Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, June 04, 2017

06/04 Links: Accept Islamic Terror as the New Normal?; Relive the Six Day War War of no choice

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: True Lies

Air Force One had barely lifted off carrying US President Donald Trump to the next stop on his recent peace mission when the Palestinian town of Burka proudly declared it would ignore mounting requests to cease its incitement against Israel by naming a women’s center after a terrorist murderer.
The glorified murderer in question was Dalal Mughrabi, who was one of the killers in what was then the worst terrorist atrocity in Israeli history – the Fatah attackers killed 38 civilians (including 13 children) and a soldier, and wounded 71 others – in the horrific bus hijacking known as the Coastal Road Massacre of 1978.
Palestinian Media Watch reported that the village council of Burka would not budge from its decision to name its center after Mughrabi. Council head Sami Daghlas hailed Mughrabi as a hero, another “holy martyr of the resistance.”
He told reporters she was chosen by the villagers to commemorate a Palestinian hero “who sacrificed herself for her country, and therefore they have no intention to change its name regardless of the price.”
According to a May 15 report by Ma’an, which claims to be an “independent” Palestinian news agency, the center will focus on presenting the history of the “Martyr Dalal Mughrabi” to youth groups. Ma’an declared further that this constitutes “the beginning of enrichment activities regarding the history of the Palestinian struggle.”

With an army of 27,000, Hamas terror chief Deif readies for war

Deif and his “supervising minister” Sinwar — both of whom are considered radical even by Hamas standards — are cautious and in no hurry to start a war with Israel. This, despite the worsening situation in the Gaza Strip, the ongoing closure of the Rafiah border crossing, and the PA’s threats to force tens of thousands of officials into retirement and cut the salaries of the ones staying on.
As far as the old-new Hamas headed by Ismail Haniyeh, Sinwar, and Deif is concerned, the main goal, at least for now, is not another war with Israel, but rather the survival of Hamas’s regime in Gaza and a future takeover of Palestinian power centers — the West Bank and the PLO — in their entirety.
Adapting
One reason Hamas is not eager for another conflict just yet is that Gaza’s population has had its fill of war and catastrophe. The inhabitants of the Strip have adapted to the new situation of prolonged power outages, salary cutbacks, and so on, and, as always, have learned to survive.
For example, after the iftar and the tarawih — the evening break-fast meal and the prayer service afterward — the young people hurry off to Gaza’s famous cafés, such as Gahwetna, on the Sheikh Ajlin neighborhood’s polluted beach, and Habiba. The nargila is the item most in demand there, along with coffee, tea, and fruit juice. These establishments are for the young men — the shabab — only. Other places — such as the Al-Deira Café (on the Rimal beach), the adjacent Roots, and Level Up, on the eleventh floor of a building in the Rimal section — have a mixed clientele.
The threats by the PA in Ramallah to decrease fund transfers to Gaza continue to loom. T., for one, is sharply critical. “I don’t know what Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) is trying to accomplish with the cutbacks and reducing the payments for electricity. He wants to punish Hamas, but he’s actually punishing two million Gazans.”

Will the UK let May tackle Islamist terror?

With Britain battered by three terrorist attacks in three months, and its security services having thwarted five more in the same period, Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday morning set out the specifics of her intended strategy “to take on and defeat our enemies.”
May’s succinct and determined statement, delivered hours after three terrorists killed at least seven people in a central London murder spree, raises two questions: Does her government have the will to fight back in the way she specified, and, with general elections on Thursday, will it be given the opportunity?
Watching her from Israel, which has for so long been forced to grapple with the Islamist death cult, May gave every indication of having internalized what she, Britain, and the rest of our free world are up against.
What “bound together” the stream of terror attacks in the UK, she declared, was “the single evil ideology of Islamist extremism.”
Terrorism was now breeding terrorism, copycat style. The situation had become intolerable. Enough was enough. “We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are.”
Strikingly, she added: “There is, to be frank, far too much tolerance of extremism in our country, so we need to become far more robust in identifying it and stamping it out across the public sector and across society.”
To fight back, May called for an overhaul of Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy. She also demanded that terror groups be tackled on the ground in the Middle East. And she sought to battle them and their ideologues in cyberspace — to “turn people’s minds away from this violence.”

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

It probably won’t be the last time I shake my head at how the US Reform movement (I’m including the much smaller liberal branch of the Conservative movement) has replaced Judaism with progressive politics – they call it “social action” or “tikkun olam” (repairing the world) although it is always political action on behalf of the causes of the Left – but it is the first time I have understood that it is a survival strategy for them.

The last few generations of liberal American Jews joined a synagogue because they wanted their children to grow up with an idea that they were different in a special way from the majority of non-Jews among which they lived. They wanted them to have bar and bat mitzvahs and to go to Jewish camp, so they would have Jewish friends and maybe ultimately marry a Jewish person. There was still a concern that it was important to belong to the community and not to abandon it. But these Jewish parents had also grown up in liberal or almost secular households and had little Jewish literacy, and certainly no inclination to become observant.

So liberal synagogues catered to their needs. They made it clear that nothing would be expected of them in terms of knowledge or observance, and they moved back and forth on the spectrum of ritual, from “classical Reform” which resembled Lutheranism, to something closer to traditional Jewish worship, looking for a happy medium. But what primarily drew the congregants into the temples and encouraged them to pay the high dues needed to support well-compensated Reform rabbis was the feeling of obligation to provide some Jewish connection for their children.

In recent years this model started to fail. The blandness of the attenuated, content-free Judaism served up bored both the parents and the children. The newer generations didn’t remember their immigrant ancestors’ Judaism. Intermarriage was common and the “interfaith family” became a thing. Kids didn’t have time or head space for religious education; there were organized sports and academic pressures that were far more important to them. Sometimes the perceived spirituality in eastern religions and even – despite the strong taboo – Christianity, pulled them away. In particular, it was almost impossible to recruit the 20-somethings that in a few years would become the heart of the community and its leadership.

Liberal Jewish community members asked themselves why they should pay thousands of dollars a year for – what, exactly? It became harder and harder for Reform congregations to keep the lights on and to pay the “Jewish professionals” – rabbis, cantors and “cantorial soloists,” educators – that a liberal congregation needed. Many congregations merged and some closed their doors. The movement itself suffered a financial crisis as the flow of dues from affiliated congregations dried up. It was forced to cut its staff and activities drastically.

The Reform movement selected the charismatic Rabbi Rick Jacobs as president to rescue it. He made administrative changes, he emphasized camp and social activities for the children – there is no better way to get adolescents interested in something than to provide them opportunities to interact with others of the opposite sex – and, although it had been moving this way for decades, he placed the major emphasis in the movement on “social action.”

There is no theological problem for them. Unlike traditional Judaism in which commandments are obeyed because they are commandments, Reform Jews place the moral intuition of the individual above the literal (written and oral) Torah. This leads to a distinction between “ritual” and “social” commandments, in which the former are optional and only the latter are obligatory. They consider this “prophetic Judaism” and argue that it is grounded in the Torah and Prophets, but the fact that only those “prophetic” principles that correspond to 21^st century progressive ideology are honored reveals that their actual moral standards are based on something outside of Jewish tradition. Isaiah’s isolationism or Samuel’s uncompromising violence clearly don’t fit today’s Reform ideology.

Rabbi Jacobs’ maneuver has been spectacularly successful, both for the Reform movement and for other liberal groups. A recent article by Debra Nussbaum Cohen characterizes it as a reaction to the election of President Donald Trump, but the synagogue wouldn’t provide a focus for anti-Trump expression, were it not for its metamorphosis into a political action organization.

Since the presidential election, 45 new households have joined Shir Tikvah Congregation in Minneapolis, said Rabbi Michael Adam Latz. “Trump may be bad for the world, but he’s great for shul membership,” quipped Latz, whose synagogue is Reform.

“We have people in their 20s and 30s with pink mohawks and people in their 60s and 70s joining who are saying they were never interested before, but now ‘want to be part of something good that is bigger than ourselves.’”

Latz is an outspoken social justice advocate and Shir Tikvah has become a sanctuary congregation, ready to offer concrete support to immigrants being threatened with arrest by the Department of Homeland Security.

That’s part of the orientation young Jews find attractive, said Gabriel Glissmeyer, 23, who recently joined Shir Tikvah. There are “definitely more people attending since the election, and more young people especially. When I started, there were seven or eight of us consistently going. Now there are 15 to 20,” he said.

“We definitely saw a surge in January and February, and are still seeing more traction among young folks in their 20s and 30s,” said Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie at Lab/Shul. “They are looking for community and action.” His is a “pop-up,” unconventional and independent congregation.

Yet the phenomenon is also visible at establishment places of worship. The wait list to join New York City’s Central Synagogue has more than doubled since the election, from 250 families to over 540. Friday night service attendance is also up, said Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, spiritual leader of the Reform congregation. “I don’t know if this is a Trump bump or not,” she told Haaretz, “but it is quite noticeable.”

And in Berkeley, California, 20 new households have joined Congregation Netivot Shalom since January 1, said Rabbi Menachem Creditor, who is active in many interfaith social justice initiatives.

“In the immediate aftermath of the election, there was an enormous increase in attendance,” said Creditor of his 400-household Conservative congregation. The way people recited the “Prayer for Our Country” also changed: “There was a change in the volume, in a fresh and urgent way,” he said. Though he’s not sure he can attribute the increased attendance to Trump’s presidency, “there are more people praying and more intense prayer,” he noted. …

Congregants have been galvanized around social justice work, even where there hasn’t been a lasting increase in attendance, said some.

For years, I’ve been predicting the demise of the Reform movement in the US. I’ve agreed with those who said that it would fade away from a combination of irrelevance and assimilation. But it didn’t occur to me that its leftist politics would save it!

A particular target for Rabbi Jacobs’ “tikkun olam” is Israel, which he believes is in great need of repair because the reality here doesn’t correspond to an ideal liberal society in the sense loved by American progressives. In his public pronouncements, he often notes that his movement is the largest Jewish religious group in the US, and suggests that he speaks for American Jews, particularly in respect to Israel. His views, unfortunately, are closer to those of J Street than to those of the Israeli government and the majority of Israelis, and he is not shy about wanting to impose them on us.

Those of us who are concerned about Israel’s welfare and who do not think that the worldview of progressive Americans is appropriate for survival in the Middle East find this singularly unhelpful, even dangerous.

In recent years, some Orthodox rabbis, members of Israel’s Knesset and even the (non-Orthodox) man who is today the President of the State of Israel have said that Reform Judaism is not Judaism, but actually another, different religion.

That is a very strong statement to make. I am not sure we want to say that a million or so Reform Jews are actually practicing “another religion” (which, incidentally, might disqualify them from aliyah under the Law of Return). But maybe the truth is that we should see the movement simply as a political group, which has stopped being about religion at all.

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.@NYTimes again trots out lies and fake statistics in anti-Israel op-ed by @NathanThrall

Nathan Thrall in the New York Times has an op-ed blaming Israel for every problem, as usual. Fact free sentences like this abound:

For American politicians, electoral and campaign finance incentives still dictate a baseline of unconditional support for Israel. The United States has given more than $120 billion to the country since the occupation began, spent tens of billions of dollars backing pro-Israel regimes ruling over anti-Israel populations in Egypt and Jordan, and provided billions more to the Palestinian Authority on condition that it continue preventing attacks and protests against Israeli settlements. And those expenditures do not reckon the cost to American security interests of Arab and Muslim resentment toward the United States for enabling and bankrolling the oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

What exactly are the costs of those American security interests? What terror attacks have been directed at America because of the "oppression" of Palestinians that would not have happened if Israel withdrew from the territories? This is simple fiction.

And there has hardly been "unconditional support for Israel" from the US over the past five decades. The US has withheld money and arms from Israel several times over the past 50 years when Israel's policies upset the US administrations.

Or this:

Initially, the threat was of an attack by the Arab states. But that soon crumbled: Israel made a separate peace with the strongest one, Egypt; the Arabs proved incapable of defending even sovereign Lebanon from Israeli invasion; and in recent years, many Arab states have failed to uphold even their longstanding boycott of Israel.

Wasn't there a very costly war against Israel in 1973 where the Sinai Peninsula that was gained in 1967 gave Israel a buffer and precious time to defend itself?

And here:

The only real fallout from continued occupation are major increases in American financing of it, with Israel now receiving more military assistance from the United States than the rest of the world does combined.

This is an absolute lie, as I demonstrated in this post and this chart.

I know from speaking to people who have been involved that the New York Times subjects pro-Israel op-eds to excruciating fact checks before allowing them to be printed. But for anti-Israel op-eds, as we see here, anything goes.

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Slate magazine has a backgrounder on why people find Gal Gadot's Jewishness and/or Israeli citizenship so upsetting to some.

While the article isn't so bad on balance, it includes this little tidbit.

Gadot’s origins landed in headlines this week when Lebanon banned the film from theaters just days before it was scheduled to premiere. The movie had passed the country’s usual guidelines, but pressure from the Campaign to Boycott Supporters of Israel–Lebanon prompted the government to pull its approval at the last minute. (Gadot’s IDF service overlapped with the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, which resulted in, according to Human Rights Watch, “at least 1,109 Lebanese deaths, the vast majority of whom were civilians, 4,399 injured, and an estimated 1 million displaced.”)

When one looks at the link to the HRW report, which pretends to be a comprehensive study of deaths in the Lebanon war, here is its entire research that concluded that the "vast majority" of deaths in that war were civilian:

During the course of five months of research in Lebanon and Israel, Human Rights Watch investigated in depth the deaths of over 561 persons during Israeli air and groundstrikes, and collected information about an additional 548 deaths, thus accounting for a total number of 1,109 deaths (approximately 860 civilians and approximately 250 combatants[196]) from the 34-day conflict. Our research is the most comprehensive available documenting how, and why, civilians died during the conflict.

That footnote 196 points to an AP article from December 2006, which said:

Both sides have revised their figures of Lebanon's war dead. The latest Lebanese and AP counts include 250 Hezbollah fighters that the group's leaders now say died during Israel's intense air, ground and sea bombardments in Lebanon -- more than triple the 70 they acknowledged during the war. Israel initially said 800 Hezbollah fighters died but later lowered that estimate to 600.

HRW ignored Israel's estimate and fully embraced Hezbollah's estimate even though everyone knows that Hezbollah lied in claiming initially that the number of fighters killed was only 70. Yet HRW and AP were not the least bit skeptical about its "revised" estimate of 250.

Which figure is closest to being accurate?

The UN itself, hardly a pro-Israel observer, said Israel's numbers are closer to the truth as early as August 2006:

UN officials believe that Hizbollah will not want to reignite the conflict, at least for a while. The organisation's culture of secrecy has disguised the true number of its casualties - funerals of "martyrs" are being staggered to soften the impact of the losses. Some were interred without ceremony for re-burial later. A UN official estimated the deaths at 500, 10 per cent of the force Hizbollah is thought to muster, not all of whom are front-line fighters.

There's a very big difference between claiming that some 77% of the dead were civilian and the truth that the percentage is around 50%.

Here's an example of how Human Rights Watch parroted Hezbollah propaganda, and yet its report is considered so accurate over ten years later as to be quoted uncritically.

Of course, HRW would never revise its report, because fact-checking is not what that organization is about: it wants to inflate civilian casualties to pump up its own importance, so it will accept whatever numbers that would increase its fundraising efforts.

(h/t Yoel)

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From Times of Israel:

A top Palestinian official said Saturday that the Palestinians recognize the Western Wall as a Jewish holy site that must remain under Jewish sovereignty.

The comments from Fatah Central Committee member Jibril Rajoub constitute a departure from the formal Palestinian position that brands all of Jerusalem’s Old City as occupied territory which must become part of a Palestinian state, and run counter to the Palestinians’ long-running campaign to deny a Jewish historical connection to Jerusalem.

Speaking to Israel’s Channel 2 TV, Rajoub, who is also head of the Palestinian Football Association, was praising US President Donald Trump’s efforts to reach a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians and commenting on his visit last month to Israel and the West Bank.

“He went to the Western Wall, which we understand is a holy place to the Jews. In the end, it must remain under Jewish sovereignty. We have no argument about that. This is a Jewish holy place,” said Rajoub, who is sometimes touted as a successor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

This was widely reported in Israeli media and AFP had the story as well.

But Rajoub now denies that he meant that Israel should have any control over the Kotel.

In an angry missive on Facebook, he denies the story completely and says that he never said the word "Israel" in his interview as to who should control the area. Presumably he means that under Palestinian rule they would allow Jews to have some sort of access to the site, but not that Israel should have sovereignty. He insults the reports that say otherwise comparing them to barking dogs.

Hamas had strongly protested the original reports that Rajoub was allowing for Israeli control of the Jewish holy site.

It is just another example of Palestinian double-talk, and one would have thought that Israeli reporters would know by now to parse these liars' words more strictly and not assume that when they say something, they actually mean what they are making it sound like.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.