Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 01, 2018

06/01 Links Pt2: BDS Group Linked to Palestinian Terrorist Orgs; Joy Reid endorsed Ahmadinejad's plan to forcibly relocate all Jews from Israel to Europe; The European media's Palestinian propaganda

From Ian:

BDS Umbrella Group Linked to Palestinian Terrorist Organizations

Over the past decade, as the prospects of peace between Israelis and Palestinians became ever slimmer, there has been a growing attention to—and, in some quarters, acceptance of—the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement targeting Israel, or BDS. Those drawn to the cause have likely come across the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a Virginia-based non-profit organization that serves as the American umbrella group of the BDS movement and is arguably the most prominent promoter of BDS in the United States. The US Campaign, which is officially called Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, coordinates the efforts of 329 different pro-BDS organizations “working to advocate for Palestinian rights and a shift in US policy… bound by commonly shared principles on Palestine solidarity as well as our anti-racism principles,” according to the group’s website.

But as Tablet confirmed , the group also helps facilitate tax-exempt donations to a Palestinian coalition that includes Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other groups the US State Department designates as terror organizations.

The US Campaign, Tablet has learned, is the fiscal sponsor of a group called the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the main West Bank and Gaza-based cohort advocating for sanctions against Israel. The BNC was created in 2007 in Ramallah with the intention of serving as the Palestinian arm of the international BDS campaign. According to the BNC’s website, one of the group’s members is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, commonly known as PNIF. Among PNIF’s members are five different groups designated by the US as terrorist organizations, including Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front – General Command (PFLP-GC), the Palestine Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Since its founding, the BNC has frequently and openly collaborated with known leaders of these terror organizations: In 2015, for example, the BNC held a press conference to pressure the Palestinian government not to import gas from Israel, featuring a speech by Khalida Jarrar, then a member of the Palestinian parliament for the PFLP and still an active official in the terror group. A video of the BNC-hosted press conference features Jarrar seated alongside BNC secretariat member Omar Barghouti.

Michael Chabon delivers jihad speech for Hebrew Union College

He is no casual hater of Israel, this Chabon. For him it’s a full-time business. He invites other writers to join him, and his wife, Ayelet Waldman, in demonizing the Jewish State.

What did his mother ever do to him, and what did they see in him, those who run the university, that made him so emblematic for the Reform Movement?

Perhaps they heard that he is best friends with “Breaking the Silence” contrarians, or maybe they read him in The Forward, where he said about the Jewish State –

“It is the most grievous injustice I’ve seen in my life.”

That was the theme of his commencement address.

For one graduate, Morin Zaray, it was a rant too much. In a blog titled, “How My Graduation Was Ambushed,” she writes –

“As I heard Chabon’s simplified takedown of my country [Israel], the room began to spin…I felt ashamed for being part of this gathering, ashamed that many in the audience were just nodding at this reductionist view of a multilayered and complicated country…I was nearly brought to tears as I heard the crowd of Jews give Chabon a thunderous applause.”

Coming to a Temple near you.

David Collier: Beyond the great divide, a trip inside the Palestinian areas

It was a long time coming, but during the recent trip to Israel I went back to areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. A decade ago, this type of visit would not have happened given the upsurge in violence in Gaza. Violence in one area, raised tensions in another. Since the Gaza withdrawal and the rise of Hamas, this is progressively proving to no longer be the case. Why? Recent history isn’t the only reason.
Palestine as colonial construct

In 1919, as the British prepared plans for their temporary control of areas in the Middle East, they considered the southern regions of what is now Israel as ‘Egyptian’ because of the tribal affiliation of those living there. Take this extract from a memorandum on British understandings during the early days of the 1919 Peace Conference (Versailles):
‘As to the southern boundary, there are a number of different considerations. On the one hand it is contended that the cultivable areas south of Gaza ought to be part of Palestine, because they are necessary to the subsistence of the people. On the other hand this area is inhabited by Bedouins of the desert, who look really towards Sinai, and ought not to be associated with Palestine at all. It is suggested by the Foreign Office it would be a sound principle to include in Palestine all the southern country capable of cultivation, e.g. in the direction of Rafa and Beersheba; and that the remaining area south of Gaza and to the Dead Sea, should be reserved to the Bedouins and attached to Egypt since the tribes are identical with those in the Sinai Peninsula and the pre-war frontier is quite arbitrary from the tribal point of view’.

Decolonising Palestinian identity
The British cut the cloth for the mandate that was then given a name, ‘Palestine’. As a national identity, Palestine was a colonial construct whose borders were first defined in European cities less than a hundred years ago. Had the British not interfered, Palestinians would not exist as *a nation of people* today. If the British cut the cloth differently, then many of those in Gaza would wave an Egyptian flag. Had the British designed the Northern border differently, then some of today’s Palestinians would be proud Lebanese citizens. This is historical game-play that ardent anti-Israel activists should consider. ‘Decolonising Palestine’ doesn’t touch the Jews, nor the Jewish homeland, it only deconstructs the colonial identity the British created within the borders that they called ‘Palestine’.

From AP on Twitter:

#OTD In 1933, Nazi Germany staged a daylong national boycott of Jewish-owned businesses https://t.co/komPP3eJwk pic.twitter.com/8xPxMYqXSC
— AP Archive (@AP_Archive) June 1, 2018

In the video they link to, the Nazis really do look like the BDSers who boycott Jewish Israeli owned businesses today. Chants in unison, signs, inability to actually think coherent thoughts.

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06/01 Links Pt1: It's not the 'occupation,' it's the Jews; Australia Demands Palestinians Reveal if Aid Money Funds Terrorist ‘Martyrs; Report: Kremlin greenlights Israeli strikes in Syria

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Who leads Israel?

Israel has a problem with its security brass. And this week we received several reminders that the situation needs to be dealt with.
Since the Hamas regime in Gaza announced in March that it was planning to have civilians swarm the border with Israel, through this week’s Hamas-Islamic Jihad mortar and rocket assault on southern Israel, the IDF General Staff has been insisting there is only one thing Israel can do about Gaza.

According to our generals, Israel needs to shower Hamas with stuff. Food, medicine, water, electricity, medical supplies, concrete, cold hard cash, whatever Hamas needs, Israel should just hand it over in the name of humanitarian assistance.

Every single time reporters ask the generals what Israel can do to end Hamas’s jihadist campaign, they give the same answer. Let’s shower them with stuff.

The fact that the Palestinian Authority is blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza makes no impression on the generals. For months now, PA chief Mahmoud Abbas has refused to pay salaries to Hamas regime employees or pay for Gaza’s electricity and fuel. Hamas, for its part, destroyed the Kerem Shalom cargo terminal two weeks ago, blocking all transfer of gas and food to Gaza. And this week it blew up its electricity lines with a misfired mortar aimed at Israel.

Hamas’s determination to use civilians as human shields for its terrorists is a pretty clear message that it does not care about the people it controls. But for whatever reason, it didn’t register with the General Staff. As residents of the South were rushing to bomb shelters every 10 minutes or so on Tuesday, generals were briefing reporters that Israel must give them medicine.

It's not the 'occupation,' it's the Jews

Look at any news site in the world, and in almost all of them, you'll find the Gaza Strip reported as a territory "occupied" by Israel.

Here's the reality: Israel withdrew from Gaza in the summer of 2005, under the misguided assumption that the Palestinian Authority would have jurisdiction there.

But that was not to be the case. Six months after Israel's withdrawal, Hamas won the Palestinian election and the following summer staged a violent coup. The fact that Hamas was preparing for war prompted Israel to monitor the border crossings between Israel and Gaza, knowing very well that Hamas was less interested in the welfare of the residents of Gaza than in obtaining weapons and building defenses.

The facts are readily available to anyone who looks, but that never seems to matter. We are consistently described as occupiers. Incidentally, the Egyptians also monitor their border crossings with Gaza, but no one ever pulls the "occupier" label on them. That's reserved only for the Jews.

Let's reiterate: The "occupation" is not a claim, it is a perception, and it is founded on the notion that Jewish sovereignty over any part of the Land of Israel is abhorrent. In the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, Israel relinquished control over the vast majority of the Arab population in Judea and Samaria. They have a Palestinian government with a Palestinian flag and a Palestinian national anthem and Palestinian budgets. They are supposed to vote in Palestinian parliamentary elections. Most of the territory isn't populated, and Israel has a historical right to it as a nation.

MEMRI: Saudi Writer: The Arab League Summits Are Completely Pointless; Palestinian Leaders – First And Foremost Jerusalem Mufti Al-Husseini And PLO Leader Arafat – Damaged The Palestinian Cause The Most

In an article in the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that was published two days after the Arab League summit in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, Saudi writer Mash'al Al-Sudairi argued that these conferences are pointless because over the years they have produced almost nothing. While the Palestinian issue topped the agenda at all of them, he said, "all of them have concluded with nothing... [because] the Arabs are incapable of fighting and incapable of making peace." He accused Palestinian leaders, first and foremost Jerusalem grand mufti Hajj Amin Al-Husseini and PLO leader Yasser Arafat, of damaging the just Palestinian cause, criticized the boastful anti-Israel slogans used by the Arabs at these summits, and praised the two Saudi peace initiatives – Crown Prince Fahd's, in 1981, and King Abdallah's, in 2002, for breaking through the "all or nothing" approach.

The following are translated excerpts from Al-Sudairi's article:
"In advance of [every] Arab League summit, I break out in hives writing on any political issue – particularly on the Palestinian issue, an extremely just issue that is handled in the worst possible way. To date, there have been 41 [Arab League] summits, from the 1946 Inshas summit in Egypt to the most recent Al-Quds Summit [in April 2018, in Saudi Arabia].[2] Heading the list [of subjects] at [all] these summits has of course been the Palestinian issue; all of them have concluded with nothing. Unfortunately, the Arabs are incapable of fighting and incapable of making peace, and this is their complex tragedy.

"We must admit frankly that the ones who damaged the [Palestinian] cause more than anyone else were some Palestinian leaders and some Arab leaders. Enumerating them one by one, [Jerusalem grand mufti] Amin Al-Husseini, during World War II, naively gambled on Hitler with the entire weight of the Palestinian issue. He said in a speech: 'The Arabs are the natural friends of Germany because they have common enemies – the British, the Jews, and the Communists – and they [the Arabs] are willing to participate in the war.' But Hitler had no position on these statements. Al-Husseini remained in Germany, receiving a monthly salary of 150,000 marks, but the moment Germany's defeat became clear, he fled to Cairo; he was the one who tried to combine the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazi ideology. This position of Al-Husseini brought the rage of Britain, Russia, and the U.S. down upon him, and he added fuel to the fire by opposing the [1947 U.N.] partition resolution giving the Palestinians 49% of the territory – such that as soon as the State of Israel was declared, Russia and the U.S. were the first to recognize it.

Report: PA threatens Israel if Israel helps Gazans!

This story from Middle East Monitor is not too unbelievable....but still, it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has threatened to severe security cooperation with Israel if the blockade on the Gaza Strip is lifted, according to the Palestine Information Centre.

Quoting Hebrew media sources, the news site reported that the PA intelligence chief Majed Faraj sent a letter to his Israeli counterpart Nadav Argaman warning him against any action that would help alleviate the suffering of the population in Gaza.

The warning allegedly came after reports surfaced that Egypt and Qatar would help mediate a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas that would relax the blockade, now in its eleventh year.

Such a plan is thought to be detrimental to the interests of the PA, which seeks to pressure Hamas into handing over control of the Strip, following failed reconciliation talks at the end of last year.

A possible deal, according to Israeli media, would see Tel Aviv demand a complete cessation of rocket fire and tunnel building, in addition to respecting the security perimeter at the Gaza border and a solution regarding the Israeli prisoners of war held in Gaza.

In return, Israel will substantially reduce restrictions at Gaza’s border crossings, including permitting the entry of goods and services to the impoverished enclave, on the condition that they will not be used to boost Hamas’ armed wing. Egypt will also lessen restrictions at its Rafah crossing with Gaza and open the border more frequently.

PIC is a Hamas-linked propaganda site, so they have reason to make things up. They don't say what Hebrew sources they used so it could be some Hebrew-language conspiracy site for all we know.

But it is interesting that Hamas want to publish this.

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Human Rights Watch official @sarahleah1 retweets discredited "Map that Lies"

Sarah Leah Whitson, the Executive Director, Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, yesterday retweeted a 2015 tweet from the BDS-supporting Jewish Voice for Peace.

Her retweet proves beyond any doubt that HRW is not only anti-Israel but has complete disregard for facts and fairness.

The graphic is a bunch of lies, as we've proven many times before.

Even worse, MSNBC apologized at the time of the incident and stated that the maps were "completely wrong."

Yet Sarah Leah Whitson is pretending that the apology never happened.

Similarly, McGraw Hill once went through significant expense to withdraw and destroy a textbook that included The Map That Lies and apologized for publishing the lies that are on this graphic.

Years later, the person at HRW who is most responsible for knowing the truth retweets an outdated post by an anti-Israel group that pushes a series of lies.

If MSNBC and McGraw Hill apologized for publishing this, then HRW is obligated to do no less. But we know they won't, because in the areas under the responsibility of Sarah Leah Whitson, bashing Israel is more important than the truth. It has always been that way and this incident shows that HRW will never change until Ken Roth, Sarah Leah Whitson and all the other Israel haters are fired and replaced with people who actually give a damn about the truth.

(h/t Petra)

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The Arab world is very upset over the injury of star soccer player Mohamed Salah, who was tackled by Read Madrid superstar Sergio Ramos last weekend in Kiev.

A petition demanding that Ramos be punished for the hit has reached over half a million signatures.

An Egyptian lawyer has filed a €1 billion lawsuit against Ramos for causing the injury.

"I'll ask for compensation, which could exceed €1 billion (£873 million), for the physical and psychological harm that Ramos gave Salah and the Egyptian people," the Egyptian lawyer said.

But most bizarre was the part that was most obvious: Arabs are accusing Ramos of being secretly Jewish in order to explain Ramos' action.

Egyptian newspaper El Fagr starts off its article making this accusation this way:

It is not a conspiracy theory, which the Jews always accuse us of adopting, when we create positions that sound far from reason and logic to prove our position, even though we prove every time that we are right. Every hatred against us has its roots and origins. Those who support them stand behind them with all their might.

In the beginning, we must mention a clear fact that Jews never leave their vengeance no matter how long it has been. Examples include the assassination of Dr. Ashraf Marwan in London in 2007 after he killed 2,500 Israelis in the 1973 war because of his misleading information about the date of the real war, And before him liquidation of the leaders of the resistance in the Arab world which caused the deaths of Israelis, notably Yahya Ayyash, Imad Mughniyeh, Mahmoud Mabhouh and others.

There are those who wonder what all this has to do with sport, and the injury by Real Madrid player Sergio Ramos to our international star Mohamed Salah. Yes, there is a strong relationship that confirms the claim that Israel has never renounced its revenge.

Why did Jews want to exact revenge on Salah? Well, five years ago Salah - forced by his team to travel to Israel for a friendly match - refused to shake hands with the Israelis.

The Jews, according to this article, never forgot this awful snub. And Sergio Ramos has a Star of David tattooed on his arm - which means he is Jewish, and probably a Marrano or an otherwise secret Jew since his family is publicly Catholic.

The article says that the Jews, who never forget a slight to their honor, waited for just the right time to injure Salah a couple of weeks ahead of the World Cup where he was to lead the Egyptian team.

There you have it. The Jews enlisted a Real Madrid superstar to hurt the Arab because he refused to shake hands with Israelis.

I have yet to see any ridicule over this theory in Egyptian media.

(Ramos had tattooed the Star of David in memory of a Jewish teammate of his who died suddenly.)

There is one other theory floating around to explain Salah's injury, though. A Kuwaiti preacher says Allah willed it it is because he ate on Ramadan.

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05/31 Links Pt2: A Radical Romance with the Palestinians; The Dark Side of Roger Waters: A Review of Wish You Weren’t Here; French-Muslim website tweets ‘hit list’ featuring famous Jews

From Ian:

A Radical Romance with the Palestinians

A Shadow over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America. By Keith P. Feldman. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. 312 pp. $24.95, paper.

In August 2014, protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, after police killed Michael Brown, Jr., an African American teenager who had stolen some cigars. Meanwhile in Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas following Operation Protective Edge, attending the abduction and murder of three Israeli teenagers. But the slogan at Black Lives Matter protests in Missouri read “Ferguson is Palestine.”

Feldman’s A Shadow over Palestine is a detailed but deeply flawed account of the origins of the radical romance between American Black nationalists and Palestinian rejectionists in Gaza, Beirut, and the faculty lounges of Columbia University. The current cant of “intersectionality” and “resistance” revives the post-1967 alliance between Black nationalists and the New Left in the United States and among anti-liberal nationalist and Islamist movements in Arab societies.

The outcome of the 1967 Six-Day War deepened the Kennedy-era U.S. support for Israel into a Cold War alliance but also coincided with dramatic shifts in American political life. The legislative victories of the civil rights movement tipped American politics towards a Tocquevillian “revolution of rising expectations” and a radicalization that would break the Black-Jewish coalition of the early 1960s. The New Left, its expectations of working-class revolution thwarted by prosperity, found new allies in Frantz Fanon’s “wretched of the earth,” the peoples of the postcolonial Third World.

In his first chapter, Feldman of the University of California, Berkeley, traces how the definition of Zionism as “a new offshoot of European Imperialism and a new variety of racist Colonialism” made its way from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Palestine Research Center (PRC) in Beirut to the 1975 United Nations General Assembly resolution identifying Zionism with racism. Significantly, Feldman does not mention that Faeyez Sayegh and other theorists at the PRC were merely regurgitating Soviet propaganda from the 1950s. He does, however, characterize diplomat Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s campaign against the resolution as an attempt “to delink racism from history” and to export “racial liberalism” as the imperial face of neoconservatism.

Next, Feldman describes how the Black Panther Party and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) disseminated propaganda for the “colonial analogy” linking race revolution in America with the Palestinian cause. SNCC’s 1967 position paper on Zionism, “Third World Round-Up,” was “purportedly drafted within the organization.” In fact, it reproduced “almost verbatim” the PRC’s 1966 pamphlet “Do You Know?: Twenty Basic Facts about the Palestine Problem.”

‘Non-Violent’ Palestinian Rock-Throwers Murder Another Israeli

Another Israeli has been murdered, after having been struck in the head by what Haaretz described as a “heavy brick.”

For years, major American news media outlets have portrayed Palestinian rock-throwers as “peaceful” protesters, even when they throw rocks and bricks.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman infamously once included rock-throwing in his list of types of “non-violent resistance” that he hoped Palestinians would carry out. Well, I guess Friedman got his wish.

On May 24, an Israeli counter-terror unit entered the al-Amari refugee camp near Ramallah in pursuit of fugitive terrorists. Apparently, the absurdly large Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces, which are headquartered in Ramallah, had no interest in arresting the terrorists, so the Israelis had to enter PA-occupied territory to do the job that the PA promised to do in the Oslo Accords.

For years, groups like J Street and Peace Now have been telling us that ordinary Palestinian Arabs are just like ordinary Americans — they’re moderate, peace-seeking, opponents of terrorism.

Major French-Muslim website tweets ‘hit list’ featuring famous Jews

A French Muslim anti-colonialism activist on Thursday denied posting a “hit list” of Jewish groups and individuals while referncing a popular TV character.

Sihame Assbague last week posted a list of names of individuals and groups, accompanied by a GIF of a character from the series “Game of Thrones,” from a scene in which she lists the people she intends to kill.

It included the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities; the Socialist Jewish politician Julien Dray; former prime minister Manuel Valls — a supporter of Israel, whose ex-wife and children are Jews; and the radical left-wing politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is not Jewish.

But Assbague told the Times of Israel on Thursday that her post “was absolutely not a ‘hit list,'” and was a joking reference to a meme used by many online to denote “people or things that have upset them.” She said the names on her list were those of people or bodies who “distinguished themselves by their Islamophobia.”

The tweet by Assbague — whom the LICRA civil rights watchdog has accused frequently of spreading racist views on Jews – prompted a reply from the official Twitter account of Al Kanz, which is one of France’s best-read Muslim news websites.

Egypt is in no hurry to repair its electric lines to Gaza

Palestine Today reports about how electricity from Israel is no longer being set to Gaza (without mentioning that it was Hamas and Islamic Jihad rocket fire that caused the lines to go down to begin with.)

The article also mentions that the "Egyptian lines are still idle."

It has been nearly a year Egypt sent electricity to Gaza. While their contribution was modest, right now it would have been very useful to have the extra 16 megawatts.

I'm not certain if Egypt's lines are off because of damage that no one is bothering to fix, or because no one is paying Egypt for the electricity. Either way, no one is pressuring Egypt to resume its supply of power.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Here it is Wednesday midday, and some 180 mortar shells and rockets have been fired at Israel from Gaza in the last 48 hours, including rockets that reached farther north than any since 2014. The IDF responded in the usual way, bombarding military targets in the Strip that Hamas and Islamic Jihad personnel had evacuated. At this moment, there seems to be an informal cease-fire in effect. It may or may not hold; we could be on the verge of yet another “grass-cutting” operation in Gaza, or the whole thing could just be a minor blip. Meanwhile, a lot of people who would rather have been somewhere else spent their mornings sitting in bomb shelters.

The usual suspects in the Western media are committing their usual crimes against the truth. Yesterday, NPR ran a story entitled “What Has The Unrest In Gaza Meant For Palestinians?” Really. I won’t bother to link to it, but I thought about writing a piece about what the unrest at Pearl Harbor meant for the Japanese.

The objective of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is to conquer the land now occupied by the Jews, preferably killing as many of them as possible. It is a religious imperative, an obligatory jihad, and so will not end until one or the other side overcomes its enemy. It’s been a long war, and our enemies have taken different political forms over the last 100 years; but the motive has always been the same. Some periods are more violent than others, but there has never been peace.

When the battle goes against our enemies, they offer a hudna modeled after Mohammed’s treaty of Hudaybiyyah with the Meccans, a temporary truce to give them chance to prepare for the next round. That is the closest they can get to a peace offer.

Our enemies aren’t stupid, and they understand the overriding importance of cognitive warfare for the physically weaker side in an asymmetric struggle. The recent attempt to invade Israel through the border fence with Gaza was, on its surface, a failure. They did not succeed to breach the fence in great numbers and “tear out the hearts” of Jews in nearby communities, as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar exhorted them to do. But in the cognitive war, it achieved more than one goal.

The main target is popular opinion, in the world and even in Israel. Liberal Western media like NPR are not exactly pro-Hamas. But they are anti-Israel. And Hamas orchestrated the “March of Return” to induce these media to cover the events in a way that portrayed Israel in the worst possible light. NPR jumped to attention and followed the script perfectly. They referred to the attempted invasion as a “protest,” claimed that “thousands” of people were wounded in their legs by Israeli snipers, and referred to this production as a “Palestinian cry for help,” as they “[try] to break out of an area that people inside often regard as an open-air prison.”

It also brought the Palestinian struggle and in particular the demand for a “right of return” to the forefront of international consciousness, at a time when other concerns had pushed it out of view. In recent years the idea that this issue is at the center of the problems of the Middle East had receded to some extent, replaced by the conflicts created by Iranian expansionist ambitions on the one hand, and Sunni extremism on the other. Hamas wants it center stage so that its allies in Europe will continue applying pressure to Israel and supporting the various NGOs and other groups gnawing away at her.

Finally, it gave them an opportunity to suffer what they can present as civilian casualties, so they can accuse Israel of war crimes, or even try to bring her to the International Criminal Court (for internal political reasons, Hamas admitted that most of the dead “protestors” were its military operatives, so this may not work as well this time).

Hamas, PIJ and the PLO understand the West quite well. They know that their propaganda will find fertile places to grow in Europe and even the US, where they have been preparing the ground for an abandonment of Israel for years. And they also know that the last thing that Israel wants is a ground war in Gaza, which will create even more opportunities for propaganda while our society is torn apart with grief for the young men and women who would be killed or injured, and which will end indecisively like all the others.

So we continue trying to tamp down escalation, while allowing the terrorist leaders of the Gaza Arabs the freedom to continue to plan new marches, launch rocket and mortar barrages, set our fields on fire, and who knows what else that grows out of their implacable hatred.

This is the status quo that is considered acceptable, or at least less unacceptable than the alternatives. But the status quo is not static. Hamas is now supported primarily by Iran, like PIJ and Hezbollah. Someday perhaps they will join in a coordinated attack with Hezbollah in the north. Perhaps at the same time there will be an American Administration with an outlook more like that of the Europeans, and which – like the Obama Administration – will act to restrain us from defending ourselves. And thanks to the cognitive warfare that our enemies have been successfully waging, we won’t find support among the American people or their Congress. At that point, the status quo won’t look so good, but there will be little that we can do about it.

Right now, this moment, is one of the most dangerous times in recent history, at least for folks that live in the Middle East. Nevertheless there are positive factors. The final days of ISIS seem to be at hand, and maybe the map of post-war Syria will shortly take shape. Iran is being pushed back in Syria and losing influence in Iraq. The economic bonanza of the nuclear deal is coming to an end for Iran. Russia seems to be uncomfortable with an Iranian Shiite crescent in the region. And for the first time in many years, there is an American administration that seems fully supportive of Israel (but which also appears politically unstable).

It’s impossible to predict what will happen when there are so many players, each with their own interlocking interests and concerns, but there may be an opportunity for Israel here that will not reoccur in the near future. There are two ways to approach a chaotic situation: you can hunker down and try to keep from getting hurt, or you can try to exploit it and achieve objectives that are impossible in normal times.

I think we have grown too comfortable with what we allow to exist next door to us, in Gaza and also in Judea/Samaria. Would we be so comfortable if they wore Nazi uniforms? Probably not, but their ideology is no better; worse, perhaps, because of its religious underpinnings.

Now could be the moment to crush Hamas in Gaza for good.

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05/31 Links Pt1: Who’s really behind the latest attacks on Israel; Why the Palestinians Can’t Say ‘Yes’ to Trump; The Zarif Mask Falls

From Ian:

NY Post Editorial: Who’s really behind the latest attacks on Israel

Both Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad are inspired by and closely coordinate with Tehran. And the mullahs are looking for ways to recover their mojo after President Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal.

This month, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fired 32 rockets from Syria toward the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. This week, Islamic Jihad launched some 200 mortar shells at communities in southern Israel.

It was by far the largest attack from Gaza since the 2014 war. In retaliation, Israel bombed dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets, including a terrorist supply tunnel, drone facilities, weapons caches and a rocket-making plant.

And rightly so. As UN Ambassador Nikki Haley told the Security Council Wednesday: “Who among us would accept 70 rockets launched into your country? We all know the answer to that: No one would.”

Hamas’ decision to stop the attacks suggests it means to avoid another war, one that might well end its control of Gaza.

But Iran, an Israeli defense official said Wednesday, “doesn’t want stability.” No: It wants to send its own message to “deter people from putting more pressure on them.”

It isn’t working. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows that Israel will continue to pursue Iran and its terrorist proxies and make them “pay dearly.” Which is the most important message of all.

Sohrab Amari: The Zarif Mask Falls

Javad Zarif was recently caught on video chanting “Death to America!” and “Death to Britain!” and “Death to Israel!” at a rally in Tehran. That should come as no surprise to Americans who understand the nature of the Iranian regime, its history, and the anti-Western animus that pulsates at its heart. Yet numerous American political and media figures have spent years promoting Zarif as something other than what he is: a pure product of Khomeini’s hateful revolution.

Here’s the footage in question. Watch it—and re-watch it—as you join me on a guided tour of Zarif hagiography, courtesy of the American prestige press.
Death to America! Death to Britain! Death to Israel!

Fareed Zakaria, speaking at the Council of Foreign Relations, Sept. 23, 2016:
My guest needs no introduction. He has a favorability rating in Iran which has declined now to 75 percent. (Laughter.) I don’t think it’s quite that high in the United States. (Laughter.) But Mohammed Javad Zarif is the foreign minister of Iran. He was ambassador to the U.N. He’s a career diplomat. He is also an academic with a Ph.D. I think fair to say that he is the most distinguished diplomat Iran has had for many decades, and we have all seen him as he spearheaded Iran’s negotiations for the nuclear deal.
Death to America! Death to Britain! Death to Israel!

Robin Wright, writing in Time magazine, Oct. 28, 2016:
Zarif has . . . built a following in Washington. ‘He doesn’t play games,’ says Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chair Dianne Feinstein. . . . [H]e has also been lauded by the likes of Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Chuck Hagel when they were in the Senate. And he earned a University of Denver doctorate under the same professors who taught Condoleezza Rice.
Death to America! Death to Britain! Death to Israel!

I could go on and on. Will this latest footage finally shatter the liberal foreign-policy establishment’s illusion of Javad Zarif the moderate? Don’t count on it.

Algerian newspaper defends its antisemitic cartoons

The US State Department, in its annual human rights report, says in its section on Algeria:

In August the private newspaper, Echourouk El Youmi published a cartoon depicting a Jewish man with a Star of David on his sleeve clutching the surface of a globe, appearing to promote stereotypes of Jewish world domination. Also in August, Echourouk El Youmi published an article claiming that Jews had been plotting against Muslims for centuries, that Jews were responsible for most of the disasters that have befallen Muslims, and that Jews controlled the media, cinema, art, and fashion.

A columnist in that same newspaper is very upset at the allegations - and proves how antisemitic he is.

Rachid Ould Bouceifa writes about the Jews of Algeria as if they were never part of the country to begin with, and then complains that they took the side of the French. Proof of this is that after Algeria gained independence. most Jews emigrated to France. It couldn't have had anything to do with how they were treated, right?

He adds how some Jews blackmailed Arabs in Algeria.

And then he says that the cartoons are not antisemitic, ridiculing the idea that one cannot make fun of Jews in a symbolic way by means of caricature (I guess he means that everyone knows that Jews aren't literally holding the entire planet in their hands, duh.)

Bouceifa is also upset at the idea that antisemitism is even looked upon as a human rights issue. The very idea that someone would be concerned over it shows that Jews position themselves as being somehow superior to other humans.

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The Arab Organization of Human Rights issues what appear to be weekly press statements, usually condemning Israel for something or other.

This week was no different.

But buried within the items calling on the ICC to prosecute Israel and for the world to boycott Israel one sees this:

The International Legal and Communication Committee calls on the Palestinian President and the Government to immediately begin lifting the punitive and illegal measures imposed on the Gaza Strip and taking the necessary measures to support the steadfastness of the citizens and secure a decent life for them.

While this is mild language an purposefully vague as to exactly what Mahmoud Abbas is doing (limiting fuel, medicines, salaries, goods, paperwork for Gazans to travel to the West Bank) it is interesting to see that it calls his actions "illegal."

A tiny drop in the tsunami of hate.

As far as I can tell, the AOHR isn't concerned about any Arab human rights issues except in Palestinian areas.

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