Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 27, 2017

12/27 Links Pt2: Genocide Fail. Israeli Arabs have the highest Life Expectancy in the Arab World; Cary Nelson: The Middle East Studies Association Is Fundamentally Anti-Zionist

From Ian:

Genocide Fail. Israeli Arabs have the highest Life Expectancy in the Arab World

According to a recently released report from the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel, Israeli Arabs have the highest life expectancy in the Arab world.

According to the report "The Health of the Arab Population in Israel", the life expectancy of an Arab in Israel is higher than even those living in the wealthy gulf states.

What was that you were saying about "genocide" again?

WATCH: Anti-Semites On New Jersey Town Council Go Silent When Jews Called An 'Infection'

On July 17, 2017, Mahwah officials ordered the South Monsey Eruv Fund to stop construction of an eruv through Mahwah, despite the group getting permission from Orange & Rockland Utilities, which owned the poles where the PVC pipe was attached. Mahwah argued that the eruv violated township regulations. The Monsey group was given until August 4 to remove the eruv.

A legal firm was hired to fight for the eruv’s existence; on August 14 the eruv was reported vandalized. In late October, Christopher S. Porrino, the state's attorney general, issued a press release in which he condemned the town’s "hatred," "bigotry," "small-minded" and "bias," likening Mahwah’s citizens and leaders to "1950s-era white flight suburbanites who sought to keep African-Americans from moving into their neighborhoods."

Mayor William Laforet responded with a statement in which he cited Council President Robert Hermansen for Mahwah's "loss of reputation,” adding, "It has been a lonely and painful struggle for me and my family these past several months, having to deal with a reckless and oblivious council president, Rob Hermansen. He personally led his council mates to this action by the state's highest law enforcement official, and is most accountable."

On December 1, the Township Council unanimously approved the allocation of $175,000 to fight the two lawsuits alleging that the town discriminated against Orthodox Jews.

On December 14, the public session of the Mahwah, New Jersey town council meeting was witness to a woman telling them, “I want to make it known here, that the town of Ramapo, I’m sure, is suing the Hasidic people, because they have completely sucked the blood out of that town, from ruining their schools, from claiming that their husbandless women … complete corruption, and possibly criminality. And I want to know why it’s taken so long to remove, to remove the infection from our town. Thank you.”

The council sat silently, without offering any rejoinder to the hatred.

Yet back on August 10, Michael Cohen of the Simon Wiesenthal Center spoke to the council, stating, “You are, in fact, doing nothing more than saying Jews are not welcome.”

No friend of Israel

Around two weeks ago, and mere days after U.S. President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, one of the most popular tourist attractions in Berlin was opened at the Jewish Museum. Spanning over 1,000 square feet, the "Welcome to Jerusalem" exhibit is huge and includes hundreds of displays and exhibits.

One would have expected this type of exhibit at such an important Jewish museum to emphasize Jerusalem's unique character as the holiest city in Judaism and also possibly focus a bit on the historical narrative of Zionism and the State of Israel. Such an exhibit could also have presented, in a balanced manner of course, the different religions that coexist in the city in spite of the ongoing conflict. But regrettably, the exhibit does nothing of the sort, but rather serves to strengthen the theory of Muslim-Arab-Palestinian ownership of the city, mainly through a biased presentation of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

A historical documentary about the conflict, one of the exhibit's highlights, portrays Jews as domineering invaders. It notes the massacres and terrorist acts committed by Jewish paramilitary organizations while completely ignoring those same acts when they were carried out by Arab organizations at the behest of Jerusalem Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini; completely ignores the Arab revolt of the 1930s and Husseini's collaboration with the Nazis; presents a fairly long segment from an interview with late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from the early years of his leadership, in which the then-PLO chief explains that the Palestinians have no choice but to take up arms; and repeats the theory according to which the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is what led to the disintegration of the peace process, as well as the proven lie that then-Opposition Leader Ariel Sharon's 2000 visit to the Temple Mount sparked the Second Intifada. In short, according to the Jewish Museum in Berlin, the Jews are bad while the Arabs are victims.

[[File:Openly antisemitic Protester in Berlin (17.7.2014).jpg|Openly antisemitic Protester in Berlin (17.7.2014)]]

It’s been said that quashing antisemitic speech isn’t wise, for in forbidding expressions of antisemitism, you only drive the hate underground. Better our enemies should identify themselves by their hate speech, so we know who they are. Better they feel free to say what they really think, so we can gauge the danger to ourselves and our families.

So we can leave before the gates slam shut.

But it’s far more complicated than that. You have only to look at Europe to know this. Europe knows it went much too far with the Holocaust. So now it must look contrite to itself and to the world. It must at least pay lip service to silencing expressions of antisemitism.

How do we know it’s only a show of contrition and not the real thing? We know this because of Europe’s treatment of Israel, the only Jewish State.

Europe’s active anti-Israelism, such as the recent UN vote rejecting U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, is only putting lipstick on a pig, antisemitism in drag. Like Justice Potter Stewart and porn, we know it when we see it: Jew-hate. And Europe’s financial and verbal backing for the enemies of the Jewish State, for terrorism, is just part of the ongoing effort toward the genocide of the Jews.

Now because they don’t speak of the Final Solution or shove us into gas chambers, they think we’re fooled and maybe they’ve even fooled themselves. They think that having created legislation against antisemitism in Germany, they’ve passed the morality test. They don’t speak of hating Jews, so they can claim it’s something other than Jew-hate, though it’s not.

In substituting “Israel” for “Jew” they think they have every right to their hate, that it’s not unreasonable. They think this covert form of antisemitism makes antisemitism okay, polite, Western. They pat themselves on the back, congratulate themselves for this sea change. But antisemitism doesn’t come and go. It’s cyclical, cycling between overt and covert forms of the same thing.

The cycle of antisemitism in its covert form is like a moth inside a cocoon. The moth must at some point, leave the cocoon, for this is part of the life cycle. By the same token, the cycle of overt antisemitism will always out. Just as this current covert form of EU antisemitism necessarily follows the overt antisemitism of the Holocaust.

As individuals, we tend to think of the overt form of antisemitism as being the more dangerous of the two. But the real danger is in failing to see both forms of antisemitism: overt and covert, as part of one continuous cycle, with one following the other with the inevitability of time. The covert antisemitism lulls Jews into thinking they are safe. Since they think they are safe they don’t leave the host country, become trapped, and then suffer and/or die in terrible ways.

Thinking you can stay in a place as long as antisemitism is in its covert phase of the cycle is a crap shoot. You really have no way of knowing if you’ll make it out in time. Your luck isn’t better than the luck of so many who waited too long to get out of Europe, not so long ago. And no matter where you go, you’ll experience the same cycle.

By Orijentolog (hr.wikipedia.org) [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

A synagogue in Tehran

These are the thoughts that occurred in relation to the vandalizing of the Chadash synagogue in the Maleh neighborhood of Shiraz, Iran. Reports have been sketchy. What has been reported thus far is that two Torah scrolls were torn to pieces, while the prayer books were found in the bathroom, many of the holy books submerged in toilets.

It’s a horrible story. An overt manifestation of antisemitism that brought to mind an incident of some 17 years ago. A friend I’d made through random chat on AIM was dating a fellow who was originally from Iran. She kept thinking he would propose any minute, but something was holding him back. I volunteered to talk to him, my friend consented.

I made my point: my friend was not getting any younger. She wanted to have children. If he wasn’t going to get serious and pop the question, he should let her move on.

He got the point and they were engaged the next day.

Why had he been dragging his feet?

It was all about his father, back in Iran.

My friend thought her suitor’s parents were divorced. But this was not so. The guy’s father was still married to her mother in-law-to-be, but he was in Iran, while his wife was in LA, for reasons unknown to my friend. My friend’s fiance didn’t want to get married without his father by his side. But it was a difficult and complicated thing to bring him to the States for the wedding.

Somehow, the father did make it over to the States for the occasion and my friend was surprised to see that her in-laws were this fabulous love story. They doted and fawned on each other.

She had assumed they couldn’t get along, which is why dad was in Iran, while mom was in LA.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Here is what really happened: they left Iran for a better life in LA. But dad couldn’t acclimate to the American way of life. He was a fish out of water.

He was miserable.

And so, even though he loved his wife and family, HE WENT BACK TO IRAN.

Unfricking real. To leave the safety of America for THAT. To leave his FAMILY for that. But so it was.

Now here he was, reunited with his family in LA, once more, for the sake of his son’s upcoming marriage.

Would he stay? They had all missed each other so much.

He stayed for two months. Pampered his wife night and day, 24/7. Enjoyed his family. Until he couldn’t. Couldn't take it anymore.

And went back to the covert antisemitism of Iran.

Because it’s what he was used to. It’s what he knew, his whole life.

Ever since then, every time there is a report of overt antisemitism in Iran, such as what happened at the Chadash synagogue, I fear for this man, though I never actually met him.

The man who went back to Iran is the prototype of the Jew who fools himself, thinks there is a lull in the hatred, while it is covert. He is the prototype of the Jew who doesn’t make it out when the cycle goes from covert to overt and the gates slam shut.

via GIPHY

He is like the Jewish community in Germany, complaining every time there is an anti-Semitic incident. What are they even doing there in that horrible country with its awful history?? WHY are they still there?

Because they’re used to it. They’ve been lulled into Jewish somnolence, by the polite, covert cycle of German antisemitism. They don’t see what’s coming next. They don’t even know they’re caught in a never-ending cycle.

They don’t want to know.

Now you might wonder: if it happens all over the world, this cycle of antisemitism, even in Israel, then why try to escape it at all? Why make Aliyah?

The answer: Israel is the only place where your life will have meant something. Where if you die because a terrorist cuts you down, you do so defending your land, so your children might stay Jewish and inherit your inheritance. It’s the only place where just walking four cubits earns you a mitzvah.

You can’t escape the cycle of antisemitism. Not the covert and not the overt. Not anywhere. But throwing your lot in with your brethren in Israel, now that’s where you can make a difference by strengthening the Jewish presence in our indigenous land. It’s where you can do something beautiful for your people, instead of toiling for the society of those awful Europeans (or Iranians, etc.).

Isn’t it time you at least considered the notion of Aliyah?

Who knows? You maybe even stop the cycle, cold in its tracks, and change the world for good.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Faced With Accusations Of Focusing Only On Israel, BDS To Also Target Vulgaria (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

: Credit: Softeis via Wikimedia Commons

Durban, December 27 - Leaders of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement that singles out the world's only Jewish state have responded to criticism that their declared concern for human rights extends only to where Jews can be blamed, by announcing a campaign to call for political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic pressure on the European nation of Vulgaria, which also violates the rights of those under its dominion.

Mustafa Barghouti, Rania Khalek, and several other prominent BDS activists issued a joint statement this morning (Wednesday) to the effect that the movement seeks to dispel the false accusation of hypocrisy by highlighting at least one place other than Israel whose alleged misdeeds must be combated through BDS.

"We have in the past dismissed characterization of our emphasis on Israel's oppression of Palestinians as attempts to distract from the issue," the statement read. "However, following extensive consultations with many of our activists around the globe, we decided to make a good faith gesture to demonstrate our sensitivity to concerns that our actions match our rhetoric. We therefore call on all governments, companies, organizations, artists, academics, and institutions to cease all contacts with Vulgaria and its officials effective immediately."

The statement continued with a description of the Vulgarian regime's mistreatment of its indigenous population. "Baron and Baroness Bomburst must cease their depredations against their people," it declared. "Practices such as child-catching and a ban on producing or raising children carry ominous echoes of everything we accuse Israel of doing against Palestinians, and must stop."

BDS movement figures explained that Vulgaria represents a compromise. "The apparent hypocrisy of caring about human rights only where Israeli policies are concerned has taken a toll on our credibility," observed one activist who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety. "So a small but vocal minority among us have been agitating for a visible expansion of our activities to encompass other places where human rights are egregiously violated - not to imply that Israel isn't the most evil, corrupt, oppressive, genocidal regime in existence, but to give some token acknowledgement that groups other than Palestinians under Israeli occupation might also have rights that are being denied or violated: Ukrainians, Rohingya, Sudanese, Uighurs, Tibetans, Syrians, even Palestinians not under Israeli occupation. But to the majority of us, such a change of direction would dilute the effectiveness, such as it is, of our focus on Israel. So we worked out an in-between proposal under which BDS calls for pressure on a country that doesn't exist, and that pleased everyone."

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12/27 Links Pt1: Toameh: Arab Apartheid Targets Palestinians; Fatah`s guide to rock throwing for kids; The blue-eyed poster girl of Palestinian

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Arab Apartheid Targets Palestinians

Iraq has just joined the long list of Arab countries that shamelessly practice apartheid against Palestinians. The number of Arab countries that apply discriminatory measures against Palestinians while pretending to support the Palestinian cause is breathtaking. Arab hypocrisy is once again on display, but who who is looking?

The international media -- and even the Palestinians -- are so preoccupied with US President Donald Trump's announcement on Jerusalem that the plight of Palestinians in Arab countries is dead news. This apathy allows Arab governments to continue with their anti-Palestinian policies because they know that no one in the international community cares -- the United Nations is too busy condemning Israel to do much else.

So what is the story with the Palestinians in Iraq? Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Iraqi government has approved a new law that effectively abolishes the rights given to Palestinians living there. The new law changes the status of Palestinians from nationals to foreigners.

Under Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, the Palestinians enjoyed many privileges. Until 2003, there were about 40,000 Palestinians living in Iraq. Since the overthrow of the Saddam regime, the Palestinian population has dwindled to 7,000.

Thousands of Palestinians have fled Iraq after being targeted by various warring militias in that country because of their support for Saddam Hussein. Palestinians say that what they are facing in Iraq is "ethnic cleansing."

PMW: Fatah`s guide to rock throwing for kids

Fatah posted on its Twitter account the above photo of a young boy hurling rocks with a slingshot together with an explanation to Palestinians how best to throw rocks:

Posted text:
"In order to hit the target, there are three conditions:
1. Stand stably and balance your legs, arms, and body well
2. Focus your gaze on the center of the target, and do not look at anything else
3. Keep the desired balance between your body and your weapon; you are the one that controls the weapon, and not the other way around
If you did not understand this, read it again, and if you still have not understood, here is an example picture for you"
[Official Fatah Twitter account, Dec. 16, 2017]

Rock throwing at cars has caused hundreds of injuries and many deaths, including the following babies who were killed by stones thrown at their family's cars:
Yehuda Haim Shoham, age 5-months;
Jonathan Palmer age 12-months (his father Asher was also killed);
Adele Biton age 3. The 5 people convicted of murdering Adele were all teens.

PMW calls on UNICEF to issue a stern condemnation of Fatah's recruiting children to commit acts of terror. Recruiting children to attempt to kill others and to endanger their own lives is clear child abuse.

Melanie Phillips: Our crazy world

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the UN Jerusalem vote, the revelations about President Obama and Hezbollah, and further evidence of American collusion at the highest level –– between the FBI and the Democratic party.

From Arab News:

The King Abdulaziz Foundation for Research and Archives (Darah) has released a documentary, “The Call of Nobility,” about the Saudi Army in Palestine in 1948.

The film was published on the foundation’s official YouTube channel and announced on its official account in Twitter.

It tells the story of Saudi Arabia’s role in the Palestine issue and its participation with the Arab forces to save Palestine from the Zionist occupation in 1948, where the Saudis performed well and a number of them died.

The film includes interviews and meetings with Saudi and Arab historians and writers, and with Saudis who shared their memories about their participation in the 1948 war.

King Abdul Aziz had a keen interest in the Palestinian issue and had been a supporter of it and was aware of its importance from the very beginning, according to Yousef Al-Thaqafi, a Saudi historian and writer.

...Ali Majid Qabban, a retired general, explained that the Saudi forces were composed of two war brigades and were assigned to defend Gaza City along with the Egyptian forces, in a strategic location called Tabab Al-Mentar, east of Gaza City. The forces were stationed there to attack Jewish settlements on the road that links Gaza to the city of Majdal in the north.

Brig. Fayez Al-Asmari, another participant in the war, said, “The Arab soldiers were in control until the war was stopped because of the truce. Were it not for the truce that was imposed on the Arab forces, we would have prevailed. We were not satisfied with the truce because we were in control, and we assure our love for the land of Palestine and its people.”

Ali Kurdi, a retired general said, “I wrote to my father in Ramadan that we will have our Eid in Tel Aviv, we were victorious, the Jews could not defeat us, they did not have an organized army since they were extremist armed gangs, called ‘Haganah’.”

The number of Saudi volunteers was 513, 134 of whom were killed, including 34 who were seriously wounded, and 130 who received medals from the king.

After the truce the Zionist forces were able to get support from different sides, and more Jewish migrants arrived, many were well trained, and the Arab role toward the issue began to decline after negotiations began on the Greek island of Rhodes with the United Nations mediating between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

I love revisionist history and the excuses for losing.

26% of the Saudi volunteers were killed - and they are claiming that they were winning?

None of the Arab nations who fought in 1948 cared about "Palestinians." No one even used the term. They just wanted to defeat the Jews, and they were quite clear then that they mean Jews, not "Zionists"

Now, 70 years later, Saudi Arabia is pretending to be the savior of the Palestinian Arabs in 1948. It is probably not a coincidence that the Saudis are releasing this just as they are trying to push their own agenda in the Middle East, and how to handle the Palestinian Arabs.

The Arabic documentary is here.

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From Arutz-7:

According to a report by the Hebrew daily Yediot Ahronot on Wednesday, Israel Railways, Israel’s national train operator, is planning on naming the last stop in Jerusalem for its new train line after President Donald Trump, in honor of his historic December 6th recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.

The station will be the final stop on the Tel Aviv to Jerusalem train line, which is slated to open next spring. The new train line, which will operate alongside the city’s light rail system, will include a three-kilometer tunnel (1.9 miles), linking the Binyanei Haumah convention center near the Central Bus Station to the entrance of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Last year, however, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud), proposed an extension of the high-speed train line, adding another stop near the Western Wall on the southeast side of the Old City.

A steering committee for Israel Railways has approved the proposal, and is reportedly planning on naming the new station the “Donald John Trump Train Station”.

The new station will be built 52 meters (171 feet) below ground, like a similar station planned for central Jerusalem, near the intersection of Jaffa and King George streets.

This is an extraordinarily bad idea.

I can understand showing appreciation to Trump for his mostly symbolic gesture. But that is all it has been so far: symbolic. The embassy is not being moved any time soon. People born even within Green Line Jerusalem are still not considered to have been born in Israel by the US State Department. Nothing has changed on the ground.

But this is a bad idea for other reasons.

The Kotel, and the Temple Mount that gives it its sanctity, is holy. Whether you are pro-Trump or anti-Trump, the man has not lived a moral life. I don't need to go into details - they are on videotape. Trump is not a role model for anything except ruthless, naked self-promotion.

Associating him with the holiest place on Earth is a perversion. It cheapens and devalues the Kotel. It is viscerally appalling.

Much less important, but still worth mentioning, is that a move like that would alienate Israel even more, for no good reason. I have no problem with Israel doing the right thing when liberal American Jews and Western European countries disagree, but this isn't the right thing. It would not strengthen Israel's claim to all of Jerusalem to the world - it would weaken it. It would make Israel look like it is trying to suck up to an American leader rather than act as a proud, sovereign nation. It would turn what should be a symbol of Jewish unity into a reason for division.

It is a bad idea politically, it is an awful idea religiously, and it is a huge mistake strategically.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

A short Palestinian lexicon (poster)

One of the dumbest tweets in recent memory came from James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, angry that food celebrity Rachael Ray referred to food as Israeli:

Damn it @rachaelray. This is cultural #genocide. It’s not #Israeli food. It’s #Arab (#Lebanese, #Palestinian, #Syrian, #Jordanian). First the Israelis take the land & ethnically cleanse it of Arabs. Now they take their food & culture & claim it’s theirs too! #Shame. https://t.co/1nDXlcfRHA
— James J. Zogby (@jjz1600) December 26, 2017

Yes, Rachael was guilty of "cultural genocide" by calling some salads that are popular in Israel, "Israeli."

So just to explain how Palestinians use language, here is a very short lexicon of Palestinian expressions. Only two of them, but they are quite representative.

Feel free to retweet the poster.

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12/26 Links Pt2: BDS claims – an Ethiopian answer; Murray: UK: Going about Our "Normal" Lives?; Dishonest Reporter of the Year Award 2017

From Ian:

PMW: PMW report spurs Denmark to cut funding to PA NGOs

On May 26, 2017 PMW reported that funds provided by Norway, the UN and a conglomerate of countries including Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland had been used to build a center for young women that was subsequently named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi led a terror attack that resulted in the murder of 37 Israelis, including 12 children, in 1978.

Denmark
Last week, Denmark decided to cancel some grants and review further funding of Palestinian NGOs. The decision was made following an investigation initiated after PMW's report that the women’s center funded by Denmark, was named after a Palestinian terrorist murderer. Denmark announced that it will also tighten the conditions for providing funding to all Palestinian NGOs and that the majority of the aid, suspended after PMW’s report, will not be paid.

“Denmark will tighten the conditions for providing money to Palestinian NGOs, Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said... The review followed revelations [by Palestinian Media Watch] in May that a women’s center partly funded with European aid money... was named after Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in the Coastal Road massacre in 1978 that killed 37 people... Samuelsen also said that the 'majority of aid' suspended from the summer while the review was under way will not be paid.” [The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 24, 2017]

Norway
When PMW released its report documenting the center named for terrorist Mughrabi, Norway immediately demanded that the Norwegian money be returned:

Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende:
"The glorification of terrorist attacks is completely unacceptable, and I deplore this decision in the strongest possible terms. Norway will not allow itself to be associated with institutions that take the names of terrorists in this way... We have asked for the logo of the Norwegian representation office to be removed from the building immediately, and for the funding that has been allocated to the centre to be repaid." [Norwegian Foreign Ministry website, May 26, 2017]

Belgium
When PMW reported that a Palestinian school built with Belgium funds, was also named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi, Belgium condemned it and froze the construction of ten additional Palestinian Authority schools.

Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Didier Vanderhasselt:
“Belgium unequivocally condemns the glorification of terrorist attacks [and] will not allow itself to be associated with the names of terrorists... Belgium has immediately raised this issue with the Palestinian Authority and is awaiting a formal response... In the meantime Belgium will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.” [The Algemeiner, Oct. 7, 2017]

Douglas Murray: UK: Going about Our "Normal" Lives?

But the more this conspicuous, self-conscious egging-on of such attitudes is stressed, the thinner it seems to get. In March, after Khalid Masood ploughed a car across Westminster Bridge, mowing down locals and tourists, and crashed the car and stabbed policeman Keith Palmer to death inside the gates of the Palace of Westminster, one prominent British journalist took to the pages of the New York Times to pour out the clichés.

"By Thursday morning, London was, if not quite back to normal, then certainly back in business. As I traveled through the south of the city, up to Chelsea and later over to King's Cross, Londoners really were going about their lives as on any other day.

"This behavior reflects something deeper than conscious defiance, I think. It would simply not occur to the 8.6 million citizens of this megalopolis to allow one man to send them into hiding. As they say in the East End, you're having a laugh, aren't you?"

One wonders when the author last went into an East End pub to have a pint, and whether he honestly believes such honest cockneys still reside there? Nevertheless, he went to boast of the "stoicism" and "ancestral pride" that still exists there and to insist that, "The only way to proceed is -- in the much-loved British slogan -- to keep calm and carry on." Quite why this spirit is meant to reside in the bones of a city in which most of its current residents (according to the last census) have arrived in the decades since the Second World War is never clear.

Similar clichés spilled out after the suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena in May. They came out yet again after the London Bridge attack in June. Yet one of the most striking images from that night was of drinkers in Borough Market, where the terrorists finished their assault, being marched out of the Market under police escort with their hands on their heads. The British public at that point, at any rate, looked not like stoical, pugnacious heroes, but like a defeated army being marched into captivity. Still the clichés continued. The day after the attack, in her address to the nation, Prime Minister Theresa May assured the public that "Our response must be as it has always been when we have been confronted by violence. We must come together, we must pull together."

One of the most striking images from the June 3, 2017 Borough Market terror attack was of drinkers being marched out of the Market under police escort with their hands on their heads. The British public at that point looked not like stoical, pugnacious heroes, but like a defeated army being marched into captivity. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

So it is interesting to consider, beneath all the talk of business as usual, and Blitz spirit, and keeping calm and carrying on, what, in fact, are the British public actually feeling? Last month provided a sobering demonstration.

Douglas Murray Takes Us Inside The Strange Death Of Europe

Douglas Murray: I'm only going to speak for about 15 minutes because I wanted as much time as possible for Q&A, because I sense that there hasn't been much, so far, and because I'm always very excited about hearing other people's views and questions. But let me start by making a few remarks.

The first, by the way, is that I'll talk a little about my recent book. It's always rather difficult to understand another country, let alone another continent, or another culture. There are things you have in common. There are things which seem bizarre, when you look at them from outside, and there are things that look recognizable. There are things that rhyme. There are an enormous number of similarities between where I'm from and where most of you are from, and an enormous number of differences too. I've been in the states a week, spoken at a campus, and was on the West Coast at the beginning of the week, and I had one of those disassociation moments in San Francisco, when I had been in my second day in the city, and I just noticed that absolutely everywhere, there seemed to be posters advertising delivery services for marijuana. And I thought this is interesting because if there's one thing it seems to me that San Francisco doesn't need it's easier access to marijuana. More of it, just so that people who smoke it don't even have to go down the street. But there are lots of similarities between our societies as well, and one of the, I suppose, most gratifying things since the "Strange Death of Europe" came out in June here in the U.S. is the number of people who have come over to me and written to me from America, from Canada, from Australia, and said this book is about us isn't it? And, perhaps I could stop by just saying a little about what it is about, and you'll get some of the resonances.

The "Strange Death of Europe" centers on the 2015 migration crisis, which you all remember was the moment when Angela Merkel massively exacerbated an already existing problem by announcing, unilaterally, that the external and internal borders of Europe were basically dissolved. In a single act, the mass movement of people that had been going on for decades sped up exponentially, so that Germany in a single year took in an additional 2 percent of its population. Sweden took in an additional almost 3 percent of its population. This is all part of a pattern. I say that has been going on for many decades. And, just like those previous decades, what happened after the 2015 crisis was that politicians and the media found excuses to justify something that would have happened anyway. So, for instance, German citizens and others were told that this mass migration, millions of people into Europe, was there would be a net economic gain for their society, that it would enrich their society. Now, actually, all of the studies that I have gone over on this show that, at best, most such migration cannot be called to be any kind of economic gain. A study in Britain showed that over a 15 year period, migrants took out 95 billion more in services than they put in taxation. And, of course they would. If you go to another country, you don't speak the language. You don't have the skills. It's going to be a very long time, before you've put in anything into the welfare system, remotely like the amount that you and your family will have taken out. But, this is one of the arguments that is made.

Egyptian media reports that an "urgent complaint" has been filed before the administrative court to compel the Minister of Local Development and the Governor of Cairo to change the street where the US embassy is located to the name "Jerusalem is Arab."

The complainant's lawyer Samir Sabri issued a press statement saying "after a wave of anger that swept Egypt, Arab and foreign countries on the American Declaration of the President of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, it is an urgent duty to change the street in which the US Embassy in Cairo is located."

Residents didn't care so much about changing the name as to moving the embassy altogether, complaining about the security measures like concrete blocks to stop any car bombs.

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We are now more than two months into the "reconciliation" between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, much of which only occurred because the PA imposed a crippling siege on Gaza of electricity, fuel and medicines that was ignored by the world.

And yet the siege continues.

Israel does not limit medicines or medical equipment into Gaza (with the exception of a tiny number of devices that need to be approved individually because they contain radioactive material or the like.)

But the Palestinian Authority does limit them. And the world, obsessed with Israel's blockade, ignores the things that Mahmoud Abbas does to his own people, not unlike Syria's Assad.

Gaza health officials are alarmed as the shortage of medicines and other medical needs have reached a critical point.

There is now a shortage of materials needed for blood tests, such as tests for hepatitis C and B tests and HIV tests. There is also a shortage of PKU tests for newborns, and for thyroid diseases.

Also, anti-rejection drugs for people who have received organ transplants.

Out of 657 laboratory items needed, 383 of them are down to zero and 274 will run out within three months.

Israel's restriction of materials to Gaza did not kill anyone (I did not see any such claims in Arab media) but these shortages, mandated by Mahmoud Abbas on his own people for some seven months already, are resulting in deaths.

So, where are the "human rights" NGOs complaining about the humanitarian crisis? Where is the media?

They are discussing how a 18 year old "child" was arrested for assaulting a soldier on video.

Gaza? Who cares? Certainly not the media and the NGOs when Israel cannot be blamed.

(Also in Gaza, the companies that clean hospitals are on strike, due to not getting paid. Surgeries are being cancelled. I don't know who is responsible for their salaries, but once again Gaza woes only make news when they can be blamed on Jews. Certainly the "pro-Palestinian" crowd doesn't care about their precious pets.)

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12/26 Links Pt1: Trump’s Embassy Move Proved Abbas Doesn’t Want Peace; NYTs Admits That Embassy Move Didn’t Lead To Mass Violence

From Ian:

Thank You, Nikki Haley

The United Nations was founded on lofty principles in the wake of the atrocities of World War II. Sadly, with two votes last week – the first in the Security Council on Monday and the second in an emergency session of the General Assembly – we witnessed just how far the institution has fallen.

The U.S. is a sovereign, democratic nation that lives by the rule of law. One of those laws, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, was passed in 1995, by a solid, bipartisan majority of 93 to 5 in the Senate and 374 to 37 in the House. A sovereign nation has the right to choose where to place its embassies. And yet, on Dec. 6, when U.S. President Donald Trump called for the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the call was met with such hysteria in this venerable institution that one might think he had called for genocide.

These two U.N. votes, condemning Trump's recognition of Jerusalem, contradict the very foundations on which the U.N. was established. Article 2 (7) of the United Nations Charter specifically states that "nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." This, however, did not prevent the frenzy against the U.S. for supporting its one democratic ally in the Middle East.

Before Thursday's vote in the General Assembly, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley valiantly said: "The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in this assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the U.N., and when other member nations ask Washington to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit."

Why a small Central American nation became a trailblazer on Jerusalem

On Sunday, Guatemala became the first country after the US to announce its intention to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a move seen as tantamount to recognizing the city as Israel’s capital, though President Jimmy Morales’s statement included no explicit recognition.

Predictably, the Central American nation’s decision was castigated by the Palestinians and other Arab states and hailed in Israel as an act of deep friendship that marked the beginning of a new trend. Neighbor Honduras is said to be next in line. Like Guatemala, it also voted last week against the United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning the US’s December 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move its embassy there.

Other countries — Togo, Paraguay, Romania, Slovakia — are also said to be considering following in Guatemala’s footsteps in bucking decades-old diplomatic dogma to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

But what prompted a relatively small nation far removed from the Middle East and its problems to be the first to take the plunge after the US?

There are several reasons for Guatemala’s dramatic step. The country’s well-established historic friendship with Israel and ongoing deep security and trade ties are one key part of the story. The personal character of the country’s current leader is the other.

Seventy years ago, Guatemala’s ambassador to the UN, Dr. Jorge Garcia Granados, a member of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, played a crucial role in convincing Latin American countries to vote in favor of General Assembly Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

“It could be that without Guatemala, the resolution on that fateful day would not have passed, and history would be very different,” Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein told Morales during his November 2016 visit to Israel.

Israel says 10 more countries in talks about moving embassies to Jerusalem

In an interview with Israel Radio, she declined to say which states Israel was speaking with, but Channel 10 reported that the next country likely to announce an embassy move was Honduras.

Israel and Honduras, which borders Guatemala, have enjoyed very close ties over the past few years, and in 2016 signed an agreement under which Israel agreed to enhance the the Central American country’s armed forces in an unprecedented way, in order to fight organized crime.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was reelected earlier this month in a hotly disputed election. He is a graduate of MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, and spent time in Israel.

Along with Guatemala, Honduras was one of nine nations that voted “no” last week with the United States when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a non-binding resolution denouncing US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Unlike Guatemala, whose embassy was in Jerusalem from the 1950s until 1980, Honduras never had its embassy in Israel’s capital.

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein announced at a Likud party event Monday that the parliamentary heads of two other countries had spoken to him about moving their embassies from Tel Aviv. The Walla news site reported that representatives from Romania and Slovakia had expressed support for such a move and were working in their respective countries to effect it.

Other countries also reportedly in talks to move their embassies are South America’s Paraguay and the west African nation of Togo.

Are the Palestinians getting it?

The sky should have fallen. The gates of hell should have been forced open The Middle East should have plunged into even more chaos. The Jews should have had to pay dearly. It's been two weeks since the American decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and yet little or nothing has happened.

The Palestinian Arabs did not go out en masse to the streets to take part in violence, more worried about what they would lose by participating in terrorism and demonstrations (entry permits, work, freedom, housing, family members) than by “the occupation". Fifteen years ago, Israeli tanks re-entered Ramallah, Qalqiliya, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem. There had been suicide bombers, snipers, rockets, thousands of dead. Today, a few kids throwing rocks, the bad mood of the tour operators in Bethlehem and a very timid reaction from the Arab countries, the minimum possible.

What does all this tell us? That Israel may have accomplished what is called the "taking off" in surfing, when the critical wave is overcome. In this case the wave is Arab-Islamic rejection. It is not that the Palestinian Arabs have become pacifists or that they now love the Jews. More terror attacks will come. Perhaps they only hate their own corrupt leaders, like Mahmoud Abbas.

But perhaps they also understand that Israel will not pack and leave, that it will remain on the map, that the Jews and not the terrorists will decide their destiny, that the IDF is invincible, that "the wall" is high and that after 70 years of terror the Israeli Jews have won.

History records that Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, came before the Sixth Zionist Congress on August 26, 1903, and presented the "Uganda Plan," suggesting that Jews accept a place other than then-Palestine as their national home. It was voted down.

Not surprisingly, there is more to the story.

Theodor Herzl; photo by Carl Pietzer. Public domain

In his book, A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, David Fromkin writes that as an assimilated Jew, Herzl's knowledge of politics far outstripped his knowledge of Judaism. After witnessing the backlash against the Jews in France following the Dreyfuss affair, Herzl recognized the need for a Jewish state, but was not picky about the location.

At first.

Herzl created a Jewish organization through which to negotiate with various European governments. As he started plan, Herzl came into contact with the Jewish leaders and organizations that sponsored and supported Jewish settlement in Palestine. It was then that he realized the special appeal Palestine held for Jews around the world -- an appeal that would make his efforts more successful.

However, finding a government to support his plan was more difficult. After meeting with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and finding him unresponsive to his arguments, Herzl began to look for other, more sympathetic governments.

In 1902, Herzl met in Great Britain with Joseph Chamberlain, the powerful Colonial Secretary (and father of Neville Chamberlain). Chamberlain was sympathetic not only to the idea in general, but also to its location. Herzl suggested a long-term strategy, where Jews would originally settle nearby either in Cyprus or El Arish at the edge of the Sinai until Palestine became available. While Cyprus and El Arish were considered part of the Ottoman Empire, they were both occupied by the British at the time. Chamberlain turned down the idea of Cyprus, but did offer to help Herzl get approval for El Arish. Towards that end, Herzl hired the lawyer David Lloyd George, who later went on to become the British Prime Minister, 1916 -1922.

Joseph Chamberlain. Public domain

However, by mid-1903, Herzl was informed that Al Arish was considered impractical.

It was then that Joseph Chamberlain suggested Uganda as a substitute to Herzl. Actually, Alona Ferba writes in Haaretz that the land in British East Africa offered to Herzl was 15,500 square km territory in today's Kenya. The idea was supported by the British Prime Minister at the time -- Arthur James Balfour.

Arthur James Balfour, public domain

Lloyd George drafted a Charter for the Jewish Settlement, which was submitted to the British government for approval. According to Fromkin:

In the summer of 1903 the foreign Office replied in a guarded but affirmative way that if studies and talks over the course of the next year were successful, His Majesty's Government would consider favorably proposals for the creation of a Jewish colony. It was the first official declaration by a government to the Zionist movement and the first official statement implying national status for the Jewish people. It was the first Balfour Declaration. [p. 274]

We know that is was not the last, just as we know that Uganda/Kenya was rejected by Jews as a state.

After all, Uganda could never truly become a Jewish state. It was not the national Jewish homeland. Uganda was not the indigenous home of the Jews. There were no historical, religious, and culture ties binding the Jews to any place other than the one the Western World refered to as Palestine. So even though Herzl rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest and influential British politicians of the time, in the short term - he failed.

But Herzl was successful in harnessing the pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist feeling that existed in the British government at the time. In doing so, Herzl set in motion forces that a over the following years would grow and snowball, leading to the Balfour Declaration and the eventual recreation of the Jewish State of Israel.

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