Showing posts with label Yom Yerushalayim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yom Yerushalayim. Show all posts

Thursday, June 09, 2022

From Ian:

Mark Regev: Shireen Abu Akleh, Palestinians, Al Jazeera and press freedom - opinion
The accusation of a willful murder is made when among the nations of the Middle East it is in Israel alone that a free and critical press thrives. Israel’s famously boisterous and pugnacious media is always ready to expose a misbehaving politician, government wrongdoing and the IDF’s mistakes. This while the practice in the PA and Al Jazeera falls into a very different category.

Press freedom in the PA, Qatar
Although a PA basic law theoretically guarantees a free press, in reality such freedom is nonexistent: the media is severely constrained, critical platforms are shut down and journalists arrested when the authorities object to their work. Reporters have been beaten while in custody, blogger Nizar Banat ended up dead. When Abbas was angered by an Al Jazeera story, he ordered the closure of the network’s Ramallah offices.

The Palestinian president might have championed the deceased Abu Akleh as a martyr, but live Palestinian journalists know what may happen if they incur the wrath of the PA.

For its part, Al Jazeera likes to present its reporting as hard-hitting independent journalism, but the Qatari government-funded channel’s hundreds of employees never report about matters that could embarrass their patron.

Consequently, Qatar’s ongoing systematic mistreatment of the country’s migrant worker population of more than two million (similar in size to the entire population of Gaza) does not make it to Al Jazeera’s newsroom. The network has been equally silent on the kingdom’s discriminatory sexist male guardianship laws, on the criminalization of criticism against the emir’s leadership and on the lack of press freedom.

Even more problematic, following last year’s war in Gaza, the channel was presented with an award from Hamas for its reporting of the conflict. Hamas acclaim for Al Jazeera is not new, the network has a history of glorifying the perpetrators of terror attacks and broadcasting material that incites violence; its recent regurgitation of erroneous claims that the Jews somehow threaten al-Aqsa Mosque just the latest example.

Ultimately, like with its Kremlin-controlled sister channel RT, the Qatari state furnishes a television news station with a highly tendentious agenda.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European democracies banned RT broadcasts deeming them a “direct threat” to the “public order and security” of the EU. Yet, despite Al Jazeera’s record of affinity with a terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction, Jerusalem takes no analogous action, media freedom being sacrosanct.

While Shireen Abu Akleh’s untimely death warrants thorough examination, allegations that Israel deliberately targets the press deserve no credence. They are cheap propaganda and should be dismissed as such.
Daniel Greenfield: Liberating our Jerusalem
In 1966, Jerusalem was a city sundered in two, divided by barbed wire and the bullets of Muslim snipers. Diplomacy did not reunite it. Israel pursued diplomacy nearly to its bitter end until it understood that it had no choice at all but to fight. Israel did not swoop into the fight, its leaders did their best to avoid the conflict, asking the international community to intervene and stop Egypt from going to war. Read back the headlines for the last five years on Israel and Iran, and you will get a sense of the courage and determination of the Israeli leaders of the day.

When Israel went to war, its leaders did not want to liberate Jerusalem, they wanted Jordan to stay out of the war. Even when Jordan entered the war, they did not want to liberate the city. Divine Providence and Muslim hostility forced them to liberate Jerusalem and forced them to keep it. Now some of them would like to give it back, another sacrifice to the bloody deity of diplomacy whose altar flows with blood and burnt sacrifices.

As we remember Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, it is important to remember that the city is united and free because diplomacy failed. The greatest triumph of the modern state happened only because diplomacy proved hopeless and useless in deterring Muslim genocidal ambitions. Had Israel succumbed to international pressure and had Nasser been as subtle as Sadat, then the Six-Day War would have looked like the Yom Kippur War fought with 1948 borders– and Israel very likely would not exist today.

Even as Jews remember the great triumph of Yom Yerushalayim, the ethnic cleansers and their accomplices are busy searching for ways to drive Jews out of Jerusalem, out of towns, villages and cities. This isn’t about the Muslim residents of Jerusalem, who have repeatedly asserted that they want to remain part of Israel. It’s not about peace, which did not come from any previous round of concessions, and will not come from this one either. It’s about solving the Jewish problem.

As long as Jews allow themselves to be defined as the problem, there will be plenty of those offering solutions. And the solutions invariably involve doing something about the Jews. It only stands to reason that if Jews are the problem, then moving them or getting rid of them is the solution. There is less friction in defining Jews as the problem, than in defining Muslims as the problem. The numbers alone mean that is so.

Yom Yerushalayim is a reminder of what the real problem is and what the real solution is. Muslim occupation of Israel is the problem. The Islamization of Jerusalem is the problem. Muslim violence in support of the Muslim occupation of Israel and of everywhere else is the problem. Israel is the solution. Only when we liberate ourselves from the lies, when we stop believing that we are the problem and recognize that we are the solution. Only then will the liberation that began in 1967 be complete.

Only then will we have liberated our Jerusalem. The Jerusalem of the soul. It is incumbent on all of us to liberate that little Jerusalem within. The holy city that lives in all of us. To clean the dross off its golden gates, wash the filth from its stones and expel the invaders gnawing away at our hearts until we look proudly upon a shining city. Then to help others liberate their own Jerusalems. Only then will we truly be free.
The Soviet origins of left-wing anti-Zionism
Ironically, Soviet anti-Zionism itself drew extensively from Nazi rhetoric and imagery. Many prominent contributors of propaganda material, such as Trofim Kichko, Yuri Ivanov, Lev Korneev and others unabashedly recycled ideas directly from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf. They even blamed the Jews for the extermination of both Jews and non-Jews during World War II. Today, anti-Zionist groups keep that legacy alive by routinely comparing Zionism to the Nazis. For example, Shahd Abusalama, a professor at Sheffield University in the United Kingdom, found it acceptable for a first-year student to compare an Israeli operation in Gaza to the Holocaust.

One of the Soviet propaganda machine’s greatest victories was the United Nations’ 1975 adoption of the “Zionism is Racism” resolution. Its revocation in 1991 had little effect on the U.N.’s stance on Israel. Statistics from 2020 are particularly illustrative: Israel was targeted by 17 U.N. resolutions, while all other countries combined, including regimes like Iran and North Korea, received six. On campus, Israel is frequently attacked in the same language. For example, at a Cornell SJP poetry reading, one participant designated Israel a “racist, exclusivist, supremacist state.”

Throughout their entire anti-Zionist campaign, the official Soviet line was that anti-Zionism was not anti-Semitism. A 1979 article in TheWashington Post noted, “Although the number of anti-Semitic books and denunciations has grown continuously [in the Soviet Union] since the Six-Day War in 1967, recent months have brought remarkable new additions to this genre. Officially, they are labeled ‘anti-Zionist.’ Soviet bureaucrats vehemently reject suggestions that ‘anti-Zionism’ means ‘anti-Semitism.’ To many Soviet Jews, it is a distinction without a difference.”

Today, this is one of the most popular talking points among left-wing anti-Zionists and anti-Semites. Indeed, it is telling that anti-Israel groups have repeatedly attempted to block universities and municipalities from adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Anti-Semitism, which defines certain kinds of anti-Israel rhetoric as anti-Semitic. At the City University of New York (CUNY), for example, former president of CUNY’s SJP chapter Nerdeen Kiswani tweeted: “#IHRAoutofCUNY we know all too well that this purposeful conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism is used against Palestinians and organizers for Palestine. We must protect our right to organize and speak out against oppression.”

There is no doubt that today’s left-wing anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism can be directly traced to the Soviets’ anti-Zionist propaganda campaign. Knowing this is the first and perhaps most important step toward creating a more balanced and honest dialogue on the issue.

Wednesday, June 01, 2022

I noted last week that for a week before Yom Yerushalayim, Palestinian terror groups and media were in a frenzy anticipating a massive terror response to the Flag March, threatening a religious war if Jews would march through Jerusalem and all but promising that Gaza rockets would be fired and a new terror wave begun.

It appears that Israel contacted their Arab friends and those states pressured Hamas not to respond. It worked, and here is a case where the Abraham Accords - derided by "experts" as a meaningless agreement that doesn't affect the core conflict - actually helped avert a war.

However, Hamas and Islamic Jihad now have to explain to their audiences why they didn't attack after a week of inciting them to war.

And that is exactly what they are doing.

From Islamic Jihad:
 Muhammad Al-Hindi, a member of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Jihad Movement and official in the political department, confirmed today, Sunday, that the battle with the enemy is open and long and takes different forms, and the resistance is the one who determines the appropriate time for its intervention.
Hamas' Al Resalah has a column directly addressing why Hamas didn't attack:
Whoever is aware of politics knows that the resistance in the Gaza Strip operates according to its assessments of the situation, and is not tempted or dragged behind passion or what the occupation plans.

The resistance didn't respond for considerations that it is more aware of than those who watch from the outside. The occupation forces were ready for the confrontation, through which they wanted to restore deterrence power, but the resistance ...is proceeding according to an integrated and extended plan, and it has its information and estimates, and if its assessment is otherwise. , the decision would have been different, because the scenes [of the Flag Msrch] were enough to make them rain the lava of the occupation’s rapists with their rockets, and turn Tel Aviv into a mass of flames.
I've also seen other articles spinning the fact that Hamas didn't attack: articles with pride that Israel was forced to keep planes in the air over Gaza based on only threats, stories pointing out that there were still lots of minor terror attacks over the weekend, pointing out that Israel had to deploy so many police to protect the Flag March which proves that it doesn't control Jerusalem, and saying that Israel begged Hamas not to attack so Hamas was the stronger party.

In honor/shame societies, backing down from a promised fight is a huge humiliation, and lots of ink is being spilled to turn this humiliation into a victory. 

Which brings up another factor that helped convince Hamas not to launch an attack: Hamas leaders really liked getting all these phone calls from Arab national leaders asking them not to attack. This increased their prestige considerably, at the expense of Mahmoud Abbas, who was reportedly fuming at being left out of the loop. This pro-Hamas cartoon summarizes this:


The honor at being treated like the national leader of Palestinians outweighed the shame at not attacking Israel as promised.





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, May 31, 2022



Felesteen, a Hamas newspaper, reports:

On Monday, a Palestinian official revealed the Palestinian Authority’s protest to regional and international parties, due to the marginalization of its role and the failure to communicate with it regarding the repercussions of the “flags march” in the occupied city of Jerusalem. 

The official - who preferred not to be named - told the newspaper "Felesteen": "The office of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has contacted Arab and international bodies, complaining to them that they have made [direct] contacts with the head of Hamas' political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, to calm the situation in the Palestinian territories after the "flags march." and the provocations of the settlers. 

He added that "instructions were issued by the Office of the Presidency of the Authority to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Shtayyeh's government to intensify its efforts, in order to cut regional and international communication with the leaders of Hamas." 

Haniyeh had received several Arab and international warnings demanding calming in the Palestinian arena, and not to be drawn into an explosive situation because of the "flags march", for fear of a new military confrontation between the Gaza Strip and the occupation. 
 The Palestinian Authority is upset because they want to maintain the fiction that they are the leaders of Gaza as well and all diplomatic communications to Hamas must go through them. 

Needless to say, asking the PA government to pass a message along to their rivals would have been worse than useless. 

These warnings worked. Hamas and other Palestinian groups were inciting a "religious war" less than a week before Yom Yerushalayim. Palestinian media was filled with promises that they would attack if the Flags March went on as planned. 

It seems almost certain that Israel requested its Arab friends and contacts to warn Hamas not to attack, and that the consequences of such an attack would be severe. 

A couple of years ago, Egypt would have been the only nation Israel could ask to pass such a message to Hamas. Today, Israel could have asked Bahrain, Morocco, the UAE and even (indirectly) Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar to pressure Hamas not to start a war. 

Anti-Israel "experts" derided the Abraham Accords as a meaningless gesture when they were announced, saying that any agreement that doesn't directly include the Palestinians is worthless. They were wrong. Every month we see new direct an indirect benefits of the Accords.

This time, the Abraham Accords may have averted a war.




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

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