Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, June 03, 2017

06/03 Links: PA official: Jews must be sovereign at Western Wall; The Whitewashing of Linda Sarsour

From Ian:

Charles Krauthammer: Israel and Palestine are a sideshow to the real Middle East peace process

That would suggest an outside-in approach to Arab-Israeli peace: a rapprochement between the Sunni state and Israel (the outside) would put pressure on the Palestinians to come to terms (the inside). It's a long-shot strategy but it's better than all the others. Unfortunately, Trump muddied the waters a bit in Israel by at times reverting to the opposite strategy – the inside-out – by saying that an Israeli-Palestinian deal would "begin a process of peace all throughout the Middle East."
That is well-worn nonsense. Imagine if Israel disappeared tomorrow in an earthquake. Does that end the civil war in Syria? The instability in Iraq? The fighting in Yemen? Does it change anything of consequence amid the intra-Arab chaos? Of course not.
And apart from being delusional, the inside-out strategy is at present impossible. Palestinian leadership is both hopelessly weak and irredeemably rejectionist. Until it is prepared to accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state – which it has never done in the 100 years since the Balfour Declaration committed Britain to a Jewish homeland in Palestine – there will be no peace.
It may come one day. But not now. Which is why making the Israel-Palestinian issue central, rather than peripheral, to the epic Sunni-Shiite war shaking the Middle East today is a serious tactical mistake. It subjects any now-possible reconciliation between Israel and the Arab states to a Palestinian veto.
Ironically, the Iranian threat that grew under Obama offers a unique opportunity for U.S.-Arab and even Israeli-Arab cooperation. Over time, such cooperation could gradually acclimate Arab peoples to a nonbelligerent stance toward Israel. Which might in turn help persuade the Palestinians to make some concessions before their fellow Arabs finally tire of the Palestinians' century of rejectionism.
Perhaps that will require a peace process of sorts. No great harm, as long as we remember that any such Israeli-Palestinian talks are for show -- until conditions are one day ripe for peace.
In the meantime, the real action is on the anti-Iranian and anti-terror fronts. Don't let Oslo-like mirages get in the way.

Ben-Dror Yemini: The truth about the occupation

Op-ed: It’s been 50 years since Israel gained control of the territories, and figures show that the Palestinians have actually experienced a major improvement over that period. In most areas, their situation is much better than that of Arabs in neighboring countries. The lies about a genocide and destruction must therefore be shattered.
The lies must be refuted
It’s been 50 years since Israel gained control of the territories, and figures show that the Palestinians have actually experienced a major improvement. In most areas, their situation is much better than the situation of Arabs in neighboring countries. So the lies about Auschwitz and the destruction and the mass killing must be shattered.
That doesn’t mean there is no injustice. That doesn’t mean there is no room for criticism, even profound criticism, against certain actions committed by Israel. That doesn’t mean that there are no hooligans in the territories, even if they are a small minority. That doesn’t mean that the settlement enterprise should be justified. And that definitely doesn’t mean that the occupation should be perpetuated or that we should march with our heads held high towards the disaster called one big state or a binational state.
All it means is that we must refute the lies about what the Palestinians have experienced in the past 50 years under Israeli rule. That will only work to advance the discussion on the proper agreement, both for the Palestinians' sake and for Israel’s sake.

UN Watch: UNRWA fakes Gaza girl campaign with image of bombed-out Damascus

UN Watch today demanded that UNRWA chief Pierre Krahenbuhl apologize for using images of a girl in a bombed-out Syria building in a major global campaign to raise money for the organization by pretending the girl is a Gaza victim of Israeli actions.

UNRWA is now running the above photo on Facebook and Twitter ads. It is also now UNRWA’s cover image.
Imagine being cut off from the world – for your whole life. That’s reality for children like Aya. The blockade of Gaza began when she was a baby, the occupation in the West Bank before her parents were born. Now she is eleven, and the blockade goes on.
Aya’s childhood memories are of conflict and hardship, walls she cannot escape, and the fear that the only home she knows, however tiny, could be gone when she returns from school.
This Ramadan, please help support children like Aya who have known nothing but conflict and hardship.
Yet neither the girl nor the bombed-out building are in Gaza; it’s an old photo from Syria, dating apparently to 2014.
Here is UNRWA tweeting the original image in a January 2015 story on Syria:

06/02 Links Pt2: Evelyn Gordon: Gaza on the Brink; ISIS, "Lady al Qaeda," and the Muslim Students Association

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: Gaza on the Brink

If you ask Palestinians in either Gaza or the West Bank who’s responsible for their suffering, most would probably say Israel. But what would they say if they were safely overseas and no longer needed to fear their own governments? That’s not a question reporters, diplomats, or nongovernmental organizations usually bother asking. We now have an answer to it, at least with regard to Palestinians who fled Gaza. They left not because of anything Israel did, but because of persecution by Gaza’s Hamas-run government
There are numerous UN agencies ostensibly devoted exclusively to helping the Palestinians, while human rights groups allocate disproportionate attention to this issue. In both cases, their only real interest in Palestinian suffering is finding some way to blame Israel for it. They couldn’t care less about protecting Palestinians from the abuses of their own government. That’s why they keep issuing reports accusing Israel of being the “key cause” of Palestinian suffering, as one UN agency put it this week, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Yet their blatant bias often obscures a larger problem that affects even well-meaning journalists, NGOs, diplomats and almost everyone else involved in telling the world about what’s happening in the West Bank and Gaza–a failure to understand the way fear affects what people say in nondemocratic societies. For Palestinians, blaming anyone other than Israel for their problems risks serious repercussions from either their own governments or vigilante groups affiliated with both governments. And that’s true not just in Hamas-run Gaza, as people like Ayman and Naji discovered to their sorrow, but also in the Fatah-run West Bank, where journalists, businessmen, and Palestinian security officers have all suffered arrest and financial sanctions for daring to criticize the Palestinian Authority or its president, Mahmoud Abbas. Blaming Israel is always the safest solution, even in cases where it’s patently untrue.
Responsible journalists, NGOs, and diplomats would take this fear factor into account and try to dig a little deeper to try to get at the truth. They would also recognize that the very fact that Israel is the one party no Palestinian fears to criticize is in itself a potent refutation of Palestinian claims that Israel is an oppressive regime. People who truly live under an oppressive regime are generally afraid to go on record criticizing it.
Instead, these opinion shapers take everything they hear from Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza at face value and parrot it uncritically. That does nothing to better the Palestinians’ lot, but a great deal to bolster the Palestinians’ own repressive governments by absolving them of all scrutiny and pressure to reform.
The testimony of these Gazan refugees in Greece provides a rare opportunity to hear what Palestinians say when they’re out of reach of their own repressive governments and can speak freely. It thereby offers a glimpse at the true source of much Palestinian suffering – and a rebuke to all the journalists, diplomats, and NGOs who have collaborated with both Palestinian governments to hide this truth from the world.

Eli Lake: Trump Left the Door Open for a Jerusalem Embassy

He thinks he can use the issue as leverage -- for now.
Donald Trump's presidency so far has followed a pattern of disruption. He snubs European allies. He tweets in atrocious grammar. He pulls out of international agreements. He shakes things up.
But in one important respect, Trump's presidency appears entirely conventional. That is in the Middle East. Like his recent predecessors, he promised during the presidential campaign to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. And like his predecessors, he violated that promise now that he is in office.
So why did Trump do it? "To maximize the chances of successfully negotiating a deal between Israel and the Palestinians," according to a White House statement issued Thursday on his decision to sign a waiver of the Jerusalem Embassy Act, that would have set in motion the process for the U.S. moving its embassy to Israel's capital. It doesn't get much more conventional than that. What modern president hasn't tried to maximize the chances of that ever-elusive peace deal?
It would be easy to end the story there. But in this case, Trump has left open the possibility that he will eventually keep his campaign promise: "As he has repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy, the question is not if that move happens, but only when," the White House statement also said.

MP HECKLED “JEW, JEW, JEW” FOR SAYING ISRAEL HAS RIGHT TO EXIST

Sources on the ground in troubled Bradford West think the Corbyn surge could help save Labour’s Naz Shah, who is facing an increasing threat from independent Salma Yaqoob. Yaqoob – of Respect and Stop the War fame – is running a professional campaign and so far two other independents have stood down to back her. At a tumultuous hustings on Wednesday Shah was shouted down for expressing support for Israel’s right to exist. After Shah says “I continue to stand by my statement that I believe in Israel’s right to exist” an audience member can clearly be heard shouting “Jew, Jew, Jew“. Aisha Ali-Khan, who was at the hustings, told Guido: “I was horrified at the conduct some of those in the room.” Yet more disturbing stuff in Bradford…

Naz Shah MP Called "Jew" at Hustings for Saying Israel Has the Right to Exist

Lebanon gives Wonder Woman more publicity

Lebanon's Naharnet reports:

Lebanese authorities banned the new "Wonder Woman" movie Wednesday hours before it was due to premiere in the capital and following a campaign against its lead actress, Gal Gadot, who served in the Israeli army, a security official and activists said.
On its front page Wednesday, the leading al-Akhbar newspaper had a column titled: "The Israeli soldier. She has no place in Lebanon." The column featured a picture of Gadot carrying her Wonder Woman shield.

That's how to boycott someone: put a photo of her on the front page!

The article also notes:

But many in Lebanon mocked the decision as censorship or a waste of time, pointing out the film could be viewed online.

"Liberating Palestine one movie at a time. #LiveLoveCensorship," wrote the Stop Cultural Terrorism in Lebanon group, which promotes freedom of expression.

- 'In typical Lebanese fashion' -

Blogger Elie Fares accused the government of inconsistency, pointing out that several of Gadot's movies have aired in Lebanon in past years.

"In typical Lebanese fashion and because we definitely have our priorities in order, Lebanon's government decided to rise up from its slumber and resist, even though the movie has been announced for over three years now," he wrote on his "A Separate State of Mind" blog.

"The fact of the matter is that if you have a problem with the content of a movie, the actor or actress leading it or anything pertaining to it... Simply don't go watch it," he added.

"Call for a boycott, but you sure as hell have no right in making sure no one else gets to watch it too."

Even though Lebanon enjoys a greater margin of freedom of expression than other countries in the region, with a thriving arts scene, prior censorship remains in place, particularly with content relating to Israel, religion and homosexuality.

But its interior ministry's censorship bureau occasionally bans content considered to incite confessional dissent, attacking morals or state authority, or to reflect Israeli propaganda.

So far, Lebanon appears to be the only Arab country to order a ban on Wonder Woman, which remains scheduled for release across the region including in Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia later this month.

The movie - and Gal Gadot - are getting great reviews across the board.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Rolling Stone published the complete comments from Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke about the BDS campaign against his group for planning to play in Tel Aviv in July.

The issue has flared up at recent Radiohead concerts, including their show at the Greek Theater Berkeley where a large banner was held up chastising them for playing the "apartheid" state of Israel. The situation puts Nigel Godrich in an particularly awkward position, as the longtime Radiohead producer also produced the latest album for Waters, the loudest and most passionate voice of the BDS movement.

Here is Yorke's response:

I'll be totally honest with you: this has been extremely upsetting. There's an awful lot of people who don't agree with the BDS movement, including us. I don't agree with the cultural ban at all, along with J.K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky and a long list of others.

There are people I admire [who have been critical of the concert] like [English film director] Ken Loach, who I would never dream of telling where to work or what to do or think. The kind of dialogue that they want to engage in is one that's black or white. I have a problem with that. It's deeply distressing that they choose to, rather than engage with us personally, throw shit at us in public. It's deeply disrespectful to assume that we're either being misinformed or that we're so retarded we can't make these decisions ourselves. I thought it was patronizing in the extreme. It's offensive and I just can't understand why going to play a rock show or going to lecture at a university [is a problem to them].

The university thing is more of a head fuck for me. It's like, really? You can't go talk to other people who want to learn stuff in another country? Really? The one place where you need to be free to express everything you possibly can. You want to tell these people you can't do that? And you think that's gonna help?

The person who knows most about these things is [Radiohead guitarist] Jonny [Greenwood]. He has both Palestinian and Israeli friends and a wife who's an Arab Jew. All these people to stand there at a distance throwing stuff at us, waving flags, saying, "You don’t know anything about it!" Imagine how offensive that is for Jonny. And imagine how upsetting that it's been to have this out there. Just to assume that we know nothing about this. Just to throw the word "apartheid" around and think that's enough. It's fucking weird. It's such an extraordinary waste of energy. Energy that could be used in a more positive way.

This is the first time I've said anything about it. Part of me wants to say nothing because anything I say cooks up a fire from embers. But at the same time, if you want me to be honest, yeah, it's really upsetting that artists I respect think we are not capable of making a moral decision ourselves after all these years. They talk down to us and I just find it mind-boggling that they think they have the right to do that. It's extraordinary.

Imagine how this has affected me and Nigel’s relationship. Thanks, Roger. I mean, we're best mates for life, but it’s like, fuck me, really?

[Godrich responds: "I don't believe in cultural boycotts. I don't think they're positive, ever. And actually, I think that it's true to say that the people you'd be denying [the music] are the people who would agree with you and don't necessarily agree with their government. So it's not a good idea. Thom and Roger are two peas in a pod, really, in certain respects. They just have a disagreement about this, but they've never even met. I think Thom feels very protective of Jonny, which I completely get. But I'm not in the middle of Thom and Roger. Fucking hell, I wouldn't like to be in the middle of those two. No.]

All of this creates divisive energy. You're not bringing people together. You're not encouraging dialogue or a sense of understanding. Now if you're talking about trying to make things progress in any society, if you create division, what do you get? You get fucking Theresa May. You get [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, you get fucking Trump. That's divisive.

(h/t Slava)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

06/02 Links Pt1: Glick: The limits of Israeli power; Nakba: The source of Arab-Israeli conflict

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The limits of Israeli power

On Thursday, US President Donald Trump bowed to the foreign policy establishment and betrayed his voters. He signed a presidential waiver postponing the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem for yet another six months.
Ahead of Trump’s move, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a last-ditch bid to convince Trump to move the embassy to Jerusalem. But it was not to be.
Israel’s failure to convince Trump to do what he repeatedly promised US voters he would do during his presidential campaign shows the disparity in power between Israel and the US.
Israel lacks the power to convince foreign nations to recognize its capital – much less to locate their embassies there. The US, on the other hand, not only has the power to recognize Jerusalem and transfer its embassy to Israel’s capital whenever it wishes to do so, it also has the ability to convince dozens of other countries to immediately follow its lead.
The disparity between what the Americans can do and what Israel can do was on display on Monday evening in a glittering hall at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. There, Bar-Ilan University conferred its Guardian of Zion award on former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton. In his acceptance speech, Bolton presented his vision for the resolution of the Palestinian conflict with Israel.
Bolton’s views are important not merely because his past work at the State Department and the UN brought the US some of its only diplomatic victories in recent decades. His views are important as well because of his close relationship with Trump.
Bolton began his discussion Monday evening by rejecting the “two-state solution.” The two-state model, he noted, has been tried and has failed repeatedly for the past 70 years. There is no reason to believe that it will succeed now. This is particularly true, he said, given the lack of Palestinian social cohesion.
Hamas controls Gaza. The PLO, which is supposed to be Israel’s peace partner, barely controls parts of Judea and Samaria. At a time when more cohesive Arab societies are unraveling, the notion that a Palestinian state would survive and advance regional peace and stability is laughable, Bolton argued.
Bolton then turned to his preferred policy for resolving the Palestinian conflict with Israel, which he dubbed “the three-state solution.” Under his plan, Egypt and Jordan would work with Israel to solve the Palestinian conflict. Egypt would take over the Gaza Strip and Jordan would negotiate the status of Judea and Samaria with Israel.
The crowd at the King David responded enthusiastically to Bolton’s proposal. This is not surprising.

Nakba: The source of Arab-Israeli conflict

UNRWA's success has been in transforming itself into the guardian of Palestinian refugees' isolation, preserving the uniqueness of their identity as an entity that cannot be assimilated into any Arab country, but only into what is perceived as Palestine.
Since Israel’s inception in 1948, the Arab-Palestinians mark Nakba Day. Nakba, the Arabic term for catastrophe, represents much more than just the physical creation of the modern State of Israel in 1948, which Palestinians decree as the cataclysmic disaster. It is also the Palestinian process of refusing to accept the fact that a sovereign Jewish state could even be allowed to come into being.
Over the years, one of the greatest ironies is that Arab members of Knesset have repeatedly proposed establishing an official Nakba Day. Although the Knesset's Ministerial Committee on Legislative Affairs eventually banned these proposals, they indicate how ingrained 1948 is in the Arab psyche. To the Knesset's credit, there was an understanding that marking the Nakba is harmful and propagates the notion that Israel's birth was illegitimate.
But what is the Nakba all about? On the one hand, the very idea that an Arab-Israeli MK could propose Nakba be celebrated as a national holiday highlights the extent and openness of Israeli society; even ludicrous idea can be raised in its parliament. On the other, such a proposal would require Israeli society to forget what Zionism is all about.
Moreover, the Nakba’s vitality is embedded in the existence of Arab-Palestinian refugees who serve as a permanent reminder of the original sin of 1948. Nakba is also what has allowed Arab countries to treat their own brethren as bargaining chips rather than human beings whose suffering and deprivation they could have alleviated.

Palestinians: Israel's Goodwill Gestures Send Wrong Messages

Here is what is being said on the Palestinian street: Today Israel runs away from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip; tomorrow Israel will run away from Ashkelon, then from Tel Aviv and from there to the sea, and we have achieved our goal of destroying Israel. Therefore, we need to continue attacking Israel.
As with the Gaza Strip, the withdrawal from Lebanon taught the Palestinians that terrorism could drive Israelis out of their country.
Never have the Palestinians given Israel credit for its goodwill steps. On the contrary, they scoff at these moves and describe them as "cosmetic changes". The Palestinian line is that Israel's steps are "insufficient" and "unhelpful." Its concessions are regarded as gestures of a terrified people and as the rightful reward for terrorism. Far from satiating the appetite of the terrorists, such steps prompt them to step up their attacks against Israelis.

Continuing from last time, why is it that the twentieth state government officially denouncing the BDS movement last week created so little stir among BDS opponents and proponents, even as stories about the occasional student government passing a meaningless divestment resolution continues to cause loud public cheers from the Israel haters, and equally loud teeth-gnashing from our side?

While I mentioned a couple of political explanations for this phenomenon previously, the fact that both side’s responses to BDS news are inversely proportional to the significance of that news might boil down to the storylines into which each side fits events.

Most people cast themselves as protagonist in their own dramas. In the case of the boycotters, their self-created story casts them as members of an all-seeing, all-knowing vanguard, an elite that – alone – understands the world as it truly is. The fact that others do not share their vision of unquestioned Israeli wickedness and pristine Palestinian innocence is due to the villains in their tale (evil Zionists) duping the masses, creating in them a “false consciousness” which anti-Israel forces must remedy – by any means necessary.

Vanguards ready to act on behalf of “The People’s Will” (as understood by those vanguards) were behind all of the totalitarian movements that tried to overthrow democracy in the 20^th century. This places BDS squarely in the tradition of movements ready to trash democracy in the name of a self-perceived and self-declared higher good.

Understanding this storyline helps explain the BDSers readiness to go to undemocratic extremes, from stacking elected bodies with single-issue partisans, to holding secret votes late at night or on religious holidays, to pushing votes year after year after year no matter how many times BDS is rejected. From the outside, such behavior might seem cynical and corrupt. But for the true believer, this is the way to express “the people’s will” without the pesky intervention of actual people.

If you understand the boycotter’s storyline, their reaction to victory and defeat becomes more explicable. A win for them, such as an unknown food coop boycotting Israel goods, demonstrates that the masses are shaking off their blinders and moving in the direction of history (even if no other coop in the nation chose to participate in similar boycotts). At the same time a loss (like BDS being condemned by state governments across the country) are just examples of powerful elites manipulated by Zionist foes hopelessly trying to hold back the inevitable success of the BDS project.

This heads-I-win-tails-you-lose formula the boycotters trot out to turn every BDS-related event into a victory for them makes perfect sense once you realize that within their narrative everything – including successful efforts to defeat them – are part of a consistent (if fantasy-driven) world view.

Moving on to us, our storyline also has us cast in role – that of the besieged victim. Given Jewish history, this is not an absurd lens to view ourselves through, especially since the Jews’ return to history simply turned Israel into the Jew among the nations targeted militarily, diplomatically and economically for eradication since birth.

Unlike religious or ideological vanguards that see their mission to convert the entire world to their belief system, Jews – a small people without an evangelical tradition – must always take into account the needs and opinions of others. This is what makes us so sensitive to slights and setbacks, causing us to fly into a rage (and occasionally over-react) when the boycotters get their way. At the same time, our suspicion that friendships might be fleeting cause us to describe our wins judiciously, rather than engage in the kind of bombast our enemies indulge in every time they score a point.

Our history also leaves us without a militant or military mindset, which makes us often equate being besieged with being powerless. But, as described here (and in more detail in this extended essay), siege warfare has its own rules of engagement which we would do well to understand if we want to stop reacting to the provocation of our enemies and instead take effective strategic initiative against them that reflects the realities of the battlefield.

The comment section in the first part of this story included an apt metaphor for the phenomenon I’m describing: that of predator and prey. The predator, after all, might fail to capture or kills his quarry, but does not feel under existential threat from the prey he is trying to kill. In contrast, prey – even if able to dodge disaster again and again – understands that he only needs to lose once to lose everything.

So if the Israel-haters preying on Israelis and Jews feel invulnerable, impervious to criticism and to any fact that interferes with fantasies of ultimate victory, it is because they know the likelihood of their own destruction at the hands of those they are trying to destroy is minimal.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Look how peaceful Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah is!

Two days ago, Israel released a terrorist from prison, after he finished serving a 12-year sentence (reduced from the original 15 year sentence.)

Ahmed Hassan Briggah was convicted in 2005 of belonging to the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror organization and of participating in terror attacks.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is the official terrorist group of the Fatah party, headed by Mahmoud Abbas.

The official Fatah Facebook page showed the motorcade honoring convicted terrorist Briggah upon his release and the official ceremonies welcoming him.

Look at the poster in the middle of this scene at the ceremony honoring the terrorist:

Detail:

Terrorist leaders of Fatah, Hamas and Hezbollah are all featured.

This is the "culture of peace" that Mahmoud Abbas claims he is pushing.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Poster in Jerusalem, January

I'm willing to give a new president some slack, but the White House statement justifying breaking Donald Trump's promise to move the American embassy to Jerusalem is grating:

While President Donald J. Trump signed the waiver under the Jerusalem Embassy Act and delayed moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, no one should consider this step to be in any way a retreat from the President's strong support for Israel and for the United States-Israel alliance. President Trump made this decision to maximize the chances of successfully negotiating a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, fulfilling his solemn obligation to defend America's national security interests. But, as he has repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy, the question is not if that move happens, but only when.

The highlighted sentences are contradictory. Is his repeated promises to move the embassy dependent on Palestinian acquiescence, as the first sentence implies, or not, as the second one says?

Here's the full context of Trump's promise at AIPAC:

President Obama thinks that applying pressure to Israel will force the issue. But it’s precisely the opposite that happens. Already half of the population of Palestine has been taken over by the Palestinian ISIS and Hamas, and the other half refuses to confront the first half, so it’s a very difficult situation that’s never going to get solved unless you have great leadership right here in the United States.

We’ll get it solved. One way or the other, we will get it solved.

But when the United States stands with Israel, the chances of peace really rise and rises exponentially. That’s what will happen when Donald Trump is president of the United States.

We will move the American embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem.

And we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel.

The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable.

The entire point of moving the embassy was to show the Palestinians that their threats, pressure and lies will not work with a Trump administration, that the president will stand with Israel no matter what and that any peace deal will be from a position of Israeli strength.

The decision to sign the waiver - and the implication that any critics of the President should shut up about it until December 1, 2020, after the next election - cannot be framed as anything but another broken promise.

Yes, other presidents did the same thing. But no other president made this issue such a major part of their campaign.

And that one signature has strengthened the Palestinian leadership's confidence that their empty threats of violence are still as effective at influencing world leaders as they ever were.

A US decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital would not have derailed any moves to peace. Palestinian and other Arab leaders are falling over themselves to please Trump. If he would have been strong on this promise from the beginning, instead of waffling about it starting in January, the Palestinians would have made some symbolic protests and then shut up about it.

They learned a lesson from this debacle, and that lesson lessens the chances of peace.

There is no doubt that Trump has done some very positive things towards the Middle East, things that reversed many (but not all) of the toxic policies of the Obama administration.

But no Israel-supporter can feel as confident in a Trump administration today as they did when he was elected.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Did you ever notice that Palestinian Arabs were never "occupied" by Jordan? Or Britain? Or Ottomans?

I saw this at the UN website:

Of course, they mean 50 years of "occupation" by Jews.

Because no one was overly concerned about the previous 19 years of "Palestinian territory" being annexed or administered by Jordan or Egypt.

Or the 30 years of British administration before that.

Or the 400 years of Ottoman rule before that.

No, the only interest in what the world now calls "Palestinian lands" only started when Jews have some level of control over them. Not when generations of others - Muslims and Christians, Arabs and non-Arabs - controlled the land.

Somehow, only the years when the life expectancy of Palestinians skyrocketed, when the infant mortality rate plummeted, when practically all of the universities and major hospitals were built in the territories - only those years are considered tragic.

The entire exercise of "50 years of occupation" is underlined by blatant hypocrisy. If there was no Six Day war, the West Bank Palestinian Arabs under Jordanian rule would be just as interesting as the East Bank Palestinians are today - meaning, not at all. Gazans would remain in an effective Egyptian prison, with no ability to move to Egypt itself - but no one would be talking about it.

The self-rule that most Palestinians in the territories enjoy today would never have happened.

And no one would be writing op-eds about it.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

06/01 Links: Trump Signs Six-Month Waiver to Keep US Embassy in Tel Aviv; Lebanon Officially Bans Wonder Woman After Group Complains of Israeli-Born Lead

From Ian:

Trump Signs Six-Month Waiver to Keep US Embassy in Tel Aviv

U.S. President Donald Trump has signed the six-month waiver that postpones relocating the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The move was expected, but comes as a major disappointment to Jewish and right-wing Christian voters who expected the president to keep his campaign promise to move the embassy upon entering the White House.
Despite his action, administration officials did their best to mitigate the inevitable reaction from his voter base in a statement issued with the news that he had signed the waiver despite all campaign promises to the contrary.
“President Trump made this decision to maximize the chances of successfully negotiating a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, fulfilling his solemn obligation to defend America’s national security interests,” the White House said in a statement.
“While President Donald J. Trump signed the waiver under the Jerusalem Embassy Act and delayed moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, no one should consider this step to be in any way a retreat from the President’s strong support for Israel and for the United States-Israel alliance,” the statement continued.
“As he has repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy, the question is not if that move happens, but only when,” the White House said in its statement.
Sadly, upon the advice of career foreign service employees and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the president has put the move on the back burner as a hostage to the “ultimate deal” between Israel and regional Arab peace partners, and/or the Palestinian Authority.

Statement on the American Embassy in Israel

While President Donald J. Trump signed the waiver under the Jerusalem Embassy Act and delayed moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, no one should consider this step to be in any way a retreat from the President's strong support for Israel and for the United States-Israel alliance. President Trump made this decision to maximize the chances of successfully negotiating a deal between Israel and the Palestinians, fulfilling his solemn obligation to defend America's national security interests. But, as he has repeatedly stated his intention to move the embassy, the question is not if that move happens, but only when.

Eugene Kontorovich: Trump’s trouble in justifying a waiver of Jerusalem Embassy Act

News reports today suggest that President Trump will exercise his waiver authority under the Jerusalem Embassy Act for the first time, delaying an opening of the U.S. Embassy to Israel in that country’s capital for six months.
The CNN report suggests the waiver, a reversal of his campaign promises, would be motivated by concern that moving the embassy could “prejudice” a diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that Trump hopes to broker. The problem is that the the Jerusalem Embassy Act provides that State Department budgets must be severely cut unless the president issues a waiver, and the reasons for waiver are limited, essential national security considerations. The considerations mentioned by CNN’s sources (and others) are diplomatic, not security ones.
On the other hand, if the White House does issue a waiver on national security grounds, it undermines the peace process. A basic assumption of any of the conventional “two-state solution” models is that Israel’s security would be guaranteed by U.S. commitments. But if the White House is unwilling to put the embassy in Israel’s capital because of vague threats of terror, it proves that there is no chance it would actually put its forces in harm’s way if needed to come to Israel’s aid, should the Jewish state be attacked after a peace agreement. In such a case, the threats of retaliation against U.S. targets would be more vocal, salient and real.

Chag sameach!

Wishing all my Jewish readers a chag sameach!

I will not be blogging until probably Friday.

Don't OD on the cheesecake!

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

05/30 Links Pt2: Glick: Sarsour and the progressive zeitgeist; Arabs planned to eliminate Israel in 6 Day War

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Sarsour and the progressive zeitgeist

In US academic tradition, university administrators choose commencement speakers they believe embody the zeitgeist of their institutions and as such, will be able to inspire graduating students to take that zeitgeist with them into the world outside.
In this context, it makes perfect sense that Ayman El-Mohandes, dean of the Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy at City University of New York (CUNY), invited Linda Sarsour to serve as commencement speaker at his faculty’s graduation ceremony.
Sarsour embodies Mohandes’s values.
Mohandes’s Twitter feed makes his values clear. His Twitter feed is filled with attacks against Israel.
Mohandes indirectly accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of wishing to commit genocide. Netanyahu, he intimated, wishes to “throw the Arabs in the sea.”
He has repeatedly libeled Israel as a repressive, racist, corrupt state.
Mohandes has effectively justified and legitimized Islamic terrorism and the Hamas terrorist regime in Gaza. The Islamic terrorist assault against Israel, led by Hamas from Gaza, is simply an act of “desperation,” he insists.
By Mohandes’s lights, Hamas terrorists are desperate not because they uphold values and beliefs that reject freedom, oppress women and aspire to the genocide of Jewry and the destruction of the West. No, they are desperate because Israel is evil and oppressive.

Ben-Dror Yemini: Arab leaders did plan to eliminate Israel in Six-Day War

During the 1967 war, Israel seized Egyptian and Jordanian operational documents with clear orders to annihilate the civil population. Nevertheless, different academics are distorting the facts in a bid to turn the Arabs into victims and Israel into an aggressor. Here’s the real story.
More than anything else, the Six-Day War has turned into a rewritten war. A sea of publications deal with what happened at the time. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt, the revisionists assert, had no ability to fight Israel, and anyway, he had no intention to do so.
It’s true that he made threats. It’s true that he sent more and more divisions to Sinai. It’s true that he expelled the United Nations observers. It’s true that he incited the masses in Arab countries. It’s true that the Arab regimes rattled their sabers and prepared for war. It’s true that he closed the Straits of Tiran. It’s true that Israel was besieged from its southern side. It’s true that this was a serious violation of international law. It’s true that it was a “casus belli” (a case of war).
All that doesn’t matter, however, because there is a mega-narrative that obligates the forces of progress to exempt the Arabs from responsibility and point the accusing finger at Israel. And when there is a narrative, who needs facts? After all, according to the mega-narrative, Israel had expansionist plans, so it seized the opportunity. Different scholars are distorting the facts in a bid to turn the Arabs into victims and Israel into an aggressor. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Daniel Pipes: 6 days and 50 years

Israel's military triumph over three enemy states in June 1967 was among the most successful wars in recorded ‎history. The Six-Day War was also deeply consequential for the Middle East, establishing the permanence of the ‎Jewish state, dealing a death-blow to pan-Arab nationalism, and (ironically) worsening Israel's status in the ‎world because of its occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem. ‎
Focusing on this last point: How did a grand battlefield victory translate into problems still tormenting ‎Israel today? ‎
First, because of rejectionism -- the refusal to accept anything Zionist dominates the Palestinian attitude ‎toward Israel and renders Israeli concessions useless, even counterproductive. Rejectionism crystallized with ‎Hajj Amin al-Husseini (1895-1974), a malign figure who dictated Palestinian politics from 1921 until his death. He ‎so absolutely abhorred Zionism that he collaborated with Hitler and even had a key role in formulating the ‎Final Solution. Husseini's legacy remains a powerful force in Palestinian life -- its latest manifestations include the ‎‎"anti-normalization" and the boycott, divestment and sanctions movements. Assorted Israelis and do-‎gooders, however, ignore rejectionism and instead blame Israel's government for not making sufficient efforts. ‎
Second, Israel faces a conundrum of geography and demography in the West Bank. Its strategists want ‎to control the highlands, its nationalists want to build towns, and its religious want to possess Jewish holy sites; ‎but Israel's continued ultimate rule over a West Bank population of 1.7 million mostly hostile Palestinians takes an immense toll both domestically and internationally. Various schemes to keep the ‎land and defang an enemy people -- by integrating them, buying them off, dividing them, pushing them out or ‎finding another ruler for them -- have all come to naught. Israelis are stuck in an unwanted role they cannot ‎escape. ‎
Third, the Israelis in 1967 took several unilateral steps vis-a-vis Jerusalem that created future time bombs: They vastly expanded its borders, annexed it, and offered optional Israeli citizenship to the city's Arab ‎residents. This led to a long-term demographic and housing competition that the Palestinians are winning, ‎jeopardizing the Jewish nature of the Jews' historic capital. Furthermore, 300,000 could at any time choose to apply for ‎Israeli citizenship. ‎

From Asharq al-Awsat:

Iran is holding meetings with Hamas and will allegedly resume its financial support for the organization, Palestinian sources said on Tuesday. Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and senior Hezbollah figures were among those at the talks in Lebanon.

The move came after representatives from the Islamic Republic and the Palestinian terror group conducted intensive discussions in Lebanon over the last two weeks.

According to the sources, Iran and Hamas agreed to resume diplomatic relations to the level at which they were, before the Syrian civil war, when the sides broke off their close ties. It was also reported that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is expected to visit Tehran in the near future.

The agreement was supported by commander of IRGC’s al-Quds Brigades Kassam Soleimani, Ismail Haniyeh, and Hamas’ Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar.

Hamas reduced its staff and members by 30 percent including the Qassam Brigades because of difficult situations. Iran took advantage of Haniyeh’s elections as head of the organization to reinstate the relationship.

Iran supported Haniyeh reaching the leadership and didn’t support senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk because of disagreements after Tehran accused Marzouk of falsifying truths when said that Iran was not transferring financial aid to Hamas or the Gaza Strip, and that relations between Hamas and Tehran were frozen.

Since the beginning, Iran was relying on Haniyeh’s diplomacy who leans towards reconciliation with Tehran unlike former leader Khalid Mashaal.

Thanks, Obama! Iran can afford to return to its funding of the major Palestinian terror group (they never stopped funding Islamic Jihad.)

There is a small silver lining here.

This article in a pan-Arab newspaper refers to Hamas flatly as a "Palestinian terror group." Not a "resistance group," not even a "militant group." Asharq al Awsat uses the T word that Western news agencies are afraid to use.

Which means that Hamas has really lost the Sunni Muslim world.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

05/30 Links Pt1: What not signing a Jerusalem embassy waiver would really mean; Terrorism Is Not Random

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: What Trump not signing a Jerusalem embassy waiver would really mean

On Thursday, President Barack Obama’s last waiver pursuant to the Jerusalem Embassy Act will expire. Absent a new waiver by President Trump, the provisions of the law will go into full effect. Trump promised during his campaign to move the embassy, a policy embodied both in federal law and the Republican Party platform. But since he came into office, Trump’s promise seems to have lost some momentum.
This piece will examine the mechanics of the Embassy Act waiver — it is not actually a waiver on moving the embassy. The details of the law make it a particularly convenient way for Trump to defy now-lowered expectations and not issue a waiver on June 1.
First, some context. Many commentators have sought to cast a possible Trump waiver as proof that Obama’s Israeli policy is really the only possible game in town. But whether or not a waiver is issued, Trump has succeeded in fundamentally changing the discussion about the U.S.-Israel relationship. Waivers under the 1995 act come twice a year, and for the past two decades, they have hardly warranted a news item. Under the Bush and Obama administrations, they were entirely taken for granted.
Now everyone is holding his or her breath to see whether Trump will sign the waiver. If he does, it will certainly be a disappointment to his supporters. But it will not be the end of the show — he will have seven more waivers ahead, with mounting pressure as his term progresses. Under Obama, speculation focused on what actions he would take or allow against Israel (and even these waited until very late in his second term).
The waiver available to the president under the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 does not waive the obligation to move the embassy. That policy has been fully adopted by Congress in the Act (sec. 3(a)(3)) and is not waivable. Of course, Congress cannot simply order the president to implement such a move, especially given his core constitutional power over diplomatic relations.
But Congress, having total power over the spending of taxpayer dollars, does not have to pay for an embassy in Tel Aviv. The Act’s enforcement mechanism is to suspend half of the appropriated funds for the State Department’s “Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad” until the law’s terms are complied with. The waiver provision simply allows the president to waive the financial penalty.
What this means is that by not signing a waiver, Trump would not actually be requiring the embassy to move to Jerusalem, moving the embassy or recognizing Jerusalem. That could give him significant diplomatic flexibility or deniability if June 1 goes by with mere silence from the White House.

Obama treated Israel ‘as part of the problem,’ says ex-envoy Oren. With Trump, ‘it’s love, love, love’

As a noted historian, former Israeli ambassador to the United States and current Knesset member, Michael Oren has been grappling with the question of how Israel should be presented to the world for years.
Last year, shortly before being appointed deputy minister for public diplomacy, Oren was invited for a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss just that.
“Delegitimization, the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement… What are we doing wrong? What could we be doing to present Israel better?” Oren, speaking to a crowded auditorium of English-speaking Israelis at a Times of Israel event Sunday night, recalled Netanyahu asking him.
Oren said he told the prime minister that he believed Israel was fighting the war of words with the wrong weapons. While “the other side” has a simple narrative peppered with buzzwords like “occupation,” “colonialism,” “oppression,” and “apartheid,” Israel, according to Oren, had yet to work out how to present a succinct and salient argument to counter its critics. Israel was falling behind in the battle for hearts and minds because it has not succeeded in creating a positive counter-narrative, Oren argued.
Tasked by Netanyahu with forming that narrative, Oren at first approached public relations experts, he recounted, but soon realized that traditional PR methods were the wrong approach to hasbara, or pro-Israel advocacy.

JCPA: The Psychological Profile of the Palestinian "Lone Wolf" Terrorist

A series of psychological measures was administered to Palestinian residents of a refugee camp as well as a neighboring village, with subjects asked to rate both themselves as well as how they imagined actual perpetrators of "lone wolf" violence would see themselves. Our sample included many in both groups who actually knew "lone wolves." Our goal was to construct a psychological profile of the young Palestinian "lone wolf" based on the descriptions of those who knew him or her best, namely peers.
We found distinct differences between the Al-Aroub refugee camp and the nearby village of Beit Ummar. The Beit Ummar subjects saw themselves no less "nationalistic" regarding the rights of Palestinians than they saw terror operatives being, while at the same time were more tolerant of Jewish rights and less tolerant of violent behavior towards Jews.
The refugee camp residents appear to have more closely identified with those that perpetrate attacks, while Beit Ummar residents see themselves as more psychologically intact, less hopeless, less violent in school settings and more moderate in their beliefs related to incitement. We found that many Palestinian Arabs see the "lone wolves" as psychologically distressed individuals who are not solely driven by ideology.

Little one looks at me, clutching her mother’s hand.

She knows I don’t belong in her village.

Does she know I am a Jew?

I don't know.

Something in my clothes or possibly the way I was standing declares to her that I do not belong.

She doesn’t know if this is good, bad or indifferent.

Her family knows I am a Jew. They say nothing. It wouldn’t be polite. Obviously, someone had invited me, there is no way that I would be at the wedding by accident. I wasn't bothering them so it was not necessary to acknowledge me.

Little one stared. She couldn't help herself and no one told her not to.

Hesitation in her eyes it seems she is considering, "Is this lady nice? Can we be friends?" I smiled at her and her smile grew in return. Not a full smile but a half smile, as if hoping but unsure.

When she grows older, will she learn to hate me?

Will her parents teach her to be a proud Israeli-Arab-Muslim?

Or will they teach her that she is a victim ‘Palestinian’? That she can only attain pride when the Jews are gone?

The eyes of this little one speak of potential. I look at her and see both the possibility of greatness and, the flipside, the potential for nothingness, stagnation, anger and hate.

It all depends on what she is taught.

You have to be taught to hate. Preferably before you are six, or seven or eight.

It doesn’t come naturally, you have to be carefully taught.

“What do you want to be little one? A doctor? A lawyer? A scientist? An artist? You can be anything you want, if you work hard enough and take advantage of the opportunities this country, your country, Israel offers you.”

“Freedom and opportunity are yours by right of birth in this unique land. Grasp it and use it! It is your choice, what do you want? To grow or to stagnate? To achieve or complain? Walk in gratitude or anger? Do you realize that you are blessed beyond the wildest dreams of anyone in our neighboring countries and most places around the world?”

“And your neighbors? We can live side by side, little one. Maybe, one day, I can come celebrate your wedding too.”

That is the truth, but is that what she will be taught? I don’t know. What I know is that those who choose what to teach this little one shape not only her future but mine as well.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.