02/02 Links Pt1: The Tragic Palestinian Children's Crusade; Biden Announces $50 Million UNRWA Funding; NGOs Blame the Victims: A False “Massacre” in Jenin and “Legitimate Resistance” outside a Jerusalem Synagogue

From Ian:

NGO Monitor: The Role of NGOs in Supporting the International Criminal Court (ICC) Investigation

On December 20, 2019, then Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Fatou Bensouda announced that she intended to investigate alleged war crimes in the “State of Palestine” and filed a request with the Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber to confirm her jurisdiction. On February 5, 2021, the Pre-Trial Chamber in a controversial 2-1 opinion confirmed the Prosecutor’s jurisdiction. On March 3, 2021, Bensouda announced the launch of a formal investigation.

This move is to a significant degree the product of consistent and heavy lobbying of the ICC for over a decade by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Throughout, these NGOs have been central to promoting the Prosecutor’s activities: lobbying the Court to accept the Palestinian Authority, filing complaints, representing “victims,” and submitting briefs. Key NGOs include Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, FIDH (France), and Palestinian and Israeli NGOs. The European Union, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and other European governments have provided tens of millions of dollars to anti-Israel ICC campaigns and lobbying. In some instances, the European funding was explicitly earmarked for NGO activities vis-à-vis the ICC.

According to the legal principle of “complementarity,” the ICC is only authorized to investigate when a country’s judicial system has proven unwilling or incapable of prosecuting cases that fall within the ICC’s jurisdiction. Even if there is evidence of alleged war crimes, the Court is supposed to respect serious local investigations.

Importantly, as part of the NGO Durban Declaration and accompanying BDS campaigns, advocacy organizations have sought to turn the ICC into a court of universal jurisdiction. Like their exploitation of the UN and other international frameworks, these NGOs seek to use the ICC for demonization and to brand Israeli officials as “war criminals.” In contrast, the ICC was created for the explicit and narrow purpose of prosecuting individuals accused of specified crimes, and not for political legal warfare.

NGO Monitor: NGOs Blame the Victims: A False “Massacre” in Jenin and “Legitimate Resistance” outside a Jerusalem Synagogue

On January 26, 2023, the IDF conducted a preemptive counterterror operation in Jenin, during which nine Palestinians – eight of whom were armed members of Islamic Jihad and other organizations – were killed. The Palestinian Authority, reviving the blood libel from Jenin in April 2002 (Defensive Shield), accused Israel of committing a “massacre” and Gaza-based terrorist organizations launched rockets at Israeli cities.

The next day (Friday night, January 27), a Palestinian murdered seven Israeli civilians outside a Jerusalem synagogue; a few hours later (Saturday morning, January 28) a 13 year-old Palestinian shot and wounded two Israelis in a separate incident in Jerusalem.

NGO responses to these incidents reflect an immoral agenda that stands in direct contradiction to the human rights mandate that they and their funder-enablers claim. Palestinian, Israeli, European, and international NGOs and their officials that commented on Jenin before the Sabbath terror attacks repeated the PA propaganda of a “massacre.”

Other NGOs appeared to justify the terror attacks in Jerusalem, or otherwise blamed Israel for the targeting of Israeli civilians. Even those groups that directly condemned the terror attacks simultaneously included condemnations of Israel. One NGO, the Rights Forum (Netherlands), bizarrely denied that the murder of Jews because they were Jews constituted antisemitism.

Importantly, several very vocal and active Israeli advocacy NGOs, including Adalah, B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, and Yesh Din, appear not to have issued statements.

The Tragic Palestinian Children's Crusade

On December 12, 2022, 15-year-old Jana Majdi Zakharna was killed during an IDF operation in Jenin. The IDF's investigation revealed that the girl was shot to death on a rooftop as she stood in proximity to a Palestinian gunman who had opened fire at Israeli troops below and that she assisted the gunmen by observing the soldiers' movements.

The Telegram channel "Jenin Al-Qassam," which serves armed Palestinian groups in the Jenin region, has published instructions for "Jihad fighters" that deal with the use of children "to conduct visual observation and information gathering." The Telegram channel also noted that Jenin has a network of observation units staffed by "young people" assisting terrorist groups by documenting on video and delivering reports about the activities of IDF forces.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has written that under international humanitarian law, "Individuals whose continuous function involves the preparation, execution, or command of acts or operations amounting to direct participation in hostilities are assuming a continuous combat function."

Biden Admin Announces $50 Million in New UNRWA Funding

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday announced $50 million in new funding for a UN agency that is dedicated solely to the descendants of Palestinian refugees and which has been widely denounced for propagating antisemitism, eliciting rebuke from a top Senate Republican.

Speaking in Ramallah alongside Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Blinken said that the money, alongside the $890 million the Biden administration has already provided to the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) in the past two years, was intended to “rebuild” the relationship between the US and the Palestinian Authority.

“All of these steps are part of the longer term ambition to re-establish, but then not just re-establish, rebuild our relationship, as I said, with the Palestinian people and with the Palestinian Authority,” Blinken said. “And this will allow us to more effectively work toward the goal of Palestinians and Israelis enjoying equal measures of democracy, of opportunity, of dignity in their lives. We believe that that can be achieved by a realization of two states. President Biden remains committed to that goal.”

Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, slammed the move Wednesday.

“The Biden Administration is far too eager to give out US taxpayer dollars to UNRWA,” Risch told The Algemeiner. “I do not support a single US taxpayer dollar going to UNRWA without serious reform, in part because their textbooks continue time and again to include antisemitic content. That is why I will be re-introducing my UNRWA Accountability & Transparency Act which would halt funding to UNRWA until all of its antisemitic issues are thoroughly addressed.”

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The UN's Humanitarian Affairs office doesn't care about dead Jews

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs  for the Palestinian territories wrote a report called "The humanitarian impact of 20 years of the Barrier."

It lists many reasons why Israel's separation barrier makes the lives of some Palestinians more difficult, highlighting farmers who need permits to work their land on the other side. 

It is true - for a relatively small number of Palestinian farmers, the fence is a major inconvenience. There is nothing wrong with the UN highlighting their plight.

But there seems to be something missing from the analysis of a humanitarian affairs office.

The document begins with, "In 2002, the Israeli authorities started to build a Barrier with the stated aim of preventing violent attacks by Palestinians inside Israel."

By those criteria, was it successful?

Here are the number of Israelis killed in terror attacks, by year, from when construction began on the barrier:

The number of Israelis killed went down precipitously as the major parts of the barrier were completed.

It is hard to know exactly how much of the reduction was directly the result of the fence, of course; there were probably other factors. But according to one expert in the field, the barrier made all the difference: 

Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah publicly admitted that Israel’s security fence is a significant obstacle to the Palestinian terrorist organizations. “If it weren’t there," he told Al-Manar Television, "the situation would be entirely different.”

On November 11, 2006, Shalah granted a long interview to Al-Manar TV, Hizbullah’s television channel. He asserted that suicide bombing attacks are the Palestinian people’s “strategic choice” and  the terrorist organizations have every intention of continuing suicide bombing attacks, but that their timing and the possibility of perpetrating them from the West Bank depends on other factors.

“For example,” he said, “there is the separation fence, which is an obstacle to the resistance, and if it were not there the situation would be entirely different.”

According to the now dead Islamic Jihad leader, terror groups kept trying to blow up Jews and fully intended to continue, but the ugly wall stopped them. 

Which means that the barrier has saved hundreds of Israeli lives - maybe thousands. 

Now, why would the UN issue a report that only discusses how the fence is a detriment to Palestinian farmers' work, and not mention that it has largely fulfilled its purpose of saving many lives?

Unfortunately, the reason is because the UN doesn't consider saving Israeli lives to be a positive thing. 

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

 

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11/28 Links Pt1: A New Strategic Landscape in the Middle East; IDF arrests 3,000 Palestinians, thwarts 500 attacks in past 6 months; How not to condemn an Arab terrorist attack

From Ian:

A New Strategic Landscape in the Middle East

Arab-Israeli relations are a source of good news these days. The conflict between the Jewish state and its radical enemies, Palestinians and others, is far from over, and the threat of the Iranian revolutionary regime may be greater than ever. However, a new strategic alignment promises a better chance for regional states to isolate and stand up to the radicals who continue to threaten the existing order. The old structure of the Arab-Israel conflict that defined the Middle East for generations is now being replaced by a strengthening Arab-Israeli coalition against Iran and its radical Arab proxies.

The erosion and ultimately the abolition of aggressive regional solidarity targeting the Jewish state has been the supreme objective of Israel's regional strategy since its inception. Breaking up regional solidarity is an indispensable precondition to any progress toward peace. Arab states would consider accepting Israel only following a painful recognition of the failure of the attempt to erase it at an acceptable cost.

The profound change in the strategic landscape of the Middle East in the recent decade may be characterized by four pillars: the magnitude of the Iranian regional threat, the inability of Arab states to stand up to that threat by themselves, the questionable steadfastness of American support, and the proven capacity and dependability of Israel.

Unlike most European and American officials, Arabs fully realize the magnitude of the Iranian determination to hegemonize the Middle East at their expense and the effectiveness of Iranian brutality and sophistication in the pursuit of that objective. Watching the impact of the Iranian takeovers in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen and its subversion in their own countries, they know they are in desperate need of external assistance to survive.

The most vulnerable Arab states turned to the only power that fully appreciates the magnitude of the Iranian threat and is capable and determined to provide a forceful response. Israel has been engaged for more than half a decade in a wide-scale preventive war in Syria and western Iraq to thwart the Iranian takeover where it threatens Israel most acutely. The historic all-Arab coalition against Israel has been replaced by a de facto Arab-Israeli coalition against the radical forces that threaten them both.

IDF arrests 3,000 Palestinians, thwarts 500 attacks in past 6 months

The IDF’s ongoing Operation Break the Wave in the West Bank has seen thousands of troops and reservists crack down on Palestinian terrorism, arresting over 3,000 suspects and thwarting over 500 terror attacks.

The operation began in late March after a series of terror attacks in Israeli cities left 20 people dead. Israeli security forces, including the IDF, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Israel Police have been carrying out raids during day and night against Palestinians suspected of terrorism.

For more than six months, some 25 regular battalions have been deployed to the West Bank along with an additional 84 of reservists deployed to the area by the end of next year.

The large number of troops comes as the level of violence in the West Bank continues to remain unusually high, with massive amounts of gunfire directed against troops carrying out operational missions as well as against Israeli civilians.

The past year has seen a marked increase in terrorism, with 281 serious terror attacks by Palestinians: 239 against soldiers and 42 against civilians.

There were also a total of 8,483 violent incidents by Palestinians such as riots or stone throwings, about 40% of them against Israeli civilians and 60% against IDF troops. The number marked a significant rise of almost 20% from the 7,039 attacks last year.

Israel Upgrading Security Barrier in Northern West Bank

On Nov. 14, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz approved plans to upgrade a section of the West Bank security barrier after a series of terror attacks were committed by Palestinians who illegally entered Israel.

A tall fence, similar to those on the borders with Egypt and Gaza, will replace a 50-km. stretch of fencing from the Te'enim checkpoint near Avnei Hefetz to Oranit in the northwestern West Bank.

In the summer, construction began on a 9-meter tall concrete wall to replace another 50-km. stretch of fencing in the northern West Bank from Salem to the Te'enim checkpoint that was built 20 years ago.

Both upgraded sections will be equipped with surveillance cameras and sensors.

In July, the IDF began to strengthen defenses along the existing security fence in the Judean Desert in the southern West Bank, digging a deep trench over 20 km. to prevent the passage of people and vehicles.

Many credit the West Bank security barrier with helping to end the Second Intifada (2000-2005), though only 62% of the barrier was completed.

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11/09 Links Pt1: Israel Accused of Denying Palestinian ‘Right to Life’ in Speech to UN Commission; Russia gave stolen Western weapons, cash to Iran

From Ian:

Israel Accused of Denying Palestinian ‘Right to Life’ During Activist’s Speech to UN Commission

A Palestinian activist claimed on Tuesday that Israel has removed the “right to life” of Palestinians throughout Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during a speech before a UN panel in Geneva.

“We as Palestinians have basically zero to no rights–even the right to life, the most basic right,” Ubai Al-Aboudi — executive director of the Ramallah-based Bisan Center for Research and Development — told the second day of a five-day meeting of the “UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” created by the global body’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in the wake of the May 2021 war between the IDF and the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza.

“Every political system between the river and the sea violates basic Palestinian human rights,” Al-Aboudi said, using a form of words associated with advocates who seek to end Israel’s existence as a sovereign Jewish state.

Bisan and the other NGOs were outlawed in 2021 by the Israeli government for their connections to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is designated as a terrorist organization by Israel as well as by the United States and European Union. The groups deny the charges.

Other speakers at the panel denounced Israel in similar terms. Shawan Jabarin, the executive director of Al-Haq, another of the NGOs that was banned, said on Monday said that Israel used “mafia methods” to pursue the groups. Another activist, Hanan Husein, told the parley that “Israel collects its evidence through the use of torture mechanisms, illegal surveillance, evidence planting, and trying people in front of an illegal occupation system that is designed to keep the Palestinian people subjugated to human rights violations.”

Is this serious and on #Kristallnacht? Your organization is ravaged by antisemitism. You have a Commissioner who accused “the Jewish lobby” of controlling the media. As you write this, the @UN_HRC CoI is meeting to vilify Israel of preposterous crimes.

>> DELETE YOUR ACCOUNT << https://t.co/W0K7CRubXH

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 9, 2022

In Germany, Kristallnacht goes by a different name. Here’s why

This week, Jewish communities across the United States are commemorating the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish riots that marked a brutal turning point in the Nazi campaign of persecution.

In Germany, cities and towns also will commemorate this day, but under a different name. They refer to the events of November 9-10, 1938, as “the November Pogrom,” or variations on that term. That’s became to many in Germany, the term “Kristallnacht” — night of shattered glass — sounds incongruous.

“It has a pretty sound,” said Matthias Heine, a German journalist whose 2019 book examined the role of Nazi terms in the contemporary German vernacular. “When you know that it was a very serious and bloody and violent event, then this term isn’t acceptable anymore.”

That autumn night, government-coordinated anti-Jewish riots swept through virtually every town and city across Nazi Germany. Over several days, rioters destroyed hundreds of synagogues, looted thousands of businesses and killed at least 91 Jews; 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps.

It was a turning point in both Jewish and non-Jewish memories, said Guy Meron, historian at the Open University of Israel and the Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial.

“Until the pogrom, we still had a Jewish public sphere in Germany: Jewish organizations were active, and in some places in Germany Jews could still feel safe in public life,” said Meron, whose latest book, “To Be a Jew in Nazi Germany,” comes out in English next year.

Israel condemns Tel Aviv conference equating Holocaust with ‘Nakba’

Israel’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday harshly criticized a planned Tel Aviv conference linking the Holocaust and Israel’s War of Independence.

The conference, titled, “The Holocaust, the Nakba and the German Culture of Remembrance,” was organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Israel in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Tel Aviv.

According to the Rosa Luxemburg website, “Almost 75 years after the declaration of the establishment of Israel, remembering in Israel remains a politically contested terrain. Holocaust survivors and their descendants focus on the extermination of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis, while many Palestinians focus on the fateful year of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of people were destined to flight and displacement by Jewish fighters—known in Arabic as the Nakba (catastrophe).”

The ministry issued a statement on Tuesday, expressing “shock and disgust” in the face of the conference’s “blatant Holocaust scorn” and “cynical and manipulative intent to create a link whose entire purpose is to defame Israel.”

Originally scheduled for Nov. 9, the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom, the conference was postponed to Nov. 13 due to the sensitive nature of the date. However, Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachson emphasized that the date was not the issue.

“Our position is that the event is shameful and disgraceful and should not take place on any date in the calendar, and not only on the anniversary of Kristallnacht,” he said.

I wonder what some of these very Survivors would say, if they knew a German funded institute, @goetheinstitut, was seeking to hold an event - on Kristallnacht - comparing their plight in the Holocaust to the so-called 'Nakba'?https://t.co/vh1FHX5mRU https://t.co/n2oYHWhco9

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) November 9, 2022

KFC Germany encourages customers to 'treat themselves' on Kristallnacht

German fried chicken enthusiasts were shocked to receive a notification on their phones from KFC Germany encouraging them to "treat themselves" on Wednesday, as the anniversary of the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom was commemorated.

"Commemoration of the Reichspogromnacht (the German name for Kristallnacht) - Treat yourself to more tender cheese with the crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!" read the push notification sent to customers' phones.

Almost an hour later, the company pushed another notification apologizing for what it called an "error in our system."

"Due to an error in our system, we sent an incorrect and inappropriate message through our app. We are very sorry about this, we will check our internal processes immediately so that this does not happen gain. Please excuse this error," wrote the company.

Dalia Grinfeld, associate director of European affairs at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) expressed outrage at the notification, tweeting "How wrong can you get on Kristallnacht @KFCDeutschland. Shame on you!"

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Hypocrisy alert: Lebanon almost finished building a wall, with 4 watchtowers, around 100,000 Palestinians

You know how "human rights" groups and "pro-Palestinian" groups love to say that Israel puts Palestinians in Gaza as well as the West Bank in an "open-air prison"?

You know how the media will exhaustively cover any defensive measures Israel does to protect itself from terrorists that live among the Palestinians as "collective punishment"?

You know how Israel's security fence that has saved hundreds or thousands of lives is routinely denounced because it inconveniences some Arabs?

You know how Palestinian leaders will send official complaints to the UN for everything Israel does, or allegedly does, that has the slightest impact on the slightest number of Palestinian Arabs?

Finally, a final  question: How much have you read or heard about a literal open-air prison, complete with watchtowers, being built around a Palestinian UNRWA camp in Lebanon that houses some 120,000 people?

From Daily Star Lebanon:

Construction of a controversial concrete wall barrier around the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp has resumed following a brief halt.

The past few weeks have seen a surge in concrete wall’s construction. A security source told The Daily Star that the wall is now “80 percent complete.”

Palestinian officials and popular committee members at the south Lebanon camp have reached tentative agreements following discussions with the army.

However, Palestinian refugees are dealing with various problems due to the wall’s construction. Omm Issam’s home had several of its rooms taken down due to its proximity to the wall.

A source told The Daily Star that the wall will run through “hundreds” of houses.

Abu Yassin, whose home and orange garden are dwarfed by the wall, mockingly says that the wall is now his neighbor.

In November 2016, it was announced that an agreement had been made between the Lebanese Army and the Palestinian factions to construct a wall and erect watchtowers around Ain al-Hilweh, and that the process was well underway.

The move was to maintain security in the camp, which has been rocked by clashes, most recently in April. The nearly six days of continuous clashes left at least 10 dead and over 50 wounded.

Despite an initial agreement between the Lebanese Army and Palestinian factions, opposition to the wall mounted during the construction process, forcing the army to temporarily halt construction.

“The Palestinian factions implicitly agree on it [despite vocal objection later on],” a source told The Daily Star in February.

The hypocrisy is stunning. Palestinian "leaders" agreed to build this prison, and the only ones who oppose it are the actual people affected, who have no voice.  (Terror groups like Hamas and PFLP are the only organized groups that opposed the wall. Hezbollah supports it completely as a decision by the Lebanese government to "prevent terrorists from infiltrating the country."

Mahmoud Abbas visited Lebanon in February and did not say a word against this wall.

To be sure, Ain el Hilweh is a violent mess, and a terror group associated with Al Qaeda, Bilal al Badr, has infiltrated the camp and clashes regularly with Palestinian forces (Fatah, PFLP, DFLP) an the Lebanese Army. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees of Palestinian descent have crammed into the already crowded camp because they cannot be treated like normal refugees thanks to the existence of UNRWA. Lebanon does not allow Palestinians to become citizens even after 70 years of them living in these wretched conditions and has specifically anti-Palestinian laws on the books.

But the silence from NGOs, the UN, Palestinian leaders and world media over what can literally be called a prison, with concrete walls and watchtowers, being built by the Lebanese government, shows how sickeningly hypocritical the entire world is.

No one gives a damn about Palestinians unless Jews can be blamed.

(h/t EBoZ)

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No one seems to complain when Egypt acts like Israel

From Ma'an:

Egypt plans to impose a 500-meter buffer zone along its border with the Gaza Strip, a senior Egyptian military official said Sunday.

Egyptian residents living in Saladin, al-Barahmeh, Canada, Brazil, al-Sarsouriya and other neighborhoods close to the Gaza border have received eviction notices.

Homeowners who received eviction orders demonstrated against the decision and burned tires in protest.

Army bulldozers have also uprooted trees in the border area.

The army has demolished 13 homes in the al-Sarsouriya neighborhood where tunnel entrances were found.

An Egyptian military official told Ma'an that most cross-border tunnels with entrances in fields or open areas had been destroyed in a security campaign to stop smuggling. He said it was more difficult to locate tunnels that opened into houses.

This was the same kind of clearing operation that Israel was doing on its side of the Gaza border - and which was permitted by Oslo - when Rachel Corrie was killed.

The article continues:

Egypt's army spokesman Ahmad Mohammad said that forces have destroyed 343 smuggling tunnels. He said the Egyptian military has also prohibited fishing near the border to prevent smuggling via the sea.

Hamas said Friday that two Palestinian fishermen were wounded and five others arrested by the Egyptian navy off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

"Some Egyptian navy ships fired in the direction of Palestinian fishing boats near the Egyptian border off the coast of Rafah at dawn on Friday," the Hamas government's press agency reported.

"Two fishermen were wounded and five others arrested," said Hamas.

They were both taken to the hospital in Rafah, medical sources said, adding that their lives were not in danger.

Hamas described the incident as an "unjustified act," and called for those "detained to be freed."

Isn't it amazing that when Israel defends itself from Hamas terror and smuggling of weapons, it is violating the human rights of 1.6 million Gazans - but when Egypt does the exact same thing, it is simply defending itself? Indeed, Egypt goes beyond what Israel does (by not allowing people and goods to cross into Gaza via the official crossings) and there is near total silence from the so-called "pro-Palestinian" activists.

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