Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Parts of Trump Middle East plan supposedly leaked

Asharq al Awsat that French diplomats have leaked parts of the peace plan that Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt supposedly are drafting for the White House.

According to the leaks, Washington intends to present its plan within the framework of an international conference held in one of the Arab capitals, most likely in Egypt, with Israel attending.

The plan supposedly says that Washington and other countries can recognize the state of Palestine and do not exclude East Jerusalem as its capital if Jerusalem is under some sort of "international jurisdiction."

The plan is supposed to provide for Palestinians in Arab countries to be naturalized citizens and be compensated, but there would be no "right of return."

There would be a sovereign, demilitarized Palestinian state, but not on the 1967 lines. The Jordan Valley would remain under Israeli control. Some settlements would be dismantled.

The plan did not say anything about larger settlements far from the Green Line.

In return, the PA will have additional security and administrative powers in Areas A and B, and Washington plans to raise $40 billion "not to buy Palestinian acceptance but to help build state and Palestinian institutions."

Border security in the Gaza Strip will be assigned to the Egyptian side, according to the leaked plan.

This plan is largely in line with Israeli demands for peace, and seems unlikely to get any traction unless the US convinces Arab governments and the EU to support it, which seems unlikely since it violates a number of Palestinian red lines and EU positions.

The news story says that an Arab ministerial delegation which recently visited Brussels and met with its European counterparts has been briefed on this information. The Arab ministerial delegation included the foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and the PA, as well as the Secretary General of the Arab League, as we reported previously.

It is possible that the leak was engineered to elicit Palestinian anger and to quash it ahead of any conference.

Something like this, if true, would be a long shot under any circumstances, and it would require incredible diplomatic finesse that seems unlikely to come from this administration.

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An IDF joke for Purim

Just saw this on a Hebrew website:
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Two officers lost their personal weapons one day.

After searching and not finding them, they decide to judge each other.

They arrange a room with a flag to serve as a courtroom, and start the trial.
.
The first officer who serves as a judge asks the other, "Do you plead guilty?"

"I do," replies the "defendant."

"If so," says the judge, "I will give you a severe rebuke on your personal file."

They change roles and the officer who is tried becomes a judge.

The second officer "judge" asks, "Do you plead guilty?"

"I do" replies the other officer.

"If so," the judge says, "I am sentencing you to three years' imprisonment."

"How can that be?" asks the defendant. "After all, you got only a rebuke."

The judge answers, "Yes, but this is the second time it has happened in your unit ..."
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While it is funny, the joke's very existence proves the morality of the IDF, where it is expected that losing a weapon would bring one to court, and where multiple offenses per unit are considered serious.

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02/27 Links Pt2: How the Left Became its Own Worst Enemy; Joe Rogan and Douglas Murray; Honoring Yoni Netanyahu; Guardian 'Sat on Charity Sex Abuse Scandal Stories'

From Ian:

How the Left Became its Own Worst Enemy – Part I

One subtle shift has been the emergence of political correctness, a form of Cultural Marxism (the theory that culture more than politics drives inequality between races and classes in Western societies). Political correctness started as a reasonable exercise to protect vulnerable members of society -- blacks, women, Jews, gays, the disabled -- from offensive speech and action but ended as a modern totalitarianism that blocks free speech and open debate on just about everything.

Today's youth, particularly on university campuses, have adopted ways of thinking and behaving that contradict all the ideas that were the fundamentals of classic liberalism. There are many examples, but the one that stands out above the rest is support for radical Islam and hard-line Muslims.

The most famous instance in the UK was Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's embrace of members of the terror outfits Hamas and Hezbollah, which he described as his "friends". It took him until the summer of 2016 to say that he regretted his engagement with the terrorists.

In several European countries, including France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and parts of Italy, governments have banned fully or in part the wearing of the Islamic veil; above all, the niqab and burqa, the full-face forms. One might have thought that Western feminists would be in the vanguard of such movements, as it could not be clearer that Islamic law oppresses women far more than ever happened in the West. A British Muslim physician, Qanta Ahmed, and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown have openly and repeatedly called for the abolition of all forms of veiling. Muslim women reformers across entire the Islamic world have called for an end to veils of all kinds.[1] In Iran this year, young women have been demonstrating on the streets without their compulsory hijabs, and at least 29 have been arrested as the regime clamps down again.

Joe Rogan Experience #1084 - Douglas Murray (NSFW)

Caroline Glick: What America Can Learn from Israeli Gun Laws

When mass shootings take plan in the U.S., commentators routinely raise Israel as a case study to prove that guns in the hands of citizens save lives.

Israel, with its long and painful history of contending with terrorism, is rich with examples that prove this contention. In recent years, armed citizens have stopped dozens of terrorists. In some cases, those citizens acted when cowardly police officers shrank from danger.

For instance, on March 6, 2008, a terrorist disguised as a delivery man entered the Merkaz Harav seminary in Jerusalem with an assault rifle hidden in a television box. He opened fire on students studying in the library.

Two beat cops arrived on the scene but failed to enter the building to stop the killing.

In the event, a seminary student armed with a handgun, and an off duty infantry officer who lived in the neighborhood, heard the shots and ran to the seminary. The student, a young rabbi, was armed with a handgun; the officer was carrying his assault rifle. Both men ignored the police officers who told them not to go inside. They entered the building and killed the terrorist, ending the massacre. By the time they arrived, eight students, including five high school students, had been killed, while eight more were wounded.

The most recent Palestinian terror campaign, which lasted more or less from October 2015 through April 2016, showed the need for an armed citizenry. In two major attacks in Tel Aviv, the terrorists, armed with rifles were able to kill at will for several minutes because none of the civilians at the sites of the attacks were armed.

In contrast, terror attacks in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, which took place during the same period, were repeatedly stopped at their outset by armed civilians who ran to the scene within moments.

In response to the public outcry, Public Security Minister Glad Erdan slightly loosened restrictions on eligibility for gun licenses and encouraged citizens with gun licenses to carry their weapons wherever they go.

Erdan’s move to loosen restrictions on eligibility for gun permits shone a light on an aspect of Israeli life of which foreigners are largely unaware.

While the Palestinian Authority is saying that it does not want anyone to cooperate with Israelis (except for anti-Israel activities,) the IDF's COGAT continues to offer services for Palestinian Arabs:

Last week, 22 Palestinian medical experts underwent 5 days of advanced training under the supervision of the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Israel. The Palestinian medical experts acquired experience in the field of patient care, explanations regarding hyperbaric medicine and received lectures by senior physicians. This project was a joint initiative of the Training Unit of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Health Coordinator in the Civil Administration, Dalia Bassa.

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The Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education issued a 250 page Strategic Plan, in English, last year.

When they talk about how awful it is that Israel forces Arab schools in Jerusalem to use the Israeli curriculum, they include this horrible fact:

The Israeli occupation authorities constantly aim to erase the Palestinian identity in Jerusalem. They also do their utmost to change the reality of the city and fabricate its history and origin by censuring [sic] the Palestinian curricula and depriving Palestinian students of their right of access to their Palestinian curricula in its original form, as other Palestinian students. In addition, Israel has done everything possible to separate the Jerusalemite students from the rest of the Palestinian students. In implementing these policies, Israel has taken the following measures:
....
5) Distributing the censured [sic] textbooks to the municipality and private schools free of charge whereas each package is sold for Jewish students for (NIS 1200-1500); an example of their political intentions towards Palestinian students in Jerusalem.

Yes, saving Palestinian students in Jerusalem some $400 each - costing the Israeli government millions of dollars - is an example of Israeli evil!

By the way, if the Palestinians are so upset over losing their "right" to study their anti-Israel curriculum, they can always set up private after school programs to study their fake history and culture to counteract the evil Zionist narrative.

Teachers and students would certainly volunteer for such a project, and NGOs would happily pay for it.
I wonder why it doesn't happen?

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02/27 Links Pt1: PLO declares economic war on the United States; PLO Gives Apartment To Family Of Terrorist Who Murdered An Israeli; The embassy will move . . . and the world won’t end

From Ian:

PLO declares economic war on the United States

Saleh Rafat, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Executive Committee, on Sunday said that the committee would convene in the coming days to discuss the latest developments on the Palestinian issue and to follow the implementation of the decisions of the PLO Central Council, which called for the severing of ties with Israel.

In an interview with Voice of Palestine Radio, Rafat backed an appeal by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to the International Criminal Court in The Hague which would demand that a legal investigation be launched against Israel for its "crimes" against the Palestinian people. He also backed the idea of "Palestine" joining 22 more international organizations.

He called on Arab countries not to agree to the American administration's peace plan which will be presented soon, to withdraw their investments from the U.S., to boycott American products, and to adhere to previous summit resolutions that cut off ties with any country that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Rafat called for the continuation of the "mass demonstrations of anger" in “Palestine” and the Diaspora in order to deal with the American position that is biased in favor of Israel.

The PA officially joined the ICC on April 1, 2015, and immediately filed a series of legal complaints with the court. In addition to claiming that Israel committed war crimes during the 2014 Gaza war, it also claimed that Israeli “settlements” are “an ongoing war crime”

PMW: PA Mufti warns of “disasters of wars,” if US embassy is moved

After the announcement by the US State Department last week that the US embassy will be moved to Jerusalem on May 14, 2018, the Palestinian Authority's Grand Mufti warned that such a move will lead to "disasters of wars" in the entire world, as it is perceived as an "attack" on all Muslims:

"He [the Mufti] explained that the transfer of the American embassy to Jerusalem, if it is carried out, will not be an attack on the Palestinians alone, but rather a blatant attack on the Arabs and Muslims throughout the world, ...and that it will not serve peace and security in the region, but rather bring upon it disasters of wars, anarchy, and instability." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 26, 2018]

He further implicitly encouraged Palestinians and Muslims to use violence and seek Martyrdom, stating that they will "sacrifice all that is dear to them":
"[The Mufti] added that the residents of Jerusalem and all of the Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims will not submit to this blatant attack, and will sacrifice all that is dear to them in order to confront the American stubbornness."

The PA Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the embassy move "a direct aggression towards our people," regarding it as "a provocative declaration and a blow to the sensibilities of the Arabs and Muslims." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 26, 2018]

MEMRI: PLO Fatah Faction Gives Apartment To Family Of Terrorist Who Murdered An Israeli

Palestinian media are reporting that the PLO faction Fatah in the Jenin area had given an apartment to the family of Ahmad Nassar Jarrar, 22, commander of the Hamas squad that murdered Rabbi Raziel Shevach on January 9, 2018 near the Havat Gilad junction in the West Bank. Jarrar was killed by Israeli troops a month later, in a February 6, 2018 raid.

Fatah representatives noted that the donation of the apartment constituted fulfilment of the national obligation to the family of a martyr who had sacrificed his life for Palestine and whose home the occupation had razed. Jarrar's mother and brother thanked Fatah for its support.

The following are translated excerpts from reports on the matter in the Palestinian media, and expressions of esteem for the martyrs by Palestinian Authority (PA) officials.

Fatah Jenin: This Is The Fulfillment Of A National Obligation Towards Families Of The Martyrs

On February 24, the Palestinian official news agency Wafa reported: "The Fatah movement in the Jenin region has given a fully furnished apartment to the family of the martyr Ahmad Nassar Jarrar...

"Fatah Jenin secretary Nour Al-Din Abu Al-Rab told Wafa that the donation of the apartment to the Jarrar family was aimed at underlining that the Fatah movement was fulfilling the national duty towards the families of the martyrs whose homes were razed by the Israeli occupation. He noted that the apartment was fully furnished and praised the part played by all those who had contributed to this national task that, he said, proved that our people is united and consolidated and does not forget its martyrs who gave their lives for Palestine.

"The martyr's mother, on her part, praised Fatah for providing her family with an apartment after the occupation destroyed their home."

On its official Facebook page, Fatah posted a video showing Jarrar's mother thanking Fatah for its support of the family.

It doesn't get more ironic than this:

The Cairo-based Arab League on Monday condemned the decision by the Israeli municipality in Jerusalem on collecting property taxes on UN buildings and churches.
In a statement, the League's Assistant Secretary-General and Head of the Palestinian and Arab Occupied Territories Sector Saeed Abu Al considered the Israeli move as an "unprecedented aggression" on Jerusalem's churches and an escalation against the holy city and its residents.
The Israeli authorities, through this decision, seek to cancel the conventions signed with Vatican decades ago and to change deliberately and systematically the legal and historic status of the city, he said.
This "dangerous unprecedented move" deprives Jerusalem's churches from carrying out their duties, he noted.
He urged the international community to assume its responsibilities and press Israel to stop its illegal actions against both Christians and Muslims in the holy city and to rescind the taxes decision.

The Arab League statement also included this: "These steps clearly aim at the historic Christian presence in the city of Jerusalem, which is an essential part of the history of the Holy City and its historical, human, religious and civilizational heritage, which reflects the values of interfaith coexistence in its fullest form."

Yes, Arab nations, virtually all of which say that Islam is their official religion, are complaining about a lack of coexistence in Israel.

There is not a single church in Saudi Arabia. The percentage of Christians in the Middle East has plummeted from 20% to 5% over the past century. Christians are routinely persecuted in Egypt, the Palestinian territories, Iraq and elsewhere, and they are fleeing from virtually every Arab country including Lebanon.

The Arab League preaching to Israel on coexistence is pretty bizarre.

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EU High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini released a joint press statement with Ayman Al Safadi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Jordan.

Some of her statements are problematic, to say the least.

Today we will focus on how to bring the Middle East Peace Process forward. We will have the opportunity to listen to your views that coincides largely with our views. The European Union has been very clear in its position and very much united.

It sounds like she is saying that the EU and Arabs all largely agree on what is needed for peace. It is only those pesky Israelis who are against peace.

Let me say, today in particular, one word on the closure yesterday of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in protest to certain Israeli steps planned or announced. We hope that a solution can be found quickly. Jerusalem is a holy city to the three monotheistic religions. This special status and character of the city must be preserved and respected by all. And I am saying this, in particular, standing next to you, as His Majesty [Abdullah II] King of Jordan has a very special role - a very appreciated role - when it comes to the Holy Places in Jerusalem. He knows that he can always count on our full support. And I think that the developments yesterday showed that there is a special attention we need to pay to this aspect.

This is truly outrageous.

Remind me again of what Jordan's history with preserving access to the holy places in Jerusalem is? Oh, yeah - Jordan didn't allow any Jews - not Israelis, but Jews - to visit the Jewish holy places in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron and elsewhere for 19 years. Jordan destroyed 50 synagogues. Jordan desecrated the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the world.

Even today, Jordan denies all Jewish rights in Jerusalem.

Jordan's record in Jerusalem and the West Bank in preserving religious rights is not just flawed, but abysmal. Yet Mogherini is praising Jordan's monarch for - what, exactly? Denying that Jews have any rights to the Old City of Jerusalem?

And under Israeli rule, there are more Muslims living in Jerusalem than ever before. There are far more Muslims visiting the Al Aqsa Mosque than ever visited under Jordanian or Ottoman rule.There are far more Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem than ever before. Israel has uncovered and preserved Muslim archaeological treasures while the Jordanian Waqf has continuously destroyed priceless Jewish artifacts.

It is beyond disgusting that an EU official implies that Jordan would be better at preserving Jerusalem's religious heritage than Israel is, against all facts, history and logic.

The words might have been couched diplomatically, but there is a sickening rot not far under the surface of Federica Mogherini and the EU.

(h/t Irene)

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Iran today announced the Israel Hourglass Festival, a planned annual gathering and contest to countdown to Israel's destruction within 25 years, as Ayatollah Khamenei has predicted.

The festival’s press conference was held on Tuesday in Tehran, during which the main agenda and objectives of the festival were explained by the organizers.

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the Secretary-General of the International Conference on Supporting Palestinian Intifada and an international advisor to Iran’s Parliament Speaker, told the press conference that the “Hourglass Festival” is a symbol of the imminent collapse of the Zionist regime of Israel, as predicted by the Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

He emphasized that fighting Israel is part of Iran’s national security because if the country fails to overcome the Zionists near their borders, it will have to fight against them in Tehran where they are assassination Iranian scientists and citizens.

Asked about the Islamic Republic’s plan to realize the victory of Palestinians over the Israeli regime, he said Iran is not the only one responsible for supporting the Palestinian cause, and all Muslim states must play their role in this regard.

He said he cannot publicize the Islamic Republic’s plan to realize the Leader’s prediction that the Israeli regime will collapse within 25 years, but it will definitely happen.

It is essentially a contest for people to submit anti-Israel videos, posters, cartoons, mobile apps, mobile and web-based games, social media and websites, where they will be publicly displayed in Tehran in April.

The subjects of the submissions to the festival are:

Why down with Israel?
The Quds-occupier regime (Israel) and human rights;
The Quds-occupier regime (Israel) and oppression;
How did the Quds-occupier regime (Israel) form?
The Quds-occupier regime (Israel) and Islamophobia;
The Quds-occupier regime (Israel) and terrorism promotion;
Zionist child- killing regime;
The Quds-occupier regime (Israel) would not survive the next 25 years;
Israel, a cancerous tumor;
Israel, a fake, racist and colonialist regime

Note that Hossein Amir-Abdollahian says that Israel's destruction is not merely a prediction but an active plan by Iran.

There is a large countdown clock in Tehran showing the supposed number of days Israel has left before it is destroyed in 2040, since Khamenei made his prediction in 2015.

It is unclear why the festival shows 25 years instead of 22 years to adjust for the original timeframe. Maybe it isn't as catchy, and this festival is all about creating memes.

One other part about the announcement that is interesting

The organizers will work with 2,400 anti-Israel NGOs in Europe, North America, Latin America, and Eastern Asia to promote the festival across the world, Qomi said.

2400 anti-Israel NGOs? That's more than one NGO for every 3000 Israeli Jews.

I'm curious if Iran is counting Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem and Oxfam in their count of anti-Israel NGOs.

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02/26 Links Pt2: Israel is the Ultimate Anti-Imperialist State; It’s not easy to be a South African Jew

From Ian:

Israel is the Ultimate Anti-Imperialist State

In his recent anti-Semitic rant, PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas repeated the lie that Israel is a “colonial project”. This is part and parcel of a long Muslim Arab tradition to wipe out the Middle East’s indigenous pre-Islamic civilizations.

Imagine if mainstream voices in the 21st century demanded that all non-German Europeans ”integrate into proper Europe” by embracing German culture, language, identity and the Lutheran religion. In a post-Second World War Europe, it would be rightly considered unacceptable supremacist racism. By contrast, many “liberal” Jew-haters demand that Israel “integrates into the proper Middle East” in the name of “peace” by letting itself be swallowed up by the surrounding Muslim Arab world.

In an era of Western post-colonial guilt, the Middle East is often presented as a hapless victim of former European imperialism. This myth was successfully promoted by the late Arabist Edward Said and his influential propaganda book “Orientalism”, which was enthusiastically embraced by numerous Middle East departments at Western university campuses.

It is a frequently ignored fact that former European imperialism in the Middle East was preceded by Islamist imperialism. In his book Islamic Imperialism: A history, professor Efraim Karsh, documents the long and violent history of Islamic imperialism. At its height, Islamist imperialism carved out a giant Muslim empire stretching from Spain in the West to India in the East. This once mighty empire eventually fragmented and the last Muslim empire collapsed with the end of Ottoman rule in 1917.

However, Islamist imperialism largely succeeded in wiping out pre-Islamic indigenous civilizations by imposing Islam and Arabic as the new norm across the Middle East and North Africa. The Jews were one of the few indigenous nations that managed to survive Islamic imperialism and maintain a separate identity and culture.

For centuries, Jews were the ultimate “other” in a predominantly Christian Europe. Today, the reborn Jewish state is the ultimate “other” in a predominantly Muslim Arab Middle East. Persians, Turks, Kurds and Berbers have largely embraced Islam but maintain separate cultural and linguistic identities from the surrounding Arab majority.

Ancient Christian and Zoroastrian communities are oppressed and threatened under Islamic rule. Israel stands out as the only remaining independent non-Arab and non-Muslim state in the wider Middle East region.

Anti-Jewish history revisionists often claim that Israel is a “foreign body” in a “Muslim Arab” region. In reality, the reborn Jewish state is the only remaining viable and indigenous fragment that survived the onslaught of Islamic imperialism.

The New Israel Fund Harms Israel, Yet Still Gets Support

A fundamental component of all strands of Judaism is supporting Israel as the Jewish state. Whether one believes in Orthodox or Reform Judaism, follows Shabbat, etc., believing that Israel should be the Jewish homeland is something that all Jews must believe in.

That’s why I don’t understand how American Jews can support the New Israel Fund (NIF) — an organization that harms Israel on many fronts. The latest development is a joint press release from Adalah (which received more than $2 million from the NIF from 2008-2016) and Hamoked (which received more than $700K during the same period). The press release claimed that, “it is illegal upon international law to impose upon East Jerusalem residents an obligation of loyalty to the occupying power.”

As the press release notes, these organizations sent a comprehensive letter to the Interior Ministry “detailing their grave concerns regarding a newly-proposed bill to amend the Entry into Israel Law. This new bill will allow the revocation of residency status of East Jerusalem Palestinians on three possible grounds: for ‘breach of loyalty’; in cases where the status was granted on the basis of false information; and in cases where ‘an individual committed a criminal act’ in the view of the Interior Ministry.”

The new bill was drafted following the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision in September 2017 denying the revocation of permanent residency of four Palestinian parliamentarians from East Jerusalem — on the grounds of “breach of loyalty.”

These organizations argued that East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory under international humanitarian law (IHL), and that its Palestinian residents are a protected civilian population. The groups claim, therefore, that it is illegal under IHL to impose upon them an obligation of loyalty to the “occupying” power — let alone to deny them permanent residency status on this basis.

The lowdown on Israel’s foes

HOLDING aloft Alex Ryvchin’s new book, The Anti-Israel Agenda: Inside the Political War on the Jewish State, Colonel Richard Kemp, one of its contributors, referenced Benjamin Netanyahu’s Munich speech in commending the collected essays to attendees at its Victorian launch.

Kemp described Netanyahu’s February 18 appearance at the Munich Security Conference, where the Israeli PM held up a piece of an Iranian drone fired on Israel from Syria, warning the Jewish State’s enemies not to “test Israel’s resolve”.

Waving the book, the visiting Briton exclaimed, “That is also a weapon — that is a weapon you need to arm yourself in your fight to defend the State of Israel.”

The former chief of command for British forces in Afghanistan, whose testimony before the UN Human Rights Council probing the 2014 Israel-Gaza war is detailed in Ryvchin’s new work, paid tribute to the Ukrainian-born Australian writer and lawyer, who is the public affairs director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ).

Liberal and Labor MPs, including Michael Sukkar (Deakin), Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports), Tim Wilson (Goldstein), and Victorian senators Kimberley Kitching and James Patterson, were on hand for the launch, co-hosted by ECAJ, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, the Zionist Federation of Australia and Zionism Victoria.

Sukkar described Israel as “the frontline of freedom in the world … yet there’s no nation probably on the earth that’s under a greater existential threat … works such as what we’re launching tonight … are so important in pointing that out”.

The 16-day old strike by hospital janitorial staff that has closed at least one hospital in Gaza has been suspended as the workers are negotiating with the Palestinian Authority to pay them. But if the negotiations don't work out over the next two weeks, they will strike again.

Meanwhile, all government employees, including at schools, went on strike today to protest their own non-payment of salaries and benefits. All government institutions in Gaza are shut down today.

And so are public schools.

The protesters are noting that it has been months since the supposed reconciliation agreement between Hamas and the PA, where Mahmoud Abbas' government promised to take over the Hamas-run institutions, but things are worse now than they were before.

Also, UNRWA contract workers. mostly engineers, are protesting a decision not to renew their contracts. So they are shutting down UNRWA facilities in Gaza as well.

But the only Gaza news that wire services will report is the news that includes the word "Israel."

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As the world looks on in horror at the Syrian regime's merciless attacks on people in eastern Ghouta, which has claimed the lives of hundreds and accusations of Syrian use of poison gas, the regime is claiming that they are simply attacking bloodthirsty Zionist terrorists.

A Syrian apologist named Afraa Dagher wrote in conspiracy site Global Research last week:

Over 30,000 terrorists are located in this area which is one of the most dangerous terrorist strongholds in Syria, along with Idlib. Eastern Ghouta’s terrorist enclave presents an even graver danger than those in Idlib due to its proximity to the capital. This has been made all the more worrying as Damascus has always been the penultimate target of the original enemies of Syria, the western alliance and Israel.

Al-Ghouta is now home to factions of radical Islamists whose slogan is: ‘we are coming to slaughter you’. ...

The pain theses terrorists cause to our people everyday, could simply not be the product of a Syrian mind, it could only be a Zionist mind that could conceive of such a systematic plot to kill Syrians and destroy their lives. Syrians realise that a covert “Israeli” hand is behind the attacks on Damascus, a city that is not only Syria’s capital, but whose location is perilously close to the border of the occupier entity. Indeed, some of “Israel’s” covert actions are unmasked as blatant when Israeli missiles are fired at Damascus in tandem with Islamist missiles from al-Ghoutha.

Finally our Syrian Arab Army has to stop these terrorists – these armed terrorists who have every kind of advanced weapon, medicines and equipment that most regular Syrians no longer have. Sometimes these weapons were smuggled to them via the soft Turkish border and at other times via “Israel”.

All the while, the Godfather of the terrorists, Israel has used its media machine to defend the terrorists saying President Assad decided to end the “rebellion” in al-Ghouta. Israeli media has claimed that these terrorists are “rebels” who are ‘innocently’ bombing our children because those children are in so-called “pro-regime” schools. It’s no wonder, as “Israel” continues to pursue its age old dream of creating a buffer zone in southern Syria controlled by the al-Nusra front terrorist group.

At the same time, western mainstream media rely on the White Helmets, a group aligned with the al-Nusra jihadists of al-Ghoutha telling lies that it is their hospitals which are flowing with blood. These are the same people who staged and propagated the discredited “chemical attack” in al-Ghouta in 2013. Indeed, Israeli media always simultaneously publishes the same fake stories coming from the pro-jihad White Helmets.

As a Syrian, we in Syria recognize that every missile against our children, every attack against our homeland is an “Israeli one”, whether by “Israeli” planes and missiles or by terrorist groups covertly working with “Israel” in order to pursue “Israel’s” longtime goal of destroying Syria, irrespective of whether such groups call themselves al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, ISIS etc – all the while US coalition airstrikes kill our soldiers and civilians in Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa just as they killed Iraqis in Mosul. This is the reality for a people besieged on all sides.

Syria still thinks that blaming Israel is the way to unify Arabs against their enemies. (Iran still clings to that idea as well.)

But more and more Arabs are publicly acknowledging that this thinking has only contributed to their own problems. Jordan Times has an op-ed that says:

Today, extremists in the Middle East put on explosive vests and blow themselves up in houses of worship of other sects. To end this tragedy, perhaps we should start thinking of our conflicts not as a scourge inflicted upon us by the omnipotent Imperialist-Zionist conspiracies, but as problems of our making, which should be solved through reason.

The author is Western-educated, of course. This kind of actual thinking needs to be put into Arab schools and universities if any real progress is to be made in the Middle East.

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