Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, April 05, 2016

04/05 Links Pt1: 6 Months of Terror in Israel; UN rebukes Hamas for stealing cement; Hamas threatens an ‘explosion’

From Ian:

Israel suspends cement deliveries to Gaza’s private sector

Israel this week temporarily suspended the delivery of cement to Gaza’s private sector after it discovered that Hamas was siphoning the material, which is intended to rebuild destroyed houses.
The Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) monitors the flow of cement into Gaza to ensure that Hamas has not used it to construct tunnels to attack Israel. On Friday COGAT posted on its Arabic Facebook page that it suspended the transfer of cement to Gaza because some deliveries had been diverted by Imad Elbaz, the deputy director-general for Hamas’s economics office.
“This is a blatant violation of agreements for the rehabilitation mechanism,” COGAT said in its Facebook post.
COGAT head Maj.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai temporarily halted the shipments until the matter is fully investigated, COGAT said. adding that it regretted that Hamas continues to pursue its own personal agenda at the expense of Gaza’s residents.
The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, issued an unusually sharp response on Monday, accusing Hamas of theft.
“Those who seek to gain through the deviation of materials are stealing from their own people and adding to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza,” Mladenov said.

Hamas official denies stealing cement, warns of ‘explosion’

A Hamas official on Tuesday denied Israeli charges of siphoning off cement imports to Gaza and warned of a potential “explosion” unless a cement ban is lifted.
Israel on Monday announced it had stopped private imports of cement to the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave, accusing Imad al-Baz, deputy director of the economy ministry, of diverting supplies.
But Baz denied any offense, saying the imports were in line with a UN-brokered Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism, aimed at allowing for reconstruction following a devastating 2014 war with Israel.
“We don’t interfere with the cement mechanism,” he told AFP, adding that all cement distribution sites in Gaza are monitored by Israeli cameras.
He warned that Israel’s decision would have “dire consequences” including “stopping the wheels of reconstruction, destroying the economy and increasing unemployment with adverse repercussions for tens of thousands of citizens.”

6 Months of Terror in Israel

I had mentioned that the official Palestinian news agency Wafa was silent about Abbas' interview with Israel's Channel 2 when he denounced knife attacks. He wants to appear to be against violence to Israelis, but he cannot say that to his own people, so even his own media will not report on his supposed stance against terror.

But it turns out that another part of that interview may be more embarrassing to him than his purported condemnation of knife attacks.

During the interview, there was this exchange:

Ilana Dayan: If [Bibi] invites you to a meeting tomorrow, would you come?

Abbas : I'll meet him.

Ilana Dayan: Anywhere?

Abbas: And any time.

Netanyahu called Abbas' bluff yesterday, saying that he has cleared his schedule for the week and Abbas is welcome to meet with him whenever he wants.

And while some Palestinian media reported on this invitation, the official PA news agency and newspaper have not said a word about either the interview or the invitation.

Which just goes to show that Abbas is happy to lie to Israeli and Western media. Unfortunately, Western media is not keen to call him on his lies.

Hopefully Bibi will reiterate the invitation every day this week, saying "I was disappointed that Mr. Abbas did not respond to my invitation yesterday but he is still welcome to come today." Eventually Abbas will be forced to respond in one way or another. If he meets with Netanyahu, he will lose all respect in the Arab street because he preaches no "normalization;" if he refuses then the Western media may get a small clue that he is simply a liar.

And his wishes for peace are as hollow as his promises to meet with Israeli leaders.

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The anti-Jewish Jewish "peace" tour of the West Bank

You know how there are lots of articles out there complaining that Birthright trips are not offered for free to people who want to use them to bash Israel? This 2006 article whines that "Potential candidates who are discovered to have a 'hidden agenda' are not allowed onto the trips." Others complain that Birthright was "manipulating our experience" and not offering both sides of the story. 972 Magazine, in an article pleading with parents not to allow their kids to go on Birthright, describes it as "a political project, with militant and militaristic undertones. Think about it, would you send your teenage child to summer camp, if it was run by acting military officers inside an army facility? I am guessing that most of you would be rather suspicious of the aims of such a camp – quite justifiably so."

In fact, there has been a virtual cottage industry in the past few years of former Birthrighters writing cynical pieces about how the program is a right-wing, brainwashing operation.

So if Birthright is awful for politicizing the conflict and for not being open-minded enough to handle criticism, what does the other, supposedly open-minded other side do?

Let's look at the application form for the Center for Jewish Nonviolence trip being planned for this summer to the Hebron area.

The application form itself says that it will not allow anyone to participate unless they agree with everything on this checklist:

VALUES CHECKLIST We are convening a group of individuals whose core values align with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. Participants in this delegation should agree with the following three basic principles. Please check the following 3 boxes to indicate your alignment with the core values of this project:

A belief in the end of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza

A commitment to nonviolence in all forms, including refraining from violence in speech and action, as well as the use of proactive nonviolence and noncooperation with unjust laws that violate international law.

A belief in the equality and shared humanity of Palestinians and Israelis alike

So if you believe that Israel should not give up control of the Western Wall or Rachel's Tomb, then you are not allowed to go on this trip.

If you believe that Israel has the right to defend itself against rockets and suicide bombs, then you are not allowed to go on this trip.

If you believe that people who want peace and security are morally superior to people who (according to recent polls) generally support stabbing Jews, then you are not allowed to go on this trip.

Very open-minded, right?

Now, how about the Jews who run this trip? What do they think about like-minded religious Jews going on the trip?

They remain open-minded - in one direction:

Cultural Adaptability and Sensitivity As international activists, we are entering a place and a culture that are not our own. Mindful of the fact that we will be entering into Palestinian communities with their own culture, we believe that sensitivity and adaptability are crucial to engaging in our work respectfully and responsibly. This may range from dressing modestly (shoulders, knees covered, even in the heat) to refraining from intense public displays of affection. Moreover, it is vitally important to the success of our work that we be understood to be a solidarity rather than a settler presence. Many external markers of Jewish observance -- kippot, tzitzit, jewish stars, etc -- are viewed as symbols of settler presence. We ask all participants to refrain from publicly displaying external signs of Jewish observance while we are in the Occupied Territories.

Sorry! Your Jewish star necklace and yarmulke are symbols not of Judaism but of "settler presence." Never mind that tens of thousands of Palestinians work in Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria for people wearing yarmulkas, or that they go to Jewish medical clinics where people wear such terrible symbols. Never mind that they many attend a "settler university" in Ariel, and even sleep in its dormitory.

No, the quasi-Jews of the Center for Jewish Nonviolence says that these Arabs can never live together with proud Jews because they are, deep down, raging antisemites!

All of a sudden, the desire to be open and inclusive stops where people who are actually proud of being publicly Jewish are not welcome on this trip! And not only are these so-called liberals disparaging of proud members of their own religion - they are insulting the Palestinians they are pretending to support by saying that they are too immature to be able to deal with very presence of Jewish religious symbols!

The late Rabbi Menachem Froman, while I hardly agreed with his political views, managed to meet with Yasir Arafat and Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin in his efforts to use spirituality to help bring peace to the region. Somehow his brand of being a proud Jew who openly believed that Jews have the absolute right to live anywhere in Eretz Yisrael (albeit some of it under Arab control) still managed to visit Israel's enemies without shaving his beard or removing his yarmulka.

But Froman would not be welcome on the Center for Jewish Nonviolence trip, even though he was Jewish and even though he believed in every one of the three principles they list. Because the dhimmi Jews who run the trip think that peace comes from having no self-respect and no pride.

In fact, the truth is the opposite.

Look at this from another angle: Would these people who espouse full equality among all humans insist that Palestinians who want to speak in the West to them about peace remove their keffiyehs - because it might offend people with relatives in Israel who were terror victims? Would they tell them to make sure they don't say "Allahu Akbar" because that is what terrorists say before killing people?

No, to these hypocrites who claim that they solemnly support the "equality and shared humanity of Palestinians and Israelis alike" will never, ever make the same demands of Muslims that they do of Jews.

If any truly open-minded Jews manage to get past these roadblocks on attending this trip, I am sure that they would find that the trip itself has nothing bad to say about Arab violence, except in a perfunctory "of course we are against terror but we can understand it" way. But it will have a lot to say about the "fanatic" Jews who dare to wear kippot and tzitzit.

This group is comprised of members of "the entire spectrum of the anti-occupation left" including Jewish Voice for Peace, J Street, Open Hillel, If Not Now, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, T’ruah, Hashomer Hatzair and others. "We expect participants to come with various understandings of the causes of and solutions to the occupation. This diversity is welcome."

They also offer special scholarships to Jews of Mizrahi origin because, well, they mostly attract "white" Jews and really want to appear to be more diverse than they are.

But they really don't support diversity. Their own application form proves it.

(h/t Messy)

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From the Evening Standard:

An anti-Semitic protest attended by just 12 far-right supporters in north London has been branded “pathetic” and “sad” by leading Jewish groups.

A handful of people turned up for Saturday’s protest at the war memorial in Golders Green, an area with a large Jewish population, and held up a banner with the slogan “This is London not Tel Aviv”.

Another banner labelled the Shomrim, a north London Jewish neighbourhood watch group, “police impersonators”.

To occasional boos and jeers speaker Jeremy Bedford-Turner made a long, rambling speech telling people “the future is white”.

Footage was later uploaded to YouTube, with the description claiming it had been held “deep inside The Jewish Republic of North London”. The video culminated in Mr Bedford-Turner waving a pork pie in the air before taking a bite.

Their protest came less than a year after a previous anti-Shomrim march planned for the area was moved to central London after a coalition of campaigners called for it be relocated.

Mark Gardner from the Community Safety Trust, who helped get that event moved, said: “The demonstration was quite pathetic.

“But it’s still disturbing that they wanted to come to Golders Green and quite sickening to think of these people defiling a war memorial by their presence.”

Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, branded the demonstrators “a handful of sad people”.

He said: “I saw on the organisers’ video one of them ranting away for 25 minutes while one of his mates was trying to get him to shut up.

“The ranting man ate a pork pie which he seemed to think would cause Jews offence. Well, I’ve got news for him. We have no problem at all with anyone eating pork, it’s just that we don’t.”

You can see the racists' video of the event here. It is mostly a long, boring and rambling speech. "Pathetic" is a pretty good summary.

(h/t Bob Knot)

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According to reports in Palestinian media, the Tunisia Human Rights League has given its most prestigious prize, the "Peace Prize," to murderer Marwan Barghouti.

Barghouti is serving five life terms for his organizing terror attacks as leader of Fatah's Tanzim, including one attack at a seafood restaurant in Tel Aviv in 2002.

The so-called Human Rights League gave the award to his wife Fadwa, according to numerous Palestinian reports.

The ceremony was attended by major Palestinian figures including Issa Qaraqe, Minister of Prisoners' Affairs. Arab ambassadors also attended, according to the Palestinian media.

Tunisia Human Rights League president Fadhel Moussa spoke about how there can be no peace in the world without peace in Palestine.

None of the coverage I've read shows that anyone said a word about what Marwan Barghouti ever did to create or promote peace. In fact, based on news coverage of the event, no one seems to have spoken about his life at all; the award appears to have been given to him as a means to express support for Palestinian opponents of Israel where Barghouti is merely a symbol of resistance.

However, it appears that this story is made up. The ceremony was not to award Barghouti a prize.

What really happened was that the National Union of Tunisian Journalists said that they would officially nominate Barghouti to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The call came in a press conference organized by the union in partnership with the Palestinian embassy in Tunisia on the occasion of the celebration of Land Day and the Prisoners Day.

Apparently the president of the Human Rights League spoke at the press conference but that was its only involvement.

Anyone can nominate anyone for a Nobel prize; it is meaningless. The idea that a journalists union can affect who wins the Nobel is laughable.

But it shows very well how Tunisian civil society thinks about the word "peace."

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Israeli trolls Arab reporter. She then calls Jews "filth" and "thieves" (video)

This video of a Jew making fun of an Arab reporter while she covers the weekly Nabi Saleh protests is going viral on Arab media.

The reporter's name is Nebal Farsakh.

As he makes fun of her, she tells the viewers that Jewish settlers are "filth," and that the filth of Jewish settlers inevitably will be forced to leave Palestine, and the Arabs will see the light of freedom, and no matter how much the Jews try to hide the facts from the world, the world must know that the conflict is between the owners of the land and the thieves.

Farsakh is being celebrated for "teaching the Israeli a lesson." The real lesson is that she is not very professional - there are trollers who jump in front of cameras all over the world.

By the way, Farsakh is the same reporter that was hit by a rubber bullet while covering some stone throwing last year.

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04/04 Links Pt2: Eugene Kontorovich challenges EU envoy to debate; French court upholds BDS is racist ruling

From Ian:

Legal expert challenges EU envoy to debate on Judea and Samaria

The EU Ambassador to Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, participated last week in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper's anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) conference where he reiterated the EU's stance that Israeli “settlements” are “illegal under international law” and are “a hindrance to the peace process.”
Faaborg-Andersen additionally termed the 1949 armistice line an "internationally recognized border” even though the 1949 line is neither internationally recognized, nor is it a border.
Legal Grounds, a grassroots initiative established to inform about and promote Israel’s legal land rights, called on the Ambassador to publicly debate Professor Eugene Kontorovich, a renowned expert on international law at Northwestern University and senior legal think tank fellow in Israel.
Legal Grounds claim the EU's stance contravenes the officially recognized rightful presence of the State of Israel in Judea and Samaria according to international law: “These rights were recognized unequivocally by the League of Nations, and reaffirmed in Chapter 80 of the UN Charter. Moreover, the EU stance runs contrary to its previous commitment implicit in its having witnessed and signed Oslo II, an agreement based on stipulations by UN resolutions 242 and 338 that Israel is entitled to ‘secure and recognized’ borders.”
Legal Grounds believe that Faaborg-Andersen should be held accountable for his inaccurate statement regarding legal facts. (h/t Yenta Press)

NGO Monitor: An Important First Step: British Gov't Ends Funding for War on Want

The end of UK government funding for a radical anti-Israel group and accompanying disclosures of antisemitism at its events highlight the urgent need for due diligence, transparency and accountability in all NGO funding frameworks, stated NGO Monitor. According to media reports, War on Want, which is leader of boycott campaigns against Israel and companies that do business with the Jewish state, is no longer being funded by the British government.
“This is an important, albeit belated, step by the British government,” said Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. “Other institutional donors, in particular the European Union, should follow suit and immediately end their funding for this anti-human right organization.”
NGO Monitor research shows that the British government, via the Department of International Development, had provided War on Want with almost £500,000 in 2012-2015. The EU provided an additional £211,000.
For more than a decade, NGO Monitor has been tracking the crude anti-Israel campaigns of War on Want, in direct violation of requirements for a UK-registered charity. Documentation containing such information was submitted to the DFID and presented to Members of Parliament.

Edgar Davidson: Story that Government has stopped funding War on Want is a lie*

I am sorry to have to break this news to everybody celebrating the Telegraph story that the Government has stopped funding the antisemitic 'charity' War on Jews Want as a result of its anti-Israel incitement. The above is a screenshot from War on Want's website today, which gives you a pretty good indication of how un-bothered they are by the Telegraph story (War on Want essentially does nothing other than campaign against Israel so, as far as they are concerned, the Telegraph is simply advertising what they do best). The Press release from War on Want that is referred to in the highlighted section is reproduced below. They claim they have not been criticised by the Government and that they have not sought Government support for years.
For once War on Want is more or less telling the truth (it's incredible how many Jews continue to delude themselves that David Cameron's government would ever actually take real action against Israel haters). War on Want no longer asks for direct funding from the British government** for the simple reason that it gets it indirectly from the EU and Comic Relief (which of course is run by the government funded BBC). As I pointed out only last month, Comic Relief recently awarded War on Want its largest grant ever £590,719 (in 2013 it got £139,407 from Comic Relief and in 2014 it only got £27,790). But it is the EU that continues to be their main financier** - which, of course, is also partly funded by British taxpayers.
As my many previous reports on War on Want confirm, Cameron's government and the Charities Commission know all about War on Want's activities and refused to do anything about it - publicly at least. Maybe behind the scenes they were sufficiently embarrassed to suggest discreetly to War on Want that they should stop applying for direct Government funding. Either way, Gilligan's Telegraph report will make no difference at all except almost certainly lead to increased funding from Comic Relief and the EU and some additional Israel haters who have now been alerted to what they do.

Clinton Confidante's Son: Palestinians Recover Their 'Dignity' In Violence Against Israelis

Work accident! Hamas guy accidentally shoots himself

From Ma'an:

Hamas' military wing, the al-Qassam Brigades, said Monday that one of its members had died in an accident during a "Jihadi mission" in the northern Gaza Strip.

The brigades said in a statement that 24-year-old Musab Muhammad al-Sheikh, from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, was accidentally shot dead by a bullet from his own gun.

Further details on the circumstances of his death and the nature of the "mission" were not provided.

Al-Sheikh's funeral was scheduled for Monday at 12 p.m. in Jabaliya refugee camp.

Members of the al-Qassam Brigades are regularly killed during training exercises or in Gaza's notoriously dangerous tunnel networks in the north and south of the blockaded coastal enclave.

Hamas still refers to him as a "martyr."

Here is Mr. al-Sheikh posing for the photo that only is released when he dies:

And here he is in a pose I like a bit better:

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Latest NYT anti-Israel op-ed proves yet again its bias

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is famous for saying "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."

This goes doubly so for New York Times op-eds.

Today's case in point is an op-ed written by Omar Zahzah, "a Ph.D. student in comparative literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is on Twitter." (It is part of an online debate about whether anti-Zionism is antisemitism, which really is not the question.)

The NYT doesn't bother to mention that Zahzah is also a former president of the Students for Justice in Palestine UCLA. His activism on behalf of an organization that is dedicated to destroying the Jewish state may be more relevant.

Now, what does this graduate student have to say that is so critical for NYT readers to know?

It is a collection of straw men, half-truths and lies.

When the University of California Regents recently passed a statement condemning “anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism,” it avoided a broader proposal to equate anti-Zionism with bigotry. But this and similar efforts around the country to condemn anti-Zionism are part of a well documented, politically motivated national campaign to shut down speech critical of Israeli policies and deny the experiences of more than 750,000 Palestinians who were made refugees by ethnic cleansing at the creation of Israel.

His links to "prove" a "well documented, politically motivated national campaign" to shut down free speech come from ridiculusly biased sources. Of course no one is trying to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel - they are against the absurd, one-sided demonization and de-legitimization of Israel that applies rules to the Jewish state that to no other country on Earth has to live up to.

The New York Times allows the use of the phrase "ethnic cleansing" to describe the flight of Arabs from a war zone, the vast majority of whom were not forced out of their homes.

My relatives were among the Palestinians displaced. They did not deserve to be expelled from their homes, nor do any of the Palestinians who are still being uprooted because of Israeli government policies.

Without knowing where his relatives were from, we cannot know if they were "expelled." Chances are pretty slight. And to say that people who build illegal houses or raise terrorists do not deserve to have their homes taken away from them is hardly a true statement.

Anti-Zionism is a principled anti-racist position.

Actually, it is always a bigoted position meant to deny the Jewish people, alone among all peoples, the right to self-determination. (And when called on it, they deny that the Jewish people exist - which is antisemitism, too.)

The notion that there should be freedom and self-determination for Palestinians leads me to call on Israel to respect the United Nations mandated right of return for forcibly displaced refugees and their families.

Here he links to UN resolution 194 which is not law, nor is it a "mandate," nor is it a "right" - even according to its own language.

It is my conviction of equality that compels me to speak out against Israeli apartheid, with over 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel and render them second-class citizens.

Clearly Zahzah has no "conviction of equality" because he says that the Palestinian Arabs, who have only been recognized as a people in the past fifty years (and even that is debatable), have the right to self-determination - but the Jewish people do not.

Who is the racist?

Worse, the NYT allows the use of the false term "apartheid" as if it is fact. And the "50 discriminatory laws" is another false canard.

By allowing these statements to be included in an op-ed, the New York Times is complicit in spreading lies. In a way it is more insidious, because the incidental mention of these false anti-Israel talking points like "ethnic cleansing," "apartheid" and "right of return" gives the casual reader the impression that these statements must be true since the NYT allowed them to be published.

Fact checking should be at least as important in op-eds as in news articles. And the NYT has failed yet again.

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04/04 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: I'll meet Abbas any time; Sen. Leahy is Siding with the Terrorists

From Ian:

Netanyahu: 'I'll clear my schedule this week to meet Abbas'

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again invited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to Jerusalem for talks, four days after Abbas said in a Channel 2 interview that he was waiting for such an invitation.
“A few days ago on Israeli television, I heard President Abbas say that if I'd invited him to meet, he'd come,” Netanyahu said before a meeting with Czech Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek. “So, as I said this morning to an American Congressional delegation, I'm inviting him again. I'm clearing my schedule this week. Any day he can come, I'll be here.”
Netanyahu said that he and Abbas have “a lot of things to discuss, but the first time is ending the Palestinian campaign of incitement to murder Israelis.” Netanyahu said his door “is always open to those who want to pursue peace with Israel.”
During Thursday’s Channel 2 interview, Abbas said that he had offered to meet Netanyahu. “I will meet with him, at any time. And I suggested, by the way, for him to meet,” he said in English. Asked what became of that overture, Abbas said: “No, no - it’s a secret. He can tell you about it.”

Rivlin calls for talks with Palestinians, says he would meet Abbas

President Reuven Rivlin spoke on Monday of the need for direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and said he was willing to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to further this goal.
"Without mutual trust between the sides there won't be negotiations and there won't be a solution," Rivlin said during a statement in the presence of visiting Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek
The president said that he listened to Abbas' recent address, calling the Palestinian leader's words a "little more promising."

Abbas Rejects Peace and Palestinian Statehood, U.S. Media Rejects Coverage

This is the third known occasion in which Abbas has rejected a potential opportunity to gain a new Palestinian Arab state. (Jordan, with a majority Palestinian Arab population, at least until the current Syria refugee influx, occupies a majority of the land originally designated for the post-World War I Palestine Mandate.) The Palestinian leader—currently in the tenth year of a single, elected four-year term—dismissed U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s proposal to restart negotiations for peace with Israel and a Palestinian state in 2014 and an Israeli offer in 2008 after the Annapolis conference, which he acknowledged was refused “out of hand” (“Abbas admits for the first time that he turned down peace offer in 2008,” The Tower, Nov. 17, 2015). Abbas’ predecessor, Yasser Arafat, also rejected statehood and peace with Israel in 2000 at Camp David and 2001 at Taba.
Major U.S. news outlets failed to report Abbas’ rejection of Biden’s offer. According to a Lexis-Nexis search, not a single article appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times or USA Today, among others, on the latest Palestinian rejection of statehood and peace.
This is not to say that there wasn’t any coverage of Israel in the days following Biden’s visit. In a March 14 editorial entitled “Mr. Netanyahu’s Lost Opportunities,” The New York Times blamed the Israeli prime minister for the lack of a “two-state solution” while excusing Abbas as “a weak and aging leader.” The “newspaper of record” failed to specifically note any of Abbas’ refusals of statehood and peace.

Iranian ballistic missile with "Israel must be erased from the face of the earth" in Hebrew and Farsi

There have been some very serious developments in Obama administration abandoning previously stated red lines in the Iran deal.

Eli Lake at Bloomberg View wrote up a nice summary, and his conclusion is that the deal itself was never finalized and Iran has been changing it in its favor ever since, while the White House has acquiesed:

Like most of Washington, I was under the impression that the nuclear negotiations with Iran ended in July. There was the press conference in Vienna, the U.N. resolution that lifted the sanctions on Iran and the fight in Congress that followed. That turns out to have been wrong.

I should have been more suspicious when no one actually had to sign anything at the end of the negotiations or when the "deal" was not submitted to the Senate as a treaty for ratification. And while it's true that the Iranians have disposed of nuclear material, modified sites and allowed more monitoring, they also keep haggling over the terms.

Now, according to an Associated Press report, the Obama administration is considering a rule change to allow some Iranian businesses to use off shore financial institutions to access U.S. dollars in currency trades. When the White House sold it to Congress, senior Treasury officials promised the nuclear agreement would not allow such dollar transactions, since Iran's financial system has been repeatedly designated as a concern for money laundering. It was not part of the "deal" that was agreed in July, which only lifted nuclear related sanctions on Iran, but kept in place other sanctions to punish the country's support for terrorism, human rights abuses and its ballistic missile program.

But the US has caved on the dollar transactions (with a fig-leaf of doing it through third countries.)

And that's not the only thing that the US has allowed Iran to change.

Lake mentions two others.

Over the summer, Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress that the U.N. resolution that ended international sanctions on Iran's nuclear program would nonetheless retain language that prohibited Iran from testing ballistic missiles. And yet a March 28 letter from the U.S. and the European Union to the U.N. Secretary General this week conspicuously declined to call Iran's recent ballistic missile tests a "violation" of that resolution.

This caught the attention of Rep. Mike Pompeo and two of his fellow Republican House members, Pete Roskam and Lee Zeldin. In a letter to Kerry sent Thursday, they write, "The seeming American refusal to name these Iranian tests as violations is in direct conflict with the administration’s earlier commitments."

The White House sees it differently. This week Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser for strategic communications told reporters that Iran's missile tests were not part of July's nuclear agreement, which is strange because most experts consider missiles that can deliver a nuclear weapon to be part of a country's nuclear program.

Again, the Iranians have been firm on this point. There is barely a day that goes by when the country's leaders don't affirm that they have a sovereign right to test as many missiles as they choose. And in case the message wasn't clear, Iranian television made sure to broadcast images of those missiles emblazoned with Hebrew words that said "Israel must be wiped off the earth."

And that wasn't even the first:

This pattern began over the summer when Obama himself assured Congress and the public that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would have the ability to inspect any suspicious site that it wanted. The Iranians countered that their military facilities were off limits.

It turns out they were right. When the IAEA devised a plan to inspect Iran's Parchin facility, the Iranians refused international inspectors access and allowed only a ceremonial visit from the agency's director. The Iranians were allowed to collect their own site samples.

And there is another case where the US caved - in the scope of the IAEA's inspections regime. Iran has long insisted that it does not have to provide detailed information to the IAEA, and since the deal was finalized (but not signed,) the IAEA's subsequent report simply did not go into the details of its earlier ones.

Since no one has the stomach to reinstate sanctions as EU corporations flock to re-invest in Iran, it shows what critics of the deal have said all along: Iran is in the driver's seat and the US is meekly allowing it to dictate the terms of the deal. And there is no indication that this pattern will be reversed with the current administration.

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Riyadh Book Fair features lots of antisemitic books - and US backing

From Arab News, March 10:

Under the patronage of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman, Minister of Culture and Information Adel Al-Toraifi inaugurated Riyadh International Book Fair 2016 on Wednesday.

A large audience attended the opening ceremony at the Riyadh Center for Exhibition and Conference, including top Ministry of Culture and Information officials, diplomats and representatives of local and international publishing houses along with the general public.

Around 500 local and international publishers and countries are participating in the fair, displaying a wide variety of books on science, technology, history, literature, politics, religion, languages, geography, medicine, engineering and education.

The United States is one of the major participating countries. “First, I would like to congratulate Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman and Ministry of Culture and Information for professionally organizing this large event. We are very happy to participate in this major Saudi culture event because of its importance to our bilateral cultural relations,” US Cultural Attaché David Edginton told Arab News.

“The fair is a good opportunity for us and all participants and visitors to exchange ideas and information freely,” Edginton said.

The ministry has set strict rules to protect intellectual property at the fair. Other rules include warnings against displaying or selling any books or cultural materials not approved by the ministry.

Wonderful! A book fair that the US supports and that teaches Arab readers about other cultures, politics and technology!

And...Jew-hatred!

Here is booth F66, Dar el-Kitab el-Arabi, with certain books highlighted:

Clockwise from top left:

Theodor Herzl - Satan of Zionism and Devil of the Modern Time
Pawns in the Game..The Practical Implementaion of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, William Guy Carr (translated by Magdy Kamel)
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: The Masonic Plots to Dominate the World - (Part 10 in the Secret World Government Series), Mansour Abdel Hakim
The Great Secrets of Freemasonry and the Most Important Masons Past and Present - (Part 4 in the Secret World Government Series), Mansour Abdel Hakim (focuses on Jews)
The Rockefeller Family, Mansour Abdel Hakim (How they control the world and serve Israel)
The Rothschilds: Merchants of War and Revolutions
Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler, Farid al-Falluji

Lots of other book covers show Stars of David and masonic symbols, not to mention radical leftist icons. And other books not listed here include Jewish conspiracies.

The US attache David Edginton tweeted at least two photos from the fair, one of him at the opening ceremony and one showing Joey (presumably his son) selling books. US Deputy chief of mission Timothy Lenderking was also at the fair.

Why didn't the US look for obvious antisemitic booksellers before praising this book fair? It isn't as if this is the first time this kind of thing happened. But instead of making a stand, the US diplomats just turned the other way and believed the Saudi assurances that nothing offensive would be sold.

Well, nothing offensive to the Saudi regime, at least.

It is way past time for the US to act against explicit antisemitism in the Arab world as was seen by hundreds of thousands of attendees at this fair. As it stands, it appears that the US condones it.

I contacted David Edginton and asked him about this twice on Sunday, but have yet to receive a reply.

(h/t Shawarma News)

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Another major Palestinian official with Jordanian citizenship

Here is a minor, but telling, detail from yesterday's spectacular Panama Papers expose that concerns the PA's former deputy prime minister and minister of national economy Mohammad Mustafa, who was described by Foreign Policy as "the most important man in the Palestinian economy."

While the things revealed about Mustafa, mostly his relationship with the (British Virgin Islands-based) Arab Palestinian Investment (Holding) Company Ltd., APIC and the Palestine Investment Fund, do not point to any obviously illegal activities, his passport picture is interesting:

Mustafa uses a Jordanian passport, even though he was a deputy prime minister of "Palestine" at the time the passport was valid.

While Jordan has stripped citizenship from nearly all West Bank Palestinians, some well-connected officials managed to hang on to theirs.

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Arabs freak over UN-censored Israeli exhibit

i24News reports:

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, expressed his outrage Sunday over the intergovernmental organization's decision to disqualified major sections of a special exhibition about Israel which presented information about topics such as Zionism, Jerusalem and Arab Israelis.

The exhibition was created together with the pro-Israel NGO StandWithUs and was scheduled to be opened at the UN on Monday.

Danon said that he was disappointment about the censorship of the exhibition and demanded that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon reverse the move.

"By disqualifying an exhibition about Zionism the UN is undermining the very existence of the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people,” said Danon. "We will not allow the UN to censor the fact that Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital."

"According to this scandalous decision, Zionism is not worthy of the UN so we are taking appropriate measures. We will make sure that these banned exhibits will be viewed by millions around the world," Danon added.

The envoy demanded that the UN reverse "this outrageous decision and apologize to the Jewish people."

"Zionism and Jerusalem are the foundation-stones and the moral basis upon which the State of Israel was founded," Danon concluded.

Even though the UN banned the exhibit, Arabs are upset that it could even exist.

In a hilariously unhinged article about this, Alwset News writes that the idea that Jews are indigenous to Israel is their "latest fraud."

The author was upset over all of the censored posters, but the first one especially rankled:

The newspaper writes:

There are no limits to Israeli Zionist propaganda and fraud in its ongoing quest to justify the Nakba and robbery of Palestine and the dispossession and uprooting events all as nothing more than the process of the return of "the indigenous people" to their historic homeland. A popular way of thinking in literature and research politics and sociology in the twentieth century is to restore the right of indigenous peoples who suffered from Western colonialism.... The use of this expression in the official propaganda of the Zionist marks a major shift in its advertising and media discourse.

The article never gets around to saying why the fact that Jews are indigenous to the region is not true.

The article critiques the other censored posters, shown below, again without showing why they might be inaccurate. It was just wild charges of lying and propaganda.

Here are all of the posters that the UN will not allow to be shown in their halls:

If the publicity for this example of UN censorship is higher than publicity for other UN exhibits then Danny Danon might end up making these posters far more famous than they would have been otherwise.

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"Israelis are building marijuana farms for the US on Palestinian lands"

The always amusing Iranian FARS news agency claims that there is a joint US-Israeli initiative to grow marijuana in the territories.

The germ of truth to the report comes from this story from last July:

There’s yet another use for marijuana: It may help to heal broken bones, according to a new study.

Researchers found that cannabidiol – an element of marijuana that does not get people high – improved the healing process in rats with broken leg bones after eight weeks, according to a study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research by Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University.

Yankel Gabet of Tel Aviv’s Bone Research Laboratory who led the study, said it found that the element “makes bones stronger during healing,” which could prevent future fractures. This process occurs as cannabidiol, or CBD, enhances the maturation of collagen, the protein in connective tissue that “holds the body together.”

“After being treated with CBD, the healed bone will be harder to break in the future,” Gabet said in a news release.

Iranian media took this story to say that the US is now paying Israel to build pot farms in the West Bank in order to create these lucrative bone-healing drugs and thereby stealing land from Palestinians.

You have to admit, these guys have imaginations.

Here was the graphic illustrating the story:

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