Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, December 29, 2017

12/29 Links Pt1: Glick: Facing a Tamimi government; The Palestinian masquerade; U.S. Envoy: Palestinian Reaction to Trump Announcement Is Ugly, Anti-Semitic

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Facing a Tamimi government

As Arnold Roth, whose daughter Malki was among the seven children murdered at Sbarro, reported on his website, Jordanian Prince Ali’s wife, former CNN reporter Princess Rym Ali raised donations from the governments of Europe, Australia and Canada to establish a journalism school in Amman. On every page of the Jordanian Media Institute’s website, Ahlam Tamimi is presented as a “Success Model.”

Three of Ahlam’s victims were US citizens. King Abdullah has rejected repeated US requests to extradite her for trial.

Back in Nabi Saleh, Nariman and Bassem and their kids man the barricades against Israel, for their sponsors.

In 2012, Bassam was convicted of inciting a riot against IDF soldiers. An observer from the EU was present throughout his trial.

Then-EU foreign affairs commissioner Catherine Ashton touted Bassem as a “human rights defender.”

Bassem and Nariman are “volunteers” in B’Tselem’s “camera project.”

B’Tselem, an anti-Israel political warfare group funded by the EU, EU member governments, the State Department and far-left American groups, distributes video cameras to Palestinians and trains them to use them. It then posts their films online to advance its one-sided propaganda offensive against Israel.

In 2015, a consortium of anti-Israel groups including Amnesty International, Code Pink and Jewish Voices for Peace brought Bassem Tamimi to the US on a speaking tour.

In one particularly hair-raising episode, reported by Legal Insurrection at the time, Tamimi addressed an audience of third-graders in Ithaca, New York.

He urged the children to support terrorism against Israel and to join the war against the Jewish state.

Videos of Ahed were a prominent component of his presentation.

The Turkish government is also a big supporter of the Tamimi brood. After a past video of Ahed hitting and cursing Israeli forces was posted online, she and her parents were brought to Ankara to receive recognition from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a very real sense, the Tamimi family is at the nexus of a global war against Israel.

The Tamimis have connections with nearly every government and group involved in that war. The Israeli and American Left, the EU, Jordan and Turkey and of course Hamas and the PLO all support them. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

The Palestinian masquerade

As part of his diplomatic-political address, Abbas presented his captive audience with his take on the historical and theological basis for the war between Islam and the Jews. His remark, outlining the raison d'etre of this conflict, was tacked on to his main address like a footnote.

"This land is the birthplace of Jesus," he said. "Jesus Christ was a Palestinian, take note of that."

"Yes, believe in our right and God's promise to us, that this holy Palestinian city, since it was founded by the Canaanite Jebusites 5,000 years ago, was and will be the only capital of our independent state, under the sovereignty of the state of Palestine."

"This is also a good opportunity to note that I don't want to discuss history or religion, because there is no one better at falsifying history or religion than them [the Jews]. But if we read the Torah, it says that we, i.e., the Canaanites, lived here before Abraham and haven't left since that time. It hasn't been interrupted. That's in the Torah. If they want to fabricate, 'to distort the words from their [proper] usages,' as God said [a reference to Sura 4 of the Quran that mentions Jews who falsified the Torah]. I don't want to get into religion. We don't want the issue to become a religious issue. We just want to prove that we are here, and we have an eternal right to this city [Jerusalem] and to other cities."

3.
So according to Abbas, Jesus was Palestinian and Jebusite Jerusalem was never the capital city of any nation other than the Palestinians since time immemorial. Furthermore, the Palestinians are actually Canaanites, and God promised them this holy city before Abraham came along, and so on.

We are laughing now, aren't we? It's not just one lie, but a culture of lies. The Arab leader's simple ability to stand in front of the world and lie in a way that almost seems like he is trying to convince himself. Jerusalem has always been the capital of the Palestinian nation? Really? But no nation ever ruled here other than the Jewish nation and its various Jewish kingdoms!

MEMRI: Senior Jordanian Columnists Warn Against Cancelling Peace Treaty With Israel

U.S. President Donald Trump's December 6, 2017, announcement of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and his plan to move the American embassy there ignited a vast wave of protests against the U.S. and Israel across Jordan. These demonstrations included calls to cancel the agreements signed by Jordan and Israel, including the peace treaty.[1]

Loud calls to revoke the peace agreement with Israel and to cease normalization with it were also voiced in the Jordanian parliament. In its session on December 10, 2017, which was dedicated to Trump's announcement, the parliament empowered its legal committee to reexamine the agreements with Israel, including the peace treaty, and to document all of Israel's legal violations and present them to parliament so that a decision may be taken on this issue. On the following day (December 11), the committee met with Justice Minister 'Awad Abu Jarad to request all the material on the signed agreements with Israel,[2] and one day later it reconvened to discuss the matter.[3]

At the same time, 14 MPs submitted to the government a memorandum calling to "promote legislation to cancel the Jordan-Israel peace agreement due to Israeli violations of it" and due to the American announcement about Jerusalem.[4] On December 17, several MPs signed another memorandum calling on the government to terminate the leasing to Israel of the Al-Bagoura and Ghamar areas on the Jordan-Israel border, claiming that it is an infringement of Jordanian sovereignty and the rights of its citizens in those areas.[5]

Calls to revoke all agreements with Israel were also posted on social media, under existing hashtags such as "#Wadi Araba [peace agreements] will be cancelled" and "#boycott the Zionists," which were brought back into use, and under a new hashtag, "#Cancel it," which went viral within hours.[6] One Jordanian tweeted: "Jordanian members of parliament and decision-makers! Cancel the Araba [peace] Agreement, cancel the gas [import] agreement [with Israel], and sever all overt and covert relations [with it]. Out! Out, the Zionist embassy."

Have you ever turned the corner and found yourself in the middle of a street party? Men dancing in the street, women carrying babies standing, smiling and watching, loud music and vehicles lit up all colors of the rainbow… happy people, celebrating.

What a beautiful thing.

It was the last night of Hanukah and we were walking in a religious neighborhood of Haifa. After that experience, this was even more special.

It wasn’t just any party. This was the celebration of the dedication of a new Torah scroll for a synagogue.

Hanukah is a celebration of Jewish persistence, of the victory of the few over the many, of the regaining of sovereignty in the land of Israel from an occupier much larger and more powerful. Hanukah is a celebration of faith when there is no logical reason to retain faith – the miracle of the light that was not extinguished, although the laws of nature say it should have been.

How fitting to celebrate a new Torah scroll on the last night of Hanukah.

Every Torah scroll is written by hand. Every letter must be perfect, otherwise the scroll cannot be used. God used words to create the universe, thus words, every individual letter has power that must be treated with respect and the appropriate awe. The words of the Torah, the content are the guidelines that have led our people, defined us and kept us together for centuries. This makes each scroll a precious treasure, adorned with its own decorations and carried lovingly like one would carry a baby.

On the holiday of Jewish sovereignty these Jews were celebrating the continuation of Jewish legacy in the land that the Maccabees freed. They brought the other Torah scrolls the synagogue already had as if bringing them to greet the new scroll, dancing with all of them together, in the street. Police blocked off the road to make sure everyone was safe from cars while they celebrated.

As I watched the celebration I looked at the faces of the people and noted that this was a Chabad synagogue with a community of Russian Jews. These are people who, in Russia had been disconnected from their Jewish roots. Nevertheless, when they could, they made aliyah, coming back to the land of their ancestors and found a way to return to the practice of Judaism. Against all odds, these Jews came back to their roots, retook their legacy. A miracle.

You never know what you will see in Israel. This is a land of surprises. Ours are a people who love to celebrate and we have many reasons to do so.

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Kuwaiti writer calls on peace with Israel and Jews

Sultan Al-Zubani, a self-described Kuwaiti media person who welcomes debate, put out a series of tweets about Israel and Jews that raised eyebrows in that country which has a boycott against dealing with any Israeli.

He started the series by saying that Tel Aviv is an amazing, clean and tidy city.

He went on to say that he wanted to enter Israel, the land of the Prophets, but not with violence and bloodshed.

His next tweet says that it is not allowed to curse Israel since Israel is the name of one of Allah's prophets.

He goes on to describe a vision of peace: "People from the Gulf lounging in the streets of Tel Aviv, shopping from their malls and sitting in their cafes sipping coffee and going to their restaurants, eating halal meals from Palestinian-owned restaurants and praying in Jerusalem in safety and security. # Israel"

And then "If others entered Jerusalem with weapons, we will enter it with a visa and peace, away from fighting and bloodshed and destruction. # Israel_Nabi_Allah. "

He sums it up with a stunning indictment of Arab hate:

We curse #Israel although Israel is Jacob, the prophet of God, peace be upon him.
We curse the State of Israel , which is the land of prophets.
We curse the Jews , who are the people of the book and neighbors of the Prophet ...
We abhor the star of Prophet Dawood [David] peace be upon him
And we then claim that we are Muslims, the people of mercy And tolerance!

The reactions on Twitter as more muted than one might expect. But Al-Zubani doesn't have a huge Twitter following, I don't know how popular he is. I've only found one article about this tweetstorm, and its tone is more bemused than angry, pointing out that Kuwait has always been in the forefront of boycotting Israel and any company that deals with Israel, having recently rejected a major deal with French company Veolia since it does work for Israel.

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Al Jazeera needs help to see the difference between Malala Yousafzai and Ahed Tamimi (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Al Jazeera – or at least Al Jazeera contributor Shenila Khoja-Moolji – is desperately clueless, stumped by the question: “Why is the West praising Malala, but ignoring Ahed?” So let’s help them out a bit.

Malala Yousafzai gained prominence as a teen blogger for BBC Urdu, where she described her life under the harsh rule of the fundamentalist Islamist Taliban. The Taliban eventually decided to target Malala. On October 9, 2012, “[a] masked gunman boards Malala’s school bus and asks for her by name. He shoots Malala in the head, neck and shoulder.”

As far as Ahed Tamimi is concerned, masked gunmen are great. In September, Ahed Tamimi posted a picture of gunmen masked with Palestinian keffiyeh scarves on her Facebook page and repeated the message written on the image in Arabic: “Tell the fighters all over the world that they are my friends.”

So the masked gunman who shot Malala was someone Ahed would consider a friend.

Sadly, Ahed was brought up to consider masked gunmen as her “friends.”

Her father Bassem Tamimi has shared a propaganda video for the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, and his wife, i.e. Ahed’s mother Nariman, “liked” this video glorifying Hezbollah. Ahed’s father also “likes” the Hamas-affiliated jihadist Al-Qassam Brigades: as I documented some two years ago, Bassem Tamimi responded with a “Like” when someone praised a photo Ahed had posted on her Facebook page, showing her throwing rocks, with the short comment “Good ahed” accompanied by an image glorifying the Al-Qassam Brigades.

Then there’s the sad fact that Ahed has several relatives who are convicted terrorist murderers – and who are greatly admired by her family for the ruthless murders they perpetrated.

Here’s little Ahed back in 2012 when her uncle Nizar Tamimi – the murderer of Chaim Mizrahi – married her aunt Ahlam Tamimi – the proud mastermind and facilitator of the 2001 Sbarro massacre that claimed the lives of fifteen people, including seven children and a pregnant woman; some 130 people suffered injuries; one young mother was left in a permanent vegetative state.

Ahed’s mother Nariman Tamimi has surely taught her daughter that ruthless terrorist murderers like her aunt Ahlam are admirable rebels.

When Malala was shot by the Taliban gunman in October 2012, she was 15. She survived. Here you can read the story of Malka Chana Roth, a 15 year-old girl who didn’t survive the terrorist bombing Ahed’s aunt Ahlam Tamimi remains so proud of.

This is how the Facebook page of Ahed’s aunt Ahlam looked before it was made private – it is adorned with images of the suicide bomber who carried out the terrorist bombing of the Sbarro restaurant exactly as Ahlam Tamimi had planned. Needless to say, Ahed and her parents and many other Tamimi family members are Facebook friends with their murderous terrorist relative.

Ahed’s mother Nariman Tamimi has presumably also taught her daughter that the murder of teen girls brings honor to the cause the Tamimis are devoted to. In June 2016, Nariman Tamimi shared a Facebook post from another Tamimi family member to honor the teenaged Palestinian terrorist who had just killed the 13-year-old sleeping Hallel Yaffa Ariel after breaking into her home. As far as the Tamimis are concerned, the murder of Hallel Yaffa helped “to return to the homeland its awe/reverence.”

If Malala was an Israeli Jewish girl and the gunman who shot her was Palestinian, Ahed’s family would have cheered and considered him a hero who brought honor to their cause.

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British Naval analysis in 1943: No such thing as Palestinians or Palestinian nationalism

A tweet was brought to my attention today about a British Naval Intelligence handbook on Palestine and Jordan from 1943.

I found it online.

People who consume the news today about the Middle East would be very surprised to learn many of the facts brought up in the book. (Readers of this site know all of this.)

For example, Arabs hardly ever referred to the area as "Palestine," calling it "Southern Syria."

And the Arabs in the region likewise didn't call themselves Palestinians, but (at best) Southern Syrians:

Arabs from Palestine and Syria were dead set against "Palestine" being separated from Syria.

And the book also describes how Palestinian Arab nationalism, in the 1940s, was mostly a myth.

Amazing how a little bit of history can destroy 70 years of lies.

(h/t Igal)

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12/28 Links Pt2: How the International Red Cross failed the Jews; The Fantasy of an International Jerusalem; Confessions of a Digital Nazi Hunter

From Ian:

How the International Red Cross failed the Jews

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has a startling and consistent history of anti-Semitism, despite its founding and reputation as an “independent, neutral organization.” Although mandated to eschew taking sides in international and internal armed conflicts and to protect victims of those conflicts — including wounded soldiers, prisoners of war, refugees and civilians — ICRC anti-Semitism emerged prior to World War II, broadened to encompass anti-Israelism after creation of the Jewish state and has continued ever since.

In the 1940s, it failed to intercede on behalf of Jewish Holocaust victims and was complicit with the Vatican’s protection of Nazi war criminals and collaborators.

Its modern-day expression of anti-Jewish sentiment was manifested in an initial refusal to accept the symbol of Israel’s own emergency aid organization, the Magen David Adom, while welcoming the Red Crescent of Muslim countries.

It provided solicitous aid to Arab-Palestinian terrorists whose homes were destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces in reprisal for and to prevent deadly attacks against Israel.

The ICRC also supported and glorified terrorism in a tree-planting ceremony honoring imprisoned Islamic terrorists who were guilty of murdering Jews.

It has unfairly singled out Israel as an “illegal occupier” and has falsely labeled Israel guilty of an apocryphal “Jenin massacre.” In addition to these actions, the ICRC has failed to condemn Hamas’ use of human shields and has not recognized Israel’s right to self-defense. Instead,

it has demonstrated a complete lack of sensitivity for the plight of Israeli civilians as perennial victims of rocket attacks and suicide bombings.

Remarkably, the ICRC — arbiters of the humanitarian standards of war by dint of their stewardship of the Geneva Conventions — recently instituted new policies prohibiting return fire upon civilian-inhabited areas. In effect, it empowered terrorists to fight worry-free amongst the general population.

Given this recent history, the organization’s reputation as a purveyor of “neutral humanitarianism” rings hollow.

Josh Meyer Gets an Echo Chamber Beat-Down

A week after Josh Meyer’s Politico expose,“The Secret Backstory Of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook,” former Obama officials are still berating Meyer for his 13,000-word article detailing how the Obama administration killed a nearly decade-long DEA effort to stem a global Hezbollah cocaine-smuggling-and-organized-crime ring to help secure its nuclear deal with Iran. “This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” former Defense Department analyst David Asher explained in the article. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”

Asher helped establish and oversee the project, codenamed Cassandra, that looked into Hezbollah’s wide-range of illicit activities across the globe, including weapons procurement, drug trafficking, and money laundering. Senior Obama officials, according to Asher, ignored the legal and financial instruments that he and others had provided to target a terrorist organization with American blood on its hands and was still plotting against the United States.

In response, a Twitter mob of mid-level bureaucrats and former intelligence officers orchestrated in the usual fashion attacked Asher in tandem with the media echo chamber used to sell the Iran Deal, with former political operatives from the Obama White House supplying the usual talking points to their hatchet-men. Meyer’s “on the record sources have undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias,” tweeted former Obama speechwriter Tommy Vietor, who has remade himself as a podcast host. Meyer’s “entire piece,” tweeted Obama lieutenant and former CIA officer Ned Price, “is based on pure speculation by these ‘1 or 2 sources’ w undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias.”

The catchphrase, “undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias,” is an extended replay version of the catchy slogans Team Obama used to market the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Opponents and critics of the nuclear deal were “warmongers” beholden to “donors” with “agendas” whose concerns were shaped by their loyalties not to America but rather to the Jewish state. Now, the echo chamber insisted, Meyer’s sources aren’t to be trusted because they were against the Iran deal, or have associated with think tanks that opposed the Iran Deal—which means that they are secret neocon slaves of Israel, of course.

Yair_Rosenberg: Confessions of a Digital Nazi Hunter

Like many Jewish journalists who reported on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, I spent the 2016 election being harassed by a motley crew of internet racists who coalesced around the future president. They sent me threats, photoshopped me into gas chambers and hurled an uncreative array of anti-Semitic slurs my way. A study by the Anti-Defamation League found that I’d received the second-most abuse of any Jewish journalist on Twitter during the campaign cycle. My parents didn’t raise me to be No. 2; fortunately, there’s always 2020.

As a result, I’ve become something of an unintentional expert on alt-right trolls and their tactics. For the most part, these characters are largely laughable — sad, angry men hiding behind images of cartoon frogs, deathly afraid that their employers will uncover their online antics. But there are also more insidious individuals, whose digital skulduggery can be more consequential than the occasional bigoted bromide.

And so last November, in the wake Trump’s victory, I decided to turn the tables on them. My target? Impersonator trolls.

You probably haven’t heard of these trolls, but that is precisely why they are so pernicious. These bigots are not content to harass Jews and other minorities on Twitter; they seek to assume their identities and then defame them.

The con goes like this: The impersonator lifts an online photo of a Jew, Muslim, African-American or other minority — typically one with clear identifying markers, like a yarmulke-clad Hasid or a woman in hijab. Using that picture as a Twitter avatar, the bigot then adds ethnic and progressive descriptors to the bio: “Jewish,” “Zionist,” “Muslim,” “enemy of the alt-right.”

False identity forged, the trolls then insert themselves into conversations with high-profile Twitter users — conversations that are often seen by tens of thousands of followers — and proceed to say horrifically racist things.

In this manner, unsuspecting readers glancing through their feed are given the impression that someone who looks like, say, a religious Jew or Muslim is outlandishly bigoted. Thus, an entire community is defamed.

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

“Anyone who takes the approach that this is a black and white situation with a good side and a bad side clearly does not understand the conflict – nor could they have a peaceable solution in mind.” – Laura Ben-David

I took this quotation from an open letter to the singer Lorde (of whom I admit I have never heard), who recently announced that she would not perform in Israel after pressure from pro-Palestinian fans in her native New Zealand.

The letter was fine and I hope the young (21) performer reads it and pays attention. But the statement quoted above is wrong.

The conflict is “a black and white situation with a good side and a bad side.” As far as a solution, I admit that I don’t have a peaceable one in mind, but that’s because the people who have adopted the cause of the Palestinians are not going to give us one. They are preparing for war, and although we are doing our best to delay it, it’s just a matter of time.

Here is the conflict in a nutshell: Muslims cannot abide Jewish sovereignty in places that they have decided ought to be dar al islam, and that includes my country, Israel. That’s wrong, it’s racist, and it’s unnecessary.

The Palestinian Arabs, the point of the spear of the anti-Israel movement, have created a whole mythology to justify their opposition to our existence, but that’s all it is: a mythology. Their cause inflames Muslims everywhere in their genocidal racism, which they would quickly and happily implement if they weren’t afraid of us.

Laura Ben-David also said “the disputes and challenges in Israel are very real and very complex. If they were easy to solve, they would have been.” This, too, is misleading. There is one overriding reason that the conflict continues, and it isn’t complexity. It’s because various powerful outsiders have found it in their interest (real and imagined) to take the side of the racist Arab nations, and especially the Palestinian Arabs.

So for example, the disintegrating British Empire thought the Arabs would be far more useful than the Jews in protecting their routes to India and supplying them with oil. The KGB waged (and possibly its successor continues to wage) vicious psychological warfare against the Jewish state as part of the great-power conflict of the cold war. The American State Department’s Arabists are more comfortable with their pure desert nomads than sneaky, tacky Jews. The Europeans cancel their Holocaust guilt by assuring themselves that we are, after all, as bad as the Nazis. And today, the burgeoning Iranian empire sees Israel as standing on its path to Middle-Eastern or even world domination (not to mention the dar al islam issue).

Western leftists, like the ones that bothered Lorde, are so obsessed with escaping their inescapable whiteness that the old KGB propaganda lights them right up. For those that are themselves Jewish, the pleasure in attacking the only Jewish state is at least doubled. Not only do they escape their whiteness, but they jettison their Jewishness at the same time! Two for one.

It’s always someone, isn’t it? There’s no other place in the world besides our tiny state that so many seem to care about so much. If only they didn’t.

Regarding solutions, we’ve tried agreeing to several of them, many highly disadvantageous from a strategic standpoint, but somehow, the more we talk about peace – or worse, withdraw from some place we are ‘occupying’ – the more we get war (this in itself tells us something about the simple polarity of the conflict).

So that is the story. I apologize to Laura Ben-David, whose heart is clearly in the right place, but there can be too much nuance. Not everything is so complex, not every argument has two sides that are both compelling, and conflicts do not always evaporate when you make an effort to understand both sides. Some things provide clear moral choices – and this is one of them.

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"But....but...what about the occupation????" (Poster)

I received a very typical Twitter response to my earlier article about the high life expectancy of Israeli Arabs: "Does that legitimise occupation?"

I've noted in the past that many people, when looking at Israel, wear "occupation glasses." Nothing else matters. If the information they receive is bad, then it is the "occupation"'s fault, if it is good then it is being used to divert attention from the "occupation."

The Israel-haters think that they have a slam dunk when mentioning "occupation" - it is their shorthand for repression, injustice, and colonialism.

For some reason Israel doesn't do a good enough job when answering this. So here is a short response that works wonders:

If there was a Palestinian state, there would be no "occupation."

And the ONLY reason there is no Palestinian state is because the Palestinian leadership has rejected every offer for one.

Every time.

Pointing this irrefutable fact out does a number of things. It shows that Israel doesn't want to control another people, it shows that Israel wants peace, and it shows that Palestinians prefer "occupation" to statehood.

Moreover, it puts the Israel-hater on the defensive, forced to stutter that the peace offers weren't good enough or whatever. To which the response is....then the "occupation" cannot really be so bad, can it?

When forced to answer this simple observation, the Israel-haters show that they don't want a state either. They will say that a state without Jerusalem or without "return" of "refugees" - not to Palestine, but to Israel - is not worth it.

Showing that they don't really care about "occupation" but about destroying Israel.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Zionists said they would accept a state the size of a handkerchief. They accepted a UN partition plan that wrested Jerusalem from them. They desperately needed a state for the Jews to live in without fear of being murdered.

Palestinians, however, don't have any sense of urgency in their supposed quest for a state. They are willing to wait decades.

If that is true, then they are the ones who are prolonging 'occupation," not Israel.

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12/28 Links Pt1: Ben Shapiro: Time to defund the United Nations; Trump should crack down on UNRWA, finally end fiction of Palestinian ‘refugees’; UNRWA Steals Christmas

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: Time to defund the United Nations

Last week, Democrats and many in the mainstream media became highly perturbed by the Trump administration’s suggestion that the United States might tie continued foreign aid to support for its agenda abroad. Foreign dictators agreed. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who spent the last year arresting dissidents, announced, “Mr. Trump, you cannot buy Turkey’s democratic free will with your dollars, our decision is clear.”

Herein lies the great irony of the United Nations: While it’s the Mos Eisley of international politics — a hive of scum and villainy — and it votes repeatedly to condemn the United States and Israel, the tyrannies that constitute the body continue to oppress their own peoples. Among those who voted last week to condemn the U.S. for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving its embassy to Jerusalem were North Korea, Iran, Yemen and Venezuela. Why exactly should the United States ever take advice from those nations seriously?

We shouldn’t. And we should stop sending cash to an organization that operates as a front for immoral agenda items.

The United Nations spends the vast majority of its time condemning Israel: According to UN Watch, the U.N. Human Rights Council issued 135 resolutions from June 2006 to June 2016, 68 of which were against Israel; the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization only passes resolutions against Israel; and the U.N. General Assembly issued 97 resolutions from 2012 through 2015, 83 of which targeted Israel.

Trump should crack down on UNRWA, finally end fiction of Palestinian ‘refugees’

While an official report was eventually sent to Congress, its contents were kept classified to deny the American public from knowing the truth. The Trump administration can take a giant step toward Middle East peace by declassifying that report, updating it and formally adopting a definition for Palestinian refugees that makes a clear distinction between refugees displaced by the 1948 war and their descendants.

The administration and Congress should work together to change the way America funds UNRWA, making clear to taxpayers how much money goes to refugee assistance and how much subsidizes a culture of welfare and terrorism.

Future funding of the agency should be tied to a clear mission of resettlement, integration and economic self-sufficiency. A timetable and work plan should be established for UNRWA’s integration into UNHCR. Conditions should be set in the annual foreign bill, giving Haley the leverage she needs to force changes in the agency’s next biennium budget.

Nations of the world showed their true colors last week. Far too many cared more about castigating Israel than their relationship with the United States.

UNRWA is a case study in the institutional bias that America helps fund at the United Nations. Shining a light on this agency and making it a centerpiece of a new reform agenda would be a victory for American taxpayers and a defeat for the international movement to castigate our closest ally in the Middle East.

UNRWA Steals Christmas

First female Druze judge appointed in Israel

The Druze community in Israel Facebook page reports that Malka Azzam Awida, a lawyer, has been appointed to be the first female Druze judge in Israel.

Surprisingly, this did not seem to make the news anywhere.

(h/t Dror)

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Dr. Essam Adwan, a columnist writing in Felesteen, says its way past time to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews.

The affirmation of Palestinian rejection of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank requires violent resistance against the settlers, convincing them that there is no security, no peace and no rest for those who have remained in the West Bank. It remains for the various Palestinian forces to reach an understanding and even cooperation to impose violent resistance against Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Adwan says that this is something that is agreed upon by all Palestinian factions, not just Hamas.

All the Palestinian factions agreed on the National Reconciliation Document in 2006, in which all agreed to establish a Palestinian state in the territories occupied in 1967 and to use all methods of resistance against occupation in these territories. This is the minimum that has been agreed upon, without relinquishing the right to the rest of occupied Palestine. Therefore, these Palestinian factions have a national duty to carry out the armed resistance against the settlers in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority must defend and protect its back and convince the world of the legitimacy of this resistance, especially after the UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements in the West Bank.

The National Conciliation Document of 2006 was signed by Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP and DFLP. Its wording can be interpreted to mean that all those factions agree to kill Jewish settlers, by using the formulation "To affirm the right of the Palestinian people to resist the occupation, to preserve the option of resistance by various means, and to concentrate the resistance in the territories occupied in 1967, concomitantly with political action, negotiations and diplomacy.

Adwan is saying that all major Palestinian groups had already agreed to murder Jews, so why not get moving already?

Our heroic Palestinian people, and their courageous men, should not wait for permission from anyone to do what is a national duty and a religious duty .... The quickest way to prevent Jewish immigrants from thinking about migrating to Palestine or to settle in the West Bank is armed action, supported by all other resistance tactics. It is the responsibility of the national and Islamic forces to form an incubator for the West Bank Intifada by forming a leadership for it, providing material assistance to each injured person, granting lawyers to all the detainees and signing a document of honor to punish anyone who causes the arrest of a Palestinian because of his national revolutionary struggle.

It is important to stress yet again that this is not an outlying opinion. There is no controversy in Palestinian Arab media when an explicit call to murder Jewish civilians is published.

The everyday hate and incitement to murder does not make it to the news. So the world has no clue that Palestinians read this sort of thing every day with their morning coffee.

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Arabs in Israel have higher life expectancy than in any Arab or Muslim country

A report just released by the Taub Center in Israel on "The Health of the Arab Israeli Population" includes this interesting graph:

Given the amount of articles about Israeli "apartheid", it is notable that Israelis Arabs live longer on the average than Muslims or Arabs in their own countries.

To be sure, the report notes that the life expectancy of Israeli Arabs is some four years lower than that of Israeli Jews. It didn't give enough details to determine if this is because of their generally lower socio-economic status. It would be interesting to compare this statistic with those of Haredi Jews, who are generally on the same socio-economic levels in Israel.

Another related reason that could explain the gap is that Israeli Jews are much more likely to seek private specialists not covered by insurance than Israeli Arabs are, according to the report.

How about Palestinian Arabs? Where do they fall in the chart above?

According to this site, the Palestinian numbers would be 73.3 (2015) and 70.6 (2000), putting them in the middle of the pack. Given that they have been involved in three wars in Gaza and a years-long intifada in the territories, it doesn't appear that Israeli defensive actions have hurt their life expectancy at all. Their life expectancy has continuously increased since Oslo, although not as fast as those of Israeli Arabs.

(h/t UKMediaWatch)

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