Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, March 15, 2021

03/15 Links Pt2: Antisemitism is a Conspiracy Theory Against Meritocracy; The Ramallah Quakers; The Jews' Secret Fleet to Israel After the Holocaust

From Ian:

Daniel Greenfield: Antisemitism is a Conspiracy Theory Against Meritocracy

Last week, the Gross Family Center for the Study of Antisemitism and the Holocaust kindly invited me to address their audience. I spoke to them about Socialist antisemitism and the war on meritocracy, why the enemies of meritocracy are also the enemies of the Jews and why when Jews oppose meritocracy, we're enabling antisemitism.

Here's the video of the speech along with a few key points.

To understand where the new antisemitism came from, it’s important to look at how the origins of modern antisemitism redefined the Jews from the oppressed to the oppressors.

And that didn’t happen in 1948. It didn’t happen in the Six Day War.

The new antisemitism redefines Jews as the oppressors. But redefining Jews as the oppressors dates back to a time before the rebirth of the State of Israel, a time when Jews hardly had any rights, and the few rights they had were coming under attack.

"Every government having regard to good morals ought to repress the Jews," Pierre Leroux, credited with coining the term 'Socialism' wrote. "When we speak of Jews, we mean the Jewish spirit, the spirit of profit, of lucre, of gain, the spirit of commerce."

American socialism traces its ideological ancestry to Charles Fourier, a French socialist bigot who fumed that Jews were the embodiment of capitalism, “parasites, merchants, usurers”, and the "incarnation of commerce: parasitical, deceitful, traitorous and unproductive".

“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in the face of which no other god may exist,” Karl Marx ranted. “The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world.”

The emancipation of the Jews meant that they were free to pursue careers, go into business, and do their best to succeed. (h/t Chairman LMAO™)

The Ramallah Quakers

It is hardly a surprise that Sa'ed Atshan would be given tenure at Swarthmore College. What is noteworthy is how this came about. It points to the special place Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) supporters have in academia.

To start, Atshan is a well-known BDS activist, and the college itself has endorsed BDS. In many ways, Atshan is a poster child for Quaker education—he's an alum of the Quaker school in Ramallah who now teaches for the same Quaker school he attended as an undergraduate. He represents the Quaker echo chamber regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that ensures that only the Palestinian narrative will be voiced.

Atshan has also been active with Students for Justice in Palestine, whose parent organization, American Muslims for Palestine, was recently shown to be connected to the same American Muslim Brotherhood supporters who funded Hamas through the Holy Land Foundation, and which has trained its activists in "Countering Normalization of Israeli Oppression on Campus."

The Ramallah Friends School, where Atshan was educated, is one of the oldest Quaker institutions in the Middle East. The school acts as a feeder to the Quaker colleges in Pennsylvania. Another proud alum of the school is Joyce Ajlouny, the Secretary General of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Ajlouny is a native of Ramallah and formerly the head of the Quaker school.

The Ramallah school has also been exporting its pedagogy through programs like "Go Palestine," which is focused on Palestinian culture. Yet, in addition, "Go Palestine" participants receive a steady dose of anti-Israel rhetoric through films and lectures. These include"Occupation 101" and "Jerusalem: The East Side Story," films which depict Israel as a racist, savage oppressor. A panel on "Youth Activism and Engagement in Palestine" featured representatives of "the Love Under Apartheid Campaign [and] the BDS movement."

The blindspot of NYAG Letitia James

Ms. James’ tepid response to the wave of Jew hatred that proliferated throughout New York City in the summer of 2019 and has continued in various incarnations until this day, will not go unanswered.

It doesn't take much to know that the rudimentary function of the Attorney General is to launch meticulous probes in order to root out the pernicious source or sources from which criminal behavior is emanating, to find out who the suspects are and what their motive is.

While Ms. James is on the fast track to take on Asian-American discrimination with a palpable gusto, her willingness to be a pro-active prosecutor when it pertains to anti-Semitism is sputtering like a faulty engine.

Let’s remember that during the wave of heightened anti-Semitism that plagued New York City and beyond, Ms.James and her cohorts remained completely silent about the insidious surge until she was coerced to hold a press conference in the aftermath of the brutal stabbings of hassidic Jews at the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg of Monsey in December of 2019. .

In a statement released to the media at the time, James said, “There is zero tolerance for acts of hate of any kind and we will continue to monitor this horrific situation. I stand with the Jewish community tonight and every night.”

Really, Ms. James? Your actions certainly do not justify these statements.

She followed that up with a press conference after meeting with Orthodox leaders. She then claimed that she would work with local district attorneys in providing them support for their prosecutions of Anti-Demitic attackers. She also promised that she would monitor social media sites that routinely provide a platform for haters to spew forth vitriolic anti-Semitic diatribes.

Suffice it to say, Ms.James, despite her words, has done absolutely nothing to prevent the burgeoning anti-Semitism that has gripped our city and state. She still has not promulgated a viable plan to quash anti-Semitism as the slow motion roll to yet another European style deadly pogrom takes place before our very eyes.

Ms. James, we ask you and your colleagues why you maintain a double standard as it pertains to battling discrimination and prejudice? Why don’t you fight the scourge of Jew hatred with as much fervor as you do when other minority groups are the target of violence?

Mondoweiss published a word salad of intersectional nonsense that is also a petition that won't be sent to anyone.

The preamble actually says it all:

In the interest of advancing a truly intersectional and decolonial feminist vision for the U.S., Palestine and our world, the Palestinian Feminist Collective is urging others to join them in declaring Palestine is a feminist issue.

In English: "We hate Israel and we want to pretend to use feminism as a weapon against it, even though there is nothing remotely connected to feminism at issue."

The text is unintentionally hilarious:

For decades, Palestinian feminists have resisted Israel’s masculinist and militarized siege of Palestinian land and life. Since its inception, the Zionist settler colonial project has hinged on the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and land, creating generations of landless Palestinian refugees. Zionist violence continues to dominate Palestinian lives in intimate ways. Throughout the homeland, Israel demolishes Palestinian homes, subjects Palestinian prisoners of conscience to systematic sexual and physical abuse and torture, and polices Palestinian bodies, sexualities, reproductive rights, and family life. Palestinians continue to affirm life in the face of the enduring Nakba (catastrophe), which takes place through deadly closure in the Gaza Strip, military occupation in the West Bank, legal designations of second-class citizenship in the settler state, exile in refugee camps and across the shatat (global diaspora), and denial of the right to return home.

We uphold the legacies of solidarity between Palestinian, Black, Indigenous, Third World feminist, working class, and queer communities who have struggled side-by-side within larger anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-racist movements in the US and globally. This stands in contrast to liberal feminist traditions in the U.S. that continue to weaponize feminist discourses against Palestinians and other marginalized communities by failing to confront the structural forms of gendered and sexual violence inherent to settler/colonialism, imperialist wars, racial capitalism, and global white supremacy. Liberal and Zionist feminisms rely on Orientalist discourses to silence and undermine the collective aspirations of Palestinian women and their co-strugglers, contributing to intensified political repression that criminalizes free speech on Palestine and Palestinian liberation.

Did you see anything here about how Israel is discriminating against women? Neither did I, or anyone else. It is a wall of buzzwords meant to make idiots think that there is a "there" there. ''

The ironic part, of course, is that Palestinians literally have laws against its women. Lots of them.

I wrote about it at length last week.

Obviously, the "Palestinian Feminist Collective" is a sham, utterly uninterested in women's rights.

Last year, a suspiciously similarly named "Palestinian Feminist Working Group" with a suspiciously thin Internet footprint wrote a suspiciously similar manifesto also on Mondoweiss.

Hate of Israel is clearly stronger than actual feminism for these hypocrites.

03/15 Links Pt1: Jared Kushner: On Iran, the U.S. Should Continue to Play the Strong Hand It Was Dealt; Israel to push for UN adoption of IRHA definition of anti-Semitism

From Ian:

Jared Kushner: On Iran, the U.S. Should Continue to Play the Strong Hand It Was Dealt

The roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict stretch back to when Arab leaders refused to accept the creation of the State of Israel after World War II and spent 70 years vilifying it and using it to divert attention from domestic shortcomings. But today, Muslims are posting pictures of peaceful visits to the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, blowing a hole in the propaganda that the holy site is under attack.

The Abraham Accords exposed the conflict as nothing more than a real-estate dispute between Israelis and Palestinians that need not hold up Israel's relations with the broader Arab world. It will ultimately be resolved when both sides agree on an arbitrary boundary line.

While many were troubled by the Biden team's opening offer to work with Europe and rejoin the Iran deal, I saw it as a smart diplomatic move. The Biden administration called Iran's bluff. It revealed to the Europeans that the JCPOA is dead and only a new framework can bring stability for the future. When Iran asked for a reward merely for initiating negotiations, President Biden did the right thing and refused.

America holds a strong hand. Iran is feigning strength, but its economic situation is dire and it has no ability to sustain conflict or survive indefinitely under current sanctions. America should be patient and insist that any deal include real nuclear inspections and an end to Iran's funding of foreign militias.

Mohammed Khalid Alyahya: The Price of Empowering Iran

Since the Biden administration's decision to reverse the designation of Yemen's Houthi militia as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) on Feb. 12, drones and ballistic missiles have targeted Saudi Arabia 48 times. It is a fallacy to understand the region's politics as a contest between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Seen from Tehran, the central contest in the region is between the American alliance system and Iran's self-styled "resistance alliance."

Biden's misconception leads to a number of erroneous ideas: that the U.S. can play a neutral, mediating role between Riyadh and Tehran; that by distancing itself from Saudi Arabia, it creates opportunities for regional stability and understanding; and that it is the Saudi role in Yemen - and not the Iranian role - that has perpetuated the conflict in that country.

Iran has waged a forty-year war to spread its control across the region - not to compete with Saudi Arabia, but to undermine the American alliance system. Iran's network of terrorist groups in the region chant, "death to America," not "death to Saudi Arabia."

Iran's attacks on Saudi Arabian civilian infrastructure, via its proxies in Yemen and Iraq, are reactions to U.S. policy - not Saudi Arabian policy. Appeasing Iran, and punishing U.S. allies, will come at the expense of the entire region.

Abraham Accords: Getting a win-win for Israelis and Palestinians

AT THE END of 2020, as part of the omnibus spending package, Congress enacted the Nita M. Lowey Middle East Partnership for Peace Act (MEPPA) with bipartisan support. MEPPA authorized a five-year, $250 million people-to-people peace-building fund and an investment initiative to give the bandwidth and budget to answer the question, “What are we doing to ensure the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians don’t hate one another?” Often an afterthought, MEPPA gives the administration a coordinated way to think about peace-building, not as a series of programs, but as an integrated policy tool.

Congress, wanting to leverage the groundbreaking American investment as well as maximize its efficacy, baked into MEPPA a multilateral element encouraging international donors. In doing so, Congress intended to harness the added legitimacy gained from multilateral endorsement of MEPPA in the eyes of Israelis and Palestinians and ensure equitable burden-sharing.

The Biden administration can use MEPPA to gather additional commitments from both the region and European allies to address incitement, dehumanization and economic disparity between Israelis and Palestinians. In doing so, the administration can utilize MEPPA to further the Abraham Accords, institutionalize new regional dynamics while providing needed economic stimulus to the Palestinian private sector, and deal head-on with adult and youth attitudes that must change if progress will be possible.

The advantages that the Abraham Accords have created should not be quarantined to just the fight against a nuclear Iran. MEPPA offers the ideal way to capture the new regional spirit to elevate aspirations for a just, sustainable and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

MEPPA sets in motion long-term grassroots peace-building combined with joint Israeli-Palestinian economic development projects to support future diplomacy. It also enables an early opportunity for the US to repair relations with the Palestinians, cultivate a foundation of trust between Israelis and Palestinians, rebuild trust with European partners, and capitalize on the regional normalization dynamic in a way that prioritizes Israeli-Palestinian peace. MEPPA can show once again how US taxpayers can amplify and solidify their investment and impact through engaging allies, and how US leadership and innovation is still the indispensable ingredient for meaningful international cooperation.

Palestinian cabinet blames Israel for everything - but not for lack of COVID-19 vaccines

Every Monday, during the Palestinian Authority cabinet meeting chaired by prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh, he presents a summary of problems being worked on.

He is not shy about saying anti-Israel rhetoric. In today's meeting, for example, he thanked the members of Congress for writing an anti-Israel letter to Secretary of State Blinken and he condemned Kosovo for opening up an embassy in Jerusalem.

Obviously, he has to address the coronavirus crisis. The Palestinians have been promised vaccines from Russia, from Astra-Zeneca and from COVAX, but none have actually been shipped.

Yet when it comes to this topic, he never says a word against Israel.

Last week he said:

Global supply chains for vaccines are delayed due to competition from other countries and their attempt to acquire vaccines. About 75% of the vaccines are concentrated in ten rich countries, while 130 countries have not received a dose of the vaccine according to UN reports. The only available weapon in our hands today are the masks and the physical distancing, so by adhering to this, we protect ourselves and our society from the risks of infection with the new strains of the virus .

I call on friendly countries, vaccine-producing companies, and the global COVAX mechanism to fulfill their obligations and work to supply the vaccines that we were promised as donations or those that we paid for and whose supply dates were delayed so that we can provide a safe environment for the legislative elections scheduled to take place on the twenty-second of next May.

This week:

Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh said that great progress has been made in communications to obtain anti-Coronavirus vaccines, whether those that we will receive in the form of donations from the international COVAX mechanism, or those that we have paid for with the companies producing vaccines.

Shtayyeh explained at the beginning of the weekly cabinet meeting, today, Monday, in Ramallah, that the problem is not in providing funds, but in fulfilling companies' obligations, as there is piracy of the vaccine and politicization of its provision, and there is a tremendous demand and limited supply, and despite that we have activated all our diplomatic, political, medical and international channels.

He expressed his hope that these efforts will bear fruit with the arrival of the first batch of vaccines.

Even many weeks after the Palestinian leaders announced that vaccines were on their way, both that they purchased and that were donated, the vaccines never showed up. And yet even though the entire world is blaming Israel and falsely claiming that Israel must provide vaccines, there is not a word against Israel in any of Shtayyeh's addresses.

Clearly the Palestinian Authority has always intended to act like an independent state that can procure its own vaccines for its own people. And even in the face of more procurement delays, in its own internal meetings the Palestinian Authority is not calling on Israel to give or sell any surplus vaccines to them, nor is it blaming Israel for not providing vaccines for free as so many anti-Israel activists claim the Geneva Conventions mandate.

They don't want help from Israel. And when they ask for limited amounts of help, Israel has given it.

It is also notable that Israel's drive to vaccinate some 120,000 Palestinian workers is unreported in official Palestinian news agency media.

Tel Aviv University vaccinates hundreds of Palestinian and international students, @972mag silent

Earlier this month, +972 Magazine published an article about a Palestinian student at Tel Aviv University who attempted to get a COVID-19 vaccine during a university drive - after she was promised that she was eligible - but was denied the shot,

The article was slanted to show how awful Israel is for denying the shot to this woman who spent hours traveling to receive her shot. However, a close reading of the article shows that there was not an ounce of malice there - it was a snafu, a miscommunication, and TAU was not authorized to provide a shot to anyone who was not under an Israeli insurance plan, including Palestinian and international students.

Despite the Health Ministry’s insistence on refusing to vaccinate the Palestinian student, she said that Tel Aviv University went to great lengths to try and get her a vaccine. One university coordinator spoke to the medical staff on site and called the Health Ministry, she said, while senior university officials arrived at one point to try to help, to no avail. According to the student, the university staff also spoke to the administration at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, the city’s major hospital, yet nothing helped. She was later told that the university president had sent a letter to the Health Ministry on the matter.

In a comment to +972, the Health Ministry claimed it was not contacted by Tel Aviv University on the matter, and that had the university reached out, the student would have been vaccinated as “an exception.”

The headline of the article was enough, however, for countless posts in social media condemning TAU and Israel for what was just a screw-up.

Now, it seems, Tel Aviv University has solved the paperwork problem and has successfully vaccinated hundreds of students who couldn't get the vaccine a couple of weeks ago - including Palestinians:

Clearly, the evil anti-Palestinian Israeli government approved this. Clearly, no one in Israel has any objection to vaccinating Palestinian students in Israeli universities.

That idea is only in the fevered hallucinations of the anti-Israel crowd.

Of course, +972 didn't issue an update or report this story - which is still on their front page. The truth is not as important as the narrative when it comes to attacking Israel.

It is also clear from the TAU tweet that this one Palestinian woman was not singled out for not getting the vaccine last month, but that hundreds of non-Israeli students including internationals were not eligible at the time because of insurance and paperwork requirements then.

There was not an ounce of anti-Palestinian sentiment anywhere - except from the slanderers at +972.

Save the Children: Another lying, anti-Israel NGO

Last October, the UK-based Save the Children organization issued a report about Palestinian children detained by Israel.

Its press release and headline says:

It goes on to say:

81% [of children] endured physical beatings and 89% suffered verbal abuse.
52% were threatened with harm to their families.
86% were subjected to strip searches, leaving them humiliated and ashamed.
88% did not receive adequate and timely healthcare, even when explicitly requested.

These are very specific statistics, with no caveat, in the press release. A respected NGO is telling the world that 81% of detained kids get beaten by Israeli soldiers and more than half were threatened with hurting their families.

Sounds pretty bad.

But the actual report has this curious paragraph:

It is important to note that this research provides insight based on a specific sample of the population in the West Bank. Save the Children recognises that it is not a statistically significant or representative sample. As the report intentionally presents children’s experience from their own perspective, it is also important to note that incidents they mention have not been independently verified by Save the Children; however, available data from other sources is provided to support the information that children reported. The intention is that this survey will provide a springboard for further in-depth consultation with children and young people across the West Bank about the resounding impact of detention on their lives, in order to inform policy, donor funding decisions, and the support that Save the Children and others provide for Palestinian children and their communities.

In short, you know those statistics that were in the press release? They are lies. They are statistics based on a sample of "children" (many interviewed years later) who were primed by the NGO to say what the adults wanted them to say. "Did they beat you? Did they threaten you? Did they blindfold you? Did they torture you?"

Nowhere does the report even hint that the interviewers had any expertise in asking non-leading questions, or that there was even a goal of eliciting truthful and accurate answers.

These statistics were of a highly selective sample of interviewees, naturally weighted towards those who would have juicy stories to tell or vivid imaginations. It was not a random sample of detainees. Kids who were detained for a couple of hours and released without incident are far less likely to have been sought out and questioned.

By presenting the statistics as being specific and accurate, Save the Children has shown that it is more a propaganda outfit than an objective organization. The entire study was created to come to a foregone conclusion, and it succeeded. The only victim is the State of Israel, and who cares if they are treated fairly or not? They are already assumed to be evil child beaters, so there is no reason to spend any effort to find out anything otherwise.

More evidence of bias comes from the fact that many of the accusations given in the report should not have happened after June 2018, when the IDF issued a new set of standards for minors in custody, including their being informed of their rights to a lawyer in their language during questioning and treating everyone under 18 as a minor (it used to be 16.) . The dates of the incidents from the interviews are not given so it seems likely that many of the stories came from before that date - and Save the Children does not even mention these new standards once.

NGO Monitor came out with many more issues with the report.

This report has no relationship with the truth, and it shows that Save the Children lies.

(h/t Adin)

Cartoon of the Day: Progressive Seder

This is almost verbatim from this idiotic tweet.

03/14 Links: Why Europe "Will Remain Hostile to Israel"; Phyllis Chesler: Tehran on My Mind; South Africa’s Chief Justice Confronts the Apartheid Analogy

From Ian:

Rafael Bardaji on Why Europe "Will Remain Hostile to Israel"

Rafael Bardaji, executive director of the Friends of Israel Initiative and Spain's former national security advisor, spoke to participants in a February 15 Middle East Forum webinar (video) about the persistent "clash of interests ... between the European Union (EU) and the Israeli government" likely to endure for the foreseeable future.

According to Bardaji, three points of friction between the EU and Israel are prominent this year. The first is the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its former prosecutor, Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda, to "accept the Palestinians as a national state ... able to ask for investigation, prosecution and indictment of a non-state-member of the ICC," namely Israel. "The Europeans are very well attached, by heart, to the ICC despite all violations of international law regarding this decision." Bardaji said the most effective way to counter the ICC's illegal action is to approach those European powers opposed to Bensouda's decision and persuade them to defund the ICC.

The second point of friction concerns Iran. Despite Tehran's violations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the EU is eager to "keep it afloat" and press the U.S. to lift its sanctions imposed under Trump in order to resume their own trade with Tehran. The Biden administration's clear desire to reach out to Iran for a new agreement will encourage the Europeans to "offer even more concessions to Iran" to hasten a deal.

The third point of conflict is European eagerness to "pull the Palestinians back into the center stage" of the Middle East peace process, despite the fact that their longstanding belief that "without them, nothing can be done in the region" has been proven wrong. The Abraham Accords established as a result of Trump's "thinking out of the box" bore results, but the Biden administration has expressed "doubts about nurturing new countries" to join the accords, which will cause the Europeans to stiffen their own resistance.

Honest Reporting: NYT, CNN Ignore Former ‘Moderate’ Palestinian Authority PM’s Apparent Radicalization

Former Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad recently stated his belief that in order to run in prospective Palestinian legislative and presidential elections or, more generally, be a member of any Palestinian political entity, one need not accept the three guiding principles of the Quartet — a body made up of representatives from the United States, European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

The Quartet was established to facilitate peace negotiations and laid out basic criteria for the Palestinian leadership to abide by as a basis for talks: namely, to recognize the State of Israel, respect previous diplomatic agreements signed with Jerusalem and renounce violence.

Yet, the New York Times, CNN and other major news organizations that had once praised Fayyad as the personification of a new, moderate, conciliatory Palestinian political echelon have not reported on his apparent rejection of Israel’s right to exist or the need for the Palestinians to adhere to the Oslo Accords and end their support for attacks on Israelis. New York Times: Fayyad as a Model of Palestinian Moderation

Salam Fayyad is no obscure figure.

Last week, he announced that he would be submitting a list of independent candidates who will run in the May 22 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council. Fayyad served as the Palestinian Authority finance minister under Yasser Arafat from 2002 to 2005 and, following Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip in an internecine war, was sworn in as prime minister of an emergency West Bank-based Palestinian government on June 15, 2007.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas reappointed him to the position in 2009, a post he held until 2013.

He has been lauded by the media as an economic reformer who cracked down on corruption, while his views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict were deemed a welcomed breath of fresh air.

During Fayyad’s tenure, former New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Steven Erlanger quoted the PA prime minister expressing ostensible support for co-existence with the Jewish state:
It is obvious that Israelis and Palestinians need to live together, he [Fayyad] said. “There should be no question in anybody’s mind in Israel that this is what this is about, in a way that leads to us living like them, as free people, in a country of our own, right next door to them. It’s not that we have to; we want to.”

Thanks to Jordan, Jews can't pray on the Temple Mount - analysis

In the 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, Israel stated that it “respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem.” In other words, the Jordanian Islamic Trust, known as the Wakf, would be responsible for the day-to-day administration of the Al-Aksa Mosque.

Jordan has taken that to mean that it can demand things like the removal of metal detectors from the site, installed immediately after a terrorist attack in which Muslim Israelis murdered two Druze Israeli police officers.

Plus, Jordan thinks it is within its rights to demand that high-profile Israelis not visit the Temple Mount, despite the agreement stating that “there will be freedom of access to the places of religious and historical significance.”

King Abdullah also declined to allow Israel to continue to lease small pockets of farmland from Jordan, as detailed in the peace agreement, further contributing to the decline of relations.

Beyond that, he’s done nothing to counter the coldness of the peace between Israel and Jordan, and rampant anti-Israel sentiment in society. Jordan has blocked the extradition to the US of Ahlam Tamimi, one of the masterminds of the 2001 suicide bombing in a Sbarro in Jerusalem, in which 15 were killed and 122 injured; she has since become a TV star in Jordan.

A 2019 study by IMPACT-se, which analyzes the content of textbooks in the region, found "minimal recognition of Israel and the peace treaty," which it called "cause for concern." Official textbooks warn of the "Zionist Danger," and describe Israel as "a Zionist entity with no rights." One textbook expresses a "wish to see Palestine liberated from the Zionist Occupation;" another compares Zionism to Nazism and fascism.

But not letting the prince have as many armed guards as he wants at Temple Mount is the real problem in Jordan-Israel relations.

Maybe Prince Hussein can talk to Oprah about it.

"Progressive" members of Congress lie about vaccines and more in letter to Blinken

Below is a letter sent by Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and other anti-Israel members of Congress to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The disregard for the truth by members of Congress - on the record - is breathtaking.

1) These members of Congress are not advocates for the rights of the Palestinian people. They have never said a word about official discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. They have never said a word about Palestinians imprisoned and tortured to death in Syria.

They are not pro-Palestinian - they are anti-Israel.

2) The request to investigate whether Israel uses US equipment to demolish the homes of terrorists to dissuade future attacks is not a serious request. Every dollar sent to Israel is earmarked for specific purposes, and there is already an extensive audit mechanism in place, as there is for all money that goes for foreign aid. The only purpose for these repeated requests is to slander Israel and get the media to imply that Israel is misusing US funds. It is meant to cast doubt in the minds of Americans who are not aware of how transparent the process of aid to Israel is.

3) Israel is not obligated under the Fourth Geneva Convention to provide free vaccines to Palestinians. Both Geneva and the Oslo Accords (which cannot and would not contradict Geneva) make is clear that the primary responsibility for health care in PA-controlled areas is the PA itself, and they are the ones that must ask Israel for help if they want to. With rare exceptions, they haven't, and when they have, Israel has provided them with what they requested - thousands of vaccines to the West Bank which were promptly given to PLO cronies, and thousands more to Gaza from Russia.

4) As of the date of this letter, Israel had given far more than 5000 doses to Palestinians. As of Thursday, Israel had given over 50,000 doses to Palestinian workers in Israel. Also, Israel had inoculated tens of thousands of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem who are not citizens of Israel. This is blatant lie.

5) Gaza's medical crisis is not from Israel at all. Israel does not block medical supplies to Gaza at all. However, the Palestinian Authority has limited basic medical supplies and medicines to Gaza many times over the past decade, and Hamas has stolen medicines to resell them at a profit to Palestinians there. None of this was ever condemned by the signatories to this letter who pretend to be advocates of human rights for Palestinians.

6) When the members of Congress say that "settler colonialism...is illegal under international law," they aren't talking about the West Bank. They are referring to Israel itself. The theorists who came up with the idea of "settler colonialism" refer to all of Israel. I have never seen an academic paper accusing only Jews in Judea and Samaria of "settler colonialism" - they always refer to all of Israel.

Moreover, the letter writers are saying that the United States itself is illegal. The concept of "settler colonialism" was made up when it became obvious that Israel is not a colonial state since it is not attached to a major colonial power, but by Jews who want to return to their homelands. The idea that people who voluntarily move to a land and settle it are "settler colonialists" has been extended by the academics who made up the concept to include other lands where people have moved voluntarily to build a new nation - including the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries. And these same academics say that the US is guilty of settler colonialism today.

The writers of this letter are not just anti-Israel, but anti-America.

7) Whether they like it or not, any two state solution must provide security for Israel and it must not force Israel to relocate hundreds of thousands of Israelis. The Trump plan, with all its faults, is far more realistic - and therefore a far more likely path to real peace - than the demands of these writers, who want to ethnically cleanse Judea and Samaria of Jews.

8) The letter implies that any Jewish presence in "east Jerusalem" is a crime. They are saying that the holiest site in Judaism should be Judenrein. This is beyond disgusting.

It is most troubling that members of Congress are so willing to lie and slander Israel - as well as the United States itself. And they are eager to do it on the record.

Monster Ahlam Tamimi celebrates Interpol's removal of her "red" status

The architect of the Sbarro pizza shop bombing, Ahlam Tamimi, is celebrating her name being removed from Interpol's list of people wanted for arrest.

This photo seems to have been taken at a party for Tamimi's legal victory.

The photo has been circulated only in the past few days, so it seems to be a reaction to the Interpol news.

Interpol's letter itself is sickening:

This means that this murderous and proud child killer can now travel to other countries besides Jordan without fear of being arrested by local police.

Tamimi's supporters say that this was the result of one and a half years of legal pressure to Interpol.

Her lawyer, Mustafa Nasrallah, claims that the US attempt at extradition is illegal because she has already been tried and convicted in Israeli courts and this is therefore "double jeopardy." That is simply not true, the US has every right to try her for her role in the murder of two Americans killed in the Sbarro attack.

Meanwhile , Tamimi is celebrating her new freedom in a country that treats her like a celebrity while pretending to be against terror.

From the B'nai Brith Messenger, March 11, 1921:

SHOMER ISRAEL ROSENBLATTS NEW SONG

It Will Soon be Heard All Over Land—Helps War Orphans
Within a few days , Shoimr Isroel , the song dedicated to the Jewish War Orphans Fund by Cantor Josef Rosenblatt, will be known and most widely advertised piece of music in New York City jazz and sentimental love ditty not excluded . Arrangements have been made by which practically every music shop on Broadway will display this song in the window and sell it to the public without exacting any commission.. ... In every window in which the song is displayed , a statement is shown , stating the facts and aims of the Jewish War Orphans Drive . This is expected to prove a most effective salesmanship device, as well as to attract the passersby to the window.

You can hear it here: