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

From Ian:

Alan Baker: Palestinian leadership venturing into international legal field

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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11/14 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.”

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11/13 Links: Palestinian Resolution at UN Is a Desperate Step; Major Terror Attack in Turkey, 6 Dead, 53 Wounded"; Chappelle: 'Not a crazy thing to think' that Jews run Hollywood

From Ian:

Palestinian Resolution at UN Is a Desperate Step

The worst-case scenario – a future declaration by the ICJ stating that Judea and Samaria are being annexed – will not be a blow to Israel, but a headache at most. The countries that are already hostile to the Jewish state do not need a court to justify their approach. Similarly, the states that understand the situation or support Israel will not change their policies because of a political opinion disguised as international law. There have been plenty of these over the years and we are still standing.

Saturday's vote at the UN makes it clear who is on our side and who is against us. Sixty-nine countries opposed the measure, which is not a few. These include the United States, Germany, Canada, and Australia, where left-wing governments have been in power in recent years. Italy stood by us for the first time as well, as did others.

Most other Western countries abstained. Those who supported the Palestinians were mostly Arab, Muslim, or African countries, with one notable exception: Ukraine, which continues to put sticks in our wheels at the UN while asking Israel for favors in reality. Strange.

And speaking of reality, it is not yet certain whether the ICJ will even publish the opinion that the UN is requesting. The whole world knows that the conflict is political, not legal. With this very rationale, many countries have turned to the ICC requesting not to advance Palestinian claims against Israel. By the looks of things, those requests were convincing. The process is stuck there, which is a good thing.

In any case, even if such an opinion is published, it will take years before it is written. So early in the game, no one knows what it will say, much less what its effect will be on the world. But it doesn't mean we can bury our heads in the sand.

The Palestinian appeal to the ICJ is a desperate step taken by Mahmoud Abbas and his people in order to internationalize the conflict. This process started more than a decade ago, which is when-then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not counteract.

Abbas learned that he is not held responsible for the diplomatic battles he starts with Israel, which is why he has since escalated by appealing to a long list of international institutions.

It was a dire mistake. Israel has and has had a lot of leverage against Abbas and the senior PA officials. There is no reason, for example, for him to fly to meet with leaders around the globe as long as he seeks to undermine Israel's status. The same goes for other senior PA members as well.

These are the first tools in the toolbox and they are now at the disposal of the new government. They will have to use them until the final vote in the General Assembly in a month. In addition, the new foreign and defense ministers – when appointed – will have to make it clear to the US that it must put limits on the Palestinian Authority. The administration is very afraid of its disintegration. It must therefore contribute to returning the demon attempting to internationalize the conflict straight back into the bottle.

Lapid calls to exact price from Palestinians for UN ‘occupation’ vote

Israel is preparing a security and diplomatic response to the Palestinians for their UN resolution calling on the International Court of Justice to consider the illegality of Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank, Prime Minister Yair Lapid said on Sunday.

Lapid instructed the government to prepare a “security and diplomatic toolbox” to respond.

“The way to resolve the conflict does not pass through the halls of the UN or other international bodies, and the Palestinians’ move at the UN will have consequences,” the prime minister warned.

The UN General Assembly Fourth Committee voted 98-17 on Friday to ask the ICJ to consider whether the IDF’s ongoing presence in Judea and Samaria, east Jerusalem and the Golan can be considered de-facto annexation after 56 years. The resolution, officially proposed by Nicaragua because “Palestine” is a UN observer, questions the status of Jerusalem, ignoring Jewish ties to its holiest site, the Temple Mount, and referring to it as al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary). The resolution must be approved in another, full UN General Assembly vote before it goes to The Hague.

Israel slams UN panel decision on West Bank probe

Israeli leaders are decrying a UN decision to seek a legal opinion from the International Court of Justice on Israel's activity in the West Bank.

Former ambassador Daniel Shek joins us to discuss how Israel will approach the resolution, and the countries that voted in favor, including Ukraine.

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

From Ian:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 9, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israel condemns Tel Aviv conference equating Holocaust with ‘Nakba’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 9, 2022

KFC Germany encourages customers to 'treat themselves' on Kristallnacht

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

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

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

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

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

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11/01 Links Pt1: How Israel’s elections may impact the Middle East; UN: Suspend adoption of IHRA definition of antisemitism; Canada Calls to Oust Iran From UN Women’s Rights Commission

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: How Israel’s elections may impact the Middle East

As Israelis voted for the fifth time in less than four years, the region could greet these latest elections with a shrug. After all, another election will probably come in a year or so.

However, the current government of Prime Minister Yair Lapid and alternate Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made major strides in the region. Lapid, Bennett and Defense Minister Benny Gantz put a premium on public meetings and outreach around the Middle East, including hosting such important forums as the Negev Summit.

On the other hand, Lapid also rushed into the agreement with Lebanon days before the election. This matters, and on policies from Ukraine to Turkey, there could be shifts after the election that impact the region.

Israel and Turkey
One of the most important shifts in the last year has been Israel’s decision to work with Turkey. After years in which Ankara had bashed the Jewish state, comparing Israel to Nazi Germany and backing Hamas, Turkey sought to change its tone over the last year. This resulted in numerous high-level meetings and visits.

The normalization between Ankara and Jerusalem may be only on the surface, because Turkey’s ruling AKP Party is the same party as before the reconciliation. But it could also mark a shift that continues after the election.

It’s clear that with Turkey, there was a choice to normalize relations after former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu left office. Ankara had increased its extreme rhetoric and anti-Israel behavior during Netanyahu’s 10 years in power. This included the launching of the Mavi Marmara flotilla, as well as hosting Hamas leaders and vocal threats to “liberate al-Aqsa.”

Ankara’s behavior occurred against the backdrop of close Turkey-US relations during the Trump administration and its increasing role in Syria. It’s not entirely clear what led to Turkey’s increasingly anti-Israel behavior, especially considering that in the early 2000s, the countries had managed to continue amicable relations despite the differences between the AKP and Israel. The party is rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood and is close to Hamas ideologically, making it naturally hostile to Israel.

During the Netanyahu era, there was little chance of reconciliation with Turkey. Netanyahu always believed that Israel had to exude strength in the face of threats, and he wasn’t afraid to critique Turkey’s actions.

Today, both Ankara and Jerusalem have shifted rhetoric, and this has enabled major changes on the political and diplomatic fronts.

The Commentary Magazine Podcast: Will Bibi Make a Comeback?

Dan Senor joins the podcast today to map out five scenarios for the Israeli election results—Israel is voting today. And then we discuss why professional Republicans seem a little more anxious than thrilled about the clear pattern in the polling about what’s going to happen next Tuesday here in the American elections. Give a listen.

Netanyahu's peace plan with the Saudis may also end the Arab-Israel conflict

Israel’s Leader of the Opposition Benjamin Netanyahu has broken his silence - giving his nod of approval to examining the Saudi-proposed Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution (Saudi Solution) :
“I think the big prize is peace with Saudi Arabia, which I intend to achieve if I go back into office… The rise of Israeli power facilitated the Abraham Accords, and the continual nurturing of Israeli power will also nurture a broader peace with Saudi Arabia and nearly all of the rest of the Arab world. I intend to bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to a close.”

Peace with Saudi Arabia and ending the Arab-Israeli conflict will require Netanyahu to successfully negotiate to make the Saudi Solution - published in June - acceptable. That would see:
· Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria ('West Bank') being merged into one territorial entity to be called The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine - with its capital in Amman - not Jerusalem
· Abandonment of the 74 years-old Palestinian Arab demand to return and live in Israel
· Recognition of Jewish sovereignty in part of Judea and Samaria ('West Bank') for the first time in 3000 years
· No new Palestinian Arab state between Israel and Jordan

Yesh Atid Party Leader - Yair Lapid, Blue and White Party Leader - Benny Gantz - and Labor Party Leader - Merav Michaeli - have all rejected the Saudi Solution outright - aligning their respective parties policies with President Biden’s to continue pursuing the failed unachievable two-state solution first dreamt up by the European Union in 1980 and endorsed by the United Nations in 2003.

The leaders of all other Israeli political parties have yet to comment on the Saudi Solution.

Netanyahu, however, indicated his thinking was clearly in sync with the game-changing proposals.

Hundreds of Jews visit Temple Mount on election day

Twice the number of Jews visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on election day this year compared to last year, the Temple Mount Administration reported on Tuesday afternoon.

“The visitors said they took advantage of the election day vacation to go up and visit the site where the House of God stood,” the administration said in a statement. “It reminds them of how fortunate they are to be in a Jewish state, voting for a Jewish government.”

Nearly 300 Jews had already visited the mount by 10:30 a.m., the administration said.

Visits to the Temple Mount by Jews have been on the rise over the past year in general.

Some 47,988 Jews visited the Mount last year, in Hebrew year 5782—a 94% increase over the year before.

Anything about the Palestinian Auth, which is in the 18th year of Abbas’ 4 year term, without elections? No, didn’t think so. Just more lies and Jew hate from @hrw? https://t.co/0jkRZI9fWq

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 1, 2022

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10/25 Links Pt2: The New Progressivism Makes No Room for Jews; How did a radical Islamist fool the West?; Adidas drops Kanye West

From Ian:

The New Progressivism Makes No Room for Jews

In 2016, as “intersectionality” escaped from academia to become a progressive buzzword—and came to to signify a doctrine that all just causes are linked and complementary—David L. Bernstein began to suspect that it was apt to be used against the Jews. As he pointed out in an article published that year, activists argued under the banner of intersectionality that anyone opposed to racism in the U.S. should also oppose the existence of Israel. He thought, however, that there was hope:
While I didn’t say so explicitly, I’d come to believe that the mainstream Jewish community needed to find a way to include the Jewish narrative in the intersectional matrix—to complicate it—so that Jews and Israel were not viewed as the perennial oppressors and Palestinians the perennial victims. Concerned about the growing backlash to my article, I used the opportunity [to participate in a panel discussion with some of my critics] to soften my stance on the topic, stating “I still have much to learn,” and that “intersectionality is a complex, interesting, and nuanced phenomenon that we need to understand, not just from the perspective of the pro-Israel community, but from its own perspective as well.”

Bernstein, at the time still president of the left-leaning Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), soon learned that there was little room for such a compromise position:
[In 2020], the JCPA pulled together a Zoom meeting for a coalition called Jews for Criminal Justice Reform, which included top Jewish criminal-justice activists from around the country. After an inspiring talk by Paul Fishman—a former federal attorney from New Jersey—on the need to end mass incarceration, we broke up into smaller groups to discuss next steps. A lawyer named Jared, the group facilitator for my breakout session, asked, “What do you all think our criminal-justice reform priorities ought to be?” Ariella, a young professional staffer from a Jewish civil-rights organization, interjected, “Before we talk about strategy, there’s a lot of internal work we have to do in the Jewish community. We need to recognize our complicity in white supremacy and ensure we have black Jews at the forefront of these efforts.”

More and more, that’s how it is now: a young staff person holding the work process hostage until we recite some prescribed litany of woke pieties. What, pray tell, did Ariella think all this self-reflection would do to help black people get out of being jailed for low-level drug charges? I suspect she didn’t have a clue. And as things turned out, our breakout session never discussed a single criminal-justice reform measure.

In short, Bernstein discovered that there is no room in this brand of progressive ideology to see Jews as anything but oppressors, and for Jews to do anything but proclaim their own imagined sins. This discovery is the subject of his newly published book, Woke Antisemitism.

How did a radical Islamist fool the West? - analysis

Many articles written about Qaradawi after his death emphasized his condemnation of al-Qaeda and ISIS and his moderate rulings permitting certain Western conduct for Muslims living as minorities in Western countries.

These articles portrayed him as many Westerners wanted to see him: a widely accepted authentic Islamic scholar who wanted to dialogue with the West and rejected violence.

However, the intelligence center noted that many of these articles left out that he helped shape “the concept of violent jihad,” especially justifying “carrying out terror attacks, including suicide bombing attacks, against Israeli citizens, the US forces in Iraq, and some of the Arab regimes.”

Qaradawi supported violent jihad and suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians. He was a source of supreme religious authority for Hamas at a time when many Islamic scholars still prohibited suicide of any kind.

Qaradawi claimed that violence was a legitimate expression of the so-called “resistance” and that Israel was a militaristic society in which every civilian is a potential soldier, said the report.

His antisemitism was not limited to Israel, with the report saying he frequently expressed antisemitic statements worldwide and even issued a fatwa authorizing attacks on Jews around the world.

In that fatwa, “he claimed that there is no essential difference between Judaism and Zionism, and therefore every Jewish target equals an Israeli target,” according to the report.

‘The Squad’ urges Biden administration to negotiate ceasefire in Ukraine

30 Democratic US Congressmembers – most notably the young progressives who have become colloquially known as “The Squad” – penned a letter to President Joe Biden’s administration on Monday in which they ask the administration to avoid direct military conflict and attempt to bring Russia and Ukraine to a ceasefire.

“Given the catastrophic possibilities of nuclear escalation and miscalculation, which only increase the longer this war continues, we agree with your goal of avoiding direct military conflict as an overriding national-security priority,” the letter read. A call for diplomacy

The congress members noted the difficulties involved in a settlement, particularly with the issue of annexed territories in the east of Ukraine, though they also mentioned Biden’s commitment to end the war. While no concrete plan of action was presented in the letter, the congress members suggested that easing sanctions against Russia would be a natural step to take.

“Such a framework would presumably include incentives to end hostilities, including some form of sanctions relief, and bring together the international community to establish security guarantees for a free and independent Ukraine that are acceptable for all parties, particularly Ukrainians.”

“The alternative to diplomacy is a protracted war, with both its attendant certainties and catastrophic and unknowable risks,” the letter continues.

The signers of the letter also pointed to the food and commodity crises brought upon by the war as reasons to seek an end to the war. “Economists believe that if the situation in Ukraine is stabilized, some of the speculative concerns driving higher fuel costs will subside and likely lead to a drop in world oil prices.”

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Are Indonesia and Pakistan next?

The Jerusalem Post reported:

Diplomatic delegations from Pakistan and Indonesia are both in Israel for secret visits this week, according to Pakistani news reports on Monday.

The Pakistani delegation is headed by Pakistani-American Nasim Ashraf, a former minister of state in former prime minister Pervez Musharraf 's government.

During their visit to Israel, the Pakistani delegation was given tours across Israel. They are also scheduled to meet with President Isaac Herzog later this week, the report added.

The Indonesian delegation in Israel is headed by a "senior official." Reports of a diplomatic presence of the two most populous Muslim nations in the world in Israel come amid recent warming of ties between Israel and Indonesia.

 The Indonesian Foreign Ministry denied any such visit. 

Whether it is true or not, Arabs are taking the report seriously. This is especially in the wake of Turkish president Erdogan restoring relations with Israel and even saying he wants to visit Israel. Together with the second anniversary of the Abraham Accords, anything seems possible.

The combined Muslim population of Indonesia and Pakistan is higher than the combined population of Arab states, and having those two countries normalize relations with Israel would be a staggering psychological blow for the holdout Arab nations - they would be in the minority of Muslims worldwide!

And even if Indonesia and Pakistan only warm up relations without making them official, it points to a pattern that the anti-Israel crowd cannot downplay, much as they want to. Even unofficial relations and trade ensure Israel is considered a permanent part of the Middle East, and when countries stand to lose Israeli trade and scientific expertise they will think twice about trying to treat Israel as a pariah again.

The Abraham Accords broke open the dam, and the flood of new relationships with Israel cannot be easily stopped.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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BDS Activist Linda Sarsour Visits Israel and Witnesses Coexistence, Only Reports Oppression and Apartheid (Kweansmom)

A guest post from Kweansmom.

Linda Sarsour, outspoken Palestinian-American activist, never has anything good to say about Israel, calling it an oppressive occupier and an apartheid state. Yet during a recent visit to her relatives on the West Bank, she also spent some time in pre-1967 Israel and visited one of its most ethnically and religiously diverse cities, Haifa. Is it any wonder she was silent about it? 

According to publicly available social media posts from others in her touring group, Linda Sarsour walked along Rehov Yefe Nof (literally, the Street with the Beautiful View) from where she could view the Haifa Bay  and almost all of Haifa itself. The view includes the spectacular Bahai Gardens and the spiritual center of the Bahai faith. The Bahai sect originated in Iran, where it is persecuted, but in Israel, the Bahai enjoy full freedom of religion.  Naturally, this fact doesn’t fit in with Sarsour’s “Jewish Supremacy” explanation of Israel’s founding, so she’ll never admit that she personally witnessed it. 

Ms. Sarsour also took a boat tour near the port of Acre. Both Acre and Haifa are mixed ethnically and religiously, having a significant non-Jewish population.  She might even have seen or heard about the University of Haifa, whose student body and faculty about 40% Israeli Arab. Also in Haifa is the Technion, where Arab Israeli student populations have  tripled in the past two decades thanks to active campaigns to increase Arab participation and graduation. But facts like these don’t support her “apartheid” narrative, so she left them out of her public posts. 

 Ms. Sarsour spent most of her time during her recent trip in the Palestinian Territories of the West Bank, where by her own admission she saw that her family and friends are free to practice their religion, commemorate their heroes and celebrate their happy family occasions.  That’s not to say that Palestinians in the West Bank experience no hardship, but her narrative contains no nuance about who is responsible for it. In her telling, Palestinian joy is only because of their “resilience” and Palestinian suffering is only due to Israeli “oppression”.  There is no terrorism, only “resistance”, and Palestinian leaders have no agency.

Ms. Sarsour was very impressed by the presence of signs posted on trees in Palestinian towns reminding passersby to say blessings upon the Prophet Mohammed. It made me wonder what the street signs would say in her utopian vision of a binational state for all citizens of Palestine which she hopes will one day replace Israel. Will Palestine respect all religions, as Israel does? Or will it depend on whether “public order and public morals” are jeopardized, as written in the Constitution of Palestine? 

A short time after she returned to the US from the PA, she proudly went to speak at a conference in Turkey, which has been occupying Northern Cyprus for nearly 50 years. Apparently occupation is only bad if Israel is doing it. For a comprehensive analysis of the human rights double standard for Israel vs. Turkey, see Elder of Ziyon’s excellent essay on that topic. 

When I first posted on Twitter that Ms. Sarsour was in Israel, some people responded that they shouldn’t have let her in. And I’ll admit, I used to think that Israel was right to keep BDS activists out of the country. But despite her best efforts, Linda Sarsour got to see with her own eyes that Israel isn’t the hateful, racist country she likes to say it is. Despite her attempt to keep her visit a secret, a few telling photographs were leaked. So maybe it’s for the best if the haters are allowed in to the country and given the opportunity to witness the truth.  Maybe one day she and others like her will have to publicly admit what their own eyes have seen.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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16th century Islamic history book describes the strong Jewish attachment to Jerusalem

Zubdat-al Tawarikh is a 16th century Islamic history book that is filled with color, miniature illustrations. It is in the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul.

Here is one of its illustrations, depicting Jonah, Ezra and Jeremiah.

The description of this artwork shows that Muslims not only were well aware of the Jewish ties to Jerusalem, but they created legends about how strong they are:

Still another miniature depicts the stories of three different prophets (fig. 9). In the upper section is found the story of Jonah and the fish. Jonah, the text tells tried to avoid his mission by sailing away but was caught by a violent storm. He was then swallowed by a fish and after three days left on shore. In the miniature Prophet Jonah is shown trying to hide nis nakedness in the midst of bushes. Below him is a brook full of brightly colored fish. On the upper left hand corner, another prophet is represented. Sitting among trees and animals according, to the text, Prophet Jeremiah, grieving over the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylonians, hid in a wild forest. A similar story is narrated in the text for Prophet Uzeyr [Ezra], depicted in the lower section of the miniatures, who also grieved over the destruction of the Holy City but his grief was so deep that God took his soul and gave him life, years after Jerusalem was reconstructed. The building on the lower right hand corner undoubtedly symbolises the rebuilt city of Jerusalem, yet it is the accurate rendering of a typical sixteenth century Ottoman building with a dome and an arched portico. The ruins of the once destroyed city, on the other hand, are indicated by broken arches and columns on the left.

Before the 20th century, no Muslim doubted that Jerusalem has a Jewish history. The idea that Jerusalem has nothing to do with Judaism - which was one of the themes of a speech by Mahmoud Abbas yesterday - is just one of many Palestinian lies that is widely believed by dint of repetition. 

See also here for another early Muslim work about the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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The other Turkish occupation

Everyone knows about Turkeys' occupation of Northern Cyprus. 

But Turkey also occupied large swaths of territory in northern Syria, and the people who scream about the evil of Israeli "occupation" are silent.

Not only that, but Turkey is threatening to invade Syria, and - again - the people who are upset about countries like Russia invading their neighbors seem to not have much of a problem with this.

From AP:

Turkey's president told journalists that Ankara remains committed to rooting out a Syrian Kurdish militia from northern Syria.

"Like I always say, we'll come down on them suddenly one night. And we must," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on his plane following his Saturday visit to Azerbaijan, according to daily Hurriyet newspaper and other media.

Without giving a specific timeline, Erdogan said that Turkey would launch a cross-border operation against the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, which it considers a terrorist group linked to an outlawed Kurdish group that has led an insurgency against Turkey since 1984. That conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, PKK, has killed tens of thousands of people.

However, the YPG forms the backbone of U.S.-led forces in the fight against the Islamic State group. American support for the group has infuriated Ankara and remains a major issue in their relations.

Ankara has launched four cross-border operations into Syria since 2016 and controls some territories in the north with the goal of pushing away the YPG and establishing a 30-kilometer (19-mile) deep safe zone where Erdogan hopes to "voluntarily" return Syrian refugees.

In 2019, an incursion into northeast Syria against the YPG drew widespread international condemnation, prompting Finland, Sweden and others to restrict arms sales to Turkey. Now Turkey is blocking the two Nordic countries' historic bid to join NATO because of the weapons ban and their alleged support for the Kurdish groups.   

Oh, and Turkey is building settlements, too, to move Syrian refugees to areas under its control 

 The media seems strangely uninterested. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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03/14 Links Pt2: Amnesty International admits – it wants the destruction of Israel; Netanyahu says it’s ‘absurd’ Iran nuclear talks ongoing after Erbil attack

From Ian:

David Collier: Amnesty International admits – it wants the destruction of Israel

Tokenising Jews, silencing their voice
We are left with O’Brien sitting in his ivory tower talking about Jews. He says he knows what Jews think. He disagrees with surveys that suggest he may be wrong. O’Brien clearly thinks he knows Jews better than they know themselves. British Jews know this antisemitic feature of the hard-left all too well. We dealt with it as it ran rampant through the Labour Party. People telling Jews that they knew better than the Jews, what being Jewish was about.

Since when was it in Amnesty’s remit to cast aside surveys of American Jews and suggest that Amnesty know better?

Like many, O’Brien does not understand ‘Jews’ at all. I am sure he has one or two Jewish friends. People, with one foot already outside of the community who have turned their ‘Jewishness’ into something abstract and meaningless. Just as the Corbynites hid behind fringe hate groups like Jewish Voice for Labour, Amnesty have found their ‘acceptable’ Jews now too.

But Jews won’t be told by naive fools such as O’Brien what they do or do not want. We will reject Amnesty’s blatant antisemitism. The Jewish people were stateless for long enough. We know all too well how high the price can be for political impotence. And as we look at Ukraine – it is worth reminding ourselves of the reality of the world that we live in. The world needs a Jewish state that is independent and capable of defending itself. We need Israel. This is not up for debate.

Seeking the destruction of Israel
So now we know for sure. Amnesty International is seeking the destruction of Israel. O’Brien has his vision. He calls it a ‘Jewish safe space’. He says Israel should not exist as ‘a Jewish state’. We recognise this terminology. It is the same language that BDS uses. With Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran all making genocidal threats, O’Brien is trying to convince Jews they live in ‘Switzerland’.

He has the same problem many on the left do. He sees Jews as white and privileged and he sees Palestinians as ‘brown’ and gives them no agency. Rather than viewing the Islamist need for imperial domination as the problem, he sees the tiny Jewish safe haven as being the cause of the conflict. There is no point looking for logic, truth or consistency in this. It is the same incoherent modern leftist swamp in which antisemitism thrives.

The bottom line is this. Amnesty seeks the destruction of Israel. They want a world without an independent state for the Jewish people. They have clearly placed this at the top of their ideological wish list. There is no argument anymore. Amnesty International are as antisemitic as they come.

JPost Editorial: Amnesty International's report on Israel is full of distortions and lies

In the US, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) called the report “a gross mischaracterization of Israel, its history and its values.” State Department spokesperson Ned Price warned against applying double standards to Israel.

Most Jewish organizations also rejected the report. But O’Brien, who is not Jewish, obviously trusts his gut instinct more. He also seems to be hoping that by “changing the conversation” and repeating the apartheid lie enough times, he can create new facts.

The event is the first in a series hosted by the WNDC that will explore “Palestine past, present and future.” Israel’s own ancient past, its successful present and its future as the Jewish state is of less importance to the group.

In a separate story published over the weekend, JTA revealed that the environmental Sierra Club NGO has canceled its scheduled trips to Israel in response to pressure from progressive and anti-Zionist groups after activists alleged the organization was “greenwashing the conflict” and “providing legitimacy to the Israeli state, which is engaged in apartheid against the Palestinian people,” according to an email seen by the news agency.

This is another example of what happens when the apartheid libel is deliberately spread.

Such efforts don’t only harm Israel’s image, they cause once respected organizations to lose their credibility and standing. Above all, they do absolutely nothing to promote peace or help the Palestinians.

By criminalizing Israel and ignoring Palestinian anti-normalization and terrorism, these organizations and the progressive activists are encouraging more rejectionism and more terror.

The Palestinian Authority will see no reason to make even basic moves to peace as long as it believes it can erase Israel with progressive, Western support. The lies themselves fuel further attacks, both on Israelis and on Jews and Jewish targets around the world. The apartheid libel is not only a lie, it is a dangerous one.

Because it’s not like there’s an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Ukraine or anything, so @hrw is back to their favorite topic - Jew bashing. Of course taking everything out of context, to engage in some not-so-mild misinformation and bigotry. https://t.co/5iPbRpQYPN

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) March 14, 2022

Netanyahu: New Nuclear Agreement Will Give the Ayatollahs a Nuclear Arsenal

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu launched a scathing attack on world powers who are continuing to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran — even after the Islamic Republic fired missiles toward the US consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan.

In video messages posted to social media in both Hebrew and English on Sunday evening — addressed to Israeli and American citizens, respectively — the former prime minister said it was “absurd” for world powers to continue to negotiate in Vienna with Tehran.

“The desperate rush to sign this flawed nuclear agreement with Iran is not only absurd, it’s downright dangerous,” Netanyahu stated in his English video, posted with the caption: “Every American family should watch this video.”

“Yesterday, Iran fired missiles in the vicinity of the American consulate in Iraq, and the US continues to charge ahead, along with the other powers, to sign a nuclear agreement that will give the ayatollahs a nuclear arsenal,” Netanyahu charged.

“It would also relieve sanctions and give them hundreds of billions of dollars in order to continue the terror that they waged yesterday and wage every day throughout the Middle East and the world,” he said. “This agreement is even worse than its predecessor, because in three years’ time, under this agreement, Iran will be a threshold nuclear state. It will have enough enriched uranium to create dozens and dozens of nuclear bombs and it will have the ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] to deliver them to any place in the United States.”

The final details of the burgeoning nuclear deal between Iran and world powers have yet to be revealed, and diplomats involved have said that some remaining elements are still being negotiated. It was not immediately clear which documents or intelligence Netanyahu was basing his claims on.

Every American family should watch this video. pic.twitter.com/BVo5ZFJwKk

— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) March 13, 2022

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Maybe NOW the world will have a problem with Turkey occupying Northern Cyprus

From MiddleEast-in-24.com:

A number of rabbis met today (Wednesday) with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his palace in Ankara, and discussed with him a number of issues related to Jewish life in the country and around the world. The meeting was attended by many rabbis, led by Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Berl Lazar. The person who was supposed to arrive was also the Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who was eventually forced not to arrive because Turkey is a red state.

The rabbis discussed with Erdogan and then ate a sumptuous dinner. According to the organizers of the meeting, this is the first time that a strictly kosher meal is served in Erdogan’s palace.

Erdogan even surprised when he promised to approve the construction, for the first time ever, of a synagogue in northern Cyprus – a territory occupied by Turkey a few decades ago, unrecognized by world nations and having Chabad activities. The Turkish president even stepped in when he said he hoped the synagogue will be inaugurated in about a year. Today there is an improvised and semi-secret prayer house in the Chabad house in the Turkish half of the island, and now the Turkish president has promised to take active action to establish a synagogue there.

Turkey has been building settlements on occupied territory for decades, and it is met with a shrug from the same world leaders who say that Jews building houses in disputed territories are guilty of war crimes.

But now that Erdogan is saying that he is building a synagogue for Jews in occupied territory, that might be enough to get the world upset for the first time at Turkey. 

(h/t YMedad)

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Gays, Kurds not protected in Turkish hate-crimes draft bill

From Hurriyet Daily News:

A draft presented to the Cabinet concerning hate crimes does not include provisions for those targeted because of their sexual orientation or ethnic identity.

The draft, which designates “hate and prejudice” as an aggravation cause for crimes, was presented as one of the reforms that government vowed to implement as part of its “democracy package.”

However, hate and prejudice crimes are defined in the draft as “crimes committed based on someone’s or some group’s language, race, nationality, skin color, gender, disability, political views, philosophical beliefs or religion,” excluding those based on ethnicity and sexual orientation, different to many European countries.

With the exclusion of ethnicity as a characteristic that could be basis of a hate crime, assaults against ethnic minorities in Turkey that don’t have a nation recognized by the United Nations would be charged with a regular punishment. For example, if an Armenian person in Turkey is targeted for being an Armenian, the crime committed against them will be regarded as a hate crime and whatever the crime is, its penalty would be aggravated.

On the hand, the largest ethnic minority in Turkey, Kurds, is not included in the regulation, as it does not have a U.N.-recognized country.

Although gender is included, the same is true for gays and lesbians, as attacking a person based on their sexual orientation is not regarded as a hate or prejudice crime, according to the draft.

Sounds like EU material, no?

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The EU is funding illegal settlers! (Illegal Turkish settlers, that is.)

From Wikipedia:

The demographic character of Northern Cyprus changed after the Turkish invasion in 1974 and especially during the last 10–15 years. The TRNC census carried out in April 2006 showed that out of a total population of 256,644 in Northern Cyprus, 132,635, or 52%, were Turkish Cypriots in the sense that they were born in Cyprus of at least one Cyprus-born parent (for 120,007 of these both parents were Cyprus-born). In addition, 43,062 TRNC citizens (17%) had at least one non-Cypriot Turkish-born parent, 2,334 TRNC citizens (1%) had parents born in other countries, 70,525 residents (27%) had Turkish citizenship, and 8,088 (3%) were citizens of other countries (mainly UK, Bulgaria, and Iran). Based on these census data, it can be argued that 113,687 TRNC residents, or 44% of the population, are not Turkish Cypriots properly speaking, but are in fact "Turkish immigrants" or "Turkish settlers" from Anatolia. Alternative sources suggest that there are 146,122 Turkish settlers from Anatolia in TRNC (2007 figures) and that the Turkish Cypriots in Northern Cyprus are today outnumbered by the Turkish settlers, contrary to the picture presented by the 2006 TRNC census.

Almost one-third of the Turkish settlers in Northern Cyprus have been granted TRNC citizenship by the authorities of Northern Cyprus and have thus been naturalized. Settlement in Northern Cyprus, especially if accompanied by naturalization, is a violation to the Geneva Conventions Protocol of 1977, since the Turkish occupation has been declared illegal by the UN. The Republic of Cyprus government regards these Turkish immigrants as "illegal settlers" and does not include them in the population estimates for the entire island published by the Republic of Cyprus Statistical Service.[5]

So given that roughly half of the residents of northern Cyprus are illegal settlers, and the land is under illegal occupation by Turkey, certainly the EU would never consider investing in the illegal occupation, right?

Not really. Here is a glossy brochure from the EU that brags about all of the projects it is proudly sponsoring there:

Nowhere in this brochure, nor in the 2006 EU resolution to help the Turkish Cypriots, is any distincton made between the natives and the illegal settlers - all of them benefit equally from the EU programs to help the environment, co-existence, farming, education, infrastructure and so forth.

By any measure, the EU is funding the Turkish settlement enterprise.

Eugene Kontorovich describes the hypocrisy in a JPost op-ed (in yesterday's linkdump)

Under guidelines prepared earlier this summer, euros would not be allowed to go to Israeli entities located cross the Green Line – or to those that have any operations there. All Israeli entities applying for funding would have to submit a declaration that they do not have such operations.

Europe claims that such a move – unparalleled in its dealings with any other country – is mandated by international law. The EU does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the territories, and thus has an obligation to keep its money from going there. Those who celebrated the move said that Israel is finally paying the international price for its occupation.

Yet it turns out that despite the guidelines, the EU still knowingly and purposefully provides substantial direct financial assistance to settlements in occupied territory – in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, that is. So the EU funds the occupation of an EU member state. Turkey’s invasion and occupation of Cyprus in 1974 was condemned the UN Security Council, and the EU’s official policy is that the Turkish occupation is illegitimate, and Turkey must completely withdraw. The EU does not recognize the Turkish government in Northern Cyprus.

Nonetheless, the EU maintains an entire separate program to direct funds to Northern Cyprus.
...
Projects include study abroad scholarships for students at the numerous Northern Cyprus universities (imagine such funding for students at Ariel University!); developing and diversifying the private sector through grants to small and medium- sized businesses; various kinds of infrastructure improvements (telecom upgrades, traffic safety, waste disposal); community development grants, funding to upgrade “cultural heritage” sites, and so forth. They even put on a concert.

The program basically gives grants to the Turkish business and private entities, and builds the infrastructure of the occupying government. The EU is doing exactly what its claims, in the settlement guidelines, international law prohibits.

The relevant EU resolutions and reports make no mention of any international legal question about such funding.

There are real differences between the EU’s funding policies toward Turkey’s occupied territories and Israel’s territories: the former is a much starker contradiction of the principles the Europeans proclaim to uphold. The settlement guidelines aim to regulate groups based in Israel proper, and goes out of its way to make sure no money might be incidentally spent in the West Bank (or Golan or, oddly, Gaza). Yet the Northern Cyprus project is not simply an outgrowth of standing arrangements with Turkey or Cyprus, but rather a particular funding program that by definition funds 100% occupation activities.

Indeed, the EU maintains an office in Northern Cyprus to oversee its over “1000 grant contracts...to NGOs, SMEs, farmers, rural communities, schools and students,” according to an EU report.

This office liaises directly with the Turkish occupation regime in the territory.

Hmmmm. One standard for Israel, another for everyone else. Sounds very familiar.

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Turkish police beat, threaten to rape detainees

From Hurriyet Daily News, during the Gezi demonstrations, but I don't recall seeing it anywhere:

What you will read below is extremely disturbing. It is the firsthand impressions of a Boğaziçi (Bosphorus) University student who was detained by police in connection with the Gezi Park incidents in Istanbul.

The entry you will read below came through the Internet. It was on the Facebook page of the person narrating. It was also in Hürriyet columnist Yalçın Bayer’s web version of his column. It was sent to Yalçın Bayer by Professor Işık Aytaç, again from Bosphorus University, as the account of her student Erkan Yolalan, who shared his story on his Facebook page....

“Last night (June 3, 2013) around 9 p.m. I was detained in Beşiktaş, at traffic lights on Barbaros Avenue. I was not involved in any action like swearing or throwing stones. They took me in bending my arm the moment they saw me. Some friends of mine saw on TV how I was taken into custody. Then hell began.

“After crossing the lights in the direction of the seaside, while I was at the edge of the platform where the IETT bus stops are at the seaside, any policeman who was there and any riot police squad member (çevik kuvvet) who saw me started kicking and punching me. For about 100-150 meters, in other words, all the way to the Kadıköy ferry station, whoever was present there was kicking and punching. Insults and curses such as ‘Are you the ones to save this country, mother f***, sons of ****,’ never ended. I could not count how many people hit me before I reached the detention bus.

“Just as I was taken near the buses, a few policemen called from behind a bus, ‘Bring him here.’ They took me behind the bus and started kicking and punching me there. I learned later that because of the cameras they took me behind the bus to beat me.

“When I was inside the detention bus (İETT) the lights were out, and I heard a girl’s voice begging inside the bus: ‘I did not do anything, sir.’ I could not even see who was hitting me as I was taken inside the bus and after I was in the bus. The only thing I was able to do in the dark was to cover my head. Curses and insults continued. I sat. Everyone who was passing near me was hitting me. I got up and went to a corner. They wanted me to take a seat again. I told them everyone who passed by was hitting me when I was seated.

They again swore, slapped and punched me and made me sit.

“They were hitting the girl and throttling her. A civilian policeman whose name is İsmail said exactly this to the girl, ‘I will bend you over and f*** you right now.’ [He – Erkan Yolalan- later added that this policeman İsmail also said, “Now that it is dark and the lights are off I will ****”]

“And the response of the girl was heartbreaking. With a low voice, she could only say ‘Yes, sir.’

“And next, we, the three people present at the bus, were forced to shout: ‘I love the Turkish police. I love my country.’ They made us yell this again and again ordered us to make it ‘louder, louder.’ The insults and beating did not come to an end.

“The atmosphere seemed a bit calmer, but this time they brought another young person. The guy’s nose was broken. When I asked him why he didn’t protect his face, he told me ‘Two people held me by force and a third person punched my nose three times.’ From time to time there were others brought in.

“A young person named Mustafa from Bahçeşehir University was brought then. Twenty policemen from the riot squad had attacked him, and he looked too weak even to stand up. Slapping and punching him near the detention bus was not enough for them, they hit his head with a helmet. That was not enough either, they hit his head on the bus window. They took him inside the bus while continuously hitting him. His hands were cuffed from behind; his head was bleeding; they made him sit on the floor.
[...]

“Once we were at the police station, an army of lawyers was waiting for us. And the policemen now were talking to us on polite terms.

The columnist goes on to predict what will happen:

Note to international readers: Do you know what will happen? This person Erkan will be terrorized with scores of lawsuits filed against him by the policemen in question, all testifying that he attacked them first. The public prosecutor will process these cases much faster, even before the cases against them begin. Collecting the evidence will take ages. The guy and all the others on that detention bus and any others testifying for him will be found guilty and will be given jail sentences. Earmark this paragraph for future reference.

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So what the hell was Erdogan talking about?

This news is all over Israeli and Jewish news media today; here's the version from JTA:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel was behind last month’s military coup in Egypt.

Erdogan told a meeting of the provincial chairs of his ruling Justice and Development, or AKP, party that he has evidence that Israel was involved in the July 3 overthrow of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, the Turkish Hurriyet news service reported.

“Who is behind this? Israel. We have evidence,” the prime minister said, according to Hurriyet.

He cited as proof a statement by a French intellectual he identified as Jewish, who told the Israeli justice minister during a visit to France before Egypt’s 2011 elections, “The Muslim Brotherhood will not be in power even if they win the elections. Because democracy is not the ballot box,” Hurriyet reported.

Who is this "French Jewish intellectual"?

Almost certainly it is Bernard-Henri Lévy, the rock-star philosopher of France.

Here is what he wrote in the Huffington Post after the Egyptian elections:

Let's not tell ourselves any stories.

The Muslim Brotherhood, whose candidate just won the presidential election in Egypt, is not a democratic organization.

They were not at Tahrir Square, in Cairo, at the beginning of the revolution.

Engaged in a curious game where, as long as they were left free to do their (economic, financial and other) trafficking, the army had already handed over an entire part of the prerogatives (concerning health and education, for example) that are normally those of a State, they began by doing everything they could to curb the movement.

I remember, on February 20th, at their headquarters in El-Malek El-Saleh street, an edifying encounter with Saad Al-Hoseiny, a member of the strategic leadership of the Brotherhood, whose attitude towards the insurgent peoples' demands for rights and liberty was, to say the least, one of prudence, if not ambivalence or even hostility.

Worse, we can never be reminded enough that the organization whose pale apparatchik is in the process of acceding to the leadership of the largest Arab nation was born in the late '20s as a totalitarian sect, inspired by Naziism, one whose founder, Hassan Al-Banna, never neglected an occasion to inscribe Adolf Hitler after Saladin, Abu Bakr or Abdelaziz al-Saoud in the lineage of "reformers" whose "patience, firmness, wisdom and obstination" had guided humanity.

...Scarcely more than a quarter of registered voters adhere to the president-elect's supposedly "moderate" Islamism.

Better still, there exists today in Egypt a huge "modern party" that, though certainly divided and rife with contradictions, consists of half of the electorate.

Or, even better put, it means that a battle is engaged where there will be, on one side, as usual, the military-Islamist bloc, and on the other, this formerly unheard of bloc that, though disorganized, has not renounced the spirit and the hope of the Tahrir Commune, and no one knows what the outcome of this battle will be.

Revolutions are not events but processes. These processes are long, conflictual, fraught with sudden leaps forward and discouraging retreats. But nothing says that things will not happen in Egypt at this dawn of the 21st century as they have in other great countries, heirs of immense civilizations that have taken time to give birth to their respective futures -- France, for example, where we had to pass through the Terror, the counter-Terror, two Empires and a Commune crushed in blood before we saw the birth of the Republic, or these countries that have emerged from a long communist coma and are groping towards a democracy whose first stage will have been the return to power, at the voting booth, of this or that Communist Party, or, worse, the appearance of a chimera named Putin, synonym of crimes that are right in line with those of the red czars of the last century.

Will we regret the fall of the Wall because of the war in Chechnya? 1789 and the glorious Gironde because of the massacres of September? No, of course not. And that is why the sombre lesson coming, these days, from Cairo does not make me regret the breath of spring of Tahrir. The promise is still alive. The struggle continues.

Levy's antipathy towards the Islamists is obvious, and almost certainly Erdogan is twisting his words (not to mention that the idea that a conversation between Levy and an Israeli official is an absurd proof of Israeli actions) but Levy believes that revolutions are not one-time moments but a continuous, time-consuming process,  and that the process includes elections but is not exclusive to them.

Indeed, he seems to be almost prophetic about the current events in Egypt in this June 2012 article.

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