Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, August 21, 2020

08/21 Links Pt1: Trump and Netanyahu Debunk the Failed Consensus; Caroline Glick: Is the Palestinian veto alive or dead?; IDF carries out three waves of airstrikes as 12 rockets launched from Gaza

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: Trump and Netanyahu Debunk the Failed Consensus

Nonetheless, this failed consensus persisted in the minds of Washington and Brussels simpletons. It reached an apex during the famously anti-Israel Obama administration, a coterie of quixotic liberal internationalists who preferred the hubris of trying to craft a Middle East anew — best embodied by 2015's harrowing nuclear accord with the Islamic Republic of Iran — over the prudence of addressing the Middle East as it actually is.

At long last, the U.S. has a president grounded in reality — who sees the world as it is, and not as academes and theorists would rather it be. The U.S. has a president who advances a hardened and realist foreign policy, grounded in a properly narrow conception of American nationalist interests, which properly rewards our allies as allies and punishes our enemies as enemies.

In the Middle East, this has translated into a famously pro-Israel, anti-Iran set of foreign policy initiatives. Trump has moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, defended Israel to the hilt at the United Nations, unveiled the most pro-Israel U.S. peace plan initiative ever, withdrew the U.S. from Obama's terrible nuclear deal and punished the Islamic Republic with crippling sanctions as part of a broader "maximum pressure" campaign. As Israel's relations, following the nuclear deal with Shiite Iran, began to clandestinely thaw with the region's Sunni Gulf states, those Sunni Arab countries saw a strong, militarily emboldened Israel that had unambiguous American support. They saw a nation unequivocally committed to opposing a nuclear Iran, which the Sunni Arab states also fear, by any means necessary. They saw an Israel, with the imprimatur of Trump's peace plan, confident that it would not be browbeaten by supercilious Western elites into yielding yet more land concessions for an illusory peace with an implacable Palestinian foe.

The Israel-UAE peace agreement is Israel's first with an Arab country since the 1994 accord with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. But it is the single most transformative peace agreement of them all. Israel has not given up any land. Nor, for that matter, has Israel been weakened in any way whatsoever.

The race is now on to see who will next follow the UAE and make peace with Israel: Bahrain, Oman and Morocco appear to be the leading contenders. This is the legacy of the Trump-Netanyahu doctrine: the latest proof of the age-old truth that peace comes when a historical foe is not weak but strong, and the evisceration of the elites' consensus that claimed the contrary.

Caroline Glick: Is the Palestinian veto alive or dead?

Since Israel was established the Palestinian veto doomed all efforts to forge peace between the Arab world and the Jewish state.

The Palestinian veto rests on a toxic proposition that Israel's right to exist is contingent on its satisfaction of Palestinian claims against it. So long as the Palestinians say they are unappeased, Israel cannot expect the Arab world to either recognize or live in peace with it.

The very existence of the veto has ensured that the Palestinians will never be satisfied with any Israeli concession and will never agree to peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state. After all, their global and regional importance is a product of the veto. The Arabs and much of the rest of the world support the Palestinians because they wield the veto. As holders of the veto, the Palestinians are viewed as the key – or the key obstacle – to Middle East peace. If they give up or lose the veto, they will lose their position and power to enable or block peace and foment war and instability.

As for the Arab leaders, for generations, the Palestinian veto was the key to their own power and stability. It enabled them to deflect the attention of their peoples and of the governments of the world away from their corruption, extremism, and failure at home and abroad. It enabled them to scapegoat Israel and blame the Jewish state for the suffering and stagnation of their people.

Given its toxic power, abrogating the Palestinian veto has always been Israel's highest goal. And given its centrality for both the Palestinians and the wider Arab world, for most Israelis, it seemed like a dream so impossible that it wasn't even worth dreaming.

The peace treaties Israel signed with Egypt and Jordan were concluded while genuflecting to the Palestinian veto. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat signed Egypt's peace deal with Israel in 1979 only after he concluded a framework deal for Palestinian autonomy with then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.

King Hussein of Jordan only agreed to sign a peace deal with the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1994 after Rabin signed the Oslo peace deal with PLO chief Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn.

Since signing their peace treaties with Israel, Egypt and Jordan have continuously breached them by refusing to implement the clauses of their deals that require them to normalize their relations with Israel. Both use the Palestinian veto to justify their material breaches, which have reduced both "historic" treaties into little more than long-term ceasefires.

Arsen Ostrovsky: From Israel: Celebrating Peace With the UAE and Looking to the Future

Though there are many differences between us, I believe there is far more that unites us.

We are both a proud people, with rich history and traditions. The fact that this agreement is called the "Abraham Accord" is a testament to this, because it also underscores our inextricable bond to the Prophet Abraham.

We are both forward-looking, understanding that the future belongs to those who innovate and look ahead—not those held back by past dogmas. Indeed, the UAE recently launched the Arab world's first mission to Mars, while Israel is universally acknowledged as the "start-up nation" for our technological prowess.

We are also both committed to advancing the cause of peace, both with our Palestinian neighbors and with the region more broadly. I believe the UAE and broader Gulf community can play a leading role in fostering this.

We both also have a shared strategic interest in the global fight against terror and extremism—most notably against the dark forces of Iran, Hezbollah and ISIS.

And finally, in a COVID-19-infused world, we have already started working together to find a cure.

Unlike Israel's peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, I believe what singles out the proposal with the UAE is that it is all-encompassing and, crucially, builds on a bottom-up, people-to-people framework—not a "cold" approach imposed by political leadership.

This agreement is already paving the path for an endless array of new opportunities, ready to be seized, from direct travel and phone calls to trade in tech and collaboration in research and culture.

Peace is not made overnight. It requires effort, courage and mutual commitment.

It is my sincere hope that other countries in the Arab and Gulf world will follow the brave and principled leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed to embrace relations with the Jewish state and build the foundation for a better future for all the people of the Middle East.

In the Jewish tradition, it is common to end our High Holiday prayers with the saying, "next year in Jerusalem." May indeed it be "next year in Jerusalem" for the people of the UAE and the Gulf, as we look forward to welcoming them as cherished friends and welcome guests in our country!

Arabs keep accusing the people they hate of being Jews

This is the 51st anniversary of Denis Michael Rohan burning the Al Aqsa mosque, and as usual, most Arabs and specifically Palestinians are falsely saying that Rohan was Jewish.

Why? Because as surveys show, most Arabs hate Jews. Not Zionists, Jews.

It is something that many, especially progressives, want to ignore or deny. But it remains there despite peace agreements with Israel and despite Arab insistence that they have no problem with Jews.

They do.

Today there is a story in an Egyptian site saying that a newspaper editor has accused Al Jazeera of being run by Jews, and implying that the entire nation of Qatar is also run by Jewish puppetmasters, although he doesn’t say that the rulers themselves are Jews.

We often see accusations that the Muslim Brotherhood is a Jewish front.

It cannot be denied – the worst insult an Arab can give another is that they are secretly Jewish, and that is all the proof you need of Arab antisemitism.

As with everything else in the Arab world, in order to understand the events of the past week one needs to view them through the prism of the Arab honor/shame mindset.

Since at least the 1940s, there has been a strong myth of Arab unity. It is nonsense but its falsehood has had no impact on its importance, with virtually every Arab constitution emphasizing how each country is part of the greater Arab nation. While there have been no shortage of intra-Arab disagreements and even wars, only rarely has the Arab world publicly split.

It has become a point of honor to present to the non-Arab world the myth of Arab unity.

No one has benefitted more from this myth that the Palestinian leadership, because the only issue that the entire Arab world could agree on was its hate for Israel. The zenith of the success of the myth was during the 1970s, when Palestinian airplane hijackings combined with the Arab oil embargo prompted Europe and much of the world to give in to terror and to elevate the Palestinian cause, especially at the UN.

The Egyptian peace treaty with Israel was a major blow to this unity, but eventually the Arab world learned to live with it, knowing that Egypt – a hugely antisemitic country – was not going to normalize relations, and it will keep a cold peace for its own reasons. After some turmoil the Egyptians were welcomed back as full members of a seemingly unified Arab collective.

The cracks in Arab unity about Israel began with the Oslo process and the PLO refusal to accept a state. It accelerated during the Arab Spring. Individual Arab nations had major internal issues to deal with, and the Gulf nations became upset at Palestinian demands for more and more money. The PLO was refusing to even speak to Israel, the Arab leaders had to guard against revolutions and all the while oil prices were plummeting.

Then the Obama administration decision to get closer to Iran and throw the Gulf states under the bus made them realize not only that Palestinians were a liability, but that Israel could be a friend.

Honor is important, but it is not more important than self-preservation.

The Palestinian leadership didn’t get the memo. They were the poster children of Arab unity and they believed that this will never change. Their media even today emphasizes the tiniest pro-Palestinian demonstrations or statements from mediocre columnists, and reacts angrily at any criticism, always emphasizing the Arab world’s unity in support for their cause and how shameful it is for anyone to disagree.

In fact, Palestinians are referring to the UAE/Israel deal as the “shame deal” in a naked attempt to appeal to the Arab sense of shame – mainly to discourage other Arab nations to follow the UAE.

Notably, the Palestinians cut off coordination with Israel in order to pressure Israel to stop the “annexation” plan. That plan is off the table for the foreseeable future – but the Palestinians are making no move to resume coordination with Israel, even at the expense of the well being of their own people. The only reason is because it would be shameful to even appear to do something that would benefit Israel, even though it hurts them much more.

Shame works two ways, though. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the UAE timed this announcement only a month after the Palestinians very publicly rejected planeloads of COVID-19 aid from the Emirates, ostensibly because the plane landed in Tel Aviv. This was a huge insult to the UAE.

The flip side to Arab shame is evident in other ways. Now that the UAE has publicly come out in favor of normalizing relations with Israel, other Arab nations are reluctant to criticize the Emiratis – because of the same interest in maintaining the illusion of unity! And given a choice of publicly supporting a non-state entity of “Palestine” and a very real United Arab Emirates, nearly all of them would rather stay on the UAE’s good side.

This is why the Arab League is not meeting to denounce the UAE, as the Palestinian leadership has been demanding. In the past, they could get the League to hold “emergency sessions” at the drop of a hat, but that organization also needs the myth of Arab unity and it will not embrace the division that the PLO is now insisting on.

That would be a source of shame.

Israel and the US need to always keep the honor/shame mentality in mind when dealing with the Arab world. Israel in particular needs to remain strong both militarily and economically, because just like the Arab world has long ago realized the benefits of aligning with the powerful Christian world, they can swallow their antisemitism to ally with the Jewish state when it is in their own interests.

Saudi intellectual Dr. Turki Al-Hamad is a prominent American educated writer and former university professor. He is an unapologetic liberal in the very conservative kingdom.

His tweet about the idea of Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel has been ruffling some feathers:

If I was in Saudi Arabia's place, I would normalize (relations with Israel) today. (Saudia would be) censured either way, "like barley, eaten, yet denigrated" (Arabic proverb about something or someone good and useful, that is denigrated despite being good and useful).

Your Highness, Crown Prince Muhammad (Bin Salman), normalize (relations with Israel), since all the Arab anger is just a storm in a teacup. Jerusalem was Judaized, and what did they [the Arabs] do? Nothing. They don't want to solve the (Palestinian) issue. They want to let the injustice go on (this might be sarcastic) and weep about the (supposed plot to rebuild the Jewish) Temple. Believe me, they and the Shiite Hizbullah do not deserve respect.

Simply put, Palestine is not my cause/issue.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

08/20 Links Pt2: Jews Without Israel; The End of Jewish Yemen is Imminent; The Palestinian People Cannot Expect Their Arab Allies to Suspend Their Needs Forever

From Ian:

Einat Wilf and Oren Gross: Jews Without Israel

America is a country where anyone arriving on its shores could become fully and completely American. This idea of the universal America is as inspiring as it is exceptional. The U.S. is the only country that was purposefully built on universal ideals.

The rest of the world's countries are not universal nations, and almost none of them aspire or even pretend to be so. Ever since the 20th-century collapse of empires, the Earth is divided between nation-states - almost all based on a single dominant national, ethnic, linguistic, or religious group, often with some other national, ethnic, linguistic, or religious minorities.

Israel, as the nation-state of the Jewish people, with an Arab national, ethnic, linguistic minority, is well within the global norm.
When Israel is measured by the EU guidelines on how nation-states should treat their national, ethnic, and linguistic minorities - for example, in providing schooling, government services, and road signs in the minority's language and providing the ability to celebrate holidays - Israel emerges with strong marks.

This achievement is especially impressive since Israel operates in the rare situation that its minority belongs to the dominant national, ethnic, linguistic majority in the region - most of which is still officially at war with it, and continues to deny the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in any borders. In fact, the status of the Arab minority in Israel during wartime is better than that of minorities in many countries which are at peace.

Most Jews in America still believe that Zionism is deeply entwined both with their Jewish and American identities, and that Zionism incorporates both the particular and the universal. Jews in Israel will continue to celebrate the fact that they finally live in the sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people and can therefore walk this Earth knowing that someone has their back.

The End of Jewish Yemen is Imminent

A precarious existence for country’s last 100 Jews

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have ordered at least some of the country’s remaining Jews to leave, according to sources in the Amran Governorate, north of the capital Sanaa, who spoke recently with The Media Line.

According to Ali Qudair, a tribal chief in the governorate, soldiers surrounded a village in mid-July to question members of at least one Jewish family living there about its contacts with people abroad.

“A group of military vehicles arrived in the area, taking up positions at the entrances to the village and establishing checkpoints,” Qudair told The Media Line.

“The soldiers entered the house of a Jewish family in the village and questioned members about their correspondence with the State of Israel, their property in the village and other areas, and whether or not they were in contact with relatives residing in other countries.

Qudair added that some of those questioned were taken to an unknown location and held for 48 hours.

“During the past few years,” he said, “the Jews have been denied many of their rights. They no longer can travel except with prior permission from the Houthi-appointed area supervisor.”

Qudair’s version of events was corroborated by Saeed Ahmad (not his real name), a resident of the nearby town of Kharef who says he enjoys strong friendships with many Jews in the area.

“On July 12, the Houthis arrested seven individuals from the Jewish community after questioning them and searching some of their homes,” he told The Media Line.

Ahmad adds that the Shi’ite Houthis, who have taken over most of Yemen’s main population centers, ordered these Jews to leave the country, imposing certain conditions on them regarding their property, most notably that they could sell it only to residents of the area or to the state – meaning to the Houthis themselves.

Ahmad said Houthi authorities were now arranging for their exit from Yemen, giving them a specific mechanism for traveling, communicating and conducting business.

Yemen’s Jewish community is estimated to have reached about 200,000 before members began leaving early in the last century, the exodus reaching a pinnacle in 1949 and 1950 with Operation Magic Carpet, a mission of the Israeli government, which brought some 50,000 people from Yemen to the Jewish state. Scores more were flown to Israel, reportedly in 2013 and 2016, in two flights that were kept secret for fear of disrupting sensitive channels of movement. (h/t Zvi)

The mystery of the persecuted Yemenite Jews unravelled

Saeed al-Nati, his disabled mother and three daughters lived in Amram in northern Yemen. The Houthis, who had invaded the area in 2004, began to harass Saaed in order to make him leave.

He was jailed in May for one month, but was released after committing to sell his home. He and his family left for the capital Sana'a, where 33 Jews live in a compound, and then on to Aden, where he hoped to catch a flight out of the country.

Saaed was told that there were no flights out of the country because of the coronavirus crisis. In any case, he was told that the only country that would take him would be Israel, as Yemeni passport holders could not obtain a visa for any other Arab country.

Enter Abu Dhabi to the rescue. Photos clearly show the disabled mother in a wheelchair and Saeed's sons, wives and grandchildren from London embracing their sisters. Mindful of the impending announcing of the UAE peace deal with Israel, Abu Dhabi must have seen a golden photo-op to advertise the emirate's tolerance and pluralism.

According to the Sparabia report, the departure of the al-Nati family leaves just five Jews - aold woman, her crazed brother and three others - in Amram province, where the market was once dominated by Jews. Together with the 33 Jews still in San'a that makes a total of 38 Jews in Yemen altogether.

Violence in Amran made the remaining Jews leave in waves. In 2016, 17 members of one family arrived in Israel in a blaze of publicity carrying a Torah scroll which they claimed was a family heirloom.

The Houthis arrested two Jews and two Muslims for facilitating the smuggling of a 'national' treasure. One Jew was released after three months, but they kept the other, Levi Salem Musa Marhabi, in jail.

A court of first instance acquitted Levi Marhabi and the Muslims, but eighteen months later, Levi Marhabi is still in jail.

Marbahi suffered a stroke that caused paralysis in half his body. His deteriorating health prompted Elan Carr, US antisemitism tsar, to appeal for his release.

Nevertheless, the Houthi-run prosecution has refused to accept all the guarantees provided to them for his release until such time as the case is heard by the Court of Appeal.

Excusing antisemitism (poster)

I made this poster after seeing yet another socialist Jew on Twitter recommend the website “HowToFightAntisemitism.com” – a website that only talks about right-wing antisemitism, both real and alleged.

To them, five out of these six examples are not antisemitism, or they must be swept under the rug. They want to use antisemitism as a political tool – and have zero interest in actually fighting it. (Some people on the Right do the same.)

We Will Recognize Israel In Exchange For Destroying Israel by Javad Zarif (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

We Will Recognize Israel In Exchange For Destroying Israel

by Javad Zarif, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Islamic Republic of Iran

Javad Zarif Tehran, August 21 - Diplomacy and politics are all about compromise. Both arts require flexibility, creative thinking, and efforts to craft win-win situations in which all parties to the issue can walk away with a compelling argument that they gain from the outcome. Iran therefore proposes the following: the Islamic Republic will depart from its long-held position that Israel has no right to exist, and will grant full recognition of the Jewish State, and in return, that Jewish State will concede to our eliminating it by violent means.

The Zionist entity has persisted despite the best efforts of the Arab and Islamic worlds over the last century to thwart such imperialist ambitions, often dealing us setbacks once thought impossible for dhimmi people to achieve. They had help, of course, in the form of the Great Satan, as well as a knack for exploiting divisions among the Muslim states and parties, each of whom sometimes saw the conflict not as a jihad to liberate Dar al-Islam from infidel colonist usurpers, but as yet another arena in which to jockey for regional influence. Regardless of the mechanics of the phenomenon, the fait accompli of a Zionist state has worn down even some of its staunchest opponents, several of whom now maintain diplomatic and commercial ties with the entity. Iran recognizes certain historical inevitabilities.

At the same time, the Islamic Republic cannot abide the continued and deepening occupation of Islamic Waqf lands, an affront to the Islamic Umma and to Allah. Since the Umma - and of course Iran has always played a decisive leadership role in Islam; take that, House of Saud - will not countenance the ongoing violation of Palestine, but that Occupation stubbornly refuses to disappear, and in fact entrenches itself further as the years pass, even conducting successful pursuit of recognition from its erstwhile existential foes, only one way forward can break the dynamic of mutual exclusivity: Iran will grant the legitimacy and recognition that the Zionist entity craves, and we, in exchange, will eliminate that entity. Win-win.

Lest cynics argue that if Iran had the capacity to destroy the Zionist entity it would have done so already, it must be noted that the Islamic Republic has already demonstrated its ability to destroy other countries: Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and to some extent, Iraq, which will never function independently from Tehran if we have anything to say about it.

The ball is now in the Zionists' court, but they will refuse, as they have always opposed resolution of the conflict.

08/20 Links Pt1: Ben Shapiro: The Remaking of the Middle East; Douglas Murray: The Foreign Office has lost the plot in the Middle East

From Ian:

Ben Shapiro: The Remaking of the Middle East

All are angry for the same reason: The central myth of American Middle Eastern policy, formulated over the course of decades, has been thoroughly exposed. That myth suggested that in order for any peace to bloom in the Middle East, the West would have to apply pressure on the Israeli government to make concessions to the Palestinians -- that Israel would have to abandon claims to East Jerusalem, to the Golan Heights, to areas of Judea and Samaria.

That myth had been repeatedly tarnished by events of the last several years. When America moved her embassy to Jerusalem, foreign policy "experts" assured the public that the so-called Arab street would be set aflame. Instead, nothing happened. When America recognized Israel's formal annexation of the Golan Heights, foreign policy "experts" said that the Middle East would become a tinderbox. Nothing happened.

Now Arab nations are openly forming alliances with the Jewish state, fully acknowledging that Israeli-Palestinian issues remain bilateral in nature. Relations between Jordan and Israel, between the UAE and Israel, between Sudan and Israel, between Egypt and Israel -- none now hide behind the fig leaf of Palestinian demands to avoid peace. They have realized that other interests, both economic and security-related, are a top priority. And they have tacitly recognized that Palestinian intransigence is not worthy of their support.

Hilariously, former Vice President Joe Biden tried to take credit for the Israel-UAE deal, suggesting that his own communications with the UAE had paved the way for the agreement. That's laughable on its face: In 2014, Biden had to issue a formal apology to the UAE government after suggesting that the UAE supported militants in Syria. Biden's chief contribution to the diplomatic breakthrough was actually the Obama administration's sycophantic embrace of the Iranian regime: By making clear that the United States could not be relied upon to protect Sunni nations from Iranian predations, the Obama administration convinced Arab nations that their interests lie in security alliance with Israel.

And so, the region has changed for the better. In more honest times, Trump administration officials who brokered this breakthrough would be up for the Nobel Peace Prize; instead, the news has been largely downplayed in favor of the scandal du jour from Trump's Twitter account. But we should be clear: The first important breakthrough in the Middle East in three decades just took place. And it took place because reality finally set in for Israel's heretofore enemies: Israel isn't going anywhere. Perhaps Palestinians will eventually learn the same lesson and peace will truly be possible.

Douglas Murray: The Foreign Office has lost the plot in the Middle East

Last Friday the UN Security Council rejected any extension of the arms embargo on Iran. That embargo — imposed in 2007 — began to get phased out after the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. But a ‘snapback’ provision was put in place intended to allow the return of åall such sanctions should Iran violate the terms of the deal. Iran has been violating those terms for some time, but on Friday, when the United States hoped that its allies would join it in deploring this fact, only the Dominican Republic voted with it. The UK, like France and Germany, chose to abstain. On the question of whether Russia and China should once again start selling arms to Iran, this country apparently takes no view.

It would be nice to be able to say that this was peculiar. But it isn’t. In the same week that Britain abstained at the Security Council the US brokered an historic deal elsewhere in the Middle East. Under its supervision, the United Arab Emirates and Israel signed an agreement to normalise relations. The Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, has now invited Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed to visit Jerusalem. As the economic and diplomatic benefits of normalisation become clear, other countries in the Middle East are expected to follow suit. Deals like the UAE-Israel agreement are part of a larger attempt to find unity among states wishing to avoid Iranian dominance. Hence President Rouhani’s threatening condemnation of the UAE for its ‘treacherous’ actions. There are rumours of Bahrain and even Saudi Arabia at some point joining the UAE’s acceptance of reality.

In the British Foreign Office, meanwhile, such reality appears to be a world away. Responding to the US-led initiative the Foreign Office (FCO) released a statement which made precisely two curt points. The first welcomed the normalisation. The second consisted of the FCO’s perennial claim: ‘Ultimately, there is no substitute for direct talks between the Palestinians and Israel, which is the only way to a [sic] reach a two-state solution and a lasting peace.’

Defenders of the FCO like to present it as a first-class vessel, cruising along on the deep wisdom accrued from decades of masterly global circumnavigation. Recent events suggest otherwise. Just take last week’s statement. The Foreign Office was insisting that the only way to peace in the Middle East is for ‘direct talks between the Palestinians and Israel’. Yet it was doing so in response to an agreement that demonstrated precisely how unnecessary any such ‘direct talks’ actually are.

The historic nature of the UAE--Israel deal is not just the normalisation itself, but that it demonstrates how states in the region can make peace with Israel without needing to go through the corrupt and rejectionist Palestinian Authority. For decades the wisdom of the FCO (trotted out whichever party is in government) has been that an Israeli-Palestinian ‘two-state solution’ will ‘unlock’ and otherwise solve all the wider problems of the Middle East. It is to this failed venture that British diplomacy remains principally wedded. But if the UAE can reconcile itself to making peace without needing to go through the Palestinian cartel, then why can’t the British Foreign Office?

Amb. Dore Gold: Israel Has Been Making Common Cause with the Victims of Regional Aggression for Decades

Israel has been making common cause with the victims of regional aggression since the early 1960s, when it found itself in a coalition of states, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, opposed to Egypt's military intervention in Yemen's civil war. When Jordan faced an armed invasion from Syrian tanks in 1970, Israel understood that it was in its interest to safeguard its neighbor's territorial integrity.

Until 1971, the UAE was still a British protectorate. The UK announced it would withdraw from all of its positions "east of Suez" by 1972. The UAE thus gained independence at a time when it was clear that Britain would no longer provide security; the new state had to protect itself. After the rise of revolutionary Iran in 1979, the Iranian regime aspired to recover the lands its predecessors once controlled during the era of the Safavid empire.

Israel is not the regional policeman, nor should it attempt to take on such a role. But it must make its contribution to upholding the regional order along with its Arab allies.

From The People's Advocate and New South Wales Vindicator (Sydney), 23 September 1854, a description of a speech given by Sir Charles Nicholson at a meeting to raise funds for impoverished Jews in the Holy Land.

[The Jews of Palestine’s] position was one which must excite the strongest interest in all civilized countries. For the last 2000 years it had been the constant and almost sole object of these people to revisit Palestine, and re-establish their nationality. It was the land of their fathers, the land of promise consecrated by so many historical reminiscences of a character to impress us with the purest and holiest sentiments, the land of many heroic achievements, the land oi science and of art.

To this land the Jews in all ages and under all circumstances have manifested a strong disposition to return.

Whether trampled down by the Roman, the Syrian, the Greek, or the Mahomedan, the same desire, the same firm resolution, to visit the land of their fathers, had always actuated this peculiar and interesting people. Although subjected to the greatest contumely, and the most intense afflictions and sufferings in all ages and countries, they had never lost sight of the grand object of their existence.

He is describing Jews. He is describing Zionism. Throughout history, they were one and the same.

This video, in Hebrew, was published today by the Al Etihad newspaper in the UAE, describing how excited they are for peace with Israel and how tolerant the UAE is.

The Palestinian leaders are trying to embarrass the UAE by calling the agreement “the shame deal.” This video indicates that if anything the UAE is proud of it.

It is crazy enough to see Arabs speaking Hebrew to give a message of peace to Israel. But the Hava Nagila background music really drives home how much things have changed in such a short time.

The FBI’s “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” file

Yesterday, the FBI tweeted – without context –a link to their file on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Protocols of Learned Elders of Zion: https://t.co/BpI5Tc8oKc
— FBI Records Vault (@FBIRecordsVault) August 19, 2020

There is no problem, of course, with the FBI having a file on the famous antisemitic Russian forgery, nor in their making those files public.

There is a serious problem with them tweeting out these copies without any context.

It included a number of different copies of the book, all of which had been sent to the FBI by either informants or US citizens who either wanted the FBI to know about the secret plot of Jews to control the world, or who were asking whether the book was true.

Here is part of a 1949 letter by a Clarence Fausett, typed up for the FBI from a handwritten original, where he wanted to make sure that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was aware of this Jewish/Communist conspiracy.

The FBI replied in Hoover’s name:

As with all of the copies of the letters that the FBI sent, at the bottom are notes about whether the FBI has any information on the correspondent.

The FBI continued to receive similar letters from the 1940s through the 1970s, not only about the Protocols only but also with copies of other antisemitic tracts, covered in this file.

The responses, by not mentioning that the book was a lie, can be construed as a tacit support for their contents.

Here’s a 1968 letter where the correspondent is pretty convinced that Jews are controlling the government already, and he hopes that J. Edgar Hoover can clean things up.

This portion of a 1964 letter to the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee was copied to the FBI. It was written by a woman who wanted to know if the Talmud says the horrible things that the antisemites claim it says.

On one occasion, a special agent sent a copy of the Protocols to FBI headquarters asking about it, and they responded with a reference to a book that discredits the work.

The file is an interesting slice of history of American antisemitism as seen through the letters of concerned, often anti-communist citizens. It is reasonable to ask whether the FBI should have answered the letters of those who honestly wanted to know whether the antisemitic works were legitimate – it would require the FBI to become a fact-checking organization for the entire country which is not its purpose, but its refusal to answer the questions may have contributed to antisemitism itself.

A Page a Day (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

Since January, I’ve been participating in a daf yomi program. That means that every day, 7 days a week, I study a page (actually, two facing pages), of Talmud.

The fact that someone like me, who grew up in a secular home and did not have a Jewish education, has the opportunity to do this is a new development. The Talmud itself, for those who don’t know, consists of passages from the Mishna, the Oral Law first written down around 200 CE in Hebrew, and the Gemara, a much larger body of commentary on the Mishna that was compiled over a period of several hundred years afterwards. The Gemara is written in Aramaic, a language close to Hebrew, but the writing is condensed and elliptical. It also includes notes by Rashi and others commenting on and explaining the text. Until recently there was simply no way a modern reader could approach this without a great deal of preliminary study with knowledgeable teachers.

But in the last three decades, scholars have produced translations of the Aramaic texts along with detailed commentary to fill in the gaps for ignoramuses like me. In particular, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, z”l, who died earlier this month, created a monumental translation of the entire Babylonian Talmud (there is also a Jerusalem Talmud, but the one compiled in Babylonia is considered more authoritative) into modern Hebrew, which in turn has been translated into English. More than just a translation, Rabbi Steinsaltz interpolated explanations and context into the text, so that it’s possible to read it almost like a novel. There are even diagrams, which my wife says remind her of computer games.

The Talmud is not an orderly exposition of Jewish law. Rather it is a record of the deliberations and conversations of generations of sages, in which arguments are given for multiple interpretations of the Mishnaic texts, which themselves are an attempt to elucidate the commandments of the Torah and apply them to everyday life. Sometimes the Gemara will say “the halacha is such-and-such” but most of the time, all you have are the arguments. There are also stories, ridiculous medical advice, superstitions, insults – including some passages that have been used by Jew haters throughout the years as evidence for our evil ways. During the Middle Ages, non-Jewish authorities sometimes ordered printed copies of the Talmud to be censored or even burned.

The seven years it takes read the whole thing are daunting. When I started the daf yomi program, I didn’t believe that I would last more than a few weeks. But I’ve become more and more interested and involved as time goes by. I have even learned a few useful expressions in Aramaic, for example in yesterday’s daf, pok t’nei l’vara! (“go, take that teaching outside”). I’m convinced that if I live long enough (b”h), I will finish the project. I will never be either a scholar or very observant, but this study brings me closer to Judaism and Jewish history.

I think that this would not have happened if I still lived in a non-Orthodox community in the USA. In Israel, Judaism and Jewish history are in the air. I am continuously made aware of who I am, by the language, the holidays, the symbols of the state, the biblical geography, and the fact that I am surrounded by Jews. There are neighborhoods in Brooklyn in which I would also be surrounded by Jews; but even there, the consciousness of living as a small minority in someone else’s country is inescapable (not to mention the reminders provided by the growing number of antisemitic incidents). And I would miss the diversity of Israeli Jews, Jews of every color and culture.

But don’t I know that one of five Israelis is an Arab? Of course. There is room for an Arab minority. Nevertheless, there are also dangers – not directly from the presence of the Arabs, but from those that want to use their presence as a reason to weaken the Jewish state. Meir Kahane believed that the Arab citizens of Israel posed a demographic threat. Their birthrate was higher than that of the Jews, and so he predicted that the Jewish majority would ultimately be eroded. Today the birthrates of Jewish and Arab citizens are not far apart (I think the high Haredi birthrate is a greater threat to a functional state).

The real problem is an ideological one, posed by those (Jews and Arabs) who want to replace the state of the Jewish people with a state of its citizens. 62 members of the Knesset understood this when they passed the Nation-State Law to guarantee the continued Jewish character of the state. Right now there are attempts to weaken the law by inserting language to guarantee “equal rights.” We should be aware that the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty is already interpreted to guarantee equal civil rights to individual Jews and Arabs; and it is not necessary or desirable to weaken the provision of national rights that is made by the Nation-State Law to the Jewish people alone.

I am also not at all diffident about calling for Jews everywhere to make aliyah, despite the difficulties. You can certainly study Talmud in the diaspora, whether by subscribing to the daf yomi or by studying at one of the numerous yeshivot or other institutions of Jewish learning there. But you cannot, even in deepest Brooklyn, breathe Jewishness with every breath, as you can in the Jewish state.