Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, December 19, 2016

Hanan Ashrawi's Miftah NGO hosts and publishes neo-Nazi material

Back in 2013, I found that the Miftah NGO, founded by Western media darling Hanaa Ashrawi, had published the blood libel of Jews drinking Christian blood for Passover as fact, along with explicit support for terror and terrorists.

Even today, the website includes explicit antisemitism in Arabic.

Now it has been discovered that Miftah even has an article (cached here) from the neo-Nazi "National Vanguard " site with classic Judeophobic tropes in English!

Entitled "Who Rules America - The Alien Grip on Our News and Entertainment Media Must Be Broken", the article ends off with this call to arms against "alien" Jews in the US:

The Jew-controlled entertainment media have taken the lead in persuading a whole generation that homosexuality is a normal and acceptable way of life; that there is nothing at all wrong with White women dating or marrying Black men, or with White men marrying Asian women; that all races are inherently equal in ability and character -- except that the character of the White race is suspect because of a history of oppressing other races; and that any effort by Whites at racial self-preservation is reprehensible.

We must oppose the further spreading of this poison among our people, and we must break the power of those who are spreading it. It would be intolerable for such power to be in the hands of any alien minority, with values and interests different from our own. But to permit the Jews, with their 3,000-year history of nation-wrecking, from ancient Egypt to Russia, to hold such power over us is tantamount to race suicide. Indeed, the fact that so many White Americans today are so filled with a sense of racial guilt and self-hatred that they actively seek the death of their own race is a deliberate consequence of Jewish media control.

Once we have absorbed and understood the fact of Jewish media control, it is our inescapable responsibility to do whatever is necessary to break that control. We must shrink from nothing in combating this evil power that has fastened its deadly grip on our people and is injecting its lethal poison into their minds and souls. If we fail to destroy it, it certainly will destroy our race.

Let us begin now to acquire knowledge and to take action toward this necessary end.

The article is from 2001, but its age does not acquit Miftah of antisemitism. On the contrary, the fact that Miftah decided that this article is worth spreading before anyone investigated their history of hate, and that the well-funded organization didn't remove it after worldwide publicity over its blood libel article, proves that Jew-hatred is part and parcel of the organization itself. This article, together with the other articles we've unearthed, proves that Miftah is an organization where antisemitism is a fundamental belief, and any so-called apologies issued in English are not a reflection of what Miftah members believe but of a desire not to jeopardize their sources of funding.

Those sources, deplorably, turn a blind eye to this overwhelming evidence of naked Jew-hatred at Miftah because they believe that Miftah is a moderating influence on Palestinian society. Instead of using their funds to make a fundamental change in Palestinian society, they use them to protect their precious NGOs whom they do not want to antagonize.

It is way past time that Western NGO and nations end writing automatic checks to people who push the worst forms of hate and pretending that somehow their funding advances peace.

NGO Monitor lists Miftah's funding sources:

2013 budget of $1,194,627, of which $1,005,304 was donated by foreign governments and entities.
2012-13 donors include: International Republican Institute (United States), Norway, NGO Development Centre, United Nations Development Programme, Ireland, United Nations Population Fund, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Germany), National Endowment for Democracy (US), UN Women, Oxfam Novib (Netherlands), Arab Fund (Kuwait), U.S. Consulate and the British Council.
In 2014-2016, Miftah received $330,000¹ from the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat (joint funding by Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands) in core funding.
In 2013, Miftah received EUR 70,000 from Ireland.

The US Consulate started its funding of Miftah after I exposed their spreading the blood libel.

(h/t מיכאל)

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Priti Patel

In October, after reports surfaced in the UK that much of the monetary aid given to the Palestinian Authority was going towards payments to terrorists and their families, the government suspended sending millions in aid pending review.

Prime Minister Theresa May mentioned this in her speech to Conservative Friends to Israel earlier this month, saying:

Let me be clear: no British taxpayers’ money will be used to make payments to terrorists or their families.
It is right that Priti Patel has called for an examination of aid spending in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to ensure that every penny is spent in the right places and in the right way.

That review is now bearing fruit, and (for now) the UK's aid towards Palestinians has been drastically limited to specific sectors.

In a statement, the Department for International Development said it was continuing to examine UK aid to the Palestinian territories but was imposing a series of “critical changes”.

From now on, British aid will focus “solely on vital health and education services”, with funding going towards “the salaries of health and education public servants on a vetted list” only.

No more UK funding will be available to PA workers in Gaza, and Britain will assess the PA’s “fiscal and public financial management reforms” with targets set in order to secure future payments.

It is expected that British money will be used to pay salaries of up to 30,000 Palestinian teachers, doctors, nurses and midwives. The funds will be used to ensure around 25,000 Palestinian children continue their education, are immunised, and have medical consultations.

There will be up to £25m of DfID money sent to the PA in this financial year.

This is very welcome. It is way past time to end blanket aid to the Palestinian Authority with little oversight as to how the money is actually spent.

Of course, the PA is trying to make up the shortfall with aid from Arab countries who have fewer compunctions about aid. Mahmoud Abbas visited Saudi Arabia today for that purpose.

May also said in her speech:

And she [Patel] is looking at options for the UK to support co-existence projects in the region – something I know so many people in this room have called for.

Keep in mind that the PA explicitly rejects co-existence projects with Israel as "normalization." As of earlier this year, essentially none of the UK's aid to the region included such projects, meaning that they acceded to the PA's bigotry in not accepting Jews as part of the region.

It looks like the UK is actually trying to do something positive in how it allocates funding to the Palestinians. Hopefully they will do the same towards UNRWA, and other nations will start to question their own aid priorities to the Palestinian Authority.

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White supremacists threaten Jews in a small Montana town

From ThinkProgress:

A white-supremacist call to action to “troll” Jewish people in Whitefish, Montana — home of white nationalist Richard Spencer’s mother — is gaining support on social media and putting lives in danger.

On Friday, Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer published an inflammatory article about Jews “targeting Richard Spencer’s mother,” Sherry Spencer, claiming that her real estate business is failing because of public backlash against her son, a white supremacist and prominent member of the National Policy Institute (NPI) who coined the term “alt-right.”

Anglin falsely claimed that Jewish people in Montana are “harassing” Sherry, attempting to extort money from her, and forcing her to sell a building she owns — all because they disagree with her son. He cites a Daily Mail article in which Sherry complains that her sons’ views are damaging her business. The article does not mention any particular religion. But Anglin called on his readers to harass Jews, describing them as a “vicious, evil race of hate-filled psychopaths” and “a people without shame.”

It reads:

“Are y’all ready for an old fashioned Troll Storm?
Because AYO – it’s that time, fam.
And as always: NO VIOLENCE OR THREATS OF VIOLENCE OR ANYTHING EVEN CLOSE TO THAT.

Just make your opinions known. Tell them you are sickened by their Jew agenda to attack and harm the mother of someone whom they disagree with.
The post included photos, phone numbers, email address, and social media accounts of members of Love Lives Now, a peace organization “committed to co-creating a caring, open, accepting and diverse community, free from discrimination and dedicated to equal treatment,” which is smeared by Anglin as a “terrorist group.” The action also incorporated photos of a local real estate owner, her husband, and young sons, as well as addresses where people can find them.

Love Lives Here Chairman Will Randall told the Missoulian that the fallout has been “gut-wrenching.” “These are some of the best people around, and to see them attacked because they’re Jewish or have a Jewish-sounding name is disgusting,” he said.

On Sunday morning, former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke lent his support to Anglin’s effort on Twitter.

I won't link to the neo-Nazi site that is making the threats, but it includes exhortations to tweet to a 12 year old boy: "You can hit him up, tell them what you think of his whore mother’s vicious attack on the community of Whitefish." (The boy closed his Twitter account.)

The husband of one of the targets has a law firm, and Anglin told people to give him bad Google reviews. Sure enough, only in the past few days, people have gone to his Google site and made up stories about how they were scammed in a Ponzi scheme by the lawyer, or that he ruined their lives with bad representation - all obviously fiction.

As pathetic as Anglin is, the people who mindlessly do what Anglin decrees from his hiding place are a huge and toweringly stupid waste of oxygen.

This is the address where Anglin's father accepts donations to his son's neo-Nazi website.

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RT (formerly Russia Today) has a half-hour program where former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, at home in his new Russian media outlet, interviews Rania Khalek about how Israel is supposedly testing out cool weapons on Palestinians and then selling them, as well as how Israel trains US police to use violent methods against minorities.

The interview is a farce masquerading as reporting, with Hedges asking Khalek things that she has no idea about and she pretends to spout some answers.

The only specific weapon Khalek mentions that Israel "tested" in Gaza and then marketed was a bunker buster bomb. Of course, she didn't mention that Hamas builds tunnels 30 meters below the ground to Israel in order to stage terror attacks, and only a bunker buster can hit something like that.

Similarly, she accuses Israel of killing Palestinians for the mere crime of carrying a knife, without mentioning what exactly they were doing with those knives.

What is most interesting is that both Hedges and Khalek are known plagiarizers.

Hedges has a long history of plagiarism, as this New Republic article lays out in excruciating detail. He stolen lines and paragraphs from several other writers, including Ernest Hemingway.

Khalek was once booted from Alternet for her own plagiarism, lifting essentially an entire article from Cracked magazine.

Hedges and Khalek - what a perfect combination of frauds. Not only frauds, but frauds who pretend that the are motivated by ethics in their libelous reporting when they are both proven to be thieves of others' intellectual property.

RT is the perfect venue for the false pieties of these "progressive" frauds.

(h/t Spotlighting SA)

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12/18 Links: Nazareth school children honor murderer of 3 Israelis; Amona residents take deal, avert forced evacuation

From Ian:

PMW: Nazareth municipality has school children honor murderer of 3 Israelis

Last week, the municipality of Nazareth, a predominantly Arab town in Israel headed by Israeli-Arab Mayor Ali Salam, held an event that glorified terrorist murderer Baha Alyan who together with an accomplice murdered 3 Israelis on a bus in Jerusalem last year. "Hundreds of elementary and high school students and young men and women of all ages" participated in the event organized by Nazareth municipality and the Inma'a Association for Democracy and Capacity Building. [Al-Quds, Dec. 11, 2016]
At the event, the coordinator Saeb Masawrah from Inma'a stated that the chain was a "completion of the message of Martyr Baha Alyan" and that the "Nazareth municipality supported the project":
"'We saw fit to establish the largest and longest chain of readers in the city of Nazareth as a completion of the message of Martyr Baha Alyan who came out of Jerusalem. We are gathering here in order to emphasize our unity as Arabs everywhere, and we will complete the message in all of the Arab cities and villages.' Masawrah noted that the Nazareth municipality supported the project and welcomed the cultural idea."
[Al-Quds, Dec. 11, 2016,]
Before Baha Alyan's terror attack, in which he murdered 3 innocent Israeli civilians, he had once established a readers' chain in Jerusalem. It is under this pretext that Nazareth honored him. However, his public legacy is one of murder.

UK Limits Aid to Palestinians Following Terror Financing Scandal

The United Kingdom issued new guidelines on Friday limiting the foreign aid it gives to the Palestinian Authority following reports that the money was being used to pay salaries to terrorists and their families.
The UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) announced that the Palestinian Authority will continue to receive British aid money “in order to maintain stability, provide vital services and build and strengthen the institutions needed for a viable two-state solution.” However, “key changes” have been made regarding how and to whom the money will be distributed.
1. UK support will now focus solely on vital health and education services, in order to meet the immediate needs of the Palestinian people and maximise value for money. Funding will only go towards the salaries of health and education public servants on a vetted list.
2. UK funds will no longer be used to support the salaries of Palestinian Authority public servants in Gaza who have not been able to work.
3. The UK will assess fiscal and public financial management reforms that the Palestinian Authority will need to show progress against in order to secure full future payments from the UK.
According to the FCO, Palestinian aid will now be directed through the European Union’s PEGASE mechanism (Palestinian-European Socio-Economic Management Assistance Mechanism), which will provide a list of qualified individuals limited to the health and education sectors. Those on the vetted list will be “checked by independent auditors” for risk factors including terror financing.

Amona residents take deal, avert forced evacuation

In a move likely to quell fears of a violent showdown between settlers and security forces, residents of Amona voted Sunday to evacuate their outpost peacefully, accepting a proposal from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that would see 24 families moved to an adjacent plot of land while the rest set up in nearby Ofra.
The state said earlier that it would request an extension for the evacuation notice — set for December 25 — which the High Court is likely to accept, in order to allow time for the implementation of the compromise deal.
The residents voted 45 in favor of the proposal, with 25 opposed and two abstentions. A few hours later, cabinet ministers embraced it in a unanimous vote.
The last-ditch effort to prevent the forced evacuation of Amona, presented Saturday night, was built on a previous proposal, rejected by the settlers last week, that would have seen only half as many families remain on the hilltop.
Under the agreement, presented by Netanyahu, Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Yossi Dagan, head of the Shomron Regional Council, 24 of Amona’s 40 families would receive mobile homes on a plot just meters from the outpost — as opposed to the 12 in last week’s offer — while the remaining families would be given temporary residences in Ofra.

Perhaps the most difficult part of speaking out against political Islam is the fact that so many otherwise intelligent people insist upon interpreting that opposition as one of irrational prejudice or, as is more often suggested, flat-out racism.

Let's dispatch with this immediately.

Opposing the Jihad (or political Islam or Islamism or whatever-you-want-to-call-it) constitutes unjust, illiberal bigotry against Muslims in the way that opposing Nazism constituted unjust, illiberal bigotry against Germans.

This is to say, it doesn't and it didn't.

Why do so many people - yes, particularly on the Left - have so much difficulty understanding such a basic concept? Why is it that western-progressives, who flatter themselves as the most well-educated and sophisticated people on the planet, are also the ones most likely to be stone-cold ignorant of Jihadism (i.e., the various ways in which Sharia is advanced) and the fun it's been having in Europe the last few years?

Why is it that they continue to disregard Jihadi activity in the United States or pretend that it is something other than what it is? Barack Obama, for example, famously referred to the 2009 massacre at Fort Hood as "workplace violence"... and the best minds of my generation nodded their heads in quiet submission.

So, this is two points for you guys.

Number 1:

There is Nothing Racist in Opposing Jihad

Please allow that to sink in for a moment.

Nazism was a racial supremacist philosophy and opposing Nazism did not represent anti-German bigotry.

Likewise, Sharia is a Muslim theo-supremacist legal philosophy and opposing it does not represent bigotry toward anyone. On the contrary, opposing Sharia is the "anti-racist" position.

Those of us who oppose the rise of political Islam - and, thus, Sharia - generally do so out of a commitment to secular humanism wherein people are free to practice their faith in any manner they choose so long as they do not throw Gay people off of tall buildings, behead Christians, force their kidnapped daughters into conversion, coerce women into black potato sacks where their individuality can be snuffed, or seek the genocide of the Jews via the eventual conquest of Jerusalem.

Those of us vocal in our disapproval of such behavior are, in fact, protesting the rise of a widespread theocratic movement that also happens to be the single most successful political movement of this century. This is not about Muslims as people. It is about a supremacist ideology that rules most of the Middle East, making significant advances into Europe, and that would see me, my family, and all of my friends either in submission or dead.

Not all Muslims support Sharia law, however, and the foremost victims of political Islam are Muslims, themselves. Anti-Jihadis are not anti-Muslim. Anti-Jihadis are almost always pro-democracy, pro-liberalism, pro-women's rights, and pro-ethnic minorities. Sharia is anti-democratic, anti-liberal, anti-women, anti-all-non-Muslims, and would sentence me to death for having the temerity to say so.

Yet, in the United States, progressives and Democrats look upon those of us standing up for universal human rights, by opposing Sharia, as right-wing, conservative, bigoted troglodytes. What the Left needs to understand, however, is that by accepting the rise of political Islam - as, for example, Obama did in his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt - they are undermining the very purpose of their ideological existence.

If the progressive-left no longer believes in universal human rights then it no longer believes in much of anything, now, does it?

Number 2:

The Jihad is Real

It's a bit strange that after the 9/11 Jihadi attack, the Boston Marathon Jihadi attack, the Fort Hood Jihadi Attack, the San Bernardino Jihadi attack, the Orlando Gay nightclub Jihadi attack and the recent Ohio State University Jihadi attack - to mention just a few - that American progressives fail to acknowledge the reality of the thing.

Jihadism is a political movement grounded within Islam that seeks to spread Sharia Law the world over. The violence is a means of spreading fear among the public in order to undermine the likelihood of political push-back. The primary way this is accomplished is through intimidating people into giving away their fundamental civil liberties. Thus free speech is stifled and people will not mutter too loudly about the destruction of Palmyra nor the Christian genocide in the Middle East.

None of this means, of course, that non-dhimmitudinous westerners should go chasing after Muslims.What it does mean is that the West is long over-due for an honest discussion of the significance of Sharia in terms of US immigration policy. Because opposing Sharia is considered "racist" on the progressive-left, the Democratic Party shows very little interest in monitoring just who comes into this country from parts of the world where Sharia dominates. In this way, non-Muslims from Muslim countries who wish to to become Americans - and thereby free themselves from living under Sharia - are given no more consideration in the immigration and naturalization process than actual Jihadis.

If the progressive-left and the Democratic Party would simply recognize that opposing Sharia is not racist, and that the rise of political Islam is a serious matter, then we can finally begin to have a rational conversation around US immigration policy. One aspect of this discussion, in my opinion, should be concerned with the need to fast-track non-Muslims from oppressive Sharia-dominated countries into the United States as asylum seekers.

In 1883, Emma Lazurus wrote,"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...". She did not write, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to kick your ass and undermine secular humanism."

We should allow Muslims into the United States who yearn to breathe free.

The other kind, maybe not so much.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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The reporters who falsely claim J-Street is equivalent to "liberal Jews"

There are plenty of liberal Jews who support Israel. There are plenty of Zionists who support a two-state solution. I might disagree with the specifics of what they believe and how they want to see peace in the Middle East, but their love for Israel and support for Israelis is unquestioned.

Then there is J-Street.

J-Street is an anti-Israel organization that has been artificially boosted by the White House and the media as the home for liberal Jews, even though its positions are outside the mainstream of the majority of Jewish Zionists, including liberals.

So while the overwhelming majority of American Jews support Benjamin Netanyahu - the democratically elected leader of Israel - J-Street does everything they can to undercut him, and Israeli democracy.

Liberal Jews like Alan Dershowitz advocate for a two-state solution. AIPAC supports a two state solution. The Jewish Agency supports a two state solution. And the Israeli government does, too.

As long as the security of Israel is not compromised by that solution.

J-Street has no such caveats. They have opposed essentially everything Israel has done over the Green Line even in areas that are undoubtedly going to be part of Israel under any conceivable peace plan. They have lobbied for the US not to veto one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions. They refuse to say that they support Israel as a Jewish state as part of any peace deal. They oppose tax deductions for even ambulances and medical clinics over the Green Line.

And that, in a nutshell, is both why J-Street is anti-Israel and why they do not represent liberal American Jews who support Israel.

But when the designated American ambassador to Israel called J-Street "worse that kapos" - a term I would not use personally, but one that indicates the depth of how J-Street uses its pretense of being "pro-Israel" as a screen to hide its anti-Israel activities - the media that has boosted J-Street beyond its actual importance is now trying to claim that there is no daylight between J-Street's positions and that of most liberal Jews.

So we see these tweets from the New York Times writer Matthew Rosenberg pretending that J-Street represents "dovish Jews" and "Jews who support two-state solution:"

Next Amb to Israel: More Settlements? Done. Annex West Bank? Sure. But dovish Jews? Worse than Jews who aided Nazis https://t.co/kg5a3x9mg8
— Matthew Rosenberg (@AllMattNYT) December 16, 2016

Trump Chooses Hard-Liner as Ambassador to Israel — said Jews who support two-state solution "are not Jewish" https://t.co/stII3meNpt
— Matthew Rosenberg (@AllMattNYT) December 16, 2016

That's not all. Look at this lying headline from New York magazine:

As if "liberal Jews" and "J-Street" are synonymous.

And the worst example of a Jew who tries to pretend that J-Street's positions, and therefore his own, are mainstream for American Jews, is Rob Eshman of the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, who wrote an entire absurd article on this theme:

All of these tweets and headlines are purposeful lies meant to mainstream an anti-Israel organization as somehow being pro-Israel.

And all these examples prove is that one cannot trust reporters who cannot distinguish between reality and their wishful thinking.

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Time magazine has an article that pretends to be a backgrounder on the legal status of Jerusalem, and it gets it quite wrong in a number of respects. Every single thing it gets wrong is against Israel, showing that this is a lesson in media bias.

After the Second World War, the State of Israel was established and gradually recognized ‘de jure’ — or lawfully — by most of the world’s countries. However, although the U.N. recognized the state of Israel in 1948, allowing it to become a member state, it placed the whole city of Jerusalem under international control (a ‘corpus separatum’) on Dec. 13 1949. Despite this, most governmental offices moved to the city.

UN General Assembly resolution 303(4) was passed on December 9, not December 13th. It did not place Jerusalem under international control - General Assembly resolutions cannot do that - it merely said "its intention that Jerusalem should be placed under a permanent international regime."

Time is lying.

Crucially, the United States voted against this resolution.

Here is what happened on December 13th: David Ben Gurion said in unmistakable terms that Jerusalem is and always will be the capital of Israel:

As you know, the General Assembly of the United Nations has in the meantime, by a large majority, decided to place Jerusalem under an international regime as a separate entity. This decision is utterly incapable of implementation - if only for the determined unalterable opposition of the inhabitants of Jerusalem themselves. It is to be hoped that the General Assembly will in the course of time correct this mistake which its majority has made, and will make no attempt whatsoever to impose a regime on the Holy City against the will of its people.

...For the State of Israel there has always been and always will be one capital only - Jerusalem the eternal. So it was three thousand years ago - and so it will be, we believe, until the end of time.

Time goes on:

But in 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel captured the eastern section of Jerusalem, which Jordan presided over, and declared Israeli law, jurisdiction and administration would be applied to the whole city. Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem has been considered illegal under international law and was condemned by the U.N., as well as other states.

The link that Time gives to claim that Israel's rule over the part of Jerusalem that Jordan had annexed is illegal says no such thing. It is an article by legal scholar Eyal Benvenisti that argues that even if Israel annexed "East Jerusalem" it would still be considered an occupier (a controversial theory) but in no way does his article claim that such occupation is illegal. In fact, there is no such thing as "illegal occupation" - the laws of belligerent occupation simply reflect that an occupying country has certain responsibilities, but the state of occupation is not illegal. The most that anyone can claim is that some Israeli actions violate the laws of occupation, not that the occupation itself is illegal.

Time is lying.

Time goes on:

In 1980, the Knesset declared that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel,” but this law was declared null by the U.N., which called for the removal of the remaining embassies in the city.

Here's what Time doesn't bother to say: Even though the US abstained on that Security Council resolution, it considered the demand that states abandon their diplomatic missions to be null and void. From Secretary of State Edmund Muskie:

The status of Jerusalem cannot simply be declared; it must be agreed to by the parties. That is a practical reality. It will remain so. despite this draft resolution or a hundred more like it....
The Council calls upon those States that have established diplomatic missions in Jerusalem to withdraw them from the Holy City. In our judgement this provision is not binding. It is without force. And we reject it as a disruptive attempt to dictate to other nations. it does nothing to promote a resolution of the difficult problems facing Israel and its neighbours. It does nothing to advance the cause of peace.

Time goes on:

Countries continued to locate their foreign embassies in Tel Aviv, Israel’s second largest city, situated on the Mediterranean coast, and the refusal to recognize Jerusalem as Israeli territory has become a near-universal policy among Western nations.

Not really, since Western nations recognize the Green Line (falsely) as a border. Their diplomats and heads of state routinely travel to Jerusalem to speak to Israeli diplomats. If pre-1967 Jerusalem was considered controversial, none of these national leaders would ever step foot in the city as guests of Israel.

Then Time contradicts itself:

The U.N. still maintains its position on Jerusalem. In October 2009, the U.N.’s Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that Jerusalem must be the capital of both Israel and Palestine—living side-by-side in peace and security, with arrangements for the holy sites acceptable to all—for peace in the Middle East to be achieved.

If the UN maintains its position of Jerusalem as a corpus separatum, then how can it also call for Jerusalem to be divided into becoming a capital of two states?

The UN Secretary General even realizes that the idea of Jerusalem as an international city is dead, yet Time says its position hasn't changed since 1949.

This is really a poor article, and its bias and lies show that Time isn't trying to explain the facts - it is trying to hide them.

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Four articles in the NYT against David Friedman in one day

Friday's New York Times had four articles against Donald Trump's choice to be the US ambassador to Israel.

Yes - four articles in one day. Two "news" articles, one editorial, and one op-ed.

The main news article on Friedman was "David Friedman, Choice for Envoy to Israel, Is Hostile to Two-State Efforts."

David M. Friedman, an Orthodox Jewish bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island, is Donald J. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, despite his lack of diplomatic experience and frequent statements that flout decades of bipartisan American policy.
“Bankruptcy law and involvement with settlements are not normally seen as an appropriate qualifications for the job,” one of its former occupants, Martin S. Indyk, said on Friday. “But then these are not normal times.”

Nah, no bias there, to quote Indyk first. As if no American president has ever appointed an ambassadorship to someone with no diplomatic experience before. Oh, wait - Obama and previous presidents have done so routinely, handing out ambassadorships to fundraisers fortheir campaigns, sometimes with good results and sometimes with embarrassingly bad results.

The next NYT story takes some quotes of Friedman's from his writings at Arutz-7:

David Friedman, Trump's Ambassador to Israel, on the Issues

David M. Friedman, the bankruptcy lawyer nominated by Donald J. Trump to become ambassador to Israel, has for at least a year regularly contributed columns to Arutz 7, a right-leaning Israeli news site.

Interestingly, while they published excerpts of eight of his articles in Arutz-7, they didn't excerpt this one:

While a student of American and Israeli foreign policy, I am no expert. I have little to add to the disgust already expressed by the experts with regard to the horrific agreement reached between the P5+1 and Iran – undoubtedly the worst international accord since Neville Chamberlain conceded Eastern Europe to Hitler. But I am an expert in negotiations, especially with difficult and often dishonest counterparties. And in that context, I would like to weigh in on how utterly inept Obama and Kerry proved to be.
A phrase commonly used for a negotiation where everything is up for grabs and there are wide swings between the bids and the asks is a “Persian Bazaar.” In a Persian Bazaar, the overriding rule is caveat emptor – let the buyer beware – and there is not even a pretext of honesty, integrity or good faith.
The Iranian nuclear negotiations were a prototypical Persian Bazaar. The Mullahs repeatedly spoke out of both sides of their mouths, professing, simultaneously, a desire for world peace and for death to America and Israel, making supposed concessions and then taking them back, refusing to consider new issues and then adding new conditions of their own. What would you expect? They are Persians playing a game they invented. And the United States was badly outplayed.
There are some basic rules to negotiation in such an environment. Simple and obvious rules that America flubbed at every opportunity.

Because it shows that in at least one aspect, Friedman knows a hell of a lot more than all the editors at the New York Times combined.

Then comes the op-ed from former ambassador Daniel Kurtzer:

Donald Trump’s Israel Ambassador Pick Is Hazardous to PeaceThrough his other appointments thus far, Mr. Trump has made it clear that he wants to take American policy in an abruptly new direction. In the Middle East, especially in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Trump’s approach is a prescription for trouble and the loss of American credibility.
The consequences of acting upon Mr. Friedman’s public suggestions are clearly dangerous. Moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem — not a pressing issue for most Israelis — will inspire riots across the Islamic world.

So to this diplomat, doing the right things always takes a back seat to the veto power of the fear of Muslims. Good to know.

Finally, the editorial itself:

A Dangerous Choice for Ambassador to Israel

There are other reasons to question Mr. Friedman’s fitness for the post. He has accused President Obama of anti-Semitism, absurdly, and called supporters of J Street — a liberal American Jewish organization that has lobbied for a two-state solution and the Iran nuclear deal — “far worse than kapos — Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps.” American ambassadors to Israel traditionally maintain close contacts with American Jews, as well as Israeli officials, but Mr. Friedman reportedly told a closed-door forum in Washington earlier this month that he would refuse to meet with J Street, effectively ostracizing a significant part of the community.

J-Street isn't a significant part of the Jewish community. It is a significant part of the White House strategy to split the Jewish community. Too bad the NYT doesn't know the difference.

In a further sign of Mr. Friedman’s apparent zeal for confrontation rather than diplomatic finesse, he has announced that he expects to have his office in Jerusalem, rather than Tel Aviv, where the American Embassy has been for 68 years, along with the embassies of most other countries. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem, which has sites that are sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews, as their capital. Like the crucial questions of borders, Israeli security and the fate of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, the contested status of Jerusalem should be resolved by negotiation, not by American fiat. Unilaterally relocating the embassy to Jerusalem would be interpreted as tipping the scale for Israel, further eroding America’s role as an honest broker.

I still have not seen a decent argument against moving the embassy to Jerusalem within the Green Line, and the NYT is not adding any. It obfuscates the issue, making it sound like the Arabs have a valid claim on Israel within the Green Line. US diplomats visit Jerusalem routinely without any Arab objection, because after all it is where Israel's leaders live and work. It is a silly fiction that the 45 minute drive between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is needed for peace.

This isn't a reasoned objection to Friedman. This is an obsession.

And, as the Free Beacon notes, the NYT derangement over Friedman spills over into Twitter.

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12/17 Links: Danon: UN hypocrisy against Israel has broken records; Gove: 'Anti-Zionism Is Anti-Semitism, Impure and Simple'

From Ian:

Danon: UN hypocrisy against Israel has broken records

Outgoing United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday admitted that the international body is biased against Israel.
In a statement to the Security Council summarizing his ten years in office, Ban said that "we must never accept bias against Israel within UN bodies."
The Secretary General then admitted that the UN has a "disproportionate volume of resolutions, reports and conferences criticizing Israel" and that "in many cases, rather than helping the Palestinian cause, this reality has hampered the ability of the UN to fulfill its role effectively."
At the same time, Ban criticized Israel over the Regulation Law, which recently passed its first reading in the Knesset and would legalize the status of some communities in Judea and Samaria.
"I strongly urge legislators to reconsider advancing this bill, which will have negative legal consequences for Israel and substantially diminish the chances for Arab-Israeli peace," Ban said, according to the Reuters news agency.
Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, reacted to the Secretary General's statement with regards to Israel and criticized the UN.
"The Secretary General admitted the clear truth; the UN's hypocrisy towards Israel has broken records over the past decade. During this time the UN passed 223 resolutions condemning Israel while only eight resolutions condemning the Syrian regime as it has massacred its citizens over the past six years. This is absurd," said Danon.
"With a new Secretary General set to take office next month, we look forward to the possibility of a new era of fairness at the UN," the Ambassador added.

Ban condemns West Bank outpost bill, admits UN biased on Israel

Ban said that if the bill is passed by the Knesset, it “would for the first time apply Israeli law on the status of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank” in clear violation of international law.
“I strongly urge legislators to reconsider advancing this bill, which will have negative legal consequences for Israel and substantially diminish the chances for Arab-Israeli peace,” he said.
The South Korean secretary-general called for Palestinian unity, an end to Palestinian terrorism and incitement to violence, and a halt to Israeli settlement construction if the two-state solution were to yield fruit.
“The framework for peace remains unchanged: the establishment of two states, on the basis of the principle of land for peace, and a just and comprehensive regional peace consistent with relevant Security Council resolutions as well as with existing agreements signed between the parties,” he said.
Ban didn’t refrain from acknowledging and criticizing his own organization’s bias against Israel in recent years.
“Decades of political maneuverings have created a disproportionate volume of resolutions, reports and conferences criticizing Israel,” he said. “In many cases, rather than helping the Palestinian cause, this reality has hampered the ability of the UN to fulfill its role effectively.”
“At the same time, Israel must realize that the reality in which a democratic state, governed by the rule of law, keeps the Palestinian people under military occupation will continue to generate criticism and calls for accountability.”
Ban called on the Security Council to issue a commitment to the two-state solution, saying “the status quo entrenches a one-state reality of perpetual occupation and conflict.”
“We must not give up on the right of Palestine to exist, just as we must protect the right of Israel to exist in peace and security with its neighbors,” he said.

Prominent British MP: Anti-Zionism Is ‘Simply Antisemitism Minding Its Manners So It Can Sit in a Seminar Room’

Anti-Zionism is “simply antisemitism minding its manners so it can sit in a seminar room,” a prominent British Conservative politician said on Friday.
In an op-ed published in the Times of London, Michael Gove — the MP for Surrey Heath and a former secretary of state for justice — wrote, “Antisemitism has moved from hatred of Jews on religious or racial grounds to hostility towards the proudest expression of Jewish identity we now have — the Jewish state.”
“No other democracy is on the receiving end of a campaign calling for its people to be shunned and their labour to be blacklisted,” he continued. “This is antisemitism, impure and simple. It is the latest recrudescence of the age-old demand that the Jew can only live on terms set by others. Once Jews had to live in the ghetto, now they cannot live in their historic home.”
Antisemitism, Gove emphasized, “deserves to be called out, confronted and opposed.”
Furthermore, Gove noted, “the fate of the Jewish people, and the survival of the Jewish state, are critical tests for all of us. The darkest forces of our time — Islamic State, the Iranian leaders masterminding mass murder in Aleppo — are united by one thing above all: their hatred of the Jewish people and their home. Faced with such implacable hatred, and knowing where it has always led, we should not allow antisemitism any space to advance, or incubate.”
Gove ended with a call for the UK to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration — in which Britain announced its support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” — by moving its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Gove: 'Anti-Zionism Is Anti-Semitism, Impure and Simple'

Britain should move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and have the Queen open the new premises in a show of solidarity with the Jewish state, senior Conservative Michael Gove has said.
The former Education and Justice secretary has called for the move as a marker in opposing the rising tide of antisemitism, which he says is being dressed up as antizionism.
The gesture would prove that Britain was “not going to be intimidated by those who want to treat Israel as a second-class state,” Gove said.
Israel is the only country in which the British embassy is not located in the nation’s capital, and the only British ally which the Foreign Office has steadfastly refused to let the Queen visit.

Moroccan King Mohammed VI visited a newly rehabilitated synagogue and a new Jewish museum in Casablanca on Friday, part of a program to rehabilitate the old city of Casablanca.

The Jewish community held a ceremony in the king's honor, which included a prayer for the monarch.

The king also visited other sites in the city, such as a new health center for women.

Here is a video in Arabic on the event.

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12/16 Links Pt2: PA claims it got no US aid in 2016 but State Dept. gave them $357m; Terrorists Angered by Trump’s Election

From Ian:

Mossad blamed as Tunisian scientist ‘with Hamas ties’ killed near his home

Mohammed Al-Zoari, an aviation scientist and engineer with links to Palestinian terror group Hamas, was shot dead at point-blank range on Thursday in the Tunisian city of Sfax, Hebrew outlets quoted Arabic media as saying Friday evening.
According to reports on Israel’s Channel 10 and Army Radio, unknown assailants shot Zoari multiple times when he was sitting in his car near his home.
The reports said between three and seven bullets were found in his body.
According to Channel 10, a senior Tunisian journalist said the Israeli spy agency Mossad had been tracking Zoari for quite some time, and was responsible for his assassination.
Israel’s Channel 2 news said Zoari was reported to have received death threats because of his Palestinian terror links.
However, Channel 2 also quoted Tunisian security officials as saying that the investigation of the death did not currently suggest an assassination by a foreign intelligence agency.

PA claims it got no US aid in 2016. In fact, State Dept. gave Palestinians $357 million. And that’s not all

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah claimed last week that his government has received no aid from Washington in 2016, accusing the US of imposing a “financial siege” on the Palestinians. But the State Department has in fact provided Ramallah with over $357 million in financial assistance in the past year, according to information given to The Times of Israel by a US State Department official on Thursday.
Additionally, in 2016 alone, the US contributed $355,177,827 to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA), of which $95 million was earmarked for the West Bank and Gaza. UNWRA also operates Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
In total, therefore, the US gave around $712 million in aid to Palestinians in 2016, and is the world’s largest supplier of such aid.
Hamdallah told the official PA radio station the Voice of Palestine on December 8 that his government has not seen any of the aid money approved by the US in 2016. He described this as part of a “financial siege” on the Palestinian government. That allegation against the US of failure to pay, according to figures and explanations received by The Times of Israel, is a cynically skewed misrepresentation of the reality.
“Since last year, there is a financial siege on the Palestinian government… For example, let’s speak frankly, the US approved $263 million in 2016 as aid to the government. Look, 2016 is about to end, no shekel or agora, or dinar or dollar has been paid, if we speak frankly. We hope that this aid money will be paid,” he said, according to a translation by Palestinian Media Watch.
Hamdallah then listed and praised countries that he said have given aid to the PA in 2016, and excluded the US.

Israel Can Be Jewish, Democratic, and Committed to Human Rights, Without Contradiction

Looking to Israel’s Declaration of Independence for guidance, Ruth Gavison addresses the polarization within Israeli society that has resulted from fierce debates over identity, the status of the Palestinians, religion, and the like:
We [in Israel] have forgotten that democracy, human rights, and the Jewish state, [all of which are enshrined in the Declaration], go together very well. Jews used to understand this. Not only do they go together well, they are required for each other. The people who struggled to establish the Jewish state knew that they were going to have a democracy and they were very responsive to the idea of human rights. . . . But these three interlocking elements . . . are today viewed by many as totally distinct, with either major tensions or even outright contradiction among them.
So, increasingly, we find people who want to take one element of the complex vision . . . and make it primary. They give their primary ideal a very expansive interpretation. They demand that the other two elements be operative only within the constraints of the broadly-defined primary element. And this happens from all sides of the political and cultural spectrum. . . .
The “wisdom” of the Declaration, and of the decisions that the founding fathers and mothers made in the first decades of Israel, was their agreement to disagree. . . . The Declaration itself [thus] left many ideological questions open. . . . Who is a Jew? What role does the Jewish religion play in the new state? What is the relationship within Judaism among nationalism, culture, and religion? What is the status of the Arab minority and what are its rights? . . .