Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 07, 2017

Why did Saudi Arabia summon Abbas?

2014 meeting

From TOI:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas traveled to Saudi Arabia unexpectedly on Monday to meet with King Salman and Crown Prince Muhammed Bin Salman, with the Gulf kingdom at the height of a major crackdown on members of the royal family.

Abbas had been in Egypt, where he was scheduled to meet with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, when he was summoned to Riyadh to meet with the Saudi rulers, according to the official PA news site Wafa.

The timing is very curious, as this sudden invitation came at the same time of the current upheaval in Saudi Arabia where some leaders were placed under house arrest.

Palestinians are making jokes about it:

Some social media users suggested that Abbas had been summoned to Saudi Arabia to hand in his resignation letter, in the same manner as Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who resigned from Riyadh on Saturday.

Others tried to guess which luxury hotel Abbas would be placed under house arrest in.

The tweets were in reference to the wave of arrests of tens of Saudi princes and businessmen and their detention at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, as well as Saad's resignation.

One Arab analyst did float an interesting idea, though.

As the PA is slowly working to take over parts of Gaza, Hamas plans to maintain its military forces - exactly the way Hezbollah does in Lebanon outside the Lebanese army.

And Hamas has been very chummy with Iran, with their leaders visiting Iran only a couple of weeks ago.

Saudi Arabia is sufficiently worried about Iran that it may be possible that this is meant to push Abbas to stop any more encroachment by the mullahs into Gaza.

If this was only about the moribund "peace process" it could have waited. But when it comes to threats from Iran, and during the ongoing negotiations between the PA and Hamas under Egyptian oversight, this theory makes as much sense as any other.

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11/07 Links Pt1: Fatah glorifies the second Intifada, promises more terror; The Real Arab Spring

From Ian:

PMW: Fatah glorifies the second Intifada, promises more terror

Fatah's Bethlehem Branch glorified the Palestinian Authority's terror campaign (2000-2005) - the second Intifada, posting on Facebook the photo above with the text:

"A souvenir picture from the Al-Aqsa Intifada The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades - Bethlehem."
[Facebook page of the Fatah Movement - Bethlehem Branch, Oct. 26, 2017]

Over 1,000 Israelis, of which the vast majority were civilians, were murdered during the PA terror campaign, mostly in suicide bombings by Hamas and Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades is considered a terror organization by the US and the EU. The image shows rows of masked men, apparently belonging to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, dressed in black clothes, wearing keffiyehs (Arab headdresses) and yellow Fatah headbands, and carrying various types of rifles.

Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous times that Fatah continues to promote violence and refuses to lay down its weapons. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Mahmoud Abbas' Advisor Sultan Abu Al-Einein wrote: "The only way to freedom and liberation is resistance to the occupier... There is no honor for the weak
." [Facebook page of Mahmoud Abbas' Advisor to NGOs Sultan Abu Al-Einein, Nov. 2, 2017]

"Resistance" is in PA terminology often a euphemism for violence and terror.

The Real Arab Spring

Washington’s liberal foreign-policy establishment sees an ambitious would-be autocrat overreaching at home and abroad. But the Saudi leadership was never going to sit still in response to Tehran’s growing hegemony, a threat that was abetted by the Obama administration’s nuclear diplomacy and failure to check Iranian aggression across the geopolitical board. Feeling abandoned by Washington, and with their own system’s weaknesses bearing down on them, the Saudis were due for a big shakeup.

MBS’s [Mohammed bin Salman] project makes sense against this backdrop. His reform vision is by no means democratic. But it is populist, nationalist, and shorn of illusions. Which is to say, it is deeply attuned to the needs of the Arabs today and the worldwide spirit of the age.

Start with populism. By targeting graft, MBS is vindicating average Saudis, who stewed as they watched the well-connected cash in on public money. By granting women the right to drive and loosening social restrictions that made the kingdom one of the worst places to be young, MBS is creating a constituency that is invested in his success. Saudis won’t shed tears for princes locked up in the Riyadh Ritz.

Then there is nationalism. By liberalizing the economy and seeking revenue beyond oil, MBS is shoring up the national foundations of Saudi power–crucial in the confrontation with Tehran. With oil prices depressed, Riyadh can no longer afford to run a colossal welfare state. Weaning Saudis off petro-entitlements is likely to foster a healthier, more accountable sense of belonging and citizenship than the kingdom has afforded citizens since its founding. More philosophically, MBS views the nation-state form as an enduring mechanism for confronting 21st-century challenges. MBS is thus one among a rising group of like-minded world leaders, including Narendra Modi, Benjamin Netanyahu, and, of course, Donald Trump.

Finally, MBS’s reform vision is realistic. As the likes of Bernard Lewis warned and subsequent events showed, Arab society isn’t configured to representative democracy as we in the West understand it. With the precious exception of Tunisia, Arab “democracy” has yielded Islamism, state failure, and civil war. Top-down change, driven by a popular figure like MBS, promises a less perilous path to reform and prosperity for the Saudis and their neighborhood. The U.S. should embrace this vision–and lend a hand.

Caroline Glick: Saudi purges and duty to act

There can be little doubt that there was coordination between the Saudi regime and the Trump administration regarding Saturday’s actions. The timing of the administration’s release last week of most of the files US special forces seized during their 2011 raid of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan was likely not a coincidence.

The files, which the Obama administration refused to release, make clear that Obama’s two chief pretensions – that al-Qaida was a spent force by the time US forces killed bin Laden, and that Iran was interested in moderating its behavior were both untrue. The documents showed that al-Qaida’s operations remained a significant worldwide threat to US interests.

And perhaps more significantly, they showed that Iran was al-Qaida’s chief state sponsor. Much of al-Qaida’s leadership, including bin Laden’s sons, operated from Iran. The notion – touted by Obama and his administration – that Shi’ite Iranians and Sunni terrorists from al-Qaida and other groups were incapable of cooperating was demonstrated to be an utter fiction by the documents.

Their publication now, as Saudi Arabia takes more determined steps to slash its support for radical Islamists, and separate itself from Wahhabist Islam, draws a clear distinction between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Given Saudi Arabia’s record, and the kingdom’s 70-year alliance with Wahhabist clerics, it is hard to know whether Mohammed’s move signals an irrevocable breach between the House of Saud and the Wahhabists.

But the direction is clear. With Hariri’s removal from Lebanon, the lines between the forces of jihad and terrorism led by Iran, and the forces that oppose them are clearer than ever before. And the necessity of acting against the former and helping the latter has similarly never been more obvious.

Where are all the predicted NYC anti-Muslim hate crimes after the terror attack?

It has been a week since Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, yelling "Allahu Akbar," murdered eight innocent people in New York City.

Immediately afterwards we saw articles like this:

Newsweek:

Hate crimes against New York City Muslims were on the rise even before Tuesday's car attack in lower Manhattan—but the region's Pakistanis, Arabs, Turks and other followers of Islam are preparing for more incidents as New York mourns its eight victims.

AOL:

Muslim New Yorkers are bracing themselves for hate crimes after terror attack

New York activist Linda Sarsour was at John F. Kennedy International Airport waiting to board a flight to San Diego Tuesday afternoon when news broke that a truck driver had killed multiple people in Lower Manhattan.
As she watched subtitled cable news reports scroll across a terminal television, the co-organizer of January’s historic Women’s March on Washington said to herself what many Muslim Americans find themselves saying after a terror attack.
“I was thinking, ‘Please, God, don’t let it be a Muslim,’” Sarsour said in an interview Wednesday morning.

Metro:

Fears of Muslim New Yorkers have been reignited by Tuesday’s deadly truck attack in lower Manhattan.

NPR:

SHAPIRO: And so at this point, are you almost expecting a backlash?
RASHID: I think we've seen this cycle repeatedly - that there is an attack. Whether it's committed by a Muslim or not, there's often a backlash against Muslim communities. And when it is committed by a Muslim, there's a real sense of collective guilt. And I really feel particularly for Muslim women who wear hijab who are very visibly Muslim to be in this environment right now.

So where is the backlash in New York that we were warned about? It's been a week, the media has been on high alert - where are all the anti-Muslim hate crimes?

The mosque in Paterson near where Saipov lived did receive a number of threats - most of them from the same person, who didn't block his caller ID. But I cannot find any examples of hate crime in New York City that we are all conditioned to expect.

Funny how the stories of expected anti-Muslim hate crimes always are more prominent than actual anti-Muslim hate crimes.

Newsweek also reported in its story:

The New York Police Department's hate crimes unit reports that half the known hate crimes in the first two quarters of 2017 were against Muslims.

This is completely false. I downloaded the statistics.

Anti-Jewish hate crime complaints in the first two quarters outnumbered anti-Muslim complaints 98-15.

Arrests for anti-Jewish hate crimes outnumbered arrests for anti-Muslim hate crimes 22-10.

Where are the anguished articles about the "wave" of antisemitic crimes in New York City? Why do the comparatively tiny number of Islamophobic crimes get such an outsized amount of attention?

Perhaps because the media doesn't want to consider Jews to be minorities while Muslims want to be considered "people of color"?

But if that's the case, there is another statistic about anti-Muslim crimes that the media will stay away from:
Four of the ten people arrested for anti-Muslim crimes were black.

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Graphic by Haaretz

In June, Haaretz published a major investigative report (excerpted here) on the negotiations between Israel, the US and the Palestinians in 2013 and 2014.

The report shows that Netanyahu approved a framework, created by John Kerry and his team, that would have resulted in a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines with land swaps. When it was presented to Mahmoud Abbas, he angrily rejected it.

When Kerry came back with a sweeter offer that addressed Abbas' concerns - without consulting the Israelis - Abbas never responded and let the talks die.

This story, published in an ultra-left wing newspaper, it the biggest news story of the year for Israel.

It proves that Netanyahu is far more flexible towards a two-state solution than any reporter has ever written. It proves that Abbas is more intransigent and uninterested in peace than any reporter is willing to admit.

It completely up-ends the conventional wisdom about Israel and the Palestinians.

And no one wants to talk about it.

The media and world diplomats don't want to upset their carefully crafted mythology of an intransigent Likud government and a moderate PA. This story destroys that.

Worse, the Government of Israel doesn't want to mention this story either - because Netanyahu needs to portray himself as someone defending Israel's interests in the face of his more right-wing coalition partners.

So no one, right or left, is touching the more important story of the year.

Literally every day over the past two weeks we have seen op-eds and editorials castigating Britain or Balfour or Israel for blocking a Palestinian state that would fulfill a part of the Declaration that was never written.

Typical is The Guardian which wrote:

The Guardian of 1917 supported, celebrated – and could even be said to have helped facilitate – the Balfour declaration. However, Israel today is not the country we foresaw or would have wanted. It is run by the most rightwing government in its history, dragged ever rightward by fanatical extremists. ...

For Palestinians the situation is even more desperate. Almost 5 million live under a military occupation, which has lasted for five decades. ....

This is all the fault of the Palestinian leadership which has consistently rejected every single peace offer. Including peace offers supported by the "most rightwing government in [Israel's] history." Clearly, Israel's right wing extremists are more liberal and supportive of peace than the most moderate and liberal Palestinian leaders.

But no one is willing to admit this - from the right or the left.

The government of Israel is not going to help spread the best pro-Israel story of the year (perhaps the decade since Netanyahu has been Israel's leader since 2009.)

The mainstream media is not going to spread it.

Haaretz, which broke the story, has treated the issue like Kryptonite since then.It's own op-eds have ignored the story and continued to use the conventional wisdom of evil Likud and wonderful Fatah.

Competing Israeli media don't want to credit Haaretz with the scoop. They haven't reported it.

John Kerry didn't want to mention this when he cravenly pushed Israel, and only Israel, to make even more concessions- even though he knows the truth.

Neither right-wing nor left-wing websites want to admit that Netanyahu was willing to make sacrifices for peace similar to what Olmert and Barak were willing to do, and considerably beyond what Yitzchak Rabin was willing to do.

And Israel suffers because of it.

But you could do something. Every time someone writes or speaks about Israeli intransigence and Palestinian suffering, respond with the facts: Even Netanyahu accepted a Palestinian state, and Mahmoud Abbas rejected it. Force Israel's detractors to respond to this. Because the only rejectionists in the Israeli-Arab conflict has always been the Palestinians.

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

Montefiore

Haaretz reports:

Britain's Labour Party is not doing enough to combat anti-Semitism masked as anti-Zionism, three prominent and influential British Jewish writers have claimed.

Historians Simon Shama, Simon Sebag Montefiore and novelist Howard Jacobson penned an open letter in the U.K.'s The Times criticizing Jeremy Corbyn's party for what they called its "derisory" response to anti-Zionism that they claim has become indistinguishable from anti-Semitism.

“We are alarmed that during the past few years, constructive criticism of Israeli governments has morphed into something closer to antisemitism under the cloak of so-called anti-Zionism," the joint letter read.

This is an important letter. The trio are all passionate Zionists. Shama once created an entire hour-long documentary for the BBC giving the moral case for Israel and he defended Israel's reaction to Hamas terror in Gaza. Montefiore, from the famed Zionist famly, wrote the acclaimed "Jerusalem: A Biography." Jacobson has fiercely defended Zionism in print.

So it is most disappointing - nay, infuriating - to read that their open letter included this passage:

“We do not forget nor deny that the Palestinian people have an equally legitimate, ancient history and culture in Palestine nor that they have suffered wrongs that must be healed. We hope that a Palestinian state will exist peacefully alongside Israel...”

Equally legitimate ancient history and culture in Palestine?

Simon Schama

The first two are historians, for God's sake. How can they say that Palestinian history and culture are on a par with that of Jews?

The idea is absurd. There were no Arab people called "Palestinian" before the 20th century, and the only reason they exist is to deny Zionism. Their "ancient history and culture" consists of soap from Nablus and costumes from Bethlehem, which no one ever called "Palestinian," and little else.

It is an insult to Jews and Zionists to equate the two claims and narratives and ideas of "justice.".

Even if you give these writers the benefit of the doubt and say that they are only making this claim to allow their message about antisemitism to be easier to swallow by British anti-Zionists - doesn't that mean that they don't really believe that anti-Zionism is a modern form of antisemitism? It dilutes their argument, instead of strengthening it.

Moreover, when prominent Jews openly say that the Jewish claim on the Jewish homeland is nothing special, then why on earth should the rest of the world think that Israel has a right to exist - especially when Arabs universally claim that Jews have no rights to the land whatsoever? Who wins that argument? The British Zionist leaders are handing the keys to Jewish holy places to those who want to ban Jews from visiting.

The fear that prominent Jewish Zionists have to fearlessly defend the Jewish claims to Israel in the face of the Arab lies is sickening. Israel's claim to all of the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean is far superior to that of anyone else - historically, culturally, politically, legally. When the most prominent Zionists in Britain show that even they don't believe that, there is something very rotten going on in England.

The irony is that people respect those who are strong in their beliefs that they are right. Embracing the Arab narrative makes observers doubt the sincerity of these prominent Jews, no matter how eloquently they state the case for Israel in other contexts. The truth is solidly on the side of Israel, and their propleptically giving the arguments for the other side dilutes their message. They could have simply said that Palestinian Arabs have rights too - as all humans do - and that their rights must be respected in any solution to the conflict.

There may be legitimate reasons to want a two-state solution. But it should be done because Israel, the entity that has the strongest claim, is willing to compromise on that claim for peace. If it is done because one legitimizes Arab claims, then Arab claims on Green Line Israel are just as compelling (and illegitimate) as their claims on the "territories." (And you will never hear even the most moderate Palestinian say that Jews have a right to self-determination.)

No self-respecting Zionist can accept any part of the Palestinian Arab claims - because the very acceptance of those claims negates Jewish claims. That is the entire point of Palestinian nationalism since the 1910s - to delegitimize Zionism and Jewish peoplehood altogether. If there was no Zionism, there would have never been Palestinian nationalism which exists to combat Zionism. (Where were the Palestinian nationalists demanding self-determination in the territories between 1948 amd 1967?)

If Schama and Montefiore disagree, please, I would love to hear their arguments. I have looked for years for any evidence of a "Palestinian" nation and culture and people that predate Zionism, without luck.

I have no doubt that these three writers love Israel, but they seem very unaware of how much damage they can unwittingly cause to the nation they love by embracing the narrative of those who want to destroy Israel.

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11/06 Links Pt2: The roots of Labour's antisemitism problem; Who Saved Israel in 1947?

From Ian:

Syrian Diplomat Who Accused Israelis of Trafficking Children’s Organs Now Professor at Rutgers University

A former Syrian diplomat who accused Israeli officials of trafficking children’s organs is now working as a professor at state-funded Rutgers University in New Jersey, The Algemeiner has learned.

Mazen Adi, an adjunct professor in Rutgers’ Political Science Department, worked for Syria’s foreign ministry in various roles for 16 years starting in August 1998, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Most recently, between January 2007 and July 2014, Adi served as a diplomat and legal adviser at the Permanent Mission of Syria to the United Nations in New York. He represented the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as it met pro-democracy protesters with lethal force in 2011, sparking a conflict that has left an estimated 465,000 people dead or missing.

By the time Adi left Turtle Bay, the Assad regime had faced years of international opprobrium and sanctions, having been accused of perpetrating atrocities including mass killings, systematic torture, forced starvation and chemical weapons attacks.

Adi voiced Assad’s views — and occasionally those of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — at both the UN Security Council and Sixth Committee of the General Assembly. Among his comments, found in UN records from 2008 to 2011, were allegations that Israel systematically targeted civilians, destroyed the environment and buried alive enemy soldiers; that Syria was a “trailblazer” in the fight against terrorism; and that Assad was committed to seeking a peaceful resolution to the Syrian conflict and implemented “sweeping reforms” following popular protests.

U.S. should deport Rutgers prof who represented Syria, abetted genocide

An international human rights group today called on Rutgers University to fire Mazen Adi, a professor on war crimes law, on grounds that as a Syrian diplomat and legal advisor he justified the war crimes of the genocidal Assad regime.

UN Watch, an independent non-governmental monitoring group based in Geneva, also called on the U.S. to deport Mr. Adi, whose identity was first exposed by The Algemeiner newspaper yesterday.

“The U.S. government needs to investigate how a long-time agent of the Syrian regime, close ally of Iran, was granted a visa to work and teach in America,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.

“It ought to be a matter of profound concern that an American university would allow an apologist for the Syrian regime’s genocide to be a teacher.”

“When the United Nations debated Syria’s culpability for bombing its own people, Mazen Adi said that the Syrian authorities ‘upheld all their legal and judicial responsibilities,’” Neuer went on to say. “He is a liar and an apologist for mass murder.”

While serving as a Syrian delegate and legal advisor at the UN, Mr. Adi systematically acted as an apologist for the mass murder committed by the Assad regime against his own people, helping Syria to win impunity at the UN to conduct continued war crimes.

Mr. Adi joined Rutgers in September 2015, where he teaches international criminal law, political science, and United Nations and global policy studies.

Prior to Rutgers, Adi had served for 16 years as a Syrian diplomat, including as a legal advisor and occasional chargé d’affaires at the Syrian mission to the UN in New York.

Rutgers prof: "Israel trafficking in children's organs"

Rutgers prof Mazen Adi spins Assad genocide as "democracy"

Rutgers prof: Syria "upheld all legal responsibilities," "preserves rights of accused"

Fatah's disgusting Theresa May cartoons

Here are some cartoons that were published on Fatah's Facebook page and other media in the past week or two directed at Theresa May:

Yes, Fatah has turned Theresa May into an honorary Jew!

See more from PMW.

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The Zionist conspiracy against Tariq Ramadan (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

For an ardent Zionist like me, it is utterly disappointing to learn from the United Arab Emirates’ news site The National that “Supporters of Mr Ramadan are describing the accusations against him [as] part of a Zionist plot to destroy his name.” Obviously, there can be no doubt whatsoever that the eminent Oxford professor has the most awesome supporters who know what they’re talking about. So now the depressing question is: what took the infamous Elders of Zion so long??? Are they getting real old??? I mean, why didn’t they act well before 2009, when Ramadan was appointed “H.H. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies and Senior Research Fellow” at Oxford’s St Antony’s College???

On the other hand, I have to admit that the Zionist plot starts to look really formidable. The first to accuse Ramadan was French ex-Salafi Henda Ayari, who – encouraged by the #MeToo campaign – went to the police to file a complaint against Ramadan for “rape, sexual assault, willful violence, harassment and intimidation.” Soon afterwards, another French woman (who remained unnamed) came forward and “gave an account of an extremely violent [sexual] assault to two French newspapers.” A third woman reportedly “told Le Parisien in an interview … that Mr Ramadan sexually harassed her in 2014 and blackmailed her for sexual favours.”

And then there was a rather stunning confession by a French official “who was considered the ‘Monsieur Islam’ of the French Ministry of the Interior between 1997 and 2014, [and who] was well acquainted with Mr Ramadan.” Reportedly, “Monsieur Islam” was really really shocked by the allegations against Ramadan: he “insisted he had ‘never heard of rapes’” – all he sort of knew was that Tariq Ramadan “had many mistresses, that he consulted sites, that girls were brought to the hotel at the end of his lectures, that he invited them to undress, that some resisted and that he could become violent and aggressive.”

Shocking, utterly shocking, isn’t it – who could ever suspect that a man known for sometimes becoming “violent and aggressive” with “girls … brought to the hotel at the end of his lectures” would rape some of those girls???

The plot (the Zionist plot, naturally!!!) thickened further when Swiss media reported that four Swiss women testified about being sexually exploited by Ramadan while they were his teenage students. And once again, “a Swiss specialist in Islam who spent years accompanying Mr Ramadan on his trips across Europe,” admitted “that he had heard various rumours and suspicions about his former close associate’s behaviour over the years.”

Of course it should go without saying that the people who kept quiet about all those allegations against Ramadan did the right thing – as the Director of Oxford’s Middle East Centre just put it so delicately: “It’s not just about sexual violence. For some students it’s just another way for Europeans to gang up against a prominent Muslim intellectual. We must protect Muslim students who believe and trust in him, and protect that trust.”

Absolutely and obviously right: it would be plain old “Islamophobia” to focus on the fact that there have been accusations of sexual misconduct and even potentially criminal conduct against Ramadan for years and that some women finally have found the courage to come forward to testify!!!

So all we can do now is helplessly watch the monstrously evil Zionist plot against Tariq Ramadan take its course. But in the meantime, let me just highlight a bit of the record of the “prominent Muslim intellectual” whom Oxford apparently deems so worthy of the continued “trust” of students – particularly Muslim students.

If you check out Ramadan’s own website, you will see that it has several pages worth of links to his Press TV show “Islam and Life.” According to the Facebook page of the program, it is a “weekly show with Prof. Tariq Ramadan on the world’s fastest growing religion and the daily challenges faced by its followers especially in the West.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has described Press TV as “Iran’s official English-language propaganda arm” and “one of the world’s leading dispensers of conspiratorial anti-Semitism in English.”

Maybe Oxford’s H.H. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies and Senior Research Fellow Tariq Ramadan could devote one of his shows to the “Zionist plot” against him???

Now let’s have a quick look at some of the views the oh-so-trustworthy Oxford professor shares with his social media followers (634K on Twitter, more than 2 million on Facebook).

Some two years ago – on the same day when The Atlantic published Jeffrey Goldberg’s excellent piece on “The Paranoid, Supremacist Roots of the Stabbing Intifada” – Ramadan posted a rant entitled “ISRAELI SOCIETY IS SICK.” Naturally, no word about the ongoing wave of murderous stabbing and car-ramming attacks by Palestinian terrorists, but plenty of blood-libel style poison about how utterly evil and murderous Israeli society is, concluding with the professor’s view: “It is Israel that is the first danger of Israel, and its main disease.” One of Ramadan’s fans responded with a succinct summary: “Israel has become its worst nightmare; zionism is naziism.”

Already a few weeks earlier, Ramadan bitterly denounced “the great democrats of the world” who “talk about self-defense of Israel” which really means giving “Israel carte blanche to spread inhumanity, repression and horror.” The eminent professor concluded “Disgusting, really.”

If you’re not too disgusted by now, here are a few more similar outpourings of Oxford’s H.H. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies and Senior Research Fellow Tariq Ramadan: “#Israel They kill in #Palestine;” “#Israel CONDEMN ! CONDEMN ! FOR GOD SAKE CONDEMN !!!;” and “ISRAEL AND STATE TERRORISM.”

Finally, it will come as no surprise that Carlos Latuff – the proud second-prize-winner of Iran’s 2006 “International Holocaust Cartoon Competition” – is the kind of “artist” who can express in a picture that is worth a thousand antisemitic words how Tariq Ramadan feels.

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11/06 Links Pt1: The British left’s obsession with Israel-Palestine; Melanie Phillips: Our crazy world

From Ian:

The British left’s obsession with Israel-Palestine (Saturday Nov 4, 2017)

A short interview (with Tom Gross) while yet another anti-Israel protest takes places in London, with buses organized by the trade unions and others bringing in protestors from all around Britain.

Meanwhile there have been no protests for the 600,000 Rohingya Muslims made refugees in recent weeks by the military in Burma, which has had British arms and training and like Israel is another former British colony, and has been carrying out systematic ethnic cleansing and a scorched earth policy against Rohingya.

Nor for the 160,000 Kurdish men, women and children forced from their homes in the last two weeks by Iranian-controlled Shia militia in Kirkuk.

For over two years now, partly using British weapons, the Saudis and other gulf Arabs have been bombing civilians in Yemen, leading to mass starvation and malaria inflicting millions of people there. There hasn’t been a single protest in London. And the list goes on...

Andrew Marr clumsily claims “a lot of Jewish friends” and “Jewish community leaders” blame Israel for antisemitism in Britain

BBC presenter Andrew Marr has claimed in an interview with the visiting Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that “a lot of Jewish friends” and “a lot of Jewish community leaders have said that Israeli government policies are feeding antisemitism in Britain.

Mr Marr asked Mr Netanyahu: “Can I ask you about the condition of Jews in this country because I’ve got a lot of Jewish friends and there are a lot of Jewish community leaders who are very worried about your government and they say that particularly the settlements issue has made it much, much harder to defend Israel in this country.” However, Mr Marr then added: “We have always had antisemitism in Britain but it has been quite quiet for a long time and it is back on the rise.”

Mr Netanyahu correctly answered: “Well, you know, I wouldn’t blame Jews for antisemitism any more than I would blame blacks for racial hatred stirred against them, or anti-gay hatred. It’s because of what they are.” Mr Netanyahu appeared to have more to say, but Mr Marr interjected: “There’s a distinction between Jews and policies.” Mr Marr was correct to draw such a distinction, which makes his suggestion that many Jews think that rising antisemitism in Britain has been fuelled by the political positions adopted by the Israeli government so extremely clumsy.

There is no evidence that Israeli government policy, which has not changed terribly markedly in recent years, has had any impact on rising hate crime against British Jews, nor is there any evidence that there is any policy that the Israeli government could adopt to stem the tide of hatred aimed at British Jews by the neo-Nazis of the far-right, the extremists of the far-left, or Islamists inspired by groups such as ISIS.

IsraellyCool: Binyamin Netanyahu Handles ‘Hostile’ Andrew Marr Interview Like a Boss

I am not sure if it just me, but BBC television presenter Andrew Marr comes across as both goofy and smug. And he would not be out of place in a James Bond film as Q, showing Bond the latest gadgets.

Be that as it may, he recently had Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on to discuss the Middle East conflict. He tried to play “bad cop” – much like Tim Sebastian used to do on HARDTalk, and still does on DW’s Conflict Zone.

Bibi always give a good account of himself but I’d venture to say this was one of his most masterful performances.

Benjamin Netanyahu on the Israeli Palestinian "conflict".

Over the years, I’ve talked about some of the psychological factors that might explain the behavior the of BDS advocates. These include a ruthlessness that drives them to drag third-parties into their battles, regardless of the cost to others, and fantasy politics which leads them to engage in activities for the sole purpose of making themselves feel more important than they are.

Some of these factors are actually detrimental to the BDS cause (witness the nearly universal revulsion that greets their fantasy-driven public temper tantrums). But some of them are a major source of the boycotter’s power, especially when faced with opponents who labor under the illusion that BDS is a genuine, “normal” political project.

For example, the BDSers ability to ignore any facts or arguments that do not suit their purpose or fit their world view means they can never actually lose an argument since, in reality, they refuse to engage in one (even if they pretend their diatribes to be dialog). But there is another psychological element that fuels not just BDS but the entire anti-Israel project that relates to the dynamics of blame.

This is something most of us can relate to since we all are involved in blame dynamics (healthy and unhealthy) at various points in our lives. To take a simple example, imagine a couple that drives to the beach where one person places the car keys on a beach blanket. As the day winds to a close, the other person folds and packs up the same beach blanket, but does not notice the keys which tumble into the sand and get lost.

Under such circumstances, the couple could see this chain of events as an unlucky accident, a pair of reasonable actions that, when linked together, led to negative consequences neither party could have foreseen. But since it was a pair of individual actions that led to the loss, each person could choose to blame the other for one of the two steps that led to the problem (leaving the keys on the blanket rather than in a bag or pocket vs. not noticing them when packing up), claiming - in effect - that just one person bore primary responsibility for the problem they both face.

On some occasions, the circumstances lend themselves to assigning primary responsibility to one person or another. But blame is rarely driven by such analytical calculations. Instead, the first person to accuse the other tends to gain the initiative, putting the blamed person on the defensive (often in an attempt to absolve the blamer of responsibility). And in this dynamic, someone willing to accept some responsibility tends to be at a disadvantage vs. someone willing to accept none.

Over time, the roles of blamer and blamee can become engrained in personal relationships, causing the person who is “faster on the draw” to automatically zero in on something the other person did that is blameworthy, with the other person taking a default position of either accepting responsibility or, eventually, avoiding confrontational situations that may be driven by an uncomfortable blame dynamic.

If this dynamic is common among individuals where the stakes are fairly low, it is a cornerstone of international politics where the nation assigned blame can face serious consequences (from being targeted for economic punishment, to justifying war waged against it). Which is why nations routinely tap the aforementioned blame dynamic, making sure to point an accusing finger outwards immediately and never acknowledging responsibility for anything (regardless of their actual culpability). And within the Arab-Israeli conflict, this politics of blame has reached near pathological levels.

This is why every negative action that can be assigned to Israel (real or imaginary) is the subject of not just accusation by this or that Arab country, but must become top priority for every international organization – combining the blame dynamic with Israel’s foes willingness to corrupt any institution in order to achieve their own ends.

This is also why the Arab states and the Palestinians will never accept responsibility under any circumstances for anything they are unquestionably responsible for (from supporting every one of the 20^th century’s totalitarian movements, to rejecting peace offers over and over again, to resorting to violence and triggering wars in which their own people suffer the consequences).

This dynamic plays itself out amongst the Palestinians “friends” in the BDS movement who, if cornered, will manage a choke out a cough of concern regarding Hamas rocket fire into Israeli schoolyards. But once Israel returns fire, they rise together as a single great pointing finger and shouting voice screaming “J’accuse” at Israel (and its supporters), insisting that the boycotters alone represent the voice of human rights and justice (regardless of how little they have to say on either subject when Israel is not the target of their abuse).

In the case of the BDSers, the blame dynamic fits perfectly with their fantasy of being the only voices of courage and virtue in a Manichean world where evil and all-powerful opponents endlessly conspire against them.

Getting back to the original dynamic described in the earlier lost-keys story, the endless repetition of one party’s readiness to blame and unwillingness to accept responsibility creates a situation whereby the party trying to avoid the blame game who is willing to accept some responsibility is punished for not immediately and unquestionably accepting all of it.

This is the unhealthy dynamic Israel faces vis-à-vis its finger-pointing, responsibility-avoiding foes, and it is not entirely clear how she can get out of it short of becoming as ruthless, cynical and insensitive as her accusers.

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UK diplomat admits "second half of Balfour" doesn't exist - but it SHOULD

Last month the UK mission at the US tweeted a bizarre statement that there was a second half to Balfour that has never been fulfilled.

As noted then, this statement makes no sense. There were three clauses to the Balfour Declaration:

1. His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people
2. nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine
3. or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The tweet implied that a Palestinian state would be the fulfillment of the "second half" of Balfour, even though it only mentioned civil and religious rights - both of which are safeguarded under Israeli law.

Sir Simon McDonald, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, spoke at a Balfour centenary event last week at the Portcullis House, Westminster where he expanded on this "second half of Balfour" - and his assertions are literally a fantasy.

He said, “If written after the Second World War, when the international community developed a rules-based international architecture, the Declaration would have included the political rights of self-determination of these communities too.”

McDonald is saying that the "other half of Balfour" is a clause that was never written - but would have been, supposedly, had Balfour written them in 1947.

Official British policy is that Israel is obligated to create a Palestinian state dedicated to its destruction because the British Government has given itself the ability to insist on using alternative history fiction as a diplomatic instrument.

This is bizarre on so many levels that one doesn't know where to begin. And to add insult to injury, McDonald spoke "as a historian."

McDonald also engages in his own bit of revisionist history when he describes the Peel Commission as an attempt to fulfill this fictional part of Balfour: "A two-state solution was first proposed by the Peel Commission in 1937 in an attempt to make a reality of both elements of the Balfour Declaration," he asserted.

But the Peel Commission report does not pretend to be a fulfillment of Balfour. On the contrary, it attempts to abrogate Balfour. First it says that Balfour's assumptions (included in the Mandate) on how things would play out were wrong:

The association of the policy of the Balfour Declaration with the Mandate System implied the belief that Arab hostility to the former would presently be overcome, owing to the economic advantages which Jewish immigration was expected to bring to Palestine as a whole.

The entire idea of partition is antithetical to Balfour who anticipated the Jewish National Home on all of Palestine. Peel attempted to change the rules.

Later on, in discussing holy places as a separate territory, Peel explicitly abrogates Balfour:

Guarantees as to the rights of the Holy Places and free access thereto (as provided in Article 13 of the existing Mandate), as to transit across the mandated area, and as to non-discrimination in fiscal, economic and other matters should be maintained in accordance with the principles of the Mandate System. But the policy of the Balfour Declaration would not apply; and no question would arise of balancing Arab against Jewish claims or vice versa. All the inhabitants of the territory would stand on an equal footing. The only official language" would be that of the Mandatory Administration. Good and just government without regard for sectional interests would be its basic principle.

Balfour implies the the Jewish national home would administer the holy places and allow full access (as Israel does today.) Peel wrests that right away.

Finally, it remains fascinating that during this month of non-stop Balfour coverage, so little has been written about the third clause that was supposed to ensure that Jews in other countries would be treated well even with a Jewish national home in historic Israel. The Arabs - including the Arabs of Jordan, who were under British influence - certainly didn't adhere to this clause, and Great Britain did not do anything to enforce that among its Arab friends.

(h/t Irene)

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Despite Hamas-PA agreement, crossings still closed and medicines still not entering Gaza

While much has been made of the Hamas-PA agreements in Cairo, on the ground things are getting worse for Gazans.

On November 1, the PA formally took over responsibility for the Gaza crossings into Egypt. Days later, nothing has changed. Egypt has not yet opened its border and no one is talking about any practical moves the PA has made to help out. The PA is insisting on a full return to the 2005 crossings agreement, and apparently the de facto Gaza leaders of Hamas have not yet agreed to some of the provisions.

The EUBAM monitors of the Rafah crossing, who have been paid to do nothing for the past ten years, have not yet been asked to resume their mission by any of the parties.

Naturally, the Gisha NGO blames Israel above all:

Two million people in Gaza have been held hostage to political power struggles for far too long, while their most basic needs and rights have been trampled or overlooked. The parties responsible for this ongoing reality include the feuding Palestinian authorities in Gaza and Ramallah, as well as the Egyptian government, but first and foremost Israel, the only party that has maintained extensive control over the Strip for the past 50 years.

(Gisha never said a word against Hamas' role in restricting people's movement until this blog shamed them a few years ago.)

Meanwhile, the severe medicine shortage in Gaza - entirely the fault of the Palestinian Authority who has refused to ship medicines there since spring - keeps getting worse, despite the Cairo agreement.

The Gaza Ministry of Health announced that the southern governorates have completely depleted their stocks of 130 pharmaceutical products, 45% of the list of essential medicines, including 50 types of surgical drugs like anesthetics.

Yet the only party that gets blamed remains Israel,which imposes no restrictions on medicines into Gaza.

"Human rights" NGOs are notably silent, because for them to mention these problems after the supposed agreement between Hamas and the PA would show yet again that their singleminded focus on Israel and willingness to give the Palestinian leaderships a pass has in fact been part of the reason why Gazans suffer. Today.

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Iran again reveals how nervous it is about Israel/Gulf ties

From Iran's Mehr News agency:

Leader’s Advisor, Ali Akbar Velayati, said certain countries of the region were obsessed with normalization of relations with the Zionist regime.

Iranian Leader’s Aide Ali Akbar Velayati made the remarks while addressing the second International Union of Resistance Scholars on Thursday in Beirut.

The official said the opening ceremony of the meeting had been accompanied a message by Leader of Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, who called for continued fight against Israel; “the issue reveals the great importance attached to the Palestinian issue by Iran’s Leader.”

“Gathering of great scholars of the Islamic world in one place indicates that resistance, and not compromise, remains as the only path to freedom of Palestine,” he continued.

The secretary general of the Islamic Awakening Assembly said that some of the countries in the region were unashamedly after normalizing relations with Israel.

He emphasized that, driven by the Iranian Leader’s guidelines, Palestine will always remain the first issue of the Islamic world.

If Arab countries don't consider Israel an enemy, then Iran's desire to lead the Islamic world is a failure. But it has no cards to play to make the Arab nations turn towards Iran, especially given how it is acting in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

Iran is what is driving the Arabs to cooperate with Israel. And Iran cannot figure out how to fix that and maintain its Shiite-supremacist stance.

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