Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Is the two-state solution dead?

The original headline of this New York Times article about Kerry's speech read:

Expiration Date for Israeli-Palestinian 2-State Solution May Be Jan. 20

Soon after, they changed the headline to:

Two-State Plan Nears the End Of Its Shelf Life

This was the headline in today's front page, but online it changed again to "In John Kerry’s Mideast Speech, a Clash of Policies and Personalities."

At least one thing is accurate about the NYT coverage: the speech was directed at Israel, and gave Palestinians a pass, outside of the obligatory "we tell Palestinians that they really should stop incitement and terror. Pretty please" disclaimer to make the position of the outgoing US administration appear even-handed.

As I documented in my previous post, it is Israel and only Israel that has made any concessions for peace since the Oslo process began. The Palestinian leadership has not only consistently bragged about its intransigence, it has hardened it, to the point that it even threatens its own citizens who visit Jewish-owned stores and it refuses to even speak to Israeli negotiators. EU-funded programs to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians have essentially all failed because of official PA policy against "normalization"; their funds have been redirected into internal Israeli peace programs between Jews and Israeli Arabs.

Now in a last gasp effort, Obama and Kerry are perversely claiming that it is Israel that is imperiling the two state solution, not the Palestinians. The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media barely report about the things I just mentioned, solidifying the myth of Israeli culpability and Netanyahu's secret desire for annexing the territories.

What the White House and the media don't understand is that they are the ones who have emboldened Palestinian intransigence and the failure of negotiations, not Israel.

By consistently giving Palestinian leadership a pass - by ignoring the stream of antisemitism and support of terror that the current generation of Palestinian young adults have been barraged with since they were born in the 23 years after Oslo, ignoring that Mahmoud Abbas' party praises terrorists literally every day on Facebook, by placing the blame for the failure of successively generous (and successively foolhardy) Israeli peace plans onto Israel, the media and the world governments have given Palestinians a pass for their outrageous behavior.

And the Palestinian leadership is more than happy to pocket their political gains that resulted from their refusal to compromise.

Very few Israelis want to rule over Palestinians. But they don't want to imperil their security for a piece of paper, either.

At this point, no one knows that a Trump administration will do. But it is very possible, if they play their cards right, that they could do more for peace than Obama and Kerry could do in a lifetime.

It is this coddling of Palestinians by the international community and the media that have caused Abbas and Erekat to harden their positions while even the Likud party has softened its own. When faced with a United States that tells them that this gravy train is over and that if they want a state they need to act like it, it might prod them into action.

Or it will reveal that their true desire isn't really to have a state of their own but to destroy the Jewish state. President Trump will not be afraid to say that once he is convinced of it, and all Palestinian actions to this point have pointed in that direction.

A Trump administration that ends this coddling of a group of terror supporters rebranded as peacemakers will certainly do more for real peace than anything - and I mean anything - that Obama or Kerry has done.

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The US continues to award Palestinians for intransigence - 2 major changes in US policy today

John Kerry's speech on Wednesday gave Palestinians two more gifts from the US today - rewards for their adamant refusal to compromise.

Kerry said that Israel must do more concrete moves for peace - stopping building, giving more power to the PA - in order to build confidence towards a two state solution. There were no such concrete demands on the Palestinian side, only wishy washy requests to stop incitement and terror - with no consequences if they refuse.

As has been pointed out before, Mahmoud Abbas has bragged on multiple occasions that he has not changed the Palestinian position one bit since 1988.

Since then, the Israeli side has given the Palestinians autonomy, land, and allowed them to arm themselves. It has released scores of murderers and terrorists from prison.

The Palestinians have responded with suicide bombings, stabbings, shootings, rocket fire, more incitement and more overt support of terrorists. Israel has made all the concessions. (Unless you count the Palestinian Authority stopping terror attacks to be a "concession," which mean you consider Palestinians to be murderers by nature and want to reward them for acting like normal humans.)

And the US has rewarded the intransigent side.

In 2001, the US officially said that the Palestinians should have a state - a wonderful reward for the outbreak of the second intifada.

In 2011, President Obama for the first time said that any peace plan must adhere to the 1967 lines with equal land swaps - a completely new US position, giving Palestinians far more than the Clinton parameters envisioned, and also a reward for Palestinian refusal to counter earlier Israeli offers for peace.

And today, John Kerry gave two major new concessions to the Palestinians as a reward for their refusal to even talk to Israel for years.

One was to say that Jerusalem must be the capital of two states. His specific words were "Jerusalem as the internationally recognized capital of the two states."

This was never officially stated by the US before.

The other major change was that the US changed its characterizations of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria from being "illegitimate" to now reverting to language from the Carter era that they are "inconsistent with international law." The very first veto at the UN Security Council by the Obama administration in 2011 was for a resolution that called the settlements illegal, now Kerry says that this is official US policy.

That is two major changes in Obama's policy towards Israel today, and (at least) three during his administration, all of them in favor of Palestinians who have not even deigned to negotiate with Israel after months of pleading by the US.

When Israel gives concessions for peace, they are not rewarded with goodwill as Kerry pretends is a prerequisite for peace. They are instead punished, while Palestinians reap more and more rewards for doing nothing at all for peace, in fact for creating an environment where their people will support terror for generations to come.

The lesson is clear. Israel must stop being nice, because the nice guys are the ones who are treated by the world as if they have no rights to begin with.

The policy of bending over to please the West has resulted in the West bending over to reward the terrorists.

And on Wednesday, John Kerry proved it.

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Chanukah Night 5: Shir Soul medley

Another acapella group, but a new twist on some classics.

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12/28 Links Pt2: PM, ministers lay into Kerry’s ‘obsessive, skewed’ speech on conflict; UN to fund blacklist of companies in 'settlements'

From Ian:

Kerry: Two-state solution ‘only path to peace,’ but we won’t impose deal

US secretary of state John Kerry on Wednesday laid out his “comprehensive vision” for the future of Middle East peacemaking, saying that a two-state solution was the “only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state,” but promising that the US would not seek further UN action on the conflict, days after President Barack Obama infuriated Israel’s for the decision not to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlement activity.
In a speech that lasted well over an hour, Kerry described settlements as an important obstacle to achieving an agreement between the sides and that Israeli actions in the West Bank were putting the two-state solution, which he said was the sole path to peace, “in serious jeopardy.”
Kerry argued that settlement construction in the West Bank was being “strategically placed in locations that make two states impossible” and said the “the status quo is leading toward one state, or perpetual occupation.”
With less than a month as secretary of state, Kerry sought to champion the two-state outcome he worked to achieve throughout the last four years, saying it was the only path forward. Yet his address comes in the backdrop of incoming president Donald Trump signaling he may not be committed to the two-state framework.
“The two-state solution is the only way to achieve a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” Kerry said. “It is the only way to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state living in peace and security with its neighbors.”
“It is the only way to ensure a future of freedom and dignity for the Palestinian people and it is an important way of advancing United States interests in the region,” he added of the two-solution, which he said was “now in serious jeopardy.”

PM, ministers lay into Kerry’s ‘obsessive, skewed’ speech on conflict

Israel’s leadership was quick to deride US Secretary of State John Kerry’s vision for a solution to the Middle East conflict Wednesday, shortly after the American diplomat once again championed the two-state solution and staunchly defended the Obama administration’s decision to allow the UN Security Council to declare Israeli settlements illegal.
Responding to the speech, the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement to the media that, “Like the Security Council resolution that Secretary Kerry advanced at the UN, his speech tonight was skewed against Israel.
“For over an hour, Kerry obsessively dealt with settlements and barely touched upon the root of the conflict — Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries.”
Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home party, said he had no intention of allowing Palestinians to set up a “terror state” alongside Israel.
“Kerry quoted me three times anonymously [in his speech] to show that we are opposed to a Palestinian state,” Bennett wrote in Hebrew on Twitter. “It’s true. If it’s up to me, we will not establish another terror state in the heart of the land [of Israel].”

PMW: Support PMW: Look what we accomplished this year!

"Palestinian Media Watch showed how the PA sought to deceive international donors..."
[MP Joan Ryan, Labour Party in UK Parliament, June 13, 2016]
"Anyone in this parliament who has been to the many sessions of Palestinian Media Watch that have taken place here over the last 15 years has seen some of the appalling material..."
[MP Michael Danby, Labour in Australian Parliament, Nov. 22, 2016]
"Antisemitic statements and incitement to violence by Palestinian leaders are documented by Palestinian Media Watch... Aid to Palestine should therefore be conditioned."
[MP Mikael Oscarsson, in Swedish Parliament, Jan. 19, 2016]
"The Norwegian Foreign Ministry confirms Palestinian Media Watch's claim." [TV news report, NRK TV (Norway), April 24, 2016]
"Itamar Marcus [PMW director]... has documented the flow of money to the [terrorist] prisoners... " German MP Volker Beck: "Supporting people who have committed terrorist acts against Israel or Israeli citizens cannot be funded under any circumstances by the PA, when Germany supports them financially." [TV news report, Channel 1 (Germany), Aug. 25, 2016]
"The donor community is helping the PA basically pay people to slay other people and then a stipend is given..."
[Congressman Ed Royce referring to PMW report
in House Foreign Affairs Committee, April 13, 2016]

1) He did it on Shabbos. Many people will read this and say, "What do you mean Shabbos? He did it before Chanuka!"

They're not wrong. Obama pushed the resolution to a vote before a Jewish holiday as if to twist the knife in that much deeper. Roseanne Barr has pointed out the similarity here to how the Nazis operated during the Holocaust.

nazis enacted anti jewish laws on the eve of jewish holidays-exactly as @POTUS has done on eve of Hanukkah. Don't light candles 2night, BHO!
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) December 24, 2016

Barr's point is valid. The Nazis purposely scheduled the deportation of Jews from the Zychlin Ghetto to the Chelmno camp to take place on Purim, March 3, 1942. Half a year later, Amon Goeth and his SS-men took 50 Jews from their barracks at Auschwitz and shot them dead. Because it was Yom Kippur.

But there is another point to make and that is that the Jewish Sabbath takes precedence over most holidays and certainly over Chanuka. It's the holiest day of the week. And it's the day that observant Jews take a break from all media.

By pushing the vote through on the Sabbath, Obama effectively rendered mute the people most affected by this resolution: the ones who see yishuv haaretz (settling the land) as fulfilling God's will; the ones who set Jerusalem above their chiefest joy (Psalms 137:5-6). He, Obama, made it illegal for Jews to live in Jerusalem or pray at the wall. And he did that on the holy Sabbath day, while they were out of contact with the wider world. It is sneaky, evil, and underhanded.

2) The Security Council applauded the results. The always eloquent Nachman Kahana writes:

"The vote is not the real story here. The more damning action of the Security Council occurred after the voting, when all the members stood and clapped at the results."

Rabbi Kahana draws a comparison between the behavior of the Philistines before Samson's final heroic act (Judges, chapter 16) and the behavior of the Security Council to the State of Israel. The Philistines ridicule Samson and are said to be in "high spirits." By the same token, says Rabbi Kahana, "The clapping at the end of the vote at the Security Council disparaged, denigrated, belittled, trivialized, ridiculed and discredited the Jew and the Jewish State. . .

"As a consequence of the Philistines’ ridicule and clapping, the Temple to Dagon was destroyed. The Security Council’s ridicule and clapping will bring about the obliteration of the institution that has lost its ability to discern between right and wrong."

Amen. Can't be soon enough for this gal.

3) The smiling Obama Christmas photo POTUS tweet. Nothing like tweeting a photo of the Obama family wearing self-satisfied smiles, because hey! O just screwed the Jews! (And any day that happens is a holiday in the Obama White House)

May your home be filled with peace and joy. Merry Christmas! pic.twitter.com/ZfJKus2SsV
— The First Lady (@FLOTUS) December 25, 2016

4) Alan Dershowitz telling us that Obama is the worst president ever. Dershowitz has been everywhere since the lead up to the resolution, playing up to the cameras, writing articles, giving interviews. And we should listen to him because? He voted for the man?? Stumped for him TWICE?

“He called me into the Oval Office before the election and said to me, ‘Alan, I want your support. And I have to tell you, I will always have Israel’s back.’ I didn’t realize that what he meant was that he’d…stab them in the back.”

Funny. Because a lot of us who didn't go to Harvard did know he'd do exactly that. We tried to tell you, Alan. Do we now have to listen to you tell us just how bad he/this is?

5) Obama ran roughshod over American tradition by doing something lame ducks just don't do. Seth Frantzman wrote a comprehensive list of abstentions by the U.S. on anti-Israel resolutions. This writer checked each abstention. Not one abstention occurred during a president's final month in office. To break with longstanding U.S. policy during the lame duck period is just not done. Basically this is Obama thumbing his nose at America and its longstanding presidential tradition.

6) No one called the Arabs out for their ongoing terror during the Security Council meeting.

7) No one called the Arabs out for refusing to negotiate during the Security Council meeting.

8) The media paints Israel the violent party. Writing about the reaction of the Israeli government to the U.S. abstention, Washington Post writer Ruth Eglash characterizes MK Naftali Bennett as a "more-militant" voice (which by default must make Netanyahu at least "somewhat militant"):

"Netanyahu’s anger was matched by more-militant voices in his right-wing coalition.
"Education Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the ultranationalist Jewish Home party, held a news conference at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, one of Judaism’s holiest sites, saying the city has been the capital of Jews for 3,000 years."

What is it that makes either of these government figures "militant?" Is holding a news conference at the Western Wall "militant?" Are Netanyahu and Bennett militant because they think Jews should be able to live in Jerusalem? Pray in Jerusalem?

The answer, of course, is that neither one of them is militant. The tag reflects only the Washington Post's bias, or at least that of Ruth Eglash.

9) The pretense that Jews building homes is something illegal, evil, and nasty. There is nothing wrong with people building homes. Therefore there is nothing wrong with Jews building homes. There is certainly nothing wrong and everything right with Jews building homes in their indigenous territory. The thing that's really nasty, evil, and wrong is that anyone at all would demand that even one square inch of the Holy Land be Judenrein. Absolutely. Evil.

10) Obama's brazen effrontery to God. God gave Israel to the Jews. Forever (See: Genesis 13:14-17). Who is Obama to say it is illegal for Jews to live in the land God gave them?? (The nerve.)

But hey, it's Chanuka. And Chanuka is when we Jews remember stuff. We remember our victory over the Greeks. We remember getting our Temple back. We remember regaining our religious freedoms and ridding Jerusalem of Hellenist culture.

Chanuka is a time to ponder all God's miracles for us. Oil, for instance, that lasted way longer than it possibly could. Not to mention, the disappearance of a powerful culture.

Yes! We outlived the Greeks.

And we'll outlive Obama, too.

Meantime, I rather enjoy imagining him being struck by lightning. Repeatedly. (A girl can dream.)

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12/28 Links Pt1: Trump slams Obama for his 'disdain' and 'disrespect' toward Israel; How Pro-Israel Dems Lost the Party

From Ian:

Transcript claims to show US worked with Palestinians on UN resolution

An Egyptian paper published what it claims are the transcripts of meetings between top US and Palestinian officials that, if true, would corroborate Israeli accusations that the Obama administration was behind last week’s UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements.
At the same time, a report in an Israeli daily Tuesday night pointed to Britain helping draft the resolution and high drama in the hours leading up to the vote, as Jerusalem tried to convince New Zealand to bury the Security Council measure.
In a meeting in early December with top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, US Secretary of State John Kerry told the Palestinians that the US was prepared to cooperate with the Palestinians at the Security council, Israel’s Channel 1 TV said, quoting the Egyptian Al-Youm Al-Sabea newspaper.
Also present at the meeting according to the report were US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and Majed Faraj, director of the Palestinian Authority’s General Intelligence Service.

White House: No coordination with Erekat, leaked transcript ‘total fabrication’

The White House on Wednesday denied any coordination with the Palestinians over the formulation of Friday’s United Nations Security Council Resolution condemning Israeli settlements, and called recently leaked transcripts of conversations between top US and Palestinian officials, published by an Egyptian newspaper, a “total fabrication.”
According to the report in Al-Youm Al-Sabea, a meeting took place earlier this month between Secretary of State John Kerry, national security adviser Susan Rice and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, during which the three strategized on how to push forward a resolution that would be acceptable to the US.
While Erekat did lead a Palestinian delegation to Washington this month, no such meeting between all three individuals took place, according to National Security Council spokesman Ned Price.
A State Department statement released at the time confirmed that Erekat met separately with Kerry and Rice, but no tripartite meeting between all of them occurred, said Price.
“This alleged meeting… never happened,” Price told The Times of Israel on Wednesday morning. “The ‘transcript’ is a total fabrication.”

Phone Call From Biden Said to Precipitate Ukraine’s UN ‘Yes’ Vote

The repercussions of Friday’s United Nations Security Council vote in favor of a resolution urging Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory” continue to reverberate. The resolution, which declared Jewish settlement anywhere in the West Bank including the Old City of Jerusalem to be in violation of international law, passed by 14-0, with the United States abstaining—a game-changing action that broke with decades of diplomatic guarantees to Israel and which enraged American Jewish political leaders in both parties.
A wealth of evidence is now emerging that, far from simply abstaining from a UN vote, which is how the Administration and its press circle at first sought to characterize its actions, the anti-Israel resolution was actively vetted at the highest levels of the U.S. Administration, which then led a pressure campaign—both directly and through Great Britain—to convince other countries to vote in favor of it.
Tablet has confirmed that one tangible consequence of the high-level U.S. campaign was a phone call from Vice President Joseph Biden to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which succeeded in changing Ukraine’s vote from an expected abstention to a “yes.” According to one U.S. national security source, the Obama Administration needed a 14-0 vote to justify what the source called “the optics” of its own abstention.
“Did Biden put pressure on the Ukrainians? Categorically yes,” said a highly-placed figure within the Israeli government with strong connections to Ukrainian government sources, who confirmed to Tablet that the Americans had put direct pressure on both the Ukrainian delegation—and on Poroshenko personally in Kiev. “That Biden told them to do it is 1000% true,” the source affirmed.

Trump slams Obama for his 'disdain' and 'disrespect' toward Israel

US President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday took to social media to rail against the Obama administration's treatment of Israel, criticizing the White House's foreign policy decisions and its most recent move at the United Nations.
"We cannot continue to let Israel be treated with such total disdain and disrespect," Trump wrote on Twitter hours before US Secretary of State John Kerry was scheduled to give a speech on Middle East peace.
He continued by stating: "[Israel] used to have a great friend in the U.S., but... not anymore. The beginning of the end was the horrible Iran deal, and now this (U.N.)!"
"Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!," the president-elect added.
Shortly after Trump issued his remarks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the incoming American commander-in-chief for backing Israel.
"President-elect Trump, thank you for your warm friendship and your clear-cut support for Israel!" Netanyahu wrote on Twitter.

Al Jazeera looks at modern antisemitism. What does it leave out?

From Al Jazeera:

It's been called the world's oldest hatred. In back-to-back debates in this UpFront special, we discuss anti-Semitism.

In the first debate, a panel explores the rise - or return - of anti-Semitism among the far right, and discusses if Donald Trump's election has emboldened those attitudes.

And in the second debate, we discuss anti-Semitism among the left, and the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

Part 1: Anti-Semitism on the political right

Since Donald Trump's election victory in November, anti-Semitic attacks have been on the rise in the US, with swastikas and other Nazi imagery increasingly popping up.

Has far-right anti-Semitism been energised by Trump's election win?

"It's not so much that this anti-Semitism didn't exist before; it probably did exist but it was under the radar," says Haaretz senior columnist Chemi Shalev. "The candidacy of Donald Trump brought forth or emboldened all sorts of anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish groups who nobody paid attention to any more."

Hadas Gold, a media reporter for Politico magazine, says: "Some of my colleagues got actual letters to their personal addresses at home - it was rather frightening. I mean, it's never pleasant to see your face with a bullet hole through it. These direct threats were something new, and they were almost always directly connected to Donald Trump."

In the first part of this UpFront special, Chemi Shalev and Hadas Gold discuss the troubling resurgence of anti-Semitism among the hard right.

Part 2: Anti-Semitism on the political left

With anti-Semitism on the rise across parts of Europe, is it something the left and supporters of the Palestinians need to tackle urgently, or is anti-Semitism being used and abused by supporters of Israel?

"Just because sometimes not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish, doesn't mean that it never is," says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, who also writes for The Jewish Chronicle. "Sometimes it is, the way it's expressed. If it borrows from or draws on the language or imagery of old style anti-Jewish prejudice, then it is."

Israeli-Canadian Lisa Goldman, cofounder of the left-wing Israeli journal 972, says: "I do see it on the rise in Europe on the left, but the crude anti-Semitism I'm seeing comes from the radical right."

Palestinian-American human rights lawyer Noura Erakat, who is also an author and academic, says: "I think that obviously there is a misunderstanding that's constructed. But at the end of the day, those who are part of a movement against Zionism are part of a liberatory movement not only for Palestinians, but it has an emancipator potential for Jewish people as well."

In the second part of this UpFront special, Jonathan Freedland, Lisa Goldman and Noura Erakat debate anti-Semitism among the political left.

So five leftists discuss modern antisemitism. Not surprisingly, they are enthusiastic to discuss rightist antisemitism and link it to Trump - and to discount leftist antisemitism as really justified anti-Zionism. There is a little disagreement about whether the Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel can be conflated with Zionism, but all agree that Jews can hate Israel's government.

What they don't discuss at all is whether the obsession over Israel by the Left is a form of modern antisemitism. They create a straw man that criticizing Israel isn't antiemitism, when no one says it is. It is the obsessive, deranged hate of Israel and only Israel that is antisemitic, and that is exclusive to the Left. It is the demand that Israel, and only Israel cease to exist that is antisemitic. It is the crazed equation of Israel to the Nazis that is antisemitic, something that they simply do not want to address here.

No wonder they didn't want to discuss it.

This is Al Jazeera's idea of "balance."

What about Arab antisemitism?

It is dismissed with a sentence. The moderator asks Noura Erakat about the undeniable antisemitism in the Middle East, and she responds that she doesn't deny it but the Palestinian movement is completely against it.

The host, of course, is happy to leave it at that and not to mention the constant stream of antisemitic rhetoric on Palestinian TV, other media and schools, and the far worse antisemitism in Egypt, Jordan and elsewhere.

Erakat also makes up a novel idea. She claims that there are only two areas under League of Nations mandates that did not achieve self-determination when the League was dissolved (she calls it the "League of Mandates") were Namibia and Palestine, and "Palestine" remains the only such area that is still under colonial rule.

Of course, Israel was the fulfillment of the League of Nations mandate for a Jewish homeland when it became independent. Legally, all Palestine institutions became Israeli institutions except for the areas illegally annexed by Jordan or administered by Egypt. Noura's ancestors did not complain when they became Jordanian citizens. Erakat is pretending that Israel's control of Judea and Samaria is a continuation of British colonialism - as she asserts that people need to "understand history."

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You can' t make this up.

Someone forwarded me the latest (and last) newsletter from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, ICAHD. The organization says that it is closing its Israel operations:

For various reasons – refusing to NGO-ify ICAHD and turn it into a domesticated organization doing the donors’ bidding; losing young Israeli activists who prefer limited and reactive actions on the ground to strategic and systematic (but, granted, less adrenaline-generating) work within an organization; and, perhaps primarily, the inability of our critical Palestinian and Israeli partners to formulate our version of a just solution and develop the mechanisms for effectively advocating for it – we closed our office in Jerusalem and shifted our advocacy efforts to our chapters abroad: the UK, Germany, Finland, the US and Australia.

But before they disappear from the Israeli scene, they proved that they are hypocrites in the purest sense of the word.

Commenting on the UNSC Resolution 2334, they write:

The vote has no immediate repercussions. It doesn't contain sanctions on Israel for ignoring and violating it -- which the Israeli government has already says [sic] it will. The only genuinely effective way to end settlement construction and all other Israeli attempts to make the Occupation permanent is to enforce the the Geneva Convention, which would dismantle Israeli settlements.

The Geneva Conventions do not in any way, shape or form demand the demolition of Israeli settlements! This is pure fiction from the mind of ICAHD founder Jeff Halper.

But it shows that the high and mighty moralists from ICAHD don't care about demolishing houses - if Jews own the houses being demolished. They don't care about homeless people - if the homeless people are Jews.

ICAHD doesn't want to see Jews and Arabs living together in an Arab state of Palestine. The very same people who demand that Israel's (quite legal and quite limited) house demolitions of illegally built homes and homes of terrorists be considered a war crime explicitly advocate the demolition of the homes of Jews in Judea and Samaria.

Can there be a purer demonstration of hypocrisy, and of how little these anti-Israel activists truly care about human rights?

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Analogies are never perfect, but they can still be illuminating.

Let's talk about Guam.

Spain originally colonized the island in the 16th century. The US captured the island in 1898 during the Spanish American War. (There was no battle, the island's residents had no idea they were at war with the US and surrendered.)

Since then, the US has controlled the island. it remains today an unincorporated territory of the United States, where the residents do not enjoy constitutional protection.

The United Nations includes Guam in its list of Non-Self-Governing Territories, and it has expended efforts to decolonize Guam along with the other remaining colonized lands worldwide.

Among the annual UN demands of the US concerning Guam is:

Called once again upon the administering Power to take into consideration the expressed will of the Chamorro people as supported by Guam voters in the referendum of 1987 and as subsequently provided for in Guam law regarding Chamorro self-determination efforts, encouraged the administering Power and the territorial Government to enter into negotiations on the matter, and stressed the need for continued close monitoring of the overall situation in the Territory;

Here is how the US responds to the UN demands for self-determination in Guam:

In a letter dated 2 November 2006 addressed to the delegate of American Samoa to the United States House of Representatives, the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs elaborated on the position of the Government of the United States. He indicated that the status of the insular areas regarding their political relations with the federal Government was an internal United States issue, and not one that came within the purview of the Special Committee on the Situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. He also noted that the Special Committee had no authority to alter in any way the relationship between the United States and those territories and had no mandate to engage the United States in negotiations on their status.

In other words, when the UN wants to help the residents of Guam to achieve self-determination, the US tells the UN to go to hell.

No protests, no BDS.. The US can act with impunity towards the residents of Guam and keep the island as a colony despite UN attempts to work towards more independence.

It is instructive to see that even democratic nations tell the UN to drop dead when it is in their interests to do so.

(h/t Irene)

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How you may be able to donate to EoZ and receive a tax deduction

EoZ is not a non-profit so donations are not tax-deductible.

But if you have a business, you can place an ad in the EoZ site before the end of the year and deduct that as a business expense for advertising.

If interested, email me at elder -at - elderofziyon.com.

And, as always, thanks!

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Chanukah Night 4: Incandescence (Ariella Zeitlin)

This is an instrumental, with a really nice Chanukah-themed video.

(h/t Josh K)

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12/27 Links Pt2: UN vote tops Wiesenthal list of top 10 antisemitic, anti-Israel cases in 2016

From Ian:

UN vote tops Wiesenthal list of top 10 antisemitic, anti-Israel cases in 2016

The US abstention from a recent vote against Israeli settlements at the UN Security Council topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s annual list released Tuesday of the 10 worst outbreaks of Jew-hatred and anti-Israel incidents.
The Jewish human rights organization ranked the Obama administration’s move as the top case, charging that it erased Jewish history.
“The most stunning 2016 UN attack on Israel was facilitated by President [Barack] Obama when the US abstained on a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for settlement construction. It reversed decades-long US policy of vetoing such diplomatic moves against the Jewish State,” wrote the center.
The organization added: “It also urges UN members ‘to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967,’ effectively endorsing BDS.”
UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn along with former British politician Baroness Jenny Tonge ranked second.
According to the ranking, “antisemitism in the [Labour] party has greatly escalated. Corbyn, who previously called Hamas and Hezbollah his ‘friends,’ also promoted his strategy adviser Seumas Milne, a Hamas proponent.”

Special Report Fox News Trump Dec 26 - 'This Was a US Operation All the Way' - Krauthammer on UN Israel Resolution

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Michael Lumish: Question of the Whenever # 5: Why Support the Regressive-Left?

By what argument can regressives claim to stand for universal human rights when they honestly do not care that women are treated like chattel throughout the Islamic world and forced to hide themselves in black potato sacks?
By what argument can regressives claim to stand for universal human rights when they think that the Christian genocide under Arab-Muslim imperial rule is just dandy?
If the regressive-left does not stand for universal human rights than it stands for nothing and is, therefore, undeserving of support.
And, needless to say, no Jew with even the slightest whit of self-respect would support a political movement that is more than happy to undermine the well-being of Jews everywhere, through its willingness - if not eagerness - to throw Israel to the wolves, as we just saw with the recent UNSC resolution.
The so-called "progressive-left" has thrown its alleged values into the garbage entirely and, thereby, transmogrified itself into the regressive-left.