Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

02/17 Links Pt1: Israel negotiating release of Israeli woman held in Syria; NYT Op-Ed Pushes Utopic, Unrealistic Israel/Palestine Vision; Elliott Abrams: The Deterrent Message Iran Needs to Hear

From Ian:

Israel negotiating release of Israeli woman held in Syria

Israel and Syria are intensively negotiating a prisoner exchange deal with Russian mediation, in which two incarcerated residents of the Israeli Golan could reportedly be released in exchange for a young Israeli woman who entered Syrian territory by mistake.

The woman has not been identified. According to Channel 12, she is a 25-year-old formerly Haredi woman from Modi’in Ilit who left the ultra-Orthodox community. It is not clear why she crossed into Syrian territory.

Syrian state media announced on Wednesday: “The exchange is taking place through Russian mediation to liberate the Syrians Nihal Al-Maqt and Dhiyab Qahmuz, the Syrian prisoner from the occupied Syrian Golan, in an exchange during which a young Israeli woman who entered the Syrian territories by mistake will be released. She entered the Quneitra region by mistake and was arrested by the Syrian authorities.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an interview with Army Radio, declined to comment on the negotiations but said: “We are working to save lives. I can just say I’m using my personal connections” with Russian President Vladimir Putin to secure her release.

Israel is “at the height of sensitive negotiations” on the issue, he said. “I believe we will resolve it.”

National Security Adviser Meir Ben Shabbat and hostage coordinator Yaron Bloom left Wednesday morning for Moscow to negotiate the release of the Israeli woman, according to Hebrew media reports.

The two prisoners Israel has reportedly been asked to release are residents of the Golan Heights. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 during the Six Day War and annexed it in 1981. Many residents of the region retain Syrian citizenships and identify as Syrian.

Not Again: NYT Op-Ed Pushes Utopic, Unrealistic Israel/Palestine Vision

It’s unbelievable how often the very concept of Israel as a regular sovereign state comes under attack in the New York Times, and indeed across the media.

A recent article, titled “Want Israeli-Palestinian Peace? Try Confederation“ by Bernard Avishai and Sam Bahour encourages readers to toy with the concept of Israel as a state like any other and view it as a theoretical plaything that can afford to, “share a capital city, a transportation and urban infrastructure, and a business ecosystem.” Before proceeding with an analysis of this piece, it’s vital to note one fundamental fact: this view is not so much a minority opinion amongst Israelis and Palestinians as practically non-existent.

That the New York Times affords such a perspective means it gains prominence amongst the influential. But while the idea of doing away with Israel as a sovereign state with control over its population and a capital city like any other nation gain currency amongst outsiders, back in the Middle East – where people have to grapple with reality – such impractical ideas are laughed at by Arabs and Jews alike.

The New York Times’ Distortions and Impractical Ideas
Back to the New York Times’ piece. Among the impractical ideas and distortions of reality that the op-ed promotes are:
A “dotted-line border in Jerusalem”

The suggestion that Jerusalem can be split is something many Israelis and Zionists – as well as Palestinians, by the way – have extreme difficulty accepting. For millennia, Jerusalem was a single city. For precisely 19 years, it was divided by an ugly barrier, the frontier between Israel and Jordan. Since 1967, the city has been reunited, and while life is far from perfect, it has become immeasurably better for citizens of both sides. Not least because there are no more no-mans-land zones that citizens cannot approach out of fear of being fired upon by soldiers on the other side.

Nevertheless, Avishai and Bahour suggest that “Confederal institutions would permit dividing sovereignty in Jerusalem with a dotted-line border, actually keeping the city open to all.” As if the presence of armed Palestinian police in Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods, with no real border separating them from Israeli citizens, is something Israel could tolerate. Even more so when considering the reality that over 25% of Jerusalem’s Jewish population live in the neighborhoods of Gilo, Pisgat Ze’ev, and Ramot, all of which are on what would be on the Palestinian side.

All told, over a third of Jerusalem’s Jewish population live in such neighborhoods. Trusting the Palestinian security administration with the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews, or effectively creating Israeli enclaves surrounded by Palestinians with the means of attacking them, and hoping for the best is no more than a wild fantasy.

Bahraini Political Analyst Saeed Al-Hamad: Iran’s Enterprise Is Hitlerian in Nature; I No Longer Trust the Democrats, the American Left of the Wealthy #Iran #Hitler #khamenei pic.twitter.com/jhsSFz2tF1
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) February 17, 2021

Seth Frantzman: NYT accused of whitewashing Turkey’s Afrin occupation

The New York Times has been accused of whitewashing Turkey’s military occupation of Afrin and the ethnic cleansing of Kurdish people. This surprised many, given that the newspaper has covered other conflicts by giving both sides a voice but when reporting in Afrin it appeared to only give Turkish military occupation officials and pro-Ankara voices a place.

An illegal military occupation. Stolen olives shipped to the occupying power for resale. Far-right settlers rampaging and attacking indigenous communities. Religious persecution. Locals kidnapped in extrajudicial raids, imprisoned in secret military detention centers. Ethnic-cleansing. All of this has happened in Afrin in northwest Syria, an area that was once Kurdish and was invaded and occupied by Turkey and Turkish-backed extremist militias in 2018. Since then, it has been ethnically-cleansed of Kurds, and minority graveyards and religious sites have been ransacked and destroyed. The New York Times is now accused of whitewashing Turkey’s occupation of Afrin in an article on Tuesday.

Experts, activists, former residents and commentators expressed shock at the article online noting that it failed to mention human rights abuses and the displaced people forced out of Afrin. Some compared the article to state-run Turkish media propaganda. For a US press that prided itself on confronting the far-right in the US and critiquing an authoritarian leader, or “speaking truth to power,” the article was slammed for not including any critical or dissenting voices.

Titled “In Turkey’s Safe Zone in Syria security and misery go hand in hand,” the article claims that while Turkey’s invasion three years ago was widely criticized, “today, the Syrians they protect are glad the Turks are there.” The article hints at the fact that 160,000 Kurds were ethnically cleansed. “Thousands of Kurdish families fled the Turkish invasion, along with the Kurdish fighters. In their place came hundreds of thousands of Syrians from other areas, who have swollen the population, taking homes.” Usually, when the indigenous population is expelled and other populations are moved in, it is called ethnic cleansing. In this case, Kurds were removed by Turkey and far-right religious extremist militias it controls, and Sunni Arabs and Turkmen were moved into Afrin.

During those eight years [of President Bush], there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.
Obama, July 13, 2009

With each passing day, speculation is mounting as to what to make of Biden's failure to call Netanyahu.

Lahav Harkov of the Jerusalem Post quotes sources that there is not really a big deal going on here and no snub of Netanyahu, per se.

She quotes sources that claim Biden simply does not want to be seen as interfering with Israel's upcoming March 23rd elections by allowing Netanyahu to make political hay out of a phone call from the president of the United States -- this according to 2 Israeli political parties who have been in contact with the Biden administration.

That explanation might be taking for granted the respect that Israelis are supposed to have for Biden.

But take into account that Israelis favored Trump over Biden in last year's election and it is just as likely that the impression will be that Biden is specifically trying to interfere and influence the upcoming election against Netanyahu by refusing to make that phone call.

The fact that Biden has not contacted any other leaders in the Middle East is supposed to support the claim that there is nothing personal in that phone call not being made.

And in addition to the phone call, Biden's putting his selection of an ambassador to Israel on hold until after the Israeli elections -- because some of the people being considered, such as former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, have a poor relationship with Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Schanzer of The Foundation for Defense of Democracies points out that there is still plenty of communication going on between the US and Isr ael -- Secretary of State Blinken is speaking with Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is speaking with Meir Ben Shabbat.

With talk of returning to the Iran Deal, it's all very well for Biden to indicate a return to Obama's foreign policy, but those days are not the kind that Israel is eager to return to.

Those 2 sources Lahav quotes both claim that Biden wants to convey the message that “there is no special relationship with Bibi.” That may be, but in the process, Biden is also conveying the message that there is no special relationship with Israel either.

And that is something that conflicts with the readiness of past presidents to quickly connect with Israel's leaders.

Schanzer gives a short history lesson, pointing out that

o Clinton called Prime Minister Rabin on January 23 and met with him 2 months later.

o  Bush called Prime Minister Sharon on February 6.

o  Obama spoke with Olmert on January 2 (before his own inauguration) and then called Netanyahu on April 1, the day after Netanyahu was sworn in.

o  Trump spoke with Netanyahu on January 22, and hosted him the following month.

Abbas is no doubt relieved to see Biden push off making that phone call -- imagine what kind of message Hamas might see in this.

But there is more going on than just a delay in making a phone call.

Last Friday, during a White House press briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki was asked what seemed to be a straightforward question:

Can you please just give a broad sense of what the administration is trying to achieve in the Middle East? For example, does the administration still consider the Saudis and the Israelis important allies?

Her response was a painful attempt to avoid giving an answer:

Well, you know, again, I think, we, there are ongoing processes and internal interagency processes, one that we, I think confirmed an interagency meeting just last week to discuss a range of issues in the Middle East where we've only been here three and a half weeks.

And I think I'm going to let those policy processes see themselves through before we give kind of a complete lay down of what our national security approaches will be to a range of issues.

If the Biden administration cannot even call Israel an ally when Biden is barely a month into his presidency, then we really are going to a very contentious 4 years.

And then there is the issue of some of the staff Biden has chosen for influential posts in his administration -- people about whom Mort Klein of ZOA has warned:

The new secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, has ‘publicly said the IRGC, the Iranian terror group, should never have been put on [the State Department’s] terror list, because that would “provoke” Iran’. Robert Malley, the chief negotiator of the Iran Deal, is a ‘public, unabashed supporter of the mullahs, an unabashed supporter of Hamas’.

Not forgetting lesser luminaries like Maher Bitar, who used to be on the board of the racist Students for Justice in Palestine and is now the NSC’s senior director for intelligence programs. Or Hady Amr, who used to be national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network, has written of being ‘inspired’ by the Palestinian intifada, and threatened vengeance after Israel assassinated a Hamas leader. Amr is now deputy assistant secretary of state for Israel-Palestine.

The choice of Malley, Bitar and Amr are concerning.

But Israel is not the only country on edge.

Walter Russell Mead of The Wall Street Journal writes about Biden’s Rough Start With the World, claiming that "this has been one of the shortest and coldest diplomatic honeymoons on record," referring to Biden's boast that "America is back" not being welcomed by US allies quite as enthusiastically as Democrats may have expected. In Europe, American "wokeness" is being rejected by France while Russia and China are being viewed as attractive trading partners by Europe, ignoring Biden's talk of human rights.

And in the Middle East:

Iran is showing no eagerness to ease the administration’s path back into the 2015 nuclear deal. And both Israel and the conservative Arab states resent the American shift in that direction.

After just 4 years of Trump, Biden might just discover that this is no longer Obama's Middle East.
Or world.

Peter Beinart yukking it up with Israel-hater Ben Rhodes (video)

Peter Beinart recently started a webcast at his position at the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

It doesn't seem to have gotten too many fans.

Last week, his guest was Ben Rhodes (40 YouTube views). Rhodes, of course, was a Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama and helped architect that administration's pro-Iran,. anti-Israel policies.

Here are three clips from the interview.

In this one, Rhodes claims that the US media is "pro-Likud." Really.

Here we see Rhodes say (to Beinart's delight) how sick he was to hear about Palestinian intransigence, because to his mind no one ever gave them a chance to accept a peace deal. Except maybe once.

Really.

He flatly says that the Obama administration never gave them an opportunity for peace either, when in fact the Palestinians ignored a framework that John Kerry gave them that would have given them far more than anyone else offered including a capital in Jerusalem.

Finally, here is Rhodes trying to get into Netanyahu's head, and the best he can guess is that since Jews have been persecuted throughout history, they justify being cruel as well. This is a watered down version of the antisemitic Jews as Nazis theme so popular amongst the Left.

Rhodes has literally no clue of what he is talking about - yet he is a contributor to NBC News.

(h/t Brad)

There was a cryptic press release from Canadian Friends of Sabeel:

As announced previously by CFOS, CFOS commenced a defamation action against B’nai Brith Canada arising out of an April 2018 article published by B’nai Brith in which B’nai Brith alleged that CFOS had promoted an anti-Semitic book tour. This defamation action has now been settled. As part of the settlement, B’nai Brith has agreed to delete the article in question as well as all of its related social media posts and publications. CFOS has likewise agreed to delete its Press Release announcing the litigation.

It appears to be referring to an incident in 2018 when Bnai Brith Canada accused Sabeel's founder, Rev. Naim Ateek, of antisemitism ahead of a book tour.

Since the nature of settlements like this obscure more than they illuminate, the question remains: is Naim Ateek an antisemite?

Sabeel famously espouses a "liberation theology" in which Jesus, a Jew, is portrayed as a Palestinian living under occupation.

Ateek has gone further than that, directly saying that Jesus is suffering with today's Palestinians under Jewish rule:

[T]he suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago is lived out again in Palestine. The number of innocent Palestinians and Israelis that have fallen victim to Israeli state policy is increasing. Here in Palestine Jesus is again walking the via dolorosa. Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them. He is with them when their homes are shelled by tanks and helicopter gunships. He is with them in their towns and villages, in their pains and sorrows. In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge Golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.

Ateek denies it, but the imagery of Jesus/Palestinians here being crucified by the Jews is overwhelming - and it is one of the most enduring antisemitic themes there has ever been. He pretends that he is not explicitly referring to Jews as the "evil religious power" of two thousand years ago - but who else could it be? If this isn't a direct charge of deicide, it is damned close.

The antisemitic imagery does not end there. Ateek wrote "Many of us find [the burning of children during the Holocaust] comparable to what the government of Israel has done to the people of Gaza today." Comparing Israeli actions to the Holocaust is antisemitism, full stop.

Ateek wrote a long essay about Palestinian suicide bombings. He spends no less than five pages showing "understanding" and trying to teach readers what would make Palestinians want to blow up Jews.

The militants go on to argue that what they are doing is precisely like a soldier in battle who carries a heroic act by storming a club within a military camp and blowing himself up killing soldiers as well as women and children who happen to be enjoying a party. If one looks at it in this context of warfare, then it happens all the time. No war has been free from such acts and its actors were labeled heroes and were awarded medals posthumously. They were not called terrorists. In the West such acts are deemed heroic, but in Islam, due to the close ties between God and country, they are given a religious character and the people involved are considered “shuhada” (martyrs); their act is martyrdom and its prize is paradise rather than a human military medal. When one considers it from this angle, then being engaged in war and the defense of one’s homeland, these militants would argue, the suicide bombings could be a legitimate way of resistance.

Not a word is written trying to explain why Israelis might want to live in their own homeland in peace. So even though he condemns suicide bombings, the amount of sympathy he shows for the terrorists nearly overwhelms the condemnation itself.

Even worse, Ateek has described Hamas as an Islamic "liberation theology movement," which drew applause from an audience near Detroit in 2008. His pretense of being against violence rings a bit hollow.

Theologically, Sabeel is a supersessionist movement, that denies all of Jewish thought and belief by saying that Christians have taken over any covenant God had with Jews and Jews have no national rights. One example of Sabeel's erasure of Jewish covenantal rights: "The twelve names of the twelve sons of Jacob, who gave rise to the twelve tribes of Israel, represent God’s people according to the self-understanding of the Jews, who at a particular moment in their history started to see themselves as God’s only people. The twelve names of the twelve apostles here represent God’s people restored after the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is God’s people in an inclusive sense."

As a result, Ateek and Sabeel denigrate Jews and Judaism, using terms such as "primitive" and "tribal" to describe Judaism and saying that the "heart of the Torah" says to destroy all non-Jews in Israel (many examples here.)

Supersessionism has been used for 2000 years as a reason to persecute Jews.

Put it all together and it is difficult to say that Ateek is not an antisemite.

02/16 Links Pt2: Why are Jewish groups fighting the IHRA antisemitism definition?; Peter Beinart’s Latest: a Call to Ease Sanctions on Iran; Bari Weiss: Gina Carano and Crowd-Sourced McCarthyism

From Ian:

‘Dehumanizing’ Murder of Ilan Halimi Solemnly Remembered Amid Continued Threat of Antisemitism in France

A modest crowd of around 100 people gathered in Paris on Sunday afternoon to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, a young French Jew, at the hands of an antisemitic criminal gang in 2006.

The emotional ceremony took place at the Jardin Ilan Halimi in the 12th arrondissement of the French capital — a public park where a simple memorial to Halimi that describes him as a “victim of antisemitism” is located. Sunday’s event began with those in attendance observing a minute’s silence in his memory.

The 23-year-old Halimi was kidnapped on Jan. 20, 2006, by a mainly Muslim gang calling themselves “The Barbarians.” Lured into the gang’s hands by a young woman who flirted with him in the cellphone store where he worked as a salesman, Halimi subsequently spent three weeks in captivity, during which he was constantly beaten and burned with cigarettes while tied to a radiator.

Throughout the ordeal, the gang attempted to extort 450,000 Euros in ransom money from Halimi’s relatives, believing them to be wealthy because — as one of the gang members later explained to French police — “Jews have money.”

On February 13, 2006, Halimi was dumped, barely alive and with burns on 80 percent of his body, near a railway track on the outskirts of Paris. Discovered by a passerby who called for an ambulance, Halimi died on his way to the hospital.

After a harrowing three-month trial in 2009, 27 members of the gang were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their roles in Halimi’s murder. The Barbarians leader, Youssef Fofana, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Some of those attending Sunday’s ceremony were young children at the time of Halimi’s death and grew up in the shadow of his story.

Why are Jewish groups fighting the IHRA antisemitism definition? - opinion

Over the last year, significant progress has been made in pushing back against online antisemitism.

One of the most notable initiatives, which I began campaigning for in January 2020, is for social media companies to adopt the International Holocaust Memorial Association definition of antisemitism – a widely accepted educational framework which explains classical and modern antisemitism.

From a successful social media campaign (#AdoptIHRA) to a newly announced set of policy recommendations from the Israeli government, the pressure continues to mount on digital platforms to deal with hate speech against Jews.

But instead of getting on board in the fight against bigotry, fringe Jewish groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), IfNotNow, and the New Israel Fund are using the discussion to politicize antisemitism.

Social media companies have thus far refused to adopt the IHRA definition in full, but through discussions at the nongovernmental and governmental level, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok have all modified their approach to antisemitism and are engaging in open dialogue. While hate speech against Jews was always forbidden (though not enforced) across platforms, only this year was Holocaust denial banned explicitly on Twitter and Facebook. It’s not enough, but it is a step in the right direction.

Dealing with antisemitism today requires acknowledging that anti-Zionism can be used as an excuse to justify hate speech (and hate crimes), something Facebook has stated it now takes into consideration in its community standards.

Stop Politicizing IHRA.

"Jewish" organizations lobbying against the #IHRA definition of antisemitism are endangering Jewish communities and enabling #antisemitism in the name of anti-Zionism. pic.twitter.com/9DruVOfknO
— Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) February 15, 2021

Guardian continues its crusade against the IHRA antisemitism definition

For the third time in the last ten weeks, the Guardian has published an attack on the widely accepted IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism.

The latest is an op-ed (“Facebook might censor criticism of Zionists. That’s dangerous”, Feb. 11) by , the deputy director of ‘Jewish Voice for Peace’ (JVP). JVP is a marginal US based anti-Zionist, pro-BDS group that achieved notoriety by partnering with terrorists, as well as launching an antisemitic campaign called ‘Deadly Exchange’, which suggested that American Jews play a key role in perpetuating “racist policing in the U.S.”

Following two introductory paragraph where Wise outlines the problem of far-right and white supremacist antisemitism in the US, she applauds the “broad coalition of progressive organizations, activists, and faith communities are working to dismantle antisemitism along with all other forms of racism and oppression”. If you open the link above, it takes you to a site called United Against Hate, which describes itself as a coalition of groups advocating for “Black and immigrant liberation, Muslim and Latinx freedom, Indigenous power, AAPI security, and Jewish safety”.

However, one of the other member groups of United Against Hate is Mpower Change, led by Linda Sarsour, whose history of employing antisemitic tropes we’ve documented previously. The group, which calls itself “the largest Muslim-led social and racial justice organization in the U.S.”, was widely criticised for encouraging its followers to attend a Juneteenth rally last year that, the group stressed, was open to everyone “minus cops and Zionists.”

Despite the antisemitic baggage of groups she’s affiliated with, Wise then opines that “not everyone claiming to work against antisemitism has Jewish safety at heart”.

We're going to make history, again

This week, we continue making history in terms of developing the sport of judo in Israel and internationally. We, Israel, are hosting the Tel Aviv Grand Slam 2021 – a competition where scoring and prestige alike are of utmost importance ahead of the Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer.

In such a trying year, under the shadow of the coronavirus, with severe restrictions and protocols in place that cannot be deviated from even an inch, the Israel Judo Association under the helm of President Moshe Ponte, has been able to contend with all of the challenges in the way and put us on the world map of Grand Slam tournaments. Tel Aviv, as of today, is like Paris, Abu Dhabi, Tokyo and other prominent cities across the globe – as it opens its doors to one of the most important competitions on the judo circuit along with hundreds of judokas from over 50 countries. The logistical operation is complicated but it's happening, big time!

This year, the tournament carries additional significance due to the arrival of Iranian judoka and dissident Saeid Mollaei, who will compete in the same weight category as my friend, world champion Sagi Muki. It's an agonizing thing to leave your family behind and compete against an Israeli, but the hope is to see them both in the finals. Sport has to be above politics.

I'm entering this tournament as the reigning European champion and after winning a bronze medal at the 2021 World Judo Masters in Doha, Qatar. I'm in peak condition after a successful training camp this past month. On Tuesday, I will enter the COVID capsule in the hotel, where we will train, eat and sleep without being able to go outside or come into contact with people outside the capsule until the competition ends on Saturday. I'm excited and proud to represent Israel here, in my home, the place where I was raised.

From AP:

Israel fired several missiles early on Monday targeting areas near the Syrian capital, Damascus, Syria's state news agency reported. An opposition war-monitoring group said the strikes killed nine Iran-backed fighters.

The SANA news agency claimed that Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles, which it said were fired from Syria's Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor with a network of activists on the ground, said the strikes hit positions of the Syrian army's Fourth Division in the mountains near the highway that links Damascus with the Lebanese capital of Beirut. It said another strike hit Syrian army positions in Kisweh, just south of Damascus.

The Observatory said that of the nine Iran-backed fighters killed, seven were near the Damascus-Beirut highway and two in Kisweh. Weapons depots were also struck in both areas, it added.

9 dead, all from Iranian-backed militias. No civilians hurt. 2 different locations. Weapons depots.

And this sort of thing happens every week.

The quality of Israel's' intelligence inside Iranian-backed military targets in Syria is truly astonishing.

02/16 Links Pt1: Israel hints it may not engage Biden on Iran nuclear strategy; Why Israel should be considered to join NATO; The international miscarriage of justice at The Hague

From Ian:

Why Israel should be considered to join NATO

The recent Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab countries could also trigger the idea that in admitting the State of Israel, NATO would be playing globally, on one hand, and on the other hand, open the doors to further members around the World.

With a solid democracy and values driven society, Israel military capabilities would fit perfectly the present and future needs of the Alliance. The military quality hardware, technology or intelligence would enhance NATO’s existing capabilities. In a moment where NATO’s budget burned share is at the centre of many debates, Israel’s military budget is near the singular value of 4.5% GDP.

To be part of an Alliance, also means that one loses partial autonomy and such issue is remarkably pivotal for a nation that faces singular and constant security challenges. One of the core, if not the main, debates about an Israel NATO membership, will always be focus on NATO’s Article 5 (collective defence) activation over a potential attack from Iran or any of Iran’s proxies, such as the Hezbollah. The odds of such an attack are high and such an event would put the Alliance in a difficult position as this could prompt an armed conflict of years in the Middle East and even some regions in North Africa.

It is also clear that the full membership would not depend only NATO members, especially if Turkey will not veto that same membership, but also in Israel willingness in joining it.

In the balance, if one looks to NATO core values of: “individual liberty, democracy, human rights and the rule of law”; with three essential core tasks: “collective defence, crisis management and cooperative security”; one sees here the natural place for Israel to be part of.

On the opposite side, Turkey’s membership, despite its overwhelming present issues, should remain unchanged even if Ankara will suffer different sanctions from NATO member countries as the US and face high political pressure from Paris or London.

Looking at future picture, it is time to start building on Israel’s full membership to NATO.

Mordechai Kedar: The Truth About Financial Aid to the Palestinian Authority

In the past, the donor states have at times sought to circumvent the Palestinian Authority, opting instead to finance specific projects. This idea failed because of the mahsubiya method practiced in the PA: a contractor who gets foreign funding for projects transfers part of the money to the “right people” in the PA, thereby serving as a pipeline for the funneling of “kosher” funds to the instigators of terror.

Another problem is the Israeli government, which is well aware of the situation and yet continues to give artificial respiration to the corrupt PA. Following the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993-1995, many in Israel sobered up and realized that the PA’s continued rule could lead to the growth of a terror state in the West Bank compared to which the dangers posed by the terror state that arose in Gaza would pale into insignificance. But no Israeli government has taken the necessary steps to put an end to the Oslo delusion.

After 15 years with no elections in the PA, it was recently announced that elections would at last be held for the Legislative Council and the presidency, a move that will afford the terror Authority a democratic stamp of approval. The question immediately arose as to whether Hamas will be allowed to run in these elections. Many fear that the democratic process would result in Hamas again winning the majority of seats on the Legislative Council and possibly the presidency as well. But what kind of democracy does not permit a preeminent organization to run in elections that are supposed to be free?

The holding of the elections appears to be fully supported by key officials in the Biden administration: both those who favor the establishment of a Palestinian state because of their blind faith in the two-state solution, and those whose sympathies lie with Muslim Brotherhood organizations in the US and elsewhere. The latter group would see a Hamas victory in the PA elections as a desirable outcome.

Muhammad Aref Massad understands that a terrorist Authority has been set up alongside Israel that could give rise to a terrorist state. When will the policymakers in Israel, Europe, and the US understand this?

Blinken’s Worrisome Golan Heights Hedge

On Monday, instead of endorsing President Trump’s 2019 decision to recognize Israel’s claims of sovereignty over the Golan Heights — the disputed territory it seized from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 — Secretary of State Antony Blinken hedged. He noted, during a CNN interview, that Israel’s control of the territory is “of real importance, to [its] security. Legal questions are something else. . . . And over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we would look at.”

Asked about whether Blinken’s comments should be taken as a sign that he’s open to reversing Trump’s recognition of Israel’s claims, a State Department spokesperson told National Review on Thursday that, “The Secretary spoke to this earlier in the week and we have nothing further.” Although Blinken has also pledged to build on the Abraham Accords and view Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, his decision to leave the Biden administration’s stance on the Golan Heights ambiguous raises serious questions about the new administration’s commitment to Israel, its strongest regional ally, in the face of the growing threat from Tehran.

Downplaying legal recognition of Israel’s Golan claims further strained an alliance weakened by the new administration’s push to reenter the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his chief rival, Minister of Defense Benny Gantz, immediately pushed back against Blinken’s comments. “The Israeli position is clear. In any possible scenario, the Golan Heights will remain Israeli,” Netanyahu’s office told the Times of Israel earlier this week.

Though Israeli officials may be displeased by Blinken’s comments, they can also rest easy in the knowledge that, for the moment, the U.S.’s official position on the Golan claims has not changed: Reversing Trump’s sovereignty-recognition proclamation would require an official act of unrecognition, a move the administration hasn’t yet said it’s considering. “The Golan is, for the purpose of U.S. policy, part of Israel,” said Eugene Kontorovich, a George Mason University law professor who advised the State Department on the 2019 move. “He doesn’t have to call it part of Israel every time he speaks to make that true.”

The key question concerns the likelihood that Biden formally reverses Trump’s decision. Kontorovich calls Blinken’s comments a “trial balloon,” an effort to see what the domestic and global reaction might be if the administration were to use unrecognition of Israel’s Golan claims as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Iran. “Here they’re playing with something, which was not a card that was theirs to play,” Kontorovich said. “It would just be an extremely radical policy to unrecognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan for no productive end.”

How Jews were treated in Morocco in the late 19th century

Here is an account of Jews in Fez, Morocco, part of a longer article about Morocco that was published in the (Chicago) Inter Ocean, November 4, 1894.

Although the article seems slightly exaggerated (Jews weren't forced to wear peyos, and I am skeptical that there was a death penalty for a Jew being on a street with a mosque), the article describes how the Jews are persecuted by their Muslim neighbors.

It also has a fair amount of the typical unconscious antisemitism that is often seen in 19th century newspaper articles.

Here is another account, from the Kansas City Times, June 27, 1888:

Anger at JNF for wanting to purchase land shows it is 1940 all over again in Palestine

In 1940, the British Government of Palestine passed the "Land Transfer Regulations." It prohibited Jews from buying land in the vast majority of the British Mandate.

Here is a Jewish National Fund map from 1944 that shows the lands that it had purchased before this apartheid law, plus "Zone A" and "Zone B" where Jews were prohibited from buying lands.

The two zones encompassed the entire Negev, all of Judea and Samaria, the Jezreel Valley, the eastern Galilee, Jaffa and parts of the coastal plain south of Haifa.

The idea that Jews cannot privately purchase land anywhere in the world is anathema to any true liberal.

Yet here we are:

A major U.S. Reform Jewish group said Friday it strongly opposes a plan by the Jewish National Fund to purchase land in the West Bank for the potential expansion of Israeli settlements in the disputed territory.

"We have long opposed the proliferation of settlements because they endanger the possibility of a two-state solution," Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said in a statement. "We love and support the Jewish and democratic State of Israel, which is why we will continue to strongly oppose policies that undermine the safety, security and moral character of our Jewish homeland."

According to a proposal set to be discussed by Jewish National Fund’s directorate on Sunday, it would acquire private land, with priority given to land within settlements, land where construction is expected to face few obstacles, and land adjacent to existing settlements that can be used for their expansion.

According to the Union for Reform Judaism, "In the fall of 2019, we blew the whistle and strongly criticized KKL-JNF when we discovered that they were secretly purchasing land in the West Bank. With Sunday’s planned executive committee vote this longstanding Zionist institution plans to make those purchases openly as part of the agenda of the organization’s new right-wing leadership."

Mercaz Olami, the Zionist organization of the Conservative-Masorti movement, said in a sharply worded statement "opposing the move" that it “could irreversibly endanger KKL and our homeland."
The proposed decision, the statement said, “places KKL in a situation which potentially violates international law” and as such, it said, it could “harm” the Jewish communities in the 55 countries with JNF fundraising branches.

Arabs and even liberal Jews are agreeing that allowing the Jewish National Fund to purchase lands from Arabs, who sell the land voluntarily, for top dollar, is considered illegal and immoral.

Just like 1940.

It gets even more absurd. One of the arguments against Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria is that a small percentage of the land of these communities is on privately-owned Arab land. JNF wants to purchase those lands so the legal issues are resolved - and that is called "illegal."

How did prohibiting Jews from buying land become a moral position?

1.7 billion people have less electricity than residents of Gaza

There is a major project underway to build a natural gas line from Israel's Leviathan field directly to Gaza, which would provide much cheaper electricity for the enclave. The EU and Qatar are contributing to this initiative to help Gazans get access to more electricity, less expensively than today.

Gazans get about 14 hours a day of electricity today. This is about 203 megawatts of electricity for Gaza's two million residents, which comes out to about 99 watts available per Gazan on the average.

Given how much media attention is given to Gaza's electricity woes, one might think that Gaza is in the very bottom of any list showing how much electricity is available per person worldwide.

That is not true - at all.

Wikipedia has a list of how much power is available per capita for every country. It gets Gaza wrong, claiming .01 watts per person, which is completely false.

But assuming it is accurate for other countries, we see that there is more electricity per person in Gaza than in many other countries, including some that might surprise you like the Philippines or Morocco.

Country/Region	Average power per capita
	(watts per person)
Somalia	2
Chad	2
Guinea-Bissau	2
Burundi	3
Central African Republic	3
Haiti	4
Sierra Leone	4
South Sudan	5
Rwanda	7
Niger	8
Liberia	8
Ethiopia	9
Uganda	9
Malawi	9
Madagascar	9
Timor-Leste	9
Yemen	10
Burkina Faso	10

Tanzania	11
Benin	11
Comoros	13
Eritrea	14
Gambia	14
Nigeria	16
Solomon Islands	17
Afghanistan	18
Mali	18
Togo	18
Guinea	18
Kenya	19
Mauritania	22
Vanuatu	25
Nepal	26
Senegal	27
Kiribati	27
Cameroon	30
Ivory Coast	30
Sudan	31
Ghana	33
Angola	37
Myanmar	38
Congo, Republic of the	43
Sao Tome and Principe	43
Djibouti	45
Lesotho	48
Bangladesh	49
Papua New Guinea	49
Mozambique	50
Korea, North	56
Tonga	56
Zimbabwe	58
Cambodia	58
Pakistan	64
Nicaragua	65
Laos	65
Sri Lanka	70
Samoa	72
Guatemala	73
Honduras	78
Zambia	84
Bolivia	90
Morocco	93
Cabo Verde	94
Syria	95
Dominica	95
Philippines	99

Over 1.7 billion have less electricity than Gazans have!

I'm not saying that Gazan shouldn't have 24 hours of reliable, cheap electricity a day. Everyone should. But as usual, the media presents Gaza as being one of the worst places on Earth, and there are a lot of people who would love to live in Gaza.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)