Showing posts with label Yasser Arafat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yasser Arafat. Show all posts

Sunday, September 03, 2023

Diplomacy and peacemaking is not a smooth process. It requires a huge amount of preparation, planning and flexibility. 

It is always illuminating to look behind the scenes of the Oslo process. Gidi Grinstein, the youngest person at Camp David in 2000, is releasing his account of the events that he witnessed as well as his opinions of what to do moving forward to mark the 30th anniversary of Oslo.

His book, "(In)sights: Thirty Years of Peacemaking in the Oslo Process"  is his attempt to set the record straight after so many others gave their own versions of what happened at Camp David. 

Grinstein writes from the perspective of someone who truly wants to see peace. No one can doubt his love of Israel and Zionism - he was part of the team that founded Birthright Israel - but his perspective is decidedly on the Israeli Left.

I found his account fascinating, but perhaps not for the reasons he intended.

Obviously Grinstein tries to spin the events towards his own politics. Instead of giving a straight chronological account of what happened, he spends a great deal of time on the "sausage" behind each negotiating point and then an overview of what has happened since then, along with his own opinions as to where things failed and what Israel should have done instead, in retrospect.

While Grinstein was the junior member at Camp David, he is perhaps the one person with the most knowledge of the big picture. He served as the Secretary and Coordinator of the Israeli Delegation for the Negotiations with the PLO from 1999-2001 under Ehud Barak.

Grinstein admires Barak a great deal, but his description of Barak is of someone who is cold and calculating, who is more than willing to throw his own people under the bus for his own ends. He keeps his own cards close to his vest, so no one working for him has a clear idea of what their goals are. Grinstein extols Barak as "the smartest man in the room" who keeps his people working in a "matrix" of smaller tasks, while only Barak knows his real plan. This means that Barak creates his own backchannels to undermine the people officially working for him when he deems it necessary, he bypasses the chain of command, and he ensures plausible deniability.

Which, when you think about it, is a lot like Yasir Arafat. 

Before he worked for the Prime Minister's office, Grinstein worked for the Economic Cooperation Foundation. The ECF, founded in 1990, was itself one of those backchannels for creating relationships with, and building a peace plan with, the PLO. It was a power that helped bring about the Oslo Accords. 

To me, one of the most jarring parts of the book was where Grinstein describes how the ECF helped end Bibi Netanyahu's first term as prime minister. The ECF, which worked hand in glove with Yitzchak Rabin, opposed Netanyahu - and this Israeli think-tank colluded with the PLO to bring him down. Netanyahu demanded more concessions from the PLO in order to keep the Oslo process going, and the ECF convinced their friends in the PLO to pretend to agree to Netanyahu's demands, prompting him to sign the Hebron Agreement and the Wye River Memorandum based on lies. This caused the right wing of his coalition to revolt and new elections were called that brought Barak into office, just as the ECF intended.

Grinstein seemingly has no compunction about Israelis collaborating with the US and PLO to bring down an Israeli prime minister. The cause of peace justifies all.

Even Grinstein admits that the peace negotiators never really seriously thought about the possibility that Arafat had no intention to really sign a permanent agreement that would end the conflict and what would follow. They became friends with the PLO negotiators, and he lovingly describes how well his team would be treated when they visited Bethlehem or Ramallah and the personal friendships they struck up with the Palestinian team. He mentions and is fully aware of the wave of terror attacks during the 1990s, Arafat's incendiary speeches in Arabic, his actions being fully consistent with his "phased plan" to destroy Israel, but all of that is brushed aside in the pursuit of peace, just as using underhanded methods to bring down an Israeli prime minister is framed as a positive thing.

The only person who predicted the failure of the Oslo process, and that it would lead into war, was US Ambassador to Egypt Daniel Kurtzer, who hosted the negotiators for a Shabbat dinner. He had better insight than the entire Israeli peace delegation, who didn't even consider this.

Barak bet everything on the idea that Arafat could be pressured into signing an agreement. He was wrong. But there is very little hand-wringing on that mistake that brought about the second intifada. In fact, Grinstein emphasizes that Arafat was not the direct instigator of the intifada - even as he admits that Arafat had planned for such an event months ahead of time, and that his own security forces, trained and armed by the US, turned their weapons against Israeli forces in the first days of the fighting. He emphasizes that Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount that supposedly triggered the war was fully coordinated with the PA but still doesn't blame the PA for its role - instead noting that the Jerusalem police response to the violence helped escalate it. 

Again, Grinstein isn't blind. But he seems to purposely keep one eye closed. 

Similarly, he emphasizes that, in retrospect, Barak should not have pushed for an all or nothing deal, and worked towards a provisional Palestinian state that could be further refined with later negotiations. This, of course, would have been a huge concession by Israel to recognize a Palestinian state up front. But while he praises the Quartet for employing that idea in their Road Map for Peace, he glosses over that the Palestinian leaders rejected the Road Map out of hand, and have consistently said that they do not want a provisional state. 

Also jarring is that, as far as I can tell, the Israeli peace negotiating teams -- both Track I and Track II - apparently were exclusively made up of non-religious males, overwhelmingly if not exclusively Ashkenazic. He notes that the only Israeli woman at Camp David was a secretary. He never mentions that any of the participants in the many meals hosted in the West Bank or Europe had to make accommodations for kosher food. Most of Israeli society is not represented by these peacemakers, who all seem to believe that they are smarter than anyone else in how to look at the big picture, and not really self-critical when it comes to their miscalculations and false assumptions that led to the failure of the peace process. Diversity was not a priority for these liberals. 

There is a lot of good information in this book, and it is illuminating - sometimes in ways that it is not meant to be. It is not edited well, unfortunately - for example,  it talks extensively about the ECF without explaining what it is, and there are still numerous typos and misspellings (French Premier "Shirak"), it repeats the same anecdotes a couple of times. Hopefully these will be fixed by the time it goes to press. 

The book is planned to be released in Israel in two weeks and in the US in December.




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Thursday, August 31, 2023



















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

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Thursday, August 24, 2023




Yasir Arafat is often quoted to have said, “I am ready to kill for the sake of my cause; wouldn't I lie for it?”

I couldn't find a reliable source for this quote. However, as I was looking, I did find another where Arafat freely admitted to lying.

It is quoted in a 1998 biography of Arafat by Said Aburish, "Arafat : From Defender to Dictator." 
In Tunisia in 1987, [Arafat] both shocked and amused an Iraqi academic who politely suggested that many Arab leaders accused him, Arafat, of lying. The academic, with no axe to grind, was suggesting a change of tactics. Staring at the Iraqi with incredulous, extra-bulging eyes he said, 'Why not? For Palestine, I'd lie all the time.' Momentarily, his guest was at a loss for words. Then he burst out laughing and Arafat joined him with a broad smile which, according to the Iraqi, lightened his face and made him look like a little boy.
In Arabic, I saw the quote slightly differently: "Why shouldn't I lie? For the sake of Palestine, I am willing to lie all the time."

Aburish also described how he himself was in potential danger by his decision to be honest about Arafat in this biography (which included interviews with Arafat himself)   rather than be a patriotic Palestinian who accepts his lies:
 For example, despite evidence to the contrary, Arafat still insists that he was born in Jerusalem. Accepting his version of the story, to him the duty of all loyal Palestinians, would have cancelled my independence and vitiated my purpose. Rejecting his account of history, either openly or after feigning the opposite, would - according to his logic - have represented a betrayal worthy of punishment. It would have made writing this biography far more dangerous.

This goes beyond lies. This means that Palestinians are expected not only to accept the lies of their leaders, but they will be punished if they tell the truth instead.

This cannot be overstated. We have seen numerous times where Palestinians reflexively lie to adhere to The Narrative of unmitigated Israeli evil and suffering exclusively at the hands of the Jews, rather than admit - for example - that a child was killed by a terror group rocket. And journalists also follow the narrative, careful not to say anything to upset the authorities, whether it is Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, unless they are in a safe territory.  

This entire society based on lies was built, in large measure, by Yasir Arafat. 

(h/t Ibn Boutros)



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

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Friday, April 28, 2023

From MEMRI:


In an address at the Al-Aqsa Mosque posted on the Aqsa Call YouTube channel on April 14, 2023, Palestinian Islamic scholar Issam Amira said that Palestinians are no more Canaanite than Egyptians are Pharaonic. Rather, he said that the Palestinians are Muslims, and had had no rights whatsoever prior to the advent of Islam. He added that when late PLO leader Yasser Arafat referred to the Palestinian people as a (Canaanite) "nation of giants," he was cursing and humiliating his own people.

Isaam Amira: "The people of Palestine have no historical right to Palestine. They have no right that dates back 2,000, 3,000, or 4,000 years.

"The right of the Canaanites to Palestine is equal to the pharaohs' right to Egypt. Is it conceivable that any Muslim in Egypt would say: 'I am Pharaonic and proud of it?' Well, it's the same if a Muslim in Palestine says: 'I am a Canaanite and proud of it.' To hell with your Canaanite identity and with his Pharaonic identity.

"People, our history is simple and it is not ancient. Our history dates back only 1,440 years. 1,440 years ago we had no rights of any kind. Absolutely none.
[...]

"It must not be said that the Palestinians have Canaanite roots. We can go back to the words of Yasser Arafat who lost our cause. He referred to you as the [Canaanite] 'nation of giants.'

"This is the first time I see a president who curses his own people. The Palestinians are Muslims.

"Calling them [Canaanite] 'nation of giants' is cursing them. It's humiliating to them. It sends them back to the infidel days of tyranny. The only thing you are allowed to say is: Oh Palestinians, you are Muslims."

I don't know if Al Aqsa during Ramadan is like open mic night at a comedy club where anyone can go onstage. The audience behind Amira seems less than interested. 

Amira is a preacher in Beit Safafa in Jerusalem who has preached at Al Aqsa previously. He is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is a virulently antisemitic and pan-Islamic movement that wants nothing less than a unified Islamic Umma'- and they even oppose Hamas for wanting a separate Palestinian state instead of a new caliphate.

This rant makes sense in that context, since he doesn't want Muslims to identify as any other people except as Muslims. 

(h/t Josh K)




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Tuesday, February 14, 2023



Today, the Yasir Arafat Museum opened up a new exhibition. 

What part of Palestinian history is it about?

Silly. It is about how terrible Jews are.

Dignitaries, including the Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, crowded the space to see maps and text on the walls showing how Jews are taking over what they consider Palestinian land.

Shtayyeh commented after his tour,  "What we saw today in this exhibition is an exceptional effort in documenting settlement crimes and colonial crimes since the occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967. Settlement is a tool to destroy the two-state solution, and the colonialists have been defeated throughout history. This is the only case in the world in which the settler-colonial conflict with the indigenous people remains. "

Shtayyeh thanked the management of the Yasser Arafat Foundation for this "exceptional, distinguished and great effort in preserving, presenting and documenting the crimes of Israeli colonialism and occupation." 

He called for "Palestine to remain in the heart of every Palestinian, in the heart of every Arab, and in the heart of every free and honorable person in this world." 

Shtayyeh also called on the United States and the European Union to put pressure on Israel to stop plans to build new settlement units in the West Bank.

One demand I have not hear before: Shtayyeh called on the US and Europe to revoke citizenship from Jewish settlers who have two passports.



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!

 

 


Arafat got the ball rolling.

In a 1997 online article on Azure, Yoram Hazony describes a 1996 festival staged by Arafat's Ministry of Culture, in honor of Ba'al:

Arab youths dressed in robes bearing ancient Canaanite figures brandished torches as they danced about the town square, packed with officials of the PLO’s administration and security services...On the stone stage in the middle of the square, a dramatic passion was acted out, with the Ba’al, god of the heavens and fertility in the pantheon of the ancient Canaanites, heroically struggling against Mut, god of the underworld...the narrator took the opportunity to pour praise on the loyal Palestinian-Canaanite nations, the Amorites, Girgashites, Jebusites and Perizzites, which had fought at his side in the battle against the Hebrew invaders from across the Jordan.
And Arafat kept the ball rolling. On March 30, 2000, Arafat declared during a 'Land Day' speech:
Our forefathers, the Canaanites and Jebusites, built the cities and planted the land; they built the monumental city of Bir Salim [Jerusalem]…

The previous year, his advisor and minister for Jerusalem affairs, Faisal Husseini, said in an interview with New York Times Magazine:

I am a Palestinian. I am a descendant of the Jebusites, the ones who came before King David. This [Jerusalem] was one of the most important Jebusite cities in the area…. Yes, it’s true. We are the descendants of Jebusites.

Similar claims by Abbas and Saeb Erekat are not new.

The Middle East Forum finds efforts of this falsification in 1978 in the Palestinian encyclopedia (Al-Mawsu'at Al-Filastinniya), 

which declared, "The Palestinians [to be] the descendants of the Jebusites, who are of Arab origin," and described Jerusalem as "an Arab city because its first builders were the Canaanite Jebusites, whose descendants are the Palestinians."The entry continued, "Ever since the destruction of the Temple, the link with Jews and Christians has been severed. Muslims alone have a right to the Temple."

No Palestinian claim is too absurd to be made -- after all, who in the West ever calls them out on such things. Here is Dr. Hayel Sanduqa on PA TV, on June 2, 2011, claiming that a famous Psalm was actually first said by a Crusader:

[The Israelis] have acted to change Jerusalem's character. Even the expression (Psalm 137:5) “If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth.” This statement said by the Frankish (Crusader) ruler of Acre shortly before he left – was borrowed by the Zionist movement, which falsified it in the name of Zionism.

Is the problem really that the West is unwilling to call out the Palestinian Arabs on their falsification of history, or is the problem really much bigger -- is the West actually complicit in this falsification?

UNESCO

Erasing Jewish history seems to be a UNESCO specialty.

In 2011, Elder of Ziyon pointed out how UNESCO identified the Rambam (Maimonides) as Maimouna Ibn Moussa, effectively claiming that the revered Jewish philosopher, legal scholar and leader of the Jewish community during the 12th century was a Muslim.

Other attempts by UNESCO to erase Jewish ties to their land just up to 2011 alone include:

o  November 7, 1974: voted “to withhold assistance from Israel in the fields of education, science and culture because of Israel’s persistent alteration of the historic features of Jerusalem.” 
o  November 20, 1974: voted to exclude Israel from its European regional group -- until 1978, after the US withheld $40 million in payments from the organization in protest.
o  1989: claimed “Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem” was destroying the holy city by “acts of interference, destruction and transformation”
o  1990: attacked the “irreversible” changes to Jerusalem's architectural heritage resulting from Israeli “occupation”  
o  1993: then-UNESCO director-general Frederico Mayor boycotted an international conference on science in Jerusalem
o  1995: When the UN celebrated its 50th anniversary, UNESCO refused to mention the Shoah in its World War II resolution
o  1996: organized a symposium on Jerusalem at the body’s Paris headquarters without inviting any Jewish or Israeli groups
o  1998: a delegation visiting Jerusalem refused to meet with Israeli officials. 
o  2001: UNESCO promoted the “Cairo Declaration Document for Jerusalem Antiquities Preservation,” accusing Israel of destroying Islamic antiquities on the Temple Mount and in Jerusalem’s Old City
o  2002: During the Second Intifada, condemned Israel for “the destruction and damage caused to the cultural heritage in the Palestinian territories” as “a crime against the common cultural heritage of humanity.”
o  2009: designated Jerusalem as a “capital of Arab culture”
o  2010: declared Rachel’s Tomb and Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs as “Muslim mosques.”
o  2011: called on Israel to stop all archaeological works in the Old City of Jerusalem

In the past, UNESCO also has also called for “financial sanctions against Israel” and passed hundreds of resolutions criticizing Israel’s activities in Judea and Samaria

According to the UN Watch Database:

Between 2009 and 2021, UNESCO adopted 82 resolutions against Israel; 9 on Crimea; 4 on Iraq; 2 on Syria; and none on Iran, Sudan, North Korea, or any other country in the world...UNESCO repeatedly denies the ancient Jewish heritage and culture of the holy cities Jerusalem and Hebron – which it has declared a World Heritage site of “Palestine.”

The Supreme Muslim Council in 1925

But when it comes to denying Israel's right to Jerusalem and its Jewish history, everyone wants to get in on the act -- which is ironic, considering how in 1925, the Supreme Muslim Council published A Brief Guide to Al-Haram Al-Sharif, which in addition to permitting non-Muslims to visit, explicitly recognizes the history of Solomon's Temple as being "beyond dispute" as the location where the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque stand today -- and quotes from the Book of Samuel to make its point. The guide goes on to mention in passing that in 637 Caliph Omar "occupied Jerusalem."


 

The Mosque of Omar, 16 miles southwest of Jerusalem, has an inscription dating back to the 9th or 10th century CE that refers to the Dome of the Rock as “the rock of the Bayt al-Maqdis -- literally "the rock of The Holy Temple."

Things have changed.

The BBC

Things have changed in the media as well. CAMERA UK has pointed out that while at one point the BBC recognized the Jewish historical ties by referring to The Temple Mount...


...in 2014, after the PLO warned international reporters not to use the term Temple Mount, the media obliged and perpetuates the Palestinian Arab narrative, the BBC among them. Last month, when Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Temple Mount, the BBC reported:

The hilltop site is the most sacred place in Judaism and the third holiest in Islam. It is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, site of two Biblical temples, and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, the site of Muhammad's ascent to Heaven. The entire compound is considered to be al-Aqsa Mosque by Muslims. [emphasis added]

The BBC includes a graphic that helpfully emphasizes the point:

By perpetuating this distortion, the BBC is aiding the Palestinian Arabs who undercut Jewish rights and Jewish history by increasing the number of mosques on the Temple Mount from 1 to 5 while deliberately destroying archaeological evidence of the ancient Jewish ties to the area.

Helping the Palestinian cause is the EU.

The EU

Back in December, a document came to light describing the EU's plan to help the Palestinians by undercutting the Oslo Accords and help Palestinian Arabs gain a foothold in Area C of Judea and Samaria.

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

The document also recommends strengthening Palestinian infrastructure in Area C and supporting Palestinians with legal aid.
The article quotes Shlomo Ne’eman, head of the Gush Etzion Council and the Yesha Council who decries how "the allies of the State of Israel, the European governments, are actively working to change the borders of our country."  This is just taking the attempt to arbitrarily refer to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel and taking it to a whole new level.

Meanwhile, Wikipedia is doing its share to falsify history.

Wikipedia

An article on Wikipedia on Iran–Jordan relations, traces those relations back for "most of Jordanian history" -- in this case back to the Persians:

The article on Jordan itself tells you that "the oldest known evidence of hominid habitation in Jordan dates back at least 200,000 years."

You have to check out the Wikipedia article on Iraq-Jordan relations to get the straightforward history starting in the 20th century:


And now the Biden Administration has decided to play along with the Palestinian Arabs. 

The Biden Administration

According to a press release from the Manhattan DA's office:

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg, Jr., today announced the repatriation of an ivory cosmetic spoon dating back to approximately 800-700 B.C.E to the Palestinian Authority, marking the first time a cultural object has been returned to the Palestinian people from the United States... 

“We are proud to join our law enforcement and government partners in this moment. It is impossible to put a value on the cultural and historical significance of looted antiquities and I thank our talented team of attorneys and investigators who are continuing their incredible work of returning these objects to where they rightfully belong,” said District Attorney Bragg. [emphasisd added]

Rightfully belong?

As Johanna Markind pointed out at Legal Insurrection:

American law calls for repatriation of certain artifacts to Indian tribes, if “the requesting Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization can show that the object was owned or controlled by the Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization.” That is, the Smithsonian would return a qualified Cheyenne artifact to the Cheyenne tribe. It would not return a Cheyenne artifact to, say, the Pawnee.

According to the law, then, the artifact should have been returned to Israel. But that would have been a problem. After all, the spoon was originally looted from Hebron, so returning it to Israel would amount to admitting the Jewish ties to that area.

So instead, we are treated to an onslaught of government officials publically supporting the Palestinian Arabs in fabricating an imaginary history:

 Ivan J. Arvelo, a special agent in charge of US Homeland Security Investigations in New York, described the transfer of the spoon to the PA as a "historic repatriation”
o  George Noll, head of the US Office of Palestinian Affairs, described the spoon as “an example of Palestinian cultural patrimony.”
o  DHS official, Jeff Brannigan, claimed that, “This repatriation is representative of HSI’s commitment to ensuring the storied heritages of peoples around the world through the preservation and protection of cultural artifacts.”
The Biden Administration is pushing a falsified history -- much as Biden himself famously falsified his own history during the 1988 presidential campaign when he claimed:
 He graduated from Syracuse University’s law school in the top half of his class.
o  He received 3 undergraduate degrees.
o  He attended law school on a full academic scholarship
But this time, the media is unlikely to call him out on this fake history.







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!

 

 


Friday, February 10, 2023


Salim Al-Batayneh, a former member of Jordan's parliament and a critic of the government, wrote an op-ed saying that Israel plans to expand to take over Jordan.

"Jordan is at the heart and depth of the Israeli targeting," he says, pointing out that before the first partition of Palestine in 1921, the Jews wanted to include parts of Transjordan in the Jewish state. 

After 1967, according to Al Batayneh, Israel's expansionist plans only increased. He quotes a supposed article by an Israeli in the Times of London saying, "When the Jews gain full control over Aqaba and the Gulf, we will be able to attack the Hijaz and destroy the superstitious holy places in Mecca and Medina."

Sounds legit!

He also repeats the lie that Yasir Arafat said at the UN in 1990, claiming that the Israeli 10-agorot coin includes a map of Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates. 

The former politician soberly warns in the end of the article, "Israel has a long-awaited satanic program, and now is the time it will implement it."





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, December 29, 2022

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: Why Does the EU Disproportionately Fixate on Israel?
As part of its "Joint Strategy in support of Palestine," the European Union recently circulated a confidential document that proposes various measures to finance and advance monitoring, undercutting and undermining Israel's policies in Area C of the West Bank, including providing support and legal assistance to Palestinian residents prosecuting land claims in Israeli courts.

Under the 1993-1995 Oslo Accords, signed and witnessed by the EU, Israel and the Palestinian leadership (PLO) agreed to divide the West Bank areas of Judea and Samaria into three distinct areas of control and administration, pending the completion of negotiation on the permanent status of the territories. It was agreed that Area C would remain under Israel's full control, jurisdiction and administration.

In attempting to undermine and to intervene in Israel's legitimate and agreed-upon jurisdiction and governance in Area C, and in supporting Palestinian attempts to violate the Oslo Accords, the EU is in fact violating the terms of the very agreement to which it attached its signature as witness.

The EU claim that Area C is "to be preserved as part of a future Palestinian state in line with the Oslo Accords" is simply a mistaken and misleading interpretation of the Oslo Accords. They made no reference whatsoever to any "future Palestinian state" or "two-state solution." On the contrary, the Palestinian leadership and Israel agreed that the ultimate fate of the territories will be agreed upon in permanent status negotiations. No determination was made as to the outcome of such negotiations.

The EU document notes the EU's commitment to "contribute to building a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders." However, the Oslo Accords made no mention whatsoever of the 1967 borders. On the contrary, there has never been any 1967 border but an Armistice Demarcation Line established in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. These agreements stated specifically that the Armistice Demarcation line was not intended to constitute a border but rather a temporary line separating the forces pending negotiation of peace agreements.

It is high time that Israel's government take a far more assertive role in clarifying to the EU and its member states that the anti-Israel fixation of its staff and its actions in undermining Israel's legitimate authority and jurisdiction in Area C will no longer be tolerated.
Face it, the United Nations Is Antisemitic
The UN General Assembly passed 15 resolutions critical of Israel in 2022, compared to 13 resolutions for all other countries. Since 2015, the UN General Assembly has passed 136 resolutions critical of Israel, compared to 58 against all other nations combined. Selectively holding Israel to a higher moral standard than all other nations is classic antisemitism because its real purpose is to delegitimize the world's only Jewish state.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said, "The UN's automatic majority has no interest in truly helping the Palestinians, nor in protecting anyone's human rights. The goal of these ritual, one-sided resolutions is to scapegoat Israel."


How the EU Is Undermining International Law in the West Bank
The 1995 agreement known as Oslo II divided the West Bank into three parts: Area A, to be administered directly by the Palestinian Authority (PA); Area B, to be administered jointly by the PA and Israel; and Area C, to be controlled directly by Israel pending further negotiations. In July, the European Union’s mission in eastern Jerusalem produced a document, recently leaked to the press, stating the EU’s commitment “to contribute to building a Palestinian State within 1967 borders,” and outlining a program to build Palestinian settlements in Area C even where not authorized to do so by Israeli law. Jenny Aharon writes:

The EU . . . insists that its positions are based on meticulous compliance with international law, its own laws and charter, and also the Oslo Accords. This claim is surely [belied] by the leaked document in which we can see an activist EU striving to help the Palestinians take over Area C, the very area that is designated to Israel’s control per the Oslo Accords preliminary agreement which the EU claims to uphold.

The claim [made by the EU] is that the construction is meant for humanitarian ends and is not politically motivated. Yet the EU construction takes place in locations that are highly sensitive, precisely for the purpose of creating new facts on the ground and preparing the area for a Palestinian takeover without any final peace agreement.

Oftentimes the political motivation [of EU-funded construction projects] is obvious, as it is conducted without permits and in such places where Israel has no choice but to demolish it—for example, a school adjacent to a dangerous highway or in places where there are no facilities and thus are not considered habitable environments. The political motivation becomes even more obvious as the document explicitly states the EU’s plan to curb Israel’s archeological activities in order to minimize the Jewish connection to the land.

Moreover, the EU does not seem to consider building in Area A and Area B where all they would need is a permit from the Palestinian Authority. Apparently, in those areas, there is no need for humanitarian aid at all.
Palestinian Authority Paved Illegal Highway in Gush Etzion with Foreign Funding
The Gush Etzion Regional Council and local residents recently discovered the construction of a highway starting at Za’atara village, 11 km southeast of Bethlehem in Gush Etzion, north of the Herodion site, and reaching into the Judean Desert. At the start of the new road stands a sign in Arabic saying it was paved with foreign funding and assistance from the Palestinian Authority.

Mind you, the new highway is built in an agreed upon safeguarded reserve area, where roads and buildings are not allowed to be constructed per the Oslo Accords.

According to the Gush Etzion Regional Council, the road is another part of the ongoing effort to damage the contiguous Jewish territory in Gush Etzion. It provides access to new, illegal Arab neighborhoods in the Gush Etzion area, facilitating faster development.

Back in 2009, Salam Fayyad, then prime minister of the Palestinian Authority and its finance minister, issued the “Fayyad Plan,” aimed at creating facts on the ground, especially in Area C, with major international support, to transform international recognition of a de facto Palestinian state into a de jure state should Israel fail to deliver on its Oslo promises. Over the past 13 years, with increasing speed, the PA has been pursuing Fayyad’s policy, often with the tacit approval of the IDF civil administration and most defense ministers in Netanyahu’s and Lapid’s governments.

The Gush Etzion Regional Council says the paved road was built on preserved territories which the Palestinian Authority undertook in the Oslo Accords not to build homes or roads. Naturally, they had no intention of keeping their commitment, and Area C, especially near the robust Gush Etzion Jewish community, is flooded with illegally built PA homes and roads.

Wednesday, December 14, 2022


On this day in 1998, President Bill Clinton was bamboozled by Yasir Arafat into believing that the PLO had changed its charter. 

The very moment of the sham was captured in the photo above, as a roomful of Palestinians in Gaza pretended to vote to rescind the articles of the charter that called for the destruction of Israel.

We know that the charter never changed. The 1968 Palestinian National Charter calling for the destruction of Israel is still on the PLO website. It is still on the official Palestinian Authority press agency site. And no charter without those clauses has ever been published.

It still says, "The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage of time." It still says, "Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit." It still insists on the "liberation of Palestine" including the destruction of Israel. 

There is another way to know that there was no vote on December 14, 1998.

Heba Beydoun researched the incident in 2020, and compared the "vote" with what the PLO's own rules say are needed. She proves beyond a doubt that the entire roomful of people were play-acting for Clinton.

The only entity that can change the charter is the Palestinian National Council, in an official meeting.

That 1998 gathering is not counted as an official meeting of the Palestinian National Council, which didn't meet between 1996 and 2009.

The official invitation to the meeting didn't indicate that it was anything other than a gathering to listen to Clinton speak. It never claimed to be a Palestinian National Council meeting. Unlike official meetings, there was no opening session, no count of a quorum, no agenda, the president and vice presidents of the National Council did not attend as they must, the secretary didn't lead the session, there was no final statement at the end of the meeting, and it was never recorded among the records of official National Council meetings.

Many of the people who did attend and "voted" were not even members of the PNC - Arafat handed out invitations to members of terror groups and others to fill the room to make it look more impressive for Clinton.

Moreover, many of the other requirements for amending the charter never happened. The Palestinian National Council didn't form a committee to amend the Charter, and the proposed charter was never referred to the Legal Committee in the Council for consideration, and the Palestinian Central Council had not met for to discuss the issue, even though Arafat claimed that it had before the sham vote.

It was no accident. It was theatre, clearly planned by Arafat to deceive the President of the United States. And boy, was Clinton deceived. He said in his speech immediately afterwards:

I know the way is often difficult and frustrating, but you have come to this point through a commitment to peace and negotiations. You reaffirmed that commitment today. I believe it is the only way to fulfill the aspirations of your people and I am profoundly grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Chairman Arafat for the cause of peace, to come here as a friend of peace and a friend of your future, and to witness you raising your hands, standing up tall -- standing up not only against what you believe is wrong, but for what you believe is right in the future.

...I thank you for your rejection -- fully, finally and forever -- of the passages in the Palestinian Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. For they were the ideological underpinnings of a struggle renounced at Oslo. By revoking them once and for all, you have sent, I say again, a powerful message not to the government, but to the people of Israel. You will touch people on the street there. You will reach their hearts there.

Palestinian leaders think that they can say one thing in Arabic and another in English, they can lie with impunity to the West, and they will get away with it, with no real consequences. They even believe that they can create an entire fictional drama, complete with actors, to fool the entire world into believing a fiction.

History shows that they are correct. They did it with Clinton, they did it with Al Dura, they do it with "Pallywood," even today the English pages of their media portrays them as innocent victims while the Arabic pages say they are mighty soldiers planning to annihilate the Jews.




The West keeps getting fooled because they want to be fooled. The Palestinians have learned this lesson well.




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Friday, November 25, 2022


It used to be that Mahmoud Abbas, like Yasir Arafat before him, would issue a pro forma condemnation of deadly terror attacks against Israel. 

As of this writing, he hasn't said a word against the twin Jerusalem attacks, nor the Ariel terrorist attacks. 

He doesn't even pretend anymore to be against terror. Earlier this year he only reluctantly condemned some attacks when under pressure from Israeli and US officials. 

Meanwhile, this article in Al Quds News is upset that the UAE and Turkey did condemn the Jerusalem blasts, calling it "normalization:"
The UAE and Turkey were not content with drowning in normalization with the "Israeli" enemy, in all fields, at the expense of the cause and the Palestinian people. Rather, they were quick and brazen to condemn the two heroic Jerusalem operations, which were carried out by the revolutionary Palestinian youth, in response to the crimes of the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people and its desecration of the holy places.
...
Observers believe that these irresponsible positions come in the context of the state of submission in the positions of the current Palestinian leadership and some Arab and regional leaders, which come within the framework of the destructive settlement and normalization approach, describing the role of Turkey, which condemned the heroic operation, as "hypocritical."

They considered that the resolutions of international legitimacy affirmed the right of peoples suffering from occupation and aggression to resist it in all forms, especially armed resistance. Therefore, the response of our people and its rebellious youth to the occupation is a natural and legitimate response to the crimes of the occupation and its continuation.

As for the statements of condemnation by the normalizers with the entity of the Zionist enemy, (the UAE, Turkey and others), they are a sign and evidence of the level of weakness, humiliation, submission and shame of these countries in front of the Zionist enemy, and the total alienation from the issues of the nation and its center is the Palestinian cause, including the sanctities, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is exposed by the daily desecration by settlers who do not hide their project to build the alleged Temple on the ruins of Al-Aqsa Mosque, which enemy governments are working to demolish, God forbid.
This is a mainstream Palestinian position.




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Wednesday, November 16, 2022

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The Biden administration weaponizes the FBI against Israel
Even if the crisis passes quickly, the incoming government needs to understand that so long as the Democrats are in power, the next crisis is just a progressive rally away. As the midterm elections demonstrated, today, there are two Americas, not one. The Republican America, led by the likes of Sen. Cruz, Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, is the best friend Israel has ever had.

The Democratic America hates Israel and the Republicans. They view both as fundamentally illegitimate.

This state of affairs, where one America loves Israel and the other hates it, is unlikely to change for the better in the foreseeable future. The Abu Akleh affair makes clear that moderates in the Democratic Party—like Biden himself—have transferred policymaking power regarding Israel to their all-but openly anti-Semitic progressive base.

What awaits us will be even worse than what Israel suffered with Barack Obama. We can expect to see the Democrats’ America backing arrest warrants of IDF soldiers and commanders. Democrats can be expected to cut off critical arms supplies. We can expect them to do in public what they are already doing in private—namely funding Palestinian terrorists. We can expect them to support economic boycotts of Israel and to enable the passage of anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council.

To contend with the threat posed by the Democrats’ America, the incoming government must move to swiftly diminish Israel’s strategic dependence on the United States. We should end our receipt of U.S. military assistance. We should move production lines for critical platforms, including Iron Dome missiles, from the United States to Israel, regardless of the economic cost. And we should withdraw the outgoing government’s offer to allow the United States to fund the completion of our military laser program. Full ownership and control over the critical program should be restored to Israel’s military industries, again, regardless of the cost.

Apparently, the FBI informed Israel that it was opening the probe a few weeks ago—presumably before the Nov. 1 election. Gantz and outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid hid the news from the public, for obvious reasons. For a year and a half, they had insisted that Netanyahu was the cause of Israel’s troubled relations with the Democrats. The Biden administration’s probe of our soldiers makes clear that this was never the case. Netanyahu was right to stand up to Obama, and he will be right to stand up to Biden. Israel cannot be beholden to those who view our boys and girls as murderers for defending our lives and our nation. We can only defy them, even when they are former friends in Washington.
FBI has a double standard for Abu Akleh, Israeli victims - comment
What is behind Washington's double standard?
In a way, this fits in with the way the Biden administration has treated other allies in the Middle East, as though the accidental killing of someone caught in a crossfire is akin to the horrific murder of columnist Jamal Khashoggi, whose body was dismembered and dissolved in acid, ordered by the Saudi leadership. The Washington Post also recently published details of a leaked National Intelligence Council report on Emirati efforts to influence US policy. It must be said that those countries are not democracies and the actions Washington is criticizing were not followed with cooperation and transparency, in contrast with Israel following Abu Akleh’s death.

Some have talked about it being a shot across the bow to prime minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu as he’s expected to form a far-right government, though Washington is expressing dissatisfaction at events that occurred under a government to the left of Netanyahu.

Another argument made is that this is about US politics. The midterms just took place and US President Joe Biden may feel freer to take more controversial actions than he did before. The left-wing of the Democratic Party pushed for a probe of Abu Akleh’s killing and, as Netanyahu says in his recently-published memoir, Biden professed to feeling pressure on Israel issues in what is “not Scoop Jackson’s Democratic Party.”

US Senator Ted Cruz certainly sees it that way, saying the FBI investigation “underscores how corrupt and blatantly politicized the Justice Department has become, and how entirely beholden to the radical left-wing Squad Democrats really are. This administration has spent its time in office weaponizing the DOJ to target their political enemies as a matter of policy, and now they have allowed that tactic to bleed into their obsession with undermining our Israeli allies.”

Whether it’s about the Biden administration’s moralistic approach to the Middle East or about Democratic Party dynamics, this just contributes to a broader sense that the FBI has used and abused as a political tool in recent years.

The Abu Akleh investigation announcement happened to take place in the week in which Commentary released an issue with a cover story by intelligence reporter Eli Lake about how the FBI is desperately in need of reform.

“FBI officials routinely deceive not only the public but also the institutions designed to protect the public from FBI overreach. Agents lie to supervisors. Supervisors lie to judges. FBI directors mislead Congress. And almost no one is ever punished,” Lake wrote, following it up with a litany of recent abuses.

FBI leaders who leaked to the press and went after certain politicians are feted, Lake pointed out, asking: “What lesson will others draw from this, except that there are no consequences for abusing authority against the right political targets?”
JPost Editorial: Would the FBI come to different conclusion of Shireen Abu Akleh's death?
We are dismayed by the news that the FBI is launching an investigation into the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin on May 11. Israeli officials confirmed media reports on Monday that the US Justice Department had recently informed Israel’s Justice Ministry of the move, and they also voiced their firm opposition to the probe.

Israel conducted several thorough investigations into the circumstances of Abu Akleh’s killing, with the IDF concluding in September that she was most likely killed in “unintentional fire” from an Israeli soldier who did not realize she was a journalist. The US even participated in one of the investigations, including examining the bullet that the Palestinians said was the fatal one. The results of all the investigations were shared with the US, and particularly with the State Department.

Why then does the US administration believe that a new FBI investigation is necessary? As Defense Minister Benny Gantz succinctly said in a statement, the FBI probe is a grave error and there is no reason for Israel to cooperate with its investigation, even though it has nothing to hide.

“The decision taken by the US Justice Department to conduct an investigation into the tragic passing of Shireen Abu Akleh is a mistake,” Gantz said. “The IDF has conducted a professional, independent investigation, which was presented to American officials with whom the case details were shared. I have delivered a message to US representatives that we stand by the IDF’s soldiers, and that we will not cooperate with an external investigation.”


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