Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

01/30 Links Pt1: Palestinian Blackmail: US Is Our Enemy; Arabs Should Stop Pretending the Palestinian Issue Is an Impediment to Relations with Israel

From Ian:

The Palestinians' mock trial and "execution" of Trump and Pence gives the Palestinians a green light to target Americans physically. More interesting still is that members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction participated in the mock trial and "execution" of the US president and the Vice President.

Strikingly, this event took place inside a refugee camp that is run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA). More precisely, the execution took place outside a school run by UNRWA. Trump and Pence were "hanged" with the UNRWA flag flying atop the school in the background.

The US and other Western countries would do well to take the Palestinian campaign of threats and incitement extremely seriously – and severely counter these threats. Submission to the intimidation will simply result in even more intimidation, more violence and more threats.

Melanie Phillips: Pence, Trump, May and the nation

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network Mike Pence’s Knesset speech, the Jewish attitude to the idea of the nation, the threat to Britain posed by Jeremy Corbyn, Trump at Davos and Theresa May’s woes.

Arab Countries Should Stop Pretending the Palestinian Issue Is an Impediment to Diplomatic Relations with Israel

The improving relations between Israel and many Sunni Arab states—including those like Saudi Arabia with which it does not have formal diplomatic ties—are hardly a secret. But these countries remain reluctant to acknowledge the relations publicly and have shown little interest in actual normalization. While explaining the reluctance, Moshe Yaalon and Leehe Friedman contend that Arab countries would serve both their own interests and those of the Palestinians by dropping their insistence on a solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a prerequisite to normal diplomatic relations with Jerusalem.

[T]he pragmatic Arab regimes are wary of being seen publicly as overly keen on normalization before the Israel-Palestinian conflict has been resolved. Their citizens would widely and strongly oppose such a move and perceive it as an abandonment and betrayal of their Palestinian brethren. Even Egypt and Jordan, which have diplomatic relations with Israel and have cooperated quietly but extensively over security and intelligence matters, are careful not to appear too openly conciliatory toward Israel. . . .

What’s more, Iran, in its quest for hegemony in the Middle East, would surely use any sign of rapprochement with Israel to inflame the Palestinian conflict further. . . . The Sunni states, particularly Saudi Arabia, cannot allow themselves to give Iran or Turkey, [which has aligned itself with the Muslim Brotherhood and against the moderate Arab states], any openings to amass political capital in the region. . . .

So far, [however,] conditioning normalization on resolving the conflict has not brought its settlement any closer, and instead has obstructed other moves that would benefit the entire region. . . . The time has come to recognize that treating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an obstacle toward normalization is [an] illusion. . . . Today, normalization with Israel in itself serves authentic interests in the pragmatic Arab world. Leaders of these countries understand this, and it has led to closer ties behind the scenes. However, in order to maximize the security, economic, and cultural benefits for all parties, closer ties must become public.

Today's Arab media antisemitism

Dr.. Ismail Ibrahim writes in Al Ahram Gate on Monday that the Muslims need to unite to defeat the treacherous, evil Jews.

Not Israels - Jews.

While Arab leaders are rushing to make agreements and peace with the Jews, Israel clings to the Knesset with a painting showing the area from the Nile to the Euphrates as part of Israel. doesn' t that mean Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and part of Saudi Arabia ?!

This painting is fictional, of course.

Did any of the Arab leaders of the Israeli rulers demand that this painting be removed? Of course not, and the voices still hold on to the strategic option of peace. Every day we relinquish other rights, as will happen in the deal of the century, to which some Arabs and Muslims cheer.

...I do not know how to negotiate with those who have known treachery of the covenants, and the killing of the prophets, and their hands are still dripping with blood, throughout ancient and modern history, they are Jews. There is no difference between the Jews of today and the Jews of yesterday. They say that they are the chosen people of God. But they say that the Lord of Jews orders them to kill and destroy anyone who is not a Jew, and this is not a slander.

In our struggle with the Israeli enemy, and in order to preserve the Islamic sanctities, including Jerusalem, we have no need to turn to the life and mind of Saladin and Saif Qataz. We fight the Jews, and this is inevitable, no matter how deceitful the deceivers are. Only when Muslims raise the flag of Islam...under the unity of Muslims will we find Jews in fear and panic...

This article was linked to on the front page of the Ahram Gate newspaper.

Meanwhile, Asaad Al Azouni writes in Mustaqila that Jewish lobby groups are very dangerous. Among the worst is MEMRI, which dares to translate articles like his into English so everyone can know what Arabs really say to each other. Or, as he puts it, its purpose is "to incite the world against us through deliberate misinformation. "

But also AIPAC, of course - and J-Street too - are Jewish lobby groups.

Among the methods of these Jewish groups are false accusations of anti-Semitism. This is impossible, because today's Jews are Khazars from the Caspian Sea today and are not Semites to begin with. They were converted under pressure of their 17th-century [sic] king - but the king didn't convert because he loved Judaism but to escape the Christian and Islamic pressure.

Holocaust deniers are also victims of the false accusation of antisemitism, like Roger Garaudy.

The real problem, we are told, is the Babylonian Talmud, "which is the source of black terror in the world, because it incites crime and murder," which includes such laws as "send your neighbor diseases, and steal from your non-Jewish neighbor and sleep with his wife."

How dare these evil Jews call anyone antisemitic!

Aezzona has written bizarre antisemitic articles in a number of Arab publications, including the claim ISIS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is really named Rabbi Elliott Shimon.

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Evil Israels working to provide much more electricity and gas to Gaza. And they help Gaza farmers, too.

The Quartet issued a strategy paper for the next two years, and it talks about initiatives to help Palestinians - with Israel's assistance and cooperation - that the media somehow missed.

Just in the energy sector:

The Gas for Gaza (G4G) initiative facilitates the agreement and construction of a gas pipeline from the Israeli gas network to Gaza. It is led through the formal Task Force platform, which is convened by the OQ [Office of the Quartet.]
Ongoing progress has been achieved since the first Task Force meeting in August 2015, including identification of a route, the start of permitting in the Israeli system and ongoing progress in developing the project’s commercial framework. To support the provision of natural gas to Gaza, the OQ will:
1. Continue to chair the G4G Task Force and work with the parties to facilitate progress, including undertaking necessary studies and coordinating between the parties;
2. Initiate, coordinate and facilitate all project activities including security, technical, financial, legal and political dimensions of the project;
3. Work to secure funding for the infrastructure that is required;
4. Support the planning and permitting processes in Israel and Gaza.
Once completed, the G4G project will not only contribute to a significant increase in domestic generation on a cost-efficient basis, but also enable other critical infrastructure including the Gaza Central Desalination Plant, enable economic growth and development more broadly and importantly will fundamentally improve the quality of life.

And:

The establishment of a high voltage 161 kV line will allow for bulk import of electricity from Israel to Gaza, which will expand the supply of electricity and reduce costs. According to estimates made by the Government of Israel (GoI), this high voltage connection can provide an additional 100 MW of electricity in 3-4 years. However, in the interim, until the electricity from the 161 kV line is available for Gaza, the option of providing an additional 25 MW as a stop-gap measure is being examined.

Once again, the question is - why is this not reported anywhere?

Meanwhile, Israel is cooperating with the ICRC to allow some Gaza farmers to resume cultivating land closer to the security fence that Israel had turned into no-man's land because of the rocket threat. Israel placed some restrictions, such as no crops taller than 70 cm and no fruit trees that can hide terror activity.

The meme of an Israel hell bent on starving Gazans from food and power is too delicious for reporters to want to counter. Because if it is true that Israel is working to improve the lives of Palestinians when possible, then, maybe, a lot of the Palestinian problems are self-inflicted. And that is not acceptable to say.

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Three new old Hamas "martyrs". Pass the candy!

Hamas announced three new "martyrs" over the past couple of days, all in the senior demographic.

The first one was this 70 year old Ahmad Aweidah, "who died of an incurable disease." from his photos, it sure seems like he joined Hamas late in life after his diagnosis, so his family can get the benefits of a dead Qassam Brigades martyr.

Also, 60-year old Jabr Musa Awad al-Harazin died of a heart attack, again prompting Hamas to announce that he is a "martyr" and therefore ready to enter Paradise.

Finally, senior Hamas leader Emad al-Alami, finally died from a gunshot wound to his head, that Hamas claims came from an accident while cleaning his gun three weeks ago. That story is suspicious, to say the least.

Emadi was 62.

May all Hamas members enter their paradise, this year. But paradise needs some younger blood, too.

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Bibi on Jerusalem at Davos (video)

Plain spoken truth that so many refuse to listen to.

"He did a great service for peace because peace can only be based on truth, on reality. And denying the simple fact that Israel's capital is Jerusalem is — pushes peace backward by creating an illusion, a fantasy. You can't build peace on fantasy," Netanyahu told CNN's Fareed Zakaria at Davos.
"The seat of government is in Jerusalem. This has been the case for the 70 years of Israel's existence that we're celebrating now. Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people since the time of King David. That's only 3,000 years ago," he said.
"Under any peace agreement, you know that the capital of Israel will continue to be Jerusalem, and the seat of our government will continue to be in Jerusalem," he continued.

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01/29 Links Pt2: Dani Dayan: Anti-Zionism Is Just Anti-Semitism by Another Name; The role of propaganda in the Holocaust; The Dark Secret of Two-Faced Academics

From Ian:

Dani Dayan: Anti-Zionism Is Just Anti-Semitism by Another Name

The term anti-Semitism was created in the age of Enlightenment, when the pseudo-science of eugenics laid the seeds of Nazism. The unsubtle racism of neo-Nazis remains a lightning rod for mainstream outrage today, however religious and political hostilities against Jews are often unacknowledged for what they are.

The anti-Judaism of Islamic extremists both in the Middle East and migrant communities is a rising concern, as are the creeping tendencies in some European nations to restrict the rights of their remaining Jewish citizens.

However, it is the increasing acceptance and elevation of anti-Zionists across the world that is cause for particular concern. Those who deny the Jewish people, and only the Jewish people, the right to live in freedom and security in their homeland are routinely paraded as the picture of progressive politics.

When nations like Iran arm their bigotry with ballistic missile programs and powerful proxies like Hezbollah, they can expect acquiescence and appeasement from much of the world.

The inalienable right to self-determination is the one guarantee that Jews can never become victims to genocidal regimes again. Anti-Zionism is an ideology which perpetuates the political oppression of Jews, and by doing so legitimizes and encourages violence in Israel and the Diaspora.

It can be verboten in some circles to call out these activists or dictatorial regimes for their beliefs. Nevertheless, those who seek the political oppression of Jews must not be held to a lower standard of bigotry than their religious or racially motivated counterparts.

Fake News is old news to Jews. Today’s anti-Israel agenda, hailed from college classrooms to the voting chambers of the United Nations, regularly tells of a world in which Solomon’s Temple never stood, Jews were not in Israel and the Middle East for thousands of years, and that Zionists were complicit in the Holocaust.

A son of refuseniks chronicles the slow dissolve of Russia’s Jews

The numbers are telling, he said. There are now about 170,000 Jews in Russia, according to Mark Tolts, a Hebrew University demographer. That’s a tenth of the community’s size in 1989, as counted in the last Soviet census. Factors like an aging population, low birthrate and increased immigration to Israel make Shrayer wonder what the country will look like in 50 years.

“Jewish faces and Jewish names are starting to vanish from the Russian mainstream — from literature, the arts and the entertainment industry, but also from the achievement rolls of science, medicine and the humanities,” he writes.

Has Shrayer overcome his sense of divide with Jews who stay in Russia? As a result of his research, he is both more emotionally connected, but also, paradoxically, more disconnected.

“There’s a feeling of not quite mourning but certainly a feeling of deep sadness. It’s coming from a place that is somewhere deep inside,” he reflected.

It brings Shrayer back to the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, whose galleries and exhibits shed light on the story of Jews in Russia.

“It’s a great museum,” he said. But in part, it’s a museum of those who stayed, for those who stayed – and for their countrymen. Among the museum’s exhibits, pictured on the jacket of his book, are life-size plaster casts of Jews in period garb — all as white as ghosts.

Shrayer learned recently that the audio recording on the No. 19 tram, as well as the sign on its stop, have been changed and riders now hear and see the full name of the museum. He’s not claiming it’s his doing — that would be extremely chutzpahdik, Shrayer said.

Nonetheless, he added, the correction suggests to him that the story of Russia’s Jews resists closure.

Sundance Movie Review: ‘The Oslo Diaries’

What this film shows, more than anything, is that the people in power on both sides of this long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict were able to come together to reach an agreement despite many obstacles. When the initial documents are signed, protests erupt, and it becomes clear that the battle is not between Israelis and Palestinians but rather between those who want peace and those who don’t, regardless of their national or religious identity. Watching Palestinians place olive branches on Israeli tanks to indicate their desire for peace is inspiring. Learning of the organization of a protest for peace is reminiscent of much of what we see today in American society: people marching for rights rather than against them. In his final interview for the film, Shimon Peres puts its best: “No war is ever finished unless it’s being replaced by peace.”

This film, sadly, is far from the end of the story. Watching Yitzhak Rabin sing the words to “Shir LaShalom” — “Song for Peace”— along with Peres just moments before he was assassinated is especially heartbreaking. Knowing that these events took place more than two decades ago and little has changed is disheartening, and this film serves more as a chronicle of history than any call to action since those involved know that there is no easy solution.

The Oslo Diaries is certainly less controversial than the last documentary filmmakers Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan brought to Sundance. Censored Voices featured recorded testimonies of Israeli soldiers lamenting their misdeeds during the Six Day War, something that, while seemingly true, was seen as easy fodder for critics of Israel to use to denounce it is an imperialist state with an illegal military. Loushy and Sivan seem determined to continue presenting stories that might not always be warmly received, like Sivan’s recent editing of the disturbing documentary Death in the Terminal, which explores the beating and killing of an innocent Eritrean refugee mistaken for a terrorist after an explosion at a bus station. Extensively featuring Bibi Netanyahu in archive footage in The Oslo Diaries railing against Rabin and then being elected prime minister after his death is far from a subtle message that they believe his government isn’t helping the peace process.

There are many stories to tell about Israel and the conflict in which it remains eternally engulfed, and this spotlight on an unlikely early step forward is an optimistic and detailed one, presented as a meeting of two sides in a middle that for so long couldn’t have existed. It’s informative, affirming, and positive while things are going well, and a reminder that there is a way to see the other side.

Martin Kramer: "You remember the filmmakers Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan, whose last production was “Censored Voices” (2015)? That was predicated on a lie: an allegation of Israeli military censorship. I exposed the manipulation in an internet article entitled “Who Censored the Six-Day War?” (now available, with notes, in my book “The War on Error,” pp. 225-42). Their new film, “The Oslo Diaries,” has now premiered at Sundance, and HBO just bought it. (I guess they needed something to fill the gap left by their last Israel project, a nixed film by Ari Shavit.) I haven’t seen the new offering, but the reviews make me suspect it’s something other than history. I’ll be watching." (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Did Israel force the PA to resume electricity to Gaza?

A very interesting portion of an article in Times of Israel by Avi Issacharoff:

Although Gazans tend to blame Israel for their situation, it is actually the Jewish state that seems to be trying to encourage improved economic conditions.

The Palestinian Authority recently decided to renew the electricity supply to Gaza by resuming payments for power generated by Israel (now providing power to homes for six hours, followed by 12 hours of darkness).

But the decision to renew the power supply was not due to a sudden stroke of generosity by the PA. According to sources, it was the result of an ultimatum by Israel: The Jewish state warned the PA that if it didn’t renew payments for the Gaza power bill, the Israeli government would cover the costs with PA tax money it collects. Ramallah understood the message and made a public show of renewing electricity payments.

If true, and this is plausible, it shows again that Israel is more interested in the well being of Gazans than Mahmoud Abbas is.

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Video and photos: Palestinians lynch and burn Trump and Pence in effigy

This weekend, Palestinian in the Aida camp held a "mock trial" of President Trump and Vice President Pence and sentenced them to hanging, and burning.

WATCH: The #Palestinian Authority "executed" President @realDonaldTrump and @VP Pence.

And then they complain that they are not getting money from the U.S. pic.twitter.com/i5dhM3j0R5
— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) January 28, 2018

This is their concept of "dignity" - give us free money or else.

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01/29 Links Pt1: UNRWA: The UN Agency that Creates Palestinian Refugees; John Kerry Chamberlain, saving Israel from ifself...again

From Ian:

Pierre Rehov: UNRWA: The UN Agency that Creates Palestinian Refugees

According to the UN's own definition, the status of "refugee" cannot be passed from generation to generation -- as it conveniently has been for the Palestinians. A Palestinian with a European, American or Jordanian passport has no reason to be considered a refugee. Except by UNRWA.

"Since the UN took them over, the Palestinians started burying their dead at night, without declaring them, in order to share their rations. As a result, for nearly 20 years, the official death rate in the camps was close to zero. In addition, there was a lot of movement between the camps. But these displacements were rarely recorded, so that a Palestinian could appear in several camps at the same time..." — Said Aburish, Palestinian Refugee and biographer of the late Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat.

UNRWA is not just a humanitarian agency. Its political stance is evident at all levels of the organization. A report from the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, says that the 2016-2017 curriculum for elementary schools in PA, partly funded by UNRWA, "teaches students to be martyrs, to demonize and deny the existence of Israel, and to focus on a 'return' to an exclusively Palestinian country."

John Kerry Chamberlain, saving Israel from ifself...again

During President Obama's second term in office, Secretary of State John Kerry, like his boss and other members of the same peapod (Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, etc.), liked to warn Israel about such things as its isolation and alienation if it did not agree to Arab demands to return to its pre-'67 war, '49 armistice lines (they were never borders) which made it an over-sized ghetto, 9-15 miles wide at its waist, where most of its population and infrastructure are located.

President George W. Bush commented that Texas had driveways larger than that. I don't know about driveways, but I also don't doubt the size of some Lone Star ranches. And I'm pretty sure Mrs. Obama had to travel farther than that for shopping trips to Target.

Others, like President Jimmy Carter, supposedly worried/worry (and even wrote books) about Israel's soul and looming "apartheid nature" if it insists on the more secure, defensible, real borders that UNSC Resolution 242 promised in the wake of the '67 fighting--a war Israel was forced to fight after being blockaded by Egypt (a casus belli), shelled by Jordan, abandoned by the UN Emergency Force placed in Sinai after the '56 war (largely fought over another blockade and acts of terror), and other hostile acts and constant threats of annihilation.

All of 242's architects (Lord Caradon, Eugene Rostow, etc.)--and Presidents Johnson, Reagan, and others (including George W. Bush in his letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon)--agreed that Israel would never return to those pre-'67 Auschwitz lines.

That, dear readers, is what the "settlement" issue is mostly all about...besides Jews having both modern, religious, and historical connections to Judea and Samaria (only since the 20th century, called the "West Bank") for over three thousand years.

East Jerusalem-based NGO dissolved for financing terrorism

The Jerusalem District Court on Sunday ordered the dissolution of a nongovernmental organization based in east Jerusalem that was used as a front by a Palestinian terrorist group.

The illicit activities of Lajnat al-Amal al-Zarai, or the Committee of Agricultural Work, were first exposed by Israel Hayom in October 2016.

The group allegedly funneled millions of dollars to the Gaza Strip-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Registrar of Associations in Israel initiated the NGO's liquidation process in the court, which ruled that the evidence presented supports the allegation that the organization was involved in donor fraud and terror financing.

The alleged donor fraud was uncovered by the International Legal Forum, a local advocacy group, in 2016. It found that the commmittee had defrauded foreign entities and individuals into thinking they were donating funds for humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza, but instead the funds were diverted to terrorist activities.

It recently dawned on me that those behind the aptly named BDS “movement” must have gotten their hands on that computer Wile E Coyote used in To Hare is Human.

Fellow Bugs Bunny fans will remember that episode as the one in which the aforementioned villain decides to supplement his “super genius” with a build-it-yourself, cave-sized, UNIVAC electronic brain, complete with my favorite cartoon interface of all time: a mammoth keyboard in which each key features one word in the English language (including contractions), allowing him to give commands such as:

ROCK + FALLING + WHAT’LL + I + DO?

Given the consequences of following the machine’s suggestions, it occurred to me that our buddies in BDS-land might be falling victim to the same technology.

For example, they could have typed the following command into UNIVAC earlier this month to hatch their latest self-detonating scheme:

NEW + ORLEANS + CITY + COUNCIL + TRICK + INTO + SUPPORT + BDS

One would think that the failure of the BDSers to gin up any enthusiasm for municipal divestment since Somerville kicked them down the stairs in 2004 might have sent them the message that cities and towns are not interested in participating in their poisonous, propaganda project. But perhaps this long drought just gave the boycotters time to let a new generation of representatives come to power with no memory of the tricks that had been played on municipal leaders over a decade ago.

The BDS playbook has been put into practice so often and so routinely that I was recently able to boil it down to a simple set of endlessly repeated steps, but the New Orleans version can be summed up as: (1) find a progressive organization concerned over, but not hugely informed about, international affairs; (2) ask the group to pass a generic divestment proposal that claims to support general human rights, without mentioning BDS (or even Israel) specifically; and (3) once said generic proposal passes, take to the airwaves declaring that the institution is now fully aboard the BDS “Israel = Apartheid” bandwagon.

This is exactly what happened in New Orleans in early January and, as with similar debates in the past, local leaders who had been duped were not amused that anti-Israel activists were blanketing the world with anti-Israel propaganda, claiming support of city leaders. So, within days of being passed, New Orleans’ divestment declaration was rescinded – leaving the boycotters with soot-covered punims as their latest self-made roadrunner trap detonated in their collective face.

Or how about Ohio State University, a school where divestment has been rejected by both student government and the student body in the past?

But by plugging the following into UNIVAC, a new scheme emerged:

GET + STUDENT + GOVERNMENT + TO + PASS + ANYTHING + REMOTELY + RESEMBLING + BDS + AND + DECLARE + VICTORY

You may have seen dueling stories regarding the latest vote at Ohio State, one which claims victory for BDS the other declaring that anti-Israel divestment was defeated. The reason for this confusion is that the boycotters agreed to a measure that said nothing specific about Israel; leaving them to peddle the generic human rights initiative they had just helped to pass as actually a successful BDS vote they knew had never taken place.

But if the boycotters are free to spin this non-BDS vote as a victory for them, what is to prevent someone else from spinning it as the boycotters’ latest humiliating defeat? In fact, what’s to prevent anyone from declaring that the vote was really Students for Justice in Palestine finally showing concern for non-Palestinian human rights, including the rights of those suffering under the racist, sexist, homophobic, reactionary dictatorships that represent every government in the Middle East, save Israel? After all, if they can pretend a vote means whatever they want it to mean, why can’t the rest of us?

In general, I am in agreement with Ben Cohen that defeat of BDS is best left to folks at ground level, rather than making humiliating the boycotters a priority for national governments. And if it turns out they are falling prey to the same mischievous “one working part” that powered Wile E.’s UNIVAC electronic brain, why should we stand in the way of their racking up the next set of self-inflicted fiascos?

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Palestinians keep on cutting off their noses to spite their faces

What do you do when your people suffer from an economic crisis?

You exacerbate it, of course!

When Vice President Pence visited Israel, Palestinian factions called for a general strike. Not only did they bully all shopkeepers to close their stores, depriving them of revenue as they often do when calling for these strikes, but they blockaded roads to stop their fellow Arabs from going to work in Israel, depriving them of a day of their salary.

What percentage of the Palestinian GDP is affected by these strikes that happen multiple times a year? Does the World Bank ever put that into their calculations when blaming Israel alone for Palestinian economic woes?

Today, UNRWA workers in Gaza went on strike to protest the US reduction in aid to the agency. All UNRWA offices and schools are closed today. Instead of working together to try to serve their population better, they are denying their own people services to accomplish - what, exactly?

Similarly, the Palestinian Youth Movement in the West Bank has demanded that UNRWA somehow get the money it wants to avoid reducing services, or they will start to picket UNRWA offices and stop them from doing their jobs as well.

Even more bizarre, the private companies that import goods to Gaza through Israel have decided to also go on strike - and to stop any imports tomorrow:

Private sector institutions in the Gaza Strip have decided to stop coordinating the entry of all types of goods into the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom Crossing on Tuesday, February 6.
Maher al-Tabaa, director of public relations and information at the Chamber of Commerce, told Ma'an that the decision was due to the catastrophic situation in the Gaza Strip and that Gaza was in a state of clinical death, pointing out that the decision came in the wake of private sector meetings.
He pointed out that there are many steps that will be taken, including trade strikes, sit-ins and many events and press conferences.
He explained that all these steps come under the slogan "we want to live" and that Gaza has the right to live in dignity.
The private sector announced a one-day trade strike on Monday to warn against the deterioration of living conditions and the difficulty of continuing its work.

Is it more dignified to work together to serve the people with fewer resources, or to deny your own people access to basic services?

Can you imagine US women in World War II refusing to work in factories and going on strike to protest the war? Because that is the Palestinian mentality - we don't have to work through adversity, we just have to strike and whine and complain louder and eventually the world will provide us with what we want for free, anyway.

I mean, it's worked until now, hasn't it?

Meanwhile, a Gaza hospital has closed due to lack of fuel to keep the generators going. It isn't Israel that is blocking fuel deliveries - it is simply a shortage of cash. And this has nothing to do with UNRWA, meaning that the shortage of cash comes from the Palestinian Authority choosing to pay salaries of terrorists instead of fuel for hospitals. And NGOs aren't raising money for hospitals, because their money goes into demonizing Israel, not in helping Gazans.

And that works as well, since Palestinians simply cannot complain to the media and other Westerners for fear of appearing to break the unified position of blaming Israel (and now Trump) for all their problems.

It is a self-feeding crisis, but few are brave enough to point it out.

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Apparently, Hamas is more feminist than Scarlett Johansson

These two stories show how large parts of the feminist movement has completely lost the plot. From January 20:

Palestinian-American groups have pulled out of Saturday's Women's March Los Angeles over the inclusion of actress Scarlett Johansson as a guest speaker, in protest of what they call Johansson's support of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

"The Women's March mission says, 'We believe that women's rights are human rights and human rights are women's rights. Apparently that does not extend to Palestinian human rights, during the WMLA" said Sana Ibrahim, past president of the Palestinian American Women's Association.

PAWA responded to an online petition issued Wednesday night by Women for Palestine L.A., which similarly criticized Johansson's role in the Los Angeles event.

Other groups endorsing the petition included Jewish Voice for Peace LA, and Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition.

Other groups that boycotted the event include the socialist International Action Center and Workers World Party.

Since then, this happened in Gaza:

NUSEIRAT, Palestinian Territories: Police blocked dozens of women from attending a football match Sunday in the Gaza Strip, in what activists said they hoped would have been the first such permission under Hamas’s rule.
Authorities in the Palestinian enclave run by the Hamas movement told the women they had orders not to allow them into the stadium at Nuseirat refugee camp south of Gaza City.
Some of the women instead watched the match between Al-Nuseirat and Al-Jalaa by standing outside the fence, an AFP journalist reported.
“We came here to encourage the team and youths in Nuseirat and watch the game, but we were surprised by the presence of Hamas security guards who closed the gates in our faces and did not allow us to go inside to cheer,” Ayat Othman, one of the women who tried to attend, told AFP.
They were to be seated separately from men in the stadium.

As far as I know, in the entire world, only Saudi Arabia and Iran bar women from sporting events, and even Saudi Arabia is changing that rule. Iran bans women from most sporting events but it grudgingly allows them when international games are played and such a ban violates the rules.

Hamas has wonderful company.

No one - and I mean no one - in the West protests Hamas discrimination against women. I had not even seen this reported before this AFP report - hundreds of reporters in Gaza never thought that this was a story worth covering over the years.

But as these "liberals" give Hamas and Islamist countries a pass so-called "feminists" protest Scarlett Johansson.

Who actually is a feminist.

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