Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, February 09, 2020

Yes, the PFLP links to "children's NGO" DCI-P are real and relevant

From TOI last week:

Israel is angry at Belgium for what Jerusalem says is a systematic campaign to demonize the Jewish state at the United Nations, including by hosting a “radical” pro-Palestinian activist next week at the Security Council.

In February, Belgium holds the rotating presidency of the council and is using this privilege to invite speakers who, according to fuming Jerusalem officials, hold an extreme anti-Israel bias. They were especially outraged about Brussels inviting Brad Parker, a senior official for a nonprofit called Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), to speak at the council’s session.
“Belgium has positioned itself as one of the Security Council member states most hostile toward Israel,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat told The Times of Israel on Thursday. “Inviting a one-sided radical activist such as Mr. Parker to brief the Security Council is yet another negative record.”

Israel’s Ambassador to Belgium Emmanuel Nahshon on Thursday took to Twitter to express regret at Brussels inviting “terror supporters” to the Security Council. “This is extremely disappointing and we will express our outrage in the strongest possible terms.”

Unfortunately, @BelgiumMFA @BelgiumUN has chosen to invite terror supporters to a Security Council debate . This is extremely disappointing and we will express our outrage in the strongest possible terms.
— Emmanuel Nahshon (@EmmanuelNahshon) February 6, 2020

I posted a tweet pointing to an NGO-Monitor report detailing some of the links between DCI-Palestine and the PFLP.

Here is @NGOmonitor's detailed report on ties between @DCIPalestine and the PFLP terror group.@EmmanuelNahshon is 100% correct.@PeterBeinart, @jvplive and other terror apologists like to pretend that this information isn't true.https://t.co/XGXkYL6Hii
— Elder Of Ziyon ҉ (@elderofziyon) February 7, 2020

A group I never heard of responded:

And here is our report on @NGOmonitor, which spreads guilt-by-association allegations to advance its partisan agenda:
SHRINKING SPACE: Defaming human rights organizations that criticize the Israeli occupationhttps://t.co/lOwbYKatr3
— Policy Working Group-Israel (@IsraelPolicy) February 9, 2020

So I looked at their report. The relevant part says:

The second tactic that NGO Monitor employs to defame Palestinian NGOs is associating them with armed groups, in particular by claiming they have alleged ties with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is listed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the US and the EU.
NGO Monitor says it has exposed ties between Palestinian NGOs and the PFLP. However, it has not presented any evidence that the accused organizations ever participated in terrorist activities or violence. It also has not explained how the organizations’ work – field research, documentation, legal work, international advocacy – is in any way related to terrorism.
The accusations are largely based on references to outdated information, on a small number of cases in the 1970s and 1980s, on selective internet inquiries and on guilt-by-association. Employees of those organizations are often accused of being “affiliated”, “linked”, or of having “alleged ties”, sometimes via family relations, with terrorist organizations or their leaders. Apart from very few exceptions, no trials or formal indictments have been initiated by Israeli authorities against employees or board members of Palestinian organizations relevant to NGO Monitor’s accusations and relating to the period of their involvement in the organization.

DCI-P lies in its reports. I've proven that many times over. Here are two of the "innocent children" they claim Israel killed for no reason:

Moreover, when it claims that 75% of children arrested by Israel are tortured, their methodology is laughable - they look for kids that will say what they want, and if they find inconsistencies in their stories, they go back and prompt the kids to change the stories.

The funny part is that this group accuses NGO-Monitor of bias, but its members seem to all be associated with the NGOs (like B'Tselem) that NGO-Monitor goes after. Moreover, this group, which seems to only have one report issued, accuses NGO-Monitor of no transparency in its sources of funding (which isn't true) - but they told me that they are all volunteers and not funded by anyone. Yet this report says it was funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, associated with Germany's democratic socialist Left party.

In other words, Leftists are defending the leftist/terrorist NGOs whose entire purpose is to bash Israel.

Reporting the ties between the PFLP and various NGOs, including DCI-P, is not meant to show a direct link between the NGOs and specific terror acts. It shows that the groups themselves have an agenda that aligns with that of the PFLP, which as a Marxist/socialist terror group is well versed in using Soviet-style propaganda against Israel - and there is no more effective propaganda nowadays then to accuse Israel of human rights abuses.

NGO-Monitor isn't the only group to show ties between the PFLP and DCI-P. Israel itself has issued a report that shows that (at least until May 2018 when there seems to have been a major re-organization) many senior DCI-P members were also PFLP members.

The anti-Israel Left is purposefully ignoring the facts that NGOs like DCI-P lie, liberally, and they try to cloud the critiques with half-baked information. I've proven the lies - go after my proof if you want to defend a terror-supporting group.

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Faisal al Qassem is a popular host of an Al Jazeera TV debate show "The Opposite Direction" and is celebrated as being willing to break taboos in the Arab world. His Twitter account has over 5.5 million followers.

On Saturday, he tweeted:

Ha - The majority of Arabs, if they want to insult you, describe you as "Zionist", while knowing that the most successful project of the last century and the present is the Zionist project, while all Arab projects, especially those of the Arab nationalists, have failed. That's why, dear, before you use the word Zionist as a curse, you must first reach the shoes of Zionism and then we can talk.

He followed that up with:

When you read the Arab comments against the Zionists on Twitter and how sharp they are, the impression is that the Arab tanks are at the gates of Jerusalem, while their rulers lick the shoes of the Zionists under the table in order to keep them happy and keep themselves in their thrones, the last of which is the General of Sudan who sold the "Three no's" [of Khartoum] with a crust of bread and rushed to meet [Netanyahu] like the hired help.

People protested his comments, calling them Zionist, to which he responded:

As you can see, nearly 82% of his followers agree that Zionism has been more successful than Arab nationalism.

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This passage is from the very beginning of an article in the Fatah website denying any Jewish connection, and claiming ancient Palestinian ties, to Jerusalem:

"Hundreds of millions of Muslims across the globe have no doubt that Palestine is Arab from eternity, and that Jerusalem is its eternal capital ... and that there is no meaning to Palestine without Jerusalem, no meaning to Jerusalem without the Al-Aqsa Mosque, no meaning to the Al-Aqsa Mosque without the Al-Buraq Wall..."

The "Al Buraq Wall" is what Palestinians have called the Kotel, the Western Wall, for only the past century. Before that there was no consensus of which wall surrounding the Temple Mount was considered to be the one that Mohammed supposedly entered in his night journey, although evidence points strongly to the southern wall, with its double gate, as described by Charles D. Matthews in 1932:

The evidence of Muqaddasi (985 A. D.), a citizen of Jerusalem itself, is unquestionably for the southern location. Muqaddasi speaks of the “Two gates of the Prophet,” Babai an-Nabi, in such a way as to make the identification with the Double Gate quite positive. The descriptions of Nasir-i-Khusrau, a Persian historian who visited Jerusalem in 1047 A. D., is quite arresting. He says (as quoted by the English scholar Le Strange, in his very excellent book, “Palestine Under the Moslems,” p. 178) : “One such as these (gates) is called Bab an-Nabi (or the Gate of the Prophet)-peace and blessing upon him, which opens toward the Qiblah point-that is, toward the south (toward Mecca). . . . The Prophet. . . on the night of his ascent into heaven passed into the Noble Sanctuary through this passageway, for the gateway opens on the road from Makkah.” What could be clearer? And from the hand of a Jerusalemite and reputable historian!

Either way, no Muslim would ever say that the Buraq Wall is more sacred than the Al Aqsa Mosque. To say that the mosque has no meaning without the Kotel - the one place that Jews have venerated for centuries when banned from even visiting the Temple Mount itself - is proof positive that the entire Palestinian narrative is a series of lies.

Is there any clearer evidence that the entire Palestinian claim is not meant to assert any historic or legal rights, but to destroy Jewish rights? Literally every Jewish shrine in the Holy Land is claimed by the Palestinians to be their own, which is a hell of a coincidence. And they have been strident in saying that the Kotel was theirs as well, the Palestinian TV only recently telling viewers that Palestinians must defend their rights to the site with their lives.

The rest of the Fatah article is filled with such lies, as in this section still in the first paragraph, where it says "history proves that Palestine with its capital, Jerusalem, is Arab before the feet of the first Jew entered (Joshua bin Nun.)" The Palestinians now claim to be descended from the Jebusites, a tribe that has no evidence of existence beyond the Jewish Scriptures, who have no evidence of being Arab.

Beyond the obvious fact that Jerusalem wasn't the capital of any other nation besides Israel/Judah and there was never a "Palestine."

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02/08 Links: The BDS Movement Is Racist and Violent; The Campaign to Sever the Democratic Alliance With AIPAC; MLB will not schedule any more promotions of Roger Waters

From Ian:

The BDS Movement Is Racist and Violent

Furthermore, the movement may present itself as peaceful, but there have been countless cases of its activists creating hostile and potentially dangerous environments for Jewish people on university campuses. BDS supporters will counter these claims by pointing to the movement’s 2018 Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Yet this nomination means very little. The BDS movement was nominated by Norwegian parliamentarian Bjørnar Moxnes — the chairman of the far-left Red Party, which holds a single seat of 169 in the Norwegian parliament. This nomination is a farce, and means nothing.

What’s more important is BDS’ constant link to known terrorist organizations. One such example of this is the global leadership of the BDS operation — the BDS National Committee’s — membership. which includes the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, which itself includes several groups designated as terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

In addition to this, tens of financial accounts linked to BDS have been shut down in the US and EU in the past few years, due to ties with terrorist groups. In an interview from late 2010, even Barghouti has spoken in support of violent attacks on “settlers” (i.e. civilians), calling them “legitimate targets.”

The BDS movement has consistently been linked with terrorist organizations, and its supporters have become aggressive and violent towards any and all who disagree with their view of Israel. The methods that the movement urges show little regard for hurting civilians, even Palestinian ones — all the while, creating a divide between Israeli people and Palestinians.

There is a good reason why so many world leaders, prominent politicians and government institutions view BDS as toxic, given the actions of its followers. BDS does not belong in any conversation about anti-racism.

The Campaign to Sever the Democratic Alliance With AIPAC

Warren's eagerness to back the AIPAC boycott movement did not come as a surprise to mainstream pro-Israel Democrats, who say they have long been battling efforts by the party's left wing to mainstream anti-Israel causes.

One Jewish Democratic operative with ties to AIPAC told the Washington Free Beacon that IfNotNow's influence on the party is becoming increasingly problematic.

"There are many reasons for [Warren] not to attend AIPAC's Policy Conference, but getting pressured by an extremist group is not one of them," said the source, who would only discuss the matter anonymously. "IfNotNow has no place in anything close to the mainstream political discourse, including within the Democratic primary."

The push to boycott AIPAC is by no means new. Liberal advocacy groups have long viewed AIPAC as overly hawkish on Israel and out of line with the Democratic Party's evolving stance on the Jewish state. Liberal mainstays like the anti-war MoveOn group have demanded Democratic leaders boycott Israel for some time. This has dovetailed with growing support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which seeks to wage economic warfare on Israel.

Support for these movements has been building in the Democratic Party for years, with one of the most notable examples playing out at the 2012 convention, when a majority of Democratic conference goers audibly booed the state of Israel.

An AIPAC spokesman would not comment on the issue when contacted by the Free Beacon.

Tonight, Elizabeth Warren nodded along and smiled as a questioner slandered AIPAC as "an unholy alliance" of "Islamophobes," "anti-semites, and white nationalists" that perpetuates "bigotry"

Without blinking, Warren then agreed to boycott next year's AIPAC conference pic.twitter.com/U2MJ6DCTdZ
— Zach Parkinson (@AZachParkinson) February 7, 2020

AIPAC apologizes for ad slamming ‘radicals in the Democratic Party’

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) issued an apology on Saturday after sponsoring a Facebook ad that slammed “radicals in the Democratic Party” and blamed them for “pushing their antisemitic policies down the throats of the American people.” It also called supporters to sign a letter to Democrats in Congress “don’t abandon Israel.”

According to the Facebook ad details, between 25,000 and 30,000 people saw it and AIPAC paid between $1,000 to $1,500 to promote in on the social media platform, primarily for people ages 55 and above. The ad is no longer active.

“We offer our unequivocal apology to the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress who are rightfully offended by the inaccurate assertion that the poorly worded, inflammatory advertisement implied,” AIPAC said in a statement that was shared on Twitter on Saturday.

“We deeply appreciate the broad and reliable support that Democrats in Congress have consistently demonstrated for Israel. The bipartisan consensus that Democrats and Republicans have established on this issue forms the foundation of the US-Israel relationship,” the statement read.

“The ad, which is no longer running, alluded to a genuine concern of many pro-Israel Democrats about a small but growing group, in and out of Congress, that is deliberately working to erode the bipartisan consensus on this issue and undermine the US-Israel relationship,” the apology continued.

02/07 Links P2: Bethany Mandel: The Jewish Left is trying to hijack Israel; Warren agrees with supporter that AIPAC is an 'unholy alliance' of 'Islamophobes,' 'white nationalists'

From Ian:

Bethany Mandel: The Jewish Left is trying to hijack Israel

Now the American Jewish Left is using this World Zionist Congress election to try to turn the financial support of the Jewish people against Israel, and they’re not even trying to hide it.

Reporting on the election, the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz explained,

The list includes names like Peter Beinart, the liberal writer; Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal Middle East policy group J Street; and Sheila Katz, the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women.

No, it’s not an ad for a symposium on the Upper East Side, but a slate of first-time candidates seeking seats in the 38th World Zionist Congress, the legislative authority of a 120-year-old Zionist organization that helps determine the fate of $1 billion in spending on Jewish causes.

The candidates hope to steer funding away from Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank and toward causes like expanding rights for women and minorities. The second paragraph of the group’s platform notes its opposition to “the current policy of permanent occupation and annexation,” which it calls “unjust” and a threat to Israeli democracy.

Liberal Jewish groups already hold a majority of the American Jewish community’s 145 seats in the congress, but they have mainly used them to advocate for more religious pluralism in Israel. The new candidates hope to nudge those groups toward addressing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank more directly and to registering the unhappiness of the American Jewish community with the status quo there.

“My view of the American Jewish establishment and the Zionist establishment is that it is morally corrupt by defending the indefensible, for defending an occupation that holds millions of people occupied,” Beinart said in an interview.
Not content to allow politicized leftists take over the Congress and the money it could allocate, more right-leaning (religiously and politically) Jews are pushing back. In his endorsement of one of the slates, the Orthodox Israel Coalition, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro explained, “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish groups like J Street have mobilized to direct funding toward causes that run directly counter to the interests of the organization, including support of BDS.”

It remains to be seen how effective this effort will be to hijack a billion dollars in money meant to support Israel, not undermine it. This little-known election could have far-reaching and disastrous ramifications for Israeli security for years to come if liberals get their way.

Netanyahu Makes Endorsement In American World Zionist Congress Election

We’re extremely concerned about what will happen if the ZOA Coalition does not do well in this WZC election.

Our opponents used the power they obtained in previous WZC elections to stop Israel’s national institutions from purchasing lands in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and even in the Negev. This anti-Jewish discrimination could become even worse.

Shockingly, at the most recent World Zionist Congress, our opponents tried to pass a resolution smearing Israel’s tolerant, multi-faceted society as replete with “institutional racism.” We were only able to defeat this resolution — which reminded us of the notorious 1975 United Nations “Zionism is racism” resolution — by one vote.

An opposition group now openly says that it is running in the WZC election to “divert” the $1 billion per year of Israel’s national institution funding “away from the entrenchment of the occupation.”

“Occupation” is a false propaganda term used to attack Jewish persons’ rights to continue living on historic Jewish lands designated for the Jewish homeland under international law. Anti-Israel boycott groups use the term “occupation” to demonize Israel. It is frightening that groups running in the WZC election are using the same rallying cry.

The ZOA Coalition (slate #11) needs many more votes now, so that the next attempt to use the World Zionist Congress to smear Israel has no chance of passing. The full slate includes the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Aish HaTorah, Students Supporting Israel, NORPAC, The Lawfare Project, American Friends of Likud, Dov Hikind’s Americans Against Antisemitism, One Israel Fund, Young Jewish Conservatives, Z Street, American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, American Friends of Likud, Chovevei Zion, Eretz Israel Movement, National Conference on Jewish Affairs, major Russian-Jewish and Persian-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish groups, Beta Israel, and more.

Warren appears to agree with supporter that AIPAC is an 'unholy alliance' of 'Islamophobes,' 'white nationalists'

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., raised eyebrows on Thursday night for appearing to agree with a town hall attendee that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is an "unholy alliance" of "Islamophobes, anti-Semites, and white nationalists."

At a New Hampshire event, a woman who describes herself as an "American Jew" expressed her disdain for the pro-Israel group and asked whether or not Warren would vow not to attend the upcoming annual conference in March.

"I'm an American Jew and I'm terrified by the unholy alliance that AIPAC is forming with Islamophobes and anti-Semites and white nationalists," the attendee began. "And no Democrat should legitimize that kind of bigotry by attending their annual policy conference."

Warren nodded along as she took a swig from her water bottle.

The attendee continued. "I'm really grateful that you skipped the AIPAC conference last year and so my question is if you'll join me in committing to skip the AIPAC conference this year."

"Yeah," Warren simply replied and waved off the attendee.

She later said about her views on U.S.-Israel relations, "For America to be a good ally of Israel and the Palestinians we need to get both parties to the table. We're not getting that if we just stand with one party."

The Warren campaign did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment.

Warren, who previously attended other AIPAC events in recent years, was one of several prominent 2020 candidates who boycotted the annual conference last year. Meanwhile, top Democratic lawmakers like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. attended the conference last year.

It keeps getting worse. As the 2020 Dems get more & more anti-Israel, will any of them stand up and condemn comments like these? Directly? Or are they too scared of the angry anti-Semitic Left? https://t.co/bUTRA4STxz
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 7, 2020

The good news (bli ayin hora)

I almost hate to mention this because the situation is always precarious, but unless I'm mistaken it has been nearly six months since any Israeli was killed in a terror attack.

The last victim was Rina Shnerb, 17, killed by an IED on August 23, 2019.

That attack was done by the PFLP - the same PFLP who is linked to anti-Israel NGO DCI-Palestine in news over the past couple of days. The PFLP is linked to a number of NGOs to use them as another avenue to attack Israel under the guise of human rights.

Needless to say, none of the PFLP-linked NGOs said a word against Rina's murder.

Still, a six month stretch without a terrorist murder in Israel is quite unusual; the last time I can see a stretch that long was seven months between October 29, 2011 (Moshe Ami, 56, rocket hitting Ashkelon) and June 1, 2012 (Staff-Sgt Netanel Moshiashvili, 21, shot on patrol near Gaza).

Let's hope the current streak continues for a long, long time.

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02/07 Links P1: Trump's plan and the 2 Palestinian dreams; Palestinians: Arab Leaders Talking to Israel Are 'Traitors, Jews'; Gazans launch balloons carrying RPG warhead into Israel

From Ian:

Clifford D. May: Trump's plan and the 2 Palestinian dreams

Palestinian leaders were handed a great and unexpected victory in late 2016 when President Obama facilitated the passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334. It asserts that there is "no legal basis" for Israeli claims to the West Bank – for centuries known as Judea and Samaria – including even the 2,000-year-old Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, and the ancient Jewish holy sites of the Temple Mount.

If that were true, on what basis would Israelis have a right to anything – even a right to exist?
And if that's the verdict not just of Israel's enemies but even of the "international community" including the US, why should Palestinian leaders compromise? Why accept less than Israel's surrender and a new Jewish exile – to be called, for public relations purposes, an "end to occupation"?

By putting forward a plan that licenses Israelis, should they face continued Palestinian rejectionism, to alter facts on the ground through annexations, President Trump has changed the dynamic – at least for now.

Perhaps the next Palestinian Authority leader will be pragmatic enough to recognize that in the contemporary Middle East, where Iran's Shia imperialists pose an existential threat to their neighbors, it's time to relinquish the dream of a Palestine that is Jew-free from the river to the sea.

That does not mean acquiescing to everything President Trump and Kushner packed into their 180-page plan. It does mean resuming negotiations with Israelis, perhaps putting a counteroffer on the table and, for the first time ever, transitioning from "resisting" the Jewish state to building a Palestinian state – a real state, with functioning institutions, not a failed state kept afloat by the "donor community."

To do that would give birth to something that for generations has existed only in our imaginations: a peace process.

Caroline B. Glick: Israeli sovereignty and the future of President Trump's peace plan

On Wednesday morning, NeverTrump propagandist Bill Kristol told his MSNBC audience that Democratic chances of victory over US President Donald Trump will rise if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is defeated in Israel's elections on March 2.

Along the same lines, if Netanyahu fails to apply Israeli sovereignty to the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria before the election, not only will he almost certainly lose those elections, his defeat will bury Trump's peace plan and harm Trump's reelection chances.

To understand why this is the case it is first necessary to understand the nature of the Blue and White party and its relationship to Trump and his peace plan.

After Trump's peace plan was published, Israelis discovered significant problems with the map attached to the plan. Among other things, the map places large sections of Highway 60, which crosses Judea and Samaria from south to north outside Israeli jurisdiction. If left uncorrected, the designation will endanger the security of tens of thousands of Israelis whose communities will be rendered isolated enclaves. Since ensuring Israel's ability to defend itself and its citizens on a permanent basis is a major goal of the plan, this omission was obviously an oversight. Netanyahu announced this week that he has assembled a team to work on the map.

So long as the map is not adjusted, members of Likud and other parties in the right-religious bloc Netanyahu leads will be unable to vote in favor of the plan, despite their support for Trump and for the plan overall.

This then brings us to Benny Gantz and his party.

Just before Gantz traveled to Washington to meet with Trump at the White House last Monday, it came out that his top campaign strategists, Ronen Tzur and Joel Benenson had both separately published multiple posts on Twitter viciously attacking Trump. Both men compared him to Hitler, called him a Russian agent and a racist. In other words, both men parroted Democratic talking points against Trump. (After his posts were reported, Tzur claimed that he no longer believed the things he had written.)

Whereas Tzur – like every garden variety Israeli leftist politico – apparently follows the Democrats on everything related to American public affairs automatically, Benenson shapes Democratic positions. Benenson served as Barack Obama's senior political strategist in the 2008 and 2012 elections and as Hillary Clinton's senior political strategist in 2016.

In 2015, Wikileaks published Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta's emails. Several email chains included internal campaign discussions in which Benenson participated. In two discussions, Benenson advised Clinton not to mention Israel in public events.

Now Benenson is directing Blue and White's campaign, and there is little reason for surprise at the seamlessness of his move from Obama and Clinton to Gantz. The Israeli left has been intertwined with the Democratic Party.

Melanie Phillips: The Palestinian dissonance

Look instead at the reaction by the Palestinians. Not the reaction by the Palestinian Authority, which was merely the latest of their many rejections of a state of their own alongside Israel.

Look at the Palestinians themselves for whom that state is intended. What is their reaction to the offer of more than 80 percent of the land for such a state? They're furious.

This isn't because it's not 100 percent of the land. They're furious at the idea that they might find themselves living in such a state. So furious that they demonstrated in the thousands against the prospect.

Palestinian leaders and their Western supporters are shrieking that the plan would strip the Israeli Arabs in the Jordan Valley and the "Triangle" area of their Israeli citizenship, and transfer them into Palestine by the simply expedient of drawing its border around their villages.

This is untrue. The Trump plan states that they will be able to choose between remaining citizens of Israel and becoming citizens of Palestine. So they wouldn't be "stripped" of their citizenship at all. Changing it would be their choice.

And surely, they would all choose to become citizens of Palestine – the outcome we've been told is the absolute precondition for ending the Arab-Israel conflict?

With the unveiling of Trump's "Deal of the Century," many analyses and critiques have come out, and will continue to come out, focusing both on what Israel gets -- and on what the Palestinian Arabs do not.

In making the case for his peace plan, Trump points to 2 successful peace agreements that Israel has with its neighbors. These are supposed to be models for what is possible:

The State of Israel has made peace with two of its neighbors. It made peace with the Arab Republic of Egypt in 1979 and it made peace with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1994, two countries with which the State of Israel had fought multiple wars and numerous border skirmishes...These two peace agreements, now 40 and 25 years old, have endured and bettered the lives of citizens in Israel, Jordan and Egypt. ("Peace to Prosperity," p. 2)

Israel's peace with Egypt has long been recognized as a "cold peace," yet there have been examples of cooperation, especially in terms of security in the Sinai. There is also the gas pipeline deal, which includes the cooperation of both Egypt and Jordan -- with Israel.

Then there is Jordan.

In criticizing the Palestinian Authority, Trump's plan describes the Palestinian Authority as

"plagued by failed institutions and endemic corruption. Its laws incentivize terrorism and Palestinian Authority controlled media and schools promote a culture of incitement." (p. 4)

But this is also a pretty accurate description of Jordan as well -- especially the part about terrorism.

In 1994 Mohammad Abequa murdered his wife in New Jersey but then escaped to Jordan. President Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno and New Jersey's US representatives and senators pleaded with King Hussein for Abequa to be returned to the US for trial. Jordan refused because there was no extradition treaty between the 2 countries. Jordan did, however, agree to put Abequa on trial -- and he was found guilty of murder. He could have been sentenced to death, but instead, Abequa was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. Just 5 years later, he was released, based on Abequa's claim that he killed his wife to protect his honor.

This was not a terrorist act, but the reaction of the Jordanian government to the murder of Americans by Jordanians have not always been helpful.

In 1993, a Jordanian national, Eyad Ismoil, participated in the World Trade Center bombing. Afterwards, he fled to Jordan to evade capture. In 1995, the US and Jordan signed an extradition treaty that made it possible to return Ismoil to the US.

In November 2015, a Jordanian police officer killed 5 people, including 2 Americans at an Amman training compound. The motive was unclear, and since the attacker was killed, the reason for the attack was never revealed.

Perhaps because the incident passed without wide media attention, when another Jordanian killed US soldiers the following November, there was wider coverage. On November 4, 2016, a Jordanian soldier fired on 3 US soldiers as they were entering a Jordanian military base, killing three. The shooter was wounded. The Jordanian government was desperate to avoid responsibility:

o First the Jordanian government claimed that the US soldiers had failed to stop at the gate
o When the video disproved that, the Jordanians claimed that there had been an “accidental discharge” by one of the soldiers.
o When that was disproven, the Jordanians claimed there had been a loud noise.

Eventually, a Jordanian court found the soldier guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The request by the parents of the 3 US soldiers that the killer be extradited to the US was refused.

Speaking of extradition, there is, of course, the attempt by the US to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, the self-confessed mastermind of the Sbarro Massacre, in which US citizens were killed. Jordan claims the extradition treaty, which was valid enough for Jordan to hand over Ismoil, is not valid enough to hand over Tamimi.

That is consistent with Jordan's refusal last year to honor their extradition treaty with France to hand over for trial the man suspected of being behind the 1982 attack at Chez Jo Goldenberg, a kosher restaurant in the traditionally Jewish Marais district of Paris.

But Jordan did not care about there being an extradition treaty in 1999, when the French terrorism magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière, was able to persuade Jordan to arrest and extradite Fateh Kamel on charges of abetting terrorism on French soil -- before France even had an extradition treaty with Jordan.

Last month, I pointed out that when it signed onto the International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism, Jordan made it clear that Jordan is not opposed to all forms of terrorism:

The Government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan does not consider acts of national armed struggle and fighting foreign occupation in the exercise of people’s right to self-determination as terrorist acts

This is an ally against terrorism?
This is an anchor for a Mideast peace?

Jordan's approach to terrorism was apparent in 1997 in the Island of Peace massacre, when 80 7th and 8th-graders from Beit Shemesh went on a field trip to the Jordan Valley and Golan Heights. They went to an area of Israeli land between the Jordan and Yarmuk Rivers. The area was returned to Jordan as part of the Israel-Jordan peace deal in 1994, but was leased back.

A Jordanian soldier, Ahmed al-Daqamse, started shooting at the schoolgirls, killing 7, before was stopped when his rifle jammed. He was put and trial and sentenced to life in prison.

The New York Times reported at the time:

According to reports from Amman, the Jordanian capital, most Jordanians expressed dismay at the shooting. There were also reports that hundreds of soldiers lined up to give blood at the hospital where the girls were taken.

King Hussein himself a personal visit to offer his condolences to the families.

But fast-forward to 2011 and a Jordan minister called for the soldier's release.

According to the Times of Israel, the military court determined that the Jordanian soldier was mentally unstable and while life in prison in Jordan normally means 25 years, he was released in 2017, after 20 years.

When he was released, al-Daqamse got a hero's welcome, just as Ahlam Tamimi did.

At the time of his release, it was reported:

Footage shot early on Sunday, a day before the 20th anniversary of the massacre, showed Daqamseh being driven slowly through crowds chanting and clapping to show their support.

Jordan’s Roya television channel broadcast footage of him held aloft by a crowd in his home town of Irbid in northern Jordan, next to a poster describing him as a "hero".

It is not so surprising then that on October 26, 2019, the 25th anniversary of the Israel-Jordan peace treaty, Times of Israel reported there was no commemoration.

In October 2018 Jordan announced it would not renew an annex of the treaty that had allowed Israelis to visit and Israeli farmers to use 2 plots of land along the border.

Bottom line:

Security and intelligence cooperation remain strong, but even bilateral trade is now declining

Hardly the model for peace that Trump claims.

According to Trump's peace plan:

It is important that governments unambiguously condemn all forms of terrorism, and that governments work together to fight against global terrorism. (p. 8)

If Trump seriously believes that Jordan is one of those governments -- good luck with that.

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Arabic cartoon for kids teaches murdering Jews

Here is a cartoon meant for kids to watch that shows a heroic Palestinian prepare for and execute a terror attack of a mass shooting of Jews at a mall.

I don't yet know the provenance of this cartoon, but it is bad enough that it exists.

(h/t Yoel and MoranT)

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ spoke at the opening of the 2020 session of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, and he spoke like it is still 1999:

We know that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains key to sustainable peace in the Middle East. Its persistence reverberates far beyond Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, and it continues to further radicalization across the region. That is why we have been repeatedly raising alerts about actions that would erode the possibility of a viable and contiguous Palestinian State based on the two-State solution and that are contrary to international law and United Nations resolutions. This includes expansion and acceleration of illegal settlement activities in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as well as ongoing demolitions and seizures of Palestinian-owned property and evictions.

"We know"? Syria's civil war, Yemen, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan would all be peaceful if Palestinians accepted the Clinton parameters? Iran's threats and Hezbollah wouldn't exist if there was a Palestinian state?

And of course, only Israel is guilty in the UN's eyes. Not a word about Palestinian terrorism, about Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Fatah's own Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, nothing about rockets or balloon bombs.

The Middle East is very different than it was during Oslo, and Israel has better relations with the larger Arab and Muslim world than ever before. That by itself shows Guterres' assumption to be false. There are fewer terror attacks in Israel now than there was during the heady days of the 90s. But the "experts" have learned no lessons since then.

Why do these people believe something that is so obviously false? Because Palestinians keep saying it - as a veiled threat in order to get the world to pressure Israel to make more concessions.

(h/t Irene)

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02/06 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: It's all about the narrative. Who controls it, wins; Shiite cleric seeks France asylum after death threats over Auschwitz visit; Kirk Douglas, Hollywood legend dies at 103

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: It's all about the narrative. Who controls it, wins

Moreover, anyone who points out that Islamic terrorism is part of a holy war being waged against both the west and the not-Islamic-enough Muslim world is denounced for “Islamophobia”.

This also undermines those courageous Muslims pressing for a reform of their religion, often at risk to their lives, who have the ground cut from under their feet by westerners maintaining that the problem doesn’t lie within the Islamic world but with “Islamophobes” who claim that it does.

If we really are not to “go on like this”, the first thing that needs to happen is that this dishonesty must end and the truth must publicly be told.

The government should start saying what it has flinched from saying: that the west is the target of Islamic holy war. It should say that, although many British Muslims pose no threat to anyone, too many in the community either believe the extremist precepts on which the jihad is based or passively go along with them; that too many groups and individuals revere, for example, Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi who has endorsed human bomb attacks; that even among those Muslims who oppose violence, too many endorse poisonous ideas about the non-Muslim world which create the sea in which extremism and terrorism swim.

It should state bluntly that Muslims must start to take responsibility, both at home and abroad, for this war being waged in the name of their religion – and that the government will take all necessary measures to defeat it.

You see, it’s not just a matter of passing stricter laws. It’s all about the narrative. The jihadists know that whoever controls the narrative, wins. So far, the ignorant, spineless, demoralised west has let them seize control of it. That’s what now has to end.

UK: Why Are Dangerous Jihadists Being Released Early from Prison?

"We cannot have the situation...where an offender — a known risk to innocent members of the public — is released early by automatic process of law without any oversight by the Parole Board. — UK Secretary of State for Justice.

"When I was a constable, I could arrest and process a suspect in an hour, maximum. Today, it takes a day or more.... The police are mired in bureaucracy, while the judicial system has become an institutional cloud-cuckoo land." — Philip Flower, former chief superintendent with the Metropolitan Police, Daily Mail.

"Bluntly, how would you feel if you were told to keep track of known terrorists who have been released from prison to satisfy the politically correct assumptions of our justice system?" — Philip Flower, former chief superintendent with the Metropolitan Police, Daily Mail.

Ian Acheson, a veteran prison officer who in 2015 led an independent review of Islamist extremism in British prisons, told the BBC's Today program that the UK's risk-management system is fundamentally broken:

"We are going to have to accept that we have to be much more skeptical and robust about dealing with the risk of harm.
"We may need to accept that there are certain people who are so dangerous they must be kept in prison indefinitely....
"I am still unconvinced that the prison service itself has the aptitude or the attitude to assertively manage terrorist offenders."

Can Muslim Terrorists be Deradicalized? - Part I

"What we found [in prisons] was so shockingly bad that I had to agree to the language in the original report being toned down. With hindsight, I'm not sure that was the right decision." — Ian Acheson, British expert on prisons.

"There were serious deficiencies in almost every aspect of the management of terrorist offenders... Frontline prison staff were vulnerable to attack and were ill-equipped to counter hateful extremism on prison landings for fear of being accused of racism. Prison imams did not possess the tools, and sometimes the will, to combat Islamist ideology. The prison service's intelligence-gathering system was hopelessly fractured and ineffectual." — Ian Acheson, "London Bridge attack: I told ministers we were treating terrorist prisoners with jaw-dropping naivety. Did they listen?", London Times, December 1, 2019.

"Obedience is achieved by violence and intimidation carried out by members of the group known as enforcers. 'Those who had committed terrorist crimes often held more senior roles in the gang,' the study found, 'facilitated by the respect some younger prisoners gave them.' The study found that terrorist groups such as al-Qaida did not see prison as an obstacle. Quite the opposite, they viewed it as an opportunity to organize and expand." — Patrick Dunleavy, former Deputy Inspector General for New York State Department of Corrections, June 18, 2019.

I'm actually a little stunned at how little Elizabeth Warren knows about Israel and the history of the moribund peace process, as seen in this video clip:

"We need to encourage Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate with each other."

Wow! Who ever thought of that before?

Of course, the Palestinians refuse to negotiate directly with Israel. Does she have a plan B?

"Israel has the right to security, Palestinians have the right to self-determination and to be treated with respect."

Israel has offered them self-determination many times. As far as respect - that is something that is earned, not a human right. Just today Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party tweeted support for the person who rammed his car into a bunch of Israelis, mostly soldiers. Should we respect that?

Notice that Israel does not seem worthy of respect.

"The two state solution has been the policy of the United States and of Israel for nearly seventy years now."

Ummm...what? What was the second state in 1951? Is she saying Jordan is the Palestinian state? Is she referring to Zionists accepting the 1947 partition plan that was abrogated by the Arab world?

No, she's just proving that she has no idea what she is talking about.

"The embassy is what they should be negotiating."

Palestinians should be part of the decision where to put the US embassy to Israel? Do they help decide where the US embassy to Canada should be as well?

"They should be negotiating what constitutes the capital.That's really my point, is that that's what the parties should decide."

Oh, so Israel cannot choose its own capital - it needs the approval of its sworn enemy. The most basic decision of any world government cannot be made by that government. Sure.

This is kumbaya foreign policy. It is stupid, not prudent, to be "evenhanded" between a modern liberal state and a terror-supporting, misogynist, anti-gay, freedom hating entity whose entire purpose is to destroy the first state. Would she say that we should have been evenhanded between Iraq and ISIS, another wannabe state?

The times I've met with senators and members of Congress they knew their stuff. Warren's ignorance is laughable. (And she hired a large foreign policy team, as well.)

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