Sunday, June 05, 2016

The displaced Palestinians of 1967

Al Jazeera described the Six Day War this way:

On June 5, 1967, an unprovoked Israel invaded Palestinian, Egyptian, and Syrian territories at once.

Six days and over 300,000 Palestinian refugees later, it had occupied the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and Golan Heights.

That first sentence would be laughable if it was not believed by one or two billion people. (Notice how they call Jordanian annexed areas as "Palestinian." Historical revisionism runs deep.)

But the second sentence mentions "300,000 refugees" as fact, and it just ain't so. Nearly all the Arabs who fled did so quite voluntarily and openly told the media that they simply didn't want to live under Jewish rule.

A few years ago, I started writing a book about the history of Palestinian refugees and the "right of return." Unfortunately, I never finished it. Here is the section on what happened to Palestinian Arabs during the Six Day War, with footnotes.

The displaced Palestinians of 1967

The Six Day War did not last six days in the West Bank.

After three days of fighting, mostly centered on Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Jenin, the Jordanian forces withdrew to the East Bank. Only when the IDF realized this did it take over the entire territory. [i]

During the war, the IDF did destroy some West Bank areas that were suspected of harboring Fatah terrorists, and as a result nearby villagers did flee, but often to other towns in the West Bank. They returned relatively quickly and Israel helped in their reconstruction.

Jordan claimed an entire slew of atrocities by the Israeli forces, including forced expulsions, looting, atrocities, and use of napalm against civilians. The UN sent a special representative to the area in July for a fact-finding mission and he could find no evidence for these allegations. The mayor of Hebron said explicitly that most of those from his district who fled did so before the Israeli army arrived and that they left of their own free will. [ii]

Even though the actual fighting did not take long, over 175,000 West Bank Palestinians fled to Jordan during and after the war. The Arabs of Hebron, fearful that the Jews would exact revenge on them for the 1929 massacre, surrendered before any troops arrived and hung white sheets out their windows.[iii]

Many of those who fled had lived in refugee camps. Practically all of the 30,000 residents of the Aqabat Jaber camp, and most of the 20,000 who lived in Ein el-Sultan camp, crossed the river. All in all, the vast majority of the residents in the Jericho District went to the East Bank, joined by about one-fifth of those from the Tulkarm, Ramallah and Qalqilya areas.[iv] The vast majority of those who fled were not close to any fighting.

Similarly, Gaza fell in only two days. And just as in the West Bank, many Gazans fled as well into Jordan. UNRWA set up a new camp, Jerash, just for 11,500 Gazans who fled there. The Baqa'a, Talbieh, Marka and Husn camps also hosted thousands of Gazans as well as West Bank Jordanians who fled.

West Bank Arabs crossing the remains of the Allenby Bridge

Most of the Palestinians who fled to Jordan chose to do so after the war. In the weeks after the war ended, thousands of West Bank Arabs took whatever possessions they could carry and walked across the wreckage of the Allenby Bridge, across wood planks where the bridge was destroyed, to flee to what they considered their country. [v] They freely admitted that Israel did not drive them out and they chose to flee voluntarily. Not only poor West Bank residents fled, but also the well-to-do.[vi] Jordan’s King Hussein, alarmed at the influx, pleaded for them to remain in the West Bank and even stopped the buses and taxis that waited for them on the Jordanian side of the bridge. He also instituted roadblocks to stop them from going towards Amman.[vii] None of this dissuaded the Palestinian Arabs from their flight away from Jewish rule.

Even when Israel and Jordan negotiated to allow tens of thousands of them to return to the West Bank in late summer and in the fall of 1967, there were still more who chose to cross in the opposite direction every day. In September, the number crossing into Jordan was estimated to be up to 400 a day.[viii] As late as November it was estimated that 200-300 Arabs were still crossing into Jordan every day across the newly-rebuilt bridge. Other reports said that hundreds of Arabs were fording the river at night in the other direction, sneaking back into the West Bank. Still others illicitly commuted across the river to gather and sell produce.[ix]

They certainly did not flee because of how Israel was treating them. While Israeli forces were forceful in rooting out terrorist cells, the government had a more laissez-faire attitude towards ordinary Arabs. Israel allowed Arab farmers to export their goods to Jordan and they allowed existing mayors and other officials to stay in their roles. [x] Schools opened as usual in September, Arab banks were allowed to re-open, and Gaza residents for the first time were allowed to visit their relatives in the West Bank. [xi]

The reasons for the initial flight lay in nearly two decades of anti-Israel indoctrination in the media and Jordanian-run schools. Israeli soldiers related how the Arabs newly under their control would look for horns on their heads. Arithmetic lessons would ask how many Jews would remain if five of them were killed in a group of eight.[xii] One man said, “For years I had heard stories about what the Israelis would do if they conquered us. The stories said they would kill all the men and rape all the women if they ever got the chance.”[xiii]

However, the flight of 1967 illustrates a little-realized aspect of the flight of 1948. It was not only fear and news of atrocities that prompted the Arabs to flee in 1948; some of them they simply did not want to live under Jewish rule and would prefer to uproot their families. Recall that some residents of Umm al-Famm chose to move to the Jordanian side of the armistice line in 1949, even as others chose to be on the Israeli side.

This was especially true of Gazans, who had been effectively imprisoned in the narrow strip for nineteen years, unable to go to Egypt or abroad. Israel lifted restrictions on their travel and allowed them to go to the West Bank, or to cross the river and live in Jordan if they preferred. And thousands did.[xiv] As one of them, bitter after his experience of Egyptian rule, said, “We want to live under Arabs, not under Israel. Not under the Egyptians but under the Jordanians.”[xv] Another incentive for the Gazans to leave was the ability for the first time since 1949 to look for work beyond Jordan, in the Gulf countries that were booming with the help of Palestinian labor.

Another reason that many of the fleeing West Bank Arabs were reluctant to return was because of their relatives who were making money in Gulf countries and sending money back to them. They were afraid that the cash, which many of them relied upon, would not be delivered to Israeli-ruled territory.[xvi]

The refugee issue was not forgotten in the wake of the Six Day War, neither by the Arabs nor by the West.. Already on June 19^th, President Johnson gave a speech on five fundamental principles of peace in the Middle East. The second principle was stated this way:

[T]his last month, I think, shows us another basic requirement for settlement. It is a human requirement: justice for the refugees.
A new conflict has brought new homelessness. The nations of the Middle East must at last address themselves to the plight of those who have been displaced by wars. In the past, both sides have resisted the best efforts of outside mediators to restore the victims of conflict to their homes, or to find them other proper places to live and work. There will be no peace for any party in the Middle East unless this problem is attacked with new energy by all, and certainly, primarily by those who are immediately concerned.[xvii]

Politically, the PLO was a ruin in the months immediately following the war. Ahmed Shukairy, who had threatened Israel before the war as stridently as any Arab leader, was vilified for abandoning his people as soon as the war started. Arab states cut off the PLO’s funding, to the tune of $15 million annually.

For a time it appeared that the local Arab leaders in the West Bank could become the new leadership of the Palestinian Arabs. Sheikh Mohammed Ali Ja’abari of Hebron was in the forefront of trying to organize a new Palestinian leadership to negotiate with Israel. Some wanted independence, others wanted a confederation with Jordan and still others thought that local autonomy under Israeli rule would be the best option.[xviii]

One result of the war was that Nasser-type pan-Arabism was dealt a huge blow among Palestinians, and into that vacuum came a resurgence of Palestinian Arab nationalism. Some of this nationalism might have been deliberately kept low-key in the West Bank for fear of angering King Hussein; and as the ties between Jordan and the territories it formerly occupied lessened, the willingness to talk about a separate Palestinian state increased.

Fatah, however, saw the defeat as an opportunity to raise its profile by increasing terror attacks inside Israel. As Israeli security scrambled to gain a presence in the new territories, Fatah took advantage of the easier freedom of movement between the West Bank and Israel and staged a series of attacks.

In September in Tel Aviv, a time bomb was left in the library of the US Information service but it failed to go off. Also in September, a series of three bombs exploded in Jerusalem, including at a print shop where Arabs worked for Jews. There were also explosions at a power station and a railroad line. The most chilling attack of in 1967 was unsuccessful – a time bomb left in a crowded Jerusalem movie theatre in October that was discovered in time. [xix] In Haifa, a car bomb damaged a factory, and Fatah terrorists attacked kibbutzim and moshavim – one attack in September killing a three year old. [xx]

[i] Shlaim, Avi, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, 2001, pp.245-246

[ii] Report of the Secretary-General under General Assembly resolution 2252 (ES-V) and Security Council resolution 237 (1967), United Nations A/6717, September 15, 1967

[iii] Rabbi Shlomo Goren quoted in "The Return to Hebron," Hebron.com website, published April 9, 2006

[iv] UNRWA website "Aqbat Jaber" and "Ein el Sultan" pages; Levy Economics Institute "West Bank population according to 1967 census and Jordanian 1961 census"

[v] “Refugees Crowd Bridge to Jordan,” New York Times, June 21, 1967

[vi] “Jordanians Count 200,000 Refugees,” New York Times, June 17, 1967

[vii] “Jordan Fails in Bid to Block Refugees,” New York Times, June 27, 1967

[viii] “200 to 400 Arabs Still Cross Span to East Bank Each Day,” New York Times, September 2, 1967

[ix] “Some Said to Cross Back,” New York Times, July 15, 1967

[x] “Israel: Unusual Occupation,” TIME, December 29, 1967

[xi] “Israel: Still Crossing the Jordan”, TIME, September 8, 1967

[xii] “The Bridge on the River Jordan,” New York Times, November 26, 1967

[xiii] “Why the Refugees Go Back,” New York Times, August 27, 1967

[xiv] “Jerash refugee camp,” UNRWA website http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=131

[xv] “Arabs in Gaza Strip Pouring Out in Searchof Kin After 19 Years,” New York Times, September 7, 1967

[xvi] TIME, loc. cit.

[xvii] Lyndon Johnson speech before the Department of State Foreign Policy Conference for Educators, June 19, 1967, retrieved from sixdaywar.org

[xviii] “Middle East: Sense Amid the Shambles” TIME, September 22, 1967

[xix] “Six Months After the War, Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem Lead a Strained Coexistence,” New York Times, December 9, 1967; “US Aide Finds Bomb in Office in Israel,” New York Times, October 2, 1967; “Israel Arrests 9 Arabs,” New York Times, September 21, 1967; "Live Bomb Placed Under Seat in Jerusalem Cinema; Detonated in Open Without Injuries." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 10 Oct 1967.

[xx] "El Fatah Leader Seized As New Acts of Sabotage Are Reported." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 26 Sep 1967; "Sabotage, Terror Hit Wide Front Along Israel’s Borders; El Fatah Leaves Signs of Action." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 4 Dec 1967; "Bomb Damages Auto Assembly Plant in Haifa; Israel Army Camp Attacked Near Hebron." Jewish Telegraphic Agency 15 Nov 1967.

(h/t Yehudah P)

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Cement from Egypt being unloaded in Rafah, June 2015

YNet reports:

Egypt opened the Rafah crossing for three days this week and announced that it will remain open on Sunday, as well. Egypt has opened the crossing only a handful of times since the overthrow of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, leaving many Gazans unable to travel outside the small coastal enclave.

According to the Ma'an News Agency, 499 travelers crossed the Rafah Crossing on Thursday, 1,136 travelers crossed on Friday and 900 crossed on Saturday. The travelers included humanitarian cases, stranded travelers, students studying abroad and others.

Egyptian authorities also allowed the passage of cement and other building materials into Rafah.

Ma'an says that some 20 trucks of cement, gravel and timber were exported into Gaza on Saturday.

As far as I know, the restrictions in place to ensure that cement doesn't get diverted to Hamas do not exist on cement that comes from Egypt.

Which means that chances are pretty good that some of these building materials will be used to build tunnels into Israel - and maybe even into Egypt.

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06/05 Links: Jerusalem: The Media Myth of Two Cities; ((( How Twitter Is Teaming Up to Mess With the Nazis )))

From Ian:

Cuomo, Fighting Boycott Against Israel, Will Halt State Business With Groups That Back It

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York is planning to order agencies under his control to divest themselves of companies and organizations aligned with a Palestinian-backed boycott movement against Israel.
Wading into a delicate international issue, Mr. Cuomo will set executive-branch and other state agencies in opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or B.D.S., which has grown in popularity in some quarters of the United States and elsewhere, alarming Jewish leaders who fear its toll on Israel’s international image and economy.
Several states have moved to support Israel and prevent their governments and agencies from doing business with companies or individuals that endorse the boycotts. Similar bills are currently pending in both houses of the New York Legislature.
But on Sunday, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, intends to flex his executive power — a more familiar demonstration in the governor’s second term — to expedite such action.
According to a draft version of an executive order obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Cuomo will command the commissioner of the Office of General Services to devise a list over the next six months of businesses and groups engaged in any “boycott, divestment or sanctions activity targeting Israel, either directly or through a parent or subsidiary.”

((( How Twitter Is Teaming Up to Mess With the Nazis )))

Spend any time around prominent opinionated Jews on the Internet, particularly on platforms like Reddit or Twitter, and you’re likely to encounter an odd anti-Semitic practice. White supremacists associated with the alt-right, many of them avid supporters of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, like to highlight Jewish users for targeting with parentheses: (((Rosenberg))), for example.
As Mic reported, the Internet’s neo-Nazis even have their very own Chrome browser extension that automatically places these parentheses around Jewish names on web pages. But on social media, they typically add the symbols themselves to troll Jews and alert fellow bigots to a potential target. Mic’s staff, for example, received these charming tweets singling out Jews on their team:
(((Echoes))), Exposed: The Secret Symbol Neo-Nazis Use to Target Jews Online
With a name like “Yair Rosenberg,” I might as well be called Jewy McJewface on Twitter. As a result, I’ve been on the receiving end of this sort of treatment for years, long before Donald Trump entered the political fray. Likewise, The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg, being a Very Prominent Jew With Opinions on the Internet, has been a lightning rod for such abuse. So last night, he decided to preempt the neo-Nazis and put parentheses around his own Twitter username. It seemed like a good idea to me, so I tweeted this:
Then I went to bed. It turned out a lot of people—not just Jews—liked the idea. Some anonymous accounts even outed themselves as Jews to show solidarity. Muslims, Christians, and Hindus changed their names to show their support. As of now, hundreds of accounts have appropriated the Nazi symbols as their own.
It’s worth noting that the internet’s anti-Semites hate when their culture is appropriated by their opponents.

IsraellyCool: Proleptic Dhimmitude, Palestinianisation And A Bottle Of Beer

Some very big words used in this week’s video.
Palestinianisation: this comes from the prophetic mind of Bat Ye’or. She started writing about what Europe would become back in the 1980’s. And she’s been proved right. Everything concerning Islam, going on in Europe today is predicted in her books going back more than 25 years. This interview is absolutely essential reading if you want to understand how Israel has become so hated.
Proleptic Dhimmitude: first you have to understand dhimmitude (which I’ve written about before) or you can understand it from Bat Ye’or. Then you have to understand the fairly obscure, but brilliant, word “proleptic” which comes from “prolepsis”:
Rhetoric. the anticipation of possible objections in order to answer them in advance.
So this is submission to the rules of Islam by non-Muslims before one is actually living under a Muslim ruler. For instance judging that insulting the prophet of Islam or desecrating one of Islam’s holy texts should be illegal so as to avoid “unpleasant consequences”. That is “proleptic dhimmitude”.

Yikes!

{But can you have one without the other?}

The primary religions of the Middle East are, obviously, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Each tends, speaking in broad terms, toward a universal perspective or a non-universal perspective.

Each tend to be, more or less, political or non-political.

I recognize that such broad characterizations invite noting the exceptions.

There are Jews who want to see the imposition of Torah law within Israel. That is what Meir Kahane wanted. There are Christians in the United States who would be delighted to live in an American Christian Fascist Theocracy. It is alleged that Sinclair Lewis said, "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." And there are people of Muslim origin throughout the world who would very much prefer not to live under al-Sharia, thank you very much.

Nonetheless, there is a continuum among the religions of the Levant between the universal and the non-universal, the political and the non-political.

What I outline below is a sort-of pedagogical tool for considering the great religions of the Levant and how they relate to one another and to the rest of us today. It is not meant to be definitive, but is a construct that offers a way to consider current vital political questions around the Middle East. These questions include the Caliphatic dreams of many Muslims, the pulverization of Christians living within Muslim lands, and the efforts of the Jews of the region to hold-off a violent never-ending onslaught of hate.

Judaism

Judaism, the first of the great three religions of the Levant, tends to be neither universal, nor political.

Judaism has never been a universal religion in the sense that it has never insisted that non-Jews must conform to the faith.

Nonetheless, the Jewish people represent the most inclusive nation in the world because anyone can join it via the faith. The Jews are a people like the French are a people and like the Japanese are a people, but if I were to move to Tokyo and learn the Japanese language and convert to Shinto, I could never actually be Japanese.

However, any Japanese person who converts to Judaism is a Jew.

Period.

Judaism, today, is also non-political. That is, virtually no Jews are calling for Israel, or any other country, to be ruled by the Torah. This does not mean, however, that Israel is entirely secular. There is an article in today's (6/2/16) Times of Israel by Amanda Borschel-Dan that discusses criminal penalties within Israel for Jews who marry outside of the rabbinate.

This represents the lingering of religious-based law within Israeli society - and it is a terrible law - but it does not define that country.

Whatever anyone might want to say about the Jewish State of Israel it is very definitely not a theocracy.

The rabbinate may have some power, but it is the secular government that rules.

Christianity

Christianity is universal but, today, generally not political.

Christianity is universal because at the heart of the faith is the idea that the only way to come to know G-d - and thus the only way to come to heaven - is through devotion to Jesus Christ. Christian theology, unlike Jewish theology, is universal in the sense that its religious ideology applies to every soul on Earth. If you want to know the Truth of the Father than it must come via the testimony of the Son.

However, Christianity today is, like Judaism, generally non-political. The European Enlightenment of the seventeenth-century forced a schism between Church and State that holds. Virtually no one is calling for any country to be ruled according New Testament principles. Even die-hard, right-wing Evangelical Christians in Nebraska are not calling for the US government to be ruled according the will of Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Islam

Islam is both universal and political.

Islam, like Christianity, is universal. That is, the only way to gain entrance to Paradise is via the prescriptions of the Prophet Mohammad. The difference is that within Christianity we are taught to turn the other cheek, whereas within Islam we are taught to head-chop the infidel.

Within Christianity there is the notion that the unrepentant sinner will be damned to eternal hell-fire.

Within Islam there is the prescription to crush the Infidel in this world, as well.

Thus Islam, in its political aspect, is far-and-away the most aggressive of the three.

Sharia forms the primary legal basis of the Muslim countries. This is why they hang Gay people from cranes in Iran, stone adulterous (or allegedly adulterous) women to death in Pakistan, and flay the skin of bloggers critical of Islam in Saudi Arabia.

As has been often noted, Islam has simply not gone through the Enlightenment changes and reforms that both Judaism and Christianity have.

The Islamic states have a generalized revulsion toward modernity even as they embrace the technological products of modernity.

They love iPhones but despise Britney Spears.

At the same time, the focus of their studies tend to be more Koranic than scientific and this is why the Caliphitic Dreams of so many Muslims can never be fulfilled. The Muslim governments can never hurt the western states by beating us over the head with the Koran.

What they can do, and what they are doing, is shooing their "excess population" into the West, most particularly Europe.

Germany and Sweden are leading the way toward a new Europe.

Europe in the future - if not the West, more generally - is going to become more racist, more anti-Semitic, more homophobic, and more misogynistic.

The great irony is that it is the western-progressives, who supposedly stand for none of that, are leading the charge.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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Arab sites celebrate Mohammed Ali's antisemitic statement

Arab and Muslim sites are commemorating the death of perhaps the most prominent Muslim convert, boxing great Mohammed Ali.

And the thing they like about him most seems to be his antisemitism and anti-Zionism.

Both Islam21C and Middle East Monitor lovingly quote Ali from a 1980 interview:

You know the entire power structure is Zionist. They control America; they control the world. They are really against the Islam religion.

That's pretty much pure antisemitism there, under the guise of "anti-Zionism."

The sites also quote when Ali visited a Lebanese UNRWA camp in 1974, where he said he wanted the state of Israel to be destroyed:

“In my name and the name of all Muslims in America, I declare support for the Palestinian struggle to liberate their homeland and oust the Zionist invaders,” he said during his visit.

Over 1700 people shared this photo of Ali in the Lebanese camp on Twitter. Not one of them asked why Lebanon keeps its Palestinian Arab brethren stuck in those ghettos without basic human rights over four decades later.

Because they are so "pro-Palestinian."

Ironically, Ali's grandson identifies as a Jew.

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Ma'an, the Western-funded news agency, reports in Arabic:

Dozens of extremist settlers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Sunday morning, in memory of the "naksa," the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, to coincide with the tours and provocative marches on the doors of the mosque and in the streets of Jerusalem's Old City under Israeli police protection.

The director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Omar Kiswani said that 208 settlers stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque through the Mughrabi Gate, in small groups, tightly guarded by Israeli police and special forces.

Al-Kiswani said the Israelis started their tour at the Moroccan gate, before moving on to the al-Qibli and al-Marwani mosques on the compound, and then to Bab al-Rahma area. Some of them attempted to perform religious rituals but were prevented from doing so by guards.

Sheikh Kiswani stressed that the settlers have no right to storm Al-Aqsa, blaming the Israeli government and the Israeli police responsibility tense situation in the Far eve of the holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic Waqf denounced the provocative practices that took place by the settlers in the Aqsa Mosque.

Jews peacefully visiting the Temple Mount is the top story in Ma'an today in both English (where the rhetoric is toned down) and Arabic.

This hysteria is published day in and day out in Arabic media worldwide.

But last year secular Israeli journalist Shlomo Eldar decided to visit the holy spot to see what the fuss was all about. He published the truth in Al Monitor:

I did not visit the Temple Mount for religious, political or ideological reasons. Rather, I came as a journalist wishing to know what the commotion is all about. I wanted to find out firsthand whether the Palestinian allegations that the Al-Aqsa Mosque is in danger are founded. Has Israel really changed the sanctified status quo at the Temple Mount or is it — as Israeli officials claim — the unbridled and deliberate incitement by the northern chapter of the Islamic movement in Israel and by Palestinian Authority (PA) officials that sparked the current wave of terror?

Visiting the compound is possible only through organized groups or those that get organized on the spot. That’s why I asked to join a tour of the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation headed by right-wing activist Yehuda Glick, who heads the LIBA Initiative for Jewish Freedom on the Temple Mount. To my surprise, however, I discovered that I was the only tourist in the initiative, which is why I was privileged to have a private tour guide who gave me a detailed overview of the history of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

Orna — a certified tour guide and a secular woman — volunteers once a month, as do many other tour guides, to provide a free-of-charge professional tour “without religious, political and ideological agendas,” for anyone who wants to see the site and be informed.

When we arrived at the entrance gate another surprise awaited me: Hundreds of tourists from around the world were lining up, waiting patiently for the visiting hours. Buses packed with tourists parked close to the Western Wall parking lot. Column after column of visitors from different countries joined the long meandering line that sprawled all the way from the entrance to the Old City's Dung Gate. Naively, I thought that only a handful of people, mainly from right-wing Israeli groups that insist on changing the existing order, would come to visit this hot spot.

As it turns out, tourists have a priority accessing the compound. When a group of Jews gets organized, it has the last priority to enter. Jews wishing to visit the Temple Mount are assigned police officers, border police soldiers and Waqf security guards who make sure they bring no Jewish ritual objects whatsoever. They are also forbidden from praying, bowing, sitting down, quietly reciting prayers, bringing a prayer book, a photo of the compound or a Star of David. They are allowed to bring nothing that could potentially upset Muslim worshipers and stir up more tension. Before going in, Orna carefully stashed all the photos, drawings and maps she was carrying under the stairwell so as to meet the stringent visiting restrictions. Standing next to the long line of tourists were five Jews wearing skullcaps. Once organized as a group, they waited for the instructions of the security guards to let them in. After going through a rigorous security check at the entrance gate, they were assigned border police soldiers as well as Waqf security guards that surrounded them throughout the visit. As soon as they set foot in the plaza, the women of the Mourabitat (organized Muslim activists) started shrieking in loud voices: “Allahu akbar.” This was the first time I saw from up close the women who have been recruited by the northern faction of the Islamic movement in Israel and who receive pay for participating in the mission to “defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

At the farther perimeters of the entrance, some 20 women in a religious study group were sitting down in a circle and reading the Quran. On a knoll across from there, outside the structure, were the Mourabitoun — the men — who were also having a Quran class. When they noticed the religious Jewish men they, too, started shouting in loud voices — which blended in with the yelping of the women — “Allahu akbar.”

Unflustered by those chants, the small Jewish group continued to walk slowly along the plaza all the way to the entrance to the mosque, which is marked by a strip on the ground. That’s where they stopped for fear that they would cross into an area that is prohibited. From there they proceeded to take another round along the plaza. Then they left the compound escorted by the guards and the Allahu akbar yelling.

I drew closer to the group of Mourabitoun men. I pulled out my cell phone and took their picture. All of a sudden a few Waqf guards showed up, demanding that I hand over my device, claiming that I had taken a photo of a sight that cannot be photographed.

“I have no objection deleting the forbidden photo,” I told one of the guards, who made sure I deleted all the photos showing the Mourabitoun and Mourabitat at the Temple Mount as well as photos of the Waqf security guards around the mosque. However, they did let me keep a photo of myself against the backdrop of the mosque. But then another group of Waqf security guards showed up with their commander (which is what I inferred from the tone of his voice and the orders he bossed around to his subordinates.) They demanded that I be removed from the Temple Mount because, according to them, I had violated the rules. “Nobody told me I couldn’t take photos of the worshipers,” I tried to explain. To support my argument, I added that I had taken the photos openly and in the presence of the security guards. “If I had known that you can’t take pictures of the Mourabitoun, would I have done so in front of your own eyes?” I wondered out loud.

Raising his voice, the commander of the Waqf detail said forcefully, “Get him out right now. Khalas! [That’s enough!] Out.” As they started escorting me to the exit gate, a border police soldier stationed at one of the security posts showed up where the altercation was taking place. At that point an argument about sovereignty at the Temple Mount ensued. “You have no right to remove any visitors from the plaza,” the soldier told his Waqf counterparts, who insisted on removing the “rogue tourist.”

One of the Waqf officials turned to me in English and said, “Here, we make the decisions. Here, we call the shots. Here, we are kings — the rulers.” He kept repeating the word “king” over and over. “Nobody can dispute what we say,” he argued. “We determine who comes in and who goes out and what they can or can’t do. We are the sovereigns at Al-Aqsa Mosque.” The border police soldier tried to calm him down, telling him that those were not the procedures and that decisions have to be made jointly. Yet, the Waqf guard insisted that they were the sovereign and that they had been explicitly ordered to banish me.

This ended my visit to the Temple Mount, from which I learned that if Waqf officials have the authority and ability to decide who gets to visit the compound and who fails to meet the threshold criteria, the Al-Aqsa Mosque is therefore not in danger.

Knesset member Ghattas alleged that Israel was deepening its control and occupation, yet I don’t understand what he saw. The Waqf security guards are densely deployed at the Temple Mount compound, going to great lengths to make sure that only small groups of Jews get to visit the site compared to the thousands of tourists that are allowed to visit almost uninterruptedly. While keeping order and security at the Temple Mount and at Al-Aqsa Mosque is shared jointly by Israel and the Waqf, the tension awards the Palestinian almost total control of who is allowed into the Temple Mount and who isn’t. This, of course, stands in total contrast to the Palestinian allegations that Israel has changed the status quo and that Al-Aqsa is in danger.

Even an Israeli journalist had believed the hysteria without question, until he decided to look at the situation first-hand.

The reality is that Jews are peacefully visiting the Temple Mount and are subject to rigorous restrictions that secular tourists and Muslims are not. And every time they visit the Muslims make a big deal out of it in order to create a situation where Jews would be banned altogether.

And to a large extent, the strategy has already worked.

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From the NYT:

“Mr. President!” a woman called out to Waad Qannam at a rally last week in East Jerusalem. “We want you to represent us!” The crowd cheered passionately, even though Mr. Qannam was actually running for president on a reality television show.

In the United States, a reality television star is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. For Palestinians, it’s the other way around: A candidate chosen on a television show is the closest they have come to an elected leader in more than 10 years.

“This is just a show,” acknowledged Mr. Qannam, one of three contestants who made it to Thursday night’s finale of “The President.” “But people are hungry for a leader.”

The show, now in its second season, began with 24 contestants culled from more than 1,200 applicants who had to take a series of exams on Palestinian politics, international law, development and gender equality. Each week, contestants shadowed a Palestinian minister or business person, then told a panel of judges what they had learned and how they would improve on the job.

On Thursday night, the three finalists all had similar platforms: Boycott Israel. Designate East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. Bring about a reconciliation for the bitterly divided Palestinians between the West Bank and Gaza. (Six of the candidates in the round of 24 were from Gaza, though none made it to the final round.)

“The President” — broadcast on the Maan satellite network to large audiences in Gaza, the West Bank and elsewhere in the Arab world — was funded mostly by a State Department grant to Search for Common Ground, a nongovernmental group that focuses on conflict resolution.

AP adds:

The prospects of reaching peace with Israel rarely came up, and when the topic was mentioned, contestants tended to take strong positions against Israel.

Qannam said Israel was responsible for the current wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence and said he wouldn't call on Palestinians to stop stabbing attacks.

Why does the US fund a reality TV show in the PA? They have other TV series that seem to be able to pay for themselves without outside help.

And why is the State Department paying for a TV show that not only urges the audience to boycott Israel and tacitly condones stabbing Israeli civilians?

American tax dollars are paying for anti-Israel incitement that is far more popular than the total of all of the "peace" initiatives that the State Department has ever sponsored in the territories.

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06/04 Links: Incitement rife in Palestinian textbooks; 35 years on: mission to bomb Saddam’s nuke reactor

From Ian:

Incitement rife in Palestinian textbooks

In almost every study conducted by researchers looking into incitement in Palestinian textbooks, materials have been found which breach the Palestinian Authority's pledges to halt anti-Israel incitement in schools.
Researchers have been surveying Palestinian school textbooks frequently over the past few decades to see if they have inciting material, such as the non-recognition of Israel as a sovereign state or the glorification of terror attacks and terrorists.
The schools researched in the various surveys are all public schools under the control of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Ministry of Education.
It turns out that in the vast majority of Palestinian textbooks, Israel isn't on any maps in any form. Israeli cities within the 1967 Green Line - such as Acre, Haifa, Nazareth, Jaffa, and others – are presented as being Palestinian cities. There are only a few schools which use textbooks that show a difference between PA controlled areas and Israel.
The IMPACT-se group looks into the issue of what governments teach their children and put in their textbooks worldwide in an attempt to determine how peaceful and tolerant a society is. They also looked into the school curriculums in the PA.
According to Chairman Marcus Sheff, "we looked for characteristics of peace and tolerance. We investigate education systems all over the world. We search using objective criteria written by UNESCO, and use these criteria to rank the peace and tolerance in children and in the society itself. There is a definite and clear correlation between the level and peace and tolerance and political violence in a society."

PHOTOS: PA President Abbas’ Dedication Of Street In His Name Backfires

A West Bank municipality’s decision to name a street after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has backfired, with street signs vandalized and a great deal of abuse on social media.
Abbas dedicated the street in the town of Bir Zeit last week with pomp and circumstance.
The naming of the street was “a token of appreciation for [Abbas’] efforts to better the lives of the Palestinian people and his efforts to realize the dream of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” the municipality said in a statement.
Less than a week later, the sign was vandalized and Abbas’ name erased from it. The official media ignored the incident, but it went viral on social media, accompanied by many comments ridiculing the President, some of them accompanied by a picture of the tweeters raising their middle finger.
“The youth of Bir Zeit couldn’t stand that sign for more than a week,” Beesan wrote.
“We congratulate our great leader, the liberator of Jerusalem and the crusher of the Jews, Mahmoud Abbas, for the naming of a street in Bir Zeit after him,” Dr. Khalil Awadi wrote ironically.

06/03 Links Pt2: BDS: A new face on an old hate; Jeremy Corbyn on Israel; Mekonen – Journey Of An African Jew

From Ian:

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: This bigoted radical does not deserve a "feminist artist" award

[Angela] Davis experienced her first visit to “Palestine” (with other “scholars of color”) as a “nightmare . . . the wall, the concrete, the razor wire everywhere conveyed the impression that we were in prison.” Deftly, she compares the jailing of black Americans with the jailing of Palestinian . . . terrorists. She tells her audiences that if they support BDS, “Palestine will be free.”
In the guise of anti-racism, Davis is a bigot — an activist Jew-hater. In her lectures, she doesn’t condemn Jordan or Egypt for their anti-Palestinian actions, nor does she fault the many Arab and Muslim countries that have systematically refused citizenship and even employment to Arab Palestinians.
Davis doesn’t talk about the anti-black racism of Arabs or about the practice of real gender and religious apartheid in Muslim countries. She doesn’t even fault the Palestinian leadership for torturing and executing its gays and dissidents or for forcibly veiling and subordinating Palestinian women. A real feminist would do so.
Real feminists wouldn’t be honoring such a figure.
In early May, 100 activists and artists staged a protest at the Brooklyn Museum about “displacement both in Brooklyn and Palestine.” This demonstration was organized by the Decolonial Cultural Front and Movement to Protect the People.
No one mentioned the relentless Palestinian terrorism against Israeli Jewish civilians — or the enormous “displacement” and murder of Christians by Arab Muslims, or the “displacement” brought about by indigenous civil wars among Muslim Afghans, Libyans, Iraqis and Syrians, a “displacement” that threatens the stability and viability of the Western world.
I doubt they will demonstrate against Angela Davis.

BDS: A new face on an old hate

BDS- boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the world’s only Jewish State are nothing new, and are not related to the "occupation"- but against the very existence of Israel, within any borders.
From the Saturday Evening Post, Dec 27 1947 spoken by Salel Jabur, Prime Minister of Iraq
“What is it”, he asked me, that Americans want?” If it is a safe home for the Jews, that cannot be found in Palestine for Palestine is in the heart of the Arab world. We surround it. How shall a Jewish state live there?”
We will boycott it, give it no foods or raw materials, buy nothing from it. We will squeeze it in a ring of steel until it dies and our heart is ours again”

Fatah media reports that Hamas arrested five members of the Presidential Guard for "collaborating" with Palestinian Authority that it claims it is unified with.

On Wednesday morning, Hamas reportedly arrested Mohammed Ghazi Khitab, Isaac Ibrahim Abdullah Hussein, Shadi Alslol, Hatem Yousef Mohammed Hasanat, and Mohammed Abdul Rahman Ibrahim Mattar.

The story goes on to accuse Hamas of building secret, underground prisons specifically for political opponents, where they routinely engage in torture. Some are in the basements of mosques which are soundproofed so that the residents nearby don't hear the screams.

Fatah media is even less trustworthy than Hamas media, but the arrests and charges of torture are probably true.

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Hundreds attend funeral of Holocaust survivor they didn't know

From Miriam Goodman on Facebook:

Now this is Israel...and her people!

Following an announcement that there was no minyan (quorum) to accompany Holocaust survivor Fernand Pavel Klitz, a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, hundreds of people came to his funeral. They came from all over the country . Secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox. Old and young. School children
The burial society motorcycles escorted the procession and the coffin was carried by IDF officers and soldiers who came on their own initiative.

While this is impressive, it also points to a problem: people should worry more about these incredible survivors while they are still alive. so they wouldn't die alone.

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06/03 Links Pt1: Israel Criticized for Declining Invitation to National Suicide; Iran’s chess board

From Ian:

Charles Krauthammer: Israel Criticized for Declining Invitation to National Suicide

This seems a gratuitous provocation. Sanders hardly made Israel central to his campaign. He did call Israel’s response in the 2014 Gaza war “disproportionate” and said “we cannot continue to be one-sided.” But now Sanders seeks to permanently alter — i.e., weaken — the relationship between the Democratic Party and Israel, which has been close and supportive since Harry Truman recognized the world’s only Jewish state when it declared independence in May 1948.
[Cornel] West doesn’t even pretend, as do some left-wing “peace” groups, to be opposing Israeli policy in order to save it from itself. He makes the simpler case that occupation is unconscionable oppression and that until Israel abandons it, Israel deserves to be treated like apartheid South Africa — anathematized, cut off, made to bleed morally and economically. The Sanders appointees wish to bend the Democratic platform to encourage such diminishment unless Israel redeems itself by liberating Palestine.
This is an unusual argument for a Democratic platform committee, largely because it is logically and morally perverse. Israel did in fact follow such high-minded advice in 2005: It terminated its occupation and evacuated Gaza. That earned it (temporary) praise from the West. And from the Palestinians? Not peace, not reconciliation, not normal relations but a decade of unrelenting terrorism and war.
Israel is now being asked — pressured — to repeat that same disaster on the West Bank. That would bring the terror war, quite fatally, to the very heart of Israel — Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ben Gurion Airport. Israel is now excoriated for declining that invitation to national suicide.
It is ironic that the most successful Jewish presidential candidate ever should be pushing the anti-Israel case. But perhaps not surprising considering Sanders’ ideological roots. He is old left — not the post-1960s, countercultural New Left. Why, the man honeymooned in the Soviet Union — not such fashionably cool communist paradises as Sandinista Nicaragua where Bill de Blasio went to work for the cause or Castro’s Cuba where de Blasio honeymooned. (Do lefties all use the same wedding planner?)
For the old left, Israel was simply an outpost of Western imperialism, Middle East division. To this day, the leftist consensus, most powerful in Europe (which remains Sanders’ ideological lodestar), holds that Israeli perfidy demands purification by Western chastisement.

Caroline Glick: Iran’s chess board

Strategic thinking has always been Israel’s Achilles’ heel. As a small state bereft of regional ambitions, so long as regional realities remained more or less static, Israel had little reason to be concerned about the great game of the Middle East.
But the ground is shifting in the lands around us. The Arab state system, which ensured the strategic status quo for decades, has collapsed.
So for the first time in four generations, strategy is again the dominant force shaping events that will impact Israel for generations to come.
To understand why, consider two events of the past week.
Early this week it was reported that after a two-year hiatus, Iran is restoring its financial support for Islamic Jihad. Iran will give the group, which is largely a creation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, $70 million.
On Wednesday Iranian media were the first to report on the arrest of a “reporter” for Iran’s Al-Alam news service. Bassam Safadi was arrested by Israel police in his home in Majdal Shams, the Druse village closest to the border with Syria on the Golan Heights. Safadi is suspected of inciting terrorism.
That is, he is suspected of being an Iranian agent.

BDS leaders whine about left wing peace groups and Arabs as foreign investment in Israel skyrockets (update)

From MEMRI:

Palestinian BDS Operatives: Activities of US Peace Groups Are Destroying Anti-Normalization Efforts

Gaza BDS activist Haidar Eid said that there was resentment among BDS activists toward Palestinian authorities for allowing American peace groups such as One Voice, Seeds of Peace, and the Peace Alliance, to operate in the West Bank and Gaza. "Allowing such groups to operate in the Gaza Strip destroys the boycott campaign," he said.

BDS activist Omar Barghouti said that the Right of Return was "the most important of the three rights upon which we are insisting."

They were speaking on the Lebanese channel Palestine Today TV on April 10, 2016.

Barghouti (who, remember, went to Tel Aviv University while saying that all normalization with Israel by everyone else is absolutely prohibited) gives a nice list of BDS fails in the Arab world:

- Israeli security delegations in Saudi Arabia
- Israeli sports delegations in Qatar
- Israeli trade delegations in the UAE
- Other Israeli delegations in Bahrain, Morocco and elsewhere.

Barghouti laments how poorly the BDS movement is doing among his Arab brethren at the same time he tells Bloomberg News that even though Israel's foreign investment has tripled since he started the BDS movement, "BDS is not just working. It is working far better and spreading into the mainstream much faster than we had anticipated."

Bloomberg notes:

Despite the appreciating shekel -- a sign of foreign investor confidence -- Israeli startups raised $3.76 billion last year from non-Israeli investors, the highest annual amount in a decade, according to data collected by IVC Research Center. Foreigners, who are responsible for at least 50 percent of total yearly investment in Israeli startups, spent an additional $5.89 billion acquiring them. Chinese buyout firm XIO Group’s $510 million purchase of Lumenis Ltd. led high-tech mergers and acquisitions followed by a U.S. private equity firm’s $438 million buyout of ClickSoftware Technologies Ltd. (Acquisitions aren’t captured as part of foreign investment in startups.)

UPDATE: Transcript of the interview:

Omar Baghouti: "The BDS movement embraces international law, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is intrinsic to our movement, not something alien to it. Ever since we established the movement, we insisted that it would not be exclusionary, and would include anybody who abides by international law and human rights, and who believes in the rights of the Palestinian people – the entire Palestinian people, in the homeland and in the diaspora. We are talking about putting an end to the occupation, and to apartheid – Israel's racist system of segregation – and about the need for the return of the refugees, the most important of the three rights upon which we are insisting, because some 68% of the Palestinians, in Palestine and the diaspora, are refugees."
[...]
Haidar Eid: "To be honest, I embrace this opportunity to point out that there is resentment among the BDS activists in Palestine, both in the 1948 and the 1967 borders, at all the normalization projects, which are allowed to operate in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip – especially in the West Bank."
[...]
Host: "Are you saying that normalization activities are taking place in Gaza?"
Haidar Eid: "I would not call this 'normalization activities,' but rather, the undoing of the standards of the boycott in the Gaza Strip, by authorizing pro-normalization American organizations, such as One Voice, Seeds of Peace, or the Peace Alliance, which was established after the Geneva Accord, which gave up the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees, even though approximately 75% of Gaza's residents are refugees, to whom international law has guaranteed the Right of Return. Allowing such organizations to operate in the Gaza Strip destroys the boycott campaign."
[...]
Omar Baghouti: "Unfortunately, the official Arab and even Palestinian normalization is on the rise. We hold the official Palestinian circles primarily responsible for this, because they are the gateway to Arab-Israeli normalization. If official Palestinian normalization had not reached this level, nobody would have dared to host Israeli delegations in Saudi Arabia, sports delegations in Qatar, trade delegations in the UAE, and delegations in Bahrain, Morocco, and so on. Official Arab normalization has reached critical proportions. In light of the oppression of Arab liberties and civil society, our allies and BDS activists in the Arab world oppose this normalization, but with great difficulty. They are in need of help, but the litmus test is, first and foremost, putting an end to Palestinian normalization."

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One of the cartoons winning an award in Iran's Holocaust cartoon contest

There was a joke that Jews told each other during the Holocaust:

An antisemite claimed that the Jews had caused the war; the reply was: Yes, the Jews and the bicyclists. Why the bicyclists? Asks the one? Why the Jews? asks the other.

I was reminded of this by the announcement of the latest Iranian antisemitic cartoon contest, coming on the heels of the Holocaust cartoon contest:

An Iranian museum on Tuesday kicked off a “Zionist caliphate” cartoon contest, with “Zionism, terrorism and racism” and “ISIL terrorism and genocide in the name of religion and to the benefit of the Zionists” the designated themes.

The contest by Iranian Cultural-Art Masaf Institute will offer one $5,000 award for best cartoon, $1,000 for best caricature and four $500 awards to the other top entries, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

In its portrait session, participants are asked to focus on Theodor Herzl and Queen Elizabeth. The competition is dedicated to the “Nakba,” or displacement of Palestinians in 1948 with the establishment of the State of Israel, according to the report.

Why Queen Elizabeth?

The answer is probably because they are using her as a representative for responsibility for the Balfour Declaration, but my point is that hate against Jews remains as arbitrary and deadly now as it was during the coining of the first joke. But hating Israel is now considered as considered "obvious" as hating Jews was a couple of generations ago, because Israel in the 21st century has become the proxy for Jews as they were looked upon in the 1940s.

(UPDATE: See L_King in the comments for a probably better reason why Queen Elizabeth is singled out.)

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