Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, April 26, 2020

04/26 Links: Israeli death toll hits 200; Terror victims' families to collect NIS 500 m. from PA; Netanyahu: I’m confident annexation will happen in a couple of months

From Ian:

Israeli death toll hits 200, cases reach 15,398 as conditions eased

The coronavirus death toll in Israel reached 200 on Sunday afternoon, with one woman dying since the previous evening, as the number of COVID-19 cases in the country rose to 15,398, an increase of 250 over the previous 24 hours.

The woman died at Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer, outside Tel Aviv.

Israel has registered 23 deaths per million citizens, according to the Worldometers tally on Sunday early afternoon, which places it at around 40th in the world, slightly better than the world average of some 26 deaths per million.

The Health Ministry said 132 people were in serious condition, 100 of whom were on ventilators, and 93 people were moderately ill.

There have now been 6,602 people in Israel who recovered from the coronavirus, according to the announcement, which came a day after the World Health Organization said it could not guarantee that people can’t be reinfected after recovery.

Most stores, hairdressers and beauty salons were allowed to resume operations from midnight Saturday, if hygiene regulations related to the virus were adhered to.

In addition, restaurants and food shops were allowed to sell products for takeaway, not just home deliveries, if a physical barrier is placed between the cashier and the customers.

However, hundreds of large businesses were set to remain closed, despite approval to reopen, in protest against the government and as they demand compensation for the recent closures and ongoing restrictions.

Terror victims' families to collect NIS 500 m. from Palestinian Authority

The Jerusalem District Court has ordered that around NIS 500 million be collected from the Palestinian Authority in civil damages for a series of terror attacks carried out mostly during the Second Intifada.

Despite the significant diplomatic implications, there was no sign from the Foreign Ministry or the Justice Ministry that anyone would stand in the way of collecting the funds from the PA.

Though the decision was handed down late Friday, it was announced by Shurat Hadin, which led the charge, on Sunday.

Jerusalem District Court Judge Moshe Drori had ruled that the PA was liable back in July 2019, but since then Shurat Hadin, on behalf of eight victims’ families and relating to 17 complaints, had to prove their damages.

Although the damages may total as high as NIS 1 billion, due to the complex diplomatic implications, Judge Moshe Sobol (Drori has retired) ruled on Friday that, at this stage, the collected damages will be around NIS 500m., and that even that collection will be spread out and into multiple components.

Some of the collected funds will be by an offset of funds paid by the PA to terrorists in prison and their families, while some of the collected funds will be collected on a spread-out monthly basis. The monthly basis funds will be collected from the more than NIS 500m. which Israel transfers in customs taxes on a monthly basis.

The idea is that only a fraction of the customs funds will be used each month to steadily pay down the new judgment, while most of the funds will still go to the PA so as not to cause a financial crisis.

Netanyahu: I’m confident annexation will happen in a couple of months

Israel will be able to apply its laws to the West Bank in a couple of months following a pledge from US President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.

“Three months ago, the Trump peace plan recognized Israel’s rights in all of Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu said. “President Trump pledged to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Jewish communities there and in the Jordan Valley. In a couple of months from now, I’m confident that pledge will be honored, that we will be able to celebrate another historic moment in the history of Zionism.”

The Trump peace plan would allow Israel to annex 30% of the West Bank, including all settlements and the entire Jordan Valley, while providing the Palestinians with a massive economic-aid package to support their establishing a demilitarized state, if they meet certain conditions, including stopping incitement, payments to terrorists and instituting civil rights.

The coalition agreement between Likud and Blue and White, signed last week, states that annexation can be brought to a vote in the cabinet or Knesset on July 1 at the earliest.

Netanyahu spoke in a video message at an online conference of the European Coalition for Israel (ECI) in honor of the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference, in which the Allied powers in World War I divided up territory that had been part of the Ottoman Empire.

Jordan said to urge foreign ministers to discourage Israeli West Bank annexation

Jordan last week approached a number of foreign governments and urged them to pressure Israel not to annex parts of the West Bank, Channel 13 news reported, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz signed a coalition agreement saying the move could potentially go ahead as early as July.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi has reportedly approached counterparts in a number of countries including Russia, Germany, Egypt, Japan, Sweden and Norway.

Jordan was said to have warned that a possible annexation would have a “devastating effect,” marking the end of a two-state solution, and having potentially explosive consequences for the Middle East.

According to the report, the overtures made by Safadi were in coordination with the Palestinians, who themselves have launched a campaign against annexation.

In addition, the Arab League is due to hold an emergency meeting on the matter, Channel 13 reported.

The Netanyahu-Gantz deal stipulates that any Israeli action would need US backing, and must take into account Israel’s peace treaties with neighboring Jordan and Egypt, the only two Arab states that have formal peace treaties and diplomatic relations with Israel.

Recent months have seen Amman recall its ambassador to Israel, no joint ceremony marking the quarter-century anniversary of the peace agreement between the two countries, and the termination of special arrangements that allowed Israeli farmers to easily access plots of land inside Jordan.

British Muslim scholar says wives must obey their husbands' demands, provide sex immediately when asked

This guys is saying this in English!

Ustadh Muhammad Tim Humble: "The prophets said if I was going to command someone to prostrate before I, to bow before someone, I would have commanded a woman to bow before her husband. If he's not asking her to do something forbidden then she must do what she's told.
[…]
"It's very inconvenient and she is saddled up riding the camel whatever, you know, and he then asks her for intimacy, she then has to get down to make herself available for her husband.
[…]
"The right to immediate intimacy or immediate satisfaction of intimate desires, that needs to be with regard to the man. There is immediacy. There is an urgency...
[…]
"The prophets have explained with such emphasis, but if you had an ulcer that was bleeding with blood and pus from his head to his foot and she licked it, she would not have fulfilled the right that he had over her.
[…]
"The Messenger of Islam said if a man calls his wife to bed and she refuses... For intimacy, she refuses and he goes to sleep up angry with her, the angels curse her until the morning comes. In another narration, until her husband is happy with her.
[…]
"There is no man who calls his wife to her bed and she refuses him except that the one in the heavens is angry with her until her husband is pleased with her. That the Messenger from Islam said it's not allowed for a woman to fast while her husband is present except with his permission. In case of his need of intimacy nor to allow someone to come into his house except with his permission."

He's a popular speaker, too. He converted to Islam when he was 14.

Somehow, the British media has missed this, even though MEMRI published this on Thursday.

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Where are the Palestinian peace groups? Who is teaching Palestinians about peace?

Where are the Palestinian peace groups? And why is no one even asking this question?

From American Friends of Combatants for Peace:

Our 15th annual Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Ceremony is co-organized by Combatants for Peace and Parents Circle – Families Forum and held on Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day). Our Ceremony challenges the traditional narrative of victimhood and separation, and brings people together to declare that, “War is Not an Act of Fate – but a Human Choice!”

Yom Hazikaron, Israeli Memorial Day, is a sacred day in Israel. Nearly every Israeli family has lost someone in the conflict, and together they come to remember these dear ones. However, traditionally, Israelis ignore the grief of Palestinian families. Indeed the official Israeli ceremonies are marked by a narrative of hopelessness, accepting that “we must live or die by our swords.” This leads to deep pain, fueling the despair prevalent in both societies today.

When Palestinians and Israelis challenge the status quo and come together to acknowledge each other and remember – together, we start to build a new reality based on mutual respect, dignity, equality, freedom and peace. In this way, we are taking responsibility, challenging our own sense of victimhood, and better still, turning a sense of helplessness into empowerment and hope.

Looking at the organizations sponsoring the event, I see lots of left-wing Jewish and even anti-Zionist organizations, and I see some Israeli organizations, but I do not see a single organization based out of the Palestinian (or any Arab) territories:

The joint Jewish-Arab organizations listed above are all based in Israel.

They do not have any Arabic-language websites. Standing Together has Hebrew and English; Other Voice is clearly speaking only for left-wing Israelis.

There are a number of Palestinians who are involved in Combatants For Peace. Although I did not do an exhaustive search, I could not find them on social media. I found very few mentions of them in Arabic media. And I could not find a single time where any of them engaged publicly with other Palestinians to talk about peace with Israelis.

However, plenty of these peace-loving Palestinians come to Western nations to speak about how much they hate violence. American Jews and Western liberals eat this all up. It appears that saying you want peace is a very good career move for a segment of Palestinian society.

The message they bring, from what I can tell, is that terrorism is bad - but only Israel is responsible for the lack of peace. An overwhelming number of the social media posts from these organizations are against Israel. I see no criticisms of the Palestinian Authority for paying terrorists and their families, or for glorifying terror. I see no anguish that Palestinian children are raised learning to hate.

Maybe I missed a post here or there, but the basic message is not that both sides need to be pressured to create an environment for peace, but only Israel - a message that the Israelis and left-wing Jewish organizations are happy to push. Under the surface, there is no equivalence in the message nor of the audiences. Both sides agree Israel is to blame, at least based on what I can find.

Where are the Palestinian peace organizations, speaking in Arabic to Arab audiences? Where are the grassroots movements that demand responsibility from Palestinian leaders?

We unfortunately know the answer. The few Palestinians that have publicly spoken about real peace and coexistence with Israel and Palestinian responsibility - Bassam Eid, Khaled Abu Toameh, Mohammed Dajani Daoudi among them - are threatened, intimidated and sometimes attacked.

If these groups would be vocal about criticizing Palestinian society and leadership for that mindset, then perhaps they could credibly claim to be truly bipartisan - and truly interested in peace.

(h/t Yerushalimey)

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The PLO's website says:

The Secretary of the Executive Committee of PLO, Dr. Saeb Erekat, said that the continued detention of Muhammad Majid Hassan Al-Taleb from Birzeit University in the Al-Maskoubiyeh detention center in Jerusalem, despite his diagnosis with coronavirus, is a flagrant violation of international law.

Erekat said that the international community and the Secretary-General of the United Nations have a responsibility to compel Israel to release him immediately to follow up his health and take the necessary measures, again calling for the release of all prisoners, headed by the sick, children, female prisoners and the elderly.

Is it really against international law to not release prisoners who are diagnosed with an illness? That would be pretty remarkable, if true.

Of course, it isn't. Erekat is lying.

But apparently that isn't the only thing he is lying about. I don't think that this person has COVID-19 to begin with.

The first reports of his supposed infection were published on April 24, when the Palestinian Prisoners Society claimed that he got infected in the prison.

But an AFP report published on Saturday quotes the Israel Prison Service in context of the similar rumor that another prisoner, released, was found to have COVID-19 when he came back home.

So far Israel says no cases have been detected among inmates.
...
The Palestinian Prisoners' Club, a Ramallah-based NGO, said dozens of prisoners had been released since the coronavirus arrived in Israel.

The NGO's Amani Sarahneh...said one released prisoner, who had been detained for just four days, later tested positive for the virus.

Israel poured scorn on the claim, saying the man was healthy when he exited the prison.

The Israeli Prisons Service told AFP it had "prepared for months to prevent the entry and spread of the coronavirus in its facilities."

Each prisoner was given two multi-use facemasks and new prisoners are isolated for 14 days, it said, condemning what it called "false reports" in Palestinian media and elsewhere.

If the IPS is denying any prisoners have the virus two days after the Palestinian claim, I believe the IPS any day.

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04/25 Links: Happy Independence Day from Israel; Invoking Hitler’s name for political purposes; Activists push idea that Israel’s behind the coronavirus pandemic

From Ian:

Independence Day: 72+1 new reasons I love Israel

The same question every year: Can you really find 73 new reasons (one for each year of independence) you love Israel? I looked back at the kick-off column of 2004, and saw that Reason 7 of 56 was, “Twenty-five percent of Israelis were close enough to hear a terrorist bombing, yet 2 million of us were out vacationing on Passover.” We were in the Second Intifada.

This year we’re facing the coronavirus. Here are 72+1 new reasons I love Israel, in no particular order.

1. Demonstrating the value of harmonizing, social-musical initiative Koolulam brings together hundreds of Holocaust survivors and their
offspring; Jews and Arabs; Israelis and Diaspora Jews through mass sing-alongs. Because of coronavirus, Koolulam is gathering thousands of clips of people from around the world singing a song called “Fix You.”

2. In what other country could a song about the high priest in the ancient Temple (Ishay Ribo, “Seder Ha’Avodah”) make the hit parade?

3. More than 1,000 people attended a Jewish soul music concert at Yad Vashem in memory of Klezmer musicians murdered in the Shoah.

4. Not that you need it, but Jerusalem’s Lightricks Ltd. has a photo-editing app that touches up selfies. The start-up is valued at a billion dollars.

5. In Jerusalem, steakhouse proprietors go on vacation during the nine days of Av when meat is eschewed – and festival food trucks (auto-ochel) in the Valley of Gehenna offer dairy fare.

Celebrating Israel's Independence Day

Until we can experience the real thing, here's a little taste of Israel in honor of Israel's 72nd Birthday.

Army calls on families to film home foot drills for Independence Day

With Independence Day events limited or canceled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the IDF’s Home Front Command is encouraging Israeli children to recreate parts of the festivities at home.

One of the main events in Israel for Independence Day is the traditional torch-lighting ceremony at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, which regularly features Israeli soldiers performing elaborate foot drills. However, as the ceremony is being held under a limited format this year with no audience, the Home Front Command is calling on families to perform and record their own drills at home, videos of which will be used in the event.

“[We’re] going to create a joint drill ceremony from home,” Colonel Shimon Deri, the ceremony’s master-at-arms, said in a video released by the Home Front Command on social media channels.

Among the examples Deri gave of possible drills were the forming of a Star of David, cooking a kebab on the barbecue, and a human recreation of the coronavirus.

“From your video clips we’ll create a civilian foot drill ceremony of the State of Israel for the year 2020,” he said. The final, edited video will be posted to the Home Front Command’s site and social media channels.

Deri added, perhaps jokingly, that if some of the submitted shapes are particularly eye-catching, he could use them as inspiration for next year’s Independence Day celebrations.

04/24 Links Pt2: How the Jewish National Home Entered International Law; The Jewish Imperative for the Post-Corona World; Dad’s Torah reading of ‘Goodnight Moon’ goes viral

From Ian:

Prof. Efraim Karsh: How the Jewish National Home Entered International Law

The San Remo conference in April 1920 appointed Britain as mandatory for Palestine with the specific task of "putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the British Government [the Balfour Declaration], and adopted by the other Allied Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people." This mandate was then ratified on July 24, 1922, by the Council of the League of Nations - the UN's predecessor.

The importance of the Palestine mandate cannot be overstated. Though falling short of the proposed Zionist formula that "Palestine should be reconstituted as the national home of the Jewish people," it signified an unqualified recognition, by the official representative of the will of the international community, of the Jews as a national group - rather than a purely religious community - and acknowledgment of "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" as "the grounds for reconstituting their national home in the country."

It is a historical tragedy that 100 years after this momentous event, the Palestinian leadership and its international champions remain entrenched in the rejection not only of the millenarian Jewish attachment to Palestine but of the very existence of a Jewish People (and by implication its right to statehood).

Rather than keep trying to turn the clock backward at the certain cost of prolonging their people's statelessness and suffering, it is time for this leadership to shed its century-long recalcitrance and opt for peace and reconciliation with their Israeli neighbors.

Melanie Phillips: Israel overcomes virus of political, moral collapse

One hundred years ago this Sunday, the four principal allied powers involved in World War I signed a resolution at San Remo. Next week, Israel celebrates Yom Ha'atzmaut, the 72nd anniversary of the state's declaration of independence.

Typically, the world thinks that the key step towards the establishment of the State of Israel was the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the statement in which the British government committed itself to work for the establishment of a Jewish home in what was then called Palestine.

Relatively little attention has been paid to the more important milestone in that story: the San Remo resolution signed on April 26, 1920.

For it was at San Remo that Britain, France, Italy, and Japan turned the Balfour Declaration into an internationally binding treaty to establish a Jewish national home in Palestine, with Britain being given the mandate to facilitate Jewish immigration there.
A few months after the San Remo conference, for reasons of realpolitik, Britain hived off some three-quarters of Palestine to create Transjordan.

The scope of what was left for the Jewish national home, however, is something that Israel's enemies don't want to acknowledge – and is the reason that San Remo is conspicuously ignored. For in that resolution lie the roots of Jewish legitimacy, not just in Israel but also in the disputed territories.

That's because the Palestine within which the Jews were legally entitled to settle as their designated national home included not just the Israel that emerged in 1948, but also Judea and Samaria. That legal right given to the Jews to settle the entire land of Mandatory Palestine has never been abrogated.

During the war of extermination mounted against Israel at its rebirth in 1948, some of that designated territory was captured by the Jordanians.

As the international lawyer Eugene Kontorovitch has noted, when Israel eventually recovered this land as a result of the Six-Day War in 1967, much of the international community pretended that its own earlier guarantees didn't exist.

Far from acknowledging the legal, moral and historical right of the Jewish people to live in Judea and Samaria, the international community has consistently claimed that the areas Jordan ethnically cleansed of Jews in 1948 must indefinitely remain Jew-free zones.

Caroline Glick: American Jewry's organizational crackup

Last week an event occurred that will be remembered as a key moment in the disintegration of organized American Jewish support for Israel and American Jewish organizational life itself.

Last Friday, the leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations announced that the Conference's nominating committee had selected Dianne Lob, the former president of HIAS to run unopposed for the position of chairman of the Conference's Executive Board. Her election is scheduled to take place on April 28.

The Conference of Presidents – an umbrella group that comprises 53 Jewish American organizations – is widely viewed as the most important Jewish organization in the United States.

Why is Lob's selection important? On the face of things, it was unremarkable. People who have known Lob for decades describe her as a garden variety New York Jewish liberal whose views on Israel are in keeping with the views of the vast majority of American Jews.

Members of the Conference of President, for their part, claim not to know her at all. During her term as chairman of HIAS, from 2016-2019, she didn't participate in major Conference events like its trips to Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Lob's selection is an earthquake in American Jewish organizational life is not because of anything she has said or done, but because of her organizational affiliation with HIAS.

HIAS was established at the end of the 19th century under the name Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, to assist the hundreds of thousands of penniless Eastern European Jews who were immigrating at the time to the US. The last major group of Jewish immigrants HIAS was involved in resettling in the US were the Jews who left the Soviet Union between the 1970s and 1990s.

In 2014, HIAS officially set its Jewish roots aside. It abandoned its full name in favor of its acronym. HIAS CEO and President Mark Hetfield claimed that the world "Hebrew" is exclusionary.

Islamic Jihad terror group wishes everyone a happy Ramadan

Here's a Ramadan greeting from Islamic Jihad in Gaza:

So spiritual!

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I tweeted this a couple of weeks ago, but I don't think I posted it.

(h/t Andrew)

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04/24 Links Pt1: Virus cases in Israel reach 14,882, with 193 fatalities and 107 on ventilators; 42 fallen soldiers since last Remembrance Day, ceremonies held online

From Ian:

Virus cases in Israel reach 14,882, with 193 fatalities and 107 on ventilators

The Health Ministry on Friday said there were 14,882 confirmed coronavirus cases in the country, an increase of 79 from the previous evening.

In a statement, the ministry confirmed that the death toll is now 193, up by one since Thursday evening with the death of Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Heber whose kidney donation organization saved 800 people over the past decade.

The ministry figures showed 139 Israelis are in serious condition, of whom 107 are on ventilators, and 101 are in moderate condition. The remainder have mild or no symptoms.

In addition, 5,685 Israelis have recovered from COVID-19, a number which is included in the tally of total cases.

Heber, 55, died Thursday of COVID-19 and was mourned by many senior public officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin.

Heber, himself a recipient of a kidney donation, had been sedated and on a ventilator at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem for about two weeks. His condition worsened on April 14.

The kidney donation organization Heber founded, Matnat Chaim (Gift of Life), last week celebrated its 800th transplant over the past decade. Matnat Chaim facilitates voluntary kidney donations in Israel.

Blue and White MK Chili Tropper recently donated a kidney in a life-saving procedure for a man he did not know through Heber’s organization.

Tropper mourned Heber on Thursday, calling the rabbi one of Israel’s “heroes” who “dedicated his life to save lives, with infinite dedication, exceptional humility and love for humans that is hard to come by.”

“Many owe him their lives and Israeli society is better and more humane thanks to his life’s work,” Tropper said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his “deep sorrow about the passing of the rabbi,” saying Heber “instilled in the general public the awareness of the importance of donation.”

“Thanks to him, hundreds of people in Israel were granted a new life,” Netanyahu said. “Rabbi Heber was a model of humanity, kindness and mutual responsibility.”

Whoa. Flatbush Jewish Journal, weekly Orthodox Jewish publication in Brooklyn, prints 50 pages of obituaries NOT including obit ads.#HashemYerachem pic.twitter.com/yn46hPAyxM
— David G. Greenfield (@NYCGreenfield) April 23, 2020

42 fallen soldiers since last Remembrance Day, ceremonies held online

A total of 42 deaths were added to Israel's list of fallen soldiers between the previous Remembrance Day until now, the Defense Ministry announced on Friday morning, with another 33 disabled persons dying as a result of injury in defense services. Since coronavirus regulations limit bereaved families from visiting their lost ones' graves, the names of all fallen soldiers will be read in succession prior to the Remembrance Day ceremony on Tuesday morning.

Remembrance Day "expresses the painful partnership of bereaved families and the moral obligation to remember and perpetuate the fallen," said Arieh Moalem, Deputy Directer of the Family, Memorial and Heritage Department of the Defense Ministry. "This year, Remembrance Day events will be held without the participation of the general public. We will continue to march alongside you, the bereaved families, in the long and neverending journey of coping with the memory of your loved ones.

"This year, we will all stay home and remember," he concluded.

As is every year, a siren will go off on the eve of Remembrance Day this coming Monday at 8 p.m., and another one on Remembrance Day itself at 11 a.m., during which the country stands still for a moment of silence and remembrance for the fallen soldiers of the IDF.

Due to the continued spread of the coronavirus, the Defense Ministry decided last month that the main ceremonies at the Western Wall plaza (on Remembrance Day eve) and Mount Herzl (Remembrance Day) to be held without an audience and instead to be broadcast live.

Wavel (Galilee) camp

I reported Wednesday on the story of the first Palestinian resident of an overcrowded camp in Lebanon being found to have COVID-19, and how the people who scream every time a Palestinian in Gaza is found to be infected - and blame Israel - are completely silent over a much worse potential danger to Palestinians' health in Lebanon.

If there are no Jews to blame, their sense of social justice evaporates.

The woman in the Wavel camp in Lebanon apparently infected the other people in her house:

Four residents of a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Thursday, a health official said, bringing total cases in the settlement to five.

The residents of the Wavel camp in the eastern Bekaa Valley were tested after a member of their household, a Palestinian refugee from Syria, was admitted to the state-run Rafic Hariri hospital in Beirut earlier this week for demonstrating COVID-19 symptoms.

Contact tracing and initial investigation by the health ministry “of the refugee patient who tested positive with Covid19 in Baalbek yesterday reveals four members of her immediate household affected,” Firas Abiad, the hospital’s head, said in a post on Twitter.

Medical experts visited the Wavel camp on Wednesday to carry out tests, focusing on relatives of the first patient, people she has interacted with, as well as 50 others chosen arbitrarily inside the camp and its surroundings, according to Lebanon’s official National News Agency.

Apart from the 5 confirmed cases in the camp, all other tests have returned negative, said the head of the Rafic Hariri hospital.

There have been no reports of coronavirus cases in other Palestinian camps in the country.

In coordination with Lebanese security forces, Palestinian factions in charge of security have imposed a lockdown on the Wavel camp, preventing anyone from entering or leaving, the NNA report said.

Here's a video of a car going through the camp warning people to stay inside their houses.

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Students for Justice in Palestine sponsored an almost unwatchable discussion with Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, a professor at San Francisco State University.

Abdulhabi listed a litany of lies about Israel and coronavirus:

The fact that Israeli interrogators actually infected Palestinian prisoners while they were torturing them with the COVID-19 is quite alarming. The fact that Israeli prison authorities tell the Palestinian prisoners use your socks to protect yourself from COVID-19...

As best as I can tell, the rumor that Israelis infected Palestinians while torturing them came from a story last month that Israel quarantined four Palestinian prisoners because they came into contact with a guard who was found to have the disease. So while Israel is trying to save prisoners from COVID-19, antisemites like this professor are claiming that the Jewish state is deliberately infecting them.

Arab papers claimed they were infected. Abdulhabi made up the torture claims all by herself.

The socks rumor came from that reliable source Hamas, and again has no basis in reality. While masks have been hard to come by across the board in Israel, last week Israel did manage to get a steady supply of masks for prisoners, specially colored so they cannot use them as disguises.

This shows yet again how little regard for the truth the anti-Israel activists have. In this case, we have a professor who literally makes things up. Why San Francisco State University allows a proven liar to be teaching their students is a mystery.

The Canary Mission has a large dossier on Abdulhabi's outrageous statements over the years.

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Beth Oppenheim is Director of International Relations at the Israeli Gisha NGO, which is dedicated to improving the movement of people and goods in and out of the Palestinian territories. She just started her job there in February.

"Director of International Relations" apparently means "bashing Israel in international forums."

Gisha calls itself a human rights group, yet when it comes to criticizing Egypt or Hamas for their own restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in Gaza, they are restrained and muted. The vast majority of their pretense of defense of Palestinians is aimed at only one target: Israel.

In her first article for her new employer, Oppenheim curiously chose the Arab News as the forum for yet another article about how Israel is not living up to its responsibility for Gaza. Why the Arab News? Do Arabs not hate Israel enough for Gisha? Or perhaps she was just getting her feet wet and trying to establish credibility to get into the Guardian.

Oppenheim pretty much parrots the many similar articles that we have debunked in recent weeks. She doesn't say a word about Hamas' responsibility for keeping Gazans safe and their choice to fund weapons tunnels instead of hospitals, or how Hamas indeed uses medical facilities for terrorism. She doesn't mention that the PA has been withholding needed medical aid from Gaza for years, including now (according to Hamas, but probably true.) Instead, she falsely claims that Israel is legally obligated under the Geneva Conventions to directly provide aid to Gaza, not just facilitate aid.

I commented on only a couple of points:

Repeating a falsehood over and over does not make it true. Gaza is not occupied under international law. The legal definition of occupation by every jurist in history (before Israel left Gaza) requires "boots on the ground." Making up new international law for only one nation is not valid.

That being said, Israel is indeed keeping Gaza in mind in its coronavirus planning, for example when it is acquiring ventilators. Every ounce of aid donated to Gaza is being allowed by Israel. It is not in Israel's interests for an epidemic in Gaza. Your organization Gisha knows all this.

Gisha also knows very well that any shortage of medical supplies in Gaza is from the Palestinian Authority not sending Gaza its fair share of aid out of the tens of millions already donated. For some reason, while unwarranted criticism of Israel is amplified, the actual attempts by the PA to block all aid to Gaza is virtually ignored by your NGO.

Is your priority to help Gazans - or to bash Israel?

Arab News, that bastion of free speech, did not allow my comment to be published.

Isn't it interesting that a supposed human rights organizations chooses to publish anti-Israel articles in forums where free speech is a joke and censorship is the norm?

Gisha doesn't care about human rights. If it did, it would pay as much attention to Palestinian suppression of their own people's right to movement as it does for Israel. If it did, it would publish articles abut Egypt's restrictions on Gaza. If it did, it wouldn't choose to publish articles in newspapers that don't allow any contrary opinions to be published.

No, it is not a human rights organization. It is an anti-Israel organization. And this is par for the course for anti-Israel NGOs.

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