Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

.@HRW's @KenRoth proves again how dishonest he is

This tweet from Ken Roth, head of Human Rights Watch, shows yet again what a dishonest and reprehensible person he is.

Roth is implying two falsehoods.

One is that he cares about antisemitism.

The other is that Israel didn't care about antisemitism until Netanyahu "weaponized" it against groups like Human Rights Watch.

Now, let's look at the actual article that Roth linked to, by David M. Weinberg. Here's what he says about Israel's attitude towards disapora antisemitism in its early days:

The State of Israel has not always seen the struggle against global anti-Semitism as its fight. For the first 25 years of Israel’s existence, the unspoken attitude in Jerusalem was that if Jews abroad had a problem with anti-Semites, they could always immigrate to Israel. Immersed in the business of building and defending the Jewish state, Israel’s leaders had no time for “troubles of the Diaspora.”

Attitudes began to change after the Yom Kippur War. The campaign of political delegitimization against Israel launched by Arab countries led to the infamous 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution at the United Nations, alongside an avalanche of propaganda that blended anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. Israel began to take notice. But still the prevailing attitude in Jerusalem was that anti-Semitism was a Diaspora problem for Diaspora Jews and their host countries.

However, after the 1980 Rue Copernic synagogue bombing in Paris and other terror attacks, then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin took the decision to have Israeli intelligence officials begin advising Jewish communities abroad on security measures. Response to global anti-Semitism thus found a concrete place on Israel’s national agenda.

Israel had to worry about its survival in its early days, it didn't have the luxury of protecting the world Jewish community. The despicable Roth twists that into saying that Israel didn't give a damn about antisemitism until it could selfishly conflate it with anti-Zionism.

The article explains quite well how anti-Zionism and antisemitism were conflated for as long as Israel existed, but especially with the "Zionism is Racism" resolution at the UN and through the infamous 2001 Durban conference of which HRW was an enthusiastic participant even as the US withdrew because of its antisemitism.

Weinberg notes:

Israel also has sought to dialogue with the international human rights community on these matters. But groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the World Council of Churches have studiously ignored the IHRA framework or rejected its definitions. In fact, they frequently stray into anti-Semitic territory in their incessant and fierce criticism of Israel. They also have consciously ignored the vast amounts of anti-Semitic materials emanating from Arab and Islamic countries.

This is an understatement. Roth has ignored left-wing antisemitism, urban US antisemitism as well as Arab antisemitism.

Since Roth only recognizes right-wing antisemitism, and ignored the rest, it shows that he doesn't care about antisemitism. He is the one who weaponizes antisemitism against his political enemies, not Israel.

Notice also that Roth chose to illustrate the tweet with a photo of Bibi at AIPAC, the "Jewish lobby." His subtext was not lost on his own antisemitic followers, some of whom tweeted back their own antisemitism with no pushback from Roth.

This tweet shows how incredibly dishonest and beneath contempt Ken Roth is, as he uses the mantle of "human rights" to promote his own antisemitic agenda.

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01/22 Links Pt1: Itamar Marcus: Palestinian Authority fights Jews to ‘defend’ all humanity; Israel's UN Ambassador, Speaking in Persian, Says Israel "Stands with Iranian People"

From Ian:

Itamar Marcus: Palestinian Authority fights Jews to ‘defend’ all humanity

This week’s marking of International Holocaust Remembrance Day must be both a commemoration of the past as well as a beacon for the future. If the victims are remembered and the survivors honored, but the world doesn’t implement the lessons that must be learned, we are inviting a recurrence of history’s worst horrors.

One fundamental lesson of the Holocaust is that the world must be vigilant to expose and eliminate all demonization that leads to the justification of murder, whether directed against Jews or any other group.

One of the great failures of the international community has been its tolerant attitude toward the Palestinian Authority’s systematic demonization of Jews.

Antisemitism is now endemic among Palestinians. According to an ADL Global 100 poll a few years ago, the Palestinians are the most antisemitic people in the entire world. Ninety-three percent of Palestinians believed that at least six of the 11 negative stereotypes tested were “probably true,” higher than Iraq at 92% and Yemen at 88%. For example, 91% of Palestinians believe “Jews have too much power in the business world,” 72% believe “Jews think they are better than other people,” and 88% of Palestinians say “Jews have too much control over global affairs.”

The pervasive Palestinian antisemitism is the direct result of the PA’s teachings. PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement recently produced a propaganda video purportedly about Jewish history in Europe which it publicized on Fatah’s official Facebook page. It teaches that Jews see themselves as superior – “We [Jews] are a nation that is above the [other] nations... only we are people, and all the others are our animals” – and others as inferior: “Non-Jews... according to their worldview are snakes.” The Jews, Fatah explained, “led the project to enslave humanity” and allied with Nazis to burn Jews “to accumulate wealth.” The Jews themselves established “ghettos in order to separate from other people out of arrogance and disgust for non-Jews.” It was in the ghettos, the documentary further lies, that the Jews schemed against the non-Jews, leading to European antisemitism: “[Jews] were hated because of their racism and their filthy behavior.”

David Singer: Another anti-Jewish Textbook Gets the Publisher’s Thumbs Down

The decision by Pearson Education Limited (Pearson) to withdraw Hilary Brash’s text book – The Middle East: Conflict, Crisis and Change, 1917-2012 – comes after trenchant criticism by blogger David Collier.

Collier questioned – among many other criticisms – why two timelines did not mention the Holocaust and why references to massacres of Jewish communities had been branded as "clashes".

Collier said:
"It is almost impossible for the untrained eye to pick apart fantasy from fiction."

A spokesman for Pearson said:
"An independent review of the texts by an educational charity found no overall evidence of anti-Israel bias. It identified some areas where the balance of sources could be improved and we are updating the texts and offering existing customers the option of replacing them for free. We always welcome feedback and are committed to creating engaging, accurate and objective content. We are the only awarding body that tackles this subject matter at both GCSE and international GCSE level. We do it as we think it is an important topic, even though it is likely to provoke emotive responses."

Pearson is the UK's largest organisation offering academic, vocational and work-based learning qualifications.

Brash’s book was a textbook for Pearson Edexcel General (GCSE) and International (iGCSE) Certificate of Secondary Education studies.

Last year, 2,341 students took the General unit on the conflict for GCSE and 1,509 for iGCSE.

Pearson’s decision follows McGraw Hill’s decisionin 2016 to trash copies of its textbook Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World.

Catherine Mathis – a spokeswoman for McGraw-Hill – then explained the company’s reasons for destroying the textbook – which contained four misleading and inaccurate maps of “Palestine”:
“As soon as we learned about the concerns with it, we placed sales of the book on hold and immediately initiated an academic review. The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards. We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book.”

The Palestinian Authority’s word and the media’s silence

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has admitted that it will not honor any agreements that violate Sharia (Islamic law). And the press, it seems, has declared that it won’t cover the Authority’s admission. The Authority’s decision illustrates the value of its word. And the media’s decision to ignore it illustrates its own value, as well.

PA Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh recently said, “The government adheres to Palestinian values and principles, and does not violate the Sharia. …Our religious and national values are above everything else, and this is in keeping with the decision of the Constitutional Court’s decision, and as a protection of our (women’s) honor, the unity of our society and the rule of law [emphasis added].”

The Constitutional Court’s decision, according to an Al-Monitor report, was for “international agreements” to “prevail over local laws, provided these are consistent with the Palestinian religious and cultural legacy.” That ruling was prompted by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signing the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2014.

But as the blogger Elder of Ziyon noted, the PLO did so “without any real intention of implementing it, but to make it look like they are a liberal modern state so they can use that impression to attack Israel at the ICC and elsewhere.”

The signing of CEDAW prompted a backlash, particularly among several Palestinian Arab clans in Hebron, as Al-Monitor noted in a Jan. 5, 2020 dispatch. However, as Elder of Ziyon highlighted, this “goes way beyond CEDAW and women’s rights. This goes to the fundamental issue that the PLO and the Palestinian Authority will happily sign agreements they have no intention of keeping. They will tell the West that they signed the agreement, yet will privately ignore the agreement – just as they have with CEDAW.”

Ma'an reports that Israel today allowed five pieces of earth moving equipment into Gaza after four years of refusals.

The equipment is meant to be used by the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility.

The vehicles, valued at $876,350, were purchased in 2015 with funding from the World Bank within the Gaza Water and Sanitation Systems Improvement Project.

The UNDP negotiated with Israel and an agreement was struck where Israel equipped the vehicles with GPS systems to ensure that they are used only on water projects and not for Hamas to dig tunnels.

Whether that control will be effective is anyone's guess. I don't know what would stop Hamas from simply removing the GPS units at night, digging tunnels and then returning the equipment. Drones would see if the vehicles are moving through Gaza, though.

Ironically, the equipment is from Caterpillar, the company that Israel haters want the world to boycott.

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An op-ed in Al Hayat al Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, says:

The Israeli colonial state is taking advantage of the 75th anniversary of the Holocaust in Europe during World War II to accuse Palestinians of being anti-semites when in fact it is the Arabs, including the Palestinian people, who are Semites, and they are afflicted by Zionist antisemitism, which the Israeli colonial state implements using the tools of repression for more than seventy years since the Palestinian Nakba in the year 1948 and until this day.

And the Palestinian people, and with them all the Arabs, were and are still more in solidarity with the followers of the Jewish religion, who were subjected to the Holocaust in Europe in the 1940s, and which was led by the Hitler regime for its determination against millions of innocent people in Germany, Poland and other western and eastern European countries. Nevertheless, the Zionist movement, supported by all the evil forces in Europe and America, exploited the Holocaust against the Jews to implement the evacuation project at the expense of the Palestinian people, and the catastrophe of its people by expelling its sons from their motherland Palestine to the exiles, and did not respond to the implementation of the international partition resolution No. 181 issued in November 1947, her crime continued to occupy and control 78% of historic Palestine, and not only did that, but in 1967 it occupied all historic Palestine in addition to the Egyptian Sinai, the Syrian Golan, the Shebaa Farms and the Lebanese village of Ghajar. She claimed on all occasions that she wanted "peace." But in reality, it tore up all the international legitimacy decisions related to the Arab-Zionist conflict, struck the foundations of the peace process references, and worked around the clock to criminalize Palestinian national rights and interests in full view of the world, and closed every horizon to avoid reaching an acceptable and possible political settlement determined by the agreements concluded between them and the leadership of the PLO, which made significant and unprecedented concessions by accepting the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital over the area of land it occupied on June 5, 1967, which equals 22% of the area of Palestine, and less than half of what is guaranteed by the Palestinian state partition resolution.

...[The Palestinians] are Semites, not Khazars, who are the Jews who came from Russia, Central Asia and the countries of Europe and other countries in the world....

One of the important lessons from the Holocaust was not to reproduce the Holocaust against the Semitic Palestinian people....

It is not enough for world leaders to shed tears for the victims of German Nazism, but their duty to shed tears for the victims of Zionism...

This laundry list of lies is the official Palestinian narrative about Jews, Israel and the Holocaust.

Ten years ago Palestinians and Arabs routinely denied the Holocaust in their media. The publicity was bad and they mostly abandoned this argument. Now they are just claiming to be the major victims of the Holocaust, that Jews aren't really Jews, and that they were more supportive of Jews in Europe than Zionists were.

When one lie stops getting traction, there are always ten more that can take its place.

This article was also published in other Arabic newspapers. As always, there is not a single Arab in official media who is publicly disagreeing with the lies.

See also:

"Arabs should use Holocaust as a political weapon" (2010)

Pal newspaper: Balfour Declaration worse than Holocaust (which is fake anyway)

Review and excerpts of Mahmoud Abbas' Holocaust denial book

Arabs consider the Holocaust a myth - until it becomes convenient for them to say Jews are worse than Nazis

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Once again, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs puts something out in Arabic in social media - and
Arabs are freaking out.

On Instagram, the IsraelArabic account said:

The Shakshuka dish is one of the most popular dishes among the people of Israel, and its history goes back to the Jewish immigrants from North Africa, and it consists traditionally of pieces of cooked and spiced tomatoes with boiled eggs🍅🇮🇱

There is nothing inaccurate there - it is talking about how Israel learned about and fell in love with the dish. It doesn't say Israel claims to have invented it.

But that is not how Arabs are interpreting it:

Roya News showed the post and after going through the supposed history of how Israel stole falafel and hummus, it says, "In the most recent theft of Palestinian and Arab heritage, they stole Shakshuka, and claim it is a Jewish breakfast!"

The Israel Foreign Ministry has certainly hit the jackpot with its Arabic pages. They attract a large audience, many fans, and they make Arabs who complain about it look infantile.

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01/21 Links Pt2: Polish Jews’ pre-Holocaust plea to Chamberlain: Let us into Palestine; Netanyahu to world leaders: Important they remember where we came from

From Ian:

Uncovered, Polish Jews’ pre-Holocaust plea to Chamberlain: Let us into Palestine

The sordid history of the May 1939 British White Paper, the notorious document with which the British all but slammed shut the doors of Palestine to European Jewry, has been documented many times. Less-remembered is how the (Jewish-owned) New York Times took British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s side the day after the White Paper was issued, incurring the wrath of Chaim Weizmann and the Zionist leadership. Virtually unknown, however, is that the Polish Jewish community had sent a desperate plea two months earlier to Chamberlain — a telegram begging him to keep the gates of Palestine open.

This is the story of that plea.
Although the dispatch of the telegram was reported at the time, this article apparently marks the first time the document itself is being published.

The missive was discovered after 82 years in a British Colonial Office file; there is no evidence that Chamberlain or anyone in his office discussed it or, indeed, ever even saw it.

By late 1938, the Jewish position in Europe, already precarious in Germany and countries under the threat of German invasion, had worsened dramatically. On September 30 of that year Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement, allowing Hitler to annex the Sudeten areas of Czechoslovakia.

Chamberlain naively believed appeasement would bring “peace in our time,” but in actuality, the opposite occurred — Chamberlain’s weakness emboldened Hitler to launch World War II just 11 months later. By June 1940, Hitler was bombing the civilian population of London.

The Munich Agreement also paved the way for the Holocaust, which began less than six weeks later with the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 9, 1938. Thousands of Jewish businesses and synagogues were destroyed throughout Nazi Germany. Hundreds of German Jews lost their lives in the overnight orgy of violence, a precursor to the fate awaiting six million other Jews throughout Europe. After Kristallnacht, no one could claim ignorance of Hitler’s intentions toward the Jews.

David Collier: Catching the antisemites – playing a whack a mole game

Whack a mole is a popular game based on a repetitive and futile task. You are faced with numerous holes in the ground and you can never be sure out of which one the mole will appear. Your role is to ‘whack them’ wherever the pesky animals surface. The task is endless.

Most of those who are seriously fighting antisemitism understand this concept perfectly. It is what most of us do. In the real world however, we are not waiting for a mole, but an antisemite. Our ‘holes’ are newspapers, institutions and educational environments such as the BBC, the Labour Party, national unions and on the university campus.

There are dozens if not 100s of skilful, dedicated fighters against antisemitism who have their eyes firmly fixed on the ‘holes’ – waiting for the antisemites to appear. They always do appear – we catch whichever ones we can and the task is endless.

The mole, the hole and the task at hand
This is one of the reasons I rarely publish news of success stories. The research behind this blog has been at the forefront of the battle against antisemitism for years. I have been responsible for countless headlines in every major media outlet in the UK and many abroad. On Saturday it was the Telegraph and yesterday I even made the Bookseller. Many exclusives give credit to my research – some do not. Publicity is never sought for publicity’s sake. The problem is inherent in the game we play – ‘catching an antisemite’ or ‘whacking the mole’ is of limited value if we do not follow through and ensure the hole itself is filled.

Is Pearson a victory?
I can use Pearson Education as the first example. Over the last few days I have received dozens of congratulatory messages over the withdrawal of the Pearson Education book. On the face of it, the story is a success. The Zionist Federation and UKLFI turned to me to with concerns about the bias in a school textbook. They asked me to do a proper analysis, which I did. I was left in no doubt – the textbook carried major historical distortions and many of the usual anti-Zionist messages. It wasn’t just a slight bias – but a rewrite of the historical pillars upon which the conflict was built. I published the report – Pearson went off to conduct a review – and recently announced that the book has indeed been withdrawn. Success claimed – the book is no longer available. Mole duly ‘whacked’.

But look closely at Pearson’s announcement. They claim they found ‘no overall evidence of anti-Israel bias’. This is a lie. I know it is a lie – and I am pretty certain that they know it is a lie. In their own response they claim they need to ‘rebalance’ sources. How can there be no bias if the sources are unbalanced? Might I suggest they invest in lessons in verbal reasoning or logic solving. They can order helpful textbooks from their own warehouse.

None of this matters. Pearson has shareholders and a duty to look after its own credibility. We do not need a public admission that their processes are flawed.

Less than half of French confident of government ability to tackle anti-Semitism

Less than half of the French public, Jews and non-Jews alike, have confidence that the country’s leaders can tackle what is seen as a widespread problem of anti-Semitism in the country, a survey released Monday found.

Nearly three-quarters of the public said that racism against Jews is plaguing all areas of French society, according to the American Jewish Committee’s Paris branch.

“But alignment on the antisemitism threat to French society, and the government’s weak responsiveness, does not mitigate the fears of Jews about their safety and future in France,” the group said in a statement.

Only 47 percent of Jews and 48% of the general public have confidence in French President Emmanuel Macron tackling anti-Semitism, the survey found. The government had the confidence of just 46% of Jews and 41% of the public in dealing with the issue, while local elected official fared better, with 58% of Jews and 56% of the public expressing confidence in their abilities.

Overall, 73% of the French public and 72% of Jews said that anti-Semitism is a problem that affects all of French society.

However, there were significant differences between how Jewish and non-Jewish people felt about the severity of anti-Semitism in the country.

The level of anti-Semitism is high according to 67% of Jewish respondents, while only 47% of the general public agreed. Just 27% of Jews felt the level is low, compared to 22% of the general public.

Cartoon of the day: When UNRWA employees go out for drinks

My series of re-purposing single-panel cartoons continues...

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What should Jews prioritize? (UPDATE: A response)

IfNotNow wrote a tweet, trying to use a story in the Forward to make an anti-Israel point.

Jewish community invest more in our vital cultural institutions at home and less in supporting oppression abroad challenge 2020https://t.co/F9FnljPSBl
— IfNotNow🔥 (@IfNotNowOrg) January 20, 2020

Now, how many members of IfNotNow bother to learn Yiddish? How many really care about Yiddish culture? The article about YIVO laying off its librarians was just used as an excuse to say that, look, Jews are giving more to an awful Israel than to a vital effort to preserve Yiddish culture.

If you care about Judaism, where should your charity dollars go? What should be your priority?

This Yiddish topic indicates how anti-Zionists think.

The Yiddish that YIVO preserves, and that organizations like the Workman's Circle celebrate and study, is essentially a dead language. For historical and sociological reasons it is nice to study the history of Jews arriving in the US in the 19th and 20th centuries and their media, but outside a tiny number of people who keep it barely breathing there is nothing left.

They are interested in pretending to preserve a culture that exists only in history, one that doesn't affect their lives today. That is the Judaism of the socialist Left.

But there is another Yiddish that is thriving - the Yiddish of the Chassidic communities in New York. They have newspapers, magazines, children's periodicals and books. It doesn't need preservation - Yiddish newspapers have hundreds of pages in an era where secular newspapers are shrinking.

No one in the secular Yiddish community is interested in current Yiddish culture. Because it is the Yiddish of a living, breathing people who are committed to living Yiddishkeit. Even though it is centered on the anti-Zionist Satmar chassidic community, this is not something that the socialist Left wants anything to do with.

Yiddish is the microcosm of how people think of Judaism.

If you care about Judaism, you would want to prioritize Jewish education, Jewish culture, and Jewish living today, not yesterday. Preserving the memory of the Holocaust is important but preserving Judaism today is more important. Living Jews are a higher priority than martyred Jews. Keeping them Jewish and proud should be the project that proud Jews support.

Right now, Israel is where that is happening more than anywhere else. The most innovative and creative Jewish education and cultural initiatives are in Israel. If anything, we need to export their ideas to Jews in the diaspora. American Jews are hanging on, Israeli Jews are thriving. In Israel, Judaism is happening today, not the turn of the 20th century.

There may be exceptions but "progressive" anti-Zionist Jews are more interested in dead Judaism than in Judaism that demands participation, creativity and innovation.

If they cared about Judaism, they would care about Israel.

UPDATE: I received a response that is worth reading.

Elder,

In your recent post, you started off by attacking If Not Now? for pretending to care about Yiddish, and segued straight into attacking those who actually do care about Yiddish.

I don’t get offended easily, but I was surprised to learn that my attitude toward Yiddish is a microcosm of my attitude toward Israel, so that if I study and enjoy Yiddish I am a progressive anti-Zionist, who turns his back on living Jews to hang out with dead ones. I am 69 years old. My father’s first language was Yiddish. I have been studying Yiddish for nine years, mostly in his honor, and have made some progress. He is dead, but he can’t help it, and I try not to hold it against him when we chat, as we do now and then.

As a young man I studied in Israel and learned Hebrew. I speak it much better than I do Yiddish. I am a strong supporter of Israel. Where did you get the idea that loving Yiddish and support for Israel are mutually exclusive? That’s not true among my friends. Nor is it true of Ruth Wisse, the most distinguished, intelligent and humane living Yiddishist. I doubt that you know who she is. I also doubt that you know Yiddish, the language in which your ancestors expressed their Yiddishkeit for a thousand years.

Your view of Yiddish and Yiddishists is both inaccurate and 40 years out of date. Yiddish scholars of today study the living Yiddish of the Hasidim all the time, both as a spoken language and as the basis for a newly emerging journalism and literature. The Yiddish-speaking world is also newly aware that the Yiddishists have created and preserved resources (dictionaries, grammars, immense quantities of Yiddish texts) which they may find useful.

But I have a confession to make. I belong to the League for Yiddish, mostly because I studied with its former head, Sheva Zucker, and she is a friend. I also am a member of YIVO—just before this news broke I sent them $54. And I belong to the Yiddish Book Center That’s about $150/yr. I invest in this appalling dead language, when I could be supporting living Jews. Sorry!

Next time try to think a little before you attack whole classes of Jews about whom you know nothing. This is sin’at khinam. And this isn’t the first time I have encountered this unreasoning hatred among Jews of the handful of us who express our “khibas tsiyon” partly through Yiddish. What harm are we doing you?

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01/21 Links Pt1: Warning Iran, PM says lesson of Auschwitz is to confront evil when it’s small; PA denial of Jewish history: "The Muslims have the absolute right" to the Western Wall

From Ian:

Warning Iran, PM says lesson of Auschwitz is to confront evil when it’s small

On the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again drew a parallel between the Nazi genocide of Jews and Iran’s nuclear program.

“So we now have the capacity to defend ourselves, and I think the lesson of Auschwitz is: One, stop bad things when they’re small, and Iran is a very bad thing. It’s not that small but it could get a lot bigger with nuclear weapons, and I think the first thing is stop that,” he said in a television interview with TBN.

“And second, understand that the Jews will never ever again be defenseless in the face of those who want to destroy them. These are the two things that I think are important.”

The full interview with the Christian network will be broadcast on Tuesday evening. In a short clip released earlier during the day, the prime minister lamented the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust and stressed that attempts to wipe out the Jewish people have not ceased.

“A third of the Jewish people went up in flames. There was nothing we could do,” he said.

“Now, after the Holocaust and the State of Israel was established, the attempts to destroy the Jewish people have not disappeared,” Netanyahu said. “Iran openly declares every day that it wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. And by the way, Israel has today a population of more than six million Jews.”

Netanyahu On Trump Taking Out Soleimani: ‘A Tremendous Achievement’ That Accomplished Two Key Goals

In an interview with TBN that airs in full Tuesday night, a preview of which has been released exclusively to The Daily Wire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed President Trump’s decision to target Iran’s top military leader, Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force. The removal of Soleimani, said the Israeli leader, is a “tremendous achievement” that accomplished two key priorities at once.

Asked how Soleimani’s death will “change the Middle East,” Netanyahu told TBN Television Networks President Matthew Crouch that he believes that, first of all, “it sends a message of American determination and American strength — it’s a deterrence, a very powerful one.”

“Secondly, Soleimani himself was the architect and the generator of Iran’s empirical [goals], the Iranian empire,” Netanyahu continued. “Iran is predominantly Shiite. [Soleimani] would go into a neighboring country, say Iraq, and he would find Shiites and would create Shiite militias … manned by Iraqi Shiites but commanded by his own officers, Iranian officers. The same he would do in Syria, same he would do in Yemen.”

“He was beginning to choke the Middle East,” the prime minister stressed. “He wanted to conquer the entire Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula and ultimately destroy Israel. He was beginning to push his forces right next to Israel in Syria — and we responded to them very forcefully, we hit back.”

“But it is important to understand that Iran’s expansion into this horrible empire that brings misery and death to untold numbers of people in the Middle East—by the way, Jews and Arabs alike, Christians Muslims Jews, everyone,” said Netanyahu. “This man was an engine of destruction and conquest and subjugation. And his removal, I think, helps roll back these forces of tyranny.”

US scolds UNDOF for equating Israeli defense with Syrian aggression

The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), which maintains a buffer zone on the Israeli-Syrian border, issues regular reports of violations by both sides.

In September, it mentioned that Israel reported a projectile being shot at Mount Hermon:
The Israel Defense Forces informed UNDOF that, on 1 June, projectiles had been fired from the Bravo [Syrian] side towards a ski resort on Mount Hermon on the Alpha [Israeli] side. On 2 June, military observers of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) in Observer Group Golan, who are under the operational control of UNDOF, inspected the site, which was about 100 m south of an Israel Defense Forces position, and found a crater and an indication that a projectile had been fired from an east-south-easterly direction.

Israel was also found to violate the cease fire:

The military violations on the Alpha side included the presence of Iron Dome systems and multiple rocket launcher systems within 10 km of the ceasefire line, which are considered unauthorized military equipment in the area of limitation pursuant to the terms of the Disengagement of Forces Agreement.

Iron Dome, which is completely defensive, was called out as a violation.

The US, when writing a memo in support of continuing UNDOF operations in December, noted this jarring fact:

The United States believes UNDOF continues to have a vital role to play in preserving stability between Israel and Syria. We respect and recognize the Mission’s impartiality. This Council should be under no illusion however, that there is any equivalence between the noted violations on the Israeli and Syrian sides.

On November 19, four rockets were fired towards Israel from inside Syria. Those rockets were all intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system, likely saving the lives of civilian men, women, and children. While UNDOF has flagged Iron Dome emplacements as technical violations of the Disengagement agreement, no comparison should be drawn between these defensive systems and Syrian violations.

Another interesting point from the US about how UNDOF might be affected by President Trump's recognizing the Golan as part of Israel:

Much has been said about President Trump’s announcements earlier this year recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Today’s renewal demonstrates that the United States is committed to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement, and that this announcement in no way undermines UNDOF’s mandate.

(h/t Irene)

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Shin Bet says 560 attacks thwarted in 2019; Hamas claims 166 attacks

JPost reports:

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Service) thwarted 560 significant terrorist attacks in 2019, more than 300 of them shootings, it said Monday.

Ten would-be suicide bombers and four attempted kidnappings were thwarted, Shin Bet director Nadav Argaman said.

Meanwhile, Hamas issued its own statistics for 2019:

The harvest of resistance in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem enabled the resistance to kill 5 Zionists, injure 153 others, carry out 38 shootings, 30 stabbings and attempted stabbings, 11 car rammings and attempted assassinations, 87 planting of explosives and throwing explosive devices.

Here are the five Israelis killed in terror attacks mentioned by Hamas:

7 February 2019 - Ori Ansbacher, 19, of Tekoa, was brutally assaulted and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist while walking in the Ein Yael forest southwest of Jerusalem.
17 March 2019 - Gal Keidan, 19, of Be’er Sheva, a sergeant in the Artillery Corps’, was stabbed and killed in a terror attack at the Ariel Junction. After stabbing him, the Palestinian attacker subsequently stole his weapon before shooting him and two other people in separate locations.
18 March 2019 - Rabbi Achiad Ettinger, 47, father of 12 from the settlement of Eli, was critically wounded while driving past the scene of the terrorist attack at the Ariel Junction in the northern West Bank on Sunday, 17 March 2019. He succumbed to his wounds the following day.
8 August 2019 - Dvir Sorek (19) from the settlement Ofra, a soldier in the IDF Hesder program, was abducted and brutally murdered while returning to his yeshiva from a trip to Jerusalem. His body was found in the early hours of Thursday morning.
23 August 2019 - Rina Shnerb (17), a resident of Lod, was murdered when terrorists detonated an IED device near a popular tourist and recreation site situated near the West Bank settlement of Dolev. Her father and elder brother who were with her were seriously wounded.

This doesn't include the victims of rocket attacks last year:

5 May 2019 - Moshe Agadi, 58, father of four from the city of Ashkelon, was critically wounded while standing outside his house early on Sunday morning (5 May). Magen David Adom paramedics provided emergency medical treatment at the site and immediately evacuated him to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Medical Center, where he was unfortunately pronounced dead on arrival.
5 May 2019 - Ziad Alhamada, 49, father of seven, was critically wounded when a rocket hit the factory where he worked in Ashkelon. The second victim in today’s attacks, he was rushed to hospital but died of his wounds shortly thereafter.
5 May 2019 - Moshe Feder, 68, of Kfar Saba, the third of four victims in today’s attacks, was on his way to his place of work at Kibbutz Erez when his car was struck by an anti-tank missile. He was evacuated to the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon where he succumbed to his injuries.
5 May 2019 - Pinchas Menachem Prezuazman, 21, of Ashdod, a rabbinical student and member of the ultra-Orthodox Gur sect, was the fourth casualty in today’s attacks. The father of an infant child, he was critically wounded by shrapnel while rushing to a shelter in Ashdod. He was evacuated to a hospital but later died of his wounds.
7 July 2019 - Rivka Jamil (89) of Ashkelon died on Sunday from wounds sustained while running for a bomb shelter during the last round of violence from the Gaza Strip in May 2019.
17 September 2019 - Nina Ganisdanova (74) of Ashkelon succumbed to wounds sustained during a rocket barrage launched from the Gaza Strip which hit her apartment building in Ashkelon on 12 November 2018. Another tenant of the building, Mahmoud Abu Asba (48), a Palestinian father of six from the village of Halhul, north of Hebron in the West Bank, was also killed in the attack.

Hamas commented on the Shin Bet report, saying that it is proof that the Palestinian Authority is disgracefully cooperating with Israel.

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Arabic media is reporting that international BDS movement expressed its strong condemnation and rejection of the participation of Israel in the Dubai International Expo 202

In a statement issued on Monday, the campaign called on all countries and parties participating in the exhibition, which is scheduled to be held in October, to boycott the expo and withdraw from participation. It also called on the United Arab Emirates to refuse to receive the delegation of Israel on its soil and cancel Israel's participation from the exhibition

The campaign said: "The boycott of the Israeli occupation state and confronting the phenomenon of normalization in all its forms is a collective responsibility and a necessity for the struggle in order to deprive the occupation and its institutions of some of the most important tools of its hegemony and control over our society and our capabilities."

Back in the early days of Israel, when the Arab boycott was explicitly against Jews and not Israel, the Arab League expanded the boycott to include boycotting anyone doing business with Israel (the secondary boycott.) No one could have ever imagined that an Arab League state would be the object of such a boycott for its relations with Israel.

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