Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Cloudflare is no moral force for dropping neo-Nazi site while protecting Islamist terrorists

Cloudflare is a web proxy service that protects websites from being taken down by distributed denial of service attacks. They have always been proud of the fact that they never took down a site for political reasons, no matter how odious.

But now they took down The Daily Stormer neo-Nazi site after it made headlines in the wake of Charlottesville.

We have followed Cloudflare for a while. They provide protection for jihadist websites that support murdering Jews, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. I believe that Cloudflare is breaking US law by providing this protection.

In fact, Cloudflare claimed that they refused to provide services to ISIS because it is against the law - yet Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the PFLP and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are also US-designated terror groups, and providing services to them is just as illegal.

But Cloudflare came up with a completely different explanation for dropping the neo-Nazi site, and one not involving hiding behind the law:

Our terms of service reserve the right for us to terminate users of our network at our sole discretion. The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology.
Our team has been thorough and have had thoughtful discussions for years about what the right policy was on censoring. Like a lot of people, we’ve felt angry at these hateful people for a long time but we have followed the law and remained content neutral as a network. We could not remain neutral after these claims of secret support by Cloudflare.

Gizmodo quotes it slightly differently:

[Cloudflare CEO Matthew] Prince explained in an internal email to staffers that he doesn’t think CEOs of internet companies should be in the position of policing content on their networks—he told Gizmodo he thinks that’s a job that should ultimately be left up to law enforcement if the content violates the law—but felt pushed to act because the operators of the Daily Stormer are “assholes.”
“I realized there was no way we were going to have that conversation with people calling us Nazis,” Prince said. “The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe. That was the tipping point for me.”

That's the reason? Because some neo-Nazi sissies claimed Cloudflare shared their ideology and they were worried that people would believe them? I call bullshit.

While I don't doubt that some Nazi jerk might have made this claim on a bulletin board somewhere, no one in the world would have plausibly believed that Cloudflare is sympathetic to Nazis, just as it is obviously does not support the aims of jihadists. I cannot find a single news report saying that neo-Nazis claimed this. No one would have even heard of such a claim if Cloudflare's CEO hadn't himself said it to the media.

Cloudflare supports only one thing, and that's making money. That's why it built its reputation on providing services to unsavory organizations to begin with - and that's why it is dropping its service to the Daily Stormer. The neo-Nazis suddenly became too toxic for GoDaddy and Google and Cloudflare couldn't take the pressure from the media and the tweeters and the angry, angry people.

The jihadists may want to kill or subjugate all the Jews and Christians in the Middle East - but they don't wave swastikas.

Hamas and the other antisemitic jihadist groups are just as morally reprehensible as the neo-Nazis. They have also murdered a lot more people in the past couple of decades than any neo-Nazis have. Cloudflare is simply looking for an excuse to get out of the business of helping the far-Right after Charlottesville - but the lack of outrage over its support for Islamist hate sites is the reason it retains them as clients.

In the end, I still believe that there is a solid legal case to be made against Cloudflare'a aupport of terrorist sites. By protecting websites for terror groups, Cloudflare is providing "material support" to terror groups by the definition of the Patriot Act as I have shown.

I am not going to rely on their CEO's decision that neo-Nazis are assholes but Islamist terrorists aren't. His refusal to support ISIS and The Daily Stormer proves that he does make these decisions for financial reasons which includes fear of being fined by the government. Free speech and morality have nothing to do with it. Cloudflare's CEO is not moral - he is opportunistic.

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08/16 Links Pt2: Will the EU Stop Supporting Anti-Israel Incitement?; Prof Dissects Rasmea Odeh's Lies

From Ian:

IsraellyCool: Huge Own Goal As Israel Haters Release Video of “Palestine” Maps

Quds News Network has come out with the following video, to prove that “Palestine” existed.
I have to thank them for this. (h/t NormanF)

When Will the EU Stop Supporting Anti-Israel Incitement?

On July 26, the European Union Delegation to Israel posted a promotional video highlighting the importance of EU-Israel relations. The film is narrated by Avishai Ivry, an Israeli journalist identified with the Right. Ivry’s involvement drew criticism from across the political spectrum.
Complaints from the Right included, “How dare you promote those who try to meddle in our society?” – referring to the massive European government funding of political organizations operating in Israel. The Left asked, “How dare you oppose foreign funding and simultaneously work for the EU?” – again highlighting European funding of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), but this time condemning Ivry’s “hypocrisy” in disagreeing with the funding while also being paid to promote the EU.
The criticism, from both Left and Right, acutely reflects Israeli public discourse regarding the EU’s involvement in domestic affairs.
Beyond the partisan debate in Israel, the fringe anti-peace (and at times antisemetic) website Electronic Intifada discovered a number of Ivry’s past tweets against Palestinians.
Electronic Intifada demanded the EU remove the video, and indeed within 24 hours the film was removed. The EU’s stated reason – “We want no doubts that anything we do promotes the values the EU stands for.”
It thus appears that the EU is legitimately concerned when its public funds are distributed to individuals that contradict its values (or its image), so much so that it immediately acted on the demand made by the people who run a hate-filled website.
One might therefore imagine that if the EU was told that it was funding NGOs that contradict its values – such as groups that promote antisemitism – that they would immediately investigate and cease the funding.
To be sure, this phenomenon occurs. But the EU’s response has been quite different.

EU Support for Palestinian Security Reforms Has Not Increased Prospects for a Democratic and Viable Palestinian State as Intended

The international community fears that another intense round of violence and confrontation in the West Bank could, as in the past, threaten billions of dollars of investments in the Palestinian state-building project over the last decade. The international donor community remembers well when EU-funded premises, equipment, and PA infrastructure were flattened during the second intifada.
The EU, which is the biggest donor to the PA, has invested in the EU Police Mission for the Palestinian Territories (EUPOL COPPS), which prides itself on reforming and overhauling major elements of the Palestinian security establishment and enhancing effective policing.
From the political point of view, however, the mission has achieved little. Over the last decade, the mission has indeed carved the EU a niche in Palestinian security sector reform and increased its visibility in the Middle East peace process. Nevertheless, the EU's strategy to use EUPOL COPPS to pave the way for a democratic and viable Palestinian state by building its security capacities has fallen short.
While the EU generally refrains from supporting security services with a reputation for human rights abuse, such as the U.S.-sponsored Preventive Security agency and the General Intelligence Service of the PA, the EU-supported Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) has also been implicated in the excessive use of force against peaceful demonstrations.
If the current authoritarian backslide of the PA continues, the EU and its mission will be increasingly criticized for financing, professionalizing, and legitimizing a highly politicized and democratically unaccountable police force. This is far from the EU's envisioned approach to security sector reforms.

You'd never know that what happened in Charlottesville was about the Jews. Not from listening to the president, who spoke about racial harmony, the color of our skin, but not one word about the Jews. And not from following Bernie Sanders on Twitter, who had the nerve to call out the president for not saying it like it is, while not saying it like it is—not saying a single word about the Jews.

No, Mr. President. This is a provocative effort by Neo-Nazis to foment racism and hatred and create violence. Call it out for what it is. https://t.co/WibPqkLsLa
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) August 12, 2017

People like the president and Bernie Sanders, you see, live under the illusion that Jew-hatred is nothing special. That's despite the fact that we have, still walking among us, people who survived the systematic rounding up, gassing, and burning of more than 6 million Jews.

What is comparable to that event in history? How is what happened there anything like garden variety racism?

The answer?

It isn't.

And lumping Jew-hatred with any other hatred, bigotry, or xenophobia waters it down. Takes its meaning away. Makes us feel less alone, less targeted, and puts the world in danger, puts us back in time to the chaos of the Holocaust.

There. I said it. The word that is in a category of its own.

Now you might be excused for looking the other way and hushing up the Jew thing if you'd been duped into thinking the protest was really about the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue, or a thousand or so alt right Trump supporters. Except that we know exactly what went down at Charlottesville.

We know that men holding torches shouted "Jews will not replace us."

As if Jews had anything to do with Robert E. Lee or Trump's election.

We know that in Charlottesville, men wore swastikas and gave the Nazi salute in the bright, hot summer sunlight while chanting, "Jews, Jews, Jews, Jews."

But President Trump said nothing about the Jews or antisemitism, “Racism is evil," he said, though the Jews are not members of a single race. "And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans," he said, blurring the significance of the chants, the symbols, and the salutes.

By Cristiano Del Riccio (Hollywood Olivia Wilde)

“As I have said many times before, no matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws,” said Trump, though Jews are not one color or another. “We all salute the same great flag, and we are all made by the same almighty God. We must love each other, show affection for each other and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry and violence," said President Trump, neatly removing any specific reference to the people specifically targeted by the Charlottesville protestors.

Celebrities, whose words should not matter to anyone but do, followed suit.

Olivia Wilde, for instance. Olivia Wilde is an actress. Why should any one of us care what she thinks about abortion or racism? It's a mystery, but we do.

That means that she, Olivia Wilde, is in a unique position to speak out about the ugly, blatant display of Jew-hatred at the Charlottesville protest. But Wilde followed the path of Trump and Sanders and watered it down, speaking of Nazism, blacks, and the alt right, but refraining from all mention of the "J" word.

Message to the people of Charlottesville, from my mother, Leslie Cockburn, who is running for Congress in VA. #lesliecockburnforcongress #charlottesville www.lesliecockburnforcongress.com

A post shared by Olivia Wilde (@oliviawilde) on Aug 12, 2017 at 11:54am PDT

Lady Gaga? She spoke of the necessity for kindness and love, a form of Jew-hatred blindness that doesn't see what is, and doesn't speak of it. And if we don't speak of it, talk about it incessantly, it will not go away, no matter how much kindness and love this individual or that will throw at the world.

I know we are not created to hate each other, but to help & love. Use hashtag #BeKind #ThisIsNotUS to tweet positive messages. #Charlotte
— xoxo, Gaga (@ladygaga) August 12, 2017

Kim Kardashian, a woman of color married to a black man, also chose not to see the singularity of what those men were chanting. She spoke of "Americans" and "targets of hate & violence," but like Trump, et al, nothing about the Jews.

How tragic that this is what we've come to. My prayers are w those in Charlottesville & every American who is the target of hate & violence.
— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) August 12, 2017

Demi Lovato spoke of general prejudice and racism. Again, seeing nothing special about what exactly those men were chanting. Not paying heed, giving it no credit.

Love. Please, I beg of the evil to let go of the prejudice and racism and to #stopthehate. #prayforCharlottesville ✌🏼 pic.twitter.com/FkPoohkfAO
— Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) August 13, 2017

Jessica Alba went on for quite some time on Instagram chiding those of us who claim others "aren't THAT racist," but saying nothing at all about the target of the protestors or their identity. Which makes you wonder whether she might just be THAT racist.

#standupforwhatsright #Repost @cleowade #MLK said it best when he said: "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people." Racism & bigotry does not merely exist on the faces of the terrorists marching in #charlottesville We all know people who have said or done something that is wrong while we remained silent or tried to justify it because of the other person's background, age or by saying "well they aren't THAT racist" Enough is Enough. Start with you. Let your voice be the one that changes the people around you. Start today. Be a truth teller. Speak truth to power. Be a freedom fighter. Fight the good fight. I love you.

A post shared by Jessica Alba (@jessicaalba) on Aug 13, 2017 at 9:42am PDT

The interesting part of this is that there is no difference between President Trump and Bernie Sanders or their mutual supporters. None of them understand that the Jews are the canary in the coal mine and that they have been silenced: muffled on campus and hushed up in the news. They've been plastered over with an Arab narrative that paints them as the villain of the story, whose every word is a lie.

And all are complicit, including the Jews who join the masses, speaking of "occupation" and "choosing love" (instead of truth).

The Jews are not just hated generally, as a needed focus for blame, for venting anger and spleen. There's a back story. The Jew has long been typecast as the one who comes to undermine and destroy society, in particular, white Christian society.

Charlottesville, VA braces for 'The Whites' to speak their minds: AUG 12th. #UniteTheRight - Lee Park pic.twitter.com/ZkgADD1DN2
— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) August 12, 2017

Leo Frank

Why else was the Jewish American Leo Frank lynched for an act he did not commit? But no. This is an ugly story that must be muted.

Along with Henry Ford's Jew-hatred and the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 barring Jews fleeing persecution from the United States, the latter of which prompted President Calvin Coolidge to say at its signing, "America must remain America."

All of these things made it even more important for the president and others to decry what so nakedly happened in Charlottesville by giving it its proper name.

Because Jew-hatred isn't just a fringe thing, something in which wild-eyed crazy men indulge themselves, but something mainstream, too.

Here one must recall the 1862 General Order No. 11, penned by General Ulysses S. Grant, a man who would someday, like Trump, be president. The order expelled Jews from territory under Grant's command over drummed up claims the Jews were war profiteers, running goods between the Union and the Confederacy. Grant's papers from this time referred to the black market as being run "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders."

Ulysses S. Grant

Henry Ford

As one can see, Jew-hatred, contrary to myopic belief, isn't confined to Eastern Europe. In some of its iterations, Jew-hatred is as American as the DAR or apple pie.

All of this is why, when you've got men in Charlottesville shouting the English version of the Nazi cry, "Blut und boden," (blood and soil), it's not sufficient for the president of the United States to give a canned, watery speech—to speak of "racism," something that brings to mind the divide between black and white people and the controversy over Trump's immigration policy. In using broad terms, you see, the president failed to address the crux of the problem, and the very specific danger at hand.

Protesters march to Emancipation Park, chanting "blood and soil". #Charlottesville pic.twitter.com/fzT0QQ6szq
— ACLU of Virginia (@ACLUVA) August 12, 2017

We have seen the rise of the far left ethos in America. This societal state of mind, historically, has always led to blaming a specific other for economic and social woes. And we know the identity of that other, the one who is always blamed, always at the core of the deepest hate possible, the one who will always be hunted down and murdered, the one who must be eradicated at all costs, as the presumed source of the deepest frustrations of man.

The Jew.

The one who must never be named.

_________________________________________________________________________

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Jesus Agrees Beatles More Popular (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Jerusalem, August 16 - Jesus Christ, son of God, the Prince of Peace, King of the Jews, Messiah and Savior, shrugged His shoulders today and stated He had no problem with John Lennon of the Beatles asserting they were more popular than He.

At a press conference at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City, the Lord incarnate as Jesus dismissed protests over Lennon's 1966 remarks and what he called the "insecure obsession" with the words and their implications in the ensuing decades.

"He was right, you know," pronounced the King of Kings in human form. "I had a good run, a lasting impact, but as a driver of contemporary culture, the Beatles have outdone Me. I don't have a problem acknowledging that, and no one else should, either."

"To those who burned or crucified Beatles records, made threatening phone calls, canceled concerts, or otherwise did their darnedest to display righteous outrage, I have one word," continued the founder of the Christian religion. "Chill. You do Me no favors by showcasing your insecurity over the observations of a celebrity. It says more about you than about him, or about Me, and trust Me - you do trust Me, right? - what it says is less than flattering."

"Divine humility was kind of a major point in the whole exercise of My incarnation, torment, and crucifixion," added the Messiah. "If you think I'm going to get exercised, or that you should get exercised, when some egocentric blowhard who got catapulted to fame overnight says something in a way you don't like, well, there's a different kind of news you should be focusing on than that of My dying for anyone's sins."

The Christ also observed the unsavory similarities between those who raised such vociferous objections to Lennon's comments and those to whom the objectors would never want to be compared. "These people remind Me of those who rioted when My good buddy Mohammed appeared in a bunch of cartoons a number of years ago. Went totally ape$#!t. Even he couldn't believe how his followers, once the custodians and promoters of the most advanced civilizations had devolved into shrieking loonies over a bunch of drawings. Well, that's what we have here. As I said, chill."

"I don't need you to defend My honor - I think I demonstrated that on the cross," concluded Jesus. "If you're wondering what Jesus would do under the circumstances, rest assured it does not involve rioting. The whole humility thing appears to be lost on many of you."

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08/16 Links Pt1: Glick: Netanyahu’s great challenge; We must stop Raed Salah and his ilk

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Netanyahu’s great challenge

In recent weeks, coalition chairman MK David Bitan has told the media that Netanyahu has pledged not to resign if indicted in light of the trivial nature of the probes. Netanyahu’s ability to remain in his position, in opposition to the non-binding norm dictated by the Supreme Court in 1993, will be a function of the public’s view of him and of the investigations against him. And if Netanyahu is strong enough to stay, then his intention not to fold will have a salutary impact on the fairness of the investigations against him.
If the prosecutors realize they will have to win a case against a sitting prime minister rather than one they have already forced from office in disgrace, their decision about whether or not to indict Netanyahu will be based far more on the investigations’ findings and far less on their political views than in the past.
Although prosecutors do not care what the public thinks of them, they do care what their colleagues think of them. And if they indict a sitting prime minister and then fail to convict him while he is still in office and popular, their colleagues will not think well of them.
So it all boils down to governing. But how should Netanyahu govern? If Netanyahu follows the lead set by prime minister Ariel Sharon when he and his sons were under investigation, and abandons his political base to appease the Left, he will harm his chances of remaining in power. Netanyahu will become as unpopular as Ehud Olmert was when he was indicted. He will not avoid indictment. And he will not be reelected.
If on the other hand Netanyahu is loyal to his voters and implements the Right’s policy on Judea and Samaria – namely, applying Israeli law to Area C of Judea and Samaria in anticipation of the era that will begin when 82-year-old PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas dies – then he will not only be able to stay in office if indicted, he will win the next elections even if he is still enmeshed in criminal probes.

Gil Troy: Go Netanyahu, go – for your sake and Israel’s

Israel is enduring a moment of split-screen governing. Side by side, headlines report Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planning unprecedented visits to South America in November and his opponents anticipating his imminent indictment.
It’s time for Netanyahu to go to his Caesarea retreat and think. He should think about his character. He should think about his actions. He should think about his legacy. And he should think about his people and his nation.
If Netanyahu and his wife are innocent of the mounting allegations against them, he is behaving appropriately. If he really stayed within the law while accepting boxes of cigars and cases of champagne, he shouldn’t quit. He should hold his ground if he really knew nothing about the submarine deal, which, more than a putrid story of bribery, threatens the state’s security by wasting money on unnecessary purchases and by exposing these superfluous submarines to Iranian chicanery through the Revolutionary Guard’s investment in the German manufacturer ThyssenKrupp.
If innocent, Prime Minister Netanyahu is morally obligated to champion the rule of law against the media lynch mob. Israel needs him to defend the principle of electoral legitimacy and stop the criminalization of politics. Our Gotcha Age is bad for democracy. Politicians should be defeated by voters at the ballot box, not slander on the Internet and in the press. We should argue prime ministers out of office, not indict them.

Ben-Dror Yemini: We must stop Raed Salah and his ilk

Sheikh Raed Salah was arrested again on Tuesday. These are his best days. He's succeeding. Three of his followers carried out the terror attack on the Temple Mount and caused an outbreak of violence; the murderers' funeral became a display of solidarity with the shahids (martyrs) not unlike Hamas's anti-Semitic rallies; a young Arab man was killed in Jaffa and a Channel 2 reporter was almost lynched while covering the funeral while nearby businesses refused to give him refuge. The impression we're left with is that Israel's Arab citizens are becoming the enemy from within.
But we ought to be careful not to give the strife-mongers and barons of incitement—the Salahs and Zoabis of the world—more credit than they deserve. There are Hamasniks among them, to be sure. But before the wounds that have a hard time healing become an incurable disease, we should remember that polls conducted in recent years show most Israeli Arabs are actually in a different place—somewhere far less violent and enraged.
According to Israeli Democracy Index, for example, 55 percent of Arabs are proud to be Israeli, and in complete contradiction to the fight their leadership wages, over 50 percent of Arab youths want to do national service. The percentage of recruits among them increases every year.
How can this gap between the polls, which give cause for optimism, and even the process of Israelization among the country's Arab citizens on the one hand, and the displays of violence and hatred on the other hand, be explained?

The libel that kills

Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic Movement's outlawed Northern Branch, refers to himself as the Al-Aqsa sheikh, sailed on the Gaza blockade-busting Turkish ship Mavi Marmara, and for years has spoken of his vision for a global caliphate with Jerusalem as its capital. He is also the same man who for years has disseminated the false warning that "Al-Aqsa is in danger."
His latest arrest, one of dozens, presents a legal question: Has this false suggestion that Israel is somehow planning to destroy Al-Aqsa mosque shifted from being an abstract claim to being an actual weapon, considering that it has motivated vehicular rammers, stabbers, shooters and murderers in recent years?
In practice, the answer is clear: This libel does indeed kill. Quite literally. Hundreds of attacks in recent years were motivated by this falsehood.
It is enough to consider the indictments issued against the attackers, as well as their own statements and Facebook pages, to understand that this libel -- rooted in the days of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini -- has gone beyond the point of just venomous propaganda. It has been turned into an actual weapon, the equivalent of a suicide bomber, a Qassam rocket or a gun. Those who repeat this libel over and over are akin to an attacker who pulls the pin of a grenade or starts a timer on a bomb.

Arab op-ed: End tourism at Temple Mount. (It is a sacred soccer stadium.)

I found this op-ed in an obscure Palestinian news site.

The author complains that so many Jews are visiting the Temple Mount, more than any previous year since 1967, and he is very, very upset.

So he has a solution. Since the Jews visit as tourists and not as worshipers, the Al Aqsa compound must be closed to all visitors. " The Aqsa Mosque is a place of worship for Muslims and not a place for tourism. The Israeli occupation against Al-Aqsa is currently seeking to divide it spatially after being visited under the guise of tourism."

See? The Al Aqsa Mosque is so holy, that only Muslims can visit it. It is a place of worship!

And soccer:

And parkour:

But they must stop all tourism, because that desecrates the holy place.

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Antisemitic Muslim group speaks the truth about Palestinians in Lebanon

Hizb ut-Tahrir is an extreme Islamist organization, banned in many countries, that works towards creating a single Islamic caliphate.

But sometimes the extremists see things more clearly than the rest of the world.

This article in one of their online news sites describes how terribly the Lebanese are treating their Palestinian "guests."

Lebanese authorities outperform Jewish entity by building racist walls!

The Lebanese authorities have completed construction of a concrete wall around the largest refugee camps in Lebanon, the Ein El Helweh camp, which is home to 80,000 people near the southern city of Sidon.
The wall was built between 5 and 6 meters high with barbed wire, with high observation towers up to nine meters high and iron gates at the entrances to the camp, despite promises to stop building it, without regard to any voice or opinion of the residents of this camp who were abandoned and suffered as they are separated from their parents and their homes against their will.
The Lebanese authorities, as usual, did not deal with the conditions of the Palestinians except in terms of security at a time when they neglected to address the humanitarian and economic issues faced by Palestine refugees in Lebanon. This wall was established in coordination with the Palestinian factions and the popular committees in the camp, under the pretext of maintaining security and combating terrorism, which has become a stain on any gathering of Muslims on this land as terrorist spots.
The Palestinian families in this camp are now in a large prison in the presence of towers, barbed wire, and other barriers that are usually used in prisons, which gives them an additional burden and a sense of being imprisoned inside their homes; they can only look at the sky.

With the intensification of the political and security crisis in the country, and the absence of any legal status for the presence of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon, the Palestinian camps are the most prominent humanitarian issue with all the painful humanitarian details. They live in miserable humanitarian and economic conditions, These refugees are still subject to a discriminatory law that was implemented in 2001, which prevents them from the right to own property and to register their property legally, with difficulty in their access to the labor market and preventing them from working in 25 professions, incuding professions that require union membership, as well as tight to allow the expansion of the camps or the entry of building materials into them.

...
These restrictions and unfair measures by the Lebanese state as a "host country", as well as UNRWA's restrictive services measures, have exacerbated the situation of Palestine refugees in Lebanon and those displaced from Syria which increased their daily suffering.

In short, the humanitarian situation of the Palestine refugees in Lebanon is becoming more fragile day after day, to ask: "Is this the honor of the host?" How much time do we need to know that the problem of the Palestine refugees is not solved by organizations called humanitarian? And controlled by political interests ?!

The people of Palestine and the refugees have been the fuel of this conflict for the last decades and are still paying their blood and lives for the liberation of their land. They live in oppression and suffering in the country of asylum in the hope of realizing the right of return.

Lebanon's hospitable rulers!

It is not the security and military dealings that are dealt with by the guests. It is their duty to honor them not to oppress them and imprison them between the separation wall, which is similar to the apartheid wall that was established by the Jewish entity, as you brandish a sword to terrorize the camp and its people. Will you take responsibility for the inhuman situation you imposed?

The article throws in some bizarre political theories, blaming the Lebanese abandonment of their Palestinian "guests" on Western and Jewish power, but it is nearly impossible to find any articles in Arabic media that actually mention the institutional apartheid system that Lebanon has against Palestinians. Too bad no one who matter will read Hizb ut-Tahrir news, and the Palestinians of Lebanon will remain to be treated as cannon fodder.

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If you want to see the sickness of the anti-Israel crowd, you cannot get a better example that Ali Abunimah in Electronic Intifada.

A much-discussed article in The New York Times about pressure on President Donald Trump to fire his advisor Steve Bannon contains this intriguing sentence:

Mr. Bannon’s ability to hang on as Mr. Trump’s in-house populist is in part because of his connections to a handful of ultrarich political patrons, including Sheldon G. Adelson, the pro-Israel casino magnate who is based in Las Vegas.

As executive chairman of Breitbart News before joining the Trump campaign, Bannon transformed the right-wing outlet into what he described as the “the platform for the alt-right” – the collection of neo-Nazis, white supremacists and racists who have been the renewed focus of outrage since their violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday.

Bannon is widely viewed as the champion of the white supremacists – some of whom were openly parading with Nazi flags – and the reason why Trump did not explicitly condemn them immediately after one of their number, allegedly James Alex Fields, 20, rammed his car into counterdemonstrators killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others.

Hence the renewed pressure on Trump to fire Bannon. But if Bannon supports the white supremacist and clearly anti-Semitic far-right, why does he enjoy the backing of Adelson?

Abunimah pretends to answer the question with his usual modus operandi of finding tenuous connections between Israel and Nazis, going back to the Ha'avara agreement that Jew-haters like Abunimah love to lie about.

Here's an example of what Abunimah considers logic in his bizarre attempts to tie Israel with antisemites:

Notably, Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi ideologue who wants to create an Aryan homeland in North America, has called his mission a “sort of white Zionism.”

An antisemite calls his racist movement "white Zionism" so Abunimah uses that as a way to tie Israel to neo-Nazis! We've seen this type of logical fallacy from Abunimah hundreds of times, and in fact his gang has done it to me too, pretending that I support mass murderer and psychopath Anders Breivik by taking something I said out of context and running with it.

If you find Abunimah's tenuous proofs by association credible, then it is a lot easier to find that he is the real Nazi. Stormfront, the very neo-Nazi organization that he claims to be against which has now been banned from being hosted by Internet providers, loves to quote Abunimah. He provides lots of material for Jew-haters, who appreciate his non-stop efforts to attack Jews who happen to support Jewish nationalism. By his own logic, Abunimah is a Nazi sympathizer.

The real answer to the question of why Adelson seems to support Bannon, though, is the simplest one: Bannon is not an antisemite in any way, shape or form.

Adelson does not only fund Zionist causes. He also gives millions each year to Yad Vashem for Holocaust education and to Jewish education. To tie him to neo-Nazis, as Abunimah tries to, is the height of absurdity.

Yes, Israel - like every country - sometimes allies itself with causes that are not 100% in concert with its own. So does the US, the UK, the EU and Saudi Arabia. That is politics. It is not evidence, as Abunimah loves to pretend, that Israel loves antisemites.

But Abunimah is trying very hard to distance himself from his own clear antisemitism. He has no problem with Arabs murdering Israeli Jews but he wants to pretend that his hate of the Jewish state is a liberal position, not a bigoted one. So the man who names his entire website after a Palestinian initiative to murder Jews in pizza shops and public buses tries to reinvent himself as a defender of Jews, which means we see him jump through hoops to pretend to be against all bigotry.

Sorry, Ali. We know what you really are. You aren't convincing anyone outside of your own fevered circle of bigots that Israel hates Jews.

And this article prove that you are the antisemite. After all, the tag you used in this very article is "Lobby Watch," showing that you believe that the "Jewish lobby" (oh, sorry, "Zionist Lobby") controls America. It doesn't get much more antisemitic than that.

(h/t YMedad)

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The Elder's Bar Mitzvah

A couple of days ago (secular calendar) and in a few days (Hebrew calendar) is EoZ's 13th Blogoversary, my bar mitzvah!

To celebrate, here is the world's worst Photoshop.

Also last week was my 27,000th post.

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Iranian IRGC leader: "Daesh (ISIS) is the front line for Zionists"

And who are these "allies?"

A senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says the country’s Armed Forces will certainly give a severe response to the Daesh Takfiri terrorists and their allies.

“The kind of response is up to us and we will determine its type ourselves, but we will definitely do it,” Commander of IRGC’s Ground Force Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour told IRNA on Monday.

He added that the IRGC Ground Forces have been engaged in battles with terrorists backed by the hegemonic powers and Al Saud in southeastern, western, northwestern and southwestern parts of Iran during the recent years, but the country is currently in peace and enjoys “acceptable security.”

He emphasized that the Daesh Takfiri terrorists attacked Iraq and Syria in recent years with the support of the hegemonic powers and Saudi Arabia, adding, “If they (terrorists) had not been stopped, there would have been no sign of Damascus, Karbala, Najaf and Shiism.”

The IRGC commander said Iran only had an advisory presence in Syria and Iraq at the request of their governments, stressing, “We did not enter these countries without permission like the Americans and others [did].”

On Sunday, The commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) says Daesh terrorist forces make up the front-line soldiers of the Zionist regime and the global arrogance has created this Takfiri group to counter the Islamic Revolution.

This is not unusual talk from Iran, accusing Israel, the US and Saudi Arabia of supporting ISIS, but it is still rarely reported in the West. Especially from those who support closer relations with Iran and looking away from their support for terror and desire for nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

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08/15 Links Pt2: Why Is Israel funding anti-IDF activists?; Shapiro: America Has Twin Cancers, Antifa And The Alt-Right

From Ian:

Shapiro At 'National Review': America Has Twin Cancers, Antifa And The Alt-Right

America has cancer.
On Saturday, a crowd of alt-right white supremacists, neo-confederates, and Nazi sympathizers marched in Charlottesville, Va.; they were confronted by a large group of protesters including members of the Marxist Antifa — a group that has time and again plunged volatile situations into violence, from Sacramento to Berkeley. There’s still no certain knowledge of who began the violence, but before long, the sides had broken into the sort of brutal scrum that used to characterize Weimer-era Germany. The two sides then carried the red banner and the swastika; so did the combatants on Saturday.
Then a Nazi-sympathizing alt-right 20-year-old Ohioan plowed his car into a crowd of protesters, killing one and injuring 19. The president of the United States promptly failed egregiously to condemn alt-right racism; instead, he opted for a milquetoast statement condemning “hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.”
The Left leapt into action, declaring Trump’s statement utterly insufficient — which, of course, it was. But they then went further, declaring that Antifa was entirely innocent, despite Antifa’s launching into violence against pro-Trump marchers in Seattle over the weekend, as they have in Sacramento and Berkeley; berating New York Times journalist Sheryl Gay Stolberg for having the temerity to report that “the hard left seemed as hate-filled as the alt-right”; and suggesting that all conservatives were, at root, sympathizers with the Nazi-friendly alt-right.
And so here we stand: On the one side, a racist, identity-politics Left dedicated to the proposition that white people are innate beneficiaries of privilege and therefore must be excised from political power; on the other side, a reactionary, racist, identity-politics alt-right dedicated to the proposition that white people are innate victims of the social-justice class and therefore must regain political power through race-group solidarity.

Crowder Slams Antifa, Alt-Right

In the wake of the violent events in Charlottesville, Steven Crowder released a video in which he likened the alt-right to Antifa, and triggered an avalanche of insults and abuse from white nationalists furious at the comparison.
Crowder started by noting the Left’s absurdity in lumping together various groups as though white nationalists and white supremacists should be considered conservatives, noting they mixed conservative Christians, conservatives, the Republican Party, the alt-right, white nationalists, white supremacists, and Nazis into one homogenous group.
He joked about those on the Left who have attacked him, “I’ve been called a Nazi, and by those same people I’ve been called a filthy Jew.” (Crowder is not Jewish and not by any stretch of the imagination a Nazi.)
Then Crowder got down to business. He said of the alt-right, “They are much more similar to Antifa than they want to acknowledge.” He continued, “The rest of America is caught in the crossfire … by the way, let’s make sure that both groups are completely disassociated from conservatives and then, separate from conservatives, even President Donald Trump.”
Crowder then listed the ways in which the alt-right and Antifa are alike:

Comments below the video were rife with fury from those from the alt-right.

Women's March Appalled Over Anti-Semitism At Charlottesville. There's Just One Problem.

The Women's March is appalled by modern-day anti-Semitism, just not the anti-Semitism coming from the group's most widely-known organizer and assistant treasurer Linda Sarsour.
How very convenient.
On Monday, the left-wing feminist group posted an article from Refinery addressing the anti-Semitism at this past weekend's Charlottesville, Virginia rally, where neo-Nazis promoting their racist views and protesting the removal of Confederate statues clashed with violent "anti-fascist" group, Antifa. Tragically, a 32-year-old woman was murdered when a man with white supremacist ties mowed down protesters in his vehicle; two police officers manning the event also lost their lives when their helicopter crashed.
"We can't talk about #Charlottesville without also talking about anti-semitism. It is real and it is all around," captioned the organization.
Yeah, it's hard to look at this post as anything other than exploitation of a tragedy. The Women's March doesn't actually care about anti-Semitism. If they did, they would not have anti-Semitic Linda Sarsour as the most prominent face of their organization.
Here's Sarsour embracing Rasmea Odeh, a woman who happens to be facing a lifetime prison sentence back in Israel for her involvement in a terror plot in Jerusalem at the British consulate and a fatal bombing at a Jerusalem grocery store.

*Women's March Co-Chair, Linda Sarsour, embraces Jew-killing terrorist, Rasmea Odeh* pic.twitter.com/kbThHnVTe9
— Chet Cannon (@Chet_Cannon) August 14, 2017

The Women's March organizer also has a history of Jew-hatred, as noted by Daily Wire's Aaron Bandler:

Every once in a while there are articles about the small community of Palestinians who came from Africa.

These articles contradict each other, and sometimes themselves, as to the history of this community.

This Al Jazeera article says that the first set of Africans settled in Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Sudan, Senegal, Nigeria and Chad. But then it says that they arrived in 1829 with the army of Ibrahim Pasha, and some who were part of the British army at that time and who deserted to join the Muslims in jihad.

This other article says that the Mufti of Jerusalem asked the Africans to guard Al Aqsa mosque in the 1920s. "For a long time, most of the people working at Al-Aqsa Mosque were from the African community and they were religious militants," a member of he community says, claiming that they had to be relieved of duty for a day to allow a Belgian official to visit the Temple Mount since they would never allow non-Muslims to ascend. Then the second wave of these African Muslims came to Jerusalem with the Egyptian army in 1948 and stayed in Jerusalem. Given that the Egyptian army never made it to Jerusalem, this claim is also questionable.

Official Palestinian site Wafa goes further, saying that early African Muslims would visit Jerusalem after their Hajj to Saudi Arabia and some stayed. But then it claims that some of them came to Jerusalem with Umar in the seventh century!

Al Monitor recently discussed this topic, and it says:

Jerusalem's African community is relatively small and consists of nearly 50 families living in the Bab al-Majlis neighborhood of the Old City. The majority of the community comes from countries such as Chad, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan. Their ancestors came to Jerusalem in successive periods, beginning in the Ottoman era and continuing into the British Mandate.
Moussa Qaws, a co-founder of the African Community Society in Bab al-Majlis, told Al-Monitor that Africans "immigrated to Palestine for two main reasons: the first is religious and consists of the hajj [to Al-Aqsa Mosque, which often follows the pilgrimage to Mecca]. In fact, Africans who used to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem were rewarded a privileged social status. The second reason is jihad and the [religious] bond [formed] in Jerusalem.”

This part is interesting:

When Jordan controlled East Jerusalem, from 1948-1967, the Jordanian government did not grant citizenship to Africans. Following the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, Africans who lived in Jerusalem obtained identity cards.

If they only came in 1948, Jordan's decision makes sense and they have only been in the region for a short period of time. If they came before that, the Jordanian government showed that they are racists.

One other part of the discussion may or may not be relevant. Today, these black Palestinians mostly live in an area called "The slaves prison" near the Temple Mount, an area that had been named that since Mamluk times.

Could some of them have come to Palestine as slaves and now they are re-writing their history?

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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I tweeted this here.

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08/15 Links Pt1: UNRWA closes Hamas tunnel under Gaza schools; The Real Lessons from Charlottesville

From Ian:

Amb. Alan Baker: UNRWA Condemns the Palestinians to Refugee Status in Perpetuity

The “United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East” (UNRWA) was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1949 as a distinctly temporary entity to assist in reintegration, repatriation, or resettlement, with a view to furthering peace.
But according to UNRWA’s mandate, refugee status extends to cover all future generations of Palestinians, and specifically “descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948.” Rather than narrowing the problem, this definition has extended it, with refugee status now applying into the fourth generation of Palestinians, exploding the number of registered refugees from an estimated 700,000 back in 1949 (per UNRWA’s claims) to 5,000,000.1
This UNRWA mandate is far beyond the accepted international definitions and criteria for refugees that are the basis for the much more successful model for international refugee relief – the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), formed in 1950. The UNHCR seeks to resettle refugees, not perpetuate their camp existence.
The UNHRC operates on the basis of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which does not say a word about passing refugee status to descendants. Refugee status, according to the convention, is not permanent.
Refugees who become naturalized in their host countries, according to the convention, lose their refugee status. In contrast, in the UNRWA system, a Palestinian refugee who was born in Zurich and has a Swiss passport is still defined as a refugee.
Any attempt to reach a final Israeli-Palestinian peace must require a complete suspension of UNRWA funding and financing with a view to dissolving the agency and dismantling the refugee camps. New housing should replace them. Funding should be transformed into direct assistance to the appropriate agencies to carry out this task. If the goal of a future agreement is to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all, then UNRWA’s current configuration makes a final peace impossible to achieve.

UNRWA closes Hamas tunnel detected under two of its Gaza schools

UNRWA announced Monday it sealed a Hamas tunnel found two months ago that the terrorist group had built under two of its school in the Maghazi refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.
Canada’s Representative to the Palestinian Authority Scott Proudfoot congratulated the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees Monday for taking care of the tunnel.
“Visited school in Meghazi #refugee camp #Gaza; bravo @UNRWA for upholding neutrality & protecting children by detecting & filling in tunnel,” he tweeted.
UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness confirmed UNRWA had closed the tunnel, which it discovered at the beginning of June after the Maghazi Elementary Boys A&B School and the Maghaz Preparatory Boys School had been closed for the summer.
In a press release written in June, Gunness said, “UNRWA can confirm that the tunnel has no entry or exit points on the premises nor is it connected to the schools or other buildings in any way."
“UNRWA condemns the existence of such tunnels in the strongest possible terms. It is unacceptable that students and staff are placed at risk in such a way,” he said.
“The construction and presence of tunnels under UN premises are incompatible with the respect of privileges and immunities owed to the United Nations under applicable international law, which provides that UN premises shall be inviolable. The sanctity and neutrality of UN premises must be preserved at all times,” Gunness wrote

Palestinians: The Honeymoon with the US is Over

The Palestinians have a condition for the US to be accepted by them as a mediator in the conflict with Israel: bias in favor of the Palestinians. This is the Palestinian state of mind: If you are not with us, you are against us.
In the Palestinian logic, the US administration must endorse the Palestinian narrative and comply with all their demands if it wishes to broker "peace" with Israel. The Palestinians do indeed want the US to be involved – as an axeman for their execution of Israel.
The Palestinians are prepared to cooperate with any US administration, on one condition only: that it forces Israel to withdraw fully to the 1949 armistice lines and allow the incompetent and discredited Mahmoud Abbas to establish a corrupt, undemocratic and failed state, one that would set its predatory sights on the now-much-harder-to-defend State of Israel.
Until recently, Abbas and his Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank believed that the new president would swallow their fabrications and perhaps collude with them to bring Israel down. At one stage, Abbas even instructed his aides and spokesmen to avoid making any criticism against Trump or his administration, toward just this goal.
However, the Palestinian tone has changed in recent weeks. Palestinian officials and factions and political commentators are no longer concealing their distrust of -- and disdain for -- the Trump administration. The "honeymoon" between the Palestinians and the Trump administration is over.

We know that historically, there has never been a sovereign, Palestinian state.

But if there has never been a state, a country, called Palestine -- then what did the Arabs call themselves when that territory was under Muslim rule?

In his book, From Babel to Dragomans, Bernard Lewis includes a talk he gave in 2001, under the title "The British Mandate for Palestine in Historical Perspective." In just a few understated paragraphs, Lewis hints at the importance of The British Mandate for the Palestinian Arabs:

The name [Palestine] survived briefly in the early Arab Empire, and then disappeared. The Crusaders called the country the Holy Land and their state the Kingdom of Jerusalem After the end of the ancient Jewish states, the capital of the administrative districts called Palestine were not in Jerusalem but elsewhere, in Caesarea, in Ramleh, in Lydda, in various other places The only time between the ancient and modern Jewish states when Jerusalem was the capital was the Crusader Kingdom, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem as it was called. And that was a comparatively brief interlude. [emphasis added]

When Arabs today call themselves Palestinians, that is a new phenomenon. For centuries, the name "Palestine" had fallen into disuse and had actually disappeared altogether.

A secondary point Lewis raises is that outside of the crusaders, the city of Jerusalem was considered a capital only 2 times in history: as the capital of ancient Israel and of the modern reestablished state of Israel.

Jerusalem has never been the capital of an Arab territory, despite being the "3rd most holy" place in Islam, directly contradicting the current claims to East Jerusalem made by Abbas and by UNESCO.

Lewis continues:

Even the adjective Palestinian is comparatively new. This, I need hardly remind you, is a region of ancient civilization and of deep-rooted and often complex identities. But Palestine was not one of them. People might identify themselves for various purposed, by religion, by descent, or by allegiance to a particular state or ruler, or sometimes locality, But when they did it locally it was general either the city and immediate district or the larger province, so they would have been Jerusalemites or Jaffaites or the like, or Syrians, identifying either the larger province of Syria, in classical Arabic usage, Sham

While the name "Palestine" is the one that Rome assigned in order to erase the Jewish connection to the land, that name "Palestine" was itself forgotten as well. Using the name Palestine today is itself a modern anomaly in a land of ancient and deep-rooted history. Those who lived in the land during the Ottoman occupation of the land did not call themselves Palestinians -- that is something that would come later, in the 20th century.

If not as Palestinians, then how did the Arabs in the identify themselves?

In The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz explains:

Under Ottoman rule, which prevailed between 1516 and 1918, Palestine was divided into several districts, called sanjaks. These sanjaks were part of administrative units called vilayets. The largest portion of Palestine was part of the vilayet of Syria and was governed from Damascus by a pasha, thus explaining why Palestine was commonly referred to as southern Syria. Following a ten-year occupation by Egypt in the 1830s, Palestine was divided into the vilayet of Beirut, which covered Lebanon and the northern part of Palestine (down to what is now Tel Aviv); and the independent sanjak of Jerusalem, was covered roughly from Jaffa to Jerusalem and south to Gaza and Be'er Sheva. It is thus unclear what it would mean to say the the Palestinians were the people who originally populated the "nation" of Palestine [italicizes in original].

The map below, published by Carta, illustrates the division of the land in the 1830s as described by Dershowitz:

Map from "Israel's Right to Live in Peace Within Defensible Frontiers:
Secure and Recognized Boundaries," by Carta, Jerusalem 1971, p.19.

There were no set boundaries to Palestine, which is what you would expect when there was no political, sovereign state -- just another Ottoman territory.

So if the name "Palestine" was forgotten for centuries, who revived the name -- thus making it possible for the Arabs to take the name Palestine and Palestinian for their own?

Lewis continues:

The constitution or the formation of a political entity called Palestine which eventually gave rise to a nationality called Palestinian and the reconstitution of Jerusalem as the capital were, it seems to me, very important, and as it turns out, lasting innovations of the British Mandate... (p. 154)

Instead of Abbas demanding an apology from Great Britain for the Balfour Declaration, he and all of those who want to call themselves "Palestinians" owe a debt of gratitude to the British. After the Arabs had long forgotten the name "Palestine" it was the British, whose Mandate was based on the Balfour Declaration, who themselves re-established the name of Palestine.

Just as the British re-established the name Palestine as the name for land, it was naturally used for coins and stamps:

This was during the time of the British Mandate.
But what about during the 400 years of the Ottoman Empire preceding it?

According to the Encyclopedia Judaica

Both Turkish and European coins circulated in Erez Israel during Ottoman rule. Tokens issued by various communities, such as the Jews and the German Templers, and by some business firms, were also in circulation...granted special rights to some European powers and resulted in French gold napoleons and Egyptian coins being brought into circulation alongside Turkish coins (5:723)

Contrast this multiplicity of currencies and the lack of an official local currency with the situation that developed under the British:

On the British occupation of Palestine, the Egyptian pound was made legal tender in the territory. It was replaced in 1927 by the Palestine pound...the designs, prepared by the Mandatory government, were intended to be as politically innocuous as possible, the only feature besides the inscriptions being an olive branch or wreath of olive leaves. The inscriptions were trilingual, giving the name of the country, Palestine, and the value in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. As a concession to the Jewish community, the initials "Alef Yud" ("Erez Israel") appeared in brackets following the name Palestine. (5:723-4)

The only coins ever minted with the name "Palestine" on them were the ones issued during the British Mandate while it governed that territory under the authority granted it by League of Nations. No coins with the name Palestine were ever minted before then. There was no reason to, since there was no country called Palestine and no Palestinian identity.

In his book, Islam in History: Ideas, People, and Events in the Middle East And the Jews has a chapter on "Palestine: On the History and Geography of a Name" Lewis notes that the name Palestine has a very different meaning for Arabs and Jews:

It [the name Palestine] had never been used by Jews, for whom the normal name of the country, from the time of the Exodus to the present day, was Eretz Israel. It was no longer used by Muslims, for whom it had never meant more than an administrative su-district, and it had been forgotten even in that limited sense.

The British use of the name Palestine was a convenience, renewing a word that held no special meaning for Arabs and had fallen into disuse. The Arabs went along with the British usage. The Jews on the other had not only historical but indigenous roots to the land, spanning 3 millennia. They preserved that connection wherever they could by incorporating the ancient name, whenever the official name Palestine was used.

Without the Balfour Declaration, and the British Mandate that was based on it, the name Palestine -- which had been forgotten in the region -- would have continued to be forgotten.

But Jews will always have Eretz Yisrael.

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