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Sunday, February 15, 2026

02/15 Links: Human rights activists and organizations legitimize antisemitism; Bondi Beach terrorist, charged with 15 counts of murder; India agrees arms deals with Israel worth $8.6b

From Ian:

Jason D. Greenblatt (Arab News-Saudi Arabia): Negotiation, Trump Style

No one knows what is in President Donald Trump's head, and that is by design. Revealing his strategy would forfeit leverage, eliminate surprise, and weaken negotiations before they even begin. Strategic ambiguity is not confusion. It is strength.

Many predicted he would strike Iran quickly. I did not. Weeks ago, I wrote that he would first test whether diplomacy could work - real diplomacy, aimed at real results. Not another paper promise that looks good in headlines and collapses in practice. The last deal [in 2015] merely kicked the nuclear threat down the road and gave the Iranian regime space to cheat.

Trump wants an agreement that eliminates the nuclear threat - one that is verifiable, enforceable and immediate. One that addresses Iran's growing missile capabilities and regional aggression. Trump understands that the first victims of the Iranian regime are the Iranian people themselves. They live under crushing sanctions imposed because of their leaders' warmongering, repression and extremism. They suffer for ambitions they did not choose. At the same time, the threat to Israel and to America's Arab allies remains real and, if left unchecked, will only grow far more dangerous.

Trump seeks peace and prosperity. That is what drives him. He is, at heart, a dealmaker. Leaders across the region share a clear-eyed understanding of Iran's threat. Trump has rebuilt American strength and is unafraid to use it. He negotiates from power, not apology. Over 23 years, I watched him close deals so-called experts dismissed as fantasy. He does not accept conventional limits.

No one should fault him for exhausting every peaceful option before choosing the hard path. Trying to prevent war does not make him weak or naive or indecisive. It means he is doing his job. If there is a responsible way to avoid war, a president must pursue it. That does not mean Trump is being played. He recognizes deception. He senses bad faith. If negotiations become a charade, he will know. Quickly.

If he ultimately concludes that force is necessary - or that supporting Israel in war is unavoidable - he will do so knowing he explored every alternative.

Bernard-Henri Levy (WSJ)Is Help Still on the Way for Iranian Protesters?

Should there even be a deal with Iran? Is it reasonable to "deal" with men who killed 30,000 of their own compatriots in two days and who threaten, should demonstrations resume, to kill tens of thousands more?

Can one settle for sanctions, pressure, and concessions wrung out and immediately circumvented, when one knows that Russia has long since found ways to flood Tehran and its proxies with the resources they need to continue their enterprise of destruction?

Is any compromise possible with fanatics who proclaim that they prefer the apocalypse to defeat?

I hope the American administration understands this. I hope it has grasped that the era of containment is over, that deterrence doesn't work against a state that has made internal terror, regional destabilization, and the end of the world both a mode of governance and a program.

The time for regime change has come.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Human rights activists and organizations legitimize antisemitism

It is curious to speak at an Al Jazeera conference—the flagship channel of Qatar—about “we, who do not control large amounts of financial capital.” Who exactly is “we”? According to one investigation after another, most recently by the Free Press, Qatar has invested “nearly $100 billion to buy influence in Congress, colleges, research institutes and corporations.” The channel itself is funded almost entirely by Qatar, with an annual budget of about $1 billion. But in Albanese’s formulation, this becomes “we, who do not control large amounts of financial capital.” And no, this is not satire.

Last Thursday, Caroline Yadan, a member of France’s right-wing National Assembly party, submitted a parliamentary question to Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot regarding the continuation of Albanese’s tenure in her senior UN post. Barrot responded immediately, announcing that, at the opening of the next session of the Human Rights Council on February 23, France intends to present a demand for the dismissal of the racist who rose to that senior position. Additional European countries have announced they are joining the request.

Yadan was met with a wave of responses, including from the French newspaper Le Monde, with the peculiar claim that this is not what Albanese said and that it was not a racist statement. Amnesty International issued a statement asserting that “European states must retract their outrageous attacks against Albanese.”

One does not need a comprehension test to understand what Albanese said. She published the full text herself. She did not speak about any other country. Only about Israel. Moreover, the phrase “a common enemy of humanity” is well known from the antisemitic lexicon. Once it was said about Jews. Now it is said about the Jewish state.

Yadan responded with a long list of Albanese’s racist statements, before and after October 7. She previously published an anti-Israel cartoon depicting spider webs spread across the world with banknotes and gold coins, spoke about the “Jewish lobby,” justified the October 7 massacre, cast doubt on allegations of rape by Hamas terrorists and much, much more. UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer has published extensive investigations into Albanese’s conduct, including activities funded by Hamas supporters.

There have already been attempts to remove Albanese. Nevertheless, in April 2025, her mandate was extended by three years. The New York Times printed a sympathetic profile of her. And the world’s largest human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, condemned the United States for imposing sanctions on her.

The tragedy is that racism reigns not only in the automatic majority of dark regimes within UN bodies. It is a cancer spreading through a camp that imagines itself enlightened. And the gap between human rights and human rights organizations and activists has never been greater.

Al Aqsa Sermon To Incite Violence Thwarted By Unskippable Ads (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, December 18 - The firebrand preacher attempting to exhort his Islamic flock to defend their faith and land by visiting bloody vengeance against Jews and asserting dominance over them found that his address missed the mark, the man confessed soon after the event, probably because his momentum was disrupted by the unavoidable commercial clips that plague online media and must be viewed to completion before anyone may proceed to the content for which they came in the first place.

Imam Mustafa Massikr of the Al-Aqsa Mosque voiced his frustration and disappointment this morning following a sermon that he had anticipated would ignite a violent fervor among those in attendance, but that fizzled when the unskippable ads began playing over the compound's sound and video systems.

"I had planned for something grand, something inspiring," he lamented. "Something to restore the pride of our Islamic flock, which faces disappointment after disappointment in the fight against the Jews. A hundred years now of seeing triumph around the corner, of a victory so close we can taste it. Of driving the Jew into the dirt, or into the sea, only to find..." he trailed off.

"Let's just say that any moments of victory have been just that, moments, when in the larger sense, Israel isn't going anywhere, and deep down, we all know it."

"The ads are just a microcosm," he acknowledged.“ I’m up there, voice rising, fists clenched, about to deliver the classic ‘Itbāḥ al-Yahūd’ line that never fails to get the blood up, and suddenly—bam!—a smiling blonde woman in a hijab that somehow costs three hundred dollars appears on every screen telling us we can consolidate our payday loans in three easy steps. At a volume somehow even louder than we thought the speakers could carry. By the time she’s done explaining the APR, the moment is gone. The flock just stares at their phones, wondering if they qualify.”

Worshippers confirmed the account. “I was ready,” said Rami al-Qawasmi, 29, from nearby Silwan. “Knife sharpened, will steeled, everything. Then some guy in a lab coat starts yelling about reverse-osmosis water filters ‘that Israel can’t poison.’ I actually wrote down the website before I realized what I was doing. Now I have cleaner water but zero dead Jews. Mixed results, honestly.”

Technical staff at the mosque blamed the Waqf’s new cost-cutting streaming package. “We switched to the free tier,” admitted sound engineer Hassan al-Dajani. “Turns out the free tier includes fifteen-second unskippable ads every four minutes. We thought it would only affect the ladies’ section livestream. Lesson learned.”

Imam Massikr has vowed to try again next week, this time with a paid subscription. “Ad-free jihad is apparently twenty-nine ninety-nine a month,” he muttered. “Infidel capitalism has found a way to monetize even our sacred rage. Allah help us, the Jews don’t have to fire a single bullet anymore; JewTube Premium is doing it for them.”

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02/11 Links Pt1: Hamas’s Torture Tactics Are Finally in the Spotlight; Why Yitzhak Rabin urged moving Gaza’s Arabs to Jordan; Hostage Shlomo Mansour, 86, was murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Hamas’s Torture Tactics Are Finally in the Spotlight

Now that Hamas’s abuse of Israeli hostages threatens to derail the cease-fire, the subject will get more attention. The hostages, especially those who were freed recently, have been concentrating on recovery. In the future, we expect to learn in much greater detail what happened to the captives in those tunnels and dungeons, but what we know already is troubling enough.

This week the attention is on Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami, and Eli Sharabi because their abuse was evident before they even said a word. But more information has come trickling out: they were, reportedly, burned with hot objects, hung upside down, kept in chains, at times gagged to the point of suffocation, starved and dehydrated.

It is not the first shocking testimony from ex-captives.

Amit Soussana was chained up in a child’s bedroom. After her captor let her bathe, he stripped her of her towel and sexually assaulted her, Soussana told the New York Times in March. Later, she was suspended in the space between two couches and beaten. According to recently released hostages, Soussana’s captors beat her at gunpoint viciously until another captive convinced the Hamasniks that they had mistaken her for an IDF officer.

According to other testimony, sexual assault of the captives was widespread. Hamas also apparently tortured a child with an item similar to a hot branding iron.

Physical abuse is common, according to the captives. Yarden Bibas and Ofer Calderon were beaten and kept in cages. Bibas was also subject to the psychological abuse Hamas takes special pleasure in doling out. His wife and two young children were also taken hostage. At one point, Bibas’s captors told him his family had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, and took a video of his anguish. Hamas has not confirmed the fate of Bibas’s wife and children, even after his release. They reportedly tormented Bibas about his family throughout his nearly 500-day captivity.

The hostages would often be told they were being freed when they weren’t. Gadi Mozes, an 80-year-old farmer released last month, was at one point kept in a hot pickup truck for 12 hours underneath a Red Cross building in Gaza. He hoped he was being processed for release, but it turned out he was just being moved to a new location.

During the initial Oct. 7 attacks, before taking Emily Damari captive, Hamas terrorists shot her dog. While she was comforting the dog as it lay dying, Hamas shot her in the hand, taking off two of her fingers, then dragged her to Gaza.

Another form of torture practiced by Hamas was to let serious injuries go untreated and force the captives to watch them deteriorate.

Elliott Abrams: A Paradigm Shift for the Middle East

A year and a half ago, Iran's nuclear weapons program was steadily producing enriched uranium; by 2024, it had enough for several bombs. Washington was largely not enforcing its sanctions on Iran, greatly improving the regime's finances. And the "ring of fire" of Iranian proxies - Hizbullah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen - seemed to be a problem Israel could not solve.

But since then, Israel has turned the tables. Hamas has survived the invasion of Gaza and remains dominant there. But it will never again pose a serious military threat to Israel. The Israelis have wiped out Hizbullah's leadership and given Lebanon a chance to reclaim its sovereignty. Assad's regime is gone, and the weapons highway that has long run from Iran through Syria to Lebanon, Gaza, Jordan, and the West Bank appears to be closing.

Trump can take advantage of the situation, but only if his administration is willing to abandon Washington's habitual goal in the Middle East - "stability" - and presses instead for dramatic changes that will bolster its interests and allies and actively weaken its adversaries.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio: Hamas Is "Pure Evil," "Needs to Be Eradicated"

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reacted to the video of the latest Israeli hostages released by Hamas on SiriusXM Patriot 125 radio on Monday: "You look at these images of what they - first of all, the humiliation that they have to go through. Just put aside for a moment the horrifying conditions they were kept in and the horrifying things that happened to some of those hostages, on top of the fact that these were innocent civilians. I mean, none of these were soldiers. These are not combatants. These are just people that were abducted for purposes of being used as leverage. And they're getting, what, 200 certified killers in exchange for one innocent hostage. But it reveals who Hamas is."

"Look at the humiliation they put them through before they're released, where they do these big public displays of force. Do any of those Hamas fighters look like they've been skipping meals?...And then the conditions they're held in. So, it's incredibly revealing about what we're dealing with. This is an evil organization. Hamas is evil. It's pure evil. These are monsters. These are savages. That's a group that needs to be eradicated."

"If they still are the dominant power in Gaza when all this is done, there is not going to be peace in the Middle East, as long as a group like Hamas physically controls territory and is the most dominant power in Gaza or anywhere in the Middle East. And I hope people can see who these people actually are, in the condition of these hostages."

"The big challenge for this whole two-state solution has not been Israel. It's been: Who's going to govern that second state? Who's going to be in charge of it? If the people in charge of it are Hamas or Hizbullah or anybody like that, these are groups whose goal is the destruction of the Jewish state." "I don't know how you're going to have peace if you're turning over territory to a group whose stated purpose is the destruction of the Jewish state. Why would any country in the world agree to create a second state on their border that is governed by armed elements who kidnap babies and murder babies and rape teenage girls and abduct innocents and whose stated goal and purpose for existing is your destruction? Who would agree to that?"

02/05 Links Pt1: The End of ‘Palestine’; Donald J. Nietzsche Solves the Gaza Crisis; Israel exits UNHRC; Netanyahu gifted Trump a golden pager

From Ian:

Lee Smith: The End of ‘Palestine’

The Arabs and Democrats are only the most vocal of the many opposed to Trump’s initiative. Left-wing governments from Europe to Australia are lining up to pledge their allegiance to the fantasy of a Palestinian state, in the hopes of propitiating Muslim and Arab constituencies at home—whose understanding of “peace” means eliminating Israel. But even leaving the patent bad faith of those professing “peace” aside, moving Gazans out of Gaza is the only sane option 14 months after they initiated a campaign of rape, murder, and hostage-taking that brought their own house down on their heads.

After all, what’s more fanciful, moving 1.7 million people out of Gaza, a large portion of whom would simply be required to board air-conditioned buses or walk across the nearby Egypt border, or compelling them to live in a giant rubble field booby-trapped by an Iran-backed terrorist group? Estimates vary as to how long it would take to clear Gaza of explosives—half a decade or more? 15 years? 20? Are the Gazans supposed to live quietly in tents for the next decade or two while their homes are rebuilt next door? Where? In “temporary cities” made of Dwell Magazine-like rehabbed shipping containers built by graduates of Birmingham University? In Hamas’ tunnels?

Regardless, should the Palestinians remain in Gaza, they would invariably return to war no matter how much munificence the Gulf Arab states, the European Union, and perhaps even the U.S. might shower on the toxic sand-castle built over the past two decades with billions of Western aid money. Proof the Palestinians can’t and won’t keep the peace is that even after they won a reprieve when Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff forced the Biden administration’s ceasefire on Jerusalem, Hamas and its NGO-supported human shields celebrated in the streets as if the Hamas space program had successfully landed Palestinians on Mars. Even as Israel released jailed murderers, the Gazans paraded Israeli hostages through the ruins of Gaza like trophies of war.

The Saudis, Qataris, Emiratis and others who now rend their clothes while lamenting the likely fate of their ant-farm death cult might well have counseled: Quiet brothers, you have been spared. Don’t bring attention to yourselves. For the winds of Gaza shift on a whim and who knows if you are not next to be swept away by fate—or the American President.

Here is the stark reality: Gazans, not just the enlisted members of the Hamas brigades, waged an exterminationist campaign against Israel, and they lost. At virtually any other time in history, save the last 75 years, they would be lucky to lose only territory and not have their legend and language permanently deleted from the book of the living.

Trump’s generous offer to the Gazans therefore signals a return to history, but with a twist. Trump has not only spared them, but vowed to provide them with new lives, better lives, work, new homes, a chance to raise their families in peace, an existence not premised on total and permanent war with a more powerful adversary destined to rout them entirely, and would have already done so if not for the objections of other powerful global players.

Trump, in his innovative mercy, has offered to save the Palestinian people from their own history, and give them a new idea to live by. They should thank their maker for the chance to start anew—and give thanks as well to the American President, who realistically promises them a better future, backed by U.S. global power. Given the repeated failure of the multi-decade-long dream of eliminating and replacing the Jews of Israel, it seems unlikely that the Palestinians will receive a better offer.

Seth Mandel: Mr. Netanyahu’s Opus

Let’s rewind briefly to set the stage. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, had finally been defeated a dozen years into his second stint as premier, in 2021. Eighteen months later, Bibi found his way back into power, but in order to do so he had to assemble a coalition that was guaranteed to make trouble for him from Day One. His government proposed a radical democratizing of the Israeli judiciary that alienated half the country for a year, and failed anyway.

Then came Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s 9/11. Netanyahu, who had long (with good reason) branded himself as Mr. Security, had presided over the worst domestic security failure in 50 years. He was made to prosecute the ensuing war effort with Joe Biden tying one hand behind Israel’s back. The International Criminal Court put out a warrant for his arrest.

And then came a series of cinematic operations: the simultaneous detonation of thousands of pagers that Israel had tricked Hezbollah operatives into carrying, the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a safe house in Tehran, the elimination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah deep underground, and the zapping of Iran’s air defenses, among others.

The rollercoaster ride continued: The electoral victory of Donald Trump—no doubt the Israeli government’s preferred candidate—was followed by a painful cease-fire deal that, by all accounts, Netanyahu had been strongarmed into by the new administration while Bibi was still recovering from prostate-removal surgery.

Which brings us to this week. Netanyahu’s stay at the Blair House in Washington, a guest house of sorts for foreign dignitaries, was his 14th—more than anyone else in the history of the house. He is the first foreign leader to meet with Trump since the new president took office.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump had floated his Gaza-relocation idea, warned the Iranians to watch their step, and pulled U.S. funding from some of the United Nations’ atrocious anti-Israel committees. Trump then led Netanyahu into a packed room for the press briefing. “Congratulations,” the president said to the prime minister. “You bring them out, you really bring them out.”

And suddenly, Netanyahu once again appeared to have made the right bet. His willingness to sign the cease-fire deal and give Trump a big policy win to start his presidency seems to have won him barrels of goodwill. Trump acted as though the four-year Biden presidency was a rude interruption of a U.S.-Israel victory tour:

John Podhoretz: Donald J. Nietzsche Solves the Gaza Crisis

In his Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche proposes what he calls a “rule as a riddle.” It goes like this: “If the bond shan’t burst, bite upon it first.” If you can’t fix a problem with conventional means, go unconventional. If something is insoluble, do something radical. It’s the same idea as the Gordian Knot—no one could untie it, so Alexander the Great simply sliced it open. What you don’t get, in the end, is a single piece of rope that remains intact. But the knot no longer exists.

So it is with what Donald Trump did at the most dramatic presidential press conference of my adult lifetime by announcing his plan for Gaza. As my sister Ruthie Blum put it on X, “To all those who’ve been screaming for 16 months about the ‘day after’: TAKE THAT!” You want a way forward for the area that has been decimated as a result of the terrorist war launched against an unsuspecting Israel on October 7, 2023—a war Israel neither sought nor planned for nor expected to have to fight? You want to cry bitter tears over the uninhabitability of Gaza as a result of the consquences of the war that is entirely the moral, logistical, and geopolitical responsibility of the terrorist organization Hamas and its sponsor in Iran? Dry your tears, says Donald Trump. Here’s the plan.

Gazans will have to go elsewhere for a while. Gaza will be cleared. It’s a “demolition site.” Unexploded ordinance will have to be dealt with. Many existing structures will have to be torn down. It’s an area the size of Chicago, so it’s quite the job. Following the demo will come the rebuilding. All of this, Trump says, will be paid for by the very wealthy countries in the region, which will also be responsible for housing the displaced Gazans in one, two, four, seven, maybe even twelve comfortable sites. Gaza will be turned into the Riviera of the Middle East. At that point, the people once resident in Gaza can return…if they want to. Otherwise it will become an international city for world people.

Bam! A plan! The bond couldn’t be burst, so Trump bit upon it first. No solution, eh? OK, here’s the solution.

Oh, but President Trump, they won’t pay for it! And they won’t take in the Gazans. Oh, I think they will, Trump says airily.

What’s going on here? Simply the shifting of tectonic plates, not naturally, but through the force of will—the will to power, as Nietzsche might have put it. Yesterday, Trump asserted the will of the United States as the world’s most powerful, richest, most influential, and most dominant nation in saying something must be done about Gaza, here’s what needs to be done, here’s who’s going to pay for it, and here’s who’s going to manage it after. What must be done is it needs to be cleared and rebuilt. Who’s going to pay for it are the fellow Arabs who have been “supporting” the Palestinians in order to keep the Palestinians far away from them. Who’s going to manage it after is the United States, really more as a real-estate management company than a political entity.

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

01/19 Links Pt2: Can Biden and Blinken Read the Middle East?; For Palestinian Arabs, the Problem Is Israel's Existence, Not Its Borders; School Are Chasing Out Their Jews

From Ian:

WSJ Editorial: Can Biden and Blinken Read the Middle East?

Liberal policy on the Middle East is like a machine with a part missing. No matter the input, its output stays the same. Hamas launches the most gruesome invasion of Israel imaginable? Create a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority glorifies the massacre, prepares to compensate the killers and pledges solidarity with Hamas? Create a Palestinian state.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken laid out in Davos on Wednesday the perennially failing solution to Middle East problems. “If you take a regional approach, and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years,” he said. “Iran is suddenly isolated,” he envisioned, “and will have to make decisions about what it wants its future to be.”

Special points for Mr. Blinken’s use of “all of a sudden.” Presto, peace.

Tehran wants to erase the Jewish state from the map, but the main obstacle Mr. Blinken sees to his plan is Israel. “When in previous times we came close to resolving the Palestinian question, getting a Palestinian state,” he said, “I think the view then—Camp David, other places—was that Arab leaders, Palestinian leaders, had not done enough to prepare their own people for this profound change. I think a challenge now, a question now: Is Israeli society prepared to engage on these questions? Is it prepared to have that mind-set?”

In other words, the Oct. 7 attack and broad Palestinian support for it have demonstrated that Palestinians now want to make a deal for peaceful coexistence. Why in the world would Israel hesitate?

If this sounds bizarre, recall that it was the liberal internationalist reflex throughout the 1990s. The more Palestinian terrorism Yasser Arafat unleashed, the more Israelis had to prove they were committed to peace.

For Palestinian Arabs, the Problem Is Israel's Existence, Not Its Borders

Once a land has been conquered and is "open to Islam," it is Muslim forever. In the Muslim mind, though their physical control over Spain ended in 1492, Spain still belongs to the Muslims and will never be part of the non-Muslim world. Turkish President Erdogan still talks about southeastern Europe as being "part of the Ottoman-Muslim area."

In 1949, after Israel defeated five Muslim armies, at the Rhodes talks the Muslims insisted on the phrase "ceasefire lines" instead of "borders." The word "borders" implies recognition of the people living there. But a Muslim would find that unacceptable because those lands should remain Muslim forever. To the Arabs, the lines drawn in 1948-1949 do not matter. The land is completely Muslim.

From the Western point of view, we're talking about how to divide up land; this is the point of pushing for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands that the Arabs are not talking about how to renegotiate Israel's borders. They are talking about Israel's existence. And people cannot compromise on their existence.

‘This money will go straight to Hamas’: Penny Wong has made a ‘complete fool of herself’

Former Victorian Liberal Party president Michael Kroger has slammed Penny Wong for making a “complete fool of herself” as the Australian taxpayer dollars she is sending to Palestine “will go straight to Hamas”.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong recently announced an additional $21.5 million in aid to support Palestinian efforts.

“Penny Wong has made a complete fool of herself,” Mr Kroger told Sky News host Andrew Bolt.

“What they’ve worked out here is if you work out how much concrete is needed for those tunnels and how much metal is needed for 500 kilometres of tunnels, it’s about $15 billion.

“The Palestinian leadership in Gaza have stolen $1 billion a year from the international community and the UN, never been accounted for, no one has ever said where are you getting all this money from.

“This money will go straight to Hamas like the other $1 billion they’ve stolen from the dunces in the international community who think this aid is going to the UN, to the Palestinian people, to the children, to the hospitals, to the schools, to the needy.”

Chanukah music video night 5: Sevivon Sov Sov - A Bam Bam Hanukkah - Listen Up! Jewish Vocal Band (plus bonus "Vyunok" ensemble)

Plus this original Chanukah song performed by a children's ensemble Vyunok:

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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Should the Performance of the Korban Pesach be Illegal in the Jewish State? (Judean Rose)

The Passover offering (Korban Pesach) was the central feature of the Passover holiday until the destruction of the Temple. Today, only a remnant of this important ritual remains, in the form of a roasted shank bone on the seder plate. The Passover seder, in fact, has replaced the Korban Pesach so that most of us are now unaware that the Passover sacrifice was ever more than an anecdote we reference at the Passover table. And yet, as sure as death and taxes, each year in the run-up to the Passover holiday, Arabs claim that Jews have stormed the Temple Mount to perform the Korban Pesach using the lie as an excuse to commit violent acts of terror against Israeli Jews. The media then trumpets the lies even as it sweeps the acts of terror under the rug.

It is not only the lies, the corruption of the media in repeating the lies, and the heartbreak of the resultant seasonal terror that rankle and disturb those of us who track these events. It’s the fact that the main reason we no longer perform the Korban Pesach is the desire to avoid offense to and prevent subsequent violence by Muslims—both local and abroad. For this reason, it is against Israeli law to make a Korban Pesach on the Temple Mount. This fact, in and of itself, is completely sickening to contemplate: that an important Jewish practice is outlawed in the Jewish State for fear of upsetting non-Jews in and outside of Israel. We are accused and attacked for an observance we do not observe.

Some Israeli Jews, however, are not content with waiting a further 2,000 years to perform the Korban Pesach. Raphael Morris, chairman of the Chozrim L’Har (Return to the Mount) movement, for example, has been attempting to perform the Korban Pesach for years on end. Every year he is arrested. “He goes to prison every year. It's a regular thing,” said his uncle by marriage, Edward Horowitz, a cardiologist.

Morris’ crime this year? A lamb was found in his home, deemed evidence of intent to perform the Korban Pesach. According to a report from Honenu, a legal aid organization that defends “Soldiers and civilians who find themselves in legal entanglements due to defending themselves against Arab aggression, or due to their love for Israel,” Morris and three other activists were strip-searched and detained on Thursday and released late Friday afternoon, on the eve of Passover. “They were generous this year,” said Horowitz. “They let him out of prison for the seder.”

At the hearing, police submitted material from the Telegram channel of Raad Salah,
“who has consistently made threats in light of the activists' intentions to perform the Passover sacrifice on the Temple Mount. In reply to a question from Rom regarding the threats, the police representative answered that the police do not intend to investigate Salah about the matter.”

Honenu Attorney Nati Rom, representative for Morris and the other Chozrim L’Har activists, criticized the police over their handling of the incident:

"The Israel Police makes declarations that freedom of worship will be maintained for all religions. Unfortunately, that does not happen. Tens of thousands of inciters call for the destruction of the State of Israel and for violence on the Temple Mount, but when two people walk around with a young goat, they are illegally detained and humiliated.

"The Israel Police refused to answer our questions regarding threats to violence, and which sector poses them. In court, the police presented a post from the Telegram channel of Raad Salah, a terrorist, who threatened violence if the Passover sacrifice were performed. To my question of whether or not the police intended to investigate or detain Salah over his incitement to violence, the reply was 'no.’"

In a statement to the court, Raphael Morris said that, "every year, the State of Israel prevents Jews from performing the Passover sacrifice in its designated place on the Temple Mount. This is in addition to preventing Jewish worship on the Mount during the entire year. The police find various excuses for detaining Jews whose only fault is that they would like to fulfill the commandment of performing the Passover sacrifice according to Jewish law. Time after time, [the charges] are unceremoniously thrown out of court.”

Responding to a Jewish Press report stating that “The arrests came as the terror factions in the Gaza Strip threatened Wednesday to attack Israel if Jews arrive on the Temple Mount and ‘practice their provocative rituals in the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque,’” one reader remarked that “It's pretty likely people would have died as a result of their planned action, not to mention violation of Israeli law to start with. The Jewish Press' suggestion that Hamas and the Israeli Police are in cahoots may well violate Israeli laws against incitement and slander.”

These are perhaps valid points. The vast majority of Israelis, even those on the religious right, would not make the preparations necessary to perform the Korban Pesach even once, let alone year after year. At the same time, it is tragic that in the Jewish State, such is the state of things that preparing to perform an age-old Jewish ritual stands as an act of incitement. Especially since we’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. The ritual is illegal and hasn’t happened in thousands of year, yet Muslims yearly claim that we have “defiled” the Mount with our sacrifices and dirty feet.

Why then, should Israel continue to maintain the status quo in regard to the Korban Pesach? The enemy slanders, smears, and kills us, even as we refrain from performing the very ritual they protest. Will terror victims somehow be deader if someone should slaughter a goat or a lamb on the Mount? "If there is concern that Arabs will riot following an attempt to perform the Passover sacrifice, says Honenu Attorney Itzhak Bam, the rioters should be dealt with. Those wishing to realize their right to freedom of religion should not be harassed."

And still, the law is the law, and not every Temple Mount activist agrees with violating that law to make a point. “Redemption Expediter” Josh Wander, Founder and Managing Director of Bring Them Home said, “I don’t believe getting arrested on Erev Pesach is a Mitzvah. On the other hand, there are many Jews, us included, who prepare sheep and goats before every Pesach and have everything ready hoping that the prime minister will finally allow us access to the Temple Mount to fulfill our religious obligation. The reenactment is for educational purposes and is done every year a week before Pesach.”

Asked about the relevance of the Korban Pesach now that the Temple no longer exists, Wander explained that it is a common misconception that the Korban Pesach cannot be performed in the absence of the Temple. “The Mishne in Ediyot clearly states that sacrifices can be brought without a mikdash and indeed that was what was done when Ezra returned from Bavel* until the second mikdash was built. The two concepts are interrelated, not interdependent,” said Wander.

Many believe that performing the Korban Pesach on the Temple Mount would usher in the Messiah. Wander calls this “another interrelated concept.” “I’m in the process of writing a book on the subject…all positive acts move the process forward,” said Wander. “Things that specifically deal with Geula (Redemption, V.E.) more so. But there actually is a tradition from the Vilna Gaon that the proper bringing of a sacrifice would immediately usher in the Geula.”

Through the ages, Jews have spoken of the resumption of the observance of the Korban Pesach. Some have even made elaborate plans to carry out the sacrifice on the Temple Mount. Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank who was instrumental in the establishment the office of Chief Rabbinate of Israel and served as Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem for several decades, was rumored to have created a plan to perform the Korban Pesach on the Temple Mount, only to be stymied by his own death before the plan could be realized. According to an anecdote heard by this author, Rabbi Frank planned to convey everything needed for the Korban to the Temple Mount by helicopter, thus ushering in the Messiah and the Final Redemption.

Will Israel someday have a government willing to allow the Jewish people to once again perform the Passover offering? This seems a faraway dream. But then again the Jewish State of Israel was also once only a dream, a seemingly unattainable idea, and yet the desert blooms today, in our time.

*Babylon

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!

Now You See it, Now You Don’t: GOD TV Hides Video After Media Exposé (Judean Rose)

GOD TV, an evangelical broadcasting company with programming in 200 countries worldwide, launched Shelanu (Hebrew for “Ours”) TV on April 27, having snagged a seven-year contract with HOT cable television network through chicanery and misdirection. In the run-up to the launch, GOD TV CEO Ward Simpson boasted about this “triumph” on the GOD TV website, and in a video uploaded to the GOD TV YouTube channel. Simpson was positively jubilant as he described how the evangelical community had at long last, found a way to convert the “lost” Jews of Israel, bringing the message of Jesus Christ as messiah straight into Israeli living rooms, in Hebrew. It was a miracle, he said. But then the evil motives of these evangelicals and the nefarious means they used against Jewish Israelis were exposed, laid open to the Israeli public in a media blitz and BAM.

Down came the webpage. Down came the video. Poof. Like they had never been there before.

All those media pieces you saw on the subject citing the video and launch page, were now giving you errors. There was no longer any proof that Simpson had said those things: had bragged about converting the “lost” Jews of Israel and bringing them to Jesus.

Except that some people, in particular, my friend Shannon Nuszen, was already wise to these tricks of the trade, having once been an evangelical missionary herself. Today an Orthodox Jew living in Israel, Shannon works for Jewish Israel, and a key facet of her work is to preserve such materials, thus exposing the evangelicals, their unsavory methods, and their lies. The minute Shannon became aware of the launch page and video, she made copies, thus preserving them for posterity.

“Jewish Israel is, in fact, a database of exactly this sort of thing—we copy their blatant materials proving their agenda, and then report on it. Because as soon as a report like this hits the media, the site goes down, and all of a sudden a newly carefully worded site goes up looking KOSHER,” said Shannon. “Of course they deny everything in our original report, except that we always follow up with screen shots and pdfs of their previous site. It’s always the same MO, with all of them.”

Facebook post created with materials copied from GOD TV:

“I downloaded the video because I fully expected the original video, posted by God TV, to be taken down as soon as trouble started. I knew to expect this because I was once a missionary myself. I am a ger, a convert, and have been living as an Orthodox Jew for the past 15 years.

“Much of the media coverage on the issue links to the original 15-minute video by God TV that is now no longer available, leaving these stories with a dead video link,” said Nuszen.

Why put up the video in the first place? As Shannon put it, “The video was removed because it was never meant to be seen by Jewish people.”

Short version of the video that was taken down:

Commenting on the above (copied and documented) GOD TV video, Gavriel Sanders, a former evangelical missionary minister said he finds it particularly unsavory that Simpson speaks of “lost Jews” that need Jesus to save them. “That's not Christian education—that's proselytizing,” says Sanders.

Shannon was flabbergasted when she discovered that these missionaries had wangled a seven-year contract to preach the gospel on TV to Israeli Jews. "How this received government approval is beyond me, and hopefully this is a mistake that will be rectified immediately. This is an assault on every Jew. An attack on Judaism itself."

Exactly what kind of people engage in this sort of sneaky business, anyway? Rabbi Tovia Singer, of Outreach Judaism explains that the people who make it their business to evangelize the Jewish population of Israel are fundamentalist evangelical Christians. “They secured the Shelanu TV station on HOT TV, and the way they operate—their MO—is to blur the distinctions between Judaism and Christianity, in order to lure Jews who would otherwise resist a straightforward message. The plan, in their own words, is to evangelize 9 million Israelis, using the HOT TV channel and of course, GOD TV.

“When they say “9 million Israelis,” that means everyone. That’s as many people who are here. As it turns out, however, that’s not legal in Israel. You’re not allowed to evangelize minors in this country.

“But to speak to the way they speak—it’s a double speak,” says Singer. “To one audience, they’re very clear. To the non-Jewish evangelical Christian audience, who they want to raise money for this massive project, they put up that video, which in very plain words, expresses their intent on converting the Jews, young men and women, the elderly, to Christianity. That wasn’t meant for Jewish consumption. That was meant for their own supporters, primarily in the United States, who want to see the Jews here in the Holy Land, convert to Christianity.”

Full video here:

“It’s striking, and not surprising, that the moment they got wind of the fact that the video they had put up—which was completely unambiguous, it’s transparent in what their intent is, to convert the Jews—the moment they got wind of the fact that the Israelis are onto what they do—that the Jewish community recognizes what they are doing, they took down the video,” says Singer. “Why would they take it down? That’s their whole MO.”

Singer shared with this writer a communications card that is used by missionaries to train evangelicals on how to “witness” the Jews. It’s included in their training manual materials. The communications card tells missionaries to say “Yeshua the Messiah” rather than “Jesus Christ.” When speaking to Jewish people, the card tells them, “Don’t say, ‘Come to church,’ but rather ‘Come to a Messianic congregation.’ Don’t say ‘Christian,’ say ‘Believer in the messiah’ or ‘Messianic Jew.’”

Messianic "soul winners" card: Missionary communications card trains evangelicals how to speak to a Jew: "Do say," "Don't say"

“That’s what they’re planning to do with GOD TV and Shelanu TV in particular,” explains Singer. “They’re notorious for using Jewish symbols, icons, and liturgy. It’s a war on the weakest of all people. In fact, they say it straight out: we want to bring this to the young, we want to bring this to the elderly. And they want to do it in the native Hebrew language, which they clearly state, has never been done before.”

Shannon Nuszen has seen it all before. She grew up on this stuff. “It is not uncommon to hear Christian supporters of Israel profess their love for the Jewish people, and deny that they have any intention to proselytize while in the Jewish State. Yet, if you were to see these same Christians speaking in churches around America you'd hear something completely different. Among themselves, they are free to take their masks off.”

Rabbi Singer calls Shelanu TV, “A very aggressive project. To seize and use HOT cable—which is in the homes of some 700,000 Israelis—to witness to the Jewish people. Their view on their part in this is if the Jews en masse in the Holy Land are converted to Christianity, this would enable Jesus to make a second coming. So their press now, more than ever, is to bring back the second coming of Jesus,” says Singer who explains that this belief is based on a passage in Matthew 23:39 which evangelists interpret to mean that Jesus cannot make a second coming unless the Jews convert to Christianity en masse.

“Hot, of course, should completely nullify this agreement because this particular station was supposed to be educational. The license was not given to them for the purpose of converting people to Christianity.”

The good news is that Likud MK David (Dudi) Amsalem, who heads Israel’s Ministry of Communications is working to drive Shelanu TV out of business, fast. Here’s a rough translation of his Hebrew statement:

“We will not allow any missionary channel to operate in the State of Israel, under any circumstances.

“It is important to note that the Cable and Satellite Council is an independent and sovereign body which makes its own decisions, but as soon as I learned of this case, I immediately contacted the chairman of the Cable and Satellite Council to launch a thorough and comprehensive investigation into the matter, ensuring that no channel violates the terms of its license, and that the channel in question will be removed immediately.

“On the face of it, this is a failure, and as the representative of the State of Israel's media, I will not allow the unfair impact of religious broadcasts on viewers in the State of Israel.”

Shannon Nuszen, in her capacity as a board member of Jewish Israel, on the other hand, was never fooled. She has spent years monitoring missionary activity in Israel, and has helped the organization amass an extensive database of websites, screen shots, and videos of the internal communications of missionaries. These are always taken down after they are found by Jewish organizations that expose their agenda. That’s why she began a concentrated effort to copy the GOD TV materials as soon as she uncovered them. And she knew, right away, that something underhanded was afoot. And it was. “If God TV had applied for a license using the description for its programming in the same way they did in that fundraising video, I do not believe they would have been granted the right to broadcast on HOT TV.”

Hence the deception.

The moral of the story? Let the cable TV buyer and just regular Jewish Joes on the (Israeli) street beware. Because you’re not just paranoid. These (sneaky, underhanded) evangelists really are out to get you.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/03 Links Pt1: Iranian general Qassem Soleimani killed in Baghdad airstrike; Democrats, Media Attack Trump For Killing Terrorists Responsible For Killing U.S. Soldiers

From Ian:

Powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani killed in Baghdad airstrike

Qassem Soleimani, the powerful head of Iran’s Quds Force, was killed in an airstrike at Baghdad International Airport, Iraqi TV and three Iraqi officials officials said Friday.

The US Department of Defense confirmed it had carried out the airstrike.

“General Soleimani was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region,” it said. “General Soleimani and his Quds Force were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more.”

The Iraqi officials said the strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilization Forces.

Iranian state television said the attack was carried out by US helicopters.

“Two vehicles were attacked with missiles by US forces” and all 10 passengers, including Soleimani, were “martyred,” Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Iraj Masjedi, told state television.

Noah Rothman: Soleimani Deserved His Fate

This was a long time coming.

The strike President Donald Trump authorized on Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Qasem Soleimani neutralized a bad actor with American blood on his hands. According to a Pentagon estimate, roughly one in six U.S. casualties sustained in the effort to subdue the insurgency during the Iraq war was attributable to Iranian actions. Soleimani took an active part in that campaign, establishing training camps and setting up factories to produce the explosive charges that penetrated American armored vehicles.

Soleimani remained outside America’s grip under George W. Bush, and, when the Obama administration began withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq in 2010, the Shiite militias he controlled proved a critical backstop for an Iraqi president who couldn’t rely solely on the hapless Iraqi Security Forces. When the Obama administration lifted travel restrictions on Soleimani amid its quest to secure a nuclear accord with Iran, one of his first stops was in Moscow, to coordinate Iranian and Russian efforts to crush the U.S.-backed anti-Assad rebellion in Syria.

In the months leading up to Soleimani’s death, Iran had begun prosecuting a region-wide campaign of provocations. In 2019, Iran was responsible for the piracy of foreign-flagged vessels in the critical Strait of Hormuz. It engaged in what the nations Iran targeted called a “sophisticated and coordinated” special forces strike on international oil tankers. Iran downed a multi-million-dollar American surveillance drone, and it executed a sophisticated strike on the world’s largest petroleum processing facility in Saudi Arabia. For all this, Tehran faced no proportionate response from the West.

In December alone, Iranian Shiite proxy forces began targeting joint US-Iraq military facilities in Iraq with increasingly sophisticated missile strikes. There had been ten such strikes by the time Secretary of Defense Mark Esper asked the Iraqi government to help prevent attacks targeting U.S. soldiers on December 16th, though to no avail. A rocket attack by an Iranian-backed militia killed an American contractor and wounded three U.S. troops on December 28. In response, the U.S. carried out retaliatory strikes on the militia’s positions in Iraq and Syria. Tehran did not relent.

Paper I wrote a while ago about Iran’s killing of US and British troops, directed by Qassim Soleimani. These represent only a fraction of the death & misery he inflicted. Killing him was the right thing for President @realDonaldTrump to do.https://t.co/CvPe9har1h
— Rɪᴄʜᴀʀᴅ Kᴇᴍᴘ ⋁ (@COLRICHARDKEMP) January 3, 2020

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal: Iran’s Deadly Puppet Master

Suleimani is no longer simply a soldier; he is a calculating and practical strategist. Most ruthlessly and at the cost of all else, he has forged lasting relationships to bolster Iran’s position in the region. No other individual has had comparable success in aligning and empowering Shiite allies in the Levant. His staunch defense of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has effectively halted any progress by the Islamic State and other rebel groups, all but ensuring that Assad remains in power and stays solidly allied to Iran. Perhaps most notably, under Suleimani’s leadership, the Quds Force has vastly expanded its capabilities. His shrewd pragmatism has transformed the unit into a major influencer in intelligence, financial, and political spheres beyond Iran’s borders.

It would be unwise, however, to study Suleimani’s success without situating him in a broader geopolitical context. He is a uniquely Iranian leader, a clear product of the country’s outlook following the 1979 revolution. His expansive assessment of Iranian interests and rights matches those common among Iranian elites. Iran’s resistance toward the United States’ involvement in the Middle East is a direct result of U.S. involvement in the Iran-Iraq War, during which Suleimani’s worldview developed. Above all else, Suleimani is driven by the fervent nationalism that is the lifeblood of Iran’s citizens and leadership.

Suleimani’s accomplishments are, in large part, due to his country’s long-term approach toward foreign policy. While the United States tends to be spasmodic in its responses to international affairs, Iran is stunningly consistent in its objectives and actions.

The Quds Force commander’s extended tenure in his role—he assumed control of the unit in 1998—is another important factor. A byproduct of Iran’s complicated political environment, Suleimani enjoys freedom of action over an extended time horizon that is the envy of many U.S. military and intelligence professionals. Because a leader’s power ultimately lies in the eyes of others and is increased by the perceived likelihood of future power, Suleimani has been able to act with greater credibility than if he were viewed as a temporary player.

In that sense, then, Suleimani’s success is driven by both his talent and the continuity of his time in positions of power. Such a leader simply could not exist in the United States today. Americans do not allow commanders, military or otherwise, to remain in the highest-level positions for decades. There are reasons for this—both political and experiential. Not since J. Edgar Hoover has the federal government allowed a longtime public servant to amass such levels of shadowy influence.

Despite my initial jealousy of Suleimani’s freedom to get things done quickly, I believe such restraint is a strength of the U.S. political system. A zealous and action-oriented mindset, if unchecked, can be used as a force for good—but if harnessed to the wrong interests or values, the consequences can be dire. Suleimani is singularly dangerous. He is also singularly positioned to shape the future of the Middle East.

10/23 Links Pt2: Why Does The Left Give Louis Farrakhan A Pass?; Al Dura Season II on France's Channel 2; Paypal halts services for UK charity with alleged ties to terrorism

From Ian:

Why Does The Left Give Louis Farrakhan A Pass?

Recall Barack Obama grinning alongside Farrakhan in a photo that was intentionally suppressed so it wouldn’t harm Obama’s reelection chances.

Recall Snoop Dogg, Dave Chappelle, Puff Daddy and other celebrities at Farrakhan’s 25th anniversary of the Million Man March. Will and Jada Pinkett Smith made a $150,000 donation to the march.

Think of the leaders of the Women’s March, Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour, openly celebrating Farrakhan.

These people can’t have never heard his anti-Semitic comments. They must ultimately just not care.

In March, Rep. Danny K. Davis of Illinois said of Farrakhan, “The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth.”

The “Jewish question,” of course is what Adolf Hitler attempted to answer with the Holocaust and it didn’t get much bigger than that for Jews.

Davis’ comments prompted the New York Times to run a piece titled “Why Louis Farrakhan Is Back in the News” as if he had ever really left.

The piece quoted Farrakhan’s fans and gave them a chance to explain and repent. Mallory was quoted explaining she is warm toward Farrakhan because the Nation of Islam was there for her during difficult moments of her life.

No similar piece will ever be written about the lost boy who finds the white nationalist movement when things in his life have fallen apart, and then doesn’t abandon it after hearing the full noxiousness of the comments they make.

And that’s a good thing! It’s correct and moral not to focus on whatever good is accidentally done by hateful people like David Duke or Richard Spencer, on whatever lives they helped or communities they might have aided.

Duke and Spencer are rightly shunned by the mainstream. Why isn’t Farrakhan?

Al Dura Season II on France's Channel 2

A report broadcast on the program "Envoyé spécial" recently, is angering Israel and French Jews.

Elise Lucet, a journalist at France 2 presented "Gaza, a crippled youth," a documentary by Yvan Martinet.

Yvan Martinet is a great admirer of the propagandist Charles Enderlin, author of the Al Dura hoax, proven to have been a staged lie, and of Paul Moreira.

Paul Moreira with his anti-Israeli activist friends of the NGO Reporters Without Borders has turned to the International Criminal Court (ICC) concerning "war crimes committed by the Israeli army against Palestinian journalists", (Seen on RSF website ).

Yvan Martinet tweeted "Thanks" to Charles Enderlin who congratulated him.

On Wednesday, the eve of the broadcast, the ambassador of Israel in France Aliza Bin Noun asked the presidency of France Televisions to "reconsider the dissemination of the report," expressing concern "about the harmful and dangerous repercussions that it could engender on the Jewish community of France ".

Denouncing an "unbalanced point of view" on the situation in Gaza and the "very negative" vision of Israel, the diplomat asserts that "such content is likely to incite hatred against Israel" and by extension to the Jews of France, "because of a frequent and distressing amalgam between Jews and Israel".

08/31 Links Pt2: US announces it’s cutting all funding to UNRWA; Deborah Lipstadt: Jeremy Corbyn’s Ironically Ahistorical Anti-Semitism; Peres remembered as visionary who strived to unite nation

From Ian:

US announces it’s cutting all funding to Palestinian refugee agency

The Trump administration announced Friday it is cutting nearly $300 million in planned funding for the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees, ending decades of support.

The State Department announced in a written statement Friday that the United States “will no longer commit further funding to this irredeemably flawed operation.”

“The fundamental business model and fiscal practices that have marked UNRWA for years – tied to UNRWA’s endlessly and exponentially expanding community of entitled beneficiaries – is simply unsustainable and has been in crisis mode for many years,” the statement said, a reference to the fact that the agency grants refugee status to all the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees, something not granted to those from any other places.

However, the statement said the US would look for other ways to aid the Palestinians.

“We are very mindful of and deeply concerned regarding the impact upon innocent Palestinians, especially school children, of the failure of UNRWA and key members of the regional and international donor community to reform and reset the UNRWA way of doing business,” it said, adding that “Palestinians, wherever they live, deserve better than an endlessly crisis-driven service provision model. They deserve to be able to plan for the future.”

The US will now work together with other international groups to find a better model to assist the Palestinians, the statement said.

Reports had circulated throughout the week that the US was planning the move.

Palestinians clash with IDF on Gaza border; 180 said wounded

Some 5,000 Palestinians protested Friday along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, with some 180 wounded, according to Palestinian reports.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said some 180 demonstrators were wounded in clashes with IDF troops, including several who were hit by live fire. Among the wounded were a ten-year-old boy and a female paramedic, identified as Horouq Abu Masamah, the ministry said.

The IDF had no immediate comment.

The Ynet news site said that a hand-grenade was thrown at IDF troops and that Palestinians also managed to down an IDF drone used to disperse tear gas on the protesters. There were no IDF injuries, Ynet said.

One incendiary balloon sent over the border from the Strip caused a fire near Kibbutz Be’eri. Fire fighters extinguished it before it could spread.

The clashes came despite reports that Israel is in advanced indirect talks with Hamas, via UN and Egyptian mediation, for a long-term truce in the Strip.

Gaza has seen a surge of violence since the start of the “March of Return” protests along the border in March. The clashes, which Gaza’s Hamas rulers have orchestrated, have included rock and Molotov cocktail attacks on troops, as well as attempts to breach the border fence and attack Israeli soldiers.

The Anti-Jewish Jews

Anti-Israel activist Peter Beinart had spent years arguing that Hamas was a potentially moderate organization. Then when he was questioned at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport, he played victim.

But as Caroline Glick notes, there was every reason for Israeli authorities to question Beinart’s visit, because the anti-Israel BDS activist had participated in anti-Israel protests in Israel. Beinart was not, despite his claims, detained. He was asked about his participation in that protest by the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. The Center, despite its name, is used by Jewish Voice for Peace members, a BDS hate group, which also, despite its name, advocates for and supports terrorists who attack Israel.

JVP members are on the banned list. Beinart had participated in a protest organized by a group that it used as a vehicle. So it’s completely normal that he was asked about it just as visitors to this country are asked about their membership in prohibited organizations such as the Nazi, Communist and other totalitarian parties. The BDS blacklist that bigots like Beinart rave about is no different than the United States blacklist on anyone who “has used a position of prominence to endorse terrorism.”

That’s the BDS movement.

JVP declared that it was proud to host Rasmea Odeh. Odeh had been convicted of a supermarket bombing in Israel that killed Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner: two Hebrew University students. It called the terrorist an “inspiration” and used the hashtag, #HonorRasmea. That’s using “a position of prominence to endorse terrorism” which gets you banned from both the United States and Israel.

Beinart writes for The Forward, a paper notorious for attacks on Israel and Jews that veer into the anti-Semitic. Typically anti-Semitic Forward headlines include, "3 Jewish Moguls Among Eight Who Own as Much as Half the Human Race” and "Why We Should Applaud The Politician Who Said Jews Control The Weather."

Beinart, an anti-Jewish activist of Jewish descent, is the perfect fit for an anti-Jewish tabloid of Jewish descent. The Forward's rebranding dropped the "Jewish" part of its name in 2015. That was also the year that Beinart accused Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel of a “tendency, to whitewash Jewish behavior.”

"He is largely blind to the harm Jews cause," Beinart railed against Wiesel in terms ominously similar to those used by anti-Semites. Israel, he claimed, "leads gentiles of goodwill to fear that if they criticize Israel they’ll be called anti-Semites." Peter Beinart or Richard Spencer: who wore the bigotry best?

But the gauzy line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism is if anything even thinner among obsessive Israel bashers of Jewish origin like Beinart or The Forward’s Jane Eisner, its radical editor who stripped the lefty tabloid of its Jewishness, but not of its poisonous hatred of Jews. On the cocktail party circuit, Beinart is misleadingly billed as a ‘liberal Zionist.’ Like the Holy Roman Empire, he’s neither a liberal nor a Zionist. Neither liberals nor Zionists excuse Hamas or blame the victims of terror for their own deaths.

Terrorism is a "response to Israel’s denial of basic Palestinian rights," Beinart has insisted. It’s “the Israeli government is reaping what it has sowed.” His vicious hatred of the Jewish State is matched by his crush on Hamas. "Hamas is the final frontier," Beinart bloviated in 2009. “A shift in US and Israeli policy towards Hamas is long overdue,” he insisted in 2011. And seven years later, it’s still overdue.

11/13 Links Pt1: Pipes: Why Palestinian delusions persist; PA textbooks teach “martyrdom as a life goal”

From Ian:

Daniel Pipes: Why Palestinian delusions persist

In 1974, 2nd Lt. Hiroo Onoda of the Imperial Japanese Army was still fighting for his emperor, hiding in a Philippine jungle. He had rejected many attempts to inform him of Japan's surrender 29 years earlier. During those many years, he senselessly murdered about one Filipino and injured three others each year. Only a concerted effort by his former commander finally convinced Onoda that the emperor had accepted defeat in 1945 and therefore he too must lay down arms.

The Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza are Onoda writ large. They formally acknowledged defeat by Israel 24 years ago, when Yasser Arafat stood on the White House lawn and recognized "the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security." Trouble was, Arafat himself did not sincerely offer this act of surrender and most Palestinians rejected it.

Accordingly, the war continues, with Palestinians emulating that grizzled, vicious Japanese soldier: They, too, battle on for a failed cause, murder senselessly, and ignore repeated calls to surrender. Just as Onoda insisted on believing in a divine emperor, Palestinians inhabit a fantasy world in which, for example, Jesus was a Palestinian, Jerusalem was always exclusively Islamic, and Israel is the new Crusader state on the verge of collapse. (In this spirit, Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei has helpfully provided the precise date of Sep. 9, 2040, when Israel will vaporize, and his acolytes built a large doomsday clock to count down the days.) Some imagine Israel already gone, with nearly every Arabic map of "Palestine" showing it replacing the Jewish state.

How do Palestinians ignore reality and persist in these illusions? Due to three main factors: Islamic doctrine, international succor, and the wariness of the Israeli security services. (The Israeli Left was once a major factor but it barely counts anymore.)

PMW: Fatah official: Israel has a "fascist governmental plan, typical of Nazism"

In 2013, the Palestinian Football Association (PFA), headed by Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee Jibril Rajoub, launched an unfounded attack against the Israeli Football Association (IFA) in FIFA. The PFA claimed that the IFA is in breach of FIFA's statutes since six of its registered clubs play in what the PFA refers to as "its territory."

On Oct. 27, 2017, FIFA's Council rejected Rajoub and PFA's claim, deciding
[To] "refrain from imposing any sanctions or other measures on either the Israel FA or the Palestinian FA, as well as from requesting any other FIFA body to do so. The matter is declared closed..." [FIFA Council statement, Oct. 27, 2017]

While not acting on Rajoub's complaint, FIFA's council also said it would not act against the PFA. The basis for acting against the PFA was Palestinian Media Watch's complaint to FIFA's Disciplinary Committee which provided evidence that the PFA and Rajoub were inciting terror, glorifying terrorists, and promoting racism and Antisemitism.

In response, Rajoub continues to use denigratory and discriminatory language, saying Israel has a "fascist governmental plan... that is typical of Nazism," in breach of section 58 of FIFA's Disciplinary Code. Two days after FIFA's decision, Rajoub said:

"This is a blatant violation when they [Israelis] organize an official [football] league on lands that are not Israeli lands. Even the Israel [Football] Association did not dare to claim: "These lands belong to us." The one [Israel] who brings in politics and makes sport political is the one who works according to a fascist governmental plan, a government that is typical of Nazism. We have rights, and we will continue to demand them at the FIFA court in accordance with all the laws and regulations, and also the laws of Switzerland where FIFA is located."
[Official PA TV News, Oct. 29, 2017]

PMW will be submitting another complaint to FIFA against Rajoub's new breach of FIFA's Disciplinary Code.

New Palestinian Authority textbooks teach “martyrdom as a life goal”

For years we’ve been covering incitement on the part of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its failure to prepare Palestinian society for a resolution of the conflict via non-violent means.

The PA is viewed by the West as the ‘moderate’ Palestinian body and Israel’s supposed ‘partner for peace’, but as we’ve repeatedly highlighted, its officials routinely demonize Israel and glorify terrorists as national heroes. Young people are exposed to this radicalization, as schools and educational programs justify and condone the use of violence.

The sad reality is that a whole generation of Palestinian children is learning in schools and playing in sports fields and arenas named after mass murders.

Now a new study by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) documents how kids in Palestinian Authority-controlled areas are being further indoctrinated to hate through their schoolbooks.

Like earlier textbooks that were used to teach “over one million impressionable children”, the IMPACT-se report finds that the new textbooks—recently released as part of the PA’s first full reform of the educational curriculum since 2000—are still promoting the demonization of Israel.

But the IMPACT-se assessment also finds that the radicalization is pervasive across this new curriculum—to an even greater extent than before.

Basically, Palestinian children are being groomed to commit to jihad war and to sacrifice themselves to martyrdom.