Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, September 04, 2021

09/04 Links: Israel: Still the 'Strong Horse'; Rosh Hashanah, Abraham Accords' first anniversary, and what can change; Taliban Spokesman "Israel a ‘Tumor’ on Islamic World’s Body"

From Ian:

Israel: Still the 'Strong Horse'

Israel -- no longer diplomatically isolated -- appears to be assuming a more prominent political and military role in the Middle East. Following Israel's generous peace terms with its Arab neighbors, states such as Egypt and Jordan decided decades ago to establish diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. More recently, Islamic countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan also decided to normalize ties with Israel. Presently, these strong new ties appear to be leading to cooperation on an ever-deeper strategic level, especially regarding the destabilizing threat to the area posed by an increasingly aggressive and hegemonic Iran.

Currently -- excluding its ventures into South America from where it can more easily threaten North America -- Iran, sometimes via proxies such as the Houthis, Hamas or Hezbollah -- has successfully inserted itself into Yemen, in a seeming bid to overthrow and supplant Saudi Arabia, as well as in Iraq, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

Iran's increasingly aggressive policies toward these regional states has accelerated the cooperation between primarily Sunni Muslim Arab Gulf states and Israel. The Sunni-Shia theological civil war within Islam still appears to be fueling the destabilization of the Middle East -- especially with the recently renewed courtship by the US administration of the Middle East's greatest disrupter, Iran.

The first time around, during the Obama years, one might understand the fantasy that enriching and empowering Iran might lead it to give up its long-desired nuclear program and expansionist activities, not to mention the extreme abuses of its citizens at home. Now, however, the world has seen that the plan did not work, and that Iran had been cheating all along, anyhow.

What in the world, then, is the US expecting from repeating this disastrous exercise? For both the Israelis and the Gulf's Arab monarchies, Iran's Shia regional empire and drive to lead the Muslim world is still justifiably considered an existential threat.

Houda Nonoo: Rosh Hashanah, Abraham Accords' first anniversary, and what can change

On Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate the completion of one year and the beginning of the next. It is a time when we set goals for the future. Rosh Hashanah this year coincides with the first anniversary of the Abraham Accords, which is quite apropos because in many ways the themes of the two are very intertwined. As a Bahraini Jew, I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities which are ahead for our two countries. This past year brought with it many opportunities, but I firmly believe that year two will be even more successful.

Rosh Hashanah last year was also a very exciting time. I was honored and privileged to participate in Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani’s delegation to Washington for the Abraham Accords signing ceremony on the White House lawn on September 15, and we flew back to Bahrain just in time for Rosh Hashanah three days later. It was a whirlwind of a week – in the span of seven days, Bahrain and Israel announced their new relationship (September 11), the signing ceremony was four days later (September 15) and Rosh Hashanah was three days after (September 18). Just as we ushered in the Jewish new year, we were ushering a new relationship and opportunity for the region.

Over the past year, we have seen successful collaboration in business, healthcare, travel, tourism and social activities. However, I predict that next year we will see activity double in each of these sectors as well as some new areas of collaboration.

We will see partnerships in healthcare, technology (including fintech, greentech and agritech), cyber security and education. Many of the leading companies and organizations in both countries have spent the past year working behind the scenes to build relationships and discuss how they can work together. Our two nations share several joint priorities, which make us prime partners for knowledge sharing.

Israel’s trade with Arab states has surged since 2020 peace deals, data shows

Trade between Israel and countries in the Middle East and North Africa has grown significantly this year, following the Jewish state’s normalization of ties with additional Arab states, new data revealed.

In the first seven months of 2021, trade grew by 234 percent compared to the same period in 2020, according to Central Bureau of Statistics figures cited by Yonatan Gonen, a Foreign Ministry cadet.

The statistics showed trade with the United Arab Emirates surged from $50.8 million between January and July 2020 to $613.9 million in the same period in 2021.

The UAE was the first of four regional states who normalized ties with Israel last year, following Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 as the only Arab nations to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

Trade with Jordan has also increased this year, from $136.2 million to $224.2 million, and trade with Egypt went from $92 million to $122.4 million. With Morocco, trade rose from $14.9 million to $20.8 million.

According to the data, trade with Bahrain was practically non-existent in the first seven months of 2020. During that same period this year, $300,000 in trade was registered.

09/03 Links Pt2: Should’ve Kept Those Jews; Melanie Phillips: When lunatics control the academic asylum; EU Lawmakers ‘Unanimous’ in Denouncing Antisemitic PA Textbooks

From Ian:

Should’ve Kept Those Jews

The results, though, were arguably much worse for the expellers than the expelled. The journalist Lucette Lagnado, who herself fled with her family from Egypt, described what happened as a “cultural Holocaust.” The Jews were often multilingual business owners, with ties to Western countries and economies. The Jews had made Arab societies more open, and their departures brought with them significant losses in human capital and connectivity to the rest of the world, with damaging consequences for Arab economic development.

Another nation that lost out because of how it treated its Jews was the Soviet Union. The Communist regime mistreated, discriminated against, and imprisoned its Jews, leading them to clamor for expatriation. The era of glasnost and the fall of the USSR led more than 1 million Jews to leave in the late 1980s and 1990s for Israel, where they have helped create Israel’s “Startup Nation” economic miracle. Israeli tech leaders with Soviet origins include Demisto’s Slavik Markovich, Twistlock’s Dima Stopel, Luminate Security’s Leonid Belkind, Guardicore’s Pavel Gurvich, and Lightricks’s Zeev Farbman. Another Soviet Jew, Sergey Brin, came to America and cofounded Google.

Even North America, for all the benefits it has provided its Jews, is not immune to this negative development. In the 1970s, Canadian Jews, wary of the Québécois movement and its less-than-friendly attitude toward Jews, left Montreal for Toronto. An estimated 10,000 Jews decamped from Montreal to Toronto from 1976 to 1985. They weren’t the only ones. Many non-Jewish Anglophones left, too, and a number of major financial institutions relocated as well. The institutions did not openly admit that the Québécois challenge led to their moves, but the reason for the Jewish migration was clear. As the late political scientist Stephen Clarkson wrote in Uncle Sam and Us: Globalization, Neoconservatism, and the Canadian State, “no one denied that Montreal lost a large part of its anglophone, and particularly its Jewish population which emigrated westward to what they felt were politically safer sites.” Toronto has surpassed Montreal in population and GDP and is now Canada’s leading city.

Despite the problematic recent rise of anti-Semitic violence, America today is clearly nowhere near emulating these previous examples. Yet, as the Canada experience shows, Jews are willing to move not only between nations but within nations if they feel the need. The three states with the largest Jewish populations at the start of the twentieth century were New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. New York remains at the top, but California and Florida are now second and third, respectively. These shifts came largely because of the attractions of better weather and economic opportunity, but future shifts could result from more negative reasons. Should Jews feel unprotected in urban environments where public officials don’t take anti-Semitic incidents seriously, they might begin leaving those areas for more welcoming places.

The new hate crimes figures, as well as the recent and insufficiently denounced anti-Semitic incidents, are worrisome to the Jewish community, and should be disturbing to the nation as a whole. America’s Jews will continue monitoring the situation closely. It doesn’t take concentration camps or expulsion orders to send Jews looking for happier pastures. All that’s needed is for a government and its police forces to look away as Jews get attacked in the streets. We should all hope that the day never comes when the U.S. has to say, as other countries said before it, “We should have kept those Jews.”

Melanie Phillips: When lunatics control the academic asylum

The vicious doctrine of “intersectionality,” which links different categories of “victims” together and demonises their purported “oppressors” such as white people, men or those who believe in biological differences between men and women, also targets Zionism and the Jews.

Those who support Zionism often find themselves “cancelled.” That’s because the Marxist dogma of identity politics divides people into powerful and powerless according to crude economic or political status.

Consequently, tiny, besieged Israel is viewed as a white oppressive country (even though the majority of its people are brown or even black-skinned) simply because it’s considered a western nation, has a powerful military (albeit solely for its defence) and is supported by America. So on account of these supposed “crimes,” its supporters are targeted for vilification, too.

Andrew Pessin, a philosophy professor at Connecticut College and a Jew, experienced this in 2015 when he was falsely accused of having dehumanised the Palestinians by supporting Israel during its 2014 war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Branded a racist peddling “hate speech,” he was subjected to death threats and antisemitic abuse and forced to take medical leave from teaching for two years.

Now he has fashioned his experiences into a literary weapon in Nevergreen, a sparkling and savagely satirical novel about campus “cancel culture”.

The book is set in the ultimate “woke” environment of Nevergreen, a college situated on a remote island. The name alludes to an infamous event in 2017 at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

A biology professor there, Bret Weinstein, was hounded out of his post after he objected to the college asking white students to absent themselves for a day to attend a course on race issues. Like Pessin, Weinstein was physically intimidated and not allowed to defend himself against the accusations made against him.

People Love Dead Jews

In late 2019, antisemitic terrorists murdered three people at a kosher market in Jersey City. The killers, who had a large stock of explosives in their van (enough to destroy an area the size of five football fields, the police said), likely intended to bomb the Jewish school below the market.

Much of the news media addressed the Jersey City slaughter from a blame-the-victims angle. Dara Horn, in her new book, People Love Dead Jews: Notes from a Haunted Present, remarks that “The ‘context’ provided by local news outlets after this attack was breathtaking in its cruelty. As the Associated Press explained in a news report about the Jersey City murders that was picked up by NBC and other news outlets, ‘The slayings happened in a neighborhood where Hasidic families had recently been relocating, amid pushback from some local officials who complained about representatives of the community going door to door, offering to buy homes at Brooklyn prices.’”

Horn comments, “Like many homeowners, I too have been approached by real estate agents asking me if I wanted to sell my house. I recall saying no, although I suppose murdering these people would also have made them go away.”

The attackers were not from Jersey City, and in fact there was little ethnic tension there, according to both Black and Jewish residents. Looking back at media reports from other recent mass slayings like the 2016 Orlando nightclub massacre or the 2015 mass murder at a Black church in Charleston, Horn could locate no similar efforts to contextualize the acts of other terrorists—nothing, for instance, about “how straight people in Orlando ... were understandably upset about gay couples setting up shop in the neighborhood and disrupting their ‘way of life.’”

“Presenting such analysis as a hot take after a massacre,” Horn concludes, “is not only disgusting and inhuman, but also a form of the very same hatred that caused the massacre.” Where Hasidim are concerned, the root cause of antisemitic bloodshed becomes, just like in the old days, “Jews, living in a place!”

This is Dara Horn at her acerbic best. You couldn’t ask for a cleaner and more devastating swipe at the journalistic double standard that treats Hasidic Jews as, well, not particularly human, though perhaps useful “as a warning—because when Jews get murdered or maimed, it might be an ominous sign that actual people, people who wear athleisure, might later get attacked!”

A forgotten blood libel in Poland, 1726

I have subscribed to Newspapers.com to have access to hundreds of newspaper archives. Lately I have been looking for articles about Jews from the earliest newspapers they cover, which are British newspapers from 1700.

Reporting in those days was spotty, relying on letters received from distant lands, so it is hard to verify the stories, especially when they weren't considered important enough for the history books. Still, life for the Jews was pretty bad then.

For example, this article from The Newcastle Weekly Courant, June 26, 1717:

Or the same newspaper in 1716:

Or this story of Jews in Genoa forced to wear a yellow ribbon in 1724:

But this one really struck me, because it was a literal blood libel that time forgot, and several Jews were murdered because of it - just a tiny story in the Caledonian Mercury in 1726:

09/03 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: The Lesson the Biden Administration Refuses To Learn; The Forever War is Islam’s War on the West; Media blackout on Hamas war crimes

From Ian:

6 wounded in Islamist stabbing at New Zealand supermarket

New Zealand authorities said Friday they shot and killed a violent extremist after he entered a supermarket and stabbed and injured six shoppers.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the incident as a terror attack. She said the man was a Sri Lankan national who was inspired by the Islamic State group. She said he was well-known to the nation's security agencies and was being monitored around the clock.

She said that by law, the man was not allowed to be kept in prison.

Ardern said that three of those who had been stabbed were seriously injured.

"This was a violent attack. It was senseless," Ardern said. "And I am so sorry that it happened."

The attack unfolded at about 2:40 p.m. at a Countdown supermarket in New Zealand's largest city, Auckland. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern speaks about a stabbing attack during a press conference, Friday, Sept. 3, 2021

Ardern said that because the man was under constant monitoring, a police surveillance team and a special tactics group were able to shoot and kill him within 60 seconds of the attack starting.

Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said they had concerns about the man's ideology and kept very close tabs on him. Coster said they followed him from his home to the supermarket on Friday.

Caroline Glick: The Lesson the Biden Administration Refuses To Learn

As Biden and his advisors see things, once the U.S. announced it was withdrawing from Afghanistan, the war was effectively over. The Taliban was only fighting America because the U.S. was in Afghanistan. This explains the administration's lack of concern about the $90 billion worth of U.S.-made weapons now under Taliban control. The Taliban won't turn those weapons on America, so the thinking goes, because now that the U.S. has left, the Taliban has no problem with it. Biden and his advisors applied the same logic to sharing the names and biometric data of U.S. citizens and the America's Afghan allies with the Taliban. The Taliban won't harm those people now that U.S. forces have withdrawn.

The Taliban made no effort to hide their scorn for the administration's self-delusion. They blocked U.S. citizens and America's Afghan allies from reaching the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. They let ISIS terrorists get through to kill 13 U.S. servicemen and women and 170 Afghan civilians. They let thousands of ISIS and other terrorists out of jails. But Biden and Blinken refused to notice. They said the Taliban were now partners, and that was that.

In this light, Biden and Blinken's prioritization of the Taliban's withdrawal deadline over keeping faith with U.S. citizens trapped in Taliban-controlled territory makes sense. They think that now that U.S. forces are gone, everything will be fine. It will be possible to "deter" the Taliban from taking hostages or mistreating women and girls through diplomacy, especially at the UN.

As Biden and his team showed in their meetings with Bennett, the same assumptions about U.S. responsibility for other people's hostility toward it applies to their view of Iran and the Palestinians.

Israel is increasingly alarmed by Iran's escalating nuclear activities. Tehran has doubled the pace of its uranium enrichment. It is enriching uranium to near bomb-grade levels of purity, and it is developing the uranium metals that form the core of nuclear warheads. On August 5, Israel assessed that Iran is on schedule to become a nuclear-capable state able to build an arsenal whenever it wishes by mid-October.

Bennett hoped to impress the urgency of the moment on Biden and his advisors. But they weren't interested. Biden ended the conversation at his public appearance with Bennett by insisting that the U.S. was "putting diplomacy first and seeing where it takes us." He insipidly added, "If diplomacy fails, we're ready to turn to other options."

The Caroline Glick Show: Ep19 - Afghanistan, the Palestinians and Western Narcissism

In this week's episode of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour, Caroline and co-host Gadi Taub do a post-mortem on Biden's catastrophic failure in Afghanistan. Biden's refusal to acknowledge the failure suggests that he will also refuse to learn the lessons from the failure. This bodes poorly for the U.S. and for Israel. Caroline and Gadi discussed the Soviet roots of "Palestinian nationalism," and how the post-Holocaust war against the Jews fits into the Soviet goal of destroying American society. Join our dynamic duo for this lively discussion, and get the bonus of meeting Caroline’s mom!

Caroline Glick: Bennett's voters face Bennett's diplomacy

The four farmers of Arugot Farm, located on the eastern side of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, were tense on Monday morning. They had just gotten word that the next day, 100 soldiers were set to storm their farm and uproot their vineyard. They planted their vineyard six years ago in memory of Ezra Schwartz, a Jewish American youth who was murdered in a terror attack in 2015.

Ezra was killed and five of his friends from yeshiva were wounded when a terrorist opened fire on the minibus they were travelling in. They were stuck in a traffic jam at Gush Etzion junction and didn't have a chance. The spot they were stuck in traffic was just a few dozen meters from where three other teenagers, Naftali Frankel, Gil-Ad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrach were kidnapped and murdered the previous summer. Their abduction and execution set off a chain for events that led to the summer war with the Hamas regime in Gaza. Ezra and his friends were on their way to help build Oz V'Gaon nature preserve on the eastern side of the junction. Oz V'Gaon is locted not far from where their bodies were found and was built in their memory.

Local officials asked the farmers to build Arugot Farm. It is located on state lands the Jewish National Fund had been unable to maintain. Around 20 years ago, the JNF planted 10,000 trees on the site to protect it from Palestinian land grabs. But in the space of a few hours, Palestinian villagers uprooted all of the trees. The four farmers and their families moved in seven years ago. Together they cultivate and protect some forty acres of state land.

Under the 1995 Oslo agreement, Judea and Samaria were divided into three areas: A, B, and C. A and B were transferred to Palestinian control. Area C, which made up 60% of the area, remained under Israeli control. Israel administers Area C through the IDF's Civil Administration.

In 2008, then-Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad released a strategy to seize the lands of Area C with the goal of choking the Israeli communities, blocking their development and transferring control over strategic lands to the PA. Since then, with lavish funding from the EU, thousands of acres of state land have been seized by the Palestinians. Illegal settlements have sprung up by the dozens, major traffic arteries and access roads to Israeli communities have turned into gauntlets. In an interview with Maariv last week, Kobi Eliraz, who served as an advisor on Area C to three defense ministers, estimated that as a result of the land grabs, Israel today controls at best 40% of Judea and Samaria.

Israel Advocacy Movement: Media blackout on Hamas war crimes

The 250th anniversary of America's first Rosh Hashanah machzor

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of “Evening Service of Rosh Hashanah” by Isaac Pinto.

Pinto immigrated to the American colonies in 1740 and became involved in politics along with his trade. He recognized that American Jews generally could not read Hebrew so he wrote his own English translation of the important parts of the Rosh Hashanah service, and later expanded it with an English-language siddur and Yom Kippur machzor published in 1766 - or, as the book notes, 5526.

I cannot find a copy of the original 1761 work, but this is from the 1766 expanded edition.

The siddur and machzor are highly abridged, with only the highlights translated in its 189 pages.

There were weekly advertisements for this siddur in the Independent Gazetteer of Philadelphia in 1786.

As far as I can tell, this was the first mention of Rosh Hashanah in any American newspaper.

Pinto distinguished himself in other ways. In 1781, the Continental Congress established a Department of Foreign Affairs that was later to become the State Department. The new department needed translators, and Pinto was one of the first three people hired for that job.

I would like to wish you a very happy, prosperous new year.

5781 was a difficult year for many. While Israel has continued to remain strong, its enemies have been getting bolder.

To my mind, the biggest news wasn't the Gaza war or the new Israeli government. It was that Israel haters can now call Israel an "apartheid state" with impunity - because Human Rights Watch has made that lie mainstream.

EoZ has been fighting that lie, with videos, posters, and reports that don't only thoroughly debunk the slander, but that also prove that Human Rights Watch and its leader Ken Roth are systemically anti-Israel and even antisemitic, holding the Jewish state to standards that no one else is held to and creating a unique definition of "apartheid" tailored to fit Israel.

That's just one of the many campaigns EoZ has done this year. But it is also a place to find news you will not see anywhere else, scoops that are picked up much later in other media, and forgotten history of Israel and Jews.

EoZ has gained popularity on social media. We now have over 37,000 Twitter followers, and tweets often get amplified hundreds of times.

My regular columnists (Judean Rose, Vic Rosenthal, Daled Amos, PreOccupied Territory) add new dimensions to the blog, and Ian continues to do an amazing job collecting the links to every single important article published elsewhere. EoZ is really a one stop shop for all Israel news.

All of this takes a great deal of time and money.

Please donate to EoZ so we can continue to provide the very best in news and analysis.

To donate with PayPal you can click here

You can buy me an iced tea.

If you prefer, you can also become a patron with Patreon here.

You can also send me an Amazon gift card to my email elder@elderofziyon.com .

I appreciate you being a part of this site, and I wish you and your family a wonderful New Year, one filled with health and happiness.

When it comes to antisemitism in the West, there is a Muslim exception.

Imam Abdul Alim Musa (born Clarence Reams) has been making outrageous antisemitic statements for decades. In 2007 he said, "Who ran the slave trade ... who funded [it]? You’ll study and you will find out: the Jews ... It was the Jewish bankers ... in Vienna, with pockets full of money, funding and insuring, that’s who did it ... you can’t tell us about no holocaust. Between the African Americans and the Native Americans, everybody else’s stuff was small potatoes."

At the University of Washington in the 1990s he told students that "Yahuds are the enemy of humanity."

Yet he remains the Director of Masjid Al-Islam in Washington D.C. His mosque brags that "For several years, we have maintained our principles of self-determination, moral and spiritual development, establishment of healthy family life, and uncompromising outspokenness against the injustices perpetrated locally and globally by Zionists and imperialistic governments."

The people who claim to be against antisemitism from the Left have nothing bad to say about Alim Musa's antisemitism - or the fact that he has a pulpit in the nation's capital. The media doesn't condemn him. He's a black Muslim and therefore he is untouchable.

In a recent rant, Musa said - in English:

After a short period of being a Muslim, we had realized who our main enemy was, and we knew from jump street that our main enemy were Zionists. The main enemy of Islam were Zionists. So therefore, we not only had to go up against the Americans, who were servants of Zionism.
America has been taken over by the Zionists, and yesterday, when they [were] getting ready to meet, right? With old... whatever his name is... this man [is] getting old already... 78 years old, good God... he ain't got too much older to get before he leave...
Then, they have the bombing. They want to go in and talk to him at that time, what do they want to say to him? 'Look, we don't want to, we told you we don't want you to do anything with Iran.' Just because you tell the world you're going to do this with Iran, do that with Iran... and we don't want you to do it. To show you how we feel about it, we gonna blow up a whole crew of your soldiers in front of everybody, and in front of the public. You can't do nothing about it. Why, they couldn't do nothing about 9/11 right? Don't they have history of people standing on buildings, cheering while 9/11 goes off? Who are those people? They are Zionists.
The Zionists are telling us what to do, the Zionists put the big tall guy... you know, what's his name... head of the FBI. They do what they want. Donald Trump's best friend is a Zionist, they are friends... [but] they are not his friends, right? Don't they manipulate, and they control him? 100%. What was Trump's job? We said it here, years before it happened.
First, we said his job is to destroy the Republican Party. Remember that? Then, we said Donald's job is to destroy America, to make it super weak. If America is super weak ideologically, and the Zionists are strong, that little old group of people can control him. Why? You see it everyday, why. What is it, Pegasus [spyware] this and that... They got something on the whole Congress, and there ain't no white man that lived a moral life in the United States. I mean, there's probably one or so... But them, right? Tell the truth! So, the Zionist got them all by their body parts, they got them all! They have to cooperate, let me try to explain that again. The Zionists control Congress, the Zionists control Senate, the Zionists control economy, the Zionists run America.

Muslims, especially Black Muslims, are allowed to hate Jews. In fact, it is expected. And the media is afraid to treat them the way they treat right-wing white antisemites who say the same things.

From EJP:

The head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, acknowledged that Palestinian textbooks contain problematic material, while still insisting that the agency takes steps to prevent it from being taught, without showing that how this is actually accomplished.

He stated, in a hearing before the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee (AFET), that antisemitism, intolerance glorification of terrorism is present in PA textbooks in UNRWA schools and affirmed that his agency had revised the textbooks used in its schools following allegations of antisemitic content.

But several members of the committee questioned him on continued teaching of hate, violence and antisemitism in Palestinian Authority (PA) textbooks and UNRWA materials, citing a recent report by IMPACT-se, an organization that analyzes schoolbooks and curricula for compliance with UNESCO-defined standards on peace and tolerance. on the textbooks.

It is an interesting strategy to admit that PA textbooks that UNRWA uses are antisemitic and then claiming that UNRWA's antisemitic teachers aren't teaching it.

We know this is a lie because UNRWA's own materials were shown this year to celebrate martyrdom and violence.

Only weeks ago UNRWA claimed that it would create a "tolerance workshop" for employees. However, one of the members of the EU Parliament who questioned Lazzarini noted "the U.S. State Department accountability office (GAO) report on UNRWA said that UNRWA teachers 'have refused to take part in training for tolerance and conflict resolution.'"

The EU is certainly holding UNRWA's feet to the fire more than anyone else, although it hasn't affected their funding.

09/02 Links Pt2: Parole for Sirhan B. Sirhan? RFK’s help for Israel drove his assassin; Why Grocery Stores Get Jewish Holidays All Wrong; Banning swastikas: Victoria leads the way

From Ian:

Parole for Sirhan B. Sirhan? RFK’s help for Israel drove his assassin

During a television interview in 1989, the Jerusalem-born Sirhan said he felt betrayed by Kennedy’s Israel proposal. The assassination occurred a short time after Kennedy, a senator from New York, delivered a victory speech upon winning California’s Democratic presidential primary.

“The prisoner killed my father because of his support of Israel,” former U. S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II wrote in response to the recommendation, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. “The man was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Yet he now may walk free, no doubt to the cheers of those who share his views. Let there be no mistake, the prisoner’s release will be celebrated by those who believe that political disagreements can be solved by a gun.”

Joseph Kennedy also wrote of other aspects of his father’s assassination, including its impact on his family.

Sirhan was lucky to receive the life sentence. He was initially sentenced to death, over the objections of RFK’s younger brother and Senate colleague Edward M. Kennedy. Sirhan’s punishment became a life sentence when California’s top court temporarily ruled against the state’s death penalty in 1972.

Many Americans can think of a few compelling reasons why Friday’s recommendation should be rejected. First, the parole board’s legal division must review it in a process that could take four months. If Sirhan gets past that step, Gov. Gavin Newsom will have 30 days to review the matter, and then he can approve, veto or return it to the parole board, or do nothing and allow it to go into effect, The New York Times reported.

RFK’s backing of Israel intermingles with a slew of other issues arising from the prospect of Sirhan’s release, the subject of a virtual hearing last Friday. Sirhan’s hostility toward Israel is a crucial reason for keeping him forever isolated from society. It extends beyond the horrid act of murder and even the shock that a prominent elected official was slain.

RFK’s assassination was motivated by enmity for an American ally whose diplomatic relationship was just starting to develop, and has grown into an essential partnership. If Sirhan is allowed to walk, then others who seek to murder for political issues can expect to avoid serving their full sentences.

Politicians who take controversial positions – as they all must sooner or later - can feel intimidated if they know that assassins will receive this kind of treatment.

Rory Kennedy: Robert Kennedy Was My Dad. His Assassin Doesn't Deserve Parole

I never met my father. When Sirhan Sirhan murdered him, my mother was pregnant with me. My father's murder was absolute, irreversible, a painful truth that I have had to live with every day of my life. In 1969, Sirhan was found guilty by a jury of his peers and sentenced to death. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional and suspended it.

My mother and the majority of my siblings agree with what I now write. Sirhan is not someone deserving of parole. Across the decades, right up through last week, he has not been willing to accept responsibility for his act and has shown little remorse. The recommendation to release Sirhan still has to be reviewed by the full parole board and then by California's governor. I ask them, for my family - and I believe for our country, too - to please reject this recommendation and keep Sirhan Sirhan in prison.

Why Grocery Stores Get Jewish Holidays All Wrong

Did you hear the one about the grocery store that was selling ham (yes, actual ham) for Hanukkah? How about the supermarket that constructed a pyramid’s worth of matzo boxes just before Rosh Hashanah, or the one that stocked hamantaschen next to the honey bears? Over the last decade, the arrival of the Jewish holidays has increasingly been heralded on social media (and traditional media, too) with a parade of anecdotes from customers encountering stores’ well-meaning attempts to offer holiday products that spectacularly miss the mark.

People’s reactions over finding yahrzeit candles on a Hanukkah display, or photos of challah announcing the Passover section range from amusement to profound annoyance. How difficult, these posts and articles ask, could it be for a supermarket to do a little research? A Christian shopper would never be subjected to the humiliation of finding a Cadbury Creme Egg display before Christmas, or packaged fruit cakes on Easter!

As it turns out, however, “getting it right” is harder than one might think. And while a photo of a grocery store marketing boneless smoked ham as ideal for a Jewish holiday is objectively startling, there is more to the story than just a meme. Behind the punchline is the rather remarkable fact that the holiday section is there at all.

If you walk into a typical grocery store in a town with any discernible Jewish population, you are likely to find a shelf or two dedicated to Ashkenazi comfort and ritual foods: things like matzo ball mix, egg noodles, bottled borscht, and kosher grape juice. These products are often squashed somewhere along the store’s vaguely defined “ethnic” food aisle, which houses Indian curry sauces, packaged soba noodles, and other products that are deemed outside “mainstream” American tastes.

“Today, grocery stores, as part of the civic square, are attentive to a wide variety of backgrounds, but that was not always the case,” said Jenna Weissman Joselit, a professor, author, and historian of Jewish American culture (as well as regular Tablet contributor) According to a recent New York Times article, the ethnic aisle was born in the mid-20th century with an express purpose: “to serve returning WWII soldiers who had tasted foods from countries like Italy, Germany, and Japan while abroad.” Some of the foods eventually found a home in different aisles (think: jarred marinara), but the section itself remained, creating a ghetto of otherness amid a vast terrain of white bread, mayonnaise, and corn flakes.

Al Jazeera (Arabic) writes about the hardship of Palestinian Arabs who work in Israel who are forced to not work during the upcoming Jewish holidays this month.

Israel closes the crossings to the territories during Israeli holidays.

Of course, Egypt closes its crossing to Gaza on Egyptian holidays, but no one seems overly concerned about that.

That isn't the only horrific human rights violation that Palestinians complain about for Jewish holidays. They are also upset that Jews visit Jewish shrines on Jewish holidays, including Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and many others.

Specialist in Israeli affairs, Ismat Mansour, describes the closures, which are carried out under the pretext of Jewish holidays, as a ritual of restricting Palestinians and disturbing their lives on security grounds, although the situation today is closer to calm....The problem with the Jewish holidays - according to Mansour - is that there are many of them, and the closures may extend for long days, as happens on the Passover holiday, in which the closure extends for a week

In addition to this, the national holidays, especially the Independence Day, are considered a history of the catastrophe for the Palestinian people

There you have it. Jewish holidays are a violation of Palestinian rights, and Israeli holidays are designed to humiliate Palestinians.

The funny thing is, when they make this stuff up it is to make themselves feel important. Because the truth that Jewish holidays and Israeli special days have nothing to do with Palestinians offends those who insist they are the center of the universe.

Self-Destructive Palestinian Refusal To Accept Jewish State Good Prep For COVID Vaccine Refusal (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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syringes Ramallah, September 3 - Observers of Palestinian society have noted of late that more than a century of rejecting the notion and manifestation of a sovereign Jewish presence anywhere in the ancestral Jewish homeland, bringing upon themselves a century of misery and political limbo, has served as ample training to reject immunization against the CoV-SARS-2 pathogen, whereby they also bring upon themselves misery.

Commentators specializing in Palestinian social and political trends remarked this week that Palestinian collective unwillingness to get vaccinated against COVID-19 marks a phenomenon that could not have happened with such robust force without the similarly self-destructive refusal to accept Israel as a concept, and then as a fait accompli.

"I'm not sure Palestinian society would be where it is today, COVID-immunization-wise, if not for irredentism and intransigence on Jewish sovereignty," argued Khalil Shikaki, a prominent Palestinian pollster. "It takes a long time to nurture an intolerance so profound that one will indulge it even at disastrous cost to oneself or one's identity group. Palestinian vaccine avoidance didn't spring up out of nowhere; it's of a piece with Palestinian avoidance of accommodation with the reality of the Zionist project's success and with the absurdity of thinking it can be undone in any meaningful way. In both cases, the immediate- medium-, and long-term damage to Palestinians will be immense, and only grow as the trend persists."

Shikaki also pointed to cases in which the consequences of each type of intransigence have dovetailed. "Refusal to vaccinate puts more people at risk of hospitalization and painful, lonely death," he explained. "Refusal to accept Israel as a fait accompli puts Palestinians at risk of choosing to engage in activities that result in hospitalization and painful death, as well as the likelihood of isolation in prison. This also holds true on the more metaphorical and international level, where refusal to undertake the responsibilities of emerging statehood, instead wallowing in entitlement that reeks of supremacism, produces isolation on the global stage as even erstwhile allies lose patience and eventually switch sides in deed if not in word."

Diplomats pointed to other confluences of the two types of rejectionism. "We just gave the Palestinian Authority $38 million in vaccines that will go to waste," observed US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Joey Hood. "At their current rate of vaccination they'll end up having to chuck much of their current stock, let alone those tens of thousands of doses. It's the same thing with all the aid we and others have given them through the decades: they waste in on embezzlement, terrorism, incitement, and other self-defeating endeavors."

09/02 Links Pt1: Douglas Murray: America, the Taliban and a farewell to arms; EU Parliament Grills UNRWA Head Over Antisemitic Textbooks in Palestinian Schools; The PA's suffocation tactic

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: America, the Taliban and a farewell to arms

Like all Islamists, the Taliban are rather good at this sort of thing. They loathe modernity and everything that the modern West has brought the world. But they are perfectly happy to use the fruits of that modernity against it. So while left to their own devices, the Taliban would have struggled to invent (let alone operate) the wheel, the modern world just keeps putting its finest weaponry in their hands. And if you are gifted such things then of course you will use them, albeit for your pre-medieval aims.

The defeated powers are playing the game of ‘reformed Taliban’ to buy themselves the tiniest amount of time in what looks set to be a long game of humiliation. Canada’s minister for equality, Maryam Monsef, addressed the Taliban direct last week. In a video message she called on ‘our brothers, the Taliban’, to ‘ensure the safe and secure passage’ out of Afghanistan of anyone who wants to leave.

Yet in the competition for lead Pollyanna in the West, Monsef doesn’t even make the finals. That award must surely go to the US special representative to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad. As the last US troops were leaving, Khalilzad could be found proclaiming the Taliban ‘now face a test’. What is that test? ‘If you can get one Black Hawk over Kabul on the first day, how many days will it take you to get the whole fleet in the air?’ No, according to Khalilzad the big test for the Taliban is: ‘Can they lead their country to a safe and prosperous future where all their citizens, men and women, have the chance to reach their potential?’

If you had to take a guess, what would the answer to that question be? I would go for ‘no’. Khalilzad continued: ‘Can Afghanistan present the beauty and power of its diverse cultures, histories, and traditions to the world?’ Again, that’d be a ‘no’ from me.

Just about the only things the Americans didn’t give the Taliban was a drone capability. America still has the advantage there at least. Perhaps now would be a good time to use it.

Whiff of Hypocrisy as EU Parliament Grills UNRWA Head Over Antisemitic Textbooks in Palestinian Schools

Philippe Lazzarini, the UNRWA’s Commissioner-General, admitted there were a “number of issues” that need to be addressed.

“We as UNRWA have identified three categories of problems in the textbooks when it comes to being in line with UN value[s],” he said, “which is age appropriateness, gender perception, and then the issues related to incitement to violence, discrimination, and so on.” Lazzarini added that these problems were found after reviewing some 150 books while more checks would be carried out on other texts.

The UNRWA is certainly no stranger to controversy when it comes to the problem of antisemitism in its schools, as well as the thorny issue of its relationship with US-designated terror group Hamas.

Just last month, HonestReporting revealed the agency was seemingly in breach of conditions attached to a $150 million funding windfall from the United States after refusing to dismiss a number of teachers who had used their social media accounts to spread anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and celebrate Palestinian-orchestrated terror attacks.

A US official had made it clear that the resumption of funding, which was cut under President Joe Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, was dependent on the agency sticking to several “rock solid commitments” including a “zero tolerance for racism, discrimination and anti-Semitism.”

In June, UNRWA Deputy Commissioner Lenny Steinseth met with the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Al-Sinwar, who later revealed that Steinseth had thanked him and reportedly expressed solidarity with the terror group.

This, despite the fact the UNRWA has repeatedly found evidence of Hamas digging tunnels that are used to store rockets and launch attacks on Israel underneath its schools.

UNRWA Head Faces Questions at EU Parliament Over ‘Hate Speech, Violence’ in Palestinian Textbooks

Members of the European Parliament pressed the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Wednesday over reports of incitement to violence and prejudice found in Palestinian textbooks used in it schools.

In a hearing with UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini, members of the Committee on Foreign Affairs raised the possibility of greater scrutiny over educational materials used by the UN agency, which serves the descendants of Palestinian refugees from Israel’s 1947-48 War of Independence.

“I have serious concerns regarding the textbooks,” said German MEP Dietmar Köster, from the left-leaning Socialists and Democrats party. “In view of UNRWA’s serious shortcomings in recent years, I believe the European Parliament has no other choice but to discuss the question of whether we need stricter oversight over the agency.”

“Just this April, our very own budgetary discharge report criticized UNRWA for the hate speech and violence taught in UNRWA schools and questioned whether UNRWA has the proper mechanism in place to ensure adherence to UN values,” Köster said.

In June, a long-awaited European Union analysis found that Palestinian Authority textbooks trafficked in antisemitic tropes, removed previously-included references to Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements, and “glorified” as heroes terrorists convicted of killing Israelis.

Köster also cited research from IMPACT-se, an Israel-based nonprofit which studies curricula in the Middle East, that found UNRWA-branded educational materials had included calls to violence and a rejection of peacemaking efforts.

Bravo @AnnaAsimakopoul, for taking a clear stance on @UNRWA's egregious shortcomings regarding neutrality & impartiality.

Antisemitism & terror glorification have no place in UNRWA schools.

The EU must demand more oversight to ensure taxpayers' money serves its values. pic.twitter.com/or3ZAMj8Ti
— Transatlantic Inst. (@AJCTAI) September 2, 2021

I have noted many times in the past that when Palestinians say that "historic Palestine" is congruent with the borders of the British Mandate created in 1921, they cannot have too much history.

The Palestinian prime minister proved that yet again on Wednesday.

The Jordanian Minister of Agriculture visited the Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh in Ramallah, and Shtayyeh made a statement about the rich ties between his nonexistent nation and Jordan.

He "reiterated the spirit of partnership between Palestine and Jordan at all levels and throughout history, stressing that the two countries are partners in blood, history and unity of destiny."

Before 1946, Jordan was just a river. Before 1922, Transjordan was just a region - just as Palestine was before 1921.

Palestinians are no more descended from Canaanites as Jordanians are from Moabites or Ammonites.

So I suppose that Jordan and "Palestine" do have a history in common, in that until recently, they had no history.

Mahmoud Abbas is in Egypt and met with Egyptian journalists, where he repeated his usual talking points.

One of the points he wanted to make was that American public opinion is turning against Israel, saying that the American public mood has begun describing Israel as racist, aggressive and committing war crimes.

Abbas is especially heartened by anti-Zionist statements made by American Jews.

He also called out the US church denominations that have embraced anti-Israel positions.

As we have seen in years past, when Abbas feels like he has Westerners on his side, he becomes more intransigent, thinking that in time the West will force Israel to make concessions beyond what Israel has already offered.

The anti-Zionists, who punch way above their weight in publicity, are giving Palestinians hope for their ultimate victory, so it is no wonder they refuse to compromise for peace.

Iranian diesel "for Lebanon" is a money-making scam for Hezbollah

Two weeks ago, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that Iran was sending a ship of fuel to Lebanon in order to help that country's massive fuel shortages.

The Lebanese government had already said last year they would not accept shipments of any kind from Iran, fearful that the US would extend sanctions on them. Nasrallah's bright idea - first broached in June - was a direct challenge to the Lebanese government, as he said then, “Shipments of fuel will arrive at Beirut’s port, and let the state prevent their access to Lebanon.”

Now, Iran has announced that the ship has reached the territorial waters of its destination - Syria!

The first Iranian oil tanker that carries fuel for Lebanon has arrived in Syrian waters, Lebanese newspaper reported.

According to Al-Akhbar, the tanker has entered the Syrian waters on Wednesday and will discharge the shipment in one of the Syrian ports, and then the fuel will be transferred to Lebanon by tanker trucks.

The report said the shipment of the second and third tankers will also be delivered to Lebanon through the same mechanism.

Hezbollah will transfer fuel from Syria into Lebanon?

That's funny, because part of the reason for the fuel crisis to begin with was because Hezbollah was smuggling Lebanese fuel into Syria earlier this year!

Hezbollah sold the fuel for huge markups in the Syrian black market to fund its own terror operations. Social media in Syria and Lebanon too photos of the fuel trucks going into Syria.

Now that Lebanese are as desperate for fuel as Syrians were in May, Hezbollah is asking Iran for fuel at regular prices so they can now make money in the reverse direction and take massive profits - while claiming to be saving Lebanon.

The Lebanese people aren't fooled by Nasrallah's faux altruism. They know he is a reason they are in such bad economic shape to begin with.