Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, April 07, 2017

04/07 Links Pt2: Glick: Israel and Obama’s political war; Kemp: FO must lift their ban on Royal visits to Israel

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel and Obama’s political war

This brings us to 2015, and the fight in Washington and throughout the US about Obama’s nuclear deal with Tehran. In the 2015 operation, the White House allegedly used intercepted communications between US citizens and Israeli diplomats and between Israeli diplomats in Washington and Jerusalem to defame opponents of the nuclear deal. Lawmakers and private citizens were repeatedly subjected to condemnations in the media where unnamed administration sources questioned their loyalty, alleged that they were serving the interests of a foreign power against the US, and that in the case of lawmakers, they were bought and paid for by rich Jewish donors.
Speaking to Smith, a pro-Israel activist who had participated in the battle against the nuclear deal explained how the White House operation worked.
“At some point, the administration weaponized the NSA’s [National Security Agency’s] legitimate monitoring of communications of foreign officials to stay one step ahead of domestic political opponents....
“We began to notice that the White House was responding immediately, sometimes within 24 hours, to specific conversations we were having. At first, we thought it was a coincidence being amplified by our paranoia. After a while, it simply became our working assumption that we were being spied on.”
Weaponizing intelligence reports was only one way that the Obama administration abused its power to weaken, silence and criminalize its domestic opponents.
Weaponizing the IRS was another way.
And just as Obama’s IRS was used to hound conservative groups that opposed Obama’s domestic agenda, so it was used to discriminate against pro-Israel groups that opposed Obama’s Middle East policies.
The most well-known case of such abuse was the IRS’s failure to approve the request for nonprofit status submitted by Z Street, a pro-Israel educational organization.

Col Kemp: Foreign Office must lift their ban on Royal visits to Israel

No fewer than 16,000 British and Commonwealth troops died during the Palestine campaign in the First World War and are buried in the land where they fell. Yet a long-standing Foreign Office ban on royal visits to Israel looks likely to deny these men the honour that has been afforded to British soldiers killed in Europe, Gallipoli and other theatres of war during the centenary years. This policy must be overturned now to ensure their sacrifice is properly recognised.
Ninety-eight years ago today, on December 9, 1917, the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem surrendered the Holy City to General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force at the end of a bloody battle against the Turks that began on November 17.
The Palestine campaign has received little attention during the First World War commemorations, but was the second largest British theatre of operations in terms of strength of forces, with troops from Britain, Australia, New Zealand and India. It achieved the first defeat of a central power in the war.
British Empire forces sustained 554,828 casualties during the campaign, including 16,000 dead. At the Jerusalem War Cemetery on Mount Scopus this year I visited the graves of two of them, Edwin Beard and Leonard Frost, both boys from my school, Colchester Royal Grammar. It saddened me to think that the British Foreign Office is ready to deny these British soldiers the honour they deserve.
There are 2,415 graves in this cemetery as well as the Jerusalem Memorial, which commemorates another 3,300 troops who have no known grave. This is the place that should be the focus of the centenary commemorations of our servicemen who died in that campaign, preferably in December 2017.

The Burden of the 1967 Victory

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Considering the ways Israel’s opponents have changed over the decades, the collective yearning among Israelis for a decisive, 1967-style victory is unrealistic. The false hope for such success impedes clarity of thinking and causes the Israeli public to lose confidence in both the military and the political leadership. The only approach that can succeed in Israel’s current conflicts is a patient, attritional, repetitive use of force. Israelis should take comfort that time is on Israel’s side.
In June 1967, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) waged war alone against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It achieved a stunning victory in six days. The military skill demonstrated by the Israelis was remarkable – so much so that battles from the Six-Day War continue to be studied at war colleges around the world.
Israel’s military achievement had another extremely important effect. It went a long way towards convincing the Arab world that Israel cannot be easily destroyed by military force; Israel is a fact the Arabs must learn to live with. Indeed, ten years later – after Egypt had lost another war to Israel, this one in 1973 – its president, Anwar Sadat, came to Jerusalem (November 1977) to offer peace.
The swift and decisive victory of 1967 became the standard to which the IDF aspired – and the kind of victory expected by Israeli society in future engagements. This is problematic, considering the ways Israel’s opponents have changed and the means they now deploy.

Israeli Arab at Columbia says Jews should be proud of Israel

I had missed this remarkable video:

An Arab IDF veteran who participated in a pro-Israel event at Columbia University last month told The Algemeiner on Tuesday why he lashed out at a Jewish student on campus who said he was “not proud” of the Jewish state.

Mohammad Kabiya, a University of Haifa political science major and commander in the Israeli Air Force, whose sharp exchange with his peer about Israel’s moral standing has been circulating on social media, explained, “It is so wrong, and embarrassing, for a Jew to spread such lies about the one Jewish state in the world.”

“Israel is not perfect but it’s far from how these people are describing it,” Kabiya – a Bedouin Muslim — said in Hebrew, referring to the crowds participating in “Israeli Apartheid Week” (IAW) events. Criticism of the Israeli government and policies is legitimate, he added, “but it’s like when I fight with my brother; the whole world doesn’t need to know about it.”

Kabiya, who had been invited to Columbia by the school’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) as part of “Hebrew Liberation Week” – a counter-demonstration to IAW – has been serving as an informal spokesman for the Jewish state and his community’s proud role in its defense.

“Israel is my state and I need to protect it,” he said emphatically.

SSI president Rudy Rochman told The Algemeiner that Kabiya gives a voice and face to minority groups in Israel that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement neither acknowledges nor talks about.

“Many students didn’t even know there were such things as Israeli Arabs and were shocked to meet Mohammad and hear his story,” Rochman said. “They thought Israel was a country made up of only Jews. They had no idea that about 20% of the population is Arab.”

Kabiya — well-known in Israel for his efforts on behalf of public diplomacy — called the efforts of groups like SSI “holy work,” and encouraged Jewish students “to stand up for themselves.”

“You cannot fear people who just scream lies,” he said. “We have to support those who are responding to these disgusting things being said about Israel.”

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An unusual op-ed in Middle East Eye by Mat Nashed lifts the veil of Arab racism, a topic that is rarely addressed in the media. Excerpts:

Racism is a problem in the Arab world, yet too many people in the region deny it. Last week, an Ethiopian domestic worker fell from the balcony of her employer’s home in Kuwait. It was caught on camera, and though the woman survived, she later revealed that her employer was trying to kill her.

"The lady put me in the bathroom and was about to kill me in the bathroom without anybody finding out," the worker said.

"She would have thrown my body out like rubbish, so instead of staying there I went to save myself and then I fell."

This isn’t an isolated incident. Many Arab countries have maintained the kafala – or sponsorship system – which ties the legal status of low-wage migrant workers directly to their employer, giving the latter power to take away workers’ passports, withhold their salaries, and subject them to harrowing abuse.

In Arab countries where kafala isn’t applied, refugees and non-Western migrants are routinely abused by the state, their host community, and even aid organisations that were founded to help them.

In places, such as Qatar and Kuwait, more than 90 percent of the labour force is imported from South and Southeast Asia and Africa.

Recruiters do their part to lure workers by propagating false promises of a fair wage and a day off each week. It’s not until many workers arrive that they realise they’ve been trafficked into performing slave-like labour which they would have never consented to.

The International Trade Union Confederation estimates that more than 4,000 low wage workers will die while building infrastructure for Qatar’s 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Domestic migrant workers – generally women – are even more vulnerable. In Lebanon, they are excluded from basic protections under the labour law. And like elsewhere in the region, many are locked indoors and routinely subjected to starvation, rape and death.

In 2008, Human Rights Watch found that at least one domestic migrant worker in Lebanon was dying each week as a result of "unnatural causes" such as alleged suicide or after suspiciously falling from tall buildings. Activists suspect that the rate of deaths remains just as high today.

Elsewhere in the region, racism exposes itself in more subtle ways. Members of Egypt’s Nubian community, for instance, are often portrayed as servants in the media and scapegoated for street violence.

And yet, Nubian activists say that they are still treated better than sub-Saharan migrants and refugees. In Egypt, the darker you are, the harsher the discrimination.

That was obvious after a senior Egyptian official allegedly called sub-Saharan Africans "dogs and slaves" during a diplomatic visit to Kenya last year.

The Arabic word for "slave" is often colloquially used to address black Africans in the Middle East.

As with antisemitism, the West doesn't want to talk about Arab racism because the media wants to put people in one of two convenient buckets: "oppressors" and "victims." White people (which naturally include Jews in their minds) are generally always the oppressors and everyone else the oppressed.

One reason why the Western media ignores these stories is because any reporting that makes Arabs or Muslims the oppressors is perceived as oppression itself.

The secondary reason is because of the (frankly bigoted) expectation that news consumers will become racists if exposed to the full story. Sanitizing the news is meant to make the world a better, more ignorant place..

What the news editors haven'r figured out yet is that in the Internet age, stories like this are spreading faster and reaching more people. The media still plays a game of letting the New York Times or the wire services set the agenda and then slavishly following their slanted ideas.

(h/t messy57)

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04/07 Links Pt1: Netanyahu’s Told-You-So Moment; ‘Where Is the Arab Leadership? Where Are You, Traitors? Have You Forgotten Your Own People?

From Ian:

With 59 cruise missiles, US sends message to the world: We’re back

After two days of uncertainty from the US administration, following a chemical attack by the Bashar Assad regime, the Americans sent a message to the world on Thursday night in the least subtle way possible: with 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired straight at a Syrian air base.
It was a message directed toward Assad and the people of Syria, to allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, foes like Iran and North Korea, the US’s great frenemy Russia, and to the American public back at home.
Internationally, the 59 Raytheon Co. missiles fired from the USS Ross and USS Porter told American partners — and enemies — that despite the “America First” rhetoric, the US is again very much a factor on the world stage. Domestically, it was a sign that US President Donald Trump, whose administration has seen false-starts, failures and pushback, would take decisive action when he deemed it necessary.
“They are telling their allies in the Middle East: You are not alone,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser and IDF general, in a phone briefing on Friday organized by the Israel Project.
Breaking from the naval gazing so prevalent in this part of the world, the strike on Syria should also be at least briefly considered in the context of North Korea, which has been antagonizing the United States with nuclear and ballistic missile tests — vide the strike occurring during Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who holds considerable cachet over Pyongyang.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Told-You-So Moment

Benjamin Netanyahu will never be popular in America’s major newsrooms. Or among most of the think-tankers who set the tone and parameters of foreign-policy debate. His name is a curse on college campuses. So it’s worth asking whose vision of the Middle East has held up better under the press of recent events.
His or theirs?
The question comes to mind as Western governments confront this week’s chemical atrocity in Syria, and as footage of children’s bodies convulsing in agony once more unsettles the world’s conscience. Even President Trump, who generally lacks a moral language, was moved. On Friday U.S forces fired nearly 60 cruise missiles at a Syrian air base, punishing the Assad regime for its chemical crimes.
His predecessor had a rich moral vocabulary and a coterie of award-winning moralizers like Samantha Power on staff. But President Obama refused to act when Bashar Assad crossed his chemical red line. He wanted to extricate Washington from the region, and he saw a nuclear deal with Mr. Assad’s Iranian patrons as the exit ramp.
Such a deal came within grasp when Hassan Rouhani launched his presidential campaign in Iran four years ago this month. The smiling, self-proclaimed “moderate” was the Iranian interlocutor the Obamaians had been waiting for. Mr. Netanyahu posed the main obstacle.

Israeli Arab Newscaster on Syria Crisis: ‘Where Is the Arab Leadership? Where Are You, Traitors? Have You Forgotten Your Own People?’

Israeli Arab newscaster Lucy Aharish issued an impassioned rebuke on Wednesday of regional heads of state over their failure to halt the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria.
Referring to the suspected chemical weapons attack earlier this week in Syria — believed to have been carried out by President Bashar Assad’s regime — in which dozens of civilians, including children, were killed, Aharish said, in English remarks broadcast on Channel 2, “The images that once again struck us yesterday are no fake news, but rather old news.”
She continued, “There is one question that repeats itself — where is the Arab leadership? Where are you, traitors? Have you forgotten your own people?”
In December, Aharish aired an English statement in which she called the situation in Aleppo a “holocaust.”
“I am ashamed as a human being that we chose leaders who are incapable of being articulate in their condemnation and powerful in their action,” she said at the time. “I am ashamed that the Arab world is being taken hostage by terrorists and murderers and that we are not doing anything. I am ashamed that the peaceful majority of humanity is irrelevant once again.”

I live in a great neighborhood. It’s beautiful and green (except in the places that were burnt by arson terror last December). There is the feeling of quiet seclusion, despite being right next to one of the main areas of town. While I don’t have a direct view of the sea from my house, when you take a walk outside, it is visible from many different angles, in between the houses.

Born in Detroit, I am very aware that my current neighborhood is not to be taken for granted.

As a child in the USA, I could not play outside without a grown-up watching. I certainly could not go around the block on my own. Homes had to have alarm systems and violent robberies were common. My elderly neighbor across the street was raped and murdered by men who had grown up in the house next to hers. A few times I saw people with guns which scared me very much. They were obviously unhinged and God only knew what they could do…

The neighborhood I live in now is safe. It’s one of the better areas of Haifa. I can walk outside, alone, at any hour of the day or night without worrying about being mugged or assaulted. There are no bums, no drunks or drug addicts on the corner. When I go for a walk, my biggest worry is preventing my dog (who only likes female dogs) from picking a fight with a male dog bigger than him.

And people say they are afraid to come to Israel.

Not all neighborhoods in Israel are as nice but many are and some are better. In most areas kids can play outside on their own. There are still places where people don’t need to lock their doors.

Obviously, not everything is perfect. There are some very dangerous neighborhoods in Israel, such as the south of Tel Aviv. There are criminals and even mob families but on the whole, most of Israel is pretty darn great.

Or at least it should be.

When I walk with my dog and hear a car coming too fast, I cringe. The muscles in my back tense up and sometimes I find myself looking for something to step behind – in case the car swerves up on to the sidewalk to run me over.

Once I caught myself calculating how long it would take me to run to safety if a terrorist got out of a car and attacked me with a knife.

I know it’s not likely to happen because it would be silly to waste a car ramming attack on a single individual but I also know that there is a possibility.

Do people who live elsewhere even consider the possibility?

There is a difference between being afraid and being alert. I think it is fair to say that most Israelis are hyper-alert, all the time.

Can you picture it?

There is a hospital in my neighborhood so there is good reason for many people who don’t belong to the area, to be there. The hospital (like all Israeli hospitals) serves Jews and Arabs alike, has Jewish and Arab employees. I find myself watching the people coming and going. Who are they? What do they have in their hands? How can I tell if they are walking behind me to go to their car or to see if there is an opportunity to stab me in the back? How can I know before it is too late?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not walking around scared. I am not afraid of the Arabs that work in my neighborhood or those that use the facilities in my area. Jews and Arabs live side by side, we work, shop, study and go out for entertainment in the same places. That’s Israel and that’s the way things should be. There is absolutely no reason we can’t live together.

Except for the people who want me dead, just because I’m Jewish, living in my homeland.

I should be able to walk my dog in peace and enjoy my beautiful neighborhood. And I do. At the same time, I am forced to consider things that should never even cross my mind. That one person who decides to come to my neighborhood to stab a Jew. The one person who comes for another reason but decides to seize the opportunity to attack a Jew.

While I don’t expect any of these things to happen in my neighborhood, I am forced to be alert to the possibility that they could. It could happen to me. From a very young age, Israeli children are forced to recognize the fact that it could happen to them.

And yet Israelis do not walk around, full of fear. Maybe a better way to put it is that, Israelis are full of courage – courage is not lack of fear, it is recognition of the danger and doing what is necessary anyway.

While other people might complain, Israelis are busy curing cancer, bringing clean water to Africa (and to California as well), making television programs your tv stations are snapping up and inventing life-changing technology. Healing wounded Syrians, ignored by the world, is just one more thing to do. We don’t have time to complain about the reality we live in. We’re too busy.

But it shouldn’t have to be this way. The threat is real. The constant hyper-vigilance is damaging to physical and emotional health.

And that is the Israeli experience when everything is ok, during “normal” times.

Is taking a walk with the dog, in peace, being able to enjoy the beauty and tranquility of my neighborhood, with no worries, no stress, too much to ask for?

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Ma'an reports that today was the first day that Hamas allowed any fishing boats to leave port in two weeks, since the assassination of Mazen Fuqaha on March 25.

The price of fish in Gaza increased sharply as no domestic fish reached the market.

There were reports that Hamas believed that the killers came by sea.

This came in context of Hamas stopping nearly everyone from leaving Gaza altogether.

There have been scattered news stories from the Middle East about these Hamas restrictions, but on the whole the world media and human rights groups have been silent. (The only exception I could find was the next to last paragraph of a report by Israeli NGO Gisha, who used to be silent about Hamas abuses on people entering and leaving Gaza until I shamed them a couple of years ago and they realized that their egregious anti-Israel focus could threaten their EU funding.)

The biweekly UN OCHA-OPT humanitarian report implied that the fishing ban was just slightly worsening Israel's restrictions on fishing to a 6 mile perimeter:

[S]ince 26 March, the de facto authorities are preventing the access of Palestinian fishermen to the sea along Gaza’s coast. The Gaza Fishermen’s Syndicate has estimated the resulting losses at two to three tons of fish per day, triggering rises in the price of imported fish. These restrictions, which came at the beginning of the sardine season, are further undermining fishing livelihoods weakened by the longstanding access restrictions imposed by Israel.

Hamas' decision to lift these restrictions seem to be more from worries about people revolting than from any progress in their investigation about the Fuqaha hit.

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In 2007, Aijaz Zaka Syed won third place in the EU's Lorenzo Natali Media Prize for outstanding reporting on development and poverty eradication.

Here's what he is writing today:

The Western media narrative is indeed hopelessly flawed and skewed and is often dictated by its economic and political interests worldwide. It remains hostage to powerful lobbies – especially the all-powerful Israeli lobby.

Clearly, this is an impossibly one-sided, asymmetrical battle. The Muslims feel that they are faced with a giant propaganda machine and its awesome power that has for years controlled their world and dictated its agenda. And their claim and historic sense of perpetually being at the receiving-end is not entirely without basis.

From the worldwide media empire of the likes of Rupert Murdoch – whose News Corp owns scores of newspapers, television channels and radio stations around the globe – to the stable of Time Warner – which owns some of the world’s most powerful newspapers, magazines and television networks – the lobby’s stranglehold over the global media industry is firm and complete.

This control even extends to Hollywood, the mighty dream factory that plays a critical role in building and perpetuating stereotypes and age-old myths and biases about ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ in Hollywood-speak.

Many of the major Hollywood studios and production companies are wholly or partly owned by the Zionist and pro-Israel groups and families. So it is little surprising then that Arabs and Muslims do not exactly come across as the friendliest and most likeable people on earth in films and television shows like ‘24’ and ‘Homeland’.

The fact that some of the top editors, columnists, writers and filmmakers in the US and elsewhere also happen to be pro-Israel also hasn’t helped our cause. Just look at the New York Times and the Washington Post – the two most formidable voices of the US establishment – and the proud line-up of their editors and columnists. From Tom Friedman to Charles Krauthammer, some of the biggest names in the business are staunch supporters of Israel and its divine claim over Arab lands.

If America as the sole superpower and the political and economic master of the free world controls our world, the Zionists, in turn, are seen as controlling Uncle Sam.

Notice that Syed complains that Thomas Friedman supports Israel's "divine claim over Arab lands." Since he is against settlements, what land does that leave that he could be referring to?

It is apparent that Syed (and the Muslim world) calls anyone who supports Israel's existence, in any borders, part of the sinister worldwide Zionist lobby.

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04/06 Links Pt2: Phillips: The Hamas Formulation; Murray: Livingstone and the Decay of Labour

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Hamas Formulation

Why is everyone so shocked by the Labour party’s decision not to expel Ken Livingstone? I wasn’t the slightest bit surprised. Indeed, I would have been amazed had it done so.
Of course, his claim that Hitler had supported Zionism was a grotesque and profoundly Jew-bashing untruth. The only overtures between Zionists and the Nazis were for the Jews a desperate manoeuvre to save some from extermination, and for the Nazis a way of getting rid of them. The ludicrous claim that Hitler supported the national self-determination of the very people he wanted to wipe off the face of the earth is a malevolent distortion which Livingstone appears either to have got from sources who are themselves driven by hatred of the Jews or is his own misrepresentation of other accounts.
Having already been suspended from the party for twelve months over these remarks, Livingstone has now been suspended for a further year. Far from being repentant, however, he has doubled down and repeated the calumny, thus compounding the general outrage and the deep distress of the Jewish community.
There are three main reasons, though, why it was never likely he would be expelled.
1) Labour’s leader Jeremy Corbyn is opposed to expelling someone for antisemitism, because to Corbyn it is simply impossible for someone on the left to be an antisemite.
2) Labour plays heavily to the Muslim gallery and many Muslims believe Jews and Nazis are virtually synonymous, particularly in Israel.
3) If Livingstone were thrown out, similar action would become necessary against other Labour members who have displayed anti-Jewish attitudes. This the party has already refused to do – as over incidents in the Oxford university Labour club — effectively whitewashing Labour party antisemitism and refusing to acknowledge that the Labour party is riddled with it, not least because of 1) and 2) above.

Douglas Murray - Ken Livingstone and the Decay of Labour

UNRWA Spreads False Notion that UNRWA will introduce new curriculum of peace

Over the past week, UNRWA spread the word that UNRWA intends to introduce a new curriculum for peace and tolerance in the UNRWA school system.
However, UNRWA reports widespread popular opposition to such an initiative.
The fact that UNRWA admits that there is a problem in their schools represents a newsworthy development in itself.
However, the Center for Near East Policy Research checked all public and private sources in UNRWA. No intention, initiative or program exists in the UNRWA Department of Education for any change in the UNRWA curriculum.
UNRWA curricula in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza remain under the supervision of the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Education, which makes it clear that no plans are afoot for any change in the Palestinian Authority Education System.

US State Dept. designates Hamas commander as global terrorist

The State Department gave a “global terrorist” designation to a Hamas military commander who it accused of being involved in the 2006 kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
On Thursday, the State Department declared Abu Anas al-Ghandour a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” under a 2001 executive order that imposes sanctions on foreigners who have committed or pose “a significant risk” of committing terrorist attacks.
The US and its citizens will generally not be allowed to conduct business with Ghandour, and any assets he has in the US will be frozen.
According to the State Department, the Israel-born Ghandour leads a Gaza brigade for Hamas, which the US considers a terrorist organization. In the kidnapping of Shalit at an Israeli border crossing, two Israeli soldiers were killed and four were wounded.
Shalit was released in 2011 in exchange for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Ma'an reports that the Palestinian public prosecutor issued a warning Thursday to all stores that it is illegal to sell Israeli SIM cards or phone cards.

The possession of the chips " constitutes a criminal violation punishable by law in Palestine."

Shops have two weeks to comply. Afterwards, anyone found in possession of Israeli SIM cards can be prosecuted.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

As a child, one of my great fears was being the victim of a chemical attack. I read and reread the article on chemical warfare in the Encyclopedia Britannica in the school library with horrified fascination. When we practiced getting under our desks “in case of an atomic attack” I was relieved that it was only an atomic attack that was expected. Gas would be 100 times worse, I thought. Maybe this was because I was a Jew and heard that the Nazis had gassed Jews, even though as far as I knew my own relatives in Ukraine had been shot and not gassed.

The sarin gas attack carried out this Tuesday in Idlib by forces controlled by Bashar al Assad (the word ‘alleged’ is not necessary) was a war crime, a mass murder of civilians by horrific means. To make it even worse, hospitals where victims being treated were also bombed. It’s not the first time the same criminal has committed the same crime. But Assad could not have done it alone. He has a powerful accessory to his crimes.

Russian planes are not dropping sarin (or chlorine or barrel bombs), but they are supporting Assad’s forces with more conventional weapons, and killing plenty of civilians in the process. The Obama Administration, which initially provided some minimal support for the rebels that had opposed Assad, more or less gave up on the idea of deposing him when Russia stepped in, and recently the Trump Administration admitted that it too is “focused” on defeating Da’esh and not on removing Assad.

Interestingly, although Putin initially claimed that he was intervening in Syria in order to defeat Da’esh, he has actually done very little against it. The Atlantic Council, which is funded primarily by European governments, said this about the Russian intervention in Syria:

The results have been grievous. Russia carried out its air strikes with scant regard for the rules of war: Open-source footage shows the repeated use of banned cluster munitions, and strikes on targets including mosques, hospitals, and water treatment plants. Imagine the outcry if the United States or its allies conducted military operations in this manner. Russia’s military campaign allowed Assad’s forces to retake lost ground, a task they did with great brutality and immense human suffering. It barely dented the ISIS terrorist group, whose recent territorial losses have largely come at the hands of Kurdish militias backed by a US-led coalition. Far from shortening the war, it exacerbated it—and in so doing, it sent yet more waves of refugees flooding into Turkey and Europe.

Until recently, I hadn’t understood Putin’s motives. It’s been clear that he wants to protect and expand his naval and air installations in Syria, but by putting his eggs in Assad’s basket he is enabling the Iranian project of creating a corridor from its western border to the Mediterranean, something that might prove dangerous to Russia in the long term.

But if his goal is to destabilize his traditional enemies in Europe by flooding them with refugees, then both his intervention and the brutal way it is carried out – as well as his tolerance of Assad’s even worse behavior – become understandable. The wars going on in Syria and Iraq serve his purpose, and so does the continued existence of Da’esh.

This also explains why Russia has not interfered with Israeli activities in Syria. Although Assad and his Iranian patron are interested in building up Hezbollah as a threat against Israel, Putin doesn’t necessarily share their goals, and may even wish to limit the advance of Iranian hegemony in the region. Russia has its problems with radical Islamic jihadism, and Iran either has or shortly will have missiles that can reach Moscow. What does serve Putin’s purpose is chaos – which he promotes by helping Assad stay in power and kill anyone associated with (or stuck in the same town with) the opposition. Israel’s bombing of weapons bound for Hezbollah doesn’t detract from his goal.

It’s also an incentive for Israel to not interfere. There have been suggestions that Israel should intervene against Assad for humanitarian reasons. It is highly unlikely that Israel would take such a step. Not only would it place Israel in direct conflict with Russia, but Israel is dependent on Russia to allow it to operate against Hezbollah in Syria. The greatest direct threat against Israel today is Hezbollah as a proxy of Iran, and it would be disastrous if Putin were to decide to protect it.

I think Putin is the big winner here. In a stroke of malevolent genius, he managed to turn the Syrian civil war, the rise of Da’esh, the struggle between the Sunni and Shia worlds, the advance of Iran toward the Mediterranean, and the concomitant suffering of the peoples of the region, to his advantage. He now controls the airspace of the eastern Mediterranean region and is building up important air and naval bases here, a strategic coup against Europe and the US. Meanwhile, Europe is being destabilized by the waves of refugees from the conflicts in our region. All this on the backs of a few million dead and displaced Arabs!

Whether or not Russian activities had any effect on the American election, there is no doubt that Russia is carrying out psychological warfare against the US with the intent to create as much dissension and chaos there as possible. This isn’t anything new – the Soviet regime did it too – but social media have made it easier and increased the leverage of a small number of operatives.

Putin is a remarkable figure. I would call his actions in fanning the flames of war in Syria psychopathic, although maybe any despot has to be a psychopath. He seems to have suppressed internal opposition to his regime quite effectively (and brutally, in part by murdering anyone that threatens him). He has drastically improved the strategic position of Russia relatively cheaply, and is on his way to restoring the Soviet empire.

Various pundits have said that Putin is playing chess while Western leaders play checkers (or even simpler games, like marbles). I agree – except that the pawns he sacrifices so unemotionally are people.

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04/06 Links Pt1: Jibril Rajoub hit with lawsuit upon arrival in US; Russia and UNESCO recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital

From Ian:

Senior Fatah member hit with lawsuit upon arrival at JFK

A senior member of the Palestinian Authority was served with a $250 million civil lawsuit on Wednesday, upon his arrival at a New York airport, over his alleged involvement in the torture and killing of a Palestinian-American man.
Jibril Rajoub, who is a senior Fatah member and heads the PA Olympic committee, was handed the writ for $250 million and a court summons as he descended from the plane at JFK airport, Ynet news reported.
The suit accuses Rajoub of involvement in the alleged torture and killing of Azzam Rahim by the Palestinian Authority security forces in 1995.
The suit was filed by Rahim’s family on Tuesday in their home state of Texas against Rajoub, who at the time of the alleged killing served as head of Palestinian security in the West Bank. According to the writ, Rahim was detained by the PA on September 29, 1995, and tortured to death.
The claimants accused Rajoub of playing a major role in the arrest, torture and death of their relative. The family testified that Rahim was visiting his home town of Ein Yabrud, near Ramallah, over 20 years ago, when plainclothes security forces detained him while he was playing backgammon in a local coffee house and took him to prison in Jericho. Two days later an ambulance delivered his dead body back to the town.

Moscow surprisingly says west Jerusalem is Israel's capital

Russia recognizes west Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated in a surprise announcement on Thursday, obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post.
The announcement comes as US President Donald Trump's administration is agonizing over whether to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move that would constitute recognizing west Jerusalem as the country's capital. No other country in the world recognizes any part of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry reads, “We reaffirm our commitment to the UN-approved principles for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement, which include the status of East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state. At the same time, we must state that in this context we view West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
This is a sharp shift in Russian policy, which until now has formally held that Jerusalem should eventually be under a permanent international regime. The statement appears in English on the Russian Foreign Ministry's Russian web site.
While officials in Jerusalem interpreted this to mean that recognition of west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital will only come once east Jerusalem becomes the capital of a Palestinian state, The Jerusalem Post has learned that Moscow intends this recognition to go into effect immediately.

UNESCO Chief: ‘Jerusalem is the Capital of King David’

UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova has rebuffed attempts by the UN cultural body to deny a historic Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
“In the Torah, Jerusalem is the capital of King David, where Solomon built the Temple and placed the Ark of the Covenant,” Bokova said last week at the policy conference of the European Coalition for Israel, a grassroots Christian initiative.
“To deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site, and runs counter to the reasons that justifies its inscription in the UNESCO World Heritage List,” she added.
Bokova’s comments represent a sharp contrast to previous statements and resolutions issued by the UN agency. In October 2016, UNESCO passed two controversial resolutions condemning Israeli actions at Jerusalem’s holy sites and ignoring Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
Yet in a meeting last month with World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reaffirmed his recognition of Judaism’s historic ties to Jerusalem. Before March’s remarks, the UN chief had said on Israeli radio, “It is completely clear the Temple that the Romans destroyed in Jerusalem was a Jewish temple.”

The Arab online magazine "Highlights" has an article called "The nature of the Jews as the Nazis saw them." The photo-illustration for the article is above.

It is an Arabic translation of an article by Joseph Goebbels written in 1929 that was entitled, simply, "The Jew."

It says:

One cannot defend himself against the Jew. He attacks with lightning speed from his position of safety and uses his abilities to crush any attempt at defense.
Quickly he turns the attacker’s charges back on him and the attacker becomes the liar, the troublemaker, the terrorist. Nothing could be more mistaken than to defend oneself. That is just what the Jew wants. He can invent a new lie every day for the enemy to respond to, and the result is that the enemy spends so much time defending himself that he has no time to do what the Jew really fears: to attack. The accused has become the accuser, and loudly he shoves the accuser into the dock. So it always was in the past when a person or a movement fought the Jew. That is what would happen to us as well were we not fully aware of his nature, and if we lacked the courage to draw the following radical conclusions:
1. One cannot fight the Jew by positive means. He is a negative, and this negative must be erased from the German system or he will forever corrupt it.
2. One cannot discuss the Jewish question with the Jews. One can hardly prove to a person that one has the duty to render him harmless.
3. One cannot allow the Jew the same means one would give an honest opponent, for he is no honorable opponent. He will use generosity and nobility only to trap his enemy.
4. The Jew has nothing to say about German questions. He is a foreigner, an alien, who only enjoys the rights of a guest, rights that he always abuses.
5. The so-called religious morality of the Jews is no morality at all, rather an encouragement to betrayal. Therefore, they have no claim to protection from the state.
6. The Jew is not smarter than we are, rather only cleverer and craftier. His system cannot be defeated economically — he follows entirely different moral principles than we do. It can only be broken through political means.
7. A Jew cannot insult a German. Jewish slanders are but badges of honor for a German opponent of the Jews.
8. The more a German person or a German movement opposes the Jew, the more valuable it is. If someone is attacked by the Jews, that is a sure sign of his virtue. He who is not persecuted by the Jews, or who is praised by them, is useless and dangerous.
9. The Jew evaluates German questions from the Jewish standpoint. As a result, the opposite of what he says must be true.
10. One must either affirm or reject anti-Semitism. He who defends the Jews harms his own people. One can only be a Jewish lackey or a Jewish opponent. Opposing the Jews is a matter of personal hygiene.
These principles give the anti-Jewish movement a chance of success. Only such a movement will be taken seriously by the Jews, only such a movement will be feared by them.
The fact that he shouts and complains about such a movement therefore is only a sign that it is right. We are therefore delighted that we are constantly attacked in the Jewish gazettes. They may shout about terror. We answer with Mussolini’s familiar words: “Terror? Never! It is social hygiene. We take these individuals out of circulation just as a doctor does to a bacterium.

Just in case it isn't clear enough, the translation is placed under the section of the magazine called "The Palestinian Cause."

It is also remarkable how closely Goebbel's advice has been embraced in the Arab world, officially about "Zionists."

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