Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, January 10, 2021

01/10 Links: What Amnesty International gets wrong about Israel’s vaccine programme; Is J Street Misrepresenting Its Real Mission?; How is technology and data helping Israel become the first country to vanquish Covid-19?

From Ian:

What Amnesty International gets wrong about Israel’s vaccine programme

Meanwhile, the Ramallah administration was lagging behind. Having squandered sackfuls of public money over the years on everything from mansions for its leaders to payments for terrorists, while propped up by billions of aid dollars, its finances were not in good shape. And it suffered from a fundamental lack of coordination between different arms of the government.

Corruption, factionalism, a lack of proper elections – Mahmoud Abbas is currently 16 years into a four-year term – and incompetence had resulted in a government that often struggled to meet the basic needs of its citizens.

Speaking off-the-record as Israel moved towards vaccinating a million-and-a-half people, a senior PA official said earlier this week that given the sluggish progress, he would not rule out asking the Jewish state for help. When asked whether he had done so already, he paused before muttering: ‘yes and no’.

In truth, Palestinian liaison officials had already quietly contacted Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) department to request the vaccine. The Israelis had agreed to help. Assisting the Palestinians made sense, since it was vital to maintain a degree of goodwill in coordination between the two sides on the West Bank.

According to Israel’s state broadcaster, ‘dozens’ of doses were then secretly delivered into Palestinian hands, enough for the most prominent members of the leadership – though exactly who received the jabs remains unknown. The operation was shrouded in secrecy. Partly, this was due to Palestinian shame at going cap-in-hand to Israel. Partly, it was to avoid appearing nepotistic and incompetent to ordinary Palestinians who were waiting with mounting frustration for news about the vaccine.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health had no idea about the secret delivery. In a statement, it denied that the episode had taken place. Then, in a sign of the confusion at the heart of government in Ramallah, it conceded that Israel had made an ‘informal’ offer of 20 doses on a trial basis – though it claimed that the Palestinians had turned the proposal down.

Seen in this light, the picture bears little resemblance to the narrative pushed by the likes of Amnesty International. The Palestinians neither expected nor requested help from Israel. They held no sense of grievance, even as hand-wringing commentators from overseas sought to stir up resentment by reporting that a great injustice had been done.

Palestinians appear to be seen by some as an infantilised people in need of Western intervention. But this is certainly not how they see themselves.

The Media’s New Anti-Israel Slander — Vaccines

Israel’s extraordinary success in speedily vaccinating its population has been lauded globally. As of this writing, almost 13% of Israelis have already received the first COVID-19 vaccine — well over a million people in just a couple of weeks.

However, while many in the media are looking at Israel’s vaccination drive as an example to be followed, others are using it as one more excuse to bash the Jewish state.

Media outlets including the Washington Post, NPR, and the notoriously anti-Israel British paper The Guardian have run spurious and arguably libelous headlines asserting that Israel is preventing Palestinians from being vaccinated. “Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers” read one Guardian headline.

Unfortunately, due to the media’s obsession with proving Israel’s bad faith and the Palestinians’ victimhood, they cannot praise Israel without a backhanded snipe at the Jewish state.

However, the truth of the matter is that this story about Israel supposedly withholding coronavirus vaccines is simply another malicious media attack.

First, regardless of all the good that Israel does in the world, inevitably the haters step forward to paint Israel as evil. They cannot afford for Israel to receive credit, because it will demolish the fallacious anti-Israel foundations they have built.

Former Knesset member Einat Wilf put it best on Twitter when she wrote: “Israel advances status of GBTQ? ‘Pinkwashing.’ Israelis lead world as vegans? ‘Veganwashing.’ Israel sets up first mobile hospital in devastated Haiti? ‘Harvesting organs.’ Israel is global vaccination leader? ‘What about Palestinians?’”

Amb. Alan Baker: Is J Street Misrepresenting Its Real Mission?

According to its website, the Congressional lobbying organization calling itself “J Street” was established “to serve as the political home and voice for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans” through “organizing pro-Israel and pro-peace Americans to promote U.S. policies that embody our deeply held Jewish and democratic values and that help secure the State of Israel as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people.”

In its founding aims and principles, J Street declares its overriding aim as “reshaping political perceptions of what it means to be pro-Israel.”

The first and evidently central provision of J Street’s basic principles acknowledges that Israel faces enemies, and J Street expresses support for Israel to defend itself and live in security and peace within internationally recognized boundaries.

However, J Street’s political manifesto detailed on its website would appear to run counter – and even to undermine – any such sentiments.

On the one hand, J Street presents itself and is perceived by many naïve elements within the Jewish and non-Jewish communities as a genuine lobbying organization with the veneer of supporting Israel and expressing concern for its welfare. But, on the other hand, one can nevertheless see, behind the misleading platitudes and sweeping statements in its manifesto, that J Street’s substantive political viewpoint is openly radical and partisan, identifying itself clearly with the Palestinian narrative, and aligning itself with other openly critical-of-Israel organizations such as the Israel Policy Forum, Brookings, and the International Crisis Group. J Street has failed to welcome and promote the normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states, apparently because they downgrade the urgency J Street feels for a Palestinian state. The organization has actively lobbied against military aid to those Arab states that normalized relations.

Stop using Jews as pawns to score political points, @TedCruz and @AOC.

Over the weekend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ted Cruz got into a Twitter argument over which side was more antisemitic:

They wore Auschwitz shirts, erected gallows, and tried to hang the Vice President.

Your continued excusal and denial of Wednesday’s Neo-Nazi presence is abhorrent and dangerous.

The most healing and unifying thing *you* can do is take responsibility for your actions and resign. https://t.co/TlhLkkLPJy
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 9, 2021

Epic hypocrisy. Facts:

1) Nazis are evil bigots.

2) You & your anti-Israel pals blocked a resolution condemning antisemitism—which I passed unanimously in the Senate. https://t.co/kYQGO4zVVU

3) Unless they are genocidal, calling your political opponents Nazis is atrocious. https://t.co/ZV5dhUDRzD
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 9, 2021

Not true. The “record” you cite is the show vote on the watered-down House resolution AFTER you BLOCKED the resolution condemning antisemitism. See: https://t.co/CHlYTvFEDf

You support BDS. And you demand candidates promise NOT to visit Israel: https://t.co/6aKBDKUtAy https://t.co/Z7Kc4zfQ5D
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 9, 2021

Your GOP colleague in the House praised Hitler this week. A Confederate flag was hung outside the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Yet you continue to deny this clear connection in the aftermath of Wednesday’s violence.

You disgrace yourself and your office further every day. Resign.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 9, 2021

Does any of this make Jews feel more secure as American citizens?

On the contrary. Both sides are using Jews as a political football. Neither of them are expressing support for Jews, but using charges of antisemitism to smear their opponents.

And the Jews are stuck in the middle.

This is not the way to do makes Jews feel comfortable with your messages. The way to do it would be to fight the antisemites who are ostensibly on your side.

It shouldn’t be hard for Cruz or other Republicans to unequivocally condemn the antisemitism that we saw in Washington last week or the attack on the Jewish museum. There is a serious amount of Jew-hatred among Trump supporters and that must be condemned from the Right more than it is. I didn’t see anyone screaming at the guy wearing the “Camp Auschwitz” T-shirt. (And saying “Nazis are evil” is hardly brave.)

It shouldn’t be hard for AOC to condemn the antisemitism that we see on the Left from BDSers, from people who follow Louis Farrakhan, and from Arab antisemites. If the Left wants to show they are serious about antisemitism, they should accept the IHRA working definition and stop lying that it suppresses legitimate criticism of Israel.

Only when you risk losing your own antisemitic fanbase will we believe you really care about Jews and that you are sincere in fighting antisemitism. Until then, please, don’t use Jews to score political points.

We aren’t pawns and – except for those of us whose political ideologies are extreme - we can sense when we have true allies as opposed to people who are trying to use us.

DW reports:

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in a live television broadcast on Friday that he has told the government to reject British and American-made vaccines.

"Imports of US and British vaccines into the country are banned. I have told this to officials and I'm saying it publicly now," Khamenei said.

Why would Iran do that?

They are working on their own vaccine, that just started Phase I clinical trials, but those would be months away from being ready.

Khamenei tweeted that the American and British vaccines are "completely untrustworthy" and French vaccines "aren't trustworthy," either. (Twitter took that tweet down.)

Khamenei's fear seems to stem from a bizarre conspiracy theory about vaccines injecting GPS chips in people's bodies.

Al Arabiya reports that Iranian hardliner Hussein Kanani said on TV, "There is a lot of information according to which some vaccines inject electronic chips and implant a Global Positioning System (GPS) in our bodies to control all our actions and movements, to the extent that we become a human machine in the hands of others."

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Book Review: Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities

Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities, by Cary Nelson, is a book-length research paper that exposes the true threats to academic freedom in Palestinian territories.

Unlike what BDS activists claim, the problem is not Israel.

For this book, Nelson has expanded one chapter of his masterful Israel Denial book into this comprehensive treatment of the subject of how Palestinian students have no academic freedom at all, at least when it comes to political speech about Israel and Palestinian leaders.

He describes how the (very) few Palestinian scholars who are moderate in wanting dialogue with Israel have been threatened and nearly killed, noting that pro-Hamas academics are also threatened in the West Bank.

Palestinians like to claim that the annual elections of student bodies at their universities are proxies for regular elections that haven’t been held for 17 years and show how important democratic processes are to them. In fact, these elections are accompanied with intimidation, threats, violence and even armed interference by the Palestinian Authority (and, by proxy, Hamas) to push their own student groups to lead the campus.

Palestinian academia is a fun-house mirror of American liberal campuses. If a professor says something that makes students uncomfortable, he or she can be threatened by students much more directly and physically than today’s cancel culture.

In Gaza, the idea of academic freedom is a sad joke. All students at Islamic University of Gaza must take one full year of Islamist indoctrination courses.

One amazing section of the book shows an IUG literature class dissecting a humorous children’s poem by British poet Roger McGough called The Cat’s Protection League about a feline protection racket. The students are prompted and encouraged to interpret the poem in the most outrageous antisemitic ways, such as assuming that the cats represent Jewish gangsters. Antisemitism pervades academia in Gaza, and no one can oppose that without facing real world consequences.

That is only the tip of the iceberg. West Bank universities compete as to which of them have had students kill the most Jews. Universities are the ideological homes of terrorism, and often the physical homes as well –weapons labs have been built in Gaza universities and one of them held kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit for a time. Many terrorists during the second intifada came from West Bank universities, including Ahlam Tamimi who helped bomb the Sbarro pizza shop.

The universities also often praise terrorism. The most infamous case was the exhibit, complete with bloody body parts, of the same Sbarro attack at An Najah University: The same university more recently displayed mock-ups of a man stabbing a religious Jew and a bloody model of a car running over Jews.

Nelson does point out times that Israel interfered with campus curricula, but that all ended at the end of the first intifada. Palestinian government control and intimidation continues on campus today, to the point that students and professors are self-censoring to stay out of trouble. (He does talk about Israel’s relatively rare raids on campus since then, which are understandable when there is an imminent terror threat but often could be more effective by detaining students at home.)

Nelson also shows how other claims by BDS, that Israel blocks students from going abroad or foreign instructors to come to teach, are exaggerated – Israel does not have any more strict restrictions on those movements than most Western democracies.

Small details in the book are illuminating. For example, Nelson points out that while Israel is roundly castigated for administrative detention, the Palestinian Authority detains hundreds of people without charge as well, although they are not as forthcoming with the statistics as Israel is. (I follow Palestinian media closely and have never seen any mention of this.)

Another section has a footnote that mentions that Norman Finkelstein actually defended Hamas’ policy of murdering “collaborators” with Israel.

This is the sort of hypocrisy exposed in Not in Kansas Anymore. The boycotters’ pretense of caring about Palestinian academic freedom is clearly just an excuse to attack Israel as they ignore the far worse crimes that Palestinian students and professors are subject to every day from their own leaders and peers.

01/09 Links: Why Biden’s Plan to Rejoin the Iran Deal Makes No Sense; Netanyahu taken to safe room during protests prior to Capitol riots; The Israeli organization saving the lives of Gaza’s children

From Ian:

Richard Goldberg and Mark Dubowitz: Why Biden’s Plan to Rejoin the Iran Deal Makes No Sense

Iran has decided to escalate tensions with the West by publicly confirming the production of enriched uranium at an underground nuclear facility and seizing a South Korean oil tanker transiting the Persian Gulf. This escalation may be designed to put additional pressure on President-elect Joe Biden to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal—a move that would give extensive sanctions relief to a regime under enormous economic stress. But if Biden were to give in to nuclear extortion and abandon sanctions, he would surrender his most important leverage against Tehran and never achieve his stated goal of negotiating a longer-lasting, better agreement.

Five years ago, nearly every Republican in the U.S. Congress—and many leading Democrats including Senators Charles Schumer, Bob Menendez, and Joe Manchin—opposed the Iran deal for good reasons. The agreement set expiration dates on key restrictions, ruled out on-demand inspections, and let Iran maintain its nuclear enrichment capabilities. It didn’t address the regime’s accelerating missile program, gave Tehran the financial resources to sponsor regional aggression and terrorism, and ignored its egregious abuse of human rights.

Hinting at these flaws, Biden recently said he wants to build on the 2015 deal with a new agreement to “tighten and lengthen Iran’s nuclear constraints, as we address the missile program.” During the presidential campaign, he also promised to confront Iran’s human-rights record and its “destabilizing activities, which threaten our friends and partners in the region.” But the president-elect maintains that the only way to negotiate a new framework is by first returning to the old one.

There’s one big problem with that logic. Since rejoining the original nuclear deal requires Washington to lift its most punishing sanctions, the economic leverage against Tehran that Biden inherits from his predecessor will evaporate the moment sanctions are relaxed.

Congress had worked for years to enact tough sanctions to force the Iranian regime to abandon its malign activities. Indeed, former President Barack Obama credited these sanctions with bringing Iran to the negotiating table in the first place.

The obvious question, then, is this: If Obama contends U.S. sanctions pressure was necessary to produce an agreement as deeply flawed as the Iran nuclear deal, how could Biden ever negotiate far more restrictions on Iran with far less economic leverage?

Biden’s retreat from sanctions in the face of Iran’s threats to expand its enrichment-related activities, kick out international inspectors, and build additional nuclear reactors—in effect, giving in to a nuclear extortion racket—would also send a clear message to the mullahs: They can wait out a Biden administration in negotiations because he will never reimpose sanctions out of fear Iran might again expand its nuclear activities.

The end of the Gulf crisis is big news — but Middle East sands always shift

It appears that the Gulf crisis is over. The schism between U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Egypt, on the one hand, and Qatar, on the other, is ending today in a flurry of Arab robes and face-masked embraces at a desert air strip in northwest Saudi Arabia.

This being the Middle East, the wording must be cautious and it’s wise to include a “probably” or “perhaps” somewhere. But there is no doubting the potential significance of the news. An often absurd tiff between Washington’s allies has been taken off the front burner. The significance is arguably bigger than Israel’s recent “normalization” agreements with the UAE and Bahrain. And, given the attendance in the desert today of White House adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, it’s hard not to recognize it as an achievement of outgoing President Trump.

That success must be balanced against the president’s role in starting the crisis in May 2017, when he attended the Riyadh Arab summit on his first foreign trip. Emir Tamim of Qatar was also there, but his delegation knew something was going wrong when it found itself seated near the kitchens at the banquet. Within days, the Qatar news agency had been hacked to show fake pro-Iranian messages and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain had broken relations with Qatar. A tweet by President Trump had suggested Qatari support for terrorism. Qatar’s Arab neighbors instituted an “embargo” — in effect, a blockade, cutting the land border and banning air traffic — complaining of Doha’s support for radicals and Islamic extremists.

On a reporting trip to the Gulf a few weeks later, I searched for answers on what had happened and why. Perplexed local diplomats were doing the same. The accepted wisdom was that it was a power play by MbZ and MbS, the up-and-coming personalities of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi, the lead emirate of the UAE, and Mohammed bin Salman, who became the Saudi crown prince in June 2017 after forcing the abdication of his predecessor. Irritated by their once-irrelevant Qatari neighbor, now striding the region and even the world flush with natural gas revenues, they wanted to put it in its place.

MEMRI: A Second Chance For Sudan

With one exception, the Trump administration certainly did not distinguish itself when it comes to Africa.[1] But that exception, Sudan, is an important one. Through a bulldozer intensity focused on helping make peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, through seemingly crude pressure and clumsy creativity, the administration came through with three great deliverables for Khartoum's transitional government: removing Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List, restoring Sudan's sovereign immunity for past complicity with terrorist acts, and providing both bilateral and IMF debt relief that will make Sudan able to more easily tap international assistance for very poor countries. Khartoum in return has to move forward with normalizing relations with Israel.[2]

I am one of those who criticized the administration for pressing too hard to get Sudan's fragile transitional government to agree on Israel – even though I support normalization – but in the end, it worked and, like the other agreements between Israel and Arab states over the past few months, this is a solid, respectable diplomatic achievement.

Sudan, after 30 years of brutal dictatorship, has been given a second chance. That chance has been principally won by the Sudanese people themselves, who in 2018 and 2019 rose up against the Omar Al-Bashir regime and, with the help of key parts of the Sudanese military establishment, brought the regime to an end. But certainly, the international community also played a helpful secondary role. And second chances in the Arab world are nothing to look down upon, as we see several countries – Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen – in deep, seemingly intractable existential crises. Sudan is also in crisis, and yet one can only compare it to the situation in Lebanon and see real hope and the possibility of progress on the banks of the Two Niles.

Sudan's most immediate problem is economic. Inflation ran at over 200% in 2020, exacerbating already widespread poverty and hunger. Supplying fuel, food, medicine, and electricity are major challenges. GDP in 2020 decreased even more than it had the past two years as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Almost half of all Sudanese between the ages of 15 and 64 suffered from malnutrition as children. And with freedoms won by the Sudanese Revolution comes the right to demonstrate and complain, loudly. Expectations and frustrations are very high. Sudan's biggest challenge over the next two years is finding a way to show tangible forward motion towards a better life for its people. According to the country's Charter for the Transitional Period, democratic elections are to be held by late 2022; these would be the first fully free elections in Sudan since 1986.

The second, no less daunting, challenge that Sudan faces is that of civilian-military relations, specifically how to rein in a sprawling military establishment accustomed to both economic and political privilege. In Sudan, there are two military entities, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary forces built up by the previous regime out of the Darfur conflict and used as a type of Praetorian Guard by Bashir in his last years. Both SAF and RSF are mentioned by name in the Transitional Charter as "national military institutions that protect the unity and sovereignty of the nation." SAF's Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF Commander Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo (AKA "Hemeti") are, respectively, chairman and vice-chair of Sudan's Sovereignty Council.

It took nearly three weeks, but the Palestinian foreign ministry finally decided that the propaganda value of adopting the false anti-Israel positions of Amnesty, The Guardian and many others that Israel is somehow discriminating against Palestinians in COVID-19 vaccines outweighs the honor involved in Palestinian leaders taking responsibility for their own people.

From Ma'an:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates affirmed the duties of Israel, the occupying Power, to provide vaccines against Corona to the Palestinian people, while providing these vaccines to its citizens, ignoring its duties as an occupying power, and discriminating against the Palestinian people and denying them their right to health.

The Foreign Ministry added, in a statement issued by it, this evening, Saturday, that Israel is trying to absolve itself of its duties as an occupying power, and imposes full responsibility on the Palestinian government.

And she stressed that the State of Palestine is ready to fully assume its responsibilities and carry out its duties without compromise, which is what it was and is still doing in the face of the willful negligence and indifference of the occupying power, and the occupying power must only recognize its racial discrimination and its inability to implement its obligations and assume its responsibilities or to transfer it completely to The Palestinian government to do it, and towards Israel ending its colonial occupation of the land of the State of Palestine.

She emphasized that the Palestinian leadership’s search for providing vaccines from its various sources does not exempt Israel from its responsibilities towards the Palestinian people in providing vaccinations based on its duties based on the rules of international humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions, the Hague Regulations of 1907, and international human rights law as an occupying power.

The Foreign Ministry praised the positions of states, institutions, members of parliament, and legal and international figures who considered the violations of health apartheid practiced by Israel against the Palestinian people.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on the international community to pressure Israel to assume its responsibilities, especially Article 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which affirmed that the occupying power has a duty to ensure "the adoption and implementation of preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of infectious diseases and epidemics," including these obligations to purchase and distribute vaccines to the people -the Palestinian who is under its prolonged military occupation, as well as presenting him to our brave prisoners in the occupation prison.

Notice that nowhere in this statement is the Palestinian government actually asking for Israel's help. The entire statement is meant to accuse Israel of "health apartheid" and "racial discrimination" but at no point do they say that they actually want Israel to provide vaccines, and how.

To re-emphasize:

* Under the Geneva Conventions, the PA has the primary responsibility for deciding how to fight the pandemic. Israel is obligated to cooperate with the Palestinian Authority in fighting the epidemic if they ask. They haven't asked, at least not publicly. (If the Palestinian Authority would refuse to help its own people, or if it did not have that ability, then Israel would indeed have that obligation. No one claims that their own plans for obtaining the vaccine within a few weeks is irresponsible or reckless.)

* Logistically, the Palestinian Authority cannot store the quantities of the Pfizer vaccine that Israel is using because of a lack of specialized refrigeration equipment, so this is moot.

* If Israel would unilaterally build its own clinics in Palestinian controlled territory, which is the only feasible way to do what Amnesty, the other NGOs and news media seem to be demanding, that would be decried as a "land grab" and "settlement activity." (Previous clinics that Israel has built for Palestinians in need were boycotted.)

* If somehow these obstacles could be overcome, most Palestinians would not want vaccines from Israel because of rumors that they would cause impotence or illness.

This press release is pure cynicism, a crude excuse to push an antisemitic lie of Jews discriminating against Arabs - even though more Arabs have been vaccinated in Israel than in any other country besides the UAE.

But the propaganda value of the Israel-hating NGOs relentlessly attacking Israel for weeks meant that the Palestinian government could not ignore the topic, even though it made clear multiple times that it can handle the epidemic itself and emphatically didn't want Israel's help.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/08 Links Pt2: Pandemic has destroyed protest tourism; Netanyahu: Everyone Over 16 Will Be Vaccinated By End of March; Scotland lists Jerusalem separately from Israel on COVID-19 travel advisory

From Ian:

Pandemic has destroyed protest tourism

In Hebron, the heart of the activism, there has been fewer clashes, curfews and stabbing attacks since the pandemic. Are people tired of fighting during a health crisis? Or are there fewer flash points between Israelis, foreign activists and Palestinians?

It’s not clear. But what is clear is that Palestinians are not left worse off when Westerners in Arab headscarves stop exploiting their struggle.

Protest tourism mostly caters to a small, privileged group of middle-class Leftists. They use it as a way to burnish their radical credentials at home, or even make a profit for whatever “non-profit” they run. For the most part, it’s about a short tour and then a plane ride home.

The pandemic has taught us that activism can best be done locally. The funds wasted on air fares and fancy hotels, like the American Colony in Jerusalem, could better be directed towards local causes, or Palestinian NGOs that actually hire Palestinians.

Lockdown has given us a good opportunity to look in the mirror and ask what all these antics were about. Was it really just a way for people to have “fun” bashing Israel? Was it a kind of virtue-signalling on steroids – titillating to the foreigners at the expense of the Palestinians?

The activists may have planted trees or escorted people through checkpoints, but most of it was a charade. Palestinian lives haven’t changed. Radical westerners have simply sponged up resources that could have actually done some good.

Spielberg Makes Movie Celebrating Jeffrey Epstein’s Anti-Israel Associate

In November 2020, filming began on Oslo: an adaptation of the revisionist history Broadway play about the fake peace process between Israel and the PLO terrorist organization.

That same month, the man at the center of both the play and the movie, Terje Rød Larsen announced that he was stepping down as president and CEO of the International Peace Institute after it was revealed that he had taken a $130,000 personal loan from Jeffrey Epstein.

The International Peace Institute is closely linked to the United Nations and its honorary chair is usually the UN Secretary General. The notorious pedophile didn’t just give Larsen money, he also pumped $650,000 into the UN-linked group through his “foundations'' and the Norwegian paper that broke the story published emails showing that Larsen’s people were trying to move money from IPI back to Jeffrey Epstein. "For forms sake we should send it to Jeff, however I am sure we will get it back many fold!" Larsen appears to have written in one email.

It was 2016. The date on the original loan was in 2013. All of this took place years after the original Epstein case and his conviction. The ex-UN diplomat knew whom he was dealing with.

But the Epstein scandal didn’t stop Oslo from being produced by Steven Spielberg anyway. Or HBO from moving forward with plans to air a story about a disgraced Jeffrey Epstein associate.

Neither HBO nor Spielberg are strangers to revisionist history or anti-Israel propaganda.

Melanie Phillips: A disaster and a tragedy for America, Jews and decent people everywhere

Tragically, though, as so often in Jewish history, there are Jews who are actively helping this onslaught against truth, justice and decency. Liberal American Jews have supported Warnock with the Jewish Democratic Council of America circulating a petition claiming that he was the victim of “baseless claims and attacks.”

Such Jews have continued to support the Democrats regardless of Obama’s hostility to Israel or his empowerment of Iran. They continue to support them regardless of their embrace of the poisonous Jew-hater, Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan, and “The Squad” of Democrat Congresswomen who are given to anti-Israel or anti-Jewish statements.

And now, with the Democrats unconstrained, we will all be forced to watch as the arguably criminal conspiracy to destroy a president is buried; as the anti-white, anti-West, anti-Jew Black Lives Matter movement is invited to set the social agenda; as the Palestinian Arabs are again empowered and incentivized to resume their campaign to exterminate Israel; and as America allows two of the most lethal threats to the free world—Iran and China—to walk all over it.

The moral case against the Democrats had been solid and overwhelming. But now, with Trump having betrayed the rule of law and constitutional order, those trying to defend these principles against the left have been grievously undermined.

What a disaster. What a tragedy—for America, for the West and for decent people everywhere.

Cartoon of the Day: Everything is a war crime

Continuing my series of re-captioned cartoons....

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

01/08 Links Pt1: As Biden enters White House, did Israel's Mossad win war with Iran?; Iran leader Khamenei bans imports of US, British COVID-19 vaccines

From Ian:

As Biden enters White House, did Israel's Mossad win war with Iran?

The Post understands that a main reason that the operation to seize the nuclear archives did not take place until January 2018 was that it took Cohen and his Mossad team a full two years to plan it and carry it out.

Intelligence sources were asked about the view of some (including former Mossad chiefs Tamir Pardo and Shabtai Shavit) that the issue of how to stop Iran from going nuclear after 2025 should have been pushed off until close to 2025, without breaking up the deal in 2018.

The Post learned that the view was that any Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal in the early years would have been replaced by covertly and non-covertly chipping away at the nuclear limitations long before 2025.

Under this view, one key point was who would choose the timing of the next nuclear standoff and whether Israel and the West would have leverage or would still be trapped by fears of upsetting the Iranians.

Each move against Iran was carefully calculated to create leverage for the critical period when there would be a standoff.

Some made light of the nuclear archives because it was records of the nuclear program from the 1990s through 2003.

However, Cohen and Netanyahu believed the archives and Iran’s continued efforts to move them around to different clandestine sites helped them prove to the IAEA and others that Khamenei’s true intentions remain to achieve a nuclear weapon.

Amano may not have kept his word to Cohen, yet the intelligence obtained from the nuclear archives is exactly what empowered Grossi to insist on new inspections at Turquzabad, Mariwan (also known as Abadeh) and another site near Tehran, all of which had illicit nuclear activities.

So Cohen’s Mossad has done far more than just pressure Iran for a few years until Biden came into the picture.

Despite Iran’s recent jump to 20% enrichment, operations from his tenure will limit Iran’s ability to break out to a nuclear weapon at least in the early stages of the Biden administration. New intelligence collected may convince incoming officials to take some harder stances.

And if, at the end of the day, the Biden administration still cuts a deal with Iran that Israel does not like, something beyond even Cohen’s control, he will still have played his heart out to protect Israel, pushing the envelope to use every tool at his disposal.

The Life of Iran’s Most Celebrated Mass Killer

Late in Arash Azizi’s fluent and groundbreaking new biography of the late Qassem Soleimani, The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the U.S., and Iran’s Global Ambitions, the author tells us that the summer before Soleimani was killed, “Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert spoke of his old adversary Soleimani in a radio interview: ‘There is something that he knows, that he knows I know, that I know he knows, and both of us know what that something is.’ He paused for a moment and added: ‘What that is, that’s another story.’”

Welcome to the shadows. Azizi reads Olmert’s remarks as a threat, and perhaps they were, but amid the apocalyptic and violent threats launched from Tehran over 40 years—mostly directed at Olmert’s country—the former Israeli PM sounds positively neighborly. Soleimani’s hatred of Israel was obsessive. So many things he touched were named Quds (Jerusalem by its Arabic name)—the Quds Training Barracks, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, and a couple of operations in the Iran-Iraq War.

Soleimani endured a Dickensian rural boyhood of shame due to impoverishing family debt and menial jobs. He moved on to steady work, a love for karate, a fondness for Scarface-style men’s fashion outfits, and religious radicalization. With the coming of the revolution and Iran-Iraq War, he sought ever closer engagement at the front, as a member of the nascent IRGC, a militia “which grew to overshadow and dwarf the army … [Soleimani’s] calm and quiet demeanor did little to hide his ambition. He planned to make this war his own.” He was wounded in the grandly titled Operation Path to Jerusalem, which more modestly did liberate the town of Bostan from Iraqi control.

The recapture of Khorramshahr was followed by a string of regional events that might have ended the war: signal Iranian victories, the Palestinian attempt to murder Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov in London, and the resulting Israeli push into Lebanon to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization. By now “Saddam had his back against the wall” and so withdrew his forces from Iran and declared a ceasefire, a face-saving tactic accompanied by his invitation to Iran to join him in an “anti-Zionist” front against Israel along with the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Syria. An end to the war in 1982 would have allowed Iran to emerge victorious and saved many thousands of lives, especially since Iranian tactics still involved the use of suicidal waves of young men, adolescents, and children serving as human minesweepers. Yet the IRGC urgently lobbied Ruhollah Khomeini to remain at war, export the revolution, topple Saddam, and destroy Israel. Khomeini followed this catastrophic advice until 1988, when a defeated Iran accepted a ceasefire, leaving both Saddam Hussein and Israel unscathed. Humiliated, Khomeini attempted to restore his menacing reputation by ordering the massacre of thousands of political prisoners, mostly from the Mojahedin-e Khalq opposition group.

JINSA National Security Digest (Podcast): The State of Human Rights in Iran

The current state of human rights in Iran is horrendous and often fails to receive enough attention from the international community. In this episode, Erielle speaks with investigative journalist and founder of The Foreign Desk Lisa Daftari about the struggles various minority groups face in Iran, the state of the current dissident movement in Iran, and the power of social media to bring to light the regime’s abuses.

The Tikvah Podcast: Dore Gold on the Strategic Importance of the Nile River and the Politics of the Red Sea

In the water-scarce Middle East, water that can be used for drinking and agriculture is of premium importance. The entire ancient civilization of imperial Egypt grew up around the Nile River and its basin, and much of the east Africa still depends on it. Although Israel has made amazing advances in hydrotechnology, it too must treat water as a scarce resource, and that makes the politics of the Nile, along with the policing of the Red Sea, a question of real strategic significance to the Jewish state and the regional order of the Middle East.

In this week’s podcast, Mosaic editor Jonathan Silver is joined by Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, to discuss the strategic importance of the Nile River, the policing of the Red Sea, and what they mean for Israel and the regional order of the Middle East.

Israel closed the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron for ten days at the same time that it increased the lockdown in most of the country to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Even though Israel does not agree that the lands of Judea and Samaria are legally considered occupied, Israel's High Court of Justice usually applies the laws of belligerent occupation when deciding what is allowed in those areas. It is still important to understand whether Israel is adhering to international law of belligerent occupation, especially when prominent human rights organizations claim that it is violating those laws.

As we have shown, Israel is not obligated to provide Palestinians living in those areas with vaccines when their own leaders have indicated that they can handle the epidemic and the procurement of vaccines themselves. The local authorities are the ones with the primary responsibility of maintaining health. It is absurd to say that because Israel built an infrastructure to provide vaccines to its people before every other country on Earth that it must provide vaccines for Palestinians at the exact same time, especially when the Palestinian leaders do not want to get the vaccines from Israel and have been making arrangements to receive different vaccines that could be given to their people sooner than it would take to acquire the special refrigeration equipment the Pfizer vaccine needs.

The question of the Tomb of the Patriarchs is interesting because it is the flip side of the same question. In this case, the local authorities are against a health measure that Israel wants to enforce. In this case, does Israel have the right, or even obligation, to enforce health rules in opposition to the wishes of the Palestinians?

Once again, we see that Israel is following the Geneva Conventions.

The ICRC's commentary of same Article 56 that says that Israel must work with local authorities to ensure the health and safety of the population also says when Israel must override those authorities:

It will be remembered that Article 55 requires the Occupying Power to import the necessary medical supplies, such as medicaments, vaccines and sera, when the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate. It will also be able to exercise its right to requisition, and demand the co-operation not only of the national and local authorities but also of the population in the fight against epidemics.

The Palestinian Authority has the resources to acquire vaccines, but it is not cooperating with Israel in lockdowns. Israel has every right to force those lockdowns when the local authorities are unable or unwilling to.

To be sure, deciding when such a move is needed is often a judgment call. And there is one other part of Geneva that gives the Palestinians more considerations in this case:

In adopting measures of health and hygiene and in their implementation, the Occupying Power shall take into consideration the moral and ethical susceptibilities of the population of the occupied territory.

The commentary says:

The last paragraph provides protected persons with a further safeguard, in that any measure of public health and hygiene the Occupying Power feels it should take in order to comply with the above stipulations must pay due regard to the habits and customs of the population (3).
The purpose of the provision is to ensure respect for sentiments and traditions, which must not be disregarded. The occupation must not involve the sudden introduction of new methods, if they are liable to cause deep disquiet among the population. The provision should be compared with Article 27 [ Link ] , which requires the Party to the conflict to respect, in all circumstances, the religious convictions and practices of protected persons, and also their manners and customs.

In this case there is a tension between the requirements of ensuring the health and safety of the population and that of respecting religious practices. But even here the language of what Israel may do to fight an epidemic is much stronger than the language of respecting local religious customs - the former is a requirement, the latter is something that must be taken into consideration.

It is also beyond doubt that the objections of the Palestinians to the temporary shutdown is at least as much out of resentment for Israel than out of true religious sentiment. For example, the PA is claiming that Israel adhering to international law is a war crime:

Mahmoud al-Habbash, advisor to President Mahmoud Abbas on religious affairs and Islamic relations, described Israel's lockdown of the holy site as an inclusive war crime, saying that banning worshipers access to the site could fuel the sentiments of Muslims around the world.

Also instructive is the reaction of Hebron's Jewish community to the shutdown. The site is at least as holy to Jews as it is to Muslims, yet their reaction to not being able to enter the site is the opposite of the Palestinians':

COVID-19 UPDATE - Tomb of Patriarchs closed starting Friday, January 8.
Prayers outside: 4 sections, 10 worshipers each, total of 40 worshipers.
We pray for all affected by coronavirus. Together we will pull through.#Hebron #coronavirus #Lockdown3 #Quarantine pic.twitter.com/s7EMC6VUy6
— Jewish Community of Hebron - Hebron Fund (@TheHebronFund1) January 7, 2021

After all, there is no greater religious obligation than saving lives.

Once again, Israel is scrupulously adhering to international law, while it is being falsely accused of violating that law. And once again, the accusers don't care about the laws themselves, but in how to twist the laws in ways that demonize Israel.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The EU just published an excellent guide to using the IHRA Working Definition of antisemitism. It includes detailed descriptions of when anti-Israel rhetoric is antisemitic:

In certain forms of antisemitic expression, Israel may be used as a substitute for a conceived Jewish collectivity. Rather than “criticising” Israel as one might any other state, some forms of antisemitism express direct hatred exclusively against Israel or seek to apply double standards in criticising that country.

It goes through each IHRA example and then shows specific incidents, both from the Right and the Left, that happened in Europe that were antisemitic even though they were ostensibly anti-Israel:

Antisemitic incidents:
Online (Denmark), May 2018: An individual sent an e-mail entitled “Holocaust is a giant lie!” to individual scholars and the entire Danish Parliament. The man, who had been expelled from a right-wing party due to racist statements, wrote: “Do you really believe in the grotesque history of the Holocaust?... [T]he truth is that it never happened... Israel and the Jews have completely occupied the United States and are completely draining it of money and other resources. The Jews are the eternal enemy of the white people.”

Barcelona (Spain), May 2016: Addressing the Catalonian Parliament a politician called the head of the Barcelona Jewish Community a “foreign agent” from an alleged “Zionist lobby” that defines the Parliament’s agenda.

Paris (France), February 2019: A prominent French Jewish philosopher was verbally attacked as he walked past a protest on the Montparnasse Boulevard. Protesters shouted abuses at him, among them “dirty Zionist” and “go back to Tel Aviv”. The attack was condemned by the French President, and the Paris prosecutor’s office launched an investigation into the “public insult based on origin, ethnicity, nationality, race or religion.”

Berlin (Germany), July 2020: An antisemitic caricature of a Jew in a crossed-out red circle was printed on a laminated card. Additionally, Israel was demonised and delegitimised and Judaism was equated with racism: “Stop Israhell Apartheid! Judaism is Racism!”

London (UK), 6 September 2018: Following the adoption of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism by the UK Labour Party, advertisements claiming “Israel is a racist endeavour” appeared at bus stops around London. A spokesperson for the London mayor stated: “These offensive adverts are not authorized and are acts of vandalism which Transport for London and its advertising partner take extremely seriously. They have instructed their contractors to remove any posters found on their network immediately.”

London (UK), 4 August 2014: A Member of Parliament posted a cartoon online of Israel’s outline superimposed on a map of the US under the headline “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict – relocate Israel into United States”. To this, the MP appended the comment, “Problem solved”. She subsequently admitted her postings were antisemitic and apologised.

Benicàssim (Spain), August 2015: After pressure from activists, a Spanish Reggae festival cancelled the performance of an American Jewish singer because he declined to make a declaration condemning actions of the State of Israel. No other artist was asked to condemn a countries’ policies in order to perform. After a public outcry, the decision was reversed. However, during his performance, the artist was the subject of verbal attacks.

Media (Germany), May 2018: A German newspaper published a cartoon that uses classic antisemitic clichés, such as oversized nose, ears and lips, to depict the prime minister of Israel. The cartoon showed the prime minister in the attire of the Israeli Eurovision song contest winner 2018, while holding a rocket with the Star of David on it. Germany’s commissioner on combatting antisemitism stated that the cartoon recalled “the intolerable depictions of Nazi propaganda.” The newspaper apologised for the cartoon’s use of antisemitic clichés, fired the cartoonist and reviewed its internal editorial procedures for the publication of caricatures.

Warsaw (Poland), November 2019: Manifesting multiple forms of antisemitism, autonomous nationalists carried a banner at a large march with the words “We want our country back now! This is Poland not ‘Polin (Jewish museum in Warsaw)’ – Polish Intifada – No more apologies. No more Zionism.” They chanted, “This is Poland, not Israel!” and “White Poland!”

Berlin (Germany), May 2020: Property damage was discovered at a Holocaust memorial on the Putlitz Bridge in Moabit. The memorial, which commemorates the deportation of Berlin Jews from the Moabit train station to the extermination camps in 1942, was covered with a homemade sticker that read: “Free Gaza” and “I support a free Palestine”. This created an antisemitic connection between the Holocaust and the situation in the Middle East.

Media (Belgium), January 2020: Released to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, a Dutch-language daily published an article titled “How the Zionists ‘Discovered’ the Holocaust”. This piece argued that the millions of Jews exterminated by the Nazis cannot “protest if they are used to justify another injustice: a regime [Israel] that has imposed discrimination and apartheid in law.”

Gothenburg (Sweden), December 2017: After the US government’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, individuals threw firebombs at the synagogue in Gothenburg. Three people were arrested and sentenced for hate crime violations, committing gross unlawful threats and attempting to damage property.

Graz (Austria), August 2020: The synagogue and a communal building of the Jewish community of Graz were vandalised with graffiti carrying the following slogans: “Palestinian is free” and “Our language and our country are red lines”.

The handbook emphasizes that the IHRA definition is not legally binding, but it also describes how the working definition can be used in the judiciary to help identify when a crime is antisemitic in nature:

The judiciary has a critical role in determining the antisemitic character of crimes as well as effectively trying and sanctioning them. Delivering justice is essential for the recovery of Jews, their families and the wider community from antisemitic attacks.

Forms of antisemitism related to the Holocaust are more easily recognised than some contemporary forms, such as present-day conspiracy myths or Israel-related antisemitism. A challenge might occur when the perpetrator’s antisemitic motivation is neither explicit nor apparent but is expressed through antisemitic codes or otherwise camouflaged.

Some ministries of justice have recommended that public prosecutors use the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism to help identify antisemitism, alongside other indicators such as the victim’s perception, as well as the date and location of a crime. Recognition of antisemitic motivation at any stage of a trial (e.g. within the prosecutor’s indictment or the judges’ ruling) is important for the recovery of the victim and for the preventive effect it can have in society. While it is often difficult to identify motivation, the definition allows prosecutors and/or judges to assess the antisemitic character of particular statements or acts.

This is a very important document, not least because it is created by the liberal-leaning EU. The socialist Left who camouflage their antisemitism as liberal anti-Zionism would have a hard time dismissing this handbook that directly calls them out for their hate.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

The latest date for a Palestinian election is now rumored to be in May:

A member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, Abdullah Abdullah, spoke about expectations regarding the date of President Mahmoud Abbas issuing the presidential decree to hold the Palestinian elections.

Abdullah expected, in a radio interview with Sawt al-Watan, that President Mahmoud Abbas will issue a presidential decree, before the end of this month, and thus the elections will be held in the middle of next May, that is, after the next Ramadan.

Abdullah indicated that after the presidential decree is issued for the elections, there will be a meeting of the secretaries-general again, to discuss the roadmap during the next phase.

This happened after the Hamas leader sent a letter to Abbas saying he agreed to have elections.

I am a bit skeptical.

In March 2009, the PLO announced elections by January 2010. They never happened.

In February 2011, the PLO announced elections before September of that year. They never happened.

In November 2011, elections were announced for the following May. They never happened.

In April 2014, Hamas and Fatah announced a unity government that would then arrange elections within six months. They never happened.

In November 2019, reports came out of likely Palestinian elections in February 2020. Never happened.

Last September, there were news headlines about Hamas and Fatah holding elections, scheduled for February or March 2021. That fell apart.

Just like Fatah and Hamas unity, elections are one of those things that are in the news fairly often, and so far nothing can be shown for it.

So if you bet against Palestinian elections or Fatah/Hamas unity, you will probably win.

Even this supposed May election is unclear - are they legislative? Are they for president? Are they going to be held in Gaza at the same time as the West Bank?

The track record of two warring groups, each of whom do not want to lose their hold on power, makes any new elections or unification highly unlikely.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.