Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

12/26 Links Pt2: BDS claims – an Ethiopian answer; Murray: UK: Going about Our "Normal" Lives?; Dishonest Reporter of the Year Award 2017

From Ian:

PMW: PMW report spurs Denmark to cut funding to PA NGOs

On May 26, 2017 PMW reported that funds provided by Norway, the UN and a conglomerate of countries including Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland had been used to build a center for young women that was subsequently named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi. Mughrabi led a terror attack that resulted in the murder of 37 Israelis, including 12 children, in 1978.

Denmark
Last week, Denmark decided to cancel some grants and review further funding of Palestinian NGOs. The decision was made following an investigation initiated after PMW's report that the women’s center funded by Denmark, was named after a Palestinian terrorist murderer. Denmark announced that it will also tighten the conditions for providing funding to all Palestinian NGOs and that the majority of the aid, suspended after PMW’s report, will not be paid.

“Denmark will tighten the conditions for providing money to Palestinian NGOs, Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen said... The review followed revelations [by Palestinian Media Watch] in May that a women’s center partly funded with European aid money... was named after Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in the Coastal Road massacre in 1978 that killed 37 people... Samuelsen also said that the 'majority of aid' suspended from the summer while the review was under way will not be paid.” [The Jerusalem Post, Dec. 24, 2017]

Norway
When PMW released its report documenting the center named for terrorist Mughrabi, Norway immediately demanded that the Norwegian money be returned:

Norwegian Foreign Minister Børge Brende:
"The glorification of terrorist attacks is completely unacceptable, and I deplore this decision in the strongest possible terms. Norway will not allow itself to be associated with institutions that take the names of terrorists in this way... We have asked for the logo of the Norwegian representation office to be removed from the building immediately, and for the funding that has been allocated to the centre to be repaid." [Norwegian Foreign Ministry website, May 26, 2017]

Belgium
When PMW reported that a Palestinian school built with Belgium funds, was also named after terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi, Belgium condemned it and froze the construction of ten additional Palestinian Authority schools.

Belgian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Didier Vanderhasselt:
“Belgium unequivocally condemns the glorification of terrorist attacks [and] will not allow itself to be associated with the names of terrorists... Belgium has immediately raised this issue with the Palestinian Authority and is awaiting a formal response... In the meantime Belgium will put on hold any projects related to the construction or equipment of Palestinian schools.” [The Algemeiner, Oct. 7, 2017]

Douglas Murray: UK: Going about Our "Normal" Lives?

But the more this conspicuous, self-conscious egging-on of such attitudes is stressed, the thinner it seems to get. In March, after Khalid Masood ploughed a car across Westminster Bridge, mowing down locals and tourists, and crashed the car and stabbed policeman Keith Palmer to death inside the gates of the Palace of Westminster, one prominent British journalist took to the pages of the New York Times to pour out the clichés.

"By Thursday morning, London was, if not quite back to normal, then certainly back in business. As I traveled through the south of the city, up to Chelsea and later over to King's Cross, Londoners really were going about their lives as on any other day.

"This behavior reflects something deeper than conscious defiance, I think. It would simply not occur to the 8.6 million citizens of this megalopolis to allow one man to send them into hiding. As they say in the East End, you're having a laugh, aren't you?"

One wonders when the author last went into an East End pub to have a pint, and whether he honestly believes such honest cockneys still reside there? Nevertheless, he went to boast of the "stoicism" and "ancestral pride" that still exists there and to insist that, "The only way to proceed is -- in the much-loved British slogan -- to keep calm and carry on." Quite why this spirit is meant to reside in the bones of a city in which most of its current residents (according to the last census) have arrived in the decades since the Second World War is never clear.

Similar clichés spilled out after the suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena in May. They came out yet again after the London Bridge attack in June. Yet one of the most striking images from that night was of drinkers in Borough Market, where the terrorists finished their assault, being marched out of the Market under police escort with their hands on their heads. The British public at that point, at any rate, looked not like stoical, pugnacious heroes, but like a defeated army being marched into captivity. Still the clichés continued. The day after the attack, in her address to the nation, Prime Minister Theresa May assured the public that "Our response must be as it has always been when we have been confronted by violence. We must come together, we must pull together."

One of the most striking images from the June 3, 2017 Borough Market terror attack was of drinkers being marched out of the Market under police escort with their hands on their heads. The British public at that point looked not like stoical, pugnacious heroes, but like a defeated army being marched into captivity. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

So it is interesting to consider, beneath all the talk of business as usual, and Blitz spirit, and keeping calm and carrying on, what, in fact, are the British public actually feeling? Last month provided a sobering demonstration.

Douglas Murray Takes Us Inside The Strange Death Of Europe

Douglas Murray: I'm only going to speak for about 15 minutes because I wanted as much time as possible for Q&A, because I sense that there hasn't been much, so far, and because I'm always very excited about hearing other people's views and questions. But let me start by making a few remarks.

The first, by the way, is that I'll talk a little about my recent book. It's always rather difficult to understand another country, let alone another continent, or another culture. There are things you have in common. There are things which seem bizarre, when you look at them from outside, and there are things that look recognizable. There are things that rhyme. There are an enormous number of similarities between where I'm from and where most of you are from, and an enormous number of differences too. I've been in the states a week, spoken at a campus, and was on the West Coast at the beginning of the week, and I had one of those disassociation moments in San Francisco, when I had been in my second day in the city, and I just noticed that absolutely everywhere, there seemed to be posters advertising delivery services for marijuana. And I thought this is interesting because if there's one thing it seems to me that San Francisco doesn't need it's easier access to marijuana. More of it, just so that people who smoke it don't even have to go down the street. But there are lots of similarities between our societies as well, and one of the, I suppose, most gratifying things since the "Strange Death of Europe" came out in June here in the U.S. is the number of people who have come over to me and written to me from America, from Canada, from Australia, and said this book is about us isn't it? And, perhaps I could stop by just saying a little about what it is about, and you'll get some of the resonances.

The "Strange Death of Europe" centers on the 2015 migration crisis, which you all remember was the moment when Angela Merkel massively exacerbated an already existing problem by announcing, unilaterally, that the external and internal borders of Europe were basically dissolved. In a single act, the mass movement of people that had been going on for decades sped up exponentially, so that Germany in a single year took in an additional 2 percent of its population. Sweden took in an additional almost 3 percent of its population. This is all part of a pattern. I say that has been going on for many decades. And, just like those previous decades, what happened after the 2015 crisis was that politicians and the media found excuses to justify something that would have happened anyway. So, for instance, German citizens and others were told that this mass migration, millions of people into Europe, was there would be a net economic gain for their society, that it would enrich their society. Now, actually, all of the studies that I have gone over on this show that, at best, most such migration cannot be called to be any kind of economic gain. A study in Britain showed that over a 15 year period, migrants took out 95 billion more in services than they put in taxation. And, of course they would. If you go to another country, you don't speak the language. You don't have the skills. It's going to be a very long time, before you've put in anything into the welfare system, remotely like the amount that you and your family will have taken out. But, this is one of the arguments that is made.

Egyptian media reports that an "urgent complaint" has been filed before the administrative court to compel the Minister of Local Development and the Governor of Cairo to change the street where the US embassy is located to the name "Jerusalem is Arab."

The complainant's lawyer Samir Sabri issued a press statement saying "after a wave of anger that swept Egypt, Arab and foreign countries on the American Declaration of the President of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, it is an urgent duty to change the street in which the US Embassy in Cairo is located."

Residents didn't care so much about changing the name as to moving the embassy altogether, complaining about the security measures like concrete blocks to stop any car bombs.

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We are now more than two months into the "reconciliation" between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, much of which only occurred because the PA imposed a crippling siege on Gaza of electricity, fuel and medicines that was ignored by the world.

And yet the siege continues.

Israel does not limit medicines or medical equipment into Gaza (with the exception of a tiny number of devices that need to be approved individually because they contain radioactive material or the like.)

But the Palestinian Authority does limit them. And the world, obsessed with Israel's blockade, ignores the things that Mahmoud Abbas does to his own people, not unlike Syria's Assad.

Gaza health officials are alarmed as the shortage of medicines and other medical needs have reached a critical point.

There is now a shortage of materials needed for blood tests, such as tests for hepatitis C and B tests and HIV tests. There is also a shortage of PKU tests for newborns, and for thyroid diseases.

Also, anti-rejection drugs for people who have received organ transplants.

Out of 657 laboratory items needed, 383 of them are down to zero and 274 will run out within three months.

Israel's restriction of materials to Gaza did not kill anyone (I did not see any such claims in Arab media) but these shortages, mandated by Mahmoud Abbas on his own people for some seven months already, are resulting in deaths.

So, where are the "human rights" NGOs complaining about the humanitarian crisis? Where is the media?

They are discussing how a 18 year old "child" was arrested for assaulting a soldier on video.

Gaza? Who cares? Certainly not the media and the NGOs when Israel cannot be blamed.

(Also in Gaza, the companies that clean hospitals are on strike, due to not getting paid. Surgeries are being cancelled. I don't know who is responsible for their salaries, but once again Gaza woes only make news when they can be blamed on Jews. Certainly the "pro-Palestinian" crowd doesn't care about their precious pets.)

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12/26 Links Pt1: Trump’s Embassy Move Proved Abbas Doesn’t Want Peace; NYTs Admits That Embassy Move Didn’t Lead To Mass Violence

From Ian:

Thank You, Nikki Haley

The United Nations was founded on lofty principles in the wake of the atrocities of World War II. Sadly, with two votes last week – the first in the Security Council on Monday and the second in an emergency session of the General Assembly – we witnessed just how far the institution has fallen.

The U.S. is a sovereign, democratic nation that lives by the rule of law. One of those laws, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act, was passed in 1995, by a solid, bipartisan majority of 93 to 5 in the Senate and 374 to 37 in the House. A sovereign nation has the right to choose where to place its embassies. And yet, on Dec. 6, when U.S. President Donald Trump called for the United States to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the call was met with such hysteria in this venerable institution that one might think he had called for genocide.

These two U.N. votes, condemning Trump's recognition of Jerusalem, contradict the very foundations on which the U.N. was established. Article 2 (7) of the United Nations Charter specifically states that "nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." This, however, did not prevent the frenzy against the U.S. for supporting its one democratic ally in the Middle East.

Before Thursday's vote in the General Assembly, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley valiantly said: "The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in this assembly. We will remember it when we are called upon to once again make the world's largest contribution to the U.N., and when other member nations ask Washington to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit."

Why a small Central American nation became a trailblazer on Jerusalem

On Sunday, Guatemala became the first country after the US to announce its intention to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a move seen as tantamount to recognizing the city as Israel’s capital, though President Jimmy Morales’s statement included no explicit recognition.

Predictably, the Central American nation’s decision was castigated by the Palestinians and other Arab states and hailed in Israel as an act of deep friendship that marked the beginning of a new trend. Neighbor Honduras is said to be next in line. Like Guatemala, it also voted last week against the United Nations General Assembly resolution condemning the US’s December 6 decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move its embassy there.

Other countries — Togo, Paraguay, Romania, Slovakia — are also said to be considering following in Guatemala’s footsteps in bucking decades-old diplomatic dogma to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

But what prompted a relatively small nation far removed from the Middle East and its problems to be the first to take the plunge after the US?

There are several reasons for Guatemala’s dramatic step. The country’s well-established historic friendship with Israel and ongoing deep security and trade ties are one key part of the story. The personal character of the country’s current leader is the other.

Seventy years ago, Guatemala’s ambassador to the UN, Dr. Jorge Garcia Granados, a member of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, played a crucial role in convincing Latin American countries to vote in favor of General Assembly Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Mandatory Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

“It could be that without Guatemala, the resolution on that fateful day would not have passed, and history would be very different,” Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein told Morales during his November 2016 visit to Israel.

Israel says 10 more countries in talks about moving embassies to Jerusalem

In an interview with Israel Radio, she declined to say which states Israel was speaking with, but Channel 10 reported that the next country likely to announce an embassy move was Honduras.

Israel and Honduras, which borders Guatemala, have enjoyed very close ties over the past few years, and in 2016 signed an agreement under which Israel agreed to enhance the the Central American country’s armed forces in an unprecedented way, in order to fight organized crime.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was reelected earlier this month in a hotly disputed election. He is a graduate of MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, and spent time in Israel.

Along with Guatemala, Honduras was one of nine nations that voted “no” last week with the United States when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a non-binding resolution denouncing US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Unlike Guatemala, whose embassy was in Jerusalem from the 1950s until 1980, Honduras never had its embassy in Israel’s capital.

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein announced at a Likud party event Monday that the parliamentary heads of two other countries had spoken to him about moving their embassies from Tel Aviv. The Walla news site reported that representatives from Romania and Slovakia had expressed support for such a move and were working in their respective countries to effect it.

Other countries also reportedly in talks to move their embassies are South America’s Paraguay and the west African nation of Togo.

Are the Palestinians getting it?

The sky should have fallen. The gates of hell should have been forced open The Middle East should have plunged into even more chaos. The Jews should have had to pay dearly. It's been two weeks since the American decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and yet little or nothing has happened.

The Palestinian Arabs did not go out en masse to the streets to take part in violence, more worried about what they would lose by participating in terrorism and demonstrations (entry permits, work, freedom, housing, family members) than by “the occupation". Fifteen years ago, Israeli tanks re-entered Ramallah, Qalqiliya, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem. There had been suicide bombers, snipers, rockets, thousands of dead. Today, a few kids throwing rocks, the bad mood of the tour operators in Bethlehem and a very timid reaction from the Arab countries, the minimum possible.

What does all this tell us? That Israel may have accomplished what is called the "taking off" in surfing, when the critical wave is overcome. In this case the wave is Arab-Islamic rejection. It is not that the Palestinian Arabs have become pacifists or that they now love the Jews. More terror attacks will come. Perhaps they only hate their own corrupt leaders, like Mahmoud Abbas.

But perhaps they also understand that Israel will not pack and leave, that it will remain on the map, that the Jews and not the terrorists will decide their destiny, that the IDF is invincible, that "the wall" is high and that after 70 years of terror the Israeli Jews have won.

History records that Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, came before the Sixth Zionist Congress on August 26, 1903, and presented the "Uganda Plan," suggesting that Jews accept a place other than then-Palestine as their national home. It was voted down.

Not surprisingly, there is more to the story.

Theodor Herzl; photo by Carl Pietzer. Public domain

In his book, A Peace To End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, David Fromkin writes that as an assimilated Jew, Herzl's knowledge of politics far outstripped his knowledge of Judaism. After witnessing the backlash against the Jews in France following the Dreyfuss affair, Herzl recognized the need for a Jewish state, but was not picky about the location.

At first.

Herzl created a Jewish organization through which to negotiate with various European governments. As he started plan, Herzl came into contact with the Jewish leaders and organizations that sponsored and supported Jewish settlement in Palestine. It was then that he realized the special appeal Palestine held for Jews around the world -- an appeal that would make his efforts more successful.

However, finding a government to support his plan was more difficult. After meeting with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and finding him unresponsive to his arguments, Herzl began to look for other, more sympathetic governments.

In 1902, Herzl met in Great Britain with Joseph Chamberlain, the powerful Colonial Secretary (and father of Neville Chamberlain). Chamberlain was sympathetic not only to the idea in general, but also to its location. Herzl suggested a long-term strategy, where Jews would originally settle nearby either in Cyprus or El Arish at the edge of the Sinai until Palestine became available. While Cyprus and El Arish were considered part of the Ottoman Empire, they were both occupied by the British at the time. Chamberlain turned down the idea of Cyprus, but did offer to help Herzl get approval for El Arish. Towards that end, Herzl hired the lawyer David Lloyd George, who later went on to become the British Prime Minister, 1916 -1922.

Joseph Chamberlain. Public domain

However, by mid-1903, Herzl was informed that Al Arish was considered impractical.

It was then that Joseph Chamberlain suggested Uganda as a substitute to Herzl. Actually, Alona Ferba writes in Haaretz that the land in British East Africa offered to Herzl was 15,500 square km territory in today's Kenya. The idea was supported by the British Prime Minister at the time -- Arthur James Balfour.

Arthur James Balfour, public domain

Lloyd George drafted a Charter for the Jewish Settlement, which was submitted to the British government for approval. According to Fromkin:

In the summer of 1903 the foreign Office replied in a guarded but affirmative way that if studies and talks over the course of the next year were successful, His Majesty's Government would consider favorably proposals for the creation of a Jewish colony. It was the first official declaration by a government to the Zionist movement and the first official statement implying national status for the Jewish people. It was the first Balfour Declaration. [p. 274]

We know that is was not the last, just as we know that Uganda/Kenya was rejected by Jews as a state.

After all, Uganda could never truly become a Jewish state. It was not the national Jewish homeland. Uganda was not the indigenous home of the Jews. There were no historical, religious, and culture ties binding the Jews to any place other than the one the Western World refered to as Palestine. So even though Herzl rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest and influential British politicians of the time, in the short term - he failed.

But Herzl was successful in harnessing the pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist feeling that existed in the British government at the time. In doing so, Herzl set in motion forces that a over the following years would grow and snowball, leading to the Balfour Declaration and the eventual recreation of the Jewish State of Israel.

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French children's magazine Youpi published this in its latest edition. The translation is "We call these 197 countries states, like France, Germany or Algeria. There are a few more, but not all countries in the world agree that they are real countries (for example, the State of Israel or North Korea.)"

Youpi is meant for children ages 5-10.

The French Jewish community was not pleased, and complained to the editor.

As a result, the magazine's publisher issued an apology:

"We recognize an error, a clumsiness, we obviously did not want to challenge the existence of the State of Israel", said Pascal Ruffenach, president of the Bayard group that publlshes Youpi.

The magazine will be withdrawn from being sold today.

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Singer Lorde pretends to be brave by succumbing to BDS pressure (poster)

As has been well reported, this by HuffPost:

Grammy-award winner Lorde has canceled a planned concert in Israel following backlash over the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.

The concert was scheduled for June, but pro-Palestinian activists reached out to the 21-year-old New Zealand pop star to complain, and urged her to join a growing boycott movement against Israel.

Two activists from New Zealand, one Palestinian and one Jewish, wrote an open letter to Lorde decrying the treatment of Palestinians. They noted that it’s a particularly difficult time for Palestinians now “after the Trump administration’s decision to move” the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in an apparent bid to shut down debate about who has rights to the city.

“A performance in Israel sends the wrong message,” writer Justine Sachs and teacher Nadia Abu-Shanab wrote in the letter. “Playing in Tel Aviv will be seen as giving support to the policies of the Israeli government, even if you make no comment on the political situation.”

The pleas were effective with Lorde.

The Jewish activist, Justine Sachs, made her Twitter account private when people started looking at her extremist positions on - well, everything. I grabbed this screenshot of two of her recent tweets showing that she is against all nation-states and she would love for everyone to boycott the US as well:

I tweeted Lorde asking if she would also take Sachs' advice to boycott the US. After all, this should be part of her research, right?

Hey @lorde , the person who you thought made such great points about Israel also would love everyone to boycott the United States. Will you listen to her?

Or is your newfound morality (based on info from someone filled with hate) limited to the Jewish state? pic.twitter.com/ELy9yc7qr8
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 25, 2017

Of course, no answer on Lorde's side.

But Lorde did claim a mantle of bravery for succumbing to BDS pressure (which, as we've seen in the past, usually includes naked threats:

“Hey guys, so about this Israel show,” she said in a statement reported by The Jerusalem Post. “I’ve received an overwhelming number of messages and letters ... and I think the right decision at this time is to cancel the show. I’m not too proud to admit I didn’t make the right call on this one. I’m truly sorry to reverse my commitment to come play for you. I hope one day we can all dance.”

So Lorde says she did research before her show, and then a letter from a person who wants to see the US destroyed was considered credible enough to make her change her mind?

Here's what Lorde's calculus really is. The fear of death threats for playing Israel against no fear at all for listening to the haters. (I tweeted this earlier):

Bravery is doing the right thing, not to submit to threats (and breaking agreements) while pretending to take the moral high ground. An appeal to not hurt Palestinians' feelings, as if they really care about another concert in Israel, means more to her than hurting the feelings of her Jewish (former) fans, because the Palestinians might decide to send a few letter bombs her way and the Jews - won't.

And you can be sure that this ignorant singer who finds arguments from anarchist haters to be convincing is way too proud to admit that she did make the wrong call on this one.

(I was pleased, though, to see that one of Israel's supporters used a poster of mine on Lorde's Facebook page as people argued about this.)

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12/25 Links Pt2: The night the UNRWA stole Xmas; One Malaysian, standing with Israel

From Ian:

Christmas Eve 1944: How singing ‘Silent Night’ saved American POWs during the Battle of the Bulge

The story was told in 2011 by Keith Ginther of Montana, and was republished on his death in July 2014 by The Great Falls Tribune:
Quiet, dependable, faithful rancher Keith Ginther died Sunday in Choteau. His passing brought to mind this story, which we featured Christmas 2011. I had known him for many years in a vague sort of way. He never had much to say. And then at Christmas one year, he suddenly started talking. He seemed shocked later by all he’d reveled [sic] but proud to have told his story, too. — Kristen Inbody

Here’s an excerpt from his story (emphasis added):
In December 1944, Ginther became one of the 23,000 Americans captured or missing by the end of the Battle of the Bulge, Germany’s final and ultimately unsuccessful offensive on the Western Front.

He began a 150-mile march into Germany 67 years ago this month. He remembers feeling humbled in defeat, even more so as the POWs met German artillery pulled by horses or one truck pulling another on its way to the front….

The column of POWs passed through a countryside devastated by war and damaged by Allied bombing. At one village, the POWs had to clear rubble so German artillery could pass through. An American bomber pilot joined the prisoner ranks.

“The people seemed to be more hostile to airmen, whom they blamed for being bombed,” Ginther said.

Germans harassed the downed pilot. They’d rush the sides of the column, trying to grab him.

The villagers were starving, exhausted and angry.

When the hostility was at its worst, all the prisoners had reason to be afraid — though none so much as the captured bomber pilot.

Yet at that moment, an American in the ranks began singing “Silent Night.”

“Pretty soon the Germans were singing ‘Silent Night’ too, so it calmed things down,” Ginther said. “Halfway through the first verse, you could hear the German words, too.”

If not for the song, which for one moment brought a measure of peace to a one small corner of Germany, “I don’t really know what would have happened,” he said. “The guards would have tried, I guess, to protect him.” (h/t MtTB)

From Jerusalem on Christmas Eve, Netanyahu Offers Christians Personal Tours of Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to play tour guide to Christian pilgrims on Sunday in a Christmas Eve message relayed from Jerusalem.

In a video he posted on social media — titled “Merry Christmas from Jerusalem, the capital of Israel!” — Netanyahu described Israel as a haven for its 2-percent Christian minority.

“We protect the rights of everyone to worship in the holy sites behind me,” he said, standing in front of the Jerusalem skyline.

Netanyahu named several Christian pilgrimage sites in Israel — including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City — which would take visitors “in the footsteps of Jesus and the origin of our Judeo-Christian heritage.”

“For those of you who come to Israel, I’m going to take a guided tour. In fact, I’ll be your guide on this guided tour,” Netanyahu said. This would happen Christmas next year he said, without going into the logistics.

I'm very proud to be the Prime Minister of Israel. A country that says Merry Christmas, first to its Christian citizens, and to our Christian friends around the world! #MerryChristmas pic.twitter.com/R8DadFwoSD
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) December 24, 2017

Muhammed Yusoff Rawther: One Malaysian, standing with Israel

Arutz Sheva received the following letter several days ago:

With the recent developments in the Israeli Palestinian conflict, I have penned my thoughts on the matter from a Malaysian perspective, for your kind consideration to be published as a piece.

Thank you for your kind indulgence.
Yusoff
Penang, Malaysia

One Malaysian, standing with Israel

As the crowd of peace loving brethren from the religion of peace made their way outside the mosques in Penang and Kuala Lumpur after Friday prayers, an ugly and ironic truth dawned upon me. On the podium constructed specially for the protest, community leaders and politicians alike rose above the sea of protesters to reveal their true colours.

With chants like “death to America” and “down with Israel”, they did not for a second hesitate before the utterance of hatred, anti-Semitism, racism and sheer stupidity.

It then occurred to me, Malaysians are either too afraid, or have so become numb to such ridiculous rhetorics, that none have emerged forward to provide the counter narrative in defence of a democracy in the midst of tyrannical rule and political suppression.

Egyptian politician calls Nikki Haley a racist - while emphasizing her Sikh background

Egypt's Youm7 has an article by Salah al-Madawi, a former governor of

The Family history of the racist US delegate to the UN

When I was watching this woman’s face during the Security Council meetings I found a face loaded with strange inner ugliness and a weird determination to be more American than the Americans themselves and to be more racist than the White Americans, the descendants of the first migrants to the New World and to stand for the support of Zionism more than the Zionists themselves endeavor to.

Where did this woman whose two parents are of Indian origin gain all that hatred towards us? The woman that can sell everything sold her ethnic origin and pretended to embrace Christianity, though actually, she belongs to the Sikhs. The questions as to her religious affinity on the part of some Americans faded when she submitted her candidacy to senior positions to the state of South Carolina. When she married Michael Haley, who is a National Guard employee, the couple held two wedding ceremonies, one in accordance with Sikh rituals and later in a church in accordance with its rituals. Afterward, she [Mrs. Haley] omitted her Indian name Nimrata Nikki Randhawa and used only her middle name Nikki which means ‘the little one’ and along with it her husband’s name. Then she set into the track of political career instead of her work as an accountant.

Her best friend from amongst the Jewish Americans… of those who stood by her and supported her with money and ‘shortcuts’ till she arrived at the post of the Governor of South Carolina than with the sponsorship of AIPAC and its affiliates, she was recommended to Trump. They knew well that she acts as a mercenary and here she appears with a furious expression in the face of those who said ‘No to racism and to those who become Zionists’, so much so that there were some people who thought her to be of Jewish extract. She is not of a Jewish extract, but she is another facet of those whom the Jews of America buy and promote on Saturday in order to make use of them as their trumpets on Sunday. This woman does not have any interest in the Sikh nor with Christianity or with Islam, nor with anything else. She is a pragmatic dealer to such a degree that she adapts herself to the ideas of [Donald] Trump of assessing everything with money.

What kind of a state is that in which no one can promote himself politically without first presenting his credentials to Zionism and not the people that elect him?

Former Governor of Daqhaliyya District [in Egypt]

The antisemitism isn't too far behind, is it?

(h/t Abdallah Mashaallah)

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12/25 Links Pt1: Guatemala pledges to move embassy to Jerusalem; Phillips: The UN theatre of hatred; Bye UNESCO

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The UN theatre of hatred

Many people are understandably baffled by the recent UN vote condemning President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Since such a vote has zero practical effect, they ask, what was the point of it?

Well indeed. As the American ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said in her barnstorming response, America will still be moving its embassy to Jerusalem regardless of the UN’s opinion.

The resolution didn’t need to have any practical import. It was merely part of the UN’s theatre of hatred, the malevolent campaign it has waged for decades against Israel and Israel alone as a result of the preponderance of tyrannies, dictatorships, kleptocracies and genocidal antisemitic regimes that make up what’s called called the UN’s “non-aligned block” and which are united in their desire that Israel should be wiped off the map.

So egregious is this hypocrisy in singling out Israel, the sole democracy and upholder of human rights in the region while ignoring the brutal and murderous record of those tyrannies, dictatorships, kleptocracies and genocidal antisemitic regimes, that even a CNN correspondent has been moved to call this out. Jake Tapper tweeted: “Among the 128 countries that voted in favor of the UN resolution condemning the US decision to move the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem were “some countries with some rather questionable records of their own”.

You don’t say. The shocking thing is that so many democratic nations voted alongside these tyrannies: nations such as Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, most disappointingly India and, most sickening (to me, anyway), the UK.

Britain, the historic cradle of liberty and democracy and which once fought to defend freedom, has now made common cause with China, Iran, Libya, North Korea and Russia in their joint aim of denying the right of the Jewish people to declare, in accordance with law and history, the capital city of their own country, a right the UK and these other states would deny to no other people or state. What a disgrace.

JPost Editorial: Bye UNESCO

Israel will join the United States in removing itself and its funding from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

It’s about time.

The decision by the US was precipitated by UNESCO’s decision in 2011 to accept “Palestine” as a full-fledged member, even though there is no such thing as a Palestinian state, only a failed, quasi-political entity that is split between an Islamist enclave ruled by Hamas in Gaza and a corrupt fiefdom controlled by Fatah on the West Bank.

A 1990s-era law prohibits US funding for any UN agencies that recognize Palestine as a state. Former US president Barack Obama failed to convince Congress to change the law and restore funding. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is following through on the spirit of the law.

But the American and Israeli decisions are not just about the acceptance of “Palestine.” Like other UN institutions, UNESCO has in recent years proven to be an organization hijacked by an anti-American, antisemitic agenda that completely disregards concern for individual rights.

The US footed a large portion of UNESCO’s budget – most of which went to the payment of salaries and workers’ expenses – that did nothing to endear America to UNESCO’s functionaries.

UN Watch: The End of Human Rights at the U.N. — Panel was “Mother of All Rogues’ Galleries”

Even within the rogues’ gallery that is the U.N. human rights Council, today’s council panel attacking Western democracies for imposing sanctions on dictatorships was the mother of all rogues’ galleries.

The panelists:
1. Lead panelist was UN expert Idriss Jazairy, who described Putin’s Russia as a human rights victim. Coincidentally, as UN Watch revealed today, Jazairy received $50,000 from the Russian government. As Algerian ambassador to UN, he once said “antisemitism targets Arabs”; and, most famously, he led a major effort to muzzle UN human rights experts. And then he became a UN human rights expert himself.

2. Alena Douhan, a Belarus academic with a soft spot for Russia, whose doctorate was on the principle of “non-interference” in countries’ “internal affairs.”

3. Alfred de Zayas, the Cuban-appointed expert for a “democratic and equitable international order.” Zayas has defended Iran’s right to nuclear weapons, and writes books claiming Germany suffered a “genocide” in 1945. Zayas is a hero to Holocaust deniers.

4. Jean Ziegler, co-founder & 2002 recipient of the Qaddafi Human Rights Prize. In his presentation, Ziegler actually defended the murderous Maduro regime of Venezuela, which he said was being victimized by a U.S. “economic war.”

5. Panel Chair: the ambassador of Venezuela’s Maduro regime, Jorge Romero. He effusively thanked Ziegler for his kind words.

6. Peggy Hicks, a top official in the office of UN high commissioner Zeid, delivered the opening statement. A former Human Rights Watch official, we hoped she would provide a dissenting voice. Instead, she echoed the same line. And when Ziegler spouted pro-Maduro propaganda, Hicks was silent.

Yes, Abbas still supports terrorists. Somehow, the media keeps missing it.

Here is Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas greeting Rafat Jawabra, commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the "military wing" of Fatah movement, after he was released from prison by Israel.

The Al Aqsa Brigades were supposedly dismantled by Abbas years ago - yet they still exist. And not only in Gaza, where they recently shot rockets at Israel, but in the West Bank as well.

Here are the Brigades greeting Jawabra last week:

Those masked people with automatic weapons are on Fatah's payroll. They report to Mahmoud Abbas.

These photos are all on the official Fatah Facebook page. No one is hiding these ties. No one is hiding the fact that the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a designated terror group by the US, still operates openly under Palestinian rule.

If the hundreds of journalists drinking lattes in Tel Aviv would spend 1% of their time uncovering official Palestinian ties to terror, the world would look at the Middle East conflict in a completely different light.

Which is the exact reason why they don't.

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I am so sick of the Roger Cohens of the world

Roger Cohen, in the New York Times, writes a pretty good review of Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews: Belonging: 1492-1900. He describes how the Jewish people ping ponged from seemingly secure lives to persecution throughout the world.

But in the end, Cohen feels compelled to add two paragraphs to the time beyond 1900, and shows yet again how Israel is held to standards that are far beyond any other nation.

Not even Herzl, however, could have foreseen the industrialized mass murder of the Holocaust, the unspoken shadow that hovers over these pages. Nor could he have imagined the fulfillment in 1948, with the foundation of the modern state of Israel, of his dream. Nor how the Zionism he described in Basel as a “moral, humanitarian movement” would be prodded over time toward messianic nationalism by the violent, still unresolved confrontation with the Arabs of Palestine; nor how the Jewish exercise of power, rather than Jewish subjection to its cruel whim, would test the very ethics that bound Jews to their formless, faceless God during the millenniums of tribulation in the diaspora.

In the end the price of Jewish statehood has been heavy: the exile of another people, the Palestinians. More than a half-century of occupation of the West Bank has corroded Israeli democracy. This was not inevitable and is still not irreparable. No doubt, these themes will be prominent in Schama’s next volume. At a time of facile anti-Zionism spilling sometimes into outright anti-Semitism, Schama has made an eloquent and a far-reaching case for why Jews needed a small piece of earth they could call home.

Was there a hint of Jewish messianic nationalism when the Arabs of Palestine started attacking Jews in the 19th century and through the 1920s and 1930s? And is the current Israeli government really being influenced by messianic nationalism? Of course not - only the people who hate Israel to begin with make up that canard, and Cohen sucks it all up.

Moreover, Cohen has the astonishing ability not to recognize in today's Arab "anti-Zionism" the parallel mentality as traditional European antisemitism described by Schama. Arabs didn't care when they were under non-Arab rule of the Ottomans - but the idea of Jewish leaders is what prompted them - and still prompts them - to violence. That isn't the Jews' fault - it is simple antisemitism.

Cohen's blindness cannot be accidental. He immerses himself in the anti-Israel narrative rather than actually looking at the facts and the history.

Then comes the ethical tests of Jewish exercise of power. for some reason, only Jews have such ethical issues that test their very right to exist. Does anyone say that US control over territories where people cannot vote for president corrodes American democracy? Is anyone demanding Native Americans be given, say, South Carolina so they can exercise their rights of self determination? Is how they were treated a couple of orders of magnitude worse than how Palestinians have been treated?

And that's just the US. Every Western European country is guilty of immorality that far exceeds the worst that one can ever blame Israel for even assuming Arab lies as truth. Yet only Israel is singled out by Western, often Jewish pundits, who are so wracked with guilt over Israel's insistence on control over some historic Jewish lands whose legal status is hardly obviously "Palestinian."

Even that last sentence, where Cohen tries to show his support for Israel's existence, is ambiguous. Jews needed a small piece of earth - but don't any more?

Cohen's moralizing on behalf of the Jewish state is condescending, misdirected, biased and mostly false. Israel doesn't want "occupation" and has offered many times since 1967 to end it. Each time - each and every time - the answer was no. That simple, irrefutable fact is kryptonite to self-righteous jerks like Cohen who want to repent on behalf of Israel for not committing national suicide in the name of "peace."

Cohen will not place any blame on Palestinians (except for pro-forma denunciations of suicide bombings and the like, pretending that they are not supported by the majority.)

Only Israel is expected to live up to standards of ethics that are so high, they are unethical - because they would result in the deaths and ethnic cleansing of more people than the status quo, as long as Palestinians refuse to compromise.

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Israel Hayom reports:

The fresh violence came a day after the U.N. General Assembly resolution denouncing Trump's decision. However, the number of Palestinians who answered a call to the colors and participated in a "day of rage" over Trump's declaration was lower than expected, with a total of only about 4,000 protesters counted in the Gaza Strip and Judea and Samaria.
The Palestinians are reportedly disappointed at the low numbers of protesters, which is dropping weekly. One senior Palestinian Authority official told Israel Hayom that "the fact that the Palestinian public remains apathetic is worrying, and mostly infuriating. This is a failure by the Palestinian leadership."

Israel Hayom's Hebrew edition adds that Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are upset at how the Palestinian leadership has handled the Jerusalem issue. They were not enthusiastic about the Istanbul conference where Turkey and Iran dominated the discussion, and they fear that Abbas' rhetoric that the entire Arab world would ignite over the issue has been shown to be false, making him look like a fool.

Jordan in particular is upset because it feels that it has a special responsibility towards Jerusalem and Abbas' reaction, such as to try to isolate the US at the UN, could backfire for Jordan's efforts to be relevant in the holy city.

As a result, the three countries have established a commission together with the Palestinians in the Arab League on a more reasonable response to the Trump declaration, as the Palestinian strategy is imploding. Their public statements that they would not meet with Vice President Pence also hurt their cause, according to this article, as the Americans were reported to have reacted angrily.

The victories at the UN are symbolic, and the Arabs are much more concerned thatthe tepid Arab reaction to the Trump declaration might cause the issue to backfire on them, prompting other countries to move their embassies to Jerusalem as well. Guatemala already announced this and Romania is considering it.

(h/t Yoel)

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Egyptian TV host freaks out over Jewish students learning Arabic through an Arab singer

This TV clip from Egypt's Al Nahar TV shows a classroom in a Jewish school in Israel. The teacher is leading a class in Arabic language, and the students are learning a famous Arab song sung by Umm Kulthum.

The Egyptian host is livid. I don't have subtitles, but for five minutes he is raging about this, saying that the original Arab singer and composer would die if they witnessed these Jews singing their song.

The host also says that this is an attempt by Israel to normalize relations with Egypt.

At the end of the article he stresses that Israel is the worst and biggest enemy of the Arabs. Of course.

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"Maccabees are Palestinian" and other fun facts in Arab media

Dr. Jamal Salsa writes in Al Watan Voice that the Maccabees were just Jewish Palestinians fighting for their religious rights.

We learn from this Arab scholar (I looked him up, he is a dentist) that the Jews were Bedouins who moved from one place to another and lived in tents, while the Palestinian people were more civilized and lived in houses.

He then says that Abimelech, king of the Philistines, was really king of the Palestinians. "Abraham swore to Abimelech to preserve Palestine and the people of Palestine and live among them and live in the land with them in peace."

When the press reports on Neturei Karta "rabbis" waving the Palestinian flag, accoding to this nutcase, it is the embodiment of the divine covenant of Abraham, and in respect of these concepts and the law, who sought to live in peace with the "Kingdom of the Palestinians."

He ends off by saying "The bottom line is that Palestine existed before the waters of the sea knew their waves, and before the moon went into its orbit."

So, yes, he says that Palestine has existed for several billion years.

Which brings to mind this classic, originally from Latma:

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