Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Abbas' terror group praises the PFLP terror group. (But he's a "man of peace.")

It is useful to be reminded that even when there were elections for the leadership of the Palestinian Authority in the distant past, it did not at all make the PA into a democracy. The PA is not an independent government, but it reports to the PLO, a decidedly non-democratic organization that is ruled essentially by one person, Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas' role as Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization is what makes him essentially a dictator.

Recently, Abbas vowed to dissolve the Palestine Legislative Council. The PLC hasn't met in years, but it is dominated by Hamas based on the results of the last election. There is nothing in Palestinian law that allows Abbas to do this, but he plans to anyway.

The prime minister of the PA, Rami Hamdallah, has no power - most people have never even heard of him. The PA rubber-stamps what the PLO - Abbas- wants it to do.

The PLO has always been a terror group. Even though it supposedly has abandoned all the parts of its charter that supported terror, it never issued a new Charter without those paragraphs. Its main component is Fatah which still explicitly supports "armed struggle" in its platform. The head of Fatah? Mahmoud Abbas, of course.

Today, Abbas has proven again that he supports terror by his Fatah group issuing congratulations to another terror group, the PFLP, on its anniversary, and stressing how both groups have been an important part of the PLO. This was reported in PA-run media.

For its part, the PFLP issued a nine-point position paper for the occasion, one of which states:

The resistance option proved its effectiveness, as demonstrated by its forces, which supported it and defended it and exercised it in all its forms, especially the armed struggle, its ability to use it successfully in more than one arena despite all the attempts of the hostile forces to strike its foundations and dispersing its forces and popular support.

The PFLP also issued a statement of praise for the terror attack in Ofra this week, calling it a "bold heroic operation."

Both Fatah and the PFLP feature guns in the current logos on their media.

Anyone who pretends that terrorism is not official Palestinian policy is consciously deluding themselves.

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The PLO's Negotiation Affairs Department blocks me on Twitter

I had no idea I was that much of a threat to the PLO, but apparently I am.

Saeb Erekat, who may be the only person remaining at the PLOs' Negotiation Affairs Department since they have not been interested in negotiations for many years, is apparently upset at me for pointing out, repeatedly, what a liar he is.

Anyone else out there been banned by the PLO?

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12/11 Links Pt2: Anti-Semitism a part of the Women’s March almost from the start; Ignoring Western Press, Gideon Levy Claims It’s “Impossible” to Criticize Israel in West

From Ian:

Anti-Semitism a part of the Women’s March almost from the start

At the same time, she saw from the start that there were serious issues brewing within the organization. Harmon began to share that view. Both said in interviews that, at this point, they were each contacted by Bland, who told them she had started butting heads with the co-chairs.

At the end of December, Harmon said she received a panicked call from Bland, who she said was calling to tell her that the co-chairs were suggesting they pay themselves 2 percent of all national funds raised. Morganfield said she also heard this at the time. According to one source who spoke with Tablet and who worked in close contact with Bland and the national team, $750,000 worth of merchandise was sold within the first couple of months before the march.

In an email to Tablet last week, Bland claimed she never said anything about the co-chairs asking to take any percentage of national funds.

Questions also began to emerge about the ideological values upon which the movement was being built. On Jan. 12, the Women’s March made public their Unity Principles, which asserted: “We must create a society in which women, in particular women—in particular Black women, Native women, poor women, immigrant women, Muslim women, and queer and trans women—are free and able to care for and nurture their families, however they are formed, in safe and healthy environments free from structural impediments.” Numerous observers noted the absence of “Jewish” from the list of signifiers, and began questioning whether it signaled something about whether and how warmly American Jews—the vast majority of whom vote and identify as Democrats—would be welcomed in a changing left.

In an email to Tablet the Women’s March wrote:
Women’s March models intersectional leadership through our organizing work, which includes 200 women who worked on the conveners table, 500 partners, 24 women involved in developing the Unity Principles—including some of the folks who are expressing concern now. They were part of the process then, and did not express the concerns they are noting today. Women’s March is greater than our small team of national staff and leadership, and we’ve never claimed their identities equal full representation of U.S. women.

But whatever concerns were popping up were ultimately no match for the steamroller of the event’s progress. And when the day came, the reality far exceeded expectations. Estimates for the March on Washington range between half a million and a million people, giving the city’s metro system its second busiest day in history. Estimates for all the Women’s Marches that took place in cities across the country, had between 3.6 and 4.6 million people participating. In terms of attendance and publicity, the event was an enormous, iconic success. It took the swirling, latent energy of the country’s broad political opposition to Trump and turned it into a dramatic showing of strength.

It also seemed to solidify four women—Mallory, Perez, Sarsour, and Bland—as the public face of what was, in reality, an amorphous movement. Multiple sources active at the time point to the media as part of the reason for this—with television cameras more drawn to the flash of fame than the tedium of logistics. “As we got closer to the march, the press piece was one thing that ended up outside of Vanessa [Wruble]’s purview,” noted a source with direct involvement at the time.

At the end of January, according to multiple sources, there was an official debriefing at Mallory’s apartment. In attendance were Mallory, Evvie Harmon, Breanne Butler, Vanessa Wruble, Cassady Fendlay, Carmen Perez and Linda Sarsour. They should have been basking in the afterglow of their massive success, but—according to Harmon—the air was thick with conflict. “We sat in that room for hours,” Harmon told Tablet recently. “Tamika told us that the problem was that there were five white women in the room and only three women of color, and that she didn’t trust white women. Especially white women from the South. At that point, I kind of tuned out because I was so used to hearing this type of talk from Tamika. But then I noticed the energy in the room changed. I suddenly realized that Tamika and Carmen were facing Vanessa, who was sitting on a couch, and berating her—but it wasn’t about her being white. It was about her being Jewish. ‘Your people this, your people that.’ I was raised in the South and the language that was used is language that I’m very used to hearing in rural South Carolina. Just instead of against black people, against Jewish people. They even said to her ‘your people hold all the wealth.’ You could hear a pin drop. It was awful.” (h/t steelraptor from Saturn)

MEMRI: Article In Leading Saudi Media Outlet Al-Arabiya Criticizes Palestinian-American Activist Linda Sarsour, Claiming She Has Has 'Roots In Muslim Brotherhood'

In a December 9, 2018 article on Al-Arabiya titled "Details of calls to attack Trump by U.S. 'Muslim Sisters' allied to [Muslim] Brotherhood," by Hudah Al-Saleh, criticized Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, "with roots in Muslim Brotherhood and a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations known as CAIR," and reviewed her activity over the years.

MEMRI has released two clips of Ms. Sarsour; in one, dated June 30, 2017, she says that ISIS is the product of a politicized foreign policy of war on our people, and in the other, dated September 8, 2018, she calls for voting against Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the upcoming midterm elections, questions the faith of Muslims who defend the police, and says she doesn't care "what [any] young black person did before he got shot."

Below is the article, in the original English. All subheadings and images were also in the original.[1]

"For the first time in U.S. political history, two Muslim women joined the ranks of the U.S. Congress, with Western and Arab media widely reporting on their win during the first midterm elections under U.S. President Donald Trump. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, is the first Somali American to serve in Congress and Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib is a Palestinian American.

"However, the Democrats' battle against the Republican control of the U.S. Congress led to an alliance with Political Islamist movements in order to restore their control on government, pushing Muslim candidates and women activists of immigrant minorities onto the electoral scene.

"The common ground between Congresswomen Omar and Tlaib is that both are anti-Trump and his political team and options, especially his foreign policy starting from the sanctions on Iran to the isolation of the Muslim Brotherhood and all movements of political Islam. Those sponsoring and supporting the two Muslim women to reach the U.S. Congress adopted a tactic to infiltrate through their immigrant and Black minority communities in general, and women's groups in particular.

"One example of that is the Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour with roots in Muslim Brotherhood and a member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations known as CAIR.

"Who is Linda Sarsour?

"The name of the Palestinian Linda Sarsour (38) appeared in the public scene, when Barack Obama took office in 2008 as President of the United States. Since then, Sarsour became a familiar face in the White House. 'I have been invited at least to seven meetings in the White House since April 2010,' she has been quoted [as saying].

"This culminated in [her] receiving the 'Champion of Change' award from President Obama in 2012. A social media site still carries a previous U.S. Department of State promotional tweet, published in July 2014, saying: "Share with Mrs. Linda Sarsour about Islam in America."

Warren No Longer Speaking at Immigration Conference With Controversial Women’s March Leader

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), who was initially scheduled to speak at the same conference as controversial Women's March organizer and liberal activist Linda Sarsour, is no longer speaking at the conference due to a scheduling conflict.

Warren had been slated to speak at the National Immigrant Integration Conference, which began on Sunday and runs through Tuesday in Arlington, Virginia, the Washington Free Beacon recently reported. However, the senator's picture and biography have now been scrubbed from the conference website.

NIIC is the largest immigration conference in the United States and "plays a central role in the powerful, diverse and broad immigrant and refugee rights and integration field," according to its website.

"At the NIIC, the many different spokes of this field gather to develop relationships, build campaigns, amplify shared values, be inspired, build relationships, and share ideas, strategies, lessons learned and new information and innovations," the website says. "It is an important space for leaders and organizations, and strengthens collaborations and partnerships that power work at the local, regional and national level."

Warren's office did not respond to a request for comment. However, the conference's communications strategist, Susana Flores, told the Free Beacon by phone that Warren had canceled her appearance due to a "scheduling conflict." It is unclear what that conflict is.

Sarsour, a Palestinian-American, has a long history of anti-Israel rhetoric, including a speech in 2015 at a Nation Of Islam event. She has also discounted anti-Semitism, saying that "while anti-Semitism is something that impacts Jewish Americans, it's different than anti-black racism or Islamophobia because it's not systemic."

In Jordan, a movie called "The Old Story" is being shot, with Amman standing in for Jerusalem and Tel Aviv where the film is set.

There has already been controversy in Jordan over this film, as cars and streets were changed to look Israeli for the filming, and seeing Israeli license plates is apparently a trigger for all sorts of terrible psychological issues for many Jordanians.

The film, produced by Netflix, is supposedly pro-Palestinian. Nearly all the people involved in production are Jordanian with a smattering of Americans.

The newest problem just came up as there was to be a scene where a Palestinian terrorist flees to a mosque after his attack. It was to be filmed at a mosque in Amman, and the Waqf approved the filming, but residents objected - because, they claimed, some Jews were part of the production (possibly actors) and would pollute the holy site with their presence.

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.@UNRWA loans money to Syrian regime thugs, Hamas and Islamic Jihad

UNRWA is very proud of their microfinance program, giving small loans to people who need them:

The UNRWA microfinance department provides sustainable income-generation opportunities for Palestine refugees, as well as other poor or marginalised groups who live and work near them.

It extends credit and complementary financial services to households, entrepreneurs and small-business owners. These investments create and sustain jobs, reduce poverty and empower our clients, particularly women.

But if you look at their annual report you can see that Palestinians only take a small percentage of the microfinance loans that UNRWA offers. They gave out loans to 38,595 people in 2017, but only 13,756 went to Palestinians.

In Syria, practically none of the loans go to Palestinian "refugees." Out of 11,094 loans total in Syria, a mere 288 went to Palestinians.

Who gets the rest?

According to an investigative report in the Arabic Daraj site, some of the loans have been made to elements of the Syrian intelligence services and militias active in Syria.

The wife of the Syrian president, Asma al-Assad, seems to have worked with UNRWA on the loan program. Here's a photo of her with the then-head of UNRWA Karen Abu-Zaid.

The article has interviews with former UNRWA employees who testify that the agency's loans were taken over by Syrian officials, and loans were made to those that the regime wanted to get the loans.

The investigation uncovered hundreds of applications and documentation from UNRWA.

In addition the UNRWA program covers the Gaza Strip, Jordan and the West Bank. In all of these areas, loans are granted to elements of the Ministry of Interior (Jordan and PA) or armed militias (West Bank and Gaza.) For example, In Jordan, the General Intelligence is granted loans.

In the West Bank, elements of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are heavily hostile to UNRWA, will happily allow their terrorists to accept UNRWA loans, according to the report.

The West is giving hundreds of millions to an agency that loans money to terrorists and allies of despots.

(h/t Varda)

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12/11 Links Pt1: Terror victim's father seeks prayers for daughter, newborn grandson; Netanyahu vows no Jew to be uprooted from West Bank as long as he leads

From Ian:

Terror victim's father seeks prayers for daughter, newborn grandson

Medical staff at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem were still battling on Tuesday to save the life of a baby delivered by cesarean section after his mother, Shira Ish-Ran, was shot in her upper body in a terrorist attack near the settlement of Ofra on Sunday.

Six other Israelis were wounded in the attack, including Ish-Ran's husband. She was 30 weeks pregnant.

As of Tuesday morning, the baby was still in very serious condition. Ish-Ran's father, Chaim Silberstein, told Israeli media on Tuesday morning that while his daughter's condition was improving, her hemoglobin levels had dropped. Silberstein said this could indicate that there was still some bleeding and hoped that it was not serious.

The hospital reported Tuesday that Ish-Ran was awake and communicating.

Silberstein said his daughter had not yet been informed of her newborn son's precarious condition.

Dr. Alon Schwartz, a senior trauma surgeon at the hospital, said Monday that the medical team was concerned that the baby had sustained neurological damage as a result of the shooting.

"The baby is in critical condition in the neonatal intensive care unit. He is on a ventilator and his blood pressure is being regulated by medication. We're still fighting for his life," Schwartz said.

Silberstein said his daughter teared up when she first saw her parents.

"We were so excited we had to leave [the room] because her heart rate spiked," he said.

A Culture Of Death Versus A Culture Of Life — In 7 Tweets
On Sunday, as Hanukkah wound to a close, Palestinian terrorists attacked Jews waiting for a bus, targeting them with a hail of bullets. A pregnant woman and the baby she was carrying were hit, among others. Here is how two cultures reacted to the murderous attack, in a story of death, life, and God's providence told in seven tweets.

Just think:
The family of the pregnant woman who was shot yesterday by a terrorist are praying that the baby will survive.
The family of the terrorist who shot the mother can look forward to a lifetime of monthly payments as a 'reward'.

Does it get much sicker than that?
— David Collier (@mishtal) December 10, 2018

Hamas has welcomed tonight's Palestinian shooting attack, in which a pregnant Israeli woman and six others were wounded, calling it a "blessed" demonstration of "the ability of the resistance to hurt the enemy in its most sensitive places." https://t.co/3FOFicjOgh
— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) December 9, 2018

International Human Rights Day

Today is International #HumanRightsDay, a day that reinforces the universal rights of people all over the globe. Yet, one group of people continue to face hatered and discrimination, everywhere around the world. The one place on earth that ensures the saftey of the Jewish people is Israel.

What Is The Job of a Jewish Blogger Writing About Israel? (Daled Amos)

Of the topics that came up during the Jewish New Media Summit in Israel 2 weeks ago, one thing that was not discussed was what exactly we were doing there.

That of course was taken for granted, though not all of us necessarily had the same goals in mind.

Jewish New Media Summit 2018 logo

There were approximately 150 bloggers and journalists from about 30 different countries attending. The bloggers outnumbered the journalists.

In his critical article of the event, Gary Rosenblatt -- of the Jewish Week -- asked the question, What Was The Goal Of The Jewish Media Summit In Israel: Advocacy Or Access. He also delved into the answer, with the distinction that:

there is a difference between journalists, whose mandate is to strive for facts and fairness, and bloggers, whose goal is opinionated engagement.

That is the standard answer, and generally still valid.
But there are qualifications.

Unlike in the world in general, when it comes to Israel the distinction between journalism and blogging is not necessarily iron-clad.

There is arguably no country in the world whose very existence, policies -- actually, almost every move -- are attacked as vociferously in both the old and new media as is Israel. Under the circumstances, it would be understandable for the Israeli government to see such a summit as an opportunity to strengthen its defense in the media. But as one of the attendees pointed out at the end of the summit, he bristles at the idea of being an "ambassador" for Israel -- and no wonder. An ambassador by definition defends the country he represents and is expected to never criticize it, at least not publicly. What blogger wants to be hemmed in like that?

So no, being a blogger does not mean leaving pointed and critical questions at the door and the tension resulting from such an expectation was palpable. Jenni Frazer pointed out in When journalists asked Benjamin Netanyahu whether he considered a role in Ukrainian cinema that

it is hard to expect diaspora Jewish journalists to take Israel seriously, and vice-versa, if it insists on treating them as an extension of its public relations arm, a practice long derided by communities around the world.

Yet when discussing Israel, we seem to enter a Bizarro world where journalists are the ones who are opinionated (if not outright jaundiced), while it is the bloggers defending Israel who often respond with facts, and pointing out what often appears to be a lack of fairness and balance on the part of the journalists.

Glenn Greenwald was prescient, if not a cause, of the current state of journalism, sometimes referred to as "fake news". Back in 2013, Greenwald decried how

this suffocating constraint on how reporters are permitted to express themselves produces a self-neutering form of journalism that becomes as ineffectual as it is boring...all journalism is a form of activism. Every journalistic choice necessarily embraces highly subjective assumptions — cultural, political or nationalistic — and serves the interests of one faction or another.

This may have signaled the first manifestations of "blogger-envy" by journalists, abandoning objectivity for subjectivity, though you need to keep in mind that Greenwald's own roots are in blogging -- and old habits die hard.

This touches on comments that Matti Friedman made to the group, as described by Judean Rose in her post, Framing the Narrative: Matti Friedman on the Israel Story on what encourages this bias and how it exhibits itself in the media. Friedman explained that the goal in countering this bias is educating the journalists, which sounded encouraging when he said it. But rather than addressing how to do this, he later conceded that this was nearly impossible and that the bloggers in the audience should content themselves with working towards making Israel a better place.

For myself, I did not see a tension between being informed and being persuaded. The former made be better equipped to do the latter by being better armed with facts and background material.

The fact that other bloggers had different goals and a different threshold of subjectivity was simply a function of the wide spectrum of blogs they represented.

At the very least, being at the new media summit was a source of food for thought.
And resulted in this post.

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Bild.de looks at the study of antisemitism in Europe released yesterday and dives in deeper on the situation in Germany.

Frightening: In no country have so many Jews experienced anti-Semitic harassment as in Germany. 41 percent said they had had an anti-Semitic experience last year, 52 percent in the past five years - both well above the EU average (28 percent and 39 percent).

The Jews draw their lessons: 75 percent of German interviewees abstain - sometimes, often or always - from wearing Jewish symbols in public. 46 percent of Jews in Germany avoid entering certain areas. In plain English this means: There are no-go areas for Jews.

Felix Klein, anti-Semitism commissioner of the Federal Government, is shocked. "The fact that people identified as Jews do not want to enter certain areas for fear of hostility is something I find alarming," says Klein to BILD. He promises: "I will fight against this!"

Does this promise come too late? According to the survey, 38 percent of European Jews have thought about emigrating in the last five years because they no longer feel safe as Jews. Here, too, is Germany (next to France) with 44 percent is the sad leader.

But one question remains: where does anti-Semitism come from?

The results of the new EU survey contradict the police crime statistics (PKS). In 2017, the PKS recorded 1,504 anti-Semitic offenses and allocated 94 percent to the right-wing spectrum. Only five percent of the deeds were said have a Muslim motive.

The survey provides a completely different picture: 41 percent of the Jews surveyed in Germany stated that the perpetrators had a Muslim background. Other political offender groups were much less common - rightists with 20 percent and leftists with 16 percent.

"This data is a slap in the face," says historian and journalist Michael Wolffsohn to BILD. "They refute the political and media emphasis on anti-Semitism. The danger from the right exists, but it is not the greatest danger. "

Wolffsohn demands:" Those responsible must name the issue by name and finally act. The integration of Muslims is a human and political matter of course. But crimes committed by Muslims must be punished, not sugar coated for political correctness. "

For a long time there has been criticism of the assignment of anti-Semitic offenses to political motives. Anti-Semitism Commissioner Felix Klein also expressed doubts: "According to the police crime statistics only about 5 percent of the anti-Semitic offenses committed by Muslims. We must pursue this great deviation from the statements of Jews on anti-Semitic experiences! "

In this sad study, however, one number is remarkable. Despite Muslim anti-Semitism, Europe's and Germany's Jews worry about Muslims.

72 percent of European and 89 percent of German Jews said that intolerance towards Muslims has increased over the past five years. 57 percent of European and 54 percent of German Jews see this intolerance as a major social problem.

"Almost exemplary is the tolerance of the Jewish victim group, their compassion and concern for those from whom they experience the most intolerance, the Muslims," says Michael Wolffsohn to BILD. And says: "That is, in cliché, downright Christian charity."

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Mrs. Elder's mom passed away on Saturday.

When she took ill the previous week, my wife and I were surprised that while the interfaith chapel in the large non-East Coast city hospital she was in included prayer mats and Korans and Christian Bibles - it provided nothing for Jews (besides an electric menorah.) The chapel did not include any Tehillim (Hebrew Psalms), Siddurim (Jewish prayer books,) or chumashim (Hebrew Pentateuchs).

New York area hospitals generally do provide all of these materials, either in the chapel or in special "Bikur Cholim" rooms and lockers.

In my mother in law's memory, we would like to buy these books and distribute them to any hospital that desires them throughout North America for the benefit of their Jewish patients. We are calling the project Tzivia's TiSCH.

My mother in law's Hebrew name was Tzivia. "Tisch" is an acronym for Tehillim, Siddurim and CHumashim. It is also Yiddish for "table" or "celebration."

In phase 1 of the project, I hope to use this platform to both fundraise and to find hospitals that want to participate. If things go well I can make it more formal.

I estimate that the cost is about $200 per hospital chapel for two sets of each three volumes, so phase 1 will be able to offer these volumes to about 25 hospitals.

I plan to work with major Jewish publication companies to find the best discounts on these books so we can distribute them to more hospitals.

Please contribute to Tzivia's TiSCH on its GoFundMe page here.

If you are associated with a hospital that needs these materials, please contact me.

And if you for some reason have lots of Hebrew/English Tehillim, siddurim, or chumashim to give away for this project, please contact me as well.

Thanks!

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12/10 Links Pt2: PA Payments to Terrorists in 2018; The Forward's Anti-Semitism Problem; Marc Lamont Hill and the Soviet Union’s ongoing war against Israel

From Ian:

JCPA: Palestinian Authority Payments to Terrorists in 2018

The detailed Palestinian Authority budget for 2018 that was published recently has new details about the allocations to arrested terrorists and the families of those who died or were wounded in the context of the “struggle against Zionism:”

The total PA budget is $5 billion. The amount that supports prisoners is $155 million, out of which $147 million are spent on transfers to the prisoners. These include salaries to 5,000 prisoners, paying Israeli fines for 1,200 prisoners, grants to 1,500 prisoners upon their discharge, grants for 1,200 unemployed released prisoners, delayed payments to 1,000 prisoners, salaries for 5,500 released prisoners, unspecified amounts to released prisoners who spent more than 10 years in jail, canteen expenditures for 6,000 prisoners, and clothing allocations for 5,000 prisoners.

The PA budget for supporting the families of “martyrs” and the wounded is $185 million. This sum is used to make sure that 24,000 families of “martyrs” and wounded who reside inside the “homeland” get a monthly allowance, 13,500 such families who reside outside the “homeland” get a monthly allowance, 375 families get special monetary assistance, 28,000 families get health insurance, and monthly allowances are paid to the victims of the 2014 conflict in Gaza. On top of all this, the budget is used to finance a variety of benefits to the family members (such as going on pilgrimages and exemptions from education tuition).

Marc Lamont Hill and the Soviet Union’s ongoing war against Israel

On November 28, 2018, Temple University professor and then-CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill advocated the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel in his prepared remarks before the United Nations. The pundit’s decision to use a chant employed by genocidal terrorist groups like Hamas received widespread media coverage and likely prompted CNN to sever ties. It also received widespread applause from Hill’s audience: the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP).

A Cold War relic, CEIRPP continues the Soviet Union’s war against Jewish self-determination. The committee remains at the forefront of international efforts to delegitimize and attack the Jewish state.

According to Gil Kapen, a special adviser to the American Jewish International Relations Institute (AJIRI), CEIRPP and its sister UN organization, the Division for Palestinian Rights, are used for “organizing conferences and disseminating information condemning Israel, and otherwise spreading one-sided propaganda consistent with the most extreme Palestinian positions.” Indeed, it was founded for that express purpose.

CEIRPP was established on November 10, 1975 after the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3376, which was backed by the Soviet Union and co-sponsored by its satellite state, East Germany. That same day, both communist powers successfully advocated for Resolution 3375, which gave Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) observer status at the UN a mere two years after Arafat approved the murder of the US ambassador to Sudan, Cleo A. Noel, Jr. in March 1973.

Most infamously, the UN also passed the Soviet-inspired Resolution 3379, which equated Zionism – Jewish self-determination – with “racism and racial discrimination.”

As historian Jeffrey Herf detailed in his 2016 book Undeclared Wars with Israel:

“The resolutions of November 10, 1975, made Israel a pariah state at the UN. They placed the language of “inalienable rights” and the search for a “just and lasting peace” in the service of the PLO’s ongoing terrorist campaign waged against Israel.”
The UN, historian Gil Troy noted, “was building an institutional infrastructure” for an “ideological assault” against the Jewish state’s very right to exist. That assault was being led by the Soviet Union.

A captive in Ramallah

A permanent resident of Israel, a Jew with American citizenship, has been held captive in Ramallah by the Palestinian Authority for two months.

Does that sound credible? Could it really happen? It doesn’t seem plausible. But that’s precisely the situation, except for one small detail that shouldn’t make any difference whatsoever: The man in question is an Arab. He is accused of a very serious crime – selling property to Jews. For our neighbors, this is a felony so heinous that it incurs the death penalty.

Imagine an Israeli law prohibiting the sale of property to Arabs. The whole world would be up in arms and we would be ostracized, and rightly so. Shouldn’t the same standards be applied? Now imagine a law forbidding Jews to purchase property in the US, or Britain, or France. How would we react? We’d do whatever it took to get the antisemitic legislation rescinded.

So why aren’t we doing anything about the current situation? The PA lives by the bayonets of the Israeli Army. Otherwise, they’d be reliving what happened to them in Gaza when their loyalists were thrown from rooftops and anyone who managed to get out ran straight for the arms of Israeli soldiers.

When they had to make the choice between their brothers and our troops they chose us, and they knew very well why. So how come we’re tolerating their anti-Jewish law? Mahmoud Abbas made the Palestinian vision very clear: a territory free of Jews.

The man behind bars is Issam Akel. Contrary to law and mutual agreements, this resident of Israel is incarcerated in a Palestinian prison, most likely undergoing torture, and no one is kicking up a fuss. Israel isn’t in an uproar. Instead of doing everything in our power to put an end to this outrage, we’re dragging our feet.

Today is Human Rights Day. And it is also a day that shows how hypocritical most human rights organizations are.

Issam Aqel holds American citizenship. He bought a share in a property in Jerusalem and later sold it to the Jewish organization Ateret Cohanim. As a result he was arrested by the Palestinian Authority and reportedly tortured.

Amnesty International advocates freeing political prisoners, and what else is someone whose crime was to sell land to Jews? But they have not said a word about his arrest.

Human Rights Watch had a large report on torture and arbitrary arrests by the Palestinian Authority published well after Aqel was arrested. But they do not mention anything negative about him, or about any Palestinian law that prohibits selling land to Jews.

Aqel is only representative of one type of person that human rights organizations do not consider truly human, based on their literature and tweets. Jews who live in Judea and Samaria have no human rights either, because when they are killed or attacked - as happened yesterday where a pregnant woman and others were shot for being Jewish - these supposed human rights NGOs are utterly silent (or in this case, an ex-HRW official seemed to blame the victims more than the terrorist.) They might utter a condemnation for a bus bomb within the Green Line, but they don't say a word when Jews are slaughtered or attacked in land that these hypocrites believe shoudld be Judenrein.

HRW and Amnesty and the others love showing how much they support the human rights of terrorists. But that is because they consider terrorists human - but anyone who is Jewish, or who supports Jews, in the "West Bank" or Jerusalem is not truly considered human, and therefore they have no rights.

That's the only explanation I can see for the complete silence that these major organizations have when Jews, or people who help Jews, are attacked.

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During a decade and a half of helping fight the BDS “movement,” I’ve been asked many times if I have ever personally boycotted any person, institution or product for political reasons. Looking back, I can’t think of a single instance when I practiced or participated in any boycott of any kind.

Previous to my battles with anti-Israel boycotters, it actually never occurred to me to make boycotting part of my political life. But once I saw how the boycott weapon was being misused as a bludgeon to attack Israel, it definitely became a personal decision to avoid using that weapon myself, despite many understandable requests to do so in hope of taking the fight to Israel’s foes.

The choice not to fight fire with my own boycotts directed at Israel’s enemies is definitely a personal one, and not the only reasonable option. For example, many years ago a commenter left a story about his decision to boycott Arab shops in Jerusalem as a statement against BDS targeting Israel. And while he and I (or he and anyone else) are free to agree or disagree with that decision, it must be pointed out that his decision was personal and thus profoundly different than the choices BDS is asking others to make.

That’s because this person chose to deprive himself of the goods he might have bought at the prices he might have received. He also chose to announce clearly that he made the economic decision he did for political reasons. Finally, he was willing to accept the consequences of the choice he’s made. Those consequences might be good (word getting out that boycotts go both ways) or bad (increased hostility between Israeli Arabs and Jews). They can also be internal (from feelings of satisfaction to discomfort regarding the targets he chose for his boycott action). But they are consequences that he was prepared to bear.

Contrast that with the BDS “movement” that is all about getting other people to choose boycott and divestment and (although rarely mentioned by BDS advocates) bear the consequences.

Think about it. If a college’s branch of Students for Justice in Palestine sent out a press release saying that their members were divesting from Israel, that announcement would, at best, lead to a blog entry asking what they were divestment beyond their allowances. But if they can claim their school has joined some perceived divestment bandwagon, well now that’s news. Which is why they’ve worked so hard to get the school to do so and, when failing to succeed, worked even harder to get others to join them in pretending that it did.

In terms of consequences, BDS leaves that to others as well. If their activity rubs ethnic and religious tension raw or puts intuitions in legal jeopardy, what do they care? All they want is the “brand” of a well-known organizations associated with their squalid little political program. And if a community is turned into a war zone or a company or other organization gets sued over the position the boycotters manipulated or bullied them to take, it’s the institution (not the BDSers) who have to deal with the wreckage.

Considering the pose the divestment cru routinely strikes with regard to their supposed courage and boldness, just once I’d like to see them put anything of their own on the line. I recall a film where a father blasted some young people for playing at Third World radicalism with the statement “poverty is fine if you’ve got a return-trip ticket.” But if I were to craft a similar message for BDS it would be “boycotting is easy, so long as it’s others that pay the price.”

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