Showing posts with label second intifada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label second intifada. 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


Akiva Bigman in Mida writes that Ehud Barak had been planning to bring Benjamin Netanyahu down via mass protests long before the judicial reform issue was brought up.
Ehud Barak is a central figure in the protest movement against judicial reform. If you have been following the media, you may get the impression that although he is adamantly against Netanyahu and judicial reform, he is merely providing commentary and interpreting events. The reality is the opposite. Do not be deceived by his age or because he is a former prime minister and supposed elder statesman. At 81 years old, Barak is one of the main architects behind the current mass demonstrations. Yet, his involvement goes deeper. Barak is not only orchestrating today’s mass demonstrations, he has been integral in forming the anti-Bibi movement over the past seven years.

Recently, a chilling video of a Zoom conversation was circulated in which Barak describes a scenario of how he will return to power. He mentions that he has a friend, a historian, who told to him that he will become Prime Minister again when there are “bodies floating in the Yarkon river” of Jews murdered in a civil war. Barak immediately said that this should never happen. Yet, that he would mention such a grotesque idea, a truly horrifying scenario is disturbing. Moreover, this comment was made to a forum whose whole raison d’être is to get rid of Netanyahu and explore ideas on how to implement such a plan. Perhaps this was a slip of the tongue, or maybe it was said by someone whose purpose in orchestrating these protests is about his own return to power.

Nonetheless, the Zoom conversation video containing the “bodies in the Yarkon river” comment actually occurred in 2020 during the Corona pandemic, years before judicial reform became a legislative issue. Meaning, the notion that it is specifically judicial reform that is bothering Barak, or the people he is guiding, is bogus. And the fact that Barak was having conversations with those who raised the idea of mass civil disobedience only serves to reinforce Barak’s role in guiding these protests.  

Barak's words in the 2020 video sure sounds like a blueprint for the protests happening today, especially using the word "democracy" as a slogan. 

But he had been saying the same thing since 2016:

These are Barak’s words at the Herzliya conference, pay attention to the recurring motifs that he still talks about today:

“We have been led for more than a year by a prime minister and a government that is weak, limp and all talk, even according to senior members of its coalition, deceitful and extremist, that fails repeatedly, in guaranteeing security, undermining the fabric of democracy in Israel, failing in managing diplomatic relations with the United States and in stabilizing Israel’s position in the world… Here, I call on the government to come to its senses and immediately get back on track. If you don’t do that, we will all have to get up from our comfortable and less comfortable seats – and overthrow it, through a popular protest and through the voter’s ballot – before it’s too late.”

These are the components of Ehud Barak’s second political comeback: de-legitimization of the government, a deep animus towards Bibi and therefore the slogan ‘anything-but-Bibi’, and mass demonstrations.

Bigman's article goes on to bring  other evidence to bolster this thesis.

Could this be true?

I am reading a pre-release edition of "(In)sighrs: Thirty Year of Peacemaking in the Oslo Process" by Gidi Grinstein. Grinstein was the secretary and youngest member of the Israeli delegation at Camp David in 2000 and his book is an account of the negotiations at the time. He worked for the Barak government during his premiership and famously used the Heimlich maneuver when Barak was choking at Camp David. 

 Grinstein loves Ehud Barak. He was "blown away" by Barak's speeches. He describes him as "the smartest man in the room" who manages to break down complex problems into a "matrix" of small tasks. He describes Barak's political brilliance in building a coalition as well as in his ambitious attempts to accomplish three things in a short time period - a peace deal with Syria, withdrawal from Lebanon whether negotiated or unilateral, and then peace with the PLO, all before Clinton would leave office. 

But, whether Grinstein realizes it or not, Barak comes off as a jerk in this book. His "matrix" of things to be done were all in his head and he wouldn't share his strategy or plans with anyone. On the contrary, Barak would instruct his PLO negotiating team to continue their work even as he sabotaged their progress because he wanted to work on the other tracks first. Grinstein admits this: chief negotiator Dr. Oded Eran was a serious expert who led the team, but he was a "pawn in Barak's masterplan" whose hands were politically tied by Barak, and Barak then built his own secret negotiating team, completely leaving Eran out of the loop.

This was hardly the only example where Barak would throw people under the bus because he thought he was the only one brilliant enough to see the big picture - and to maintain his power. There was no chain of command in Barak's government, and the only possible result in such a system is chaos. Grinstein himself admits that one day Barak asked him to leak information to the New York Times, bypassing his boss, and leaving him in an uncomfortable position. Official positions were circumvented by Barak's personal backchannels. No one knew their real roles.  Everyone working for Barak was a chess piece for his ambition, not a human being. Barak comes off as a paranoid, power-mad Machiavellian far more than the wise peacemaker Grinstein tries to position him as. 

The theory that Ehud Barak is the force behind the protests today in a bid to regain power, when he cannot hope to do so by democratic means, is entirely consistent with the Ehud Barak described in a book that adores him. 




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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Friday, July 14, 2023

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the Palestinian territories comes out with a report every month about imports, exports, entrances and exits from Gaza. 

In its report on June, it says:

In June, the Israeli authorities allowed 42,220 exits of people from Gaza (in most cases, travelers exited multiple times). This is 13 per cent higher than the exits in May, and 19 per cent higher than the monthly average in 2022. However, it is 92 per cent lower than the monthly average in 2000, before the imposition of category-based restrictions by the Israeli authorities. 
They are comparing the number of exits with 2000 - when thousands of Israelis still lived in Gaza and traveled freely in and out every day? Before the second intifada when checkpoints needed to be enforced? Of course the number of exits will never be nearly as high as in 2000; the borders were porous then. 

If they were to compare with any previous year, they should - and normally do - compare it to the time between Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and when Israel started restrictions on Gaza after Hamas violently took over the territory in 2007. Otherwise it is comparing apples to oranges. 

So let's look at previous UN charts.

Here's a UN chart from 2016 that was already deceptive: starting in 2004 when Israelis left Gaza so part of the year there were many, many more exits; and showing that in March 2006 Israel started its restrictions on Gaza workers. So if there is any year that the UN should compare against, it is 2005. 


In 2005, the monthly average of exits was 31,424. Today, it is significantly higher - as mentioned, over 42,000 last month, and in fact earlier this year it surpassed 50,000 some months.

The headline should be that Israel now allows more freedom of movement for Gazans than at any time since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. But the UN cannot have a headline that makes Israel look good, can it? So instead of comparing to 2004 or 2005, as it always did before now, it makes up a new benchmark: 2000, a completely artificial and irrelevant date.

Here is UN-OCHA's new chart where they, for the first time, added the year 2000 with its "0.5 million" figure  - just to minimize how much Israel is doing to make Gazan's lives easier.


This is lying with statistics. 

(correction on years h/t Irene)



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Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

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Friday, June 30, 2023



What do you do when your hate becomes socially unacceptable?

Find an alternative that people won't blame you for!

From TheJC:

Textbooks in German schools display a strong political bias against Israel, according to a new report.

It reveals a disturbing trend of blaming Israel for the conflict with the Palestinians.
And it says teachers in German schools tend to shy away from discussing Israel in class because of fears of sparking unmanageable debates.

The report, conducted by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and the Mideast Freedom Forum, focused on 16 history and politics textbooks used in secondary schools in Berlin and Brandenburg.

The Amadeu Antonio Foundation described textbooks as “inadequate, often one-sided and tendentious” in their depiction of Israel.
It said there is a “different weighting of the victims on the Palestinian and Israeli sides.

“A mostly paraphrased David versus Goliath narrative is dominant. Terrorist attacks and other acts of violence are sometimes played down or ignored.

“Most of the textbooks portray Israel as a war-mongering crisis state and the sole aggressor in the conflict.

“Uprisings and violent attacks on Jewish civilians are given a kind of legitimacy because of the dominant image of Israel.

“The focus of knowledge transfer at school is on the Six Day War, which is also often presented in a distorted way.”

The report says the Second Intifada is “largely ignored in educational material” and there is an “uncritical representation of Hamas” while the failure of the peace process is often blamed on Israel.

Israeli settlement building, construction of the security wall and Israeli rejection of the Palestinian right of return are presented as obstacles to peace.

But Palestinian terror against the Israeli civilian population is not, says the report.  
I'm sure it isn't only Germany.




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Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Raja Abdulrahim wrote an article in today's New York Times that is ostensibly about how difficult Israel is making it for Muslim artisans to repair damage from clashes on the Temple Mount.

From start to finish, the article is a very sophisticated piece of anti-Israel propaganda

The propaganda begins in the headline:


According to the headline, the "Al Aqsa Mosque" and the "Temple Mount" are two names for the same thing. While the article itself says "Al Aqsa Mosque compound" this is part of a relatively new campaign by Muslims to rename the entire Mount as "Al Aqsa Mosque," the third holiest site in Islam, a holy place for Muslims, and not just the mosque itself which is now referred to as the "Al Qibli Mosque." Up until recent years, the Waqf called the building the Al Aqsa Mosque and the compound the Haram al-Sharif.

 At a workshop on the edge of the Aqsa Mosque compound, Muhammad Rowidy spends hours hunched over panes of stained glass, painstakingly carving through white plaster to reveal geometric designs. While he works, there is a thought he can’t shake.

“You see this,” he said, pausing and leaning back, “this takes months to finish, and in one minute, in one kick, all this hard work goes.”
The "one kick" is a clear reference to Israeli security as being the source of damage to the stained glass. And that is the impression that the article tries to give, that Israeli forces are the ones who cause damage, until nearly at the end, when it says:

Mr. Rowidy, 41, said it was easy to tell which side had broken which windows. Those completely smashed were done by the Israeli police with batons, he said. A video posted on Facebook during the unrest shows one of the windows being broken, with what appears to be a baton, from the roof outside.

In comparison, Palestinians who threw stones had knocked large holes in the windows, he said.
So Palestinians stockpile stones inside the mosque, throwing them at Jews and responding troops including through valuable stained glass windows, and Israeli forces shoot tear gas through the damaged windows to avoid entering the mosque. And somehow the Israelis are the ones blamed!

The Times doesn't show these images of deliberate damage to and weaponization of the Al Aqsa Mosque by Muslims:





The article has other examples of one-sidedness:

Incidents at the compound have often served as a spark in the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In 2000, a trip to the site by Ariel Sharon, who later became Israel’s prime minister, surrounded by hundreds of police officers, set off the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising. More recently, the security minister in Israel’s right-wing government, Itamar Ben-Gvir, angered Palestinians and regional Muslim states by visiting the compound.
Sharons' visit didn't spark the second intifada. It was an excuse for a pre-planned, deadly uprising. 

And Ben Gvir's visit did not result in any incident whatsoever, although many predicted it would. So why mention it at all?

But on the other hand, sometimes Muslims start to attack Jews for no reason from inside the mosque - but they are never described as "sparking" anything.


More bias:

The workers at the mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, need approval from the Israeli authorities for repairs or replacements, down to every broken window or smashed tile, according to the workers, administrators of the site, and Israeli rights groups.

Jews believe that the compound is the location of two ancient temples and consider it the holiest site in Judaism. In recent years, Jewish worshipers have prayed inside the compound, a violation of an agreement that has been in place since 1967.
Calling Al Aqsa the "third holiest site in Islam" is said with no caveats, even though for Sufi Muslims this is not so obvious, and this is controversial in Shiite Islam as well, as some believe that the Al Aqsa mosque mentioned in the Quran exists only in heaven. 

But while the Sunni Muslim beliefs are written as fact, the location of the Jewish Temples are framed as something that Jews merely "believe," despite the quite clear evidence of the 2000 year old remains of the Temple compound that exist today and a continuous historical thread since Biblical times. 

. With the overlapping holidays this year, there are concerns that increased visits and unauthorized prayers could provoke further clashes between the Israeli police and Palestinians, as has been the case in previous years.
Jews quietly and silently praying "provoke" clashes? No, Muslim intolerance for Jews is the source of the violence, not devout Jewish prayers. 

But perhaps the biggest problem with this article isn't how Abdulrahim artfully manages to avoid running afoul of the New York Times fact checkers while injecting so much bias. The major problem is that she doesn't say a word about why Israel is so skittish about unauthorized and unsupervised repairs on the Temple Mount.

Because Muslims had lied about this before and used those lies to build a massive underground mosque that destroyed and carted away tons of the most valuable archaeological and religious treasures on Earth. And the destruction of valuable treasures continues today. Even during last year's riots the Muslim youth broke some ancient columns, with not a word from the New York Times. 


By not reporting about this wholesale destruction done by the Waqf and Palestinians on the Temple Mount, Abdulrahim frames this as Israeli meddling in Muslim culture just to harass them.

Put it all together, and this isn't a news article. It is anti-Israel agitprop that twists and chooses facts to give an entirely wrong impression to the reader. 




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!

 

 

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

Itamar Ben Gvir caused a furor when he visited the Temple Mount back in January. But not really. All the umbrage regarding his “provocation”—walking while Jewish—was manufactured  by bored reporters who have nothing else to write about; by left-wing reporters who lust to smear Israel in print; by Hamas, the PA, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and yes, the United States of America. The latter, of course, demanded that Israel maintain the “status quo” at holy sites, which means that the Jordanian Waqf remains in charge; Arabs get the full run of the Temple Mount; but Jews are rushed through the compound under guard and may not linger or pray. The thrust of all this is that Jews are somehow intruders in their own land, in their holiest city, on their holiest spot, and that they are stealing them from the Arabs.

It’s not a new accusation. As Alex Sternberg noted in a recent piece, ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’ The history of a 100-year-old lie, the libel that Jews are taking over the Al-Aqsa Mosque is old. The falsehood, motivated by politics, originates with Haj Amin El-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem:

An early enemy of Zionism, Husseini regularly engaged in incitement against the Jews of then-Palestine. In 1920, this resulted in five deaths and 211 injured. In 1929, Husseini used the occasion of Tisha B’Av to tell an Arab crowd that the Jews were coming to destroy Al-Aqsa and rebuild the Temple in its place. “Al-Aqsa is in danger!” he shouted, pointing to throngs of Jews squeezing into the narrow alleyway at the Western Wall to commemorate the Temple’s destruction.

Angry mobs surged through the Jewish communities of then-Palestine, attacking peaceful Jews and raping, killing and looting. Hundreds were killed in Hebron, Safed and Jerusalem.

Husseini was jailed by the British, released shortly after and then appointed Mufti of Jerusalem. This new title gave him a coveted position within the Arab community.

Dr. Sternberg goes on to discuss Ariel Sharon’s infamous visit to the Mount which has long been said to be the catalyst for the Second Intifada, also known as the “Al-Aqsa Intifada”:

Following [Sharon’s] visit, the Palestinians launched a terrorist war that resulted in thousands of Israeli and Palestinian deaths.

Despite the claim that Sharon started the intifada, the truth was revealed years later and confirmed by Arafat’s wife and Nabil Shaath, a Fatah Central Committee member.

Sternberg’s otherwise excellent account of the events here falters. The truth was not revealed later, but immediately after the peace talks. Or at least to the Israeli army, who sent IDF representatives to brief the members of the small Judean hilltop settlement where I resided at the time, Metzad.

Sternberg description of events taking place at that time offers us the background for that briefing:

In July of 2000, Arafat returned from peace talks at Camp David with then-President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Barak had offered Arafat 97% of Judea and Samaria, which Arafat refused.

One of the sticking points was sharing the Temple Mount with the Jews. While Clinton considered this reasonable, it was a condition Arafat was unwilling to accept. Clinton was furious and blamed Arafat for the breakdown of the talks. Needing a diversion to deflect Clinton’s anger, Arafat ordered his underlings to plan the new intifada. Sharon’s trip to the Temple Mount took place two months later, providing a convenient excuse to launch the wave of terror.

Here too, Sternberg’s account appears to miss a crucial point: that Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount was an annual visit. This fact was well known to all, up to and including “Arafat and his underlings.” Sharon went up to the Temple Mount every year before the High Holidays—and that yearly visit was factored into the planning of the intifada from its very inception.

I know this because the same July that Arafat returned from Camp David in a tizzy, I sat among the other 30-some residents of Metzad, waiting to hear why we had been assembled. We soon learned that the army had come to warn us of a large and serious wave of Arab terror planned for September, around the time of the High Holidays (and my due date). The IDF not only had intelligence that the intifada would occur, but they had that intelligence already in July, when the intifada would have been in the earliest stages of its planning.

Already then, the Israeli army knew the Arabs would justify their unbridled slaughter of the Jews by blaming it on Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. This was alluded to by the IDF at that meeting of July 2000 on Metzad. You might have called it a guess—the prediction that terrorists would use the annual Sharon Temple Mount visit as a pretext for violence. It wouldn’t have been a difficult guess, considering it was Sharon’s custom to visit the Temple Mount every year before the holidays. But the army didn’t need to guess, because they had cold, hard intelligence. Right from the very beginning, as things were going down.

For argument’s sake however, let’s stipulate that my memory is faulty. Let’s say the army did not know and did not actually tell us that Ariel Sharon’s impending, regularly scheduled visit to the Mount would be used to justify the slaughter. It would still have come as no surprise: El-Husseini did it 100 years ago when he incited the mobs to slaughter Jews by telling them that the “Yahud” were taking over Al-Quds. That same 100-year-old excuse was still going strong in 2000 when Sharon dared walk on the Temple Mount and it is still strong now in 2023, when Ben Gvir does the same.

Terrorists like to accuse Jews of taking over the Mount and the mosque. As much as many Jews wish that were true, the reality is that the Temple Mount is administrated by the Jordanian Waqf; and Jews aren’t even allowed to pray on the Mount, let alone enter or even go near the mosque.

Ariel Sharon, for example, did not enter the mosque or even approach it. Yet this is how his visit—the planned excuse for the intifada—was reported by the Guardian (emphasis added wherever the Guardian fudged the truth, outright lied, engaged in hyperbole, or omitted salient facts—the “people” are JEWS, the “riots” are TERROR, the “West Bank” is Judea and Samaria, the “Haram” is the Jewish Temple Mount, and so on and so forth):

Dozens of people were injured in rioting on the West Bank and in Jerusalem yesterday as the hawkish Likud party leader, Ariel Sharon, staged a provocative visit to a Muslim shrine at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Surrounded by hundreds of Israeli riot police, Mr Sharon and a handful of Likud politicians marched up to the Haram al-Sharif, the site of the gold Dome of the Rock that is the third holiest shrine in Islam.

He came down 45 minutes later, leaving a trail of fury. Young Palestinians heaved chairs, stones, rubbish bins, and whatever missiles came to hand at the Israeli forces. Riot police retaliated with tear gas and rubber bullets, shooting one protester in the face.

The symbolism of the visit to the Haram by Mr Sharon - reviled for his role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in a refugee camp in Lebanon - and its timing was unmistakable. "This is a dangerous process conducted by Sharon against Islamic sacred places," Yasser Arafat told Palestinian television.

All of this was and remains a lie. There was no provocation resulting in a “riot.” The intifada and its pretend catalyst had all been meticulously planned two months earlier. You might even say 100 years earlier, when El-Husseini launched the time-honored tradition of Arab terrorists blaming their Jewish victims for getting dead, a popular sport for more than 100 years.

Ben Gvir should have sold tickets.



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!

 

 



Monday, January 02, 2023

Leaders of Palestinian terror groups, and the PA government, are making threats in response to Itamar Ben-Gvir's plan to visit the Temple Mount.

Islamic Jihad leader Daoud Shehab said such a visit would be a "declaration of war."

 Secretary of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Hussein Al-Sheikh, called for a "Palestinian, Arab and international" response.

Hamas said that Ben Gvir was "adding fuel to the fire" and holding Israel responsible for any violence. And there are reports that Hamas sent a message though Egypt to Israel that they would shoot rockets at Ben Gurion Airport if such a visit occurs.

Should Palestinian threats affect Israeli actions?

It is easy to flatly say "no." But if there was a credible threat of a thousand rockets being shot into Israel, is it worth it?

I'm no expert on game theory, but we have a history of threats and violence that can help shed light on what the reality is and what these threats are meant to accomplish.

Nearly every Palestinian threat of violence does not turn into anything. Look at the empty threats of war if the US opened an embassy in Jerusalem as a prime example. Even last March, Hamas threatened violence ahead of the last time Ben Gvir visited the Temple Mount. Nothing happened.

And on the other side of the coin, nearly every case of real Palestinian violence had little to do with reacting to specific Israeli actions, although they would use Israeli actions as an excuse after the fact. The terror spree in 2022 was not preceded by specific threats. 

The Second Intifada was supposedly sparked by Ariel Sharon's similar visit to the Temple Mount, but we know now that it was only an excuse - Arafat had planned the intifada beforehand, and the visit provided the pretext to implement the plan. If it wouldn't have happened then, it would have happened a week or month later. 

When Hamas tells Egypt to warn Israel and the threat is leaked, that is not a real threat - that is trying to manipulate Israeli public opinion while providing Hamas with  deniability when the war does not break out. 

In this case, the 2021 Gaza war is instructive. In that case, Hamas gave a very specific warning and threat: Israel must remove its forces from the Temple Mount and Sheikh Jarrah by 6 PM on May 10 or else face a rocket barrage. Indeed, they started shooting rockets right at the deadline. But in that case, just as with the PLO in 2000, Hamas already planned the attack; it knew very well that Israel was not going to accede to their demands. It was a way to blame Israel for a Hamas-initiated war. Hamas wanted the war regardless, it had a specific goal to tie the actions happening in the West Bank with those in Gaza. At any rate, it wasn't a threat meant to change Israeli behavior, it was an excuse for a war they chose to start. 

If you define terrorism as the unlawful use of violence and intimidation against civilians in the pursuit of political aims, Palestinian threats are simply a form of terrorism. Their occasional outbreaks of violence give credibility to the threats, but that actual violence has its own logic divorced from Israeli actions. 

If Israel would cave to these threats, however - as some in the Israeli opposition demand - then the threats will have accomplished a great deal. The terrorists would learn that their threats can force Israel to do what they want without them firing a single bullet. That's about as successful a terror attack as is possible. 

The armed groups in Gaza and the terror supporters in Ramallah generally don't want war. They would much rather have Europe and the US and the Knesset opposition pressure Israel to do what they want. That's the logic behind the threats.

Perhaps one can argue whether Ben Gvir should visit the holy site to begin with. But once he announced his intent, he must go through with it, because the downside of caving to Arab threats is far, far worse than the minuscule chances that it would spark a new war or a new intifada. 





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Sunday, December 25, 2022




The "UN Special Rapporteur on Occupied Palestinian Territories" has shown, yet again, how little she cares about the truth - and about Jewish lives - in this Twitter thread about the lung cancer death of arch-terrorist Nasir Abu Hmeid (Hamid).

Abu Hamid, Palestinian refugee from Al-Amar Camp, West Bank, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002, for alleged involvement in attacks against Israeli forces during the 2nd Intifada. His detention appeared to violate basic human rights standards, including denial of family visits.
Lie #1: He was not a "Palestinian refugee." By definition, a refugee cannot live in the same country they are supposedly refugees from. The definition of refugee is very clear in the UN Refugee Convention. 

Lie #2: He was not sentenced for "alleged involvement in attacks against Israeli forces." He was sentenced to multiple life sentences for his involvement in murdering seven Israeli civilians, not soldiers.


And there is nothing alleged about it. Palestinians openly brag about his so-called "resistance."

Lie #3: While Israel may have sometimes denied family visits for specific technical reasons, but they certainly allowed them. Not only did the family get to visit Abu Hamid and his three terrorist brothers in prison - they would all get together in a single group, with no glass wall between them, laughing and having fun together. I have seen two separate visits documented in photos:



That's only one tweet. 

Albanese links to a letter she co-write about Abu Hmeid in October, that shows how little she cares about fairness and truth. Even though she tries to ensure that no one can call her a liar because she liberally sprinkles her spurious accusations of Israeli mistreatment of Abu Hmeid with "allegedly" and "reportedly," she still manages to show her contempt for Israel and for Israeli civilians, and the lies still shine through:

* She again makes the false accusation that his arrest was for "attacks against Israeli forces." This shows that she believes Palestinian propaganda, where every Israeli civilian is considered a legitimate military target.

* She repeats the lie by saying "On 19 September 2022, the Board postponed the date of the hearing for Mr. Abu Hamid’s case until 6 October 2022, allegedly in light of objections to his release by the families of Israeli soldiers allegedly killed by Mr. Abu Hamid." 

This is not a mistake - she repeats the lie that he did not kill civilians, only "soldiers."

* She writes, "Mr. Abu Hamid has served most of his sentence in Askalan Prison, where he was reportedly subject to detention conditions that do not respect the minimum safety, hygiene or health standards. He was placed in a narrow and overcrowded cell without proper ventilation and deprived of adequate health care."

First of all, the prison name is Ashkelon, not Askalan. Even if you use the Arab name of the city, the prison does not have that name. This shows that Albanese simply does not accept any information from Israel as truth, while she believes Palestinian lies implicitly. 

Secondly, she doesn't couch her accusations of prison conditions with any "allegedly." Albanese states, as fact, that the prison is overcrowded and has improper ventilation. Has the Red Cross said that there is no proper ventilation there? Has she read any Israeli inspection reports? Of course not. 

Palestinians lie about the prison conditions all the time...and yet, when they go on strike for better conditions, we can see the truth.  This extensive list of demands in 2004, during the height of the second intifada, asks for things like allowing second cousins to visit and "to allow all cells to have access to a computer and not only students." But it doesn't demand basic things like better ventilation or less crowded conditions! 

Why not? Because that wasn't a problem even in 2004, let alone today!

Here is more proof, as if any is needed, that Francesca Albanese is a liar. And her refusal to believe a word that Jewish Israelis say while believing the accusations of murderers and their supporters shows, yet again, that her railing against the "Jewish lobby" was not a mistake, but antisemitism is part and parcel of who she is. 






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!

 

 

Sunday, December 18, 2022

From Ian:

Is The New York Times a ‘Strong Supporter’ of Israel?
However, by focusing solely on Israel’s actions as the determining factor regarding the future of the two-state solution, the New York Times is effectively removing any responsibility from the Palestinian Authority.

Indeed, aside from a passing remark about Palestinian corruption dimming the hopes of a Palestinian state, this opinion piece makes no mention of the Palestinian Authority’s financial support for terrorists and their families, its twice rebuffing American attempts at peace negotiations over the past 10 years or its continued incitement against Israelis and Jews within its official media organs and schools.

The only mention of the word “terror” in the editorial is in reference to past convictions by incoming National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

All of these factors, which directly imperil the chance for a successful two-state solution, existed long before the incoming Israeli government was ever formed.

And yet, in the eyes of The New York Times, these factors do not warrant the same concern or admonishment as do the anticipated actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition partners.

Related Reading: Top Israeli Daily’s Exposé Paints Troubling Picture of New York Times’ Israel Coverage

Lastly, throughout this opinion piece, the editorial board seems to enjoin the current American administration to take an active role in opposing the actions of the incoming Israeli government.

The editorial board calls upon the American government to more vocally oppose Netanyahu’s coalition partners (as opposed to the administration’s current wait-and-see approach) and to also support Israeli civil society organizations in their fight against this new government’s legislation.

Thus, in extolling democratic principles, The New York Times editorial board is essentially calling on the American government to intervene in the political life of a stalwart ally and to actively support domestic organizations in their opposition to that country’s democratically elected government.

While it is common for the American government to comment on individual actions taken by foreign governments, it is quite another thing to endorse the active intervention of the United States in an ally’s domestic politics.

Tom Friedman’s Look at Israel
Two days before The New York Times editorial board published its opinion piece, longtime New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman published an essay entitled “What in the World Is Happening in Israel?”

Even though it is seemingly more balanced and nuanced than the editorial board’s piece (one critic of the New York Times’ Israel coverage referred to it as “more accurate and profound than anything I’ve read in NYT about Israel all year”), there are a number of concerning passages within Friedman’s work.

Similar to the editorial board, Friedman seemingly points his finger at Netanyahu and his allies for what he perceives to be the eventual failure of the two-state solution, discounting the above-mentioned actions taken by the Palestinian Authority that play a major role in the two-state solution’s demise.

Further on in his piece, Friedman is doubtful about a future Israel-Saudi Arabia peace deal under the incoming Israeli government as well as Netanyahu’s proposed role as a bridge-builder between the United States and Saudi Arabia, portraying the presumptive Israeli prime minister as someone who focuses solely on the political right and deeply religious at the expense of centrists and those who hold liberal values.

However, contrary to what Friedman suggests, Netanyahu has proven himself able to work with a wide variety of political actors, including Middle Eastern leaders (with whom he signed the initial Abraham Accords agreements), President Joe Biden and others who do not necessarily share his viewpoints on all Israel-related matters.
"NY Times Editorial Rant: Why Must Israel’s Right Wing Reject 2-State?"
All of the above rejections of the two-state solution are wasted on the NY Times editorial board that insists the Netanyahu “government’s posture could make it militarily and politically impossible for a two-state solution to ever emerge.”

It will also make it close to impossible for human beings to grow wings and fly from flower to flower suckling on nutritious nectar, but, thankfully, the Times board skipped that one rant.

Of course, now comes the part the Times board could have lifted from its affiliate, Ha’aretz, copy and paste fashion: “Ministers in the new government are set to include figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was convicted in Israel in 2007 for incitement to racism and supporting a Jewish terrorist organization. He will probably be minister of national security. Bezalel Smotrich, who has long supported outright annexation of the West Bank, is expected to be named the next finance minister, with additional authority over the administration of the West Bank. For the deputy in the prime minister’s office in charge of Jewish identity, Mr. Netanyahu is expected to name Avi Maoz, who once described himself as a ‘proud homophobe.’”

It’s the newspaper of record’s right to voice its objections to the decision of a majority of Israeli voters who were easily as familiar with the above accusations and still went with Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and Maoz. They also chose a prime minister who is under three criminal indictments and a former interior minister who has recently been convicted of tax fraud. However, ballot boxes, by and large, don’t read editorials, and newspapers should know better than to attack voters for disagreeing with their world view.

The Times board is also unhappy with Israelis’ reproduction choices, stating: “Demographic change in Israel has also shifted the country’s politics. Religious families in Israel tend to have large families and to vote with the right. A recent analysis by the Israel Democracy Institute found that about 60 percent of Jewish Israelis identify as right-wing today; among people ages 18 to 24, the number rises to 70 percent. In the Nov. 1 election, the old Labor Party, once the liberal face of Israel’s founders, won only four seats, and the left-wing Meretz won none.”

Next, the editorial puts on paper the following sentence which is the culmination of the demise of its self-awareness. They actually wrote: “Moderating forces in Israeli politics and civil society are already planning energetic resistance…” See, when it’s right-wingers exercising their democratic rights, they’re called fascists; when they’re from the left, they’re “moderating forces.”

Finally, the editorial reiterates its archaic and tired mantra about 2-state, warning: “Anything that undermines Israel’s democratic ideals — whether outright annexation of Jewish settlements or legalization of illegal settlements and outposts — would undermine the possibility of a two-state solution.”

Amen?
The Times of London’s Undiplomatic Correspondent
The Times of London’s diplomatic correspondent Catherine Philp’s 15-year career at the newspaper has included postings in Israel and the Middle East. During this time, while HonestReporting critiqued Philp on a number of occasions, her reporting rarely matched that of many of her British colleagues who made little effort to hide their disdain for the Jewish state.

Now, the mask has most definitely slipped.

In response to popular British comedian Joe Lycett highlighting soccer World Cup host Qatar’s record on LGBTQ rights with several headline-grabbing stunts, Philp decided to make it all about Israel. She urged Lycett to do something similar “on the truly cynical pinkwashing Israel is undertaking to hide its real time apartheid.”
Dear @joelycett congratulations on what you do re Qatar and sport washing. I would please urge you to similar on the truly cynical pinkwashing Israel is undertaking to hide its real time apartheid..peace and love.

— Catherine Philp (@scribblercat) December 15, 2022
The so-called “pinkwashing” accusation is one that has been leveled at Israel on numerous occasions.

First coined by Sarah Schulman in an article for The New York Times in 2011, the term suggests Israel’s progressive stance on LGBT+ rights is a component of a “deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.”

As HonestReporting has noted previously, the pinkwashing claim evokes historical antisemitic libels, specifically that anything Jews do that is good or beneficial must be a part of some nefarious ulterior motive — in Philp’s case, diverting attention from Israel’s “real time apartheid.”
David Singer: Bibi must move early on Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine plan
A new solution to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace authored by Ali Shihabi - a close confidant of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister - Mohammed Bin Salman - was published by Al Arabiya news on 8 June 2022 – but has amazingly received virtually no mention or scrutiny in the international media or at the United Nations in the six months since its release.

The plan recognises:
“Israel is a reality firmly implanted on the ground that has to be accepted ...“

The plan calls for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into one territorial entity to be called The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine with unrestricted citizenship being offered to the Arab populations of Jordan, Gaza, the 'West Bank' and the refugee camps located in Syria and Lebanon.

Netanyahu – significantly –told Al Arabiya viewers:
“I think coming to a solution with the Palestinians will require out of the box thinking, will require new thinking.”

The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution is certainly the most creative plan ever proposed to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – its author declaring:

“The Palestinian problem can only be solved today if it is redefined. The issue in this day and age for people should be not so much the ownership of ancestral land but more the critical need to have a legal identity—a globally respected citizenship that allows a person to operate in the modern world.”

Netanyahu is offering his potential coalition partners a choice: Drop demands Bibi cannot accept and back him in as Prime Minister or miss this best opportunity ever to end the unresolved 100 years-old Jewish-Arab conflict.

21 December is Israel’s Judgement Day.

Sunday, October 23, 2022

Recently, Joshua Karlip wrote in Commentary about how Jewish studies in American academia have been taken over by a wokeism that marginalizes and denigrates Jews:

In December 2020, I participated in a Zoom panel at the annual Association for Jewish Studies Conference that discussed the state of the field of Jewish historiography over the past two decades. One participant noted that the first two decades of the 21st century have witnessed a rise in studies of the history of anti-Jewish violence. In response, I offered what I considered an innocuous explanation. Over the past two decades, I suggested, Jews have experienced an alarming rise in violent attacks. Between 2000 and 2005, the second intifada targeted the Jewish civilian population of Israel, leaving nearly 1,000 dead. Here in America, we have witnessed synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway, as well as a steady stream of attacks, some deadly, on Jews who “look” like Jews—Orthodox men.

This explanation did not sit well with a senior scholar in the audience. “What you said was exceedingly Jewishly focused,” she lectured me. She then went on to “enlighten” me that those who attack Jews are not primarily targeting Jews. Rather, the true targets of their hatred are African Americans. These hatemongers simply are angry at American Jews for promoting African-American rights. She ended her disquisition with a challenge. If I were really serious about fighting anti-Semitism, she told me, I would openly ally myself with Black Lives Matter.
His article is specifically about his field, Jewish historiography, but we've seen similar absurdities in other Jewish studies fields, as in an article last year in Religion Dispatches that accused anyone who wants to see Judaism survive of being racist. 

Or when 200 Jewish Studies academics last year signed a petition condemning Israel for defending itself from Hamas rockets and saying that Israel was engaged in "Jewish supremacy."

Or even recently, when the Association for Jewish Studies decided to stop accepting ads from Tablet magazine, because some members objected to some of Tablet's articles. The critics aren't even slightly ashamed at preferring woke politics over free speech, noting that  "much of the magazine’s content is focused on decrying liberal ​'wokeness'" - clearly a major crime in today's Jewish Studies cliques.

I saw a small example last week, when I tweeted, "If Jews rejoicing during their holiday upsets you, you just may be an antisemite."
Zachary Braiterman, professor of Jewish Thought and Culture at Syracuse University, responded, "it's a show of force and deliberate provocation of Palestinians living in the Old City."

This struck me as bizarre, since the video showed no indication of any deliberate provocation. Arabs pass by the singing Jews without harm. The song being sung has nothing offensive. the dancing Jews looked exactly like dancing Jews going outside their shuls on Simchat Torah worldwide.

The conversation went like this:

EoZ: You are a professor of Jewish culture and you never heard of Jews dancing on Simchat Torah outside their synagogues???

ZB: i know what a rightwing show of force by radical rightwing religious nationalists in Israel looks like

EoZ: Funny, because it looks exactly like a Simchat Torah celebration in Teaneck or Boca to me.
Please, let us ordinary people know exactly what you see in this video that shows you are right. The song? The color of the Torahs? 
I await your expertise.

ZB: because the intention is a show of force over against Palestinian people under Israeli control

EoZ: No flags. No insults. No slogans. The Arabs can pass by without issue. No incitement. They are doing in the Old City exactly what Jews did everywhere else. If you think they do not have the right to do in Jerusalem what Jews do in America, that says something about you, not them.

ZB: you are omitting the entire political context of a military occupation and threats of dispossession in E. Jerusalem

EoZ: So according to you, Jews have the right to dance outside on Simchat Torah everywhere in the world - except for Jerusalem's Old City.  Even if they have NOTHING to do with Ben Gvir.
Do I have that right?

ZB: why not at the Kotel?

EoZ: Why not outside where they pray?
Braiterman insisted, three times, that the video showed Jews deliberately provoking Arabs, yet never offered any evidence outside the pompous "I know it when I see it."

In short, he sees religious Jews dancing and he assumes that they are bigots. He cannot even imagine that Jews dancing outside in Jerusalem are celebrating the holiday the way Jews do worldwide, and nothing more. 

He then attempted to claim that Jews who quietly visit the Temple Mount are also deliberately provoking Arabs: "the religious zionists regularly do not respect Arab residents of Jerusalem or the sanctity of Har Ha'Bayit." I responded that this was absurd, they show far more respect for the Temple Mount than Muslims do. But he has a consistent position - when Jews show a love of Jerusalem's holy places, he assumes that they are really trying to attack Muslims and Arabs. 

Braiterman throws all religious Zionist Jews into one bucket, pretending that they are all racists, all fans of Itamar Ben Gvir, all support attacking Arabs for no reason.  

Stereotyping isn't sober analysis. It is bigotry. 

I've prayed on the Temple Mount and would happily have joined the Simchat Torah dancing, and I am no fan of Itamar Ben Gvir. An Israeli friend told me "my guess would be that not only is it true that most religious Zionists oppose [Ben Gvir], but also most of his supporters are not religious Zionists." 

The professor is not an antisemite. No one who spends two years writing a post on the Sefat Emet would be. But throwing all religious Zionists in the same racist bucket is, in a small way, just as bigoted as throwing all Jews into the same bucket.

Jewish studies is in deep trouble. 




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!

 

 

Sunday, September 25, 2022




As he does every year, Mahmoud Abbas gave an anti-Israel speech to the UN. And as with every other one on record, it was filled with lies.

Here are some of them, based on the official speech (he sometimes ad libs outside the speech, often betraying more  antisemitism...)

I speak to you on behalf of more than fourteen million Palestinian people, whose parents and grandparents lived through the tragedy of the “Nakba” seventy-four years ago, and they are still living the effects of this “Nakba”, which is a disgrace to humanity, especially those who conspired, planned and carried out this heinous crime.  
The "Nakba" came about because Arabs did not accept the concept of a Jewish state in any boundaries. They chose to fight. They lost. No one "planned" to expel Arabs. It was a war started by the Arabs, not a "heinous crime" started by Jews. 

Notice that his definition of "Palestinian" is anyone who lived in Palestine in 1947-48. Meaning, anyone who lived there for centuries beforehand and who left is not a Palestinian. Abbas is admitting that the concept of "Palestinian people" is less than a century old. 

More than five million Palestinians have been suffering under the Israeli military occupation for fifty-four years.
There were less than a million Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza after the Six Day War.

It has become clear, ladies and gentlemen, that Israel, which disavows the resolutions of international legitimacy, has decided not to be our partner in the peace process. Israel is the one that destroyed the Oslo Accords it signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization. It is the one that, with its current policy, has premeditated and determined to destroy the two-state solution, which proves with conclusive evidence that they do not believe in peace, but in the policy of imposing a fait accompli by brute force and aggression, and therefore there is no longer an Israeli partner with whom to talk.   
Oslo died with the second intifada, orchestrated by the leaders of the PLO that had pledged to stop all terror. Israel kept on trying for peace for years afterwards and the PLO - first Arafat, then Abbas - kept saying no. This is historical revisionism. 

It thus ends the contractual relationship with us, and makes the relationship between the State of Palestine and Israel a relationship between an occupying state and an occupied people, and nothing else. We will not deal with Israel except on this basis, and we demand the international community to deal with it on this basis as well. This is Israel’s choice, not ours.  
The Palestinian Authority, which Abbas unilaterally declared to be the "State of Palestine," was created by the Oslo Accords. If he says that they don't have any legal force, he is the president of - nothing.

Abbas wants the benefits of Oslo but none of the responsibilities.
Israel is carrying out a frantic campaign to confiscate our lands and spread its colonial settlements and plunder our resources, as if this land was empty and had no owners, just as it did in 1948.   
Palestinians have been saying this for decades. Yet the percentage of land Israel has legalized for settlements is virtually the same as it was 25 years ago. 

Oh, and in 1948, the percentage of land privately owned by Arabs was about 20%. The rest was owned by the ruling country.

Parts 2 and 3 will be posted in the coming hours.




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, July 26, 2022

During the height of the second intifada, this book was published:


Yes, it was positioning the terror war against Israeli civilians as "resisting Israel's aprtheid."

This was written shortly before the infamous antisemitic Durban conference where the 'apartheid" slur gained currency.

From the forward:


You get that? A demand to stop violence is a recipe for more violence.

Because today's anti-Israel bigots pretend to be against violence, it is easy to forget that during the suicide bombing spree, these same people justified the most heinous war crimes by Palestinians. This book was part of that tradition.

It includes chapters written by Edward Said, Alison Weir, Omar Barghouti, Ali Abunimah, Hussein Ibish and more (the last two complaining that US media was sympathetic to Jews being attacked.) 

The "Apartheid" libel is not a response to Israeli actions. It is a justification for Palestinian atrocities.



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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