Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

11/28 Links Pt1: U.N. Challenged to End Its 'Anti-Israel Hate and Rejectionism'; An Arab Muslim in the Israeli Army

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The State Department drops the ball

Over the weekend, The New York Times published its latest broadside against US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for what the newspaper referred to as his “culling” of senior State Department officials and his failure to date to either nominate or appoint senior personnel to open positions.

But if the State Department’s extraordinary about face on the PLO’s mission in Washington is an indication of what passes for US diplomacy these days, then perhaps Tillerson should just shut down operations at Foggy Bottom. The US would be better off without representation by its diplomats.

Last week, in accordance with US law, Tillerson notified the PLO’s Washington envoy Husam Zomlot that the PLO’s mission in Washington has to close within 90 days because it has breached the legal terms governing its operations.

Specifically, Tillerson explained, PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas breached US law when he called for the International Criminal Court to indict and prosecute Israeli nationals during his speech before the UN General Assembly in September.

Tillerson explained that under US law, the only way to keep the PLO mission in Washington open is if US President Donald Trump certifies in the next 90 days that its representatives are engaged in “direct and meaningful negotiations” with Israel.

The PLO didn’t respond to Tillerson with quiet diplomacy. It didn’t make an attempt to appease Congress or the State Department by for instance agreeing to end its campaign to get Israelis charged with war crimes at the ICC. It didn’t put an abrupt end to its financial support for terrorism and terrorists. It didn’t stop inciting Palestinians to hate Israel and seek its destruction. It didn’t disavow its efforts to form a unity government with Hamas and its terrorist regime in Gaza.

It didn’t join Saudi Arabia and Egypt in their efforts to fight Iranian power and influence in the region. It didn’t end its efforts to have Israeli companies blacklisted by the UN Human Rights Committee or scale back its leadership of the international boycott movement against Israel.

The PLO certainly didn’t begin “direct and meaningful negotiations” with Israel.

Melanie Phillips: Reformist noises coming out of Saudi Arabia, what all this might mean for the Arab-Israel conflict

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network the significance of the continuing reformist noises coming out of Saudi Arabia, what all this might mean for the Arab-Israel conflict and the row over the remarks made by Israeli deputy foreign minister Tzipi Hotovely about American Jews.

The shedding of blood, the violation of the sacred houses of God and the terrorizing of worshippers are acts of corruption on the earth.
Ahmed El-Tayyeb, current Grand Imam of al-Azhar and former president of al-Azhar University

This past Friday, over 300 Sufi Arabs were murdered in a terrorist attack on their mosque:

The death toll in a bomb and gun attack on a Sufi mosque in northern Sinai has risen to 305, with 27 children among the dead, Egypt's state prosecutor said Saturday.

Another 128 people were wounded, according to a statement from the public prosecutor read out on Egyptian state-run news channel Nile TV.

Between 25 and 30 armed men carried out the assault on the al Rawdah Sufi mosque in Bir al-Abed, the statement said.

Along with the horror at the senseless massacre is the sense that of all places, a mosque -- as a holy place of worship -- should be immune from bloodshed. Even if the Islamists behind the attack considered Sufis to be heretics, the blind gunfire would result in the destruction of copies of the Koran in addition to the carnage.

There was a similar Western sense of revulsion and confusion in response to other news reports of Muslim attacks on mosques over the years.

In the course of one year, from August 2010 to August 2011:

In August 2011, the New York Times reported: 28 Are Killed in a Bombing at a Mosque in Baghdad.
In October 2010 in Afghanistan, The Taliban murdered the head of Kunduz province, along with 14 other people, in a mosque bombing in Tahkar after the governor had been spoken out against the Taliban and other terror groups.
In September 2010, a mosque was burned during the arson attack on the Crazy Water Park in Gaza according to a report by The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
August 2010, a mosque was destroyed in Lebanon in a fight between Hezbollah and a rival group.
In addition, a Turkish general admitted he deliberately destroyed a mosque in 1974 to intimidate an enemy:

In remarks published in the Haber Türk daily yesterday as part of an interview with Gen. Sabri Yirmibesoglu, who led the Special War Department in 1971 and also worked to mobilize civilian resistance during Turkey's military intervention on Cyprus in 1974, said: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent's incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example,” in an attempt to clear things up. [emphasis added]

While the Turkish destruction of a mosque was in the context of a "military intervention" if not a war, those other examples, including the Sufi mosque massacre, were a consequence of Muslim infighting.

Why was there no sense of sacrilege to inhibit the attackers in each case?

Back in 2010, in response to the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center dedicated a chapter of it's own report, Hamas and the Terrorist Threat from the Gaza Strip, to the Hamas exploitation of mosques. An article in The Jerusalem Post summarized the report findings: Hamas used almost 100 mosques for military purposes:

The Malam report asserts that the extensive use of mosques to store weapons and as launch pads for rocket attacks on Israel was part of a Hamas strategy based on the knowledge that the IDF would not target civilian infrastructure including mosques, which were therefore ideal for weapons storehouses and rocket attacks.

The Malam analysis is based on Hamas sketches of neighborhoods that show that mosques were used as sniper positions, Israel Air Force videos showing massive secondary explosions after mosques were hit as well as reports from IDF troops.

One mosque in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City was raided by IDF troops who discovered a warehouse full of rockets and mortar shells. During the operation, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at Israel troops from the mosque.

On January 13, IDF troops raided a mosque in Jabalya in northern Gaza that was full of weaponry including an anti-aircraft cannon. In a mosque in the Atatra neighborhood in northern Gaza City, troops uncovered a secret warehouse built under the podium, from where the imam leads prayers, which was full of weaponry and improvised explosive devices.

According to the report, the use of mosques for military purposes is as old as Islam itself:

The massive military use Hamas and the other terrorist organizations made of mosques has historical-religious roots. By the 7th century the prophet Muhammad had turned the mosque he built in Medina into a center for preaching, a place where political matters were dealt with, consultations held and appointments made, and where the Muslim army was prepared before it was dispatched to war and to attack the enemies of Islam. Muslim sages are of the opinion that the mosque is not only a house of prayer but that other uses, including military and political, are acceptable. Contemporary examples of the military and political uses made of mosques by radical Islamic terrorist organizations can be found in the Gaza Strip and many other places in the Arab-Muslim world. [p145. Emphasis in the original]

One example of such a Muslim religious leader is the Salafist Sheikh Saeed Abdul Azim:

The mosque is the place of worship and retreat, the place of education and guidance, the place of consultation and advice of Muslims, the safe driving center, the headquarters of the military command, the holding of the armies of the Mujahedeen in the cause of Allah and the place of reception of the coming delegations of the Messenger of Allah. The mosque, and say to them - peace be upon him -: (without you sons of Arvada) Agreed upon.[translated with Google Translate; emphasis added]

Then there is Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who until 2015 permitted suicide bombings:

Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi asserted at the time that mosques may be used for political, social, cultural and religious purposes, including on issues related to jihad. He noted that in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, the mosque was the center of activities for the entire Muslim society. The mosque was not only a place to worship Allah, but also a place of study, a gathering place for consultation, a place for people to get to know one another and the like. According to him, in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, delegations would travel from the Arabian Peninsula to meet with the Prophet at the mosque. In those days, Friday sermons were delivered at mosques, and instructions from the Prophet were given to his followers on various topics, including religious, social and political matters. In AlQaradawi’s opinion, since the inception of Islam, the mosque has played an important role in encouraging Muslims to embark on jihad and in the management of the "resistance against the enemies of the [Muslim] community, from among invaders who seek to govern it [i.e., the Muslim community]." Al-Qaradawi noted that mosques play an important role in any jihad. Moreover, in his opinion, it is permissible to preach in a mosque against a government that does not comply with Sharia. [p. 2, emphasis in original]

Al-Qaradawi. Source: Wikipedia. Credit: Nmkuttiady

Using mosques as a base of operations to fire rockets of course disregards the danger it causes to civilians. We have seen in the past that civilian casualties are not a concern for a terrorist group like Hamas. However, the further danger of this approach towards mosques is that they do not appear to have the kind of sanctity that protects worshippers from attacks by other Muslims.

This is a Pandora's Box that was faced by Jews, when in protest against the writings of the Rambam, they burned his books. When non-Jews saw how Jews treated their own writings, they picked up on the idea and burned Jewish holy books too.

This domino effect explains how the Taliban had no problem defacing a Koran in order to sell Heroin.

We learned our lesson.

The Muslim attitude towards mosques, however, is hardwired into Islam -- and considering the tinderbox that is the Middle East, that Sufi mosque is unlikely to be the last to be targeted by Islamist terrorists.

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Teachers in Gaza are upset at UNRWA.

Apparently, UNRWA (reasonably) decided to dismiss 164 teachers for not having bachelor's degrees, a requirement.

The teacher's union is fighting the decision, saying that it violates the "dignity" of all UNRWA workers. They are holding several meetings all over the territories.

The description of the end of one of these meetings is quite revealing:

At the end of the meeting, it was confirmed that the teachers and teachers refused to sign any papers or deal with the decisions of the Agency's administration. The aim of these measures is to steal the toil and efforts of the teachers through a planned policy of piracy that begins with stealing the wages of the teachers and ends with doing away with the issue of the refugees .

Every single time UNRWA threatens to cut a service because it doesn't have the money, the pushback from Palestinians is insanely over-the-top. They start with threats, move on to strikes and eventually go to violence, and that constant threat of terror causes UNRWA to find some Western country to donate and hold off the next "crisis."

But the reason why they are so adamant against the slightest compromise is revealed here: The Palestinians think there is a slippery slope between losing a penny of UNRWA benefits - and UNRWA benefits disappearing altogether.

Which means that they will no longer be considered "refugees," uniquely defined among the 50 million real refugees in the world today.

And their entire self-definition is based on being considered "refugees" and therefore oppressed because they cannot "return" to Israel.

They live in the areas of British Mandate Palestine - the country they claim.They are not refugees. Their parents and grandparents weren't refugees either. At best, 70 years ago, some were displaced persons. But no one maintains that status for generations besides Palestinians.

There is a real fear here. Palestinians know that UNRWA is a bizarre, anomalous agency that really has no reason to exist. It provides services far above and beyond what the main UN refugee agency provides to the true refugees who were forced from their countries.

So they act in the only way they know how to: they threaten, they attack, they tenaciously claim that the slightest weakening of benefits will inevitably bring the end of the gravy train they have been on for seven decades.

UNRWA cannot continue the way it has been. Not when the number of fake "refugees" under its working definition increases by tens of thousands a year. Something's got to give.

But UNRWA and the Palestinians agree that they don't want to actually think about that. So UNRWA points to the threats and violence as a reason to gain ever-increased funding, and both parties can pretend that UNRWA will exist in 2050 providing free food, medicine, shelter and schooling to another 10 million "refugees" who haven't been born yet.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Giving Tuesday

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If it is not possible to be Zionist and a feminist, then it is impossible to be a feminist at all

The Forward, disgracefully, gives space to Mariam Barghouti, a Ramallah-based writer (I don't know if she is related to the terrorists with the same last name.) She reiterates the absurd claim that one cannot be a feminist and a Zionist.

The crux of her argument:

When I hear anyone championing Zionism while also identifying as a feminist, my mind turns to images of night raids, to the torture of children and to the bulldozing of homes. But I also think of those female soldiers who casually partake in it all, including ex-Israeli soldier and “Wonder Woman” Gal Gadot, who expressed her love and support for the Israel Defense Forces as they bombed and killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in 2014.

Being a feminist and a Zionist is a contradiction in terms because the Zionist feminist is complicit in propagating supremacy and domination over a people on the one hand, while on the other hand calling for an end to patriarchy.

Let's pretend that her argument has merit. Let's forget that the definition of Zionism has nothing to do with subjugating another people.

According to Barghouti's logic, anyone who believes in any system where there is a whiff of supremacy or domination over anyone else cannot possibly be a feminist.

Her next paragraph actually goes in that direction, where she essentially says that it is impossible to be a white feminist as well!

Indeed, the Zionist feminist is reminiscent of another kind of feminist: the white feminist. Women of color have been historically marginalized within the feminist movement, mostly due to white women stifling racial justice issues and de-emphasizing the specific oppressions faced by people of color because of their race, ethnicity and class. This negligence was often justified as working for collective sisterhood. But as Hooks eloquently explains, “As long as women are using class or race or power to dominate other women, feminist sisterhood cannot be fully realized.” Fundamentally speaking, feminism cannot support racism, supremacy and oppressive domination in any form.

Barghouti's thesis is that if you belong to any group that can be considered oppressive, then you cannot be a feminist.

Therefore - can one be a Muslim feminist? After all, Islamic law does not allow women to have the same rights as men. Not in testimony, not in marriage, not in clothing. So by her definition, one cannot be a Muslim feminist.

Can one be a Palestinian feminist? Polls show that Palestinian Arabs overwhelmingly support specific terror acts against Jews, so therefore they support the oppression and murder of Jews. Moreover, they deny the Jewish right to self determination and a homeland, not accepting the concept of a Jewish state. So by her definition, it is impossible to be a Palestinian feminist.

Can one be a Belgian feminist? Belgium has a rich history of colonialism, and since stereotyping is an essential part of Barghouti's definition of oppressors (considering all white women to be racist, considering all Zionists to be bloodthirsty killers or cheerleaders of such) then Belgians (and British, and French, and Spanish....) cannot be feminist.

Can one be an Australian or New World feminist? Of course not, because any non-indigenous person who lives in Australia (or North and South America) lives on land that rightfully belongs to First Peoples. Their very existence shows oppression is an inseparable part of them. In her own words, an American or Australian feminist "is complicit in propagating supremacy and domination over a people on the one hand, while on the other hand calling for an end to patriarchy.") If you don't give your house away to the indigenous natives, you are an oppressor and have no right to call yourself a feminist.

So we are left with very few people in the world who can possibly be feminist. Too bad. I thought the idea of equal rights has merit, but obviously it would be hypocritical to push feminist ideas when one is a citizen of a nation/state that has laws that prioritize its citizens above non-citizens - a clear case of subjugation of others, when you think about it.

And therein lies the irony: By pretending that "feminism" means something other than equal rights for women, Barghouti and her intersectional pals are hurting the cause of equal rights for women by adding these insane, arbitrary rules that can disenfranchise and exclude the biggest champions of equal rights.

If Barghouti is crafting this argument to exclude only people who support Jewish nationalism, then she is a bigot. If she is consistent in applying her argument to all who are equally "guilty," then it is almost impossible to be a feminist unless you are a member of an aboriginal tribe with no history of sexism or oppression against other tribes.

By the way, here is what Mariam Barghouti (who has American citizenship) looks like.

A white person who is trying to pretend to be a person of color in order to hijack other movements towards the Palestinian cause - to the detriment of everyone else.

Sounds like oppression.

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11/27 Links Pt2: How some Jews are empowering BDS; Antisemitic attacks in Australia increase nearly 10% over last year

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The Jewish identity detective agency

Tzohar, headed by the inspirational Rabbi David Stav, is the Israeli rabbinical organisation which is challenging the monopoly of Israel’s ludicrously harsh and inflexible rabbinate by adopting, within halachah, a more humane, inclusive and rational approach.

So much is generally appreciated. What is less widely known is its extraordinary “roots” project.

This sets out to prove the Jewish antecedents of Israeli Jews whose families come principally from the former Soviet Union. To their horror, some of these Israelis discover they don’t possess the documentary proof that their families are halachically Jewish. And without that, they cannot get married in Israel.

Many couples only realise just before their wedding that they have this devastating problem. Working very fast, Tzohar unearths lost evidence to enable them to marry.

In its Shorashim forensic unit, Tzohar has created a kind of religious detective agency. Remarkably, its rabbis often need to resort to cloak-and-dagger operations to extract documentary proof from government and security forces’ archives in the former Soviet Union.

The challenges are formidable. The trail is often as complex as it is hidden. Under the harsh decrees of Soviet communism, many of these families ditched their Jewish identity to adopt a nationalistic one.

Grandparents, both in Israel and in the former Soviet Union, are a crucial source of information and leads. Racing against time before these elders pass away, Shorashim tries to reach them to obtain their testimony before it is even needed.

Edwin Black: Mennonites and BDS: A Lawsuit Amid a Legacy

Ellen Koontz, a Kansas contract schoolteacher, is asking a federal judge to re-affirm the anti-Jewish boycott campaign begun by Adolf Hitler on April 1, 1933, openly adopted shortly thereafter by the Mufti of Jerusalem as part of the Arab-Nazi alliance during the Holocaust, internationalized against the Jewish State after WWII by the Arab League in December 1945, made illegal in America by a 1976 amendment to the Tax Reform Act and a 1977 amendment to the US Export Administration Act, which governs commercial activity impacting foreign policy, reaffirmed by continuous Presidential Executive Orders, and re-labelled in recent years with glitter and violent disruption as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, otherwise known as BDS.

The IRS publishes specific reports explaining the criminal nature of anti-Israel boycotts by individuals or companies in commercial transactions as a function of foreign policy. In this vein, anti-BDS legislation has been adopted by more than 20 states, including Kansas. Koontz says Kansas Law HR 2409 infringes on her religious right to boycott Israeli Jews and those individuals and companies who do business with Israel.

So, Koontz sued—Koontz vs. Watson—to overturn the Kansas law and now seeks a temporary injunction of the enforcement of HR 2409. Watson disguises her purely political campaign as a religious duty handed down from the sixteenth-century, non-confrontational teachings of the pacifistic Mennonite religion.

Koontz has duped the court.

The Mennonite Church USA has abandoned its spiritual underpinnings and jumped from its religious exemption into the realm of political and racial bias.

How 13th century Jewish scribes disparaged the names of Christian saints

The british Library has digitized about half of its amazing collection of Jewish manuscripts.

The commentary on this page in the Miscellany section, which is a Hebrew depiction of the secular calendar with Christian holidays noted, is simply fascinating:

Christian calendars in Hebrew are not unique. They are found in a few medieval Hebrew manuscripts from 14th-16th-century CE Germany, France and Provence, but the Northern French Hebrew Miscellany is the earliest that is known. Its design is highly unusual as it is laid out in the centre of the page in the intriguing shape of a spiral. The calendar provides a selection of Christian Saint days for every month of the Julian year.[1] The months are given their French name (in Hebrew writing) as well as a Hebrew equivalent. For example, January is identified with the Hebrew month Shevat. We are told it has 31 days, before its Saint days are listed. However, the Jewish authorship of this Christian calendar is never lost on the reader. The names of Saints are often negatively distorted and the title of Saint (in Hebrew qadosh, meaning holy) is hardly ever used, no doubt a deliberate omission.
Critical language exists throughout this calendar. It begins with the title: ‘The months of the non-Jews and their abominations’. The first Saint Day that is listed for January, St Simeon (of the Stylites), is rendered not as Shimon (the Hebrew equivalent name) but as Ṣimaon, which in Hebrew means ‘thirst’. The days of St Mary appear at several points in the year. For example, the Purification of Mary on 2 February, under the name of ḥariah, a distortion of Mariah, which sounds like the Hebrew for excrement. The days of St Peter, for example St Peter’s Chair on 22 February and St Peter and Paul on 29 June, are regularly given as Peṭer ḥamor. The latter means donkey, which is not merely intended as an insult, but as a clever pun on the Biblical Hebrew phrase for first born ass (Exodus 13:13). St John the Baptist, whose birthday is on 24 June, is depicted as Yaḥoram, ‘may he be destroyed’, from Exodus 22:19. It is a distortion of the Hebrew name Yoḥanan, the Hebrew equivalent of John.
All these derogatory names and words have been blackened out in the manuscript, presumably by one of its later Christian owners. But they are still legible behind the ink. The distortion of the names of Christian Saints and feasts was common practice among medieval Jews, and the scribe of this manuscript was most probably following common usage. This usage undoubtedly reveals deep-seated anti-Christian feelings. But its intention was to neutralise the religious significance of Saint Days and feasts, and to avoid the use of what medieval Jews considered to be idolatrous names, whose utterance is forbidden in Exodus 23:13.

There is a lot of great stuff at that site.

(h/t Yoel)

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Der Stürmer has enduring appeal for Israel-haters

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

I just came across a tweet by Andrew Bennett about the notorious “historian” and ardent Israel-hater Ilan Pappé, who claims that “a shadowy Jewish elite deceives the world with a false ‘peace process’ to mask its true intent: the imprisonment of Palestinians.” Indicating his disdain for Pappé’s views, Bennett added a quote from the Nazi publication Der Stürmer: “This is the freedom they promise us/The freedom we see where Judah rules/Behind prison walls and bars/Within a dark prison sits/A humanity that longs for true freedom/And longs for rescue and release.”

I found the quote striking because of the line “where Judah rules.” Of course, the Nazis imagined the oppressive rule of “Judah” everywhere; but all too obviously, today’s anti-Israel activists remain indebted to the Nazi idea that Jewish rule is intolerable, even if it extends only over a tiny sliver of the Middle East.

When I looked up the quote, I found that it had appeared in the issue of 17 June 1943 of Der Stürmer, together with an image of a (white/”Aryan”) prisoner behind bars; the image and the original German text can best be seen here.

It is arguably a particularly chilling image, given that at the time it was published, hundreds of thousands of Jews languished as prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.

In our time, it’s of course Palestine that is imprisoned by “Judah”/Israel – here are two examples from Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff; the image on the right won him second prize at Iran’s 2006 “International Holocaust Cartoon Contest,” and tellingly, he shared this prize with far-right French cartoonist Françoise Pichard.

However, while the Nazis vividly imagined the viciousness and cruelty of Jewish rule, even they might have shuddered to learn from Rutgers professor Jasbir Puar that these days, “Judah”/Israel doesn’t just claim the “right to kill” its hapless prisoners, but also insists on “the right to maim” in order to “enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies.”

Another motif from Der Stürmer that remains very popular is the idea that the Jew is behind – and benefits from – violence and bloodshed anywhere the world, as Der Stürmer reminded its readers in the 18 May 1944 issue.

Pretty much the same idea is behind the “Deadly Exchange” campaign of the Orwellian-named Jewish Voice for Peace, which – as Andrew Bennett has shown in a detailed analysis – “alleges a moneyed Jewish conspiracy to kill innocent Americans.”

But of course, people who always find a way to blame the Jews are a dime a dozen: a reporter interviewing an Egyptian who had lost several relatives in the recent terror attack on a mosque found that “he blames Israel for the massacre, saying that Israel created and controls #ISIS.” Palestinian religious leaders in Gaza also quickly concluded that the “Zionists” were somehow involved, while ardent Israel-hater Miko Peled offered a slightly different version, insisting that the terrorist atrocity was “a direct result of the regional instability caused by #Sisi and his criminal collaboration w #Israel.” Veteran anti-Israel propagandist Ali Abunimah liked Peled’s take and promptly re-tweeted it.

However, no worries: as you can learn later this week at The New School, it’s not antisemitism if you change the old Der Stürmer slogan “The Jews are our misfortune” to “The Jewish state is our misfortune.”

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11/27 Links Pt1: Libel in official PA daily: Israel and the US behind terror attack in Egypt; PA opposes Jews' visits to Temple Mount

From Ian:

JCPA: 70 Years after UN Resolution 181: An Assessment

Seventy years ago, on November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 calling for the partition of Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. The Jews accepted the plan with a mixture of joy and hesitation, while the Arabs rejected it and launched a war to forcibly prevent its implementation.

The Arabs denied the Jews any right whatsoever in their ancestral homeland, and a large majority still maintains this view to this day.

Since the Arab states rejected the resolution upon its adoption and prevented its implementation, the Palestinian leadership can neither logically nor legally claim today that Resolution 181 can serve as a basis for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Moreover, the partition plan refers to the creation of an Arab state, not a Palestinian state. Indeed, nowhere does it indicate the creation of a Palestinian state for the Palestinian people. There was never any such designation as “Palestinian” for the Arab population residing in the area.

Finally, according to the UN Charter, General Assembly resolutions are simply recommendations and are not legally binding. Only resolutions adopted by the Security Council under Chapter 7 of the Charter may be obligatory. Thus, Resolution 181 cannot in any manner be considered to be a basis for a Palestinian claim to statehood.

Israel to re-enact historic UN vote that led to its establishment

The Israeli delegation to the U.N. will mark 70 years to the historic vote on Nov. 29, 1947 that resulted in the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel with a festive re-enactment of the vote, to be attended by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and dozens of ambassadors from around the world.

The re-enactment, the initiative of Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon in collaboration with the World Jewish Congress, will kick off a series of celebrations in honor of 70 years to the Jewish state's founding. The event will be held at the original hall where the vote was held in 1947. The hall, which is now located inside the Queens Museum in New York, has been decorated to look as it did on the day of the historic vote, with wooden tables, a stage and a world map hanging on the wall. At the conclusion of the vote, dancers will break out in the hora, just as they did in the actual vote in 1947. Israeli singer Ninet Tayeb will then perform "Jerusalem of Gold."

Pence will be a guest of honor at the ceremony and will be accompanied by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who is Jewish. Dozens of diplomats and ambassadors will also attend the event, including World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder as well as representatives from the 33 countries that voted in favor of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, as well as local Jewish community leaders.

"We are proud to celebrate with our heads held high the definitive event that led to the establishment of the state and present the achievements and the vast support that Israel has around the world," Danon said. "It is a great honor for Israel to host Vice President Pence at the festivities. The president of the United States 70 years ago, Harry Truman, was the first leader to recognize the State of Israel with its founding. Ever since then, Israel has had no better friend than the United States."

On Tuesday, New York's Times Square will show clips from the historic vote alongside Israel's first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel as well as footage of modern-day Israel on its megascreens. Dancers waving Israeli flags and wearing shirts saying "I love Israel" will dance in Times Square at the event, the initiative of the World Zionist Organization and the Zionist Organization of America.

Amb. Danny Danon: We fulfilled the dream

Seventy years have passed since the moment that will forever be engraved in the history of our people, and since then, every one of us can picture themselves listening to the radio, tense with anticipation, during that historic vote on Nov. 29, 1947.

Every time we watch or listen to the long minutes of the vote, which seemed to last as long as our 2,000 years in the Diaspora, we get chills.

In 1897, Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl imagined the unimaginable when he wrote, "At Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today l would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it."

Fifty years later, the Zionist dream came true. Reality eclipsed anything we could have imagined and the U.N. recognized the establishment of the Jewish state in the land of Israel. Today, 70 years after the vote, we stand with our heads held high, proud of our extraordinary achievements, and continue to believe and dream.

Looking back from where we are today, in a strong, thriving and independent Israel, it might be hard to fathom the tense atmosphere that preceded the vote, how momentous it was or the herculean efforts on the part of the Jewish leadership, which realized that the fate of their people rested on their shoulders.

Today, we are grateful to the 33 nations that voted in favor of founding the Jewish state, thereby changing history.

Last time, I discussed how perfectly reasonable decisions by the American Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) to minimize issues that divide (notably doctrine) in favor of matters that could unite (fighting for secular political causes) had negative (and linked) unintended consequences.

Most significantly for PCUSA: these choices led to an acceleration of the membership decline the new priorities were supposed to stem. But for the Jewish community, the elevation of politics made the church vulnerable to the blandishments of BDS, a propaganda campaign ready to demand (for years and decades if necessary) that anyone claiming to fight for “social justice” must embrace their anti-Israel hysteria – or else.

Another Protestant group – the Quakers – have also embraced religiously inspired anti-Israel animus, with far more vengeance than their Presbyterian brethren. In fact, outside of Muslim organizations or fringe front groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, there are few institutions in the country more dedicated to BDS than the Quakers. But their trajectory towards this position was different than that of the Presbyterians in several subtle but significant ways.

To begin with, Quakerism already experienced membership collapse in the US centuries ago when it moved from serious Protestant contender in Colonial times (when as much as a third of Colonial Americans may have been Quaker) to the tiny sect it is today with fewer than 80,000 members in the country.

Quakerism also reinvented itself in the early 20th century, becoming the religious focal point for political Pacifism, a position that put the group at odds with the American government and public in the run up to World War I. In the face of this hostility, church organizations and members showed courage in standing up for their Pacifist beliefs, volunteering for alternatives to military service that put individual Quakers in harm’s way without requiring them to kill.

But something happened to this pacific sect as the Second World War gave way to the Cold War. For, as this piece describes, Quaker politics (always presented as religiously inspired) moved from condemning all violence from all sides anywhere and anytime, to becoming a critic of US foreign policy and champion of Left Wing causes – including causes whose members refused to give up the gun.

Given this evolution, it’s easy to see how the obsession of today’s Quakers with Israel fits the church’s postwar political framework. But the church’s direct involvement in the Middle East also lent elements of religious bigotry (in the form of Supersessionism) to the brew.

Supersessionism was originally a widespread Christian belief which held that the covenant God gave the Jews at Sinai was passed on to those who accepted Christ’s divinity. This is what allowed generations of Christians over the Millennia to treat Jews among them not as forerunners to the faith, but as has-beens whom God has rejected in favor of believers in the new creed.

Both Catholicism and Protestantism wrestled with their own church’s Supersessionist history and theology, especially given the contributions that belief system lent to historic anti-Semitism and, ultimately, the Holocaust.

Mainstream rejection of Supersessionist beliefs left this theology confined to the religious/political fringes. For the straight-on anti-Semitic Right, mouth-breathing shouts of “You will not replace us!” carry the irony of accusation against a people (You = Jew) whom Identity Christians believe they have already replaced in God’s eye.

On the other end of the political spectrum, chants of “Palestine from the River to the Sea,” spell out who is to succeed whom in the Holy Land, with all the dark consequences for the Jewish state and the Jews who make it up one does not have to imagine. Yet this is the very goal Quakers routinely defend with religious language and fervor, oblivious to the violent history of those they support and the bloodshed their vision of “justice” would unquestionably entail.

If the notion of a Pacifist religious organization enthusiastically supporting (and sometimes leading) the propaganda arm of a violent war against the Jewish state strikes you as incongruous, keep in mind that the leadership of today’s Quaker organizations have nothing to do with the courageous men and women from a century ago who struggled to balance their personal moral beliefs with their commitment to the wider society.

Rather, today’s church is led by partisan charlatans who live off moral capital produced by their forefathers, capital they have chosen to spend by handing the organization’s name and reputation over to violent bigots.

When the self-righteous sell their souls, they tend to inflate the evil of those they fight against in order to justify the corruption they have let loose within their own institutions. So it should come as no surprise that Quakers fearful of the devil they must confront in the mirror put so much effort into convincing themselves and others that the Zionist enemy they have invested so much in attacking must represent not God nor man, but Satan.

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The past 8 months prove (again) that "pro-Palestinian" really means "anti-Israel"

The Palestinian Authority knowingly put thousands of Gazans' lives at risk starting in March of this year - and the world didn't care.

Even the UN knows, and buries, the truth.

From the latest OCHA (UN) Gaza Crisis paper:

A series of measures implemented by the Palestinian Authority since March 2017, following an escalation in the internal Palestinian divide, have led to a deterioration in the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip. ....These measures have exacerbated Gaza’s energy crisis, resulting in increasing outages from 12-16 to 18-20 hours a day, worsened the salary crisis in the public sector, increased the shortage of essential drugs from around 33% in March to 45% in October and delayed the referral of patients for medical treatment outside Gaza. These developments have impacted the availability of essential services and the livelihoods of Gaza’s two million residents. The following indicators were identified by the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) to monitor the evolution of the crisis, trigger humanitarian action and prevent further deterioration. Despite an agreement signed in October 2017 between Fatah and Hamas, most of the measures that triggered the recent deterioration have not been reversed.

The graphs that UN-OCHA provides show a sharp deterioration of the quality of life in Gaza starting in March when the PA started cutting off electricity and medicine:

In black and white, one can see the stark results of the PA's cutting off essential services to Gaza. And these statistics were known for 8 months.

Where were the protests in the streets of London? Where were the peace activists? Where were the "human rights" NGOs? This year, Gaza plunged from a bad place to live into an impossible place to live, and it is all because of decisions made by Gaza's own fellow Palestinian Arab leaders.

The lack of media attention to this is, frankly, criminal. The only protests about Gaza are aimed at Israel. No one blames Hamas for violently splitting with the PA; no one blames the PA for collective punishment of two million people. The things that Israel is routinely blamed for are totally ignored when Arabs do much worse.

These past eight months are all the proof you need that all those protesters, all those NGOs and all those politicians who pretend to care about Gazans are full of crap.

Just like they don't care about thousands of Palestinians killed in Syria, and hundreds of thousands who became refugees. Just like they don't care about explicit discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon and Jordan and Egypt. Just like they don't care about legal disenfranchisement of Palestinians in every single Arab country.

If Israel isn't involved, the world's concern for Palestinians is virtually zero.

When Israel can be blamed, rightly or wrongly, the world's concern for Palestinians far outstrips its concern for every other group whose suffering is far worse.

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Earlier this month I wrote that a Haaretz article about the Palestinian rejection of John Kerry's framework for peace accepted by Netanyahu - and its ignoring a sweetened version of the plan - is the biggest story about Israel that everyone has ignored. The timeline is shown to the right.

Part of what is so maddening about the story - a story that destroys the stereotypes both of an intransigent Netanyahu and of a moderate, flexible Abbas - is that Kerry knows the truth, and even so he continues to primarily blame Israel primarily for the failure of the Obama-era peace push. The recently surfaced recording of Kerry in Dubai last year blaming Israel alone is but the most recently publicized example.

The reporter of the Haaretz story, Amir Tibon, has been reporting on the failed talks for years. He co-wrote a very comprehensive article for the New Republic on the same topic in 2014.

In that article, he described a scene where Obama presented Erekat and Abbas with the sweetened plan that would give them a capital in Jerusalem:

The next day at the White House, Obama tried his luck with the Palestinian leader. He reviewed the latest American proposals, some of which had been tilted in Abbas’s direction. (The document would now state categorically that there would be a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem.) “Don’t quibble with this detail or that detail,” Obama said. “The occupation will end. You will get a Palestinian state. You will never have an administration as committed to that as this one.” Abbas and Erekat were not impressed.

What happened next crystallizes the entire Palestinian position towards peace and having a state perfectly:

After the meeting, the Palestinian negotiator saw Susan Rice—Abbas’s favorite member of the Obama administration—in the hall. “Susan,” he said, “I see we’ve yet to succeed in making it clear to you that we Palestinians aren’t stupid.” Rice couldn’t believe it. “You Palestinians,” she told him, “can never see the fucking big picture.”

Erekat is proud of Palestinian intransigence. He says that accepting a peace plan from the most pro-Palestinian president in history is "stupid." He and Abbas want more, far more, and will always respond with a "no."

And their favorite person in the Obama administration calls them on it. Susan Rice tells them that, once again, they are the ones who have sabotaged peace.

What more proof does one need that it is Abbas and his team who are the obstacles to peace?

Yet this richly documented story, like the Haaretz story, is ignored by a world that is emotionally invested in the lazy memes of "intransigent Likud" and "moderate, peace seeking Abbas."

The truth is right here. But no one wants to open their eyes.

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Where is Benjamin's grave?

I saw an Egyptian article that says that some Egyptians claim that the gravesite of Benjamin, son of Jacob, is in the west side of Cairo.

According to the article, residents around the building (which is naturally a mosque) have egarded the site as sacred for decades. The Egyptian government has never officially recognized it, though.

The sign on the room that supposedly contains the tomb says "Here lies our master Benjamin, the brother of our master Joseph."

Interestingly, the Arabic article calls Joseph "Joseph Siddiq" which I believe is cognate with his Hebrew appellation, Yosef HaTzadik, or "Joseph the Righteous."

Pilgrims come from India and Iran and some Gulf countries besides Egypt. Residents say that some Jews come there as well.

There is no tradition in Hebrew scriptures as to where Benjamin is buried. The midrash in Sefer HaYashar says he was buried in Jerusalem.

But there is a site in Israel in Kfar Saba that is claimed to be Benjamin's gravesite:

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From Petra, the official Jordanian news agency:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, on Friday said that Jordanians and Palestinians are "one people living in two states", appreciating His Majesty King Abdullah II, who spared no occasion to defend the Palestinian cause and Jerusalem before the world.

If any Western leader would say this, there would be incredulous op-eds castigating him or her.

If Netanyahu would say this, the UN would call for a resolution condemning him.

When Abbas says something that puts into question whether there ever was a "Palestinian people" that was distinct from the rest of the Arab world - crickets.

(h/t This Ongoing War)

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