Friday, April 08, 2016

Is stabbing an IDF soldier in Hebron terrorism? (update)

There was an uproar on Thursday at the statements of Zionist Union MK Zouheir Bahloul:

MK Zouheir Bahloul (the Zionist Camp) stated once again that the Palestinian who stabbed an IDF soldier in Hebron is not a terrorist. “The word ‘terrorist’ has become inclusive and generalizes every Palestinian as one [a terrorist],” said Bahloul during a radio interview earlier today (Thursday).

During the interview, Bahloul claimed that there is a difference between Palestinians who attack civilians and those who direct their attacks against IDF soldiers and military bases. “I agree that whoever murders an entire family is a terrorist,” he stressed. “They are terrorists and also murderers who deserve to be punished. Any person who murders another, destroys the life of an innocent person or stalks and attacks an entire family on their way home from work is a terrorist.”

Bahloul even said that his statement includes all types of citizens, even Israeli settlers in the West Bank. However, he claimed that when it comes to terror attacks against military targets, the Palestinians are not terrorists. “People who attacked families in their sleep would not considered terrorists if they had attacked a military base,” he stated.

“All those who fight for their freedom and independence are considered terrorists in the eyes of Israelis,” he claimed. “According to the [Israeli] people, every Palestinian who fights for his struggle in order to remove the injustice of the occupation is considered a terrorist. I agree that an attacker with a knife is a murderer but he is not a terrorist. My problem is that this word has become inclusive and generalizes every Palestinian as a terrorist.”

The reaction was fierce:

Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog said in response: "I reject and condemn Zuheir Ba'aloul's remarks. A terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist."

"[I]t makes no difference whether that person has gone out to kill a Jew or a Palestinian," Herzog said.

The party also issued a statement making clear that Ba'aloul's comments did not reflect its views, and demanding the government take more effective action to bring what it called "a wave of terrorism" to an end.

Lawmaker Nachman Shai denounced the remark as "sad and unnecessary."

Erel Margalit, of Zionist Union, demanded Ba'aloul retract his "severe" remarks.

Far-right politicians predictably joined in the criticism. MK Shuli Muallem-Refaeli (Habayit Hayehudi) condemned the comment by asserting that it illustrated how "unfortunately the terrorists are also represented politically" in Israel.

“MK [Zouheir] Bahloul’s comments are shameful,” [Prime Minister] Netanyahu wrote in Hebrew on Facebook. “IDF soldiers protect us with their bodies from bloodthirsty murderers. I expect all Israeli citizens, and members of Knesset in particular, to give them their full support.”

So who is right?

Any definition of terrorist must be consistent no matter what the context. Terrorism against Jews and that against Arabs must be defined identically or else the word just becomes propaganda.

Unfortunately, there is no universal definition.

At first glance, Bahloul seems to have a point. There would seem to be a moral difference between attacking civilians and attacking an armed soldier.

But is stabbing a soldier in Hebron terrorism?

There are many definitions of terrorism that people have come up with. One that was indirectly created by the UN, in the context of the 1999 Terrorism Financing Convention, defines a terrorist act as one "intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act."

I think this is a very good definition. And it cuts to the core of the question of whether attacking IDF soldiers in Hebron can be considered a terrorist act.

Hamas mortars fired at IDF troops are not acts of terrorism. Rockets fired at civilians are. That is why I always call militants in Gaza terrorists - they may sometimes engage in quasi-conventional warfare but a key part of their strategy is to terrorize the Israeli public.

Can soldiers never be terror targets? Clearly, for example, those who are off-duty are not considered valid military targets.*

Here's another question: Is it terrorism to target police, or armed guards? The answer is clearly yes. They have weapons, but targeting them for political purposes cannot be considered anything but terrorism. Their jobs are purely defensive.

Soldiers in Hebron are not fighting a war, at least not in the legal sense. They are acting as police to protect Jewish citizens of Israel who live there. Their IDF uniform does not make them legitimate military targets when there is not a state of war, and I do not believe that the current uprising can be called a war.

It can be called a terror spree. The political motivation to murder a soldier is identical to the motivation to kill a random Jew: it is to instill terror in the population in order to intimidate them and instill fear.

Attacking a person doing police duties is a terrorist act no matter if he or she is wearing the uniform of an armed guard, a police officer or a soldier.

I believe that Bahloul is wrong in this case.

But his point is not as offensive as the reactions made it out to be; the knee-jerk responses against Bahloul by Israeli politicians were more posturing than enlightening. I didn't see anyone answer him with exactly why he is wrong, and that is a shame. (Bahloul was also making a political point, of course, by implying that Jews consider all Arabs to be terrorists.)

We should use this event as a good excuse to further refine the definition of terrorism, not for scoring political points.

*It is not so clear. Gidon Shaviv points out to me that Yoram Dinstein says "Enemy combatants in an international armed conflict can be attacked at all times and in all circumstances. They ‘may be targeted wherever found, armed or unarmed, awake orasleep, on a front line or a mile or a hundred miles behind the lines’." The Conduct of Hostilities Under the Law of International Armed Conflict (p. 34).

But this hinges on the definion of wartime.HRW says "International humanitarian law makes clear, however, that reserve or off-duty soldiers who are not at that moment subject to the integrated disciplinary command of the armed forces are considered civilians until the time that they become subject to military command-meaning, until they are effectively incorporated into the armed forces. Their incorporation into the regular armed forces is most frequently signified by wearing a uniform or other identifiable insignia." And another text on terror says "Similarly, noncombatants can include off-duty members of the military in nonwarfare environments."

Nevertheless, most definitions of terrorism seem to allow it to be possible to have terrorist acts against soldiers under some circumstances, as stated above.

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04/07 Links Pt2: Abbas Calls for Peace Talks Yet Denies Israel’s Right to Exist; The ‘Palestinian’ invasion of the university

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: UNwelcome

A so-called “miscommunication” led the United Nations to ban a display about Zionism from an Israeli exhibition at its New York headquarters this week, a UN spokesman said. That it was ultimately approved by a UN body of Zionism experts fails to explain why two other panels were rejected.
The Zionism panel was one of three that were originally censored by the world body and the only one to be eventually approved. But not the one on Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish people for some 3,000 years, and on Israeli Arabs, Israel’s largest minority.
It is somehow not surprising that the UN should still be in some kind of doubt (denial?) regarding the nature of Zionism. One would think that the body that passed a resolution in 1975 claiming that Zionism is racism and reluctantly revoked it in 1991 would be more familiar with the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.
The Jerusalem panel depicts the Jewish people as “indigenous to Israel” since biblical times. It notes that “Jerusalem has been the center and focus of Jewish life and religion for more than three millennia and is holy to Christians and Muslims as well.”
The panel on Israeli Arabs refers to the group as “the largest minority in Israel, making up 20 percent of Israel’s population.” It stresses that, despite the turmoil in countries surrounding Israel, its Arab citizens have equal rights under the law.
Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon called on Secretary- General Ban Ki-Moon on Sunday to reverse the decision and to “apologize to the Jewish people.”

Former Palestinian finance chief: Global Judaism is a virus, a plague

A former top Palestinian official cited the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged text produced in Russia at the turn of the last century that purports to outline Jewish plans to take over the world, as proof that the world economy is controlled by Jews.
“Global Judaism, which controls the world’s financial markets, constitutes a virus and a plague which strikes at the entire world,” said Dr. Fouad Bseiso, the former governor of the Palestinian Monetary Authority, according to a translation of his comments in a TV interview provided Thursday by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“What was written in the 4th protocol of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion [titled ‘The destruction of religion by materialism’] is now being implemented on the world’s economy through the global Jewish hegemony over the world’s financial markets, he said.

Fmr. PMA Governor Bseiso: Global Judaism Is a Virus, Follows the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Senior Palestinian economist Dr. Fouad Bseiso, who served as the first governor of the Palestinian Monetary Authority in 1994-2001 said in an interview with Al-Quds TV that global Judaism is responsible for the global financial crisis of 2008. Dr. Bseiso added that "what was written in the 4th protocol of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is now being implemented." He said that the Jews control the prices of commodities like oil, silver, and gold and that over 30% of Israel’s income comes from its plundering of Arab countries. "Global Judaism," he said, "constitutes a virus and plague which strikes at the entire world." The interview aired on April 5, 2016.

Now Lebanon's Hanin Ghaddar, who sympathizes with Hezbollah, writes that the organization has lost its ideological way.

Years ago, it was an ideological powerhouse:

Hezbollah’s power did not come from its weapons alone. Nor was it primarily founded on social services and Iranian money. These were tools to maintain its control and influence, which grew through decades of building a narrative of allegiance. Hezbollah prevailed because it has won the narrative, by linking three pillars of a Lebanese Shiite identity: the resistance, the collective memory of the battle of Karbala and Iran’s Wilayat al-Faqih.

Lebanese Shiites’ identity was gradually rebuilt to link their collective history of Karbala and the Israeli occupation of the South. Kul Youm Karbalaa (Every day is Karbala) became the slogan that defined the daily lives of the Shiites in the South, because it embodied all of these elements: fighting injustice, remembering Karbala and a deep Shiite identity affiliated with Hezbollah’s Wilayat al-Faqih.

As I grew up in the South, I encountered this narrative every day. It changed the way people dressed, the way they socialized and celebrated religious occasions, even the way they celebrated births and mourned deaths. It escalated to fierce rhetoric during conflicts and wars, and went back to social and cultural conduct between conflicts. Although this narrative was imposed on us by the Party of God, people accepted it. They related to its purpose, the vibes of its power and the way it accentuated our communal identity.

People wanted it; they even needed it to survive. The enemy was clear, the history was common and the purpose was well defined.

The dream of many of my relatives, neighbors and friends as we grew up was to join the “resistance” or help it in any way possible. There were more volunteers knocking on Hezbollah’s doors than young men seeking employment. Many wanted to fight for free, and die for free. But Hezbollah paid anyway, because they knew that it was the best way to structure its army and maintain commitment.

But now, people join just to further their careers:

“I am just waiting for my contract to expire and then I’m out,” Mahdi (25 years old) told me. He – like all others – sign a two-year contract that specifies the salary (between $500 and $1200) and the package of benefits they receive. The thing is that they have to complete the two years. They cannot just give notice and leave whenever they want to. “And they don’t pay compensation packages to martyrs’ families as they used to,” Mahdi added, saying that each family of a martyr used to receive forty thousand dollars, but that this was halted almost two years ago.

Mahdi’s main complaint is that when he joined Hezbollah he thought he’d come back with a victory that would provide him with an office or technical job and secure his future. “Instead, I feel like I took a job at a company where I am required to give everything, including my life, and there are no guarantees for the future beyond these two years.” And victory? He smiled.

And her conclusion provides insight that the Western media has not caught up to:

In fact, many Hezbollah members and supporters have realized in the past few years that they have become the mercenaries of Waliyat al-Faqih in Iran’s war in the region. They will have to go wherever they are required, be it Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or Yemen. The new rhetoric of sectarian regional war has cost Hezbollah its depth in the Arab world. But most importantly, Hezbollah lost its narrative.

For more than thirty years, Hezbollah’s narrative was built on a very clear purpose and specific target. The result was liberating land and gaining political power. However, the “resistance” today is a matter of perspective. The narrative is no longer well-defined or evident. The “enemy” fluctuates too often and allies are mostly strategic or temporary. The US is no longer the “great Satan,” and the Putin – the partner in Syria and ally against imperialism – is also coordinating with Israel.

“We are invaders,” says Mustafa, “this is our role now. Yes, I have many questions, but war is too complicated and I have a family to support.”

The “resistance” has gone corporate and the old beliefs of liberation and freedom are now replaced with ambitions for promotion and better status. It is going to be extremely difficult for Hezbollah to come back from this.

But does it matter? If Iran increases the amount it pays Hezbollah to be its mercenary force in other conflicts (and terror attacks),

On the other hand, the near universal loathing for Hezbollah in the Arab world cannot but hurt the movement and make it even more difficult to attract supporters.

Iran may just be wringing everything it can out of Hezbollah before it implodes.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

I never understood why the more radical Arab members of the Knesset behave so provocatively. Why did Haneen Zoabi take part in the 2010 Gaza flotilla? Why did she, along with her Balad colleagues Jamal Zahalka and Basel Ghattas visit the families of terrorists killed after murdering Jews and participate in a moment of silence for the ‘martyrs’? Why did her party and the Communist (mostly Arab) Hadash party condemn Arab states that declared Hezbollah a terrorist organization?

The simple answer is that they are anti-Zionist and these are anti-Zionist actions. But why so provocative? It has already made them a target of legislation designed to remove them from the Knesset, although it’s doubtful that such a law will pass in a form that would result in Arab MKs being banished, as they so richly deserve.

Gadi Taub, writing in Ha’aretz, argues that they are trying to provoke the Right to propose actions that are anti-democratic, which will cause a response from the Left that opposes the Jewish nature of the state. Thus, the result will be to negate both the democratic and Jewish aspects of the state. According to this view, both the Right and the Left are being manipulated.

I think the answer is more simple: they want to incite and infuriate both Jews and Arabs against each other, to destroy the possibility of coexistence between Israel’s Jews and the 20% of its population (not including Judea and Samaria) that are (mostly Muslim) Arabs. But this coexistence is necessary for the continued existence of the state.

20% is a large minority. France, with all of its troubles, has a Muslim minority of 7-9%; the UK hovers at about 5% and Germany at less than 4%. Given the hostility between ‘Palestinians’ and Israeli Jews, there is great potential for instability here. Politician Avigdor Lieberman has proposed transferring some of the most heavily-populated Arab areas of Israel to Palestinian Authority control in order to reduce the size of the minority (nobody would move; the proposal transfers the territory to the PA). The chances of this happening are infinitesimal, since the Arabs that live there strongly oppose it.

Meir Kahane thought that the present situation was unsustainable. He pointed to a higher birthrate among the Arab population. But since then, with increased education and development in the Arab sector, the Arab and Jewish birthrates have tended to converge.

A 2013 survey showed that 53% of Israel’s Arab citizens recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. That sounds encouraging until you think about the other 47%. Nevertheless, in the recent wave of terrorism (up to March 27) which includes 338 stabbings, shootings and vehicular attacks, only a few were perpetrated by Arab citizens of Israel. Most of the terrorists were residents of Judea/Samaria or eastern Jerusalem. While Arab citizens may pay lip service to anti-Zionism, they are far less militant than their cousins in the territories.

Although the narrative of Palestinian victimization is strongly established among Arab citizens of Israel, most appreciate the practical benefits of being a minority in a functioning state rather than a majority in a failed one. They have eyes and ears and are aware of the conditions in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and the Palestinian Authority.

They do believe strongly that they are victims of discrimination in Israel. To a great extent this is exaggerated. Consumption levels for Arabs and Jews in Israel are quite similar, and large sums of government aid go to Arab municipalities. There is a great deal of corruption in the Arab towns and cities, which results in a lower level of service to their population. But this is not because the national government discriminates against Arabs. There is also a problem of crime and illegal weapons, and in this case the complaints are justified. The police have had a hands-off attitude, which has allowed crime to flourish. The new head of the Israel police has promised to take action.

Last year the Hamas-linked Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel was outlawed because of its incitement of violence on the false grounds that Israel was endangering the al-Aksa mosque, a perennial favorite of Muslim Israel-haters since at least 1920. Several terrorists attributed their actions to their concern for the mosque and the Temple Mount.

Much propaganda against Israel turns on the supposed discrimination against Arab citizens. Recently a right-wing member of the Knesset, Betzalel Smotrich, was severely criticized for saying that maternity wards should separate Jewish and Arab mothers because his wife didn’t want to be disturbed by Arab haflot [parties] in the rooms, and that today’s Arab baby might become tomorrow’s terrorist. Naturally, this was picked up with glee by those who seek anything negative about Israel, but his statement was widely derided, including by the head of his party.

Foreign funders like the American New Israel Fund and the EU fund a number of organizations (e.g., Adalah, Mossawa Center) which allegedly defend the rights of Arabs in Israel, but actually are trying to create discord between Jews and Arabs, as well as to promulgate the usual propaganda which accuses Israel of racism and bias.

All of this represents another line of attack against the Jewish state, focusing on its internal behavior rather than its relations with ‘Palestinians’ living in Judea and Samaria, or its alleged ‘disproportionate’ response to Hamas rockets and tunnels.

The potential for chaos if there were a widespread Arab revolt is very great. But on the other hand, good relations between Jews and Arabs could be a powerful tool for Israel in its effort to fight delegitimization. Not much can be done with the PLO, whose reason for being has always been to destroy Israel. But mutual understanding – or at least mutual acceptance – can be achieved with our Arab citizens.

The government was right in banning the Islamic movement, the flow of foreign money to hostile Arab NGOs should be stopped, the police should make serious anti-crime efforts in Arab towns, and Smotrich should shut up and keep his nastiness to himself. The calculated actions of Zoabi and company are nothing less than treason, and should be treated as such.

Jews and Arabs can get along. They must. Both groups would suffer from the alternative.

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04/07 Links Pt1: Oren: Sanders should apologize for Gaza ‘blood libel’; Israel Has The Right To Defend Itself, But…

From Ian:

Michael Oren: Sanders should apologize for Gaza ‘blood libel’

Bernie Sanders should retract and apologize for his “libelous” suggestion that Israel killed more than 10,000 innocent Palestinians during the last Gaza war, MK Michael Oren said Thursday, asserting that the Democratic candidate’s misrepresentation ultimately serves the interests of Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Oren, who served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States between 2009 and 2013, argued that the presidential candidate’s comments delegitimize the Jewish state and endanger its security.
“First of all, he should get his facts right. Secondly, he owes Israel an apology,” the freshman lawmaker (Kulanu) told The Times of Israel in an interview.
“He accused us of a blood libel. He accused us of bombing hospitals. He accused us of killing 10,000 Palestinian civilians. Don’t you think that merits an apology?” Oren went on.
“He doesn’t mention the many thousands of Hamas rockets fired at us. He doesn’t mention the fact that Hamas hides behind civilians. He doesn’t mention the fact that we pulled out of Gaza in order to give the Palestinians a chance to experiment with statehood, and they turned it into an experiment with terror. He doesn’t mention any of that. That, to me, is libelous.”

Sanders yet to correct claim Israel killed ‘over 10,000’ Palestinian innocents

Two days after the New York Daily News published the transcript of its editorial board’s interview with Bernie Sanders, in which the Democratic presidential candidate twice inaccurately said he believed that Israel killed “over 10,000” innocent Palestinian civilians during the 2014 Gaza War, he had yet to correct his misstatement or issue an apology as of Wednesday evening.
Earlier Wednesday, the Anti-Defamation League, a major Jewish organization that monitors civil and human rights issues, urged Sanders to correct his misstatement. “Even the highest number of casualties claimed by Palestinian sources that include Hamas members engaged in attacking Israel is five times less than the number cited by Bernie Sanders,” noted ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt. “We urge Senator Sanders to correct his misstatements.” The ADL, a tax-exempt nonprofit, generally avoids inserting itself into the fray of political elections and declines to take positions on candidates running for public office.
Following the transcript’s publication, The Times of Israel reached out repeatedly to Sanders campaign communications director Michael Briggs and national press secretary Symone Sanders to ask whether the Vermont senator would acknowledge and correct his mistake in massively inflating even Hamas’s own estimation of how many civilian lives were lost during Operation Protective Edge. There was no response from either official.

Petition: Tell Bernie Sanders to Retract His Statement That "10,000" died in Gaza

Even Hamas, the existing government in Gaza, predicted a total death toll of 1,462 civilians killed in the conflict not 10,000.
Regardless of who we support in the upcoming election, we the undersigned call on Bernie Sanders to immediately retract and disavow his inaccurate and dangerous assertion about the death toll in the conflict in Gaza.
(Full disclosure, I am a supporter of Bernie Sanders but believe he needs to be called out when he gets it wrong)

Israeli minister says US candidate Sanders' Gaza death figures "loony"

An Israeli cabinet minister described as "loony" on Thursday an account by U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of the number of Palestinian civilians killed in the 2014 Gaza war that went well beyond any official assessments.
The minister, Zeev Elkin, commenting on an interview by the Vermont senator in the New York Daily News on Monday, took a forgiving tack, saying politicians "sometimes make mistakes" in the heat of a campaign.
"I don't remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?" Sanders told the newspaper. "I do believe and I don't think I'm alone in believing that Israel's force was more indiscriminate than it should have been."
Sanders, who trails Hillary Clinton in the pledged delegates needed to win the nomination ahead of the Democratic party's July convention in Philadelphia, also criticised Gaza militants for launching rockets at Israel from civilian areas.
The war killed around 2,100 Palestinians, according to Gaza officials, Israel and foreign observers. The Palestinians say most of the dead were civilians. Israel says more than half were fighters. Israel lost 67 soldiers and six civilians in the war.
Asked about Sanders' toll, Elkin, using the Israeli military's term for the Gaza war, said in a radio interview: "Anyone who knows a little about what happened in Operation Protective Edge understands that this was a weird and loony statement."

The story has already been well covered. Bernie Sanders, campaigning for President, said to the New York Daily News:

Daily News: And I'm going to look at 2014, which was the latest conflict. What should Israel have done instead?

Sanders: You're asking me now to make not only decisions for the Israeli government but for the Israeli military, and I don't quite think I'm qualified to make decisions. But I think it is fair to say that the level of attacks against civilian areas...and I do know that the Palestinians, some of them, were using civilian areas to launch missiles. Makes it very difficult. But I think most international observers would say that the attacks against Gaza were indiscriminate and that a lot of innocent people were killed who should not have been killed. Look, we are living, for better or worse, in a world of high technology, whether it's drones out there that could, you know, take your nose off, and Israel has that technology. And I think there is a general belief that, with that technology, they could have been more discriminate in terms of taking out weapons that were threatening them.

...I'm just telling you that I happen to believe...anybody help me out here, because I don't remember the figures, but my recollection is over 10,000 innocent people were killed in Gaza. Does that sound right?

Daily News: I think it's probably high, but we can look at that.

Sanders: I don't have it in my number...but I think it's over 10,000. My understanding is that a whole lot of apartment houses were leveled. Hospitals, I think, were bombed. So yeah, I do believe and I don't think I'm alone in believing that Israel's force was more indiscriminate than it should have been.

The problem isn't only that Sanders overstated the number of civilians killed in Gaza by about a factor of ten.

Because if and when a reporter calls him on it, he'll just say that he said he wasn't sure but a thousand civilians killed and hundreds of buildings leveled is still something that indicates indiscriminate attacks.

And that is the problem.

Israel didn't engage in indiscriminate attacks in Gaza. Anyone who has the least familiarity with the IDF's code of conduct, the checks and balances involved in every bombing campaign, international law and the law of armed conflict know that there was very little wrong with how Israel conducted the campaign.

Last Summer, Amnesty international tweeted almost daily specific events of civilians being killed in Gaza a year earlier. In the vast majority of those cases cited, I was able to find a legitimate target in the immediate area. And the laws of war does not say that a legitimate target must be spared just because it is surrounded by civilians, although the doctrine of proportionality must be adhered to - something Israel does. Without knowing the value of the target, or indeed what the target is, no "researchers" can conclude that Israeli attacks were indiscriminate or disproportionate.

Bernie Sanders chooses to believe the lies of Amnesty and Human Rights Watch over word of the US' own chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

To put it bluntly, someone whose knowledge of the laws of armed conflict is exactly the opposite of the truth wants to be the Commander in Chief of the US armed forces.

That is a lot worse than just being very wrong on the numbers of civilians killed.

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Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote an excellent essay for Newsweek where he stated that "Anti-Zionism is the new Anti-Semitism:"

What then is anti-Semitism? It is not a coherent set of beliefs but a set of contradictions. Before the Holocaust, Jews were hated because they were poor and because they were rich; because they were communists and because they were capitalists; because they kept to themselves and because they infiltrated everywhere; because they clung tenaciously to ancient religious beliefs and because they were rootless cosmopolitans who believed nothing.

Anti-semitism is a virus that survives by mutating. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, Israel. Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism.

The legitimization has also changed. Throughout history, when people have sought to justify anti-Semitism, they have done so by recourse to the highest source of authority available within the culture. In the Middle Ages, it was religion. In post-Enlightenment Europe it was science. Today it is human rights. It is why Israel—the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press and independent judiciary—is regularly accused of the five crimes against human rights: racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide. This is the blood libel of our time.

Anti-Semitism is a classic example of what anthropologist René Girard sees as the primal form of human violence: scapegoating. When bad things happen to a group, its members can ask two different questions: “What did we do wrong?” or “Who did this to us?” The entire fate of the group will depend on which it chooses.

If it asks, “What did we do wrong?” it has begun the self-criticism essential to a free society. If it asks, “Who did this to us?” it has defined itself as a victim. It will then seek a scapegoat to blame for all its problems. Classically this has been the Jews.

Today the argument goes like this. After the Holocaust, every right-thinking human being must be opposed to Nazism. Palestinians are the new Jews. The Jews are the new Nazis. Israel is the new crime against humanity. Therefore every right thinking person must be opposed to the state of Israel, and since every Jew is a Zionist, we must oppose the Jews. This argument is wholly wrong. It was Jews not Israelis who were murdered in terrorist attacks in Toulouse, Paris, Brussels and Copenhagen.

Peter Beinart in Haaretz feels he must defend anti-Zionists, especially Palestinian anti-Zionists, as being wholly separate from classical antisemitism.

It’s an elegant formulation. But there’s a problem. The claim that medieval Jews deserved blame for the murder of Christ, or that nineteenth century Jews were genetically inferior, had no rational basis. To believe it, you had to be an anti-Semite. It’s not irrational, however, to believe that Israel is seriously abusing Palestinian human rights. Anti-Semites may exploit those abuses to vilify Jews. But you don’t have to be anti-Semite to find them profoundly troubling.

In Beinart's twisted mind, the difference between classical antisemitism and today's anti-Zionism is that the old antisemitism had no "rational basis," giving as examples accusations of deicide and racism. But that implies that Beinart would not consider other accusations against Jews that had a germ of truth in them to be antisemitic. Therefore, Beinart's logic would imply, saying that Jews should be hated because they control the banks and Hollywood and the media is not antisemitism, because there is a rational basis for believing it - at least as much of a rational basis for hating Israel because that country is supposedly guilty of genocide and apartheid.

Sacks is saying that antisemites choose to blame Jews because they need a scapegoat. Is there really any difference between that way of thinking and demonizing Israel?

Sacks dismisses Israeli human rights abuses in one phrase: Israel is “the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East with a free press and independent judiciary.” But in the West Bank, Israel is none of those things. The vast majority of people in the West Bank are Palestinians who cannot vote for the state that controls their lives. They are not citizens of the country in which they live. Their Jewish neighbors enjoy a free press and an independent judiciary. But West Bank Palestinians live under military law, which, among other things, forbids ten or more of them from gathering for a political purpose without prior approval from the Israeli military, even if they gather in someone’s home.

No one is saying that life is wonderful in the West Bank for Palestinians (although it compares quite well to life in most of the Arab world.) But the point is that the hysterical accusations of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing is just as irrational as accusing Jews of drinking Christian children's blood.

Beinart cannot admit that quite obvious fact.

In his essay, Sacks only mentions the word “Palestinians” once. But it’s impossible to understand contemporary anti-Zionism without them. Palestinians didn’t become anti-Zionists because they needed a rationale for hating Jews and found the old ones outdated. They become anti-Zionists because their experience with Zionism was extremely rough.

Time for Beinart to twist history for his own purposes:

In the early twentieth century, Palestinians constituted the vast majority of people in British mandatory Palestine. Like colonized peoples around the world, they began developing a national consciousness and a national movement aimed at securing their independence. As Jews began migrating to Palestine in large numbers, the Zionist movement—which sought a Jewish state—became an obstacle to their national desires.

That is exactly backwards. Zionism predates Palestinian nationalism by any measure. Most Palestinians became "nationalists" as a means to destroy Jewish self-determination, not as a positive movement. I've proven that in this blog numerous times, but you only have to look at how the Arab nationalists in Palestine wanted to be part of Syria until Sykes-Picot ruined that plan - only then did the idea of Palestinian Arab nationalism gain any currency, and it was wholly meant as a means to frustrate Jewish nationalism.

Beinart is purposefully reversing history.

Yes, Palestinian nationalists made mistakes (for instance, their rejection of the 1947 partition plan) and committed crimes (for instance, the 1929 Hebron massacre). But you don’t have to consider Palestinians blameless to understand why they might view Zionism in a negative light.

The people who massacred Jews in 1929 (and 1921 and 1936-9) were nationalists? Oh, please. They were purely antisemites, and their actions prove Rabbi Sacks' point perfectly. Their "anti-Zionism" was a thin smokescreen for their hate of Jews, and if you look at any contemporaneous newspapers and books from the era, the antisemitism was explicit and pervasive.

Yes, some anti-Zionists are anti-Semites. And yes, of course, some Palestinian anti-Zionists are anti-Semites. But equating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism means claiming that virtually all Palestinians are anti-Semites, even Palestinians like Knesset Member Ayman Oudeh, whose political party, Hadash, includes Jews, or intellectuals like Ahmad Khalidi and commentators like Rula Jebreal, who have Jewish spouses.

Beinart stoops so low as to use the "some of my best friends are Jewish" line to defend rabid anti-Zionists.

Anyway, it means no such thing. While it is true that most Palestinians really are antisemites - there are things called "polls," you know - Rabbi Sacks is speaking about how people who want to hate Jews nowadays use anti-Zionism as their excuse, just as they historically used anti-capitalism or anti-communism or eugenics theories as excuses in the past. Either way, it is hate. But Sacks is not claiming that everyone who has a problem with Israeli policies is an antisemite. That is Beinart's straw man that underlies this essay, and its logical conclusion is disgusting:

Equating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism turns Palestinians into Amalekites. By denying that they might have any reason besides bigotry to dislike Zionism, it denies their historical experience and turns them into mere vessels for Jew-hatred. Thus, it does to Palestinians what anti-Semitism does to Jews. It dehumanizes them.

After purposefully misstating Rabbis Sacks' arguments, Beinart all but calls him a racist. (This is after praising him in the first couple of paragraphs.)

In truth, most Palestinians really are antisemites. Many are not. But that is not what Rabbi Sacks is saying. His point is that the arguments that are used against Zionism - not criticism of Zionism but the desire to destroy Israel - are virtually always prompted by antisemitic tendencies.

Beinart's desire to justify his own criticism of Israel makes him want to defend the indefensible. This essay is Beinart's attempt to conflate legitimate criticism of Israel with blind hate for Israel that is behind BDS and "Zionism is racism" and "From the river to the sea..." And the only way he can succeed is by lying.

One has to wonder why Beinart, who claims to be only against the "occupation," tries so hard to legitimize those who want to see Israel destroyed.

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Al Monitor has an interesting analysis:

A new current has been active within the Fatah movement. Its founders have named it the “Democratic Reformist Current,” which consists of a large number of leaders who were dismissed by the movement’s leader Mahmoud Abbas, because they refused its policies, as well as other active leaders.

The conflict within the movement started to fully surface after former leader Mohammed Dahlan was dismissed from Fatah’s Central Committee on corruption charges and ended all ties with the movement on June 12, 2011. Yet in 2015, the Corruption Crimes Court in Ramallah rejected the accusations directed against him and closed the case. Dahlan has been residing in the United Arab Emirates ever since.

Dahlan’s dismissal was followed by the dismissal of many other leaders and cadres supporting him, which resulted in the movement splitting into two currents: the pro-Abbas current and the opposing reformist current led by Dahlan.

Abdul Hamid al-Masri, a former member of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, who was dismissed from the council two years ago, and who is a founder of the reformist current from the Gaza Strip, told Al-Monitor that the current is a part of the Fatah movement and that they are seeking reforms within Fatah through this current.

He said, “We want to bring about reforms in terms of all of the defects caused to the movement’s internal regulations, the violations and the monopoly of leaders over the movement’s decision-making. These include the dismissal of Dahlan and fellow members of the Revolutionary Council, including myself. We do not perceive the dismissal as legal, because it did not go in line with the movement's internal regulations, such as a two-thirds vote of the Revolutionary Council’s members that is required for the members’ dismissal. For that reason, many Fatah members and leaders have rejected the dismissal.”

He said, “I think that Abbas and those members opposing the return of the reformist current’s members to Fatah — who rejected the policy of marginalization, isolation, persecution and oppression that they have been subjected to — are few. In contrast, those voices calling for the members to return to the movement and assume their roles are the majority. Abbas is not the inevitable fate of Palestine or the Fatah movement. He was preceded by Yasser Arafat, who died, but Fatah survived. Abbas will leave and the movement will survive.”

..Are the founders of the reformist current planning to establish a new independent political body that represents them?

Political analyst Akram Atallah told Al-Monitor, “Although roughly four years have gone by since Dahlan and his supporters were dismissed from the movement, it is still unknown whether or not Dahlan and those supporting him will form a new party or return to the movement, based on reconciliation between him and Abbas."

He added, “A feeling that work is underway toward the formation of a parallel party prevails sometimes. At other times, there is a feeling that work is underway to go back to the movement. This time, the matter is different from the previous defections, or even from the other Palestinian factions, like the defection of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that split up into two parties in 1968. So far, it is still unclear where this issue is heading.”

The acrimony between Abbas and Dahlan reached a peak a couple of years ago when Abbas blamed Dahlan for being responsible for the death of Yasir Arafat. But Dahlan's popularity has been pretty steady, especially in Gaza.

Certainly some Palestinian newspapers openly support the Dahlan faction and criticize Abbas. I haven't seen much call for a separate party, though, and everyone understands that such a move would weaken Fatah's hold on the PLO, which is really the organization that runs things.

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04/06 Links Pt2: The United Nations sanctifies evil; When Does Anti-Israelism Turn Into Anti-Semitism?

From Ian:

Isi Leibler: The United Nations sanctifies evil

The United Nations has progressively become dominated by Islamic nations and tyrannies and increasingly sanctifies evil. Just last week, on March 24 in Geneva, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) concluded its session by passing five resolutions condemning Israel. This followed a series of blood libels accusing the only democratic country in a region surrounded by barbarism of engaging in a policy of deliberate murder of Palestinian children.
Indeed the UNHRC has passed more resolutions condemning Israel over the past decade than all resolutions criticizing other governments combined.
This, despite the fact that countries leading the charge against Israel are themselves engaged in horrific human rights violations. And despite the fact that in Syria, Israel’s neighbor, hundreds of thousands have been killed and millions are trying to flee the country as President Bashar Assad’s army and Islamic State (ISIS) butcher entire communities.
The reality is that the UN, with its subsidiaries, has morphed into an evil body dominated by Islamic nations, tyrannies and rogue states whose policies it legitimizes.
Freedom House, the independent watchdog organization dedicated to the expansion of freedom and democracy, maintains that 80 percent of UNHRC members are “not free” or only “partly free.” In this degenerate body, Saudi Arabia was elected last year to chair a key human rights panel.
The UNHRC has consistently appointed fiercely biased anti-Israel rapporteurs and commissioned numerous reports to demonize Israel and accuse the Israel Defense Forces of engaging in war crimes.

UN-believable

This week the United Nations outdid itself. HonestReporting takes a careful look at their UNbelievable activities, and their effects on women's rights, human rights, and Israel.

Cruz's father: America was founded on the Torah

In his speech, Pastor Cruz told PJTN supporters that his son is the "strongest supporter of Israel on Capitol Hill," and promised that he "will continue to support Israel unconditionally."
He also countered replacement theology, by which some Christians believe they are the new Jews and that God has abandoned the Jewish people. PJTN has made fighting replacement theology and anti-Semitism one of its key goals.
After calling replacement theology heresy, Cruz said his son "will not fund the United Nations, until they stop supporting BDS and anti-Semitism.”
"Israel is the only country in the world with a title deed from the Almighty!," emphasized Pastor Cruz, noting on the divine promise to the Jewish people.
Laurie Cardoza-Moore, president and founder of PJTN, embraced and thanked Pastor Cruz at the end of his speech.
"Pastor Cruz is a true friend of Israel and the Jewish people within the Evangelical world," she said. "We need more people like him today, when more and more of our brothers and sisters are embracing heretical forms of anti-Semitism like BDS and replacement theology."

From the sex advice column of Dan Savage:

I am a twentysomething, straight, cis-female expat. How long do I have to wait to ask my German lover, who is übersensitive about the Holocaust, to indulge me in my greatest — and, until now, unrealized — fantasy: Nazi role-play? He is very delicate around me because I am a secular Jew and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. (Even though I’ve instructed him to watch The Believer, starring Ryan Gosling as a Jewish neo-Nazi, to get a better grasp on my relationship with Judaism. To be clear, I am not actually a neo-Nazi — just your garden-variety self-hating Jew.) This persists even though we’ve spoken about my anti-Zionist politics. Evidently he was indoctrinated from a young age with a hyper-apologetic history curriculum. I appreciate that he thinks it was wrong for the SS to slaughter my family, but it’s not like he did it himself. I know it sounds really f***ed up, but I promise this isn’t coming from a place of deep-seated self-loathing. Even if it were, it’s not like we’d be hurting anybody. We’re both in good psychological working condition, and neither of us is an actual bigot. I would try to get to know him better, but we are so different (there’s a big age difference) and I don’t really see our relationship being much more than ze sex.

National Socialist Pretend Party

Savage defers the answer to Mark Oppenheimer who writes about Judaism for Tablet. He says that she should broach the subject with her lover, but then adds some good advice that applies far beyond a sex advice column, even if the letter-writer seems far beyond redemption:

In her letter, she assures us that she is ‘secular,’ ‘anti-Zionist,’ and ‘garden-variety self-hating’ — then jokingly compares herself to the Jewish white supremacist (played by Ryan Gosling in that movie) who in real life killed himself after the New York Times outed him as a Jew. Now, all of us (especially homos and Yids) know something about self-loathing, and I think Jews are entitled to any and all views on Israel, and — again — I am not troubled by her kink. That said, I do think she needs to get to a happier place about her own heritage. Just as it’s not good for black people to be uncomfortable with being black, or for queer people to wish they weren’t queer, it’s not healthy, or attractive, for Jews or Jewesses (we are taking back the term) to have such obvious discomfort with their Jewish heritage.

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Bigfoot Meets Rothschilds, Trump, To Plan Next Step In World Domination (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Tel Aviv, April 6 - Secure in the knowledge no one would bat an eye at their presence among the bizarre characters on this city's Shenkin Street, several prominent members of the World Zionist Conspiracy met at a restaurant in that eclectic neighborhood this week to discuss the next phase in their plan to take over the planet.

Sasquatch, the supposedly-deceased King of Rock 'n' Roll Elvis Presley, Donald Trump, and a group of Rothschild family representatives gathered with a number of lower-profile WZC operatives at Bug, a hip restaurant Tuesday morning. The attendees heard briefings from agents on recent developments in the Panama Papers scandal and the US presidential primaries, as well as on efforts to conceal Mossad involvement in last month's terrorist attacks in Belgium.

The presence of Bigfoot and Elvis at the proceedings highlighted the usual nature of the meeting, which normally does not include operatives whose roles call for remaining completely out of sight except for strategic, doubtful sightings. In this case, said an attendee who spoke on condition of anonymity, the pair supplied updates on the decades-old campaign to zero in on the people most likely to suspect a massive conspiracy and coverup, and distract them with all manner of secondary conspiracy theories involving UFOs, cryptozoological creatures, mysterious celebrity disappearances, and the Bermuda Triangle.

Trump, for his part, arranged for a lookalike to take his place in Wisconsin, where the GOP frontrunner faces a tough primary contest. The reality TV star and real estate mogul had already given regrets to his daughter that he would have to miss the circumcision ceremony of her newborn son in New York in order to campaign; however, he traveled not to Wisconsin, but to Tel Aviv. Trump's Mossad handlers insisted he attend in order to hear direct instructions from the Rothschilds on how to proceed with his campaign and what groups to offend in what order, so that the WZC would be best positioned to exploit the ensuing media storms for financial and political gain. Previous problems in coordination of the offensive messages led to massive stock market losses when the candidate called for the punishment of women who had abortions; he was supposed to wait until next week to make that pronouncement.

Also in attendance was Dr. Vlad Drake, who, though retired from formal membership in the WZC, continues to consult the Conspiracy on the use and spread of mosquitoes, which he invented.

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04/06 Links Pt1: Bernie Slanders is seven times worse than Hamas; Abbas: All of Israel is an "occupation"

From Ian:

David Horovitz: Seven times worse than Hamas: Bernie Sanders by the numbers

Bernie Sanders exacerbated his shockingly under-informed address on Israel from late last month with an interview to the New York Daily News this week in which he casually traduced Israel.
In his March speech — which he said he would have delivered at AIPAC’s Washington policy conference if only they’d let him read it out over satellite — he demanded that Israel remove its blockade from Gaza while simultaneously professing to support Israelis’ “right to live in peace and security.” Needless to say — or rather, evidently, needful to say to Sanders — backing Israelis’ right to live in peace and security entails working to ensure that terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction are not allowed to import the weaponry they need to achieve that goal. Demanding that Israel end the Gaza blockade is tantamount to demanding that Hamas be enabled to freely bring in rockets, missiles and all manner of other military equipment to expedite Israel’s demise. Only a politician who supports Hamas — such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan — or one with a grossly inadequate understanding of Israel and its challenges could possibly endorse such a position.
In his New York Daily News interview, Sanders dismally reconfirmed that he falls into the latter category. The would-be president castigated Israel for an ostensibly “indiscriminate” war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, and, while admitting that he didn’t really know the facts, asserted, twice, that Israel killed over 10,000 innocent civilians in the course of that conflict.
Over 10,000 innocent civilians? That’s seven times the self-serving figure asserted by Hamas, the terror group that runs Gaza, and gleefully adopted by the UN Human Rights Council, the sham body that obsessively loathes Israel. According to Hamas, 1,462 civilians were killed. The Israeli authorities believe the true figure was far lower, both because Hamas inflated the overall numbers of combatants and noncombatants killed, and because Hamas deliberately misrepresents many of its own dead gunmen, who often fought out of uniform, as civilians — to demonize Israel, and to minimize its own losses. Israel also stresses that Hamas deliberately placed Gazans in harm’s way by putting its rocket launchers and terror tunnel openings in and around their homes. Finally, Israeli officials note that no civilians whatsoever would have been killed had Hamas not chosen to maintain its violent hostility to Israel, which since 2005 has had no civilian presence and no military presence whatsoever in the Gaza Strip. In Gaza, Israel did what much of the world — including Bernie Sanders — would have it do in the West Bank: It left. And war followed.

Why Bernie Exaggerates About Gaza

Had Sanders bothered to think more deeply about the issue, he would have understood that without taking the care that it did, casualties in Gaza would have been as high as 10,000 or even more than that because of Hamas embedding its rocket launchers and fighters in and among civilians, including using hospitals as bases and UN schools as ammo dumps. And while he may regard Israel’s need to take out these targets as optional, Israel’s leaders had the responsibility to defend their people against truly indiscriminate attacks in the form of Hamas rockets and terror tunnels.
But the problem here, as with the entire “progressive” critique of Israel, is that Sanders’ beliefs about the Gaza war are rooted in his misconceptions about the continuing cause of the conflict. He seems to think it’s about Israel having to “improve its relationship with the Palestinians.” But not once in his lengthy comments about the Middle East in the Daily News interview does he note that Israel has repeatedly offered the Palestinians far-reaching territorial concessions in exchange for peace and has been turned down every time. Nor does he care to notice that even Palestinian moderates refuse to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders may be drawn. Pushing for more unilateral Israeli withdrawals, as President Obama has done and Sanders seems to indicate he would also advocate, merely encourages the Palestinians to continue to believe that continued intransigence will eventually isolate the Jewish state. It also gives the Palestinian leadership a pass for fomenting hatred against Israel and Jews that has set off a bloody third “stabbing” intifada.
Sanders doesn’t oppose Israel’s existence, and he can claim both to have lived there briefly and to have relations with Israelis. But his policies do not encourage peace, nor do they do Palestinians held hostage by Hamas in their independent state in all but name in Gaza much good either.
More importantly, he reflects a blame Israel first mindset of the left wing of his party that is as divorced from reality as anything that comes out of Trump’s mouth. While he isn’t likely to become president, Sanders’ mindless repetition of canards about Israel probably sounded like the truth to many of his fans. If, as the age demographics would seem to indicate, those young voters are the future of the Democrats, the party’s divorce from the pro-Israel movement seems to be accelerating. (h/t Yenta Press)

The Mottle Wolfe Show: Israel Gets Berned

[gets good about the 13 min mark] Still feeling the Bern? Bernie Sanders radically over estimates the death toll in Gaza. Is it from ignorance or lack of interest in foreign policy? Also Brian of London joins Mottle to talk about Dubai’s winner of the ‘Best Teacher of the the Year’ award in the married to a terrorist category.

In March, I reported on EoZTV that the Palestinian Red Crescent hosted a Fatah celebration of mass murderer Dalal Mughrabi. The next day Palestinian Media Watch also reported the story with more details.

At the time PMW noted that this isn't the first time that the Red Crescent was involced in glorifying terror, and they had previously complained to the ICRC about how their funds are being used. The responses from the ICRC from previous occasions were outrageous:

In the past, the International Red Cross (ICRC) responded that they don't tell the Palestinian Red Crescent how to spend the money given to it by the ICRC. When the Palestinian Red Crescent together with the ICRC glorified terrorists by planting 150 trees bearing the names of "veteran prisoners," the ICRC defended the Palestinian Red Crescent's right to do so, arguing that each branch has the right "to define [its] own priorities and activities and to allocate funds accordingly."

The official position of the ICRC is that, if their branches believe in murdering Jews, then that is perfectly OK with them.

The official purpose of the ICRC is in complete contradiction to this position:

Its purpose is to protect life and health and to ensure respect for the human being. It promotes mutual understanding, friendship, cooperation and lasting peace amongst all peoples.

PMW has written another complaint to the ICRC over this latest repulsive incident:

We'll see if the most prestigious humanitarian organization in the world will again defend funding those who celebrate mass murderers.

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The new Halabi home paid for by supporters of murderers

Mahmoud Abbas said in his interview with Channel 2 in Israel:

When a child goes and takes a knife, he does not consult with anyone. Even with his parents, nor his brother. He doesn't say: "I'm taking a knife and going out". No sensible person would allow his son to come to him and tell him: "I want to take a knife and kill", and he will answer him: "you are wise." It is not possible. It is not possible. He will take away the knife and lock him inside. Parents do not want it....Ask yourself why this boy, 15, takes a knife and knew he was going to die, and still going. Ask yourself why. This is because there is no hope for him.

All of this is contradicted by the case of Muhannad Halabi.

Halabi was the teenager who murdered Nehemia Lavi and Aharon Bennett on October 3, also stabbing Bennett's wife in the neck and shooting and injuring their 2 year old son. As Odel Bennett begged for help, Arabs in the shuk spat at her and laughed.

Halabi didn't say he was going to stab Jews to death because of "no hope." Rather he said that he was angry at supposed attacks on the Al Aqsa Mosque and he posted on Facebook that he wanted to start a revolution.

He showed this post to his parents before his murder spree who agreed with his sentiments. “I will always be proud that my son sacrificed his life for the liberation of his homeland,” said his mother Suhair.

He is universally regarded as a hero in Palestinian society, even though his victims included a rabbi, a woman and a child. Everything that Abbas claims about the murderers and their families is proven wrong by Halabi.

When Israel demolished his family home to deter future murders, Palestinians immediately raised a large amount of money to build or buy the family of the "martyr" a new house and to blunt any deterrent for encouraging children to murder Jews.

Now, the family has purchased a 360 square meter, $175,000 villa near Ramallah with the funds raised from fellow supporters of terrorism.

It doesn't appear that Abbas' alleged policy of discouraging terror attacks is successful. Unfortunately, his policy of making "martyrs" into heroes is working very well.

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Jordan lodges official complaint to Israel over Yehuda Glick's visits to Temple Mount

From the official Jordanian Petra News Agency:

Jordan protests rabbi storming of Jerusalem mosque

Jordan Tuesday strongly protested a raid into Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque compound, led by ultranationalist rabbi Yehuda Glick of the ruling Likud party, and urged Israel, as the occupation power, to stop such provocations.

State Minister for Media Affairs, official government spokesman, Mohammad Momani, said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Affairs, through its close monitoring of the Israeli violations of Al Aqsa Mosque/Haram al Sharif (holy sanctuary), which it considers a red line, today lodged an official protest to the Israeli embassy in Amman.

The memo, he said, held Israel, the power of occupation, fully responsible for the safety of Al Aqsa Mosque, and reiterated Jordan's condemnation and rejection of recurrent raids by Glick, an extremist Israeli rabbi who campaigns for expanding Jewish access to the mosque compound.

Momani said the foreign and Awqaf (religious affairs) ministries were monitoring the situation at Al Aqsa Mosque, adding that Jordan would pursue its efforts through diplomacy and legal means to deter Israel and bring the breaches to a stop. He urged the world community and international organisations to help in this endeavour.

Here is a photo of Rabbi Glick's "storming" of the Temple Mount on Monday, along with 12 other Jews. This is the incident that prompted Jordan's complaint.

Glick said on Facebook that there was very little Muslim protest and shouting at his group, and he expressed hope that the idea of Jews visiting their holiest site is now considered normal among Arabs now that the violent protesters from the Islamic Movement have been banned from the site.

YNet reported last week that Arab media were circulating a photo of Glick seemingly targeted with a red circle.

Glick - who advocates equal access to the Temple Mount for Jews, Muslims and Christians - is often demonized by Arab media

He was shot four times in the chest in 2014 in Jerusalem for his message of equality.

The Government of Jordan apparently agrees with the would-be assassin that Glick is a danger that must be eliminated.

The idea that Jordan is lodging official complaints over the peaceful visit of a Jew to the Temple Mount is one of the absurdities of the Middle East that are considered normal.

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