Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, December 28, 2019

12/28 Links: Israel’s James Bond - How an Iraqi-born Jew became an Israeli hero; FBI: Jews were victims in 60% of religiously motivated hate crimes in 2018; Why Are Academics Ignoring Iran’s Colonialism?

From Ian:

Israel’s James Bond - How an Iraqi-born Jew became an Israeli hero

In fact, out of an estimated 137,000 Iraqi Jews, Ben-Porat’s leadership of Operation Ezra and Nehemiah resulted in about 130,000 making their way to Israel. An estimated 111,000 came by air, the rest by way of Iran. Roughly 7,000 Jews chose to remain, hoping to protect businesses and assets. Today, however, there are no Jews living in Iraq.

Upon his return to Israel, Mordechai married his fiancé, Rivka, with whom he had three daughters, 15 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Until her death in 1995, they were married for 49 years. Today with his wife of 20 years, Nechama, he lives in Ramat Gan. In subsequent service with Mossad LeAliyah Bet, he was involved in other missions, most of which remain top-secret. Among other things, he also became an MK, a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament; and he founded the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda, a small city next to Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport.

In 2001, he was awarded the Jewish state’s highest civilian honor as a recipient of the Israel Prize with specific reference to his efforts rescuing Jews from Iraq. Recently, those same Jews along with their children and grandchildren gathered at the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda. Their nickname for Ben-Porat? Israel’s James Bond.

In the late 1990s, he authored a memoir called, To Baghdad and Back: The Miraculous 2,000 Year Homecoming of the Iraqi Jews.
Today at age 96, Mordechai sits at his dining room table, remembering the past but doing so as a lens for viewing the future. Reflecting on all he experienced in times of intense persecution in Iraq, he looks at developments in today’s world today’s world. His conclusion? His sober conviction is that persecution has returned and likely will appear with no less intensity throughout the world, especially of Jews, Kurds and Christians.

Should he establish a school that will teach the things he learned – how to survive, what to do, what not to do? He is giving the matter serious consideration. Perhaps the greatest mission for Israel’s James Bond is yet ahead. Perhaps in 2020, the construction of The Mordechai Ben-Porat International School of Persecution Preparedness will begin. Stay tuned!

Saudi blogger's special Hanukkah message

A pro-Israel Saudi blogger released a special video clip in Hebrew in honor of the Hanukkah festival, which began Sunday evening.

Mohammed Saud, who often speaks Hebrew in his video clips on social media, sang ‘Al Hanissim’ Sunday night in a Facebook post released in honor of Hanukkah.

Last month, Saud, a resident of Riyadh, met with former White House special envoy Jason Greenblatt, a long-time ‘Twitter friend’.

In a Hebrew tweet, Saud lauded Greenblatt, calling him an “amazing person who wants and is trying to bring peace” to the Middle East.

“I hope for peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, that Saudis will visit Israel, and Israelis will visit Saudi Arabia,” continued Saud. “God bless Israel and the US and Saudi Arabia.”

Earlier this year, Saud released videos of himself singing both Ashkenazi and Sephardi piyyutim (liturgical poems) in honor of Rosh Hashanah.

Prime Minister Netanyahu called me, what excitement, I hope he wins and brings peace to the Middle East, Netanyahu I appreciate and admire you. God bless you and all the citizens of Israel
⁦@netanyahu⁩ pic.twitter.com/bKL2HMnRSz
— محمد سعود Mohammed Saud מוחמד סעוד (@mohsaud08) December 26, 2019

Saudi supporter of Israel claims citizenship revoked

A Saudi journalist claims that Riyadh has revoked citizenship for him and his family over his views on Israel.

Abdul Hameed al-Ghobein says that he was not officially informed about the reason, but insists that his repeated calls for the Saudi government to normalize relations with Israel were behind it.

The development comes amid reports that the Israel-Saudi relationship has been warming up.

Ghobein says he will not question the decision if it is the wish of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“We only listen and obey,” he says.

For now, there is no evidence to support his assertion, with the Saudi government issuing no official statements on the matter.

Ghobein lists journalism as one of his professions. He has written for Israeli newspapers and uses social media to praise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I call for direct and unconditional ties with Israel. This is a strategic choice,” he says.

Chanukah music video night 7: Kosha Dillz - Schmoozin' + 8 Nights - Pinny Schachter

Chanukah is only a peripheral part of this video, but it is nicely done.

BONUS: 8 Nights by Pinny Schachter

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12/27 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: A Boris Bear Hug Against British Antisemitism; BBC and Sky News demonise Israel for Christmas; Assault on 2 Young Jewish Boys Among 4 Antisemitic Attacks in Nyc in 48 Hrs

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: A Boris Bear Hug Against British Antisemitism

Through such ostensible even-handedness, the British government has been supporting for years a Palestinian agenda that is predicated on the destruction of Israel. And that’s why the menace of antisemitism in Britain extends far more widely and deeply than Corbyn’s Labour Party.

A recent poll of the British public found that 21% felt warmth towards the Palestinians while only 19% felt warmth towards Israel.

This isn’t surprising at all, given the unremitting pro-Palestinian propaganda and corresponding incendiary falsehoods about Israel that are standard discourse on the BBC and other media, as well as in the universities.

Instead of fighting these untruths, the government actually reinforces the lies attempting to write the Jews out of their own history. These help fuel both anti-Israel hatred and the Jew-baiting that such discourse inevitably licenses and sanitizes.

In America, President Donald Trump is a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people. That’s because he doesn’t try to drive a wedge between the one and the other, and he recognizes the link between hatred of Israel, hatred of Jews, and hatred of America.

Johnson has yet to show he understands that those who attack Israel have the West in their sights too. He owes his large parliamentary majority to the patriotic British working class who understand precisely that. But for Britain’s intellectual governing class, hatred of Israel is a signature motif.

If Boris Johnson really wants to stand with the Jewish community against the forces of darkness, then he needs to start educating the public in the truth about Israel and its enemies.

He needs to start telling people about the Palestinians’ eye-watering antisemitism, about their repeated refusal of a Palestine state, and their real aim to exterminate Israel.

He needs to start telling the public that the Jews are the indigenous people of the land. He needs to explain to them that antisemitism is not a prejudice like any other but is unique in its deranged nature and scope.

He needs to start calling out those NGOs, universities and media that spread murderous falsehoods about Israel. He needs to start telling the truth about the lies. And he needs to change his own government’s policy that spreads them.

We shouldn’t hold our breath. But then again, given these extraordinary times, who knows?

Israel Advocacy Movement: BBC and Sky News demonise Israel for Christmas

Matti Friedman: Israel’s Sea Change

Zionism’s Maritime Revolution: The Yishuv’s Hold on the Land of Israel’s Sea and Shores, 1917 – 1948 - Kobi Cohen-Hattab

One summer day in 1947, a ship about to sail from the London docks made history when it raised a new flag: the blue-and-white pennant of the Jewish national movement. There was a commotion on the riverside. “Thousands crowded onto the shores of the Thames,” an observer recorded:
This was the first time in history that seamen’s orders were given in Hebrew at the Thames dock. The appearance of the lovely Jewish ship with the Jewish crew on the Thames made a strong impression not only on the Jewish groups but also on the British trade and shipping classes.

The ship, SS Kedmah, was the very first vessel belonging to the Zionist movement’s new shipping company, ZIM. It was sailing for the Land of Israel, still under British control, where its arrival was occasion for a national celebration in the Jewish home. Crowds came to the Tel Aviv beach to see the ship steam in, and five Piper Cubs flew an honor guard overhead (one carried Golda Meir). Children waved flags, and Zionist leaders delivered speeches praising what was then called the “conquest of the sea.”

As usual, the story—as told in Kobi Cohen-Hattab’s excellent new history, Zionism’s Maritime Revolution—wasn’t that simple. The new Zionist ship was, in fact, a refurbished English vessel with 20 years of rough service behind her, including the wartime evacuation of Singapore in 1941. She nearly broke down in the Mediterranean en route to the Yishuv. Saltwater got into the internal systems, the refrigerators didn’t refrigerate, the ovens didn’t cook, and the lights went out. The crewmen, who were Jewish, couldn’t stand the officers, who were British. The feeling was mutual, and eventually there was—inevitably, in those times of proletarian consciousness—a strike.

And yet the moment truly was historic, marking the launch not only of the national shipping company but of a significant Jewish presence in the Mediterranean. Within a year of Kedmah’s arrival, there would be a state called Israel with a navy, commercial vessels, a fishing industry, and ports—all of which would have seemed like a farfetched dream just two or three decades before, when a few Zionist enthusiasts and cranks under Turkish and British rule began promoting improbable visions of sovereign Jewish seamen sailing Jewish boats on what David Ben-Gurion once imagined as a “Jewish sea.”

The story of how this unfolded in the 30 years before Israel’s birth in 1948 is the subject of Zionism’s Maritime Revolution: The Yishuv’s Hold on the Land of Israel’s Sea and Shores, 1917 – 1948. While the early years of Zionist settlement on land have been exhaustively documented, it’s surprising to learn here from Cohen-Hattab, a professor of history at Bar-Ilan University, that so far there hasn’t been a comprehensive account of what happened on the water, no book that “has used a critical approach and the totality of existing sources to relate the story of the sea and its professions within the chronicles of the Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel in the modern age in the years prior to the establishment of the state.” The author has set out to fill the hole in the record, explaining how modern Jewish seamanship grew from a few failed fishing communes and handmade boats to the beginning of real naval power.

Honest Reporting: A Hero of Israel: Who Was Clark Clifford?

Lovett suggested that recognizing a Jewish state was nothing more than an attempt to win Jewish votes in the upcoming November 1948 presidential election. He also suggested that the new Jewish state would be filled with Jewish immigrants who were in fact communist agents working for the Soviet Union.

But there was one more person in that meeting – White House Counsel Clark Clifford, a close friend and adviser to the president. Clifford argued that a new state committed to democracy would do wonders for the chaotic Middle East. In Clifford’s memoirs he relates that Marshall was “red with suppressed anger as I set forth the case for the immediate recognition of the Israeli state.” Marshall told the president that if he followed Clifford’s advice, then “the great dignity of the office of president would be seriously diminished.” He went as far as saying that if the president supported the new Jewish state then in the November election, “I would vote against the President.”

Clifford further wrote that “When I finished, he (Marshall) exploded, ‘Mr. President, I thought this meeting was called to consider an important, complicated problem in foreign policy. I don’t even know why Clifford is here.’” According to Clifford, Truman replied, “Well, General, he’s here because I asked him to be.”

In the end, Truman recognized the newly declared Jewish state minutes after it was declared on May 15, 1948. It is clear that he did so based on his deep belief in the Bible which promises the Holy Land to the Jewish people. In fact he later said:

I had faith in Israel even before it was established, I knew it was based on the love of freedom, which has been the guiding star of the Jewish people since the days of Moses. I believe it has a glorious future before it, not just as a sovereign nation but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.

But, with his most important cabinet members being strongly against this recognition, Truman needed the voice of a trusted friend arguing that supporting a democratic Jewish state in the biblical and ancestral homeland of the Jewish people would create a beacon of light and stability in the Middle East, and that this was in America’s best interest.

And Clark Clifford was the right man in the right place to make that happen.

United States recognition of Israel was critical to its survival in the face of worldwide criticism and condemnation.

And that makes little-known Clark Clifford a hero of Israel.

Chanukah music video night 6: Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah! By Tragedy: Heavy Metal (plus bonus video)

I prefer original songs every year but this is definitely a different take on a classic.

Bonus: This is the most over-the-top dramatic rendition of "I Have A Little Dreidel" that I have ever seen.

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12/27 Links Pt1: The ICC, settlements and the Orwellian denial of the Jewish presence in Israel; Netanyahu vows to ‘finalize borders,’ get US to back annexation; Glick: Fighting Iran's undivided and indivisible regime

From Ian:

The ICC, settlements and the Orwellian denial of the Jewish presence in Israel

SINCE THE question in this narrative is to determine who the first occupant was, this implies that historical Jewish presence must be denied and that, as a corollary, Palestinians need to prove that they were the first occupants. The consequence of this narrative is that anything Jewish is erased from the history of the country.

For example, recently, Palestinian academics denied archaeological evidence of Jews in Israel, part of a narrative to portray Jews as recent invaders. More generally, this creates an impossible historical conundrum, since the presence of an Arab population emerged as a notable community in the territory of Israel after the Muslim conquests of the seventh Century and that, thereafter, this population always cohabited with the Jewish and Christian communities that remained after the conquests.

More specifically, the aspect of this broad narrative relating to the inherent illegality of Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria implies a certain view of the history of the past century. One could even say that this narrative requires a sort of Orwellian rewriting of the past, to erase key moments that fit uneasily with such a narrative.

Indeed, it requires a rewriting of the recognition of a Jewish right to self-determination that followed the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It ignores the conditions under which Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza, were occupied respectively by Jordan and Egypt from 1947 to 1967. It ignores the circumstances of the 1967 Six Day War when Israel took control of this territory in a defensive war. It ignores the negotiated terms of the Oslo Agreements in relation to the distribution of authority in Judea and Samaria and the lack of final status of both borders and territories.

The wide-sweeping argument of illegality per se also ignores the diverse nature of each individual presence in these territories, in terms of where it is, how it came into existence, what legal regime applies to it, etc.

As in a courtroom, the issue comes down to the identification of competing narratives before the international community acting as a judge. Each side is therefore faced with the choice of which narrative to choose from. Some narratives can be reconciled. Others cannot.

The fact remains that the position that settlements are illegal as such serves a war-like narrative that denies any legitimacy to Jewish presence on the entire territory of Israel, as exemplified by numerous declarations, including a recent declaration by a Fatah official that Palestinian people will not relinquish a grain of soil from the land of historical Palestine from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River.

The December 20 announcement by the ICC prosecutor that she is ready to open a formal investigation with settlement-related activities at its core will undoubtedly be seen as a first narrative victory for those challenging Jewish presence in Israel. This can only be countered if another narrative is presented, not just in public discourse, but at the ICC itself, which provides genuine procedural opportunities for participation in the judicial debate, as we noted in an editorial last September.

Col. Richard Kemp The ICC decision on Israel would make Himmler proud

The ICC prosecutor accuses Israel, during the 2014 Gaza war, of using disproportionate force, willfully killing and injuring civilians, and intentionally attacking protected individuals and locations. She also alleges that the IDF committed war crimes against Gazans violently attempting to breach the border into Israel in 2018 and 2019.

I was present during these conflicts, witnessed, and was extensively briefed on IDF operations. I was a member of an investigation into the 2014 Gaza war by the High Level Military Group, an independent body of retired generals from Western armed forces and human rights experts. The group unanimously concluded that: "The IDF not only met its obligations under the Law of Armed Conflict, but often exceeded these on the battlefield."

Gen. Martin Dempsey, at the time Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, commented: "Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties." My first-hand observations during the Hamas-instigated Gaza border violence in 2018-19 echo these assessments.

The allegation that Israel committed war crimes by transferring parts of its civilian population into occupied territory can only be described as outrageous. The West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza are not "occupied territories." The suggestion that willing tenancy on this land by Jews is intrinsically illegal sees the ICC prosecutor adopting the Nazi concept of Judenrein, cleansing an area of Jews.

Despite situations where such crimes have actually occurred, including Northern Cyprus and Crimea, no prosecutions for war crimes in this category have ever been brought against anyone. Special treatment is reserved for the Jewish state.

"The IDF takes more steps than any other Army in the history of warfare to preserve the lives of innocent civilians on the battlefield" @COLRICHARDKEMP @i24NEWS_EN pic.twitter.com/ORw3M45Ixt
— Jeff Smith (@JeffSmithi24) December 26, 2019

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner: Israel's Defensive Arguments Fell on Deaf Ears at the ICC

Since September 2012, when the Palestinians' status was upgraded in the UN to an observer state, they have repeatedly warned that if Israel does not submit to their demands, they will turn to the International Criminal Court in The Hague and formally submit war crimes complaints.

Israel tried to persuade ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda that the tribunal has no authority to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since Israel is not a signatory to the Court's Rome Treaty and the Palestinians are not a state. Israel correctly argued that it has a strong and independent judiciary investigating every incident, and does not hesitate to prosecute and frequently convict whenever there is even the shadow of a violation of law. As such, the ICC has no authority to act as a super-review court for the Israeli justice system.

Every IDF tank and helicopter has an on-call legal advisor who is relied upon to instruct the units whether to shoot a shell or fire a missile when there is even the slightest question concerning collateral damage to civilians. But all of these defensive arguments seem to have fallen on deaf ears. The writer, an Israeli civil rights attorney, is president of the Shurat HaDin Law Center.

Mahmoud al-Habbash is Mahmoud Abbas's adviser on religious and Islamic affairs and also the chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority.

Yesterday he greeted a delegation of Christian. human rights and interfaith leaders from Belgium, where he assured them that "Palestine" has nothing against Jews and that the conflict is not a religious one.

As usual, the delegation didn't research who they were meeting with beforehand, and eagerly lapped up Habbash's words.

Habbash, who tells non-Muslims that the Palestinians are not interested in religious conflict, in 2014 he said that Jihad should be directed toward Jerusalem. "Jerusalem is still waiting. Jerusalem is the direction. Jerusalem is the address," Habbash stressed, adding that "evil hands" (Jews) were "conducting a filthy game" intended to weaken the Islamic nation and "to divert the compass away from its true direction."

In 2018 he was even more explicit that there was a coming religious war between Islam and Islam's enemies, which presumably include the people who visited him from Belgium:

As always, these delegations from around the world are so thrilled to meet with Palestinian leaders - but they never check out these very same leaders' hate beforehand. In the end, they legitimize it.

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Jordan's deal to buy natural gas from fields off Israel's coast is over five years old and the protests in Jordan to stop the deal have been going on for just as long.

They will be ineffective for a very simple reason: Jordan cannot keep the lights on.

This article from Ammon News describes which hours of the day the electricity will be shut off in Jordan's northern cities over the next several days.

In many areas there will be no electricity for between 3 and 6 hours today, Monday and Tuesday. They include most of Irbid, Ramtha City, the Jerash Governorate, the Al-Mafraq Governorate and elsewhere.

It does not sound like there is anything unusual in turning off electricity for a few hours a day.

Jordan is an energy-poor country and even if some people hate Israel so much to protest buying fuel from the hated Zionist entity, Jordan's king is not going to risk people rioting against him because they are freezing in the winter.

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RT reports that heavy rains caused a major landslide to destroy part of a Jewish cemetery in Beirut. Skeletons and gravestones collapsed into a major street, and municipal workers used heavy earth moving equipment to push the debris - and possibly the bodies - back into the cemetery.

Here's the video:

There are only a handful of Jews left in Lebanon.

The comments on YouTube from Lebanese citizens are almost uniformly disgusting and antisemitic. I only saw a handful of comments that were sympathetic to the tragedy. Most lookied like this:

This is the beginning of the collapse of Zionism, this is God's revenge for them

Let them take their graves with them, why leave them in Beirut
when the day comes, they say this is a Jewish land, and they demand that I give them their bones and save your soul

Jews 💀👽😢😔
My brother, even the grave rejects them

We will see in the near future this photo and hear the address saying its country is Israel has fallen and the Palestinians are now returning to their areas and lands and building Palestine again

Save the street, it has become impure

Glory to Allah

We wish to see the Jews killed in Palestine, God willing

Even the earth refuses their bones to be unclean to hell, sons of the Devil

Even the dead in the Arab countries are upset with her.

God's curse on the Zionists and the stinking Netanyahu

God willing, the Israeli settlement in Palestine collapses like the cemetery, say Amen, Lord of the Worlds 🤲

There is no god but God and
Muhammad is the Messenger of God, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him ...
There is neither power nor strength except in God the Most High, the Great ...
Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds ...

may Allah help

Thank you, a strong storm that annihilates Jewish impurity

God's wrath

Glory be to Allah

bones? We thought the Jews were slugs 😀😀

God is great and praise

My Lord is angry at them even when they are dead, Latif.
And you are healed, and there is no temple, as liars

Glory be to God, and with His praise, Glory be to God the Most High, Glory to the Holy One, Lord of angels and spirit

The land of Bilad al-Sham rejects Jews living and dead

Ha ha ha ha

May God curse them all, alive and dead

Divine justice does justice to our brothers in all the Arab countries that are oppressed by the stormy Jews. They did not destroy a single house and came to most of the cemetery. Glory be to God.

Now the Zionists will say that (the Temple of Solomon) is in Beirut .😅

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Chanukah music video night 5: The Dreidel Song (Yiddish) די דריידל ניגון - Shmueli Ungar

Who says Yiddish is a dead language? (There is one stanza in English as well.)

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12/26 Links Pt2: UNRWA’s ex-spokesman Chris Gunness glorifies Hamas hanging “collaborators”; Sky News Arabia blames Israel for Jewish exodus from Arab lands; Israel’s Eurovision show voted best of decade

From Ian:

UNRWA’s ex-spokesman Chris Gunness glorifies Hamas hanging “collaborators”

In a December 23, 2019 tweet that was just deleted today, Chris Gunness, the spokesman of UNRWA from 2007 until his departure earlier this year, made light about the hanging of “collaborators” by Hamas:

Why is a former top UN official glorifying murder?

This latest rant by Gunness is hardly his first:

2. In May, Chris Gunness went on a crazy rant about 'Judeo-Nazis'. When we sent him our 130-page report on UNRWA teachers who glorify Hitler, he lashed out at us. https://t.co/D197La4zRr

A reminder how some use the veneer of 'pro-Palestinian' to mask their hate. pic.twitter.com/55dOKe14g7
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 26, 2019

Gunness has previously justified the stabbing of Jews, even as he pretended that he didn’t:

Why do the EU, Germany, Britain and Canada give tens of millions of dollars annually to UNRWA, even though its leading officials glorify murder?

DELETED: Tweet by Chris Gunness, ex-UNRWA spokesman, glorifying Hamas hanging "collaborators." https://t.co/BIdA1zmpN3

Time and again he covered up for dozens of his UNRWA teachers who glorified Nazism, praised Hitler, spread genocidal antisemitism & incited Jihadi terrorism. pic.twitter.com/JhpW1athFr
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) December 26, 2019

Fatah set to celebrate 55 years since its first terror attack (not its founding)

Here's the logo for Fatah's 55th anniversary being celebrated on January 1:

Look at the map and see exactly how much Fatah wants to live side by side with Israel.

As we point out every year, January 1 is not the anniversary of Fatah's founding. That happened in 1959 according to Wikipedia, possibly a few years earlier.

No, it is the 55th anniversary of its first terror attack, an attempt to sabotage Israel's National Water Carrier.

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah doesn't celebrate its actual birth. It celebrates terror.

Every single year.

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If Arafat Were Alive Today He'd Be Horrified To Find Himself Entombed by Marwan Barghouti (Preoccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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If Arafat Were Alive Today He'd Be Horrified To Find Himself Entombed

by Marwan Barghouti

: Credit: BDalim via Wikimedia Commons

Kishon Prison, December 26 - Much has changed since our beloved Raïs passed away in 2004, some of which he would appreciate, and some of which he would decry. But perhaps the most important thing the legendary Yasser Arafat would notice if he were among the living today, and which would spark his unmitigated disapproval, is that he lies interred in Ramallah.

Abu Amar, as we often called him, came to personify the Palestinian national struggle; despite his bitter differences with leaders of other factions among our people, no one before or since could make a more convincing case for the last, and perhaps only, consensus figure among our leadership. If he lived and breathed now, he would certainly find discouraging the worsening divisions between, for example, Fatah and Hamas, and the fact that we stand nowhere appreciably closer to the hoped-for liberation of our homeland than when he departed this mortal coil. That, and the fact that he wouldn't be living and breathing for long under all that dirt and concrete.

Some might try to alert the Raïs to the momentous departure of Israel, settlers, soldiers, and all, from the entirety of the Gaza Strip in 2005, presaging, we all hoped, a similar development in the rest of Palestine. I contend he would remain unswayed by that observation, for three main reasons: no such retrenchment of Zionist settlements has followed - the opposite, they have only expanded in the decade-and-a-half since; Fatah lost its short-lived control of the Gaza Strip soon after, as irreconcilable rifts widened between the movement and Hamas; and his attention would be unable to focus on any supposed victories while entirely occupied by the dark, airless tomb in which he would find himself.

What would our larger-than-life, legendary leader say if he came back to life today? Would he marvel at the new town of Rawabi? Would he nod approvingly at the continued misery of those who dwell in refugee camps after four generations rather than admit the attempt to drive in the Jews into the sea in 1948 has failed? Would he criticize his political heirs' enriching themselves on funds provided for the benefit of ordinary Palestinians, when those leaders, after all, are just following his example? Would he see as wisdom or folly the continued refusal of any Palestinian leadership to outline a feasible, reasonable resolution to our conflict with Israel? In my assessment, he would panic at being entombed, and soon suffocate back to death.

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