Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 04, 2018

"Palestine:" The only "state" that wants its people to move to an enemy state

Qalandia "refugee" camp in the West Bank

Responding to a reporter’s question on whether the US will continue to provide funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to millions of Palestinian refugees, in light of a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution last month condemning the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, [Nikki] Haley said Trump was prepared to cut aid to UNRWA if the Palestinians refuse to return to peace talks.

“I think the president has basically said that he doesn’t want to give any additional funding until the Palestinians are agreeing to come back to the negotiation table,” Haley said. “We’re trying to move for a peace process but if that doesn’t happen the president is not going to continue to fund that situation.”

“The Palestinians now have to show their will — they want to come to the table. As of now they are not coming to the table but they ask for aid. We’re not giving the aid,” added Haley. “We’re going to make sure they come to the table and we want to move forward with the peace process.”

An article in Palestine Today says in Arabic what the Palestinians try not to say in English.

If UNRWA cannot get funded, then the "refugee" issue would fall to the UNHCR.

The UNHCR would not consider the vast majority of the people under UNRWA's mandate to be refugees.

As the article says, the entire point of UNRWA, from the Palestinian perspective, is to artificially keep the "refugee" issue alive - until the descendants of the refugees from 1948 are allowed to "return" to Israel.

Why would any self-respecting state, as the Palestinians consider themselves, want their own people to move to an enemy state? A state that they claim has an apartheid system against them, no less?

Absurdly, the demand for Arabs of Palestinian descent to move to Israel doesn't only apply to those who languish in "refugee" camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, but also to every single resident of the camps in the West Bank and Gaza - under Palestinian control!

Nothing makes the goals of Palestinian nationalism as clear as their demands to perpetuate and fund the fake "refugee" status of their people until they can "return."

UNHCR tries to resettle refugees in other countries so they can rebuild their lives in peace and security. UNRWA wants to keep their "Palestine refugees" to be stateless until they "return" to Israel.

The goal is not to build a state for Palestinians but to destroy Israel. And it always has been.

Everyone knows that "return" is a demand to destroy Israel from the inside. But the international community won't say this out loud. The claim that Israel is somehow obligated to adhere to a tortured reading of a part of a single paragraph of a non-binding General Assembly resolution is still considered a cogent argument from the world that is still frightened of Arab terror. They pretend that the unique UNRWA definition of "refugee" has the same legal weight that the real definition of refugee has. (Not one European or even Arab country will accept asylum applications from UNRWA's "Palestine refugees" unless they are real refugees from Syria, for example.)

The entire UNRWA ecosystem has been subverted and repurposed since the 1950s with the single goal of destroying Israel - by keeping Palestinian Arabs in stateless misery - under the pretense of human rights.

The goals of Mahmoud Abbas' PA, of Fatah and Hamas, of the "pro-Palestinian" agitators, are all the same. And the "refugee" issue is all the proof you need.

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Saeb Erekat said yet another absurd statement that the Western media accepts as if it makes sense.

For years the “Palestinian leadership has engaged in good faith in numerous meetings and encounters with the US administration,” said Saeb Erekat, the longtime senior Palestinian negotiator, after a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s political committee in Ramallah.

“Now, he is threatening to starve Palestinian children in refugee camps and deny their natural rights to health and education if we don’t endorse his terms and dictations,” Erekat said, referring to Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Only the fake Palestinian "refugees" get free healthcare and education from a UN agency. All real refugees get far, far less from the UNHCR.

But Erekat is claiming that the US threatening to attach strings to the billions it has given the Palestinians is a violation of human rights!

It gets worse. The Fatah Facebook page is directly threatening the US, saying that it will be isolated internationally:

Mr. Trump!
The Palestinians are a people under occupation and do not have the slightest strength, neither economic nor military, but they reduced your international presence, isolated you and dwarfed your role! The next is the internationalization of the conflict and the escalation of the popular resistance of the civilian and Palestinian national unity.
Who is imposing sanctions on who, Mr. President?Mounir El Jagoub
Head of the Information Office
Office of the mobilization and organization of Fatah

In English they claim that the money is needed for food and try to appeal to receive it for moral reasons. In Arabic they are more clear - they want to extort it.

So here is how Erekat and the Palestinian leadership has viewed the "peace process" since Oslo:

(You can retweet the graphic here.)

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01/03 Links Pt2: Regime Change Is the West’s Best Hope for Iran; Heroic Women Fighting for Freedom; Germany's dangerous foreign minister

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: Regime Change Is the West’s Best Hope for Iran

If the regime in Iran collapsed, there’s every reason to believe that Tehran would reassess its options. If the demonstrators have their way and compel a provisional Iranian government to abandon its support for terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and rogue states like Syria, the threat posed by Israel’s nuclear arsenal (which it has possessed since at least 1968) diminishes significantly. Likewise, Iran’s regional non-nuclear competitors in the Arab World—chiefly Saudi Arabia and its allies—can be checked as effectively by conventional forces as they would be with a nuclear arsenal. Incentives provided to Tehran in the form of aid to induce verifiable nuclear disarmament and to transition toward a republican government would also facilitate this process.

To the self-described foreign-policy rationalists who engineered the Iran nuclear deal and now brood in exile, this all sounds like so much fancy. “Realistically, the best-case scenario is not that Iran becomes a Western-style liberal democracy, but rather that it follows the China model,” wrote current New York Times foreign affairs columnist Max Fisher, “of gradual economic and diplomatic opening, along with loosening some social freedoms.” Indeed, we have seen some social freedoms restored in the Islamic Republic—the abolition of the penalty of arrest for women who decline to wear the hijab, for example—but only as a result of protesters setting fire to government offices. Fisher’s isn’t just a failure of imagination disguised as sober calculation; it’s bet-hedging. No one will fault you if the government in Tehran collapses and you didn’t see it coming. Who could have? But if you were to advocate, much less hasten, the regime’s collapse and it survives anyway, your reputation as a policymaker or analyst might not.

Cracks are beginning to show as enraged demonstrators beat at the Islamic Republic’s foundations. Like the Soviet Union, Iran’s is a repressive regime that sacrificed its legitimacy long before its citizens took to the streets in revolt.The Iran deal has provided Iran with lucrative new trade arrangements and access to assets lost to it in 1979, but it has not induced a change in its confrontational posture toward the West. Nothing will. There will need to be new management in Tehran.

Eli Lake: The West Can Help Iranians Take Back Their Country

There is currently a Change.org petition urging Obama to speak out in favor of the demonstrations. That is a good start. But the former president should do more. He should devote his good offices to publicizing the cause of Iranian freedom. No American can lead Iran’s opposition, but Obama’s unique understanding of grassroots activism puts him in an ideal position to lead the Western cause of solidarity. He could organize lawyers, newspaper editors, teachers, librarians and human rights groups to partner Iranians under siege, following the Jewish-American movement to allow Soviet refuseniks to emigrate.

With all of this in mind, it’s also important to avoid past mistakes. Let’s start with hubris. Iranians will be the authors of their liberation. No State Department or CIA program will bring freedom to Iran. The expert class that has gotten so much of Iran wrong in recent years should step aside and listen to those Iranians driven out of their home country who live today in the West.

So far, the movement in Iran appears to have the advantage of being leaderless. Unlike the Greens of 2009, there are no Iranian leaders who have emerged as the personality or face of this new opposition. Let’s leave it that way. People’s Mujahedin leader Maryam Rajavi, or supporters of the Pahlavi dynasty that fell in 1979, should not be treated as leaders or spokesmen for this organic uprising. They seek to impose an agenda on a movement they did not create. Don’t let them do it.

The same goes for those who have emerged as a de facto lobby for President Rouhani and his faction within the Iranian regime. This network, based primarily in Washington, includes the National Iranian American Council, the Ploughshares Network and the many journalists and experts titillated by U.S.-Iranian diplomacy. For years they told us Rouhani was a reformer. Today they whisper that these demonstrators are really a ploy of Rouhani’s “hardline” opposition. They celebrate “elections” that have the legitimacy as those for student government. They want Trump to be silent today.

Finally, it’s important to not be discouraged. I hope the unrest in Iran spreads and the fanatics, thieves and terrorists who have infantilized Iranians for 38 years are toppled. But it’s likely the unrest today is the beginning of a longer process. This regime has survived mass demonstrations and riots before and restored the fear necessary to continue its misrule. It’s the West’s job in these coming weeks to support our real allies, the Iranian people demanding freedom.

Obama Betrayed Iranian People; Trump Stands with Them

As a long-time Iranian, I can tell you that the support of the US and President Trump is invaluable to the ordinary Iranians: they feel helpless and alone in the face of the monsters who have been oppressing them for so long.

On Persian social media outlets and apps such as Telegram, which is extremely popular among Iranians, people are cheering the US support. People are asking the US to support them in other ways as well, in addition to helping them bypass the internet-blocks and shut-downs that the Iranian regime recently implemented.

If the Iranians succeed in changing this Islamist regime, it will bring down the highest state sponsor of terrorism, the leading regime in human rights violations, the top state sponsor of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitic propaganda. Iran, with its current regime, is a danger not just to its long-suffering people, but to everyone. These protesters, who are flooding the streets and demanding that their voices be heard, are committing acts of heroism that will be felt throughout the world and throughout history.

Christian periodical in the 1930s warned that acting Jewish causes antisemitism

Continuing on my reading of The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel by Caitlin Carenen, we see that the influential Christian Century magazine was against persecuted Jews immigrating to Palestine.

But they were also against Jews coming to America, too.

"There is no ethical principle that requires either an individual person or nation to expose itself to a condition sure to involve a moral overstrain....Our immigration laws should be maintained and even further strengthened. Christian and other high-minded citizens have no need to feel apologetic for the limitations upon immigration into the country," it said.

Part of the reason is that the immigrants were so...Jewy. The magazine gave a not so friendly warning to American Jews:

As the decade progressed and persecution against Jews in Germany increased, the Christian Century continued its assault against Judaism. In editorials and articles, the journal warned Jews against maintaining a separate ethnic identity in the midst of Protestant America. In an editorial written in 1937, for example, the editors encouraged Jews to abandon Judaism's particularistic aspects in favor of its universalistic elements in the hope of "achieving a higher integration of social relationships in the United States." Reflecting the inherent tensions between democracy and religion, another editorial insisted that maintaining religious particularity at the expense of a °higher synthesis" with Protestant America would only result in '"the spirit of American tolerance shriveling up."

Those devout and progressive Christians were okay with tolerance, as long as the people they had to tolerate were just like them.

And that if the Jews decide to keep acting like Jews, then, well, who can blame the people who will discriminate against them?

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Report: Cultural Genocide Absolutely Delicious

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

: Credit: Avi Deror via Wikimedia Commons

Tel Aviv, January 3 - A survey of foodstuffs available in Israel has determined that dishes adopted or adapted from foods Palestinians claim as theirs, and whose use by Israelis represents an attempt to erase indigenous culture, taste damned good.

The study, which examined the restaurant, cafe, and street food scene in cities around Israel, found that the Israeli versions of dishes that Palestinians and their supporters have weaponized as rhetorical weapons against Jewish sovereignty in the Levant, are by and large a culinary tour de force.

In an article to be published in the February issue of Gourmet magazine, the researchers detail the painstaking legwork and analysis that led to their conclusion. "We've spent the last three months eating falafel, kaddeh, knaffeh, baklava, and an endless variety of pickled or seasoned vegetables," revealed Anin Taam, the lead author of the study. "We specifically focused on foods on which Israeli culture prides itself and that Palestinians claim were 'appropriated' by Zionists in an attempt to destroy 'native' traditions, and found that boy, are those Israeli dishes good. I have gained so much damn weight during this research."

Ms. Taam also addressed the specific accusations of what some Palestinian advocates have termed cultural genocide. "Cultural genocide foods are the best foods," she explained. "Pizza, chocolate, potatoes, and basically anything Chinese, Japanese, or from the Indian subcontinent - man, I'm drooling just thinking about it. Can you imagine how poor the culinary world would be if foods were only allowed to be prepared where they originated?"

"Here's to cultural genocide," she toasted, raising a glass of fine Israeli wine from the Judean Hills. "Holy crap, this Psagot Winery makes good Chardonnay. I realize that's not strictly an appropriation of food, given the restrictions Palestinian Islamic culture places on wine, but you get the idea."

"You know, it's a little funny to make those accusations," contended Sue Fganya, a food consultant who was not involved in the study. "I always thought genocide against the Jews was a European thing, but there went the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Husseini, spiritual father of Palestinian nationalism, trying to replicate the Nazis' Final Solution over in Palestine. I guess there are some kinds of cultural appropriation or cultural genocide that are acceptable, and some that are not? I do wish someone would explain it to me, so I can enjoy my pineapple-topped pizza without worrying that I'm committing an atrocity against Italians and Pacific Islanders. I mean, a worse one than pineapple on pizza. If you could imagine."

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01/03 Links Pt1: Trump threatens to cut off US aid to Palestinians; Palestinians: Always on the Wrong Side

From Ian:

Trump threatens to cut off US aid to Palestinians over Jerusalem dispute

Acknowledging his push to broker peace in the Middle East has stalled, US President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority, asking why Washington should make “any of these massive future payments” when the Palestinians were “no longer willing to talk peace.”

In a tweet, the president dismissed Palestinian fury over his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, saying he had planned for Israel “to pay” in future negotiations for his declaration. But Palestinian intransigence was now preventing any progress on peace talks, he said

Washington was paying the Palestinian Authority hundreds of millions of dollars a year “for nothing,” he wrote, complaining that the US received “no appreciation or respect” in return.

“They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel,” he said. “We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more.”

“But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace,” he went on, “why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”

...peace treaty with Israel. We have taken Jerusalem, the toughest part of the negotiation, off the table, but Israel, for that, would have had to pay more. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2018

US warns it won’t fund UN refugee agency if Palestinians reject talks

Speaking with reporters Tuesday at UN headquarters, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley stressed the US remains committed to reaching a peace deal, and indicated it would cut off aid if the Palestinians refused to engage in peace negotiations.

Responding to a reporter’s question on whether the US will continue to provide funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency, which provides aid to millions of Palestinian refugees, in light of a non-binding UN General Assembly resolution last month condemning the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Haley said Trump was prepared to cut aid to UNRWA if the Palestinians refuse to return to peace talks.

“I think the president has basically said that he doesn’t want to give any additional funding until the Palestinians are agreeing to come back to the negotiation table,” Haley said. “We’re trying to move for a peace process but if that doesn’t happen the president is not going to continue to fund that situation.”

“The Palestinians now have to show their will — they want to come to the table. As of now they are not coming to the table but they ask for aid. We’re not giving the aid,” added Haley. “We’re going to make sure they come to the table and we want to move forward with the peace process.”

The US was the biggest donor to UNRWA in 2016, giving $368,429,712. It is also the largest overall supplier of financial support for the Palestinians.

EXCLUSIVE - U.N. Palestinian 'Refugee' Agency Defends Budget After Census Finds Nearly A Third Less ‘Refugees’

I24 News added the census was “conducted by 1,000 Lebanese and Palestinian employees and was taken over the course of a year.”

In his statement, UNRWA’s Gunness said that “UNRWA looks forward to analyzing the survey results in detail and to discuss their policy implications with the Lebanese authorities, the Palestinian community, donor countries and the broader UN family.”

He stressed that the census “does not cover all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon – it covers those in the camps and gatherings.” However, the census was reported as a thorough accounting of most Palestinian “refugees” living in Lebanon.

Gunness added: “UNRWA continues to operate facing a large shortfall in its budget. UNRWA urges all donor countries to provide the funding needed in order to maintain and actually strengthen its capacity to assist and protect Palestine refugees in Lebanon.”

The U.S. is UNRWA’s single largest donor, providing about $300 million annually.

The definition of a Palestinian “refugee” and the actual numbers have long been the subject of debate.

Trump’s Mideast policy: Diplomatic Darwinism in the quest for the ultimate deal

US President Donald Trump’s bombshell tweets late on Tuesday demonstrated once again just how unpredictable the leader of the free world is.

In under 100 words, he questioned America’s longstanding financial support for the Palestinian Authority, contradicted his own position on Jerusalem, and indicated that Israel would have to “pay” in future peace negotiations.

With a president as impulsive as Trump, nothing is impossible. Tomorrow he really could, as he threatened on Twitter, announce that the US will cease funding the PA or demand painful concessions from Israel, or declare he is abandoning his pet peace project altogether.

At this point it appears more likely, however, that US officials will somehow try to downplay the president’s surprising tweets, indicating support for the status quo and vowing that the White House will continue unabated in its efforts to bring about a lasting peace.

Still, Trump’s tweets do provide fascinating insights into how he views international relations and the application of his “America First” foreign policy in the Middle East. It’s all quid pro quo, a system of bilateral transactions in which the strongest player dominates weaker ones. Call it diplomatic Darwinism.

A political party in Morocco is proposing to remove citizenship from any Jews who live in "Israeli settlements."

The proposal was created by Elias Ammari, secretary-general of the PAM party, after meeting with former Hamas head Khaled Meshal.

The PAM party (Parti de l'Authenticité et de la Modernité) is considered to be close to the monarchy, so this may be more troubling than if it was just some Islamist party - it looks like just another excuse to bash Israel.

No one seems to know how many Israelis still have Moroccan citizenship, and certainly no one knows how many live beyond the Green Line. About 250,000 Moroccan Jews have emigrated to Israel since 1948.

Simon Sacra, Secretary General of the Federation of Moroccan Jews in France, defended the right of Moroccan Jews to preserve their Moroccan nationality wherever they may be, whether inside Israeli settlements or in other areas.

"Despite the passage of about 70 years, Moroccans in Israel still love Morocco and the King, defend his interests and visit him annually to celebrate their holidays and theit common historical coexistence."

As for the Moroccans living in the settlements, Sacra explained that these Jews did not go there for political reasons, but purely economic. "To buy a house in Tel Aviv, you must be a millionaire," he said.

He also said that Moroccan Jews in the settlements have good relations with the Palestinians, although I'm not sure what evidence he has for that. Sacra is obviously concerned about a slippery slope of disenfranchising some Moroccan Jews now and opening up the rest for possible loss of citizenship later.

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Remember how the Arab world was going to explode after the US said it would move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem?

From Ammon News:

Jordan has allocated 1.5 million dinars (around $2.1 million) in the 2018 national budget for a gas pipeline linking the Hashemite Kingdom with Israel. According to Al-Ghad newspaper on Sunday, the cost of the joint Jordanian-Israeli project is expected to rise to 3 million dinars ($4.2 million) in 2019, and to 6 million dinars ($8.5 million) by 2020. The pipeline will pass over the Sheikh Hussein border crossing, 90 km from Amman.

There has been serious opposition to Israeli gas imports to Jordan, but the kingdom is ignoring them all. Because it needs natural gas. Badly.

And that is how Israel can best defend itself - by providing to the Arab world things that they cannot easily get otherwise, and put them in a position where if Israel is hurt, they would be hurt worse.

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Palestinians stealing Israeli falafel culture!

The debate over who invented falafel balls is never going to be resolved.

But everyone agrees that the idea of a falafel sandwich in pita is completely Israeli.

As Haaretz reported in 2012, "Falafel was made popular in Israel by Yemeni Jews in the 1950s. They brought with them the chickpea version of the dish from Yemen and introduced the concept of serving falafel balls in pita bread."

Clearly, falafel in pita is an Israeli innovation and an example of Israeli cuisine.

And look who stole it:

The GoPalestine page includes this photo of "Palestinian" falafel in pita:

The popular Afteem restaurant in Bethlehem makes and sells falafel sandwiches in pita as well:

The "Palestinian Cuisine" blog also includes Israeli falafel sandwiches:

It sounds like cultural genocide, doesn't it?

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01/02 Links Pt2: Time for the US to Send a Message by Cutting UN Funding; The Palestinians have lost the support of the Arab world

From Ian:

Time for the US to Send a Message by Cutting UN Funding

The obvious purpose of the GA vote was to give certain members of the international community an opportunity not only to reject Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but to effectively reprimand the United States. The fact that Egypt, which receives $1.3 billion annually in US foreign aid, first authored the resolution makes this blatant display of anti-Americanism all the more egregious. The US must act to disincentivize UN members states from future attempts to neutralize its Security Council veto, and to try to humiliate it in the General Assembly.

The US provides 22% ($4 billion) of the UN’s mandatory contributions — far exceeding the contributions from other major countries — for administrative and programs costs, as well as for peacekeeping operations. The remaining $6 billion in US support are voluntary contributions that fund organizations such as UNICEF, the World Food Program and UNRWA (whose existence likely perpetuates the Palestinian conflict).

On December 24, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley offered an initial response to the resolution: that the US will cut the UN’s 2018-19 fiscal year operating budget by $285 million. Admittedly, this reduction is intended to “increase the UN’s efficiencies while protecting [American] interests.” Though a step in the right direction, more needs to be done to discourage the UN’s recent behavior.

The US, in the world of international relations, cannot always expect an unambiguously causal relationship between financial support and policies it wants. However, when illiberal actors hijack the UN, and pursue extraordinary measures to actively interfere with internal US policies, it is time to impose a consequence: reduced funding to the United Nations.

'The Palestinians have lost the support of the Arab world'

Middle East expert and senior lecturer at Bar Ilan University, Arutz Sheva weekly columnist Dr. Mordechai Kedar says that the Palestinian Authority is losing support in the Arab world, claiming that former allies are growing “sick of the Palestinians,” as they find support for PA efforts against Israel contrary to their national self-interest.

Interviewed by Channel 20, Kedar says that the Arab world is increasingly impressed by “Israel’s internal stability, its democracy - which even allows all sorts of thugs to say they don’t want to enlist - and the fact that Israel is comprised 20% of Arabs, and not one of them is fleeing. They even know that the Palestinians, who live under Israeli ‘occupation,’ live much better than all the other Arabs in the Middle East. They understand that Israel is something that doesn’t mesh with what they were taught about it - it is something different.”

Kedar explained that the Arab world was growing annoyed with PA efforts against Israel in light of US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“What happened was that Trump warned that he would stop funding countries that voted against the US - in Egypt, nobody wants to lose their food just because the Palestinians want Jerusalem. Therefore, in this matter the Palestinians have succeeded in annoying many Arabs in the Middle East, to the extent that people say, ‘Why do we have to be held captive by the Palestinians in the peace process with Israel? If it’s in our interest to have peace with Israel, let’s get on with it, and let the Palestinians break their backs with Israel.’”

“In my opinion, the Palestinians have lost the Arab world to a large extent, and the whole Palestinian national project stands on brink of collapse, because Trump pulled the PA ‘Jerusalem card’ - which has no substance - from their tower of cards.”

JPost Editorial: Wanted: Palestinian pragmatism

Washington has largely remained silent in the face of extreme Palestinian reactions to US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Hardly a peep was heard from the Trump administration when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared that the US, by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, had disqualified itself as a fair broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is despite the fact that the US transfers hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the PA every year.

Nor was there a reaction when Fatah officials such as Jibril Rajoub announced that American Vice President Mike Pence, who was supposed to visit the region in December, had become a persona non grata in areas controlled by the PA. Rajoub asked other Arab leaders to follow suit. Yet this snub was largely ignored by the US. Pence’s office said that his visit was canceled due to an important vote on US tax reforms.

While the US has remained restrained, the barrage of attacks from the PA has not let up. The official Fatah Twitter account continues to share outrageous posts since Trump’s decision, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch.

On December 14, for instance, a tweet was sent out that juxtaposed a picture of Trump with one of Hitler and added, “I don’t see any different [sic], do you?” Then, during a sermon on December 20, Mahmoud Habbash, Abbas’s adviser on religious and Islamic affairs, condemned the US by saying Trump’s recognition was “rubbish” and worth less than “the urine of one Jerusalem child.”

There was no sign that – as US officials originally hoped – the extreme initial reactions from the PA to Trump’s decision were quieting down.

Despite pressure from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and perhaps other Arab countries such as Jordan and Egypt, Abbas and other Palestinian leaders refuse to tone down their attacks on the US and take seriously a peace deal now being hammered out by the Trump administration.

"The Zionists are hampering the growing Turkish influence in the Balkans"

A typical bizarre conspiracy theory in Jordanzad describes over a century of "Zionist" schemes in the Balkans.

The piece starts off with saying that "the Zionists played a prominent role in the Balkan wars at the beginning of the last century." It goes on to say that "Zionists" provided the Yugoslav Army with biological weapons for use against Kosovo Albanians during the disturbances of the 1980s.

"And the same agents were put by Israel in the water to cause Palestinian infertility and force the disobedience of the women of Kosovo..."

Yeah, it's that kind of article that the Arab press is so good at.

But the part I loved most was the illustration of a heroic Erdogan leading the charge to liberate Jerusalem:

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Christian Century in 1942: "Jews are exaggerating - only half of Polish Jews slated to be exterminated by 1943"

I mentioned I was reading The Fervent Embrace: Liberal Protestants, Evangelicals, and Israel by Caitlin Carenen.

One of the reasons that US media were reluctant to publish stories about Nazi atrocities against Jews was because the Allies has published similar reports during World War I that were discovered to have been fabricated.

But this episode with Rabbi Stephen Wise, as reported by the Christian Century in 1942, is jaw-dropping:

This was also mentioned in a biography of Rabbi Wise:

There were over 3 million Jews in Poland before the war.

The good Christians at the Christian Century didn't think the planned slaughter of 1.5 million Polish Jews was a big deal. That fact was only useful as proof of how Jews lie and exaggerate.

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01/02 Links Pt1: The PA’s daily battle cry for violence; An Iranian Revolution of National Dignity; Shapiro: Trump Reverses the Obama Doctrine on Iran

From Ian:

PMW: "We shall not retreat" – the PA’s daily battle cry for violence

Nearly every day since Dec. 12, excluding the days around Christmas and New Years, the official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida has published a full-page of pictures of protests including rioters throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks at Israelis. The only text on the pages is a giant headline repeated each day: "We shall not retreat." The locations of each event also appears on each picture, nearly are of which are from different Palestinian cities.

One page, from Dec. 18, shows pictures of peaceful demonstrations against US Pres. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from different countries around the world (Libya, Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Montenegro).

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the Palestinian leadership and Fatah have been attempting to incite more violence against Israel ever since US Pres. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The following pictures are further evidence:

Caroline Glick: The Iranian explosion of truth

The $100 billion in sanctions relief Iran received in the wake of the nuclear deal enabled the regime to give hundreds of millions of additional dollars each year to its proxy militias and armies in Iraq, Yemen and Syria.

It is self-evident that if the protesters get their way and the ayatollahs are overthrown, that money would stop flowing to Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and the Shi’ite militias in Iraq. Instead, that money, and billions more, would be spent developing Iran.

There are many ways that the nations of the world can help the protesters in Iran. The US and Iran’s other targets can expose the financial corruption in the Islamic Republic, including the bank account information of everyone from Supreme Dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei down to local Basij commanders. They can broadcast anti-regime information into Iran through multiple platforms outside the regime’s control. They can bypass the regime and unblock Twitter, Facebook, Telegraph and other social media platforms.

Aside from that, the Trump administration can take immediate steps to constrain even further the regime’s access to the international monetary system and force European and US firms to cancel their multi-billion dollar deals with the regime.

There are many reasons to fear that the protests will fail to achieve their goal of overthrowing the regime. The regime is already sending its forces out to repress the protesters through killing and mass arrests.

But even if the protesters’ prospects of success are small, there is no excuse for not supporting them, as constructively, enthusiastically and unconditionally as possible. There is certainly no excuse for working to preserve Obama’s foreign policy legacy at the expense of a popular uprising that has the potential to avert a world war.

Peter Kohanloo, Sohrab Ahmari: An Iranian Revolution of National Dignity

Iran is convulsing with the largest mass uprising since the 2009 Green Movement. Demonstrations that began last week in the city of Mashhad, home to the shrine of the eighth Shiite imam, have now spread to dozens of cities. And while the slogans initially addressed inflation, joblessness, and graft, they soon morphed into outright opposition to the mullahs. As we write, the authorities have blocked access to popular social-media sites and closed off subway stations in the capital, Tehran, to prevent crowd sizes from growing. At least 12 people have been killed in clashes with security forces.

What is happening in the Islamic Republic?

After nearly four decades of plunderous and fanatical Islamist rule, Iranians are desperate to become a normal nation-state once more, and they refuse to be exploited for an ideological cause that long ago lost its luster. It is a watershed moment in Iran’s history: The illusion of reform within the current theocratic system has finally been shattered. Iranians, you might say, are determined to make Iran great again.

Their movement is attuned to the worldwide spirit of nationalist renewal. From the U.S. to India, and from South Africa to Britain, political leaders and the voters who elect them are reaffirming the enduring value of the nation-state. Iran hasn’t been immured from these developments, as the slogans of the current protests indicate. No longer using the rights-based lexicon of votes and recounts, Iranians are instead demanding national dignity from a regime that for too long has subjugated Iranian-ness to its Shiite, revolutionary mission.

It’s notable, for example, that protestors chant “We Will Die to Get Iran Back,” “Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My Life Only for Iran,” and “Let Syria Be, Do Something for Me.” Put another way: The people are tired of paying the price for the regime’s efforts to remake the region in its own image and challenge U.S. “hegemony.” Some have even taken to chanting “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul,” expressing gratitude and nostalgia for the Pahlavi era, which saw the modern, pro-Western nation-state of Iran emerge from the shambles of the Persian Empire.

As the Iranian protests continue, one of the signs of just how serious the protesters are is what they are chanting in public about their government:

“Death to Dictator” “Death to Rouhani” "Death to Khamenei" and “Reza Shah, Bless Your Soul”.
Clearly, the extent of the anger of the protesters goes beyond removing an individual leader -- some want a complete change in government that would return Iran to the way things were before Khomeini and the Islamic revolution.

Here is another anti-government chant opposing Iranian machinations outside of the country:

#BreakingNews
Dec 30 - #Kermanshah, #Iran
People chanting "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My life for Iran"#IranProtests #???????_?????? pic.twitter.com/UBRKWnt0Ds
— Heshmat Alavi (@HeshmatAlavi) December 30, 2017

This was tweeted by Heshmat Alavi, a political and human rights activist who has written for Forbes, The Hill, The Daily Caller and Gatestone Institute.

While "Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, My life for Iran" is not exactly a ringing endorsement of Israel, it does illustrate less than enthusiastic support for the Palestinian Arabs in general, and Hamas terror attacks in particular.

But that in itself is not really anything new.

In 2009, Iranian-born conservative author Amir Taheri wrote in his book The Persian Night: Iran under the Khomeinist Revolution:

Since [the crushing of the protest in] 1999, Iran has witnessed countless student demonstrations and protests. In hundreds of resolutions passed during mass gatherings, students have challenged virtually every aspect of the Khomeinist ideology and the regime's domestic and foreign policies. One typical resolution passed repeatedly states that the people of Iran do not desire the destruction of Israel and do seek close and friendly relations with the United States. Every year in July, students mark the anniversary of the 1999 events. On October 8, 2007, students in Tehran greeted Ahmadinejad with cries of "Down with the Dictator" and "Forget about Palestine! Think about Us," forcing him to run away briefly with the help of his bodyguards. [emphasis added]

Four years earlier, in 2005, The New York Times reported that Iran's hard line on Israel was not unaminmous:

Beset by practical concerns such as double-digit inflation and unemployment, Iran's youthful population is well aware of the fact that the ideological hubris of their parents' generation - often a half-baked hodgepodge of anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism, Islamism, and Marxism - has borne the country little fruit apart from a soiled international reputation and political and economic isolation. During the 2003 summer student protests, one popular slogan, delivered in lilting Persian, was "forget about Palestine, think about us!" [emphasis added]

The article was written by Karim Sadjadpour, currently an Iranian-American policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment and Ray Takeyh, a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Sadjadpour and Takeyh go on to write:

There exists no inherent reason why the Israeli-Palestinian struggle should be an overriding concern to the average Iranian. Iran has no territorial disputes with Israel, no Palestinian refugee problem, a long history of contentious relations with the Arab world, and an even longer history of tolerance vis-a?-vis the Jewish people. To this day, the Jewish community in Iran is the largest in the Middle East outside of Israel.

Ironically, in 2005 this article was claiming that based on the troubled relationship between Iran and the Arab world, it was Iran -- not the Saudis -- that should have been drawn into an alliance with Israel.
They summarized the position that Iran need not be so supportive of the Palestinian Arabs in the words of one reformist leader that:

"We shouldn't be chanting 'death to Israel'; we should be saying 'long live Palestine.' We needn't be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves."

Clearly, things have not worked out that way so far -- this despite the fact that 2 years earlier, in 2003, an article in The New Republic and republished in The Jewish World Review was saying the same thing and was asking Is Iran rethinking its position on Israel? It suggested that

though the West still thinks of Iran as a cauldron of anti-Israel passion, a new generation of pro-democracy Iranians increasingly speaks out against the government's seeming obsession with the Palestinians.

From the way the article describes it, even "conservatives" in the Iranian government were apparently seeing the light. You would expect a very different situation from the one currently going on during the past few days.

The article examines why things were potentially so promising:

several senior conservatives have quietly joined the chorus, hinting that Iran's support for terrorist groups opposed to Israel is negotiable. According to one senior conservative official, "Iran's policy in the Middle East and the peace process is not beyond the realm of possibilities that can be discussed, given a dialogue with the United States." Translation from Islamic Republic-speak: We can talk turkey on Israel/Palestine. Sadeq Zibakalam, a Tehran University professor with close ties to conservative officials, underscored this view earlier this year, when he told the U.S.-funded Radio Farda Persian service that Iran understands Washington's concerns about Tehran's support for Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. President Mohammed Khatami, a reformer who has long argued that Iran should not interfere in any agreements made between Israel and the Palestinians, is unlikely to quibble with the conservatives.

So what happened?

While Mohammed Khatami, the reformer, was president in 2003, by 2005 a new president was elected: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- and the rest is history.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Credit: Farzad Khorasani Source: Wikimedia Commons

While he did not single-handedly stem the supposedly growing tide of reform, Ahmadinejad did represent the interests of the hard-liners.

For now, it is impossible to say whether the current protests will be put down and crushed as were the student protests in 1999 and the election protests in 2009. Even if successful, they are not about to change Iran overnight into a friend of Israel reminiscent of the reign of the Shah of Iran. Instead, it has been suggested that the current unrest will keep the government occupied and reduce the possibility of conflict between the two countries, especially along the Syrian border, at least for a while.

But beyond that, the idea that Iranian animosity towards Israel is not hardwired, may perhaps hold promise for some point in the forseeable future.

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Fatah: Israelis are the terrorists, our suicide bombers are the heroes

I wasn't the only one to notice how Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah was glorifying female terrorists and suicide bombers in celebration of the 53rd anniversary of their first terror attack.

Israel's PMO Arabic media spokesperson Ofir Gendelman wrote this on Facebook:

Fatah responded by claiming that Israel is the one that glorifies terror attacks like Deir Yassin, and these women are simply martyrs fighting the occupation:

Funny, I never saw any Fatah-style posters glorifying terrorists in any official Israeli site.

So now the children, old men and other civilians murdered by these heroes are "gangs of murderers" that must be "fought.".

Good to know that Fatah is so public with its moral inversion. Not that any Western media will notice, though.

Fatah also published a lengthy poem glorifying their heroes. Auto-translate does poorly on poetry but the poem does mention "apes and monkeys drinking whiskey" so it certainly has its share of Jew-hatred.

Progressive.

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