Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, June 28, 2019

06/28 Links Pt1: The Fatal Flaw in the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Plan; For Hitler, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Capitalism, and Anti-Americanism Were All Connected

From Ian:

U.N. pays lipservice to Holocaust (while promoting antisemitism)

"The United Nations Wednesday hosted a special session on the fight against anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred at which Israel's U.N. ambassador urged world powers to "declare war" against anti-Semitism.

Danny Danon recommended that the U.N. produce an annual investigative report on anti-Semitism, that the U.N. Secretary-General appoint a special envoy for combatting anti-Semitism and that the global body add 'ending anti-Semitism' to the list of so-called 'sustainable development goals' it has set itself. The U.N. currently has set itself 17 such goals to meet by 2030, including climate action, education, zero poverty levels, and full gender equality...

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminded the audience that the Holocaust was 'only as far back as a single average human lifespan' and noted that while Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany had been defeated in World War II, 'anti-Semitism has not been extinguished. Far from it.'...

However, Anne Bayefsky, the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News that the Guterres must do more to address anti-Semitism, which she said goes largely unchecked throughout the global organization.

'The U.N. Secretary-General paid the usual U.N. lip-service to the Holocaust, and then declared the United Nations fights the ills of bigotry and anti-Semitism as a matter of its very identity,' Bayefsky said. 'That's false. The U.N. provides a global platform to promote anti-Semitism dressed-up as anti-Zionism, the hatred of Israel, and falsehoods about Israeli crimes.'

'I fear the truth is that as long as we believe that the United Nations - an organization controlled by forces antithetical to human rights,' she added, 'is part of the solution to limiting the reach of anti-Semitism, the less likely we will ever get there.'"

For Hitler, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Capitalism, and Anti-Americanism Were All Connected

Reviewing two new biographies of Hitler, one by Peter Longerich and the other by Brendan Simms, Daniel Johnson takes stock of the connection between the dictator’s hatred of the Jews and his hatred of the West:

While Longerich places the main emphasis of his book on a comprehensive account of how Hitler exercised power, Simms is more interested in the question of why. Both agree that he saw the war as an existential struggle against “the Jews,” especially from 1941 onward. Longerich shows that Hitler himself was responsible for the radicalization of the war against the Soviet Union into one of racial extermination. But this process was part of Hitler’s need to implicate an often reluctant German nation not only in his pitiless bid to reverse the unexpected defeat of 1918 but also in his genocidal project, above all the annihilation of European Jewry, thereby deliberately incriminating his compatriots and allies.. . . .

When Hitler declared war on the U.S., in one of the last of his Reichstag speeches on December 11, 1941, he claimed that Roosevelt, like Woodrow Wilson before him, was “mentally disturbed” and that his long tenure in office could only be explained by the sinister “power” behind him of “the eternal Jew.” Simms gives this speech prominence in his account: there Hitler set out in detail his claim that “the American president and his plutocratic clique” intended to establish “an unlimited economic dictatorship” over the world. The world was now, he declared, at war—a war between the German Reich and the “Anglo-Saxon-Jewish-capitalist world.” . . .

To this day, here in Britain, there are politicians who combine anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Semitism. They peddle the politics of resentment, of the “have-nots” against the “haves.” They call themselves socialists and their enemies Nazis, but they often turn a blind eye to mass murder and they like to make scapegoats of the “Zionists.” We all know who they are. And we British, of all people, ought to know better than to lend them our votes.

What do ordinary Palestinians think about the Bahrain economic vision? (Daled Amos)

From Daled Amos:

Inon Dan Kehati leads a group known as The Home, a grassroots organization promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs, working on the inside, with the people who are directly and personally affected. They see the problems blocking efforts towards peace created by outside interference of self-appointed peace envoys and promises of money coming from the United States and the European Union -- money that ends up lining the pockets of the Palestinian Authority.

And now they see Jared Kushner's peace plan, or at least the economic part of it: Peace To Prosperity
Kushner claims that the Palestinian Arabs have no reason not to trust Trump.

But is that true?

I asked Kehati about how, from his perspective, the Palestinian Arabs feel about the plan.

Q: what do you make of what is going on in Bahrain, especially the idea of dealing with the economic part and working from the ground up instead of trying to create a state first?

Kehati: I don't think it can bring any momentum or any progress to the (peace) process. Any foreign involvement here, especially western involvement, is just interfering.

Q: Among the people you work with, both Jews and Arabs, do they share a similar pessimism that Trump (and especially Kushner) are getting involved in things that are beyond their ability (and right) to try to control?

Kehati: Most Palestinians that I know, they want prosperity and definitely what Kushner says, that the Palestinian people want prosperity and want better conditions and economic grown and stuff is very true. But the way that it comes from the US -- most likely the PA will make an obstacle so that it will fail eventually. I don't see how it can work.

As long as the PA is there, nothing is going to change. The PA is also playing a double game because they are the Israeli arm regarding managing security in Judea and Samaria -- but it is a dictatorship at the end of the day.

Q: So the Palestinian Arabs actually are siding with Abbas against Kushner's "Peace To Prosperity" plan?

Kehati: Yes, the Palestinians, I am afraid, do agree with Abbas on this issue. Simply to speak about economic prosperity and about money that basically will not go downward to the people is something that does not appeal to Palestinians.

I think that Abbas might take advantage of this conference, and the fact that its basically speaking about economic issues that will definitely not go down to the people -- and abuse it to gain more support from the Palestinians, even though 9 out of 10 Palestinians don't see Abbas as their president or as their leader.

That is the western thinking that does not speak to the emotions and the basic needs of the Palestinian people, but speaks from a western financial perspective about something that is more complex. Again, a total failure to understand the deep motives behind the Palestinians.

The thing is about human rights -- we are not talking about political rights. Freedom of movement, freedom to travel and easing of the military rule: these are the things that speak more to the Palestinians. This is money that basically would go most likely to corrupt leaders or dictators or just corrupt people. This money will not flow downwards.

Mordechai Kedar, an Israeli scholar of Arabic culture who works with Kehati and his group, has written about the conference in Bahrain along similar lines.

He addresses the question Why are the Palestinians so opposed to the 'Deal of the Century'?.

On the one hand, whether coming from the nationalistic claims of the Palestinian Authority or the religious perspective espoused by Hamas, neither group will recognize the validity of a Jewish presence in the land. Add to that the actions the Trump administration has taken in recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem and removing support for the "Palestinian refugees."

Palestinian resistance to western involvement is more than just a rejection of foreign involvement per se. Echoing Kehati, Kedar also sees a rejection of the western approach to solving these kinds of problems:

PLO spokesmen are up in arms because, in their opinion, dealing with the economic issues before solving all the other problems – Jerusalem, the refugees, borders, Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, water, sovereignty – are a result of the American conception that money, work and economic development can solve everything. [emphasis added]

Involving other Arab countries would seem to be the way around that problem. But according to Kedar, there is more to the Palestinian rejection than just opposition to the involvement of the West:

Another serious flaw in the "Deal of the Century" is that it involves additional Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. This is totally unacceptable to Palestinian Arab spokesmen because years ago, Arafat established the rule that "independence is a Palestinian decision," meaning that the Palestinians are the only ones allowed to decide on their own destiny and future.

Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki also believes that that Trump administration doesn't get it and that the offer of economic aid is not going to work:

The administration makes a big mistake. It shows lack of understanding of the psyche of the Palestinians when it starts with material benefits as a carrot, so that Palestinians can see what they would be missing if they reject the political part of the plan.

This is something that is likely to create the exact opposite reaction among the Palestinian public that the administration hopes it will elicit.

Not every analyst is as pessimistic.

Yoni ben Menachem, an Arab affairs and diplomatic commentator for Israel Radio and Television, and a senior Middle East analyst for the Jerusalem Center, thinks that Palestinian opposition to Abbas outweighs their opposition to the Bahrain Conference.

He has been commenting on his Twitter account, where he has expressed his belief that the Palestinian protests opposing the conference have been minimal:

Reporting on the protests have not been so clearcut. According to The Times of Israel, hundreds protested on Monday. On Tuesday several thousand took to the streets in Nablus to protest against the conference, but around Ramallah there were only about 30 who showed up. Similarly, in Bethlehem, the protesters numbered only in the dozens.

Ben Menachem believes that the corruption and incompetence of Abbas have in fact undercut his ability to disrupt the conference and the steps that will follow. In an article about The Palestinian Failure in Bahrain, he notes that Abbas originally called for a general strike, then instead called for 3 days of demonstrations instead, perhaps recognizing how little influence he really has.

The failure of Mahmoud Abbas has become the street talk in the territories, and he may give the Trump government the impetus to begin unilaterally implementing parts of the economic plan discussed at the Bahrain conference. Mahmoud Abbas did not go out of his way to thwart the Bahrain conference and acted as if he understood that the game was over and that he could not stop the gathering. The PA has not formulated a national plan to deal with President Trump's "bargain of the century" and is content to make do with denunciations and threats. [Translated from the Hebrew with Google Translate]

Whether this is an overly optimistic view remains to be seen, with various factors in play along with the established traditional Palestinian suspicions outlined above. And as Kehati points out, Abbas and the Palestinian Authority will not make things easy.

Besides, there still remains the Arabs in Gaza, where Hamas -- which is no less corrupt and incompetent than the PA -- rules with a stronger hand.

I corresponded with someone who told me about a friend, a simple Palestinian Arab who doesn't care about Bahrain. The PA and the Ramallah NGOs do not speak for him, and he doesn't know what the Bahrain peace plan is. All he wants is a job and to bring home food for his family. These are the people, not the officials and those who join their protests in the streets, who will ultimately decide the fate of Trump's deal.

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Last month, Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil tweeted that he supports the right of Lebanese women to pass citizenship to their husbands and children, except if they are married to a Palestinian or Syrian men.

It caused a bit of a ruckus in Lebanon but his explicit bigotry didn't make a ripple in the international media..

Earlier this month, he again went to Twitter to say, “It is normal to defend the Lebanese labour force against any other foreign labour, whether it be Syrian, Palestinian, French, Saudi, Iranian or American, the Lebanese come first!”

The Syrians and Arabs of Palestinian descent who are in Lebanon generally have nowhere else to go, so of course they need jobs. Yet he lumps them in with other foreign workers, who are also an important part of the workforce as they are throughout the Middle East.

Again, there was some regional controversy over his comments, and the rest of the world yawned. I didn't see any "pro-Palestinian" groups issue statements of condemnation.

Anti-Palestinian bigotry in the Middle East is simply not a story unless it can be ascribed to Lebanon's southern neighbor.

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Gaza balloon arsonist unit has its own T-shirts

Over the past few days, the number of fires being set by Gaza arson balloons has increased markedly, with nearly 100 fires set this week alone, causing major damage.

The Gaza terror groups that set these fires are known as "lightning units" - and at least one of them made up T-shirts.

The Gaza groups are very proud of the fires they set, with a lot of coverage in Arab media of the fires and the release of videos extolling the groups.

A video set to a popular song, Palestinian border unit members launch incendiary and explosive laden balloons towards #Israel today. A total of about 19 fires were reported today. #Gaza pic.twitter.com/uMxMqI5EMQ
— Joe Truzman (@Jtruzmah) June 26, 2019

Reports today indicate that Israel has given concessions to Gaza groups to stop the balloons, which is being criticized by opponents of the government.

An Israeli official confirmed Friday that the country had agreed to a number of economic concessions for the Gaza Strip in exchange for an end to arson attacks and other violence along the border.

“In response to a request from the United Nations and Egypt, Israel will return the fishing zone [to 15 nautical miles] and the flow of fuel, in light of a promise that Hamas will stop the violence against Israel. If Hamas will not abide by this commitment, Israel will reinstate sanctions,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

On Friday, despite the agreement, an incendiary device disguised as a book was sent into Israel on a bunch of balloons, while other balloon-borne incendiaries caused several fires in the border region.

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06/27 Links Pt2: The Human Shields of the New Anti-Semitism; Anti-Western “Experts” Gather to Bash Sanctions, Defend Dictators; Michael Gove: Antisemitism ‘now finds a home in British politics’

From Ian:

JCPA: The Human Shields of the New Anti-Semitism

I understand the mindset of the Israelis who came to the defense of the BDS movement in response to Germany’s anti-BDS resolution.1 They remind me of the Palestinians in Gaza who come to the defense of the terrorists of Hamas in response to Israeli activity against them. Although there are important differences between the two, the similarity in mindset is profound and clearly evident.

Those who stand on the roof of a building in Gaza, seeking to hamper Israel’s efforts to defend itself against the terrorists operating within the building, are not terrorists. They are not there to kill Israelis themselves. They are there to express a basic identification with the terrorists, with their goals, and with the violent, terrorist means that they employ. When they are there, they hamper the struggle against terror and thereby strengthen terror, and they become participants in the danger that terror creates for the soldiers and civilians of Israel.

Those who come to the defense of the BDS movement in response to Germany’s resolution are not anti-Semites. They do not do so to discriminate against Jews, whether in Europe or the United States. They do so to express a basic identification with a movement that is sullied by anti-Semitism, with its goals and with the malevolent, anti-Semitic means that it employs. When they take a stand there, they hamper the struggle against the new anti-Semitism and thereby strengthen it, and they become participants in the danger that anti-Semitism creates for Jews and for all aspects of their lives.

Identification with the BDS movement is immoral. It is not part of a general struggle against various instances in which one nation-state’s forces are present in the territory of a different nation. This movement has no interest in what happens in Tibet. It has no interest in what happens in the Crimean Peninsula. It has no interest in what happens in Western Sahara. It is interested solely in the presence of the nation-state of the Jewish people in a disputed territory. To take an operative interest in a single situation while fundamentally and perpetually ignoring all the comparable situations is a form of racism. A racist mindset toward Jews is called anti-Semitism. The racist mindset toward Israel is the new anti-Semitism. Those who stand against Germany’s resolution are standing up for it.

Ambassador Danon: Time to declare war on Antisemitism

On the 26th June 2019, an informal discussion was held in the General Assembly in the UN on “Combating Antisemitism and other forms of racial hate”. Over 90 countries participated in a discussion which included hundreds of guests from the Jewish community in the United States, Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, and many others.

For the New Campus Anti-Zionists, Social Justice and Liberation Entail the End of Jewish Self-Determination

Andrew Pessin, a professor of philosophy, and Doron Ben-Atar, a professor of American Studies, don’t share a discipline or research interests, but they share the experience of being Jewish faculty members targeted and harassed by anti-Zionists at their respective universities. Together, they have edited a volume of essays titled Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS. In his review, Jarrod Tanny comments on one of the themes that emerge from the book: the highly porous line between hatred for the Jewish state and hatred for Jews.

Much as 19th-century anti-Semites saw the Jews as the chief perpetrators and beneficiaries of the widespread misery unleashed by political modernization and industrialization, today’s anti-Zionists have centered the Jewish state—a tiny entity that allegedly wields a disproportionate amount of power through its covert machinations—in their cosmology of global oppressions. Social justice and liberation entail the liquidation of Jewish power. . . .

“If the Palestinians stand . . . as symbolic of all the victims of ‘the West’ or ‘imperialism,’” writes [the British scholar of anti-Semitism] David Hirsh, “then Israel is thrust into the center of the world as being symbolic of oppression everywhere.” In this sense, the Palestinian is the universal victim, the 21st-century incarnation of the Marxist’s proletariat whose liberation would lead to the liberation of all. All that stands in the way is the Jewish state and the diasporic communities who advocate for its existence. Social justice and freedom will come only when Jewish self-determination is undone and Israel is forced to vanish into history.

But it is primarily the Jews of the diaspora, not Israel, who are paying the price for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement because its goal, write Pessin and Ben-Atar, is “to change the conversation about Israel and Zionism” in America, not to help the Palestinians. In fact, they go on, “they have changed the conversation quite significantly. It is now permissible to say things about Israelis and Jews . . . that not long ago were impermissible.”

Lee Kern on why the hard left is jealous of Zionism

Argentine Foreign Minister Reiterates Justice Call for Victims of 1994 AMIA Jewish Center Bombing

Argentina’s foreign minister has reiterated his country’s determination to bring to trial the Iranian-backed terrorists responsible for the July 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires — the worst terror atrocity in the country’s history, in which 85 people were killed and over 300 wounded.

“We do not cease in our demand for justice, or our request that the accused appear before Argentine justice,” Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Faurie told a gathering at the United Nations in New York this week to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the AMIA atrocity.

Faurie said that the AMIA bombing — carried out by Iranian and Hezbollah operatives — “was not only an attack against the Jewish community, but against all Argentines and the democracy of our country.”

He added that his government was committed to “the eradication of antisemitism and all forms of hatred, which are the seeds of violence.”

Other speakers at Monday’s commemorative event included the president of the 73rd session of the General Assembly of the UN, María Fernanda Espinosa; the president of AMIA, Ariel Eichbaum; and the president of the North American section of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), Evelyn Sommer.

85 candles were lit during the ceremony in commemoration of each of the AMIA victims.

Cartoon of the Day: Litmus test for supporting Palestinians

Continuing my series of re-captioning single panel cartoons...

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Charity Calls At Dinnertime, Pretends You've Donated To Them Before (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Jerusalem, June 27 - A representative of a not-for-profit organization that depends on the generosity of supporters rang your phone while you sat eating with your family after a long day and attempted to convince you that because you have contributed to them before, you obviously find them worthy, and would you please contribute again, because the cause is so worthy, when in fact you have never contributed to said organization an would prefer to enjoy the time with your family without such a disruption.

A woman calling herself Rivka called at 6:45 pm on behalf of a charitable organization whose name you did not catch, but did not sound familiar in any case, and thanked you for your past donations to the charity. The confidence with which she recited her spiel caused you a moment of doubt during which you considered that perhaps you had given some money to her organization despite neither recognizing the name nor recalling having made such a donation, an activity for which you would have kept records for tax purposes.

"Good evening, my name is Rivka," she began and mentioned the name of her organization and mispronouncing your name. "I'm calling to thank you for your generous donation, and to ask you for further support of our activities." She then exploited your wish to avoid unpleasant confrontation by regaling you with a list of the organization's flagship activities, in addition to what she called "exciting new initiatives" in the community.

At no point in her prepared script did Rivka apologize for the intrusion into what in most households represents one of the few stretches of quality family time, whether around the dinner table or in various recreational or relaxation pursuits. Nor did the caller acknowledge that many households, notably yours until last year, spend that time of day readying a preschooler for bed and coaxing the remaining schoolchildren to complete their work and pack for for the next day's sessions, and that therefore a call to ask for money disrupts the harmony, bonding, or basic functioning of said household.

Rivka also attempted a gentle deflection of your insistence that you have never donated to the organization she represents, but found herself unable to provide an adequate response to your challenge that you never received a receipt for the previous donation for which she appeared so thankful.

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06/27 Links Pt1: Will Arabs Accept Normalization with Israel?; Bahrain FM: Israel is here to stay, and we want peace with it; The Flawed Human Rights Watch Report on Gaza

From Ian:

Will Arabs Accept Normalization with Israel?

Israel's peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan were a result of their leaders coming to terms with the fact that fighting Israel was too costly and that it was therefore preferable to make peace. But the treaties were not about the public's recognition of the legitimacy of Israel and the Zionist cause.

The idea of "normalization," as Israelis like to call it, is unacceptable to most Arabs. It means acceptance of Israel as a natural facet of the Middle Eastern neighborhood. But they don't, and they won't (and they don't think they should).

There is an antipathy towards Israel which is perceived as having imposed itself on the Arabs, inflicting a humiliating defeat upon them. It is too much for us to ask for them to not only accept Israel, but to embrace it too. This "cold peace" means that Israel must retain its military superiority to maintain deterrence.

The Arab world has entered a protracted period of crisis, with declining economies and rapidly growing populations creating unmanageable economic situations and instability. What happens if Jordan or Egypt collapses economically? How is Syria expected to be re-established? What lies ahead for the West Bank and Gaza? There is a zone of instability on Israel's doorstep and it could blow up at any time.

Honest Reporting: Palestinian Poverty: Who Isn’t Sharing the Wealth?

A key refrain in the Israeli-Palestinian narrative is the issue of the Palestinian poverty, allegedly resulting from the Israeli occupation. Surveys cite statistics that anywhere from 26 to 53 percent of Palestinians are poor. In October 2018, the United Nations warned that humanitarian aid to the Palestinians is at an all-time low, a sign of increasing Palestinian poverty.

This raises several key questions:
- How poor are the Palestinians relative to other economies?
- Is Palestinian poverty evenly distributed at all levels of society?
- What is being done to remedy Palestinian poverty and is it effective?
- Are there other nationalities that are poor, but do not get the attention that poor Palestinians get?
- Is Palestinian poverty a legitimate reason for the belligerent actions of its leaders?

The default reason for Palestinian poverty is “Israeli occupation.” Thus, by extension, since Israel wishes to prolong the occupation, Palestinian poverty is in Israel’s interest. As the argument goes, Israel wishes to force its enemy into submission and therefore keeps the Palestinians impoverished. This argument however doesn’t account for something befuddling – the wealth of the Palestinian leadership. If a nation wishes to defeat another nation, it looks to weaken the other nation’s leaders. In the case of the Palestinians:
Professor Ahmed Karima of Al-Azhar University in Egypt claims that Hamas has some 1,200 millionaires among its members, but is unwilling to reveal his sources.

Corroborating this claim, albeit on a lesser scale, Deborah Danan writes:
Pan-Arab London based paper, Asharq al Awsat, which is considered a reliable media outlet, recently ran a story saying there are 600 millionaires in Gaza.

Moreover, as Ynet detailed:
In 2010, Egyptian magazine Rose al-Yusuf reported that [Hamas leader Ismael] Haniyeh paid for $4 million for a 2,500 m sq parcel of land area in Rimal, a tiny beachfront neighborhood of Gaza City.

The Tikvah Podcast: Michael Doran on America’s Standoff with Iran

This Friday, the world’s leading economic powers will gather in Osaka, Japan, for the G20 summit, and though it won’t be on the official agenda, the rising tensions between Iran and the United States will loom large over the gathering. Since May, the Islamic Republic has carried out half a dozen acts of sabotage and violence against the U.S. and its allies. What is the story behind Iran’s escalating provocations? Is it looking for war? Is America? Earlier this week, Hudson Institute scholar Michael Doran offered a compelling account of the strategic thinking behind these recent Iranian actions. In “What Iran Is Really Up To,” published in Mosaic, Doran presents compelling evidence that Iran is seeking to sow fear among European governments in the hope that they will pressure the Trump Administration to reinstate two vital waivers that would ensure the continued viability of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. This is part of a long game, writes Doran, to revive the Iran Deal and preserve Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb. In our podcast this week, Michael Doran joins Jonathan Silver to explain his essay and its argument. He discusses why the revoked waivers are so important, why the Iranians believe their strategy will work, and why the biases of European governments and many American Democrats play right into Iranian hands.

In Amad.ps, which appears to be associated with the DFLP terror group, Saleh Awad writes that Israel is on its way to disappearing.

After saying that Zionism is racist and how wonderful Jews were treated under Arab rule, Awad writes one of the most bizarre paragraphs I've read in Arabic media:

The agreements that took place between some Arab regimes and the Israeli regime proved that there is nothing sacred in Zionist thought. The Zionist entity gave up some of what was long promoted as sacred in the body of the Hebrew state. What happened to the slogan about a land from the Nile to the Euphrates? Where is Judea and Samaria? What happened to the settlements that Tel Aviv said were for security and were then demolished by their own hands in the Sinai and the Gaza Strip? All this has become nonsense .. The country of honey and milk is the country of explosives and violence and death and anxiety.

The rest of the article is similar nonsense, but this paragraph is useful because it shows that to many Arabs, Israeli concessions for peace are regarded not as noble but as evidence of weakness, to be mocked.

It doesn't mean that Israel should never make bargains with its enemies for peace. It does mean that Israel should not assume that there will be any goodwill in Arab countries as a result of its concessions.

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Bahrain took away Palestinian political power, which is necessary for peace

Many of the speakers at the Bahrain economic workshop emphasized how none of the vision is possible without political buy-in from Palestinian leaders.

Beneath the surface, though, the workshop was meant to undercut and minimize that very political power.

Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind Dilbert, has a daily podcast where he discusses the news. One of his specialties is in noticing and analyzing persuasion techniques. He called Jared Kushner's opening speech at Bahrain a brilliant example of how to speak persuasively (starting around 11:30 and going past 38:00.)

He specifically mentions that Kushner made the audience "think past the sale." The idea of peace has become a roadblock and Kushner, instead of pushing the immovable, got the people to imagine a world after a peace agreement, which then makes them believe that peace is possible.

Although Adams didn't say this, when Kushner made people think past the sale, they also thought past the real roadblock - that the Palestinian Authority vetoes every single peace plan. For the times that they thought past the sale, the PA's intransigence was forgotten.

Which means that the people who want to see a prosperous Middle East now have, at least subconsciously, realized that the current Palestinian leadership is not part of the solution. They are part of the problem.

Palestinian leaders need, more than anything else, to feel relevant. That relevance has been most obvious when they say no. The dynamic has been that Israel makes a peace offer, Palestinians refuse it, and the West pressures Israel to sweeten the offer. Palestinian leaders sit back and let the desire for peace push Israel towards their positions without their making any concessions.

Bahrain turned that logic on its head. Yes, the West and now the Arab world want peace, but instead of seeing this as Israel not giving enough, the Palestinian attempt to get the world to boycott a conference meant to help them showed that they are the obstacles to peace, not Israel, which was publicly eager to participate.

Israel and the Gulf states are looking at what a peaceful future might look like - and the only way to get there is to bypass or replace the obstacles.

Bahrain looked past the sale in another important way. It showed Arab officials talking with Israeli reporters and others. This is what the world would look like after peace.

This is what the Palestinians and their fans contemptuously call "normalization." Article after article in the Palestinian Arab press decries this normalization, especially the statement from Bahrain's Foreign Minister Khalifa to Israeli media that "Israel is part of the heritage of this whole region, historically. The Jewish people have their place amongst us."

This was a stunning statement from an Arab official, and it broke the Palestinian-led consensus about what Arabs are and aren't allowed to do vis a vis Israel.

Seeing Zionist Jews and Arabs acting friendly with each other is looking past the sale. It shows what the future could hold. And once again, the main roadblock to that vision is Palestinian intransigence. Being against "normalization" means that one is against real peace. The wonderful thing about Bahrain is that the Gulf states, even though they do not have formal relations with Israel, have already shown more warmth towards the Jewish state than Jordan or Egypt have after peace agreements. People who want real peace want normalization; conversely those who consider normalization to be a dirty word are clearly not the people who should be considered peace partners.

Up until recently, for the most part, Palestinians had veto power not only on the peace process but also in what the Arab world was allowed to say about Israel. That political power has been eliminated with this one interview, which went beyond what the Saudis have said about Israel. Not only did Khalifa say that he wanted peace - he said that Jews have a political history in the region. He left unsaid that this predates Palestinians - and Islam.

Palestinians have been denying Jewish heritage, and even Jewish peoplehood, in the Middle East specifically because they know that if Jews are a people with a history, they also have rights that precede their own. They know the truth but they have been suppressing it, largely successfully, among the Arabs (and their anti-Israel fans.)

Bahrain's Foreign Minister has broken their choke-hold on history and refuted them, breaking their hold on the narrative of the historic place of Jews in the Middle East. This is huge, not only because it shows another viewpoint for the Arabs to embrace, but because it deflated Palestinian political power in the Arab world.

Which is necessary if one wants peace. The obstacles must be removed, or set aside.

The "peaceniks" of the West have been emotionally invested in what has become a religion of Israel making more concessions to Palestinians in order to bring peace. Ten years ago, they would have said that peace with Palestinians is important because it is a prerequisite to peace between Israel and the larger Arab world. Hearing pro-Israel statements from Oman, Bahrain, the UAE and Saudi Arabia shows that this linkage is not nearly as strong as was assumed. The biggest boosters of Palestinians over the years are now the biggest critics (although that is not yet too public - it is notable that Khalifa said that Palestinians boycotting the workshop was a mistake, as did Jordan.) It is almost comical to see the people who were so invested in the old, discredited method of bringing peace try to mock the Bahrain conference. They are proving that they are not interested in peace but in pressuring Israel. They also had political power as pundits or NGOs, and this conference has not only reduced Palestinian political power, but also that of the J-Streets and Peace Nows of the world.

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Kushner asks if Palestinians hate Israel more than they love their kids. Unfortunately, they do.

Reuters reported from the Bahrain workshop:

“Gaza right now is feeling a lot of pain because of bad leadership and the sanctions that have been imposed on them because of it,” Kushner said. “So the question that (Hamas) leadership has to ask themselves is ... do they hate their neighbor in Israel more than they love their citizens and their people?”

Does he have to ask? The entire reason Gaza is a hellhole is because of Hamas insisting on the right to attack Israel, and it regularly insults Fatah for allowing security coordination with the hated Zionists.

But the same can be said for the Palestinian Authority.

A telling incident happened yesterday:

Oman will open an embassy in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, the sultanate's foreign ministry said.

The Palestinian Authority on Wednesday welcomed the decision.

“This is a positive development,” said an adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. “But we hope that this is not a first step toward establishing diplomatic relations between Oman and Israel.”

Palestinians only think in terms of zero-sum games. Gaining diplomatic recognition from Oman is great - but it is not worth it if Israel also benefits. Oman recognizing Israel, if it plans to, dos not affect Palestinian lives at all. But to their puerile way of thinking, if Israel gains anything, they lose.

This little comment also shows how Palestinians only define themselves in terms of Israel.

That zero sum thinking is what makes Kushner's question unfortunately relevant to the "more liberal" West Bank Palestinians. Because since they think in terms of zero sum, they in fact do hate Israel more than they love their own people.

Their boycott of the Bahrain Conference, meant to bring a vision of prosperity to them, proves this as well as anything can.

Adults look for win-win results. Only severely emotionally stunted people cannot accept anything good if it also benefits their supposed "peace partner."

The difference between seeing Gulf Arab officials happily speaking to Israeli businesspeople and reporters and how Palestinians shun any public meetings with Israelis (who aren't BDSers) is striking. One wants to actually find a way to peace, the other wants to find ways to block it - because peace benefits Israel.

The Palestinians have no clue how much they hurt themselves by playing this game.

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Living in the Shadow of the Next War (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
William Tecumseh Sherman

The recent tension between the US and Iran is being watched very closely here in Israel, because it could well be the trigger for our next war.

I am convinced, to my very great sorrow, that this war is unavoidable. The 130,000 rockets and longer-range missiles under Iranian control in Lebanon will not be left to rust away, nor will those in Gaza. Our enemies – Iran and its proxies, as well as Hamas and the PLO – are not interested in peace.

Iran has spent billions and struggled for decades in its attempt to become a nuclear power, and to establish regional hegemony. We are not only a bone in the throat of their Islamic sensibility, we are physically in their way. They won’t give up without a fight, and they believe they can win.

US President Trump thinks he can break them with sanctions. But the Iranian regime doesn’t care what happens to its civilian population. If they are willing to shoot their people down in the streets (and they have demonstrated this), they will let them suffer. At some point they will be on the verge of going nuclear, and when that happens, someone will have to stop them. It is not a question of if there will be war. It is a question of when – and of precisely what will set it off. And once it starts, no matter who starts it, Israel will be in the thick of it.

It will almost certainly be a multi-front war. Iran has its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. The Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and Judea/Samaria have demonstrated, over and over, that they do not want a state of their own. They want our state, without us. No amount of money will persuade them to become other than who they are. By themselves they do not have the strength to challenge us, but in the context of a general conflagration, they will take the opportunity to cause as much damage as possible.

Numerous experts have predicted that this will be a terrible war, for our soldiers, for our home front, and for our enemies. Indeed, the home front has been mostly spared since our War of Independence in 1948. This time, our enemies – understanding our lack of strategic depth and believing that they can break both our spirit and the support system of the IDF – will concentrate on bringing the war to us, with rockets and ground invasions.

Hezbollah has the ability to launch thousands of rockets per day, far more than can be intercepted by Iron Dome or our other antimissile systems. In 2006, when they had far fewer and less sophisticated rockets, they threw the northern part of the country into a panic. Degrading their launch capability will take time, and in the meantime rockets will be exploding into our homes. Those who have safe rooms or access to nearby shelters are lucky, but many Israelis – like my daughter – live in older buildings which do not have such facilities. Large-payload missiles may bring down whole buildings, in which case safe rooms will be little help. Missiles that can hit densely populated urban areas will create mass casualties.

We know that both Hamas and Hezbollah plan cross-border incursions to kill and kidnap Israelis, maybe even to capture smaller communities. IDF ground forces will be spread thin, and they will have to worry about terrorist “operations” by Arabs from Judea and Samaria as well.

The sheer inevitability of this war weighs on us. We know it will happen; we are expecting it from week to week. Although people here don’t talk about it often, it’s never far from their consciousness. We know that some of our friends and neighbors, maybe even ourselves, will not survive. Others will lose their homes and all their possessions. We know too that numerous young soldiers and some older reservists will not come home alive to their families.

There will be funerals, and horrendous wounds. As is often said, in Israel all the soldiers are everyone’s children. It will tear us apart. It will make us angry. It won’t however, cause us to flee the country, as our enemies hope.

Will we prevail? We’d better. Otherwise Israel, and ultimately the Jewish people, will disappear. Losing the war would be a disaster on the scale of the one in the year 70 CE, and I doubt that the conditions exist for our people to survive another two-millennium diaspora.

I think the outcome will depend primarily on one thing: leadership. In 2006, we could not defeat Hezbollah, because the team of Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz, Tzipi Livni, and Dan Halutz was incompetent from top to bottom. Do we have the leaders that we need today? Do we have a Churchill to stiffen the home front against a blitz, or officers who will take the initiative like Arik Sharon did when he crossed the Suez Canal in 1973? We’ll find out.

We have the desperation – and advantage – of having no place else to go. Our enemies cannot imagine how much firepower is available to the IDF, and if it is unleashed they will not be able to stand against us. In its recent operations, the IDF has gone out of its way to minimize enemy civilian casualties. This next war might begin that way, but at some point Hamas and Hezbollah’s use of civilian infrastructure as a shield will leave us no other option but to put that concern aside.

When relatively accurate rockets with large payloads start striking industrial targets and big cities, for example, the launchers in Lebanon will have to go – regardless of what they are built next to or inside of. It’s pretty certain that most of southern Lebanon will end up a slag heap, and parts of the Gaza strip will meet the same fate.

If thousands die in Israel, tens of thousands will lose their lives in Lebanon and Gaza, or anywhere else from which our enemies fight. If the Arabs of Judea and Samaria rise up, their communities, too, will be razed, and they’ll find themselves homeless, another nakba.

War, it’s well-known, is hell. This one will be, too. But we must ensure that it will be a bigger hell for our enemies than for us.

Sometimes it takes a war to change things that otherwise would be frozen forever. WWI changed the face of Europe and the Middle East, brought down the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, and Czarist empires, gave freedom to some peoples and a new kind of slavery to some others. WWII facilitated the destruction of Europe’s Jews, the creation and use of atomic weapons, and the establishment of a Soviet empire in Eastern Europe – but also ushered in the United Nations (not an unmixed blessing), the American civil rights movement, the end of the British Empire, and the creation of the State of Israel.

Maybe, in addition to a new regime in Iran, the next war will bring about the end of Hamas and the PLO, and even the creation of the long awaited Palestinian state – in Jordan, where it belongs.

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