Ma'an quotes Israel's Kan News as saying that the Palestinian Authority will bring five thousand Russian Sputnik COVID-19 vaccines into the territories tomorrow.
Monday, January 18, 2021
Monday, January 18, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
COVID-19
Ma'an quotes Israel's Kan News as saying that the Palestinian Authority will bring five thousand Russian Sputnik COVID-19 vaccines into the territories tomorrow.
David Collier: Academia – the epicentre of global antisemitism
The epicentre of global antisemitic activity is – astonishingly – academia. Anti-Zionist, antisemitic academics beget more anti-Zionist, antisemitic academics, all scratching each other’s backs and agreeing with each other.Guardian anti-Israel editorial evokes antisemitism
It is almost impossible to follow a research path on the subject of Israel unless you have spent several years mentored by an Islamist, a Marxist or someone who claims Palestinian heritage. If you show potential as a professional anti-Israel propagandist, or agree to research an area that they choose for your study – your fees may all be covered. Once holding your PhD, you join a club whose members praise each other’s books, sign off each other’s grants – and block access to anything and anyone that does not fit the anti-Israel profile. As a group you actively seek to silence dissent. Hey – you even get to co-sign letters to the Guardian. It is a self-protecting global factory that churns out activists who hold PhDs and who all hate Israel. This isn’t academia, it is taxpayer-funded, Islamist-sponsored, antisemitic, propaganda. This propaganda is the central pillar upon which western antisemitic, anti-Zionism is supported.
In opposition to this, we must stop spending our time putting out fires and begin to address why these fires keep starting and where the fuel for them is all coming from.
Jews on campus – a type of ‘dhimmitude’
Jewish people today on campus can be tolerated, protected or abused. At no point are they treated as equals. The best they can hope for is protection and tolerance in a hostile environment. It is reminiscent of dhimmitude under Islamic rule. On the campus the prevailing wisdom is that their beliefs in Jewish identity are fundamentally wrong.
The Woke doctrine of ‘systemic racism’ holds that Jews are ’white’ and that they are guilty of establishing the ‘settler colonial’ state of Israel. Post-colonial, post-modernist, Marxist thought dominates the universities in which they are ‘permitted’ to study, and they will be tolerated provided that they ‘behave’. In these halls Zionism is a dirty word which is equated with racism.
Jewish students can wave their flags in secret rooms but must not do it where it can provoke. They are offered the protection of being allowed to be wrong within a superior system of thought – or in other words they are second class students. If they are abused, it is far less serious than an offence against someone from the Muslim, BAME or LGBTQ communities. If an academic is responsible for the abuse (see Bristol, Leeds, Warwick) it is the academic who will be protected and the complaining Jewish student who will be victimised – even if the student can prove abuse. Academics fiercely resist the protection for Jewish students that the government is trying to implement. Jewish students that bow down before their masters will be given special favours and status. The best analogy I can find is Dhimmitude.
It has got so bad that there are some universities which are virtually Judenfrei. Why would an openly pro-Israel Jewish student want to go to a University where they will be vilified by other students and victimised by lecturers? What an indictment of the failure to deal with the problem that Jewish students choose a University not by the course content or the quality of teaching – but by the extent of antisemitism that they will encounter.
On Sunday, the Guardian (via their sister site, the Observer) published an article on a King’s College/YouGov poll – commissioned by Campaign Against Antisemitism – on the attitudes of British Jews, which found that “90% believe that media bias against Israel fuels persecution of Jews in Britain”.Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy alive in Israel
On that same day, the Guardian published an official editorial on the recent B’Tselem report they’ve been promoting which not only accused Israel of apartheid, but characterised it as a “Jewish supremacist” state. Though their coverage up until today uncritically quoted B’Tselem’s “Jewish supremacism” charge, and included an op-ed by the NGO’s director which used that term, this editorial used that term in their own editorial voice:
Israel has a problem of historic discrimination. But under Benjamin Netanyahu’s government there has been the enactment of the nation state law that constitutionally enshrines Jewish supremacy and a plan to formally annex parts of the West Bank.
First, let’s be clear. This has nothing whatsoever to do with Israel’s prime minister, or even the nation state law. Though we’ve refuted Guardian charges that the law enshrines discrimination, our concern is with their editors’ use of a term which suggests the state is intrinsically racist, and which has a clear antisemitic history.
We contacted Community Security Trust (CST), who provided us with the following statement about the use of the term by the Guardian and B’Tselem:
“The meaning and impact of language can vary considerably depending on who is using it, the audience that is hearing or reading it, and the context in which it lands. For this reason, whatever B’Tselem’s intended meaning in Israel regarding the phrase “Jewish supremacy”, they ought to have been cognisant that this phrase has a long-standing antisemitic usage outside Israel, and journalists in the UK, writing for primarily non-Jewish audiences, should be even more mindful of the danger of such wording.”
The danger British Jews feel about such wording, per the CAA poll which the Guardian reported on, is that it demonises not only Israeli specifically, and Zionism more broadly in a manner that’s arguably antisemitic per the IHRA definition, but vilifies Jews qua Jews – insofar as most are (correctly) identified as Zionists.
We’ve complained to the Guardian, and asked that they remove that antisemitic term from their editorial.
On Monday, the US marks Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday with a national holiday. Celebrated this year on January 18, the event comes less than two weeks after historic violence on Capitol Hill, the symbol of American democracy.
King was only 39 years old in 1968 when an assassin’s bullet ended his life in Memphis, Tennessee, but his legacy as a proponent of nonviolent conflict resolution lives on.
This year, though, a different spirit – one directly affected by the attack on the home of the US legislative bodies – adds a variant to King’s heritage.
“I have also been thinking a lot this past week about Rev. Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in Washington, DC, at the [National] Mall, in front of hundreds of thousands of Americans in August 1963, in which he envisioned freedom for all Americans and called for an end to racism,” Rabbi Ron Kronish, the founding director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel, told The Media Line.
“How relevant this is today when racism is once again tearing America apart, as we witnessed so dramatically during the insurrection incited by US President Donald Trump last week on January 6, at the same place, in America’s capital city,” stated Kronish.
What are the ramifications of these events for Israel and the Middle East?
As we honor the incomparable #MartinLutherKing, the great champion of human rights & civil liberties for all, a reminder that #MLK was also a staunch Zionist & supporter of the State of #Israel!
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 18, 2021
Watch the 📺 this #MLKDay: pic.twitter.com/TfRUYBFgdV
Monday, January 18, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
cartoon of the day, humor
Over the weekend, a custom-tailored-for-Facebook story started making the rounds, claiming that Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was blasting Israel for refusing to share the Iron Dome missile defense system with Hamas. It was just the kind of hilariously delicious absurdity that could be expected of the same organization that will soon welcome Chad—where slavery is still a rollicking tradition—into its Security Council, but the ever zealous guardians of Israel’s minor infractions and little else soon declared that Pillay was being slandered: she never called on Israel to share its defensive bounties, but rather criticized the United States for helping to fund the advanced system and noted that “no such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling.”
Monday, January 18, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
On Friday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas enacted a decree-law on holding legislative, presidential and National Council elections in the coming months starting with legislative elections on 22 May.This is a welcome development as participative, representative and accountable democratic institutions are key for Palestinian self-determination and state-building.The EU has in the past years consistently supported and funded the work of the Central Elections Commission in order to prepare for holding free, fair and inclusive elections for all Palestinians.
David Singer: Trump's Middle East solution will sink into oblivion
Trump’s Peace Plan was rejected by PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on 5 February 2020:
“They told me Trump wants to send me the deal of the century to read, I said I would not,” Abbas told the meeting of Arab League foreign ministers.
“Trump asked that I speak to him over the phone, so I said ‘no’, and that he wants to send me a letter, so I refused to receive it.”
On 9 February 2020 - US Ambassador to Israel – David Friedman – affirmed:
“The process [preparing a detailed map – ed] will not last very long, but we want to go through a process… We’re going to go through a mapping process to convert a map which is drawn of more than a million to one into something which really shows on the ground how the territory will be put together.
"It’s not unduly difficult, but it’s also not simple, because there are a lot of judgment calls. We don’t want to do this piecemeal …
"We want to do it once, holistically, in totality, and get it done right. We just want to get it done right. That’s not too much to ask. And that was the president’s message when he spoke about it the first time.”
On 15 February 2020 - the three US members of a joint US-Israel committee to join Israel’s three nominees in translating Trump’s conceptual plans into two defined territorial entities were announced (Mapping Committee).
Eleven months later the Mapping Committee’s map remains under tight wraps. No reasons have been given for the Committee’s failure to publish.
Failing to release the Mapping Committee’s detailed map before 20 January setting out defined borders to facilitate future Israel-PLO negotiations – should they ever be resumed - will see Trump’s two-state solution sink into political oblivion.
President Trump’s opportunity to finally end the 100 years-old unresolved Jewish-Arab conflict will then become just a footnote in history – joining the failed attempts of his Presidential predecessors.
Commentary Magazine Podcast: Trump’s Gift to Biden
Hosted by Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, John Podhoretz, Noah Rothman Bret Stephens, newly minted COMMENTARY contributing editor, joins the podcast today to discuss his blockbuster article, “Memo to President Biden: Please Don’t Mess Up the Abraham Accords.”
US Special Envoy Aryeh Lightstone @lightstonea to #i24NEWS on Arab-Israeli normalization and the new Middle East:
— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) January 17, 2021
'Peace does not belong to Republicans or Democrats, it is not an issue for Jews, Christians or Muslims, it is an issue for mankind.' pic.twitter.com/Kiw8GX9I2q
Col. Richard Kemp on 30th Anniversary of 1991 Gulf War
Monday, January 18, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
Monday, January 18, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
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| Dafna Meir H"YD |
Monday, January 18, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Israel ratified in 1991 and the State of Palestine acceded to in 2014, requires states to take steps necessary for the “prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases.”
The United Nations body responsible for monitoring this treaty has confirmed that Israel is obliged to respect this treaty in the occupied territory, and to protect the right to health and other rights of the population there.
The Committee reminds the State party that it has positive and negative obligations with regard to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, depending on its level of control and the transfer of authority, that it should not raise any obstacle to the exercise of such rights in those fields where competence has been transferred to the Palestinian authorities and that any measures taken by the State party should ensure that the legislative and policy measures relating to the occupied territories taken by the State party as the occupying Power do not result in any permanent alteration in the political or legal status of the territories or have irreparable consequences for the people living there.
“Nothing can justify today’s reality in parts of the West Bank, where people on one side of the street are receiving vaccines, while those on the other do not, based on whether they’re Jewish or Palestinian,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “Everyone in the same territory should have equitable access to the vaccine, regardless of their ethnicity.”
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
As Israel-UAE Ties Deepen, BDS Advocates ‘Give Up’ on Efforts to Boycott Jewish State
Amid expanding ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates following the Abraham Accords, a leading Palestinian BDS organization is giving up on efforts to boycott the Jewish state inside of the Arab Gulf country.From Pompeo’s Twitter Account, an Understated Policy Statement
In a statement, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)—a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee—announced that it would “exclude” those residing in the UAE from its call to ban UAE-Israeli economic and diplomatic partnerships.
“The PACBI takes into account the delicate situation of Arab subjects in Arab countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, ruled by tyrannical regimes that have become a hotbed of normalization and betrayal plans and projects in the region,” wrote the BDS group.
Previously, the PACBI had called on Emiratis to boycott several major UAE companies and institutions that had established ties with Israel, including the First Dhabi Bank, Emirates Policy Center and Dubai Expo.
The move by the BDS movement to drop its efforts to boycott Israel in the UAE comes as Arabs in countries that signed the Abraham Accords are showing increasingly positive attitudes towards the Jewish state.
A new report from Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs (MSA) found a substantial decrease in negative posts on Arab social media regarding normalization with Israel in the weeks after the agreements were signed.
According to the MSA, the decline in negative comments towards Israel and normalization was in part due to the public awareness campaigns carried out by the respective governments.
Mike Pompeo’s Twitter account has apparently tucked a notable policy statement into an otherwise unremarkable legacy-burnishing tweetstorm — and it has significant implications for U.S. support of Israel at the U.N.
The tweet was just one of the dozens that the secretary of state’s account has fired off every day since the start of 2021 to note his foreign-policy accomplishments as he nears the end of his tenure. It’s generally unremarkable stuff — some old pictures and graphics with snappy, occasionally stilted sloganeering (though more than a few Pompeo critics have seized on it as an opportunity to go after the top Trump official).
But Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noticed a decision that has otherwise gone unremarked upon: When @SecPompeo shared the 2018 press release announcing the U.S. decision to halt funding to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the post stated that “it’s estimated less than 200,000 Arabs diplaced in 1948 are still alive and most others are not refugees by any rational criteria.”
UNRWA serves Palestinian refugees exclusively — it says that there are 5.8 million of them in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Palestine — and it’s the only organization within the U.N. system that focuses on a specific set of refugees. (All other refugee groups are handled by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.) It’s a testament to the U.N.’s single-minded obsession with criticizing Israel, holding the Jewish state to a different standard.
But what actually makes someone a refugee? Many have disputed the 5 million number as a gross inflation that purposefully overstates the true refugee population in order to undermine Israel at the U.N. Goldberg, dissecting Pompeo’s statement, takes square aim at a longstanding myth:
UNRWA claims to serve millions of “Palestinian refugees.” These “refugees” are in some cases kept in poverty and hopelessness, told they are waiting for the day when they will return to their rightful homes within modern Israel (to end the Jewish majority of the state). Of course, most people served by UNRWA don’t meet basic criteria for refugee status. Most are either citizens of other countries or live within Palestinian territories. Most were not displaced by conflict. Yet @StateDept has promoted UNRWA’s fiction for decades – with taxpayer $.
So Long, Ambassador David Friedman, and Thanks for All the Fish*
Today we are taking our leave from US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. I must say that over the years I have met many ambassadors from many countries, including from the US, our great ally, but I can say that there was never a better ambassador than David Friedman in establishing the deep ties between Israel and the US, in correcting the diplomatic injustices that were created over the years in global diplomacy regarding Israel and in establishing the status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and many other things some of which have yet to be told.
David, I do not know, when you were appointed ambassador, if you knew the mark you would leave behind, but today we all know it. We know that you were very active in bringing about the American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, itself a correction of an injustice that is difficult to understand.
You not only did his but you acted quickly on the transfer of the American embassy to Jerusalem and on the fact that in American passports it will be written ‘Jerusalem – Israel.’
What could be simpler, what could be more just, than correcting this injustice? This nonsense was corrected after decades due to vigorous action by President Trump and with your encouragement and at your initiative. This is the first thing.
Richly deserved! No U.S. Ambassador in history has done more than @USAmbIsrael to support Israel & strengthen the U.S. - Israel alliance. From Jerusalem embassy, security cooperation and Abraham Accords, Amb. Friedman has played intricate role in every U.S. policy these 4 years! https://t.co/hnOA8Tw9rN
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) January 17, 2021
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Elder of Ziyon
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| Six of the "martyrs" |
Elder of Ziyon























