Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, February 03, 2017

02/03 Links Pt1: Obama sent $9.2B to UN; US slaps new sanctions on Iran following missile tests

From Ian:

Obama sent $9.2B to UN, related groups in 2016

In its last year in office, the Obama Administration showered at least some $9.2 billion on the United Nations and its sprawling array of organizations, according to a document recently posted on the State Department website.
The total is gleaned from a document that summarizes U.S. government spending for international organizations, and is about 20 per cent higher than the $7.7 billion figure given out by State for 2010, before the Obama Administration abruptly quit providing any overall tally for its U.N. support.
The overall U.S. bill for international organizations of every stripe is just under $10.5 billion, meaning that U.N. organizations absorb about 88 per cent of such U.S. government spending.
The new tally includes nearly $360 million for the controversial United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, which is regularly accused of inculcating violent anti-Israel attitudes and even abetting terrorist attacks on Israel, which it strongly denies.
That is nearly a 50 per cent jump over the $238.3 million UNRWA got from the U.S. in 2010.
The UNRWA numbers, along with all the rest of the U.N. donations, are likely to come under fierce scrutiny in the weeks ahead, both from the Trump Administration, which wants to take a tough look at aligning its U.N. spending with national interests, and from Congress, which is frustrated by U.N. bloat and inefficiency, and often maddened by its anti-Israel biases.

Lawmakers look to get tough on UN

Lawmakers at a hearing Thursday called on the U.S. to get tough with the United Nations in response to a recent Security Council vote condemning Israeli settlement activity.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) called the U.N. a "politicized tool" at a hearing on Israel, Palestine and the U.N. before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittees dealing with the Middle East and international organizations.
Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the Middle East and North Africa subcommittee, said she would reintroduce legislation to bring about tougher U.S. oversight of the world body.
Her bill — the United Nations Transparency, Accountability, and Reform Act, first introduced in 2015 — demands greater oversight of U.S. contributions to the U.N. and affiliated organizations.
"We now have the opportunity to grow and strengthen our alliance with Israel and show the world that we support our friends — we don't leave them out to dry," added Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), who chairs the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations.

Hillel Neuer Opening Statement at US Congress Subcommittee Hearing

Hillel Neuer's opening statement at the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Joint Subcommittee Hearing on Israel, the Palestinians, and the United Nations: Challenges for the New Administration. February 2, 2017

UNRWA Schools Exposed as Hotbed of Extremism in New 130-Page Report

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Beinart savages Kushner on refugees but gives Obama a pass

Indeed, herein lies the crux of Beinart’s hypocrisy. His condemnation of Kushner centers on his support for his father-in-law’s executive order for a temporary ban of refugees. For the record, I happen to agree that even a temporary ban should not be implemented – even to simply introduce new vetting procedures – without the simultaneous creation of safe zones in Syria to protect innocent life.
But Beinart forgets that the Syrian refugee crises did not begin under Trump or Kushner, who have been in office for just two weeks. Rather, it came about through the callous and indifferent foreign policy of Beinart’s hero, Obama, who refused to intervene in Syria, even as the slaughter there turned to genocide. Sunni Muslims, including children in Damascus and Aleppo, were being slaughtered by Shi’ite militias and Bashar Assad’s Alawite government, with the active support of Hezbollah and Iran.
Obama did nothing.
Only after Trump’s executive order did Beinart suddenly spring to life to protect the innocent citizens of Syria whom president Obama and his national security team had abandoned. President Obama also finally found his voice – post-presidency and from the vacation comfort of Palm Springs – against the Trump administration’s immigrant ban. This while Obama didn’t even lift a finger to save the children of Syria after Assad violated Obama’s self-declared red line and gassed Arab children. Where was Beinart’s condemnation of Obama’s violation of his own warning to Assad not to gas innocent Arabs?
The immigrant crisis, which is absolutely tragic, resulted in large part from American inaction and Obama’s retreat in the Middle East and beyond. There might never have been an immigrant crisis if Obama had instituted a no-fly zone, safe zones, or supported moderate Syrian rebels against Assad from the outset.
Countless people called on president Obama to pursue policies that would rescue the innocent people of Syria. But not Peter Beinart. Obama refused to listen, and the result was not only the murder of 500,000 Arab men, women and children, but the displacement of millions of refugees, which is the crisis we now face.
But amid this unprecedented humanitarian failure, there was no column by Beinart asking how Christianity could have produced Barack Obama.

Meet the "Palestinian refugee" who is also a member of Congress

UNRWA defines Palestine refugees this way:

Persons who meet UNRWA’s Palestine Refugee criteria
These are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict. Palestine Refugees, and descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, are eligible to register for UNRWA services.

It also says:

The descendants of the original Palestine refugees are also eligible for registration, but only refugees living in one of UNRWA’s five fields of operations receive Agency services.

Al Awda says:

There are about 7.2 million Palestinian refugees worldwide... More than half the refugee population lives in Jordan. Approximately 37.7% live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, comprising about 50 percent of the population in those areas. About 15% live in almost equal numbers in Syria and Lebanon. About 355,000 internally displaced Palestinians reside in present-day Israel. (!) The remaining refugee population lives throughout the world, including the rest of the Arab world.

Meet one of these "refugees" by the UNRWA and Palestinian definition.

This is Member of Congress Justin Amash. American politician, Palestinian "refugee."

“My father became a refugee in 1948. They lived in [Ramallah] until 1956 when a pastor and his wife from Muskegon, Michigan sponsored my dad’s family to come to the United States. They arrived in New York City like a lot of immigrant families and started a new life here. Now, my parents have a son in Congress. It’s really the American Dream,” he said.

Yet Justin is eligible to register as a Palestinian refugee with UNRWA today. He, his father and their non-Palestinian wives are eligible to get aid from UNRWA as refugees if they move to the West Bank or Jordan or other UNRWA areas of operation. His three children, born and raised in Michigan, are also "Palestinian refugees," as will the children of any of his sons. Forever.

It is impossible for Palestinians to lose "refugee" status unless they die - and even then only if the death can be proven with documentation or testimony that would rarely be given if the alternative is more free benefits for that family. (See first link above.)

There can be no more absurd example concerning the official, UN-approved definition of a "Palestinian refugee" than Justin Amash.

(h/t Irene)

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Iranian Space Agency accidentally shows "Am Yisrael Chai" and Israeli flag

The Iranian Space Research Center has an article about the Lunar X Prize contest where international teams are competing to send a spacecraft to the moon that perform various tasks.

Israel's SpaceIL is one of the teams, and the article mentions the name without saying what country it is from, unlike its reporting on the other teams.

However, the illustration accompanying the article comes from the SpaceIL entry - and it includes the words "Am Yisrael Chai" and an Israeli flag on the two visible legs of the spacecraft.

Obviously the Iranian Space Research Center is filled with closet Zionists!

(h/t Judah Ari Gross)

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Following the news media is a frustrating exercise lately - because the amount of lies and spin is off the charts. All that can be trusted are primary sources (and sometimes they are iffy.)

It started off yesterday with a leak reported to the Jerusalem Post:

The White House warned Israel on Thursday to cease settlement announcements that are “unilateral” and “undermining” of President Donald Trump’s effort to forge Middle East peace, a senior administration official told The Jerusalem Post.

For the first time, the administration confirmed that Trump is committed to a comprehensive two-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict negotiated between the parties

The official told the Post that the White House was not consulted on Israel’s unprecedented announcement of 5,500 new settlement housing units over the course of his first two weeks in office.

“As President Trump has made clear, he is very interested in reaching a deal that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is currently exploring the best means of making progress toward that goal,” the official said.

"With that in mind, we urge all parties to refrain from taking unilateral actions that could undermine our ability to make progress, including settlement announcements,” the official added. “The administration needs to have the chance to fully consult with all parties on the way forward.”

How accurate is this? It is unclear. But this leak seems to be what prompted the White House Press Secretary to issue an official statement that is being heavily spun as a slap at Israel:

The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years. While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal. As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region. The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month.

The Washington Post headline is typical:

Trump warns Israel that new settlements ‘may not help’ achieve Middle East peace

The New York Times claimed that Trump embraced Obama's foreign policy principles and that this was an "abrupt turnaround" in Trump's policy towards Israel.

But while the White House has not given Israel carte blanche to build settlements anywhere, this is the first official White House statement on the issue - and unlike the media spin, it is a massive sea change from what the Obama administration has stated.

It explicitly says that settlements are not an impediment to peace. This goes against US policy for decades. (Reagan said they weren't illegal but he never went this far.)

It says that new settlement construction may not be helpful - not that it is an obstacle to peace.

It implies that there is absolutely no problem with Israel building within existing settlement borders. Which accounts for essentially all the building in Judea and Samaria in nearly two decades.

It implies that Israel can build all it wants in Jerusalem, since all that building is within the municipal borders.

The news media, as usual, is reporting this versus a perception of a Trump White House that was more pro-settlements than Netanyahu is. But Trump has made clear from the start that he would love to find a way to make peace between Israel and the Arab world as well - he never implied a hands-off policy. The reason the news media is spinning this as a slap at Israel is because they falsely spun the Trump position beforehand.

But when you remove the spin, this is the most far reaching statement condoning settlement activity in US history.

Things might still change, of course. Netanyahu will meet Trump soon and things will become clearer then.

However, this White House statement is remarkable not for its supposed slap at Israel but for its huge break with the official position most previous presidents, and it is 180 degrees from the position of President Obama.

If the media wants to spin this otherwise, let them. What matters are facts, not reporters' wishful thinking.

UPDATES: I added the NYT quote.

Also The Guardian, in reporting this, suddenly admitted that its reporting on settlements for two decades has been lying : "Settlement construction since 1991 has been within existing blocs."

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2 out of every 3 Palestinians believe in demons/"jinn" (update)

A Pew poll from 2012 asked Muslims in many countries a lot of questions about their beliefs.

While 14% of Palestinian Muslims believe in sorcery and witchcraft, the lowest percentage of any Middle East sector surveyed, 59% of them believe in the "evil eye" and 67% believe in "jinn," demons or genies.

14th century Islamic depiction of Jinn

A column in The Telegraph noted in 2013:

Although the pamphlet, called Feeling Stressed, was subtitled “A leaflet for Muslims”, I took a look at it, and found something surprising. One of the questions addressed was: “What if my problem is caused by jinn possession?”

“People can mistake mental illness for jinn possession,” the answer began. “So, even if you feel that you may be possessed, it is important that you see a doctor.”

The leaflet I picked up is approved by the Muslim Council of Britain and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I hope it proves helpful.

UPDATE: A majority of Americans believe in demon possession as well. And more young people do than older people.

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02/02 Links Pt2: UNRWA teachers incite terrorism; The Cautionary Tale of Samantha Power

From Ian:

UN Watch: 130-page report: UNRWA teachers incite terrorism & antisemitism

Before a joint subcommittee hearing today of the U.S. Congress concerning the U.N., Israel, and the Palestinians, the director of the independent monitoring group UN Watch will testify and present a new report showing 40 alarming new cases of UNRWA school teachers in Gaza, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria whose Facebook pages incite to Jihadist terrorism and antisemitism, including by posting Holocaust-denying videos and pictures celebrating Hitler.
UN Watch sent letters this morning to U.N. chief António Guterres, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and U.S. envoy to the U.N. Nikki Haley, urging them to take action and demand U.N. and UNRWA condemnation of the incitement, and the immediate termination of the implicated employees.
“We need to see zero tolerance in the U.N. for terrorism and antisemitism,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based UN Watch.
Click here for the PDF of the report.

The Cautionary Tale of Samantha Power

T here are two situations in the world that should shame Power, the anti-genocide activist. The first, and less obvious one, is Burma. The Obama administration cites this country as one of its foreign-policy successes, because the ruling junta took steps toward liberalization in return for lifting some sanctions against it. But then everybody seems to have forgotten about it, and in doing so forgot about the Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority currently being subjected to an unmistakable genocide—among the clearest examples ever to emerge in real time. This is genocide on Power’s watch, and we don’t hear a peep about it.
The other, of course, is Syria. Whether or not the Assad regime has fully crossed over the line to having committed genocide, America’s inaction already flunks Power’s test. As longtime Levant correspondent Michael Totten has written, we’ve seen the warnings. The first was Assad’s use of chemical weapons, a chilling callback to Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds. Another was the credible reporting of Shiite Iranian militias’ ethnically cleansing Sunni Arabs in core cities, atrocities that were then repeated in other strategic areas.
If Power would station troops in Israel because she worries the Palestinians could plausibly be victims of genocide in the near future, what could she possibly say about Syria? Well, she’d likely say, “We tried.” President Obama declared that Assad’s use of chemical weapons would be a “red line” that, once crossed, would earn American military intervention. When it became public that Assad had deployed chemical weapons, Obama put the word out: As the Germans used to say during World War II, the Amis are coming.

Daniel Pearl was murdered 15 years ago today

“My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish. I am Jewish.”
In my memory, there are certain place markers in the history of terrorism that led to where we are today.
The 1972 Munich Massacre of Israeli athletes (1972); the bombing of the Beirut Marine Barracks (1983), the World Trade Center attacks (1993 and 2001); the Jerusalem Sbarro Pizza bombing (2001) and the videotaped beheading of Daniel Pearl, February 1, 2002.
I don’t diminish the significance and horror of other attacks, it’s just that these are memory reference points for me.
In searching our archives, I can’t find a post we devoted to providing what happened to Daniel Pearl, though we have mentioned him. Shame on us.
This article from The Telegraph in May 2004 relates some of the basic details, Daniel Pearl ‘refused to be sedated before his throat was cut’

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Tuesday afternoon we started to hear that the IDF was preparing to remove the 40 families that live in the community of Amona, in the Binyamin region of Judea. Just now, a few moments ago, I heard on the radio that the evacuation (some prefer “expulsion”) is beginning. It doesn’t look like it will go smoothly.

To explain the situation in the fewest possible words, the community was built 20 years ago. A portion of it, about one half acre out of a total of 125 acres, is owned by Palestinian Arabs who were given title to the land by the King of Jordan, during the 19-year Jordanian occupation. About 15 more acres are registered in the names of Arabs who apparently do not exist.

The Supreme Court of Israel decided that the only acceptable remedy was to bulldoze the entire community. The Court did not accept the suggestion that the Arab “owners,” who had never utilized the land, could be paid compensation for it. The government developed a compromise that would have provided an alternative location nearby for some of the families, which the community agreed to. But this was stymied when additional Palestinians petitioned the court claiming to own that land. The residents were only told that the deal was off a few days ago.

The Palestinians have been assisted in their legal proceedings by the Israeli organization “Yesh Din.” Yesh Din received more than $4.6 million from foreign government bodies between 2012 and 2016. Foreign sources accounted for 93.5% of their total donations. Yesh Din specializes in “lawfare” against Israel and the IDF.

This raises, yet again, a very fundamental question for the State of Israel. In a sentence, what are we?

Are we the nation-state of the Jewish people in its historical homeland, which derives its right to the land from both the biblical promise made to us by Hashem and the modern promise made by the international community in the Palestine Mandate, a right that we defended more than once by force of arms? Are we a Zionist state, in other words?

Or are we something else – a multinational state which exists at the pleasure of today’s post-nationalist, anti-Jewish international establishment?

It would seem that the answer should be obvious, and it is to the great majority of Israeli Jews. But the state has not acted as though it believes in its own Zionist principles.

When the Jordanian occupation and its illegal annexation of land set aside for the Jewish people was ended in 1967, Israel did not annex Judea and Samaria, because its leadership was forced by its “friends” in Europe and the US to accept the idea of “land for peace.” Israel would give Judea and Samaria “back” to Jordan, for example, and Jordan would give us a peace treaty.

The injustice inherent in this is obvious. Who gave Jordan the right to take that land in violation of international law and to ethnically cleanse it of Jews? How can we be asked to give something “back” that was ours in the first place? But this was our policy until King Hussein decided in 1988 that he didn’t want the hassle of trying to control the PLO, and transferred his “ownership” of the land to the PLO. And shortly thereafter, the Israeli government tried to continue the “land for peace” process with the PLO via the Oslo accords.

Israel never annexed the land it regained in 1967 (except for Jerusalem) and it even retained Jordanian law in Judea and Samaria. Because Israeli governments believed that some or all of the territory would ultimately be returned to Arab control, it treated it as occupied territory, despite the fact that, by the most reasonable interpretation of international law, for the first time since 1948 it was not under occupation.

24 years later and several wars and intifadas later, Israelis have finally come to realize that an exchange of land for peace won’t bring peace. Anyone with half a brain who looks at recent history (especially the results of the withdrawal from Gaza) and listens to what the Palestinians themselves say and do, understands that.

It’s often said that “surveys show that a majority of Israelis favor a 2-state solution.” That is correct, if the survey question is something like “Do you favor giving up the territories in return for peace and security?” The unfairness of this question is manifest if we rewrite it as follows: “If giving up the territories would bring peace and security, would you favor it?”

Since giving up the territories would put a terrorist entity next door to Tel Aviv, and since the Arabs won’t even pretend to agree that they would give up their claims on Israel in return for the territories, and since the PLO is unstable and easily overthrown, the “if” clause of the conditional statement is certainly false. And virtually every Israeli knows this.

A religious Zionist also understands the importance to his or her spiritual life of the places mentioned in the tanach, like Hevron and many others. But even a secular Zionist appreciates the first words of the Declaration of Independence:

ERETZ-ISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

Virtually every Israeli knows this as well – except possibly much of our leadership and our legal establishment.

If the lessons of history, international law, and Zionist ideology (both religious and secular) were translated into action, the courts would find a way to legalize Amona and other communities that would also be fair to the Arabs. Ultimately, we would annex all of Eretz Israel.

Unfortunately, the government has yet to get clear of the “land for peace” mentality; and the legal establishment seems dedicated to beating us into the mold of the multinational, secular democratic state that former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak so much admired.

This needs to change. Fear of the international community is not a reason to deny our own birthright. Politicized institutions like the UN and the International Criminal Court have no moral authority, and no practical way to punish Israel. And there is absolutely no reason we must allow foreign agents like Yesh Din to continue to subvert our country.

In fact, now, while there is an American government that for the first time may itself be able to shake off the ideas of land for peace and the 2-state solution, is the perfect time for Israel to finally become the truly Zionist state that Jabotinsky, Begin and Ben-Gurion dreamed of.

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02/02 Links Pt1: Hamas Apologist Beinart: Jews Should Be Ashamed Of Kushner; ‘Tough Love’—The First and Last Obama Lie

From Ian:

Hamas Apologist Beinart: Orthodox Jews Should Be Ashamed Of Jared Kushner

This is rather rich coming from the same fellow who routinely blames Israeli settlements for Palestinian Arab terrorism against Jews, who has shilled on behalf of Barack Obama’s Iran deal. Jewish history teaches many valuable lessons.
Beinart concludes:
Kushner’s moral failure challenges the Modern Orthodox community — a community for which I have enormous admiration — to ask why it is often more stringent about ritual lapses than it is about ethical ones. Why do many Modern Orthodox Jews shudder at the thought of eating nonkosher cheese, yet proudly support Trump?
Halakha is pretty clear on non-kosher cheese. But it isn't quite as clear on Trump. Perhaps many orthodox Jews support Trump because there’s nothing in halacha that says that voting for a more secure border is a violation of duty. Perhaps Beinart’s moral standards, which tut-tut Hamas while ripping Trump’s non-Muslim ban, aren’t the Torah’s. Perhaps the Torah's standard frowns more on hugging the Obama administration's pro-Iran dealmaking and anti-Israel UN policy than a policy suggesting better vetting for people from terror-rich countries.
If this piece had been written by an alt-right anti-Semite, it would have quickly been condemned by Beinart. But Beinart’s writing it from the left, so he’s free to insult orthodox Jews as religious bigots.

PMW: UN Sec-Gen "sinned" when he acknowledged Jewish Temple

On Jan. 29, 2017, new UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated that it is "clear" that "the Temple of Jerusalem that was destroyed by the Romans was a Jewish temple." In his interview on Israeli radio, Guterres also emphasized that "Jerusalem is today a holy city for three religions. These are the facts that nobody can deny." [Voice of Israel radio, Jan. 29, 2017]
These comments have led to sharp criticism and condemnations in the Palestinian Authority because they contradict the PA narrative, which denies any Jewish historical ties to Jerusalem and rejects the existence of the Jewish Temple, always referring to it as "the alleged Temple."
An op-ed in the PA daily accused Guterres of having "sinned against peace" by attesting to the Jewish tie to Jerusalem:
"Antonio Guterres clearly and explicitly sinned against peace and the Palestinian-Israeli political agreement when he claimed... that he 'believes in the connection between Jerusalem and the Jews.'"
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 30, 2017]
The writer reiterated the Palestinian stance that Jerusalem belongs only to Muslims (and Christians), and that Israel does not have a right to exist in any borders, lecturing Guterres that "Palestine" is "from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea":

Look what's for sale at Gaza's Metro Market

Elite Chocolit chocolate milk mix is on sale at Gaza's Metro Market.

Here's the version of this favorite in Gaza that you can get yourself in the US:

Gaza stores that sell Israeli products do not get threatened or boycotted or picketed.

That only happens in Europe and the US.

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Bloomberg has a fascinating article on Saudi-Israeli business ties which are under the table but thriving.

[Shmuel Bar, head of an Israeli software intelligence company] says he meets freely these days with Saudis and other Gulf Arabs at overseas conferences and private events. Trade and collaboration in technology and intelligence are flourishing between Israel and a host of Arab states, even if the people and companies involved rarely talk about it publicly. When a London think tank recently disinvited Bar from speaking on a panel, explaining that a senior Saudi official was also coming and it wasn’t possible to have them appear together, Bar told the organizers that he and the Saudi gentleman had in fact been planning to have lunch together at a Moroccan restaurant nearby before walking over to the event together. “They were out-Saudi-ing the Saudis,” he says.

Peace hasn’t come to the Middle East. This isn’t beating swords into plowshares but a logical coalescence of interests based on shared fears: of an Iranian bomb, jihadi terror, popular insurgency, and an American retreat from the region. IntuView has Israeli export licenses and the full support of its government to help any country facing threats from Iran and militant Islamic groups. “If it’s a country which is not hostile to Israel that we can help, we’ll do it,” Bar says. Only Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq are off-limits.

The Saudis and other oil-rich Arab states are only too happy to pay for the help. “The Arab boycott?” Bar says. “It doesn’t exist.”

The Arab embargo of Israel, nominally in force since the Jewish state’s founding in 1948, necessitates that all business between Israel and most Arab states remain strictly off the books, cloaked by intermediaries in other countries. But the volume and range of Israeli activity in at least six Gulf countries is getting hard to hide. One Israeli entrepreneur set up companies in Europe and the U.S. that installed more than $6 billion in security infrastructure for the United Arab Emirates, using Israeli engineers. The same companies then pitched Saudi Arabia to manage overcrowding in Mecca. Other Israeli businesses are working in the Gulf, through front companies, on desalination, infrastructure protection, cybersecurity, and intelligence gathering.

But what about the Palestinian issue? While on the record it is still the prerequisite for normal ties, Gulf countries are only paying it lip service. This section of the article is most telling:

Salman al-Ansari, a former banker and media executive who runs a new Saudi advocacy group in Washington, sent an even stronger signal in October. In an article for the Hill, he wrote that Saudi Arabia and Israel should form a “collaborative alliance,” rooted in open business ties, to assert their rightful place as the “twin pillars of regional stability.” Arab critics skewered al-Ansari for not mentioning the Palestinians in the article. He says the omission was intentional, reflecting his wish to change the old narrative of conditioning everything on Palestinian statehood.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs published an article about how much Arab governments care about the US embassy move to Jerusalem. This part was most interesting:

We recently received from Palestinian sources, a report about what happened in a meeting between Abbas and King Salman at their December 21, 2016, meeting. According to this report, while the two were sitting in the king’s palace in Riyadh, a telephone call from President Sisi of Egypt was received to update the king that he had decided, while Mahmoud Abbas was in the king’s presence, to withdraw the Egyptian Security Council resolution against Israel. [It was submitted later by other Security Council members.] The King told Sisi, “Go ahead.” Abu Mazen said, “At least resist Trump’s decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem,” but Sisi said, according to the sources, “I am with Trump,” while the King of Saudi Arabia kept silent.

In fact, Saudi Arabia has reason to want Israel to continue to control Jerusalem:

Augmenting the importance of Jerusalem may play on the nerves of Saudi Arabia as well, especially since the Saudis are anxious to preserve the supreme holy status of Mecca on the background of the Shiite-Sunnite split and the targeting of Mecca by Shiite missiles from the Yemen.

Actually, Jerusalem is very important to the Palestinian Authority and the Muslim Brotherhood and is less important to other Arab countries and Saudi Arabia in particular, since the status of Mecca is now challenged by the Shia. The Saudis cannot tolerate a rivalry posed by Jerusalem.

Only a couple of weeks ago, Tzipi Livni openly met with Saudi Prince Turki al Faisal in Davos at the World Economic Conference:

In Davos w/ Saudi Prince Turki Al Faisal after discussing the region & peace process with Jordanian FM & Palestine Investment Fund Chair pic.twitter.com/XTzFHRfk15
— ציפי לבני (@Tzipi_Livni) January 20, 2017

Palestinian supporters are really upset. Electronic Intifada gave a great, mournful summary:

BDS Gulf, an activist group that supports the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign, said the meeting in Davos was part of “repeated and escalating violations” of the boycott of Israel.“What compounds our concern and dismay is that this violation is not the first of its kind by Turki al-Faisal and others, but is part of a series of flirtations between the prince and Zionist officials,” BDS Gulf added.Turki al-Faisal has been leading a rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia rooted in their common hostility toward Iran. This warming embrace included a high-level delegation to Israel led last summer by former Saudi general Anwar Eskhi.Last February, al-Faisal publicly shook hands with Israel’s then-defense minister Moshe Yaalon at a conference in Germany.In May, al-Faisal held a public discussion with former Israeli national security advisor Yaakov Amidror at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank affiliated with the Israel lobby group AIPAC.Previously, al-Faisal has appeared publicly with Amos Yadlin, the former head of Israeli military intelligence.A recent report by one of Israel’s most influential think tanks – headed by Yadlin – noted the growing ties with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf regimes as one of the positive regional trends for Israel.

While they whine, they know the truth: Israel has a lot to offer Saudi Arabia and the other Arab countries, and "Palestine" has nothing at all positive to offer. Instead, it would be another avenue for the Muslim Brotherhood, via Hamas, to get a toehold in the region.

It seems certain that behind the scenes, Gulf countries are telling Abbas that if he doesn't accept a peace plan then he will risk losing Arab support altogether.

(h/t Zvi)

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Reuters reports:

Israel said on Wednesday it would establish a new settlement in the occupied West Bank, the first since the late 1990s, to rehouse settlers evicted on the same day from an outpost built on private Palestinian land.

A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said he was making good on a commitment to the settlers of Amona and had ordered the formation of a committee to locate a site where they could rebuild their homes.

"As promised a month and a half ago to the settlers, (Netanyahu) has set up a committee that will promote the establishment of a new settlement... It will begin work immediately to locate a spot and to establish the settlement," a statement from the Prime Minister's Office said.

The announcement was made shortly after Israel's Supreme Court rejected a government plan to rehouse some of the Amona settlers on an adjacent plot because it ruled that homes built there would also encroach on land owned by Palestinians.

According to the Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, Israel last established new settlements in the West Bank in 1999, although outposts such as Amona, that settlers set up without official permission, have been built far more recently.

I also showed that the New York Times reported, parenthetically, that there has been "little building" over the past eight years in the territories.

But if you have read Reuters and the NYT and all major news media during the past ten years, you would think that Israel has been building "settlements" non-stop and at breakneck speed.

In fact, all they were reporting was some small increases in existing settlements to accommodate natural growth and some approvals of buildings many of which never made it to actually being built. In a small number of cases they retroactively legalized outposts that were built against the Israeli government's wishes.

Suddenly, the media is reporting a completely different story. Only now is Israel barely starting to do what they have blamed Israel for over the past decade. (And it is also only in the planning stage. The new community doesn't even have a name.)

Thousands of international journalists have passed through Israel in the past twenty years, and as far as I know, not one of them reported how little actual building was going on. Suddenly, in the past week, they are noticing - because they want to show their readers that Israel is acting even more against peace than it was during all those years of supposed Israeli "intransigence" and "extreme right wing Likud government."

No one is asking why this story as ignored for so long.

But it now brings up the next question that the media is not bothering to ask: If Israel really has been building so little, then why have the Palestinians refused to negotiate?

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that Palestinians refused to negotiate because of Israeli settlement building. They insisted that construction be frozen completely. And over at least two periods, Israel did exactly that - once for ten months and once for 18 months. The rest of the time Israel merely slowed down construction and most of it was in areas that would be part of Israel under any conceivable agreement.

This new reluctant realization by the media that Israel had done very little "settlement activity" is not because they suddenly saw the error of their ways. They simply want to frame Israel as acting even worse than they were framing Israel before and the only way to do that is by comparing it with before. But when they need to back up their new assertions, they are forced to admit that they were lying to their readers and news consumers for so long with Palestinian Arab propaganda, so the truth is obscured behind the news of "new settlements."

What the newfound discoveries of these professional reporters show is that it is the Palestinians who have been becoming more and more intransigent by refusing to negotiate even when settlement activity was frozen or nearly frozen. But since this contradicts the meme that they must push above all else - that Israel is the intransigent party - this is not going to be reported either.

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Gaza wholesalers refuse to accept cement deliveries because of new Hamas taxes

On Wednesday, Gaza building suppliers refused to accept building materials being imported from Israel through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

The reason was because Hamas unilaterally added a major tax on all such materials, and they did not believe they coul dpay the taxes and still make a profit. (Cement and other materials in Gaza have a fixed price.)

The materials that the Gaza suppliers refused to accept included cement, aggregate and iron.

From the mainstream media, you wouldn't know that Israel is bringing truckloads of cement every day, that Hamas is interfering with the distribution of those materials by imposing arbitrary taxes, and that Gaza suppliers are angry at Hamas, not Israel.

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