Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, February 05, 2021

Cartoon of the Day: It's hard to criticize Israel

02/05 Links Pt1: Yisrael Medad: Palestinians are back on the State Department docket; UAE massively cut aid to Palestinians after normalization with Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Obama's third term

The Biden administration has resumed funding UNRWA, reopened the Palestinian mission to Washington and recommitted itself to the “two-state solution.” It has thus re-empowered the Palestinians’ agenda of demonising and blackmailing Israel in order to destroy it, and afforded the Palestinians status while they do so.

It has also said it wants to return to the disastrous 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, brokered by former President Barack Obama, whose terms allowed the regime to obtain nuclear weapons with only a short delay while enabling money to pour in to fund its war against Israel and the west.

Although the administration is currently saying that Iran must first return to “full compliance,” the regime’s continuing breach of that deal by increasing its number of advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium suggests it believes that America will soon cave in.

This is doubtless due to Biden’s instant moves against Iran’s foes in the Gulf. These moves include America’s “temporary” pause on the sale of F-35s to the United Arab Emirates and its “re-examination” of the Trump administration’s designation of the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, against whom Saudi Arabia is fighting, as a terrorist organisation.

Even more telling are some of Biden’s appointments. The new American envoy to Iran, Robert Malley, whitewashed Yasser Arafat’s duplicity at Camp David and, as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has observed, “has a long track record of sympathy for the Iranian regime and animus towards Israel”.

More sinister yet is the appointment of Maher Bitar as senior director of intelligence at the National Security Council. A long-standing anti-Israel activist, he spent years promoting the BDS movement and its campaigns. As a student in 2006, he was on the executive board of the poisonous Muslim Brotherhood-linked Students for Justice in Palestine, which hounds Jewish students on campus and disseminates antisemitic propaganda.

As Daniel Greenfield pointed out on FrontPage.org, while studying in Britain at Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre Bitar wrote in a paper that Israel’s “political existence as a state is the cause for Palestinian  dispossession and statelessness”.

In other words, far from advocating a two-state solution, Bitar thinks that Israel —America’s key ally in the Middle East — should not exist at all.

Yet this individual will now handle some of the most heavily classified intelligence available to the United States. He will decide what information America’s intelligence community shares with foreign intelligence services.

Yisrael Medad: Palestinians are back on the State Department docket

At the U.S. State Department press conference on Feb. 2, a question was posed by Said Arikat of the Al-Quds daily newspaper. Incidentally, if you do not know, among other things this particular journal carries some very anti-Semitic caricatures, as well as other images not favorable to the United States.

His question:
… last Tuesday, U.S. envoy to the United Nations told the Security Council that the United States is going to restore aid to UNRWA, the work and relief agency, and will probably open the consulate in East Jerusalem as well as reopening the office here in Washington for the Palestinians. My question to you: Is there a timetable, one? And on UNRWA aid, considering that the United States was the largest contributor, so will that be retroactive? I mean, that’s close to like $900 million since 2018.

Retroactive? Those funds were withheld because of bad management, anti-Semitic promotion and terror-support that was confirmed in reports. Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

State Department spokesman Ned Price’s answer was:
The United States does intend to restore humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people. We’re not doing that as a favor, but because it’s in the interest of the United States to do so … the suspension of aid to the Palestinian people has neither produced political progress nor secured concessions from the Palestinian leadership. Of course, it has only harmed innocent Palestinians.

He added:
The United States will reinvigorate our humanitarian leadership and work to galvanize the international community to meet its humanitarian obligations, including to the Palestinian people.

Interestingly, Erikat’s own report on that exchange (here in Arabic) is headlined “US State Department Spokesman: Resuming support for the Palestinians is in our strategic interest.” Erikat added “strategic” for good measure, highlighting it in his tweet. A proper academic study of his reporting, perhaps, would be an interesting project for the future.

As for Price’s “innocent,” let’s leave that to the Hamas recruitment agencies, and those of the Islamic Jihad and additional terror groups in Gaza, which fire rockets at Israeli civilian targets, dig tunnels to facilitate the invasion of Israel, and send incendiary kites and balloon bombs aloft. But indeed, what interest is it to for the United States to continue a fiction (millions of refugees) so as to enable a non-productive economy (relying on aid handouts instead) and to ignore the Palestinian Authority’s continued policies of anti-normalization, diplomatic rejectionism, denouncing the Abraham Accords (see next question) and continuing terror incitement?

Caroline Glick: Biden's drive to war in the Middle East

This policy is irrational even when assessed from within the closed cognitive circle of the Biden/Obama team. They intend to make an irrevocable concession to Iran – billions of dollars of revenue which will flow into its coffers once the sanctions are removed. And in exchange they are asking Iran to make a revocable gesture. Iran reinstated its nuclear enrichment at Fordo and raised its enrichment level to 20% at the drop of a hat. If it turns the switches off to get the sanctions relief, it can turn them right back on after the money starts to flow.

This will almost certainly happen in June at the latest. On June 18, Iran will hold presidential elections. President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif will both leave office. All of the current viable candidates hail from the Revolutionary Guards Corps and they can all be guaranteed to abandon the JCPOA. So at best, the JCPOA's remaining shelf life is four months.

Biden, Blinken, Sullivan, Malley and their colleagues all must be aware that this is the case. The fact that they are moving ahead with their failed strategy all the same indicates that they are ideologically committed to their plan and will stay with it even as it drives the region to war.

This brings us to Israel. During the Trump years, Israel and the US were fully coordinated in their joint and separate actions to undermine Iran's nuclear program and its operations in Syria and Iraq. As a senior official in Trump's National Security Council explained recently, "Working together the intelligence agencies of both countries were able to accomplish more than they could on their own."

Obviously, those days are over now. And as Biden's team makes its presence felt fully, Israel's options for blocking Iran from becoming a nuclear power are diminishing.

When IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi announced last month that he had ordered the relevant IDF commanders to prepare operational plans to strike Iran's nuclear installations, most commentators assumed his target audience was the Iranian regime. Others argued he was issuing a warning to the Biden administration. The former claimed he sought to force Iran back from the nuclear brink. The latter argued he was demanding the Biden administration take Israel's positions seriously before it moves ahead with abrogating the sanctions.

But in the face of the Biden team's strategic fanaticism and Iran's race to the nuclear finishing line, it's at least equally likely that Kochavi's intended audiences were neither the Iranians nor the Americans. Instead, he may well have been telling the Israeli public to be prepared for what is coming. And he may also have been telling Israel's regional partners that the time for joint action is now.

Last month, Jonathan Tobin sounded the alarm on Biden's foreign policy in the Middle East, which is guided by the foreign policy establishment now back in charge. Tobin is looking at the return of Robert Malley, who will advise on Iran; the resumption of aid to UNRWA and to the Palestinian Authority itself; and at Biden's decision to halt, at least temporarily, the arms sales to the UAE and Saudi Arabia -- the former considered a part of the Abraham Accords.

As Tobin sees it:

Biden’s choices show that he has learned nothing from the mistakes made during the Clinton and Obama administrations.

But what exactly are the mistakes of the Clinton and Obama administrations?

Enter Yoram Ettinger, Israeli researcher, who this week looked beyond the Clinton and Obama administrations, and traced the history of various US administrations in the Middle East, going back to 1948:

President Biden’s foreign policy and national security team reflects a resurgence of the State Department’s worldview. An examination of this worldview and its track record is required, in order to avoid past mistakes.

Remember how Abba Eban said the Palestinian Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity?

Notice the pattern of misjudgements that Ettinger finds in US Middle East policy:

1. In 1948, the State Department opposed the recognition of Israel for a variety of reasons:

o Israel would be helpless against the Arab armies arrayed against it

o Israel would be pro-Soviet

o Israel's existence would undermine US-Arab relations

o Israel's existence would destabilize the Middle East

o Israel's existence would threaten the US supply of oil

o Israel's existence would damage US interests

2. During the 1950s, the US courted Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser as a potential Middle East ally, going so far as to extend non-military aid to Egypt. But In return:

o Nasser turned into a key ally of the then-USSR

o Nasser supported anti-Western elements in Africa

o Nasser intensified anti-US sentiments in the Arab world

o Nasser attempted to topple pro-US Arab regimes

3. In 1978-1979, the Carter administration betrayed the pro-US Shah of Iran and instead embraced Ayatollah Khomeini and even shared intelligence with the Khomeini regime during its first few months. Carter assumed Khomeini was controllable and looking for freedom, democracy and positive ties with the US.

4. In 1980-1990, during the Reagan and first 2 years of the George H. W. Bush administrations, the US collaborated with Saddam Hussein and supplied him with:

o intelligence-sharing
o supply of dual use systems
o $5 billion loan guarantees

This time, the guiding principle was “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” For his part, Saddam saw this as a green light for Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait -- especially when the US Ambassador to Iraq, April Gillespie, 8 days before the invasion, told the leader, in accordance with the position of the State Department that an invasion of Kuwait was an inter-Arab issue.

Interestingly, Ettinger does not list the overthrow of Hussein and the subsequent weakening of Iraq -- removing Iraq as a check on Iran which in turn became a major destabilizing influence and global sponsor of terrorism -- as an error by the Bush administration.

5. From 1993-2000, during the Clinton administration, the US praised Arafat as a messenger of peace, worthy of the Nobel Prize for Peace and of annual US foreign aid. In doing so, Clinton ignored:

o Arafat's goal of destroying Israel, as reflected the 1959 Fatah and 1964 PLO charters,

o Arafat's hate-education system, demonizing Jews and glorifying terrorism

o Arafat's intensified terrorism.

6. In 2009, the Obama administration embraced the anti-US Muslim Brotherhood, ignoring its terroristic nature, and looking at it instead as a political, secular entity and turned a cold shoulder toward the pro-US Mubarak. This paved the way for the Muslim Brotherhood to gain power in 2012/13, which was a blow to pro-US Arab countries, which have been afflicted by Muslim Brotherhood terrorism.

7. Up until the 2011 civil war in Syria, the State Department considered Bashar Assad to be a reformer and possibly a potential moderate, based in part on Assad being

o an ophthalmologist in London

o married to a British woman

o president of the Syrian Internet Association

-- just as his father, Hafiz Assad -- known as “the butcher from Damascus” -- was regarded as a man of his word, and a credible negotiator, justifying Israel’s giving away the strategically important Golan Heights.

8. In 2011, the Obama State Department was a key supporter of the US-led NATO military offensive, which toppled Libya’s Qaddafi, despite the fact that Qaddafi

o dismantled Libya’s nuclear infrastructure

o conducted a war on Islamic terrorism

o provided the US counter-terror intelligence

The overthrow of Qaddafi transformed Libya into a platform for civil wars and global Islamic terrorism.

9. In 2011, the Washington, DC foreign policy and national security establishment welcomed the eruption of violence on the Arab Street in various Arab countries, and interpreted it as a march toward democracy and progress toward peaceful-coexistence -- calling it an Arab Spring.

In fact, this released intra-Arab and intra-Muslim terrorism and violent power struggles across the region.

10. In 2015, the Obama administration ignored Iran’s core fanatical and repressive ideology and its systematic perpetration of war and terrorism. Instead, the architects of the Iran nuclear accord (JCPOA) provided Iran with $150 billion, which allowed it to bolster their terrorism and expansionism across the region.

Obama and his 'experts' operated under the assumption that the Ayatollahs were open to negotiation and willing to live in peaceful-coexistence with their Arab Sunni neighbors. In doing so, the US disappointed most Iranian citizens, by renouncing a military regime-change option against the ruthless Iranian regime.

---

In his rush to reinstate the Iran deal, Biden is not merely pushing back the clock on the mistaken policy in which he participated during his time as vice president in the Obama administration.

YouTube screencap

Now Biden is adding his name to the list of US administrations whose foreign policy errors have inflamed the instability of a region that is more than capable of generating tensions and instability all on its own.

This week, the official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that Palestinian prime minister Mohamed Shtayyeh gave an "Order of the Star of Jerusalem" award to "Denmark's Representative to Palestine, Nathalia Feinberg."

English language Palestinian government announcements also refer to Feinberg as the "Representative of Denmark to Palestine" as her title, as does the PLO.

That isn't her title, though.

Feinberg's official title is "Head of Mission at the Danish Representative Office in Ramallah."

No mention of "Palestine" in her title. The PA literally lies about her title to make it appear as if Denmark recognizes "Palestine" as a nation.

And this is a consistent pattern. Official Palestinian media refers to Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff as the "European Union Representative to Palestine" when his actual title is "Head of Delegation, Delegation to West Bank and Gaza Strip, UNRWA."

Palestinian media refers to the "German representative to Palestine, Ambassador Christian Klaghas," as if he is an ambassador at a German embassy. But Christian Clages is actually Head of Mission, Representative Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, Ramallah. There is no embassy and he is no ambassador.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry issued a press release mentioning the "Czech Ambassador to Palestine, Petr Stary." His title is actually the Representative of the Czech Representative Office in Ramallah.

The Head of Mission Representative Office of Hungary in Ramallah is called the "Hungarian ambassador" by the PA's foreign affairs ministry.

This is consistent. Palestinians refer to envoys as "ambassadors" and their titles including the word "Palestine" for countries that do not recognize a Palestinian state.

Diplomats are highly attuned to the specific meaning of words. There is no way that they are unaware of how the Palestinian Authority is lying about their titles and the titles of their missions, which in normal circumstances would be considered an insult.

But as with so many other things, there is a Palestinian exception where the normal rules of statecraft, diplomacy and etiquette simply do not apply.

Last year, a rumor started that Israel and the UAE were establishing intelligence listening posts on Socotra, a strategically located island at the base of the Gulf of Aden. There might be something to that rumor, since it makes sense - the UAE seized the island in 2018 and both they and Israel would gain a lot from being able to listen to signal intelligence of countries and ships in the region.

The latest rumor about Socotra is a little less credible.

From Middle East Monitor:

The Minister of Transport in Yemen's Houthi-led government, Zakaria Al-Shami, has claimed that Israel is looting natural resources belonging to the strategic island of Socotra, and has been enabled by the UAE.

"The Zionist regime, under the cover of the UAE, is operating in Socotra, looting and plundering its natural resources, and taking advantage of its geographical location, crude oil as well as medical and tourism capacities besides its other riches," he said during a meeting in the capital Sanaa on Saturday.

Israel must be excellent at logistics, able to clandestinely steal oil without anyone noticing. And hospitals!

Iranian media also spread this rumor. Big surprise.

02/04 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The vaccine blood libel; Piers Corbyn arrested by police over anti-vax Auschwitz leaflets; Spotify's neo-Nazi problem

From Ian:

Gil Troy, Natan Sharansky Explain Jewish Unity at StandWithUs Conference

Former Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky and McGill University Professor Gil Troy explained the meaning of Jewish unity on January 31 at the virtual StandWithUs 2021 International Conference.

Sharansky, who recently co-authored a book with Troy titled “Never Alone: Prison, Politics and My People,” said that when he was imprisoned in a Soviet Union gulag for nine years, he never felt alone because he knew that the Jewish people were with him. During his time serving in the Israeli government from 1996-2005, Sharansky knew that despite all of the various disagreements that went on, they all had the same goal of fighting for the principles of Judaism.

“You are never alone once you’re part of a Jewish family,” Sharansky said.

Troy said that in a recent conversation with Journal Editor-In-Chief David Suissa, he realized that the Jewish people now have a positive message: It’s no longer about simply being on the defensive against anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism; “We do what I call the Jew-jitsu… from never again to never alone, and that’s our message,” Troy said, adding that “we’re all together in this fight.”

Sharansky proceeded to explain how he came up with the 3Ds — demonization, delegitimization and double standards — to determine when criticism of Israel veers into anti-Semitism. He said he had heard accusations of Israel committing war crimes at U.S. universities during the Second Intifada; he even heard European politicians say that accusations of anti-Semitism are being used to censor criticism of Israel. Sharansky argued that he wants there to be plenty of room to criticize the Israeli government since “we are a democratic society which is full of self-criticism” and that he just wants to ensure that the “red line” isn’t crossed into anti-Semitism.

Where things stand with California’s ethnic-studies curriculum

For more than a-year-and-a-half, StandWithUs has worked tirelessly together with concerned citizens and partners to remove anti-Semitism, anti-Israel bias and other destructive ideas from California’s draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC). At the same time, we have pushed for the inclusion of positive education about anti-Semitism and the Jewish people. The stakes are extremely high because California public schools serve 6 million students, and the ESMC is likely to be used as a model in many other states as well.

As the ESMC receives increased national attention, we are providing an update about this critical challenge for California and the nation as a whole.

It is important to put this issue in context.

We face a massive statewide and nationwide threat: Extremists are shamelessly exploiting ethnic studies to promote hate and one-sided political agendas. We cannot allow hatred and ignorance about Jews and Israel to be institutionalized in American public education.

At the same time, we have a huge opportunity: The subject of ethnic studies is meant to give marginalized communities better representation in the classroom. The bill that led to the creation of the ESMC envisioned a “culturally meaningful and relevant curriculum,” educational standards guided by “equity, inclusiveness and universally high expectations,” and an “objective of preparing pupils to be global citizens with an appreciation for the contributions of multiple cultures.” These are goals we fully support for other communities and for our own. We can counter anti-Semitism and ignorance by teaching millions of high school students about the struggles and successes of the Jewish people.

The threat is amplified by the fact that a significant faction in the field of ethnic studies, represented by the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, institutionally promotes anti-Zionism and discriminatory boycotts against Israel. Too often, this faction engages in outright anti-Semitism by framing Jews as “white, privileged, colonial oppressors.” This is why, in September 2020, a program within San Francisco State University’s College of Ethnic Studies hosted an anti-Semitic event shamelessly glorifying convicted terrorist Leila Khaled. It is also why the first draft of the ESMC was so deeply problematic.

Melanie Phillips: The vaccine blood libel

That horror originated in medieval England with the accusation that Jews murdered Christian children to drink their blood, a demented fabrication which directly incited the murder of countless thousands of Jews. And there have been many other instances over the centuries of baseless accusations levelled against the Jews for spreading disease, notably when Jews were blamed for outbreaks of plague as a result of which thousands of Jews were slaughtered.

Today’s vaccine libel sits squarely within that horrific trajectory. For it promotes the grotesque lie that the Jews of Israel are deliberately helping cause the spread of disease and death among the Palestinians by refusing to make available to them a life-saving vaccine.

This not only weaponises yet another lie to demonise and delegitimise Israel. More fundamentally and devastatingly, it presents Israeli Jews as evil. It denies the fact that Israel is the most humane and moral country in the world, not least in the consideration it repeatedly extends to its Palestinian neighbours who never stop trying to murder its citizens and colonise its land. Instead, the vaccine blood libel suggests that Israeli Jews are devoid of compassion, empathy or moral sense and would callously cause the Palestinians to die from Covid-19.

And that is is one of the reasons why antisemitism isn’t just “another kind of racism,” as it is so ignorantly and often described, but is uniquely malevolent and murderous. For it presents the Jews as evil, a blight on humanity, a mortal threat to the rest of the world. In doing so, antisemitism incites the obvious impulse to eradicate such an evil, which has resulted over the centuries in countless massacres, pogroms and eventually the Nazi attempt to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth. And presenting Israeli Jews as similarly evil fuels exactly the same impulse to destroy them.

The claim is often made that the venomous falsehoods about Israel are not antisemitic but merely legitimate criticism of its policies. Well, the vaccine blood libel graphically demonstrates that this is not so. It is instead the latest, foul iteration of the attempt to demonise and destroy the Jews.

As the eternal people, the Jews will survive this. The society which gives rise to it will not.

Cartoon of the Day: Bad investment advice

Continuing my series of recaptioning cartoons....

Fringe Parties Warn Israeli Democracy In Peril If Fringe Parties Kept Out Of Power (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Knesset Tel Aviv, February 4 - Political groups at the extremes of Israeli society with a small following cautioned today that the representative, accountable nature of the country's political system risks collapse unless those groups exert some control over the government.

In advance of another round of parliamentary elections this coming March, parties at both far ends of Israel's political spectrum issued dire warnings that the democratic future of the country hangs in the balance: representatives of each party insisted that unless his or her tiny minority calls the shots, Israel can kiss its democratic status goodbye.

"We are the defenders of democracy," stated Meretz legislator Michal Rozin. "If we remain at our current number of seats - just a handful out of the 120 in the Knesset, corresponding to perhaps 100,000 votes - then democracy will die an even swifter death than we have warned is happening for the two decades since we last held real power. Failing to include Meretz in whichever coalition emerges in the next few months will sound the death knell for Israel as a democratic state, for at least the fortieth time in the last ten years. Israel can't call itself a democracy if it doesn't let a hundred thousand voters set policy for the other 4.5 million."

At the other end of the political spectrum, far-right activist Itamar Ben-Gvir asserted that only adopting his fringe group's agenda can the country stave off the collapse of its political system. "The challenge of our time is that, perversely, to save democracy, we must destroy it," he explained. "Some of my colleagues would like to see Arab citizens of Israel disenfranchised outright, but it might not be strictly necessary to save our democracy by limiting participation in it to people who agree with us. We also have the option of inducing non-Jews to leave and thereby forgo their right to vote. It's also a more feasible practical step, given the dominance the fringe Left has in such institutions as academia, media, and the court system. Just don't call us Kahanist! We've rebranded since the 1980's and now we identify as an oppressed minority."

Observers see parallels between the phenomenon and reactions among conservatives in the US following the failed reelection attempt by President Donald Trump. "We're seeing some of the same arguments," noted commentator Hanan Crystal. "Apparently, earning a number of votes insufficient to obtain genuine clout means that those who did vote for you are now 'disenfranchised' or 'marginalized' in some way. You're nobody today if you're not marginalized. It's what's fashionable."

02/04 Links Pt1: The Return of the Peace Processors; The U.N. Refugee Agency With Few Actual Refugees; The Palestinian Arabs demand Big Ben back

From Ian:

The Return of the Peace Processors

The establishment conversation on Israel and its neighbors has been dominated for more than 30 years by members of a guild referred to as the peace processors. The foundational premises that animate the guild's work in the Middle East have been shown, repeatedly and consistently, to be simply wrong. The reaction of the peace processors to the repeated failures of the real world to live up to their expectations speaks to an intellectual community that is blind to the realities of Middle East politics.

Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, we were told, was going to lead to an explosion of violence across the Muslim world, but nothing of the sort happened. A fence separating Israel from the West Bank was said to be doomed to fail because it didn't address the real motivations of suicide bombers, yet after the fence was built, suicide bombing dwindled. By achieving autonomy for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the Oslo Accords were supposed to lead to a reduction in violence. Instead they led almost instantly to a massive increase in violence.

Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank is said to be killing the peace process and that "time is running out" for a two-state solution. Yet the number of Israeli settlements in the West Bank remained largely unchanged and the amount of West Bank land built up remained between 1.5 and 2%. Moreover, the demographic balance between Israelis and Palestinians didn't change. Just as the number of Jews in the West Bank grew, so too did the number of Arabs.

Richard Goldberg: The U.N. Refugee Agency With Few Actual Refugees

In 2012, then- Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois tried to answer this question. His amendment to an annual spending bill demanded an estimate of people receiving Unrwa services who were actually displaced by the 1948 war. The Obama administration delivered a classified answer in 2015. The State Department guarded the secret, even during the Trump years—until Mr. Pompeo’s tweets.

“Unrwa is not a refugee agency; it’s estimated <200,000 Arabs displaced in 1948 are still alive and most others are not refugees by any rational criteria,” Mr. Pompeo tweeted. “Taxpayers deserve basic truths: most Palestinians under UNRWA’s jurisdiction aren’t refugees, and UNRWA is a hurdle to peace. America supports peace and Palestinian human rights; UNRWA supports neither. It’s time to end UNRWA’s mandate.”

President Biden reportedly intends to restore funding to the agency. Some questions he needs to answer: Should America support more than five million people through a refugee agency if fewer than 200,000 of them are refugees? Why should the State Department’s refugee bureau oversee Unrwa if the majority of its registry are not refugees?

Since most people registered with Unrwa are citizens or permanent residents of another country—such as Jordan—or currently reside within the borders of a future Palestinian state, Congress should work with the administration to find bilateral solutions. America can still assist the remaining 200,000 refugees while supporting others outside the Unrwa framework.

Remarkably, there are no technical teams from the U.S. Agency for International Development or other federal agencies designing programs, projects, or budgets to help Palestinians registered with Unrwa achieve economic independence. In other words, there are no plans to improve their lives. That needs to change.

American oversight of the U.N. must also change. When the U.S. contributes to U.N. agencies, it often takes a seat on the board to exercise basic oversight. Unrwa, however, has no board of governors and no oversight.

It took more than eight years, but we finally got the truth: Less than 5% of those on Unrwa’s registry are refugees. This means Unrwa is not a refugee agency, but something else entirely. That demands a bipartisan policy to halt the abuse of taxpayer funding.

Gerald M. Steinberg: A Pragmatic Peace for Israelis and Palestinians

For more than 70 years, peace between Palestinians and Israelis has eluded the most dedicated and experienced negotiators. Grand plans that focus exclusively on Palestinian perspectives, and downplay deeply embedded Israeli insecurity, including the growing Iranian threat, have no chance of success. And there is no value in presenting proposals that fail to consider the deep conflict between Hamas and Fatah, or the lack of a Palestinian leadership capable of reaching a historic compromise. The Palestinians and their supporters claim that the establishment of a sovereign state in which the Jewish people are the majority, with Jewish symbols, violates their rights. For Israelis, the injustices began with the Arab rejection of the 1947 UN Partition Plan, followed by an invasion aimed at "throwing the Jews into the sea," denying 4,000 years of Jewish history in this land, including Jerusalem. Palestinians have the potential for realizing the benefits of peace and cooperation, but this will require a willingness to let go of the goal of reversing the establishment of Israel. New leadership focused on improving the lives of Palestinians is necessary. To avoid doing harm, and to make lasting contributions, peacemakers should focus on steps that promote cooperation, rather than adding to the conflict.

Ma'an reports that the Palestinian minister of health, Dr. May Al-Kailla, announced the arrival of 10,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik vaccine to the Ministry of Health.

The vaccines arrived at Ben Gurion Airport this morning and are being transferred from Israel to the Palestinian health officials later today.

In a statement on official Palestinian radio, Al-Kaila said that the PA has purchased two million doses from Russia. This is in addition to "donations from friendly countries and institutions supporting our people and Palestinian communities," which probably refers to the COVAX mechanism.

She said that the first major shipment of the Sputnik-V vaccine will arrive between February 14-20.

A lot of the news about vaccines to the Palestinians has been contradictory and confusing, with rumors being reported as fact. I even saw one article blaming Israel for blocking vaccines, using the Paris Protocol as an excuse, yet this delivery of Russian vaccines proves that this was not true.

Meanwhile, Hanan Ashrawi went on RT to say that Israel is guilty of "apartheid" for not giving Palestinians free vaccines at the expense of Israelis. Now that she is no longer part of the government, she doesn't have to worry about mentioning the small fact that the PA never requested vaccines from Israel besides the 5000 doses that were delivered this week.

The political rhetoric on Wednesday between Republicans and Democrats made it crystal clear that Jewish lives don't matter in America. We are just cannon fodder in the never-ending and often stupid partisan fighting between the major political parties.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is a conspiracy theory spouting nutcase who embraces antisemitism as one of her many insane beliefs. She was in the news last week after a 2018 Facebook post surfaced where she blames California wildfires on a conspiracy partially hatched by "Rothschild Inc." She has shared a video that says that quotes a Holocaust denier saying that “[A]n unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists and Zionist supremacists has schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation, with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands.” And she has a range of crazy conspiracy theories about George Soros that go way beyond his financial support for leftist causes and enter the realm of the Jewish puppetmaster controlling the world.

She doesn't belong in Congress, let alone as a member of important Congressional committees.

Yet yesterday, instead of stripping her of her powers in Congress, Republicans did nothing but condemn her crazed statements - which requires no political courage at all - and then said that evil Democrats are worse, anyway.

Here is House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy's full statement:

“Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference. I condemn those comments unequivocally. I condemned them in the past. I continue to condemn them today. This House condemned QAnon last Congress and continues to do so today.

“I made this clear to Marjorie when we met. I also made clear that as a member of Congress we have a responsibility to hold ourselves to a higher standard than how she presented herself as a private citizen. Her past comments now have much greater meaning. Marjorie recognized this in our conversation. I hold her to her word, as well as her actions going forward.

“I understand that Marjorie’s comments have caused deep wounds to many and as a result, I offered Majority Leader Hoyer a path to lower the temperature and address these concerns. Instead of coming together to do that, the Democrats are choosing to raise the temperature by taking the unprecedented step to further their partisan power grab regarding the committee assignments of the other party.

“While Democrats pursue a resolution on Congresswoman Greene, they continue to do nothing about Democrats serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee who have spread anti-Semitic tropes, Democrats on the House Intelligence and Homeland Security Committee compromised by Chinese spies, or the Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee who advocated for violence against public servants.

“In the end, this resolution continues to distract Congress, especially given the limited time that Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat leadership want the House to debate and work, on what it needs to focus on: getting Americans back to work, getting kids back to school, and providing vaccines to all Americans who need it.”

This is a long-winded attempt to take no responsibility for Greene's antisemitism and then deflect it by saying that Democrats are politicizing it.

Are they? You bet they are. The Democrats are guilty of the exact same papering over of antisemitism from their own members as the Republicans are. Representative Ilhan Omar is still a member of major Congressional committees after saying that Jewish money controls the United States and Jewish Americans are guilty of dual loyalty.

And, just like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Omar avoids using the word "Jew" in a pathetic attempt to pretend that she is not targeting Jews. Democrats pretend that attacks on "Zionists" using age-old antisemitic tropes are not dog whistles for classic antisemitism.

So the Republicans, instead of acting like adults and marginalizing Greene, did literally nothing - and used Greene as an excuse to call Democrats antisemitic.

The response from the Democrats was to push their own resolution to strip Greene from her committee assignments. Which would be appropriate - except that their own actions in 2019 show that there is nothing ethical about their supposed horror at Greene's remarks. That is when, instead of condemning Ilhan Omar's antisemitic statements and taking away her own committee assignments, they pushed a watered down, meaningless resolution that condemned "hate" - a resolution that Omar herself could vote for.

Democrats and their allies went even further, not only trivializing antisemitism. Twitter was filled with the accusation that those attacking Omar are racist and Islamophobic.

Both Democrats and Republicans circled the wagons around their own antisemites while claiming that the other side was antisemitic.

The bottom line is that Jews cannot rely on either political party to protect them in America. Both parties claim to be against antisemitism - yet when it comes to actions beyond rhetoric, both parties will actively defend the antisemitism of their members.

Both Democrats and Republicans are trying to woo the Jewish vote and Jewish money by shouting how much they support Jews and Israel, how much they hate antisemites and Nazis and white supremacists. When the chips are down, though, they both are willing to throw Jews under the bus to protect their own antisemitic bigots.

The clear message to Jews in America is that we are on our own.

Arab League meeting in 1957

In 1965, the Arab League issued The Casablanca Protocol which said, among other things, that Palestinians in any Arab state must be able to obtain jobs without any restriction, like any citizen of those nations. Arab nations could not discriminate against Palestinians.

Then you look at the fine print.

Kuwait added a reservation saying that private Kuwaiti businesses can discriminate against Palestinian employees.

Lebanon said that they would only honor this rule "in accordance with prevailing social and economic conditions" - meaning, if the economy is bad by any definition, Palestinians are last in line to get jobs.

Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Tunisia never signed the protocol to begin with!

Then, in 1991, the protocol was further watered down. "An amendment to a resolution passed at the 46th Session of the Arab League Conference of Supervisors of Palestinian Affairs held in August allows member states to observe the 1965 Casablanca Protocol in accordance with their national laws."

Which means that any Arab nation can pass a law that contradicts the Casablanca Protocol and it becomes meaningless. Which is exactly what was done in Lebanon.

This is the sort of thing that, had Israel done it to Arab citizens of Israel, there would be thousands of academic papers and op-eds denouncing this discrimination.

But Arab countries discriminating against Palestinians?

Yawn.

(h/t Irene)