Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, July 19, 2018

07/19 Links Pt2: PMW: Cheering Palestinians hang and burn effigy of Donald Trump; The AMIA Bombing: 24 Years Without Justice; Mossad thwarted Iranian plot to bomb opposition rally in France

From Ian:

PMW: Cheering Palestinians hang and burn effigy of Donald Trump

Palestinians from Abbas' Fatah party held an anti-America rally in Nablus, to express support for Mahmoud Abbas' rejection of the American peace proposal. The highlight of the rally was when a giant Donald Trump doll hanging from a noose was brought in front of the crowd, who cheered as Trump's effigy was then ignited and burned.

Mahmoud Al- Aloul, Abbas' deputy who is seen as Abbas' choice to succeed him as chairman of the PA, participated in the anti-US rally. Strikingly, in one of the pictures that the Fatah of Nablus posted on its Facebook, PMW has noted that Al-Aloul raised his hand in a "V" sign for "Victory" to Trump's burning effigy.

Official PA TV news also broadcast the burning of Trump's effigy stressing that this was to counter the US peace proposal:

Official PA TV newsreader: "In opposition to the attempts to eliminate the Palestinian cause and to [US President] Trump's deal, masses of our people in the Nablus district participated in the central rally that was organized by the Fatah Movement at Martyrs (Shahids) Square in the center of the city."

Official PA TV reporter: "The official and popular Palestinian protest is strengthening, opening the way for future activities, given the attempts to harm the symbols of the [Palestinian] cause and its red lines."

Fatah Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul was also interviewed by PA TV, and stressed the anti-American focus of the Fatah event:
"[The rally is being held] because the public understands the weight of the pressures to which [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership are being subjected by the US. It wants to execute its deal, which it called 'the deal of the century,' and which President Mahmoud Abbas is standing firm against and rejecting - he and the Palestinian leadership - most decisively."

Melanie Phillips: The hysteria over Helsinki and the real threat to the free world

Just as he did with Kim Jong-un, another formidably dangerous foe, he therefore flatters him in public as a kind of feint in order to cement what he’s doing behind the scenes in making him an offer he can’t refuse. It’s a negotiating strategy.

That also explains the difference between the way he approaches Putin or Kim Jong-un and the way he treats the EU, Angela Merkel and Theresa May. He holds the EU and Merkel in contempt as weak and relatively powerless; there’s little if anything he wants from the EU, except for them to pay more towards their own defence. He does, though, want a good deal with the UK; hence the way he tempered his criticism of Mrs May’s catastrophic Brexit negotiating strategy with more emollient language, in order to convey his message that he wanted to deal with an independent Britain and not with an EU proxy.

Trump’s personality flaws – his self-obsession, his lack of attention span, his thin skin against criticism, his inability to speak carefully and accurately – are plain for all to see. The crucial point, however, is not what Trump says, nor the content of his character, but what he does and what he achieves.

And here’s what Putin said that was potentially so significant. For his remarks suggested that he would support Trump’s attempts to defang both Iran and North Korea. If Trump turns out to have succeeded in detaching Russia from Iran over Syria and from China over North Korea, that would be a huge step towards defeating two of the most evil and dangerous regimes in the world.

Seen in this light, the reaction of the media and political class to the Helsinki press conference was not just hysterical and disproportionate and a display of near-pathological hatred towards Donald Trump, but a malevolent undermining of the most promising attempt for years to tackle some of the major threats to the peace and security of the world.

Melanie Phillips: Crazy world Brexit, Helsinki, Labour, Tommy Robinson

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired the mass hysteria breaking out all over the place: over Britain’s Brexit impasse, President Trump’s Helsinki press conference, Labour Party antisemitism and the jailing of Tommy Robinson.

Caroline Glick: Trump Was the Big Winner at Helsinki Summit

In their remarks, both Putin and Trump said that they are committed to Israel’s security. Putin said that he accepts Israel’s position that the 1974 disengagement of forces agreement between Israel and Syria must be implemented. The agreement bars Syrian military forces from deploying to the border with Israel and limits their deployment in the area adjacent to it. Trump stated outright that the U.S. supports Israel’s efforts to prevent Iran from entrenching its forces in Syria.

Both leaders also expressed their admiration and respect for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

These remarks were significant on two levels. First, they reduced the prospect of war by communicating key messages to Iran and Hezbollah.

Trump’s statement that,“the United States will not allow Iran to benefit from our successful campaign against ISIS” dovetailed a statement by National Security Advisor John Bolton ahead of the summit. Speaking Sunday with ABC News, Bolton said, “I think the president has made it clear that we are there [in Syria] until the ISIS territorial caliphate is removed and as long as the Iranian menace continues throughout the Middle East.”

Iran will understand the remarks of both men to mean that the U.S. will fight with Israel in any war with Iranian-controlled forces in Syria to ensure their withdrawal, just as they fought with their allies in Syria to defeat ISIS.

Then there is Putin. Putin’s statement of support for Israel’s security and peaceful relations between Syria and Israel also sent a signal to Iran. Whereas Putin has worked with Iran to enable Assad to survive and restore his control over territory previously controlled by rebel forces, Putin will not cooperate with Iran if it chooses to remain in Syria and face Israeli and perhaps U.S. forces in battle.

Putin may or may not help Israel in such a war. He may or may not work with the U.S. But he will not fight on Iran’s side.

While it is unlikely that these statements will suffice to convince Iran and Hezbollah to withdraw their forces from Syria, it is clear enough that the summit reduced the prospects of war in the immediate term.

And again, if that was the only thing accomplished at the summit, its importance would be incontestable.

Trump/Putin Summit. Trump is Right on Russia! And More

Legal expert testimony to Congress urging the US to recognize Israel's annexation of the Golan

This is from Professor Eugene Kontorovich's written testimony to a congressional committee on national security on July 17.

He first goes through the legal arguments that no international law is violated by Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights.

But then he digresses and discusses the issue of the "experts" that are against the US recognizing this annexation, and how very wrong these "experts" have been on Syria.

__________________________________

Even discussing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan purely from a legal perspective goes sharply against the grain of consensus among Middle East experts. The conventional view is that Israel must at some point return the Golan Heights to the Syrian Arab Republic. Many will likely argue that recognition would harm U.S. relations with the Arab world, or be “destabilizing.” Thus in closing, a few observations are in order about the value of the accepted wisdom in these matters.

.... Less than a decade ago, the conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establishment was that Israel should return the Golan Heights to Syria in a peace deal. Not only would an Israeli withdrawal make peace between the two countries, the story went, it would get Damascus to break its alliance with Iran. The views of Amb. Martin Indyk in a 2010 New York Times op-ed were typical:

Today, nothing could better help Obama to isolate Iran than for Netanyahu to offer to cede the Golan. . . Netanyahu must make a choice: take on the president of the United States, or take on his right wing.

This position was standard. Indeed, never were experts more confident that Assad was a partner for peace than in the years just prior to his campaign of systematic ethnic cleansing and gassing of his own population.

In 2009, a blue-ribbon panel that that included Zbigniew Brzezinski, Chuck Hagel, Lee Hamilton, Brent Scowcroft and others released a report about the “last chance” for peace. Among other things, it recommended that the U.S push for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan to "fundamentally transform the regional landscape and ultimately detach Damascus from its uneasy strategic partnership with Iran.”

In the same vein, Richard Haass, the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, painted this rosy picture:

Israel's security could be further buttressed by demilitarizing the territory returned to Syria. Technology could provide early-warning systems. Peacekeepers (possibly American) could be stationed there, much as they are in the Sinai to buttress the peace between Israel and Egypt. And the Syrian leadership is sufficiently strong that it could live up to security commitments.”

Today, every aspect of the assumptions behind these suggestions has been entirely discredited.

Firstly, Assad is not and never was a peacemaker. The notion that he would abide by a deal with Israel any more than the countless ceasefires, chemical weapons agreements and treaties, and basic international commitments that he has flouted in the past seven years strains credulity.

Second, his alliance with Iran is not a bad relationship he stumbled into, but rather his greatest strategic asset. Iran has ensured the survival of his regime and family when most others countries would turn away in disgust: that is not an alliance he would give up for the Golan.

As for peacekeepers in a possible peace deal, the U.N. peacekeepers already stationed in the Golan fled their positions at the outbreak of the civil war. The demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria – the fruit of earlier diplomatic accords - has been remilitarized by both Assad and rebel groups. Nor have U.S. allies in Syria, such as the Kurds, been able to rely much on direct U.S. backing when the going gets tough.

Thus the peace deal widely favored just a few years ago by leading policy experts would have expanded Assad’s power and threatened Israel – for naught.

The profound and demonstrable error of the foreign policy consensus in these matters – from Jerusalem to the Golan – is something that must be taken into account going forward. It suggests that in charting future policy, the U.S. should not be guided by the same hollow certitudes. In the wake of these serious misjudgments by leading Middle East professionals, it would behoove the U.S. to look in totally different directions for solutions. Just as many said “now is not the right time” to move the embassy, a similar refrain will be heard about the Golan. But now – in the wake of falsely positive predictions about the nature of the Assad regime and falsely negative ones about the consequences of moving the embassy to Israel – it is the right time to seek entirely new paradigms in these matters. Recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan is a start.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

Suppose someone told you that they wanted to take a billion and a half dollars of American and European taxpayer money each year, and use it to raise an army.

It would feed and house more than five million people, and educate the children to prepare them for the future role as soldiers to overrun a particular country. The teachers would in many (or most) cases be members of organizations recognized in your country as terrorist groups.

This army would be required to live in camps in various countries. But its soldiers would not be allowed to become citizens of those countries.

Membership in the army would be hereditary, and child allowances would be calibrated to incentivize reproduction. There would be no need for members to work, since they would receive a dole regardless of employment. In any case, there are few options for work in the camps.

The members do not have passports. They are not allowed to settle anywhere else in the world. They are told that the only way to change their status is to overrun the target country and take “back” their homes from the current residents. But only 0.4% of them ever lived in the target country, and this was more than 70 years ago.

Of course I am talking about “Palestinian refugees” and the organization that supports and nurtures them is called UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine.

In the sad history of the 20^th century, millions of people became refugees. After WWII, Jews could not return to Europe, and ethnic Germans were kicked out of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. In 1948, about 650,000 Arabs fled from what became the new state of Israel; and immediately afterwards some 800,000 Jews escaped unfriendly Arab countries. Many of these refugees lost all of their property and were forced to flee with just the clothes on their backs.

Most of these refugees found new places to live, and in many cases had to start over from nothing. Most of the Germans went to Germany, although some ended up in the Soviet Gulag. The Jews of Europe went to Israel, America, and other places. The Jews from the Arab world were mostly absorbed by the new state of Israel. By the mid-1950s, most of these refugees had new homes – all but the Palestinian Arabs.

The Arab nations were unhappy that they lost the war they launched against Israel in 1948. So they came up with a brilliant plan to create a weapon that could be used to destroy Israel, a weapon that would automatically grow stronger with the passage of time, which would be a military, psychological, and diplomatic weapon all at the same time. Best of all, someone else would pay for it.

They invented the Palestinian refugee, a creature like no other refugee, because Palestinian refugee status in hereditary. They established UNRWA, an agency whose charter – unlike all other refugee relief agencies ever – was not to resettle refugees, but rather to increase their number. And the West, which pays almost all of the bills of the UN, bought into it out of cowardice and lack of will to oppose the Arabs, who had all that oil, after all.

And so the “refugee camps,” which more and more became to resemble permanent neighborhoods, came into being in several nations and became breeding grounds for recruits to the multiplicity of Palestinian terror organizations – Fatah, Hamas, PFLP, DFLP, PFLP-GC, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Abu Nidal group, etc. Unemployed young Palestinian men flocked to these groups in order to lend purpose to their lives. The growth of anti-Israel and international terrorism since 1960 was caused to a great degree by the activities of these groups. Palestinian terrorists popularized airline hijacking and suicide bombing, leading directly to 9/11 and other atrocities. Thus was the West paid back for its investment.

But the Malthusian logic of the Palestinian refugee system has finally caught up with it. There are about 5.2 million Arabs with Palestinian refugee status today, and the West can’t afford any more to feed, house, clothe, and “educate” them. The power of Arab oil is diminishing. The US is sharply cutting what it gives UNRWA.

The system is wrong in multiple ways. Hereditary and permanent refugee status is fiscally unsustainable for the Western donors, cruel to the “refugees,” destabilizing to the host countries, and a threat to the targeted country, Israel. There is no legal justification for it: despite Arab claims, there is no “right of return” for refugees in international law, and even less so a “right of return” for the descendants of refugees.

If you wonder why the Arab nations have allowed this system to continue, there is a simple reason, which I call the First Principle of Arab Leadership: it is always more important to hurt Jews than to help Arabs.

The US State Department produced a report on the Palestinian refugee situation during the Obama Administration which supposedly (it is classified) says that the actual number of true refugees – when counted by the criteria used for non-Palestinians – is actually closer to 30,000 than the 5.2 million that UNRWA claims today. Apparently the State Department believes that if the details in it were released, US contributions to UNRWA would be cut even further.

Which is what should happen. In fact, they should be cut to zero, and the terrorist-ridden organization disbanded. The Arab clients of UNRWA should be granted citizenship in their host countries, and funds for their absorption and integration into society transferred to these countries for a limited period of time. Hereditary refugee status should be abolished. The 30,000 who are actually refugees should be assisted by the normal UN refugee agency, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which has been successful in resettling hundreds of thousands of refugees since 1950.

The system could be changed tomorrow, and it would not be too soon.

The fact that the Western countries have tolerated this perverse and vicious system for so long is a massive moral failure on their part. The UN, the European Union, and the US State Department share in the blame. Israel, the target of this infernal mechanism, has suffered wars and terrorism for decades because of it. And generations of “refugees” have had their chances for a normal life foreclosed.

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07/19 Links Pt1: Haley Slams Human Rights Council as ‘Greatest Failure’ of the UN; PA TV attacks PMW: "PMW is an extremist Zionist NGO with teams that work around the clock"

From Ian:

Nikki Haley Slams Human Rights Council as ‘Greatest Failure’ of the UN

U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Wednesday the United Nations' Human Rights Council is the "greatest failure" of the international organization given its continued support to dictatorial regimes and entrenched bias against Israel.

"The Human Rights Council has provided cover, not condemnation, for the world's most inhumane regimes," Haley said in remarks at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

"It has been a bully pulpit for human rights violators. The Human Rights Council has been not a place of conscious, but a place of politics. It has focused its attention unfairly and relentlessly on Israel. Meanwhile, it has ignored the misery inflicted by regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and China."

Haley doubled down on the Trump administration's decision last month to withdraw the United States from the council amid what she viewed as a "chronic" anti-Israel bias that led to over 68 condemnations of the Jewish state over a 10-year period versus just six for Iran. She also accused the council of allowing notorious human rights abusers as members.

She cited the council's acceptance of the Democratic Republic of Congo as a member in October even as mass graves were being uncovered there, and its unwillingness to confront habitual human rights abuses in Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela.

She said American participation was the "last shred of credibility" the council had.

"It has taken the idea of human dignity—the idea that's at the center of our national creed and the birthright of every human being—and it has reduced it to just another instrument of international politics and that is a great tragedy," Haley said.

.@NikkiHaley rips @Amnesty & @KenRoth's Human Rights Watch for siding with #Russia & #China in opposing reform of corrupt #UNHRC. Opposition "comes from their institutional comforts. They have big staffs & lots of relationships with UN bureaucracy. Change is threatening to them." pic.twitter.com/gHUo2TsS3q
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) July 18, 2018

Khaled Abu Toameh: Why Iran Supports Palestinian Terror Groups

The Iranian general did not offer to build the Palestinians a hospital or a school. Nor did he offer to provide financial aid to create projects that would give jobs to unemployed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. His message to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip: Iran will give you as much money and weapons as you need as long as you are committed to the jihad (holy war) against Israel and the "big Satan," the US.

The same Hamas that is telling UN representatives that it wants to improve the living conditions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is the one that is reaching out its hand to Iran to receive funds and weapons.

Now, someone needs to step in and stop Iran from setting foot in the Gaza Strip and using the Palestinians as cannon fodder in Tehran's campaign against the US and Israel. How might someone do that? It is not so complicated. Any international aid to the Gaza Strip must be conditioned on ending Iran's destructive effort to recruit Palestinians groups as its soldiers. It is that simple.

Employee of European NGO caught puncturing Israeli’s tire in Hebron

An employee of a European pro-Palestinian NGO called Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) was filmed puncturing the tire of a vehicle that belongs to a Jewish resident of Hebron, according to a police report.

A nearby security camera in the area captured the incident last year. The footage was subsequently turned over to the district police, which determined that a TIPH activist in uniform emerged from a vehicle emblazoned with the organization’s markings and proceeded to puncture one of the vehicle’s tires.

According to Haaretz, the police report described the entire incident, which included two accomplices standing watch as the suspect damaged the vehicle, which belonged to a Jewish resident of Hebron named Nili Dvorah.

Dvorah explained to the police that the incident represented the third time her car’s tires had been punctured in a one week period.

TIPH operates in the Hebron area and is staffed by individuals from Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey who “enjoy diplomatic immunity” and “cannot be detained or arrested,” according to the organization’s website.

Last Friday, a TIPH “observer” was caught on video slapping a 10-year-old Jewish resident of Hebron so hard that he knocked the boy’s skullcap off of his head.

With her primary-election upset victory over incumbent Representative Joe Crowley, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez—at 28 years old—is the emerging face of millennial politics and an ardent proponent of modern socialist ideology. While she certainly has mobilized her supporters effectively, Cortez’ campaign is marred by her blatant lack of any knowledge on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and yet, her unseemly outspokenness on it’s intricacies.

Over the course of her campaign to unseat Crowley, Cortez railed against the actions of the Israeli government; yet on her July 13 interview on PBS’ Firing Line, where she referred to “the occupation of Palestine,” the settlements, and drew vague comparisons between Israel and Ferguson Missouri, Cortez’ lambasting culminated with five words: “I am not the expert.”

Cortez was neither pressed or challenged on her views on the conflict by host Margaret Hoover, but rather asked to “expand” on her beliefs, which she failed to do for the sole reason that she has no views, no individual contemplations on the matter at hand, but a party line which she touts and parades around on Twitter and at events. She’s committed the anti-Israel playbook to memory—on full display during the interview—liberally claiming “occupation” and “massacre” (in a Tweet) without comprehension of what she’s spouting: hyper-partisan language which deliberately denies fact. And while Cortez is certainly apt at dishing out this rhetoric with the adroitness of a seasoned politician, during the interview, she follows her unsubstantiated assertions with a sequence of uh’s and oh’s, as she connives a way to legitimize her ideas… without factual evidence to support it.

All in all, the greatest grievance against Cortez is her enduring stubbornness. Throughout her campaign, she easily could have remained silent on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict due to insufficient research, but rather, it took an utter blunder on a major national news network for her to admit that she is not well-versed in the geopolitics of the region. Politicians cannot be blamed for not being savvy in every area of expertise, but rather can be faulted for expressing a highly controversial and largely unjust opinion in these circumstances, in the absence of such knowledge, which Ocasio-Cortez did throughout her bid.

But what’s troubling still is how Cortez is idolized by a sizable portion of young people, and how she appears to be on the fast-track to become a major fixture in the Democratic party after unseating the Chair of the House Democratic Caucus and the long-term, well-respected politician Joe Crowley, and obtaining fame overnight. Her socialist views and millennial-age inherently binds her to the up and coming left-wing generation of voters, and to a large extent, garners their support and attention from the get-go. To have Cortez’ language on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict normalized among her base is particularly unnerving, regardless of whether or not there exist facts to back up the claims, because they will be taken as truths nonetheless.

Cortez, unfortunately, is a part of a growing trend of partisanship and far leftism among the Democratic party, a struggle in which support for Israel is caught in the crosshairs. After her interview with Margaret Hoover, Cortez appeared on Democracy Now! hosted by Amy Goodman, where she, according to the Jerusalem Post, “took a neutral stance on the two-state solution” rather than outrightly stating her recognition of Israel’s legitimacy and right to exist, a stance she had previously adopted. The ‘partisanization’ of Israel-centric issues over recent decades is undeniable, hence the period of no productivity in the United States-Israel relationship under Obama, and almost immediate progress under a Republican president. While there exist notable exceptions to this trend, namely Chuck Schumer, Jerry Nadler, and some others, Democrat politicians know what vernacular on the conflict is socially acceptable among their crowd and which isn’t. They know the talking points and the key players, but adhere closely to the Democratic mantras and idioms often bashing Israel. Such partisanship has permeated into even the highest ranks of the Democratic party: Bernie Sanders—who is currently campaigning with Ocasio-Cortez in Kansas—took to Twitter in April to pledge his support for the Gaza protesters while disregarding the violent actions of many protesters and the significant role played by internationally-recognized terrorist organizations, just one of many lopsided stories portrayed by some Democrats as the whole picture of what occurred.

With Democrats poised to dominate Congress in the midterm elections this November—including Cortez, the clear frontrunner in her district—and potentially the presidency in 2020, it’s incredibly dangerous and damaging to have untrue statements being taken as fact by policymakers. While Cortez’ PBS embarrassment was a high-profile instance of Democratic lack of awareness on the conflict, it served as a wake-up call to viewers, that rhetoric will always merely be rhetoric, and the distinguishing factor between Cortez and other, more informed politicians, is possession of the facts that reinforce their claims.

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The program to target children with anti-Israel propaganda

Teen Vogue has an article that uses the same stupid logic we've seen before to try to link police violence in the US with Israeli defense against violent rioters who want to destroy her.

"The recent history of police violence enacted on unarmed black and brown citizens by American law enforcement mirrors the recent history of Israel treating Palestinians as violent insurgents." #DoBetter https://t.co/nWzX1xDFN7
— Teen Vogue (@TeenVogue) July 16, 2018

We've debunked the logic before. (Of course, Teen Vogue adds twists like US and Israeli police supposedly use the same brand of tear gas. What a smoking gun!)

The troubling thing is that Israel's enemies are deliberately targeting children with anti-Israel propaganda - children who are even more susceptible to half-ruths and lies than adults are.

Teen Vogue has been consistently serving up anti-Israel lies for a while. But the issue isn't one magazine, but what is behind it.

This year, the organization IfNotNow tried to pressure Camp Ramah to push an anti-Israel message.

I wrote about a high school in Houston that had an anti-Israel presentation.

In 2014, Charles Jacobs listed some more outrageous examples of anti-Israel inculcation in US public schools:

We’ve just now learned that Newton students are given PLO-produced maps to learn about the history of Israeli “occupation” of “Palestine.” One of the maps labeled the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem as an “illegal Israeli settlement,” and another map claimed entire Palestinian cities are “walled in” by Israel.

In Williamson County, Tennessee, one biased text asks students: “If a Palestinian suicide bomber kills several dozen Israeli teenagers in a Jerusalem restaurant, is that an act of terrorism or wartime retaliation against Israeli government policies and army actions?”

In New York, preparatory materials for the famed Regents exam falsely claim that Israel prevailed militarily in 1948 only due to strong support from the US.

In Albany, New York, an English teacher had her students write an essay, as part of a persuasive writing exercise, imagining themselves to be Nazis, and assigned some of them the task of describing why Jews are evil. After this case came to light – the result of assertive parents – the school superintendent publicly apologized and the teacher was removed from the classroom.

At New York’s Riverdale Fieldstone prep school, administrators held an Israel-Palestine day and under the pretense of “evenhandedness” invited Rashid Khalidi and Tony Judt as featured speakers to represent “both sides” of the conflict. Both Khalidi and Judt believe the State of Israel should not exist.

At the Campbell Middle School in Smyrna, Georgia, ...one lesson describes a video left by a female Hamas homicide bomber, who describes her act of martyrdom as “...my most wanted wish that I asked God Almighty to fulfill.” Another lesson in the curriculum is an editorial titled “A Palestinian’s Plea” that concludes with, “It is not hard to understand why people would take their anger and frustration out on somebody, and it is understandable that person would be Jewish. It is the Jews that take our land, it is the Jews that destroy our homes, and it is the Jews who have killed our children!”

Clearly, the anti-Israel crowd wants to spread their hate among those who are least equipped to understand what is happening to them.

It is not necessarily a centralized movement but it is very deliberate. For example, teachers in Washington State can borrow the "Palestine Teaching Trunk" where they can give students two- to six-week anti-Israel lessons complete with workbooks, maps, novels and DVDs. Many teachers seem to have already used it.

The Middle East Children's Alliance similarly has a "Teach Palestine" initiative to provide free anti-Israel propaganda to children.

Some of the Teen Vogue article seems to be from the "Teach Palestine" playbook:

• Collaborate with educators and community activists on key points of interdisciplinary and inter-community curriculum—for example, how borders and walls affect communities around the world, including at the US/Mexico border and in Palestine; how the criminalization of youth affects children and families in Palestine and in the United States.

Here's a slide from another online resource put up by an anti-Israel teacher, inviting students to imagine themselves as Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression in terms of their own bedrooms:

The lesson plans often pretend to be even handed in order to get into the classrooms, but the orientation is obviously anti-Israel.

This is all deliberate and part of a grand strategy to make Israel look evil to kids. The the pro-Israel side seems way behind in the battle over the minds of children.

(h/t Jay)

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Here is the text of the controversial "Jewish nation-state" law that passed last night.

I do not see anything problematic, although the wording about Arabic seems strained. Even so, the status of Arabic is above that of English.

There is nothing here that contradicts other laws (and international conventions that Israel has signed) that ensure no discrimination against non-Jewish citizens of the state.

_____________________________________

Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People

1 — Basic principles

A. The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established.

B. The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.

C. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.

2 — The symbols of the state

A. The name of the state is “Israel.”

B. The state flag is white with two blue stripes near the edges and a blue Star of David in the center.

C. The state emblem is a seven-branched menorah with olive leaves on both sides and the word “Israel” beneath it.

D. The state anthem is “Hatikvah.”

E. Details regarding state symbols will be determined by the law.

3 — The capital of the state

Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.

4 — Language

A. The state’s language is Hebrew.

B. The Arabic language has a special status in the state; Regulating the use of Arabic in state institutions or by them will be set in law.

C. This clause does not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect.

5 — Ingathering of the exiles

The state will be open for Jewish immigration and the ingathering of exiles

6 — Connection to the Jewish people

A. The state will strive to ensure the safety of the members of the Jewish people in trouble or in captivity due to the fact of their Jewishness or their citizenship.

B. The state shall act within the Diaspora to strengthen the affinity between the state and members of the Jewish people.

C. The state shall act to preserve the cultural, historical and religious heritage of the Jewish people among Jews in the Diaspora.

7 — Jewish settlement

A. The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.

8 — Official calendar

The Hebrew calendar is the official calendar of the state and alongside it the Gregorian calendar will be used as an official calendar. Use of the Hebrew calendar and the Gregorian calendar will be determined by law.

9 — Independence Day and memorial days

A. Independence Day is the official national holiday of the state.

B. Memorial Day for the Fallen in Israel’s Wars and Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day are official memorial days of the State.

10 — Days of rest and sabbath

The Sabbath and the festivals of Israel are the established days of rest in the state; Non-Jews have a right to maintain days of rest on their Sabbaths and festivals; Details of this issue will be determined by law.

11 — Immutability

This Basic Law shall not be amended, unless by another Basic Law passed by a majority of Knesset members.

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07/18 Links Pt2: Linda Sarsour and the Rejection of MLK; Playing Politics With Birthright? That’s Like Stealing A Free Trip To Israel; How the World Really Views Israel

From Ian:

Michael Lumish: Linda Sarsour and the Rejection of Martin Luther King, Jr.

On a recent MSNBC news discussion show, left-wing anti-Zionist activist Linda Sarsour claimed:
Dr. Martin Luther King warned us about people like Chuck Schumer. He said it wasn’t the Ku Klux Klan and white citizen counselors who were the obstacles towards justice. It was people calling for “civility” and people that were telling us when to protest and at what time and how to protest.

I find it fascinating that “progressives” like Linda Sarsour have the chutzpah to evoke Martin Luther King, Jr., when the very last thing that King stood for was Sarsour’s brand of ideological racism.

The primary admonition of Dr. King was to judge people according to their individual character, rather than immutable characteristics like ethnicity. This was the fundamental message of his “I Have a Dream” speech on the National Mall on August 28, 1963. How someone who represents the American left could not understand this requires explanation.

Anti-racism was the essential message of the civil rights movement in the United States following World War II. Yet Sarsour insists, “If you’re in a movement and you’re not following a woman of color, you’re in the wrong movement.”

This notion contradicts the teachings of King and of the entire movement for social justice — from abolitionism to Abbie Hoffman — because it is racist on its face. What Sarsour is saying, in no uncertain terms, is that the quality of one’s character is directly determined by one’s ethnicity and gender.

This is turning the ideals of the civil rights movement inside out and backwards.

Washington Post Column Says USA Is Reenacting The Holocaust — Minus The Genocide

Over and over again, Beorn hedges his argument by admitting “we are not dealing with a genocidal regime in the United States.” Given that genocide was the chief legacy of Nazi Germany, it is unclear where any parallels are obvious to the Trump administration’s immigration policy.

Nevertheless, Beorn persists in his comparisons.

“Politically, the president has certainly taken actions which are in many ways parallel to those of the early Nazi movement,” he wrote.

“Even his management style has similarities to Hitler. Like Trump, Hitler was reluctant to surrender too much authority to one subordinate, and so his Cabinet (which he never called) was a den of backbiting and maneuvering underlings seeking the support of Hitler, who was the only one who decided policy. There are similarities with Trump, even if he has not achieved this level of dominance,” the column explained.

Don’t worry, however, Beorn thinks he’s being reasonable. After all, according to him, “Trump is not hitler” because “Hitler was arguably a far more astute politician.”

Impact of the Suez crisis on the Jews of Egypt

The Suez Crisis, aside from producing an understandable rise in support for President Gamal Abdel Nasser and his regime, had devastating effects for persons living within Egypt who had become ‘egyptianized’ i.e. those who were not Egyptian citizens; or those whose ancestry was not wholly Egyptian, but had attained Egyptian citizenship through various legal statutes.

These people were collectively known as the mutamassirun, and, in the immediate post-colonial period in Egypt (from 1922 onwards) they owned a large share of capital and operated a large number of businesses in Egypt. They were also acknowledged to have made significant contributions to Egyptian cultural, religious and linguistic diversity in the past.

Although measures to expel members of the mutamassirun were already underway before the Suez Crisis came to a head, the Crisis is widely seen as giving Nasser the necessary impetus and legitimacy to proceed to make it extremely difficult for ‘egyptianized’ persons to remain in Egypt. It was a natural step for Nasser to seek to blame the Suez Crisis on the mutamassirun population.

After all, Nasser had risen to power on an avowedly pan-Arab, anti-colonial message. As Britain had directly ruled Egypt from the late nineteenth century until 1922, and France had previously invaded under Napoleon in 1798, the mutamassirun were easy targets for blame post-Crisis Egypt, as many were of British or French nationality or extraction. There was also a sizeable population of Jews living in Egypt around the turn of the twentieth century.

By Peter Paul Rubens - This file was derived from: Peter Paul Rubens-The Judgement of Solomon-Statens Museum for Kunst.jpg:, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18113395

24 And the king said: 'Fetch me a sword.' And they brought a sword before the king. 25 And the king said: 'Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other.' 26 Then spoke the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her heart yearned upon her son, and she said: 'Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it.' But the other said: 'It shall be neither mine nor thine; divide it.' 27 Then the king answered and said: 'Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.' {S} 28 And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged; and they feared the king; for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him, to do justice. {S} (1 Kings Chapter 3)

Solomon was wise. For he knew that a real mother values her child’s life above all and would do anything to spare it harm. So it is with Israel, and those who claim her.

Both Jews and Arabs claim that the deed to Israel belongs to them alone. But were the Jews and the Arabs to stand in court before King Solomon, the facts of Arab eco-terror would certainly reveal the the Jews as the true deed-holder to the land.

As of this writing, according to the IDF blog, "Hamas has burned more than 7,400 acres of land and set more than 750 fires, an average of more than 11 fires a day, using arson kites and incendiary balloons."

The Jews, on the other hand, have planted over 240 million trees. In fact, according to the Jewish National Fund (JNF), Israel is one of just two countries that have entered the 21st century with a net gain in number of trees. The very creation by the Jews of an organization whose main mandate is reforestation, reveals the desire to grow, nurture, and develop the land.

The real owner of the land, loves the land. And you do not burn or destroy what you love. You make it grow. You cultivate every inch.

This is exactly what the Jews have done since their return to the land and Jewish statehood enhanced these efforts. Israel had been left denuded and destroyed by the Muslim Conquest and subsequent uncaring foreign occupations. The Ottomans, for example, did nothing to restore the territory to the former glory of, for instance, Temple times. All of the occupiers, ancient and contemporary, came and conquered, plundered and destroyed, then moved on to greener pastures. They left an arid dust bowl and ruins.

Roman Statesman Dio Cassius wrote of the Roman destruction of Israel:
"Of their forts the fifty strongest were razed to the ground. Nine hundred and eighty-five of their best-known villages were destroyed....

Thus the whole of Judea became desert, as indeed had been foretold to the Jews before the war. For the tomb of Solomon, whom these folk celebrate in their sacred rites, fell of its own accord into fragments, and wolves and hyenas, many in number, roamed howling through their cities."

Historian Carl Hermann Voss wrote:

"In the twelve and a half centuries between the Arab conquest in the seventh century and the beginnings of the Jewish return in the 1880's, Palestine was laid waste. Its ancient canal and irrigation systems were destroyed and the wondrous fertility of which the Bible spoke vanished into desert and desolation... Under the Ottoman empire of the Turks, the policy of disfoliation continued; the hillsides were denuded of trees and the valleys robbed of their topsoil."

Of the once fertile Galilee, Mark Twain wrote:

"These unpeopled deserts, these rusty mounds of barrenness, that never, never do shake the glare from their harsh outlines, and fade and faint into vague perspective; that melancholy ruin of Capernaum: this stupid village of Tiberias, slumbering under its six funereal palms.... We reached Tabor safely .... We never saw a human being on the whole route."

Of the Holy Land in general, Twain remarked:

"Nazareth is forlorn .... Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin today, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago: Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Savior's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang, "Peace on earth, good will to men," is untenanted by any living creature... Bethsaida and Chorzin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them, where thousands of men once listened to the Savior's voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.

"Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes.... desolate and unlovely... it is dreamland."

But with the Jews’ return, homes were built and farms were planted. The Jews took a land left barren and made it flourish, coaxed life out of every corner. Saw its potential, like a mother sees worlds in her newborn infant, a blank slate that might yet save the human race.

One might suggest that the idea for a two-state solution mirrors King Solomon’s solution. Offer to cut the land in two, and give half to each party. The real mother will refuse, offering instead, aid or autonomy. The real owner knows that ceding land that keeps her citizens safe, secure, and prosperous to a murderous enemy is to destroy the whole.

Giving the enemy half the land in the form of statehood, is just a trick to dupe the real mother out of her baby. Which is what the enemy wants. They certainly don't care about the land, or they would not be setting it aflame. They want death and destruction. The land is beside the point. They don't care how you cut up the baby/Israel. They don't care if Israel dies a cruel death. As long as the real mother doesn't get her back alive.

The Jews' enemy is Israel's enemy. It is an Angel of Death claiming sole ownership to the land, even as it destroys all that lies within: the vegetation, the animals, the people.

A falcon attached to a rope with flammable material was found today near the Gaza Strip. Arson fires have been caused by incendiary materials flown from Gaza into Israel. Apparently it’s not enough to destroy nature with kites, now falcons are being used for terror as well. pic.twitter.com/j6noxwCwqS
— COGAT (@cogat_israel) July 16, 2018

And it has always been this way. This lust for destruction lies in contradistinction to how an owner feels about his property. It shows scorn rather than respect for the life the Jews have eked out of the land, hardscrabble. The only thing they have proven with Arab eco-terror is that Israel is a land that can flow with milk and honey and life, or be burnt to a crisp.

You don’t burn the things you care about. You don’t burn what you love. You protect it with everything you’ve got. You protect every tree, every animal. You take care of the ecosystem. You recycle, sustain, and cherish.

In the Arab people of the PA and Gaza, you have not a potential caring steward of the land, but as in the story of Solomon's wisdom, a jealous harlot who sells a pack of cheap lies masquerading as the real deal. One who applauds the mortal wounding and murder of a baby, just so long as the other woman doesn’t get to have it alive. This Arab harlot is motivated by hate and jealousy so large that it crowds out the maternal instinct that makes other human beings nurture and protect the things they hold dearest.

In burning the land, in destroying its ecosystem and killing innocent children and animals, the Arab people of the PA and Gaza have once again betrayed the false nature of their claims to the land. They have proven that it is the Jews who are the real owners of Israel. Because it is the Jews who continue to strive to preserve and protect and defend, even as the Arab people of the PA and Gaza continue to rape, destroy, and pillage the land, without end. The terrorists even use the aid they receive from Israel, the EU, and the United States to stoke the fires of their terror machine, instead of using the money to build schools and hospitals for the good of their own people. Hamas even pays a stipend to anyone who will lend a hand in the destruction of Israel.

So the next time you hear the excuse that kites and condoms are the Arab people’s only weapons against the mighty Jews who stole their land, don’t you believe them for a minute. The real owner would never lay a hand on the land, would never burn the land and the animals, or harm the people.

The real owner celebrates life.

And it doesn't take the wisdom of a Solomon to know the difference.

h/t Dov Epstein, Barb Nisenson, and the Eretz Yisroel blog for ideas and source material.

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God Wishes You'd Decide What He Thinks Already (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Heaven, July 18 - Supernal sources reported today that the almighty creator of existence itself has grown what in anthropomorphic terms would be described as tired of human vacillation regarding what He desires.

The LORD voiced His ongoing impatience in an interview this morning, expressing exasperation with mankind's inability to arrive at a consistent thesis of the divine will and its implications for human behavior.

"By My Name, I do wish these people would make up their minds what I want," mused YHWH. "They can't seem to stick with an idea for more than a generation or two. This is not exactly the glorious realization of the potential of having made man in My image."

God proceeded to list numerous occasions on which human understanding of the divine will shifted, indicating a pathetic grasp of what the divine attribute of eternity means.

"The development that stands out the most in this respect has got to be Christianity," recalled the Eternal Father. "Couple ambition with a healthy dose of resentment, and voilà, suddenly everyone's been wrong all these centuries about how to serve Me and bring redemption to the world. But of course there are plenty of smaller, more nuanced moments. Remember when there was a 'divine right of kings' to rule? Good times. That gave way to 'consent of the governed' and the like, of course with arguments both philosophical and theological to 'prove' what I wanted. Yeah, I'm definitely fickle that way. Eventually they'll move on to something else - anarchism hasn't seemed to catch on, for reasons obvious to anyone but anarchists, but of course they tend to shy away from acknowledging Me in the first place."

The most annoying, as it were, aspect of this human foible, however, remains the phenomenon of different humans claiming special knowledge of the LORD's thinking. "It's an old problem," acknowledged the Almighty. "False prophets exist in their way in every generation and society. At least the Rabbis of the Talmud and their predecessors - and to some extent, their modern disciples - understood that two seemingly contradictory things can hold true at the same time, depending on perspective, and that absolute truth and objectivity are My realm, not theirs. Not that anyone realizes that's really what I want, judging from human rhetoric."

He Who Spoke And The World Was Created added that despite what that preacher on Sunday morning TV broadcasts asserts, there is no divine desire for said preacher to obtain a private jet. Not that you'll listen.

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07/18 Links Pt1: PA: Palestinians have a “right” to kill Israelis; Glick: Time to Let Gaza Fail; US report finds only 20,000 Palestinian refugees left; Despite Putin’s Despotism, Russia Needs Israel

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians launch campaign to foil Anti-'Pay for Slay' bill

Palestinians on Tuesday launched a “national campaign” to thwart Israel’s decision to deduct payments made by the Palestinian Authority to security prisoners and families of “martyrs” from tax revenues belonging to the Palestinians and which are collected by Israel.

The campaign was launched in Ramallah by representatives of various Palestinian groups and relatives of security prisoners held by Israel and “martyrs.” Palestinian politicians and activists from different factions also participated in the event.

Earlier this month, the Knesset voted into law the so-called “pay-for-slay” bill to slash funds to the PA by the amount it pays out to the prisoners and the families of Palestinians killed in attacks on Israelis. The money will be deducted from the taxes and tariffs Israel collects on behalf of the PA.

Organizers of the campaign said its goal was to thwart the new Israeli bill through a series of activities in the press and social media. As part of the campaign, the Palestinians are also planning to send letters to diplomatic missions in Ramallah explaining the dangers of the Israeli move, the organizers added.

Issa Qaraqi, head of the Palestinian Commission for Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners and one of the leaders of the campaign, said that the drive was directed against Israel’s “piracy and theft” of the stipends. The campaign, he added, will take place in many parts of the West Bank, as well as some capitals around the world.

Condemning the Israeli bill as “Israeli blackmail,” Qaraqi said, “All the racist laws approved by Israel stemmed from apartheid.” He added, “Nothing will discourage our people from supporting those who made sacrifices for the Palestinian cause.”

PMW: PA: Palestinians have a “right” to kill Israelis, PA will continue to pay the prisoners’ salaries

PA responds to Israeli law against the PA’s terrorist salaries
Palestinians have a "right" to kill Israelis

PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Spokesman Hassan Abd Rabbo:
"The [Israeli] legislation... targets the history of our people's struggle and its right to resist the occupation"

PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs:
"The Martyrs and prisoners are the symbol of the struggle, freedom fighters, and fighters of independence, and not murderers and terrorists as the occupation defines them"

PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Director Issa Karake:
"[Israel] wants to define the Palestinian people's entire struggle as a "crime" and those who have resisted the occupation as 'criminals.' This is the resistance of our Palestinian people, which is guaranteed by the international and humanitarian laws"

PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs:
"The PA [will] not submit to racist laws like these, whose goal is to prevent the Palestinian people's legitimate resistance"

PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Director Issa Karake:
"The president [Abbas is] signing on the status of the prisoners as legitimate prisoners of war"

Caroline Glick: Time to Let Gaza Fail

Israel and the U.S. should not worry about what will happen when Hamas is overthrown. Hamas is unlikely to lose power for the foreseeable future.

Simply put, if the U.S. stops supporting humanitarian aid to Hamas and its loyal supporters, Hamas’s economic model of governance will be destroyed. The economic incentive to attack Israel will be defeated.

The argument that Iran will fill in for any lost revenues from the U.S. or others is not convincing. First, Iran gives money, arms and training to Hamas no matter what the aid situation is in Gaza. Second, when Iran’s money starts drying up as a result of the U.S. sanctions beginning next month, over time, Iran will have far fewer resources to devote to Hamas.

Hamas is a terror regime dedicated to the goal of annihilating Israel in the course of a wider jihad for global Islamic domination. And the people it governs support it, and its goals, and its methods of advancing its agenda.

It is time to stop telling ourselves fairytales about how all they want is a better quality of life and start acting on the basic reality that enemies attack you when they think it is in their interest. The way to defeat Hamas is to degrade its ability to attack and stop rewarding its aggression. Let Gaza fail on its own terms.

Palestinians are claiming Jews are burning their fields

As Palestinians are bragging about setting hundreds of fires in southern Israel, burning hundreds of acres and causing untold amount of damage, Palestinians are claiming that "settlers" are setting fires to their fields.

We've discussed Ghassan Daghlas before. He is literally paid by the Palestinian Authority to make up stories about what "settlers" are doing. Practically none of his accusations have any proof, and many of them are proven fabrications, but they get published in Palestinian Arabic media as fact - and sometimes even mainstream journalists accept his lies at face value.

He has accused Jews many times of setting Palestinian fields on fire, and today is no exception.

Daghlas claimed that a group of settlers from Yitzhar set fire to land in the town of Asira al-Qibliya, south of Nablus.

He added that the fire "came on dozens of dunums planted with olive trees."

The photo accompanying the article shows a brush fire, common in the dry season, with no olive trees in sight.

Daghlas' would be out of a job if he couldn't make things up.

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