Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, December 24, 2017

12/24 Links: Saudi Arabia bars Israelis from chess tournament; Shin Bet thwarted over 400 attacks in 2017

From Ian:

Saudi Arabia bars Israelis from chess tournament

Israeli chess players on Sunday were denied the visas necessary for them to participate in an international tournament in Saudi Arabia next week, crushing hopes that they could make history by being the first representatives of the Jewish state to take part in such an event hosted by the kingdom.

Seven Israeli players had filed requests for visas to participate in the games to be held in Riyadh on December 26-30 as part of the world rapid and blitz chess championships.

Last month, the World Chess Federation (FIDE), which runs the tournament, said that it was “making a huge effort to assure that all players get their visas.”

But on Sunday that international body announced that its efforts were for naught.

Moshe Shalev, the interim head of the Israel Chess Federation, told The Times of Israel that the players had not been granted visas and said his group was discussing taking legal action.

“We are thinking about suing the World Chess Federation,” he said.

Prof. Phyllis Chesler: Europe's betrayal

I am reliving the Evian Conference, held in 1938. No European country was willing to take the Jews.

Eighty years later, on December 21, 2017, twenty six European countries voted to condemn the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Six abstained. No European country dared to stand with the United States, with Israel, or with reality.

Austria and Germany—Hitler’s home base—voted to condemn the United States’ decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Germany—whose shame about the Nazi genocide of six million assimilated, productive, and non-violent Jews led Merkel’s Germany tp embrace millions of non-assimilated, non-productive, and very violent Muslim refugees—and why?

Partly to redeem their own soiled reputation and, more diabolically, to continue their traditional Jew-hatred by allowing Muslim refugees to harass, beat, torture, and murder Jews—and by consistently voting for Palestinian terrorists over a peaceful and democratic Israel.

Germany—on whose soil Israeli athletes were murdered in cold blood at the Olympics and whose police could not stop the Palestinian killing spree or apprehend the perpetrators.

Austria and Germany were not the only European countries who voted to condemn the vote on moving the American Embassy to Israel’s capital city, Jerusalem.

Israeli experts weigh in on Obama-Hezbollah revelation

In fact, while much of the probe has centered on the potential illegality of Obama's intervention, investigators are scrutinizing the former chief executive’s reasons for interfering to Hezbollah’s benefit: namely, to examine the assumptions and, more generally, the worldview that shaped his policy toward the organization and, by extension, Iran.

To that end, Politico cited statements made by John Brennan, who would become Obama's top counterterrorism adviser and then CIA director. As early as 2010, just one year after Obama assumed office, Brennan confirmed that the administration was looking for ways to build up “moderate elements” within the "very interesting" Hezbollah group which was no longer considered a "purely terrorist organization."

Obama loyalists see in this interpretation a reasonable justification for the former president’s actions as a path to engaging Tehran diplomatically rather than militarily. Critics not only see no reasonable indication to have believed Hezbollah was malleable, and in fact, saw the terrorist group’s militancy as intractable. This is supported by the now infamous comments by top Obama aide Ben Rhodes who bragged in an interview of manipulating an uninformed media and populace to ratify the Iranian nuclear agreement. Indeed, it is being reported that the core of the Obama team has been activated to de-toxify the alleged Obama actions vis-à-vis Hezbollah.

Those who rejected the agreement have been strengthened during the ensuing years, as Shiite Tehran continues to foment unrest in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and beyond, arguing that by all indicators—and citing its blatant development of missile delivery systems capable of supporting nuclear weapons and flouting of United Nations Security Council resolutions—the Islamic Republic remains committed to exporting its revolutionary ideology while competing with Sunni Saudi Arabia for regional dominance.

And while proponents of the accord contend that Tehran is abiding by it, opponents continue to warn that the devil is in the existence of "sunset clauses" that will expire after 12 more years, effectively giving Iran a green-light to resume enriching uranium. At that point, the country will have pocketed all of the benefits of sanctions relief and reinforced its so-called "Shiite Crescent," a land corridor stretching through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon and into the Mediterranean.

According to Efraim Kam, a Senior Research Fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies, Iran's unwillingness to change course was predictable. "Obama saw the nuclear deal as a way to get Tehran to modify its strategy," he explained to The Media Line. "In the administration's view it was a jumping off point to more cooperation and dialogue.

"However," Kam highlighted, "even before the accord was concluded Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei made clear that he was not going to alter his calculus. He left no doubt that coordination would not be extended to other areas and never changed his mind for one minute."

The western-left is the most racist political movement in the West today outside of political Islam.

The categories of contemporary progressive-left racism include:

1) Anti-White Racism

2) Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

and

3) Humanitarian Racism

While left-leaning politicos in the United States are searching for Nazis and Klansmen and White Supremacists and White Nationalists and the "Alt-Right" - whatever that is, exactly - hiding beneath every bed, they remain childishly oblivious to the toxic and divisive racism that is eating its way through the core of their own political movement.

Up until about the election of Barack Obama - who I voted for in 2008 - the United States made highly significant strides in ethnic relations over many decades, which was a major factor in Obama's electoral success.

Since then, the United States is regressing on issues of race even as the inheritors of the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. urinate on that legacy while calling it "social justice."

There has not been this much racial discord in the United States since 1968 and it is largely due to the fact that the progressive-left has beat it into the heads of poor "black" kids that they are oppressed and that poor "white" kids are the oppressors.

What kind of social results did they expect would emerge from incessant left-leaning racial hatred in the United States?

Anti-White Racism

Although nobody on the left ever wants to discuss it, the most prominent form of publically acceptable racism in the United States, today, is anti-white racism.

Hundreds of articles and other forms of media have been published in left-leaning venues decrying how horrible and racist and brutal - yet, somehow, fragile - "white" people are.

As an American Jew - and since the word "white" has become a racist perjorative - I am not even certain that I know what a "white" person is. I do know that I am constantly mistaken for one despite the fact that my ancestry, along with almost all non-converted Jews, goes to the Levant.

The fundamental point, of course, is that people do not get to pick-and-choose who it is acceptable to be racist towards. Either you oppose racism or you do not. If you claim that certain ethnicities, for historical and socio-economic reasons around power relations, are incapable of racism then - guess what? - you are being racist.

That is, you are holding some groups of people to different ethical standards based on their ethnic background.

Excuse me, but that is the very definition of racism.

Western-left identity politics is both racist and noxious because it indoctrinates young people into a political point of view which places individuals upon an ethnic and gendered Hierarchy of Victimhood wherein one's political significance, if not one's humanity, itself, depends upon where one falls within the hierarchy.

Contemporary left identity politics, therefore, in distinction from old-timey interest group politics, is the most prominent racist and illiberal political movement in the United States today.

It is what I call "identity politics overreach."

It is also one significant reason, among others, that Donald J. Trump happily sits in the Oval Office.

Antisemitic Anti-Zionism

This one, naturally, is my favorite.

One of the astonishing things about antisemitism is that, like an ideological virus, it has the ability to mutate according to the changing nature of its political environment. If in previous generations antisemitism was justified by notions such as the Jews killed Jesus or the Jews killed Mohammad or the Jews invented capitalism or the Jews invented socialism or the Jews represented an inferior and parasitic race, today we are to understand that the Jews are inhumane to the allegedly indigenous "Palestinian" population.

kIf you were to question your average U.S. Democrat they would likely agree that the historical persecution of the Jewish people was entirely unjustified. The western-left despises Nazism and racism and fascism, even as they unthinkingly embrace certain aspects of it. They would absolutely agree that the European persecution of the Jews was a great injustice in the past, even as they also embrace the western-left antisemitic anti-Zionism of the present.

Unfortunately, polling data also shows that a majority of self-identified "liberal Democrats" favor the Palestinians-Arabs over the Jews of Israel by a plurality of 40 percent over 33 percent.

In other words, in the imaginations of "liberal Democrats" - by which they actually mean "progressives" or, as some would say, the "regressive left" - every previous generation the Jews were innocent and did not deserve harassment or persecution... except for this one.

By some mysterious happenstance the Jewish people, today, both Israeli and diaspora, are, in fact, guilty. We were not in the past, but we are today.

Thus, who can really blame "Palestinians" if they perpetually seek to murder Jews in the very heartland of the tiny Jewish nation?

If the international community despises the Jewish State of Israel it is, therefore, because of the Jews, themselves, who generally insist upon supporting the allegedly racist, militaristic state of Israel. What this suggests, within the western-left mind, about the morality of diaspora Jewry which supports Israel is not very pretty.

Humanitarian Racism

In Manfred Gerstenfeld's introduction to Behind The Humanitarian Mask: The Nordic Countries, Israel, and the Jews, which is a scholarly compilation of articles published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, Gerstenfeld writes:

Behind the Nordic countries’ righteous appearance and oft-proclaimed concern for human rights often lurk darker attitudes. This volume’s main purpose is to lift their humanitarian mask as far as Israel and Jews are concerned. This disguise hides many ugly characteristics, including the financing of demonizers of Israel, a false morality, invented moral superiority, and “humanitarian racism.”

The condescension and imperial superiority of contemporary leftists toward those of non-European descent, with the exception of Jews, is unfathomable. The progressive-left, as a group, treats all non-Europeans, other than Jews, like little children in need of a pat on the head and a chocolate chip cookie.

It is, at least in my estimation, the current iteration of nineteenth-century western imperial notions of "white man's burden" and it takes the form of holding non-Europeans to the ethical standards of inferiors.

In this way, European historical guilt around issues of race trump feminism, and even regular human decency, in how much of the guilt-riddent "white" middle-class judge people who in an earlier generation they would have called "our little brown brothers."

Until the western-left moves beyond anti-white racism, antisemitic anti-Zionism, and humanitarian racism, it will remain riddled with hypocrisy and acting in cross-purposes toward its own supposed values.

It is very sad that over fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr's famous I Have A Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. that the western-left has flung King's admonitions into the gutter.

The most important thing that King stood for was this:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

Martin Luther King, Jr. stood for anti-racism.

The contemporary left does not.

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A year ago, I critiqued a major essay in the New York Times' philosophy section by Omri Boehm, who teaches at The New School. Using arguments that wouldn't pass a first year logic course, he argued that Zionism was racism.

Now he has moved into critiquing Judaism itself.

In an article in the Los Angeles Review of Books, which was translated and published by the major German newspaper Die Zeit, Boehm argues that thousands of year of Jewish attachment to Jerusalem is really bogus, and any Jew who thinks that Jews should control Jerusalem are tantamount to idolators.

The name of the article is "Jerusalem, Our Golden Calf."

Yes, a lesson in Judaism from a person who hates Judaism.

OK, this should be fun:

[T]he heart of our heart is the Torah, and Jerusalem is not mentioned in it even once. Other municipal centers play in the book significant theological roles: Hebron is strongly associated with Abraham’s figure; Shchem, more familiar today as Nablus, functions as the Promised Land’s gate; and it is in Beit El that Jacob is renamed, very symbolically, as “Israel.” Clearly, Moses has never heard of Jerusalem, and Joseph never dreamt of it in his dreams. As the Torah’s literary theology unfolds, Jerusalem remains conspicuously absent.

Because, perhaps, Jerusalem's role is only as the capital of the Jewish nation that had yet to be born? And its prominence is obvious to anyone who glances at the Hebrew Scriptures outside the Pentateuch? (Not to mention that Jerusalem's spiritual centrality is strongly hinted in the Bible as well, as the place that God will choose to place the Temple.)

Nah, this is not important.

When the city does gain prominence, its role emerges directly from the Israelites’ demand to become “like all the other nations” — to be ruled by an earthly political authority, rather than directly by God (1 Sam. 8:5). Samuel interprets this request as an idolatrous act of betrayal, and God unequivocally shares the same judgment. Comparing it to the Israelites’ “worshiping other Gods” and “forsaking” him in the desert, God explains to Samuel that the Israelites are rebelling directly against the deity: “It is not you that they have rejected; it is Me that they have rejected as their king” (1 Sam. 8:7-8). Indeed, alongside the infamous incident with the Golden Calf, the Israelites’ request to be ruled “like the nations” has become one of the Bible’s prime examples of idolatry.

One can argue as to exactly God meant when he used those words. But Boehm, knowing his readers won't bother to look up the verses, purposefully omits what God said immediately afterwards. In the very next verse, God tells Samuel "Now therefore hearken unto their voice; howbeit thou shalt earnestly forewarn them, and shalt declare unto them the manner of the king that shall reign over them."

God and Samuel definitely have a problem with the way the people request a king, but clearly they don' t have a problem with the concept of a king. After all, the Torah mentions that Israel should have a king, explicitly, in Deuteronomy 17 - even using the words that the nation will want to be like the nations around them. Choosing a king is considered one of the commandments of the Torah.

To flatly call this request "idolatry" is absurd, because this means that, according to Boehm, God is instructing the Jews to worship idols.

What does this have to do with Jerusalem? Not much. But the "philosopher" will twist the truth to pretend it is, with more absurd interpretations that fly in the face of normative Judaism:

It is from this paradigmatic idolatrous moment that Jewish politics would be subsequently centralized in Jerusalem — a king’s earthly capital — and the city’s Temple would be built, consolidating its political-theological sway. These idolatrous origins have left on Jerusalem an enduring stain: an adequately Jewish relation to it can be at most one of ambivalent love, mixed with suspicion. Not one of enthusiastic identification.

Not surprisingly, Boehm doesn't bring any verses from any prophets that describe this supposed ambivalence or suspicion.

It is common to mention that for 2000 years, Jews have recited Psalms 137 in wedding ceremonies: “If I forget you Jerusalem, my right hand forget its skill, my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” But this is misleading, because for 2000 years Jews have recited this while rejecting the establishment of Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem as an abomination. Indeed Jewish law strictly prohibits Jewish rule over Jerusalem before the Messiah’s arrival and the fulfillment of Isaiah’s aforementioned prophecy. In this light, not just Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — but also Ben Gurion’s declaration of Israel’s independence — stand in sharp contradiction to the Jewish religion.

There is not one source in codified Jewish law that says that Jewish rule over Jerusalem is prohibited before the Messiah's arrival. Nowhere in Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, nowhere in Shulchan Aruch, nowhere. (There have been some anti-Zionist rabbis who make such an assertion, but there is no basis in Jewish law for it.)

This entire essay is complete garbage. Boehm's entire thesis is literally made up, using cherry-picked Biblical quotes and assertions that have no basis.

And, as we have seen, even Boehm doesn't pretend to have proven that attachment to Jerusalem is akin to idolatry. He makes a false assertion that desiring a king is idolatry, he associates that with Jerusalem without any proof, and voila! An essay that gets published in prestigious journals based on nothing but hot air.

You cannot call Boehm ignorant. He knows very well he is twisting the Bible and Jewish law in ways that are utterly antithetical to what anyone with any knowledge can see what they say. He knows very well that God told Samuel to listen to the people and establish a kingdom. He didn't stop reading the verses at the point that shows him to be a liar - he just stopped quoting them, because intellectual honesty is exactly what Boehm is not about.

He is a fraud.

However, you can call the Los Angeles Review of Books and Die Zeit ignorant for publishing such blatant lies by a confirmed anti-Zionist a hater of Judaism, talking about Judaism and Jerusalem without doing the least amount of fact checking.

How does this happen? How can otherwise responsible publications allow something that is literally based on easily-refuted lies to be published? It isn't hard to open up a Bible and read the context of the verses, nor is it difficult to notice the other logical fallacies in Boehm's article.

The answer, I think, is that here is another example of things that are too good to check. Jews have been wrong about the holiness of Jerusalem for thousands of years! We have a Jewish scholar who says so! And he is a philosopher, which gives him some extra special credibility, because we really don't know much about that field but it sounds really prestigious!

So I don't blame Boehm for widely spreading his anti-Israel and now anti-Jewish hate. That's what he is about. But I do blame periodicals and newspapers to blindly believe his lies without even bothering to call up a local rabbi who might know a thing or two about the Jewish scriptures to save themselves embarrassment.

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How the PLO threatened Christmas tourists in 1967 - and today

From Time, December 29, 1967:

A warning by the Arab guerrilla organization El Fatah that Christmas tourists would not be safe in the Holy Land led the Israeli government to station 950 security police in Jerusalem and Bethlehem and to set up roadblocks in the area.

From the New York Times, December 24, 1968:

Also from the NYT on that same date:

Fatah, the dominant party in the PLO, explicitly warned and threatened Christian tourists in 1967 and 1968. And Christian leaders, under Israeli rule, were confident enough to tell the world to ignore the terrorists and come anyway, even though some were scared off. And Israel took drastic steps to reduce the chance of terror attacks by banning non-Christians from Bethlehem.

This month, virtually the same thing happened. Fatah, led by Mahmoud Abbas, and other Palestinian groups warned of "days of rage" in Israel. However, Christians under Palestinian rule - who have been fleeing their homes in droves since the Palestinian Authority was established, under Muslim threats to them - are too frightened to blame their Muslim-dominated government, so they blame Israel and Trump.

And credulous reporters believe them:

A week before Christmas, there were only a handful of tourists snapping photos of the huge decorated tree in Manger Square, with its strings of red and white lights. The large plaza in front of the Church of the Nativity was nearly empty except for a handful of visiting clergy.

Chalk the absence of visitors up to President Trump’s Jerusalem speech, which outraged Muslims, scared off tourists, and unnerved Christian clerics. It also bushwhacked Vice President Pence’s planned (now postponed) trip to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Cairo, which was meant to express solidarity with Mideast Christians. Church leaders were refusing to meet him.
...

For starters, the president’s move wrecked a pre-Christmas tourist season that is especially important to Palestinian Christians.

“Before the Trump statement, we thought this would be the best year in the past 10 years for tourism,” I was told by Maher Canawati, who, with his father, Nicola, owns the legendary Three Arches gift shops in Bethlehem, specializing in mother of pearl and carved olive wood objects. Living in Bethlehem since the early 17th century, the family has managed to navigate political challenges over time; portraits of ancestors look down on Canawati, including one of his father posing with a Bethlehem Boy Scout troop,

“The city has 50 hotels, 20 built in the last four years,” says Canawati. “Everyone thought things would be better. But now there have been many cancellations after the statement.” Bethlehem’s economy is at stake.

Trump's statement didn't scare off tourists.Palestinian threats - from the exact same Fatah that threatened tourists in the 1960s, as well as from a host of other Palestinian terror groups - is what is scaring off tourists.

Palestinian Christians, scared as hell of their tenuous position under Arab rule, have learned that breaking ranks with the Muslim majority can be deadly. So they know exactly what to say to reporters when they are on the record.

Off the record, though, Palestinian Christians admit their fears, they talk about their persecution, and they are voting with their feet by relocating anywhere they can outside the Arab world.

As I quoted an article by Standpoint in 2014:

While Bethlehem remains the most populous Christian city in the West Bank, its Christian population, as in the West Bank generally, is shrinking dramatically. Only 50 years ago, Christians constituted 70 per cent of Bethlehem's population. Today they make up just 15 per cent. Christians number approximately 38,000 people in the West Bank, representing 2 per cent of the population.
"We used to be many. Now there are so few of us left. Everyone is trying to leave," says Samir, another salesman in a neighbouring shop selling Orthodox icons. Worrying about the consequences of complaining about the situation, Samir declined to use his real name.
"My mother doesn't like to walk in the street at night because her hair is uncovered, and people come up behind her and make rude comments," he tells me. During Christmas celebrations last December, women in their twenties on a visit from London with their parents and siblings complained of being harassed by a gang of male youths as they stood watching a festive performance in Manger Square. The gang did not desist until some local women came to stand nearby and told the boys to stop.
Everyone agrees that economic hardship and the low birthrate of the Christian community are the primary causes for decline. Yet in recent years Christians in Bethlehem also complain of a growing climate of intimidation from Islamic extremists.

It was Muslims who decided to downgrade Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem and Nazareth this year. It was Muslims who decided on violent riots to protest a symbolic declaration by Trump.

And it is the exact same Fatah that threatens Christian tourists, while claiming to represent them.

UPDATE: As of December 20, Israel expected more Christian tourists this year than last. The entire premise of the article seems to be mistaken.

Journalists who don't bother fact checking. Sheesh.

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12/23 Links: Another "Reconciliation" Bites the Dust; Israel to formally announce withdrawal from UNESCO; Pierre Rehov’s new film “Unveiling Jerusalem”

From Ian:

After investigation, Denmark to cut funding from some Palestinian NGOs

Denmark is to revoke funding from several Palestinian non-governmental organizations and tighten aid criteria for others after they were tied to anti-Israel activities.

Israel hailed the move as a victory and urged other European governments to follow suit.

The Danish Foreign Ministry made the announcement Friday, saying it would implement a more stringent vetting process for the transfer of funds to Palestinian NGOs.

“It is important that there is confidence that Danish assistance is going for the right purposes,” said Danish Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen.

Samuelsen said that, following an investigation, most of the earmarked funds will be returned to Danish government coffers. He added that many organizations currently receiving Danish support would no longer do so.

“This is a welcome, moral, and crucially-important decision. Palestinian NGOs that have ties to internationally-designated terrorist organizations and that promote boycotts against Israel should not receive European governmental funding,” said Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs Gilad Erdan.

“I call on all other European governments to exercise the same moral responsibility and take similar steps,” he said.
(h/t Elder of Lobby)

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Another "Reconciliation" Bites the Dust

The idea that Hamas would disarm and stop digging tunnels and hand the Gaza Strip on a silver platter to Abbas and Fatah is pure fantasy.

From the outset, it was clear that Hamas had no intention of relinquishing its security control over the Gaza Strip and that it plans to continue holding hostage the two million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. How do we know that? The answer is simple: That is what Hamas leaders themselves have been stating in public almost every day for the past few weeks since the "reconciliation" agreement was announced in Cairo.

The Hamas-Fatah "reconciliation" accord failed because Hamas will continue to prepare itself to pursue the fight against Israel. It wants to continue digging tunnels along the border with Israel so that it can use them one day to kill or kidnap Israelis. Hamas wants to continue building tunnels along the border with Egypt so that it can use them to smuggle weapons and terrorists into and out of the Gaza Strip.

Hamas wants to hold on to the thousands of militiamen it employs and continues to recruit in the Gaza Strip because it will never allow anyone else to rule the Gaza Strip. Hamas denies that it had agreed to disarm or dismantle its security forces when it reached its agreement with Fatah.

The "reconciliation" deal, however, not only failed because of the controversy over the security control of the Gaza Strip.

The other reason the deal never materialized is because Hamas simply cannot accept a situation in which it is being asked to accept the so-called two-state solution. Hamas is worried that its partnership with Abbas and Fatah might be interpreted as a sign that Hamas recognizes the Oslo Accords and has abandoned its genocidal ideology, which calls for the destruction of Israel. As made clear by the Hamas leaders, their goal remains to seek the "liberation of all of Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river." This is Hamas's mantra.

The United Nations Long Ago Lost Its Moral Authority To Tut-Tut At Trump Over Jerusalem

On December 21, the 193-member UN General Assembly held an emergency special session at the request of Arab and Muslim states. The session was aimed at rebuking President Trump’s recent announcement to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Not surprisingly, the special session passed a non-binding resolution approved by 128 states, declaring Trump’s announcement is “null and void and must be rescinded.” But this resolution only serves as the latest example that the UN lacks moral authority to resolve the thorniest world affairs.

The UN’s Anti-Isrel Bias Is Appalling
While the UN charter claims it is an “organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members, “ Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is often subjected to the UN’s anti-Israel bias. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon justified Palestinian terror against Israeli civilians by saying, “it is human nature to react to occupation.”

The UN’s Human Rights Council, packed with human rights abusers such as Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Venezuela, permanently singles out Israel under a special agenda item and condemns Israel at every one of its meetings. The UN Commission on the Status of Women condemned Israel as the only country in the world violating Palestinian women’s rights, while ignoring the violations committed by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, and many abuses women suffer in countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.

The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) singled out Israel as the only violator of “mental, physical and environmental health,” while ignoring the atrocities taking place at the time in Syria and Yemen. Interestingly, the same WHO appointed Zimbabwe’s 93-year-old authoritarian leader, Robert Mugabe, one of the worst human rights abusers in the world, as WHO’s goodwill ambassador in 2017. It had to recant its offer after worldwide outrage.

The UN has done little in the last six decades to come up with any reasonable solution to the Israel- Palestine conflict. By singling out Israel constantly and repeatedly as the target for its condemnation, the UN has already lost moral authority to be the right venue to solve this conflict.

Elliott Abrams: Honor and Dishonor at the United Nations

But then we get to the meat, where the General Assembly resolution continues:

“Expressing in this regard its deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem,

“Affirms that any decisions and actions which purport to have altered, the character, status or demographic composition of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal effect, are null and void and must be rescinded….”

Israel made no “recent decision;” only the United States did. And now we are told it “must be rescinded,” to which one can only reply with the famous words Daniel Patrick Moynihan spoke in 1975 after the “Zionism is Racism” resolution passed: the United States “does not acknowledge, it will not abide by, it will never acquiesce in this infamous act.”

Some will argue that it is unfair to compare these two resolutions. I think not. Both continue the General Assembly’s record of infamous maltreatment of Israel. No other country has ever been singled out for abuse in such a manner, and now the United States is abused for the crime of acknowledging the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. Only one nation on earth is not permitted to choose its capital, and the refusal to allow Israel that right is part and parcel of the delegitimization campaign against Israel of which this resolution is itself a part.

Now what? The United States has said there will be a price to pay for insulting us in this way. Withholding aid is unlikely to be the way forward. There are too many cases where humanitarian aid is needed and there is no reason to punish desperately poor people because of a vote their rulers made. In other cases American security interests are too important. But there are ways to make our displeasure known, such as canceling or delaying the visit of a top-level American official, or the visit to the United States by a foreign official. Downgrading ties quite informally is also possible: some foreign minister comes, and finds that unaccountably the President, National Security Advisor, and Secretary of State are unavailable, and that the mid-level officials who are available have just a few minutes rather than the time requested. Requests that are too important to deny can be slowed down. A creative diplomat will find plenty of ways to show that we remember and resent this gratuitous insult to our country.

From The New York Times:

A protest in Malaysia against President Trump’s decision to designate Jerusalem the capital of Israel brought together political foes on Friday, illustrating how solidarity with Palestinians has united disparate forces in the Muslim world.

Prime Minister Najib Razak headlined a rally of more than 1,000 people in the Putra Mosque compound in Putrajaya, the country’s administrative capital.

Also in attendance were former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the 92-year-old opposition leader, who has led a campaign to oust the scandal-plagued Mr. Najib, his former protégé, and Khalil Abdul Hadi, the head of the youth wing of the country’s main Islamic party. Mr. Mahathir joined a prayer service at the Putra Mosque, along with other politicians.

“Today, regardless of our political beliefs, we gather to show that as Muslims in Malaysia we are united in opposing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” Mr. Najib said Friday.

"There are 1.6 billion Muslims,” Mr. Najib said at the Malaysian rally, to vigorous applause. “There are only 13 million Jews. It does not make sense if 1.6 billion lose to the Jews. If we don’t unite, we will be looked down upon.”

That is honor./shame in a perfect little nutshell. It shows that the issue isn't Israel or Jerusalem or Palestinians - it is Muslims losing to the Jews.

And the prime minister's political opponents are even more antisemitic:

Lawyer-cum-activist Azhar Harun has suggested that Prime Minister Najib Razak is wrong in the way he is looking at the issue of Palestine and Jerusalem, following comments made at the “rally for Jerusalem” in Putrajaya yesterday.Firstly, the 1.6 billion has never lost to the 13 million. The 1.6 billion have lost to themselves. They are busy trying to kill each other, whether figuratively or even literally.
“Secondly, and more importantly, many among the 1.6 billion are absolute hypocrites. They lack the absolute and sincere willingness to free Palestine and the Palestinians from the clutch of the 13 million,” Azhar said.
He added that there has been no proper plan, if any, from Muslim leaders and nations other than making fiery speeches.
Azhar then asked Najib to accept the fact that social media tools, such as Twitter and Facebook, through which he has “voiced his disdain against the 13 million”, is owned by the 13 million.
He also made the distinction of how the Jews now hold economic power and indirectly, political power, including among Muslim leaders.
“They, themselves, rely on the Jews and the friends of the Jews, to make money and to pursue their selfish agenda. They lack altruism,” he said.
Azhar explained how the Jews had plotted their way back from the “pogrom and holocaust” to persevere and eventually gain “world dominance”.
“They did that, first by gaining control of the economy through the financial system, international trade, properties and the world’s essential productions.
“Then, with the wealth that they created, and the essential services that they excel in and even monopolise, they made themselves indespensable to everything that moves in this world, including politicians who were too eager to pursue their own agenda, even at the expense of the Palestinian cause.
“With that, they become an absolute necessity. With that they control the politicians and the politics,” he said
Azhad added that there were no fiery speeches or “sad poems” involved in the Jews’ efforts.
“They had a plan. They worked to execute that plan quietly. And that is why, the 1.6 billion ‘lost’ the plot. And they ‘lost’ to the 13 million.”

The further Muslims are from Israel (and therefore the Western media limelight), the more free they are to be public about their antisemitism. But make no mistake - deep down, the self-loathing and shame that came from weak, lowly Jews defeating the Muslims to gain Israel is the driving force behind all the political moves of the Muslim world towards Israel, and Palestinians are merely pawns.

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12/22 Links Pt2: Phillips: The true presidential collusion scandal; Top 12 BDS Fails of 2017; That mental illness problem again.....

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: Straws in the wind or a dangerous delusion?

In Jerusalem this week, a touching film was screened about the Jews of Iraq. In Remember Baghdad, sensitively directed by British filmmaker Fiona Murphy, five Iraqi Jewish families look back at a scarcely imaginable time when Jews lived and prospered in Baghdad before persecution and massacres drove them out of the country.

One of these exiles, London resident Edwin Shuker, has recently made the deeply quixotic gesture of buying a house in Erbil, the embattled Kurdish city. As he emotionally explains, he feels a duty to reestablish a connection, however small, with ancient Babylon, which 2,500 years ago was home to one of the most ancient Jewish communities in the world.

No less striking is the reaction to this film from Iraqis themselves.

Earlier this month, it was screened at the British Academy in London to a mainly Iraqi Muslim audience, including a senior delegation from the Iraqi Embassy.

According to David Dangoor, a prominent Iraqi Jewish exile who also lives in London, the Iraqi ambassador’s political adviser said at the screening that, with the defeat of ISIS and extremism, the country is intent on pushing tolerance and diversity. Other members of the audience, said Dangoor, made very positive comments about Iraqi Jews.

There are other straws in the wind.

Last December, the Iraq Society of London’s Imperial College held an Iraq Day sponsored by the Iraqi Embassy at which the ambassador insisted that Iraqi Jews should have a stand. Although this sported many books about their lost community and related subjects all saying “printed in Israel,” Dangoor says it was the most popular of all the displays and its books all sold out.

Some Iraqi exiles scoff at the suggestion that Iraqi Muslims are now warming toward the Jews and Israel. Nevertheless, the Arab Muslim world is changing in startling ways.

Sohrab Ahmari: Swedish Secularism Targets Jewish Homeschoolers

The firebombing of a synagogue in Gothenburg thrust Sweden’s anti-Semitism crisis into global headlines. For years, Swedish Jews have lived in fear of such violence, which is almost always perpetrated by the country’s large and ill-assimilated Muslim minority. According to a 2013 European Union study, four out of five Jews decline to publicly identify themselves as Jewish in Sweden–a damning indictment of a country that likes to portray itself as one of the Continent’s most tolerant.

Street-level thuggery isn’t the only source of the crisis. As if Molotov cocktails and mobs chanting “we will shoot the Jews” weren’t enough, Swedish Jews also find themselves pressed by the reigning securalism. The Swedish state is full of solicitude for Jewish citizens in the wake of anti-Semitic attacks. But it also seeks to limit their freedom to practice their faith.

Consider Rabbi Alexander Namdar and his six-year battle to homeschool the four youngest of his 11 children in Sweden. The rabbi and his wife, Leah, arrived in the country in 1991 as emissaries of the Chabad movement, and they founded its first outpost in Scandinavia. Their center now serves some 4,000 Jews in Gothenburg, offering religious education, holding prayer and holy-day activities, and promoting Jewish life and culture in the city.

When it came to educating their own children, the public system was out of the question. The public schools were religiously inadequate and, more important, physically unsafe for Jews. Private schools were no better. All schools, including “private” and religious schools, are government-funded in Sweden, and therefore required to accept all-comers. For the Namdars, then, homeschooling was the only way to ensure their school-age children’s security and the Jewish character of their education.

Caroline Glick: Israel’s learning disabled Right

It is an iron rule of Israeli politics regularly disregarded by the political Right that left-wing parties govern from the Left, not the Right; center-left parties govern from the Left, not from the Center.

Despite the axiomatic nature of this rule, time after time, politicians and public figures on the Right have ignored it. Periodically, they make light of the distinction between governments run by their political camp and governments run by their leftist opponents.

To their credit, the converse is never true. Leftist politicians and activists never delude themselves that they are better off in the opposition. They always prefer governments led by their own camp to governments led by the Right.

For several years, this pathology unique to the political Right laid dormant – never entirely gone, but out of sight. Today, the Right’s pathological refusal to recognize that it is better off in charge than in the opposition is making a political comeback.

For the past month, a rapidly growing chorus of columnists and politicians – all of whom dwell on either the right-wing or left-wing margins of the nationalist camp – have decided to join the Left in its assault against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and call either directly or indirectly from his ouster from office.

The Left – like its rightist followers – characterizes its anti-Netanyahu campaign as an anti-corruption campaign.

EoZ top tweets of the week

Here are my top tweets of the week, sorted by number of impressions.

5.

Remember Omar Mishrawi, the @BBC reporter's son whose death from a Hamas rocket was blamed on Israel?

The case of Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh is worse.https://t.co/wiGQiXPOSF pic.twitter.com/MYgp2yhufK
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 20, 2017

I find it amusing that the idea of US money as leverage on a UN vote is considered so outrageous when the threat of Arab oil boycotts and terror has been what has fueled anti-Israel resolutions since 1970.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 21, 2017

Jerusalem is the only place in the world where 19 years of a 3000 year history is considered the "status quo" that must be preserved.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 21, 2017

When a member of the Arab American Association told Linda Sarsour about being sexually harassed by a Muslim man, the "feminist" @lsarsour sided with the man and threatened the woman. https://t.co/R8yUV7XitV

Sarsour is a hypocrite.
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 18, 2017

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah literally giving illustrated lessons to children on how to attack Israelis with rocks https://t.co/Vwcz02TyJK @UNICEF and other NGOs silent. pic.twitter.com/Efzy1BCrR2
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 17, 2017

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12/22 Links Pt1: There Is No ‘United Nations.’ So Let’s Stop Paying For It.; Daniel P. Moynihan (Feb. 1, 1981): “Joining the Jackals”

From Ian:

Michael J. Knowles: There Is No ‘United Nations.’ So Let’s Stop Paying For It.

In 1975, the U.N. adopted the resolution, “Zionism is racism.” In 2011, the U.N. General Assembly held a moment of silence to honor North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il. In 2017, it condemned the United States for establishing an embassy in a member nation’s capital city. It wasn't always like this. During its founding period, the United Nations possessed greater moral clarity because it limited membership to countries that had declared war against the Axis powers in the Second World War. The modern U.N. bears no resemblance to that body.

More than 20 years ago, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton explained the relation between the United States and the United Nations with characteristic bluntness. “The League of Nations was a failure because the United States did not participate. The United Nations would be a failure if the United States did not participate,” he observed. “There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interest.”

The image of a United Nations that does not rely for its very survival on the goodwill of the United States is a dangerous fiction that empowers the worst actors on earth and conflates their vicious self-interest with American moral clarity. It’s time to defund the fantasy. When next the ingrate children leading U.N. member states desire our blood and treasure, as they constantly do, they can come to us and beg.

Daniel P. Moynihan (Feb. 1, 1981): “Joining the Jackals”

The chain of resolutions passed in condemnation of Israel by the Security Council in 1979-80 forms a complex story. Yet to follow it only a single point needs to be understood. It is that, as a direct result of American policy, the Security Council was allowed to degenerate to the condition of the General Assembly.

Under the UN Charter the General Assembly reaches decisions by majority vote, but its decisions are purely recommendatory (Article 10). By contrast, the Security Council has power. In situations where it determines that there is a “threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression,” the Council “shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken. . . .” These include “such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary. . . .” The Security Council, in a word, may make war. And for that reason the Security Council does not operate by majority vote. Any permanent member may veto any action, simply by voting No. However, in the face of the increasingly vicious Soviet-Arab assaults that followed Camp David, the United States began to abstain. I have represented the United States on the Security Council; I have served as President of the Security Council. I state as a matter of plain and universally understood fact that for the United States to abstain on a Security Council resolution concerning Israel is the equivalent of acquiescing.

The first abstention in the sequence we are now tracing occurred on March 22, 1979 when the Council, in a resolution directed against Israel, established a three-member commission “to examine the situation relating to establishments in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.” The phrasing here was ominous: “Arab territories . . . including Jerusalem.” Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. How could its capital be in the territory of others?

Equally ominous, although at this point restrained, was the reaffirmation of earlier Council statements that the Fourth Geneva Convention “is applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem” and the strict injunction upon Israel “as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.” Now, the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War is one of a series of treaties designed to codify the behavior of Nazi Germany and make such behavior criminal under international law. This particular convention applied to the Nazi practice of deporting or murdering vast numbers of persons in Western Poland—as at Auschwitz—and plans for settling the territory with Germans. The assertion that the Geneva Convention also applied to the West Bank played, of course, perfectly into the Soviet propaganda position that “Zionism is present-day fascism.”

Ben Shapiro: BREAKING: U.N. Votes 128-9 To Declare Trump's Jerusalem Embassy 'Null And Void'; ALSO BREAKING: Who Gives A S***

On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly voted 128-9 to condemn the United States for President Trump’s decision to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They labeled the policy “null and void.” There were also 35 absentions. The nine countries voting no were the United States, Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Togo, Micronesia, Palau, Nauru, and the Marshall Islands. The 35 abstentions were mainly centered in Eastern Europe. 21 countries didn’t bother voting.

The vote was hailed by the Left as evidence of . . . something. It’s really just the latest indicator that the United Nations is the Star Wars cantina of international politics — it would be difficult to find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. Here’s the breakdown on U.N. resolutions over the past few years, thanks to UN Watch:

OMG I can't believe the United Nations, that hive of scum and villainy, is condemning the US over recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. It's not like they're rabid anti-Semites or anything. (Stats below courtesy of https://t.co/bQQDd2bcVo) pic.twitter.com/EagaKWrjh7
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) December 21, 2017

The United Nations was always a garbage idea — the very notion of countries where citizens have been reduced to eating dogs (Venezeula) or thrown in jail for dissent (Turkey) declaring American sovereign policy “null and void” with regard to reinforcing a historical and verifiable truth is insulting. The foreign community has zero control over our foreign policy, and particularly over our placement of our embassy.

Fortunately, we now have a list of countries to which President Trump can minimize funding — and we can reconsider giving money to the U.N. in the first place. U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has officially been appointed Daily Wire spirit animal, said as much:

CNN’s Tapper: Many Countries Voting against U.S. on Jerusalem Have “Questionable Records”

A number of countries supporting Thursday’s United Nations General Assembly vote against President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital have “questionable records of their own,” Jake Tapper said in a commentary during his show The Lead on CNN.

Tapper singled out critics such as Venezuela, Syria, Yemen and North Korea, all of whose citizens suffer from tyranny and war.

“The U.S. imperils global peace says the representative of Venezuela, a country in a humanitarian disaster,” Tapper observed. After noting that Venezuelans are suffering from widespread hunger, Tapper asked, “On what moral platform does the government of Venezuela stand today?”

Tapper also rejected criticism of the U.S. position on Jerusalem from Syria noting, “We’re in the seventh year of the brutal Syrian civil war that’s killed half a million people and displaced millions. Syrian President Bashar al Assad has used chemical weapons against his own citizens including children.”

Yemen, which along with Turkey drafted the resolution criticizing the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem, is “seemingly more focused at least during the speech on where the U.S. puts it’s embassy on Israel than on the 7 million Yemenis on the brink of starvation in that country’s civil war,” Tapper said.

Critics with questionable records condemn US

Last week, the Turkish embassy in Tel Aviv tweeted Chanukah greetings:

Sharing the joy of #Hanukkah with the Turkish Jewish community, we wish it brings peace for all. #hagsameach / İsrail’deki Türk Yahudi toplumunun Hanuka bayramini kutlar, barış ve huzur getirmesini dileriz. pic.twitter.com/Q8HCi68Rt0
— Turkish Embassy TA (@TelAvivBE) December 14, 2017

Nothing about Israel, just greetings for Chanukah.

The responses that came in Arabic are nearly all insulting, because acknowledging a Jewish holiday means, to many Arabs, being pro-Israel.

So responses ranged from standard insults to things like this:

Arab media is covering this without any hint of their usual meme that Jews are good, Israelis are bad.

Clearly, these Arabs haven't received the memo that they supposedly love Jews and hate Zionists.

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UNRWA claims (and takes funds) for 450,000 "refugees" in Lebanon. There are only 174,000 left.

From AP:

The first official census of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon has revealed that there are 174,422 Palestinians now living in Lebanon, a figure almost two thirds less than previously estimated.

The Palestinians — both original refugees and their descendants — were believed to number about 450,000 but tens of thousands emigrated from Lebanon in over the past decades, seeking better opportunities.

The census released Thursday was conducted by the Lebanese Central Administration of Statistics and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Even though UNRWA knows how many Palestinians are in Lebanon and how many left, it claims that there are 450,000 "registered Palestine refugees" in the country - because it wants to screw the world out of more money.

I looked at this in 2012, when it was thought that there were still 260,000 Palestinians actually in Lebanon in a study that UNRWA itself funded - and buried.

Lebanon is where the world's hypocrisy about Palestinians is in full view. A country whose very laws are discriminatory against Palestinians, where Palestinians are barred from getting many jobs or to own land, where they are pushed into overcrowded camps where they are not allowed to build and that are not allowed to expand.

And in one case, the camp is literally surrounded by a brand new wall, complete with watchtowers, making it a literal prison. Now we know that the 100,000 Palestinians in this prison are more than half the total Palestinian population in Lebanon!

The plight of Palestinians in Lebanon is worse than in Gaza. No wonder two thirds of them have fled to wherever they could go.

Yet popular artists still perform in Lebanon without anyone complaining about "apartheid." There are few articles and no conferences and no UN resolutions to help these Palestinians.

Anyone who says they care about Palestinian suffering and who never mentions their oppression in Lebanon (and Syria and Jordan and Egypt) doesn't really care about Palestinians.

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Palestinians destroying ancient Herodian and Hashmonean antiquities - literally bulldozing Jewish history

We've discussed the The Temple Mount Sifting Project before:

The Temple Mount Sifting Project (formerly known as the Temple Mount Salvage Operation) is an Israeli archaeological project begun in 2005 dedicated to recovering archaeological artifacts from 400 truckloads of topsoil removed from the Temple Mount by the Waqf during the construction of the underground el-Marwani Mosque from 1996 to 1999.[1] The project is under the academic auspices of Bar Ilan University and until 2017 was funded by the Ir David Foundation and Israel Exploration Society.

The destruction of so many tons of property from the Temple Mount was the biggest archaeological crime in history.

The project webpage is now warning of other large-scale destruction of Jewish history by Palestinians, ISIS-style.

In full view of people passing on the highway 90, Palestinians are using bulldozers and other heavy equipment to destroy Second Temple-era Jewish settlements in order to build a new village.

This is all happening in Area B, under Palestinian administrative control.

Moreover, it looks like Palestinian antiquities thieves are working in the area at night to steal whatever ancient artifacts they can find to sell on the market.

The article notes that similar destruction has recently begun in the area of the Hasmonean palaces in Jericho.

These areas are under Israeli military control, but complaints have gone unheeded. At a time that Jerusalem's Jewish history is in the news, the Israeli government is allowing Jewish history in Judea and Samaria to be wantonly destroyed.

In Israel, any construction project must be checked out - and stopped or modified, if necessary - by archaeologists to see if anything of historic value would be destroyed. Muslim artifacts are protected as well as Jewish ones.

The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, wants to destroy any vestiges of Jewish history from areas under its control.

This is another crime being done in broad daylight.

(h/t Yoel)

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Donate to EoZ!

(Post pinned to the top of the blog, scroll down for newer articles.)

It is the end of the year, and this site continues to be an integral part of the pro-Zionist online discourse.

1.7 million direct page views this year. Over 25,000 Twitter followers. My research quoted in newspapers. And even a symposium in Jerusalem this year.

EoZ takes a great deal of time and money. Also, unlike practically every other website, I try to pay at least a token amount to my columnists who do such a good job.

Please help support EoZ and ensure that we can continue to grow and educate the world on the truth about Israel and the Arab world.

And thanks again for all your support!

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Have a great holiday season and thanks again!

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12/21 Links Pt2: The 10 most insane UN anti-Israel actions of 2017; Is The Liberal Media Giving Linda Sarsour A Pass On A Sexual Assault Cover-Up?

From Ian:

UN defies Trump, rejects US recognition of Jerusalem as Israeli capital by 128-9

Non-binding General Assembly motion brands US president's decision on holy city 'null and void'; US envoy Haley notes '65 countries refused to condemn the United States'
The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday defied warnings from the United States and overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the Trump administration’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and calling on countries not to move their diplomatic missions to the city.

A total of 128 countries voted in favor of the text, defying the threats — that were forcefully reiterated in an address before the vote by US envoy Nikki Haley — to cut aid to countries that opposed the motion.

Nine countries — the US, Israel, Togo, Micronesia, Guatemala, Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands and Honduras — voted against the resolution.

There were 35 abstentions, including a number of countries that had been widely expected to support the move, such as Colombia, Mexico, Malawi and Rwanda. A further 21 countries did not vote at all.

By abstaining, Hungary, Croatia, Latvia, Romania and the Czech Republic broke European Union consensus on the vote. The EU had previously vehemently rejected any attempt to change Jerusalem’s status in the absence of a final peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.

Haley tweeted after the vote that “65 countries refused to condemn the United States” — totaling the no votes, the abstentions and the no-shows.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, in a video, that “Israel completely rejects this preposterous resolution. Jerusalem is our capital — always was, always will be.” However, he added, “I do appreciate the fact that a growing number of countries refuse to participate in this theater of the absurd.” He thanked US President Donald Trump and Haley for their “stalwart defense” of Israel and the truth.

Full text of Nikki Haley’s speech to UN General Assembly on Jerusalem

.@dannydanon: “I am holding before you a coin. It says ‘Freedom of Zion’. If you check the envelopes on your desk, you will see I left one for each of you... These are the facts no one wants to hear.” pic.twitter.com/FjcxMF4QZo
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) December 21, 2017

Hillel Neuer: The 10 most insane UN anti-Israel actions of 2017

5. Dubravka Simonovic, the U.N. expert on violence against women, visited Israel and the territories and concluded: When Palestinian men beat their wives, it’s Israel’s fault.

UN Watch’s executive director took the floor to challenge the U.N. investigator’s report: “Why did you fail to mention that official Palestinian TV regularly broadcasts Islamic preachers who tell the people how to beat their wives?”

In reaction, the Egyptian chair of the meeting broke with parliamentary protocol: “I would like to say thank you, but I can’t,” said Ambassador Amr Ramadan. “Because I think that you need to respect this council more.”

4. In its ritual annual scapegoating of the Jewish state, the UN General Assembly adopted 20 one-sided resolutions against Israel—and only 6 resolutions on the rest of the world combined. Tomorrow, at an emergency meeting called by the Arab and Islamic states to condemn the United States over its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a 21st resolution will be adopted criticizing the Jewish state.

3. UNESCO negated its mandate to protect world heritage by adopting a resolution recognizing Hebron—second holiest city in Judaism because of the Tomb of the Patriarchs—as a Palestinian world heritage site.

UN Watch revealed that UNESCO had rejected its own experts’ advice, who opposed the Palestinian nomination on account of failing to properly recognize Hebron’s Jewish and Christian heritage.

2. UNRWA launched a global campaign showing the picture of an 11-year-old girl, “Aya from Gaza,” in a bombed-out building—portraying Israel as a cruel oppressor of Palestinian children—but UN Watch exposed it as a fraud: the photo was actually from Syria. The story went viral online. UNRWA suffered massive embarrassment, and was forced to remove the photo worldwide.

1. The office of U.N. human rights commissioner Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein spent the past year preparing to inflame the anti-Israel boycott campaign by drawing up a blacklist of companies that do business in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and other Jewish communities over the 1949 armistice line. The report is due to be submitted this month, and presented before the council in March. UN Watch will take the lead in countering the blacklist, what Nikki Haley this week called the “ugly creation” of the UNHRC.

Palestinian writer describes his people as "12 million intercontinental missiles"

Adnan al Sabah, who lives in Jenin, writes an article for the Arab Media Internet Network about what has worked for Palestinians and what hasn't, to figure out why they still haven't managed to make any progress.

He starts off his essay as if he might actually be saying something daring:

Why do we fight the largest military arsenal in the Middle East with worn or hand-made guns? In a century, we continue to offer victims after victims, and we are happy to present ourselves as champions and lovers of death. We speak with pride about victories here and there despite the enormity of the catastrophe and without shame either for ourselves or for the world around us.

So Sabah decides to look at the history of Palestinian "resistance" and see what lessons can be learned.

He starts with their first murderous rampage in 1920 and goes on from there, looking at the impotence of the murder sprees and terror attacks in 1921, 1929, 1936 and the more recent intifadas. Yet he despairs - why haven't these moves worked? And now, horror of horrors, Arab states no longer want to fight wars with Israel.

What to do?

Sabah says that all 12 million Palestinians must get off their seats and walk, "barechested," and overrrun Israel. After all, Israel cannot possibly kill 12 million people, right?

As he writes it, "How many people can [an Israeli soldier] kill before he is trampled by the masses of men, women, children and the elderly, sick, disabled, and old?"

Tellingly, he refers to all 12 million alleged Palestinians as "12 million intercontinental missiles." This is exactly how the Arab leaders have traditionally looked at Palestinians - not as people but as cannon fodder, as pawns who can be used for propaganda purposes against Israel. Certainly not as human beings with human rights, at least not under Arab rule.

Of course, the idea that Palestinians must compromise and make peace with Israel so these millions would not have to be human weapons never occurs to Sabah - nor does it occur, as far as I can tell from over a decade of reading Arabic media, does it ever occur to a single Palestinian Arab published writer in Arabic.

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