Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

02/24 Links Pt2: Are ‘Human Rights’ Organizations for Palestinian Rights, or Lawfare Against Israel?; Cabinet Approves Purim Curfew to Head Off COVID-19 Outbreak

From Ian:

Are ‘Human Rights’ Organizations for Palestinian Rights, or Lawfare Against Israel?

Recently, an Arab Christian gynecologist, Dr. Salamah Qumsiyeh, was brutally attacked in Bethlehem by a man who attempted to slash his wrists (there is a video that documents the injuries the doctor sustained, and it is not for the faint of heart). This was the second attack on a physician in the Palestinian territories within a year. The Internet site Jihad Watch, which is run by a former resident of Beit Jalah (a Christian town neighboring Bethlehem) who was until recently an anti-terrorist investigator for the government, claims the attack was committed by Khadr Odeh from the Aida refugee camp. Odeh is a gang leader with close links to the Palestinian Authority (PA) security apparatus. The motive appears to have been alleged malpractice when the physician treated the assailant’s wife.

Qumsiyeh admitted, in a short interview from his hospital bed, that he knew his attacker, but he did not name him, probably out of fear. Most of his brief remarks were a plea to the PA to take action against his assailant and questioning why the PA does not protect its citizens.

According to Jihad Watch, Odeh and his gang have committed a spate of attacks on Arab Christians in the Bethlehem area. The head of the PA’s Bethlehem District acknowledged Odeh’s involvement in four brutal attacks in the past year, but did not mention that the victims were all Christians. The official PA and PLO line is that all Palestinians are treated equally and that brotherly love prevails between Muslims and Christians in the Bethlehem area and elsewhere.

There are, of course, two sides to every story. The question is whether the many “human rights” organizations covering Israel and the Palestinians — probably the highest density of human rights organizations in the world relative to the size of their beat — investigated these claims.

An Internet search revealed that no organization other than Jihad Watch covered the attack on Qumsiyeh or the allegations of systematic maltreatment of Christians in the Bethlehem area, where Christians are now a minority. The search only revealed “occupation forces” alleged attacks on Christians several years ago.

The Israeli “human rights” organization B’Tselem takes its name from the Biblical verse stating that man is made in God’s image. It is true that the organization’s self-declared aim is to cover Israeli violations in the “Occupied Territories.” Still, B’Tselem must surely acknowledge that Christian Arabs are also made in His image, so the possible violation of their rights should be a matter of concern to the group.

Cabinet Approves Purim Curfew to Head Off COVID-19 Outbreak

Israel’s Cabinet on Tuesday approved a nighttime curfew for the Purim holiday weekend in an attempt to forestall a spike in COVID-19 infections due to parties and gatherings. Starting Thursday night, the eve of Purim, and ending on Sunday morning, the curfew will be in effect from 8:30 pm to 5 am.

During the hours of curfew, members of the public must remain within 1,000 yards of their own homes, and may not be present in others’ residences. Private intercity travel will be banned entirely for the hours of curfew, starting at 8 pm Thursday. Intracity public transportation will be reduced, and occupancy limited to 50 percent. Police will also be setting up roadblocks on intercity arteries and at entrances and exits to cities and towns.

The Cabinet stressed that in addition, no Purim gatherings would be allowed during the daytime that exceed 10 participants indoors or 20 people outdoors.

Following the Cabinet’s approval of a curfew, the Israel Police began gearing up to enforce it, with an eye on planned underground parties.

One high-ranking police official told Israel Hayom that because Purim would be the first holiday after Israel began lifting its third nationwide lockdown, the public was feeling “a sense of freedom,” especially in light of the vaccination campaign, and warned that “it will be hard to enforce the curfew hermetically.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci on US, Israel Vaccine Rollouts in Interview with i24NEWS

Mauritania reportedly among 19-20 countries Israel is planning to give vaccines

The number of countries Israel is planning to provide with coronavirus vaccines in return for diplomatic support has grown, according to Hebrew media reports Wednesday, as top health officials said they weren’t consulted on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to give away doses.

The list now includes 19 countries, the Kan public broadcaster reported, while Army Radio put the number at 20.

Among the countries now reportedly slated to get vaccines is Mauritania, which has no diplomatic ties with Israel.

The northwestern African country became the third member of the Arab League to establish diplomatic relations with Israel in 1999, but cut ties a decade later amid the 2008-2009 Gaza war. US officials told The Times of Israel last month that Mauritania was close to normalizing relations with Israel before president Donald Trump’s term ended.

Other countries named by Kan included Cyprus, Hungary, Guatemala, Czech Republic, Maldives, Ethiopia, Chad, Kenya, Uganda and Guinea. Each country will receive between 1,000 and 5,000 doses of Moderna vaccine.

The broadcaster said it remained unclear how the decision to give doses away was made or how the list of countries, which was passed on by the National Security Council, was drawn up.

WHO Regional Rep. Praises Israel as Vaccination 'Frontrunner'

As we approached the northern entrance to Efrat, my husband gasped. A car with Palestinian Authority license plates had run a red light, right in front of us. It was nighttime and we were returning from Jerusalem to our home in the Judean Wilderness. We’d traveled there to receive the second of our two vaccination shots against COVID-19. Watching that car speeding past, the driver ignoring the stop light, my first thought was that this wouldn’t happen if Israel exercised sovereignty here in this place, in Judea. My second thought was that people have no clue that sovereignty is about more than land rights.

As the errant driver passed the bright red traffic light, the safety of other drivers on the road in the dark of night was clearly not his concern. And since the residents of Judea and Samaria live under martial law, there was also no one to apprehend him for his misbehavior. Here is a driver who never had to take into account the niceties or legalities of risky driving behavior. Why should he? There is no one to deal with those who drive dangerously on the roads of Judea and Samaria.

According to Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, head of the International Law Department of the Kohelet Policy Forum, it’s not just a matter of no one to police the roads. Without sovereignty, there's simply no law and order. “By preventing the normal administration of law and policing, the existence of military law, and in particular the Civil Administration, prevents effective enforcement against property crime," says Kontorovich. "The military is not organised to be property police, and the Civil Administration does not see law enforcement as its primary priority.”

Crime Doesn't Care About Your Religion

Crime, by the way, is not exclusive to Jewish residents of the territories. Because crime doesn’t care about your ethnicity, religion, or nationality. Though religion does matter--along with your gender--when it comes to inheriting or purchasing property. Naomi Linder Kahn, director of the International Division of Regavim, explains:

“Both Arab and Jewish residents are suffering as a result of the legal limbo that has existed in the territories since 1967, where outmoded Jordanian and Ottoman law is still being enforced by Israeli courts. The old Jordanian legislation means that women—whether Arabs or Jews—cannot inherit or purchase land in Judea and Samaria. Worse yet, Jordanian laws still in effect prevent Jewish people of either gender from purchasing land anywhere in Judea and Samaria, in what is a clear case of Israel propping up an antisemitic policy. Finally, Israel continues to uphold outrageous Ottoman laws no longer in effect anywhere else in the world for over 100 years that allow for property theft through agricultural land use in territory over the Green Line.”

Failure of Israeli Leadership

Beyond these points of concern, there are many more problems that go unresolved as a result of the failure of Israeli leadership to implement sovereignty. But while sovereignty is currently relegated to the backburner for a variety of reasons, the sole issue of the Sovereignty Movement (Ribonut) is to keep the issue of Israeli sovereignty front and center. Asked about the implications of sovereignty beyond the issue of land, Nadia Matar, co-founder of Ribonut, along with Yehudit Katsover, reframed the issue to show how the application of Israeli law to Judea and Samaria would necessarily improve society. Matar provided a bulleted list:

· Substantive rather than political considerations when deciding whether to build or not to build

· Fewer road accidents

· Economic benefits, such as a drop in housing prices, nationwide

· Ecological benefits: Enforcement and supervision in the areas of the environment: landfills, quarries, pollution of streams and groundwater, and etc.

· The IDF will be free from being occupied with silly things like giving out building permits and will finally be able to deal with its real missions, fighting terrorism and protecting borders

· Improvements in the provision of road infrastructure, electricity, water, and etc.

· Preservation of and preventing the looting of heritage and archeological sites by official and unofficial robbers

“But above all,” says Matar, “sovereignty will be an official political and national statement that this land is ours.”

Being There

It is this last point that resonates most of all with those of us who live in Judea and Samaria. We poke along under an onerous and archaic quasi legal system--one that is woefully subpar, ignoring as it does, infractions of basic legal norms. The Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria must put up with a lot, simply for the privilege of being here: the unfairness of how we are treated compared to other Israelis; the dangers of living beyond the Green Line; and living without the standard legal rights our contemporaries have come to expect.

But we live where we live because we love the land, indigenous Jewish territory for thousands of years. And we live where we live because our presence serves to protect the holy city of Jerusalem (the enemy has to go through here to get to there). Finally, we live here because we hope that if enough of us do so, our government will come to do the right thing.

From our point of view, you see, it doesn’t matter who sits in the White House, Trump or Biden. What matters is who sits in the prime minister’s seat in Jerusalem. And we are waiting for someone who has the stones to declare our sovereignty over all our land, at last.

02/24 Links Pt1: Why is KKL-JNF's plan to buy Palestinian land in West Bank controversial?; Blinken: US to run for UNHRC seat, abolish anti-Israel bias

From Ian:

Jpost Editorial: Why is KKL-JNF's plan to buy Palestinian land in West Bank controversial?

KKL-JNF, which was established in 1901 to buy and develop land for Jewish settlement and is famous for the millions of trees it has planted throughout Israel, serves as the Jewish people’s custodian for some 15 percent of the land in the country. In this role, it has in the past purchased land in Judea and Samaria and been involved over the Green Line since the 1967 Six Day War, buying at least 65,000 dunams across the West Bank including in the communities of Itamar, Alfei Menashe, Einav, Kedumim, Givat Ze’ev and Otniel. In other words, buying land is what it does.

While it may be true that KKL-JNF’s expansion of activities in the West Bank could complicate Israel’s ties with the Biden administration, as critics of the plan have claimed, this is a question for the government of Israel of what it wants to do. Indeed, State Department spokesman Ned Price said in response to the plan, “It is critical to avoid unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions and undercut the efforts to achieve a two-state solution. This includes annexation, settlement building, demolitions, incitement and payments for terrorists.”

But while the State Department is voicing the views of the US, the KKL-JNF plan is in line with existing Israeli government policy which is not aimed at unilaterally establishing new facts on the ground, but rather at expanding and developing existing Jewish communities. This is something that Israel has always done and will need to continue doing to enable a quality of life for residents of existing communities in Judea and Samaria.

Although the Israeli government – under pressure from the US – can freeze settlement expansion as it has in the past, it cannot prevent existing communities from meeting the needs of their growing populations. This was once termed “natural growth,” and has been largely accepted by the international community, including the US, as legitimate and not in violation of the status quo. We do not expect the Biden administration to adopt the peace plan put forth by the Trump administration under which all settlements were meant to remain and the land to be annexed by Israel, but natural growth of existing communities should not be impaired.

KKL-JNF has the right to approve the plan, and instead of criticizing the organization, Zionist groups should see it as a way to better the everyday lives of Israelis living in the land of Israel, something KKL-JNF has done since its inception.

Blinken: US to run for UNHRC seat, abolish anti-Israel bias

The United States plans to run for a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday as he decried the 47-member body's bias against Israel and called for its Agenda Item 7 to be abolished.

"I’m pleased to announce the United States will seek election to the Human Rights Council for the 2022-24 term," Blinken said as he spoke at the virtual high-level meeting of the 46th session which opened Monday and ends on March 23.

Former US president Donald Trump exited the UNHRC in 2018, abandoning the US seat, to protest the council's bias against Israel, which is the subject of more resolutions than any other country.

US President Joe Biden rejoined the council, but as a participant and not a voting member. The US can regain its seat only through elections held annually by the UN General Assembly in New York.

"We humbly ask for the support of all UN member states in our bid to return to a seat in this body," Blinken said.

He lauded the UNHRC for its important work in highlighting global human rights abuses, but chastised it for its treatment of Israel.

"We urge the Human Rights Council to look at how it conducts its business. That includes its disproportionate focus on Israel," Blinken said.

"We need to eliminate Agenda Item 7 and treat the human rights situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories the same way as this body handles any other country," he said.

🇺🇸@SecBlinken: “We urge the UNHRC to look at how it conducts its business—including its disproportionate focus on Israel. We need to eliminate Agenda Item 7. We will focus on ensuring Council membership reflects high standards. Those with the worst records should not be members.“ pic.twitter.com/njnU9yBFoz
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) February 24, 2021

5️⃣ Problems with @UNWRA:

Last week UNRWA was found to have material promoting terrorism in children’s textbooks...but that’s only the beginning of the problem with the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.

Watch @YosephHaddad and I break it down: pic.twitter.com/k9c3PE2771
— Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר (@emilykschrader) February 24, 2021

For the past month, the anti-Israel Left has mounted a major campaign - a petition, a website, lots of articles - claiming that Facebook is considering adding the word "Zionist" to its hate speech policy.

The only piece of evidence for this is a single letter that Facebook sent to someone where they wrote:

As you know, in the context of our hate speech policy, we do not allow content that attacks people based on a protected characteristic (e.g., race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation). Under the same policy, we also remove violating attacks where proxies or codewords are used by way of substitute for a protected characteristic.
In that context, we are looking at the question of how we should interpret attacks on "Zionists" to determine whether the term is used as a proxy for attacking Jewish or Israeli people. The term brings with it much history and various meanings, and we are looking to increase our understanding of how it is used by people on our platform.

There is not one clue that Facebook is doing anything wrong or underhanded. On the contrary, it is doing research. A word can be used in many ways, and Facebook was reaching out to understand how the word "Zionist" may be used as a substitute for "Jew."

Facebook no more wants to restrict the word "Zionist" than it wants to restrict the word "Jew" itself. It wants to understand how the context of the word can be interpreted as a slur, just as the word "Jew" can.

The Israel haters are purposefully twisting this Facebook-initiated request to claim that it is a Zionist plot.

Mitchell Plitnick, co-author with Marc Lamont Hill of the recently released book "Except for Palestine," writes in the New Arab:

Facebook is facing a dilemma. The social media Goliath finds itself caught in a debate over the use of the political label "Zionist". Supporters of Israel are pressing Facebook to treat the term "Zionist" as a proxy for "Jew", and to therefore label harsh criticisms of Zionism - a political ideology that must surely be open to criticism in any free society - as anti-semitism, a hateful ideology that has no place in civil discourse.

There's a funny thing about that paragraph. While the rest of the article is replete with links, Plitnick has no link showing that Zionists are pressuring Facebook to do anything. No proof for the main assertion in the first paragraph of the article.

Because, as far as anyone can tell, this wasn't a Zionist initiative. It was Facebook trying to uphold its own policy.

Plitnick then argues unwittingly for Facebook to do exactly that - in terms of the Right:

The use of the word "Zionist" to launder anti-semitism is a real issue. For decades, white nationalist conspiracy theories have talked about the "Zionist Occupied Government," or "ZOG," referring to Jewish control of the United States, or even the world. It is an outgrowth of centuries of anti-semitism and particularly of the continuing malign influence of the notorious Russian forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, first published in 1903.

...The disingenuous practice of using the term "Zionist" to cover for anti-semitism is not difficult to see through. Both opponents and adherents of white nationalist propagandists, for example, routinely understand precisely what is meant.

Which means that Plitnick agrees that sometimes the word Zionist is used as a pejorative proxy for "Jew" and therefore would fall under Facebook's hate speech policy. He admits that the way that white nationalists use the term is clearly antisemitic. So why shouldn't Facebook treat those cases as the antisemitism it is?

He gives no answer. He just says that when legitimate critics of Israel use the term, it never means Jews, so don't bother even checking it out.

Yet even the Left was forced to admit the blatant antisemitism in the British Labour party, often hiding behind "anti-Zionism."

Iranian and Arab media today will talk about "Zionist" control of the media or of banks, simply substituting "Zionist" for traditional anti-Jewish tropes. Only last week I wrote about an Arab article that claimed that Mohammed drove out the deceitful "Zionists" from Medina.

Denying that is denying reality, but Plitnick ludicrously claims that Palestinians and their allies are never antisemitic.

Plitnick's example of the far-right slur "Zionist Occupied Government" is clearly antisemitism. But the Left makes the same claim - that the "Zionist lobby" controls Congress and the White House. What, exactly, makes one of them antisemitic and the other one legitimate criticism? The stereotype is identical, the aims are identical, the language is nearly so. While Plitnick himself criticized some aspects of the infamous "Israel Lobby" book by Walt and Mearsheimer, he didn't consider it antisemitic, and plenty of people on the Left embraced its theme that is indistinguishable from "ZOG."

If even Plitnick agrees that some purported anti-Zionism is thinly disguised antisemitism, what could be wrong with Facebook learning how to identify this and treat it as the hate it is?

Because Plitnick and the groups behind this initiative want to defend left-wing and Arab antisemitism. They doesn't want it to be scrutinized. They want free reign to cross the line between legitimate criticism of Israel and hate. They want to allow the most vile antisemitism to be spouted from people on the Left and then defend it as mere "criticism of Israel."

Facebook wants to see what it can do to flag hate speech. People from the Left want to defend hate speech when it comes from their own side. Which means that they aren't against antisemitism - they just want to use the term to apply only to their ideological opponents.

NBC's "Nurses" program aired an episode that is antisemitic. There is no other way to view it: it characterizes religious Jews as:

* Being against any modern medical procedures

* Being against grafting bone or tissue from non-Jews

* Being against having women's organs or bones placed in men

* Jewish men not directly addressing female nurses

* Saying that prayer and medicine are incompatible

The inaccuracies about how religious Jews are would be laughable if it didn't just teach millions of viewers that they are uncaring monsters who reject women and medicine.

A Hasidic Jewish youth named Israel (of course, in case the point wasn't made) who skipped "temple" to play basketball gets hit by a car and needs an operation to fix his leg and walk normally again. His rabbi father is aghast that doctors suggest a bone graft, which could come from "a dead goyim leg" - from "an Arab, a woman."

Of course, Judaism has no such restrictions. But funny looking Jews with sidecurls are an irresistible target for modern entertainment.

Notice also that the nurse sarcastically makes fun what the rabbi is saying, normalizing the idea that Jewish beliefs can be lampooned on TV. Even though the show is claiming that Jews believe something that is diametrically opposed to Jewish law, the message that gets through from this show is that nurses must be respectful to all people - except Dark Age Jews.

Later, the nurse tries to make a Biblical argument to the son that one can break (nonexistent) Jewish laws to save one's life. The father refuses to acknowledge the nurse is even there, because, of course, she's a woman.

Then the father says that his son getting a bone graft would jeopardize his eternal soul, and that the choice is between trusting medicine or prayer.

In the end, the nurse is frustrated that she couldn't convince the backwards Jews what was best for them.

This entire episode is the Jewish equivalent of having a Black character eating watermelon with fried chicken and saying "Yessa Massa!" It is not only a thoroughly offensive stereotype, but it is a stereotype that has no relationship with reality.

At a time when identifiable Jews are being beaten in the streets simply because of how they look, NBC is contributing to the idea that Jews are not just like anyone else - but that they are fundamentally different, completely wrong and deserve to be treated with contempt.

This requires an immediate and abject apology.

EoZTV: Fisking an anti-Israel propaganda video that tries to exonerate a car-ramming terrorist

From The Guardian:

Israeli forces executed a 26-year-old Palestinian at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank last year, a report has alleged, challenging Israeli police claims that the man was a “terrorist” conducting an attack.

Forensic Architecture, a British research body based at Goldsmiths, University of London, said it had conducted an analysis into the death of Ahmad Erekat, who was shot seconds after his car crashed into a booth and lightly wounded an Israeli border guard.

The incident last June was described on the day by Israeli police as a “vehicle attack”, saying that its forces had “quickly neutralize [sic] the threat from the terrorist”.

In the past few years, Palestinian attackers have used car-rammings against Israeli security forces and civilians.

However, Forensic Architecture said its investigation, which reconstructed the scene using available film, including security footage published by police, cast “significant doubt” on claims Erekat was involved in an attack, and suggested the crash may have been an accident.

It takes a video to fisk a video, and I made one to demolish the major two claims: that Ahmad Erekat was innocent and that the Israeli border police "executed" him for no reason.

Both of those are not only lies, but easily proven lies. Forensics Architecture, an anti-Israel group that pretends to be objective and scientific, uses "computer models" and hand waving to obfuscate the simple truth that is obvious from the 11 second video of the attack: that Erekat accelerated, on purpose, into an Israeli checkpoint and then jumped out of the car one second later, something that innocent accident victims never do.

02/23 Links Pt2: Matti Friedman: Zero-Sum Game; Kemp: The Duped Generation that Supports BDS; The Perils of NonViolent Islamism; Thank You, Michael Che!

From Ian:

Matti Friedman: Zero-Sum Game

When I started reporting on Israel for the international press, I was made aware of linguistic quirks unique to this particular beat. One good example was the word “settlement,” which, in ordinary usage, means “a small village,” an isolated community out of Little House on the Prairie or perhaps colonial Rhodesia—but which we often used to describe suburban towns of 50,000 in the West Bank or certain neighborhoods in Jerusalem. A typical reader of the English language envisioned one thing, while the reality was another. Another quirk was our use of the word “capital,” which we refused to apply to Jerusalem, even though Jerusalem is Israel’s official seat of government, and that is the meaning of the word, which has nothing to do with international recognition. Or there was the word “disputed,” which we weren’t allowed to use for the West Bank, even though there’s obviously a dispute over the territory—the word “disputed” would make it seem like Israel might have a case. Our vocabulary was a kind of political code.

One of the most confusing examples was the word “refugee.” In describing the problems associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we regularly referred to “millions of Palestinian refugees,” summoning a clear image for Western readers—tents, camps, displaced people. The word “refugee” means “a person who flees for refuge or safety, especially to a foreign country,” but this wasn’t true of the vast majority of the people we were describing. So what were we talking about?

That very good question is the subject of a very good book, The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, by the Israeli journalist Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, formerly a member of Knesset for Israel’s Labor Party. The authors, like most liberal Israelis (and like me), once believed the 1990s-era Western narrative about Israeli-Palestinian peace: that the Palestinians would eventually be satisfied with a state alongside Israel, that everyone desired the same kind of progress, that maximalist rhetoric on the Arab side masked more modest goals, and that the Palestinian talk about millions of refugees and their “right of return” to Israel was a starting position that was bound to be bargained away. We were all wrong, and in this book, the authors set out to explain why.

“Our book demonstrates,” they write, “that in the case of Israel and the Palestinians, decades of shuttling, strong-arming the sides, and endless hours of negotiations came to naught because none of the diplomats or negotiators truly understood and dealt with the root causes of the conflict, choosing instead to turn away and focus on that which appeared easier.” The part that appeared easier, they believe, was the route of the future border—which chiefly meant pressuring Israel to remove settlements. But all along, the real root causes, Schwartz and Wilf argue, were the Palestinian refugees and the desire of Israel’s enemies to use them and their descendants to reverse the very creation of Israel.

Richard Kemp: The Duped Generation that Supports BDS

BDS tells its supporters that it is "an inclusive, anti-racist human rights movement that is opposed on principle to all forms of discrimination, including anti-semitism and Islamophobia". That is a lie.

BDS has also succeeded in making life worse for Palestinian Arabs, the very people they falsely claim to help. This includes backing and strengthening the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas....

Vast international funds provided to assist them have been systematically embezzled by their leaders for their own enrichment.... This month, the UK's Jewish News revealed that $145 million of British taxpayers' money has been spent on incitement in Palestinian schools since 2016 alone.

Young and impressionable men and women, whose main attention is on studying for their degrees, have been duped by Barghouti's BDS rabble-rousers into thinking they were demonstrating in support of a two-state solution to be achieved by peaceful means.

Using words chillingly resonant of the Third Reich, Mahmoud Abbas said during a speech in Egypt: "In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or soldier — on our lands". He meant Jews. Israeli Arabs would be welcomed.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that he and President Biden are "resolutely opposed" to BDS because it "unfairly and inappropriately singles out Israel and creates a double standard". The US administration should take up the plans... to target organisations that engage with or otherwise support BDS, such as Amnesty International, Oxfam and Human Rights Watch, and cut off government funding. British and European governments should follow suit....

On pursuing justice: A Merseyside perspective

The following is an op ed by Johnny Cohen of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. Mr Cohen is a respected pillar - and veteran leader - of the city's Jewish community and currently serves as president of the Merseyside Jewish Representative Council.

His article is published under the title “Arnold’s anger over the release of woman who murdered daughter” in this past weekend’s Jewish Telegraph in the United Kingdom.

Their online edition does not include this welcome piece. So with Mr Cohen’s permission, we are grateful to reprint it here. * * * In March 2014, the Liverpool Jewish Forum hosted a special visitor from Israel, Arnold Roth.

He and wife Frimet, parents of a profoundly disabled daughter Haya, had set up the Malki Foundation following the brutal murder in 2001 in the Sbarro Pizzeria massacre in Jerusalem of their older 15 year-old daughter Malki, one of two US nationals among 15 civilians, including 7 children and a pregnant woman, who were killed. 130 others were injured, many severely.

The Foundation, Keren Malki, enables families in Israel to provide quality care at home for children with disabilities, and later I spent a few years as a Trustee, until I found that time pressures did not allow me to do justice to that position.

Arnold’s talk concentrated on the foundation and on Malki herself, not on her murder. But he did express anger and disappointment that the woman who directed Malki’s murder, Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, was one of more than 1,000 Israeli-held security prisoners who had planned/perpetrated various terror attacks against Israeli targets, but were released from prison in exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011.

Tamimi, the first woman ever to be admitted to the ranks of Hamas terrorists, had pleaded guilty in an Israeli court in 2003, did not express remorse for her role, and had received 16 consecutive life sentences and an additional 15 years in prison.

02/23 Links Pt1: Joe Biden’s Emerging Folly in the Middle East; Netanyahu: Iran Will Fail like Haman Did 2,500 Years Ago; Vaccination nation

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: Joe Biden’s Emerging Folly in the Middle East

APolitico report published Monday revealed that Joe Biden’s administration wants to rid itself of the troublesome Middle East. In terms of global priorities, one Biden adviser confessed that the region “is not in the top three.” The new administration would prefer to focus on instability in the Western Hemisphere, containing threats and pursuing diplomatic initiatives in Europe, and, of course, finally pivoting to Asia. “They are just being extremely purposeful to not get dragged into the Middle East,” another adviser said. But the Middle East has a habit of dragging the United States back in, and a heedless effort to withdraw from the region is one of the easiest ways to stumble back into open-ended commitments.

The Biden administration encountered one of the first tests of its resolve to disengage from Middle Eastern affairs earlier this month following a deadly rocket attack on an Iraqi military base in which one civilian contractor was killed and nine others were wounded, including a U.S. service member. The Shia militia Saraya Awliya al-Dam, which maintains close links with Tehran, claimed responsibility for the attack.

The Biden administration responded in a “measured” way, according to the New York Times. It does not want to see a nascent attempt to restart negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program derailed by this Iran-linked provocation. But that indefatigable commitment to the pursuit of “rapprochement” with Iran and its proxies has only invited more rocket attacks.

On Monday, locals observed as rockets were fired at the U.S. diplomatic presence in Baghdad within the so-called “Green Zone.” It’s the third attack on Western diplomatic stations in Iraq in a week. Iraq has responded by requesting a larger NATO military presence in the country, and NATO will oblige. In the coming weeks, the Atlantic Alliance will increase its deployments in Iraq from 500 to approximately 4,000, and the Pentagon is not ruling out additional deployments to supplement the Western presence there.

Iranian strategy may seem counterintuitive on its face; why would a rogue state desperate for the rewards associated with the resumption of diplomatic talks risk it all by testing the new administration so brazenly? But Iranians can read American news media, too. If Tehran believes that the Biden administration wants out of the region so badly that it will not absorb the costs associated with sticking around, why not test that proposition? Iran’s long-term objective isn’t just relief from economic sanctions, after all—its regional dominance, with the U.S. all but out of the picture.

Biden squanders leverage Trump stockpiled on Iran in pursuit of a defective nuclear deal

Unfortunately, we’ve seen this movie before. As the Obama administration courted Tehran for nuclear talks from 2012 to 2015, it restricted its counterterrorism and counternarcotics policies toward the regime’s proxies like Hezbollah. As Politico exposed in 2017, U.S. efforts against Hezbollah lessened as the importance of getting a nuclear deal with Iran grew.

The desire to achieve and maintain the Iran nuclear deal also had other negative regional effects. Some of those in the Obama administration arguing for a more robust Syria policy in support of protestors and against the atrocities of President Bashar al-Assad — Tehran’s man in Damascus — were overridden since targeting his regime would have necessarily aggravated the Islamic Republic.

Absent any reciprocity, the Biden administration reversed the Trump administration’s restoration of U.N. penalties on Iran’s military-related procurement and proliferation.

The Biden administration’s eagerness for diplomacy will likely be read by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as a vulnerability to exploit. And in response, Tehran will do what it has done for decades: intensify its aggression and only back down if presented with no other alternative.

Iran is watching Washington begin to dismantle maximum pressure in favor of “maximum diplomacy.” Absent a willingness to add to or even maintain existing sanctions, as well lacking broader efforts to tackle the clerical regime’s regional threat network, such an approach is indeed possible to prejudge: It will end in failure.

Joe Biden Must Respond to Attacks By Iran’s Iraqi Proxies

In addition to holding the Iranian regime to account for last week’s attack—something which Secretary Blinken and UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab both promised to do to the perpetrators—a renewed effort to bring Iranian compliance for nuclear non-proliferation should undoubtedly include robust measures put in place to curb Iran’s ballistic missile development.

While the break-out time for developing a nuclear weapon once Iran reaches 20 percent uranium enrichment (which they have assured under the guise of national sovereign law to implement from February 23 unless U.S. sanctions be lifted) is only a mere three and a half months, Iran will still require the delivery capability which will truly enable the regime to be a nuclear military power.

Only three weeks ago Iran tested a new rocket with improved technology which could be used in its missile program. The new Zuljanah rocket, developed to send satellites 310 miles into orbit, is easily transferable to Iran’s military missile program run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Any renegotiation of the JCPOA by the United States must factor in the requirement to limit Iran’s ballistic missile program, and Britain will be instrumental in helping shape this policy with fellow JCPOA signatories. Curbing Iranian uranium enrichment is only one side of the nuclear coin; the other lies in restricting the ballistic missile program needed to operationalize a nuclear warhead.

Due to the consistent pressure which Iran is applying on the new administration, time is running out for President Biden to show a stronger hand needed to deal with this repeated Iranian aggression. This includes publically acknowledging the role in which Tehran has over sponsoring and controlling the Shia Iraqi militias which continually cause the biggest source of U.S. and British casualties in Iraq. With the recently announced significant uplift of NATO troops to Iraq, this is not the time for appeasing an aggressive Iranian regime.

Netanyahu: Iran Will Fail like Haman Did 2,500 Years Ago

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the story of Purim and the downfall of Haman the wicked who sought the Jewish nation’s destruction to warn Iran against threatening Israel with nuclear weapons.

Speaking on Tuesday at the state memorial ceremony for Yosef Trumpeldor and his comrades who fell in defense of Tel Hai in the north, Netanyahu declared that “on the eve of Purim, I say to those who seek of our souls, Iran and its proxies in the Middle East: 2,500 years ago another Persian tyrant tried to destroy the Jewish people and just as he failed then – you will fail today.”

Purim, celebrated this year on Thursday through Sunday, marks the saving of the Jewish people from Haman, an Achaemenid Persian Empire official who plan to annihilate all the Jews and failed, as recounted in the Book of Esther.

“We will not allow your extremist and aggressive regime to acquire nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told Iran. “We did not make the journey of generations through thousands of years back to the Land of Israel, to allow the hallucinatory regime of the ayatollahs to end the story of the resurrection of the Jewish people.”

Rejecting a renewed agreement with Iran, Netanyahu underscored that Israel “does not rely on any agreement with an extremist regime like yours. We have already seen the nature of agreements with extremist regimes like yours, in the past century and also in this century, with the North Korean government. With an agreement and without an agreement – we will do everything so that you do not arm yourself with nuclear weapons.”

Netanyahu’s cautionary remarks came just hours after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that Iran will continue its 20% enrichment of uranium, and will increase enrichment up to 60% “based on the country’s needs.”

Oman Daily has a quite unhinged article by Zahir bin Harith Al Mahrouqi against normalization with Israel by Gulf states.

It starts off by alternatively being happy at how (he says) most Gulf Arabs are still anti-Israel and upset that many Arab youth don't know how truly awful Israel is. But then he really goes off the deep end:

The conclusion is that popular normalization with the Zionist entity in the Gulf and in the Arab countries is unacceptable, and Israel cannot succeed in reaching the Arab peoples, except through twisted methods that it has mastered, such as disguising themselves with Arab names and calling Mordechai "Muhammad," for example, and selling its products to people by changing the name of the country of origin.

May God have mercy on the researcher, Abdel-Wahab Al-Messiri, who predicted how things will turn out, and said: “From now on, we will find Jews in Muslim clothes. The Career Jew. A Muslim who prays with us in the mosque, but he plays the same role as the Jewish general. Accordingly, this phenomenon must be analyzed so that many of us do not convert to Judaism without realizing it. ”

There you have it. The danger of normalization is that soon Muslims will unwittingly become Jews. Perhaps they are afraid that there is a secret phrase that, when uttered, converts people into Jews like the Shahada makes people Muslim.

Iran's International Quran News Agency liked this article so much, they reprinted it.