Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 21, 2021

01/21 Links Pt1: Michael Oren: The Case Against the Iran Deal; American values are incompatible with funding UNRWA and the PA

From Ian:

Michael Oren: The Case Against the Iran Deal

The JCPOA allowed Iran to both maintain its nuclear program and revitalize its economy. Biden must make clear to Tehran that it can have one or the other, but not both. Tragically, spokespeople for the new administration are proposing to return to the JCPOA and lift sanctions, and only afterward negotiate a longer, stronger deal. Such a course has no chance of success. Even a partial lifting of sanctions would forfeit any leverage that could compel the regime to negotiate a deal that genuinely removes the danger of a nuclear Iran. At best, the regime will agree to cosmetic changes—for example, extending the sunset clauses—but not to dismantling its nuclear infrastructure. A fatally flawed deal would remain essentially intact.

The Biden administration must resist pressure from members of Congress and others who are urging an unconditional return to the JCPOA. Even the deal’s fervent supporters need to recognize that its fundamental assumptions—that Iran had abandoned its quest for a military nuclear option and would moderate its behavior—have been thoroughly disproved.

At the same time, America must consult its Middle East allies about what they think a better deal would look like. Such a deal would verifiably and permanently remove Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons. This means not merely mothballing the nuclear infrastructure, but eliminating it. It means empowering international inspectors with unlimited and immediate access to any suspect enrichment or weaponization site. It means maintaining economic and diplomatic pressure on the regime until it truly comes clean about its undeclared nuclear activities and ceases to develop missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. A better deal will deny Iran the ability to commit the violations it is now committing with impunity.

Achieving these objectives will require close and candid cooperation among the United States, Israel, and concerned Arab states. Such cooperation was not possible in the negotiations leading up to the JCPOA, which America initially conducted behind the backs of its Middle Eastern partners. In the final stages, U.S. officials misled their Israeli and Arab counterparts about America’s negotiating positions. This displayed not only bad faith, but a patronizing presumption of knowing the vital security interests of the countries most threatened by Iran better than they knew those interests themselves.

The incoming administration has declared its determination to restore the trust of America’s allies, along with promoting peace and human rights. But those objectives are incompatible with renewing a deal that betrayed America’s allies, strengthened one of the world’s most repressive regimes, and empowered the Middle Eastern state most opposed to peace.

The JCPOA is also incompatible with President Biden’s long-standing commitment to Israel’s security. At a 2015 gathering celebrating Israel’s independence, then–Vice President Biden said: “Israel is absolutely essential—absolutely essential—[for the] security of Jews around the world … Imagine what it would say about humanity and the future of the 21st century if Israel were not sustained, vibrant and free.”

Reviving the JCPOA will endanger that vision, ensuring the emergence of a nuclear Iran or a desperate war to stop it. Biden is a proven friend who has shared Israel’s hopes and fears. He must prevent that nightmare.

JINSA (PodCast): After the Abraham Accords: Relocating Israel to CENTCOM’s AOR

The recent Abraham Accords have solidified a growing anti-Iran coalition in the Middle East, and the latest decision to move Israel to CENTCOM’s Area of Responsibility reflects and reinforces this changing dynamic within the region. Jonathan Ruhe, Director of Foreign Policy at JINSA’s Gemunder Center, joins Erielle to discuss the importance of this relocation, the reasoning behind the decision, and what we might expect from future administrations when it comes to Israel’s role within CENTCOM.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Victims of an Arab Country

Like most Arab countries, Syria denies citizenship to Palestinians. Children born in Syria to fathers who are Palestinian nationals are considered Palestinians, not Syrian nationals.

Palestinian leaders see no evil or wrong-doing when their people are being killed, injured, displaced, arrested and tortured in an Arab country. The attention of these leaders is solely focused on Israel, which they denounce day and night not only for what it does, but also for what it does not do.

On January 9, Abbas entered the 17th year of his four-year term. He is again talking about his desire to hold new elections. This charade is played at least once or twice a year so that people will believe that he really wants elections.

The Palestinians do not need new elections. They need new leaders who will guide them out from their longstanding morass into a future of promise and peace.

PMW: American values are incompatible with funding UNRWA and the PA - watch lecture by Itamar Marcus

Itamar Marcus explains why funding UNRWA is the international communities’ worst investment ever: ‎because “UNRWA is just growing refugees,” in his recent webinar/lecture to the DC-based EMET ‎organization. ‎

During the 12 years of the last two American administrations, Palestinian refugees have grown by a ‎million from 4.6 million - 5.6 million, according to reports by UNWRA. Billions of American dollars during ‎this period were invested – presumably to solve the refugee problem – but instead UNRWA used the ‎money to literally increase the refugee problem. ‎

Funding of UNRWA should be conditional upon saving 300,000 people a year by removing them from ‎refugee lists and giving them a life and a future. Instead, UNRWA abuses nearly 100,000 additional ‎people each year, by condemning them to be refugees. Funding UNRWA is supporting the abuse of ‎human beings for political purposes.‎

Funding the PA likewise contradicts fundamental American values. The PA uses its money to reward ‎terrorists, glorify terrorists, fund terror organizations, disseminate vicious Antisemitism, celebrate the ‎murder of Israelis and Jews, and deny Israel’s right to exist. ‎

There is no logical reason why any US administration would want to support entities so diametrically ‎opposed to American values.‎

We are only three weeks into 2021. Here's a survey of the antisemitism this year that the socialist Left wants you to ignore.

IfNotNow put up a petition to President Biden demanding that the new envoy to fight antisemitism only attacks right-wing antisemitism - and ignores all others.

The email that it generates says:

Pick a Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism who will be committed to fighting neo-Nazis and white nationalists, not Palestinians and students.

Your Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism must be someone who will be a true leader of this larger effort in building long-term structures that can fight and dismantle the far-right and create a multiracial democracy so that everyone in our country can move forward together.

Of course, IfNotNow and the Jewish socialist Left condone and enable antisemitism. They not only ignore most types of antisemitism, but they use far-Right antisemitism as an excuse to attack their fellow Jews who are politically conservative.

And there is plenty of antisemitism that these groups don't want any US antisemitism envoy to battle. Here are some examples from the new year.

One which happened north of the border was the defacement of a Montreal synagogue this month with swastikas.

While it looks at first glance to be a far right crime, in fact the suspect, Adam Riga, is a left-wing BDS supporter who signed a petition against Concordia University hosting an exhibit about Israeli architecture.

It isn't a surprise that a leftist antisemite would deface a synagogue with swastikas., After all, he can claim not that he is promoting Nazism but pointing out how Zionists are Nazis, which is a perfectly valid form of expression to those who fight against the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.

The incessant attacks on Israel by the Left also attracts and emboldens more traditional antisemites.

People who actually care about antisemitism would be careful that their words don' t foment hate. That never happens on the far Left.

In Portland, three restaurants that serve Middle Eastern food were vandalized last week with graffiti accusing them of stealing cuisine.

The restaurants used to say they served Israeli street food but dropped that months ago. Even if they were proudly serving food they call Israeli, it is still clear that attacking a small business based on its cuisine is a hate crime. Imagine attacking Chinese restaurants because of China's human rights abuses.

IfNotNow and other Jewish socialists are silent for these attacks because they agree with the politics of the vandals.

Of course, the biggest antisemitic meme of the month was the libel that Israeli Jews are racists who are deliberately withholding vaccines from Palestinians. Rashida Tlaib said, "I think it’s really important to understand Israel is a racist state and that they would deny Palestinians, like my grandmother, access to a vaccine, that they don’t believe that she’s an equal human being that deserves to live, deserves to be able to be protected by this global pandemic. And it’s really hard to watch as this apartheid state continues to deny their own neighbors, the people that breathe the same air they breathe, that live in the same communities."

Tlaib doesn't have to say "Jews," when she says "they" it is understood that she is not referring to the 20% of Israelis who aren't Jewish and who are in the government, the army and the medical establishment.

She said this just as B'Tselem accused Jews in Israel of enforcing not only apartheid but "Jewish supremacy," an explicitly antisemitic formulation that wasn't rebuffed by the supposed antiracists of the Left - it was embraced by them.

Another example of how the new antisemitism is like the old antisemitism. Yesterday, someone on Twitter widely circulated this image:

This is a classic antisemitic meme - there are hundreds of similar graphics on the web seemingly showing Jews in positions of power in politics, entertainment, news media or banking.

But this one uses Israeli flags to represent the Jews. The designer is deliberately accusing Jews of dual loyalty, which is a common thread between both Left and Right antisemites, including Ilhan Omar.

This month saw "progressive" Jewish groups start a campaign against the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism because it could be "misused" to show that their political partners engage in antisemitism. Nearly all the examples on this page would fall under the IHRA definition of antisemitism under the examples the far Left wants to exclude.

Ironically, many of the people they claim to be protecting by fighting that definition know very well that anti-Zionism is often a mask for antisemitism. The definition was endorsed by the Global Imams Council, by the Muslim majority nation of Albania, the Mimouna Association of Morocco, and by the Kingdom of Bahrain.

If anyone knows that hating Israel is a proxy for hating Jews, it is Muslims who grew up with that idea.

There was plenty of antisemitism on the Right as well - no one is pretending there wasn't. The "Camp Auschwitz" man at the Capitol and the confederate flag at the Jewish museum in NYC were two prominent examples. The difference is that no one on the Right claims that those attacks weren't antisemitic - but the socialist Left is keen to either deny the obvious antisemitism from their side, or at best to sweep it under the rug.

Which makes them complicit.

Cartoon of the Day: I'm just anti-Zionist

Continuing my series of recaptioned cartoons....

Generally when people speak about Palestinians in Jordan, they think about the majority who have full Jordanian citizenship.

They are still treated as not real Jordanians, and the native Jordanians regard them as people who will leave one day to live across the river. But they do have all of the benefits of citizenship.

However, there are a lot of Palestinians in Jordan who have no citizenship, no health benefits, and very few human rights. They are mostly the Palestinians who came from Gaza after the 1967 war.

Although UNRWA counts them as "Palestine refugees," they are not refugees by any measure. They came over voluntarily, well after the Six Day War, because they didn't want to live under Jewish rule. This New York Times article from November 7, 1967 says that even then, hundreds of Palestinian Arabs who couldn't leave Gaza under Egyptian rule were crossing into Jordan every day, and the reporter could not find one of them who said that the Israelis mistreated them.

How many are there? According to UNRWA, there are 158,000 - about 7%. But a census done in 2016 counted an astonishing 634,000 Palestinians who do not have national ID numbers.

This means that they are barred from the majority of positions in the public sector.

They are banned from many professions such as dentistry, engineering and law.

They need special work permits to obtain jobs in the private sector.

They have limited property rights. Up until recently, they could not own land at all.

They have limited or no services from the Jordanian National Aid Fund.

They cannot attend state universities or are forced to pay much higher fees than citizens.

They are ineligible for government health insurance, which means that any major medical procedure keeps them in poverty.

Even the ones born in Jordan are not eligible to become citizens.

There are more stateless Palestinians in Jordan today than there were Arabs who fled Israel in the 1948 "nakba."

Yet who even knows about this huge group of people? Who talks about them? Why is there such a discrepancy between UNRWA's estimates and Jordan's census in even counting them?

This is real apartheid against some 28% of the Palestinians in Jordan. Human rights groups are mostly silent.

And no one calls this "apartheid."

What President Biden Will Mean for Israel (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

As I write this, preparations are underway for the swearing-in ceremony of a new President of the US. Nobody truly knows what this will mean for us in Israel. Caroline Glick, who can be depended on to see the dark side – often, unfortunately, correctly – finds Biden’s appointments of numerous former Obama officials, some of whom are demonstrably anti-Israel, to be evidence that the new administration will return to the almost maliciously anti-Israel policies of the Obama Administration.

On the other hand, as Bret Stephens notes (in a masterful piece that I hope will be required reading for Biden and his people), the situation has drastically changed since Obama pursued his diplomatic assault on Israel. Everything is different (except perhaps the Palestinians). Israel, Iran, the Arab nations, and the situation in the USA have all undergone significant changes. The damage to American interests from continuing Obama’s policy today would be even greater than in 2008-2016.

But not all politics is rational, as history amply demonstrates. Bad regimes sometimes follow policies dictated primarily by the misapprehensions, prejudices or even obsessions of their leadership rather than the interests of their nations. The Obama Administration was one of those.

Indeed, its interpretations of the intentions of the Palestinians and the Iranian regime – which could be determined simply by paying attention to their words – were so far from reality that I often found myself asking, “stupid or evil?” Did American officials really think that the Palestinians would be satisfied with a peaceful state alongside Israel if only the right concessions were forced out of us? Did they really believe that the agreement with the Iranians would prevent them from getting nuclear weapons, or even significantly slow them down?

There was also an ideological element, a clear affinity of Obama himself to the Muslim opponents of Israel that was demonstrated by the speech he delivered in Cairo shortly after his inauguration. There was his comparison of the Palestinians to black Americans, one of the worst possible analogies. And there was his antipathy for our Prime Minister, which he famously shared in an off-mike chat with the French president. Taking all this into account, one can be excused for thinking that one of the deliberate objectives of Obama’s policies was to weaken and hurt Israel.

While these personal characteristics of Barack Obama do not apply to Joe Biden, he does seem to believe in the traditional (and wrong) principles of American Middle East policy, such as the primacy of creating a sovereign Palestinian state in bringing normal relations to the region. He agrees with Obama that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are “illegitimate and an obstacle to peace,” a position that the State Department reversed under Trump.

American policy toward the Palestinians, going back to the Clinton Administration, has always been to provide ample financial aid to them and get Israel to make concessions up front, both territorial and practical (like freeing jailed terrorists). And Obama’s Iran policy was heavily front-loaded with financial benefits to Iran. One would think that professional diplomats would understand why this strategy failed over and over. Both the Palestinians and the Iranians have objectives that they cannot be paid to give up. Giving them presents only made them ask for more, and in both cases they used the money to pay for terrorism.

The non-professionals of the Trump Administration did understand this. They reversed course and applied economic pressure to both the Palestinians and the Iranian regime, in order to create leverage for negotiations. Unfortunately, the policy hasn’t been in place long enough to tell if it will work, but the desire to be “not-Trump” may cause the new Administration to end sanctions on Iran and re-fund the PA and UNRWA – making failure a certainty. Biden has already promised to restore Trump-suspended payments to UNRWA, the Palestinian refugee agency, thus continuing the decades-long growth of a hostile population of heavily indoctrinated, stateless welfare clients.

We can also expect a resumption of objections from the US against Jewish construction in Judea/Samaria and Eastern Jerusalem, joining the chorus from Europe. It wouldn’t surprise me if another unannounced but near-total freeze on construction will soon go into effect.

In more encouraging news, recent comments by Anthony Blinken, Biden’s nominee for Secretary of State, indicate that he doesn’t intend to reactivate the Iran deal immediately. Nevertheless, we should watch for any loosening of the Trump-applied sanctions on Iran as an indication of the likely direction the administration will take.

Israel has been engaged in a “war between the wars,” against Iranian installations in Syria. The Trump Administration did not interfere. I expect that attacks against these targets will be less frequent under the new administration. A warning sign will be if they stop entirely.

I had hoped that Israel would utilize the last weeks of Trump’s term to destroy the Iranian nuclear installations, perhaps even with American help; but apparently our PM and the IDF believe that their lower-level activities are effective enough that such an ambitious project wasn’t needed. We might regret this later; I will be very surprised if it happens under Biden.

All of the above is based on the assumption that the “moderates” in Biden’s administration, including Biden himself, will be in control. And here is where the real scary stuff begins.

Biden is 78 years old, older than any other American president at the time of his inauguration (Trump was 70 and Ronald Reagan was not quite 78 at the end of his second term). He certainly does not appear to me, admittedly a non-professional, to be at the top of his game … or worse. Even if he remains as president for a full term, it’s hard to imagine that he will be calling the shots. His vice president, Kamala Harris, is an unknown quantity in the area of foreign affairs. And there are strong forces that will be trying to exert their influence on the administration – unfriendly ones.

One is the left wing of the Democratic party, which supported Bernie Sanders for the presidency, and which is strongly anti-Israel. The other is the Obama organization.

When Barack Obama left the White House, he did not retire from politics and retreat to his home state, like so many other ex-presidents. Rather, he bought a home in walking distance to the White House, and transformed his highly effective campaign fund-raising organization into a social action group, with both domestic and foreign policy goals. It’s hard to believe that he will not try to exert influence over the new administration.

I believe that Israel will be able to work with an administration that is somewhat less friendly than that of Trump, as long as it is honestly interested in regional peace. Israel will present the evidence – which is overwhelming – that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons; indeed, is developing them now. Together with its new allies in the Arab world, it will argue that continued maximum economic and diplomatic pressure is the most effective way to stop Iran, short of war.

I believe also that Israel will be able to convince such an administration that the real reason for the lack of progress with the Palestinians is their refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state with any borders. We will explain that the development of Israel’s relations with other Arab states means that Palestinian sovereignty can be delayed indefinitely, until the Palestinians are prepared to accept the legitimacy of the nation state of the Jewish people.

But if the American administration undergoes a sharp turn toward the left, either as a result of a takeover by the left wing of the Democratic Party or from the influence of the Obama organization, we could see a return of Obama-era pressure for concessions, restrictions on our actions, and appeasement of Iran.

We’ve made a great deal of progress in the past four years. It would be a shame if it were reversed.

We’ll find out in the next few months.

-- Victor

01/20 Links Pt2: Israel’s Vaccine Triumph; Biden Changes U.S. Ambassador to Israel Twitter Name to Include West Bank and Gaza; Rachel Riley wins libel case against Vox journalist

From Ian:

Meir Y. Soloveichik: Israel’s Vaccine Triumph

This lesson is the essence of Jewish identity. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik noted that “Israel,” the name given by the Bible to the chosen nation, originally belonged to the patriarch also known as Jacob. This, he argued, is no coincidence: Jacob, he pointed out, is the only biblical progenitor who is seen interacting not only with children but grandchildren. Drawing Joseph’s sons Ephraim and Menashe to him, the patriarch blesses them in the name of Abraham and Isaac, linking ancestors to descendants. We are all named for Israel because the original Israel, in joining generations, is our polestar; a nation that emulates his life cannot die.

With the coming of the vaccine, our forefather Israel was imitated in modern Israel. As Israeli seniors swarmed the vaccinations centers, one of them, Amnon Frank, expressed to the Israeli media what drew him there. “A grandchild without a hug is half a grandchild,” he reflected. “We haven’t hugged them since March.” This single succinct sentence captures the meaning of l’chayim; life is truly life when it is shared.

These two Israeli sets of statistics—the vaccination of the old and the perpetuation of the young—are two trends that are wholly connected with each other. A country that toasts l’chayim, a society that desires life, illustrates what life truly means. It ensures that grandfathers and grandmothers are written in the book of life, so that they are thereby able to embrace their grandchildren once again.

In one of the most famous of Talmudic tales, a group of rabbis beheld a Jerusalem devastated by Rome and wept, while one of their colleagues, Rabbi Akiva, laughed and stubbornly cited the prediction of the prophet Zachariah: “There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age. And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.” The story is cited as an example of profound faith, as indeed it is. But perhaps Akiva’s insight also is that the prophetic verse, joining grandparents and grandchildren, contained the secret of Jewish survival: A nation that reveres its elders and celebrates new life would outlast an empire that glorified war and death. In Israel today, Akiva’s seemingly preposterous prediction has come true, as the world discovers new meaning in the mantra am Yisrael chai—the nation of Israel lives.

I’m a so-called Palestinian.. I was born in Kuwait, now live in Israel on a permanent residency.. in this picture you see me getting my first covid shot..

How racist can Israel be to vaccinate a non-citizen Arab who is fraudenlantly claimed as a Palestinian refugee by PA & UNRWA https://t.co/OflSVLm4eS pic.twitter.com/ShwNmedjCU
— Mark Halawa - مارك حلاوه (@HalawaMark) January 19, 2021

Shumuely Boteach: Should Europe’s Jews move to Israel? - opinion

On Sunday, The Guardian reported the depressing fact that “almost half of British Jews avoid showing visible signs of their Judaism in public, such as a Star of David or a kippah, because of antisemitism,” according to a new study.

“The Campaign Against Antisemitism and King’s College London gave 12 statements that participants in the survey were asked to agree or disagree with,” The Guardian reported. “Twelve percent showed ‘entrenched antisemitic views’ by agreeing with four or more of the statements. The one that had most backing was ‘Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews,’ affirmed by almost a quarter (23%) of respondents.” That’s pretty sobering. But it gets worse. “Among the general public, a similar proportion agreed with one or more antisemitic statements put to them, pointing to a ‘deeply troubling normalization of antisemitism.’”

Is anyone surprised? The question is what to do about growing European antisemitism. Should Jews in Britain give up and move to Israel? On the other hand, making Europe “judenrein” is exactly what the Nazis sought through the annihilation of European Jewry, and should we give Hitler that posthumous victory?

Two of the greatest Jewish leaders of the 20th century had opposing views on this question.

Theodor Herzl concluded that antisemitism was unmovable, and the only hope for Jewish survival was the establishment of an independent Jewish state. He insisted on the necessity of using diplomacy to persuade the world that Jews have a right to self-determination in their historical homeland – Israel – and helped turn the centuries-old dream of returning to Zion into a reality.

Biden Changes U.S. Ambassador to Israel Twitter Name to Include West Bank and Gaza

The Biden administration on Wednesday reversed a change to the U.S. ambassador to Israel's Twitter account name to read, "the official Twitter account of the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza" after a Washington Free Beacon report highlighting the shift.

For a time on Wednesday, the official Twitter feed for the U.S. ambassador to Israel had its title changed to add "the West Bank and Gaza," territories the United States has for decades avoided taking a stand on due to ongoing peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. The title change sparked an outcry online, including among Republican lawmakers, and was quietly changed back to read only, "U.S. ambassador to Israel." The State Department would not comment on the initial change or why it was changed back to its original form.

Embassy officials have speculated that the title was inadvertently changed by Twitter due to a technical glitch when the accounts were switched from the Trump administration over to the Biden administration. The Free Beacon could not confirm the veracity of these claims.

"The U.S. doesn’t have ambassadors to any other disputed territory in the world. Singling out Israel, once again, is wrong," said Len Khodorkovsky, former deputy assistant secretary at the State Department. "Instead of building on all the progress that’s been made toward peace in the Middle East, the Biden administration seems to be reversing course toward the failed policies of the Obama years."

During the Obama administration, former ambassador Dan Shapiro was referred to in official communications as the "U.S. Ambassador to Israel."

While President Joe Biden has said he would maintain the U.S. embassy facility in Jerusalem—which former President Donald Trump moved in a historic policy shift—it is likely he will put greater emphasis on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which have long been stalled. Biden also will grapple with the last administration's decision to recognize the Golan Heights area along the Israel-Syria border as officially part of the Jewish state.

They switched it back pic.twitter.com/lhn8CsLHAC
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) January 20, 2021

The Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) made headlines last week, when it announced it was cutting ties with Return Ministries, due to a breach of contract. But a closer look at the announcement reveals some head-scratching contradictions. Return Ministries, through its Aliyah Return Center in Israel, used the Jewish Agency’s 15-acre Bikat Kinarot campus to spread the gospel to lone IDF soldiers and new immigrants. We know this, because they said so in videos distributed to their followers. In an internal document distributed to the Jewish Agency board, however, JAFI claimed that Return Ministries did not engage in proselytization at Bikat Kinarot. The Agency says that Return Ministries only claimed to be engaging in proselytization, which is the breach that led to the termination of its contract with the group.

The JAFI statement says, for example, that accusations by Beyneynu (see: The Jewish Agency for Israel is Partnering with Evangelical Christians and “They’re not here just to pick grapes”) were “false” and that the Agency found “no evidence” that the group was proselytizing. At the same time, the Agency statement says “[Return Ministries] erroneously took credit in their media posts for involvement in areas such as Aliyah, specifically with proselytizing lone soldiers and new olim.”

In summary, the Jewish Agency appears to be saying, “Return Ministries didn’t proselytize, but they bragged that they did, and that’s the reason we ended their contract.” In that statement somewhere is also more than an intimation that my friend, Shannon Nuszen of Beyneynu, is a liar. Here is the official written statement from the Jewish Agency for Israel:

Return Ministries, through its Israel activity at their Aliyah Return Center, was found to have inaccurately portrayed our relationship with them at our Bikat Kinarot campus. They erroneously took credit in their media posts for involvement in areas such as Aliyah, specifically with proselytizing lone soldiers and new olim. We executed an examination of these flagrantly false representations during December 2020 and our leadership took swift and firm action, issuing Return Ministries a cease and desist letter, notifying them of the immediate termination of the partnership agreement in its current form. Return Ministries admitted this violation of our agreement.

The Jewish Agency then demanded Return Ministries remove all presence of Aliyah Return Center activity and employees at the Bikat Kinarot campus.

Our examination showed no evidence of any direct missionary activity. Yet the videos posted by Aliyah Return Center create a perception that is in direct opposition to the mission and values of The Jewish Agency for Israel and has unfairly entangled the organization’s work and reputation.

So there you have it: JAFI says that Beyneynu’s information is false and that no evidence was found to suggest the group was proselytizing. At the same time, the JAFI statement suggests the decision to terminate the contract was based on the information Beyneynu provided, in the form of video footage issued by the Aliyah Return Center, which Beyneynu found and sent to JAFI. These videos, says the JAFI statement, “create a perception that is in direct opposition to the mission and values of The Jewish Agency for Israel and has unfairly entangled the organization’s work and reputation.”

The reasoning here is so convoluted it beggars belief. The Jewish Agency severs ties because of evidence that Return Ministries portrayed itself as proselytizing to soldiers and new immigrants, and not because they actually did so. Perhaps that is because Return Ministries swears up and down to the Jews that it is not a proselytizing organization. They state that they do not and have not missionized any Jews. At the same time, they tell their followers that everything they do is in preparation for the Second Coming, which includes bringing the Jews to Jesus. Why, when apprised of this situation, does the Jewish Agency refuse to believe what they see in front of their eyes and hear with their ears?

Did they not even glance at the Return Ministries website, where this mission statement appears?

Here is where I would like to offer a few thoughts:

· An organization named “Return Ministries” is only going to be a missionary organization formed for the purpose of proselytization. It can’t possibly be anything else, as its name makes crystal clear. The belief is that Jesus can’t “return” until the Jews are saved.

· The Jewish Agency got caught letting the foxes run the henhouse. So now they’re engaging in a bit of CYA, terminating the contract while claiming the accusations of proselytization are false.

· If the Aliyah Return Center—there’s that word again: “return”—says it was proselytizing, and then trumpeted this fact to all and sundry on social media, why should the Jewish Agency believe otherwise (or even pretend to do so)?

If the Aliyah Return Center—there’s that word again: “return”—says it was proselytizing, and then trumpeted this fact to all and sundry on social media, why should the Jewish Agency believe otherwise (or even pretend to do so)?

Haaretz writer Allison Kaplan Sommer pleads the Jewish Agency’s tortuous case like this: "The decision to break with Return Ministries, [the Jewish Agency] stressed, was not because the group was conducting missionary work, but because it represented itself as doing so.”

To this claim that Return Ministries only “represented itself” as proselytizing and didn’t actually do it, I can only say, “Vas you dere, Charley?”

Which leads to my next point: why was what is clearly a missionary organization, left to run this Jewish Agency center for lone soldiers and new immigrants without any oversight? What in the world was the Jewish Agency thinking? (My best guess: free labor and lots of Evangelical shekels for the JAFI coffers.)

Will the Jewish Agency continue to work with Return Missionaries, albeit in a different capacity? According to the Christian Post, Return Ministries International Director Dean Bye finds this to be a real and plausible possibility. “As for the partner organization that has been persuaded to terminate agreements with us, we are yet to learn what all this entails but understand their ‘termination’ is only related to our Bikat Kinarot Campus agreement in its current form. As those who have committed our lives to God’s call to serve and bless Israel, we are prepared to work together on a peaceful resolution to the dissension that has been created,” said Bye, who continues, "We declare our continued commitment to Israel's Aliyah and Absorption, the Return and Restoration of God's people to their land. We pray that our relationship with the Jewish Agency for Israel will continue to grow stronger as truth prevails."

What, exactly, is the meaning of “termination in its current form?”

The termination of the Jewish Agency contract with Return Ministries, if it is indeed a termination, comes after the Agency worked double time to blame and defame the messenger: Beyneynu. Prior to terminating the contract with Return Ministries, the Agency threatened the nonprofit—dedicated to monitoring and raising awareness of missionary activity in Israel—with legal action: “Contrary to what is stated in your letter, Return Ministries has no involvement in the Jewish Agency's programs, and the Jewish Agency strongly [opposes] any prohibited missionary activity which is inconsistent with the Jewish Agency's character, goals and activities. Therefore you are hereby required to immediately cease your activity which contradicts the provisions of any law . . . The Jewish Agency will act in this matter to exhaust any right it has under any law, including against you personally . . . and will take every step necessary to charge you for any damage or expense caused . . .”

Note that the threatening letter says nothing about which laws were said to be broken by Beyneynu. That’s because Beyneynu broke no laws. Beyneynu did what it was created to do: raise awareness of missionary activity, in this case missionary activity occurring under the auspices (and nose) of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

The goal of The Aliyah Return Center, after all, is no secret. That goal is to aid in the fulfillment of “prophecy” regarding both the “physical and spiritual restoration of Israel,” a time when all Jews, God forbid, will come to accept Jesus as their messiah. Evangelicals believe all this will trigger his “return.” This belief is reflected in the name Aliyah Return Center, and its parent organization, Return Ministries. Beyneynu meant only to raise awareness of the inherent problem of the Jewish Agency working in tandem with an organization whose sole mission is to proselytize the Jews of Israel.

Instead of thanking Beyneynu for shedding light on the issue, and dealing with the problem, the Jewish Agency threatened Beyneynu. It was only when the story began to attract publicity that the Agency decided to cover its tracks by terminating its contract with the missionary organization. Why such a contract existed to begin with is, again, not difficult to fathom: free missionary labor, lots of missionary shekels, lather, rinse, repeat.

Beyneynu is taking it all in its stride. The termination of JAFI’s contract with Return Ministries is, after all, a victory for the organization and for Israel, on whose population the missionaries prey (no pun intended). Rabbi Tovia Singer, a counter missionary expert with Beynenu says he is “delighted that sound minds prevailed here. These are evangelical Christians who work in partnership with the Messianic movement and create a toxic environment. The wording of the Agency’s statement is simply ‘damage control.’”

Founder and Director of Beyneynu, Shannon Nuszen, also expressed satisfaction with the Agency’s decision. "I am pleased that in the end the Jewish Agency made the right decision to terminate this relationship. We are grateful for, and appreciate our non-Jewish friends of all faiths that stand with us. But, for the protection of the Jewish people it is the job of Jewish leadership to ensure that certain lines in this relationship are not crossed

"Beyneynu simply brought to light, through presenting the video evidence from Return Ministries themselves, that these lines were indeed being crossed at the Jewish Agency program. While it hurts that the Agency attacked our group through this process, I am happy to hear that in the end leaders made the difficult decisions that had to be made, protecting our most vulnerable Jews.”

Cartoon of the Day: Trigger warning

Continuing my series of recaptioning cartoons....

01/20 Links Pt1: As Trump exits, the full Mossad story on normalization into focus; Melanie Phillips: On Iran, it's groundhog day all over again; The many reasons Biden should not enrich Iran's rulers

From Ian:

EXCLUSIVE: As Trump exits, the full Mossad story on normalization into focus

As the administration of president Donald Trump exits stage left, it’s time to take stock of the four normalization deals that Israel has already signed.

But there is a crucial piece of the story that has not been emphasized.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, although the July-to-December 2020 wave of deals provided the historic photos, the turning point moments were back in 2017 and 2019, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Also, though, it has not yet signed an agreement itself, the key party was always Saudi Arabia.

Much of the de-emphasis of these points has to do with Mossad chief Yossi Cohen – whose acts were mostly shrouded in mystery until a major speech in July 2019 – who was leading the Israeli push by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

There have been multiple narratives about who really got the ball rolling between Israel, the US and the UAE, and about when was the critical turning point.

Of course, part of the complex answer is that each country in the Israel, UAE, US triad played its part.

Also, each of the countries that came afterward made its own contributions which helped form the order of who would be “in” during the Trump era and who would play “wait and see.”

But to properly understand what happened in 2020, Israeli intelligence sources would say that it is imperative to understand the behind-the-scenes role of Cohen and the Saudis and what happened in September-November 2017, and in July 2019.

Trump officials: Mauritania, Indonesia were next to normalize, but time ran out

The Trump administration was closing in on agreements with Mauritania and Indonesia to be the next Muslim countries to normalize relations with Israel, but ran out of time before the Republican president’s term ended, two US officials told The Times of Israel this week.

An agreement with Mauritania was the closest to being reached, with US officials believing they were mere weeks away from finalizing a deal. The northwest African country was identified by the Trump peace team led by senior White House adviser Jared Kushner and special envoy Avi Berkowitz as a likely candidate to follow the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in normalizing with the Jewish state, given that it once had relations with Israel.

Mauritania became just the third member of the Arab League to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1999, but severed ties 10 years later against the backdrop of the 2008-2009 Gaza war.

After the UAE agreed to normalize ties with Israel in August, Mauritania’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement offering tepid support for the deal, saying it trusted Abu Dhabi’s “wisdom and good judgment” in signing the accord.

Mauritania also has close ties with Morocco, which similarly established relations with Israel in the 1990s only to break them off several years later. The Trump peace team was encouraging Rabat to push its neighbor and ally to forge ties with the Jewish state.

The next most likely candidate to join the so-called Abraham Accords was Indonesia, the US officials said, claiming that a deal could have been inked if Trump had another month or two in office.

Melanie Phillips: On Iran, it's groundhog day all over again

When anxiety first surfaced that in Joe Biden the US would once again be led by a president who would be soft on Iran, some others attempted a positive gloss. Don’t worry, they said; in light of Iran’s appalling aggression over the past four years and the fact that the regime was now far weaker than it had been, Biden would be exceptionally stupid to cosy up to Tehran and re-empower this lethal threat to the Middle East and the west.

But with the Biden era about to begin, those fears have become even stronger. For the signals are all pointing towards the Democratic party’s cultural default of empowering evil people both at home and abroad and abandoning or actively trashing their victims. And against stiff competition from the world’s tyrants (China, North Korea, Russia), the Iranian regime is arguably the most dangerous.

In 2015, it was given a tremendous boost by the nuclear deal, brokered by US President Barack Obama and supported by (to their eternal shame) the UK, France, Germany and others. The fiction was that the deal would stop Iran from developing the nuclear weapons with which they had pledged to erase Israel and attack the west, because the agreement would bring the regime in from the diplomatic cold and thus transform it into a regular government.

The opposite happened. The deal funnelled billions of dollars into the regime, enabling it to increase its dominance of the region, repress its own people still further and continue its sponsorship of international terrorism. Far from stopping the Iranian bomb, the terms of the deal meant that at best it would only delay the Iranian nuclear weapons programme by a few years, and only assuming that the regime would not continue to cheat and lie.

It was actually a deal to facilitate the Iranian bomb and fund the regime’s genocidal and fanatical aggression abroad and tyrannical repression at home. It made Neville Chamberlain’s Munich agreement with Hitler look by comparison like an act of principled statesmanship.

Times of Israel reports:

The Trump administration was closing in on agreements with Mauritania and Indonesia to be the next Muslim countries to normalize relations with Israel, but ran out of time before the Republican president’s term ended, two US officials told The Times of Israel this week.

An agreement with Mauritania was the closest to being reached, with US officials believing they were mere weeks away from finalizing a deal. The northwest African country was identified by the Trump peace team led by senior White House adviser Jared Kushner and special envoy Avi Berkowitz as a likely candidate to follow the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in normalizing with the Jewish state, given that it once had relations with Israel.

The next most likely candidate to join the so-called Abraham Accords was Indonesia, the US officials said, claiming that a deal could have been inked if Trump had another month or two in office.

With a population of over 270 million, Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim country. That gave it “extra symbolic importance,” to the Trump administration, which maintained that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict need not be a hindrance to peace between the Jewish state and the Muslim and Arab worlds, a US official explained.

We have been told for years that Jared Kushner and Avi Berkowitz were neophytes with no diplomatic experience who cannot be expected to accomplish anything. Yet they managed to broker peace deals between Israel and four Arab states.

So certainly the new, seasoned diplomats in the Biden administration will find it trivial to finish the work done with Mauritania and Indonesia and get them to recognize Israel.

We will see if the experienced dinosaurs of Oslo can learn something from the nobodies who did more for peace than any previous administration. Or if they will go back to business as usual.

Jewish Voice for Peace writes on their Facebook page:

“Most Jews, including an estimated half-million Israelis, continue to choose to live in diaspora. Yet there is no name for the ideology that backs up the political choice to do so” — or at least there wasn’t, until Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz coined the term “diasporism.”
Kaye/Kantrowitz’s “diasporism” challenges two key Zionist assumptions: “first, that living in diaspora is an unfortunate lapse, unchosen and without value;” and “second, that true home and safety are to be found in the nation state.”
Instead of conceiving of the Jewish diaspora as “a problem to be solved by indoctrinating the next generation about their REAL home,” the ideology of “diasporism” celebrates our multi-rootedness and our ethnic and cultural diversity. It affirms our “right to be, and to fight for justice, wherever we are,” opening up opportunities to join with other diasporic peoples who oppose reactionary nationalism and “see borders as lines to cross.”
For Kaye/Kantrowitz, if there is a problem with Jewish life in the US, it’s not our estrangement from Israel, but “the narrowly prescribed options… for expressing and nurturing Jewish identity,” i.e. Zionism, antisemitism, and the Holocaust. If you’re looking for a diasporic home to express and nurture a Jewish identity beyond these options, JVP might be a great community for you!

You can see the appeal to the idea of "Diasporism" to anti-Zionists like JVP. It justifies their loathing for Jewish Zionists and Israel. It attempts to create a divide between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. It is an attempt to normalize their hate.

While I cannot speak to the original thinking of Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, as I have not read her book on the subject, JVP's formulation of "diasporism" is not a philosophy. It is a justification for the unjustifiable disguised as philosophy.

After all, Zionism doesn't preclude Jews living outside Israel. It doesn't say that Jews shouldn't work within their own communities for equality for all, or to fight against antisemitism. In fact, Israel gives resources to help Jewish communities worldwide.

The only real difference between Zionism and "diasporism" is that Zionism seeks unity among all Jews - the half of Jews who live in Israel and the half who do not - while diasporism seeks division between the two groups.

There is one simple way to show that diasporism is not a true liberal philosophy and is just hate hiding behind noble sounding words.

If diasporism is the ideal for Jews, then it must be the ideal for all groups who are outside the lands of their ancestors. If the ideal for Jews is to integrate into the nations they live in, then shouldn't Palestinians have that same right?

Where are the Leftist Jews who are agitating for Palestinians to have the right to live as equal citizens in Arab countries? Certainly most Palestinians themselves want that. The few times that Egypt and Lebanon allowed some to become citizens, Palestinians eagerly took advantage of the offer. But the standard Leftist opinion is that the Palestinians must remain outsiders in the lands in which they were born until they are allowed to "return," and that "return" is a human right that is more essential than equality.

Does anyone (outside Palestinians themselves) actually advocate "diasporism" for Palestinians?

Similarly, where were these "diasporists" when Jews were being expelled from Egypt and Syria and, even last year, Yemen? Does it only apply to Jews who are already comfortable in liberal western countries and not to Jews who actually have been under attack as Jews?

If the idea of disaporism isn't universal - if it applies only to Jews and only in the West - then it isn't a moral philosophy. It is nothing but an excuse for hate and division.

Steffi Hentschke, in German newspaper Die Zeit asks whether Israel is even a democracy. Its subhead asks that question explicitly.

Then we read the article.

Israel is making a name for itself these days because of its successful COVID-19 vaccination campaign. Three weeks after the first vaccination, around 1.8 million citizens - around 20 percent of the population - have been vaccinated. But this success cannot hide the fact that, 72 years after the founding of the state, Israel is in its deepest domestic political crisis. For the fourth time in two years , parliamentary elections are due at the end of March . In a recent study, 19 Western democracies were compared; nowhere else have there been so many elections since 1996 as in Israel.

You get that? Israel cannot be a democracy because it has too many elections.

Many in the country have long since doubted whether Israel is still a democracy at all . Thousands of citizens have been taking to the streets for months, criticizing the erosion of democratic structures. The focus is on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu , who has ruled the country for 14 years.

Israel cannot be a democracy because the people can protest the Prime Minister every week without worrying about being arrested.

This makes him the longest-serving head of government in Israel's history - and the first incumbent to stand trial for criminal offenses, corruption, breach of trust and bribery.

Israel cannot be a democracy because its elected leaders aren't above the law and can be prosecuted like any other citizen.

Israel has no constitution. After the founding of the state, they could not agree on it, especially the first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was against and declared that as long as the majority of the Jewish people still lived in the diaspora, no stable constitution could be passed. Instead, basic rights with constitutional status were drawn up, which to this day form the foundation of the rule of law. These basic laws include the right to freedom of the press, the protection of minorities and the independence of the judiciary.

Israel cannot be a democracy because it has basic laws that include freedoms that no other non-democracies have.

The Supreme Court in Jerusalem takes care of compliance , a massive building made of sandstone with panoramic windows. Men in black robes hurry through the bright hallways, only the creaking of the soles of their shoes on the polished marble floors can be heard.

Israel cannot be a democracy because it has a judicial system that enforces freedom and democracy.

Do you see a pattern here? The very things that makes Israel a free country and a democracy are used to claim the opposite.

The article was also skewered in MENA-Watch.

(h/t someone on Twitter, sorry, didn't save it)