Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USA. Show all posts

Sunday, July 17, 2022

  • Sunday, July 17, 2022
  • Elder of Ziyon
  • , ,
The Human Rights Watch 2021 World Report describes the human rights situation, as they see it, in every country.

The number of pages allocated to each country is a rough approximation of which countries HRW considers their top priorities.

And the country with the most pages, by far, is....The United States.

This chart shows a very bizarre idea of where the top human rights problems worldwide are:


Western democracies are rated often worse than states with the most serious human rights issues. 

Here's the entire list so you can see for yourself how twisted HRW's priorities are.

COUNTRIES Pages
United States 18
China 14
Russia 13
Brazil 12
European Union 12
India 12
Colombia  11
Mexico  11
Syria  11
Venezuela  11
Egypt  10
Israel/Palestine  10
Myanmar  10
Afghanistan 9
Argentina 9
Australia  9
Iran 9
Peru  9
Bangladesh 8
Belarus  8
Bolivia  8
Canada  8
Cuba  8
Ecuador 8
El Salvador  8
France  8
Guinea 8
Haiti  8
Honduras  8
Iraq 8
Japan  8
Kyrgyzstan  8
Libya 8
Nigeria 8
Pakistan  8
Thailand 8
Turkey 8
United Kingdom  8
Yemen 8
Armenia  7
Azerbaijan  7
Chile 7
Germany  7
Greece  7
Guatemala  7
Indonesia 7
Kazakhstan  7
Lebanon  7
Maldives  7
Morocco 7
Nepal 7
Nicaragua  7
North Korea 7
Saudi Arabia  7
Somalia  7
South Sudan 7
Spain  7
Sudan 7
Turkmenistan  7
Ukraine 7
Uzbekistan  7
Algeria 6
Bahrain 6
Burkina Faso  6
Burundi  6
Cambodia 6
Cameroon 6
Eritrea  6
Ethiopia  6
Georgia  6
Italy  6
Jordan  6
Kenya  6
Malaysia  6
Mali  6
Papua New Guinea  6
Philippines  6
Poland  6
Qatar 6
Rwanda 6
Tajikistan 6
United Arab Emirates 6
Vietnam 6
Bosnia and Herzegovina  5
Central African Republic 5
Democratic Republic of Congo 5
Hungary  5
Kuwait  5
Mauritania  5
Mozambique  5
Singapore  5
South Africa  5
South Korea 5
Sri Lanka 5
Uganda 5
Zimbabwe  5
Angola  4
Eswatini  4
Kosovo 4
Oman  4
Serbia  4
Tunisia 4







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

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Thursday, July 14, 2022


Some reactions to the Jerusalem Declaration from terror groups:
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine called it "an open invitation to ignite regional wars in the region...[it brings] destruction  and scourge, under the pretext of Israel's defense of itself.

"It aspires to fully control our region's energy wealth, and drag it into alliances and regional and continental wars. It serves only the imperialist interests of the United States.

"It will drown our region in seas of blood, with many problems such as impoverishment, starvation, waste of wealth and mass destruction."

They forgot to mention the locusts.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said "it is a continuation of the aggression against the Palestinian people and their national rights and the release of the Zionist entity's hand in expanding and deepening its colonial project in Palestine, and extending outwards."

The Palestinian Authority said that "the threats launched by US President Joe Biden in occupied Jerusalem will fall via the resistance and steadfastness of our people and the peoples of the region and the forces of resistance. The Palestinian people are the ones who determine their fate, not the colonialist Biden and his Zionist partners." 

The moderate PA then "called for escalating all forms of resistance....against aggressive colonial and Zionist policies" which is a lightly veiled call for terror attacks.

Hamas said that "Biden's visit confirmed that Washington is a direct partner in the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people....Attempts to legitimize the occupation and integrate it in the region will be destroyed on the rock of the steadfastness of the Palestinian people."

Islamic Jihad said, "We have to sharpen our resolve, intensify our resistance, and impose new facts on the ground. Only then can we achieve the minimum of what we aspire to."

All of this sounds like a ringing endorsement to me!






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!

 

 

Tuesday, July 12, 2022


From Naharnet:
Israel was mulling the possibility of filing a U.N. complaint against Lebanon over the drones that Hezbollah sent towards the Karish gas field, but it later shelved the idea at Washington’s request, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Israel refrained from filing the complaint “after the pressures of U.S. Ambassador Dorothy Shea on the Lebanese premier managed to secure a stance shirking responsibility in an official (Lebanese) statement,” al-Akhbar added, noting that the U.S. pressures were also aimed at avoiding any impact on U.S. President Joe Biden’s visit to the region.

Not sure how reliable Al Akhbar is, since Israel did  write a letter of complaint today. So the question is - was there US pressure?

“The Americans are exerting pressures on a group of Lebanese politicians to avoid any negative development that might affect the U.S. mediator’s tour, and they are also requesting the announcement of positive news about an imminent solution for the demarcation file in order to make use of that in the pacification efforts,” informed sources told the daily.
If true, does Israel get anything in return for acquiescing to US demands?  It doesn't seem so.

The article goes on to say that there may be a horse trade in the works to help the negotiations over the maritime demarcation line between Israel and Lebanon:

Al-Akhbar added, citing deliberately “leaked” media reports, that “the demarcation file has entered an advanced new stage.”

“Reports are saying that the Israel enemy does not mind granting Lebanon the entire Qana field without financial compensations, following a U.S. endeavor in this regard,” the newspaper said.

“Discussions are now revolving around a compensative maritime area that would be granted in return for giving up the entire field,” al-Akhbar added.

“This area is related to the demarcation of lines, which requires a zigzag line granting Israel a maritime area after adding the field to (Lebanon’s) exclusive economic zone,” the newspaper quoted the sources as saying.



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!

 

 

Monday, July 04, 2022


How can these two facts be both true?
After an extremely detailed forensic analysis, independent, third-party examiners, as part of a process overseen by the U.S. Security Coordinator (USSC), could not reach a definitive conclusion regarding the origin of the bullet that killed Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. Ballistic experts determined the bullet was badly damaged, which prevented a clear conclusion.

In addition to the forensic and ballistic analysis, the USSC was granted full access to both Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Palestinian Authority (PA) investigations over the last several weeks. By summarizing both investigations, the USSC concluded that gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh.  The USSC found no reason to believe that this was intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances during an IDF-led military operation against factions of Palestinian Islamic Jihad on May 11, 2022, in Jenin, which followed a series of terrorist attacks in Israel.
What actual evidence is this conclusion based on? Certainly the PA didn't provide any. In fact, so far, there has not been a single bit of evidence that the IDF was responsible, at least not publicly released, outside the admission that they shot in her general direction a handful of times. 

This appears to be less about finding out the truth and more about making the incident go away. Biden is coming to Israel and right now, both Israel and the US want to make sure that there aren't any ugly incidents. This way they don't rile up the Palestinians too much, and the White House can tell the 24 senators who demanded an investigation that it was done as best as possible, and the White House also takes some of the heat off Israel by saying it wasn't done intentionally.

The actual truth? The likelihood that Palestinian terrorists killed Shireen Abu Akleh? Those just get in the way of the upcoming trip. 

So the truth is buried.





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!

 

 

Tuesday, June 28, 2022




On June 15, 2021, the Biden administration released the first U.S. National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.

It was created as a response to the January 6 events in Washington, and it is mostly concerned with the threats of white supremacist terrorists, with a smattering of other potential ideologies:

According to this assessment, one key aspect of today’s domestic terrorism threat emerges from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists and networks whose racial, ethnic, or religious hatred leads them toward violence, as well as those whom they encourage to take violent action. These actors have different motivations, but many focus their violence towards the same segment or segments of the American community, whether persons of color, immigrants, Jews, Muslims, other religious minorities, women and girls, LGBTQI+ individuals, or others. Their insistence on violence can, at times, be explicit. It also can, at times, be less explicit, lurking in ideologies rooted in a perception of the superiority of the white race that call for violence in furtherance of perverse and abhorrent notions of racial “purity” or “cleansing.”

 Another key component of the threat comes from anti–government or anti–authority violent extremists. This significant component of today’s threat includes self–proclaimed “militias” and militia violent extremists who take steps to violently resist government authority or facilitate the overthrow of the U.S. Government based on perceived overreach; anarchist violent extremists, who violently oppose all forms of capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions, which they perceive as harmful to society; sovereign citizen violent extremists, who believe they are immune from government authority and laws; or any other National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism 9 individual or group who engages in violence – or incites imminent violence – in opposition to legislative, regulatory, or other actions taken by the government. Other domestic terrorists may be motivated to violence by single–issue ideologies related to abortion–, animal rights–, environmental–, or involuntary celibate–violent extremism, as well as other grievances – or a combination of ideological influences. In some cases, individuals may develop their own idiosyncratic justifications for violence that defy ready categorization.
Nowhere in this document does it discuss any threat from Islamic terrorists.

It doesn't even mention 9/11 once. 

This is frightening. Federal authorities have foiled many attacks from Muslim extremists over the past two decades, both against Jewish targets and against governmental targets. 

The majority of unsuccessful terrorist attacks foiled by the FBI and others in this Wikipedia page were motivated by Islamist ideology. And there have been hundreds of Islamist terror attacks worldwide in recent years.

It is mind boggling that given the history of Islamist terror attack attempts over the past two decades, the White House implictly declares that this is no longer a problem that deserves strategic thinking - and possibly resources.

Many lives have been saved by US intelligence services and police monitoring for domestic Islamist terrorists. No one can doubt that the desire from both ISIS-style groups and Iranian-aligned terror groups to kill Americans and specifically Jewish targets has not abated. 

It is difficult to escape the conclusion that this national strategy is partially motivated by political factors. American lives, and American Jewish lives, should not be sacrificed on the altar of political correctness - but this appears to be exactly what is in danger of happening.

(h/t JM Phelps)




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!

 

 

As we've been reporting, the Trump decision weeks before his term ended to include Israel in Centcom has been paying dividends, as military cooperation between Israel and Arab states that it is not officially at peace with has been increasing dramatically. Israeli military leaders secretly met with their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan in March under the aegis of Centcom.

Iran has now officially responded to the news, and they seem unhappy.

 The chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces denounced the Zionist regime’s participation in the US Central Command’s military activities and war games as a source of threat to the region, which he said would definitely trigger a reaction from Iran.
[Monday,] Major General Mohammad Hossein Baqeri slammed the Zionist regime as the root cause of interventions and instability in the region.

The Israeli regime has hatched plots in order to establish contacts with regional countries and achieve its interventionist objectives, the top Iranian commander warned.

He also cautioned that the Zionist regime’s membership in the CENTCOM (US Central Command) and its move to deploy equipment and participate in the war games would present threats to the region, adding, “We do not tolerate such threats and will definitely react to them.”
Iran's usual response to things like this is to ask Hezbollah or Hamas to start something up that will force an Israeli reaction that would upset the Arab world. But the terror groups have their own political problems - neither the Lebanese nor the Gazans want another war that only ends up hurting them. Syria likewise doesn't have the appetite to start a war with Israel.  Combined with  its economic crisis, Iran's leverage over its terrorist allies is much more limited than it has been. 

This is not to say that Iran cannot destabilize things in the region, but it has had its hands tied much more recently.




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!

 

 

Thursday, June 23, 2022

Should someone tell him what the purpose of a green screen is?


The editor of Ma'an, Nasser Al-Lahham, recently took ill. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas called him up to wish him a full recovery. Ma'an, while independent, is largely aligned with Fatah.

And two recent editorials by al-Lahham are quite insane.

In one rant where he says that all Israeli natural gas is really Palestinian, he starts off saying that Israel is erasing the name "Yafo" (Jaffa) from the map and replacing it with Tel Aviv.

When the Zionist gangs occupied Jaffa in 1948, the name of the city remained Jaffa until now, but Israel continued to expand its settlement construction in Tel Aviv , to the point of saying that it is the city of Tel Aviv in order to cancel the name of the Arab coastal city, which is Jaffa.  
Tel Aviv merged with Jaffa (Yafo) in 1950, and over seven decades later, the official name of the city remains Tel Aviv Yafo.


That's not a very good erasure.

Al-Lahham wrote something even more bizarre recently, claiming there is a "Palestinian curse" that is destroying the United States:

I am convinced that Palestine has a stronger curse than the curse of the Pharaohs. And that everyone who attacked the people of Palestine and their just cause became an example for those who are considered.

And after the United States failed to create any moral or political balance in the world and oppressed the people of Palestine. It began to crumble like dominoes, at the gates of the ancient East.

And after it failed in Jerusalem and embodied its injustice in the Trump deal, the youth tore the pictures of US President Trump and trampled on them with slippers. The era of America's defeat has begun to appear everywhere in the world, in Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Brazil and even Iran.   
Here is an editor of a newspaper, a newspaper that is quoted worldwide and considered moderate - and he thinks that the US is in decline because Palestinian youths ripped up photos of Donald Trump. 

I'd like to say that al-Lahham's mental faculties have been affected by his mystery illness, but he's been writing crazy things for years



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!

 

 

Monday, June 20, 2022




From the Carolina Journal:
A group of N.C. Jewish clergy leaders are calling out the N.C. Democratic Party for anti-Israel resolutions that were considered at the party convention held June 18 in Durham. Calling the resolutions potentially “dangerous.” the clergy members point to the party’s Platform Committee Special Report, which sets a wide range of positions that the state party takes in the upcoming year, including 2022 elections.

The North Carolina Jewish Clergy Association issued a statement on June 17 that criticized Democrats’ resolutions that said Israel violated the human rights of Palestinians, called for an investigation into the alleged killing of a Palestinian-American journalist by Israeli forces, and establishing May 15 as Nakba Remembrance Day, recognizing the destruction of Palestinian villages.

“Of the seven resolutions devoted to foreign affairs, three are focused on criticism of Israel,” said the NCJCA Steering Committee, including Rabbi Judy Schindler, Rabbi Eric Solomon (co-chairs), Rabbi Mark Cohn, Rabbi Lucy Dinner, Rabbi Andy Koren, Cantor Shira Lessek, and Rabbi Batsheva Meiri. “While some of our clergy are sympathetic to some of the claims embedded in the statements, on the main, these resolutions are not thoughtful nor balanced. In short, they contain one-sided representations of the complexities of the decades-long Arab-Israeli conflict.” 
The document is ridiculously anti-Israel, to the point of calling for the destruction of the Jewish state via the fictional "right of return."

It includes:

Forcible Transfer: In which Israel has removed and demolished tens of thousands of Palestinian communities and homes that it refuses to recognize, even though those communities existed there for decades, in order to maximize land available to Jewish communities; by making it exceedingly difficult to remain in certain areas, through blocking building permits and access to utilities such as water, sewage, and electricity, amounting to forcible transfer through a policy of ‘relocation.’

Creation of Separate Reserves and Ghettos: The purposeful end goal of Israeli actions such as expropriation of land and forcible transfer is the fracturing and ghettoization of Palestinian lands. While Palestinians make up about 20% of Israel proper’s population, the vast majority are restricted to only 3% of its land...

Denial of the Right to Leave and Return to Their Country, and the Right to a Nationality: ...In addition to making it difficult for Palestinians to leave Gaza and the West Bank, those wishing to return to their family lands are also faced by near-insurmountable challenges. While Israel gives any Jew, anywhere in the world, the right to immigrate to and become citizens of Israel at any time, even if they settle in occupied East Jerusalem or the West Bank, those Palestinians and their families who were either expelled from Israel in 1948 or fled from fighting in the region after that time are not granted that same right of return. Finally, by both not recognizing Palestine and holding the revocation of residency as a threat above all Palestinians, Israel denies the Palestinians a right to a national identity. By denying this right, Israel subjects all non-Israeli citizen Palestinians to a “state” in which they have no legal protections or rights, even to basic needs like food, water, and shelter, as can be seen in the actions of Israel towards these people; 
The text is riddled with lies, half-truths and purposeful mixing up of different issues to give the worst impression.  Here's a really egregious example accusing Israel of dropping American bombs on civilians just for fun:

WHEREAS, as Israel has shown itself to be either unwilling or unable to address these human rights violations, the United States must ensure that American resources, such as the bombs used without justification on civilian targets this past May...

This is the wholesale hijacking of the NC Democrats by the extreme Left of the party. Many Zionists are concerned about the depth acceptance of the "Squad" mentality in the mainstream of the party, items like this document cement that concern. 

It will be interesting to see the reaction from Zionist Democrats to this extreme anti-Israel document. 



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!

 

 

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

The UN Human Rights Council has released the initial report of the permanent Commission of Inquiry that is designed to delegitimize Israel. It is the only permanent commission of inquiry in the UN.

The commission is headed by Navi Pillay who has pre-judged Israel to be guilty of a host of crimes over the past 15 years before even the pretense of investigation, making her the ideal lead for this kangaroo court.

A consortium of 22 nations, led by the US, signed a letter to oppose the obvious bias of the commission:
Resolution S-30/1 established a COI of open-ended mandate with no sunset clause, end date, or clear limitations connected to the escalation in May 2021. For this reason, many of the Council’s members at the time expressed fundamental concerns when resolution S-30/1 came up for adoption.

To be clear, no one is above scrutiny and it is this Council’s responsibility to promote and protect human rights the world over. We must work to counter impunity and promote accountability on a basis of consistent and universally applied standards.

We believe the nature of the COI established last May is further demonstration of long-standing, disproportionate attention given to Israel in the Council and must stop.

We continue to believe that this long-standing disproportionate scrutiny should end, and that the Council should address all human rights concerns, regardless of country, in an even-handed manner. 

The Palestinian Authority's deputy foreign minister and Palestinian observer to the UN, Ibrahim Khraishi, gave a speech to the UNHRC denouncing the letter - and said that because of this letter, the US should be expelled from the UN Human Rights Council!
There is a joint statement prepared by America with the occupying power inciting against the commission, its report and its work, which exposes the double standards practiced by other countries that demand the necessity of supporting the work of other investigation committees emanating from this council in different parts of the world.

This policy pursued by America, which undermines the legal and human rights system, disqualifies it from being a member of this Council. Therefore, we call on the General Assembly to suspend its membership in the Council.
Yes, the PA is saying that the US is guilty of double standards for opposing the UN's double standards.



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!

 

 

Thursday, June 09, 2022



The US State Department's 2021 Report on International Religious Freedom was recently released. It has quite a large section on Israel, much of it about religious coercion by Orthodox in Israel towards other denominations. 

But one theme on that and the West Bank/Gaza page was seemingly against religious freedom. 

When it discusses Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, the tone of the report is decidedly negative, which is quite strange for a report that is supposed to support freedom and rights for religion:

According to local media, some Jewish groups performed religious acts such as prayers and prostration on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount despite the ban on non-Islamic prayer.  The Israeli government reiterated that overt non-Islamic prayer was not allowed on the grounds of the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount.  NGOs, media, and Jewish Temple Mount advocacy groups continued to report that in practice, police generally allowed discreet non-Muslim prayer on the site.  The news website Al-Monitor reported in October that although the country’s two chief rabbis repeatedly said Jews were not to set foot in the Temple Mount out of concern they could inadvertently step into an area which, in Jewish law, it was forbidden to enter unless one was ritually pure.  In recent years, some Jews had entered the mosque and tried to offer prayers. 

No Jews entered the mosque. The State Department is adopting the absurd recent Palestinian claim that the entire Temple Mount is a mosque. (If it was, then no Muslim would be allowed to wear shoes on the entire complex!)  

In August, the New York Times reported that Rabbi Yehuda Glick, whom the newspaper described as a “right-wing former lawmaker,” led “efforts to change the status quo for years” and said that Glick livestreamed his prayers from the site.  The report said that although the government officially allowed non-Muslims to visit the site each morning on the condition that they did not pray there, “In reality, dozens of Jews now openly pray every day [at the site]… and their Israeli police escorts no longer attempt stop them.”  The New York Times reported that Glick and activists ultimately sought to build a third Jewish Temple on the site of the Dome of the Rock, an idea that Azzam Khatib, the deputy chairman of the Waqf council, said “will lead to a civil war.” 

The same article said that Glick only wanted to build the Third Temple in dialogue with Muslims, not above their objections, and it would be open to all religions.  Both of those facts  should be relevant but the report seems to want to paint the Jews as extremists who want to forcibly take over the Mount. 

According to the Religion News Service, one group known as the Temple Institute hoped to build a third temple where one of the al-Aqsa complex’s three mosques now stands and to reinstate ritual animal sacrifices.  The group’s website reported that it was working with an architect on a design.  In September, al-Monitor reported, “In the past, doing so [praying out loud or making movements of genuflection], could lead to the person being detained and ejected from the site, as Jews are not allowed to pray there.  But more recently, a warning is reportedly more common.  Last July Israel’s Channel 12 filmed Jews praying silently at the site while police officers watched.”  Police continued to screen non-Muslims for religious articles.  Police allowed Jewish male visitors who were visibly wearing a kippah and tzitzit (fringes), and those who wished to enter the site barefoot (in accordance with interpretations of halacha, Jewish religious law) to enter with a police escort.

On October 5, the Jerusalem Magistrate Court ruled that “silent Jewish prayer” on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount did not violate existing police rules on the site.  The ruling was in response to a case involving a 15-day administrative restraining order against a man whom police had removed from the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount on September 29 on grounds that he disturbed public order by engaging in Jewish prayer.  The judge ruled that silent prayer “does not in itself violate police instructions” that prohibit “external and overt” non-Muslim prayer on the site.  Al-Monitor said the Magistrate’s Court’s ruling was “unprecedented” and “seem[ed] to question the status quo that has prevailed over the site.”  The Jerusalem District Court overturned the lower court’s ruling on October 8, ruling that the INP had acted “within reason,” and “the fact that there was someone who observed [him] pray is evidence that his prayer was overt.”  Minister of Public Security Bar-Lev supported the appeal, saying “a change in the status quo will endanger public security and could cause a flare-up.”  The Waqf said the lower court’s ruling was “a flagrant violation” of the complex’s sanctity and a “clear provocation” for Muslims.
This report is framing the Jews who want true religious freedom as fanatics who are somehow limiting Muslim religious freedom. The supposed "status quo," which was by definition antisemitic in that it forbade Jews from prayer, is held up as an ideal.

(h/t Irene)




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!

 

 

Thursday, June 02, 2022



As President Biden prepares for his upcoming trip to Israel, the question of his promise to reopen the US Consulate in Jerusalem to serve the Palestinian population is coming up again.
Last year, Israeli officials suggested that while opening it up in Jerusalem is an affront to the Israeli claim to Jerusalem, they have no problem if the US opens it up in the de facto capital of the Palestinian Authority of Ramallah.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas rejected the idea, saying, "We will only accept a U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state."

But consulates aren't opened in capitals. They are opened in other important cities. Capitals usually host embassies, not consulates.

Meaning that if the Palestinian Authority insists that Jerusalem is their capital, they should insist that a US consulate be opened in Ramallah or Nablus or Hebron, and that eventually - in their hope - an embassy would be opened in Jerusalem.

As usual with Palestinians, facts are not a factor. Everything is about symbolism. Many of their "red lines" are symbolic and have nothing to do with their ostensible demand for a Palestinian state. Jerusalem isn't even mentioned in the PLO charter of 1968 - they created that demand to take Jerusalem away from Jews.  Their insistence on Jerusalem being their capital is a completely different topic than statehood, and any links are imaginary.

And then we read this insanity:

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is considering suspending its recognition of Israel ahead of U.S. President Joe Biden's upcoming visit to Israel, Palestinian sources told Ynet on Thursday.
    
The Palestinian leadership has agreed on a tactic of gradually upping the ante against Jerusalem in a bid to stir international pressure and turn the screws on the White House in order to score lucrative overtures from the Americans.

As part of the measures, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is considering adopting the Palestinian Central Council's decision to suspend its 1994 recognition of Israel until the latter withdraws from territories it seized in the 1967 Six-Day War and recognizes a Palestinian state within their border. Ramallah is also considering suspending security ties with Jerusalem.
Normal countries are penalized for acting against American interests. The Palestinians are not only rewarded for bad behavior - they expect to be rewarded for acting irresponsibly!

The West needs to distinguish between Palestinian demands and reality, and insist that they will not negotiate fantasies.




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!

 

 

Thursday, May 19, 2022

Malki Roth, z"l
Later today, there will be an extensive interview with Arnold Roth on this site by columnist Varda Epstein. Roth is the father of Malki Roth, a 15 year old girl with American citizenship who was one of 15 civilians killed, including six other children and a pregnant American woman, at the Sbarro Restaurant massacre of August 9, 2001.

One of the terrorists who engineered the attack is Ahlam Tamimi, who was released from Israeli prison in 2011 in a prisoner swap and now lives as a celebrity in Jordan.

Even though Jordan has an extradition treaty with the United States it has refused to honor that treaty to have Tamimi tried in the US and brought to justice. 

Arnold Roth, along with his wife Frimet, have been very frustrated these last few days. Last week, Jordan's King abdullah visited the US for the third time since Joe Biden became president. Yet not only was the topic of Ahlam Tamimi not brought up by any US government official, but not one mainstream media outlet even mentioned this ongoing travesty - no questions in any White House or State Department briefings about what the US is doing.

I was reminded of this seeming conspiracy of silence as I read this book review of  Jeffrey Herf's  Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 by Sol Stern in Quilette.

Herf notes that the notorious Nazi collaborator and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was under house arrest in Paris after World War II. Yugoslavia requested extradition of the Mufti to try him for war crimes he committed in the Balkans for the Nazis. 

 French Foreign Ministry documents unearthed by Herf explain why this was never going to happen. A diplomatic memo put the matter quite directly: If the French government complied with the extradition request from Yugoslavia, or indeed from any other allied government, “we would unleash a new wave of hostility against us in all the Arab countries, and would also deprive ourselves of the interesting and fruitful contacts that the Mufti maintains with important figures from the Arab world.”

In June 1946, French security forces guarding the house where Husseini was detained conveniently left the door open and he “escaped” to Egypt. The Mufti was granted asylum by King Farouk and received a rapturous reception upon his return. In Cairo, he was greeted as a conquering hero by the founder of the islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna. The Mufti, al-Banna declared, was a great leader who “challenged an empire and fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”
Doing the right thing takes a back seat to pretending that monsters can be useful, directly or indirectly.

Like the Mufti, Ahlam Tamimi is popular in the Arab world. The US wants to maintain friendly relations with Jordan. Instead of acting like a superpower, giving a message to the world that the US will pursue justice, the Biden administration is continuing the policy of sending hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Jordan to prop up its "moderate" king. 

Like post WWII France, the US has decided that a murderous war criminal is an ally in achieving its foreign policy aims.

There is one significant difference between the Mufti and Ahlam Tamimi, though.
American progressives and leftists who later pushed for Israel’s independence first came together to launch a public campaign to bring the Mufti to justice for his collaboration with the Nazis and for possible war crimes. But Husseini was shielded from prosecution by high-level government officials in the US and France who were determined to protect Western influence in the Arab world. In Washington, the sudden concern for the Mufti’s safety came from the same anti-Zionist faction within the Truman administration that later tried to block the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.
The people fighting for justice in the 1940s were progressives and liberals. The people who are fighting against justice today are progressives and liberals. 

The media in 1946 were aghast at how the allies allowed the Mufti to escape to freedom.


But the media today has erected a wall of silence to protect the murderer of Jews and Americans. 

Even though the Roths and others have tirelessly contacted media outlets and fought for coverage of the Tamimi case, the people who pretend to care so much about "justice" in other contexts have decided to bury this story.

And the people who are shielding the criminals then and now happen to also be the people who are the most critical of Israel in the name of the same "justice" they trample.






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Friday, November 19, 2021



The New York Times reports:

An armed drone strike last month on an American military base in southern Syria was Iranian retaliation for Israeli airstrikes in Syria, according to eight American and Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The drone attack, which caused no casualties, would be the first time Iran has directed a military strike against the United States in response to an attack by Israel, an escalation of Iran’s shadow war with Israel that poses new dangers to U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Five so-called suicide drones were launched at the American base at Al Tanf on Oct. 20 in what the U.S. Central Command called a “deliberate and coordinated” attack. Only two detonated on impact, but they were loaded with ball bearings and shrapnel with a “clear intent to kill,” a senior U.S. military official said.

Most of the 200 American troops stationed at the base, whose main role is training Syrian militias to fight the Islamic State, had been evacuated hours earlier after being tipped off by Israeli intelligence, the officials said.

Both Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials said they had intelligence indicating that Iran was behind the operation. Because three of the drones did not explode, American officials were able to study them and determine that they employed the same technology as drones used by Iran-backed militias in Iraq.
Israel attacks Iranian targets in Syria, and Iran retaliates against - the United States.

Why?

Perhaps it is because Iran considers the US and Israel to be essentially the same. But they are far more sophisticated than that.

This is an attempt to drive a wedge between Israel and the US.

Iran sees the public debate in the US over support for Israel. While the media exaggerates it a great deal, that isn't important; the perception is. If Iran starts to harass US troops and American targets, while making it clear that this is about Israel, there will be some Americans who say that supporting Israel isn't worth the risk to American lives.

Of course, Iran cannot do this directly, so it has to do it without taking credit but in such a way that it is unmistakable.

This was the wildly successful Palestinian strategy in the 1970s. They directed their terror attacks primarily against Western targets, particularly airplane hijackings and attacks in airports. The terrorists made it clear that if the West would give up its support for Israel, the attacks would stop. George Habash, the PFLP head,  said, "To kill a Jew far from the battlefield has more effect than killing a 100 of them in battle; it attracts more attention. And when we set fire to a store in London those few flames are worth the burning down of two kibbutzim. Because we force people to ask what is going on."

PFLP mastermind of airplane hijackings, Wadi Haddad, said, "We must be a constant irritation, a bug under the skin of the developed world. We must make them lose patience with Israel and Palestine that hard way.”

Yasser Arafat responded to the PFLP by creating Black September to be able to reap the benefits of attacking Western targets while maintaining deniability as to being directly responsible, so he could pretend to want peace. 

After only a couple of years of these attacks, the world rewarded Arafat with a speech at the UN. This happened in 1974, in the midst of the Palestinian international terror spree - two years after the Munich Olympics massacre, two years before the Entebbe hijacking, with many other major attacks both within and outside Israel never stopping. 

The West rewarded Arafat's terror by legitimizing him and turning away from Israel while pretending to do this for moral reasons. This culminated in the infamous UN "Zionism is Racism" resolution, a complete capitulation to Palestinian terror by the international community.

Iran is now mimicking the PLO's strategy - be a thorn on the side of the Americans and make it seem as if this will end when the US abandons Israel. Do it in such a way that the US does not have enough clear cut evidence and Congressional backing to directly retaliate against Iran. 

Meanwhile this is an appeal to American opinion that supporting Israel is not worth the cost. And, just as it happened in the 1970s, the people who are most likely to buckle under to  this blackmail are the ones who will loudly proclaim that they are doing it not because they are cowards but because they truly believe in the justice of the anti-Israel cause.

-----------
An excellent account of the Palestinian hijacking attacks from the 1960s to early 80s can be found in an appendix of Terrorist Innovations in Weapons of Mass Effect Preconditions, Causes, and Predictive Indicators, page 86-98. A much shorter article, The 1967 War and the birth of international terrorism  summarizes this as well.








Sunday, November 08, 2015





hillary clintonHillary Clinton has a recent piece in The Forward entitled, How I Would Reaffirm Unbreakable Bond With Israel — and Benjamin Netanyahu.  Despite her role in the most anti-Israel administration in American history, Clinton wants us to believe that she cares about Israel, has an "enduring emotional connection" to the land and its people, and has done all sorts of good work in supporting the Jewish state.


She tells us:
I have stood with Israel my entire career. As a senator, I fought to get Magen David Adom accepted to the International Red Cross when other nations tried to exclude the organization. I wrote and co-sponsored bills that isolated terror groups, and pushed to crack down on incitement in Palestinian textbooks and schools. As secretary of state, I requested more assistance for Israel every year, and supported the lifesaving Iron Dome rocket defense system. I defended Israel from isolation and attacks at the United Nations and other international settings, including opposing the biased Goldstone report.
Although I do not distrust Hillary's intentions toward Israel, you know what they say about good intentions and the direction of its paving.  It is her foreign policy ideology that I do not trust.  It is her unwavering belief in the ongoing failed Oslo nonsense.

It is the likelihood that after eight years of Obama's antics we will get more of the same from Hillary.

She reminds us that "in 2012 I led negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza to stop Hamas rockets from raining down on Israeli homes and communities."

The is sort-of true.  Clinton did lead the cease-fire effort at the time, but its primary effect, whatever its intention, was to save Hamas from Israeli retaliation.  If Clinton was interested in preventing Hamas rocketeers from ruining the lives of Israeli children then she might not have waited until the moment that Israel started shooting back before interfering.  Hamas sent thousands of rockets into southern Israel in the years preceding that engagement and if Hillary was so opposed she might have used her influence to see about de-funding the Jihadi organization.

She didn't.

Aside from outlining the various ways that she has been allegedly friendly to Israel in the past, she also assures us that she will be friendly to Israel in the future.
And while no solution can be imposed from outside, I believe the United States has a responsibility to help bring Israelis and Palestinians to the table and to encourage the difficult but necessary decisions that will lead to peace. As president I will never stop working to advance the goal of two states for two peoples living in peace, security and dignity.
This is the big problem.

And it is why no one who cares about the well-being of the Jewish State of Israel, or the well-being of Jewish people, in general, should support Hillary's campaign for president.  Hillary, like Barack Obama, is a devotee of the Oslo Delusion.  We already know how this movie is going to end because we have seen it many times before.

It looks something like this:

1) The US and the EU demand negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

2) The parties agree to talk and then the PA, the US, and the EU demand various concessions from Israel for the great privilege of sitting down with the PA's foremost undertaker.

3) Israel fails to meet all the concessions, thus causing the PA to flee negotiations, which they never had any intention of concluding to begin with.

4)  The PA and the EU and the left-leaning American administration place the blame for failure at Jewish feet.

5)  The EU and various European countries announce additional sanctions, thereby essentially joining the anti-Semitic anti-Zionist BDS movement.

6)  Jihadis seek to murder Jews.
We are in phase number six of the current round at this particular moment... as anyone who cocks their head out the car door window in Jerusalem, and listens to the screams, will attest.  Young Arab-Muslim men are running around Israel stabbing old Jewish ladies and young Jewish children and many in the West believe Israeli Jews richly deserve it.  Part of the reason that many in the West, particularly on the Left, think that Arabs have every right to kill Jews is because people like Barack Obama and his administration constantly blame Arab violence on their Jewish victims.

For years, Barack Obama - and people who think like him - have essentially told the world that the real problem is that Jews are so arrogant that they think that they should have the right to build housing for ourselves in Judea... not to mention Samaria.  Thus, suddenly, the word "settler" begins to gain evil connotations and the Jewish people are encouraged to split between those of us who oppose these evil settlers and those of us, being evil ourselves, support the evil settlers.

I support the evil settlers.

That land and those hills represent the very heartland of the Jewish people and no one is going to tell me that Judea belongs to the Arab conquerors of Jewish land.  Since at least the Peel Commission of 1937, the Jewish people in the Land of Israel have, over and over again, demonstrated their willingness to share what little bit of Jewish land there is with their hostile neighbors.

Time and again they were rebuked.

What Hillary Clinton needs to understand, and what Barack Obama never learned, is that this is not a war over land.  It is a centuries-long Arab-Muslim imposition of imperial supremacy upon all non-Muslims, most particularly those that they call the children of orangutans and swine, i.e., the Jewish people.

What Hillary Clinton needs to understand is that while Israeli-Jews are not victims, because they refuse to be victims, this does not mean that they are oppressors, either.  It is the Arabs, not the Jews, who have turned that particular human tendency into an art-form.


Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 11 years and over 22,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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