Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: blame Israel

Showing posts with label blame Israel. Show all posts

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Good news! According to Bowman and Sanders, there is no such thing as Palestinian terror!

From the extreme Leftist Jewish Currents:

REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN AND SENATOR BERNIE SANDERS are leading an effort to urge President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to investigate whether Israel is using US weapons to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians, in violation of United States law, according to a letter and e-mail sent to other members of Congress obtained by Jewish Currents. The letter was written by Bowman, while Sanders is spearheading efforts to garner support from other senators, according to Bowman’s office. The letter has so far been signed by eight additional lawmakers: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Summer Lee, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, Betty McCollum, André Carson, and Ayanna Pressley. “At this inflection point, we ask your administration to undertake a shift in US policy in recognition of the worsening violence, further annexation of land, and denial of Palestinian rights,” the lawmakers wrote. The lawmakers end the letter by calling on the Biden administration to “ensure US taxpayer funds do not support projects in illegal settlements” and to “determine whether US-origin defense articles have been used in violation of existing US laws.” The letter criticizes the new Israeli government’s “alarming actions” and its cabinet of “far-right, anti-Palestinian individuals and parties,” asserting that the Israeli coalition in power is “pushing repressive, anti-democratic policies and escalating violence towards the Palestinian population.”

As usual, Israel haters are using any excuse they can to sever the ties between the US and Israel. Here, they are even using the protests against judicial reform to help promote their accusation of Israel using US weapons against innocent Palestinians.

The letter itself is a mishmash of anti-Israel rhetoric. It describes Israel's raids of Palestinian terrorists as nothing more than killing Palestinians for no reason.

Here is its summary of the events in the West Bank this year:

Shocking violence in late February encapsulated the bloody reality in the occupied West Bank. On February 22, a daytime raid by the Israeli army into the crowded Palestinian city of Nablus killed 11 Palestinians, among them a 72 year-old-man and a 16-year-old child. On February 26, a Palestinian gunman shot dead two Israeli settlers outside of Nablus. Subsequently, hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian town of Huwara. The settlers, accompanied by the Israeli army, set fire to homes, schools, vehicles, and businesses, killing one Palestinian and injuring over 300 Palestinians. The local Israeli military commander called the attack a “pogrom." The attack was not an isolated incident, with the State Department reporting that Israeli settler attacks have expanded in severity and scale. The day after the Huwara attack, an Israeli-American citizen Elan Ganeles was killed by a Palestinian gunman on a highway in the occupied West Bank.

This comes amid an already violent year. Israeli forces and settlers have killed over 85 Palestinians in 2023, including 16 children. At least 14 Israelis have been killed, including two children. The previous year was the deadliest for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2004 and included the Israeli military’s killings of two American citizens, Shireen Abu Akleh and Omar Assad.

At no point does it mention that the vast majority of those killed by Israel - including nearly all of the "children - were members of terror groups or actively engaged in fighting. Israel's record in avoiding civilian casualties in urban warfare is far better than that of the US itself.

In fact, the word "terror" is missing from the letter (except for a footnote.) One would have no idea that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are active in the West Bank, nor that the Palestinian Authority has not been doing nearly enough to stop those groups. The letter certainly doesn't mention the number of Al Aqsa Brigades members who have been involved in these clashes, because mentioning Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah would be embarrassing. The fact that cities like Jenin have been essentially taken over by masked gunmen who terrorize the residents as well is simply ignored. Reading the letter, one would think that Israel kills scores of Palestinians for no reason whatsoever, and occasionally some individual gunmen kill a Jewish "settler" who barely counts as human anyway.

It mentions an American citizen killed by Palestinians, but unlike the public insistence on investigations and accountability for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, this letter says nothing about holding the terror group behind the murder of Elan Ganeles accountable.

Previous investigations of whether the IDF had run afoul of US policy in using military aid have not found any issues (since 2006.) But Israel haters don't care abut facts, and keep making the accusations anew every year.

Meanwhile, no one calls for investigation into how US equipment is used by Egyptian and Jordanian armed forces who are accused of torture and unlawful killings by the US State Department.

This letter isn't a sober listing of legitimate concerns. It is a hit piece meant to incite hatred of Israel. And it can be seen in how it talks about Huwara.

The Huwara attack by settlers was reprehensible - and it is utterly irrelevant to the alleged point of the letter, to investigate Israel's use of American weapons. The letter implies that the IDF colluded with the attackers, which the authors know is a lie. But since the real point of the letter is to incite hatred for Israel and Israeli Jews, and in that context it all makes sense.

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The Left - and Palestinian racism - killed Rachel Corrie

Today is the 20th anniversary of Rachel Corrie's death, accidentally killed by an Israeli bulldozer as she acted as a human shield against a mine clearing operation.

Her death came directly because of the Leftist myth that Israelis are racist - and that Palestinians aren't.

Corrie was brainwashed by her "progressive" teachers at Evergreen College and her International Solidarity Movement colleagues.

One of her instructors, Simona Sharoni, not only encourages but requires students to engage in activism in her classes. Corrie received college credit for her trip to Gaza, working with her professors to call her activism an independent study program.

A basic tenet of the far-Left, which has now become mainstream, is that Israel is an irredeemably racist entity engaged in "genocide" against non-white Palestinians. This myth is what fueled Corrie and ISM to place activists in harm's way, because of a naïve belief that they were invincible - protected by their "white privilege."

One of Corrie's fellow Evergreen students, Joe Smith, also received independent study credit for his time in Rafah while Corrie was there. "I saw ISM as a way that I could directly use my white, Western, American male privilege to directly serve underprivileged people of color," he said a week after her death.

Corrie's emails to her parents while in Gaza emphasized her unwavering beliefs that white privilege would protect her, and that her anti-Israel activism was penance for her being an American. She emailed that Israel wouldn't arrest her and hold her for a long time because "I am a white US citizen." She wrote about how ISM members could make "serious use of our international white person privilege," and said, "If the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible."

Other ISM activists admitted after Corrie's death that they felt invincible. ISM believed that "the white foreigners were the magic bullet that could neutralize Israel's overwhelming military strength." Smith himself admitted how he and his fellow ISMers felt invincible by their whiteness: "It's definitely easy to get cocky in this war zone when a tank is shooting at people and you walk up to them and shout at them, 'Hey, I'm here!' and they pack up and leave. You get so used to this idea, 'Hey, they won't hurt us.' It has really made me realize how naïve and cocky I was."

Corrie and other ISMers took huge risks with their lives because of this child-like belief that their whiteness is a superpower. In fact, an Irish activist in Rafah at the time named Jenny was nearly run down herself by a D9 that she thought she could stop. “The bulldozer’s coming, the earth is burying my feet, my legs, I’ve got nowhere to run, and I thought, ‘This is out of control.' Another activist pulled me up and out of the way at the last minute.”

Even the Palestinians that these activists befriended considered them crazy. But there were no adults around to counteract the almost religious belief they had that Israeli racism would protect them in a war zone.

Notably, ISM would specifically recruit white kids because of this very assumption. Activists were well aware (and struggled with the idea) that they were promoting the idea of being white saviors of darker Palestinians and complicit in the racism they claim to oppose.

But there was another reason why Corrie took such a risk that day that she was killed. And that was Palestinian racism and misogyny.

Even though these woke, white ISM activists flocked to Rafah to supposedly help Palestinians, there was much mistrust among the oppressed people of color that they deigned to help. ISM members were very concerned over an anonymous letter they had received:

[Corrie] was propelled, in part, by frustration. During the past few days she and the nine other ISM activists had become preoccupied with an anonymous letter circulating through Rafah that cast suspicion on the human shields. “Who are they? Why are they here? Who asked them to come here?” it asked. The letter referred to Corrie and the other expatriate women in Rafah as “nasty foreign bitches” whom “our Palestinian young men are following around.”

That morning [of Corrie's death], the ISM team tried to devise a strategy to counteract the letter’s effects. “We all had a feeling that our role was too passive. We talked about how to engage the Israeli military,” Richard “Fuzz” Purssell told me by phone from Great Britain.

Corrie, while assuming that Israeli racism would protect her, felt that if she would only take more risks, then Palestinian racism and misogyny would magically disappear.

And that is exactly what she did.

We know now that Palestinians have treated these white international women horribly. There are many reports of how they have been raped by the Palestinians they think they are helping - and the stories are hushed up by the very organizations like ISM they volunteer for. Corrie believed that Palestinians are inherently good and Israeli Jews inherently evil, and she only had to try a little harder to prove it.

The narrative of Israeli racism and Palestinian victimhood is fundamental to the existence of these organizations like ISM. And that false narrative is not only what killed Rachel Corrie, but also promoted a culture of Palestinian sexual assaults on her fellow, invincible, white women.

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

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As soon as @Amnesty started their "Apartheid" campaign, they STOPPED mentioning Lebanese/Jordanian discrimination against Palestinians

In 2007, Amnesty International wrote a 5-page report describing the institutionalized and legal discrimination against Palestinian Arabs in Lebanon.

It ended off with these recommendations for the Lebanese government:

To this end, the Lebanese authorities should:
 urgently repeal or revise all laws and policies that directly discriminate against Palestinian refugees;
 take immediate steps to improve conditions in the camps and gatherings;
 register all non-ID Palestinian refugees under Lebanese jurisdiction without delay;
 end the discrimination facing Palestinians in the labour market;
 ensure that adequate health care is available to all;
 ensure that all children have equal access to education.

That report, 16 years ago, was the last time that Amnesty dedicated a report to the plight of Palestinians in Lebanon.

Nothing has changed since then. The discriminatory laws are still in place, Palestinians still cannot own land, they still are banned from many jobs, they still have no access to Lebanese health care, babies born are not given citizenship.

By any definition, including Amnesty's own definition, this is apartheid against Palestinians in Lebanon. But Amnesty never calls it such, and it has not considered this issue worth a follow-up report since the first decade of the century.

Amnesty would briefly mention Arab discrimination against Palestinians in their annual reports on every country. From their annual report on 2014:

Thousands of Palestinian long-term refugees continued to live in camps and informal gatherings in Lebanon, often in deprived conditions. They faced discriminatory laws and regulations, for example denying them the right to inherit property, the right to work in around 20 professions, and other basic rights.

And for 2019:

Lebanon also continued to host tens of thousands of long-term Palestinian refugees, who remained subject to discriminatory laws excluding them from owning or inheriting property, accessing public education and health services, and working in at least 36 professions. At least 3,000 Palestinian refugees who do not hold official identity documents faced further restrictions, denying them the right to register births, marriages and deaths.

2020:

Over 470,000 Palestinian refugees were registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, including 29,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria. The 180,000 of them estimated to be still living in the country remained subject to discriminatory laws, excluding them from owning or inheriting property, accessing public education and health services and from working in at least 36 professions.

But when you look at the Lebanon entry of Amnesty's latest annual report, covering 2021, there is not a word about discrimination and mistreatment of Palestinians in Lebanon.

Nothing has changed. The overcrowded camps are still there, the discriminatory laws are still there. Amnesty's decision not to mention that which had been in every annual report until now must be deliberate.

Perhaps it was a mere clerical error, an oversight, a regrettable mistake?

Let's look at Amnesty's annual reports on Jordan concerning the non-citizen Palestinians who live there.

2019:

On 14 October, the Ministry of Labour raised from 11 to 39 the number of professions barred to non-Jordanian nationals seeking employment. Among them were long-term Palestinian refugees not holding Jordanian citizenship, most of whom were from the Gaza Strip; they continued to be denied other basic rights and services, too.

2020:

Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip continued to be excluded from basic rights and services as they do not have Jordanian citizenship.

But in the latest 2021 report, there is not a word about Jordanian discrimination against hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are not citizens. And they are still suffering from the same discrimination they were the year and decades before.

Why would Amnesty excise any mention of Arab human rights abuses against Palestinians in its 2021 report when they were mentioned in previous reports, and their situation has not gotten any better?

Here's why.

Amnesty released its 2021 annual report in March, 2022. This was shortly after Amnesty issued its report falsely accusing Israel of "apartheid" against Palestinians.

As soon as Amnesty issued its anti-Israel report, in which it had invested so many hours and so much money, it removed any mention of Jordan and Lebanon treating their Palestinian residents far worse than Israel does!

This is unlikely to be a coincidence. Amnesty's libel against Israel would have been diluted by their mentioning how Arab nations officially discriminate against Palestinians who have lived within their borders for decades. They did not want people to point to their own reports showing that Arabs really are guilty of apartheid against Palestinians, with discriminatory laws aimed specifically at them. 2022 was the year that Amnesty dedicated to attacking Israel - even creating T-shirts and swag and encouraging "stunts" to get publicity for their crusade.

Amnesty is not soberly reporting on accusations of Israeli human rights abuses. It is enthusiastically promoting an anti-Israel campaign. Mentioning that their fellow Arabs treat Palestinians worse than "racist, Jewish supremacist" Israel would damage that message.

So they erased all human rights abuses against Palestinians that they couldn't blame on Israel.

Which proves that Amnesty is not the impartial arbiter of human rights it pretends to be. At least when it comes to the Middle East, it is an anti-Israel propaganda outlet. It happily throws Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan under the bus. To them, demonizing Israel is a far more important mission than mere human rights.

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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92.5% of Palestinians killed this year were members of terror groups or actively involved in attacks

As he did last year, Adin Haykin is documenting every single Palestinian killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank this year, and explaining the circumstances.

I put his current thread on a Twitter Thread Reader post.

Out of 80 killed this year, I count six who were uninvolved civilians. (I'm counting a father who was shot while trying to stop his son's arrest as a civilian.)

That means that 92.5% of those killed were actively part of hostilities, or members of armed groups. And that includes every single minor who was killed this year.

It is also entirely possible that some of the civilians listed were killed by Palestinian fire, which as we've seen has been quite wild.

A far as I can tell, never in the history of urban fighting has the percentage of innocent civilians killed been this low.

In contrast, over 50% of those killed in Operation Banner in Northern Ireland by the British Army were uninvolved civilians.

Western troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria have never achieved anything close to this record.

The mainstream media emphasizes the uninvolved, as they should. But they do not contextualize their deaths with these facts that the IDF is far exceeding what is considered acceptable by any other army in history, especially when it often operates in an extremely challenging environment when there stone throwers and firebombs coming from attackers on all sides.

If any other army went under the same microscope that the IDF does, they would look horrible by comparison.

For example, the New York Times reported in 2021 about an attack by US forces five years earlier that no one knew about:

Shortly before 3 a.m. on July 19, 2016, American Special Operations forces bombed what they believed were three ISIS “staging areas” on the outskirts of Tokhar, a riverside hamlet in northern Syria. They reported 85 fighters killed. In fact, they hit houses far from the front line, where farmers, their families and other local people sought nighttime sanctuary from bombing and gunfire. More than 120 villagers were killed.

Do you remember reading about this incident, or the dozens of others that were uncovered in that story using Pentagon records? No, the story disappeared from the news media radar in no time.

Now, imagine the tsunami of coverage from multiple news outlets, the UN resolutions and condemnations from every nation on the planet, that would result if Israel killed 120 civilians in an air strike and claimed it was a successful strike on dozens of fighters.

That is not just a double standard. That is treating Israel as uniquely evil and ignoring far, far worse things done by "the good guys."

And that is the entire point. Israel's critics do not want you to know this context when they accuse Israel of war crimes. They do not want you to see how Israel compares to other armies. They never make 3D models of US bombing of wedding parties.

There is only one possible explanation for putting Israel under an electron microscope for doing an amazing job targeting terrorists while virtually ignoring the horrible mistakes that every other professional western army does. It isn't "concern over taxpayer dollars" or "humanitarian concerns" or any of the dozens of other excuses used to justify this obsession with how Israel fights terror. None of the Western armies who wantonly bombed dozens of innocents had to worry about an immediate threat of someone slipping through a porous border and attacking their own citizens who live only a few kilometers away.

The only explanation is antisemitism.

Maybe not the explicit, neo-Nazi kind, but this crazed obsession with finding everything wrong with Israel defending itself from real, imminent threats while ignoring everyday Palestinian terror cannot be logically explained any other way except to say that a Jewish state is assumed to be automatically criminal the way Jews have lived under that assumption for thousands of years.

The truly remarkable thing is that the IDF, like the Jews throughout history, don't respond by saying that they might as well act the way they are being accused of acting. Instead, they continue to improve their methods and work towards a 100% record of only killing those who are actively trying to kill them first. (In attacks on Iranian targets in Syria, they are very close to that 100%.)

The IDF is truly the most moral army in the world. It isn't even close.

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

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The crime of "Judaizing" - what's old is new again

Times of Israel has an interesting article about how crypto-Jews in Mallorca would continue to celebrate Purim by calling it the "Feast of St. Esther."

A brave woman named Ana Cortés admitted to the Church that she was still celebrating Jewish holidays and studying (illegal) Jewish texts.

The crypto-Jews of Mallorca paid a heavy price for clinging to their Jewish faith. Pedro Onofro Cortés was burned at the stake. Ana Cortés was sentenced twice for the crime of “Judaizing” or secretly practicing and teaching Judaism, once in 1677 and again in 1688.

Indeed, historical works about the Inquisition mention the "Judaizing" charge brought against crypto-Jews.

Today, the same term "Judaizing" is still being used as an epithet - when referring to Israel "Judaizing" Judaism's holiest city.

Just as it was then, the term is used by antisemites to make it moral crime to keep Jews or the Jewish capital - Jewish.

It was an insult then and it is an insult now. And in both cases, it is only antisemites who use the term as an epithet.

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

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Harvard Arab speakers define "pro-Palestine" as attacking Israel

Jewish Insider reports from the Arab Conference at Harvard this past weekend. The headline says, "Harvard ‘perfect example’ of pro-Palestinian activism, speakers argue at Arab Conference at Harvard."

If you read the article, you cannot find a single example of "pro-Palestinian" activism. Nothing to provide Palestinians in Gaza with jobs or medicine. Nothing to help Palestinians in camps in Lebanon or Syria to live in security. Nothing to encourage Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to hold free elections.

But here is what they did have:

“When we’re talking about this youth movement for Palestine, Harvard is a perfect example,” Mohamad Habehh, director of development at American Muslims for Palestine, said in a Sunday session. Later in his address, he called Zionism “a very stupid ideology” and pledged to “end U.S. support for Israel.” Habehh said that American Muslims for Palestine would be meeting this week with officials at the State Department to urge them to deny Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich a visa into the U.S. due to recent comments he made calling for Israel to “erase” a Palestinian village.

... Speaking at the conference on a panel about Middle Eastern representation in the 2030 Census, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) urged students to fight back against what she called “the intimidation, the bullying, the targeting to silence you” from pro-Israel students. “Everybody wants to silence me. But I know, whoever comes after me, I’ve knocked at least a couple doors down,” Tlaib continued, so that another student “can come in, she can say ‘apartheid.’”

There is not a single example of pro-Palestinian activism - but several examples of attacking the Jewish state.

These are intelligent people, and they cannot distinguish between going after Israel and supporting Palestinians.

Because, indeed, the entire point of Palestinian nationalism is not to build a state - but to destroy one.

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

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Palestinians try to hijack UN Conference on Least Developed Countries

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas went to Doha to speak at the 5th UN Conference on Least Developed Countries.

As is always the case, he spent more time attacking Israel than to discuss the topic at hand.

Our Palestinian people have been living the ravages of the Nakba and the refugee catastrophe for 75 years, and they are facing the crimes of the occupation, which, since 1967, have turned into a continuous colonialism that violates the resolutions of international legitimacy, delves into practices of ethnic cleansing and racism, persists in changing the identity and character of the occupied city of East Jerusalem, and violates Al-Aqsa Mosque. It assaults the historical and legal status of Islamic and Christian sanctities, uproots Palestinians from their land, demolishes their homes, continues settlements, plunders resources and withholds Palestinian funds, and kills Palestinians in Nablus, Jenin, Jericho, Jerusalem, Hebron, and other cities, villages, and camps .

On top of that, terrorist settler gangs commit crimes of burning Palestinians and their property, as happened recently by burning dozens of homes, shops, and hundreds of vehicles in the town of Hawara, and calling on ministers in the occupation government to incite killing and destruction and to wipe this town out of existence. We call on the international community to stop and punish this Israeli terrorism against our people, and to work towards ending this occupation of the land of the State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Despite all this, our people will remain steadfast, continuing to defend their land and sanctities .

The State of Palestine will continue to confront the occupiers and their violations of international law, signed agreements, and their unilateral practices, and go to international forums and courts. We will also continue to carry out our international responsibilities, as happened when the State of Palestine chaired the Group of 77 and China in 2019, in addition to continuing our efforts to combat extremism and international terrorism .

Yes, the people who literally invented international terrorism, the people who supported Al Qaeda far longer than any Arab country, the ones who literally pay terrorists and their families as an inviolable part of their annual budget, claim to be fighting terrorism.

We look forward to continuing your support for our endeavor to defend our people's legitimate right to self-determination, and their right to freedom and independence. We will also continue our commitment to implementing the sustainable development plan and its goals, and the special situation of the least developed countries. We have succeeded in launching a very important document entitled "Atlas of Sustainable Development 2020", with the aim of documenting development efforts .

I couldn't find this Atlas of Sustainable Development 2020. One would think that if it was such an important document, it would be referenced in Palestinian websites. All I found was a video about this document, written in English, which indicates that it is one of the hundreds of reports that have been pushed by the EU or UN, mostly created so the Palestinian Authority can show the West that it is acting like a normal government that cares about its people.

Yet the recommendations in these reports are never implemented, unless more Western money is dependent on progress.

UPDATE - it is here. It is a point in time document showing how the Palestinian territories are doing against UN goals. It might be important, but it doesn't mandate any improvements. (h/t GnasherJew.)

The Palestinian Authority has never acted like a real government - for good reason. The only issues that they are passionate about are anti-Israel, not pro-Palestinian. When you look at everything it does, everything they say in international forums, every statement they issue, this is obvious. And this speech by Abbas is simply more proof that Palestinian nationalism is a cover for destroying Israel by any means possible.

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

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World Council of Churches is upset when Israel makes life EASIER for Palestinians

In 2018, the World Council of Churches website wrote about how arduous the journey through checkpoints was for Palestinians going to Israel to work or find jobs:

At 4.45, the Qalandiya checkpoint is already crowded, as thousands upon thousands of Palestinians try to make their way to Jerusalem each day.

Qalandiya is the main checkpoint between the northern West Bank and Jerusalem, and ecumenical accompaniers (EAs) from the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (WCC-EAPPI) visit regularly in the early mornings.

“If you live in East Jerusalem outside the wall, or in Ramallah for example, and you work in Jerusalem, you need to be at the checkpoint early if you want to get to work on time. Getting through the checkpoint can take anything between one and several hours,” one of the EAs explains.

It was definitely not an enjoyable experience to go through the checkpoint then, and the WCC wanted to make sure the whole world knew it.

Now in 2023, the WCC revisited the checkpoints, and found things are quite different:

Machsom Watch was founded in January 2001 by three Jewish Jerusalemite women who saw military checkpoints around Jerusalem and in the West Bank and decided to do something about it. Now 88, Barag pursues human rights as energetically as ever.

Over the past five to ten years, she has noticed big changes at checkpoints: there are no more long lines of people. In fact, thousands of people come, they cross quickly, and the whole process is computerized.

This sounds great, right? Israel has cut the wait time for the Palestinian workers by hours every day. What could be wrong with that?

When your job is to demonize Israel - plenty!

“The Israeli military will tell you: look what we have done to make life easier for Palestinians, but in reality, the system is much more difficult and complicated, but you cannot see it,” says Barag. “There are over 100 types of permits.”

“As human rights people, we must do something about this inhumane system of control,” she says. “We do not want to make the situation easier.”

She realizes this seems like a contradiction—but what she is saying, is that the occupation should not become easier to administer because humans are increasingly less visible in the process. “Let us not open the space for soldiers to operate a machine—one that is bureaucratic—and where the gates open and close remotely,” she says. “We do not want to make the occupation more palatable; we want to see an end to the occupation.”

If the "occupation" would end and there would be two states - there would still be a border crossing between the two states! It would probably be harder for Palestinians to go to work in Israel than it is today.

And the World Council of Churches will be there to condemn that, too.

Because the problem isn't that Israel is unfair to Palestinians. The problem is that Israel exists, and the WCC is doing everything they can to remedy that situation.

(h/t Simon Wiesenthal Center)

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Yasir Arafat Museum has a new exhibit on Jewish settlements

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!

Another child mujahid, and more silence from @UNICEF and other NGOs about Palestinians recruiting children

The Palestinian Amad news site shows this photo of another "child" killed by Israeli forces as they engaged in a battle upon entering the Al-Faraa camp to arrest terrorists that the Palestinian Authority refuses to.

Hmmm. 17-year old Mahmoud al-Aidi seems to be carrying something. A laptop bag, perhaps?

Not quite.

In this case, the IDF says that al-Aidi approached them with an explosive device.

In related "child martyr" news, 14-year old Qusai Radwan Waked, who was killed Sunday, appears to have been linked to Islamic Jihad, and was referred to as a "mujahid" in the Jenin Qassam Telegram channel while wearing the PIJ headband and showing the "tawhid" hand gesture popularized by ISIS and now used by Palestinian jihadists.

The martyr, the mujahid cub, Qusai Wakada, son of the town of Al-Arqa in Jenin, who was martyred yesterday while confronting the invading occupation forces in Jenin..

Palestinian militias are recruiting children and encouraging them to attack Israeli soldiers, knowing that their deaths are worth far more in public relations value than their military skills.

And yet NGOs that supposedly care about the welfare of children have been completely silent - because that dilutes from the false narrative of Israeli forces wantonly shooting children, which is also worth far more to them in fundraising value.

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!

Palestinians trying to hijack the earthquake

The Palestinian Information Center seems upset that the world is paying so much attention to the earthquake in Turkey and Syria and not to them.

So they wrote an article that not only accuses Israel of "aid-washing" but also claims that the damage in Gaza wars was just as bad, if not worse, than the horrific scenes we are seeing in the quake zones.

The painful scenes of the earthquake victims under the rubble, their loud cries asking for help and rescue, and the pictures of the injured children stuck under the rubble, brought back to mind the images of the successive wars on the Gaza Strip, where the occupation planes destroy homes and residential towers on the heads of their owners.

It goes on to say that the destruction of Gaza was the same, and who could even imagine that Israel is really interested in saving lives? It is all just "hasbara."

Ibrahim Al-Madhoun said that the Zionist occupation is trying to whiten its black image after committing many crimes, and is taking advantage of the earthquake catastrophe and international sympathy with Turkey and Syria, and wants to appear with a fake face, by playing a humanitarian role that does not suit its criminal nature.

Al-Madhoun stressed that the image that the occupation is trying to appear as a relief and savior for the victims of the earthquake will not convince the Arab peoples and the free people of the world.

Al-Madhoun called for the need to focus on the real image of the occupation, expose its criminality, warn the world, international institutions, and countries against being deceived by the occupation, exposing its crimes, and remembering what happened and is happening, of crimes committed by the occupation on an ongoing basis.

The irony is that while the Israelis are proud of their fast response teams and their setting up an entire field hospital in Turkey, the Palestinians are spending more time on the publicity campaigns promoting their own aid than the aid itself. They created a "Palestine is With You" campaign and logo:

Notice that the center of the logo is the Dome of the Rock - meaning that even this campaign to supposedly help thousands of victims is really designed to ensure the centrality of the Palestinian cause.

I don't think there are any new logos of the Israeli efforts for helping the victims.

As usual, the Palestinian accusations against Israel is projection of what they are doing - trying to leverage a disaster into making Palestinians look good.

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From Times of Israel:

The High Court of Justice issued a sharp rebuke on Tuesday of the government’s recent request for yet another delay in the court’s order to evacuate the illegal Khan al-Ahmar Bedouin encampment in the West Bank.

Justice Noam Sohlberg rejected the government’s request for a four-month extension for the submission of its position on the issue, and instead set a hearing for a request by the right-wing Regavim organization that the court issue a final order requiring the hamlet’s immediate evacuation and demolition.

We've been inundated with articles from around the world about how fascist and theocratic the current Israeli government is, and how it is trying to eviscerate the only Israeli institution that is defending good old fashioned liberal values. But if that is true, why is the government trying to delay the demolition of Khan al Ahmar - and why is the High Court insisting that it be demolished immediately?

Why is the liberal High Court on the side of the right-wing Regavim NGO and the right-wing government on the side of the EU?

Because the memes are all wrong. Every biased assumption behind these articles is wrong. And this is the real outrage.

Clearly, the High Court insists the encampment is illegal. It always was illegal. Even though the Europeans and progressive Americans are saying that demolishing Khan al-Ahmar is a war crime or whatever, the Israeli courts see no validity in that argument.

Equally clearly, the current "most right wing government in Israeli history" is not anxious to demolish Khan al-Ahmar. It is engaging in realpolitik, and it doesn't want to antagonize the Europeans. I'm sure that the government knows Khan al-Ahmar is illegal but instead of using the court as a shield to destroy the outpost, it is fighting it.

Moreover, the "extremist Likud" prepared a site for the residents to move that would have a sewage system and electricity - all on the Israeli taxpayer's dime, essentially rewarding the lawless Bedouin.

When you look past the headlines, none of the memes about Israel jive with the facts. Too bad most journalists prefer to parrot the memes and try to fit the facts to the narrative rather than point out the truth.

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Another Palestinian "child" soldier killed

Last night, another Palestinian under 18 who was a member of an armed group was killed - and he will be counted as one of the "children" Israel "murdered" this year.

Hamza Al-Ashqar, 17, was killed in Nablus while shooting at soldiers.

As is often the case with child soldiers killed who had been recruited by terror groups, part of Palestinian media emphasizes that he was a "child" while the other part proudly mentioned that he was a "heroic fighter." It all depends on the audience and which narrative will incite more people to be angry.

Al-Ashqar was a member of the Lion's Den and apparently one of the Fatah armed groups. Fatah issued an obituary, "With more pride and esteem, the Fatah movement mourns in the camp of the new soldier, the martyr hero Hamza Amjad Al-Ashqar, who was assassinated by an Israeli sniper, while he was a frontman defending the soil of the homeland to join the planet of martyrs."

It is becoming more obvious that Palestinian terror groups are purposefully recruiting children to be killed, since the Western media rarely mentions that they are child soldiers. As far as so-called human rights NGOs, I have yet to see a single one of them condemn the recruitment of child members of terror groups.

It is a winning formula, so why not recruit more teenage cannon fodder?

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Syria insists it would NEVER accept earthquake aid from Israel. No one thinks this is strange.

From Reuters:

The pro-Assad regime Al Watan newspaper on Monday quoted a Syrian official denying reports it relayed a request for Israeli aid in the wake of the massive earthquake that shook the region.
Earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a request from Syria did arrive and that Israel was prepared to send tents and medical supplies and provide treatment for the injured.

Arabic media reports one of the denials:

The source said, "If Netanyahu had received such a request, it was certainly from his allies and friends in ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist organizations."

The source added to the Syrian newspaper Al-Watan: "The Israeli occupation entity is the cause of woes, wars and tensions in the region, and it is the last one who has the right to talk about providing aid and assistance. It is disgraceful that Netanyahu exploits the catastrophe of the earthquake that struck Syria to mislead public opinion and cover up the expansionist and aggressive policies of the occupation."

Aid-washing!

The highest priority of any government is to protect its citizens. If Syria is telling the truth now, it is saying quite clearly that hating Israel is a more fundamental tenet than saving people's lives.

That's about as good a definition of antisemitism as there is.

It is exactly the philosophy of BDS, who claim to want to boycott Israel at any cost (for anyone but themselves.)

And just like BDS, the insistence that human lives are less important than having nothing to do with the Jewish state is couched in terms of - morality!

Isn't it strange that the rest of the world doesn't think this is strange? Syria and other Muslim nations having an obsessive hate of Israel is accepted as a law of nature.

And, in some ways, that's also a good definition of antisemitism.

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JNS reports:

Israel’s Cabinet voted on Sunday to establish a new community along the border with the Gaza Strip.

The future town, to be named Hanun, will be located in the Sdot Negev Region and eventually be inhabited by some 500 families.

“The establishment of the community is further evidence of the resilience of the [citizens living in the] ‘Gaza envelope’ and the power of the State of Israel. We’re proud to build up the Land of Israel and we’re proud to strengthen settlement in all parts of our land,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hamas calls Israel building a community within the Green Line a "dangerous escalation" - and threatened it:

The Hamas movement confirmed that the continuation of the Zionist occupation government with its aggressive settlement policies in our land, the latest of which was its announcement today, Sunday, of building a settlement near the Gaza Strip, constitutes a dangerous escalation that will not bring the settlers security or stability, and will not grant the occupation legitimacy or sovereignty over our land.

In a press statement, today, Sunday, Hamas stressed that the occupation government is solely responsible for its disregard for settling settlers near the Gaza Strip, and for putting them in danger, and it bears full responsibility for its settlement escalation throughout the occupied West Bank.

The movement called on the international community to shoulder its responsibility in curbing those racist occupation policies that threaten peace and security in the region.

The English announcement stressed "colonialism" while the Arabic one (above) directly threatened the community.

Just more proof that it isn't the "occupation" that Palestinians are upset at - it is Israel's existence.

And this is a story that Western media still barely reports.

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