A Palestinian delegation met the Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister, Faisal Al-Miqdad, on Tuesday in Damascus, while in the city to have more talks with Hamas.
The delegation was headed by Jibril Rajoub, secretary of the Fatah Central Committee, and the director general of the PLO’s political department, Anwar Abdel-Hadi.
During the meeting, which was held at the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Damascus, Rajoub expressed his appreciation for the Syrian government's ability to achieve security and stability.
While Palestinian leaders say that the worst thing for Arab governments to do is to talk with Israel, they honor the Syrian regime that slaughters hundreds of thousands of their own people.
I wonder what other Arab countries think about these chummy relations between the Syrian thugs and their Palestinian admirers.
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Maariv reports that France is changing its official position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and no longer rules out the possibility of a different solution than the traditional two-state orthodoxy, according to diplomatic sources in Paris.
In a discussion initiated by a pro-Israel lobby organization in Europe, French Ambassador to Israel Eric Danon said: "We will not negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians. This is a bilateral question and we say that the new situation that has arisen must be taken into account and returned to the negotiating table."
"No one knows what will be in the end - one state, two states, with or without Jerusalem. What we prefer and think is best is a two state solution. Does that mean we can not agree on something else? Not at all. We can accept any solution that the Palestinians and Israelis will agree on. "
Ma'an adds that Danon also said, "Six months ago, no one would have imagined that Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain would sign a peace agreement. The Middle East has changed completely because of the position of the United States, Iran and Turkey, because Israel has become a new regional power. The Palestinians must take into account their weak position on the international and Arab arenas."
Danon had said similar things in the past, but it was classified in Paris as a "personal position." This seems to have changed.
This is yet another thunderbolt that is becoming a daily occurrence. Western European countries have been the last reliable support for the maximal and fantasy Palestinian positions, even as the US and the Arab world has been distancing themselves from the PLO. Mahmoud Abbas has been relying on the EU to do its negotiating for him and to pressure Israel for him - exactly what Danon said France will no longer do.
Up until two months ago it would have been unthinkable for a EU country to say out loud that maybe Palestinians won't get a capital in Jerusalem, let alone their own state.
All of this is a direct result of the Israel/UAE agreement brokered by the Trump administration. It is the culmination of three years of injecting reality into the Arab/Israeli conflict, and now that the "Palestine on 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital and return of refugees" bubble has been broken, the world is free to think of alternative ways to bring peace.
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New York City has announced plans to close all schools and possibly all nonessential businesses in nine ZIP codes, most of them in areas with large Jewish populations. In Hasidic neighborhoods, such a shutdown would cripple the local economy, send schoolchildren back to crowded apartments, and effectively ban the large tisches—or festive sukkah gatherings with major rabbinic figures—that are one of the highlights of the holiday of Sukkot. Outdoor holiday festivities that would normally take over 13th Avenue in Borough Park for Sukkot and Simchat Torah have already been canceled, as have similar events in Crown Heights.
Other disruptions to normal life lie ahead. In an Oct. 5 press conference, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo blamed many of the state’s new hot spots on illicit mass gatherings of Orthodox Jews. “Orthodox Jewish gatherings often are very, very large and we’ve seen what one person can do in a group,” Cuomo said. As proof of recent Jewish rule-breaking, the governor displayed a picture of a Satmar funeral from 2006. The consequences of the spike would begin immediately. “We’re gonna close the schools in those areas tomorrow. And that’s that,” said Cuomo.
The governor also claimed he would immediately begin the process of closing synagogues, something that his downstate foil, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, apparently lacked the courage to do himself. “The city’s proposal does not close religious institutions. We know religious institutions have been a problem. We know mass gatherings are the superspreader events. We know there have been mass gatherings going on in concert with religious institutions in these communities for weeks—for weeks.” Cuomo declared that in order to remain open, Orthodox leaders, who he said he would meet with the next day, would have to agree that their shuls would adhere to social distancing rules and then cooperate with a new state-level enforcement task force which would deputize local-level health and law enforcement personnel. His timeline for the creation of the task force, and for the state issuing permission for synagogues in hot spot ZIP codes to operate, was notably vague.
The closure threat has been a gift to local demagogues. “The spike at 11219 and 11204 ZIP codes are a fake spike” claimed Heshy Tischler, an increasingly popular former City Council candidate, last seen bolt-cutting open locked parks during the tail end of New York’s initial “pause.” “The Jews have been very complacent” added Tischler, shortly after he issued a condemnation of “Fuhrer de Blasio” during an interview last week. “We’re easy targets,” he said of Borough Park’s Jews. “Our leaders are mice. They’re people that are scared of actually leading.”
There are other, less abrasive attempts underway at addressing the shutdown threat. Last Wednesday, a Yiddish-language notice from the Aaron faction of the Satmar Hasidic movement in Williamsburg urged: “We very much ask that anyone who feels ‘100% healthy and strong’ should, for God’s sake, come to take a test and thereby save the situation. The test takes only a second, it is only a short swab in the nose, and you can thereby save the institutions and study houses, as well as Jewish livelihoods.” Similar messages circulated on multiple Bobover Hasidic WhatsApp groups in Borough Park.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo put New York’s Jewish Orthodox community on blast Monday for hosting mass gatherings amid the pandemic — but used a nearly two-decade old photo to illustrate his point.
“We know there have been mass gatherings going on in concert with religious institutions in these communities for weeks,” Cuomo said during a news briefing addressing COVID-19 outbreaks in certain areas of the Empire State.
On display beside the gov was a slideshow with images purporting to be of recent packed events in the Orthodox community, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Orange County.
“These pictures are just from the past couple of weeks,” Cuomo declared.
In fact, one of the photos was taken 14 years ago — at the 2006 funeral of revered Hassidic rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum in the Orange County village of Kiryas Joel.
Apparently the picture @NYGovCuomo put up in his presentation today of a “recent” large gathering in Satmar Kiryas Joel is from 2006 — the funeral of Rabbi Moshe Teitelbaum in Kiryas Joel! pic.twitter.com/CxGtHhyZUj
Amid a new surge of COVID-19 in New York’s Orthodox Jewish communities, many members are reviving health measures that some had abandoned over the summer — social distancing, wearing masks. For many, there’s also a return of anger: They feel the city is singling them out for criticism.
The latest blow: an order Monday from Gov. Andrew Cuomo temporarily closing public and private schools in several areas with large Orthodox populations. It will take effect Tuesday.
“People are very turned off and very burned out,” said Yosef Hershkop, a Hasidic Jew from Brooklyn who works for a chain of urgent-care centers. “It’s not like we’re the only people in New York getting COVID.”
Over the past few weeks, top government officials, including Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, have sounded the alarm about localized upticks in COVID-19 after several months in which the state had one of the nation’s lowest infection rates. Officials say the worst-hit ZIP codes overlap with large Orthodox Jewish communities in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens and in a couple of nearby counties.
The goal is to head off a feared second wave of infections months after the city beat back an outbreak that killed more than 24,000 New Yorkers.
Under the shutdown plan submitted to Cuomo by the mayor, 100 public schools and 200 private ones would be closed in nine areas that are home to close to 500,000 people. Those areas represent 7% of the city’s population but have been responsible for about 1,850 new cases in the past four weeks — more than 20% of all new infections in the city during that span.
De Blasio had proposed the shutdown on Sunday, the second day of the Jewish holiday Sukkot, when Orthodox Jews would not be using telephones or computers and thus wouldn’t have heard the news until sundown.
“Announcing this in the middle of a Jewish holiday shows City Hall’s incompetence and lack of sensitivity towards the Jewish Community,” tweeted Daniel Rosenthal, a state Assembly member from Queens.
De Blasio said he was aware of the holiday but felt obligated to announce the plan as soon as it was developed.
Nas Daily is a hugely popular Facebook video producer who is turning into a video content trainer. He is famous for doing a one minute video a day for 1000 days.
His real name is Nuseir Yassin and he is an Arab Israeli - he calls himself a Palestinian Israeli.
He has lots of charisma and charm, and many of his videos have more than a million views.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has called for a boycott of Palestinian-Israeli blogger Nas Daily and his search for 80 new Arab content creators, claiming that the influencer's training programme is a cover for normalisation with Israel.
Nuseir Yassin, better known by his Facebook name Nas Daily, has amassed nearly eight million followers on Facebook, over two million on Instagram and 1.6 million on YouTube since he started creating one-minute video clips in 2016.
Last month, he launched The Next Nas Daily, a paid opportunity for 80 Arabic language content creators to take part in a six-month training programme run by the Nas Academy, which offers classroom and online courses teaching skills such as shooting video, editing and storytelling.
“We want to make the Middle East more accessible and understood by the world and we need YOU to make that happen,” the website states.
On Monday, the BDS movement posted a statement calling on “content creators and influencers in the Arab region to boycott the upcoming Nas Daily programme, which aims to implicate them in normalising relations with Israel and cover up its crime”.
Nas is not political at all. Here is has an uncharacteristically anguished video where Haredi Jews in Jerusalem say that all Arabs are terrorists, but then he speaks with some religious Jewish girls who are fans of his.
He wants Jews and Arabs to be treated like human beings - and that is the reason BDS doesn't like him. The idea that an Arab Israeli looks at Israeli Jews as anything but subhuman makes them crazy.
Here are the specific things Nuseir said that enrages the BDSers:
In a one-minute explanation of the creation of Israel in 1948, he said: “Some Palestinians left, some got killed and some stayed in their land. My people stayed.”
That is pretty accurate.
He went on to explain that he had chosen to accept the borders of Israel and Palestine and “move on”, because “in life there are better and bigger things to focus on than the name of a piece of land”.
That is fairly sane.
In a separate video, posted a day after 58 Palestinian protesters were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, Yassin stated: “If you stand with one side and one side only, you are wrong, because it's not black or white.”
That is self-evident.
“I can name a hundred things we as Palestinians (and Arabs like in Egypt and Jordan) did wrong in the past 70 years, and the same goes to Israel. Once you realize every side is to blame, you really can't take sides.”
This is what BDS is deranged over.
Strategically, this is incredibly stupid on BDS' part. If someone is a fan, they aren't going to stop being a fan because of what BDS says. A charismatic Arab who wants peace with Jews is certainly more appealing than terror-supporting BDSers who prefer unending war.
It seems like the UAE accords has really damaged the fragile BDS brains.
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Manny's cafe in San Francisco has been attracting protests ever since it started. And the only reason is because Manny Yekutiel - a gay Mizrahi Jew whose grandparents fled to Israel from persecution in Afghanistan - does not oppose the existence of Israel.
The Mission anti-gentrification activists wanted a “bicultural, bilingual environment for Mission families” with bilingual signage here. And that happened. They wanted Yekutiel to hire bilingual staff that “reflects the availability of qualified applicants in the local community,” and the staff here is now heavily composed of local people of color (many are also LGBTQ, like Yekutiel). United to Save the Mission called for “moderate price points” — and not only is the coffee a buck seventy-five, but Tecate runs you two bucks and a meal starts at six. The food here, in fact, is prepared on-site by Farming Hope, a nonprofit employing homeless, formerly incarcerated, and low-income community members — and they earn all the food revenue.
And, on top of that, the MOU calls for “community-serving groups” to use the event space here — for free. That’s happening, too (groups with a bit more cash pay $54 per hour, which is still low).
So the only reason for the protests is because Manny doesn't want to see the ethnic cleansing of Jews in the Middle East.
Last month, in a barely reported story, Manny's was vandalized with a huge painted "FUCK YOU."
The article I reference above about the people opposed to Manny gave a very simple proof that they were all antisemites.
Protesters are not canvassing the Valencia Street corridor, gauging the non-Jewish business owners’ stances on Israel’s right to exist. That’s something to think about.
That's exactly it. They aren't protesting Manny because he is Zionist - but because he is a Jewish Zionist.
And the fact that the "anti-Zionist" Jewish groups that pretend to hate antisemitism are not supporting Manny shows that they support Jew-hatred, too, when it comes from their leftist buddies.
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In contrast, Harris said that if Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden wins the upcoming election, “all of the rules of the game could change, especially because the Israeli leadership has not hid its close ties to Trump.”
He said that a Biden win would likely lead to the Palestinian issue being re-elevated to a key component of US policy in the region.
At the same time, he said there could be an extended transition period early on in a Biden presidency when dealing with the corona crisis and other domestic issues would drain away any serious attention to the Palestinians.
Harris is hopeful that if Abbas is succeeded by friendlier officials like Salam Fayyad and Mohammed Dahlan, that Palestinian thinking on reaching a deal with Israel “could be refreshed.”
However, these individuals would not be on Abbas’ list for a successor and Harris said that it was unclear if the five or so top contenders would be more flexible in reaching a deal.
Another key issue to keep an eye on is security coordination with the PA.
Though Abbas has surprisingly reduced security coordination with Israel more than expected to show his anger with current Israeli-US positions on the Palestinians, Harris said that the PA has been meticulous to stop or warn Israel about any terror operations.
He said this is a core PA interest so that Israel does not accuse it of being connected to terror which could lead to another “cleaning house” operation like during the Second Intifada.
Instead, reduced cooperation has led to problematic incidents such as where the PA police were chasing a Palestinian car thief near the Israeli settlement of Hashmonaim.
Israeli forces arrested the PA police, though they were doing nothing wrong, because the PA did not coordinate the chase and any incursion into Israeli areas.
I have no doubt that the Abraham Accords recently signed on the White House lawn, between the State of Israel, the United Arab Emirates and the Kingdom of Bahrain, is nothing short of a significant breakthrough in the region. As UAE Ambassador to Washington Yosef Oteiba well described, it is a matter of “breaking the barrier of legitimacy” and “buying more time for both sides – the Israeli and the Palestinian – by removing the option of annexation from the table” (at least for the time being). Thereafter, he said, it is up to the parties in the conflict to make a wise use of their time and resolve their disputes bilaterally.
One should not be misled. The Emiratis did not turn their back on the Palestinians. Not officially and not at all. They were simply not willing to belong to the people of the region who had linked their destiny to their past. Instead, they courageously preferred to lead by example while galloping forward toward the next 50 years.
In their view, the current Palestinian old-guard leadership in the West Bank belongs to those who look back and are stuck in the past. Even if things are not stated explicitly, given that they are not precisely politically correct, they are quite clear.
It is also perhaps important to note that while the leadership of the UAE has taken the brave and groundbreaking step toward full normalization with Israel, its tweeters chirp day and night in praise of the State of Israel and Judaism. Mutually beneficial micro-agreements and projects are being forwarded in a wide variety of fields.
The Emirati population has been educated for years in accepting the “other” and living in a very multicultural, international and generally very tolerant environment. Hence, as soon as normalization became kosher, or halal, it was relatively easy for the population to embrace this new reality.
Other current or potentially future regional partners in normalization with Israel may find it a tad more difficult. Even in the tiny Kingdom of Bahrain, in which most inhabitants are Shi’ites who have been educated in a much less heterogeneous manner, the new reality will take time to set.
The Czech Republic is ready to take further steps towards moving its embassy to Israel to Jerusalem, a spokesman for Czech President Miloš Zeman said on Monday.
The government committed to “further strengthening of our representation in Jerusalem,” in a readout from a meeting of top Czech government officials, including Zeman and the country’s prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister, interior minister and parliament speaker.
Zeman’s spokesman Jiří Ovčáček explained that moving the Czech embassy to Jerusalem is one of the president’s long-term goals.
Prague opened a "Czech House" in Jerusalem in November 2018, meant to be a first step towards opening an embassy in the capital. The house includes a cultural center, branches of the Czech Republic's trade and tourism offices, and a space for the Czech Ambassador to hold meetings in the capital.
Zeman has long expressed hope to move the Czech Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has said the country will not break from the EU position, opposing such embassy moves and recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.
The mastermind of the Sbarro Massacre, responsible for 145 casualties and 15
deaths -- including 2 Americans -- is in the news again. Now the attempt
to extradite Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi from Jordan to the US focused on her
husband,
Nizan, who was deported and ended up in Qatar.
Apparently, the goal is to encourage Ahlam to leave Jordan to join him
there.
This way, the standoff between Jordan and the US would be brought to an end.
Till now, Jordan has claimed that its extradition treaty with the US is
invalid -- despite the fact that Jordan honored the treaty in 1995 to
extradite terrorist Eyad Ismoil, a Jordanian national, for his part in the
bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
But there is a big difference between deporting Nizan,
the murderer of Chaim Mizrachi, and deporting his wife, the mastermind of the Sbarro massacre, and a
popular celebrity in Jordan. Thus far, Tamimi has evaded justice. At one point, she was arrested by Interpol in 2017 for extradition to the US, but
ended up spending only 1 day in prison.
Deporting Nizan to Qatar, possibly in an attempt to lure Tamimi out of
Jordan, might be easier.
Tamimi herself is aware of this. She is quoted by
Quds Press:
The timing is very bad, but it seems that the Jordanian side is betting that
I will join my husband to Qatar, and this is not at all possible, being
there is a warrant with Interpol distributed at all airports around the
world, for my extradition to Washington. [Google Translate from Arabic]
Benjamin Weil, director of the Project for Israel’s National Security, for
the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET),
echoed this in an interview with JNS:
On the one hand, Qatar doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United
States. On the other hand, she risks getting stopped by the Interpol on her
way to Qatar. The United States has a lot of leverage over Jordan and was
unsuccessful in extraditing her, despite its extradition treaty with the
Jordanians.
Meanwhile, Tamimi is fighting to have Nizan returned to Jordan.
Currently, she has filed a complaint with the National Center for Human Rights
in Jordan. As to why she would do this after her husband has been
deported instead of doing so in an effort to prevent his deportation
altogether,
she offered this:
We could not do anything before the deportation of Nizar because the Jordanian
authorities threatened to forcibly deport him to the Palestinian territories
and hand him over to the Israelis. We did not want to repeat the same scenario
of arrest and Israeli jails, so we had to comply.
The fact that Jordan is doing anything at all is in response to current US
pressure.
In 2018,
the Trump administration signed a five-year aid agreement with Jordan
worth $6.4 billion, raising the annual amount of aid by $275 million to $1.3
billion. But while raising the amount of aid, the US has also been raising the
stakes for Jordan. While the Trump administration has not been public and
forceful in getting Tamimi extradited to the US to face justice, he has been
increasingly willing to apply financial pressure.
During his confirmation hearing in June, Henry Wooster, Trump’s nominee for
ambassador to Jordan, was asked about
options for leverage to secure Tamimi from Jordan in order to bring her to justice:
US generosity to Jordan in Foreign Military Financing, as well as economic
support and other assistance, is carefully calibrated to protect and advance
the range of US interests in Jordan and in the region.
The current situation may be the most that the US can get out of Jordan, which
is supposedly fearful of a backlash.
Will it be enough?
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What Donald Trump has done for Israel and Jews, so far:
1. Moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.
This gave a signal to the world that the US was looking at the Middle East in a realistic way. Saying that Jerusalem isn't Israel's capital is a fiction that the Arabs, EU and UN were holding onto and no peace is possible without everyone understanding the truth.
The move also proved something else: that the experts who swore that the Arab world would rise up in anger at the US move were proven wrong, which means that every piece of conventional wisdom about the Israel/Palestinian conflict was probably wrong as well. The Zionist Right, which insisted that the Palestinian threats of violence when they didn't get their way were empty, was proven to be correct. Once the basic premises of the Oslo crowd were found to be false, everything else was now in play.
2. The Abraham Accords
Israel has been talking to Gulf Arab nations for years, and it has partnered with them under the table. The Israel/UAE agreement is an entirely different dimension.
We don't yet know the full repercussions of this, including which other countries will want to normalize relations with Israel, but this already has affected the entire Arab world. Nations that have been antagonistic to Israel like Lebanon and Iraq and starting to think twice. Arab antisemitism is suddenly not a given. The Arab League is no longer a rubber stamp for Palestinians. The idea of finding win-win solutions with Israel is slowly replacing the old paradigm of refusing to do what would be in the Arab world's best interests because Israel would benefit as well.
Real peace comes when Israel is accepted as a native country in the region, and this is the first step towards that.
3. The Pompeo doctrine
Before the "Deal of the Century" was the so-called Pompeo Doctrine, which overturned Jimmy Carter-era opinion of the State Department, saying that Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria do not inherently violate international law.
This is a correct opinion, but it also showed that the basic assumptions that were causing a permanent deadlock can be thrown out the window.
4. The Executive Order on antisemitism
People went nuts opposing this executive order. In the end, the only thing it did was add antisemitism to the list of types of discrimination (race, color, or national origin) covered under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. This should be a no-brainer. People who oppose this are people who tacitly support antisemitism.
The part that they went nuts over - using the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism as a basis for determining if someone was discriminated against - was based on a series of false arguments. This EO showed, as starkly as can be shown, the difference between the two parties on the Jewish issue.
5. Pulling out of the JCPOA and sanctions on Iran
The JCPOA was a path to a nuclear weapon to Iran, albeit delayed a few years. Trump changed that completely. Iran can no longer give unlimited sums to Hezbollah, to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to worldwide terror. Lebanon's willingness to negotiate with Israel on its maritime borders are at least partially a result of Hezbollah losing influence there.
Iran is stubborn and will not willingly surrender, but the pressure is working in small ways. The potential for huge benefits is there, and it would be a major mistake to waver on this.
6. Quitting the UNHRC
The UN Human Rights Council had been a joke for years, and while Western nations all knew it, they continued to play along. Not the Trump administration. It was an antisemitic cesspool and giving it legitimacy helped entrench its bigotry.
7. The Peace to Prosperity Plan
The "Deal of the Century" was not enthusiastically accepted by the Arab world, but I'm not sure that was the point. It showed the world, and especially the Arab world, how the Palestinians would prefer rejecting any plan - even one that both showed a path to statehood, a contiguous state and that would give them a real economy.
Their rejection is what set the stage for the Arab world to turn their displeasure with the Palestinians from private to public. Once again, honesty is necessary for peace.
8. Recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel
Here's another case where the Trump administration destroyed a fiction. Syria is a terror-supporting dictatorship that murders its own citizens - who on Earth would want the residents of the Golan to live under that regime? Yet until Trump, no one was willing to say this out loud.
9. US pulling out of UNESCO
This was not a huge deal, but it sent a message: International agencies can no longer treat Israel and Jewish heritage as worthless without repercussions. Up until the Trump administration, international agencies felt that they would treat Israel like garbage with impunity, and even Israel was accepting being treated badly, in a sort of Stockholm syndrome. This has changed, and it shows that the US is a moral power in the world - exactly the opposite to how it is portrayed.
10. Cutting payments to the PA, closing the PLO office in DC
The Trump mindset is that everything has a quid pro quo. Trump spent time trying to talk to the Palestinians. When they showed that they did not want to play in a new playing field, Trump said there was no reason to continue to fund them. The status quo has no reason to remain and everything is up for renegotiation. If the US gets nothing out of the Palestinians, then why give them free money forever?
11. Cutting aid to UNRWA/rejecting "Right of Return"
This is yet another case of realpolitik over the fantasies of the Palestinians. There is no "right of return" for anyone after 72 years. It was used as a means to try to destroy Israel. It was always a non-starter. It was way past time to say this out loud.
12. Assassinating Qasem Soleimani
While the benefits of this operation were primarily to the US, Soleimani was also instrumental in anti-Israel activities from Iran. He has helped direct Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon war and he certainly had a hand in Iran's attempts to establish bases in Syria that directly threatened Israel. He was irreplaceable.
13. Sanctioning the ICC
This showed the world that using the tools of international law to attack the very nations that already have robust justice systems has nothing to do with justice and everything to do with perverting justice.
14. Hiring Elan Carr as the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism
Elan Carr, although he only started in February 2019, has already made it clear that crazed hate of Israel is antisemitic. He is also now organizing a conference on online antisemitism for later this month.
_____________
The contrast to all previous administrations, especially the Obama administration, is blinding.
I cannot imagine any Democratic president doing any of these, let alone all of them. I worry what a J-Street oriented administration would do - or undo - because it still clings to old, discredited views of the conflict.
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He talks with people who have profiles in the Canary Mission archives and how upset they are about it.
But buried deep within the article, he makes an admission about the Canary Mission:
Nothing on Awad’s profile, which includes accusations of supporting the Palestinian-led movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel and “demonizing Israel,” indicates that she has ever engaged in illegal activity or even espoused views that could be considered violent, extremist, or anti-Semitic. (The same holds for the several other people The Intercept spoke to for this story who had Canary Mission profiles.) Yet the site uses an astounding guilt-by-association logic that attempts to tie her to international terrorist groups.
In other words, there is nothing inaccurate about Canary Mission profiles. At all.
Sumaya Awad's profile accurately notes that she is a BDS supporter, a speaker for the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights BDS group, a founder of a local Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, A supporter for Hamas-led violent protests on the Gaza border, and that she spreads hatred for Israel. None of that is in dispute.
It does not label her as antisemitic, but it does note that SJP speakers often are. It doesn't label her as a terrorist but it notes that SJP members and speakers often support terror. This isn't "astounding guilt by association" - it is an accurate representation of the organization she chooses to be a prominent member of, and there is no difference in noting her association with it than noting that someone is a member of the KKK even if they themselves did nothing racist.
The more serious charge is that people misuse Canary Mission profiles. I've seen such reports, and I don't know how accurate they are. But that isn't Canary Mission's fault. It finds out public information and organizes it, nothing more.
Which means that it provides a service.
In the case of Awad, she is worried that the Canary Mission profile might affect her attempt to become a US citizen. Yet the article provides zero evidence that such a thing has ever happened or can happen. Instead, it points to a case of a person who was interviewed by the FBI, possibly partially because of his Canary Mission profile, yet he had explicitly expressed support for Hamas numerous times on social media which is the real issue, not a "blacklist."
Canary Mission shines a light on what people say and do. Anyone who reads their profiles cannot argue with that. Instead, its critics use scary words like "blacklist."
I can imagine that it feels uncomfortable to see that when one's name is Googled the first thing that comes up is a Canary Mission profile. But it is using public information and it is accurately describing what people have done or said. If that is problematic for some, then perhaps they should think twice before openly expressing support for US-sanctioned terror groups online.
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Al Arabiya interviewed Saudi Arabia’s former ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. He is heavily critical of Palestinians, from how they never appreciated what their fellow Arabs did for them to their historic choices of always backing the wrong horse.
What I heard from Palestinian leadership in recent days was truly painful to hear. This low level of discourse is not what we expect from officials who seek to gain global support for their cause. Their transgression against the Gulf states' leadership with this reprehensible discourse is entirely unacceptable.
However, if we want to look at it from a different perspective, it is not surprising to see how quick these leaders are to use terms like “treason,” “betrayal,” and “back stabbing,” because these are their ways in dealing with each other. Gaza Strip leaders [Hamas], who have seceded from the PA [Palestinian Authority] to govern Gaza independently, accuse the West Bank leadership of treason, while at the same time, West Bank leadership accuses separatist Gaza Strip leaders of stabbing them in the back.
Efforts in the past years would have been better focused on the Palestinian cause, peace initiatives, and protecting the rights of the Palestinian people to reach a point where this just, albeit robbed, cause can finally see the light, and when I say robbed, I mean both by Israel and Palestinian leaders equally.
The Palestinian cause is a just cause, but its advocates are failures and the Israeli cause is unjust, but its advocates have proven to be successful. That sums up the events of the last 70 or 75 years. There is also something that successive Palestinian leadership historically share in common; they always bet on the losing side, and that comes at a price.
Amin al-Husseini in the 1930s was betting on the Nazis in Germany, and we all know what happened to Hitler and Germany. He was recognized by Germany, Hitler, and the Nazis for standing with them against the Allies when Berlin’s radio station broadcast recordings by him in Arabic, but that was all he got, which was no good as far as the Palestinian cause was concerned.
Moving forward in time, no one, especially us in the Gulf states, can forget the image of Abu Ammar [Yasser Arafat] as he visited Saddam Hussein in 1990 after the occupation of Kuwait. An Arab people occupied and Kuwait, alongside the other Gulf states, had always welcomed the Palestinians with open arms and was home to Palestinian leaders. Yet we saw Abu Ammar in Baghdad, embracing Saddam, and laughing and joking with him as he congratulated him for what had happened. This has had a painful impact on all the peoples of the Gulf, especially on our Kuwaiti brothers and sisters, specifically the Kuwaitis who stayed in Kuwait and resisted the occupation.
Months later, as another example of failure in choosing sides, the battle for the liberation of Kuwait begins and Saddam Hussein strikes the capital of Saudi Arabia with missiles. That was the first time anybody launched missiles at the capital of Saudi Arabia. Even Israel did not launch missiles at the Kingdom. We were the ones, by the way, who bought these missiles for Saddam to support him in his war against the Persians.
Another shock followed when we saw deluded youths in Nablus dancing joyfully in celebration of the missile attack on Riyadh, holding pictures of Saddam Hussein. These incidents cannot be forgotten, but we rose above them, not for the sake of the Palestinian leaders, but for the Palestinian people.
I believe that we in Saudi Arabia, acting on our good will, have always been there for them. Whenever they asked for advice and help, we would provide them with both without expecting anything in return, but they would take the help and ignore the advice. Then they would fail and turn back to us again, and we would support them again, regardless of their mistakes and of the fact that they knew they should have taken our advice. We even went further as a state and justified to the whole world the actions of the Palestinians, while we knew that they, indeed, were not justified, but we did not wish to stand with anyone against them, nor did we wish to see the consequences of their actions reflected on the Palestinian people. This has always been the policy of the Saudi leadership. I think this has created a sense of indifference on their side, and they have become convinced that there is no price to pay for any mistakes they commit towards the Saudi leadership or the Saudi state, or the Gulf leaderships and states.
I think the circumstances and times have changed, and I think it is only fair to the Palestinian people to know some truths that have not been discussed or have been kept hidden.
...These people, as I have said before, are disillusioned, and in the undisputed words of God the Almighty: “Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” So far, they are undoubtedly a major reason behind the setbacks the Palestinian cause has faced.
... The Camp David agreement was rejected by the Palestinians and by the Arabs. It became the mistake that played a major role in deepening the Palestinian tragedy, as the Arab nation boycotted Egypt, the mother of the world, because the Palestinians rejected the autonomy provisions in the Camp David Treaty and considered this peace treaty a betrayal to the Arab nation.
What was Israel doing during this period? It built settlements, occupied more land, and strengthened itself and its army. They were fighting us on all fronts, paying attention to major details and leaving the minor issues behind. Who cares for the support of North Korea? Israel was working on increasing its influence, while the Arabs were busy with each other. The Palestinians and their leaders led these disputes among the Arabs.
After the Oslo Accord, I asked Abu Ammar, God rest his soul - and as they say remember the virtues of your dead - what he thought of the autonomy provisions in the Camp David Treaty. He said, “Bandar, Camp David’s autonomy provisions were ten times better than the Oslo Accord.” I said, “Well, Mr. President, why did you not agree to it?” He said, “I wanted to, but Hafez al-Assad threatened to kill me and to drive a wedge among the Palestinians, turning them against me.” I thought to myself, so he could have been one martyr and given his life to save millions of Palestinians, but it was as God willed it.
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The head of the Jewish community in the northern German city of Hamburg on Monday denounced a violent antisemitic assault on a Jewish student outside the city’s main synagogue as a “terrorist attack.”
Philippe Stricharz was speaking following the outrage on Sunday afternoon, in which a 26-year-old man who arrived at the Hohe Weide Synagogue for services celebrating the holiday of Sukkot was brutally beaten by an assailant in military fatigues wielding a foldable shovel.
Stricharz told the German dpa news agency that he had chosen the word “terrorist” because “such acts unsettle people and scare them.”
“There is a fear of whether one can even arrive at our Jewish facilities to celebrate festivals without injuries or harassment,” Stricharz said.
Hamburg police and the city’s public prosecutor are treating the attack, which occurred just before 4pm on Sunday, as attempted murder. The assailant — identified as a 29-year-old German from Kazakhstan who was dressed in military uniform — was said to have been in an “extremely confused” state when he was apprehended by police.
Investigators said they found a hand-drawn swastika on a piece of paper in the man’s pocket. They said they were attempting to establish how he came into possession of a military uniform.
German investigators said Monday they were probing an attack on a Jewish student outside a synagogue in Hamburg as attempted murder with anti-Semitic intent, a case condemned by Chancellor Angela Merkel as a “disgrace.”
The 26-year-old student was badly injured on Sunday by a man who repeatedly struck him on the head with a shovel outside the synagogue where the Jewish community was celebrating Sukkot, also known as the Feast of the Tabernacles.
The assault came a year after two people were shot dead by an extremist who tried and failed to storm a synagogue in the eastern German city of Halle.
Jewish leaders and top politicians led condemnation of the latest attack, which Merkel’s spokesman described as a “repulsive” assault.
Flowers, candles and a message reading “For an open and tolerant society – Anti-Semitism has no place here” are pictured in front of the Hohe Weide synagogue in Hamburg, northern Germany, on October 5, 2020 (MORRIS MAC MATZEN / AFP)
“Such an attack is repulsive, no matter what investigations about the motivation and the condition of the perpetrator might show,” said spokesman Steffen Seibert.
“And it must be clearly stated by everyone in this society: in Germany, every such act is a disgrace.”
The suspect, 29, was arrested by police officers who were assigned to protect the synagogue in the northern city.
The Jewish community in Hamburg was celebrating the festival of Sukkot, and the synagogue was busy with congregants at the time of the attack.
A Hamburg rabbi said the community was “very, very shocked” by the assault.
“The question is: What have we not learned since Halle?” Rabbi Shlomo Bistritzky said.
Germany’s leading Jewish group said the attack “can only be classified as anti-Semitic.”
“The situation that Jews increasingly become a target of hatred, must not leave anybody cold in a state of law like Germany,” said Josef Schuster, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
Last year’s attack on a synagogue in Halle came on October 9 on Yom Kippur, the holiest festival in the Jewish calendar.
The attacker killed a passerby and a man at a nearby kebab stall after failing to force his way into the building. A neo-Nazi suspect is currently on trial for the crime
German investigators said Monday they were probing an attack on a Jewish student outside a synagogue in the northwestern city of Hamburg as attempted murder with anti-Semitic intent.
The 26-year-old student was badly injured on Sunday by a man who repeatedly struck him on the head with a shovel outside the synagogue, where the Jewish community was celebrating Sukkot.
The suspect, a 29-year-old German man of Kazakh origin, was arrested by police officers who were assigned to protect the synagogue.
Dressed in combat fatigues, the suspect had a piece of paper with a hand-drawn swastika in his pocket, said police and prosecutors in a statement.
“The current assessment of the situation suggests that this is an anti-Semitic-motivated attack,” they said, adding that investigators are treating the case as an “attempted murder with grievous bodily harm.”
The victim was wearing a kippa at the time of the attack, The New York Times reported.
There are thousands of articles and reports about how terribly Israel treats Palestinian prisoners.
But there is practically zero about Palestinian prisons and prisoners.
Except for an occasional NGO writing up about torture in Palestinian prisons, there is a black hole of information about how the Palestinian penal system works.
How many prisoners are in Palestinian prison (both Hamas and PA)?
How many women?
How many children?
How many for political reasons?
How many are subject to the death penalty?
How many have been tortured?
How many have died in custody?
How many prisoners have COVID-19? What precautions are being done to protect them?
All of this information is easily available from the Israel Prison Service, but not from the Palestinian prison bureaucracy.
This is not only a problem with a lack of transparency from the PA and Hamas on their penal systems. It also shows how little interest ostensibly pro-Palestinian NGOs have in Palestinian prisoner rights. It shows how little interest Palestinian media has in their own people in prison. And it shows how little interest the media, both Palestinian and international, have in looking into this story.
We do know that there is torture. We do know that some prisoners die in custody. Yet there is very little interest in uncovering the details behind these facts.
It is yet another example of how Palestinian lives only matter when Jews can be held responsible for them.
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Wednesday, October 07, 2020
Elder of Ziyon
