Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Antisemite and inciter Raed Salah starts a hunger strike

Sheikh Raed Salah, 58, head of the banned northern branch of the Islamic movement in Israel, started a hunger strike on Sunday morning, to protest against his prison sentence and his solitary confinement.

He was sentenced to nine months in prison for incitement, and after a delay, started his sentence in May.

Salah has constantly incited violence by telling people that the Jews were about to destroy Al Aqsa Mosque. He has invoked the classic blood libel, says that 4000 Jews were told not to go to work in New York on 9/11, that a Jewish cabal were behind Monica Lewinsky and the JFK assassination.

All of which made Salah a wonderful choice to write a column for The Guardian.

Similarly, despite Salah's explicit support for murdering Jews that can be found on his Facebook page, Amnesty International condemned Israel's making his group illegal during the height of the knifing attacks late last year.

In other words, Salah is a sweetheart of the Left who have no problem with his antisemitism and support of murdering Jews.

Palestinians and leftists aren't protesting against Salah's hate - they are protesting to support it.

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Don't worry - it never happened.

From Ma'an:

An Israeli home in the illegal settlement of Beit El, located in the central occupied West Bank district of Ramallah and al-Bireh, was burned to the ground late Thursday night after a group of Palestinian youth threw Molotov cocktails into the settlement, according to Palestinian sources.

According to locals, several youths threw Molotov cocktails at the house, which was located on the outskirts of the settlement. The house then caught on fire and burned to the ground.

Israeli forces, firemen, and ambulances rushed to the area to put out the fire, while Israeli forces immediately began searching the area for suspects.

An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an she would look into reports on the incident.

The story isn't true. Yisrael Medad asked around and found that nothing of the sort happened.

But the story is important anyway - because it means that Palestinians are bragging about doing exactly what they continuously accuse Jews of doing to the Dawabsheh family.

The false reports say that the youths burned the house down late at night. This means that in their own telling of the story, the youths would have assumed that there was a Jewish family inside that they were trying to murder.

Of course, the entire population of Israel denounced any potential Jewish involvement in the incident in Duma. But this story is being reported in Arab media without any moral qualms about what they claim they did. Even as Palestinians continue to use Duma as a means to show the world how supposedly immoral "settlers" are, they go out of their way to brag to their media that they are burning Jews alive in their homes, or at least are trying to.

The difference in morality is stunning - but the news media won't point it out. It wouldn't be "evenhanded."

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11/13 Links: PA threatens revenge on US if embassy moves to Jerusalem; Dershowitz: What the US election tells us about the past, present and future

From Ian:

Dershowitz: What the US election tells us about the past, present and future

So Trump’s narrow victory doesn’t tell us much about the past or the present. Even if Trump had lost by a narrow margin, the fact that he got nearly 60 million votes would still be significant – as significant as his narrow victory – in telling us about the current mindset of the American people.
But the fact that Trump won tells us a great deal about the future, because a Trump presidency promises to be very different than a Clinton presidency would have been.
A Clinton presidency – coupled with a Republican Senate and House – would have been subject to the checks and balances of our constitutional system of separation of powers. A Trump presidency will not be subject to those constraints. There will be less gridlock, although the Senate filibuster may impose some constraints on President Trump’s expressed desire to pack the Supreme Court with “Scalias.”
Just as it was impossible to predict this election, it is impossible to predict the precise dimensions of the Trump presidency. If he is smart, he will reach across the aisle, as well as across genders, ethnicities and religions. A successful president must be different than a successful candidate. Only time will tell whether Trump acts on this historic truth.
In the meantime, the loyal opposition must remain both loyal and opposed to policies and appointments that are inconsistent with our values. We must cooperate when cooperation is warranted, but when it is not, we must use all available lawful options – political, judicial, media, academic and economic – to serve as checks and balances on a president who tries to exceed his authority. This is not the time for liberals or Democrats to become immobilized with despair, nor is it the time for violence or unlawful actions. It is a time to become energized and proactive.

Why US Election Coverage Is a Wake Up Call for Israel’s Supporters

Why This Matters for Israel’s Supporters
If you’re a long-time reader of HonestReporting, you won’t be surprised that the news industry is infected with groupthink, insularity, and is capable of skewing reality. It won’t shock you that reporters allowed themselves to become personally alienated and that the public discourse is now suffering for it.
You also know to be on the watch for the eight categories of media bias: misleading terminology, imbalanced reporting, opinions disguised as news, lack of context, selective omission, distortion of facts, lack of transparency and the use of true fact to reach false conclusions.
Noteworthy as mea culpas are, you’re also aware that the news industry doesn’t change overnight. It’s quite possible that, as Joshua Benton argues, “the forces that drove this election’s media failure are likely to get worse” (gulp!). We have to become more sophisticated news consumers. We must embrace the news literacy movement. (Learn more about it at the Poynter Institute, The News Literacy Project, and Stony Brook University’s Center for News Literacy.)
But it’s clear that there’s a bigger gap than we realized between the American public and nation’s leading papers. The Washington Post, for example, is now catching up on white, working class Americans who don’t live in big cities. These are people who are either indifferent to, or even mistrustful of the Post, the New York Times, or CNN. Does this mean Israel activists trying to reach “beyond the choir” should focus their efforts on local papers and web sites more trusted by red state small towns?
If none of this moves you, consider one last question.
With the news industry admitting it blew the biggest story of 2016, isn’t it just possible that journalists are just as capable of having botched other areas of coverage, be it Brexit, nuclear Iran, the Arab Spring, Russia’s rise, the war in Iraq, the economy, issues of race, gender, sexuality, or, of course, Israel and the Palestinians?

Headline Fail Over Israeli “Settlement Building Spree”

In the wake of Donald Trump’s US election victory, there have been many reactions concerning the consequences for Israeli policy. Israel’s science minister Ofir Akunis is quoted by Associated Press in many media outlets stating: “We need to think how we move forward now when the administration in Washington, the Trump administration and his advisers, are saying that there is no place for a Palestinian state.”
There has been no talk of any change in Israeli government policy. Yet, the comments by one minor Likud minister are taken by The Times of London to imply something far greater:
"Israel Plans Settlement Building Spree"
This is wholly disproportionate and a distortion of the facts. Instead of a headline attributing comments to a single political figure, The Times headline falsely states conjecture as fact even when the text of the story itself spends more time focused on a future Trump administration’s potential policies towards Israel.
HonestReporting has contacted The Times to ask for a headline change. Watch this space.

As I write these lines, anti-Trumpers are protesting and, in some cases, rioting, throughout America's largest cities. In Chicago two young black men beat the holy hell out of a 50-year old white guy because he allegedly voted for Trump.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is in big trouble and many of us are still quietly processing the gravity of the current political moment.

Much to my astonishment, the day after I went onto the Nothing Left radio show to discuss the meaning of Hillary's likely win, Donald Trump handed the Democratic Party a big can of whoop-ass.

My suspicion is that the Brexit Effect befuddled the pollsters, the majority of whom indicated the strong likelihood of a Clinton win.

The Brexit Effect

It is probable that many Trump voters, like many Brexit voters, were intimidated into believing that their political sensibilities represent the very worst of human failings and therefore they misled pollsters concerning their positions. These would have been among the very large numbers of people who represented Trump's soft base.

In the months leading into the election Trump-leaning voters were told - over and over again - that they are racist, sexist, homophobic, bigots. The victory of Hitler-cum-Trump, therefore, is said to reveal an American political-social consciousness rolling in the muck of barbarism, stupidity, and the unjust prejudices of earlier times.

And who gets the blame for this insidious state of affairs? Why, racist, sexist, homophobic, bigots who refused to support those who called them racist, sexist, homophobic, bigots, of course.

Many throughout Britain felt much the same way concerning Brexit voters. EU supporters, much like Hillary supporters, believed that the opposition was (or is) comprised of backward-looking, low-life Neanderthals who - when they aren't feeding the pigs or banging their heads against rust-belt walls - are out spreading hatred and racism toward people "of color" in order to gratuitously satisfy irrational anachronistic prejudices.

Therefore, because the "deplorables" were constantly told how deplorable they are, they sometimes lied about their true electoral intentions and thereby skewed the polls. In other words, both Trump and Brexit had the kind of quiet support that tends to hamstring pollsters, or so goes the theory.

Broken Glass in the Streets

Some of the angry are out in the streets breaking windows in American cities, today, because they believe that the United States is a horribly racist country and the conquest of The Deplorable Cheese Doodle (or is he a Cheetoh?) represents a confirmation of their worst fears.

They revel in the alleged ugliness of their fellow Americans because they have been encouraged to do so by much of the media, much of academia, and by politicians looking to divide the electorate for personal political gain.

Thus we end up with this surreal political moment wherein people are in the streets spitting hatred at haters for the purpose of ending hatred in America. It is apparently through breaking store-front windows and the bones of middle-aged white guys that Love Trumps Hate.

The Democratic Party assumption of anger or racial malevolence as a primary motivating factor for Trump voters points to a serious problem in the ways that we have come to see ourselves as a people and a country.

While the United States is a flawed democracy, it is nothing like the fascistic hell-hole that some make it out to be. From a human rights perspective, in fact, the US is one of the most decent countries on the entire planet and that is not going to change anytime soon, Trump or no Trump.

Furthermore, while the man can obviously be boorish, there is little to indicate racism in his policy propositions around issues of immigration.

Trump wants immigration into the United States to take place through a legal and tightly-controlled process which, during a period of rising Jihad, emphasizes security measures. Given the spread of Political Islam throughout the Middle East and Europe, and the unfortunate European experience with mass Muslim immigration, this is merely commonsense. It has nothing whatsoever to do with "race" hatred and everything to do with people who are eager to blow up the infidel in the name of Allah. It is not about skin color or ethnicity. It is about the spread of a theofascistic ideology that holds women in contempt and that encourages the throwing of Gay people off of tall buildings as an expression of religious justice.

It is one of the great ironies of recent western political history that the movement most associated with social justice and universal human rights, i.e., the progressive-left, is also the political movement least likely to stand up for the minority rights of hundreds of millions of people living under al-Sharia throughout the Muslim world.

America does not hate - and neither does the West, in general - but the world is not lacking for countries that do.

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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From Haaretz:

The Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, said in Washington on Friday that if President-elect Donald Trump moves the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem the Palestinians would “make life miserable” for the United States at the United Nations.

“If people attack us by moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which is a violation of Security Council resolutions, it is a violation of resolution 181 of the UN general assembly that was drafted by the U.S. … it means they are showing belligerency towards us … If they do that nobody should blame us for unleashing all of the weapons that we have in the UN to defend ourselves and we have a lot of weapons in the UN,” Mansour said.

The official United States position on Jerusalem is indeed based on the idea, originally floated in UN General Assembly Resolution 181, that while Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state and an Arab state, Jerusalem and its surrounding areas would be a separate entity not under control of either state.

It is an absurd position by the US. While UNGA 181 was accepted by the Jews, it was rejected by the Arab world, including the Palestinian Arabs.

Indeed, Palestinians responded to the resolution by attacking Jewish civilians within hours of its passing.

UNGA 181 has no legal standing.

The US knows quite well that Jerusalem will never become an international city, but it continues to hold on to that fiction today in order to pressure its friend Israel into a peace agreement. There is no valid legal reason, under US law or any interpretation of international law, for embassies not to be relocated to Jerusalem west of the Green Line. (Even within the resolution, the status of Jerusalem was only to remain in that bizarre state until 1958.)

Now, the Palestinians are complaining that the resolution that they violently rejected, that has zero standing in international law, should be respected?

If that's the case, then that means that the Palestinians accept the concept of a Jewish state, since that's what the resolution says.

If that's the case, then that means that the Palestinians must renounce all their own claims to Jerusalem as being their capital, since that's what the resolution says.

If that's the case, then not only do the Palestinians lose any rights to Jerusalem, but also Bethlehem and many Arab villages between the two cities, since that's what the resolution says.

Why doesn't anyone ask Mr. Mansour if this is what he is saying?

Also, someone may want to ask him about how wise he is to threaten the President-elect just at the time he is making major decisions at to what his policies would be.

But this is Palestinian diplomacy - whining that life is unfair, and threats to make things more to their liking.

One other point - it proves that the Palestinian claims against Israel are not to gain Palestinian rights, but to destroy Jewish national rights.

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I wrote about how PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas bragged in his speech honoring arch-terrorist Yasir Arafat that the PLO has made no concessions since 1988, including the entire time he has led the group.

Mahmoud Abbas said some other outrageous things in his speech that have been ignored by the media.

Here's one of them:

By the way, it is written in the Divine Books and in the Torah that we [Palestinians] have been here in the land ever since even before our Master Ibrahim (i.e. Abraham), our presence has not been interrupted. We are not the [only] ones saying this, the Torah and history are saying this. We were not taken to some [other] country and we were not absent [from this land]; we stayed here all the time, and we are still here and we will remain here, and we will never leave our land. We will stay steadfast and patient until we will obtain for our people its independence.

Abbas and other Palestinian leaders have previously made the claim that they were descendants of Canaanites.

Or Jebusites.

Or Philistines.

Never mind that they all contradict one another. All of them are lies anyway.

Palestinians are Arabs - they say so explicitly in all their official documents from the 1964 PLO Covenant to the 2003 "Constitution" - and the Arabs some from, surprise, the Arabian peninsula. The Arab tribes overran the Levant around the time of the spread of Islam.

Beyond that, as far as I can tell, every single prominent Palestinian family traces their origins to outside the land.

Even more outrageous, Abbas is saying that the Jews, by being forcibly exiled from the land for some brief periods, have no historic claim on their historic homeland. (He won't say the word "Jews" explicitly, because by admitting that Jews are a people, he would open up a can of worms.)

By pretending to use the Torah as a basis for Palestinian claims, Abbas is trying to use the very document that proves Jewish historic rights to the land against Jews.

It is not only disrespectful - it is fundamentally antisemitic.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Masked terrorist supporters - at university - celebrate Arafat's death anniversary

These scenes were at Bir Zeit University on Saturday to mark the anniversary of Yasir Arafat's death.

So moderate! So liberal! So peaceful!

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11/12 Links: Glick: Israel in the Trump era; 500 Jewish mothers bake challah for IDF soldiers

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Israel in the Trump era

As I explained in my book The Israeli Solution – A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, there was a dismaying consistency in US policy toward Israel that ran from Bill Clinton’s administration through the George W. Bush administration and on to the Obama administration. At least since the Clinton years, the received wisdom of the American foreign policy elite has been that the US must seek to swiftly cause Israel to sign a deal with the PLO. The contours of the deal are similarly clear to all concerned. Israel must surrender control over all or most of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and transfer the areas, more or less Jew-free, to the PLO.
This bipartisan view is inherently hostile to Israel. It places all the responsibility for making peace on Israel. And as the sole responsible party, Israel is also the sole party that is guilty for the absence of peace. The flipside is similarly dismal. Palestinians are absolved of responsibility for terrorism, hatred and political warfare against Israel.
The anti-Israel hostility inherent in the two-state paradigm has brought on a situation where even pro-Israel US officials end up joining their anti-Israel colleagues in bearing down on Israel to act in ways that are inimical to both its national security and to the very concept of a US-Israel alliance. The foreign policy ruling class’s commitment to the two-state paradigm has blinded its members to Israel’s strategic importance to the US and caused them to see the US’s only stable ally in the region as a drag on US interests.
Many of Trump’s advisers, including Gingrich, who has been raised as a leading candidate to serve as either Trump’s White House chief of staff or as secretary of state, have rejected this received wisdom. In a Republican presidential debate in 2011, Gingrich referred to the Palestinians as an “invented people,” and noted that they indoctrinate their children to perceive Jews as subhuman and seek their annihilation. For his statement of fact, Gingrich was brutally assaulted by Democratic and Republican elites.
But he never rescinded his statement.
Trump’s election provides Israel with the first opportunity in 50 years to reshape its alliance with the US. This new alliance must be based on a common understanding and respect for what Israel has to offer the US as well as on the limits of what the US can offer Israel. The limits of US assistance are in large part the consequences of the many genies that Obama unleashed during the past eight years. And the opportunities will come more in areas related to Israel’s relations with the Palestinians and the political war being waged against it by the Europeans and the international Left than to the challenges posed by the ascendance of Islamism in the Middle East.
To be sure, Trump is inconsistent. But from what we do know we must recognize that his rise marks a deflection point in US history.
It is a rare moment where things that were unimaginable a month ago are possible. And if we play our cards right, like the American people, Israel stands to gain in ways we never dreamed of.

Trump and Netanyahu — a match made in heaven?

Would Netanyahu have preferred Clinton over Trump? We might never know.
But already, Israeli politicians to Netanyahu’s right, such as Naftali Bennett, are seizing on the Republican platform’s omission of a two-state solution — essentially trying to push Netanyahu into formally abandoning the idea, and preparing to undermine him from the right if he doesn’t. He can expect more pressure from the right, too, to expand settlements — once Trump is in the White House and such building may not be criticized as it routinely was under Obama. Netanyahu is wary about Palestinian statehood, and is a supporter of the settlement enterprise, of course, but he benefited, in the complex dance of domestic politics and regional diplomacy, from being able to find a middle path between the pro-peace-talks, anti-settlement US administration and the opposite stance of the political hawks at home. A president Clinton would have enabled him to chart a similar course, albeit with slightly greater empathy from Washington. A president Trump will likely give Netanyahu a freer hand — which, however paradoxically, might make life more complicated for him.
On Wednesday, the president-elect and the prime minister spoke on the phone for about 15 minutes. They exchanged pleasantries and discussed “regional issues,” according to Netanyahu’s office. Trump also invited Netanyahu to the White House “at the first opportunity.” Netanyahu gladly accepted.
Pretty soon, then, we might find out more of what Trump plans for the Middle East — if anything. We’ll also see how well the two men get along. And Netanyahu will have a better idea of whether president Trump is as “easy to work with” as Hillary Clinton would have been.

Trump's Israeli friend (and donor)

Donald Trump's Jewish connections extend beyond his converted daughter Ivanka. Businessman Yaakov Shaham is one of the few Israelis who can call themselves a friend of the American president-elect.
Shaham and his wife Helena own the Palace Group, a chain of prestigious senior living communities in Miami.
"The Donald Trump that I know is completely different from the Trump that yells at rallies and inflames the crowds," said Shaham. "Privately, Trump is much quieter, much more sensible, and also a very smart man with a great sense of humor. The man's a pal. He pats on the back. He'll take a picture with you, will talk with you eye-to-eye. He's just a completely different man behind closed doors."
He recounted, "I met Trump for the first time four years ago in Palm Beach at the golf course there. We chatted for a bit, had lunch, and that was it. Half a year before he decided to run in the election, when he finished renovated his resort in Doral in the Miami area, he invited me to play golf with him, and we played together for three hours. I was really impressed. He's a very positive man. From then, our relationship began to grow. We kept meeting every fortnight at the resort." (h/t Elder of Lobby)

11/11 Links Pt2: Vote for the Dishonest Reporter of 2016; Leonard Cohen Dies at 82

From Ian:

Celebrating One Hundred Years of the Balfour Declaration

John Howell is MP for Henley and Vice-Chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel.
Today marks the start of the year-long celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, when the UK and Israel will unite to commemorate one of the most defining moments in our shared history.
Over the past century the world has witnessed a country rise out of the desert and flourish, against all odds, to become the ‘Start-Up Nation’ – a world leader in technological innovation, cyber security, academia, and medicine.
The Balfour Declaration was instrumental in the creation of the State of Israel, adding the official British voice to the chorus that wanted to give “a land without a people to a people without a land”.
The document served, in effect, as a legal birth certificate, in the form of a letter from Conservative Foreign Secretary Arthur J Balfour to Lord Rothschild dated 2nd November 1917. It conveyed Lord Balfour’s support of His Majesty’s Government for Zionist aspirations for Jewish self-determination in Israel, the land of the Hebrew Old Testament, following centuries of persecution.
Lord Balfour wrote, “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

Daniel Pipes: America’s know-nothing diplomacy

Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, recently said something astonishing in defense of his foreign policy ignorance: “The fact that somebody can dot the i’s and cross the t’s on a foreign leader or a geographic location then allows them to put our military in harm’s way.” In other words, not knowing where a place is a good thing because, in Alice Ollstein’s witty summary, “You can’t get into a war with a country you can’t find.”
As a student of U.S. foreign policy this struck a chord — not because it’s an outlandishly whacky statement but precisely because it is mainstream. Really. Here are three notable precedents from the last century:
In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson dispatched the International Commission of Inquiry (commonly known as the King-Crane Commission) to Palestine and Syria to ascertain the political wishes of their residents. The leaders of this potentially influential commission monumentally lacked qualifications for the undertaking. Henry C. King was a philosopher and president of Oberlin College; Charles R. Crane was a busybody, anti-Semite, and heir to the fortune from his family’s plumbing fixture company. Strikingly, their ignorance was seen as an advantage; a presidential aide explained that Wilson “felt these two men were particularly qualified to go to Syria because they knew nothing about it.”
Secretary of State Robert Lansing, who thought Wilson wrong on this, explained that the president did not want to appoint “persons who are familiar with the subject” of political and territorial questions. Instead, Wilson thought that “an empty mind is more receptive of the truth than one affected by experience and study.” Indeed, ignorance is an “essential qualification for an investigator.”
The King-Crane Commission report, not surprisingly, was (in the words of the historian Elie Kedourie) “as ill-informed as its influence on policy was negligible.”
In 2003, the Bush administration announced John S. Wolf as the new U.S. presidential Middle East envoy (more formally, “chief, U.S. Coordinating and Monitoring Mission for the Middle East peace process”). The Washington Post (in an admiring article titled “For Mideast Envoy, Rookie Status May Be an Advantage”) quoted a senior administration official saying that “It’s a good thing that he has exceptional negotiating skills and very little direct experience in the area.”

Honest Reporting: Vote for the Dishonest Reporter of 2016

Now’s the time to vote for the Dishonest Reporter of 2016. It’s our annual recognition of the year’s most skewed and biased coverage of Israel and the Mideast conflict. Make your voice heard and we’ll announce the ignoble winners by the end of the year.
Vote for one reporter or news service, along with a brief reason for your choice. This year’s nominees — in no particular order — are:
1. Luke Baker: The Reuters Jerusalem bureau chief and (then) head of the Foreign Press Association told a Knesset panel discussing news bias that media watchdogs like HonestReporting make government oversight unnecessary. Within days, Baker baselessly attacked HR.
2. Leila Hatoum: An editor at Newsweek Middle East, whose anti-Semitic tweets demonstrate that she’s not fit for her position.
3. Headline writers: Throughout the year, headline fails repeatedly twisted the stories of Palestinian stabbings, shootings, and car-ramming attacks.
4. AFP: For maliciously using World Press Freedom Day and International Women’s Day to bash Israel.
5. The Independent: While we secured plenty of corrections from The Independent, the sheer volume of negative stories demonstrated a near-obsession by the editors. One especially nasty story never amended spun a survey to claim “Nearly half of Israeli Jews believe in ethnic cleansing.”

Palestinian T-Shirts make Trump a Chasid, Obama an Arab

Seen here, apparently at an anti-Israel souvenir souk in Jerusalem:

It appears that these were created before the election.

But there is some truth to this: the election was between Trump and Obama, not Trump and Clinton.

While we don't know what Trump's position on Israel will really be, the T-shirt maker has a clear vision how the Arab world views Obama and Trump.

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11/11 Links Pt1: Trump’s Election Upsets the Palestinian Authority’s Diplomatic Campaign Against Israel

From Ian:

PMW: PA TV: Israel murdered Arafat, now targeting Abbas - "the plot is renewed"

Today, November 11, is the anniversary of former Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's death and on this occasion the PA traditionally repeats its libel that Israel murdered Arafat with poison.
This year is no exception. In a new video, which PA TV has been broadcasting several times daily the last few days, Israel "and its allies" are accused of committing "the murder with poison". In addition, PA TV suggests that Israel is plotting to murder PA Chairman Abbas as well, stating that "the plot is renewed":
Earlier this week, Palestinian Media Watch reported on similar Palestinian claims that Israel is planning to "eliminate Abbas politically and physically."
A young girl earlier this year repeated her belief that Israel played a role in Arafat's death, stating that "the Jews killed him":

JCPA: Trump’s Election Upsets the Palestinian Authority’s Diplomatic Campaign Against Israel

One of the biggest losers from the U.S presidential election of Donald Trump is the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority depended on the election of Hillary Clinton so that they could unleash a diplomatic blitz against Israel in the halls of the United Nations. “Civil society” organizations were specifically designed for the task of expelling the State of Israel from the United Nations and replacing it with Palestine. The brazen demand that Israel “return” the Dead Sea Scrolls to the Palestinians is part of the Palestinian strategy to erase Israel and inherit its Jewish heritage, much in the same vein as the PA scheme of pushing a “Palestinian Jesus.”
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki, the architect of the diplomatic blitz against Israel, was the first to comment on the meaning of Trump’s election. In the first Palestinian public remark on the election, Malki said that he “was concerned” because Trump represented an absolute supporter of Israel. With Trump’s election, he warned, global stability is threatened.
One of the aspects of the French Middle East peace initiative that worried Israel was the intention that NGOs (non-governmental organizations) would play a leading role in that international conference. These organizations, based in Ramallah, lead the campaign of hatred against Israel. Riyad al-Malki and Mustafa Barghouti, the heroes of the anti-Israel Durban Conference, stand out as clear leaders of these organizations, and from them, the BDS movement sprang.

Iran's Threats Louder after Obama Appeasement

Chants of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" were heard across Iranian cities as thousands of Iranians marked the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the taking of 52 American hostages for 444 days by militant students.
The State Department's reaction is classic: ignoring these developments and continuing with appeasement policies.
These anti-American demonstrations are not rhetoric, but are the cornerstone of Iran's revolutionary principles and foreign policies, which manifest themselves in Iran's support for terrorist proxies, support for Assad's regime, and the scuttling of US and Israeli foreign policies in the region.
Many other Iranian officials who were engaged in attacks against the US currently serve in high positions. Hossein Salami, who enjoys one of these high-level positions, is the deputy commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. He stated at the rally: "America should know that if they do not honor their agreement in the nuclear deal, we will resume uranium enrichment..."

Nearly 1/4 of all West Bank Arab worker income is from Israel

The latest Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics labor report is out.

While joblessness increased across the board, there are still nearly 112,000 Arabs working in Israel or Israeli settlements, about 13% of the workforce.

But Arab workers in Israel get more than double the income of those in the West Bank, 222 shekels a day compared to 97. They also work fewer hours every week.

This means that nearly a quarter of the total income of West Bank Arabs comes from Israelis.

Imagine what would happen to this already teetering economy if they would follow BDS advice and boycott Israel - or even if they would follow Peter Beinart's and other "progressive" Jewish advice and boycott only the Jews who live in Judea and Samaria.

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First page of official PA 7th grade reading textbook that incites kids to hate. UNRWA schools use it.

The Jerusalem Post reported this week:

Over 200 US-government approved textbooks used in hundreds of Palestinian UNRWA-sponsored schools are reportedly teaching Arab children between the first and ninth grades to kill Israelis, and sacrifice themselves as martyrs to drive Jews out of the country.
The violent narrative can be found in 240 books – ranging from civics to mathematics – in over 400 UNRWA schools in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, said experts at a Tuesday conference for the Center for Near East Policy Research in downtown Jerusalem.
David Bedein, who heads the research institute and Israel Resource News Agency, said the disputed books were purchased from a warehouse owned by the Palestinian Authority and then carefully vetted by a team of researchers.

Of course, UNRWA denies this.

I asked Bedein if he could send me examples, because I like to check things out for myself.

They check out.

UNRWA already admits that it uses the PA curriculum, as it uses the curricula of the host countries in every area it operates.

The specific textbooks that the Center for Near East Policy Research looked at are indeed part of the current curriculum - because all of those textbooks (from first through eight grades) are online. And I verified for the worst examples that I saw were in the books being used, today, that can be downloaded online.

Finally, I verified the translations done by Dr. Arnon Groiss with my Arabic expert "Ibn Boutros."

So what is UNRWA teaching its schoolkids, today?

Here is part of a poem called We Are Returning:

We Are Returning

Returning, returning, we are returning

Borders shall not exist, nor citadels and fortresses

Cry out, O those who have left:

We are returning

Returning to the homes, to the valleys, to the mountains

Under the flag of glory, Jihad and struggle

With blood, sacrifice, fraternity and loyalty

We are returning

Returning, O hills; returning, O heights

Returning to childhood; returning to youth

To Jihad in the hills, [to] harvest in the land

It came from a fifth grade textbook called Our Beautiful Language, Part 1 (2015) p. 50.

I took a screenshot of the entire page. The book is online here.

Here are excerpts from a poem called The Martyr in a seventh grade textbook:

Hearing [weapons'] clash is pleasant to my ear

And the flow of blood gladdens my soul

As well as a body thrown upon the ground

Skirmished over by the desert predators

…

By your life! This is the death of men

And whoever asks for a noble death – this is it!"

I found the book it was from as well; here's the entire page:

From the book "Reading and Texts," grade 8, part 1, there is a poem called "Palestine" that starts off with "O brother, the oppressors have exceeded all bounds and Jihad and sacrifice are necessary…"

The documentation I was sent said it was on page 44, but in fact it is on page 66:

What is most outrageous is that the US government supposedly researched these issues in 2013 and concluded that nothing was wrong in the textbooks, a position they reiterated this year.

Here is absolute proof that the PA and UNRWA are teaching hate.

The State Department needs to explain itself, and the US must stop funding this hate immediately.

(h/t Josh K)

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Mahmoud Abbas released a statement on the anniversary of Yasir Arafat's death.

He said that the Palestinian investigation into the cause of his death, twelve year later, were going to be released "soon."

But besides that, Abbas repeated something he has said many times before, something that demolishes his reputation in the West as being a "moderate" and a peacemaker.

In this passage, he speaks about the unchanging positions and principles of the PLO. The main word is translated as "constants" or "invariables" (الثوابت) indicating that the word is stronger than just principles, so I have kept that wording:

The PLO achieved recognition as the sole and legitimate representative of Palestinian people and kept the unchanging positions ("constants"), and declared Palestinian independence in 1988 in Algeria, and we went back with him [Arafat] to establish a Palestinian national authority, on our land, Palestine .

Many people are talking about constants. Where are the constants?, They are the constants that were declared at the Palestinian National Council in Algiers. And some people speak without knowledge, ...and I say here, I challenge [them to show] that we gave away one constant since 1988. We come back to the constants adopted by the famous National Council, which was attended by 700 members, which represent the entire spectrum of the Palestinian people, and have taken these decisions, and we are sticking to these constants by our teeth and say: We are sticking by them and continue to hold firm in order to achieve them.

Abbas is bragging once again that no concessions have been made by the PLO since before Oslo, let alone during his entire term as Arafat's successor.

None.

During that time period, Israel has has allowed terrorist leaders to move into the territories, it has given up land, it has accepted a two state solution.

And the Palestinians have done literally nothing for peace since 1988 - according to their own leader.

Notably, that part of his speech (and other inflammatory parts that I will write about) were not translated into English by the official Wafa news agency report of the speech.

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Today's media bias: IBTimes calls Temple Mount a "Muslim mosque"

The headline:

The reporter calls the entire Temple Mount a "Muslim Mosque." Muslims actually claim this, but that doesn't make it true. And no Jew is interested in praying inside the Al Aqsa Mosque or the other mosques on the site.

The headline is also wrong in saying that "Israel" wants Jews to pray at the holy site. If Israel wanted it, it would have already happened. A few Knesset members brought up the idea.

Moreover, the article does not say once that the Temple Mount is holy for Jews (let alone Christians,) let alone the holiest site for Jews. It only says that it is holy for Muslims.

Some Israeli lawmakers want to allow Jews to pray at an Islamic holy site in Jerusalem, a contentious proposal that is opposed by Middle Eastern leaders and could stroke tensions between Jews and Muslims in the Israel.

All this adds up to an article that has more bias than facts.

The incompetent reporter doesn't even know that the expression is "stoke tensions," not 'stroke tensions."

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