Article 1Palestine is part of the larger Arab world, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab nation. Arab unity is an objective that the Palestinian people shall work to achieve.Article 41. Islam is the official religion in Palestine. Respect for the sanctity of all other divine religions shall be maintained.2. The principles of Islamic Shari’a shall be a principal source of legislation.3. Arabic shall be the official language.
Wednesday, December 02, 2020
- Wednesday, December 02, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
- Peter Beinart
- Wednesday, December 02, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, December 01, 2020
Stop whitewashing FDR's abandonment of the Jews
Franklin D. Roosevelt is widely remembered as a strong leader who boldly led America out of the Great Depression and to the brink of victory in World War II. Yet when it comes to the Holocaust, some defenders of FDR's record want us to believe he was not responsible for keeping Jewish refugees out of America—as if that was all the handiwork of the State Department, which supposedly ran U.S. immigration policy and foreign policy independently of the president’s wishes.The Battle Over Antisemitism
Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways.
Prof. Daniel Greene, speaking recently at the University of Oklahoma, continued to perpetuate the implausible notion that President Roosevelt was too hapless to make his own foreign policy. Remarkably, Greene spoke for nearly an hour about America’s response to Nazism and the Holocaust, yet barely mentioned the president.
This tendentious approach is consistent with the theme of the controversial exhibit on “Americans and the Holocaust” at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, for which Greene was senior curator. The exhibit has been criticized by many scholars for downplaying President Roosevelt’s abandonment of European Jewry.
Greene told his Oklahoma audience that the reason so few German Jews were admitted to the U.S. in the 1930s was because of “bureaucratic walls put in place by the State Department” —as if the White House had no occupant.
What actually happened is that the State Department implemented Roosevelt’s policy of restricting immigration far below what the existing law allowed. The annual quota of German immigrants—about 26,000—was filled only once in FDR’s twelve years in office; in most of those years, it was less than 25% filled.
There are letters from the president himself at the time in which he acknowledged and defended the fact that visas were, as he put it, “considerably under-issued.” There are documents showing that State Department officials briefed the president on their efforts to keep refugees out.
Attacking the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
Those who attack the IHRA definition of antisemitism are those who discriminate against Jews, practicing antisemitism, as defined by the IHRA. They are primarily proponents of the BDS movement. Among the bill’s fiercest adversaries are leaders and members of a BDS organization inaptly called “Jewish Voice for Peace” (JVP), who try to put a “Jewish” seal of approval on antisemitism, misrepresenting their own antisemitic campaigns and rhetoric as human rights activism and valid criticism of Israel. The group actively agitates against the use of the IHRA definition of antisemitism and attacks the anti-BDS legislation introduced in Senate and Congress, as well as other efforts to raise awareness of antisemitism. They write op-eds and circulate petitions that falsely claim the bills are “intended to codify criticism of Israel as antisemitic” and to “make dissent about Israel illegal” when, in fact, neither the definition of antisemitism nor the bills proposing its use would outlaw criticism or dissent about Israel. On the contrary: The definition includes language specifying that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
JVP leads the charge that the widely-accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism is undemocratic. The group substitutes its own alternate definition that restricts age-old hatred against Jews to Christian theology-based or Nazi white supremacist-based racial theories alone. This disingenuous propaganda is aimed at those who are unacquainted with antisemitism or with the proposed legislation against it, as it sounds an alarm against any practical attempt to hold people accountable for anti-Semitic racism and persecution of others. JVP demands that: It is vital that Jewish organizations across the globe stand united against harmful definitions of antisemitism and together for human rights and the freedom to protest. We at JVP are proud to have initiated this historic effort.
In November 2017, Former Executive Director Rebecca Vilkomerson joined Linda Sarsour—a vitriolic, anti-Israel, BDS activist who has been accused of outright antisemitism—on a panel that redefined antisemitism to exclude the panelists’ own activities.
Former Executive Director Rebecca Vilkomerson (2nd to right) joining Linda Sarsour (right) in panel that redefined antisemitism.
On December 15, 2020, several BDS and anti-Israel organizations are convening a panel made up of those who seek the demise of the Jewish state, in order to redefine antisemitism. The panelists include Rashida Tlaib—a U.S. congress member accused of using antisemitic tropes of dual loyalty, spreading anti-Jewish blood libels, singling out politicians for criticism because of their Jewish identity, and having close ties to a Holocaust denying, conspiracy theorist and terror-supporting anti-Zionist activists; Barbara Ransby — a university professor in History, African American Studies and Gender and Women’s Studies who is prominent player in the BDS movement, supporting violent anti-Israel terrorists and using her platform to spread false and vicious anti-Israel propaganda; Marc Lamont Hill— BDS proponent and one-time CNN journalist who advocates the elimination of a Jewish state, justifies anti-Israel terrorism, and is associated with the notoriously antisemitic Louis Farrakhan. The single Jew on the antisemitism panel is Peter Beinart — an “as a Jew” Jew who has made a career of vilifying the Jewish state and advocating its abolition.
Canary Mission: Anti-Semites Lead Farcical Panel Discussion on Anti-Semitism
If you were assembling a panel of experts to teach the world how to dismantle anti-Semitism, who would you choose? Perhaps a well-known journalist who deals with Jewish issues like Bari Weiss or a dynamic young activist like Hen Mazzig, or perhaps you would contact one of the myriad of great organizations tackling anti-Semitism.
Well, Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow and friends have done the opposite. They have put together a team of anti-Israel pundits, anti-Semites and terror supporters; and asked them to lead the discussion on dismantling anti-Semitism.
The farcical panel titled "Dismantling Antisemitism, Winning Justice" is set to take place on December 15th.
LET'S GET TO KNOW THE “QUALIFICATIONS” OF THESE PANELISTS: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is widely known for her anti-Israel activism and support of the BDS movement, for which she was barred from entering Israel in 2019. She has claimed that Palestinians saved Holocaust survivors and compared boycotting Israel to boycotting Nazi Germany.
Peter Beinart, the ONLY Jew on the panel, has called the Jewish state a “cancer” and lamented the Jews' “unfortunate Zionist obsession” with Jewish statehood. He has referred to Israeli society as “racist” and has implied that Israeli and American Jews are Nazis in relation to the Palestinians.
Marc Lamont Hill was fired from his position at CNN in November 2018 for using language associated with the destruction of Israel. He has also promoted anti-Semitism, fundraised for a convicted terrorist and glorified anti-Israel violence. Read more in his NEW Canary Mission Profile.
Barbara Ransby is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a long-time supporter and friend of terrorist Rasmea Odeh; she has also demonized Israel and promoted violent anti-Israel protests. Read more in her UPDATED Canary Mission Profile.
OUTRAGEOUS: Upcoming @jvplive panel on antisemitism includes @thisisUIC professor Barbara Ransby, a long-time supporter and personal friend of PFLP terrorist Rasmea Odeh, who masterminded the bombing of a Jerusalem supermarket that killed two students.https://t.co/kb04N8LBoU pic.twitter.com/mRsgDl6HB3
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) November 30, 2020
- Tuesday, December 01, 2020
- Varda Meyers Epstein (Judean Rose)
- Judean Rose, Opinion, Varda
Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of JStreet, on Sunday condemned
the assassination of senior Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Ben-Ami took his cue from the EU, which took its cue from Tehran. One can
understand why Tehran would condemn the assassination of the man considered to
be the father of Iran’s nuclear program, someone considered “irreplaceable”
in the mullahs’ quest to get the bomb. Iran wants the bomb, and the elimination
of Fakhrizadeh is a setback. Big time. The condemnations coming out of Brussels
and from Ben-Ami, on the other hand, can be explained only by the famous quote
from Winston Churchill:
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping
it will eat him last."
It makes sense that JStreet would want to appease Iran by condemning
the elimination of Fakhrizadeh, a man with deep knowledge of the Iranian nuclear
program. A nuclear Iran threatens the free world, not least of all the United
States. Go to any protest, or even to the Iranian parliament after Soleimani was killed, and you will hear the chants of, "Marg bar
Āmrikā," (Death to America).
JStreet’s Ben-Ami hopes that in agreeing with his wannabe murderers, they will consent to eat him last.
Perhaps more to the point, JStreet is an anti-Israel organization pretending
to engage in Israel advocacy. JStreet actually shares the aim of the Iranian
nuclear program: the elimination of the Jewish State—witness the organization's covert
support for BDS. It is believed that Israel is behind the assassination
of Fakhrizadeh, though the Jewish State has neither confirmed nor denied a role
in the targeted killing of the scientist. Israel has a good motive for taking
out Fakhrizadeh and that is that while a nuclear Iran may be the greatest
existential threat to the free world—which unfortunately includes Jeremy
Ben-Ami among its inhabitants—Israel is Iran’s closest target, and the elimination
of the Jewish State a primary goal for Khameini.
Ben-Ami, knowing that Israel is first on the menu, hopes
that in condemning the actions of the Jewish State, he will be last on the list
of tasty items to be consumed by the crocodile named Iran. That is why Ben-Ami
was pleased to be included on the guest list of Jewish leaders invited to Obama’s
table to discuss how Israel might be pressured to give away more indigenous
Jewish land to the Arabs. Obama is the main architect of that ultimate appeasement
of Iran: the JCPOA (which Iran never
signed). It is Obama who sent the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, pallets
of untraceable cash.
It is only natural that Ben-Ami would wish to be a starring
ingredient in the dessert course, to ally himself with Obama. Ben-Ami, like
Obama, wants to be eaten last. Alas, the only way for these men to fulfill this
aim is to make themselves relevant until the end. They hope that if they appear
to share the goal of the crocodile, and even assist in procuring food for the
beast, the beast might save them for another day, when there is nothing tastier
to eat.
The problem is that the crocodile is a bully, and the
problem with appeasing a bully is that the bully always comes back for more.
Which means that the bullied are never free, even as they delude themselves
that the opposite is true, that they are saved. Being last to be eaten, on the
other hand, by definition means that one is eventually eaten. Which is how the
game ends.
And the game always ends unless you stand up to the
crocodile, to cut off its sustenance for good. That is the only way to do away
with the crocodile, once and for all. Which Israel knew. Which is why Fakhrizadeh
had to go.
It only makes sense. It’s the only real way to game the
system, to not get eaten, last or otherwise.
Anyone who understands this, anyone with a modicum of sechel or common sense, therefore did
not vote for Joe Biden. Biden, predictably, intends to revive
the JCPOA, because he too, hopes to be eaten last, as do those who voted for
him. The Biden voters either hope to be last to be eaten by the Iranian
crocodile, or else they are oblivious to the danger in the swamp. They are
oblivious because the media dangles progressive sugar plums before their eyes,
the shiny and exciting causes they prefer to embrace above life itself: BLM,
Antifa, illegal immigrants, and above all, a supreme hatred of the Orange Man.
The people who voted for Biden (and Obama before him), can’t
see the crocodile lurking, waiting to pounce on those with no clue of the
danger waiting for them in the wings. The crocodile, meanwhile, watches on as its
early prey, the Biden voters, spew their hatred of anyone who thinks
differently from them: the people who won’t get with the plan. The Biden voters
don’t know that all along, the plan has been out of their hands and even unknown
to them, the people to be eaten first.
The people who voted for Biden, knowing he would probably
reinstitute the JCPOA, are like so much unwitting chum. They have no idea how delicious
they are, as an appetizer, or even a main course. Ben-Ami, meanwhile, awaits
his turn on the platter with bated breath—perhaps garnished with edible gold—as
the crocodile opens its yawning cavern of a mouth, never to be sated or
satisfied.
Always wanting more.
- Tuesday, December 01, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
Middle East Monitor reported:
The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture in Gaza announced on Thursday that it will be importing [sic] Palestinian olive oil for the first time from the besieged enclave, to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).Speaking to the press, the ministry's Spokesman Adham Al-Basyouni disclosed: "44 tones of olive oil were exported to Arab countries after achieving self-sufficiency for the first time."He stated that his ministry exerted efforts to export the surplus of Gaza's olive oil as part of its support for farmers.Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Palestinian businessman Hamdi al-Jerjawi said that "990 olive oil tins [15 tons] were exported to Saudi Arabia and 600 olive oil tins [9 tons] were exported to the United Arab Emirates."
Jonathan Tobin: Will Biden get the message he was just sent on Iran?
The Iranian regime has already repeatedly demonstrated that its goals are incompatible with those of Western fools, either in the United States or Europe, who think that diplomacy can somehow accommodate its ambitions. Iran’s use of terror, its nuclear ambitions are, like its ruthless and brutal suppression of dissent at home, integral to the identity of the Islamist government. Efforts to appease them like the nuclear pact are unsatisfactory and temporary solutions to a problem that requires a more realistic long-term approach.Eli Lake: On the Iran Nuclear Deal, Israel Gets a Vote
It’s equally true that Iran’s leaders have also shown that, despite their bluster, the talk about waging war on Israel or the West is more of a bluff than a credible threat. While that could theoretically change, the talk of so-called experts on Iran about a conflict between “hardliners” and Tehran liberals is, like so much of the analysis of the Soviet Union a generation ago, utterly bogus.
That means that the problem facing Biden is not how to undo Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal or to make a new Middle East where Israel and the Gulf states are working in unison to accept a return of Iran appeasement. Rather, it’s how long it will take his new foreign-policy team to understand that the Obama vision for a housetrained Iran that would do business with the West was never realistic and, even with the support of Europe, Russia and China, can’t be revived. If they’re serious about crafting an Iran policy that is anything more than an Obama nostalgia tour, they must acknowledge that the nuclear deal—whose sunset clauses ensured that Iran would eventually get a bomb and which ignored its terrorism and missile building—must be scrapped sooner or later.
The information about Iran’s nuclear problem that Israel published two years ago—showing they never really stopped working for a weapon, along with every act of terrorism and illegal missile-building they commit—contradicts the Obama-Biden hopes for curtailing, let alone ending the threat from the regime.
Former Secretary of State and future Biden climate change tsar John Kerry may have advised Iran to simply wait until a Democratic administration replaced Trump to resume good relations with the West. But even if Tehran is cheered by Trump’s defeat, they aren’t going to conform to Biden’s will any more than they did to Obama’s. Their violent and aggressive goals remain unchanged, and nothing short of the kind of economic isolation that Trump was seeking to impose will force them to change their behavior, if, indeed, even that would suffice.
As important as the transition to a new administration in Washington is, it changes nothing about Iran or its intentions or the responsibility of those who rightly understand the nature of the threat to act. As they showed with the assassination and with its strikes against Iranian targets in Syria, Israel won’t simply sit back and let Iran have its way. The only question about Biden’s policy is whether he will join that fight as Trump did, or if he will stand on the sidelines as the Jewish state continues to do the West’s dirty work.
In this sense, it’s mistaken to view Israel’s likely strike against Fakhrizadeh through the lens of its effect on President-elect Joe Biden’s goal of re-entering the Iran nuclear deal and negotiating a stronger follow-on agreement. Israel has already proved it has extraordinary intelligence capabilities inside Iran. But the opportunity to take out a high-value target such as Fakhrizadeh does not come along often. It’s more likely that the opportunity presented itself and Israel pounced.Melanie Phillips: The warped reaction to the Fakhrizadeh assassination
More important, Israel has showed in the last three years that it is willing to use its intelligence capabilities to stymie Iran’s nuclear program. Israel killed some nuclear scientists inside Iran during negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Back then, most observers believed that Israel’s only chance to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was an overt action, such as a missile strike, drone attack or bombing run. The explosions at Iranian sites over the summer suggest Israel can accomplish much of this task through intelligence operations.
The upshot is that any future deal with Iran will have to address Israel’s security needs. That is not what happened five years ago. The tensions of the nuclear deal became so dramatic that in 2015, Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress to make the case against the deal Obama was negotiating. Netanyahu was willing to risk Israel’s most important alliance to oppose a deal that he believed imperiled his country’s future. So it’s highly unlikely that Israel would be willing to end its activities in Iran so the U.S. can rejoin that same deeply flawed nuclear agreement.
Israel may agree not to launch any strikes for a time, such as the first few months of the Biden administration. But it won’t give up the capability to strike inside Iran unless Iran agrees to abandon the aspects of its nuclear program suitable for building bombs. If Biden is smart, he will use this dynamic to his advantage as he tests Iran’s willingness to negotiate.
Israel’s sabotage and assassinations have not destroyed Iran’s nuclear program. But they have set it back. As the architect of that program, Fakhrizadeh will be hard to replace. What will be even harder for the regime, however, is persuading its other scientists that they will be safe if they continue the quest for a nuclear weapon.
Iran declared war against the west decades ago, and has committed numerous attacks and sponsored repeated acts of murderous terrorism against America, coalition forces in Iraq, Israel and diaspora Jews. Yet the western establishment, which has perversely refused to defend its interests against such attacks, continues to behave as if Iran is not responsible and that only a western military response would be an act of war.
Progressives say the regime will be contained by reaching out to it in negotiation. Once again, this is an example of the west’s ineffable arrogance in assuming that its own value-system is shared by the rest of the world. To the Iranian regime, attempts to negotiate are a sign of weakness and thus an incentive to further aggression. When the west extends its hand in conciliation, the regime views it as an opportunity to chop it off.
No-one in their right mind could be sanguine about the prospect of an all-out war with Iran. Equally, no-one in their right mind should be sanguine about enabling it to produce a nuclear bomb.
The assassination of Fakhrizadeh, along with all the other measures Israel and its allies have taken against the regime, shows how asymmetric warfare (or warfare by terrorists or rogue states outside the rules of war) need not mean that the bad guys always win. All it needs is the moral will to defend the free world against this novel form of aggressive warfare through novel ways of waging a just war.
Israel and the Trump administration possess that moral will. Obama and his retreads, along with the craven Europeans, do not.
- Tuesday, December 01, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
- Tuesday, December 01, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
No hit man was involved in the recent assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said.Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of burial of the late Iranian scientist on Monday, Ali Shamkhani said the distinguished figure was assassinated in a complicated operation that involved electronic equipment without any assassin at the scene.
According to Fars - Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and his wife drove to their home in the suburbs of Tehran last Friday, accompanied by three security vehicles. In the middle of the trip, a remote control weapon opened fire, and Fakhrizadeh went out to check what had happened. Fakhrizadeh thought that it was his car that had actually collided with something. From the moment he left, he was shot at by an automatic machine gun that was on top of a nearby Nissan vehicle. After he was hit, the Nissan vehicle with the machine gun on it exploded.....The owner of the vehicle on which the machine-gun was installed left Iran on October 29.
The IDF showed off this technology in 2016, when it was fitted into Ford F-350 pickup trucks that were designed to conduct border patrols.The trucks, dubbed Border Protector Unmanned Ground Vehicles, are equipped with an array of sensors and cameras that allowed people to drive them remotely.At the time they were unveiled the trucks were unarmed, but the IDF said it was hoping to arm the vehicles some time in early 2017.'We will get a machine gun on the vehicle that will be operated from a control room,' an IDF official told Fox News at the time.The IDF said the vehicles have been operational since 2015, and would later incorporate driverless technology.
- Tuesday, December 01, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
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- Tuesday, December 01, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
Don't promote democracy, talk about the royal families or comment on treatment of foreign workers.Israel is advising tourism professionals and businesspeople to avoid discussing those and other sensitive political topics with residents of the United Arab Emirates, as it protects its new peace deal with the Gulf Arab country and promotes new daily flights between Dubai and Tel Aviv, launched last week."United Arab Emirates: Do and Do Not," the tourism ministry's 29-page Hebrew-language advisory published Nov. 8, is the first public Israeli government comment on the issue of Emirati political freedoms, but it stops short of criticizing alleged abuses."The United Arab Emirates is not a democratic country and it is not acceptable to speak about democracies as a preferred model of government," the advisory says. It also recommends "not to speak to Emiratis about the royal families," "avoid speaking about local politics" and "avoid speaking about government or state policy towards foreign workers."The ministry says the guidelines are not government policy but cultural sensitivity tips aimed primarily at Israeli tourism operators preparing to receive Emirati visitors, whenever Israel lifts its COVID-19 ban on incoming tourism.... Analysts and activists in both Israel and the Gulf criticized the Israeli approach."Gulf citizens are worldly and engage in the topics that the Israeli government is steering its tourists from," says Bader Al-Saif, a Kuwait-based fellow with the Carnegie Middle East Center. "It's how one engages in these topics that would matter.""The message is: be silent. If you want to go to the UAE, and have a collaboration with them, don't talk about anything that would light a fuse," says Eitay Mack, a left-wing Israeli human rights lawyer.
Monday, November 30, 2020
David Collier: ‘the wrong sort of Jew’ – the left’s latest antisemitic conspiracy theory
Last week one tweet by ‘Double Down News’ was shared 2000 times and received 3400 likes. It was an upload of a 9-minute video of Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi from Jewish Voice for Labour. On YouTube, the same video was watched over 120,000 times in 4 days.J’accuse: In the shadow of Dreyfus at the European Union
Above the video ‘Double Down News‘ used the headline -‘Meet the Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn’t Want You To Know Exists‘. Putting aside the fact that Idrissi and all of her JVL buddies have been given more than their fair share of mainstream media platforms, the underlying accusation here is stark. Zionists control the media. Why else would anti-Zionists not be given a platform? In other words, this is an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
The recent video even starts with Wimborne Idrissi saying she has been called the wrong sort of Jew. Except nowhere in any of the google searches was there any indication Idrissi and co regularly face such an accusation. All of the ‘wrong sort of Jew’ results were of Jews on hard-left websites batting away at an accusation that does not really exist.
They built the straw man and are now busy playing victims as they publicly demolish it.
The video by ‘the wrong sort of Jew.’ In just nine minutes, Naomi Wimborne Idrissi takes the viewer through most of the rancid arguments we have come to recognise in the fight against antisemitism. The pillars of hard-left antisemitic – anti-Zionist discourse.
That Jewish people are weaponising antisemitism and are harming the fight against real antisemitism. Idrissi distorts the truth by implying that the Jewish community is evenly divided. She is well aware that her opinion resides in a fringe minority group. She deals in historical distortion by decontextualising pre-Holocaust anti-Zionism. Raises the antisemitic idea that the treatment of the Palestinians by Israeli forces is comparable to the way Jews were treated by the Nazis. Touches on freedom of speech and truth – which is ludicrous hypocrisy coming from a spin artist who publicly calls for no platforming those she opposes. Tell viewers that media has ‘sidelined and ignored’ left wing Jews because they support Palestine. Which is a blatant lie. Takes ownership for the historical Jewish fights for justice. Finishes off by saying that her group are the decent ones – people who want justice and peace. Which means that 93% of Jews must be indecent and against justice and peace.
A vile cocktail of lies and distortion.
On August 21, it was announced that the employee would be fired on 1 September. She was left with the cancellation of her medical insurance amid the COVID -19 pandemic.Alan Baker: The Audacity of Belgium
The Simon Wiesenthal Center for over a year has acted in support of a Spanish Jewish employee, tenured since 1996 and now a senior official of the European Commission. In 2013, she was transferred to the EU diplomatic service, European External Action Service (EEAS), to work in the Middle East (Israel and Palestinian Territories).
One of her colleagues informed her that their Division Head allegedly suspected her of spying for the Mossad. She was thus transferred to the Turkish Division, entrusted with counterterrorism files.
According to her lawyers, then began a “slanderous... defamatory... campaign with antisemitic overtones.” She was again suspected of passing information to Turkish representatives. In 2016, she was dismissed “in the interest of this service.” Thus a long and painful process began. The story appeared in last week’s Paris Match weekly (Belgian edition). The author, Frédéric Loore, gave the official an anonymous identity, the nom-de-plume of “Eva.” Loore suggested that his article was fit for the cover of a novel by John Le Carré.
He questioned: “Has the EEAS been infiltrated by a Mossad mole or have some of its managers engaged in harassment on the grounds of antisemitism? Was there a Mata Hari in the ranks of the service in charge of the European Union’s foreign and security policy? Or was it a fabricated plot to get rid of a cumbersome senior civil servant of Jewish descent?”
“Eva” had sought an investigation to find out on what these gratuitous accusations were based. “In the end, it was carried out only to harm me... After six years, they still refuse to tell me who accused me of these facts and on what basis,” the employee said.
In an official announcement by the “Belgian Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs” department, on Nov. 6 the Belgian government voiced its condemnation of the demolition by Israel of structures built illegally and without any planning and zoning approval in parts of the disputed territories administered by Israel. The buildings were constructed with Belgian funding.
According to this official announcement, “Belgium supports such infrastructure projects because they meet urgent needs. They are always carried out in accordance with international humanitarian law … the demolition of infrastructure and housing is contrary to international humanitarian law, in particular, the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel’s obligations as occupying power, and UN Security Council resolutions.”
Belgium’s heavy involvement in illegal construction in violation of the planning, zoning, and construction regulations and requirements applicable in what the Palestinians and Israelis have denominated as “Area C” is made clear in the announcement:
“Since 2017, at the initiative of Belgium, a group of partner countries affected by similar actions has systematically intervened with the Israeli authorities to ask them to stop the demolitions and to repair the affected projects or to compensate for the damage suffered.”
Belgium’s audacity in demanding compensation is equaled by its blatant disregard of the legal infrastructure agreed upon between Israel and the Palestinians, applicable in the areas in which Belgium is so actively involved in illegal construction.
Israel Advocacy Movement: Israelis and Palestinian clash over Sheikh Jarrah
The pending eviction of the al-Kurd family from Shiekh Jarrah has made headlines for 40 years. In this video, we reveal the truth behind the headlines.
- Monday, November 30, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
- Monday, November 30, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
And now I put the question to you: Who is prepared and able to guarantee that what happened to us in Europe will not happen again? Can human conscience, and we believe that there is a human conscience, free itself of all responsibility for that catastrophe? There is only one safeguard: a Homeland and Statehood! A Homeland, where a Jew can return freely as of right. Statehood, where he can be master of his own destiny. These two things are possible here, and here only. The Jewish people cannot give up, cannot renounce these two fundamental rights, whatever may happen.The problem of Jewish-Arab relations is not merely the problem of Jews and Arabs in Palestine. It is the problem of the relations of the Jewish and Arab peoples as a whole. Their national aspirations in that broader sense are not only compatible but complementary.Nobody can seriously claim that a Jewish Palestine could in any way endanger or harm the independence or unity of the Arab race. The area of Western Palestine is less than 1% of the vast territory occupied by the Arab States in the Near East, excluding Egypt. The number of Arabs in this country is less than 3% of the number of Arabs who have gained their political independence. The Arabs in Palestine, even if they were a minority, would still be a part of that large Arab majority in the Middle East. The existence of Arab States to the north, east, and south of Palestine is an automatic guarantee, not only of the civil, religious and political rights of the Arabs in Palestine, but also of their national aspirations.But a Jewish Palestine, a populous, highly-developed Jewish State has something of great value and importance to offer, not only to the Arabs in Palestine, but to those in the neighbouring countries as well. Even the small beginnings of the Jewish State, where Jews have occupied and developed only a small fraction of the country, have already had a marked effect on the advancement of the population in Palestine. Even now the position of the Arab peasant and farmer in Palestine is superior to that of the Arab peasant and farmer in Arab States. Our national aim cannot be achieved without great constructive work, agricultural, industrial, material and cultural, and this must, by its nature, raise the economic and social standards of all the inhabitants of the country. We cannot fully utilize the water resources of Palestine, which are now being wasted, without providing larger irrigation possibilities for the Arab fellah as well. We cannot introduce modern methods of cultivation without the Arabs learning from that example. We cannot organize Jewish labour and improve conditions of work without similarly organizing the Arab worker and improving his conditions.As long as the government is in foreign hands, the impact of our development on Arab advancement is small. The theory of holding the balance between Jews and Arabs, which in practice meant curbing and obstructing our work, was not only injurious to us but to the Arabs as well.One may rightly ask: Why is it that a million Arabs can be safely left in a Jewish State and why should not a million Jews be left in an Arab State? If the Jews and the Arabs who are in Palestine ,were all the Jews and all the Arabs that exist in the world, this would be a very logical and conclusive argument. There would then be no reason whatsoever why one should prefer an Arab to a Jew or a Jew to an Arab, and only numbers would count. But one cannot ignore the fact that both communities living in Palestine are merely fragments of larger communities living outside, and both of them belong to these larger units and their fates are inextricably bound up with the larger units. By depriving the Jews in Palestine of a national home, by preventing them from becoming a majority and attaining statehood, you are depriving not only 600,000 Jews who are here, but also the millions of Jews who are still left in the world, of independence and statehood. In no other place can they have the desire or the prospect of attaining statehood.In depriving the million Arabs of the same prospect, you do not affect the status of the Arab race at all. An Arab minority in a Jewish State would mean that only a certain number of individual Arabs would not enjoy the privilege of Arab statehood, but it would in no way diminish the independence and position of the free Arab race. The Arab minority in Palestine, being surrounded by Arab States, would remain safe in national association with their race. But a Jewish minority in an Arab State, even with the most ideal paper guarantee, would mean the final extinction of Jewish hope not in Palestine alone, but for the entire Jewish people, for national equality and independence, with all the disastrous consequences so familiar in Jewish history.The conscience of humanity ought to weigh this: Where is the balance of justice, where is the greater need, where is the greater peril, where is the lesser evil and where is the lesser injustice?The fate of the Jewish minority in Palestine will not differ from the fate of the Jewish minority in any other country, except that here it might be much worse.
Lee Smith: Why Iran Is Getting the Bomb
Barack Obama will never forgive Benjamin Netanyahu for being right about the Iran nuclear deal. In his new memoir, Promised Land, Obama writes that the Israeli prime minister’s “vision of himself as the chief defender of the Jewish people against calamity allowed him to justify almost anything that would keep him in power.”Richard Kemp: The Killing of a Nuclear Scientist May Save Countless Lives
In fact, Netanyahu put his job on the line by doing something few Israeli voters support—he challenged an American president and potentially endangered the U.S.-Israel relationship. In March 2015, he went over Obama’s head to make his case to the representatives of the American people and told Congress that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) would give Iran a clear path to the bomb. Since many restrictions were due to expire by 2025—the so-called “sunset clauses”—Iran would have an industrial-scale nuclear weapons program in about a decade.
“We’re being told that the only alternative to this bad deal is war,” Netanyahu told Congress. “That’s just not true.”
Netanyahu was right. Donald Trump pulled out of the JCPOA in May 2017 and there was no war. Trump sanctioned the Tehran regime into penury and instead of war, Iranian demonstrators took to the streets to protest against those who’d squandered the country’s wealth by funding international terror.
In January, the president ordered the killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani. Middle East experts warned that he’d woken a sleeping giant and the region would shortly go up in flames—but again, there was no war. In fact, the Trump White House’s clear stance against the world’s leading sponsor of terror made room for peace in the Middle East. In the summer, the Abraham Accords gave Israel new regional partners, with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan all agreeing to normalize relations.
Obama’s Iran deal was the costliest mistake of his presidency for the peoples of the Middle East. The premises on which it was based were proved false. And yet Joe Biden can’t wait to reenter the JCPOA, with Secretary of State-apparent Antony Blinken pledging to keep “non-nuclear sanctions” intact, signaling his clear intention to lift nuclear-related sanctions against Iran.
The only thing that could interfere with such wonderful plans, the press warns, is an impending Trump strike on Iran, which might come any day now. According to The New York Times, Trump asked his cabinet for military options after the U.N. reported that Iran had exceeded its limit of enriched uranium.
Does that mean Trump or Bibi is actually on the verge of attacking Iran? Of course not. On both the American and the Israeli fronts, Trump administration policy was to get American troops out of global hot spots as fast as possible—not start wars. What the war drums means is that the phony communications infrastructure that marketed the Iran deal from 2013-2016 is up and running again.
Under the slogan "Death to America", Iran has been at war with the US, Israel and their Western allies since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, using proxy groups to kill hundreds of Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and other places; and to launch terror attacks across the Middle East, Europe, the US and Latin America.WSJ($): Another Bold Strike Against Iran
Mr Fakhrizadeh was a brigadier general in the IRGC and therefore not only a senior military commander in a country at war with the US and its allies but also a proscribed international terrorist.
Iran will never abandon what it considers its absolute right to become a nuclear-armed state, not under the current regime nor any future regime.... It has lied to the IAEA and the archive even sets out in detail the ways in which it has deceived the inspectors.
Despite claims to the contrary, the JCPOA was never going to prevent a nuclear armed Iran... Its sunset clauses meant that at best the deal might have delayed Tehran's acquisition of nuclear weapons for a few years.... Any return to the JCPOA by a Biden White House, as is being pushed by Mr Brennan and other prospective administration officials, will not see a strengthened deal but more likely an even weaker one.
Mr Brennan and the European supporters of his argument seem to believe that Iran can be contained by appeasement and negotiation rather than military strength and political will. The path advocated by the proponents of appeasement can only lead to infinitely greater bloodshed, violence and suffering than the death of a proscribed terrorist on the streets of Iran.
If Tehran's most prized personnel can be killed and its guarded facilities damaged, and it can do little in response, then the clerical regime's haybat, its unchallengeable awe, is degraded for all to see.
For a regime that knows the extent of popular anger against it, that is a perilous situation.
America's will to intervene in the Middle East is declining rapidly, and Israel's position is significantly stronger than it was in 2012, when President Obama began secret negotiations with Tehran in Oman.
- Monday, November 30, 2020
- Elder of Ziyon
1. The fight against antisemitism must be deployed within the frame of international law and human rights. It should be part and parcel of the fight against all forms of racism and xenophobia, including Islamophobia, and anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism. The aim of this struggle is to guarantee freedom and emancipation for all oppressed groups. It is deeply distorted when geared towards the defence of an oppressive and predatory state.
2. There is a huge difference between a condition where Jews are singled out, oppressed and suppressed as a minority by antisemitic regimes or groups, and a condition where the self-determination of a Jewish population in Palestine/Israel has been implemented in the form of an ethnic exclusivist and territorially expansionist state. As it currently exists, the state of Israel is based on uprooting the vast majority of the natives – what Palestinians and Arabs refer to as the Nakba – and on subjugating those natives who still live on the territory of historical Palestine as either second-class citizens or people under occupation, denying them their right to self-determination.
3. The IHRA definition of antisemitism and the related legal measures adopted in several countries have been deployed mostly against leftwing and human rights groups supporting Palestinian rights and the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, sidelining the very real threat to Jews coming from rightwing white nationalist movements in Europe and the US. The portrayal of the BDS campaign as antisemitic is a gross distortion of what is fundamentally a legitimate non-violent means of struggle for Palestinian rights.
4. The IHRA definition’s statement that an example of antisemitism is “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg, by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” is quite odd. It does not bother to recognise that under international law, the current state of Israel has been an occupying power for over half a century, as recognised by the governments of countries where the IHRA definition is being upheld. It does not bother to consider whether this right includes the right to create a Jewish majority by way of ethnic cleansing and whether it should be balanced against the rights of the Palestinian people. Furthermore, the IHRA definition potentially discards as antisemitic all non-Zionist visions of the future of the Israeli state, such as the advocacy of a binational state or a secular democratic one that represents all its citizens equally. Genuine support for the principle of a people’s right to self-determination cannot exclude the Palestinian nation, nor any other.
5. We believe that no right to self-determination should include the right to uproot another people and prevent them from returning to their land, or any other means of securing a demographic majority within the state. The demand by Palestinians for their right of return to the land from which they themselves, their parents and grandparents were expelled cannot be construed as antisemitic. The fact that such a demand creates anxieties among Israelis does not prove that it is unjust, nor that it is antisemitic. It is a right recognised by international law as represented in United Nations general assembly resolution 194 of 1948.
6. To level the charge of antisemitism against anyone who regards the existing state of Israel as racist, notwithstanding the actual institutional and constitutional discrimination upon which it is based, amounts to granting Israel absolute impunity. Israel can thus deport its Palestinian citizens, or revoke their citizenship or deny them the right to vote, and still be immune from the accusation of racism. The IHRA definition and the way it has been deployed prohibit any discussion of the Israeli state as based on ethno-religious discrimination. It thus contravenes elementary justice and basic norms of human rights and international law.
7. We believe that justice requires the full support of Palestinians’ right to self-determination, including the demand to end the internationally acknowledged occupation of their territories and the statelessness and deprivation of Palestinian refugees. The suppression of Palestinian rights in the IHRA definition betrays an attitude upholding Jewish privilege in Palestine instead of Jewish rights, and Jewish supremacy over Palestinians instead of Jewish safety. We believe that human values and rights are indivisible and that the fight against antisemitism should go hand in hand with the struggle on behalf of all oppressed peoples and groups for dignity, equality and emancipation.