Apparently, the only unilateral moves opposed by the US and EU are those by Israel

In yesterday's State Department briefing there was this exchange between Said Arikat and spokesperson Ned Price:

Q: The Arab press and the Israeli press are both reporting that Israel is planning a – like a – to accelerate the demolishing of – the demolition of Palestinian homes in Area C and in other areas. Do you have a comment on that?

MR PRICE: Our comment on this is – remains the fact that we believe it’s critical for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution. This includes the annexation of territory, settlement activity, and demolitions.

I just went through a selection of press briefings that used the word "unilateral" in respect to Israel and Palestinians over the past year, and while the spokesperson often says that the US is against either side making any unilateral moves that could increase tensions, I cannot find a single example where any Palestinian actions are considered unilateral.

Not them submitting complaints to the ICC. Not them building entirely new Arab settlements in Area C. Not them praising suicide bombers and other terrorists. Not paying terrorists and their families lifetime salaries.

Someone should ask Ned Price explicitly what Palestinian unilateral moves the US opposes.

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What you can learn from Fatah's anniversary slogan

Fatah's pro-violence logo

On January 1, Fatah will celebrate its 58th anniversary. 

Well, not really. It is the 58th anniversary "of the launch of the contemporary Palestinian revolution," meaning the anniversary of their first terror attack, That attack was meant to disrupt Israeli's access to water. It was a direct attack on civilian infrastructure, and those terror roots are an inherent part of Fatah, today.

It came up with a typically unwieldy slogan for the occasion: "Just as we dropped the deal of the century and the annexation project...we will defeat the neo-fascists."

Fatah is taking credit for Donald Trump's "Deal of the Century" not being successful. 

How did they accomplish this Herculean task? 

By saying "no."

The same way they "defeated" every other chance for peace and an end to conflict with Israel.

Their desire to keep the conflict going is something they are very proud of!

What happened after their latest rejection of any peace plan without a counter-offer? Bahrain and the UAE said, we've had enough of the Palestinians acting like spoiled babies, so we will normalize our own relations with Israel, ignoring their long standing demand that they hold veto power over our foreign policy.

But we want something in return - so they demanded that Israel rescind a partial annexation plan. The far-right extremist Netanyahu, wanting peace, agreed. 

So I guess, in a convoluted way, the Palestinians were responsible for the shelving of that plan! I somehow doubt this is what they intended, though. 

And how will they defeat the "neo fascists" of Israel's new government? Well, in a few years there will be new elections again, with different ministers, so then the Palestinians will claim that they "defeated" them.

The Palestinian leadership is incompetent and impotent, supporting terror to the last penny and unable to do anything remotely constructive.  But they want to pretend that they are in the center of everything.

For a long time, much of the West believed it. Now, even the most hardened Israel hater realizes that the Palestinian leaders have become irrelevant, which is the worst thing that can happen to you in an honor/shame society. 

Fatah still holds on to that pretense. 

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"Weed Apartheid:" Israel now blamed for strict Palestinian anti-marijuana laws (update)

There is one overarching rule that both the antisemitic Right and Left share: everything is always the Jews' fault.

A truly absurd example can be seen in an article in The Intercept today, accusing Israel of "weed apartheid" because Palestinians under Palestinian Authority rule have different laws than Israelis under Israeli rule.

Really.

In the dusty occupied hills west of the Jordan River, segregation shapes the smoking experience of Palestinians as much as every other aspect of Palestinian life. For Israelis, the police’s relaxed attitude toward weed carries over to the occupied West Bank. Rather than face military justice, Israelis living in Jewish West Bank settlements are protected by an entire legal system built on inequities so rife that it has contributed to Israel being accused of the crime of running an “apartheid” system.

The disparity in treatment for Palestinians and Israelis when it comes to cannabis constitutes a facet of this system that might be called weed apartheid. A Palestinian and Israeli breaking the same law in the same place in the West Bank, for instance, will be dealt with by different security forces and processed in different legal systems.

This is of course not true. A Palestinian in Area C lighting up with an Israeli will not have to worry about going to Palestinian jail, because Israel is responsible for security there. Writer Jesse Rosenfeld spends a lot of time fudging the truth, by comparing Palestinian laws in Areas A and B with Israeli laws - both military and civil - in Area C.

The deception given in this article is remarkable. It emphasizes that Israeli citizens in the West Bank are subject to Israeli civil laws while Palestinian non-citizens are subject to military law - a mainstay of the "apartheid" charge that ignores that every country on Earth treats citizens and non-citizens differently.

But when it talks about draconian anti-pot laws for Palestinians, it suddenly pivots to Palestinian laws, not Israeli laws. You have to carefully parse the article to see how deceptive it is. For example, the article makes clear that Israeli military law doesn't give a damn about Palestinian pot use unless they are major dealers, smuggling drugs to Israel. But Palestinian laws are much harsher for minor offenses.

And The Intercept blames Israel for that!

To show how this analysis is ultimately antisemitic, let's pretend that Israel does what the article pretends it wants. 

If Israel applies the exact same laws to Palestinians in the territories as to Israeli citizens, and therefore cannot be accused of "weed apartheid," that would mean that Israel is annexing the entire West Bank. This is the very definition of annexation - applying the same laws to a new area.

No matter what Israel does, short of national suicide, Israel is oppressing Palestinians!

Nowhere in this article is there any criticism of the Palestinian Authority for their anti-marijuana laws and strict enforcement. Somehow, this is all Israel's fault. Just as the Left blames Israel for Palestinian men beating their wives, every dysfunctional part of Palestinian society is ultimately blamed on the Jews. 

Because to these bigots, Palestinian Arabs are not mature enough to be responsible for their own actions. 

UPDATE: I hadn't noticed it first, but the "Jewish Israelis" in the headline is another way to know that The Intercept is functionally antisemitic. 

Because "Muslim Israelis" and "Christian Israelis" have exactly the same laws as "Jewish Israelis."

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

 

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“Unilateral West Bank land grab”

 

 

 

Alan Solow, a member of the Executive Committee of Israel Policy Forum and former Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, wrote a blog in Times of Israel arguing that Israel should not extend sovereignty on parts of Judea and Samaria for this reason:

No solution should be imposed on anyone or by anyone in the Israeli-Palestinian arena.

While American Jewish consensus around Israel policy has not always been easy to attain, this sentiment has stood for decades as the one universally accepted principle undergirding the quest for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – that it must be reached through bilateral negotiations between the parties. This precept allowed Jewish leadership to strongly urge American administrations of both parties not to attempt to implement their own vision of how to resolve longstanding differences between the two sides. Despite expressions of expected or preferred outcomes over the years, every President has endorsed this concept. This principle also allowed American Jewish leadership to credibly oppose unilateral attempts by the Palestinian Authority to declare a state or to otherwise take action without consent to change the status of disputed territories.

There is a fatal flaw in this logic: Palestinians have been acting unilaterally for decades.

They have called themselves the State of Palestine. They have joined numerous international conventions without any desire to actually enforce their words.

They have built illegally in Area C, with support from the European Union, creating facts on the ground and literally engaging in a “land grab.”

And, perhaps most importantly, they have taken the de facto veto power that the international community has given them, using exactly this logic, to make peace far more distant than it appeared to be in 2000.  They’ve said “no” to every offer, not to negotiate but to wait for others to pressure Israel to give up more concessions without compromising their own intransigent, extremist positions.

Solow makes it sound like this status quo can go on forever:

The fact is that nobody is credibly threatening Israel’s control over major settlement blocs in the West Bank which are generally recognized as likely becoming Israeli territory as part of a final status agreement. Israel’s continued control of these Jewish population centers is, as a practical matter, uncontested. The only reason to acquiesce to Israel taking them unilaterally now is to abandon the position that solutions are to be negotiated, not imposed.

It can go on for a few years, but the situation is not frozen in amber. Palestinians will continue to build; they will continue to attempt to gain political legitimacy at Israel’s expense, they will continue to grow in population, they will continue to occasionally explode in violence.

Israel cannot play forever by these rules where Palestinians can do what they want and Israel has its hands tied by adhering to an artificial moral standard.  Continuing to wait for Palestinians to come to the table means that Palestinians can continue to act with impunity.

Extending sovereignty is not a land grab. It is the beginning of a disengagement. It is finally choosing borders. It is solving the demographic problem. It is staking a legal claim. It is sending a message that Palestinian intransigence will not be rewarded anymore. It is recognition that the world has changed since Oslo and Israel cannot be tied to an agreement that the Palestinians have abrogated since at least 2001.

Solow shouldn’t be warning Israel against doing what it must. He should be explaining to American Jewry why Israel must do it. And it is a serious failure in American Jewish leadership that he, and other leaders, cannot even figure this out for themselves.

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