Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, October 07, 2019

10/07 Links Pt2: The Zionist Movement Did Not Seek to Dispossess the Palestinian Arabs; Interior minister moves to deport Palestinian BDS founder; Yom Kippur 1967: The Return to the Western Wall

From Ian:

Efraim Karsh (WSJ): The Zionist Movement Did Not Seek to Dispossess the Palestinian Arabs

David Ben-Gurion's stature as Israel's founding father would seem to be eminently secure, given his crucial, perhaps indispensable, role in salvaging the Jewish people from political oblivion and reinstating it in its ancestral homeland. Tom Segev's A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion is an effort to tarnish his reputation and reinterpret Israel's founding period.

On May 14, 1948, Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, becoming its first prime minister and defense minister, posts he held until 1963 (with a brief retirement from office in 1953-55). Segev casts Israel's founding father as the destroyer of Palestinian Arab society - deeply implicated in what Segev and his fellow revisionists see as the "original sin" of Israel's creation: the supposedly deliberate and aggressive dispossession of the native Arab population.

The truth is that, far from seeking to dispossess the Palestinian Arabs as claimed by Segev, the Zionist movement had always been amenable to the existence of a substantial Arab minority in the prospective Jewish state.

No less than Ze'ev Jabotinsky, founder of the faction that was the forebear of today's Likud Party, voiced his readiness (in a famous 1923 essay) "to take an oath binding ourselves and our descendants that we shall never do anything contrary to the principle of equal rights, and that we shall never try to eject anyone." And if this was the position of the more "militant" faction of the Jewish national movement, small wonder that mainstream Zionism took for granted the full equality of the Arab minority in the prospective Jewish state.

In December 1947, shortly after Palestinian Arabs had unleashed wholesale violence to subvert the newly passed UN partition resolution, Ben-Gurion told his Labor Party that "in our state there will be non-Jews as well" and all of them will be equal citizens; equal in everything without any exception; that is: the state will be their state as well."

The Haganah's operational plan - adopted in March 1948 to reverse then-current Palestinian Arab aggression and rebuff the anticipated invasion by the Arab states - was predicated, in the explicit instructions of the Haganah's commander in chief, on the "acknowledgment of the full rights, needs, and freedom of the Arabs in the Hebrew state without any discrimination, and a desire for coexistence on the basis of mutual freedom and dignity."

To the Arab World, Jewish Sovereignty Is a Rebellion against Islam Itself

Arab anti-Zionism, Shmuel Trigano argues, has little to do with land, the fate of the Palestinians, or Palestinian self-determination—and everything to do with religion. Citing the historical status of non-Muslims in the Islamic Middle East, he points in particular to two concepts: that of the ummah, a nation of all Muslim believers that transcends ethnic and political boundaries, and that of the dhimmi, protected religious minorities who are allowed to live in Muslim society with legal disabilities:

The concept of the ummah inspired the Arabs to rebel against the [European] colonial powers: not so much for their colonial nature (the colonial yoke of the Ottomans was by and large tolerated), but for their Christianity. A decisive turning point was the rise of nationalism: while the ummah dissolved into nation-states, the pan-Arabism that emerged in its wake provided indirect continuity.

To this situation, . . . an additional factor came to the fore: the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine, under the British Mandate, as provided by the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The problem derived not from the emergence of a new political force in the midst of the Arab countries, but from its Jewish character: as sacrilegious to the Islamic conscience as the Christian colonial powers had been. . . . In these terms, Jewish sovereignty is understood as nothing short of a rebellion against Islam.

Thus, Trigano argues, the conflict between Israel and its neighbors can be understood in relation to the gradual and long-ongoing destruction of the Jewish communities of the Middle East and, more broadly, to the destruction of Christian and other non-Muslim communities. The latter began not recently, with the rise of Islamic State, but with the bloody anti-Armenian pogroms of the 1890s:

The Armenians . . . committed an act of rebellion against [their status as] dhimmi by fighting for national autonomy. . . . A violent response ensued: several massacres were carried out by the Ottomans in 1894-5. . . . Often overlooked is the jihadist nature of these massacres: not only in their motivation and their legitimation, but also in the nature of the acts themselves and the fact that the surviving women and children (some 150,000) were forcibly converted to Islam. The same pattern was to reappear in the second wave of massacres, this time instigated by the Young Turks [in 1915].

Michael Lumish: The White Jew

When I was growing up to be a "white" person meant to be a person of European descent. This is no longer the case.

To be "white," today, means to be a "bad" person, particularly if you tend to be of the manly persuasion.

In contemporary political parlance, "whiteness" is a signifier of racism, oppression, colonialism, imperialism, privilege, sexism, Islamophobia, transphobia, capitalism, and, most particularly, racism.

The irony is delicious.

"Progressives" -- throughout politics and the academe and, even, corporate America -- consider "white" to be a category of ethnic guilt. In the name of "social justice" they are condemning innocent young kids, particularly boys, of some sort of original sin.

They are, in fact, damaging your children and most of you are A-OK with it.

In this way, the "progressive" movement is deeply religious and increasingly medieval. The movement used to be about open-mindedness. Today it is about hysterical dogma. Mario Savio would not recognize it.

It used to be about social libertarianism and freedom of expression. Today it is about ideological conformity and a Puritanical patrolling of the borders of acceptable thought.

Molly Crabapple - a respected leftist artist who was enamored with a Neo-Nazi

Recently, another set of the usual Jewish leftist academics and no-name students signed a petition against Trump's handling providing funds to Duke/UNC after it had an anti-Israel conference.

This is no big deal. But +972 Magazine's coverage of the story mentioned some prominent names that signed the petition:

The open letter to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose signatories include renowned scholar Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky, and artist Molly Crabapple, condemns the Education Department’s recent investigation of the consortium and subsequent ultimatum...

Who is Molly Crabapple, whom +972 puts on the same pedestal as the discredited Judith Butler and Noam Chomsky?

Well, although she has tried to erase her many tweets about the topic, Crabapple was a huge fan of a neo-Nazi known as "Weev."

Here is Weev:

As documented in this Medium article about Crabapple's relationship with Weev:

Weev is a self-professed admirer of Hitler, and currently serves as the webmaster/IT guy for The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi website. He has bragged about faxing threats to kill Jewish children to synagogues. (There are 28 total mentions of the alias “Weev” on The Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, filled under the sections “Hatewatch” and “Extremist Profile.”) He waged a targeted harassment campaign against a prominent woman programmer, taunting her and her family with rape and violence threats until she was scared to go out in public. He tried to organize people to crash the funeral of Heather Heyer. He has a large swastika tattoo on his chest.

A few years ago, Quinn Norton lost her job at the New York Times partially because of her friendship with Weev. But for some reason, Molly Crabapple's friendship with him hasn't turned the Left - or Leftist Jews - against her.

Crabapple wrote an article about his trial where he was accused of hacking AT&T. The merits of the case are not so clear; he really didn't hack AT&T. But Crabapple's care about Weev went way beyond her support for his civil rights and to her admiration of him as a person, as she wrote in an article for Vice:

On the morning of March 18, I was sitting with friends at the Federal Courthouse in Newark, waiting to hear how long Weev would spend in jail.

I didn't go there to write an article. I went because his conviction was wrong, and my friends and I cared for him. I meant to be another body filling the courtroom, to provide whatever support that's good for.

...While he's instantly likeable in person, he's done things that have offended.

...One after the other, his friends embraced him, warm and hard. Official internet asshole or not, Weev inspires ride-or-die love.

Four hours earlier, we'd been downing whiskey to celebrate Weev's last night of freedom.

...Weev tried to touch his tablet. Suddenly, giants in hoodies pounced on him. Weev is small. Their huge backs walled him off. They pounded his head into the table, cuffed him, and dragged him from the room. Weev's friends sprang to their feet. This is the cruel trick of seeing a loved one handcuffed. You want to protect them. You can't. A black-haired girl from last night's party balled up in tears.

...Weev returned in shackles, grinning.

Molly Crabapple was practically in love with a proud neo-Nazi with a swastika tattooed on his chest.

And today she is considered a leading light of the Left, to the extent that she is name-checked by +972 to be in the same category as Butler and Chomsky.

Since people started pointing out Crabapple's entirely inappropriate love for her Nazi friend, she had been furiously removing all her loving tweets to Weev, and now claims that she never liked him. But she can't erase this love-letter to the bigot and misogynist.

Crabapple has signed other anti-Israel and pro-BDS petitions. Jewish Voice for Peace happily gets her signature when they need it. She reliably shows up when anti-Israel groups ask her to.

The question is, why the Left is so quick to excuse one of their own who embraced a far-right asshole?

(h/t Kweansmom)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Last week, I tweeted an old satirical poster I had made of a mythical organization called "Muslim Voice for Peace." In response, Zach Lewis pointed me to a Facebook page, by an anonymous individual, called Palestinian Voice for Peace.

That's where I found the story about the Arab plumbers who refused to charge a Holocaust survivor I posted yesterday. It has gathered thousands of views.

Here is another heartwarming video also posted at that page. It shows an Arab nurse leading an early Rosh Hashanah kiddush for residents of a nursing home. He starts off by calling for the coming year to be a year of peace, of hope, of love, and of health. He then reads the kiddush - inexpertly but with feeling.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

10/07 Links Pt1: Whatever Happened to the Palestinian ‘Diplomatic Tsunami’?; FM confirms initiative to sign ‘historic’ non-aggression pact with Arab states; Fatah attempts to hide its terror promotion from Facebook

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Whatever Happened to the Palestinian ‘Diplomatic Tsunami’?

At the United Nations, where once-hardened ex-generals like Barak quaked about the prospect of the world uniting to force Israel to accept a Palestinian state, the situation for the Jewish state’s foes is particularly dismal. It’s true that many UN agencies, like its Human Rights Council, are still cesspools of antisemitism and hypocrisy, focusing almost exclusively on bogus attacks on Israel while ignoring real human-rights catastrophes in countries around the world.

But as is the case elsewhere, the diplomatic isolation that Barak and so many others feared never happened. Indeed, as Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon recently wrote, the world body is no longer the “home court” for those who oppose Israel. The majority of member states joined the United States and Israel in condemning Hamas terrorism in the past year. In a variety of steps, both large and small, Israel’s presence there has become normalized.

At the same time, the Palestinians have become more of an afterthought. It’s probably better for Abbas that even the Palestinians’ usual cheerleaders on the left paid no attention to his recent address at the UN General Assembly, where he spoke of his devotion to democracy and his plans to hold an election. Abbas is so devoted to democracy that he is currently serving the 15th year of a four-year term as president of the PA, to which he was elected in 2005. No one takes his talk of finally holding another vote seriously, since there is no way he would risk being defeated by his more radical Islamist rivals in Hamas, who currently rule Gaza.

The Arab and Muslim worlds may still be hotbeds of antisemitism and may have successfully exported their Jew-hatred to the West in the form of the BDS movement. However, Arab states have effectively dropped the Palestinian cause as a priority and instead are increasingly looking to Israel as an ally against Iran. Though they still pay some lip service to the Palestinian cause, the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt have little interest in creating another failed and unstable Arab state for the Palestinians.

To note these facts is not to deny that the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians is not going away and remains a serious problem. But as long as both the PA and Hamas are stuck in the mindset of their century-long war on Zionism, peace will have to wait until the Palestinians are ready to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

The fact that the “tsunami” that so many Jews feared has fizzled into the BDS flop that can only intimidate someone like Lovato demonstrates that the conventional wisdom peddled by Israel’s noisy critics shouldn’t be taken seriously. Those who listen to the counsels of despair in 2011 have turned out to be as confused as a second-tier pop star.

FM confirms initiative to sign ‘historic’ non-aggression pact with Arab states

Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Sunday confirmed that he has been advancing non-aggression treaties with several Arab countries in the Gulf, a “historic” démarche he said could end the conflict between Jerusalem and those states.

“Recently I have been promoting, with the backing of the prime minister, a diplomatic initiative to sign ‘non-aggression agreements’ with the Arab Gulf states,” Katz wrote on Twitter.

“It’s a historic move that will end the conflict and enable civilian cooperation until the signing of peace agreements,” he said, in what appeared to be a tacit acknowledgement that no Arab country is currently willing to establish full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved.

Katz further confirmed that he presented his plan to several Arab foreign ministers during his visit to New York last week at the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. He also discussed the proposal with the US administration’s outgoing special envoy for the peace process, Jason Greenblatt, Katz said.

“I will continue to work to strengthen Israel’s standing in the region and around the world,” he pledged.

Katz’s tweet included a link to a report aired Saturday night by Channel 12, which first revealed the existence of the potentially groundbreaking initiative.

PMW: Fatah attempts to hide its terror promotion from Facebook

In fact PMW's reports show that Fatah does all of that and worse on its Facebook page, and PMW has pointed this out to Facebook more than once. Yet Facebook continues to leave the platform open for Fatah's terror promotion.

Fishman further explained that Facebook finds that governments and academics are acting too slow in terms of designating who are "terrorist actors" and therefore designates such themselves:
"We [Facebook] designate terrorist actors ourselves. This is pretty unique, but the reason we do this is because although there are a variety of lists of terrorist organizations in the world that are maintained by academics, that are maintained by governments, we find that academics and governments act too slowly. They don't actually maintain comprehensive lists in real time, and the expectation on us by our users and by the community globally is that we are able to respond to these things in near real time."

One can only marvel at the speed with which Facebook claims that it responds to terror promotion when looking at its inaction in the face of PMW’s thorough documentation. Nine months ago Facebook was supplied by PMW with explicit evidence that Fatah’s mission includes terror and violence. Yet in its statement to the Jerusalem Post last week Facebook said:
"We have received reports about potentially violating content on this page and, as we do with all such reports, are in the process of reviewing that content to determine whether it violates our policies."

Facebook boasting would be laughable, if its behavior was not life-threatening. Facebook claims to have a policy according to which “there may be no praise, support, or representation of a terrorist organization, a terrorist actor, a terrorist event,” and boasts ‘we are able to respond to these things in near real time.”

In the case of Fatah, Facebook has failed repeatedly to deal with the terror promotion on its platform. Despite being provided with the evidence, Facebook did nothing to remove Fatah’s terror glorifying and promoting posts. While their actions were no more than piece-meal, it appears that even Fatah accepted PMW’s claim that many of their posts contained terror glorification and promotion and decided to take them down.

Facebook removes terror promotion in “real time,” except when the murder of Israelis is being celebrated and promoted. For Israelis a full nine months is necessary and Facebook is still “in the process of reviewing that content,” that clearly celebrates and promotes terror.

While Facebook is bragging about fighting terror, Palestinian terror is being embedded in the hearts and minds of the next generation of potential terrorists, thanks to Facebook.

PA wipes peace agreements from schoolbooks, encourages incitement and intolerance

The Palestinian Authority has removed any mention of past agreements with Israel from their school textbooks, with the exception of the Oslo Accords, which are mentioned in far less detail than in previous editions of the schoolbooks, according to a new report by Yedioth Aharonot.

The new curriculum, which has been progressively implemented throughout the past three years, and the textbooks in particular, are studied between 1st and 12th grades in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and refugee camps. They, unlike their previous editions, make no mention of the historical Jewish presence in Israel, and speak about every quarter in Jerusalem's Old City – except the Jewish Quarter.

The portions of the textbooks that do mention the Oslo Accords portray Israel in a negative light, claiming that "the Zionist occupation was forced to recognize the PLO after the First Intifada in 1987."

In addition, the old textbooks contained the full contents of the letter written in 1993 by then-PA chairman Yasser Arafat to then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, which detailed the values of peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.

The new textbooks, however, censor the part in which Arafat writes that the declaration of principles "is the beginning of an era of coexistence in peace without violence and any action that may risk the peace."

The few times in which Israel is mentioned throughout the rest of the textbooks are in parentheses, a habit typically taken on to claim the illegitimacy of the state by extremist organizations such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, according to Mako.

Fox News reports:

The White House announced late Sunday that Turkey will soon move forward with a planned military operation in northeast Syria, as U.S. troops who have been deployed and operating with Kurdish-led forces in the area began pulling back from their positions.

The decision sent shockwaves through the region and Washington, with U.S. officials telling Fox News that top Pentagon officials were “completely blindsided” and “shocked” by the order to pull back hundreds of U.S. troops, a move that effectively green-lights the Turkey operation. President Trump spoke with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by telephone.

Some officials see the move as a betrayal of the Kurds, whom the U.S. supported against ISIS for years.

Speaking on "Fox & Friends" Monday morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., called it an "impulsive decision" by Trump that would undo U.S. gains in the region and give ISIS fighters a "second lease on life."

He tweeted: "If press reports are accurate this is a disaster in the making."

...The decision to give Ankara the green light was seen by the Kurdish fighters as a major shift in U.S. policy. Over 11,000 mostly Kurdish fighters in the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been killed fighting ISIS in Syria.

One U.S. commander who helped lead the anti-ISIS effort told Fox News the decision amounts to a propaganda victory for China and Russia, saying those countries can tell would-be U.S. partners that America will abandon them.

“No one will ever partner with us again,” the commander said.

As for Turkey's intentions with the Kurds, the senior military officer said: “They are going to slaughter those cats.”

One of the problems with Obama was that he abandoned traditional allies and tried to ally with America's enemies.

Trump is doing the exact same thing, no matter what justification he is using. Turkey is not America's friend and the Kurds were tremendous allies in the fight against ISIS. Not to mention that their own national aspirations are far more justified than those of most stateless peoples.

If Trump can abandon the Kurds in a quick decision without talking to the experts first, he can abandon anyone.

Including Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

It wasn't that long ago that the Palestinian Authority was on the record as adamantly opposing boycotting Israel, to the point of actually arresting BDS protesters.

Things have changed, though.

This week, the Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh and 12 members of his cabinet are meeting in Cairo for four days.

The stated purpose of the meeting is to come up with a plan to boycott Israeli goods and replace them with Jordanian, Iraqi and Egyptian goods.

The attendees include the ministers of economy, agriculture, public works, higher education, endowments, interior, local government, communications, transport, energy, foreign affairs and finance.

The Palestinian economy is heavily dependent on imports from Israel now but the percentage of imports from Israel has been steadily decreasing over the years, While virtually all imports were from Israel in the 1990s, in 2016 only 58% of its imports came from Israel.

Interestingly, the meeting this week doesn't seem to be at all about Palestinian exports, of which 83% went to Israel as of 2016. This is especially interesting since while the PA exports tens of millions of dollars worth of items to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar, there are virtually no exports to Egypt - the country hosting this conference. This seems to indicate that this conference isn't about diversifying the number of trade partners for Palestinians as it is for boycotting Israeli goods.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Al Resalah, a Hamas-leaning news site, has an article over the horrendous "raids" and "incursions" of Jews during the current holiday season, which they say is all an excuse to eventually take over the Mount.

As you read the rant, you notice that the complaints aren't only for "settlers storming the Al Aqsa Mosque," which is the usual reason for their articles, but they are upset at Jews doing anything at the Western Wall as well. Muslims consider that to be a part of Al Aqsa Mosque and they do not distinguish between their anger at Jews walking near the Al Aqsa Mosque and Jews praying at the Kotel.

For example:

The scene began on September 29, alongside the Western Wall of Al-Aqsa, when Jewish extremists gathered in enormous numbers, almost the greatest since the beginning of the Israeli incursions, and began to repeat their Talmudic prayers with a loud voice alongside the holy Islamic wall.

One of the things that "everybody knows" is that the Kotel should end up under Jewish sovereignty and the Temple Mount under Muslim control. But nobody told the Palestinians this, they believe the entire Old City is theirs, with no chance even for negotiation.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Sure Palestine existed. It became Israel. Today's "Palestine" has NOTHING to do with pre-1948 Palestine.

One of the dumber arguments that keep coming up is that British Mandate-era coins, stamps and posters that say Palestine is proof that there was an independent state of Palestine.

What people don't realize is that Palestine became Israel.

All the governmental agencies and offices went from named "Palestine" to being named Israel. The Anglo-Palestine Bank became Bank Leumi. The Palestine Post became the Jerusalem Post. The Palestine Orchestra became the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The Palestine Football Association became the Israel Football Association.

Every tourism poster for Palestine before 1948 was made by Zionists.

Before 1948, Arabs in Palestine generally did not want to be known as Palestinians. They were against creating a Palestinian currency or postage stamps.

Everything legally named "Palestine" became Israel. They were dominated by Zionists before 1948 and that continued after 1948.

What people call "Palestine" today has absolutely nothing to do with British Mandate Palestine. It is an entirely new construct. There is no link whatsoever between today's Palestinian Authority or its institutions and those of Palestine before 1948.

Every single time someone claims a Palestinian history by pointing to any official logo, document or newspaper from before 1948 they are lying. All that stuff was either British or Zionist, and the vast majority of those examples became Israeli.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

10/06 Links: PMW: PA capitulates to Israel's anti-"Pay-for-Slay" law; It’s time to put an end to labeling Trump an anti-Semite; Elizabeth Warren Fundraises for Anti-Semite; Caving to BDS

From Ian:

PMW: PA capitulates to Israel's anti-"Pay-for-Slay" law

After initially refusing to accept any tax revenues Israel collected and transfered to the Palestinian Authority because Israel implemented its anti-"Pay-for-Slay" law, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has now capitulated and agreed to accept the vast majority of the funds.

In February 2019, Israel's cabinet decided to implement one part of the 2018 anti-"Pay-for-Slay" law and started to deduct the sum the PA spent in 2018 paying salaries to terrorist prisoners and released prisoners from the 2019 tax revenues Israel collects and transfers to the PA.

Initially, rejecting Israel's implementation of the anti-"Pay-for-Slay" law, because he argued that paying financial rewards to Palestinian terrorists is legitimate, Abbas refused to accept the money Israel tranfered and plunged the PA into a self-made financial crisis.

"[PA] Minister of Civil Affairs [and Fatah Central Committee member] Hussein Al-Sheikh said yesterday [Feb. 10, 2019] that he has conveyed an official message at the request of [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas that emphasizes that 'He will refuse to receive the collected [tax] money if Israel deducts even one penny from it.'" [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 11, 2019]

When he made that decision, Palestinian Media Watch speculated that Abbas was probably planning to use the ensuing impoverishment of the Palestinian population as a tactic to put pressure on Israel to transfer to him the money he uses to reward terror. PMW also suggested that he was using the decision as a means to leverage the international community to put pressure on Israel to ignore its own laws. Abbas was also hoping that the international community would again side with the PA against Israel and further subsidize the PA.

As a show of his resolve to plunge the PA economy into the abyss, Abbas decided to cut the salaries of the PA's law abiding employees by 40-50% while guaranteeing the payment, in full, of the salaries to the terrorists. The PA also stopped allowing Palestinians to receive medical treatment in Israel, under the false claim that Israel was deducting $100 dollars a year for this service. This ban did not apply to senior Fatah figures like Jibril Rajoub who continued to receive medical treatment in an Israeli hospital.

Abbas' decision to accept the tax revenues, even though Israel continues to implement its anti-"Pay-for-Slay" law, reflects an understanding that all these goals have failed.

Pay for Slay with funds from UK?

The Department for International Development (DFID) must now release documents to UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), having abandoned part of its appeal from the decision of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The ICO ordered DFID to disclose to UKLFI audits of accounts into which British grant aid was transferred and then used to pay salaries to convicted Palestinian terrorists. British Ministers relied on these audits when concerns were expressed that British money was being used to pay terrorists.

Various countries, including the UK, paid large sums of money into the World Bank’s Palestinian Recovery and Development Program Multi donor trust fund (PRDP-MDTF), which were then transferred to the Palestinian Authority’s Central Treasury Account.

Funds from this account were used to pay convicted terrorists, rewarding them for their crimes.

On 26 July 2019, the ICO ordered DFID to disclose the audit reports of the PRDP-MDTF and the terms on which the auditors were engaged. The ICO concluded that there was a significant public interest in the disclosure of the information, which outweighed any harm that may be done to diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority.

DFID had filed a Notice of Appeal on 19 August 2019, saying that it intended to appeal the release of the documents, on the grounds that the ICO’s assessment of the public interest was wrong, and that it also disputed the ICO’s conclusion that the Palestinian Authority was not a State, for the purposes of section 27 of the Freedom of Information Act.

David Singer: Netanyahu and Liberman must stop Israel’s third election in a year

Israel is surrounded by enemies – especially Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria and Hamas in Gaza that could be tempted to exploit the fractured nature of Israel’s current political circumstances.

There are pressing political issues awaiting Israel’s next Government – most notably negotiations on President Trump’s deal of the century and Netanyahu’s election promise to annex large parts of the "West Bank."

Ending this state of suspended uncertainty has now been thrust on the shoulders of Netanyahu and Liberman – following the failure of Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to achieve a deal they could both live with.

Netanyahu and Liberman would do well to heed the sage advice contained in the Ethics of the Fathers:

“Do not seek greatness for yourself, and do not lust for honor”

Achieving greatness and honor together by compromising their political expectations will secure Netanyahu and Liberman a special place in the annals of Israel.

Here is a nice story that was only in the Hebrew-language media a couple of weeks ago.

Simon and Salim Matri, Arab citizens of Israel, came to do plumbing work worth around NIS 1000 for an elderly woman, Rosa Meyer, in Haifa.

As they spoke to her, Rosa revealed that she was a Holocaust survivor.

Simon said, "At one point, while working, my brother Salim started talking to Rosa about her life. Her life story touched me. At that moment, I decided I wouldn't charge her a penny."

The wrote on the invoice, "Wishing you health to 120 years old. Amount to pay: 0 ."

When Meyer saw the invoice, she was moved to tears. "The brothers really surprised me. It was so exciting and gratifying, and I thanked them very much," she told Mako.

"We did it wholeheartedly," says Simon, "We left our phone number to Rosa and told her to call us with any trouble she had, and we'd come to help her for free. That's the education we got at home - helping people. Money is important, but not the most important. It's important to be human. "

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

In the tradition of using any and every possible reason to condemn Israel, a meeting of Arab environmental ministers this weekend in Morocco claimed that Israel was polluting Jerusalem.

The Eighth Islamic Conference of Environment Ministers declared Jerusalem as a "permanent and environmentally friendly capital for the Islamic world" at the end of its session held in Rabat.

The conference was organized by the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO.)

The Palestinian representative said, "We have presented a detailed picture of the Palestinian environmental situation and the systematic targeting of the city of Jerusalem and its exposure to the process of Judaization, aimed at stealing its history, heritage, civilization, and the environment of a people and turn it for the benefit of other people alien to it, in the strangest environmental destruction known to the world."

What exactly does this have to do with the environment? Nothing. Just invoking "Judaization" of Jerusalem excuses any accusation against Israel.

In a related story, the Amman International Book Fair ended yesterday. Its theme was ""Jerusalem al-Quds: The Capital of Palestine."

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

I met Michael Bassin this past week. He is a super-nice, friendly, outgoing guy, and he told me about a book he wrote about his adventures in the Arab world and later in the IDF.

If I hadn't met him in person, I wouldn't have believed the stories in the book. And his book, "I Am Not A Spy," published in 2017, is a must-read.

As an idealistic American high school student, Bassin asked Dennis Ross what he could personally do to help bring peace between Israel and the Arab world. Ross answered that he must get to know the other side on a personal level, reminding him that one doesn't make peace with friends.

Bassin took this advice as literally as one can.

After studying classical Arabic at George Washington University, Michael spent a semester at the American University at Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates - over the objections of his Conservative Jewish parents.

Michael first stopped off in Egypt, and later visited Amman, Jordan. Being a naturally open guy, and not wanting to deceive anyone, he let people who asked know that he was Jewish. He was quickly informed by Christians in Egypt - screamed at, actually - that revealing that he was Jewish was an incredibly stupid and dangerous thing to do in the most antisemitic country in the world.

Even so, when he went to Sharjah, he decided to tell anyone who asked that he was Jewish and let his winning personality allow people to see that Jews weren't evil.

Sharjah takes up the major part of Bassin's story, and it is fascinating. Bassin is not the idealistic, "Jewish Voice for Peace" type that you would imagine would want to spend time in the Arab world telling people how evil Israel is. Michael is a Zionist and a very well informed one. On the other hand, he truly wants to forge relationships with the Arabs he meets.

The cast of characters at the university is diverse. There is Mo, who loves the excitement of being friends with a Jew but whose brother is trying to defame Michael among the students at every turn. There is Jake, a Christian American who is mistaken as a Jew. A professor admits to Michael that he used to work in Israel and loves it there. Other professors don't even try to hide their antisemitism. Two Arabs from Jerusalem become unlikely Zionist allies, delighting in making other Arabs uncomfortable with their stories of how good Israel is. An apparent UAE spy is sent to seduce him and ply him with drugs to give an excuse to expel him from the country. Osama, a dead ringer for Bin Laden, tries to convert Michael to Islam.

Michael is accused of being an Israeli spy at school, but he laughs it all off - after all, a spy wouldn't admit he was Jewish. Yet when he feels discomfort at how people are treating him, especially the Palestinians on campus, he is not intimidated - instead, he attends a Palestinian Cultural Club event. While everyone is shocked, over the next few weeks a number of Palestinians approach him individually and ask him to explain the Israeli point of view. His guts, and the PCC leaders who didn't dare confront him at the meeting making them look like cowards, increased everyone's respect for him.

One of the curious Palestinians was a beautiful, hijabi girl, Samira, who had been frightened of him before the event. They flirted with each other but they knew that he cannot go further, because her life would be in danger should the news get out. Innocent things can mean life and death. Michael found this out later when a friend whose computer he used to email an Israeli friend (his own Internet was shut down by a vindictive dormitory manager) ended up getting abducted and beaten by UAE security forces, accusing the friends of being an Israeli spy.

To me, the most foolhardy thing Michael did was go to Beirut on vacation - right after the 2006 Lebanon war. Originally invited by Lebanese students, they all ended up canceling their plans as Hezbollah was set to possibly violently take over the country. Michael and Jake went ahead, and saw that even all of the Beirut Sunnis and Christians abandoned the city in fear. But once they were there, they toured the ruins of the Shiite sections of Beirut.

One detail from this episode stood out for me. As they approached the bombed out section they say posters with photos of young boys who were "martyred" by Israeli bombs. Michael felt bad for the loss of innocent lives. Then they meet 17-year old Mohammed, excited to see Americans, who tells them, "Everyone left Beit Jibail when the war started. But Hezbollah picked certain people to stay and become shahid. They said it was important to have people stand in front of fighters when they fight the Israelis."

Mohammed's own younger brother was one of those chosen to be a human shield for Hezbollah. And Mohammed was happy that his brother was chosen to be a martyr just so Hezbollah could accuse Israel of killing kids.

Amazingly, Michael and Jake even manage to get to Damascus for a couple of days, followed by a member of the not-so-secret police - they end up asking him for directions to a good restaurant since it was so obvious he was following them.

The book takes a turn when, after college, Bassin volunteers for the IDF, where his fluency in Arabic is taken advantage of. He is assigned patrol duty in Judea and Samaria and tries to bring humanity to the Palestinians he meets, and he narrates the tension between wanting to be friendly and knowing that he must act as an authority figure or else security at large would suffer. This section of the book resembles parts of Marc Goldberg's "Beyond the Green Line."

"I Am Not A Spy" is sprinkled with funny and touching anecdotes - his search with his Emirati friends for a jinn is worth the price of the book by itself.

Most importantly, Bassin describes the Arab mentality better than anyone else has. So many so-called "experts" pretend to know how the Arabs think, but Arabs know how they must act around NGOs and journalists to avoid bringing shame to their people. By living with them and being pro-active instead of timid, Bassin gained the respect and trust of many Arabs who candidly told him of the antisemitism they were taught from birth.

It was an unexpected treat to meet Michael and another treat to read his book. I strongly recommend it to everyone - especially the "progressives" who pretend to want peace but whose idea of peace is to meekly do whatever the Arabs demand from them.

Bassin respects and wants peace with Arabs but, unlike the progressive crowd, he also respects himself.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.