Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: peace building

Showing posts with label peace building. Show all posts

Friday, March 31, 2023

Saudi, Tunisia, Sudanese and Somali delegates meet in Israel for security conference

More than 20 guests from different Arab Gulf and African countries arrived in Israel on Wednesday for a historic visit to Jerusalem, where they will discuss a range of issues that pertain to regional links with the Jewish state.

Among these guests, some of whom were from countries with which Israel does not have diplomatic relations, were representatives of think tanks, institutes of applied diplomacy, and journalists, Ynetnews reported. They participated in a three-day conference, initiated by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, focused on Israel's relations with the countries of Africa and the Gulf region.

Representatives of Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Djibouti, Tunisia, Mauritania, and Sudan - states that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel - were among those at the forum, as well as envoys from the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Somaliland, South Africa, South Sudan, and Uganda.

To have delegates from Tunisia and Saudi Arabia is not a small thing.

Arab media and social media are filled with these photos of the delegates:

Topics discussed included the war on terrorism and radicalization, water desalination, food safety and the war on hunger.

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The real Israel and the Israel that is being broadcast to the world

From Israel21c:

More than 300 Arab and Jewish Israeli children recently joined forces to create a sustainable garden at the Al-Hayat School in the Arab town of Kfar Qassem in central Israel. The Kfar Qassem kids were joined in the project by children from the nearby Jewish community of Kfar Saba.

The “Green Roofs” project, under the auspices of the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation, was funded by USAID.

For several months leading up to the planting of vegetables, spices, perennials and hydroponic plants, the seventh-graders learned about sustainability, environmental responsibility, climate crisis and consumer culture.

The program also served to connect the two neighboring communities, create understanding among the youth and encourage activism to promote coexistence.

The shared garden, which is open to the public, “deepens the connection between Kfar Qassem and Kfar Saba residents even further,” says Kfar Qassem Mayor Adel Badir.

Countering the negative images in the media, the mayor said the garden “symbolizes both cooperation and shared existence.”

This isn't the image of Israel in most Arab media (although a couple of websites did cover this story.) More often, you see stories like this from Hizb Ut-Tahrir:

And Western media seems to prefer the latter narrative over the former.

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!

The difference between honest critics of Israel and the antisemitic BDSers who really don't care about Palestinians

Dr. Rosena Allin-Khan is a Labour MP for Tooting and a physician.

She recently traveled to Gaza and reported back on the issues she saw with Israel's permit system for patients to leave Gaza. She is obviously not a Zionist and some of the resulting articles have been called out for major inaccuracies. Nevertheless, she is someone who cares deeply about the people of Gaza.

What happened to her when she tried to help the children of Gaza shows that the purported "pro-Palestinian" crowd really don't give a shit about Palestinians.

From her Twitter thread which she titled, simply, Anti-Semitism:

I travelled to Israel and Palestine earlier this year, working as a doctor, with the aim of finding out what issues Palestinians (especially from Gaza) currently face with accessing hospital treatment.

I saw some truly horrific cases inc. of Palestinian babies being born prematurely, but because of permit issues mothers were sent back to Gaza shortly after birth, with some babies dying alone in hospital.

I spoke at length with many news outlets, the Guardian and the Today Prog did good pieces on this. Kids undergoing chemotherapy can’t travel with parents because they’re deemed a security risk. But the issue has many sides to the story and is not simple.

This caused a stir. I was called a liar, some people tried to discredit what I was saying. I held firm, I have proof of these horrific cases - it’s a fact that many Palestinians are not treated with dignity.

So, in my quest to improve the permit system, I had a very lively radio discussion with the Deputy Israeli Ambassador - something which continued in the green room at the BBC. Weeks later, she invited me to meet with her to discuss it further.

So last week, I went to the Israeli Embassy to discuss it, in the hope to get some traction, to improve the permit system - which will benefit thousands of Palestinians waiting for hospital treatment.

Instead of supporting my work, those purporting to support the Palestinian cause have spouted horrible anti-Semitic abuse. See some examples here - it’s disgusting, these views are abhorrent - but also misguided and ill-informed.

This behaviour does nothing to help the Palestinian cause. I have been there, called out what I’ve seen and spoken in the press. Am I now not meant to work to improve this dreadful situation?

I’ve worked with Palestinians across the Middle East for 10 years - but these racists think they can sit behind a keyboard here in the U.K and troll someone genuinely trying to help. It’s revolting - it’s wrong.

People claim that Zionists call all critics of Israel "antisemites." It was never true; legitimate criticism of Israel is not antisemitic in the least.

Dr. Allin-Khan's criticisms are clearly legitimate.

Her story shows that Israeli officials have no interest in hurting Palestinians. Their main concern, as with any country, is the security of their citizens. But there is no desire to hurt Palestinians, and if solutions can be found to help even the children of their enemies without endangering Israelis, the Israeli government not only wants to find them but has implemented hundreds of such ideas, big and small, every year.

The BDS crowd doesn't care about Palestinians. As these tweets show, including from some prominent BDS leaders, they are all about hate for Israel, not support for Palestinians. They are hypocritical. And, as even Dr. Allin-Khan notes, their hate is based on antisemitism.

BDSers assume that all Israeli Jews are murderers and racists and therefore must never even be treated as human beings. People who care about Palestinians know that Israelis must be their partners in helping mitigate the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza. (They also know that Hamas and Fatah are responsible to a large extent on the problems in Gaza.)

Honestly, I respect Qatar more than the BDS crowd. Qatar, even with its support for Hamas, actually works with Israel to bring aid to Gaza - thereby violating the "BDS call" that so many idiots treat as sacred.

This episode is just one more that proves that BDS is nothing more than a hate group. And while they claim they are supporting Palestinians, when it comes down to it the only thing they love about Palestinians is to see them suffer - Palestinians are only useful when they can be used as PR weapons against Israel.

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Palestinian software house tells customers not to believe the BDS lies

ASAL Technologies is a software development house in Ramallah. They've done business with Cisco, Intel, HP, Microsoft and others.

Their FAQ page reveals a lot about how "pro-Palestinian" activists are in fact hurting the most skilled and creative Palestinians. Because in order to gain business abroad, ASAL has to convince potential customers that the propaganda that they have been hearing for decades is all wrong.

Can Palestinians travel?
Yes. Palestinians are able to travel to any part of the world. Provided with the proper and necessary documentation, Palestinians can acquire a visa and travel to any destination.

Do you have internet?
Yes. We do have internet and electricity. Over the past 60 years, the West Bank had not sustained any outages due to political reasons. Currently ASAL Technologies has two fiber optic cables from two different ISPs to ensure 24/7 internet connectivity. And short term plans are to move the headquarters of ASAL Technologies to Rawabi -the first Palestinian smart city- where the infrastructure of the whole city has been optimized to meet international standards.

Does the political situation affect your work?
No. Though it is hard to visualize if one hasn’t visited Palestine, the reality is that the political situation does not affect our ability to conduct business as usual with all of our clients. And to ensure that our employees can always access their workplace, we opened up a new branch in north of Palestine, and future plans are to open up yet another branch in the south.

These people should be role models for the Palestinian Arabs - they don't spend all of their time whining about what they can't do, but instead they show what they can do. And already they managed to build a modern workplace in a nice building.

The company also does business with Israeli companies, much to the chagrin of the BDSers:

Israel’s high-tech industry is among the country’s crowning achievements. Many Israeli tech firms send work offshore to Eastern Europe, India or China.

In the past three years, however, some have turned to Palestinian engineers and programmers. They are cheaper, ambitious, work in the same time zone, and – surprisingly to many Israelis – are similar to them.

“The cultural gap is much smaller than we would think,” said Gai Anbar, chief executive of Comply, an Israeli start-up in this central Israeli town that develops software for global pharmaceutical companies like Merck and Teva.

Palestinian engineers have also warmed up to the idea. “I doubt you would find a company who says, ‘I am closed for business,” to Israelis, said Ala Alaeddin, chairman of the Palestinian Information Technology Association.

“We have a window of opportunity to demonstrate our skills,” said Murad Tahboub, CEO of Asal Technologies, a Palestinian outsourcing company that works with Comply and a handful of other Israeli-based companies. “The more people know about us … the more comfortable they will be in doing business with us.”

This is what real peace looks like. And the people who support boycotts and labels and all the other anti-Israel initiatives are the ones who are working against peace - and against the very people whom they are pretending to care the most about.

Unfortunately, Palestinian society is geared to silencing the voices of people like these workers -people who want to truly build their communities and are eager to work with Israelis to get it done.

(h/t Mike)

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Western money goes to terrorists, not peace

From the Wall Street Journal:

A report by Palestinian Media Watch recently revealed that British taxpayers have been paying salaries to terrorists. It revealed that £3 million every month is paid by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in salaries to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The salaries come from the PA's general budget. That "general budget" is kindly provided by the U.K., among other EU countries.

Many British taxpayers, struggling to pay their family's way through a recession, might rightly wonder why their money is going to pay as much as £2,000 a month to people serving the longest sentences—those who have targeted Israeli buses and other civilian targets with suicide bombers, for instance. That is higher than the average wage in nearly all of Britain. You might be forgiven for wondering, if you were a struggling teaching assistant in the North of England, why failing to tick "suicide bomber" on your careers form should have left you so much worse off than a terrorist in the Middle East.

Meanwhile:

The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, where students from Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority learn together, may not open its gates in the next academic year.

Located in the southern kibbuz of Ketura, the institute was established in 1996 as an engine for the vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace. This is the only place in the Middle East dealing with the common environmental problems of Israel and its neighbors.

“From my point of view it's a severe blow,” explained Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, director of the institute's Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation. “We won’t have partners on the other side, the environmental problems won't go away and it will be increasingly difficult to solve them.”

The institute, Abu Hamad says, doesn't only promote international cooperation, but peace between peoples as well.

“We need $1.5 million to begin 2013. Some donors promised us hundreds of thousands of dollars over a span of years, but those contributions have shrunk or vanished."

Yes, the terrorists get paid far more every month than a real example of cooperation and peace needs to start its academic year.

No one in the "pro-Palestinian" crowd supports the existence of real peace programs between Israel and the Arabs. Because they aren't "pro-Palestinian" at all - but anti-Israel.

Both those stories are worth reading in full for other reasons.

The British story notes how Britain's International Development Minister Alan Duncan adamantly refuses to accept the evidence and insists that paying these prisoners - whose payscale increases with the time they are in prison - is really "social welfare."

The Arava story notes that the institute has to hide the fact that it is in Israel when recruiting students from Jordan.

(h/t Ian, Zvi)

Qatar cancels "Music and Dialogue Festival": too "Zionist"

If you want to find an Israeli who is "pro-Palestinian", you won't be able to do better than Daniel Barenboim.

The Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim has been granted Palestinian citizenship for his work in promoting cultural exchange between young people in Israel and the Arab world.

The Argentine-born musician is believed to be the first person in the world to possess both Israeli and Palestinian passports after receiving his new documentation at the end of a piano recital in Ramallah in the West Bank at the weekend.

"Under the most difficult circumstances he has shown solidarity with the Palestinian people," Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian MP and presidential candidate, said at the recital held to raise money for medical aid for children in the Gaza Strip.

Barenboim even managed to enter Hamas-controlled Gaza last year to perform with his mixed Arab-Jewish orchestra.

And for the past few years, that same orchestra - the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, which he co-founded with Edward Said - has performed in a festival in Qatar.

But not this year.

The event was supposed to include three concerts featuring the orchestra under Barenboim's lead as well as a debate at a local university on the subject of "music as a contribution to peace."

Said died nine years ago, his widow was among those invited to the debate. Everything was ready, thousands of tickets were sold, but just a few days ago Barenboim was surprised to hear that the Qatari authorities announced that the festival was cancelled.

The reason? "Sensitivity to the developments in the Arab world." The official announcement further stated: "We are aware of Maestro Barenboim's special talents, but the festival under his lead is cancelled."

Apparently this is only a diplomatic pretext and the reality may be that the Qatari authorities surrendered to the pressure that was put on them by the Palestinian organization for boycott on Israel.

The Arab media insisting that the reason for the cancellation is the fact that "Barenboim represents the occupation."

Editorials in newspapers throughout the Arab world stated: "This isn't the time or place to entertain Israelis and a Zionist conductor. Qatari authorities are giving the Zionist maestro an opportunity to present a seemingly positive aspect of Israel."

Omar Barghouti, the hypocrite leader of the Israel boycott movement who has no problem getting his doctorate from an Israeli university, explains why Barenboim is such a horrible Zionist:

Although he rejects the 1967 occupation, he also rejects the return of refugees to the homes they were thrown out of during the nakba [in 1948].

Barenboim attempts to cleverly clean up Israel’s image by accepting some Palestinian rights, but at the same time he repudiates the most significant of Palestinian rights.

Meaning the right to destroy the Jewish state.

Barghouti has an entire op-ed in Al Akhbar about this, decrying how Arab countries are "normalizing" relations with Israel in academia, the arts and even sports. He loves to self-righteously force his agenda to boycott Israel on everyone but himself.

Barenboim might be spending his entire life trying to achieve peace and dialogue between Israel and the Arab world, but he still accepts that Israel has a right to exist. That is an unpardonable crime.

And Qatar cannot appear to be "Zionist" by hosting a pro-peace artist who was honored by the Palestinian Authority. That is too controversial.

This episode also neatly proves that the BDS movement is not merely against "occupation" but against the very existence of Israel itself.