Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, May 26, 2020

05/26 Links Pt2: If You Want to Criticize Israel, First Support Its Right to Exist; Chinese Embassy In France Tweets and Deletes Anti-Semitic Imagery

From Ian:

If You Want to Criticize Israel, First Support Its Right to Exist

Members of these anti-Israel groups do not want to have a conversation, because they realize they do not have facts to support their arguments.

For example, they ignore that the Jewish people are indigenous to Israel by overlooking the reality that there has been a continual Jewish presence in Israel for the past 3,000 years. They also ignore that the name “Palestine” was actually given to the territory by Roman conquerors who overtook the land in 70 CE.

Anti-Israel campus groups attempt to economically strangle Israel through BDS campaigns by stating that Israel is a racist nation. Evidence, however, shows that half of Israel’s Jews are not white, and that one out of every five Israelis is not a Jew. This minority group consists mostly of Israeli Arabs, who are provided with the same rights as Jews and serve in its government at all levels.

Further adding to this list of factually incorrect arguments, anti-Zionists claim that Israel, a country the size of New Jersey, is standing in the way of peace in the Middle East. This misconception completely disregards the five times Israel has officially offered land in exchange for peace, which were all summarily rejected.

These facts are not presented as proof that Israel is a perfect nation. Like any country in the world, Israel faces its own difficulties and deserves to be criticized for its faults.

However, instead of being evaluated equally, Israel is constantly singled out by those who seek to harm its existence. As a result of this injustice, antisemitism continues to rise as Jews face increased attacks against both them and the Jewish state.

For those who seek to criticize Israel, all that I ask is for you to hold it to the same standard you choose to apply to all countries. I ask that you support its right to exist to allow it to make improvements, instead of advocating for the destruction that erases its ability to do so.

The myth of the Good Dutchman

Sometimes a remark of a person in a minor publication sheds major light on an important national characteristic. Twenty years ago, Dutch-Israeli author, Miriam Dubi Gazan, interviewed the Dutch Ambassador in Israel, Como van Hellenberg-Hubar for the Dutch-Jewish "Joods Journaal". The article focused on the behavior of the Dutch during the Second World War.

By the time that article was published, historians had already proven that in the occupied Netherlands those who resisted or opposed the Germans had been a small minority of the population. Most people were indifferent. Many had collaborated in one way or another. Those included high ranking government officials, the police, municipalities, the majority of the supreme court, railroad leaders, and a multitude of others.

Nevertheless, the myth of the ‘good Dutchman’ during the war spread internationally. The diary of Anne Frank played an important role in this misrepresentation. She had been hidden with her family and others by good Dutch people in Amsterdam. Much less emphasis was given to their betrayal, probably by another Dutchman which led to her death.

Van Hellenberg-Hubar stated in the interview: "I am of the opinion that the myth of the 'good Dutchman' can have a positive effect. A myth can serve as an ideal picture. A picture which one has to meet. The positive norm, which the myth contains, is part of the norms and values in the Netherlands. If one effects the myth, the danger that the norm in this case, tolerance, also is effected. Tolerance is in essence not self-understood but a consequence of a conscious choice to give space to another. On that one has to work. Starting to deconstruct the myth can in this context be problematic."

What he said can be summarized as: “I am in favor of lying to embellish the Dutch past. We should lie or at least remain silent about its ugly sides.” Once one applies this view as a prism on Dutch society many of the attitudes of the country’s leaders during the past decades become much clearer.

‘Call of Duty’: Modern warfare’s Middle Eastern politics of ignorance

WHEN IT COMES to the countries in the Middle East, however, “It becomes much more politically fraught, politically complex.... When you talk about spending a whole bunch of time in this Middle Eastern country, where we’re going to be tracking down the terrorist leader and working alongside freedom fighters in that country, we just didn’t want to get wrapped up in the politics of any specific real world country.

“That’s because, number one, we don’t know enough about the politics of any given country to be able to do it respectfully. And number two, it would tie our hands as developers where we have these ideas of emotionally impactful narrative moments, exciting game-play moments, and we want to be able to bring those to the screen without having to worry about, ‘Well, that’s not accurate to this conflict. That thing didn’t really happen.’” This answer amounts to nothing more than complete nonsense. Infinity Ward brought in consultants from the US military and others to get every aspect of the weaponry in the game just right, but they couldn’t bring in a single political scientist, historian or sociologist familiar with the Middle East? The company has other games set in real political contexts with fictional details, such as when Russia invades America in a prior Call of Duty game. That didn’t really happen in real life now, did it? Using Jacob Minkoff’s logic, why didn’t Infinity War ever have a fictional stand-in for America? Just like they fused elements of Afghanistan in the 1980s, Chechnya in the 1990s and Syria today to create “Uzrikstan,” the fictional America in earlier Call of Duty games could have looked like America, but with a population that speaks German and dresses like they do in France – “Gerfransica” perhaps.

But that sounds ridiculous, right? Does it sound more ridiculous than “Uzrikstan,” the mountainous Arab “Middle Eastern” state on the northeastern Black Sea coast that grows poppies and has no religion? It gets worse, unfortunately. The game developers told The Guardian newspaper last year that one of the protagonists for their single player campaign, “Farah Karim,” was inspired by the female Kurdish fighters in Syria today. Yet in the game, she’s suddenly Arab (because everyone in the Middle East is Arab and lives in a desert, apparently).

The Kurds in Syria have been badly oppressed by Arab nationalist regimes since the 1950s, and today most are proud that in contrast to Arab political groups across the region, women in many of their movements take on real leadership roles.

For Infinity Ward to take this example and flip it on its head seems plain wrong.

Israel vs. Iran GDP per capita

Iran’s GDP has never recovered to its pre-revolution levels.

Israel’s has now quintupled Iran’s GDP per capita. And this is before US sanctions kicked back in.

Israel is close to Iran’s total GDP even though Iran has nearly 10 times the population.

When Iran says Israel won’t exist in 2040, perhaps it is talking about itself.

“Pro-Palestinian activists” should rejoice: Palestinian conflict deaths down 75% this year

The number of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces have plummeted this year compared to last year, from 76 to 18, a 75% reduction.

Compared to 2018, it is even more dramatic – an 87% drop.

It appears that when there are fewer violent riots, there are fewer people dying!

Who would have thought that?

05/26 Links Pt1: The Jews are not “settlers” in their own ancestral heartland; Is the two-state solution dead?; PA: Quran commands fighting and permits killing Israelis

From Ian:

The Jews are not “settlers” in their own ancestral heartland

Jewish communities, (villages and towns) in Judea and Samaria do not consist of “settlers.” The Jewish population consists of the descendants of the native and indigenous Jewish people in their own ancient land. A people have no need to “settle” what is already theirs by virtue of millennial physical and spiritual attachment. It is theirs and theirs alone.

Notice that as of this time of writing, Judea and Samaria have still not been annexed (I prefer the words, liberated or redeemed) at least not yet and the time to do so is well overdue – 2,000 years overdue. Will it happen this July, 2020 under Bibi Netanyahu’s watch or will there be another fabricated delay? These lands, after all, are the very warp and woof, the very fabric and fiber of Jewish history, both during and after Biblical times.

Simply put: The Jewish people do not “settle” land that already belongs to them. And the Jewish people cannot be called “settlers” in their very own ancestral, Biblical and native heartland.

Now if those facts are understood and hammered home again and again by every Israeli and every Jew in the Diaspora, think of the power and the glory that will illuminate the world as the veil of deception is finally torn from the same world’s eyes.

But it all will become meaningless if Israel’s leaders and politicians succumb yet again to a hostile world or to the Israeli Left, betray President Trump’s best chance for Jewish restoration in at least part of Judea and Samaria (its ancestral heartland), and instead delay for more endless years Israeli sovereignty throughout Eretz Yisrael.

Why do US Jewish leaders remain silent on Israeli sovereignty?

There is simply no excuse to stand on the sidelines during this existential debate merely because the issue is "controversial."

It is said that during this time of coronavirus, major Jewish organizations are suffering due to decreased donations. The virus may well be responsible for a considerable decline in support, but another virus may be at play here as well. The virus of fear is also rampant: fear of offending one's donors, one's neighbors, one's friends and relatives by taking a position that is unpopular but morally and historically correct.

Perhaps American Jews have grown weary of supporting organizations that lack the courage to distinguish themselves one from another. Perhaps they are hungry for an organization that trusts Israelis to act in their own national interest just as citizens of other countries do. Where is such a major Jewish organization among the American landscape today?

At some point, Israel will extend sovereignty over the Jewish portions of the West Bank. The status quo cannot continue indefinitely until the Palestinians miraculously decide to live in peace next to the Jewish State, a fantasy progressives continue to cling to despite all evidence to the contrary. It is at long last time to face reality and move on.

As Rabbi Hillel wisely said: "If not now, when?"

JPost Editorial: Netanyahu's circus of a trial delegitimizes democracy

The rowdy crowd took its cue from the beliefs of the person they had come to support – the prime minister. Netanyahu, who had attempted to avoid attending Sunday’s opening session, ended up grabbing the spotlight in every way possible, in an effort to dominate the headlines and coverage.

In a smart PR move, he had the Likud ministers bused to the courthouse to portray solidarity in a much-publicized photo taken without the court’s permission. As the Post’s Gil Hoffman wrote, media from around the world had gathered to report on the prime minister standing alone in a courtroom facing serious charges. The presence of the Likud ministers, as well as the cynical use of a group of Holocaust survivors who also pledged allegiance to the prime minister, helped to dull that sharp image.

Where things took a far more sinister turn was when Netanyahu gave a long statement to the media before the trial’s launch. First, he attempted to deflect the charges against him as an indictment against anyone in Israel with a right-wing political viewpoint.

“They are trying to topple me and the entire right wing,” he claimed, adding a who’s who of Israeli “leftists” who are out to get him. “The police, prosecution, press and the Left and the legal establishment joined together to bring me down....”

That doesn’t leave many people or institutions on the other side, as Netanyahu made sure to cover all the bases with his base statements. But as Hoffman astutely pointed out, the verdict in this trial, which is a watershed moment in Israeli history, is not going to be decided by partisan Likud voters or Israelis who distrust the legal establishment and the police. Rather, it is going to be ruled upon by the three judges, who will absorb all the evidence presented by both sides and make judgments based on the facts, not emotional appeals or demagogic tirades.

Netanyahu managed to shift the focus on this first day of his trial away from the image of a prime minister on trial to the image of a prime minister being lynched by a crooked system out to get him.

That attack on the democratic institutions of the country might have been effective in the short term, but when the court reconvenes in July and witnesses start taking the stand in the coming months (or even years), the focus will again shift to where it should be – on the charges, the defense and whether the prime minister is guilty or innocent.

The PLO in Lebanon decided to seal off all the Palestinian “refugee” camps in that country after the discovery of four suspected cases of COVID-19 in the Burj al-Barajneh camp.

That camp is only one of a dozen camps in Lebanon that have been virtual prisons for Palestinians for decades.

Even though it is now been over two days since this closure, there is absolute silence from the “pro-Palestinian” crowd on social media about this. In fact, these activists are still politicizing the almost nonexistent problem of COVID-19 in Gaza, even though every single case there was quarantined and no one in the general population of Gaza has caught it.

By any measure, Palestinians in Lebanon are in worse shape than in Gaza. Their population density is far higher, they cannot build, they are not allowed to have many jobs, they are treated as enemies, and the Palestinians fleeing from Syria were forced into the already highly overcrowded camps because their grandparents happened to live in Palestine in 1948.

Yet these people who style themselves as caring about Palestinians largely ignore Lebanon. They claim to speak “truth to power” but will never criticize Lebanese abuse of their Palestinian “guests.”

Just like they won’t criticize Hamas for its role in the misery of Gazans.

The only Arabs they criticize are those that they can claim are aligned with Israel.

Anyone who desires that Palestinians remain stateless and miserable in Lebanon and elsewhere rather than accept Israel’s existence is not pro-Palestinian.

The entire point of “return” is, and always has been, to destroy Israel (quotes)

I saw this at +972 Magazine today:

While the idea of “return” is presented as a humanitarian issue by Palestinians and NGOs, the Arab world has long recognized that it was a pretext for destroying Israel – and this remains true today.
Here are some historic quotes on the topic from research I did a number of years ago:
As early as October, 1949, Egypt’s foreign minister Muhammad Salah al-Din said, “…in demanding the return of the Palestinian refugees, the Arabs mean their return as masters, not slaves; or to put it quite clearly – the intention is the extermination of Israel.” [i]
Similarly, in 1960 Egypt’s Nasser said, “If the refugees return to Israel, Israel will cease to exist.” [ii]
In 1950, Lebanese weekly As Sayyad suggested that Arab states should recognize Israel in order to ensure the return of the refugees. That way, it added, “we should create a large Arab majority that would serve as the most effective means of reviving the Arab character of Palestine while forming a fifth column for the day of revenge and reckoning.” [iii]
In 1952, Sir Alexander Galloway, former head of UNRWA in Jordan, was quoted by Reverend Karl Baehr, Executive Secretary of the American Christian Palestine Committee, in front of a US Senate committee, as saying, “It is perfectly clear than the Arab nations do not want to solve the Arab refugee problem. They want to keep it as an open sore, as an affront against the United Nations, and as a weapon against Israel....Arab leaders don't give a damn whether the refugees live or die."[iv]
Prime Minister of Lebanon Abdullah el-Yafi, stated in 1966, “The day on which the Arabs’ hope for the return of the refugees to Palestine is realized will be the day of Israel’s extermination.”[v]
The people who claim they care about “return” have an agenda which is the opposite of humanitarian. It is an agenda to destroy.
_____________________________

[i] Egyptian Foreign Minister, Salah-el-Din, The Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Misri, Cairo (11 October 1949), quoted from N. Feinberg, Studies in International Law, with a Special Reference to the Arab-Israel Conflict (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Magnes Press, 1979) 506
[ii] Neue Zuercher Zeitung, September 1, 1960, quoted by Terence Prittie in “Curtis, M. Neyer, C. Waxman and A. Pollack (ed.),"The Palestinians: People, History, Politics," 1975.
[iii] “Israel Gives Plan on Arab Refugees,” New York Times, November 12, 1953, quoting an Israeli white paper.
[iv] Committee on Foreign Relations, Palestine Refugee Program, Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Near East and Africa of the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Eighty-Third Congress, First Session on the Palestine Refugee Program, May 20, 21, and 25, 1953 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953), p. 103. Quoted in "A Tale of Two Galloways: Notes on the Early History of UNRWA and Zionist Historiography," Alexander H. Joffe & Asaf Romirowsky, Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 46, Issue 5, 2010
[v] Abdullah el-Yafi, Prime Minister of Lebanon, the Lebanese daily newspaper El-Hayat, Beirut (29 April 1966), quoted from N. Feinberg, op. cit.

Just in case you weren’t already thoroughly convinced that Hezbollah is a completely immoral and contemptible terror group, their English-language Al Manar has an article extolling the acts of 12 suicide bombers who attacked Israeli targets in Lebanon before 2000.

Hezbollah, who has been mistakenly viewed by the Israeli enemy and the West as a mere armed group, is an Islamic Jihadi party that refers to Islam teachings and values in devising its strategies and plans.

Sacrificing one’s soul for the sake of God, nation and oppressed people is praised in Islam as martyrdom. Hezbollah sacrificed 1281 martyrs in its fight to liberate the Lebanese South and Western Bekaa from the Israeli occupation.

The military confrontation with the Zionist enemy imposed on Hezbollah Resistance certain military strategies that prevent the Israelis from frustrating them. In this context, Hezbollah carried out 12 martyrdom bombing operations against the Israeli occupation posts, inflicting game-changing losses upon.

After describing these attacks, the article concludes:

The above-detailed martyrdom bombing operations, which reflect the sublime values of sacrifice and altruism, have dug deeply in the Israeli collective unconsciousness, changing all the Zionist false claims of possessing an invincible military power.

The EU still does not designate Hezbollah as a terror group, only its “military wing.” This would be considered unbelievable if we hadn’t already seen how easily Arab terrorists can bend Europeans to their will. by making various threats of how Europe acting morally would hurt Lebanon or other such nonsense.

A group that glorifies suicide bombers as “altrusitic” does not deserve any respect, and all the respect given to Hezbollah by the EU makes the EU that much more irrelevant.

05/25 Links Pt2: The Torah Heard Round the World; Dear Europe – the Israelis are not your Jews; Roger Waters – getting a taste of his own medicine

From Ian:

The Torah Heard Round the World

My synagogue is using the scrolls my grandfather once used as a military chaplain in WWII. Now, once again, his Torah brings comfort during a time of danger and uncertainty.

When our family moved to New York, we brought the Torah with us and loaned it to our new shul, the Park Avenue Synagogue, as our Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove instantly understood the significance of this family treasure.

And now the Torah is back in action during a crisis. When I saw Cantor Azi Schwartz holding my grandfather’s Torah snug to his chest, I was overwhelmed by emotions about how our tradition has the capacity to travel over time and space in a troubled world. He has incorporated this scroll into some of the online services that we watch in our virtual world, part of how he brings relief to all of us who are trying to stay healthy and be patient until this viral storm passes so we can return to normalcy. As he held that Torah, the cantor offered a small taste of what so many observant Jews dearly miss, the spiritual wonder of attending services on Friday night and Saturday morning as we connect with our congregational friends and take time away from the demands of the secular world to pray and learn.

And yet, I couldn’t also help feeling that my grandfather’s Torah needs to be returned to a physical home as soon as possible. While the Jewish community is rightly focused on making sure that public health guidelines are followed, we must be prepared, when this pandemic is over, to do everything possible to repair our social fabric, which includes the synagogue, church, and mosque. Jews and other places of social bonds—educational, cultural, and other nonprofit groups—will struggle to survive when this ends.

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the institutions that are so vital to the emotional health of our world—the places where people come together for common interests and experiences, the organizations that offer cultural education and celebration, and the physical religious rooms that help us achieve spiritual vitality. A new normal cannot exist without them. We can’t be virtual forever.

In the years ahead, we must do everything that is necessary to fix the broken spaces where Torahs like my grandfather’s are housed and where we come together as a people to worship. Just as my grandfather did almost 75 years ago, we will need to bring the Torahs back home, as soon as this war is over.

What a Difference a ‘J’ Makes

Not everyone welcomed the visibly distinctive insignia of the Jewish chaplain. Some Protestants, reported the American Israelite in November 1918, bristled at the notion that the Jews had an “emblem peculiar to themselves,” anxious lest they use the war “as a time for their own denominational propaganda work.” A number of American Jews, in turn, bristled at the use of Roman numerals rather than the letters of the Hebrew alphabet to designate the commandments. If, as representatives of the Jewish community claimed, the Ten Commandments was to the Jews (aka the “Hebrews”), what the cross was to Christians, why stop short of heralding it as a Jewish symbol, through and through?

Fear of desecration, of exposing the sacred Hebrew letters to the most frightful of wartime conditions, was one response; the difficulty of procuring Hebrew letters another. Left unsaid but implicit all the same: By WWI, American visual culture, which prized the Ten Commandments, commonly depicted them with Roman numerals, not Hebrew letters. (By then, the “Tablets of the Law” had become as much an American phenomenon as a Jewish one, but that’s another story.)

Though quelled at the time and for several decades thereafter, concern over the nomenclature by which the Ten Commandments was identified repeatedly surfaced. Writing more than 50 years later, in 1972, Rabbi Judah Nadich, General Eisenhower’s adviser on Jewish affairs, called the concern a “perennial” one, while Rabbi Aryeh Lev, director of the National Jewish Welfare Board’s Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy, across whose desk passed any number of suggestions—among them, replacing both the Hebrew letters and the Roman numerals with “short straight horizontal lines”—described it as “really an interesting matter.”

It would take another decade—a total of 65 years—before Hebrew lettering finally made its way onto the Jewish chaplain’s Ten Commandments insignia. In 1983, it became official.

The substitution of a “J” for an “H” and of the Hebrew alphabet for Roman numerals may not appear on anyone’s list of triumphant historical moments or victories. Perhaps they should. Gestures of inclusion and public recognition, these two visual declarations not only stabilized American Jewry’s footing, but also bolstered its confidence, its self-assertion, as a minority culture. By my reckoning, that qualifies as a victory.

📽 VIDEO: President Truman meets with Chaim Weizmann, President of the newly proclaimed State of Israel, at the White House #OnThisDay in 1948. https://t.co/PpC76dXDDL
— AIPAC (@AIPAC) May 25, 2020

Dear Europe – the Israelis are not your Jews

At some point, the people who run the European Union will have to get used to the idea that Israel is here to stay.

So far, it’s been a tough sell, mostly because old habits die hard.

Amid the flurry of denunciations against Israel, for even thinking about going ahead with sovereignty for parts of Judea and Samaria, most telling is this remark from Josep Borrell, EU’s High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, as follows: “We strongly urge Israel to refrain from any unilateral decision that would lead to the annexation of any occupied Palestinian territory, and would be, as such, contrary to international law.”

Regarding international law, the high commissioner is highly mistaken, as we read here from the Gatestone Institute.

From time immemorial, or precisely the Revelation at Sinai, which the Sage Judah Halevi referred to as the defining moment of all world history, the land, all of it, belongs to the Jews, verified over and over again from Balfour, to the League of Nations, to the San Remo Conference, back to The Kuzari and ultimately to the Hebrew Bible.

It is written in parchment. It is written in stone. It is written in the DNA of every Jewish person, man, woman, and child.

So what’s troubling those European commissioners, high and low, particularly from France, and now even the Vatican?

Yes, France, still famous for the Roundup of Paris, which even amazed the Gestapo at how smartly the gendarmes rushed to the task.

Suddenly, the French were more efficient even than the Germans…and today, incidentally, Germany has also voiced “concern” about Israel’s possible move toward partial annexation.

Antisemitism in Yemen 1910-1915

The American Jewish Yearbook has interesting information about Jews throughout the world since its inception.

In the yearbook covering 1909-1910, here are a few entries:

September 22. Jews forced to leave Yemen (Arabia) to avoid conversion to Mohammedanism.

DECEMBER 3. One hundred and fifty Jewish emigrants from Yemen arrive in Palestine; they are distributed among colonies of Rehoboth and Rishon le-Zion.

September (1910): Jews of Yemen protest against refusal to accept their testimony in courts.

May 3, 1912: Anti-Jewish disturbances in Yemen. Several Jews murdered

1913-14: JEWS OF THE YEMEN:—AUGUST. Government permits organization of judicial tribunals exclusively of Arabs; this action victimizes Jews who may be falsely accused, as testimony of two Arab witnesses suffices to secure condemnation.—Jew ill-treated and left half dead in roadway because he submitted successful bid when invited to exchange large sum of money for Government. Complaint of Jew unavailing.—Heads of community imprisoned for disobeying edict ordering them to clean streets, no matter what their social status. Representations to Governor of Sanaa, the representative of central Government, unavailing.— Minister of Interior declares that peremptory orders will be given to Military Governor of Sanaa to protect Jews of Yemen.— OCTOBER. Further cruelties of the Imam, spiritual head of Yemen, toward Jews reported. Jews denounced for alleged trading in intoxicating drinks promptly punished without investigation of the charges.—MARCH. The Imam accedes to request of Haham Bashi, that Alliance Israelite Universelle be permitted to establish a school at Sanaa in which Arabic, Hebrew, and a foreign language may be taught.—MAY 28. Haham Bashi receives reports from Sanaa that the Arabs have again attacked Jewish inhabitants.

This is how Arabs have treated Jews throughout the centuries. Nothing to do with Zionism.

Alan Solow, a member of the Executive Committee of Israel Policy Forum and former Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, wrote a blog in Times of Israel arguing that Israel should not extend sovereignty on parts of Judea and Samaria for this reason:

No solution should be imposed on anyone or by anyone in the Israeli-Palestinian arena.

While American Jewish consensus around Israel policy has not always been easy to attain, this sentiment has stood for decades as the one universally accepted principle undergirding the quest for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – that it must be reached through bilateral negotiations between the parties. This precept allowed Jewish leadership to strongly urge American administrations of both parties not to attempt to implement their own vision of how to resolve longstanding differences between the two sides. Despite expressions of expected or preferred outcomes over the years, every President has endorsed this concept. This principle also allowed American Jewish leadership to credibly oppose unilateral attempts by the Palestinian Authority to declare a state or to otherwise take action without consent to change the status of disputed territories.

There is a fatal flaw in this logic: Palestinians have been acting unilaterally for decades.

They have called themselves the State of Palestine. They have joined numerous international conventions without any desire to actually enforce their words.

They have built illegally in Area C, with support from the European Union, creating facts on the ground and literally engaging in a “land grab.”

And, perhaps most importantly, they have taken the de facto veto power that the international community has given them, using exactly this logic, to make peace far more distant than it appeared to be in 2000. They’ve said “no” to every offer, not to negotiate but to wait for others to pressure Israel to give up more concessions without compromising their own intransigent, extremist positions.

Solow makes it sound like this status quo can go on forever:

The fact is that nobody is credibly threatening Israel’s control over major settlement blocs in the West Bank which are generally recognized as likely becoming Israeli territory as part of a final status agreement. Israel’s continued control of these Jewish population centers is, as a practical matter, uncontested. The only reason to acquiesce to Israel taking them unilaterally now is to abandon the position that solutions are to be negotiated, not imposed.

It can go on for a few years, but the situation is not frozen in amber. Palestinians will continue to build; they will continue to attempt to gain political legitimacy at Israel’s expense, they will continue to grow in population, they will continue to occasionally explode in violence.

Israel cannot play forever by these rules where Palestinians can do what they want and Israel has its hands tied by adhering to an artificial moral standard. Continuing to wait for Palestinians to come to the table means that Palestinians can continue to act with impunity.

Extending sovereignty is not a land grab. It is the beginning of a disengagement. It is finally choosing borders. It is solving the demographic problem. It is staking a legal claim. It is sending a message that Palestinian intransigence will not be rewarded anymore. It is recognition that the world has changed since Oslo and Israel cannot be tied to an agreement that the Palestinians have abrogated since at least 2001.

Solow shouldn’t be warning Israel against doing what it must. He should be explaining to American Jewry why Israel must do it. And it is a serious failure in American Jewish leadership that he, and other leaders, cannot even figure this out for themselves.

05/25 Links Pt1: Muslims themselves gave us the tools to disprove Palestinian lies ?; Israeli minister to Twitter: Remove Khamenei from your platform

From Ian:

Muslims themselves gave us the tools to disprove Palestinian lies ?

Of all the Palestinian lies about the Temple Mount, the most dangerous is the false thinking being ‎created. In recent years, the Palestinians have been kneading the timeline of history as if it were ‎dough. They are writing a new historical story for Jerusalem: the Muslims were here first, while the ‎Jews – who have no ties whatsoever to the city and its holy sites – arrived after them, then ‎proceeded to steal, block off, and invent a story about the Mount and the Temple that sits there. ‎

For the past few years, Israel has opted to stay in its PR comfort zone. In the face of these mega-lies, it ‎chose to focus on the Palestinian ritual that goes along with the invented history and assigns Israel an ‎intention of destroying "Al-Aqsa" by means of an artificial earthquake and "throwing chemicals on the ‎foundations of the mosque," as well as horrific cartoons that show Jews as "Dr. Streimer" or as snakes ‎and octopuses wrapping themselves around the Dome of the Rock, stealing ice cream bars shaped like ‎Al-Aqsa with evil looks, or cutting off the top of the Dome of the Rock with a guillotine and rushing Al-‎Aqsa on D9 bulldozers to raze it. ‎

But none of these imaginings or works of art comes close to the seriousness of what Palestinian ‎leaders have been doing to their people's thinking for several years now: the "historical" statement ‎that Jewish ties to Jerusalem are based on falsehoods; that Jews have no true ties to Jerusalem; that ‎the Temple never stood on the Temple Mount; or that the Temple itself was only imaginary – "Al-‎Mazoom," as they call it. ‎

The immediate reaction to this false version of history is to turn to archaeology and well-established ‎history – hundreds of Jewish and Christian historical sources – to disprove the plié. But it seems that ‎isn't enough. Even the long list of prominent Muslim religious figures who for 1,300 years wrote ‎unhesitatingly about the Temple Mount as the location of the Jewish Temple makes no impression of ‎missions of Muslims. ‎

So we need something else – to delve into the history of the Mount. In the past few years the ‎research "tool belt" at our disposal has expanded, and we should use it. More and more academic ‎studies are showing that the Muslims, from the first time they visited the Mount, used Jews to find ‎their way around and that the Jews were the ones who taught Muslims about the Mount and where ‎its borders lie, as well as the boundaries of the Foundation Stone, and that the first Muslim ‎ceremonies at the Dome of the Rock bore a striking resemblance to Jewish ceremonies at the very ‎Temple whose existence the Muslims now deny. ‎‎

David Singer: PLO Opens Door to Jordan Returning to Judea and Samaria

Netanyahu had no compunction in calling out and exposing the continuing travesty of justice that these current protestations represented.

However the roadblock jamming any progress in resolving the conflictwas suddenly cleared when days later PLO President Mahmoud Abbas announced:
"The Israeli occupation authority, as of today, has to shoulder all responsibilities and obligations in front of the international community as an occupying power over the territory of the occupied state of Palestine, with all its consequences and repercussions based on international law and international humanitarian law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which holds the occupying power responsible for the protection of the civilian population under occupation and their property, criminalizes collective punishment, bans theft of resources, appropriation and annexation of land, bans forced transfer of the population of the occupied territory and bans transfer of the population of the occupying state (the colonialists) to the land it occupies, which all are grave violations and war crimes"

Stripped of the lies and false and deceptive claims contained in this statement that have formed part and parcel of the PLO’s propaganda arsenal since its formation in 1964 – Abbas’s message was clear: Abbas was now turning over responsibility for Judea and Samaria to Israel.

The PLO had never claimed “regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan” or “on the Gaza Strip” as article 24 of its founding 1964 Charter declared. Its activities were to be “on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields”.

This PLO position only changed in 1968 after Jordan – having occupied Judea and Samaria between 1950 and 1967 driving out every Jew living there – lost that territory to Israel in the Six Day War. Gaining sovereignty in 100% of Judea and Samaria by the creation of another Arab State became the focus of the PLO from 1968.

President Trump’s peace plan offeringthe PLO possibly 70% of Judea and Samaria plus Gaza (see map below) has been rejected by the PLO.

Abbas – in turning over responsibility for Judea and Samaria to Israel – has opened the door to Jordan replacing the PLO as Israel’s negotiating partner.Successful negotiations between Jordan and Israel could see Jordan annexing part of Judea and Samaria, Jordanian citizenship being restored for the Arab residents as existed between 1950 and 1988 and a possible end to the Jewish-Arab conflict.

King Abdullah – expect a call from President Trump.

Are deep security ties between Israel and Jordan at risk? – analysis

Israel’s defense establishment understands the need to prevent a collapse of such ties, as the two countries not only have robust security coordination and intelligence sharing mechanism regarding the common threats. According to foreign reports, Jordan has allowed Israeli jets to use its airspace for its war-between-wars campaign in Syria.

The strategic depth provided by Jordan, which has not entered into any alliance with neighboring countries hostile to Israel, has kept Israel’s eastern and longest border the quietest and safest for 25 years.

Both Jordan and Israel understand that should security ties fail, not only will King Abdullah face instability at home, but the violence could spill over the border to Israel.

With a majority of Jordan’s citizens of Palestinian descent, Palestinian self-determination and maintaining the status quo of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem are key aspects of public discourse in Amman and contribute to the cooling relationship between the neighboring countries.
In March, Jordanian Prime Minister Omar Razzaz told CNN that “today, we are at the lowest level in the relationship that has been since signing the peace treaty” and warned that the peace treaty itself was at risk.

Razzaz also denounced Israel’s alleged “violations of the sanctity of Muslim and Christian endowments in Jerusalem.”

While Netanyahu and Abdullah both recognize the need to keep the peace, domestic pressures in Jordan might make it difficult for the king to continue it at the low-profile level it currently stands.

That would not be good, for either side.

Lebanese interior minister Mohammad Fahmi, noting an increase in coronavirus cases in Lebanon, called for a “total lockdown” on the country.

But to make his point, he didn’t say this this was for the safety of the Lebanese people. He didn’t say that he wanted to flatten any curves.

No, this minister said that by not adhering to a lockdown, Lebanese society would be hurt – which is just what the Israelis want to see.

He explained that "For me , there is no such thing as Israel; there is something called the Zionist entity. It intends that our society crumbles from within. This is a particular interest of the enemy of our society, and our enemy is clear. If our society does not to abide by public safety, this is in the interest of the Israeli enemy.”

I fully expect an opposition politician, who wants lockdown restrictions lifted, to say that failing to do so would wreck the Lebanese economy, which is exactly what the Zionists want.

It is a strange obsession that Arabs still have with Israel: blaming Israel for everything that is wrong in their own society, labeling their political enemies as “Zionist” and using the word Israel the way some parents use the boogeyman to scare kids into doing what they want.