Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

07/28 Links Pt1: Camp David 20 Years Later: The Oslo Delusion; On Hezbollah, It’s Time to Call Nasrallah’s Bluff

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: Camp David 20 Years Later: The Oslo Delusion

The veteran terrorist walked away from an offer that gave him more or less everything Palestinian advocates said they wanted. Two months later, convinced of Barak’s weakness and thinking bloody attacks on Israel would produce even more such suicidal concessions, he launched a terror war of attrition known as the Second Intifada. That traumatic conflict, which took the lives of more than 1,000 Israelis and many more Palestinians, blew up any remaining support for Oslo. It set in place a broad consensus among Israelis — further reinforced by the disastrous results of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, which led to a Hamas-run terrorist state in the Strip, as well as the refusals of Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas to negotiate in good faith — that peace is out of reach in the foreseeable future.

As Miller now concedes, the summit didn’t have any of the elements that could lead to success, such as “strong leaders,” a “workable deal,” and “effective US mediation.” Barak’s desperation and the Clinton administration’s poor planning made things worse. Miller is also correct in pointing out that Clinton’s belief that trying and failing was better than not trying at all was horribly wrong. The consequences of his hubris were paid in the blood of those slaughtered in Arafat’s intifada.

Nevertheless, Miller still holds on to the delusion that more American pressure on the Jewish state, coupled with a set of parameters for a deal that would have given the Israelis no wriggle room on Jerusalem and other intractable issues, might have made a difference. He disdains the efforts of the Trump administration to advance peace, thinking its leaders are far too close to Israel. But although Kushner seems to have tried to avoid making the same mistakes as Clinton, he too doesn’t seem to fully understand why even his more realistic “Prosperity to Peace” vision had as little chance of achieving an agreement as the 2000 summit.

In an interview with Newsweek, Kushner exhibited some magical thinking of his own. Kushner believes that the key to peace is pushing the Arab states closer to Israel. Doing so is a good thing in and of itself, but like every other formula for a settlement, it failed because the Palestinians just aren’t interested.

The lessons of the Camp David Summit rest on understanding that better diplomacy, planning, and help from outside parties is never going to be enough. Until the Palestinians give up their vision of a world without a State of Israel — one that is now sadly shared by Jews like Peter Beinart, who think the failure to make peace means that the Zionist project should be discarded in favor of a dangerous utopian vision that will lead to far more bloodshed than any intifada — no peace process, no matter how skillfully conducted, will ever succeed.

Most Israelis understand this bitter truth and have adjusted their expectations accordingly. It is to be hoped that future American governments, including a putative one led by former Vice President Joe Biden, which will likely be staffed by Clinton and Obama administration veterans, will be capable of understanding that in the absence of a sea change in Palestinian political culture, further negotiations are simply a waste of everyone’s time.

Analysis of UAWC’s Response to the Dutch Funding Freeze over Terror Links

On July 20, 2020, the Dutch government announced that it was suspending funding to the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) over links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). During a parliamentary debate, Foreign Minister Stef Blok and Development Minister Sigrid Kaag acknowledged that an internal government audit concluded that Dutch funds were used to pay the salaries of two UAWC employees who were also members of the PFLP terror organization and then arrested for murder.

According to NGO Monitor research, since 2013, the Netherlands has provided UAWC with approximately €20 million in grants.

In response to the Dutch announcement, UAWC issued a statement (July 22) attempting to deflect the serious allegations and misleadingly referring to “former employees” (the two were employed by UAWC at the time of the murder and their subsequent arrests). Reflecting the core emphasis on public relations and donor retention, the statement was published in English.

NGO Monitor has prepared the following detailed analysis of UAWC’s response:
Quote: For many years, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) has been attacked by the Israeli government and right-wing organization affiliated with it. Most of our projects are in “Area C” of the occupied West Bank, where we help vulnerable communities hold on to their land. The Israeli government has built illegal settlements in this area and wants to annex it. This is the key reason why we are attacked.

Analysis: UAWC opens (and closes) with a clearly political defense meant to appeal to European officials, emphasizing “’Area C’ of the occupied West Bank, where we help vulnerable communities hold on to their land,” and asserting that the “key reason” for being “attacked” is the Israeli government’s pursuit of annexation.

In reality, NGO Monitor’s research is the result of evidence linking UAWC to the PFLP terror group (see below). Since December 2019, UAWC’s links to the PFLP have taken on heightened importance, after Israeli authorities announced the arrest of two UAWC employees for murder. On August 23, 2019, Samer Arbid, UAWC’s accountant, commanded a PFLP terror cell that carried out a bombing against Israeli civilians, murdering 17-year old Rina Shnerb, and injuring her father and brother. According to the indictment, Arbid prepared and detonated the explosive device. Abdul Razeq Farraj, another UAWC employee, was also indicted for his involvement in the PFLP and the 2019 attack.

On Hezbollah, It’s Time to Call Nasrallah’s Bluff

From a position of unprecedented weakness and distress, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is back to his old gambling habits. Similar to the summer of 2006, he is now threatening to perpetrate a terrorist attack against Israel in response to the death of one of his operatives in Syria.

Then, Nasrallah’s failed gambit triggered an all-out war, which exacted a terrible price from Lebanon and mainly from the Shiite ethnic group he purports to represent. Nasrallah himself was forced to pay a heavy price: his personal freedom. The man has been shuttered in his bunker ever since, and doesn’t see the light of day.

Nasrallah, however, is shackled to his equations — because he fears Israel will interpret a failure to act as weakness, he feels obligated to retaliate and is willing to risk a head-on clash. He hopes, of course, that he’ll be able to control the flames by keeping casualties on the Israeli side to a minimum, allowing Israel to absorb the event and temper its own counter-response, as it has done in the past.

For this reason alone, Israel should not play into Nasrallah’s hands. Rather, it should nullify the equations he is seeking to dictate and present him with a clear red line.

During the Second Lebanon War, Israel was strung along by poor leadership that failed to bring the IDF’s massive military advantage to bear. Instead of bringing Hezbollah to its knees, Israel was needlessly drawn into a 33-day war of attrition.

And yet, the results of that war sent a clear and decisive message to Hezbollah — that Israel will no longer allow the terrorist group to violate its sovereignty and continue attacking it from Lebanese soil. The quiet that prevailed along the border with Lebanon was therefore an important achievement, and it’s a fact that Hezbollah, battered and deterred, recognized that preserving this quiet was just as much in its own interest.

Al Qaws, the Palestinian LGBTQ group, will hold a protest against both Palestinian patriarchy and Israeli oppression tomorrow.

But they won’t be holding it in Ramallah or Hebron. They are doing it in Haifa.

On Wednesday, July 29th, alQaws for Sexual and Gender Diversity in Palestinian Society along with other queer and feminist Palestinian organizations will hold a protest in occupied Haifa to raise our voices against the patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist oppressions on LGBT and queer Palestinians, and to demand an end to violence against our bodies and lives.

…Discussions exploring sexual and gender diversity have spread broadly and can no longer be ignored or denied. Nor are they limited to specific groups in our society. These discussions have stormed our homes, our workplaces, and even our political and social spaces, making this one of the most controversial questions in Palestine. Yet the most consistent aspect of our visibility and the current debates remains the violence against LGBT and queer Palestinians. We have witnessed unprecedented physical and psychological violence on social media and beyond, reflecting various forms of homophobia and transphobia, often expressed through outdated and harmful myths and misconceptions that work to yet again demonize and exclude us from our own society, to control our bodies and repress our desires.

Of course, a Palestinian group – no matter how unpopular – must also talk about how awful Israel is.

The struggle to combat societal and state violence against the queer movement in Palestine unfolds on a complex terrain, structured by a settler-colonial power that denies Palestinian freedom and decolonization, and exacerbated by an economic system that exploits and degrades us. These violent foundations give rise to the “pinkwashing” narrative which opportunistically weaponizes our own pain against us, both on the global stage and within our communities. We stand in fierce opposition to the colonizing force that erases our struggle, then uses us as a fig-leaf for its oppression by claiming to be our salvation.

I suppose it pains them for me to point out that they chose to do the protest in Israel and not in their own Palestinian controlled areas – because they know that in the Palestinian territories they would be attacked and arrested by police while in Israel they will be protected by police.

This is the “pinkwashing” they rail against – where they choose to protest in the very nation that they claim is oppressing them.

How to manipulate a poll to make it look like Americans oppose Israel

Anti-Israel activists are upset that the Democratic platform does not include anti-Israel language. They point to a poll last year that, they claim, says that a plurality of Americans and 2/3 of Democrats support cutting aid to Israel.

A look at the poll shows how pollsters can easily manipulate the people to say what they want.

Data for Progress (whose very name shows that they intend to manipulate data for their political purposes) asked two questions:

In the past, the US has cut military aid to foreign governments accused of human rights violations. Supporters of the cuts say the US shouldn’t be involved in human rights abuses and it’s a waste of taxpayer money. Opponents say that even if some governments have imperfect records, we need to do what is necessary to fight terrorism and to counter foreign powers like Russia and China. Do you [support or oppose] the US government reducing foreign and military aid to governments engaged in human rights abuses?

First, the stage is set where the person is told that the US has a track record of cutting aid to human rights abusers. Then the two sides of the issue are described in a deliberately slanted and simplistic way. Finally, the question is asked whether they support existing US policy on reducing aid to human rights abusers.

Of course, most people will oppose it.

Then comes the trap:

Israel is one of the largest recipients of US military aid. Some legislators in the United States say that aid should be reduced because Israel often violates the human rights of Palestinians by using lethal military force against unarmed Palestinian civilians, including children. Other legislators in the United States say aid should not be reduced; Israel does what it needs to do to protect itself from terrorism and hostile foreign powers, who deliberately provoke Israel with violence. Do you [support or oppose] the US government reducing foreign and military aid to Israel based on human rights violations?

Israel is defined as a human rights abuser, deliberately and often attacking innocent Palestinian children with lethal force. The “pro-Israel” side of the question ignores everything Israel does to minimize casualties and the history of deadly Palestinian terrorism against civilians.

The person being polled already has put himself on the record as supporting reducing aid for human rights abusers. The question does not leave room for anyone to say that Israel is not a human rights abuser on par with the worst dictatorships in history. No one wants to look like or feel like a hypocrite. So many people, especially those who are not informed of the facts around Israel, will allow themselves to be steered to answer the way that the “progressive” pollster wants.

Anti-Israel organizations like J-Street commission polls like this all the time and then trumpet the results as if they reflect actual opinions of people rather than naked manipulation of their emotions. I wish that Zionist organizations would do similar polls with different wording, for example:

Israelis have been incessantly attacked by Palestinian terrorists for over seventy years. Hamas and other terror groups regularly vow to destroy Israel and plot further attacks. Some people think that Israel is too aggressive in defending its citizens and the US should cut aid to Israel that pays for defense against Hamas rockets and other attacks. Others say that Israel has the right and obligation to defend itself and has a robust judicial system to ensure that there are no abuses of power against innocent Palestinians. Do you support or oppose cutting US aid to Israel?

See how easy it is to ask the same question in a different way – and how easy it is to lead the people being surveyed into taking the position that the pollster wants?

Polls assume that most people are ignorant of the topic they are asking about – which is often true. When the pollsters pretend that it is their job to “educate” those being polled, they are engaging in advertising, not surveying. Instead of pretending to present both sides of the argument, a truly objective survey would simply ask “Do you support cutting US aid to Israel?” without any explanations and without other precursor questions meant to prime the answer (like questions about the budget or taxes, or on the other hand about US allies and enemies.)

If most people answer “I’m not sure” then that is the reality.

Surveys commissioned by partisan organizations are worthless. This is something that should be covered in basic high school civics classes and by the media. Unfortunately, the media are often the ones who commission these same polls so they will not criticize a major source of their own “scoops.”

As far as I can tell, there are no watchdog organizations that rate the objectivity of surveys. There should be.

No, antisemitism is not rooted in white supremacy

At JTA, a Rabbi Emily Cohen makes a muddled case against boycotting Twitter for 48 hours to protest its acceptance of antisemitism.

Her arguments are all over the place, but a couple of them are worth dismantling:

First, there’s the issue of this boycott catalyzing around a Black man. Anti-Semitism comes from everywhere. While perhaps it’s chance, and celebrity, that led to Wiley’s particular thread being the tweet that broke the bird’s beak, I can’t help but worry that white Jews and their allies were more ready to speak out against Wiley than against anti-Semitic white people.

She is not the first person to see racism by Jews who go after Black antisemites. She must have some proof, right?

In the United Kingdom, white people — including prominent politicians like Jeremy Corbyn — have been spouting anti-Semitism for some years. While these statements have hardly gone unnoticed — responses have included a film about Labour Party anti-Semitism and suits for libel resulting in formal apologies — to my knowledge there has not been a public call for a comparable social media boycott. Not for Corbyn, not for the many George Soros conspiracy tweets and not for any of the countless instances of anti-Semitism that show up on my feed every day.

Did Corbyn ever spend an entire day with many posts directly attacking Jews? His antisemitism was not primarily on social media but behind closed doors in the Labour Party – and the justified attacks on him were properly centered on his political position, not his social media accounts. . To say that no one demanded a Twitter ban on Corbyn – and that this is somehow proof that the people demanding such a ban on Wiley are racists – is bizarre and insulting.

It is also racist. To add more obstacles before calling out antisemitism for a Black man than for a white man is pretty much racism, as if the Black man cannot be held responsible for his actions as much as a White man should.

Cohen then contradicts herself:

I believe that we must stand against anti-Semitism in all its forms, but I also know that anti-Semitism is deeply rooted in white supremacy. Fixating upon anti-Semitism expressed by Black people more than that expressed by white people hurts all marginalized peoples.

But she just said above that “anti-Semitism comes from everywhere.” Now she says it is “deeply rooted in white supremacy.” If the second statement is true, then black antisemitism or Arab antisemitism are virtually impossible.

No, Emily, antisemitism is not rooted in white supremacy. White supremacy is rooted in antisemitism.

For a rabbi, Cohen is surprisingly ignorant about Jew-hatred. Was Martin Luther’s antisemitism based on white supremacy? How about that of Voltaire? Marx? The Spanish inquisitors? The Mufti of Jerusalem? Louis Farrakhan? Ice Cube?

Jew-hatred is independent of philosophy, logic, politics or skin color. Anyone who tries to tie it to any of those is likely to be condoning some types of antisemitism as somehow more justified and less objectionable than others. And it is a disgrace when this comes from someone who calls herself a rabbi.

Too many on the Left want so desperately to say that white supremacy is the primary kind of antisemitism and want to soft-pedal all other kinds. These are the people who want to weaponize antisemitism against their political enemies – and in so doing, they are enabling antisemitism from the likes of Wiley or Professor Griff or Mahmoud Abbas. Plenty of antisemites are not white, just as plenty of them are.

To look at antisemitism primarily through the lens of race means that you don’t really care about antisemitism.

07/27 Links Pt2: UK chief rabbi accuses social media platforms of ‘complicity’ in anti-Semitism; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's slam dunk against anti-Semitism; Col. Kemp: Why I Speak Up For Israel

From Ian:

UK chief rabbi accuses social media platforms of ‘complicity’ in anti-Semitism

British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis accused Twitter and Facebook of “complicity” in online anti-Semitism on Sunday, charging that the two social media giants’ “inaction” had allowed hate to flourish on their platforms.

“For too long, social media has been a safe space for those who peddle hatred and prejudice,” Mirvis wrote in letters sent to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish.

“Free speech is an essential cornerstone of any civilized society, but when it is used to incite hatred and violence against others, social media companies have a responsibility to act and must do so without delay,” he wrote.

“Over the next two days, many people around the world, including myself, will be suspending their social media activity in protest against the woeful lack of responsible leadership from companies including Twitter and Facebook,” Mirvis continued.

“This cannot be allowed to stand. Your inaction amounts to complicity.”
The Chief Rabbi writes to @Jack and Mark Zuckerberg to demand #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate pic.twitter.com/s0AFO4HPSx
— Chief Rabbi Mirvis (@chiefrabbi) July 26, 2020

“This cannot be allowed to stand. Your inaction amounts to complicity. I urge you to take swift action to challenge the hatred that currently thrives on your platform.”

Thousands join 48-hour Twitter ‘walkout’ to protest anti-Semitism on platform

A host of British politicians, celebrities, high-profile figures and other users said they were signing off of Twitter for two days starting Monday morning to protest anti-Semitic hate on the social media platform.

The protest, promoted under the hashtag #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate, was sparked by Twitter’s handling of a recent anti-Semitic rant by UK rap artist Wiley, and came as anti-hate groups have stepped up pressure for social media platforms to clamp down on rampant hate speech.

Wiley, 41, whose real name is Richard Cowie, posted a stream of anti-Semitic tweets Friday, claiming connections between the Jewish community and the Ku Klux Klan, as well as repeated tropes about Jews and money.

The tweets were up for 12 hours before Twitter finally deleted some of them under its “hateful conduct policy,” though others remain. He also posted anti-Semitic content on Instagram, which appeared not to have been deleted.

The grime musician, who has half a million Twitter followers, was given a seven-day suspension from the platform. Amid a wave of backlash his management company said it had cut all ties with him. He is also facing a police investigation.

Among the people and organizations going silent until Wednesday are British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his predecessor Jonathan Sacks, members of Parliament, Israeli elected officials and leading Jewish organizations in Canada and the United States.

Before going dark, Mirvis posted a letter to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey calling for action against anti-Semitism on the platform he co-founded more than a decade ago. “Your inaction amounts to complicity,” Mirvis wrote.

The protest took root after Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, who became famous for her role on “EastEnders,” tweeted on Friday night that she was considering abandoning Twitter over Wiley’s two-day spree of aggressively anti-Semitic posts.

HonestReporting Joins Blackout After Barrage of Twitter Antisemitism

HonestReporting is joining a widespread 48-hour Twitter ‘blackout’ after the musician known as Wiley was allowed to tweet incitement against Jews for hours unimpeded. We stand together with the demands of other Jewish organizations that are calling on Twitter to act more quickly to prevent the spread of dangerous hate speech to large audiences.

Rapper Richard Kylea Cowie Jr., better known by his stage name Wiley, spent hours on Friday mounting a relentless attack against Jews, including calls for black people to go to “war” against Jews. Wiley claimed in these tweets that Jews had usurped black people as the Hebrews, a conspiracy theory that has led to acts of terrorism against Jews, such as the stabbing attack in Monsey in New York in December 2019. Wiley also called for Jews to be shot.

Wiley’s extended rant on Twitter saw him repeatedly invoking conspiracy theories positing that Jews were responsible for the international slave trade, claiming that Jews had cheated him and were “snakes”, comparing Jews to the Ku Klux Klan, and suggesting that Jews should “hold some corn” – a colloquialism meaning that the subjects be shot.

Over the course of several hours, Wiley issued dozens of offensive tweets to his audience of over 493k followers. Twitter’s reaction was to delete a handful of his tweets and briefly suspend his account – a woefully inadequate response.

Yet despite Wiley’s large online following, his protracted rant was initially met with little coverage in the traditional media.

For years, HonestReporting has been urging the broadcast media to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism. More recently, HonestReporting has taken the step of urging social media giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to adopt the same standard, on the understanding that social media networks are now as influential as traditional media outlets – if not more.

Cartoon of the Day–The Leftist do-gooders

They are so altruistic, endowing Israelis with their wisdom from the Upper East Side!

Jordan’s Ad Dustour newspaper columnist Marwan Soudah writes about the ~~Jewish~~ Zionist plan to for world domination– a plan that he happily credits his Soviet Union-era scholars for teaching him.

During my academic studies in the Soviet Union and beyond, I became acquainted with scores of scholars, specialists, researchers, orientalists, writers, and journalists from Russia, both civilians and military. They devoted most of their time and their entire efforts to denuding the expansionist Zionist thought and practice in Palestine and the Arab world, and to concentrate efforts to curb the global and racist-slavery goals of Zionism that set their sights on infringing on the peoples of Russia and the globe, and dividing people into two parts, two camps, two worlds facing and contradicting, neither valid nor free. They are: the Jews of Zionism "born full and civilized"; And .. Goyim; gentiles who are meant to be servants and inferior slaves.

Among these distinguished scholars wereYuri Ivanov; Vladimir Begon; Yevgeny Yvesev. Galina Nikitina; Vladimir Kiseleyov; Professor Gedanov; F. P. Pulshakov and the two magnificent internationalist generals: Yevgeny Shikatikhin and Professor Alexander Romanenko. The latter fought in Chinese military uniforms to confront the Zionist war pilots in the airspace of Korea and the People's Republic of China, and the foundations of the global front against Zionism and others. During the successive decades of their difficult struggles, they warned a lot about the hideous Zionist goals that "will not stop in and around Palestine", and some of them paid with their lives, dying was the price of their faith, the necessity of stopping the imperialist Zionist expansion of thought and practice on the ground…

They warned, according to their analyses and private information available to them, that: Signing a peace treaty or agreement with "Israel" will only mean one thing: a new stage of rest for Zionism during which it is preparing to implement a renewed aggression in the Palestinian territories, and to prepare for another outside it, in the Arab world.

They said that Zionism …does not believe in agreements and peace, because it is voraciously looking for their oil wells, water and wealth. In their studies, they indicated that peace agreements with the Zionists openly implied: a renewed geographical expansion, a new displacement of Arabs from their homelands, and Zionist plans to create new, more acute internal problems in the Arab countries.

Those patriotic scholars who support us say that Zionism aims, through its pure Jewish state, to distract Jews from its hidden economic-political goal of world domination. They mouth statements of their devotion to the Jewish ideals and the so-called "liberation of persecuted Jews in their societies." In this way, the Zionists established the so-called "movements for national liberation", in order to enable them to mobilize fabricated and politically domesticated fighters capable of fighting and dying to accomplish the Zionist cosmic mission as war and terror, to continuously expand capital and industries, to convert the Arab "goyim" into "Black labor" that has no rights.

Soudah is an unabashed fan of Communist China and North Korea, and he is – get this – he heads the “Qalamiyin League, Putin and Russia’s lovers in Jordan and the Arab world.”

Anyone who doubts the links between antisemitism and modern “progressive’ socialism should try to explain this article where “Zionists’ regard the rest of the world as “goyim” meant to serve them and their plans to take over the world.

07/27 Links Pt1: Should There Be a Price for Rejectionism and Terror?; Hamas head: We refused $15 billion in aid conditioned on disarming; IDF thwarts Hezbollah terror cell infiltration

From Ian:

Should There Be a Price for Rejectionism and Terror?

Decades of peace-processing have been premised on the assumption that Palestinian leaders are ready in principle to end the conflict and live with Israel. But Palestinian leaders have never actually been willing to renounce, once and for all, their claims over any of the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. President George W. Bush learned this lesson. He wooed Arafat by giving official U.S. endorsement, for the first time, to a Palestinian state, but Arafat rebuffed his overture and, in violation of formal promises, bought a huge arsenal of Iranian weapons and then lied about it.

For decades, Palestinian leaders have refused peace offers that were seen as reasonable by top U.S. officials. What is innovative about the new U.S. peace plan is that it favors imposing consequences if the Palestinians unreasonably perpetuate the conflict. If they continue to support terrorism and reject peace, their cause will suffer. Palestinians are now being told that, if they remain violent and uncompromising, the U.S. will not block Israel from advancing its own claims to areas that, in the administration's view, realistic peace talks would leave to Israel.

The sensible question for the Palestinians is not whether the deal provides everything they think they are entitled to, but whether it is the best deal available - now and in the foreseeable future. The plan's goal is to change the diplomatic circumstances that have perversely incentivized the Palestinian side to keep the conflict going.

Hamas head: We refused $15 billion in aid conditioned on disarming

Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh said that his terror group had turned down as much as $15 billion in development aid to Gaza two months ago which he claimed had been conditioned on demilitarizing the Gaza-based terror group.

Haniyeh told Qatari newspaper al-Lusail that the offer had been made in the context of US President Donald Trump’s controversial peace plan, which would allocate $13.38 billion to the Gaza Strip for development if implemented.

“There were parties that came to us two months ago, who we know had been paid off by major powers. They offered us new projects in the Gaza Strip worth about $15 billion. Of course, we said this is excellent, we want to establish an airport, port, and economic development projects in the Gaza Strip,” Haniyeh said.

Both Hamas and its rival Fatah have opposed Trump’s peace plan — often referred to in the region as “the deal of the century” — since it was first published.

Haniyeh, who lives in the Qatari capital of Doha, told al-Lusail that the offer included an end of the blockade of Gaza by Israel and Egypt, which began after Hamas took over in the strip in 2007. Israel says the blockade prevents Hamas from importing weapons which it would use to threaten the Jewish state. The blockade has devastating effects on the Gazan economy, however, where unemployment is now over 60 percent.

Haniyeh said that the most recent offer was conditioned on Hamas relinquishing its military capabilities. The Trump peace plan stipulates Hamas’ disarmament as a precondition for negotiations on Palestinian statehood, although it seems unlikely that the Gaza-based terror group would agree to do so unilaterally.

“We learned that, in exchange, we would have to dissolve our military factions and integrate them into the police and retire our weaponry, especially heavy weapons, the rockets that hit Tel Aviv and beyond, and dissolve the capability of Gaza for self-rule,” Haniyeh said.

David Singer: David Singer: Jordan Moves to Resolve West Bank Sovereignty Problem it Created

Jordan’s Prime Minister Omar Razzaz has made a welcome intervention to resolve the issue of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (aka West Bank).

Razzaz’s offer comes as Israel readies to restore Jewish sovereignty in 30% of Judea and Samaria after an absence of 3000 years – as promulgated by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter – and detailed in President Trump’s deal of the century.

Razzaz has raised the possibility of a “one-state solution” to replace the “two-state solution”:
“We are against unilateral actions. We are against annexation. We are against any steps that are not within an overall scheme that leads to a two-state solution. Short of that, if we’re not going towards a two-state solution, let us know what we’re going towards, what kind of one-state solution we’re going towards.”

The “two-state solution” favoured by the international community for the last 40 years – creating an independent State of Palestine between Israel and Jordan – has long passed its anticipated birth date. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) refusal to sit down with Israel to negotiate creating such a State in Gaza and 70% of Judea and Samaria – as detailed in Trump’s Plan – is the final nail in the coffin for an unattainable solution first aired by the 1980 Venice Declaration.

Razzaz should consider going towards the “Jordan one-state solution” that existed between 1948
and 1967 – after Transjordan:
• invaded and conquered Judea and Samaria in 1948 – ethnically cleansing all Jews then living there
• changed its name in 1949
• unified “the two banks of the Jordan, the Eastern and Western, and their amalgamation in one single state: The Hashemite Kingdom of the Jordan” in 1950
• granted Jordanian citizenship to the West Bank Arab residents between 1950 and 1988

Razzaz lays down three conditions for any “one-state solution”:
“Jordan will not absorb transfers of Palestinians. Jordan will not become ‘the’ Palestine, as the Israeli extreme right wishes. And Jordan will not give up its custodianship over [holy Muslim and Christian sites in] Jerusalem. These three are clear for us.”

Of course during the week of Tisha B’Av, Muslim antisemites are doubling down on Temple denial.

Felesteen “reports” that “Temple groups begin carrying out raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Dozens of settlers continued their incursions into the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, with close protection from the occupation forces that deployed in the area to facilitate the storming operation.

Local sources reported that a number of settlers, accompanied by rabbis, stormed Al-Aqsa courtyards and performed Talmudic rituals in its courtyards.

The preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Ikrima Al-Maqdisi warned against the great danger that settlers ’storms carry on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, through which the occupation seeks to impose a new reality on it.

The Al-Aqsa preacher said that the occupation takes many religious occasions among the Jews as an excuse to intensify the storming of the mosque and impose Israeli sovereignty on it.

Sheikh Sabri affirmed that the Zionists are celebrating what is called the “ruin of the Temple,” and they do not know where it is, but they use the holiday as an excuse to Judaize Al-Aqsa Mosque with false pretenses.

Sheikh Ikrima has been going on a tear lately to incite Muslims to jihad against any Jews who want to visit Judaism’s holiest place that Muslims took over, much like we just saw happen to Hagia Sophia in Turkey.

A brief debunking of the “Blacks are the real Jews” theory

Many Black antisemites insist that they are the real Jews and Jews are imposters, and they claim that they have science and history on their side.

So let’s look at their evidence.

This article in Medium by “Black Simba” is fairly typical in its list of proofs.

Tacitus a Roman historian, even states his thoughts on the origins of the Jews to be descended from Africans:

“Others assert that in the reign of Isis the overflowing population of Egypt, led by Hierosolymus and Judas, discharged itself into the neighbouring countries. Many, again, say that they were a race of Ethiopian origin..”

-Tacitus (Roman historian, History V: Theories of Jewish Origins, written circa 105 AD)

If you look up Tacitus Histories, he also says three other theories of the origin of Jews, each with as little proof as the others.

It is said that the Jews were originally exiles from the island of Crete who settled in the farthest parts of Libya at the time when Saturn had been deposed and expelled by Jove….Still others report that they were Assyrian refugees, a landless people, who first got control of a part of Egypt, then later they had their own cities and lived in the Hebrew territory and the nearer parts of Syria. Still others say that the Jews are of illustrious origin, being the Solymi, a people celebrated in Homer's poems,5 who founded a city and gave it the name Hierosolyma, formed from their own.

This cherry picking of the words of an unreliable historian reporting rumors is proof of nothing.

2. From a similar article in Medium by Addison:

In 2001, Dr. Ariella Oppenheim and her team at Tel Aviv University released their study which found that the European Jew-ish people were mainly from Khazaria, a Caucasus country which is now called Kazakhstan, Georgia, and other names. The Khazarians converted from pagan religions to talmudic Judaism after the 8th century.

Here’s what the paper actually says:

It is believed that the majority of contemporary Jews descended from the ancient Israelites that had lived in the historic land of Israel until ∼2000 years ago. Many of the Jewish diaspora communities were separated from each other for hundreds of years. Therefore, some divergence due to genetic drift and/or admixture could be expected. However, although Ashkenazi Jews were found to differ slightly from Sephardic and Kurdish Jews, it is noteworthy that there is, overall, a high degree of genetic affinity among the three Jewish communities. Moreover, neither Ashkenazi nor Sephardic Jews cluster adjacent to their former host populations, a finding that argues against substantial admixture of males.

This is the exact opposite of the claim.

3. From Addison:

In 70 AD the Romans invaded Israel causing millions of Israelites to escape to Africa. “In his book ,The Great Roman-Jewish War: 66–70, the Roman historian, Flavius Josephus, stated over thousands of years ago,that the Israelites migrated into Africa. He writes:

“General Vaspasian and his son Caesar Titus fought against the Jews. Millions of Jews fled into Africa, among other places, fleeing from Roman persecution and starvation during the siege.”

Millions of Jews streaming into Africa would be a very compelling proof from an eyewitness. However, I could not find this passage in Josephus, assuming that the book being referred to is “The Wars of the Jews.” I likewise cannot find any scholar who quotes this. It appears to have been fabricated.

4. From Simba:

These maps, drawn/written by different cartographers all show Judah on the African West coast in the 1700s. Some of which show the Kingdom of Judah right on the Slave Coast itself!

The Kingdom of Whydah in today’s Benin was also spelled Hueda, Whidah, Ajuda, Ouidah, Whidaw, Juida, and Juda by various European mapmakers. The natives pronounced it Owidah, not close to Yehudah. The name is coincidental. Absolutely no one before recently tried to claim that Jews lived there. The people of the kingdom did not have any rituals that could be considered Jewish in the slightest.

5. From Simba:

If you look at the original names of those African slaves that were captured (before Europeans changed their names after getting to the Americas..), many of them had Hebrew names. Searching slavevoyages.org (a database of those that boarded slave ships during the trans-atlantic slave trade) just for names with “yah” (a short for the name of God, example: hallelujah, kumbaya..etc) in them returned over 800 matches, the term “jah” had over 400.

The database he refers to has over 91,000 names. His assertion that any names with “yah” or “jah” are meaningful falls short when you realize that it is only 1.3% of all the names. Moreover, if you choose other consonants besides “j” and “y you get more impressive results: 2400 for “bah,” 1100 for “dah,” 700 for “kah,” 2400 for “lah,” 2450 for “mah,” 900 for “rah,” 700 for “sah,” 800 for “tah.” Meaning that “yah” and “jah” have no relationship whatsoever with anything Jewish.

6. Addison:

Black people of the Diaspora, unlike other Africans, trace their DNA ancestry back to the Land of Israel.

Unfortunately he fails to say anything further about this study. The closest he gets is discussing the Lemba:

In the 1990’s, a black Hebrew tribe called the Lemba, that resides in Zimbabwe, had their DNA tested in a study done by The Center for Genetic Anthropology at University College London. The DNA test confirmed, that the Lemba, had the same DNA sequences as the Israelite priests, that many believe to be the descendants of Aaron, the older brother of Moses. The results from the study means that the Lemba tribe share the same DNA as the ancient Israelites.

That study, and more recent studies, do not support the conclusion that the Lemba descended from the ancient Israelites, rather all that could be proven was that they patrilineally originated in the Middle East, because other tribes had the Cohen haplotype.

Addison makes a similar claim about the Igbo tibe of Nigeria which has a similarly tenuous claim on having Jewish origins.

It is possible that a few African tribes have some Jewish origin. Jews have spread far and wide. Plus, of course there are Jews who settled in Ethiopia and Tunisia and elsewhere in Africa. But the claim that the majority of Africans who were sold as slaves are descended from Jews has no basis in reality.

Add to this the fact that both these articles knowingly distorted facts and selectively chose others while ignoring the overwhelming evidence that contradicted their proofs, and we see that the idea that most Black descendants of slaves are the original Jews is fiction.

And in at least some cases, it is a thin thread to hold a large basket of Jew-hatred.

7. Slightly off topic but to a similar accusation that Jews were instrumental in the slave trade in North America, here are the facts: There were far more Black slave-owners in the Americas than Jewish slave-owners.

To keep matters in perspective, we should note that in the American South, in 1830, there were only 120 Jews among the 45,000 slaveholders owning twenty or more slaves and only twenty Jews among the 12,000 slaveholders owning fifty or more slaves. Even if each member of this Jewish slaveholding elite had owned 714 slaves—a ridiculously high figure in the American South—the total number would only equal the 100,000 slaves owned by black and colored planters in St. Domingue in 1789, on the eve of the Haitian Revolution.

In actuality, so far as ownership of slaves is concerned, the free people of color in the Caribbean greatly surpassed the much smaller number of Jews. Even in Charleston, South Carolina, the percentage of free African Americans who owned slaves increased from one half to three quarters as one moved up the socio-economic scale as indicated by the ownership of real estate. The thousands of Southern black slave owners included freedpeople who had simply purchased family members or relatives. But there were also colored planters, especially in Louisiana, who owned more than fifty or even one hundred slaves. The allure of profits and power transcended all distinctions of race, ethnicity, and religion.

And the most important point:

No one should defend the small number of Jews who bought and sold slaves, or who forced slaves to cut cane on the estates of Joden Savanne. No one should defend the infinitely larger number of Catholics and Protestants who built the Atlantic slave system, or defend the Muslims who initiated the process of shipping black African slaves to distant markets, or defend the Africans who captured and enslaved perhaps twenty million other Africans in order to sell them to European traders for valuable and empowering goods. But while posterity has the right and even duty to judge the past, we must emphatically renounce the dangerous though often seductive belief in a collective guilt that descends through time to every present and future generation.

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Ismail Haniyeh, head of the “political wing” of Hamas, claims that he rejected a a proposal that was submitted to Hamas two months ago which would have included $15 billion in infrastructure projects in Gaza, including an airport, seaport, and other major projects.

The proposal, which presumably came from a moderate Arab country in cooperation with the Trump administration, was for Hamas to integrate its terror wing into the Palestinian police force and to end the division between Hamas and Fatah in exchange for the cash.

Haniyeh said that he especially rejected the idea that Hamas would give up its “heavy weapon” of missiles that can reach Tel Aviv and beyond, whose entire purpose is the war crime of targeting civilians.

It would be interesting to see a poll of Gazans themselves to see whether they would prefer Qassam rockets or cash and an airport.

Palestinian leaders have a habit of making decisions that use their people as pawns, and if this offer was in fact made, this is no exception.

#NoSafeSpaceForJewHate–boycotting Twitter for 48 hours

JPost reports:

Prominent Twitter users are calling for a 48 hour boycott of the social media platform starting Monday, July 27 at 9 a.m. GMT following the site's refusal to take satisfactory action against antisemitism.

Using the hashtag #NoSafeSpaceForJewHate and backed by a number of prominent users including writers, politicians and other celebrities, the new campaign is fueled by frustration felt by many Twitter users over the lack of action taken against antisemitism on the site, despite the platform's claims of being against racism.

The campaign was sparked over the lack of action taken against British rapper Wiley, who made several antisemitic comments on the platform.

“If you work for a company owned by 2 Jewish men and you challenge the Jewish community in anyway of course you will get fired,” Wiley wrote and then added, “Infact [sic] there are 2 sets of people who nobody has really wanted to challenge #Jewish & #KKK but being in business for 20 years you start to undestand [sic] why.”

In several other tweets, Wiley claimed that Jews control "the Law," and made several claims about Israel not being a Jewish country, "Listen to me Jewish community Israel is not your country I'm sorry."

He later doubled down on the comments, stating after being confronted: "Anti Semetic? What's it called the way you rip us off in business then? What's that called when you tell us there is 1 rule for us and another rule for you lot? What's that called?" He added "Anti Semetic? Are u stupid? Do you know what these people do to the world?"

Wiley is only the tip of the iceberg as many Black celebrities have been posting Jew-hatred on social media in recent weeks. Some have huge followings. Twitter is complicit in Jew-hate worldwide.

I will not be posting anything to Twitter for 48 hours (I hope I managed to shut down all my automated posts.)

Please check out my posts directly on my blog, or go to Facebook to see my most recent posts. If I have the urge to tweet, I’ll write everything on Facebook instead. (Not that Facebook is that much better than Twitter…)