Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, September 16, 2016

Do Native Americans know they are being used by Palestinian activists?

I received an email from "End the Occupation" about a protest this weekend:

As the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe continues their resistance to the U.S. government’s plan to install an oil pipeline on Native land, thePalestinian Youth Movement (PYM) has organized a caravan of Palestinians and allies arriving today in North Dakota to stand in solidarity.

Artwork in solidarity with Standing Rock and the water protectors. (Leila Abdelrazaq)

The proposed route of the pipeline runs through an area of Sioux land that is of utmost cultural, spiritual, and environmental significance. There are historic burial grounds, village grounds, and Sundance sites that would be directly impacted. The pipeline is also supposed to run under the Missouri River, whose water is essential to life on the Standing Rock Reservation.

Palestinians are expressing solidarity with this resistance, recognizing the similar experiences of violent settler colonialism Native American and First Nation peoples continue to endure.

While working to end all US support for Israeli settler colonialism that continues to steal the land and resources of the indigenous Palestinian population, it is essential for Palestinian rights activists here torecognize the settler colonial nature of the United States and challenge the continuing denial of the rights of Native nations and their people.

The cynicism of these "pro-Palestinian activists" who live in territory that used to be Native American land and pretending suddenly to be against the "settler colonialism" that their homes and universities are built upon would be astonishing if we already didn't see that same cynicism every day in all the other claims they make.

One of the people signing this was Anna Baltzer, who is quite American and hasn't as far as I can tell burned her US passport in solidarity with Native Americans.

My question is, do the Native Americans realize that this support is not exactly wholehearted and that they are being used, and ultimately will be hijacked, by their supposed benefactors?

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09/16 Links Pt1: The PA makes terrorism a profitable profession; Powell’s Selective Outrage

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: Why the U.N.’s Israel obsession should worry even people who don’t care about Israel

One of the striking findings here is that the supposedly more sober Security Council shares the General Assembly’s vice: When it comes to settlements and occupation, it can see no evil if Israel is not the culprit.
This provides further demonstration of the findings of my new research paper, that the supposed international norm against settlers is in practice a norm about Israel, rather than a general rule of law.
But some may be inclined to shrug off the U.N.’s particular interest in Israel, on the theory that “one has to start somewhere.” In this view, international law is deeply intertwined with politics (which is true), and the international legal system is weak and immature. Dealing with alleged Israeli wrongdoings is the first level in an eventual broader and more systematic approach. Another response is that if it is impossible to censure serious wrongdoers — say, Turkey and Morocco, whose occupied territories are now mostly populated by settlers — something is better than nothing.
But the data — which covers the past 50 years — show this is not happening. If anything, causation seems to run the other way. Turtle Bay’s focus on one country has apparently robbed it of the ability to address the world’s many situations of occupation and settlements. This shows the double role of the scapegoat: It does not just get all the blame, but it also effectively absolves others. The U.N.’s blindness to settlements around the world is actually the flip side of its focus on Israel.

International Law Expert: UN’s Obsession With Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Robs It of Ability to Deal With More Serious Problems (INTERVIEW)

The UN’s obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has robbed it of the ability to deal with other more serious problems around the world, an international legal expert told The Algemeiner on Thursday.
Dr. Eugene Kontorovich — a professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law and head of the international law department at the Kohelet Policy Forum — said his research has found that the standards the UN applies to Israel regarding its policies in the West Bank are not applied to any other country.
“As I was doing research, one of the things I discovered was that even in situations which under international law clearly qualify as an occupation, the UN almost never uses the word occupation,” Kontorovich told The Algemeiner.
Speaking with The Algemeiner, Kontorovich said, “What Israel is told by the international community to do, which is to prevent its Jewish nationals from living in territories it controls, is told only to it. The important part of this research was not to show that there is a double standard and not to show that Israel is singled out — that’s a bit like saying cops stop minorities more on suspicion of illegal activities. What this shows is that what the UN is telling Israel to do is not legally required. In other words, the rule it says Israel is violating doesn’t exist. You can’t have a rule in just one situation.”
Kontorovich said that while change at the UN was a hopeless prospect, “the question is whether the American government will empower the UN by not vetoing damaging resolutions. Will America give greater strength and legitimacy to this dysfunctional institution?”

Powell’s Selective Outrage

Powell’s top aide and chief-of-staff for years was Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a man who has embraced bizarre, anti-Semitic conspiracies with increasing volume. He has, for example, suggested that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons was really an Israeli false flag operation. He flirted (though did not endorse) with 9/11 conspiracies. His hatred and description of neoconservatives to support various partisan polemics reads like something out if Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
While the email dump shows that Powell and Wilkerson still talk like old friends, through all of Wilkerson’s antics, Powell has said nothing, seemingly endorsing Wilkerson’s rants with his own public (and private) silence. In doing so, Wilkerson’s problem with Jewish policymakers has become Powell’s.
Of course, there’s an additional irony here to Powell’s cynicism. He may have supported Wilkerson’s efforts to delegitimize critics, figuring that so long as he himself didn’t use the dog whistles, he’d maintain his luster as a senior statesman. He may simply have also simply felt that the ends justified the means. That cynicism disqualifies Powell as any arbiter of political morality.
There’s an additional irony here, of course. Russia is the chief suspect in the hacking of Powell’s account, as well as recent hacks of the Democratic National Committee, and perhaps other figures as well. But Wilkerson often was a fixture on Russia Today (RT), the Kremlin’s chief propaganda arm. His presence legitimized the conspiracies Russian President Vladimir Putin which to disseminate. The interplay of Wilkerson and RT was symbiotic. Once again, Powell at any point could have instructed Wilkerson privately or, better yet, publicly to knock it off, to stop embarrassing him, and to stop embarrassing his country. And yet, Powell was happy to allow Russian propaganda to do its trick so long as the subject of its attacks were elements of the U.S. political debate with whom Powell disagreed.
Perhaps if Powell had guided himself more by principle than cynical political calculations, his embarrassment might not be so great.

‘The Boys in Tehran Know Israel Has 200 Nukes Pointed at Them,’ Says Former Secretary of State Colin Powell in Leaked Email

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell told a colleague last year that Israel has a slew of nuclear weapons pointed at Iran, according to emails released by hacking group DCLeaks and reported on by US foreign policy blog LobeLog on Wednesday.
In a March 2015 exchange between America’s former top diplomat and his current business partner, Jeffrey Leeds — about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial speech to Congress to warn against the Iran nuclear deal that was being negotiated — Powell wrote:
Negotiators can’t get what he wants. Anyway, Iranians can’t use one [a nuclear weapon] if they finally make one. The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands. As Akmdinijad (sic) [said], “What would we do with one, polish it?” I have spoken publicly about both nK and Iran. We’ll blow up the only thing they care about—regime survival. Where, how would they even test one?
This assertion about the existence of Israeli nukes, as LobeLog‘s Eli Clifton pointed out, is significant, because Jerusalem continues to maintain a policy of “nuclear ambiguity.”
Powell, who publicly endorsed the Iran deal a few months later, during an interview on NBC‘s “Meet the Press,”

Aw, look at those cute kids dressed like terrorists at Islam's thiird holiest site

This photo was from earlier this week during Eid festivities on the Temple Mount:

Perfectly natural.

Teaching kids to idolize murderers and to associate terror with Islam is not outrageous, but expected by the world.

And news outlets like AP and Reuters won't show these pictures, because, you know, it might foment Islamophobia. Some things are more important than news.

(h/t Ambassador Dani Dayan via Dan K)

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Hamas' Eid al Adha Greeting Card

From the Al Qassam Brigades of Hamas comes this graphic to celebrate this year's Eid al Adha:

See how festive it is? This is the softer side of Hamas!

The Google autotranslate is not 100% accurate. It translates closer to "May you be well every year" and is used as as a standard greeting for annual holidays as well as birthdays. So, for example, this is the same phrase being posted by Hamas at the end of Ramadan this year:

The flowers are a nice touch. It makes the message of "death to Jews" a lot homier.

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Ibrahim al-Zaeem, who appears to be a cleric and an intellectual of sorts, wrote an article published in the Huffington Post Arabic where he decries any thought of Arabs accepting Israel in any way.

He starts off by saying that more and more Arabs are tacitly accepting Israel's existence, as a type of realpolitik, since Israel is strong enough that it is not going to be destroyed any time soon.

He says that these Arabs are cozying up to Israel because they believe that it is invincible and it controls the media and the banks. Probably referring to the Gulf states, he says that when they visit Israel it is in the name of tolerance of Islam.

"You fools!" he responds. "Have ye not read about Islam, but you (pretend to) know the ethics of your prophet?"

"Many in the Arab and Islamic nation, and I am one of them, refuse to mention 'Israel' in the abstract but always to mention its aggressive nature. Mentioning 'Israel' without qualification is a betrayal of Palestine! How can some people want the Arab and Muslim conscience to accept the presence of a malignant cancer in the body of the 'umma? How can they want to re-wire the Arab collective mind to deliver a fait accompli (of Israel)? How can we leave our civilization and history and heritage behind us? And for whom - for the 'chosen people!'" Zaeem adds.

He then goes on to say that Israel is quite vulnerable, as the October 1973 war and the terror intifadas and the Gaza wars showed.

Zaeem stresses that he is not against Jews but only Zionists. The only response to Zionism is jihad.

It is better to be defeated militarily that to lose one's soul, which is what the Arabs who accept Israel's existence are doing, Zaeem concludes.

If this Iranian-educated cleric had just spewed his hate in a regular Arab newspaper, this would not be very newsworthy. But for the Huffington Post Arabic to publish this (even with its caveat that it doesn't necessarily agree with the views of its writers) is much more significant - and it says more about HuffPo pushing an Iranian narrative to the Arab world even as mainstream Arabs are starting to accept Israel.

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Who is more antisemitic: Hamas or the PLO?

MEMRI translated an August sermon by Hamas MP Marwan Abu Ras:

It included a part where Abu Ras called the Jews "the vilest and most despicable nation in history."

OK, that's pretty antisemitic.

But the PLO may be worse.

Because the PLO denies that Jews are a nation or a people, claiming merely that Judaism is a religion. They deny the very idea of Jewish peoplehood. In their words:

Recognizing the Jewish state implies recognition of a Jewish people and recognition of its right to self-determination. Those who assert this right also assert that the territory historically associated with this right of self-determination (i.e., the self-determination unit) is all of Historic Palestine. Therefore, recognition of the Jewish people and their right of self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine.

The PLO ambassador to Chile accepted these talking points:

About the hatred we have against the Jewish people. As Palestinians, first, we don’t have hatred. Second we don’t recognize the existence of the Jewish people-there is no Jewish people.

Hamas admits that the Jewish nation exists, and merely says that it is "despicable." The PLO, on the other hand, doesn't even accept that the Jews are a people.

Which is worse?

I would argue that the PLO's denial of Jewish nationhood is even worse than Hamas' explicit antisemitism.

You can argue about the matter.. But both Hamas and the PLO are undoubtedly antisemitic by their own words.

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09/15 Links Pt2: The ADL Takes Sides Against Israel; Black Lives Matter's Anti-Semitic Bedfellows

From Ian:

The ADL Takes Sides Against Israel

When Abe Foxman retired from his post as national director of the Anti-Defamation League after 50 years there, including 28 at its head, there was uncertainty about the direction his successor would take the organization. Unlike Foxman, Jonathan Greenblatt wasn’t a longtime staffer at the anti-Semitism monitoring group nor was his background in pro-Israel advocacy or Jewish philanthropy. He was, instead, representative of a new generation of Jewish leaders, an entrepreneur and corporate executive with experience in non-profit charitable work. But the items on his resume that stood out the most to those with an eye on ADL’s ability to interact with the political world were those that spoke of his time as a staffer in both the Clinton and Obama White Houses. That raised questions as to whether the veteran Democratic operative would stand up for Israel in conflicts with his former boss.
This week we received the answer to that question in the form of an article in Foreign Policy by Greenblatt attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Greenblatt took issue with Netanyahu’s video posted last week accusing the Palestinians of advocating “ethnic cleansing” because of their efforts to force the eviction of hundreds of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the West Bank and Jerusalem in order to create a Palestinian state where Jews could no longer live. The Obama administration reacted to the comments with fury. The administration views arguments about whether Jews have a right to live in the territories as irrelevant to the quest to create a Palestinian state.
But rather than side with Netanyahu on a question of Jewish rights or even maintaining a stance of public neutrality while voicing his opinion behind the scenes, Greenblatt dove headfirst into this debate with an opinion piece. Echoing the administration’s talking points, Greenblatt said the prime minister was wrong to assert that Palestinians should accept the potential presence of Jews in their state the same way Jews accepted Israeli Arabs as fellow citizens with equal rights. Since Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Jerusalem consider themselves Israelis and need to be protected by the Israeli Army, he says there’s no comparison. More than that, the ADL head says that by using the phrase “ethnic cleansing,” Netanyahu is invoking the specter of genocide in an inappropriate manner for “crass political ends.”
Greenblatt’s stance is deeply troubling.

UN Watch: UN Watch questions High Commissioner on Israel bias

We commend the High Commissioner for his statement highlighting abuses in many countries. At the same time, we wish to request some clarifications.
The High Commissioner rightly mentioned abuses by Venezuela, and said his office would speak out at “every opportunity.” If so, why has his Twitter account, followed by 1.5 million people, refused to post even one word on Venezuela over the past 6 weeks of escalating hunger, arbitrary arrests, and oppression?
The High Commissioner mentioned Crimea, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh — yet failed to say that, under international law, these are occupied territories. Instead, he only used that term in one case: for the Palestinian territories. Why?
Finally, the High Commissioner criticized Iran, Syria and North Korea for refusing to cooperate with UN inquiries—and he then lumped in Israel with that list.
Let us be clear: UN Watch continues to demand that all countries cooperate with legitimate UN inquiries. But what if a UN mechanism is manifestly not legitimate?

Another amazing Second Temple find - a stone weight with a priest's name

From JPost:

A routine archaeological excavation of an Old City synagogue destroyed by Jordanian troops during the War of Independence turned into much more, after the burnt remains of rare relics from the Second Temple period in 70 AD were revealed several meters below ground level.

Among the artifacts unearthed in the 2013 excavation in the Jewish Quarter included a rare stone scaled weight inscribed with the name of a priestly family, covered in millennia-old ashes from the fire that Roman soldiers used to burn Jerusalem to the ground.

The temple in question, Tiferet Yisrael, which was built during the mid-19th century, and served as one of the two main synagogues of the Jewish Quarter, along with the Hurva synagogue, was bombed in May of 1948 by the Jordanian Legion.

Despite its historic import, the process to rebuild the synagogues did not begin in earnest until 10 years ago, said Israel Antiquities Authority archeologist Dr. Oren Gutfeld on Thursday, noting that antiquities laws require excavations before construction of any kind.

“After we cleared all the ruins from 1948, we started in the basement of the synagogue and uncovered its ritual bath [mikveh], heating system, and parts of a chandelier,” said Gutfeld, who oversaw the dig.

“And when we dug beneath the basement floor we uncovered a building from the Mamluk Period in the 13-14th centuries, which turned out to be a Byzantine structure in secondary use, probably for public purposes.”

Approximately 3 meters below the basement, Gutfeld said the Byzantine building was paved with mosaic tiles amid fresco walls, indicating it was a non-residential structure.

“Immediately after we took out the floors we arrived to a very, very massive and deep conflagration layer from the year 70 AD, when the city was burned to the ground,” he said.

“It was so massive, that every day after finishing the work we were all black [from the ancient soot], like firemen.”

Upon removing the burnt layer of debris, Gutfeld said a mikveh from the Second Temple period was found next to a storage facility filled with fragments of pottery, stone vessels, animal bones, and ancient coins.

“During the fire and destruction, something blocked it, and it stayed frozen in time for 2,000 years,” he said.

“While I was digging in the burnt layer, I found a stone weight covered with soot, and only one of the 600 stone weights uncovered from the Second Temple period had a Hebrew inscription. So, I looked at it and smiled to myself thinking maybe it’ll have an inscription, and when I put it in a bucket of water and took it out I started to shiver.”

Immersion in the water, Gutfeld said, revealed two lines of inscribed text.

“The lower line had the name of the family of a high priest named ‘Katros’ written in Aramaic, but we could not understand the meaning of the upper line until recently, which is why we delayed publication of the find until now,” he said.

After years of analysis, Gutfeld said it was recently determined that the first line also was inscribed with the family’s name, but in ancient Persian.

“It was used to measure weight on a scale – maybe even for objects in the Temple,” he explained. “So it makes sense that the family name was inscribed on the stone.”

Moreover, Gutfeld said the family is criticized in the Mishnah for being corrupt and buying the title of priesthood.

“It was very popular during the Second Temple period to buy into the priesthood,” he said.

Asked how it felt to have the soot of one of Judaism’s most historic events on his flesh, Gutfeld paused thoughtfully for a moment.

“It is amazing when you think about what you are digging,” he said, noting that neighborhood residents and rabbis came to the site to take some of the debris as souvenirs.

For now, as the new synagogue is being built, Gutfeld said he is still awaiting publication of the find in a scientific journal.

Another weight with the Kathros family name was discovered a while back in "The Burnt House," another Old City structure that is from the time of the Temple's destruction that may have actually been their family home.

(h/t Yoel)

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

On Tuesday afternoon, Shimon Peres, 93, suffered a mild stroke. Later that evening his condition worsened, and now (Wednesday morning) he is fighting for his life.

I was surprised at how sad I felt. After all, Shimon Peres is a man that I have bitterly criticized time after time. He was one of the so-called “architects of Oslo,” the men who secretly violated the law to negotiate with the PLO, and then presented their deal as a fait accompli to PM Rabin, who had no choice but to go along. How could an Israeli PM reject an offer of peace? Rabin thought he could manage the process, but the pressure that was immediately applied to him by the US placed him in the position of someone stuck on the back of an angry bull and told to ride. And then, ironically enough, he was assassinated by a right-wing extremist.

Coincidentally, Tuesday was the 23^rd anniversary of the festive signing of the Oslo Accord on the White House Lawn. I wouldn’t have known – it is not a ‘festive’ day in Israel, not at all.

I wrote that the actions of Peres, Yossi Beilin and others bordered on treason. I wrote that Beilin and the ones who went to Oslo for secret talks with PLO representatives should be prosecuted, and that Peres, who as Foreign Minister directed the negotiations without informing Rabin, should be forced to retire from public life.

I opposed Peres’ candidacy for President of the State of Israel. He never repudiated Oslo, even after the Second Intifada that took the lives of more than 1000 innocent Israelis, even after it became clear that bringing Arafat and the PLO back from exile was the single worst mistake made by any Israeli government since 1948, even after PLO incitement gave us the “Stabbing Intifada.” An arrogant man, he never said “we were wrong,” he never apologized for his role (as far as I know, neither did Beilin).

His arrogance is the arrogance of the Left, the unwavering belief that they know better than the rest of us, and that the end justifies the means. Every time he opened his mouth I was annoyed.

I wanted to yell at him “Admit it! Admit you were wrong!” But he wouldn’t.

As President, he lived like Louis XIV. His maintenance cost Israel almost $16.5 million between 2012 and 2014.

And yet, I find myself feeling remarkably sorrowful. Because this man loves his country and loves the Jewish people in a way that very few of our politicians do. He came to Israel in 1934 at the age of 11, and as a young man he became involved in the politics of the yishuv. He took on many military and political responsibilities over the years, including numerous ministries and three terms as PM.

Some say that he was responsible for Israel’s obtaining its nuclear deterrent. I don’t know, but he did play a key role in building the nuclear reactor in Dimona.

Peres has always been a Zionist. Unlike some Ha’aretz writers, he never said that if the Jewish state failed to conform to his model, he would move to Europe. He does not believe that there is an irreconcilable conflict between the Jewishness of the state and democracy, nor that the former should be sacrificed in the name of the latter. A symbol of the Ashkenazi establishment, he nevertheless didn’t call anyone “chachchachim.”

Just hours before his stroke, Peres posted a video on Facebook (Hebrew), calling on Israelis to buy Israeli-made products, “not just because it’s more patriotic, but simply because they are better.”

May Shimon ben Sara have a full and speedy recovery.

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09/15 Links Pt1: Palestinian scout instructor praised murderer of 3; Saudis Come Clean on Funding Terrorism

From Ian:

Palestinian scout instructor praised murderer of 3: Follow his path

As Palestinian Media Watch has documented, the Jerusalem Scout Commission of the Palestinian Scouts and Guides Association (English - Palestinian Scout Association - PSA), which is a member of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), recently held a course named after terrorist Baha Alyan who murdered 3 Israelis on a bus in Jerusalem in October last year.
A 30-minute long video from the closing ceremony of the “Martyr Baha Alyan Course” posted on the Jerusalem District Scout Commission’s Facebook page shows course instructor Muhammad Al-Dahdar glorifying murderer Baha Alyan, and expressing the hope that all the 250,000 scouts in the Palestinian Scout Association “are following Baha’s path.” After this statement, Al-Dahdar explicitly says he is speaking “in the name of the Palestinian Scouts and Guides Association”:
Baha Alyan Course instructor Muhammad Al-Dahdar: “Baha remains among us, he remains in our hearts, and emphasizes to you that 250,000 scouts and guides in the Palestinian Scout Association are Baha! And if Allah wills it, they are following Baha’s path.
In the name of the Palestinian Scouts and Guides Association and the Jerusalem District Scouts and Guides Commission, I am happy [inaudible]...”
[Jerusalem District Scout Commission Facebook page, Aug. 29, 2016]

PMW: Jerusalem Scout Commission that held course named after terrorist is part of Palestinian Scouts

Anne Bayefsky: All Jews out of Palestine is not a peace plan

The Obama administration is furious about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recent objection to Palestinian plans for a state with “no Jews.” In a video posted on September 9, 2016, Netanyahu made the obvious comments that the Palestinian effort to purge all Jews from the West Bank amounts to “ethnic-cleansing” and “ethnic cleansing for peace is absurd.” The State Department responded by shooting the messenger, calling Netanyahu’s remarks “inappropriate and unhelpful.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas makes no secret about Palestinian intentions. As he boasted to the interim Egyptian President while on a visit to Cairo in July 2013: “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – on our lands.”
The State Department’s reaction to Netanyahu opens a window into the nature of modern antisemitism, as well as possible Obama plans to drive a permanent wedge between Israel and the United States via the Security Council before he leaves office.
Simultaneously with promoting a Jew-free state, Palestinians routinely accuse Israel of “ethnic cleansing.” A mere two days after the State Department’s scolding of Netanyahu, on September 11, 2016, Abbas crowed that Israel “is advancing settlement construction, ethnic cleansing, premeditated killings and violation of holy sites, turning it into an object of criticism across the entire world.”
The ethnic-cleansing mantra is frequently accompanied by Palestinian charges of ‘apartheid,’ ‘racism,’ and ‘Judaization.’ The common thread of such hate speech is that the facts are irrelevant. Nearly two million Arabs live in Israel with more freedoms than in any Arab state.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar: Tensions rise as PA elections are postponed

Palestinian Authority local elections, in Judea and Samaria as well as Gaza, were supposed to take place on October 8th, a few weeks from now.
At first glance, it seems as though the elections are only for choosing functionaries for the local governmental bodies in charge of technical and limited municipal citizen services. However, the closer the elections loomed, the more other substantial and basic issues began to surface, issues that go way beyond municipal frameworks to influence the general atmosphere in the Palestinian Authority (PA). Tensions reached new highs last week when it was announced that the PA Supreme Court had decided to authorize postponing the elections to an unknown date.
The PA Bar Association filed the request to postpone the elections for two reasons. First of all, they claimed that Israel will not allow voting in Jerusalem – justifiably so, of course. Holding elections in that case makes the PA seem subservient to Israel and could be interpreted as their relinquishing claims to the city. On the other hand, the PA cannot allow elections to be held in Judea, Samaria and Gaza in line with Israel's delusions – in the PA's opinion – about Jerusalem. The second reason, claimed the association, is that while voting in Judea and Samaria is under PA supervision, that is not the case in Gaza where the PA has no control and does not recognize the legality of Hamas institutions.
Hamas accuses PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of using the courts to "undercut Palestinian democracy."

Lamia Baeshen, writing in Gulf24 News, is upset that Jews keep going on and on about what she calls the "alleged Holocaust."

Baeshen complains that at first the Jews blamed the Holocaust on Hitler, then on the Nazis, then on the German people and finally the entire world. She notes that there are hundreds of Holocaust-themed films, scores of museums and memorials, thousands of books and articles about every single detail of the "alleged" event.

Why is this a problem? Because, she says, the sheer weight of this "industry" (obviously she's been reading Finkelstein) makes it impossible for anyone to question whether it happened.

I can see how tons of documentary evidence from testimonies, Nazi archives, physical evidence of gas chambers, mass graves and cremated remains and so forth makes it difficult for Jew-haters to question the Holocaust. It must be very frustrating for people like Lamia Baeshen.

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So why aren't Arab states paying their pledges for Gaza again?

As the World Bank complains about the lack of donors paying their pledges for Gaza (see my article from earlier), it is worthwhile to look at who exactly hasn't been paying - and why.

Here is their list as of July 15 sorted by percentage of pledges paid:

Donor	Support to Gaza	Disbursement of Support to Gaza	Disbursement ratio of Support to Gaza
South Africa	1	0	0%
Serbia	0.05	0	0%
Bahrain*	6.5	0.75	12%
Kuwait	200	29	15%
UAE	200	29	15%
Qatar*	1000	192	19%
Italy5	23.7	4.7	20%
Saudi Arabia*	500	113	23%
Spain	22.8	5.22	23%
Estonia	1.27	0.32	25%
Turkey	200	64	32%
Brazil10	5	2.4	48%
Greece	1.27	0.63	50%
Croatia	0.4	0.25	63%
Slovenia	0.19	0.127	67%
Switzerland	70.4	59	84%
European Union1	348	297	85%
Norway2	145	126	87%
Germany	63.3	57.9	91%
USA	277	277	100%
World Bank	62	62	100%
Algeria	61.4	61.4	100%
Japan4	61	61	100%
UK	32.2	32.2	100%
The Netherlands	15.3	15.3	100%
Canada	14.7	14.7	100%
Denmark	14.5	14.5	100%
Australia	13.2	13.2	100%
France7	10.1	10.1	100%
Finland	9.3	9.3	100%
Russia	8.7	8.7	100%
Belgium8	7.9	7.9	100%
Austria9	5.2	5.2	100%
India	4	4	100%
Ireland	3.17	3.17	100%
South Korea	2	2	100%
Mexico	1.1	1.1	100%
Chile	0.25	0.25	100%
Hungary	0.16	0.16	100%
Poland	0.1	0.1	100%
Malaysia	0.1	0.1	100%
Singapore	0.1	0.1	100%
Bulgaria	0.06	0.06	100%
Slovakia	0.05	0.05	100%
Romania	0.05	0.05	100%
Portugal	0.03	0.03	100%
Sweden	10	11.4	114%

Notice how poorly the Arab states are in paying their pledges.

Again, the World Bank doesn't mention the obvious. And it doesn't try to figure out why.

An op-ed in a Gulf newspaper a few days ago explains it. It describes how tired the Arab nations are about the Palestinian issue, especially the infighting between Fatah and Hamas over leadership, causing the split between Gaza and the West Bank.

It says that the recent collapse of the scheduled local elections is just the latest in a series of events showing that Palestinian leaders care little about their own people, who are kept prisoner by the disputes and narrow factional interests of Hamas and Fatah. Their actions have nothing to do with helping their people and everything to do with holding on to power.

The Arab world is keenly aware of this dynamic, and they have no interest in throwing money into a bottomless pit of greed and corruption.

While the World Bank report mentions some economic issues associated with the Fatah/Hamas split, such as how Gazans don't pay their share of taxes, it ignores how Arab donors have lost interest in the Palestinian issue altogether especially when they have their own problems that are often far, far worse.

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The World Bank has released a report addressing the budget woes of the Palestinian Authority. From AP:

The World Bank says less than half the money pledged by donors to rebuild the Gaza Strip after the 2014 war between Hamas and Israel has been disbursed.

The shortfall is among several reasons the Palestinian economy is stagnating, with unemployment at 42 percent in Gaza and at 18 percent in the West Bank.

The World Bank says Israeli restrictions are also limiting Palestinian economic competitiveness and driving away private investments.

The bank recommends Israel allow more building in the West Bank and loosen its blockade of Gaza. It also calls on the Palestinian Authority to cut spending, especially by reducing pension payments.

The report seems fairly comprehensive, even as it blames Israel primarily for limiting PA growth in Area C.

What is most interesting is what it doesn't mention.

It notes that the PA pays extremely high salaries to its own people compared to public sector employees of other nations:

At 15 percent of GDP, the relative size of the PA’s wage bill is amongst the highest in the world and it is certainly a major contributor to the PA’s chronic fiscal difficulties. The high wage bill is mainly driven by the high average public sector wage, which as a multiple of GDP per capita amounts to 3.5 – exceeding the average ratio in MENA and in all other regions except Africa. Pay practices, the system of annual step increases (1.25 percent per year) and automatic promotions have contributed substantially to the high average wage.

The World Bank gives a number of specific recommendations:

The PA should (i) control wage increases and index the CoLA to inflation; (ii) consider implementing a temporary wage freeze for employees who are at the lower end of the public sector pay scale until their pay equalizes with private sector peers; and (iii) Implement zero-staff-growth policies in units of government that are found to be overstaffed while limiting staff growth in other units of government to a maximum of population growth (3 percent).

The World Bank doesn't mention what some $137 million of the PA budget goes to pay terrorists in Israeli jails, their families, and former terrorists who get automatic jobs without having to work.

If 15% of the GDP goes towards wages, that means that the total wage budget is about $600 million. Assuming that the bulk of the amounts paid to terrorists and former terrorists are in the PA's wage budget - and they must be, because the stipends to prisoners and former prisoners are considered salaries - that means that as much as 23% of the PA's wage budget is simply to reward terrorists!

In a document that is dense with recommendations on how the PA can bridge the budget gap and what Israel and the donors could do, this omission is not an oversight. It is deliberate. The international community is quite aware of this fact and even Norway's foreign minister complained to Abbas about this. (He responded that Norway shouldn't worry - none of their money goes towards terrorists.)

The World Bank praised the PA at reducing the relative size of the PA's wage bill from 15.5% to 15.1% over three years. Yet simply eliminating payments to terrorists would instantly reduce that metric to about 10%!

By ignoring this huge part of the PA budget, the World Bank is implicitly condoning the PA's policy of paying terrorists. And that is the real outrage.

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Pre-Christian antisemitism: "Jews don't even kill their own children!"

Many have noted how modern antisemitism morphs to whatever the hater wants to ascribe to Jews: they are too insular or too assimilationist, too capitalist or too communist, too pious or too atheist, too rich or too wretched, all depending on the hater. Of course, in recent decades it has morphed yet again into the idea that Jews are colonialist, or racist, or victimizers instead of victims. "Go back to your land" has become "Get out of the land." There is no consistency for Jew-haters except the hatred itself.

It is therefore fascinating to see how Jew-haters thought before Christian antisemitism took prominence.

The Histories by Tacitus has a short chapter on Jews, with a very twisted history of the Jewish nation and an interesting description of the Second Temple. It was written around 100 CE.

Tacitus hated the Jews, but his reasons are quite different from the ones we are used to seeing:

Whatever their origin, these observances are sanctioned by their antiquity. The other practices of the Jews are sinister and revolting, and have entrenched themselves by their very wickedness. Wretches of the most abandoned kind who had no use for the religion of their fathers took to contributing dues and free-will offerings to swell the Jewish exchequer; and other reasons for their increasing wealth may be found in their stubborn loyalty and ready benevolence towards brother Jews. But the rest of the world they confront with the hatred reserved for enemies. They will not feed or inter-marry with gentiles. Though a most lascivious people, the Jews avoid sexual intercourse with women of alien race. Among themselves nothing is barred. They have introduced the practice of circumcision to show that they are different from others. Proselytes to Jewry adopt the same practices, and the very first lesson they learn is to despite the gods, shed all feelings of patriotism, and consider parents, children and brothers as readily expendable. However, the Jews see to it that their numbers increase. It is a deadly sin to kill a born or unborn child, [Infanticide was a common practice among the Greeks and Romans] and they think that eternal life is granted to those who die in battle or execution—hence their eagerness to have children, and their contempt for death. Rather than cremate their dead, they prefer to bury them in imitation of the Egyptian fashion, and they have the same concern and beliefs about the world below. But their conception of heavenly things is quite different. The Egyptians worship a variety of animals and half-human, half-bestial forms, whereas the Jewish religion is a purely spiritual monotheism. They hold it to be impious to make idols of perishable materials in the likeness of man: for them, the Most High and Eternal cannot be portrayed by human hands and will never pass away. For this reason they erect no images in their cities, still less in their temple. Their kings are not so flattered, the Roman emperors not so honoured. However, their priests used to perform their chants to the flute and drums, crowned with ivy, and a golden vine was discovered in the Temple; and this has led some to imagine that the god thus worshipped was Prince Liber, the conqueror of the East. But the two cults are diametrically opposed. Liber founded a festive and happy cult: the Jewish belief is paradoxical and degraded.

Tacitus' hatred for Jews shows, more than ever, that Jew-hatred is a psychological problem with the haters, and has nothing to do with reality. Jews have been and always will be the bogeyman, with the unique ability to be hated for anything and everything - even, and perhaps especially, for morality.

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09/14 Links Pt2: Anti-Israel, BDS event on Capitol Hill cancelled; Jeremy Corbyn in his own words

From Ian:

House Minority Leader Forced Cancellation of Congressional Event to Promote Boycotts of Israel

A congressionally sponsored event to promote boycotts of Israel was cancelled late Tuesday evening after House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) was informed about the forum and made an impromptu phone call to the lawmaker sponsoring the event, ordering that it be shut down, according to sources familiar with the matter who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.
The Free Beacon disclosed earlier this week that a member of Congress had lent their backing to an event aimed at promoting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which has been widely cited as an anti-Semitic effort.
The group hosting the forum, the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, is known for employing anti-Israel and anti-Semitic language, according to human rights organizations.
The U.S. Campaign was reported to have convinced a low-level staffer in Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s (D., Texas) office to reserve an official congressional room for the event.
Pelosi’s office then called Jackson Lee to “demand” the lawmaker revoke her support and cancel the event, according to sources familiar with the conversation.
Pelosi learned of the event after William Daroff, a leading pro-Israel official, informed her of the Free Beacon’s reporting on the pro-BDS forum, according to sources.

BDS event on Capitol Hill cancelled after US congresswoman withdraws support

An event initially sponsored by a US lawmaker in the House of Representatives in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) has been canceled following the legislator's withdrawal, US Conservative publication The Weekly Standard reported Tuesday.
According to the magazine, US Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) had originally reserved a room for the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation on Capitol Hill, before pulling out of the event following complaints by fellow Democrats.
Jackson, for her part, denied any prior knowledge or connection to the event, which advertised the participation of "actual practitioners" of the BDS movement, according to the organizer's invitation.
A spokesperson from Lee's office acknowledged that a room had been booked by a former employee in the congresswoman's office, but said that neither Lee nor her aides were previously aware of the arrangement.

Congressional Forum in Favor of Boycotting Israel May Violate Rules on Discrimination

An upcoming congressionally sponsored forum to promote boycotts of Israel may violate internal rules barring the use of federal offices for events that promulgate discrimination “based on race, creed, color, or national origin,” according to congressional documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Free Beacon disclosed on Monday that a member of Congress who refuses to be identified publicly is sponsoring a forum this week that promotes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS, which has been criticized by Jewish organizations as an anti-Semitic effort.
Efforts by senior congressional sources to determine the name of the lawmaker sponsoring the event have so far failed, but the Free Beacon has learned that the lawmaker is required to attend the event under congressional rules governing the use of official facilities.
Internal congressional documents governing the use of federal facilities also bar lawmakers from hosting any outside organization that practices discrimination.
Human rights groups and Jewish organizations have long accused the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the organization leading the Friday event, of engaging in anti-Semitic rhetoric and supporting discrimination against the Jewish state.

Is this law, or a public opinion poll?

The Left, which loves to brandish the "international law" argument while pointing to the obvious legal "consensus" over the settlement enterprise, which it opposes, believes the demand to evict Jews from Judea and Samaria within the framework of a peace deal is justified, rather than ethnic cleansing. But does this consensus really exist?
Even in the early 1970s, Judge Stephen Schwebel, who would later serve as president of the International Court of Justice at The Hague, argued that Israel was within its rights to hold onto the territory it had seized during the Six-Day War in 1967. His argument was based on the assessment that the war was a matter of self-defense for Israel. Schwebel said that because the original danger had not dissipated, from Israel's perspective, holding (even if not fully annexing) the land was justified, valid and that any change was dependent on resolving the conflict through peaceful avenues. Moreover, Schwebel argued that in cases where the previous sovereign (Jordan) seized the territory unlawfully (the world did not recognize Jordanian sovereignty in Judea and Samaria), then the rights of the new country -- which took control of the land through the legal action of self-defense (Israel) -- supersede the rights of the previous country. Professor Eli Lauterpacht from Cambridge, Professor Eugene Rostow from Yale and other esteemed jurists also concurred. A "consensus," you say?
Last week, Northwestern University School of Law published a comprehensive research paper entitled "Unsettled: A Global Study of Settlements in Occupied Territory." Professor Eugene Kontorovich, an international law expert, examined all the cases throughout modern history of settling in conquered territories and how those conflicts were resolved. Evidently, in no instance after World War II and the signing of the Geneva Conventions in 1949 did the international community accept the demand to vacate people who had already settled in an area as a condition for peace or independence. When East Timor requested independence from Indonesian occupation, its representatives did not condition their desired independence on the eviction of Indonesian settlers. In the negotiations between Cyprus and Turkey, the peace accord wasn't conditioned on making every Turkish settler leave the island. When Vietnam conquered Cambodia, a million settlers followed. In the Paris talks in 1990, the mediating countries rejected outright the demand to evict the Vietnamese settlers. During World War II, millions of Russians followed in the wake of the Soviet Union's occupation of Baltic countries. In the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, those countries did not condition their independence on evicting Russian settlers. Other cases are currently being thoroughly debated (Western Sahara and Morocco, Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria and Lebanon, Russia and Georgia, and Russia and Crimea).