Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Hypocrite @JohnBrennan bashes Israel for doing things HE supported as CIA chief for Obama

To be a good intelligence officer, one needs to be able to look at the facts dispassionately and without bias.

Based on the editorial he just wrote for the New York Times, former CIA director John Brennan is an incompetent intelligence analyst.

He starts off with describing how humiliating checkpoints are - based on a short fictional film.

I knew that Israel had legitimate security concerns in the aftermath of the 1967 and 1973 wars, worries that had been heightened by attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets by Palestinian terrorist organizations.

Half a century has passed, and the political and security landscape of the Middle East has profoundly changed.

Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. The Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States last year, have paved the way for four more Arab states — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

There also has been significant progress in reducing violence carried out by Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories. The exception is Hamas, which continues to launch rocket attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

The implication is that checkpoints are no longer necessary because the Palestinian security forces are adequate to do the job.

In 2009, Brennan told a newspaper, "the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities have to bat 1.000 every day. The terrorists are trying to be successful just once."

And how does one stop them? Brennan had defended the Bush administration support for "advanced interrogation techniques" and the policy of extraordinary rendition, moving terrorism suspects to countries where they might be tortured.

But suddenly he is critical of Israel's techniques to keep terrorists out of the country. Moreover, he ignores that Israel has spent millions to improve the checkpoints, some of which have reduced the amount of time to cross the border into minutes.

The major hurdle will be to reverse the trend of diminished interest that the Israeli government has shown in pursuing a two-state solution. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has spearheaded relentless expansion of settlements in the West Bank. That expansion has brought along more concrete walls, security barriers and control points.

During the Obama administration while Brennan was CIA director, Israel accepted a peace framework suggested by the US which would have led to a Palestinian state - and the Palestinians didn't only reject that, but they rejected a plan that was much more favorable to them. They even bragged about their rejectionism to Susan Rice, who told them effectively that they were idiots.

Under Netanyahu, there have been virtually no new settlements although existing ones have more people. The amount of space Israel controls is likewise essentially the same as it was during the Oslo process. Israel's policies have not made the two state solution less likely - Palestinian rejection of peace has.

The most offensive thing Brennan wrote, however, was not in the article. It was in a tweet promoting the article. It shows that his years as an Arabist (American University in Beirut, CIA station chief in Riyadh) has given him antisemitic tendencies:

I always found it difficult to fathom how a nation of people deeply scarred by a history replete with prejudice, religious persecution, & unspeakable violence perpetrated against them would not be the empathetic champions of those whose rights & freedoms are still abridged.

This is a polite version of the "Jews are Nazis" trope.

Brennan is saying that Israeli Jews are heartless monsters who don't care about Palestinian human rights It is a pernicious lie. Israeli Jews may be paranoid, but they have good reason for their paranoia.

During this holy month of Ramadan, Palestinian youths are celebrating by attacking religious Jews for fun and TikTok videos. Should this be ignored?

The issue, as always, isn't whether Palestinians deserve human rights. No one argues with that. The issue is how to best balance Palestinian human rights with Israeli human rights.

The reason that the number of attacks has gone down isn't only because of Palestinian security services frustrating terror attacks - it is because Israel created an atmosphere through defensive measures like fences and checkpoints, as well as pro-active attacks on terror cells, to make it less likely that terror attacks would succeed.

It wasn't that long ago that Palestinians were writing their own op-eds justifying terror attacks as legitimate.

And it was only a couple of weeks ago that Palestinian TV heavily promoted a music video inciting terrorism:

Should Israel take these threats seriously - should they try to bat 1.000 - or should they just shrug off this incitement and terrorism?

It is more than condescending for "experts' to tell Jews that the lesson of Auschwitz is to be sensitive to human rights. Guess what - we are, and we were way before Nazi Germany. The lesson of Auschwitz is to take threats to murder Jews seriously and ensure that they are not successful.

When the threats go away, so will the checkpoints.

Here are excerpts from a 2004 article by Stan Crooke which can be read, believe it or not, at the Workers Liberty website.

It shows the origins of the "Zionism is Apartheid" lie, along with many others.

The Stalinist roots of left "anti-Zionism"
In the 1970s the rulers of the USSR launched a sustained 'anti-Zionist' campaign, in fact anti-semitic.

No surprise. But an examination of the publications from that campaign shows something much more shocking than the fact that the old Stalinist despots were ready to use any sort of reactionary prejudice for their own ends. It demonstrates that much of what many British and international leftists - even Trotskyists - say about Israel is an indirect and unwitting copy of the Stalinists' efforts at constructing a Marxist-sounding gloss on old anti-semitic themes.

Zionism equals racism; Zionism equals imperialism; Zionism equals South African apartheid; Israel is the USA's 'watchdog' in the Middle East; Zionism is complicit with, or even promotes, anti-semitism - all these themes, now commonplace on the left, were pioneered by the Stalinists.

The core of the Stalinist argument was their old technique of 'the amalgam'. Zionism, so the Stalinists claimed, was tied up with, allied to, linked with, or responsible for, every reactionary force that right-minded people might detest - capitalism, imperialism, even anti-semitism and Nazism.

The creation of a national home for Jews was the means whereby Jewish-bourgeois hegemony over Jewish workers was to be maintained. "The powerful Jewish bourgeoisie, allied with imperialism, needed the creation of a 'national home'... first and foremost in order to keep under its influence the mass of Jewish workers".

Moreover: "In the West Jewish capital became such a powerful force that it was able to participate independently in the colonial division of the world.

According to the Stalinists: "Zionism and anti-semitism are two sides of the same coin - racism. Zionists greeted the anti-semitic policies of Tsarism in its time and also the monstrous policies of genocide at the time of Hitler."

Zionists "co-operated with Hitlerites and helped them to destroy millions of Jewish lives, attempting to save only the capitalists. The Zionists always regarded anti-semitism, and still do so, as an important means of forcing all Jews to leave their countries and escape to the 'Promised Land' in Israel".

There was, moreover, an overlap between the theories of Zionism and fascism: "As regards the theory of 'racial purity', the treatises on 'lower' and 'higher' peoples, the concepts of the 'Aryan' and the 'superman', here there is really not a little in common between the Zionists and the fascists." The theories of various 'Zionist ideologues' did not differ "at all from the views on racial exclusiveness to be found in the 'collected works' of Hitler, Rosenberg, and other fascist theoreticians." "Zionism is akin to Nazism" because "the ideologues of Zionism and apartheid are related to it (Nazism), (and) are merely contemporary variations of the myth about the supposedly innate inequality of people and races".

For the Stalinist writers, Israel was not only a sort of offshoot or outpost of the USA. It was, with fiendish cunning, simultaneously an offshoot or outpost of South Africa as it was before 1994, under the system of apartheid.

"Israel and South Africa are linked by a common racist ideology and practice, and by reactionary domestic and foreign policies... The union of the racists of Israel and South Africa is a massive threat to the African peoples and to the whole of humanity."

Facile analogies, now prevalent on the British left, featured constantly in the Soviet campaign. Zionism and apartheid possessed 'common ideological roots'. "In the South of Africa, in the Republic of South Africa, and in Palestine, close to the Suez Canal, there arose two platforms of world imperialism, summoned... to put a check to the national-liberation movement of the peoples".

Many of the footnotes for the charge that Zionism is akin to apartheid come from a 1975 book by Valery Ivanovich Skurlatov, entitled Сионизм и апартеид - Zionism and Apartheid, published by the official Soviet Politizdat of Ukraine.

Skurlatov's book is summarized in this article by R. Nudelman:

In his book Zionism and Apartheid Skurlatov sketches the following pattern of Jewish history from ancient times to modern Zionism: even in ancient times the world needed middlemen for trade and in the course of centuries a trade clan or order formed whose most successful embodiment was the upper crust of ancient Jewish society. In ancient times this upper class had already turned into a "transnational Jewish corporation." From then on this "transnational Jewish corporation" has appeared under different guises in world history but always with a single purpose: to win supremacy over the world. With this aim in view, the corporation first created "the religion of the God-chosen," Judaism, a religion created by stealing, in its usual manner, "not only material but also cultural values, from other peoples." Judaism proved to be a very useful religion for gaining world domination, for it "very consistently generates a solid ideology of race superiority and apartheid." Later on, "Judaism's racial concept served as a prototype for European racism," first of all Catholic (because Catholicism posed as "New Israel"), then Protestant ("Protestantism is a version of Christianity pregnant with racism"), and finally Masonic ("Masonry is secular Judaism"). In modern times "the racist God-chosen prescripts of the Jewish corporation proved even more compatible with the bourgeoisie." This was particularly evident in the USA: "The Judeo-Protestant influence made itself distinctly felt in the formation of American imperialist ideology." And now, having inculcated Judaic formulas of conduct throughout the world, "the international Jewish elite already knows no bounds to its world power ambitions." But bourgeois ideologists, "although imbued with Judaic components," proved insufficiently useful for this purpose, writes Skurlatov, and so "the financial-monopolistic corporation of the Jewish bourgeoisie concluded that it was necessary to equip itself with a caste-exclusive doctrine, Zionism." Today, concludes the author, "because it considers itself God-chosen," this corporation "openly lays claim to world domination."

This purely antisemitic drivel is literally the source for today's Leftist antisemitism, including the Human Rights Watch report equating Israel with apartheid - which, as is shown above, really means Judaism and apartheid.

04/27 Links Pt2: Human Rights Watch Report Maligns Israel with Lies on Top of Lies; For many French Jews, Halimi murder a ‘watershed moment’ of distrust in France

From Ian:

Human Rights Watch: Israel commits crime of apartheid, UN must apply sanctions

The right-wing Israeli group NGO Monitor condemned the apartheid accusations, saying they were part of larger global campaign to discredit Israel and undermine its identity as a Jewish state.

“HRW’s report is part of a concerted NGO campaign over the past 18 months to interject the term ‘apartheid’ into discourse about Israel,” it said. “Indeed, HRW reiterates, cites and quotes many of these NGOs in its publication.”

“In a broader context, this report is another move in the decades-long series of obsessive attacks against Israel and its legitimacy as the nation-state of the Jewish people,” NGO Monitor said.

HRW’s report distanced its accusation of apartheid from any comparisons with South African apartheid, which is often used to discredit that claim.

Instead, HRW spoke of a three-pronged definition based on the Rome Statute: an intent to maintain racial domination by one group over another; a context of systematic oppression of one group over another; and inhumane acts.

Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, both within and outside sovereign Israel, met this definition of the crimes of apartheid, HRW said. The report did not take direct issue with Israel’s identity as an ethnically national Jewish state. But as an example of discrimination, it cited Israel’s Law of Return, which grants citizenship to Jews who want to immigrate to Israel. Palestinian refugees and their descendants who had lived on territory now under Israeli sovereignty did not have that same right of return, it said.

New @kohelet report debunks @HRW's propaganda doc on Israel: a mix of lies and fantasies; an alternate reality where the Palestinian Authority doesn't exist, terrorism doesn't exist, and Israel agreeing to the "Right of Return" amounts to Apartheid https://t.co/Q7h0nLSjiP
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) April 26, 2021

Gerald Steinberg: Human Rights Watch demonizes Israel via propaganda of apartheid - opinion

Beyond South Africa, no other regime or government has been deemed to meet the international definition of apartheid, not even murderous and oppressive regimes practicing separation based on race, religion, and gender such as Saudi Arabia and China.

In pursuing this 20-year campaign, HRW, led by Kenneth Roth, has continuously invoked the “Israel apartheid” theme, including playing a central role in the notoriously antisemitic NGO Forum at the 2001 UN Durban conference. The final declaration referred to Israel and apartheid repeatedly, and called for the “complete international isolation of Israel as an apartheid state.”

After members of HRW’s board criticized this involvement, Roth replied cynically: “Clearly Israeli racist practices are an appropriate topic.” Roth and other top officials have repeated the apartheid and racist smears frequently since then. In one of many examples, in the context of the 2017 white supremacist march and violence in Charlottesville, Roth tweeted a link to a propaganda piece headlined “Birds of a feather: White supremacy and Zionism.” He included a picture depicting a Confederate and Israeli flag, commenting, “Many rights activists condemn Israeli abuse & antisemitism. Some white supremacists embrace Israel & antisemitism.”

A major addition to the usual allegations is that the planned annexation of parts of the West Bank controlled by Israel under the Oslo framework (the strategic and sparsely populated Area C) constitutes apartheid (repeated 32 times in the HRW text). Indeed, at the time when Israeli officials made such statements, HRW and the NGOs issued a wave of apartheid condemnations. Now, even though the annexation was dropped, the condemnations remain, again demonstrating the centrality of slogans over substance.

In 2009, HRW founder Robert Bernstein, writing in The New York Times, took on his organization, criticizing the leaders for losing their moral compass, and “issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.” Many years later, and with much larger budgets and visibility, the organization’s delegitimization continues.

Ben-Dror Yemini: A most dangerous and mendacious report

Let us imagine for just one moment that an Iranian official penned a damning report on human rights in Sweden, or a member of the American far-right wrote about the Democratic Party in the U.S.

Would anyone take such a document seriously?

But we are expected to all take heed of "A Threshold Crossed," a new report criticizing Israel written by Omar Shakir, who heads the Israeli-Palestinian desk at Human Rights Watch.

Shakir is a provocateur and a quarrel-monger, who has spent more than a decade campaigning to deny Israel's right to exist.

He actually resided in Israel until the Supreme Court revoked his residency permit when the scale of his actions against the very existence of the State of Israel was revealed.

He was also denied entry to Bahrain when he wanted to attend a FIFA conference solely to persuade the organization to boycott the Israeli national soccer team.

Shakir's abysmal hatred of Israel is evident even when compared to the established hostility of other bodies branding themselves as "human rights organizations."

As far back as 2010, Shakir was urging the Palestinians to abandon the right to self-determination and instead adopt the terminology of apartheid and universal rights in order to make a single binational state a reality.

In 2015, he signed a petition opposing a visit to Israel by a group of Muslims who were supposed to be guests of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

It goes without saying that Shakir is a clear supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, an organization whose leaders do not try to disguise the fact that they are working for not peace but for the elimination of Israel.

Iran cancels Quds Day because of COVID

For the second year in a row, Iran is canceling its annual Quds Day hatefest against Israel because of the coronavirus.

The holiday was originally created by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, when he announced:

I invite Muslims all over the globe to consecrate the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan as Al-Quds Day and to proclaim the international solidarity of Muslims in support of the legitimate rights of the Muslim people of Palestine. ... I ask all the Muslims of the world and the Muslim governments to join together to sever the hand of this usurper and its supporters. I call on all the Muslims of the world to select as Al-Quds Day the last Friday in the holy month of Ramadan—which is itself a determining period and can also be the determiner of the Palestinian people's fate—and through a ceremony demonstrating the solidarity of Muslims world-wide, announce their support for the legitimate rights of the Muslim people. I ask God Almighty for the victory of the Muslims over the infidels.

I always though Jews were dhimmis,. not infidels (kafirs) - but who am I to argue with the Ayatollah?

Quds Day is held on the last Friday in Ramadan, which would have been May 7 this year.

Iran is now seeing record numbers of deaths and illnesses from COVID-19.

But not to despair - the festivities might still occur in London, which has an enthusiastic Quds Day rally every year.

Far-Left Jews want FEWER police to protect synagogues in the Bronx

The response by the far-Left on the multiple attacks against synagogues in Riverdale is different than in the past (when attacks like these from non-white supremacists were ignored.)

This thread by Sasha Parsley Kesler, a member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, was widely shared:

I am holding the pain & fear in my #Riverdale #Jewish community after 4 synagogues were vandalized in 6 incidents this weekend. Jews have a long history of seeing our synagogues attacked, triggering the memory of deadly violence that has followed across the world.

As Jews we feel the profound threat of antisemitic violence. Our community’s fear & pain demand action. Our vision is a NYC free from hate violence, where all communities impacted by bigotry come together & reject approaches that pit us against each other.
https://jfrej.org/campaigns/freedom-to-thrive/hate-violence-prevention-initiative

I am also imaging another way to respond to this violence, one that does not invite further militarized policing of our streets & communities. I am hearing that the local @NYPD50Pct will double its patrols in response to these incident.

I understand the gut reaction in white Jewish communities to look to police as our protectors. And we all know that more policing does not make us ALL safer. Riverdale is a diverse community - I do not want the attempts to secure my safety to threaten that of others.

I’m dreaming of a world with community-based rapid response, restorative justice & anti-hate education. Where we join our neighbors across NYC who are afraid because who they are makes them a target of hate & violence.

Jewish safety & dignity are intertwined with that of all communities. My fellow Jews - here is a moment for us to do something different. To radically reimagine who protects us. Our neighbors protect us. We protect us. Join me?

They are saying that violence like this could be stopped by "community-based rapid response, restorative justice & anti-hate education."

Really?

Let's look at their detailed plan:

Support Restorative Approaches to Violence
The following are proactive steps that can be taken to address and prevent hate violence in New York City and State.
●• Rapid Incident Response: Finding ways to call attention to, and increase awareness about hate violence in the immediate aftermath of incidents of violence is an important part of hate violence response and prevention. It can be important for impacted and allied communities, as well as city agencies and elected officials to respond with a unified voice against violence. Rapid incident response may include community alerts, town hall meetings, neighborhood safety events, and school-based and neighborhood education across multiple identities.
●• Data and Reporting: Data and information about the hate violence occurring in our communities is a critical tool for identifying strategies to end violence. Marginalized communities feel safest reporting incidents to community-based organizations, which can help them to make a safety plan and determine whether or not they would like to report to law enforcement or another city agency. Groups must be funded to do this data collection work. This includes support for training and access to data collection software, as well as support for community-specific hotlines to receive reports. New York State must pass the Hate Crimes Analysis and Review Act (A08070/S06066-B) and both the city and state must create funding for community-based data collection options.
●• Community Education: Many incidents of hate violence occur in public spaces and go unchallenged by witnesses. Bystander/upstander intervention training empowers community members to safely ally themselves with individuals targeted victims when an incident of hate or harassment is underway in public.
●• Restorative Justice Programs: Much of the current effort at stopping hate violence is focused on criminalizing acts of hate, while the root causes of hate violence remain unaddressed and the violence remains unchecked. Restorative justice (RJ) is a means of giving all who are stake‐ holders in an incident—survivors, people who have done harm, and the communities to which they belong—a voice in how harm can be repaired and future harm prevented. RJ can give survivors more of a voice and provide opportunities for healing while holding those who cause harm accountable for their actions. NYC Against Hate supports the creation of a RJ pilot program focused on incidents of hate violence committed by minors which do not meet the hate crimes standard to provide opportunities for education, accountability, healing and reform

Would any of that have stopped a determined, probably mentally ill man who specifically sought out all the Jewish houses of worship he could find - attacking them at night, with no one around?

Would community education have stopped him?

Would Jews be the least bit safer?

Would "increasing awareness" work?

No. Not in a world when publicity for hate crimes makes them more likely. Just like the Blacks who laughingly attack Hasidim in Brooklyn or Arabs TikToking their attacks on haredim in Israel, they want to be seen and for people to laugh about it!

The Jews in Riverdale are afraid - but the far Left wants them to be the guinea pigs in an experiment on how to protect them using no police, or asking the entire community first before bringing police in.

This is nuts.

I'm not saying that their ideas are all bad. But they should be implemented together with law enforcement, not as an alternative. Police are as interested in education and community involvement as anyone. They want to see crime go down too, despite the slurs against them.

And when we are talking crimes that are motivated by sheer hate, it is mere wishful thinking that education can make a dent in it - and certainly not while we are in a middle of an epidemic of such crimes.

The phrase "roto causes of hate" in this context also sounds suspiciously like there might be some justifications for it. If you asked this antisemite why he is attacking a synagogue, he will probably answer that his landlord or employer is Jewish and he has been wronged, or that a Jew looked at him funny. It is not hard to imagine the facilitators showing sympathy for his antisemitic rants, or even turning and asking the Jews to comment on his supposed victimhood as if it is their fault.

Don't throw Jews under the bus for utopian vision of "restorative justice."

04/27 Links Pt1: John Kerry, Enemy of Israel; Iran Aims to Expand WMD Program, German Intel Agency Concludes; San Remo Resolution Day, April 25, should be an Israeli holiday

From Ian:

John Kerry, Enemy of Israel

As the Trump years proved, there are a number of options available as we wait for the Iranian regime to come to its senses or, hopefully, crumble, including maximum economic pressure and sabotage. Last week, Israel reportedly blew up Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility’s electrical substation, located 40 to 50 meters underground, damaging “thousands of centrifuges.” This is likely the second time in the past few months that the Israelis have been able to smuggle explosives into the facility and detonate them remotely. Of course, this incident is only one in a long line of unexplained fires, assassinations, and computer worms that have caused substantial delays and damage to the illegal Iranian nuclear-weapons program. All of these efforts have likely saved lives by delaying the ability of Iran to become another North Korea — or worse, since Iran exports terror all over the world.

During the Obama years, Democrats would offer an ugly false choice: You either support diplomacy with the “moderate” wing of the theocratic state, or you endorse “war”; either fly unmarked euros in tonnage and bail out the Mullahs, or plunge America into another Iraq War. At one point, Obama claimed that the Republican caucus was making “common cause” with Iranian hard-liners.

The opposite was true. In the leaked audio from Zarif, we hear that the military and theocratic forces in the nation “call the shots” and overrule “government decisions and ignoring advice.” According to the Times, Zarif says that the political wing is “severely constricted” and decisions “are dictated by the supreme leader or Revolutionary Guards Corps.” Obama’s contention that the Iran deal was being forged with the “moderate faction” was always a fantasy.

The real moderates in Iran were forsaken by Obama and Biden when they decided that the United States wouldn’t support the 2009 Green Movement, in what Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky called one of the biggest failures of human rights in modern history. Democrats Murphy, Biden, and Kerry are more interested in ensuring Iran becomes a regional counterforce to Israeli power.

Whatever you believe about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Biden’s iteration of the deal, it should not have to be said that high-ranking United States officials shouldn’t be sharing sensitive information about an ally with a terror regime. Yet it also seems quite likely that’s exactly what John Kerry did.

John Kerry is skirting the line of treason with Iran

The rather curious defining feature of Democratic Party foreign policy, going back at least four decades, is that our friends must be bullied and our enemies must be appeased. The Democratic worldview holds that America is a source of geopolitical evil whose destructive influences must be tamed and reined in, and that America’s enemies must be emboldened in order to tilt the global playing field away from America’s noxious ambit.

Barack Obama’s administration encapsulated this toxic ideology through its single-minded pursuit of a nuclear accord with the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism during the president’s lame-duck second term. Many of the leading hucksters who comprised Team Obama’s “negotiators” with Tehran — Wendy Sherman, Robert Malley, and Colin Kahl among them — are now reprising their roles during Uncle Joe Biden’s third Obama term.

No individual personified the Obama Bros’ supine tango with the mullahs better than then-Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry, the “statesman” who has been on the wrong side of every major foreign affairs issue since at least the Swift Boats of Vietnam, betrayed his country in borderline-treasonous fashion as Obama’s chief diplomatic lackey. Not content to sell the farm — and scores of unmarked pallets of U.S. taxpayer cash — to a mullocracy with untold American blood on its hands as a diplomat, Kerry then traitorously colluded as a layman with his pal, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, to undermine the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” Iran containment strategy.

Alas, we now know it is apparently even worse. New leaked audio appears to reveal that Kerry, now Team Biden’s special climate envoy, divulged to Zarif the details of over 200 clandestine Israeli military operations taken against Iranian targets in Syria. One might be loath to take on blind faith the claims of a thug like Zarif, but in this case the shoe fits. This is who John Forbes Kerry is — who he always has been, and always will be.

Seth Frantzman: John Kerry, the latest victim of Zarif’s big mouth - Analysis

The BBC reported in 2015 that Iran was quietly deepening involvement in Syria. Zarif says he didn’t know about Iran’s role. Didn’t he read the BBC? Is he the most uninformed foreign minister in the world?

Or is he up to some game, trying to pretend he didn’t know as a way to get some benefit? What might Zarif receive if he can claim he didn’t know about Iran’s role in Syria? He can make it seem like deals he negotiates are being “violated” by other elements in Iran. He can perhaps prepare himself for a post-ministerial career.

Zarif’s comments remind one of the scene in the film Casablanca when Captain Renault is “shocked” to find gambling taking place in a café that he himself gambles in. Zarif is shocked to find out that there are Iranians in Syria and claims that Kerry told him about airstrikes. Which is more reasonable: that the Iranian foreign minister learns of Israeli airstrikes from the former US secretary of state, rather than read media reports, or that he simply wants to convey something about his relationship with Kerry?

KERRY HAS a long history of being close to the Iranian regime. This goes back to Davos in 2007 and likely before. He wanted to radically re-orient US policy in the region to work with Iran. His goal in this was likely to achieve some fame for himself as the person that brought Iran in from the cold.

The US worked hard on the Iran Deal, in part because it was such a sunk cost and the US needed a diplomatic win. Kerry fronted that win. Without the Iran deal, which the US begged for at the time, there would be little to show for the efforts to work with the Islamic Republic.

The US narrative at the time was that there would be “war” if there was no deal. In reality, there was no war, which was revealed when the Trump administration walked away from the deal. Iran also wasn’t blocked from uranium enrichment; it openly enriches uranium in violation of the deal while the other signatories beg Tehran to stop.

Kerry and Zarif cultivated a relationship in which they would help one another, ostensibly confronting “hardliners” back home in both of their societies. It was a symbiotic relationship: They would rise and fall together.

The leaked tape has embarrassed Kerry, which resulted in his denials. It’s not clear how it will impact Zarif. He was already distrusted at home, and now it’s not clear if he can be trusted abroad to further Iran’s aims if he paints himself as ignorant of Iran’s own policies – although this may work in his favor because he can continue to be the cherubic face of Iran’s regime.

The word "apartheid" is becoming a standard part of NGO discourse on Israel, with the new Human Rights Watch report I've been critiquing, the B'Tselem report from January, and the recent dishonest B'Tselem "poll" attempting to prove that Israelis agree.

One question that no one is asking: what is different today than in, say, 2000 - or even 1975?

The name of the HRW report is "A Threshold Crossed," meaning that Israel has reached the point of apartheid, implying that up until now it hadn't.

What threshold are they talking about?

The "occupation" isn't new. The Oslo Accords that say where Israel has security control isn't new. Settlements aren't new. The actual physical area taken up by Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria is nearly identical to what it was 25 years ago. The number of physical settlements is pretty much the same as they were in 1993 at the onset of Oslo. (Actually less, because there are no Gaza settlements.)

As recently as 2017, the Arab dominated UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia issued a report that accused Israel of apartheid - and the UN distanced themselves from it and removed it from the ESCWA webpage, as well as forced the resignation of the ESCWA head who spearheaded the report.

If anything, from a legal perspective, things are far better for Palestinians now then they were before Oslo - after all, they now have large areas that they govern themselves where Israeli security do not enter. They have a government (or two) that some 95% of Palestinians live under.

Some will say that what's new is the Israeli policy of separation from Palestinian areas, which they claim is analogous to apartheid. Yet Israel's policy was a direct result of the terrorism from the second intifada - the spree of attacks targeting Jews and Jews only. It is perverted to say that Israel's successful attempts to save Jewish lives is apartheid.

So what has changed? Why didn't the "legal experts" at B'Tselem and HRW say Israel was guilty of the crime of apartheid before 2021?

Because Israel never was guilty of the crime of apartheid.

These NGOs know nothing has changed, and the apartheid slander is just as much a lie now as it was in decades past. They instead choose to change the definition of "apartheid," or cherry pick arguments that seem to support that definition and ignore all counter-arguments.

They twist international law to absurd lengths, making up definitions that - if applied to other nations - would indicate that every nation on Earth is guilty of persecution and apartheid and racism.

They won't write those reports, of course.

Their goal isn't the truth, and it never was. Their goal is to demonize Israel and only Israel by making up international laws that only apply to the Jewish state and no one else.

This is what modern antisemitism looks like.

In a stunning change of US policy, the Biden administration has issued a statement of support for the notoriously antisemitic Durban Conference of 2001.

The UN World Conference Against Racism held in 2001 was an antisemitic hatefest.

Flyer handed out at Durban

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were distributed at the conference by the Ahlul Bait Foundation of South Africa. Antisemitic flyers literally supporting Hitler and banners supporting terrorism against Israel were featured.

The conference had two elements, an NGO Forum and a Governmental Conference.

The NGO Forum - with the enthusiastic participation of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch - was where the BDS strategy started. It attacked every Jewish organization in attendance. Its final declaration called Israel a "racist apartheid state" guilty of "war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing." Statements denouncing attacks on Jews and synagogues were removed from the final declaration.

The Governmental Conference was not as explicit in its antisemitism but it was no better. Its final declaration singled out Israel, listing only Palestinians specifically under the 45 paragraphs in the section of "victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance."

Paragraphs against antisemitism were removed in the final statement.

The United States and Israel walked out of the conference because of its explicit antisemitism.

The UN tried to organize a celebration on the tenth anniversary of the conference, called Durban III, in 2011. The US, along with thirteen other countries, boycotted the conference because it would have restated the antisemitic and bigoted final statement. The Obama White House issued a strong statement describing why:

Several months ago, the United States announced that we would not participate in the 10-year commemoration of the 2001 Durban Conference. Consistent with that decision, we are not attending today’s high level event in New York.

Since its inception at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, the Durban process has included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism. In 2009, after working to try to achieve a positive, constructive outcome in the Durban Review Conference that would get past the deep flaws of the Durban process to date to focus on the critical issues of racism, the United States withdrew from participating because the review conference’s outcome document reaffirmed, in its entirety, the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) from 2001, which unfairly and unacceptably singled out Israel. The DDPA also endorsed overbroad restrictions on freedom of expression that run counter to the U.S. commitment to robust free speech.

Last December, the United States voted against the resolution establishing the commemoration because we did not want to see the hateful and anti-Semitic displays of the 2001 Durban Conference commemorated.

Because of this US stance, many other nations boycotted Durban III: Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland, besides Israel.

Last month, the principled US position against Durban was changed.

The US, which just rejoined the UN Human Rights Council, led an effort to write a statement against racism that included this paragraph:

Recalling the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Program of Action, we are committed to working within our nations and with the international community to address and combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance, while upholding freedom of expression.

This pro-Durban paragraph was completely unnecessary in the context of an anti-racism declaration. But it ensured one result: Israel cannot possibly sign this letter.

Every other nation that boycotted Durban III signed this letter supporting the original Durban Declaration that attacked Israel and only Israel, thanks to US efforts to get signatories.

Israel is isolated - by the US.

This coming September, the UN plans to hold a 20th anniversary meeting for Durban, Durban IV, where the original anti-Israel statement will be reconfirmed. The General Assembly resolution for the meeting says:

Decide to hold a one-day high-level meeting of the General Assembly to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, at the level of Heads of State and Government, on the second day of the general debate of the seventy-sixth session, on the theme “Reparations, racial justice and equality for people of African descent”, consisting of an opening plenary meeting, consecutive round tables and/or thematic panels and a closing plenary meeting (para. 28);

By only mentioning that the meeting will concentrate on discrimination against Black people, the organizers are attempting to get around the objections to Durban III. However, this is a smokescreen, because it also says:

Also decide that the meeting will adopt a short and concise political declaration aimed at mobilizing political will at the national, regional and international levels for the full and effective implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action and its follow-up processes.

Based on the pro-Durban letter by the US at the Human Rights Council, it appears entirely possible that the Biden administration will attend the September farce and put on a fig leaf of "trying to change it from within." However, that cannot work: the conference says its entire purpose is to confirm and implement the original Durban declaration in full. Objections to one paragraph do not get attached to the declaration, which is approved by consensus.

The only way to deal with Durban IV - the 20th anniversary celebration - is to completely boycott it as was done for Durban III - the 10th anniversary celebration. Anything less than that it condoning the message of Durban. The US, in its zeal to appear like a leader in the anti-racism movement, appears to be willing to change its principled position that Durban was wholly unacceptable.

No one ever thought that the Biden administration would be worse than the Obama administration concerning Israel. This is worse.

One other thing: The date of the Durban commemoration at the UN is September 22 - which comes out on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which precludes practicing Jews from protesting.

Projection time: Palestinians accuse Jews of creating 100,000 fake graves - including at the Mount of Olives

The Jordanian Al Ghad newspaper claims that there are thousands of mock Jewish graves surrounding Jerusalem as a means to control lands.

In occupied Jerusalem and the vicinity of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, thousands of phantom Jewish graves that were planted by the Israeli occupation are spreading with great frequency and still are, surrounding and besieging the blessed mosque with imaginary symbols that are not found in history, to fully control the Waqf and Palestinian lands in the city.

After 1967 and the occupation of Jerusalem, the occupation authorities seized dozens of additional dunams of land, and turned them into modern Jewish cemeteries, and new ones that were not there before, that did not contain tombstones or remains of dead bones, in order to serve settlement and Judaization.

Over the past years, the occupation carried out massive falsifications of history, archeology, geography, and Arab-Islamic names in Jerusalem, in order to legitimize fake Jewish graves and create a sacred Jewish region.

Specialist in Jerusalem affairs, Fakhri Abu Diab explained in his interview with Safa agency that more than 100 thousand fake graves have been planted so far on large areas of green lands, specifically in the towns of Silwan, Al-Tur and the vicinity of Al-Aqsa.

The imaginary graves extend - according to Abu Diab - from the southern and eastern wall of the Al-Aqsa Mosque to as far as the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, through the town of Silwan, Wadi al-Rababa, Ras al-Amud, and the Shayah area.

The story is true - about Palestinians.

While Palestinians have made these claims before, in fact the only people who have ever erected fake graves were Palestinians, most notably in the Mamillah cemetery in 2010 when they were discovered to have hastily placed hundreds of fake gravestones on top of nothing but trash.

The most disgusting thing about the Arab charges is that they are claiming that the Mount of Olives, the oldest Jewish cemetery in the world with over 100,000 graves, whose gravestones were stolen by Jordan between 1948 and 1967 and used to pave roads and build latrines, where my own ancestors and other relatives are buried - is all a lie.

Here are a couple of photos of Jordan's using ancient Jewish gravestones for building.

Palestinians upset at AFP photo showing IDF soldier protecting an Arab woman

AFP photographer Hazem Bader took these photos with the caption that says, "An Israeli soldier escorts a Palestinian woman to safety as Palestinian youth clash with Israeli security forces in the center of the occupied West Bank town of Hebron on April 24, 2021."

Palestinians are livid that this photo exists. Imagine, a wire service photographer - a Palestinian, no less - who chooses to show something that doesn't portray every Israeli as a monster!

A number of articles and Facebook posts are quoting another journalist, Saeed al-Tawil, saying "The Syndicate of Journalists, the Ministry of Information and the Government Media Office are required to withdraw and freeze the membership of Palestinian ”photographer Hazem Bader, a photographer for the AFP, after he described a photo as 'an Israeli soldier escorting a Palestinian woman to safety during the clash of Palestinian youths with the Israeli security forces in Hebron on April 24, 2021" .. Hazem forgot the entire scene and the crimes of the occupation throughout the days and even previous years, and decided to take advantage of his image that shows the occupation with an angelic face."

It seems that 99% media bias against Israel isn't enough for Palestinians.

(h/t Yoel)

04/26 Links Pt2: Israel enters top 20 club with highest GDP per capita; Jews, Muslims in Gulf hold festive event as holidays coincide; Human Rights Watch Endorses Palestinian Terrorism

From Ian:

Amid COVID, Israel enters top 20 club of nations with highest GDP per capita

For the first time in its history, Israel ranks among the top 20 economies based on GDP per capita, Forbes Israel reports, based on International Monetary Fund data.

GDP per capita breaks down a country’s economic output per person and is a global measure for assessing the prosperity of nations. Small, rich countries and more developed industrial countries tend to have the highest per capita GDP.

According to the data compiled by the publication, with GDP per capita of $43,689 for 2020, Israel ranked 19th out of the top 20, above No. 20 Canada, with per capita GDP at $43,278; No. 21 New Zealand, with $41,127, and the UK with $40,406 at No. 22.

Luxemburg tops the ranking with GDP per capita of $116,921, followed by Switzerland, with $86,849, and Ireland with $83,850. Norway comes in fourth at $67,176, and the US fifth, at $63,416, the data showed.

In 2019, Israel ranked 21st, and a decade ago it wasn’t even in the top 30 leading economies, Forbes said. In 2010, Israel was ranked 32nd globally for per capita GDP.

Israel seems to be emerging from its battle against the deadly coronavirus pandemic with a battered economy and massive unemployment, but still in better shape than other developed nations. The nation’s gross domestic product shrank by 2.5% in 2020, its worst contraction on record, compared to an average 6.6% drop last year for the European Union, a 3.5% decline in the US, and a 5.5% contraction on average in OECD countries.

French Magazine Devotes Cover Story to ‘Post-COVID’ Israel

Israel’s success in beating back the COVID-19 pandemic continues to attract attention in international media outlets and this weekend, the French magazine Le Parisien devoted a cover story to Israel as an example of life “after” COVID.

The feature article, which interviews numerous Israelis and includes colorful descriptions of a busy Tel Aviv and Israel’s unprecedented national vaccination operation, is titled “A Taste of Life After [COVID].”

“Tel Aviv is no longer hiding its face behind a mask. It is now open to the air and to people on the street, even though sometimes a mask hides under a chin,” the article informed readers.

The article attributed Israel’s success to its digitized healthcare system, the relative discipline of its population, and efforts by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who the magazine said “Fought tooth and nail for the vaccines … harassing the Pfizer CEO 30 times with phone conversations into the night.”

A separate article posted on the magazine’s website reported that Israel had marked the first day in months without a single COVID-19 fatality and said that since January, Israel had the lowest percentage of serious COVID-19 cases in the world.

Jews, Muslims in Gulf hold festive event as holidays coincide

A joint interfaith event celebrating both the Jewish holiday of Lag B'Omer and the daily breaking of the fast in the Islamic holy month of Ramadan (Iftar) will be held this week in Dubai, marking the first occurrence of such a collaboration. The event was announced by the Association of Gulf Jewish Communities (AGJC), the people-to-people network of Jewish communities from the Gulf.

"The event will include a panel discussion with Jewish and Muslim ambassadors focusing on how interfaith and co-existence is propelling the GCC region forward," the organization said.

Israel, the UAE and Bahrain have recently signed peace deals known as the Abraham Accords as part of a larger normalization process orchestrated by the Trump administration in 2020. This has paved the way for official ties between Israel and those countries, as well as with Morocco and Sudan, and has improved Arab-Jewish relations in the region.

During the event, the AGJC will host a webinar moderated by the American Jewish Committee's International Director of Interreligious Affairs Rabbi David Rosen featuring Ambassador of the Kingdom of Bahrain to the United States Abdulla Rashed Al Khalifa; Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to the United States Yousef Al Otaiba; and Ambassador Marc Sievers, who is the former Ambassador of the United States to the Sultanate of Oman. Bahrain's Ambassador Houda Nonoo will speak during the program as well.

"Both Sefirat HaOmer and Ramadan share a common theme as they are a time for reflection. As we celebrate the Lag B'Omer holiday and Iftar dinner together as the AGJC with our Muslim neighbors, it's a time for us to reflect on where the region is today and the role that interfaith diplomacy has played in getting us here," AGJC's Rabbi Dr. Elie Abadie said in a statement.

"Interfaith dialogue and co-existence is the catalyst for change in the Gulf and it was very important for us to host a program during this time when both Jews and Muslims celebrate holidays in order to further this important conversation," AGJC President Ebrahim Dawood Nonoo added. "Living in the Gulf, we are blessed to share and experience many holidays with our Muslim neighbors and to host them at our tables for our holidays. This virtual celebration will continue to bring us all together."

In biggest-yet Israel-UAE deal, Delek to sell stake in Tamar gas field for $1.1b

Israeli energy giant Delek Drilling announced Monday that it had signed a memorandum of understanding to sell its entire stake in Israel’s Tamar offshore gas field to the Abu Dhabi government-owned Mubadala Petroleum, potentially handing the United Arab Emirates a major share in one of the Jewish state’s key strategic and economic assets less than a year after the countries established diplomatic ties.

The deal for the 22 percent stake is worth $1 billion, with an additional $100 million conditioned on certain terms and goals being met, according to a notification about the agreement sent by Delek Drilling to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the Israel Securities Authority. The companies said they aim to finalize the deal by May 31.

If completed, the deal will be the biggest commercial agreement made so far since Israel and the UAE signed a normalization pact in August 2020, brokered by former US president Donald Trump.

“This transaction has the potential to be another major development in our ongoing vision for Natural Gas commercial strategic alignment in the Middle East, whereby Natural Gas becomes a source of collaboration in the region,” Yossi Abu, CEO of Delek Drilling, was quoted as saying in the statement. “The development is not only a significant endorsement of the quality of the Tamar reservoir and the Levant basin but also a major support for the East Mediterranean Natural Gas sector.”

Under the terms of the so-called gas framework, drawn up by the Israeli government in 2015 to regulate the domestic natural gas market and allow a competitive and decentralized structure, Delek — owned by tycoon Yitzhak Tshuva — was required to sell off its non-operated stake in Tamar by the end of 2021.

A columnist at Jordanian news site (that is popular in Egypt) Sawaleif showed yet again that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are identical.

The wicked, unclean Jews, God cursed them in many verses, their ancestors were monkeys and pigs metamorphosed physically, and their offspring was metamorphosed as a moral metamorphosis, they all have the characteristics of monkeys and pigs. F

Then Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, described them in the Great Qur’an that they have no covenant, and despite that, you find among us those who pledge to them, trust them, and coordinate with them. We know from the Noble Book of God that they are the killers of the prophets like Yahya (John the Baptist), peace be upon him, as they tried to kill Jesus, the son of Mary. peace be upon him and his mother. These demoralized Jews who were planted by Britain in our country and supported by America with money and arms, they kill Palestinian children and burn them with gasoline and fire while they are alive and attack women and defenseless sheikhs and uproot olive trees and they defame the sanctities morning and evening.

It is known to all that the Master of Creation and Beloved of Truth Muhammad, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, the prophet of all humanity and the gifted mercy, he and his companions moved with their weapons against the Jews of Banu Qurayza by order of God Almighty brought by Gabriel, peace be upon him, to punish them for their treachery and breach of the covenant, and we all know how their punishment was, and God bequeathed the Muslims their lands and homes.

The Companions and Followers agreed to expel all the Jews from all of the Arabian Peninsula for their misfortune and treachery, and in the age covenant it is written that they have no place in Palestine, according to the testimony of the bishops of Jerusalem, who handed over its keys to the Commander of the Faithful.

With all this being brought up, how do Muslims today accept Palestine, in which a Muslim people live from the sea to the river, to be ruled by a Jewish state ? Woo! From Zion's neck ... let the red blood come.

The author seems like such a likable chap.

As is always the case, there is not a peep of anger or annoyance from Arab media at this explicit antisemitism.

As is always the case, Arab antisemitism is not considered antisemitism by the self-declared experts on the topic from the Left.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Mahmoud Abbas' "political party" Fatah, took credit for some of the rockets that were shot to Israel over this past weekend.

These are the "moderates" who are eagerly taking credit for war crimes.

“Redeem you, Jerusalem.” The leadership of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades - Palestine, the Brigade of the Martyr Commander Nidal Al-Amoudi, is following the escalation of events in the city of Jerusalem, moment by moment, and instructing its fighters to avenge the attacks of the Zionist enemy against the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy sites.
The video documents the launching of the blessed rockets by our triumphant brigades towards our occupied towns last Saturday night, in response to the enemy's continuing violations in the city of Jerusalem, and the next is greater.

Sorry, did I call it a war crime? I think the people who call Israel an apartheid state refer to these as blessed resistance rockets.

04/26 Links Pt1: Israel Issues Ultimatum to Hamas: ‘Stop the Rocket Fire or We Will Hit You Hard, Tonight’; Biden’s Team of Israel-Haters; Iran FM: Kerry informed us of hundreds of Israeli covert actions

From Ian:

Jpost Editorial: How can Israel respond to rocket fire? - editorial

Jerusalem is a handy battle cry and rallying point in the Muslim world. As The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh noted yesterday, both Fatah and Hamas are seeking to use the issue of Jerusalem to distract from the internal problems and challenges they are facing ahead of the PA elections scheduled next month.

Israel so far has refrained from stating outright that it will not permit the Palestinian elections to take place in east Jerusalem, but this possibility is already being used as a way to justify both the current violence and Abbas’s possible postponement of the balloting altogether.

Hamas has a history of using rocket attacks on Israel to get what it wants, be it a cash inflow from Qatar, to divert attention from domestic problems, or this time, as an election ploy.

The situation is a tricky one for Israel. On the one hand, it does not want to risk an escalation that could so easily spiral out of control into a full-blown war; on the other, if Israel does not respond to a massive rocket barrage on its sovereign territory, it will lose its deterrence.

Hamas needs to learn that terrorism doesn’t pay, and the international community needs to convey that message. There is no excuse for firing 40 rockets on a civilian population; not riots in Jerusalem and not the Ramadan festival.

Residents of the Negev cannot be held hostage in the political battle between Fatah factions and Hamas in their election campaigns.

Similarly, the renewed protests on the Gaza border must be halted at this early stage. As we enter into the hot summer season, care must be taken also that the “balloon” fire attacks and “incendiary intifada” are not resumed.

The peace agreements recently signed between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan show that Israel has no argument with the Muslim world. It seeks peace, not war. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of terrorist organizations like Hamas. They should not be rewarded for their constant threats and belligerence.

Israel Issues Ultimatum to Hamas: ‘Stop the Rocket Fire or We Will Hit You Hard, Tonight’

After days of absorbing rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, Israel’s military and political leaders finally seem to have lost patience, presenting the terrorist group with an ultimatum.

“If the rocket fire from the Strip does not cease,” it warned, “we will hit you hard, tonight.”

Jihadist groups in Gaza — not all under the control of Hamas — have fired more than 40 rockets toward Israeli territory since Friday. Most have landed in open areas, the Iron Dome aerial defense system has shot several of them down, and the rest did not make it out of the Strip

Israel has retaliated with limited airstrikes on Hamas targets as well as the rocket launching sites. Jerusalem reiterated that although not all of the groups firing rockets may be connected to Hamas, they rule the Strip and will be held accountable.

According to sources from Hebrew outlet Walla!, Israel passed the message to the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Tor Wennesland to transmit to Hamas and the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah.

Israel does not want to deal with a Gaza battle right now, and Hamas knows it

The IDF has also been fighting Iran at sea, conducting strikes and raids on its oil tankers, delivering fuel to Syria in violation of international embargoes. On Saturday, one such ship was reportedly attacked off the Syrian coast, though it was not immediately clear if Israel was involved.

In addition, Israel has its gaze fixed on Vienna, Austria, where US President Joe Biden is negotiating with Tehran through European intermediaries over a mutual return to the 2015 nuclear deal, a move that Jerusalem vehemently opposes.

On Sunday night, an Israeli security delegation — now not including Kohavi — took off for Washington to meet with American counterparts over the course of the week in a highly improbable effort to keep the United States from rejoining the Iran nuclear deal or at least to make the agreement more robust, with improved oversight.

The Gaza-ruling Hamas, which has for years worked out precisely how far it can push Israel before it triggers a major response, likely knows that Jerusalem is not interested in getting roped into a conflict in the Strip — meaning it can afford to allow terror groups to launch some 40 rockets at southern Israel, knowing that the IDF will keep its retaliations limited.

And indeed this was the case this weekend. After 36 rockets were launched toward Israel on Friday night and early Saturday morning, several of which actually struck inside Israeli communities, the IDF responded with a tank strike on an unmanned Hamas observation post and air raids targeting launchpads and other infrastructure — far from a major blow to the terror group. When four more projectiles were fired at southern Israel on Saturday night, the Israeli military refrained from retaliating at all.

Since then, both sides have put out both reassuring and threatening messages to one another, publicly and through the Egyptian military, making it clear that neither side wants a larger conflict but that each was prepared to fight if one were to break out.

It is a situation that Israel has found itself in many times before, often resulting in multiple days of intense fighting and with little to show for it at the end.

Report: Hamas rejects ceasefire offers, threatens 'major conflict' over Jerusalem

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said overnight that he would not agree to hold Palestinian legislative elections, scheduled to take place on May 22, if Israel will not allow east Jerusalem residents to participate.

"We will not agree to hold elections without Jerusalem and without its candidates, because it is our eternal capital. We are calling on the international community to pressure Israel to live up to the agreements," Abbas said.

Meanwhile, mediated attempt to deescalate violence from the Gaza Strip, led by a senior official in Egypt's security apparatus and diplomatic officials in the US, continued over the weekend.

The Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, identified with Hezbollah, said Hamas officials had told it that there had been contact between Hamas and Israel in the past two days, via a third party, and that Hamas had rejected any proposal to reinstate calm as long as Israel continued its "current policy" in Jerusalem.

Al-Akhbar reported that Hamas wants to "prevent any incursion by settlers to Al-Aqsa mosque, and stop the plans to 'Judaize' the city, and [for Israel] to allow Palestinians in east Jerusalem to take part in the Palestinian elections."

According to the sources quoted, Hamas issued a warning to Egypt that if Israel continued its current policies, it would "lead to an explosion in various areas, especially Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, even if that drags down the situation in Gaza and things develop into a major conflict."