How did we get here?
Since the civil rights movement, different events have caused friction between our communities, which have dampened the good relationship which black and Jewish people once shared. Over time, antisemitism and racism have infested both groups. In addition, various events, like the Crown Heights riots, created tension. Hate also spewed from extremist groups and organizations like the Nation of Islam, causing more friction.

Today, black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan and his followers are normalizing antisemitic rhetoric. And now, prominent figures like Kanye West openly spreads antisemitic conspiracy theories while promoting extremists from the Black Hebrew Israelite community who openly support Hitler and the Nazis on the streets of New York.

The black and Jewish communities have, in the past, worked together as vulnerable groups to fight for equality. Over the years, they lived as neighbors in segregated neighborhoods in the US.

Their alliance had some profound moments. Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald teamed up with Booker T. Washington to create schools for black children in the south. Rosenwald donated $70 million to build 5,000 schools for black children.

Black colleges also stepped in during World War II to rescue Jews from Germany. After the Nazis took power, the US failed to take immediate action, thus administrators from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) saved 50 Jewish-German scholars by hiring them.

Lyn Julius: Making sense of the great Mizrahi exodus

Sixty years ago, Algeria declared its independence from France after a bloody war that is thought to have claimed over a million lives. In the course of throwing off the French colonial yoke, Algeria divested itself of 800,000 “white settlers” or pieds noirs. But along with the settlers went 130,000 native Algerian Jews.

There was a reason for this: Within a year of independence, it was clear that there would be no place for non-Muslims in the new Algeria. Indeed, the country’s constitution stipulated that only those with a Muslim father or grandfather could acquire Algerian citizenship.

The Jewish refugees, who held French citizenship, were “repatriated” to France, where they had never lived. One of them was Shmuel Trigano, then 14-years-old. Within two days and with two suitcases in hand, his life changed forever. Uprooted from the only home he had ever known, he was left permanently scarred.

However, it was only relatively recently, when he saw Palestinians brandishing the keys to homes they had left in 1948, that Trigano realized there was a political dimension to his trauma.

“We also had keys,” he says of the 900,000 Jews forced to flee Arab countries. “But we were too modest. We did not make claims—and because we were silent, we allowed a false narrative to fill the vacuum.”

In order to counter what he calls a massive distortion of the facts, Trigano set about applying the tools of his trade as a professor of sociology. He constructed a conceptual framework to make sense of the post-1940s Jewish exodus from 10 Arab countries over a period of 30 years.

David Collier: Gazan scams the anti-Zionists – antisemitism makes people dumb

A Gazan has just scammed anti-Zionists out of £1000s. Pete Gregson, the Scottish man who ran the campaigns has even just admitted it. The truth here is that this is a cycle; The lies of anti-Israel propaganda creates anti-Zionists, anti-Zionism embeds antisemitism, and antisemitism makes people targets for scams. And trust me on this, the people in Gaza and the West Bank are fully aware of it.

A Gazan scammer – the backstory
Keeping this part short: Those who read this blog will know that throughout 2022, I ran several articles on the relationship between Pete Gregson, an active antisemite from Scotland, and a Gazan by the name of Mohammed Almadhoun. Gregson put out an endless stream of fundraisers to help Almadhoun and even ran the Gaza- Edinburgh twinning campaign alongside him. I went digging (as did one or two friends), tracking down Almadhoun and all his claims. It took a while, we had to dig deep – and I even ended up speaking to an Egyptian surgeon referenced in one of the campaigns (who denied ever operating on Almadhoun). My research showed beyond doubt that not only did Almadhoun’s family have ties to both Islamic Jihad and Hamas, but that the fundraising campaigns were a scam.

A Christmas Eve notice and the Boxing Day email
Pete Gregson carried on with his campaigns, ridiculing my research and standing by his Gazan ‘friend’. Until on Christmas Eve the latest campaign was suddenly closed. Then yesterday (Boxing Day), Pete Gregson personally sent an extraordinary email to all those that had contributed. It began like this (full email – see image) :
“It greatly pains me to admit to our having been victims of a humongous scam “

He even openly admitted that I had been right:
Gregson explains that he now knows that Almadhoun, the Gazan scammer will ‘tell lies with impunity if he can scam money‘

Let Jews Arm Themselves to Keep Their Synagogues Safe

Since 2018, there have been three violent attacks on worshippers at American synagogues; numerous others were attempted, threatened, or successfully foiled by law enforcement. Under these circumstances, Jewish communities have adopted various protective measures, including arming themselves. State laws in Maryland and New York, however, specifically prohibit carrying weapons in houses of prayer. Stuart Halpern and Tevi Troy argue against such regulations:

Legally speaking, the laws appear to violate the Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms. Indeed, the New York law was challenged on that basis, and the Maryland law may face a legal challenge as well. But the laws could also be subject to a First Amendment challenge, as they could be seen as an unreasonable burden on the free exercise of religion. After all, if you can’t worship safely because of the threat of anti-Semitic violence, how can you be free to practice your religion?

Legalities aside, there is a larger problem here: these laws may be well-meaning, but the fact remains that, if enacted, potential victims will comply with the law, while their potential attackers won’t. As a result, the attackers will remain armed and dangerous, while potential protectors will be disarmed and limited to the run, hide, and fight directives of local synagogue security committees. These committees do great work, but they necessarily tell congregants, as a last resort, to throw a siddur (Jewish prayer book) at an attacker. A siddur, alas, is a poor substitute for a gun in a firefight.

The 3,000-year-old Jewish tradition has examined the tension between sanctity and safety in the synagogue. In the book of Exodus, the Almighty offers instructions for building a sacrificial altar—what would become a central component of the holy sanctuary. The Israelites are told that it is not to be made of hewn, or carved, stone. Using a sword—a weapon—in the construction of a ritual object, the Bible makes clear, would profane what is meant to be sanctified. Yet the Jewish tradition also recognizes instances of violence as necessary in defense of holy places. The book of Kings recounts how the rebellious Joab, after a failed coup, tries to avoid capture from King Solomon by grasping the sanctuary altar. Solomon ordered him executed there nonetheless.

12/22 Links Pt1: Melanie Phillips: The European Union’s subversion of Israel; Returning the Palestinians to Center Stage Undermines Stability in the Middle East

From Ian:

JCPA: The EU's Secret Palestinian Building Plan for Area C

Its actions in unilaterally advancing a Palestinian state in Area C, territories assigned to Israel both administratively and regarding security responsibilities by both the PLO and Israel in a mutually signed agreement of September 28, 1995, represent a violation of international law and call into question the EU’s ability to continue serve in any capacity as diplomatic interlocutor.

The EU’s unpublished policy plan also violates Israel’s legal rights as affirmed by the EU at Oslo and reveals a pro-PLO bias that renders the EU as de facto supporters of the official PA policy of allocating payments to Palestinian terrorists who were killed, captured, or imprisoned as a result of their jihadi terror activity. Israel and the international community bear a responsibility to reveal the EU’s gross violations of its diplomatic responsibilities and those of Josep Borrell, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, as well as European Commission President Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen.

This latest revelation is only the most recent example of EU malfeasance as an entrusted diplomatic interlocutor. Ambassador Alan Baker, former legal advisor to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, pointed out in a July 2022 policy brief for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, that EU member states restored funding to six Palestinian civil society organizations designated by Israel as terror-supporting organizations, rejecting evidence submitted by Israel that these organizations are linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, an EU-, U.S.-, and Israel-designated terror group.

As Baker notes, contrary to its special status as witness, sponsor, and facilitator of the Oslo Accords, the EU and specifically Norway have consistently conducted a one-sided, partisan policy aimed at prejudging the issues that are still to be negotiated between the parties, such as the issue of Jerusalem and the permanent status of the territories.

Baker added that, “Facilitating international funding to support and encourage Palestinian terror, including providing funds for salaries and benefits of terrorists serving prison sentences, is the antithesis of any genuine international action to promote human rights, peace, and stability in the Middle East.”

Melanie Phillips: The European Union’s subversion of Israel

Now this is out in the open. The E.U. can no longer pretend it is merely contributing to Palestinian “civil society.” Yet even now, there is no mention of any of this by the Western mainstream media. In Britain, the BBC has instead been busy fomenting yet more anti-Israel feeling by telling its audience that Netanyahu has finalized “the most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history.”

Similar denunciations by Israel’s outgoing leftist prime minister, Yair Lapid, have been fueling hysteria in the West, not least among liberal-minded Diaspora Jews.

These have been heard describing the yet-to-be-formed Israeli government as “horrific,” and have already been blaming Israel for putting them in danger as a result.

Now the E.U. has been engulfed by revelations of a corrupt relationship with Qatar—the sponsor of Hamas and mortal foe of Israel. While details are still unfolding, this axis isn’t surprising. There’s a nexus between the universalism embodied by the E.U. and the desire to bring down Israel, the nation state of the most particularist culture in the world.

And it’s no coincidence that the majority of British Jews, who in 2016 voted for the U.K. to remain in the E.U. partly through their ludicrous belief that universalism actually protected them against antisemitism, have also swallowed many of the lies about the Palestinian cause—and, like their liberal American counterparts, are now clutching their pearls over Smotrich, Ben-Gvir and Maoz.

While concerns about the extremism of this trio are justifiable, the people they most resemble are the Maccabees. They were Jewish religious zealots who fought the Hellenized Jews because the Hellenizers were adopting Greek universalist precepts and, as a result, taking a wrecking ball to Jewish practices such as circumcision and Shabbat observance.

But the Maccabees fought and defeated the Jews’ Greek oppressors. While being rightly excoriated for violent extremism, the heroes of the Hanukkah story saved the Jewish people from tyranny.

It may be that today’s Maccabean Three are channeling Jewish history once again.

Israeli MKs slam EU policy document for ignoring Jewish land rights in West Bank

A group of 40 Israeli lawmakers led by Likud MK Amichai Chikli sent an open letter on Tuesday to the European Union protesting an official policy document that they say denies historical Jewish ties to the so-called Area C of the West Bank.

The classified June 2022 document exposed by Israeli media gives an overview of the continental bloc's policy toward Area C of the territory, which is fully administered by Israel.

According to the Oslo Accords, a series of interim peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians signed in the 1990s, this territory is supposed to be gradually relinquished to Palestinian control, with an option for land swaps under a final status agreement. The document shows that the EU is working in concert with the Palestinian Authority to integrate Area C into a future Palestinian state.

The EU criticizes Israeli policies of building in Area C of the West Bank, which the Israeli government refers to by its biblical name — Judea and Samaria.

In the letter, lawmakers criticize EU policies in the West Bank as favoring the Palestinians and ignoring the historical claims of the Jewish people to the land.

"In the last decade, we've witnessed the increasing involvement of the European Union in construction, planning road projects and erecting water and solar energy facilities in hundreds of outposts in Area C," Chikli told i24NEWS.

"The document uncovered this week shows that this is a deliberate strategy that completely ignores Israel's position and sovereignty in the area.

Moreover, the construction moves show that the goal is for the most part to interrupt the sequences of Jewish settlement and to create choke rings around the settlement blocks that will make it difficult for Israel to exercise its sovereignty in the future." "These moves constitute serious damage to the relations between the European Union and the State of Israel."

Israeli lawmakers slam EU policy document on West Bank

Ex-Israeli Military Officers Call EU's Area C Policy "Hostile and Aggressive"

Letter from Israel Defense and Security Forum calls EU policy 'to advance illegal Palestinian development' a threat to Israel's national security

An Israeli organization consisting of more than 16,000 former military, security, and police officers called the revelation that the European Union is working on a Palestinian takeover of Area C of the West Bank "an act of blatant hostility and aggression."

In an open letter sent Wednesday from the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF) and addressed to Dimiter Tzantchev, head of the EU delegation to the State of Israel, the NGO slammed the EU for its confidential policy document revealed by media outlets on Tuesday.

The EU policy document, which was leaked by Israeli media, gives an overview of the EU's policy toward Area C, which is administered by Israel. The document shows that the EU is working with the Palestinian Authority on making Area C a part of a future Palestinian state. The EU criticizes Israeli policies of building in Area C, which the Israeli government calls by its biblical name, Judea and Samaria.

"According to our professional understanding of national security, the dominant terrain of Judea and Samaria in Area C is key strategic terrain that controls or can threaten most of the modern State of Israel’s infrastructure and strategic assets," the letter stated. "The EU’s reported clandestine activity to undermine Israeli control in Area C and to advance illegal Palestinian development in those areas constitutes a clear and present threat to the security of the State of Israel, and is an act of blatant hostility and aggression."

The letter was signed by 12 former military officers and includes the names of dozens more. The IDSF describes itself as a "Zionist, security-based movement" that includes senior officers from all branches of Israel's armed forces, as well as researchers, academics, and Israeli citizens.

The founder and director of the IDSF Brig. Gen. (Res.) Amir Avivi told i24NEWS that the EU's activity undermines the Oslo Accords, which established Israel's control over Area C.

"These areas are crucial to Israel's existence in the long term. It's an existential issue," said Avivi.

"We are the only ones who can define what we need, talking about national security, talking about the Jewish national aspirations. No European country can decide for us what we need, and certainly not go against an accord that everybody should adhere to."

Someone is kicking Palestinians out of their homes - and Palestinians don't say a word

Orient News reports:

Last Sunday, we published a documented report on the Assad regime's confiscation of Palestinian property in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad and Palestine camps as part of a general plan to establish a sectarian Shiite southern suburb similar to that of Hezbollah in the Lebanese capital, Beirut.

The documented report referred to the confiscation of Palestinian property under flimsy pretexts, including the failure of one of the homeowners to pay a sum of one million Syrian pounds, equivalent to approximately $200, as a fine.

It must be noted that the Assad-Iranian sectarian scheme is still in its early infancy, and the new step came after the courts affiliated with the regime in the past made mock charges against the Palestinians to confiscate their property, as the matter sparked widespread reactions and protests, so the regime resorted to another path that appears to be apparently civil, penal, procedural, far removed from politics, hidden as much as possible from the media and the limelight, and of course without following the legal administrative procedures as they are in an authoritarian regime that does not originally establish the judiciary and justice.

The report goes on to say that the Palestinian factions are not saying a word about this. The Palestinian Authority and Fatah want to stay on the good side of Iran which is part of this scheme.

One potential roadblock is that the Palestinian camps - which were largely destroyed during the civil war - are controlled by UNRWA, and UNRWA would need to approve any takeover. But no one is rebuilding the camps as they are now, so in the future Assad could offer UNRWA some more remote land in exchange.

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!

12/20 Links Pt1: Secret document reveals EU plans to help Palestinian takeover of Area C; Palestinian stubs toe, U.S. demands investigation; The UN's not-so-Interim Force in Lebanon

From Ian:

Secret document reveals EU plans to help Palestinian takeover of Area C

A document composed by the European Union’s mission in eastern Jerusalem and defined as secret exposes the E.U.’s intention to help Palestinians gain control over Area C of Judea and Samaria, commonly known as the West Bank, Israel’s Channel 13 revealed on Monday.

Under the Oslo Accords, Judea and Samaria is divided into three zones with Area C falling fully under Israeli control.

The six-page document calls for mapping the territory in order to prove Palestinian rights to the land and monitoring Israeli archaeological activity, as ancient Jewish ties reinforce Israeli claims.

The document also recommends strengthening Palestinian infrastructure in Area C and supporting Palestinians with legal aid.

In response to Channel 13‘s expose, the E.U. said, “As a general rule, we do not refer to documents. The policy of the E.U. is created by its 27 member states. Our policy has not changed—we are committed to a two-state solution with Jerusalem as the future capital of both states.” Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

The report raised an outcry among politicians and various Israeli groups.

“It is not by chance that the European Union chose to classify the document as secret since it reveals its antisemitic attitude towards Israel for all to see,” tweeted Religious Zionism Party Chairman Bezalel Smotrich.

“It’s not content with accelerating the Palestinian takeover of Area C, it is important for it to thwart Israeli archaeological activity in Judea and Samaria lest the truth be revealed: ‘We have not taken foreign land, nor foreign property of our own; but the land of our ancestors…,'” he said, quoting the Book of the Maccabees.

Israel Can’t Allow Bigots to Control the Narrative on the Temple Mount

The trope that Jews are trying to seize and desecrate Muslim holy sites — “Judaizing the Temple Mount”– has been used to foment violence since the 1920s. If Israel is “Judaizing” the Temple Mount, it is certainly taking its sweet time. One might even argue that Israel is going about it all wrong.

For instance, when the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, they did not work out a deal by which Eastern Orthodox clerics and Byzantine authorities retained control over the Hagia Sophia. They just conquered it and converted it into a mosque. Israel by contrast won control of the Temple Mount in a defensive war, after imploring Jordan not to attack. Upon its military victory, Israel then gave control over the Temple Mount to the Jordanian Waqf. There is no historical precedent in which a militarily victorious country made such a concession to a vanquished foe. One might have expected that the world would credit Israel for its tolerance.

Today, the concepts of human rights, dignity, equality, and tolerance are thankfully considered to be paramount in most of the world. The demand to bar only Jewish worship at a site that is sacred to multiple religions is akin to the worst examples of segregation. Jewish worshipers on the Temple Mount are not guilty of disrupting Muslim prayer. They are not the ones rioting, shouting, burning tires, throwing rocks, or even murdering worshipers. Indeed, neither Jews nor Israel even consider banning Muslim worshipers from the holy site.

While most controversial issues in the Middle East have some shade of gray, this is one of the most black and white ethical dilemmas. Jews want to pray and let Muslims pray. Those manufacturing a crisis want the Jews banned, period.

Unfortunately, many international leaders and the international media outlets automatically blame Israel and thus, peaceful Jewish worship, for the tension. Even the US State Department called upon Israel to defuse tensions caused by Arab rioting on the Temple Mount. It is amazing that this centuries-old excuse for violence still bears weight.

Israel cannot allow bigots to control the narrative around the Temple Mount, and it is high time its leaders get out in front with a well-articulated explanation. While many Jews and Israeli officials have made this case, Israel’s leadership must make an articulate, public, and unapologetic case to its Arab neighbors and the world, that it respects religious freedom, demands that same respect, and explains that it is those perpetrating violence who are truly desecrating this holy site. This is urgently needed, not just to combat antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment, but to save the hopeful promise of the Abraham Accords.

Will Mahmoud Abbas and PA Leaders Face ICC Prosecution for Murder

In a statement, the Banat family directly accused PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of being responsible for their son’s death, because of his responsibility for the Palestinian security forces. The family announced their determination “to go to the end and bring justice to the gang that murdered Nizar Banat.”

The PA’s trial in Ramallah of those accused of the murder opened following heavy pressure exerted on the Palestinian Authority by the Biden administration, the European Union, human rights organizations, and the Palestinian street, which held a series of demonstrations, mainly in Ramallah and Hebron, against the dictatorial regime of Mahmoud Abbas.

Until the start of the trial, the Palestinian Authority tried to reach a compensation settlement with the family in exchange for canceling the trial. It offered them a large sum of money and jobs in the PA, but all its offers were rejected.

Even after the killing of Nizar Banat, the PA continued to use force and its security forces violently suppressed the demonstrations that called for the resignation of Mahmoud Abbas, the punishment of the murderers, and the establishment of an international commission of inquiry in the case.

According to Palestinian law, the PA defendants face prison sentences ranging from seven years to life. However, this is not going to happen. The Palestinian Authority is determined to protect them. Therefore, the Banat family appealed to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority by opening an investigation into the case.

Meanwhile, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is taking advantage of concerns over the PA’s possible collapse and the consequences of this for regional stability, in order to delay the trial.

The murder of Nizar Banat was intended to send a clear message to all the political opponents of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who will continue to forcefully suppress his critics and opponents, just like the other dictatorial rulers in the Arab world. There is no difference between them.