Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, March 17, 2017

Update regarding the hate fest scheduled for March 26th in Washington DC (YMikarov)

Further to my previous article, there have been a few noteworthy changes to the scheduled event.

One of the scheduled speakers, Rania Khalek, has backed out, citing the following reason: “I pulled out because I will not be in town and I'm sick of the backlash from Syria trolls. Had no idea Berlin was invited”.

Khalek claims she “won’t be in town” but also added that “she’s sick of the backlash from Syria trolls”. Not quite sure which excuse we should believe. She then goes on to say, “I had no idea Berlin was invited”. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Khalek is referring to Greta Berlin, notorious anti-Semite, co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement, and frequent boarder of “freedom flotillas” to Gaza. Berlin has even been criticized by Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada for posting Anti-Semitic propaganda. Imagine that. This week, she also invited our very own “Holohoax” white nationalist Jimmy Fry to her hate corner at the event. Jimmy of course accepted her invitation.

After exposure, an exchange on Twitter ensued. The @freegazaorg account [which Greta is said to be handling] sent a picture of a currency bill. The bill says “Palestine” on it in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Of course, being as ignorant as we are, we all believe that since it is emblazoned with the word Palestine, that must mean it was issued by the sovereign Arab Palestinian state in 1939. Unfortunately for Greta, she isn’t very detail-oriented. Had she noticed the signatures on the currency, she would have read Sir P. Ezechiel - Sir J. Caulutt – and H. Downie, all British members of the Palestine Currency Board for the British Mandate at the time. These names are a far cry from Al-Mohammed or Al-Husseini.

I explained that the bill was issued by the British Mandate and that it was in circulation until 1947. Prior to that, the currency was the Turkish Lira under Ottoman rule. The response? A pathetic “you’re paid by the Israeli government” and the usual block.

So it’s safe to assume that Khalek backed out because Berlin and other anti-Semites plan to attend the event. The backlash she receives daily for supporting Assad, as well as the talk cancelled by BDS earlier in the month, was enough to make her think twice. Equally interesting is that your usual “anti-Zionists” starting lashing out at the event organizer, Abbas Hamideh.

One of those is the one and only Gary Spedding, a proud supporter of BDS and anti-Zionist. The other is the notorious Noa Shaindlinger who supports Hamas and claimed to be affiliated with the terrorist organization PFLP.

She was even called a Zionist and “Controlled Opposition” by non-other than Hamideh sidekick and number one David Duke fan Jimmy Fry, who will also attend the event.

As for Hamideh, he has taken to Facebook to criticize the Al-Awda members who urged him to tone it down. He also referenced to the article I wrote and “congratulated” the traitors, saboteurs, and gatekeepers who have officially changed sides – and are now with AIPAC. Then Hamideh wrote another post claiming that anti-Semites and white nationalists will not be invited to the event. This of course is a lie.

As of this moment, here are some of the speakers and attendees of the event. Reach your own conclusions as to whether BDS is becoming a haven for rabid anti-Semitic activity.

Abbas Hemideh – Event Organizer

Refers to Jews as “Shlomos”.

Supports Hezbollah, Hamas and Assad.

Organized rally in Cleveland . Followers chanted, “Kaybar Kaybar Yahud” [Slaughter Jews].

Greta Berlin

Promotes anti-Semitic videos on social media.

Shunned by Electronic Intifada

Alison Weir

Promoter of “Jewish Power” and “Organ Harvesting” anti-Semitic blood libels.

Shunned by Max Blumenthal and JVP.

Anas Amireh - Event Organizer

Promotes car ramming attacks by terrorists.

Jimmy Fry

Holocaust denier – “Auschwitz Lies”.

Makes jokes about Jews making good lampshades.

In conclusion, and as I have stated repetitiously, BDS is in shambles in terms of its leading activists, who are not aligned with one another. Expect to continue seeing this type of mud-slinging on social media as more and more anti-Semites join the “peaceful movement” known as Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.

J.Mikarov

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For years, NGOs and the UN have railed against the supposed inhumanity of Israel's using administrative detention against various terrorist suspects.

Which makes this small comment by the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights earlier this month all the more interesting:

In the State of Palestine, my Office is also concerned that both the Palestinian Authority and the authorities in Gaza have increased use of administrative and arbitrary detention, with increasing allegations of torture and ill-treatment in both the West Bank and Gaza against political opponents, journalists and activists.

So where are the NGOs? Where are the hundred-page reports with interviews of the victims? Where are the calls for justice from the "pro-Palestinian" activists? Where are the conferences?

Apparently, no one really cares about human rights.

"Human rights" is simply an excuse to bash whoever your political opponent is. Actual or alleged victims of human rights abuses are useful when they are used to further your political agenda, otherwise, if you have been tortured or otherwise abused, don't bother wasting the time of these so-called "human rights" advocates.

There are more NGOs in the Palestinian-administered territories than anywhere else on Earth. But they get their money from those who only want to bash Israel, not to protect Palestinians from human rights abuses by their own people. So most of them take their EU funds and rehash the information they have to write yet another anti-Israel reports while actual victims of daily human rights abuses have nowhere safe to turn for help.

(h/t Irene)

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Richard Falk's report that calls Israel an "apartheid state", commissioned by UN ESCWA, relies heavily on Israel's defining itself as a Jewish state as proof that it is discriminatory against non-Jews.

So he writes:

Where a State’s constitutional law provides equal rights to the entire citizenry, it can provide an invaluable resource for people challenging discrimination at all levels of the society. However, if constitutional law defines the State as racial in character — as in Israel (as a Jewish State), and apartheid South Africa (as a white-Afrikaner State) — movements against racial discrimination not only lack this crucial legal resource but find themselves in the far more dangerous position of challenging the regime itself. Such a challenge will naturally be seen by regime authorities as an existential threat and be persecuted accordingly.

Falk is astonishingly dishonest in later quoting Israel's Declaration of Independence as proof that Israel defines itself as a Jewish state without noting that that same Declaration says that all citizens must have equal rights - and Israel's Basic Laws refer to the equal rights section of the Declaration, giving it the force of constitutional law.

The report by UN ESCWA believes that the "Jewish state" is inherently discriminatory, rejecting any objections to "the ethnic premise of Jewish statehood [as] illegitimate, because it violates international human rights law."

Yet how do ESCWA members define themselves?

Here is a chart showing how every ESCWA member defines themselves in their constitutions.

ESCWA member	How it defines itself
Bahrain	Bahrain is an independent, sovereign, Islamic Arab State
Egypt	Egypt is part of the Arab nation
Iraq	This Constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people.
Jordan	The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is an independent sovereign Arab State. The people of Jordan form a part of the Arab Nation.
Kuwait	Kuwait is an Arab, independent, fully sovereign State.
Lebanon	Lebanon is Arab in its identity and in its affiliation.
Libya	Islam shall be its religion and Islamic Shari’a shall be the main source of legislation.
Mauritania	Mauritania is an Islamic, indivisible, democratic, and social Republic.
Morocco	[Commits] To deepen the bonds of togetherness with the Arab and Islamist Ummah
Oman	The Sultanate of Oman is an Arab, Islamic, Independent State
Palestine	Palestine is part of the large Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation.
Qatar	Qatar is an independent sovereign Arab State.
Saudi Arabia	The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a sovereign Arab Islamic state with Islam as its religion
Sudan	The Republic of the Sudan is an independent, sovereign State. It is a democratic, decentralized, multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and multi-lingual country where such diversities co-exist
Syria	The Syrian Arab Republic is a democratic state with full sovereignty, indivisible, and may not waive any part of its territory, and is part of the Arab homeland; The people of Syria are part of the Arab nation.
Tunisia	Tunisia is a free, independent, sovereign state; its religion is Islam, its language Arabic, and its system is republican.
United Arab Emirates	The Union shall be part of the Great Arab Nation, to which it is bound by the ties of religion, language, history and common destiny. The people of the Union shall be a single people, and shall be part of the Arab Nation.
Yemen	The Republic of Yemen is an Arab, Islamic and independent sovereign state

With the exception of Sudan (and to an extent Morocco) every member identifies as either an Arab state, an Islamic state or both, which - by Falk's logic - means that the nations that sponsored Falk's report to define Israel as an apartheid state are apartheid states themselves.

Yet no one ever accuses them of that, even though by any sane measure they discriminate against non-Arabs and/or non-Muslims in ways that are far more egregious than anything Israel can be accused of doing.

For example, in Bahrain non-Arabs are extremely limited in where they can lease land, while Arabs have no such restrictions and can buy land outright. Jordan and others have similar laws. Arab League states, which is the majority of ESCWA members, also discriminate against non Arabs in their citizenship laws.

This is only one example of how Falk's definition of "apartheid" for Israel would apply to many of not most other nations, including the US.

So if you accept that this report proves Israel is an "apartheid state" you must agree that so are many, many other states that also fall under that definition. By manipulating the facts to judge Israel guilty, Falk is not strengthening human rights - he is weakening the definition of apartheid to become meaningless and therefore useless.

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03/16 Links Pt2: Mayim Bialik: Feminism & Zionism; PMW: Fatah: Kill 37 Israelis, become a role model for Palestinian women

From Ian:

Mayim Bialik: Feminism & Zionism: Definitions and Exclusions

A recent series of articles about Palestinian-American political activist Linda Sarsour startled many in feminist and Jewish circles, me being one of them. In these articles, Sarsour states that feminism and Zionism are incompatible.
Sarsour said, “There is no country in this world that is immune to violating human rights. You can’t be a feminist in the United States and stand up for the rights of the American woman and then say that you don’t want to stand up for the rights of Palestinian women in Palestine.” (Check out this interview with Sarsour in The Nation.)
I don’t know that I am even the authority to speak to this on an international level, but here’s what I have on a personal level. Feelings.
Why am I upset?
Definitions
Zionism is the belief in the right of the Jewish people to have an autonomous state in Israel. I am a Zionist. Feminism is the belief that a woman-driven movement can bring about race, class and gender equality and that women deserve all of the rights and privileges afforded to men. I am a feminist. There are Zionists who are critical of certain Israeli policies and those who are not; there are Zionists who are anti-occupation and there are Zionists who are pro-settlement; and there are Zionists who fall between these extremes. The definitions of Zionism and feminism are not in conflict with each other. At all.

Alan Dershowitz: Why Must Women Choose between Feminism and Zionism, but Not Other "Isms"?

There are many countries and movements throughout the world that treat women as second-class citizens: Israel is not among them.... There is a word for applying a double standard to Jews. That word is anti-Semitism.
If Sarsour was concerned with addressing structural causes of all female oppression, she would mention the status of women in the PA-controlled West Bank where just a few months ago the names and photos of female candidates for the municipal elections were omitted, referring to the women instead as "wife of" or "sister of." Sarsour would also call out the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where the police are a law unto themselves who act as judge, jury and executioner of those who speak out against their oppression and misogyny. She would condemn the tolerance, if not acceptance, by so many Muslim countries of the "honor killings" and genital mutilation of women. Instead the IWS platform exploits the feminist cause in order to delegitimize and demonize only one nation: that of the Jewish people.
The real choice to be made now by all those who care about the feminist cause is whether to allow Sarsour and her radical anti-Israel allies to hijack the movement in support of their own bigoted views. The alternative is to maintain feminism's focus on key issues that pertain to women and to call out countries and movements according to how seriously they violate women's rights, rather than singling out the one Jewish democracy – Israel.

PMW: Fatah: Kill 37 Israelis, become a role model for Palestinian women

Role model for Palestinian women is terrorist Dalal Mughrabi who led murder of 37, including 12 children
Secretary of Fatah Central Committee: “The women of Palestine draw from the giving and struggle of the first female Martyrs of Palestine, and prime among them Dalal Mughrabi and Laila Khaled”
Fatah Central Committee member: “[Mughrabi was] a daughter of the land who scattered her soul on the soil of the land of peace and constitutes for us a Palestinian school for the supreme love of the homeland”
“The lady of complete giving for the freedom of the land and man. May her soul rest in our skies, a true rainbow of freedom”
Fatah Central Committee member: “[Her operation] spread the spirit of victory in the hearts of the Palestinians and struck the Israeli occupation like lightning... [Her] “soul is constantly floating in the skies of Palestine”
PA National Security Forces: Mughrabi is “the bride of Jaffa”
Head of Palestinian Women’s Union on occasion of International Women’s Day: “She killed as many as she killed"

Head of Palestinian Women’s Union on Women’s Day: Terrorist who led murder of 37 was “a role model”

A Twitter deconstruction of Linda Sarsour (@AviMayer)

Avi Mayer, on Twitter, writes about Linda Sarsour's claim that one cannot be a Zionist and a feminist.

It is too good not to put in a short essay form.

Let's take a minute and pick apart Linda Sarsour's bizarre and twisted claim that one cannot be both a Zionist and a feminis t, shall we?

Per Sarsour, since feminism is about "the rights of all women," a feminist cannot support Israel, which "oppresses" Palestinian women.

There are several glaring problems with Sarsour's simplistic argument.

First, Sarsour herself goes on to say—in the same interview—that "there is no country... that is immune to violating human rights." Surely if all countries violate human rights, @lsarsour should condemn them all. But she aims her bile at supporters of only one: Israel.

Second, Sarsour discusses the plight of Palestinian women at length, but curiously ignores any hardship that cannot be blamed on Israel. Yet Palestinian women "face discrimination in law and in practice, and [are] inadequately protected against sexual and other violence." according to Amnesty.

"Honor killings"—murders of Palestinian women by male relatives seeking to protect "family honor"—have skyrocketed. wapo.st/2mG7Yza

Abortions are illegal under Palestinian law, forcing women to either endanger their lives – or seek help in Israel. atfp.co/1XJhdhA

How "Zionism" is to blame for these rampant violations of Palestinian women's rights within Palestinian society is for Linda Sarsour to answer.

Moreover, while Linda Sarsour professes deep concern for the rights of "all women," she has nothing to say about the rights of Israeli women. At no point does it occur to Sarsour to even pay lip service to Israeli women and their rights. They're entirely absent from her equation.

The mothers of the two Israeli students murdered by Rasmea Odeh, whom Sarsour has defended, do not appear to have rights worth protecting.

Most fundamentally, in rejecting and deriding Zionism, Linda Sarsour denies the basic right of Jewish women—and all Jews—to self-determination.

Sarsour also ignores Israel's admirable (if imperfect) record on women's rights, including having had women head every branch of government.

Finally, in declaring Zionism and feminism incompatible, @lsarsour seeks to erase the many, many women—and men—who identify with both.

Here are just a few of the women @lsarsour would no longer consider feminists due to their support of Jewish rights.

It seems that in Linda Sarsour's version of feminism, all women are equal, but some are more equal than others. Israeli women need not apply.

PS:

Oh, PS, @lsarsour: Israeli women receive 26 weeks of maternity leave, of which 14 are paid. Are you a Zionist now? https://t.co/cx9GBnRq74
— Avi Mayer (@AviMayer) March 16, 2017

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

If you’re not catching flak, then you’re not over the target. And one good way to know that we are scoring points is when our enemies start screaming bloody murder.

So back in 2002, when Israel started building its security barrier, the PLO and its fellow travelers had fits. They had lots of excuses – it was inconvenient for them, it was built on “their” land, it was an “apartheid wall,” it was ugly, and on and on; but the real reason was simple: by making it easier for us to stop terrorists on their way to our buses and restaurants, we took away their best weapon. I know: my son was in the police counter-terrorism unit at the time, and they were going 24/7 to intercept and stop the bombers who were trying to murder us on almost a daily basis. The barrier made their job much easier.

This applies in many areas, not just physical barriers and military tactics. For example, how the Israeli Left squealed in pain when the Knesset passed a law that demanded transparency for foreign-funded NGOs! Even though the law was a pale version of what had been originally proposed, the idea that our country would dare to protect its sovereignty against foreign subversion, subversion that was a meal ticket for hundreds of operatives that spent their days provoking security forces and filming the interactions, informing to the PA about Arabs who considered selling land to Jews, filing lawsuits against the government and the IDF, petitioning the Supreme Court to dismantle Jewish communities – the very idea made them furious. It was undemocratic to let people know that anti-Israel governments in Europe were paying them!

Or what about the recent anti-BDS law? Among others, it’s the progressive Jewish community in America whose ox is being gored this time: the ones like Rabbi Rick Jacobs of the Union for Reform Judaism, who love Israel so much that they want her to be better, which they are trying to achieve by boycotting products from “settlements” in order to force her to create another Hamastan next to Route 6, so terrorists can hit the airport and Kfar Saba with mortar shells. How undemocratic it is to say that non-residents of our country who are (either deliberately or because they are useful idiots) working to help destroy it may not sit on the beach in Tel Aviv!

But one of the best examples of the hypocrisy of the Arabs and their friends is their spluttering reaction to this recent remark posted by Avigdor Lieberman on his Facebook page (Hebrew, my tr.)

At the threshold of a new attempt to start up diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, we must learn the lessons of the past, and the first lesson is: every attempt to solve the Palestinian issue on a land-for-peace basis is bound to fail.

The only way to a sustainable agreement is through the exchange of territory and population as part of a larger regional peace deal.

It is unthinkable that a homogeneous Palestinian state will be established without a single Jew – 100% Palestinian, and that despite this, Israel will be a bi-national state, with 22% Palestinians.

There is no reason for Sheikh Raed Salah, Ayman Oudeh, Basel Ghattas or Haneen Zoabi to continue to be Israeli citizens.

Lieberman has expressed similar ideas before. It’s essential to understand that he is not advocating that Arabs be expelled from their homes in Israel. His plan is that borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state should be drawn so that large Arab populations that today are in Israel – such as in the ‘triangle’ area near Umm al Fahm – would fall in Palestine, and Israelis today living across the Green Line will be in Israel. Such a trade would not require anyone to move, and would allow Arabs to live under Palestinian sovereignty and Jews under Israeli rule.

Leaving aside the legal complexities, one would think this would appeal to the Arabs. Don’t they want self-determination? Unsurprisingly they hate it, calling it “racist and fascist.”

MK Basel Ghattas, who is presently facing charges of smuggling cellular phones to imprisoned terrorists, did his best to prove Lieberman right, saying,

…there is no doubt that Lieberman, an immigrant from Moldova, doesn’t understand the meaning of a homeland or its native people.

Under any possible future settlement there will be neither room for any land-grabbing settlers in a Palestinian state nor any room for racists the likes of Ivet [Lieberman’s Russian name]. The Palestinians living today in Israel are the masters of the land, and Lieberman is just a passing guest.

According to Ghattas, Lieberman doesn’t understand that the land belongs exclusively to Arabs, that the descendants of Arabs who settled here in the 19^th and 20^th centuries are “natives,” while the Jews living in places mentioned in the Bible are “land-grabbing settlers.”

Ha’aretz, in an editorial, wrote,

The defense minister believes that hundreds of thousands of Israeli Arab citizens don’t really belong to the state and should be transferred from sovereign Israeli territory to another country because of their ethnic affiliation. Practically speaking, under the guise of seeking a “sustainable arrangement,” Lieberman wants to convey to the state’s Arab citizens that they aren’t wanted by the State of Israel and that their citizenship is temporary and conditional. …

Lieberman knows that the right of those born here to maintain Israeli citizenship is no less than that of a Jew who is naturalized by way of the Law of Return. It’s not only that the idea of creating an Israel “cleansed” of Arabs is warped, but that even raising it as an option is unacceptable.

The word “transfer,” which usually refers to forced resettlement, is inflammatory, but that is how the editors of Ha’aretz like it. Nevertheless, their argument is faulty. Ha’aretz and the Arabs both want a chunk of sovereign Israel to be torn off and given to the PLO. So if boundaries need to be drawn, is it not more reasonable to do it on the basis of the ethnicity of the population? Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if Palestinians were ruled by Palestinians and Jews by Jews? Why are the 1949 armistice lines a better choice? Why is physical expulsion of Jews from their homes acceptable, but drawing the border to include Arabs in the Arab state not?

Ha’aretz thinks that Lieberman’s proposal is just a stunt to make the Arab citizens of Israel feel unwanted. I don’t support Lieberman’s idea myself, for various reasons, including that it really does insult Arab citizens of Israel, many of whom – with notable exceptions, as Lieberman made clear – are loyal and productive citizens of the state. But whether or not you think it should be implemented, it makes a very important point: it emphasizes the blatantly racist nature of the PLO demand for a Palestinian state without any Jews in it. What’s sauce for the goose, in other words, should also be sauce for the gander.

And let’s face it: why do the Arabs prefer to live under Jewish sovereignty? Of course the answer is that they know very well that despite the alleged “discrimination” and “racism” of Israel, they are and will continue to be far better off in almost every way as Israelis than under the kleptocratic, corrupt, unjust and violent regime of a PLO or a Hamas.

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03/16 Links Pt1: Israel: Hiding Evidence of Its Own Innocence; PMW: Fatah Votes for Terror

From Ian:

Hiding Evidence of Its Own Innocence

I’m not naïve enough to think that better PR would solve all of Israel’s international relations problems. But there’s no question that incompetent PR makes its situation much worse. As one example, consider Tuesday’s shocking revelation: Within about 24 hours of the most high-profile civilian casualty incident of the 2009 Gaza war, Israel had obtained evidence casting doubt on its responsibility for that death. But it sat on this evidence for more than eight years, finally releasing it only as part of a defense brief in a civil suit by the victims’ father.
The incident in question took place on January 16, 2009, when Israeli troops fighting in Gaza came under sniper fire. The troops fired two shells at an observation post that seemed to be directing the snipers. The observation post was located on the third floor of a building which, unbeknownst to the soldiers, was also the home of a well-known doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish. Three of Abuelaish’s daughters were killed, along with one of his nieces; several other family members were wounded. Abuelaish, who worked in Israel, maintained good relations with Israelis and advocated for Israeli-Palestinian peace, later became famous worldwide when he published a book about this incident and his response to it, called I Shall Not Hate.
Israel was blamed worldwide for the Abuelaish casualties and never publicly challenged the assumption of its guilt. Yet it now turns out that within a day after the incident, it had evidence indicating that its shells may not have caused the carnage.
The evidence came in the form of laboratory tests conducted on six pieces of shrapnel extracted from the two casualties treated in Israel (the other wounded weren’t brought to Israel, nor were any of the dead, so no shrapnel from the other victims was available). The tests showed that alongside traces of various explosives used by both the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas, at least one fragment contained an explosive called R-Salt, which isn’t used by the IDF but is commonly used in improvised explosive devices in Gaza. Moreover, all six fragments contained potassium nitrate, another substance not used in IDF weaponry that is used in Hamas’s homemade Qassam rockets.

PMW: PMW Releases Report in US Congress: Fatah Votes for Terror

Palestinian Media Watch's founder and director Itamar Marcus is presenting PMW's new report Fatah Votes for Terror to the House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East today, Thursday March 16, in Washington D.C. The report documents that Fatah and many of the leaders who were elected to its Central Committee at the Seventh Fatah Conference openly support terror, and did so actively during the terror wave of 2015-2016.
PMW Special Report: Fatah Votes for Terror
Special Report on Members Elected to the Fatah Central Committee in December 2016
Click to view full report in pdf
Introduction
The Seventh Fatah Conference ended in December 2016with elections for the 18-member governing body, the Fatah Central Committee. Twelve members were reelected and six new members joined the committee. In addition, Mahmoud Abbas was reelected separately as chairman, and he also has the right to appoint four additional members. This report examines Fatah's attitudes to terror during the wave of Palestinian terror 2015-2016, and focuses on the attitudes of those elected members of the Central Committee who have spoken publicly, including Mahmoud Abbas, as well as Fatah leaders who were Central Committee members during the terror wave, but were not reelected at the Seventh Fatah Conference.
This report documents how the Fatah Movement responded to individual Palestinians murdering Israeli civilians in stabbings, shootings, and car ramming attacks, during the terror wave from September 2015 to mid-2016. 40 people were murdered in these attacks (36 Israelis, 1 Palestinian, 2 Americans, and 1 Eritrean) and hundreds wounded.
The report also includes Fatah's responses to the terror on the Fatah-run TV station Awdah and its official social media.

The Palestinian Economy Is a Protection Racket Financed by International Donors

While the current state of the Palestinian economy is nowhere near as bad as one might think from reading the Western press, writes Hillel Frisch, it is beset by serious problems:
According to the standards of the World Bank, West Bankers are middle-class and Gaza residents lower-middle-class. [But] it is a matter of serious concern that neither in Gaza nor in the territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority is [there] a functioning domestic economy. By far the most important element propping up Palestinian economic welfare levels is financial aid [from] donors such as USAID, the EU, and church-related organizations, which underwrites roughly one-third of the [Palestinian] gross national product in the West Bank and considerably more in Gaza. . . .
[T]he substantial economic aid the PA receives from the EU, USAID, and individual EU member states enables it to reward incarcerated terrorists, terrorists released from prison, and the families of terrorists both living and dead with generous stipends and financial support. . . . Such support acts as an incentive to commit acts of terrorism and lowers deterrence against those who would commit such acts even without incentives.
Yet the problem is even broader. The most important group of actors on the Arab side—the PA, its militia Fatah, and Hamas—have perfected a deadly political economy rather than built a functioning one. It is the use of force, or the threat of the use of force, that assures the flow of aid from international actors, many of whom want to pacify the situation. The [donors] thus become accessories to a form of protection racket that demands, “Support me or I’ll attack Israel and its Jewish citizens.” The EU, anxious lest Israel retaliate and create a refugee problem whose imprint will be felt in Europe, plays the game and pays up.

As mentioned, on Tuesday night I hosted a symposium in Jerusalem on the topic, "Donald Trump: Good for the Jews?"

Here is my second video from the event showing Brian of London energetically defending Trump and fending off questions from skeptical critics.

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Aldous Huxley once said, "Several excuses are always less convincing than one."

Jordan's Al Ghad newspaper quotes a former president of the Jordanian Bar and current MP in the House of Representatives, Saleh Armouti, as to exactly why Jordan cannot extradite terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to the US for her role in the murder of two Americans.

He gave multiple excuses:

* She already served a prison sentence for her acts and it is not acceptable for her to go on trial again.

* Jordanian law says that any action taken against a citizen must be approved by the National Council (I think he may be saying that the Jordanian parliament never ratified the extradition agreement signed with the US under the Clinton administration, but I'm not sure)

* The US only unsealed the indictment after Donald Trump was president so this is a political ploy, and not an act to seek justice.

But there is one real reason he gives as to why Jordan will never extradite a confessed, unrepentant child murderer: because she is not guilty of any crime to begin with, and in fact she is a heroine:

"The liberated prisoner Ahlam Tamimi had the legitimate right to resist the occupier, as the United Nations laws stipulates the right to self-determination, which includes the right to resist the occupation,"says Armouti.

Arabs have pretended for years that international law supports murdering Jews as long as you can call it "resisting occupation." And as soon as someone uses that in an argument, you know that you are dealing with someone who doesn't care about the law any more than they care about the lives of Jewish children.

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Iran has trotted out their token Jews to show that they aren't antisemitic at all, only anti-Israel.

Iran's token Jewish MP, Siamak Mareh Sedq, called Benjamin Netanyahu an "insane vampire" for comparing the desire of the Persian empire to destroy all Jews in the Purim story with the desire of the Iranian entity to destroy the Jewish State today.

He added that anti-Semitism and racism have never been witnessed in the Iranian culture.

In completely unrelated news, the Supreme Leader of Iran tweeted:

Despite constant invasions by all superpowers & Zionists' media empire, Iranian nation is advancing in any areas after Revolution.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) March 9, 2017

See? Nothing antisemitic about saying that "Zionists" control the media.

He has also in the past called the Holocaust a "myth."

But he's not antisemitic. The person he holds hostage as the official court Jew says so!

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The UN's and Richard Falk's stupid "Israeli apartheid" report denies Jewish right to self-determination

The UN's Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) asked Israel-hater Richard Falk to write a report to paint a pseudo-legal face on their accusation that Israel practices apartheid under the definition of the term in international law.

Look at the members of this group:

Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen

The 74-page report has one purpose: to give Israel-haters something to point to in order to pretend that their hate is based on logic. Of course, for both Falk and his sponsors, the verdict is written first and the reasoning shoe-horned in later.

Throughout the document one can find things that to the ignorant sound legitimate but which could be burst in seconds. For example:

The question arises as to whether Israel has deliberately pursued fragmentation of
the West Bank into an archipelago of Palestinian cantons, divided by intervening
Jewish-only areas (the Bantustan model). Certainly, this geography will
permanently enfeeble any putative Palestinian sovereignty, preserving the
prerogative of Israel to administer intervening land for the Jewish people. Oslo II,
paradoxically, facilitated this “grand” strategy by establishing borders for the
Palestinian autonomy enclaves. The comparison with South Africa helps to clarify
an essential observation: with Israeli Jewish-national domination over an area
dotted with Palestinian autonomy zones, apartheid is expressed as fully in a
partition strategy as it is in a unified State.

But Israel offered the Palestinians their own state that would be contiguous in the West Bank. Several times! So much for that argument.

Falk makes the argument constantly that Israel, by defining itself as a Jewish state, is inherently discriminatory against its Arab citizens. Yet every Arab state defines itself as such, with no such complaints by Falk.

He also argues that since Arab citizens cannot legally challenge Israel's self-definition of being a Jewish state, that is discrimination against Arabs. This is deceptive, because Israel does not have any problem with its many Arab citizens who accept Israel as a Jewish state. Similarly, leftist Jews who want to change the character of the state has the same roadblocks as the anti-Israel Arabs do. So the Jewish state does not inherently discriminate against Arabs; it discriminates against people who want to change the character of the State, Jew or Arab.

Falk pretends to answers objections to calling Israel an apartheid state:

Objection 1: Consistency with international practice: The Israeli doctrine of maintaining a Jewish majority, enabling the Jewish people to have its own nation-State, is consistent with the behaviour of States around the world, such as France, which express the self-determination of their respective ethnic nations. It is therefore unfair and exceptional treatment — and implicitly anti-Semitic — to target Israel as an apartheid State when it is only doing the same.

Falk:This common argument derives from miscasting how national identities function in modern nation States. In France, for example, anyone holding French citizenship, regardless of whether they are indigenous or of immigrant origin, are equal members of the French nation and enjoy equal rights. According to the Supreme Court, Israel is not the State of the “Israeli nation” but of the “Jewish nation”.86 Collective rights in Israeli law are explicitly conferred on Jews as a people and on no other collective identity: national rights for Jews, embedded in such laws as the Law of Return and the Citizenship Law (discussed above) do not extend to any other group under Israeli rule. Hence, racial-nationalist privileges are embedded in the legal and doctrinal foundations of the State. That is exceptional and would meet with opprobrium in any other country (as it did in apartheid South Africa)

Germany's naturalization law includes "A foreigner who is ordinarily resident abroad may be naturalized... if ties with Germany exist which justify naturalization."

This doesn't extend to people who do not have any ties with Germany. So, by Falk's definition, Germany's law that gives preference for people of German heritage to become citizens even if they are not residents is apartheid, and should meet with opprobrium.

Has it?

Objection 2. The standing of Palestinians as foreigners: Palestinian residents of the occupied Palestinian territory are not citizens of the State and so the State does not owe them rights and treatment equal to that accorded to Israeli Jewish citizens and settlers.

Falk: The similarities between the legal situation in Palestinian territory under Israeli occupation and in Namibia under South African occupation have already been noted. Israel has denied Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory Israeli citizenship because they are not Jews. ...

Yet Israel offers citizenship to Arabs of Jerusalem in areas that Israel has effectively annexed. If Israel denies citizenship to Arabs because they are not Jews, how can Israel offer citizenship to those Arabs? Obviously the motivating factor is whether the land they live on is part of Israel, just as Israel offered citizenship to Arabs in Israel in 1948.

The entire tedious report is filled with examples like these. And, yes, it is antiemitic, because the fundamental premise behind Falk's thesis is that Jews have no right to self determination.

If anyone ever takes it seriously it wouldn't be difficult to write up a formal rebuttal of every one of Falk's points, but it is doubtful that anyone outside hardcore Israel haters will take it seriously to begin with.

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