Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, January 08, 2018

The DSB Movement (Divest This!)

For Immediate Release

The worldwide movement to isolate the Apartheid Palestinian Authority and Hamas regimes gained significant momentum over the last year, as hundreds of artists and performers visiting Israel continued to avoid performing in territories ruled by human-rights abusing Palestinian governments whose very existence violates international law.

Meanwhile, in the years since the murder of Italian journalist Vittorio Arrigoni at Palestinian hands, many international journalists refuse to work in Hamas-run Gaza, especially after a series of kidnappings and threats have made it nearly impossible to report from the Strip objectively.

World governments have also stepped up sanctions activities against the Iran-backed, fundamentalist Gaza regime in light of Hamas' continued support of terror and well-documented record of human rights abuses directed at women, gays and religious minorities.

In recent years, the international watchdog group Human Rights Watch condemned the government in Gaza for war crimes related to their behavior during conflicts with Israel. “Palestinian armed groups made clear in their statements that harming civilians was their aim,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “There is simply no legal justification for launching rockets at populated areas.”

HRW and other respected human rights organizations also demanded an investigation into Palestinian Authority's role in the torture and murder of 18-year-old Haitham Amer, one of many human rights violations attributed to the Palestinian Authority rule.

Meanwhile members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have strongly condemned Palestinian acts of terrorist incitement which may ultimately lead to an increase in global sanctions against Apartheid Palestine.

These and other divestment, sanctions and boycott successes too numerous to list continue to demonstrate the ongoing strength of the DSB movement!

Consider the mock press release above as a thought experiment.

Before this experiment begins, notice how this release has all the hallmarks of a genuine BDS "Year in Review" news story or hyperventilating blog post.

First, there are the trademark ambiguous accusations (such as "Apartheid" or "violation of international law") presented as unquestionably true facts. Then, you've got specific political motivations (ones shared by the BDSers) attributed to individuals (performers, journalists) or organizations (governments) with no evidence demonstrating why we must accept these motivations over equally plausible alternatives.

Finally, you've got the juxtaposition of events, statements and quotes meant to give the impression that they are all part of a single coherent story, even though these components may have nothing to do with one another.

For instance, I just strung together the Human Rights Watch and Security Council stories and hitched them to my other two stories (of performers and journalists allegedly boycotting "Apartheid Palestine") to give the impression that they were all part of the same narrative, in this case of the success of my fictitious "DSB movement." And my use of (outdated) quotes from Human Rights Watch glosses over the fact that this organization is far more critical of Israel than of the Palestinians (a background I purposefully ignored in order to give the impression that HRW condemnations of the PA and Hamas are far more typical than they actually are).

Oh, and also notice how each of the tricks I use provides just enough wiggle room to worm out of accusation of manipulativeness if ever I'm cornered. For instance, the aforementioned quote from Human Rights Watch is genuine, so why should it be my fault if you choose to incorrectly interpret it in a way that suits my purposes?

OK, so given what we know of this type of propaganda tool, two questions we should ask ourselves include:

(1) If this is so easy to do, why don't Israel's supporter play this game too? and…

(2) Given that this type of manipulativeness is so blindingly transparent, why do so many people (including many of us) continue to fall for or respond to it?

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In 2014:

Israel’s retaliatory air strikes on Gaza have been “deliberately disproportionate” and amount to “collective punishment”, Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said on Thursday, in unusually robust criticism of a close British ally
“I really do think now the Israeli response appears to be deliberately disproportionate, it is amounting now to a disproportionate form of collective punishment,” Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the country’s coalition, told Britain’s LBC radio station.
“I really would now call on the Israel Government to stop. They’ve proved their point,” he said. He said he respected Israel’s right to defend itself.

Now compare how Clegg and other British politicians criticized Israel in Gaza with how they act towards their Iraqi targets.

From The Guardian:

More than 15,000 civilians were killed by explosive weapons in 2017, a jump of 42% in a year, according to a global survey seen by the Guardian.

The rise – driven by airstrikes, which killed almost double the number of civilians in 2017 compared with the previous year – coincided with US-led military operations to reclaim the Islamic State strongholds of Mosul, in Iraq, and Raqqa, in Syria.

MPs said the figures were “deeply concerning” and raised questions over the transparency of legal criteria used by the Ministry of Defence to determine whether an individual is an Isis combatant.

The UK has said it has no credible evidence of its airstrikes resulting in civilian deaths, while the US military has revealed it unintentionally killed at least 801 civilians in Syria and Iraq.

The global survey, compiled by Action on Armed Violence, an organisation that highlights civilian harm from explosive weapons, suggests the civilian death toll from air-launched explosives rose by 82%, from 4,902 in 2016, to 8,932 in 2017.

The worst impacted countries were Syria, where civilian deaths increased by 55% to 8,051, Iraq, where there was a 50% increase, to 3,271, and Afghanistan, where 994 non-combatants died.

During the last three Gaza wars, Israel released detailed statistics on the deaths, enumerating how many were civilian and how many terrorist, and its numbers of total killed tracked closely with the numbers provided by independent researchers (who typically undercounted the number of terrorists killed significantly.)

In addition, Israel would publish results of investigations in many specific examples of airstrikes describing exactly its intelligence, who was targeted and killed, and everything it did to ensure a minimum of civilian deaths and to adhere to international law.

In comparison, there is next to no transparency by British and US forces in their airstrike campaigns. The British insistence that they have no evidence they have killed a single civilian is risible:

Iain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence, said the data threw doubts upon the MoD’s claim that it had no evidence of its airstrikes killing civilians in Iraq and Syria.

“In an attempt to combat terrorism, forces are using air weapons against groups they consider a threat and, in doing so, they are killing an awful lot of civilians,” Overton said. “It raises fundamental questions about the Royal Air Force’s claims that there is no evidence civilians are killed in its operations.”

Overton blamed a “very nasty and bloody” year on increased airstrikes and the continued use of improvised explosive devices by terrorists. The latter killed 3,874 civilians in 2017, a similar number to those killed the previous year.

“This is about urban warfare and that’s why we are getting crazy numbers,” said Airwars director Chris Woods.

“War is moving into cities. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Russia or the US-led coalition or ground forces leading the assault, the outcome for civilians under attack is always dire.

“There seems to be no interest from the coalition or the Iraqi government in properly understanding the level of civilian deaths. We’re becoming too complacent about urban warfare, and militaries and governments are downplaying the effects.

In response to calls to reveal how enemy combatants are identified, a spokesman for the MOD said it does not comment on rules of engagement. He added: “We’ve not seen any evidence that we have caused civilian casualties. We do everything we can to minimise the risk to civilian life from UK strikes through our rigorous targeting processes and the professionalism of the RAF crews. Reports of civilian casualties are and will continue to be taken very seriously and we will investigate all credible claims.”

The British are completely opaque in their terms of engagement, in their intelligence gathering, in how they determine the number of casualties, and indeed their denials of killing any civilians in urban warfare are ludicrous. Yet they have the audacity to criticize Israel for its much more limited air campaigns that are meticulously documented.

Notice also that the NGO, Action on Armed Violence, describes how difficult urban warfare is and how it inevitably will lead to massive civilian casualties. I did not see a single Gaza NGO that was fair enough to mention that obvious fact in 2014 or earlier Gaza wars.

Israel is expected to adhere not only to higher standards than any Western nation, but to adhere to impossible standards. Meanwhile, even those who are most critical of the far more deadly western air campaigns in the Middle East acknowledge the difficulty of targeting only terrorists when they hide among civilians, like Hamas and other Gaza terror groups do.

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We've discussed Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh, the Gaza double-amputee who regularly protested at the Gaza border with Israel without any incident.

The day before he was killed, he asked his family forgiveness and said he was sick of his life.

Here is his brother describing their last dinner together.

It sure sounds like Ibrahim Abu Thurayeh planned his death.

The IDF denies shooting towards the legless man on that day.

h/t Presspectiva for finding the video and doing a great write-up, and h/t Ibn Boutros and Abdallah Masha'allah for translation

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Somehow, those intransigent Israelis let a Jordanian minister into the Temple Mount. No riots!

This morning, Jordanian Interior Minister Ghaleb Al-Zu'bi visited the Temple Mount.

No one tried to stop him. There were no protests. No threats of an uprising for this insult to the desecration of the holiest Jewish site.

Al-Zu'bi went up with some Waqf officials where they told him the horrib;e story about the 25,000 Jews who had visited the year before.

In fact, a group of about 50 Jews also visited this morning, perhaps at the same time. But there are more articles in the Arab media about the "extremist Jewish settlers" who visited, and "carried out suspicious tours in the blessed mosque and listened to an explanation about the legend of the alleged temple."

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01/07 Links: Trump Odds-on to Defund UNRWA if PLO won’t Negotiate with Israel; Egyptian Scholar Tells Rowdy Arab TAU Students They Should Thank God for Living in Israel

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Antisemitism in America

Though America has never been completely immune to antisemitism, its very essence as a nation of immigrants that was always united around a set of democratic principles, never claims of “blood and soil” or a totalitarian ideology, is a centerpiece of its blessed exceptionalism.

A recent Anti-Defamation League annual report tracking manifestations of the world’s oldest hatred, however, points to worrying trends.

Data released in November and presented to the Knesset’s Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Committee last week show a 67% increase in antisemitic incidents across the US from January 1 to September 30, 2017, compared to the same three quarters in 2016. A total of 1,299 antisemitic incidents were reported in that 2017 period, including physical assaults, vandalism and attacks on Jewish institutions.

According to FBI data from 2016, Jews were targets of 684 of the 1,273 anti-religion incidents tallied by the FBI, even though Jews make up just 2% of the US population.

And, as ADL’s Israel director Carol Nuriel noted, many expressions of hatred toward Jews go unreported, either because the victims don’t report them, or because some incidents are not readily identifiable as antisemitic in nature.

What is perhaps unique to antisemitism as opposed to other forms of bigotry, racism or xenophobia is its prominence not only on the hard Right but also among progressives who either hide their antipathy toward Jews behind criticism of Israel and the “Israel lobby” in Washington, or join ranks with those who do because they have a distorted perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Some Democratic congressmen have in the past cooperated with organizations such as the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Code Pink, Jewish Voice for Peace and American Muslims for Palestine – all groups that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

This does not make these congressmen antisemites, but their willingness to work with organizations that have more sympathy for a Palestinian political leadership that glorifies terrorism and terrorists, than for Israel, a state that strives to maintain democratic principles under the most difficult conditions, sends a problematic message and fosters a toxic intellectual environment for discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar: The Obama Riots

Possible scenarios
The future can have any of the following in store

1. Things can go back to the way they were: The regime survives because it uses its superior strength against the masses on the streets, the demonstrators tire of the struggle and go back to their unhappy lives. Khamenei,Rouhani and their cohorts launch balloons of empty promises into the air, the depressed and exhausted public continues its miserable life and waits for the next opportunity.

2. The regime collapses and a group of exiled anti-Islamist politicians returns to Iran and assumes responsibility for the country: Iran stays united, but the Arabs in Achwaz, the Baouch and the Kurds, each in their own region, demand independence. The new regime agrees to wide-ranging autonomy for these groups and puts an end to their ongoing struggles against the central government. The new leaders work to have Iran rejoin the family of nations, Iran renews diplomatic relations with Israel, the US and Europe.

3. The regime collapses, the current leader flee in order to keep their heads on their shoulders: Iran breaks up into smaller states that reflect its ethnic makeup. Persians, Azers, Arabs, Kurds, Baluch, Lur, Qashkai and others, achieve statehood on the lines of what has happened to Iran's northern neighbor. The USSR was divided into individual states along ethnic lines and in each new state, the local elite rose to run each country in a fairly organized fashion.

4. The regime declares war against the Saudis and other outsiders: The last few days have had the Iranian leaders blaming "outside interests," a thinly veiled accusation aimed at the Saudis, the US and Israel, for heating up the area.. The Iranian masses are not buying this excuse and realize quite well that the regime is attempting to draw a picture of external plots against the country in order to convince the public to cease protesting and unite to protect their country from outside threats. If the Iranian regime ever realizes that its way of running the country is going to have to end, it may drag all those who rejoice in its downfall into an inferno. The regime might strike the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, it might tell the Hezbollah to launch a rocket attack against Israel as Saddam Hussein did in 2003. The last vestiges of the regime might even damage Iran's oil fields to keep them out the hands of the opposition.

The world must be prepared for the fourth scenario, although the probability of its occurrence is low, because it is a very dangerous possibility which can plunge the entire world into a severe energy crisis. Iran could decide to exact revenge for Saudi involvement in the Yemeni, Syrian and Iraqi wars and the "Iranian Spring" (according to the Ayatollahs' version of events) by bombing the Saudi oil fields. If the Saudis are attacked, Mahmoud ben Salman will want to do the same to the Iranian gas and oil fields. If this scenario comes to pass, the price of gas and oil will go off the charts for a while.

The situation is Iran is unclear and extremely volatile. Even if the regime survives the riots, the next round of street violence is only a matter of time. There will be an outburst every few years until the Ayatollah's regime collapses entirely. This is the lot of every dictatorial regime – history is replete with examples such as Nazi Germany and the USSR. Sooner or later, a regime lacking legitimacy from its citizens and whose existence is based on the employment of power against its own countrymen, is destined to fall.

Bret Stephens: Finding the Way Forward on Iran

One of the reasons why easing sanctions on Iran was never likely to soften the regime is that the people who stood to gain from commercial ties with foreign companies are the same people most invested in the preservation of the regime and its system of preferences. There’s no trickle-down economy in the Islamic Republic.

But it also means that the kleptotheocracy is uniquely vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy. All Islamist movements take the concept of justice (as opposed to freedom) as their organizing political concept, and all of them ignore it at their peril. The Iranian regime’s problem is that it has spent nearly 40 years making its hypocrisy plain to all of its people, save those who profit from it.

This is an opportunity for the free world to exploit. Ken Weinstein of the Hudson Institute has argued that the U.S. government “should release details on the billions in stolen assets” held by the I.R.G.C. and the supreme leader. That — and making sure ordinary Iranians learn about them, one scandalous disclosure at a time — is the right idea.

Another right idea, this one from Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is to once again put Setad, along with its scores of front companies and subsidiaries, under U.S. sanctions for corruption. The Obama administration did such a thing in 2013, only to reverse course as part of the nuclear deal.

In 1982, Ronald Reagan praised Poland’s Solidarity movement for remaining “magnificently unreconciled to oppression.” Turns out, it’s true of Iranians today. A West that wants to help them can begin by exploiting the internal contradiction that defines the regime that oppresses them and which may yet prove its undoing.

As the West gradually awakens to the rise of political Islam and the immigration crisis in Europe, the question of Koranic violence versus Biblical violence is sometimes referenced.

The reason for this is because of the confusion around the sources of the jihadi aggression against the West. Is it due to western imperialism or to essential Islamic theological sources?

Or a combination of both?

When jihadis blow people up or burn them alive are they acting Koranically or out of righteous indignation toward the imperial advances of the rapacious West?

Whatever the answer to that particular question, what I would like to briefly suggest is that Biblical violence is generally descriptive while Koranic violence is generally prescriptive.

If you Google "violence in the quran vs violence in bible" you come up with a variety of discussions around the question of which books are most violent, the Hebraic Bible, the New Testament, or the Koran.

The very first result that pops up on my screen is from a sociological-statistical piece in the Independent by Samual Osborne entitled, 'Violence more common' in Bible than Quran, text analysis reveals.

Osborne writes:

An analysis into whether the Quran is more violent than the Bible found killing and destruction occur more frequently in the Christian texts than the Islamic.

Investigating whether the Quran really is more violent than its Judeo-Christian counterparts, software engineer Tom Anderson processed the text of the Holy books to find which contained the most violence.

In a blog post, Mr Anderson explains: "The project was inspired by the ongoing public debate around whether or not terrorism connected with Islamic fundamentalism reflects something inherently and distinctly violent about Islam compared to other major religions."

Mr. Anderson concludes his analysis by noting:

Comparing our three religious texts across the eight major emotions we find that the Old Testament is the ‘Angriest’ (including most mentions of ‘Disgust’); it also contains the least amount of ‘Joy’.

When the question of Biblical violence versus Koranic violence is raised it is almost always done for the purpose of clearing Islam of any culpability for the results of its own theocratic-ideological inclinations. Thus statisticians like Anderson run the texts of the Bible, the New Testament, and the Koran through computer programs which tabulate violent references within those texts.

The results demonstrate that the Bible depicts more acts of violence than does the Koran.

This is hardly surprising given the length and ancient nature of the Bible, however, this misses the point entirely.

While the Bible, the New Testament, and the Koran are filled with violence, Biblical violence and New Testament violence tends to be descriptive, while Koranic violence tends toward the prescriptive.

The significance of this distinction is key to the nature of the different sources.

For example, in 2 Kings 2:23-25, concerning Elisha the successor of Elijah, we read:

23 Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!” 24 When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number. 25 And he went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.

Now, that is quite an image.

According to the Bible, God sent a couple of she-bears out of the woods to murder, or otherwise maul, forty-two children for daring to mock a prophet of Judea.

In Koran 5:33, in the Surah Al-Ma'idah, however, we read this:

Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment,

Although the chopping of hands and feet from opposite sides of the body is a mighty interesting and disgusting touch of Islamic jurisprudence, it is merely one example of the many, many violent descriptions in these books.

One cannot draw definitive conclusions on the nature of the texts from a single example, but I feel reasonably certain that my tentative conclusion concerning the descriptive / prescriptive difference between Biblical versus Koranic texts would hold up under scrutiny.

At the very least it represents a fair point of exploration in reference to the scholarship.

So, the first question to ask is not the quantity of violence in the Bible or the New Testament versus the Koran, but the intent and nature of that violence.

From what I can tell, biased as I am, the Koran calls for the submission or murder of the infidel.

The Bible of the Jews does not.

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An UNRWA school in Jordan

In the 1990s, international aid groups started looking at the bigger picture as they do their services. They realized that providing aid in a vacuum can cause other problems in the areas that they are trying to help.

One of the major potential issues is summarized here:

Aid is not neutral in the midst of conflict. Aid and how it is administered can cause harm or can strengthen peace capacities in the midst of conflicted communities. All aid programmes involve the transfer of resources (food, shelter, water, health care, training, etc.) into a resource-scarce environment. Where people are in conflict, these resources represent power and wealth and they become an element of the conflict. Some people attempt to control and use aid resources to support their side of the conflict and to weaken the other side. If they are successful or if aid staff fail to recognise the impact of their programming decisions, aid can cause harm.

As a result, aid agencies have been incorporating the "Do No Harm" and "Conflict Sensitivity" framework in all of their activities, to be more sensitive to how their actions impact not only the intended recipients of aid, but also the surrounding people.

UNRWA ignores the concept.

From the time UNRWA was established, it started creating a parallel infrastructure separate from the governments it was working under. An entirely separate health, education and aid system was created - and, by and large, the beneficiaries, who UNRWA calls "Palestine refugees", have been better off than their neighbors, causing tension and conflict.

UNRWA admits that in its early days tens of thousands, and maybe hundreds of thousands, of Arabs pretended to be "refugees" so they could get the aid benefits. There was jealousy from the start by neighboring Arabs who saw Palestinian refugees get free food, schooling and medical care that was superior to their own.

Today, there are other issues that come up from how NGOs can negatively affect the lives of the people in the areas they work. NGOs are such a huge part of the workforce in the West Bank and Gaza that they distort the functioning of a normal economy.

This can impact peace.

I found a 2004 report on the issue that mentioned:

Experience shows that, in conflicts, donor assistance can be the only, or a major, source of income. Employment in the oPt has suffered greatly under closure so that UNRWA and the PA, as conduits of donor funds, constitute the major employers and many families depend on them for survival. Unless specific measures are taken to assure people that there will be employment and income when peace is achieved, current donor support can become (inadvertently) a disincentive for taking the risks associated with peace.

This is only the tip of the iceberg.

In fact, buried in an obscure 2014 UNRWA document we see that UNRWA itself admits that it essentially ignores the "do no harm" concept in its operations:

Concepts like "conflict sensitivity" and "do-no-harm" which link local conflict analysis with the impact of the Agency operations on the adjacent community are not well established among the Field Security Office personnel.

Again, this is an astonishing admission, because every modern aid worker has the concepts of "conflict sensitivity" and "do no harm" drummed into them from the very beginning. UNRWA has all but ignored these concepts.

One example among many of how UNRWA violates this basic concept is how UNRWA has hurt the Jordanian education system.

UNRWA, funded mostly by the West, pays higher teacher salaries than non-UNRWA schools in Jordan do. As a result, UNRWA attracts better teachers than the non-UNRWA schools, which has the (unintended but clear) effect that Jordanian school quality goes down.

This is a classic case of a violation of "Do No Harm."

In fact, an employee of an international organisation working in Jordan has told me that a senior person at the Jordanian ministry of education admits this and says that UNRWA should give its education budget directly to his ministry to reduce jealousy and inequality between UNRWA and state schools.

The aid worker told me:

You can't just go to a country and set up a system of parallel service delivery for only some people and give them better service. It is bound to create conflict between them. And yet, this is exactly what UNRWA is doing....and I don't understand how they get away with it.
The "do no harm approach" is a serious principle of development aid and something the UN should be committed to. They are perpetuating conflict and making it worse.

Just imagine you're a parent and your child has to go to a subpar school because you can't afford private school and then you see your neighbors being allowed to send their kid to a school that is better equipped and has better teachers for free. Of course you would be angry.

Regardless of what donors think about Israel they should not fund an organization that creates conflict between Palestinians and Jordanians on a daily basis. It's contributing to the instability of Jordan.

This is only one small example of how UNRWA has contributed to instability in the region. It is so big, and employs so many people, that it cannot help but to cause harm to the countries in which it does its work.

Just imagine how things are in Lebanon, where UNRWA and UNHCR give completely different standards of aid to Syrian refugees, depending on whether they are considered "Palestinian" or not. Parents of Syrian refugees must be fuming to see their "Palestinian" friends get schooling and health care that is in most cases better than they can get, when they fled the very same conflict.

In many ways, UNRWA's very mandate, where "Palestine refugees" are considered different with different rules and different levels of service from real refugees, is a violation of "Do No Harm."

The idea of de-funding UNRWA has caused a furious reaction across the political spectrum. Yet UNRWA itself violates the most fundamental principles of humanitarian aid.

Isn't it time people started looking at this?

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The New York Times reported on Saturday:

As President Trump moved last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, an Egyptian intelligence officer quietly placed phone calls to the hosts of several influential talk shows in Egypt.

“Like all our Arab brothers,” Egypt would denounce the decision in public, the officer, Capt. Ashraf al-Kholi, told the hosts.

But strife with Israel was not in Egypt’s national interest, Captain Kholi said. He told the hosts that instead of condemning the decision, they should persuade their viewers to accept it. Palestinians, he suggested, should content themselves with the dreary West Bank town that currently houses the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah.

“How is Jerusalem different from Ramallah, really?” Captain Kholi asked repeatedly in four audio recordings of his telephone calls obtained by The New York Times.

“Exactly that,” agreed one host, Azmi Megahed, who confirmed the authenticity of the recording.

For decades, powerful Arab states like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have publicly criticized Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, while privately acquiescing to Israel’s continued occupation of territory the Palestinians claim as their homeland.

But now a de facto alliance against shared foes such as Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State militants and the Arab Spring uprisings is drawing the Arab leaders into an ever-closer collaboration with their one-time nemesis, Israel — producing especially stark juxtapositions between their posturing in public and private.

“At the end of the day, later on, Jerusalem won’t be much different from Ramallah. What matters is ending the suffering of the Palestinian people,” Captain Kholi concluded. “Concessions are a must and if we reach a concession whereby Jerusalem will be — Ramallah will be the capital of Palestine, to end the war and so no one else dies, then we would go for it.”

All three recipients of his calls pledged to convey his messages, and some echoed his arguments in broadcasts. “Enough already. It got old,” Mr. Megahed told his viewers about the issue of Jerusalem.

What is amazing here isn't that Egypt is telling these influential hosts to downplay the Jerusalem issue. It is also likely not too amazing for those who watch the Middle East closely to understand that the Arab governments are sick of the Palestinian issue and don't want a new intifada, which could radicalize people and embolden the Islamists under their rule.

What is incredible is that the governments are willing to go with an Israeli-ruled Jerusalem as part of a permanent peace agreement, and to tell the Palestinians to stop using it as a roadblock to peace.

"Everyone knows" that there can be no peace unless Jerusalem is divided again and the Palestinians establish a capital there. The EU says it, the UN says it. The only reason this is considered the conventional wisdom is because the Palestinians have been insisting on it, consistently, for decades. (Interestingly, the 1964 and 1968 PLO Covenants do not mention Jerusalem once.)

Also astoundingly, Egypt says another obvious fact that the Palestinians deny and that the West ignores - that Palestinians must compromise for peace. Israeli leaders, even the most right wing, admit publicly that peace will require hard decisions and compromise. Palestinian leaders never say that. They never prepare their people for peace. They insist that the UN can pressure Israel to give them everything they want eventually, and they are willing to bet their people on it.

The Arab nations know that the Jerusalem issue is a fiction. The issue that Palestinians had insisted was the one unifying theme for the Arab states has been shown to be a sham. Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt - the two most important Arab states - have downplayed the importance of Jerusalem as they want to stop the Palestinian issue from being an obstacle that stops them from moving forward with their own issues. To them, Palestinians are a self-indulgent group of people with higher living standards than most of the rest of the Arabs who spend all the time whining about how terrible their lives are.

At the very same time that the Palestinians are celebrating their UN victories, their entire support system is rotting under them. And when their support collapses, they won't know what hit them.

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01/06 Links: Fatah Day: Youth Activists Wear Dummy Explosive Belts, Threaten Israel With 'Volcano Of Fire'; Inside the Trump Team’s Push Against Obama's anti-Israel Vote

From Ian:

MEMRI: 'Fatah Day' At Bir Zeit University: Fatah Youth Activists Wear Dummy Explosive Belts, Threaten Israel With 'Volcano Of Fire'

Amid tension with the U.S. over President Trump's announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, the Fatah movement – both its leadership and its activists in the field – has also escalated its rhetoric against Israel, with emphasis on encouraging armed struggle (see also MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 7259, Fatah Social Media Accounts Glorify Armed Struggle Against Israel, Incite To Violence, January 2, 2018). One expression of this was a mass rally and parade held by Fatah's youth movement in Bir Zeit University on January 3, 2018, as part of events marking Fatah Day, i.e., the 53rd anniversary of Fatah's founding. The participants in the rally and parade wore military uniforms, and some were masked and wore shrouds and dummy explosive belts. One of the signs they carried bore Yasser Arafat's slogan, "millions of martyrs are marching on Jerusalem."

This report presents examples of incitement to armed struggle against Israel, including suicide attacks, at the Fatah Day events in Bir Zeit and in recent posts on Facebook pages affiliated with the movement and its activists.

Fatah Day Parade At BirZeitUniversity: "Millions Of Martyrs Are Marching On Jerusalem"

The Fatah Youth rally and parade at BirZeitUniversity were attended by several hundred students, many of them masked, decked in uniform and carrying Fatah flags. Some wore white robes resembling shrouds and dummy explosive belts, and held up copies of the Quran. Photos of this Bir Zeit event were posted on the Fatah's official Twitter page and on Facebook pages affiliated with the movement.[1] The message conveyed by the event was one of support for armed struggle, such as Fatah's actions before the Oslo Accords and during the second intifada.

Inside the Trump Team’s Push on Israel Vote That Mike Flynn Lied About

The last-ditch lobbying effort to scuttle a 2016 United Nations resolution on Israel by then-President-elect Donald Trump and top aides was more extensive than has been reported and went right up to the last moments before the vote, according to people familiar with the effort:

One transition member called the U.S. State Department’s 24-hour operations center for the phone numbers of officials, but the department declined to provide them.

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, called the British ambassador to the U.S., Kim Darroch, urging the U.K. to delay the vote.

Mike Flynn, soon to be national security adviser, reached Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis about the vote while the minister was at a loud holiday party in Madrid.

Nikki Haley, now the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., tried to contact then-Ambassador Samantha Power, but she declined to take or return the call, telling her staff that Ms. Haley’s outreach was inappropriate.

Mr. Trump himself on the day of the scheduled vote told Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi that putting the resolution to a vote would damage Egypt’s standing with his administration.

About two hours before the scheduled vote, Mr. Flynn called Malaysia’s Permanent Mission to the U.N., but mission staff refused to connect him to their representative.

As diplomats gathered in the Council chamber to vote, the cellphone of Uruguay’s deputy ambassador rang, and it was Mr. Flynn asking to table the resolution. The ambassador declined. The resolution passed.

Caroline Glick: Trump kicks America’s Palestinian habit

It was probably a coincidence that US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley hailed the Iranian anti-regime protesters and threatened to end US financial support for UNRWA – the UN Palestinian refugee agency – and the Palestinian Authority more generally in the same briefing. But they are integrally linked.

It is no coincidence that Hamas is escalating its rocket attacks on Israel as the Iranian regime confronts the most significant domestic challenge it has ever faced.

As IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said this week, Iranian assistance to Hamas is steadily rising. Last August, Hamas acknowledged that Iran is its greatest military and financial backer. In 2017, Iran transferred $70 million to the terrorist group.

Eisenkot said that in 2018, Iran intends to transfer $100m. to Hamas.

If Iran is Hamas’s greatest state sponsor, UNRWA is its partner. UNRWA is headquartered in Gaza. It is the UN’s single largest agency. It has more than 11,500 employees in Gaza alone. UNRWA’s annual budget is in excess of $1.2 billion. Several hundred million each year is spent in Gaza.

The US is UNRWA’s largest funder. In 2016, it transferred more than $368m. to UNRWA.

For the past decade, the Center for Near East Policy Research has copiously documented how UNRWA in Gaza is not an independent actor. Rather it is an integral part of Hamas’s regime in Gaza.

UNRWA underwrites the jihadist regime by paying for its school system and its healthcare system, among other things. Since 1999, UNRWA employees have repeatedly and overwhelmingly elected Hamas members to lead their unions.

In every major missile campaign Hamas has carried out against Israel since the group seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, UNRWA facilities have played key roles in its terrorist offensives. Missiles, rockets and mortars have been stored in and fired from UNRWA schools and clinics.

UNRWA teachers and students have served as human shields for Hamas missile launches against Israel.

UNRWA ambulances have been used to ferry weapons, including mortars, and terrorists.

UNRWA officials have served as Hamas mouthpieces in their propaganda war against Israel.

I just received another faux-outrage fundraising email from the "US Campaign for Palestinian Rights" that claims to care about Ahed Tamimi:

Ahed Tamimi, the brave Palestinian teenage activist who has experienced untold violence at the hands of the Israeli occupation in her short lifetime, spent her News Year’s Eve in an Israeli prison cell. Ahed will be punished severely for the most basic act of resisting a military occupation that has stolen her land, her freedom to live a peaceful childhood, and even the lives of her uncle and cousin. She faces 12 charges in a separate-and-unequal military court system with a 99.74% conviction rate. Read more about the connections between Ahed’s case and the landmark legislation I’m asking you to support.
Israel wants to make an example of Ahed and crush the will to resist. The Israeli government and its supporters are unapologetically brutal in the process; a minister called for life imprisonment and a prominent Israeli journalist implied that 16-year old Ahed should be raped. It is high time that we build our political power to end US complicity in Israel’s abuse of Palestinian children. 2018 will be the year – I can feel it. Take action today.

The 99.74% statistic is from 2010. No one seems to want to look at what the actual rate today is, because the 2010 number is too good.

No one suggested that Ahed be raped.

But the most interesting part is that the Israel haters are trying to get some interest in a bill before Congress called H.R.4391 - Promoting Human Rights by Ending Israeli Military Detention of Palestinian Children Act.

Under Palestinian law, Ahed Tamimi is an adult. And Israeli military law in the territories also considers 16 year olds to be adults.

But when Israel says it, it is a violation of human rights for children. When Palestinians say it....it is not even worth mentioning.

How many Arabs are in Palestinian jails between 16-18? No one knows....because no one cares.

Hundreds of Arabs report being abused and tortured in Palestinian jails every year. The "pro-Palestinian" activists are silent.

Palestinian Arabs aren't considered worthy of human rights protections, unless the abuse can be blamed on Jews. Facts don't matter.

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

01/05 Links Pt2: Murray: The Iranian rebellion the world wants to ignore; Phillips: The Iranian uprising and Europe’s shameful silence; The meaningless protests of American Jewish leftists

From Ian:

Douglas Murray: The Iranian rebellion the world wants to ignore

Elsewhere the silence indicates the dream-puncturing of an entire political class. In 2015 the UN security council agreed a deal with Iran to limit elements of its nuclear programme for a period. Iran’s incentives included a freeing up of trade and a delivery of billions of dollars in cash. For their part, companies and governments across Europe hoped to get their own cash bonanzas in the wake of that deal. Such deals always compromise the people who make them. One of the chief defenders of the 2015 deal, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, has spent recent days being studiously silent on the uprisings in Iran. When President Trump recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital she couldn’t tweet enough condemnations of his action. Yet five days into the protests in Iran, she hadn’t even said that she is watching events closely. Europe’s leading foreign affairs ideologue needs Iran’s governing status quo to stay in place so that nothing about her own deal, future cash prize or putative Nobel award is in any way disturbed.

Even if the regime is one day toppled — far-off though that day looks at the moment — there are enough rival factions within Iran to make the result as unpredictable as it was for many people in 1979. Back then the New York Times published a memorable piece by Richard Falk (formerly of the UN, now professor emeritus at Princeton University) assuring readers that the depiction of Ayatollah Khomeini ‘as fanatical… and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false.’ He later added that ‘Khomeini’s Islamic republic can be expected to have a doctrine of social justice at its core; from all indications it will be flexible in interpreting the Koran.’ Charitably we might say that Iranian politics has long been hard to read. The classified advice of the CIA in August 1978 was that ‘Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.’

Many people will dream their own dreams about the latest events in Iran, as experts and amateurs did in 1979. But for some people in the West — notably the Iranian regime’s paid and unpaid defenders — the mission right now will be to defend and otherwise cover for the regime. They will point out that the House of Saud isn’t at all nice: as though that is contested, or presently relevant.

If the Iranian people want freedom from the mullahs and can seize it for themselves, then we should wish them solidarity and luck. They will need it — for every succeeding stage, as well as this one. They are facing a regime that is not just the region’s chief destabiliser and terror sponsor, but a brutal theocracy. And that regime will certainly remain in power so long as the rest of the world remains as confused, compromised, sympathetic and supine as it has been in recent days and years.

PodCast: Iran's Uprising: Is this a rebellion the world wants to ignore?
With Douglas Murray, Nazenin Ansari, Nigel Jones, Sam Leith, Mark Mason and Freddy Gray.

Melanie Phillips: The Iranian uprising and Europe’s shameful silence

Obama believed the only reason Muslims attacked the West was that it had oppressed them. If the West offered Iran the hand of friendship, he suggested, it would turn into a model global citizen.

So he was determined to empower Iran, and Britain and the EU – driven as ever by a combination of greed and funk – fell into line behind him.

Obama thus bent over backward to give Iran a free pass. According to Politico, his administration stymied an FBI-led operation to shut down Hezbollah’s drug-running, terrorism- financing racket.

In the 2016 prisoner swap deal with Iran, he released several men who his own law enforcement agencies believed posed a danger to national security.

And in the 2009 Green Revolution, Obama abandoned the Iranian people by refusing to give the protesters support.

All of this was to secure the nuclear deal – which has merely empowered Iran to use the money released by sanctions relief to strengthen its terrorist infrastructure and step up its malign and aggressive meddling in the rest of the region.

The Iranian protesters offer the one hope that a catastrophic conflagration can be averted by regime change from within.

But the Western Left doesn’t want them to succeed – because that would shine the harshest possible light on the moral bankruptcy of the Obama administration that the Left supported to the hilt.

More unthinkable still, it would mean giving some credit to Donald Trump. But the Left’s unhinged hatred of the US president will allow nothing – not even the liberation of an oppressed people and the safety of the world – to challenge their unshakable conviction that he can never do a single thing that is good.

If the Iranian uprising is stamped out, it will be because of the absence of support from Britain and Europe. Their silence makes them complicit with a genocidal regime at war with the West and has caused them shamefully to betray a brave people fighting for its freedom.

Hillel Neuer on Radio Sweden - "Margot Wallström's position on Iran is troubling"

Jan. 4, 2018 - UN Watch, an NGO which scrutinizes the United Nations, has criticized Sweden's foreign minister Margot Wallström for not condemning Iran strongly enough over its violent response to protests in the country. UN Watch has also criticised Sweden's lack of commitment to an emergency UN Security Council meeting on the situation in Iran. Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, told Radio Sweden: The position of the Swedish foreign minister is troubling. There are hundreds of thousands of people affected by what's happening in Iran and Iran is involved in conflicts across the region. Neuer claims Sweden is neglecting its duty to advocate for human rights, but in a statement to Radio Sweden, Margot Wallström's press secretary said that she was among the first foreign ministers to comment on the situation in Iran. He added: Discussions are currently underway regarding whether the situation in Iran should be brought up in the UN Security Council and, if so, in what format. Wallström’s office insisted that Sweden's position on the matter is as yet undetermined and that a vote on whether to call a Security Council meeting is expected later today. On Thursday afternoon, Wallström took to Twitter again to express concern over the deaths, mass arrests and restrictions on the internet in Iran.

Palestinian "rage" demonstrations over Jerusalem are getting smaller and smaller

Islamci Jihad organized a rally in Gaza to denounce Trump (for the fifth Friday in a row.)

The biggest crowd scene I could find was this one:

Compared to previous Islamic Jihad rallies, this is pretty pathetic.

An anti-John Kerry rally in 2014:

Anniversary celebration in 2012:

Another in 2016:

Palestinians have to work very hard to make it look like their people are angry over this.

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

01/05 Links Pt1: Is US aid to the Palestinians actually preventing them from making peace?; US Suspends at $900 Million in Security Aid to Pakistan

From Ian:

Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Trump's bold moves just might jolt the Palestinians to finally negotiate with Israel

President Trump has sent a loud and clear message to leaders of the Palestinian Authority: Stop treating the United States like a giant ATM, withdrawing billions of dollars in aid without engaging in peace negotiations with Israel and being willing to make mutual compromises.

Has this message upset Palestinian leaders and their supporters? Absolutely.

But maybe – just maybe – President Trump’s bold and unconventional message will act like a shock treatment and jumpstart new talks between Palestinians and Israelis. If this happens – and it is far from certain – the president’s departure from past policies could go down as an historic turning point in what seems like a never-ending and frozen “peace process.”

The State Department reports that America has provided more than $5.2 billion from the U.S. Agency for International Development to the Palestinians since 1994, including $290 million in 2016.

In addition, the U.S. has provided billions more to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), which has aided Palestinian “refugees” in several countries in the Middle East since 1949. This aid includes $355 million from American taxpayers in 2016 alone. America also provided an additional $55 million to Palestinians in 2016 for law enforcement.

The term “refugees” includes children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of people who left Israel when the nation became independent 70 years ago.

The president tweeted Tuesday: “… we pay the Palestinians HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect. They don’t even want to negotiate a long overdue peace treaty with Israel…. But with the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace, why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”

President Trump’s tweet comes on the heels of his announcement last month that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – and our United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley’s threat to make deep cuts to America’s financial contributions to the world body.

Fight against incitement

As Palestinian leaders call for more violence and Palestinians burn American flags alongside effigies of U.S. President Donald Trump on the streets, the prospects for peace appear more distant than ever.

But Palestinian terrorism did not begin with Trump's Dec. 6 declaration recognizing Jerusalem as the official capital of Israel. It has been ongoing since the 1920s and it is fueled by violent indoctrination spread by the Palestinian leadership. It is only via incitement and indoctrination that innocent Palestinian children grow up to become terrorists.

More must be done to prevent the Palestinian children of today from becoming the terrorists of tomorrow.

The only way to stop young, impressionable Palestinian children from supporting terrorism in the future is to ensure that UNRWA schools no longer indoctrinate children into supporting terrorism.

Recently, the Center for Near East Policy Research published a comprehensive study on Palestinian school textbooks. The study argues that indoctrination continues to be a systematic problem in the Palestinian Authority school system.

Sexual Harassment East and West

"I say that when a girl walks about like that, it is a patriotic duty to sexually harass her and a national duty to rape her." — Nabih Wahsh, Islamist lawyer, on Egypt's al-Assema TV, October 19, 2017.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 sparked off increasingly revolutionary movements across the Islamic world, and in the process saw women in many countries denied the freedoms they had started to acquire under earlier regimes. The veil returned widely, notably in Turkey, following the growing power of authoritarian and fundamentalist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, with women's rights being increasingly denied.

We urgently need to drop our unwillingness to contrast Western and Islamic values -- whether regarding violence, treatment of religious minorities, anti-Semitism, or treatment of women. There are also growing numbers of Muslims, as we are seeing today in Iran, who find wider Islamic attitudes abhorrent and work hard, mostly against the odds, to bring their faith closer to modern values.

From Al Arabiya:

Activists in Lebanon ridiculed the announcement, during an interview with a TV station, by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah that his monthly salary, from Iran, was $1300.
Nasrallah, who tried yesterday to deflect the condemnation of Iranians shouting in the streets against Tehran’s funding of the Hezbollah militia while more than half of the Iranian people live below the poverty line, refused to disclose the amount paid to his militia from Iran.

He might be telling the truth about his direct salary, but as others pointed out, Nasrallah gets probably hundreds of millions or more from Iran to run Hezbollah. He decides where all the money is spent, including how much to allocate to himself.

Nasrallah refused to answer the question of how much Iran pays Hezbollah.

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

Glenn Greenwald's fact-free criticism of Israeli policy towards incitement on social media

At The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald wrote an article last week about how Facebook is supposedly doing Israel's bidding on censoring any anti-Israel posts.

As he is wont to do, Greenwald will take half-truths, eradicate context, and use these pseudo-facts to make insane generalizations that are, in the end, absolute lies.

Facebook has been on a censorship rampage against Palestinian activists who protest the decades-long, illegal Israeli occupation, all directed and determined by Israeli officials. Indeed, Israeli officials have been publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders:

Shortly after news broke earlier this month of the agreement between the Israeli government and Facebook, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to the social media giant over the previous four months asking it to remove content it deemed “incitement.” She said Facebook had granted 95 percent of the requests.

She’s right. The submission to Israeli dictates is hard to overstate: As the New York Times put it in December of last year, “Israeli security agencies monitor Facebook and send the company posts they consider incitement. Facebook has responded by removing most of them.”

What makes this censorship particularly consequential is that “96 percent of Palestinians said their primary use of Facebook was for following news.” That means that Israeli officials have virtually unfettered control over a key communications forum of Palestinians.

Greenwald is saying that what Israel says is incitement is actually any criticism of Israel.

The charge is almost too laughable to believe. Anyone can go to Arabic news pages in Facebook and use their translation service to see that not only are there thousands of anti-Israel posts every day, but there is still plenty of raw incitement to murder Jews that Facebook misses.

Greenwald's dishonesty in proving his position becomes clear in the next paragraph:

In the weeks following those Facebook-Israel meetings, reported The Independent, “the activist collective Palestinian Information Center reported that at least 10 of their administrators’ accounts for their Arabic and English Facebook pages — followed by more than 2 million people — have been suspended, seven of them permanently, which they say is a result of new measures put in place in the wake of Facebook’s meeting with Israel.”

The Palestine Information Center is a front for an internationally recognized terror group. It is Hamas. Too bad this little piece of information wasn't considered important for Greenwald.

Last March, Facebook briefly shut down the Facebook page of the political party, Fatah, followed by millions, “because of an old photo posted of former leader Yasser Arafat holding a rifle.”

Greenwald doesn't give the source for his quote. Do you want to know why? Because it was a lie spouted by Fatah itself!

Fatah's Facebook page publishes direct incitement to kill Israelis and Jews, as I've documented here and Palestinian Media Watch has literally hundreds of examples. An old photo of Arafat with a rifle is not considered offensive by PMW, by Israeli officials or by anyone. This, however, is:

A real journalist would know this. An anti-Israel propagandist like Greenwald would know this too - and purposefully hide that information from his readers.

But Greenwald's crimes against the truth don't end there. Not only does he laughably imply that Palestinians cannot find any anti-Israel news to read, he also claims that official Israeli social media - including Netanyahu's - is filled with direct incitement to kill Palestinians:

Though some of the most inflammatory and explicit calls for murder are sometimes removed, Facebook continues to allow the most extremist calls for incitement against Palestinians to flourish. Indeed, Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, has often used social media to post what is clearly incitement to violence against Palestinians generally. In contrast to Facebook’s active suppression against Palestinians, the very idea that Facebook would ever use its censorship power against Netanyahu or other prominent Israelis calling for violence and inciting attacks is unthinkable. Indeed, as Al Jazeera concisely put it, “Facebook hasn’t met Palestinian leaders to discuss their concern.”

Greenwald's link for Netanyahu's supposed incitement against Palestinians is when he was referring to the kidnap and murder of three Israeli boys. He quoted a poem about vengeance but in no way could anyone interpret that as a call to hurt or kill Arabs, only the people responsible for the murders.

And while it is true that Facebook would never censor Netanyahu, it would also never censor Abbas, who directly incited his people to oppose the Jews who "desecrate Al Aqsa with their filthy feet" and who he exhorted to oppose by all means - literally two weeks before the wave of knifing and car ramming attacks began in 2015, a mini-intifada that was directly encouraged by the same Fatah Facebook page that Greenwald says is innocent of any incitement.

One other difference between Palestinian incitement and the (admitted) Israeli incitement: Israelis are horrified at the few Jewish terror attacks against Arabs and the entire society is against such acts. Mahmoud Abbas' Palestinian society honors the terrorists.

Palestinian incitement on social media results in actual attacks in the hundreds per month. And social media is a large part of the reason for it. One cannot say the same about Israelis.

But Greenwald doesn't care about actual incitement to murder Jews. He's pretty much condoned it.

(h/t Bill, Yosef)

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