Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, July 12, 2021

Palestinian prime minister Shtayyeh is afraid of a bunch of religious Jewish women

Palestinian prime minister Muhammad Shtayyeh opened up his weekly cabinet session with his usual roundup of important items.

For example, after Israel announced the discovery of a giant Second Temple-era dining hall and possibly city hall, he called on UNESCO to review the issue, knowing that according to UNESCO, all the archaeological digs in Jerusalem are illegal.

But one of his statements was even more interesting.

Before he tackled the topic of Covid-19, Shtayyeh "warned of the dangerous repercussions of repeatedly allowing the so-called 'Women for the Temple' to hold Talmudic rituals in the courtyards of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque."

This is a more specific concern than the usual condemnations of "settlers" - meaning Jews - visiting the Temple Mount.

The Women for the Mikdash is a group of women who study the laws of the Temple as preparation for its rebuilding. They study how to properly bake the showbreads, how to create the dye for the various Temple curtains and coverings, and other topics.

Like other Jews, they visit the Temple Mount regularly.

Somehow, this group of women preparing for the messianic age - who do not give a hint of violence - is frightening Palestinian leaders.

It isn't Israelis they are afraid of. It is religious Jews. Because they know that people hold on to what they believe in, and that the Jews who have a sacred connection to the past are the ones who will be the most tenacious in keeping Jewish holy sites in Jewish hands.

And very often, women are more spiritual than men.

At the Blog of the European Journal of International Law there was an online symposium on whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid as claimed by Human Rights Watch. Some of the articles are technical, suggesting that HRW conflated international law with human rights law which have two different intentions and definitions, or that apartheid itself may not be a crime against humanity under customary international law.

Eugene Kontorovich offers a number of reasons why the HRW report is fatally flawed and agenda driven, and HRW's response ignores most of his points, instead arguing that it never said that Israel was an "apartheid state" but rather a state that practices apartheid as policy - as if that distinction refutes his solid criticisms.

I looked again at HRW's April report making the claim of apartheid, and saw another reason to prove that the report is based on fitting the evidence to the crime rather than actually taking an honest evaluation of Israeli actions. This one example is enough to prove that the report is 217 pages of propaganda rather than a sober analysis.

To sustain Jewish Israeli control, Israeli authorities have adopted policies aimed at mitigating what they have openly described as a demographic “threat” that Palestinians pose. Those policies include limiting the population and political power of Palestinians, granting the right to vote only to Palestinians who live within the borders of Israel as they existed from 1948 to June 1967, and limiting the ability of Palestinians to move to Israel from the OPT and from anywhere else to Israel or the OPT.

The highlighted section is a blatant lie.

There are thousands of Israeli Arabs who live outside the Green Line.

There are Arab citizens of Israel who have moved across the Green Line to the southern part of Beit Safafa in Jerusalem, across the Green Line.

There are Arab citizens of Israel who moved to Beit Hanina, a wealthy neighborhood across the Green Line.

About 1000 residents of the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem, across the Green Line, are Arabs.

Hundreds of Arab families live in the "Jewish settlements" of Pisgat Ze'ev and Neve Yaakov. Many if not most of them are Israeli citizens.

And there are thousands of Arabs in Jerusalem who have become Israeli citizens.

Every Arab citizen who lives across the Green Line can vote in Israeli elections, just as every Jew can.

Human Rights Watch purposefully lies and says that only Jews living across the Green Line have the right to vote in Israel, not Arabs. They use this lie as a key piece of evidence of how Israel treats Jews and Arabs differently. But the fact is that Israel gives the exact same rights to Arab citizens of Israel as to Jewish citizens of Israel, and the only distinction is citizenship, not religion or peoplehood. All one can say is that Israel - like every nation on the planet - treats citizens differently from non-citizens.

HRW is lying about a basic feature of Israel's laws and it twists laws that treat Jews and Arabs equally into one that discriminates against Arabs.

This one lie is enough to invalidate the report as a whole. If HRW deliberately misrepresents the truth here, then one cannot trust any of its research or assertions in the report altogether.

It is not an innocent mistake. HRW knows the truth.

Later on in the report, HRW admits:

Palestinians in Israel are citizens who have the right to vote in national elections, unlike Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem (except for the small minority of Palestinian Jerusalemites who have applied for and been granted Israeli citizenship).

That parenthetical remark, which refers to another several thousand Arabs across the Green Line who have Israeli citizenship, show that HRW is indeed aware that there are Israeli Arab citizens across the Green Line - showing that it knowingly lied in the passage quoted earlier. The report's authors are quite aware that Israel distinguishes between citizens and non-citizens, not between Arab and Jew, on voting rights.

Similarly, HRW writes "Jewish Israelis living in all parts of Jerusalem also vote in both municipal and national elections" implying that only Jewish Israelis have that right, immediately after obfuscating the fact there are, indeed, Arab citizens in Jerusalem who have the exact same rights. The paragraph above that quote says "A path to citizenship exists for Palestinian Jerusalemite residents, but the vast majority have chosen not to pursue it." HRW admits, but tries to hide the fact, that thousands have successfully become citizens and have equal rights.

These are not innocent mistakes - HRW's language proves that it knows the facts and is purposefully giving the impression of legal discrimination against Arabs.

The only reason HRW would do this is because the organization has no interest in the truth, but in promoting an anti-Israel agenda. The truth disproves "apartheid" which is why HRW is hiding or obscuring the truth.

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Another proof of HRW's disregard to the truth: The report refers multiple times to "pre-1967 borders" that never existed. The Green Line was the armistice line drawn in 1949 that was explicitly not defined as borders. For a report that pretends to make a legal argument, HRW plays very fast and loose with language that has legal definitions. This is again deliberate, because using accurate language would prove that Israel has a legal claim to the land across the Green Line so HRW chooses language to diminish Israel's rights.

Hamas isn't the only anti-Israel terror group that actively recruits child soldiers. Hezbollah has been doing this for years.

Hezbollah openly started recruiting children in 2014 when helping the Syrian army.

A 2016 interview with Al Monitor of a soldier recruited as a child shows that brainwashing them with religious justifications for wanting to be martyred is a large part of the training:

Al-Monitor: How old are you and how long have you been with Hezbollah?
Karbal:  I am 18. I joined Hezbollah a year and a half ago.
Al-Monitor: Why did you want to join the organization?
Karbal:  To wage jihad in Syria. It is my religious duty to fight there. It is the duty of every Muslim. It will also ensure my salvation after my death.
Al-Monitor:  Why do you want to wage jihad?
Karbal:  I have always been religious. As a child, I used to attend religious majlis [religion classes at the mosque], where they explained to us the duties of a good Muslim. I think I have been ready to die for a long time, and when the war in Syria broke out, it was clear to me it was a war of good against evil. The takfiris in Syria were attacking our holy sites, our Mouqadassat, which are our most sacred places, such as the Sayyida Zeinab pilgrimage site. We could not let that happen.
Al-Monitor: What type of training did you receive from Hezbollah?
Karbal:  We are submitted to three trainings. The first is a religious training. We are taught about jihad and about the goal of the war in Syria, which is the protection of our holy sites.

Houthis also recruit child soldiers, so every group that Iran supports also recruits children for war.

Human rights groups seem remarkably unconcerned over this.

Revisionist history now being created in real time

When you think about revisionist history, you think about things that happened decades or centuries ago that are now being revised, often for political reasons.

But revisionist history now happens during the news cycle itself.

Here is a summary of the May Gaza war as described by an Iranian news site:

The Israeli regime launched a brutal bombing campaign against the besieged Gaza Strip on May 10, following Palestinian retaliation against violent raids on worshipers at al-Aqsa Mosque and the regime’s plans to force a number of Palestinian families out of their homes at the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem al-Quds.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, 260 Palestinians were killed in the Israeli offensive, including 66 children and 40 women. At least 1,948 others were also wounded.

In response, Palestinian resistance movements, chief among them Hamas, launched Operation al-Quds Sword and fired more than 4,000 rockets and missiles into the occupied territories, killing 12 Israelis.

Apparently caught off guard by the unprecedented barrage of rockets from Gaza, Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire on May 21, which Palestinian resistance movements accepted with Egyptian mediation.

It even contradicts itself - did Hamas fire rockets to protect Jerusalem, or in response to Israel bombing Gaza? Neither of those are true yet both are side by side here.

This is revisionist history being created in real time.

07/11 Links: Jewish Activists Push Failed Leaders to Publicly Defend the Community; Israel to withhold nearly NIS 600 million from PA over terror payments

From Ian:

Phyllis Chesler: A rally against antisemitism is welcome, but will it slow America's antisemitism tsunami?

Almost 40 years ago, under a pseudonym, I began comparing the fate of American Jewry to that of European Jewry in the decade before the Holocaust. I was barely heard. Well, I was heard well enough to be cancelled by left and feminist groups and in certain publishing circles. Others, far more expert than I was, also began seeing what I saw.

And now, here we are.

True, in May, Israel absorbed more than 4,000 rocket attacks – but it had the military power to fight back and to destroy many miles of Hamas's underground cross-border terrorist tunnels.

True, Israel has also faced Israeli Arab attacks, a fifth column if you will. It managed to quell these riots and attempted lynchings. Perhaps, as Efraim Karsh suggests, just such a fifth column endangers Israel's future more than external attacks do.

True, some individual Arab attacks on Jews continue, a handful of Israeli Jews have been murdered but this is known as the "matzav," the situation, one that is being "managed," not "ended."

In America, Jews are not managing the propaganda-cognitive war against us very well.

There are literally millions of internet sites in every language on earth, operating 24/7 to demonize the Jews and the Jewish state. University curricula, classrooms, and resolutions are being issued, sounding exactly alike, and condemning Israel as an "apartheid, colonial, settler" state. The United Nations, mainstream media, and Black Lives Matter allied with Free Palestine and Antifa forces are continuously demonstrating in our streets and being given media cover. "Progressive" Jews, including feminists, LGBTQIA folk, and postcolonial academics, are also on board with this way of thinking.

Where should we begin? For years, when I wrote about this situation, I'd say that it's "a quarter to midnight." Now, I must write, that we are long past midnight.

In our collective past, antisemitic demonization has led to pogroms and to a genocide. What is different now? Will all our brilliant and incisive exposes of the disinformation, all our rallies, be enough to stop the spread of Jew hatred?

I hope so, but I fear it will not.

Jewish Activists Push Failed Leaders to Publicly Defend the Community

It’s hard to ignore the simple fact that Jewish leaders have failed to stop or even slow the accelerating epidemic of Jew-hatred in America. Like failed generals fighting the last war, they have focused on Nazis and the political right — and have mostly ignored the changed battlefield for as long as they could. They have deliberately, out of political considerations, minimized the assaults coming from “progressives,” black antisemites, and radical Islamists. They failed utterly to understand how promoting tolerance of the intolerant may backfire.

In response to this failure, grassroots activists have been organizing to expose and to challenge established Jewish organizations. On June 21, 2021, Patti Munter published a scathing exposé of her Federation in Rochester, NY — a warning that establishment Jewish “leaders” in that city are not defending or protecting the community. And now we hear from activists in Raleigh, NC how they had to ignore bullying threats from their local Jewish Community and Relations Council and other Jewish leaders in order to confront a clear and present danger to the Jewish community.

“Deadly Exchange” is a vicious campaign that blames Israeli and American Jews for police assaults on American black people. It falsely claims that American police departments that take part in counter-terrorism and leadership training in Israel are actually trained to “terrorize black and brown communities” in America. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Yet promoters of a campaign to force city officials to boycott the Israeli training had a victory in Durham, NC, when on April 16, 2018, the city council voted to ban that city’s police department from participating in the Israeli programs.

Those who led the “Deadly Exchange” campaign were affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Israel, pro-BDS organization that has partnered with antisemites like political activist Linda Sarsour and convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh. By explicitly promoting Jew-hatred — particularly in black and brown communities — their efforts encouraged non-Jewish antisemites to come out of the woodwork, including a member of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, who called attention to the “Synagogue of Satan that’s always lingering in the background” and the “inordinate [amount of] control that some Jews have over the political system in this city.”

Those behind the Durham victory were encouraged to bring the campaign to its sister city, Raleigh.

Jonathan Tobin: The Jewish Stake in the Battle Against Critical Race Theory

Jews, like other Americans, have an interest in opposing these toxic ideologies—let alone their imposition on our educational system. The Jewish community ought to be particularly alarmed not only by the spread of such curricula, but also the effort to demonize those citizens with the temerity to stand up to the intellectual thugs who are behind them.

As we have seen in recent weeks in the wake of the latest fighting between Israel and Hamas, there is a direct connection between the acceptance of intersectional and critical race theory ideas and anti-Semitism. Those in Congress, the media and in the academy who are championing notions of white privilege and seeing race as the defining element of society are the same people who claim that Israel is an “apartheid state,” and that the Palestinian war to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet is a struggle against racist oppression. The distance between those lies and Jew-hatred is short; it is not surprising that acts of intimidation and violence, first on college campuses and now on the streets, have followed.

That ought to mean that those tasked with opposing anti-Semitism ought to be at the forefront of the effort against critical race theory education. Sadly, not only is that not the case, those agencies most vocal about the issue are lining up with the racial ideologues allied to the Black Lives Matter movement, not the parents, both Jewish (such as Elana Yaron Fishbein, who organized the No Left Turn in Education group) and non-Jewish in school districts around the country. The ADL opposed Trump’s executive order against race training and has continued to help demonize those opposed to such efforts. The same is true of the JCPA, the umbrella group of Jewish community relations agencies.

If there is anything we have learned in the last year, it is that critical race theory is an all-purpose permission slip for Jew-hatred. Since the divide on this issue has become one largely characterized by partisan affiliation, the ADL, the JCPA and many other liberal Jewish groups have lined up in favor of it and, more importantly, against those who oppose it.

This is madness. It is imperative that Jews join the movement to stop the twisting of American education in such a way as to undermine the cause of liberty, as well as endanger Israel and the Jewish community. That those who are supposed to be defending the Jews feel more comfortable accepting the partisan conventional wisdom about race theory is both a scandal and a tragedy.

Marxist, Extremist Support for Palestinian Terrorism Leads to Jew-Hate Throughout West

For decades, most articles on the Middle East have portrayed Israel in a negative light, not as a democracy under constant threat. Willfully or not, they promote Jew-hate. Hamas is often described as a "Palestinian militant group," almost never as a terrorist organization.

Israel completely withdrew from Gaza in 2005. All the same, Israel is accused of imposing a "blockade" on the coastal strip -- without a mention that everything necessary for the residents of Gaza is allowed, or that what is being blockaded are deadly weapons. Also never mentioned is the extreme brutality of Hamas operatives towards their own residents of Gaza, who are all Arabs, or that the Palestinian Authority still supports and finances terrorism. The Palestinian Authority's rewards and incentives for murdering Jews are also always left out.

On June 24, The New York Times published yet another biased report: "Gaza's Deadly Night: How Israeli Airstrikes Killed 44 People". The Times stated that "on May 16, Israeli airstrikes destroyed three apartment buildings, decimating several families". It never noted that Hamas had attacked Israel, that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, or that Israel invariably warns residents in advance about buildings set to be destroyed, to provide time for the residents to leave rather than be injured or killed.

On May 18, when Israel was being subjected to some of the 4,000 missiles fired at it by Hamas, French Prime Minister Jean Castex... announced that he was "worried about the fate of the civilian populations in Gaza". He did not even touch on what Hamas and Iran are planning for Israel's population.

There has been increased interest recently from the Biden administration to restart negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr will arrive this week in Israel to try to restart the moribund peace process, and presumably he will meet with Palestinian leaders as well.

According to Ehud Yaari of Israel's Channel 12, Mahmoud Abbas has prepared a list of some 15 demands that are prerequisites for negotiations.

Demand #2 is for "restoring the old status of Al-Aqsa Mosque, which includes limiting the activity of the Israeli occupation police in Al-Aqsa and stopping settlers’ incursions."

This means banning Jewish groups from visiting the holiest Jewish spot. This is pure antisemitism as a demand as a prerequisite for "peace negotiations."

Anyone see a problem here?

Here's the entire list of demands some of which are almost as outrageous:

1- Reopening the Orient House and other Palestinian institutions in eastern Jerusalem closed since 2001.

2- Restoring the old status of Al-Aqsa Mosque, which includes limiting the activity of the Israeli occupation police in Al-Aqsa and stopping settlers’ incursions.

3- Stopping the evacuation of Palestinian homes in Occupied Jerusalem, especially the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

4- Releasing the fourth batch of pre-Oslo prisoners, which includes women, the sick and the elderly.

5- Stopping the expansion of settlements, including constructions in East Jerusalem, and evacuating all settlement outposts on Palestinian lands.

6- Stop demolishing homes in the Jordan Valley.

7- Stop incursions into Palestinian cities.

8- Returning weapons confiscated by the Israeli occupation authority from the Palestinian security forces.

9- Restoring the process of Palestinian family unification.

10- Increasing the number of work permits in the occupied territories.

11- Returning Palestinian police, officials and customs officers to the Karama Bridge, as was the case after the Oslo Accords.

12- Allowing the establishment of an international airport in the West Bank, and a free trade zone near Jericho and permission to build railways.

13- Allocating areas in Area C - about 60 percent of the West Bank - for factories, power stations and tourism projects, and enhancing activities in Areas B.

14- Amending the “Paris Agreement” so that goods destined for the West Bank are released from customs.

15- Allowing 4G cellular network in the West Bank.

Some of these demands are direct attempts to weaken Israel's security and endanger Jews. Abbas wants to increase the number of Palestinian Arabs who can work and live in Israel, and to release terrorists from prison. Before negotiations, he wants Israel to give up all of its stances on Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

Apparently, Abbas sees in the Biden administration people who would be as friendly towards him as the Obama administration was - meaning that he wants the US to pressure Israel on these demands on his behalf.

If these are the prerequisites, what would the actual negotiations cover? Presumably whether Israel would be allowed to remain in existence.

Hundreds of academics and "artists" sign yet another letter to dismantle Israel

Over 800 academics and artists have signed yet another letter demanding that Israel be destroyed and replaced with yet another Arab-majority state.

Somehow, this Arab state will be "a democratic constitutional arrangement that grants and implements on all the inhabitants of this land equal rights and duties, regardless of their racial, ethnic, and religious identities, or gender preferences."

Like all the other Arab states!

We know that they want this to be another Arab state because the letter says the state will "give priority to the long deferred right of return of Palestinian refugees expelled from their towns and villages during the creation of the State of Israel."

The letter uses the word "apartheid" 17 times.

It should not need to be said that people who are obsessed with the destruction of the world's only Jewish state, who are silent about the scores of states that declare themselves to be Christian, Muslim, Arab or Buddhist, prove themselves to be antisemites. But just to make sure, they use the Nazi-era term of "Jewish supremacy."

The organization behind this letter is French - Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International en Palestine - so it is not surprising that over 200 of the signatories are from France. As of this writing, 151 are from the US and 116 are from the UK.

While there are some Israelis on the list, only one identifies as living in Israel now - Emmanuel Farjoun, Emeritus Professor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who had called for boycotting Israel in 2002, before the BDS movement officially started.

The home page of AURDIP includes this photo, which almost certainly shows the results of a Gaza rocket that fell short in a school in 2014. This is exactly the pattern of Gaza terror rocket damage and not Israeli airstrikes. (If an Israeli rocket was shot at this school, there would be no school there.)

Which tells that these are hate groups and those who sign their letters filled with bile, not at all interested in justice or peace.

Mahmoud al-Aloul, deputy head of Fatah, threatened anyone who opposes the movement in the wake of the criticism that resulted from the killing of PA critic Nizar Banat.

In a speech given in Ramallah, Aloul said, "Do not provoke the Fatah movement, as it will not have mercy on anyone."

Al-Aloul told critics to "stop these polemics."

He added, "This movement supports the national unity of all Palestinians, and calls on everyone to protect the struggle."

The message is that any infighting takes away from the battle against Israel, and ends up strengthening the Zionist enemy.

Al-Aloul said that opposing Israel is the main challenge for Palestinians, and they could not afford any internal dissent which he called "secondary conflict."

"O others, who are taking us towards a secondary conflict, where are you going? Is this not in the interest of the occupation? We are fighting a battle against the occupation, isn't this a relief to the occupation? We tell you that we are in Fatah support unity, pluralism with other opinions, but we have the ability to distinguish [between legitimate opinions and opposition to Fatah.]

And who makes the decision of what kinds of criticism is legitimate and which kind results in beatings and imprisonment? Why, it is people like Al-Aloul!

07/10 Links: The Left Only Cares About Palestinians When It Can Blame Israel; Why journalists love reporting from Israel; The Rise of the Crypto-Islamists

From Ian:

The Left Only Cares About Palestinians When It Can Blame Israel

Israel is not beyond criticism. But this unhealthy obsession with an imagined Israel is not really about the conflict.

It's about a rather successful propaganda campaign by Palestinian leaders, their allies and multilateral institutions around the world. It's about an ideological shift on the political left in the West, in which race and other demographic categories have replaced class as the crucial axis.

And it has catastrophic consequences for Jews around the world who have become legitimate targets. They are the victims of what can only be called an anti-Zionist obsession, which demands total rejection of Israel of every Jew, lest they been seen as complicit in the "evil endeavors" of Israel.

This "Zio-centric" approach is one reason why the British Labour Party under former leader Jeremy Corbyn had become riddled with antisemitism, why we have seen this "new form" of antisemitism in Europe over the past twenty years, and why we recently saw antisemitic attacks in the streets of London, New York and Los Angeles.

But it also has terrible consequences for Palestinians, whose supporters are choosing to ignore the terrorism and tyranny that have wrecked Palestinian politics and have provided cover for a political structure in Palestine that they would never accept for themselves.

Jonathan A. Greenblatt: It's Time to Admit It: The Left Has an Antisemitism Problem

ADL made these points in recent years when leaders and pundits from the political right were spreading wild conspiracies and making unsubstantiated accusations about immigrants. The same is true now even when it is leaders on the political left who are doing the same about the Jewish state and the potential victims are Jewish people.

This is evident from ADL's data, which logged 251 antisemitic incidents from May 11—the official start of military action in response to the rocket attacks from Gaza —through the end of the month. This was an astounding increase of 115 percent over the same period in 2020. Such acts of hate included brutal assaults committed by people who had participated in pro-Palestinian protests in Los Angeles and New York, the vandalism of a local Jewish-owned eatery in San Francisco with the words "Zionist Pigz," and many, many more that I could choose from.

Vandalizing synagogues and attacking Jews to register dissatisfaction with Middle East affairs isn't activism; it's antisemitism.

Demonizing Zionism as a concept represents a kind of anti-Jewish racism. Delegitimizing the Jewish state with exaggerated claims and unhinged charges, then dismissing the connection between that level of inflammatory rhetoric and the violence perpetrated against Jewish people, is willfully ignorant at best, intentionally malign at worst. Excluding Jews from political coalitions or public activities is discrimination, plain and simple.

It has been heartening to see that some prominent progressive voices have spoken out against antisemitism or apologized for using overheated rhetoric. And there have been members of Congress who have made their problems with their colleagues' statements crystal clear. Last month, ADL and other leading Jewish organizations held an online rally against antisemitism that drew participation from the top leaders in Congress from both parties, as well as Muslim, Jewish and Christian clergy, and a number of prominent civil rights leaders. All of this was encouraging.

But we need all our allies to listen and others to engage authentically. This might not be easy. It may require some serious self-reflection on the part of some partisans in order to admit their biases and acknowledge their insensitivity. But it's imperative that leaders from all corners of society clearly, forcefully, unequivocally condemn antisemitism full stop.

And it's even more important and meaningful to do so when the hate happens to come from their own camp.

Why journalists love reporting from Israel

“Why does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict get so much more attention than any other conflict in the world?” Often, when Israelis ask this question, they are accused of “whataboutism”. However, I am constantly asked this by friends and colleagues who are genuinely puzzled.

As noted by Jonathan Freedland, this is certainly not the bloodiest conflict in the Middle East: hundreds of thousands have been murdered in Syria and Yemen recently. It is also not the only conflict that involves a democracy, though Nato involvement in Afghanistan has not received the same level of coverage.

While Former AP reporter Matti Freidman offered a plausible explanation in the Jewish component of the conflict, there are additional factors that might help us understand this media obsession.

Covering Israel is easy. As one journalist told me, people are so open and opinionated in Israel. all you need to do is pull out a microphone in the middle of the street, record five people who give five different opinions, wrap it up and send it back to your editor.

The liklihood of these opinions being unfiltered and therefore critical of the Israeli government is very high, while if you interview citizens of any other country in the region (as well as in the West Bank or Gaza), they know the lines they need to rehearse in front of journalists.

It is not easy to bring out nuances and critical voices in countries that are not open and free. In fact, unlike anywhere else in the Middle East, Israel’s press is so free, and human rights NGOs are so prolific and accessible, that you do not even need to go to Israel to cover the story.

Covering Israel is free of risks. Israel is an open society and there are no repercussions for those who criticise it. I have met many journalists in other countries in the Middle East. They have to operate in accordance with the government position or suffer severe consequences. While you take a personal risk in criticising Iran, Syria or Iraq, you take no personal or professional risk in criticising Israel.

Indeed, it is not only easier but also safer for a media outlet to send a reporter to Israel than to other conflict areas. Rather than undergo the risk and costs of sending a brave reporter to a hostile environment, you can send anyone to Israel instantly.

07/09 Links Pt2: No safe haven for Diaspora Jews but Israel; Melanie Phillips: Media malpractice in the West has caused permanent harm to Israel

From Ian:

No safe haven for Diaspora Jews but Israel

The phenomenon of antisemitism is revealed in the world as a natural response designed to remind the people of Israel why it exists in the world. Our only option and shield for defending ourselves against hatred is the implementation of our role as "light unto the nations."

Therefore, the solidarity we feel with the Jews of Belgium should not be expressed by rushing to invest our money in safeguarding their institutions – a move that would be futile – but by explaining, both to ourselves and to them, the cause of the animosity against Jews, and what we must do to fix the problem for the world and ourselves.

If we do not start moving towards carrying out our role, we will find ourselves with no place to hide. As it is written, "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees and the stones and trees will say, 'O Muslim, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." (First extract, The Victory of Muslims Over Jews, Hadiths)

Our Jewish sources say that eventually all the Jews, including the Ten Tribes we lost along the way, will return to the Land of Israel to unite. Although there seems to be no place to absorb them all, there is plenty of room. The Book of Daniel calls the Land of Israel the "land of the deer."

As the Talmud explains, "Just as the hide of the deer has the capacity to encompass its body, but shrinks when separated from its flesh, so too can the Land of Israel expand to encompass its rightful inhabitants but shrinks when we are exiled from it."

As in this allegory, in the same way that the deer can expand its skin, we can accordingly expand our hearts to be as one, a safety net for the Jewish people and for peace in the world.

Melanie Phillips: Media malpractice in the West has caused permanent harm to Israel

This media malevolence against Israel is expressed not only through sins of journalistic commission but also the omission of reports about Palestinian Authority oppression. Last month, P.A. security forces arrested and allegedly beat to death the outspoken Palestinian Arab critic Nizar Banat, which sparked widespread Palestinian protests.

But there had been a crackdown on dissidents before Banat’s death, with dozens of Palestinian Arabs rounded up by Palestinian Authority security forces following Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to call off the P.A. election because he feared he would lose to Hamas.

On the Gatestone site, the Israeli-Arab journalist Khaled abu Toameh writes that until Banat’s death the Western mainstream media almost entirely ignored this Palestinian crackdown—because, he says, the media couldn’t blame Israel for the harassment, intimidation and torture of Palestinians.

Had the Western media and NGOs paid attention to these Palestinian Authority abuses, says abu Toameh, Banat might still be alive, and activists protesting his death might not have been beaten.

The effect of the invidious role played by the mainstream media in helping foment murderous rage against Israel and the Jewish people, while sanitizing the behavior of the Palestinians, is incalculable.

Not only has this turned many people in Britain, America and elsewhere against Israel (including a growing proportion of the Jewish Diaspora), but it also fuels murderous Arab and Muslim hysteria against Israel and the West.

Martin Peretz: Schumer the Shomer

Americans’ lack of knowledge about the nuclear deal is not an accident. Years ago Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser and the man in charge of selling the Iran deal to the public, admitted that, far from wanting Americans to know the details of it, “We created an echo chamber [in which the experts and reporters] were saying things that validated what we had given them to say … I mean, I’d prefer a sober, reasoned public debate, after which members of Congress reflect and take a vote. But that’s impossible.”

A “sober, reasoned public debate” on the Iran deal might have pointed to the mitigating factors that argued against it: Iran has been the main belligerent in the Middle East for 15 years; it funds violent Iraqi militias that bring disorder to the country; it backs both Hezbollah and Hamas, using the latter to attack Israel, the one democratic state in the region; it supports the genocidal dictator Bashar Assad in Syria; it receives support from Russia in exchange for helping disrupt American interests in the Middle East; it signs energy deals with an aggrandizing China; and it extends its support to repressive regimes like Venezuela, to which it tried sending weapons by boat only last month.

These are the facts, plain and simple. Still, facts have a habit of fading when put against ideology. So most Democrats will probably support the new deal, because in a soft ideological way, Democrats are, more or less, for “international obligations” of almost any type, which of course the Republicans are against, also more than a bit thoughtlessly.

If a treaty ever came before the Senate, it would almost certainly fail to secure a majority, so Biden’s deal will likely take the form of another nonbinding “political commitment.” In that event, Sen. Schumer could, if he has the courage of his convictions—and these are his convictions—stand up to the proliferation of nukes to the one Middle Eastern power that would actually use them, and bring a few Senate Democrats with him. After all, Schumer does not stand alone but has two self-determined senatorial colleagues, Democrats Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. And who knows? Maybe there are others.

So, back to my Schumerania: The question will be, will Chuck be willing to risk the wrath of the squad and high-up Democratic donors and operatives deeply invested in the Iran deal’s success by taking a stand? After all these years of winning, will he show us what winning is for?

More Muslims visited the Temple Mount on this average Friday than ever did before 1967

Today, some 35,000 Muslims came for Friday prayers to the Al Aqsa Mosque and the surrounding courtyards of the Temple Mount.

This is pretty typical.

I think it is highly probable that when the Temple Mount was under Ottoman, British and Jordanian rule, the number of worshipers never or very rarely exceeded that number, even during major Muslim holidays.

When Israel recaptured Jerusalem in 1967, there were only 54,000 Muslims in the city - including the areas of Jerusalem that Israel expanded. In 1944, only 30,000 Muslims lived there - men, women and children.

While it is possible that on holidays there were tens of thousands who came from surrounding areas to visit, I still doubt that it reached 35,000. Accounts from newspapers in the first half of the 20th century would describe the crowds as being in the thousands, not tens or hundreds of thousands, for Muslim holidays, as in this April 1, 1934 NYT article.

There is no doubt that during holidays nowadays, when the crowds can reach well over 100,000, there are more Muslims at the Temple Mount than at any time in history.

More Muslims have more opportunities to see their third holiest site under Jewish rule than they ever did under Muslim or British rule.

07/09 Links Pt1: Israeli NGO urges UNICEF to probe Hamas, PIJ for using child soldiers; Austria joins Durban Conference boycott

From Ian:

Palestinian Conflict Won’t Change Arab-Israel Normalization

Normalization is here to stay, and Israel is no longer the enemy in many strategic circles across the wider Middle East. Predictions of the Abraham Accords’ demise were premature. Hamas and Iran, and a long list of right-wing parties, leftist nationalists, and populist leaders (like President Erdogan in Turkey and Prime Minister Imran Khan in Pakistan) find few buyers in the region for their anti-normalization pitch.

Perceptions about Israel changed between 2011 and 2020 in regional national security circles. Israel’s reputation in technology, its precision strikes in Syria, the role of its weaponry in the Nagorno-Karabakh war, and its alleged covert actions on Iran’s nuclear program have had the combined effect of forcing some policy planners in the region to see a robust Israeli role in collaborative regional security.

In interviews with two security officials in two countries neighboring Iran in January and May last year, they said that they indirectly rely on Israel to counter Iran’s influence, which they believe they cannot do alone. Officials in the region will not say this openly, but journalists have heard variations of this view from government, military, and intelligence officials in background briefings within the past five years.

But a word of caution: Israel should not stretch its luck.

While the dynamics have changed, a repeat of the Gaza conflict, renewed unrest in Jerusalem, and fresh images of Palestinian women and children scuffling with strong-looking, impressively attired Israeli soldiers will strain the luck of Israel’s many good friends in the region, empower hard-liners, and could slow new ties.

But if Israel shows its new friends that it can deftly handle the conflict with the Palestinians, then it can expect help from its new support network in the region to pressure Palestinian leaders to enact necessary reforms, focus on opportunities for young Palestinians, and shun violence. The idea that Arabs should nudge Palestinians toward moderation is another brewing trend in moderate Arab countries that has the potential to change the Arab approach toward the Palestinian issue, depending again on how Israel plays its cards.

Austria joins Durban Conference boycott

Austria is the eight country to announce it will not participate in the Durban IV conference in New York in September, marking the 20th anniversary of the World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa, which was rife with antisemitism.

“Austria supports efforts to combat racism worldwide, while rejecting the misuse of the Durban process to unfairly single out and target Israel,” the Austrian Embassy in Israel said on Friday.

“Therefore, Austria abstained on the vote to hold a high-level conference in New York to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Durban conference. There will be no participation at the political level," the embassy stated.

Dutch Foreign Minister Steph Blok told the Dutch parliament on Tuesday that "the Netherlands does not intend to participate in the Durban-IV conference.”

"This decision was taken due to the history of the Durban-process, the risk that this platform will once again be misused for anti-Semitic expressions and because of the conference’ disproportionate, one-sided focus on Israel, as exemplified in the original Durban declaration." NGOs distributed rabidly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel material at the conference in Durban, South Africa in 2001, accusing Israel of genocide and questioning whether Hitler was right. Copies of the infamous antisemitic trope Protocols of the Elders of Zion were sold.

Jewish Groups Applaud the Netherlands for Skipping Durban IV Event ‘Tarnished by Antisemitism’

Leading Jewish groups welcomed Netherland’s decision to join the UK, US, Australia, Canada, Hungary and Israel in not attending the anniversary event. The European Jewish Congress praised the Dutch government for deciding to boycott the upcoming “antisemitic” Durban conference.

“We thank the Netherlands for announcing that it, like other key democracies, won’t participate in the UN’s commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Durban conference tarnished by antisemitism,” B’nai B’rith International commented. “The UN and the fight against racism must never be used as cover for hate.”

Commenting on the Dutch pullout from the conference, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) said that “no country should attend an event tainted by a legacy of Jew-hatred.”

Kaag also pledged that the Netherlands would remain committed to combating bigotry, in the UN and beyond.

“This month, for example, the Netherlands will make a national declaration against all forms of racism and discrimination at the Human Rights Council meeting. Also at the forthcoming United Nations General Assembly, the Netherlands will focus in particular on combating racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Kaag said.

The Caroline Glick Show: Ep13 - Israel's latest (happy-ish) political fight PLUS Iran laughs at Biden

In Episode 13 of the Caroline Glick Mideast News Hour with Gadi Taub, Caroline and Gadi discussed the fall of the government’s temporary immigration act in the early morning hours between July 5 and 6. The event exposed the anti-Zionist nature of the government and the stakes in bringing it down. Caroline and Gadi then shifted gears to discuss the Biden administration’s latest package of sanctions relief for Iran and how to look at Biden’s nuclear diplomacy in the face of Iranian dictator Khamenei’s decision to elevate Ebrahim Raisi a psychopathic mass murderer to serve as Iran’s next president beginning next month.It was all happiness and light as usual as our daring duo navigated a course in the dark world of progressive and jihadist business as usual.Watch, listen, subscribe to our channels and get the word out!