Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, December 29, 2016

12/29 Links Pt2: Netanyahu Targets Obama's Anti-Semitism With One Photo; BUYcott fights BDS in Canada

From Ian:

Prominent US National Security Journalist Explains Apology for Past Defense of Obama's Israel Record

The anti-settlement UN Security Council resolution the Obama administration allowed to be approved last week will “haunt Israel for years to come,” a prominent US national security reporter told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.
Eli Lake — a Bloomberg View columnist — spoke with The Algemeiner three days after he posted — in the wake of the Security Council vote — a tweet apologizing to pro-Israel friends for his past defense of outgoing President Barack Obama’s record when it comes to the Jewish state.
“First of all, I want to make it really clear that I’m not posing as a great supporter of Obama’s foreign policy,” Lake explained to The Algemeiner. “I’m not even a partial Obama Kool-Aid drinker. But I’ve also written a lot about US-Israel military cooperation, particularly the military subsidy to Israel that the Obama administration has increased. This was really a tweet about conversations I’ve had with friends in which I noted that Obama had largely protected Israel at the UN — until last week — and I’ve described his approach as kind of tough love.”
However, Obama’s decision to abstain from last Friday’s Security Council vote was “unbelievable,” Lake said.

Netanyahu Targets Obama's Anti-Semitism With One Photo

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had earlier in the day expressed his gratitude to president-elect Donald Trump for his support of Israel during the crisis arising from the Obama Administration’s approval of the vicious anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution last Friday, targeted President Obama with one photo on Netanyahu’s Facebook page:
Netanyahu is exactly right. The UN Security Council resolution effectively declared Israel’s presence in the Old City of Jerusalem to be illegal, thus denying the Biblical claim to the Temple Mount, the holiest place in Jerusalem. The Temple Mount was the site of the biblical Temples, the first of which was built by King Solomon almost 1,000 years before Christ, as stated in the Bible in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles. Jews trace their claim to King David, Solomon’s father, 3,000 years ago.
On the second night of Hanukkah, the holiday that celebrates the ancient Maccabean revolt against an oppressive regime seeking to target the Jews, Netanyahu fired back at the UN, “According to the U.N. resolution, the Maccabees did not liberate Jerusalem, they occupied Palestinian territory. According to the U.N. resolution, the villages that they started out from in the Modi’in area [north-west of Jerusalem], those villages and that area were occupied Palestinian territory. Of course the Palestinians arrived much later. We were here much earlier.”

Melanie Phillips: An open letter to Theresa May

Dear Prime Minister,
It was sickening to see that your government last week voted for the declaration of diplomatic war against Israel embodied in resolution 2334 passed by the UN Security Council.
Bad enough that Britain didn’t use its position as a permanent SC member to vote against this vicious resolution and thereby stop it in its tracks. Worse, far worse was that your government voted for it. In doing so, Britain signed up to propositions that repudiate law, justice and truth.
Now reports have surfaced that, yet more appallingly, Britain was actually instrumental in getting 2334 passed by helping draft the resolution and then stiffening New Zealand’s resolve in proposing it.
I don’t know whether that is correct. I suspect it may well be. I think, nevertheless, that you spoke from the heart the other week when you told the Conservative Friends of Israel of your admiration for Israel as a “remarkable country” and a “beacon of tolerance” and your warm feelings towards the Jewish people.
I also think, however, that you know little about the history of the Jews in the Middle East, the part played in that history by previous British governments or the infernal strategic aims of the people known as the “Palestinians”. I believe, therefore, you might not fully grasp the implications of supporting UNSC resolution 2334.
So let me spell out exactly what your government has done by voting in this way. (h/t Yenta Press)

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I am writing on Wednesday, after the passage of UNSC resolution 2334 and John Kerry’s speech laying out his parameters for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And after that, there will or will not be another Security Council resolution, in which the so-called “international community” will continue on its path to making Israel indefensible and ultimately seeing her disappear.

Today I’m going to take a longer view and ask a more fundamental question than “how are they going to try to stick it to us tomorrow?” Today I want to know “what’s in it for them in sticking it to us?”

This is interesting, because the obvious answer seems to be “nothing.” Look at this objectively: Israel is a tiny country which actually contributes a lot to civilization in science, technology, medicine and more. The Palestinians (PLO and Hamas varieties) basically have one interest, and that is destroying Israel and taking over their tiny piece of land. Their major contribution to civilization seems to be the popularization of airline hijacking and suicide bombing. Israel tried several times to give away large chunks of its country – which it is fully entitled to keep – in order to end the conflict, but the Palestinians have refused every time. Lucky for us.

Most of the nations, if asked, would say that it has to do with the human rights of the Palestinians. This is interesting too, because the Palestinians seem to think they have a right to kill anyone Jewish they come across. Israel argues persuasively that it really has to take security measures that affect the Palestinians, because otherwise they would exercise their “right” to murder us. How do we know? Experience: the withdrawal from Gaza and the various prisoner releases. Give them a chance, and they try to kill us. It happens every time.

It’s even more interesting that for all the people deprived of their human rights around the world – often much more severely than the Palestinians, who have more rights than Arabs living in Arab countries – the international community expends far more money and energy on the Palestinians than on anyone else.

So let’s try to figure this out. Who would benefit if the Palestinians got their wish and we disappeared? Possibly only the Palestinians themselves and Iran, which wants to become the regional hegemon and sees us as an obstacle. But how does that explain the anti-Israel activity in almost all the European countries, especially the most “progressive” ones like the Scandinavian countries, France, Germany, Britain and others? How does it explain that other pole of the Axis of anti-Israelness, the White House? And how does it explain the particular passion with which they have taken sides?

Interests are insufficient to explain this. We need to look at psychology.

The Palestinians got their start from the Soviet KGB as a weapon against American influence in the Middle East. The Soviet psychological warfare experts melded third-world anti-imperialism with traditional Jew-hatred to create the meme of an oppressed “Palestinian people” whose human rights were being denied them by vicious European Jewish colonists. This powerful but totally false story, convincingly told, found its way into leftist dogma. It was eagerly lapped up by the affluenza-sufferers of the New Left, many of them Jewish, who were looking for a connection to the “Wretched of the Earth,” in the words of Frantz Fanon.

People are fond of saying that they are critical of Israeli policy but they don’t hate Jews. But passionate anti-Zionism is never pure. A natural question to ask is, “if Israel is so evil, what makes it so?” And the obvious answer is “because the Jews are evil.” Anti-Zionism and Jew-hatred go together. One gives rise to the other. The Palestinians’ made-up history only works if you believe Israeli Jews capable of deliberate ethnic cleansing and murder; if you believe that they are like Nazis. And if Jews are like Nazis, then their state is a Nazi state.

When the New Lefties of 1960s Europe grew up, many of them became Social Democrats. While they may have grown away from anarchism and created its opposite in the European Union, they kept their ideas about Israel and the Palestinians. It was a satisfying relief for Europeans, embarrassed by their fathers’ crimes during the Holocaust, to “realize” that the Jews themselves were actually Nazis.

In America, the New Left virtually conquered academia, where terrorists like Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn became respected members of the academic community. Big grants to universities from Saudi Arabia and other oil states ensured that there would be “Middle East Studies” departments to promote the correct line on Israel.

The Left in America was very fertile ground for Jew hatred. It was politically incorrect to say that you hated Jews, but you could say anything you wanted about Israel. And what about the “Israel Lobby?” And little by little, like in the Occupy movement, it became OK to suggest that maybe Jews had too much influence in the media, Hollywood and banking.

The black community in America was infected with anti-Jewish attitudes as well, probably originally traceable to the Nation of Islam, later amplified by conflicts with Jewish landlords, teachers and shop-owners, and fertilized by the influence of the radical Left on the Black Power movement.

Barack Obama’s ideas about Israel and the Palestinians probably developed from multiple sources: his early Muslim background; the influence of friends like Ayres and Dohrn, anti-Israel blogger Ali Abunimah, Columbia professor and PLO operative Rashid Khalidi, and academics like Edward Said; and the anti-Jewish climate in the black community. Obama chose advisors that shared his point of view, like Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes and Rob Malley.

The Muslim world quite naturally cleaved to the side of the Palestinians, because, after all, most Palestinians are Muslims. But there was also a sinister cross-pollination from ancient European Jew-hatred that was introduced by Hitler’s associate Haj Amin al-Husseini, as well as the numerous Nazi war criminals that found asylum in places like Egypt and Syria after the war. Egypt has virtually no Jews left, and yet a common insult there is to call someone a Jew. When Mubarak was deposed, cartoons and posters showed him with a star of David on his forehead.

It is now possible to understand the automatic majority votes against Israel in the UN, or, more to the point, the obsessive focus of the UN on Israel, and why real atrocities that occur elsewhere in the world are comparatively barely noticed. We can see why the terrorism committed on a regular basis by Palestinians against Jews for at least a hundred years receives only lip service, while Jewish building in Jerusalem makes Obama “furious.” We can understand why the outcome of the vote for Security Council resolution 2334 was greeted with “sustained applause.” We can see why the European nations and the EU spend millions of Euros every year supporting subversive anti-state NGOs in Israel, and why the human rights of Palestinians are more important to them than those of anyone else. And we can see why Barack Obama has consistently worked against Israel over his entire term, winding up with a still-unfolding diplomatic strike.

Even though national interest is cited – Kerry even argued in his speech that American interests were served by destabilizing Israel! – the real motivation for these policies is deep, irrational, and unfortunately, very familiar.

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12/29 Links Pt1: UN Watch: Joining the Jackals: An Open Letter to Amb. Samantha Power; Obama's Betrayal of Israel at the UN Must Not Stand

From Ian:

Hillel Neuer: Joining the Jackals: An Open Letter to Amb. Samantha Power | The Case Against U.N. Resolution 2334

Dear Ambassador Power,
I write in response to your abstention on Friday which allowed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel, and in response to the substantial explanation of vote that you delivered. With even further U.N. measures still possible before President Obama leaves office on January 20th, I urge you and the Administration—where you play an influential role as a member of the President’s Cabinet, and as one of President Obama’s most trusted advisors—to reconsider your approach.
Your speech on Friday had much to applaud. As you have vigorously done for three years, your remarks exposed in compelling detail the U.N. double standard applied to the Jewish state, which, you rightly said, “not only hurts Israel, it undermines the legitimacy of the United Nations itself.”
As you noted last year on the 40th anniversary of the infamous Zionism is Racism resolution, at the U.N. “rarely a day goes by without some effort to delegitimize Israel.” On that occasion, you called for everyone to “relentlessly fight back” against this “ignorance and hatred.”
Your vote on Friday, however, makes a dramatic break with all of this. While it is perfectly legitimate to disagree with Israel about settlements, allowing Resolution 2334 to pass was morally wrong and strategically damaging. As set forth below, we believe the U.S. decision to acquiesce in the adoption of this lopsided resolution reverses decades of past practice, sets back the cause of peace, and harms the interests of Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans.

PodCast: Israel Uncensored: Caroline Glick: UNSC Resolution is a Betrayal

On today’s Israel Uncensored, Josh Hasten interviews Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post Senior Contributing Editor, columnist, and renowned author to get her take on the anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution passed this week. Glick says that the resolution gives a green light to terrorism, lends support to the anti-Israel BDS movement and is a betrayal not only to Israel, but to the American people who are also seen as legitimate targets by the worldwide Jihad. Glick says that despite the resolution there is a silver lining with a new US Administration on the way. She concludes that this Hanukkah we should learn from our Maccabee ancestors that despite the adversity, in the end the People of Israel will prevail.

Titus Cites UNSCR 2339 In Demanding Besieged Jerusalem Surrender (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Jerusalem, December 28 - The Roman general commanding the forces surrounding the Jewish capital sent messengers today to the leaders of the besieged stronghold urging them to comply with Security Council Resolution 2339, which declared that a Jewish sovereign presence beyond the 1949 lines is illegal.

Titus Flavius, who took over the siege when his father Vespasian received word he had been appointed Emperor of Rome, cited the relevant decision of the United Nations, noting the fact that in deeming Jewish settlement or construction beyond the armistice lines illegal under international law, the Council automatically rendered the entire Jewish stronghold currently under siege an illegal entity that must be dismantled. That could happen, warned Titus, by peaceful means if the defenders of the city simply gave up the fight and agreed to be subjugated and sent elsewhere, or it could happen by force if necessary, and the Roman Legions laying the siege were prepared to subdue Jerusalem by those means.

"Be advised that in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2339, adopted December 23, 2016, this Jewish settlement of Jerusalem constitutes a violation of international law, in its consisting of Jewish settlement beyond the retroactively recognized boundaries that obtained prior to June, 1967," read the general's message, conveyed by courier. "Any attempt to thwart our action, sanctioned under the same international law, will be met with uncompromising force. Surrender, Jews, or face the wrath of the international community."

Resolution 2339 was adopted by a 14-0 vote in the Council, with the United States pointedly abstaining and declining to veto the measure. In so doing, the Obama administration departed from decades of American presidential policy that shielded the Jewish State from overt bias in the UN and its various organs. Observers predicted the chilling effect the American and international move would have on the Jewish effort to maintain control over their ancient capital and homeland in general.

Titus and his troops have been battling a Jewish insurgency against Roman rule that erupted in the year 66. Only once Vespasian took command and brought in overwhelming numbers of Roman soldiers was the tide turned, and now the Jewish State remains in control only of its capital Jerusalem and several isolated outposts. "We gave Jewish legitimacy a good number of generations, but it doesn't seem to be a recipe for peace," explained Flavius Josephus, a spokesman for Titus. "It might be time to deport these rebels by the hundreds of thousands and rename the place to help remove the connection between the Jews and Judea. I humbly suggest something ironic, such as 'Palestina,' a word that itself means 'invaders.' The joke will be on whoever uses it to establish a claim of indigenous status."

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Munir Aljagub, Fatah's media director who is quoted often as a Fatah spokesman, poses with one of his favorite cartoons.

It shows Hamas and Fatah shaking hands to become a weapon to shoot Israel together with.

So it indeed shows how much Fatah wants peace - with Hamas. And for only one purpose.

John Kerry will quote members of Israel's coalition government, who are skeptical about peace prospects, to prove that Israel is not interested in peace. But he will never, ever mention how leaders of Abbas' own movement consistently and explicitly support war.

Because it doesn't fit the narrative.

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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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