Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, January 18, 2018

01/18 Links Pt2: State Department Hiding ‘Game Changer’ Report on Myth of Palestinian Refugees; Amnesty International Ignores the Weaponization of Palestinian Children

From Ian:

State Department Hiding ‘Game Changer’ Report on Myth of Palestinian Refugees

The State Department never acknowledged having completed the report, sources said, and instead classified it.

"State had neglected to tell Sen. Kirk's office," said one source with knowledge of the situation. "It seems that this was intentional."

Once the report's existence was confirmed, Congress, in a 2017 measure, directed the State Department to provide an unclassified version of the report. This, too, was ignored, sources said.

The report is said to confirm that, as opposed to what UNRWA and its supporters claim, the number of refugees is actually in the tens of thousands, not the millions.

Richard Goldberg, a former deputy chief of staff for Kirk, told the Free Beacon that the UNRWA effort was always about exposing the myth that there are millions of refugees who still require aid.

"This is about basic taxpayer oversight of an agency that gobbles up hundreds of millions of dollars ever year," said Goldberg, the author of the original amendment that required the report. "Are we funding a refugee agency or are we funding a welfare agency that nurtures a culture terrorism and violence?"

"There's a moral difference when it comes to U.S. policy and foreign assistance," said Goldberg, now a senior adviser to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "American aid for true refugees is one thing; American aid to subsidize a culture of welfare and terrorism is entirely different." (h/t Yenta Press)

Hotovely to the BBC: UNRWA perpetuates fake refugees

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) on Wednesday spoke with the BBC about the United States’ decision to cut by half the funding it provides to UNRWA, the UN’s agency for “Palestinian refugees”.

Hotovely rejected the interviewer’s assertion that the American decision is counterproductive, saying, “What is really counterproductive is the role of UNRWA in perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

“Back in the 1950s, there were 750,000 Palestinians registered as ‘refugees’. Now, almost 70 years after the war, we’re talking about five million peoples who are registered as ‘refugees’. This is a major failure of the organization which was supposed to resettle those people who lost a war that they started – of course, we’re speaking about their grandparents who started the War of Independence which they lost.”

“There is only one version of history. They started a war after not accepting the idea of the UN Partition Plan. We need to remember that,” she added.

“The Foreign Ministry is very clear about its message: UNRWA should finish its role as an agency which perpetuates fake refugees,” said Hotovely, who also stressed the importance of foreign aid.

“Foreign aid is something that every country should provide according to the needs of the population. We’re absolutely in favor of foreign aid. This is something that is important. Humanitarian aid is important…but you need to make a major distinction between foreign aid which can be delivered by different groups and organizations and the idea that those people are going to keep living a fantasy that they are refugees, because they are not. According to international law, there is no second and third generation to refugee status.”

David Collier: Jews denied entry to eugenics libel event at the University of Warwick

Last night, at the University of Warwick, Faculty arranged a public talk that accused Israel of eugenics. Let us digest a simple truth. Like with most medical or technological innovations, Israel is a global powerhouse in fertility treatment. Every Israeli citizen, regardless of race, religion or colour, receives equal treatment. If you are Muslim and in need of IVF then no citizenship in the world, guarantees you the sort of world-class treatment that being an Israeli does. If you have doubts, talk to Prof. Foad Azem, I am sure he would be happy to convince you.

Eugenics is defined as ‘a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of a human population‘. Eugenics were most famously used as a justification for the racial policies of Nazi Germany. They are clearly associated with the Holocaust. False accusations of eugenics against Israel, places an accusing finger on the biggest victims of 20th century eugenic experiments – the Jews. The Jews are a people who lost one third of their number to genocide. You cannot spread these type of lies, which clearly fall under the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and then ignore complaints about your failure to protect Jewish students. There is something rotten in Warwick.
Dr Siggie Vertommen

The event was a talk by Dr Siggie Vertommen. It was titled ‘Anti-colonial Resistance is Fertile: Sperm Smuggling and Birth Strikes in Palestine/Israel‘. Vertommen is Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine at King’s College London. Like many activist academics, Vertommen places her pseudo-science atop a biased and twisted view of Zionism. As Vertommen specialises in ‘the political economy of global fertility chains’ then this is what she places on top of her twisted views of Zionism.

To understand the mindset, Vertommen wrote a piece on the social unrest in Israel in 2011 and 2012. It was published as a chapter in a book. The title was: ‘Help, de onderdrukkers worden onderdrukt! Sociaal protest in Israel‘. This translates as ‘Help, the oppressors are being oppressed‘.

Unpack the title. In Israel, people are oppressors. Not the government, not a political body, not an ideology, but the people. In every other nation, social protests such as this are viewed as being carried out by those fighting for change, as opposition to the status quo. In Israel, they were labelled ‘oppressors’ by Vertommen. It perfectly demonstrates, that for Vertommen, there seems to be no way out for the Israeli whatever their views. It suggests a highly racist mindset.

Antisemitism Rears Its Ugly Head in Puerto Rican Newspaper

Puerto Rico is going through a deep economic crisis, mainly due to heavy public debt. This subject has been addressed in numerous articles that explore causes and solutions to the crisis.

Last Monday, Puerto Rico’s largest daily newspaper, El Nuevo Día, published one more of these pieces. Actually, it wasn’t just one more. Penned by Wilda Rodríguez, it stated that “behind closed doors the most enlightened politicians speak of US power as a parallel government organized by the forces of wealth and violence (war machinery) from Wall Street.”

But these “forces of wealth and violence” to which Ms. Rodriguez referred, weren’t merely abstract figures. Ultimately, she singled out a specific culprit, asserting that “the US Congress will finally do what ‘the Jew’ — as the prototype of the real power is vulgarly called — wants.” And “the Jew,” according to Ms. Rodriguez, couldn’t care less about the situation in Puerto Rico, as “he” is “laden with his heavy itinerary of wars and profits.”

To justify and substantiate these charges, the writer resorted to citing the view of an individual in an opinion column published “more than twenty years ago” by the Israeli newspaper Maariv. Although it is a newspaper well-known in Israel, Maariv is not known abroad. Notably, a translation of the article appears on websites such as the one run by David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and a notorious antisemite.

The original column related that the then-US administration included numerous Jews, a fact that was said to underscore positive change from the past. The tenor of the column was essentially ethnic pride on the part of Jews — a group that had often, including in America, been outside the corridors of power. The antisemitic sites that posted the column twisted it, and claimed that it was proof of malevolent Jewish dominance.

The editor of Ma'an News Agency says that it is time for Israeli Jews to leave.

Dr. Nasser Al-Laham titled his article "This land belongs to the Arabs. To the Jews of the world: The visit is over."

He describes the Jews in the Israeli cabinet (Aryeh Eldad, Itamar Ben Geber, Uri Ariel, Yossi Feiglin, Eilat Shaked, Miri Regev, Naftali Bennett) as terrorists who followed Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein.

He describes an apartheid Israel:

Now we have 12 apartheid roads for apartheid, which Arabs are prohibited from using. There are cars, planes, airports, hospitals, ambulances, hair salons, pharmacies, ports, restaurants and hotels that Arabs are forbidden to use. Now there is an apartheid system that allows any criminal from the underworld to enjoy the protection of Israeli law, and forbids any Arab even if he is a professor of mathematics.

And, as in the title, Laham ends off:

In the statement of the [Palestinian] Central Council, a clear message to the Jews of the world: Your visit, which lasted 70 years is over.

As of 2014, Ma'an was still getting funding from Denmark, Sweden, United States, Catholic Relief Services, Save the Children, and others.

Maybe I'm sensitive, but I think calling for the ethnic cleansing of 6 million Jews is antisemitic. But Ma'an still is a respected news agency in the West.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

The Masorti (Conservative) movement in Israel has allied itself with the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism (IMPJ) in the legal struggle over what forms of worship are permitted at the Western Wall. I’ve written about that question before (here and here for example). The Supreme Court has taken the matter under consideration, and seems to have listened to and taken seriously the complaints of the progressive movements and the Orthodox authorities. Probably there is no solution that will completely satisfy both sides, but unlike some other conflicts, a compromise in this one is possible.

I’m concerned, though, that the Masorti movement is making a mistake by cooperating closely with the IMPJ on this and other issues. Most Israelis, religious and secular, already think that there is little or no difference between the movements. Religious people see them both as dangerously subversive of Judaism, while secular Israelis see them as equally pointless. “If I wanted to be religious, I would choose real Judaism,” say some secular people, who almost certainly do not want to be religious and for whom “real” Judaism would ask more of them than they are prepared to give. Both religious and secular Israelis lump the movements together as “reformim.”

But the theological gulf between the Reform and Masorti movements is far wider than that between Masorti and Orthodox Judaism. IMPJ states that “the suitable observance of religious law is through intention, in other words: through study, understanding and identification,” which simply means that the educated Jew is entitled to decide for him or herself which commandments to observe and which to ignore. Lip service is paid to the individual being cognizant of the history and tradition that gave rise to the halacha of today, but in fact Reform Jews (both in Israel and the US) commonly ignore what they call “ritual” commandments including observance of Shabbat and kashrut, in favor of “social” or “prophetic” commandments for “tikkun olam,” by which they usually mean progressive or left-wing politics.

In a few words, the Reform position is that there is no obligation to follow halacha, and most Reform Jews don’t (including egregious violations like this one). The Masorti movement, on the other hand, does assert that a Jew is obligated to observe the commandments. It is true that Masorti rabbis have issued rulings that are less stringent than Orthodox practice (although contrary to popular belief, the Israeli movement does not permit – as the Conservatives in America do – driving to synagogue on Shabbat), but these rulings are based on traditional texts and are argued in traditional ways. An Orthodox rabbi might disagree with this Conservative responsum on the difficult subject of homosexuality, but he would have to take its arguments seriously (read it; it’s great).

I recall reading a magazine article some years ago by an Orthodox rabbi, which unfortunately I can’t find. It was called something like “Is Reform Judaism a different religion?” He argued that the proposition “a Jew is obligated to observe the commandments according to halacha” is essential to Judaism. It is the way we understand our part of the covenant between Hashem and the Jewish people. Deny it, and you have “a different religion.”

Everyone on the Orthodox spectrum accepts this, as do Masortim, even if the Masorti rabbis are more lenient in their understanding of the obligations created by halacha. But the Reform movement removes the content from this principle by saying “you are obligated to observe the commandments, but every individual gets to decide what they are.” It is more like the fundamentalist Protestant idea of a personal God than the Jewish one of a covenant between Hashem and his people.

There is another problem, a political one. The Reform movement in America was explicitly anti-Zionist from its beginning with the 1885 “Pittsburgh Platform” until its “Columbus Platform” of 1937, and even then did not fully see itself as a Zionist movement until 1967. Lately, due to its close relationship with the Democratic Party, the overwhelming support shown for the anti-Israel Barack Obama by Reform Jews, and the flirtation with J Street and the New Israel Fund by many Reform rabbis (including the President of the movement, Rabbi Rick Jacobs), one has to say that the American branch of the movement is less and less supportive of the state of Israel than before. One example: it decided not to take a position on Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, which virtually every Zionist politician in Israel opposed.

The Israeli Reform movement, of course, is far more explicitly Zionist, even if it does sit on the Left of the Israeli political spectrum. But the American movement is the 800-pound gorilla that funds the Israeli movement, and its political arm, the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC). And to a certain extent, the American movement has political goals in Israel that it uses its Israeli affiliates, especially IRAC, to promote – including embarrassing PM Netanyahu and his “right-wing” government.

Although the Masorti movement in Israel is also concerned with social issues and also leans slightly to the left, it is not healthy for it to be associated with IRAC and its political machinations.

I think that if the Masorti movement wants to succeed in Israel – something which I believe is possible – it should stress the ways it is like the more liberal Orthodox groups, rather than what it has in common with the Reform movement. After all, what represents a wider theological divide? The presence or absence of a mechitza (partition between the sexes) in a synagogue, or the understanding of mitzvot? Is it even necessary to ask?

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01/18 Links Pt1: Michael Oren: Obama saw Israel as the problem - Trump sees it as the solution; Palestinian “Martyr” actively sought his own death: “I have decided to die as a Martyr”

From Ian:

Michael Oren: Obama saw Israel as the problem - Trump sees it as the solution

Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US now serving as Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister`s Office, praised President Donald Trump’s recent decision to withhold some $65 million in funding for a United Nations agency which supports self-described ‘Palestinian refugees’, effectively cutting the amount of US money to the agency in half.

Earlier this month, the US froze a $125 million grant to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – representing one-third of all US aid given to the agency every year.

On Tuesday, a State Department official said that the US had released $60 million to UNRWA, but was withholding the other $65 million, adding that the a “fundamental re-examination” of US aid to UNRWA was needed.

"There is a need to undertake a fundamental re-examination of UNRWA, both in the way it operates and the way it is funded," the official said.

On Wednesday, Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US, now an MK from the Kulanu party and the Deputy Ministry of the Prime Minister’s Office, spoke with Arutz Sheva about President Trump’s decision and the United Nation’s reaction.

While UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed “concern” Tuesday about the American cuts to UNRWA, Oren called Trump’s move “excellent”.

“He [Guterres] is ‘very concerned – well, let him be concerned,” Oren told Arutz Sheva.

“President Trump’s decision to cut funding for UNRWA is an excellent decision, both for us and for the whole Middle East. [UNRWA] is a corrupt and bloated organization that perpetuates a refugee problem that doesn’t exist.”

Einat Wilf: 1967 | As long as the Arab world views Israel as a temporary aberration to be conquered, Israel will stand fas

Given the Arab understanding of Zionism as a temporary historical aberration whose life span is a mere few decades, it made sense for the Palestinians to repeatedly choose to suffer the daily humiliations of living under a military occupation rather than to accept the far greater humiliation of permanent Jewish sovereignty on land they considered exclusively their own. In refusing to end the military occupation by making a permanent peace with Israel, the Arab Palestinians were making a conscious choice that was based on their understanding of Arab history and Islamic ‘justice’. As Arabs and Muslims, the Palestinians were not hapless victims, but rather masters of a historical narrative, at the end of which their resistance and patience would be rewarded with victory, in the form of Zionism’s disappearance. While they might suffer in the interim period, the choice they made was for what they perceived as the far greater good – defeating Zionism and driving away the sovereign Jewish presence from their land.

How to end the occupation: stand fast, stand longer

How can a temporary 50-year military occupation of most of the West Bank by Israel come to an end, if the Muslim, Arab and Palestinian view of history is that 50 years of Israeli occupation matters significantly less than the countdown of the remaining 19 years on the crusader clock? It is necessary to demonstrate to the Muslim-Arab world that their view of history is wrong, and that rather than constituting a second crusader state, Israel is the sovereign state of an indigenous people who have come home. This can only be achieved through Jewish power and persistence over time. And given the vast numerical imbalance between Jews and Arabs, it can only be achieved if those who truly seek peace support the Jewish people in sending the message to the Arab world that the Jewish people are here to stay.

The essence of the conflict between Zionism and the Muslim Arab world is a battle over time, a race of mutual exhaustion. The question that will determine how the conflict is ultimately resolved revolves around who will give up first: will the Zionists give up on their project in the face of unrelenting violent resistance, or will the Muslim Arabs give up on their project of erasing the sovereign Jewish presence in their midst, and finally come to accept it as a part of their history, rather than an affront to it?

Only time will tell.

Caroline Glick: Palestinian Leader’s Anti-American Rant Gives Trump Cause to Cut Funding

So if Abbas isn’t planning to retire, why is he cursing Trump and his senior advisors? Why is he recycling anti-Jewish blood libels from the 12th century and announcing that the deals he signed with Israel and the peace process as a whole are dead?

The simple answer is that Abbas is acting as he is because he is certain that he can. This is how he has always acted. There is nothing new in his speech. And he doesn’t think that he will suffer any consequences for behavior.

Abbas expects President Trump to disregard his statements and continue to bankroll his terror-supporting regime in the name of “the peace process,” or “humanitarian assistance” just as Bush and Obama did.

Abbas gave his speech at start of a two-day conference of the PLO’s Central Committee, which he convened to determine a response to President Trump’s announcement on December 6 that for the first time in nearly seventy years, the U.S. recognizes that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.

Trump’s Jerusalem declaration placed Abbas and his colleagues in a conundrum. On the one hand, his declaration had no practical implications. Trump signed a waiver delaying the transfer of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. No immediate plans have made to move the embassy.

Moreover, the State Department insists that there is no practical significance to Trump’s statement. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Satterfield told reporters the day after Trump’s announcement that his statement does not change U.S. policy barring American citizens born in Jerusalem from listing Israel as their country of birth on their official documents. Indeed, Satterfield refused to answer a question regarding whether Jerusalem is even in Israel.

On the other hand, simply by recognizing the basic fact that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and has been Israel’s capital for nearly 70 years, Trump broke with the longstanding U.S. policy of denying observable reality in relation to Israel in order to advance “peace” between Israel and its Arab neighbors. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Jerusalem Post Columnist Caroline Glick Joins Breitbart News

Caroline Glick, the conservative American-Israeli columnist renowned for her powerful criticisms of the Middle East peace process, has joined Breitbart News.

Glick, the long-serving senior contributing editor and chief columnist for the Jerusalem Post, is one of the world’s most widely-read commentators on Israel and international affairs. She also writes about American politics from a staunchly pro-Israel perspective.

She is the author of several books — including, most recently, The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East (2014), which calls for Israel to annex the West Bank.

Glick, a graduate of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), was Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Assistant Foreign Policy Advisor in 1997 and 1998. In 2003, she covered the Iraq War from the front lines as a journalist embedded with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, and was the first Israeli journalist to report from liberated Baghdad.

She is also the adjunct senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC. A recipient of several major journalism awards, Glick travels around the world to advise policymakers about issues relating to global security.

The radical US imams who incited hatred against Jews - and encouraged their congregants to go out and murder them - are back in the news again. Recently, Newsweek reported on the last 3 incidents of 2017, and noted that at least 2 of the imam threats against Jews were explicitly in response to Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, announced on December 6.

It is one thing to note radical imams right here in the US, but another to counter and prevent it.

Take France for example, where the government has to respond to Islamist terrorist attacks. In 2008, the French government created a special training program to teach imams French values such as the separation of state and religion. Results were not good. Out of the 60 students who started taking the course in 2008, only 9 got their certificates by 2011. One could argue that one reason for the failure is that it was created in conjunction with the Catholic Institute of Paris. That was unlikely to be a big draw for Muslims.

In 2015, France came up with the idea of a license for imams, compared to a driving licence, that ensured imams would promote a 'tolerant and open Islam'". This idea came just 11 days after the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris, leading to fears of homegrown Islamist extremists radicalized by rogue preachers.
By 2016, France's Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve was talking tough against radical Islam:

He also said that since 2012, 80 people had been expelled from France, and dozens more expulsions were underway, without giving further details.
"There is no place ... in France for those who call for and incite hatred in prayer halls or in mosques, and who don't respect certain republican principles, notably equality between men and women," the minister said.
"That is why I took the decision a few months ago to close mosques through the state of emergency, legal measures or administrative measures. About 20 mosques have been closed, and there will be others."

France's plan seems a bit ambitious, wanting not only to prevent violence but also to make imams, and by extension their congregants, into good French citizens.

Meanwhile, on this side of the Atlantic, the situation is different. In Canada, where the threat is not as pronounced the opposition has been more outspoken against the idea of certification. The Toronto Star condemned the idea of imam certification in no uncertain terms:

Canadians have no time for terror. But the Senate would never have the gall to suggest that Christian ministers be “certified” to preach in this country, no matter how unschooled in formal theology they might be, how eccentric their views, or how tiny their congregations. The same goes for Catholic, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist spiritual leaders.

The editorial claims “lone wolf” terror attacks are likelier to come from white supremacists and right-wing extremists than from Muslims. In Canada, out of the 35 million people -- including 1 million Muslims -- there are only 318 Muslims who were suspected of being radicalized. Claiming that most of them are self-radicalized on the Internet rather than in mosques, the Toronto Star goes on to say Muslims have been instrumental in preventing terror attacks in Canada. The editorial concludes that certification is a "solution in search of a problem."

And in the US?

Last year, Politico came out with an article that identified the main problem as America is Running Out of Muslim Clerics. Blaming Trump's immigration ban on the one hand and rising incidents of Islamaphobia on the other, the article claims that of the estimated 2,500 mosques in the US, more than half do not have a full-time imam. One solution underway in a dozen US cities is the development of seminaries to prepare homegrown American imams and chaplains. In 2013 more than 90 percent of the full-time imams in US mosques were either trained or born overseas. Among the US imams last year who incited hatred against Jews, one was born in Somalia and another in Syria.

But the problem, as it is in France, is what to teach the imams besides theology.

MINAB, the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board in Great Britain came up with a list of 5 standards for the purpose of self-regulation of mosques in the Muslim community by the Muslim community.

Standard 1: Members apply principles of good corporate governance
Standard 2: Members ensure that services are provided by suitably qualified and or experienced personnel
Standard 3: There are systems and processes in place to ensure that there are no impediments to the participation in the activities, including governance, for young people
Standard 4: There are systems and processes in place to ensure that there are no impediments to the participation in the activities, including governance, for women
Standard 5: Members ensure there are programmes that promote civic responsibility of muslims in the wider society.

This addresses general problems mosques may be having, but not the issue of radicalization of the mosques. This is not going to combat the issue of Islamism in the US.

It would help to get away from the standard solution.

The Homeland Security Advisory Council came out with Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Subcommittee Interim Report and Recommendations June 2016. Among its recommendations was a unanimous one to take the $10 million earmarked for 2016 -- and increase the funding by $100 million. But just throwing money at the problem is not going to work.

The best answer to the problem may be organic. A New York Times article from 2007 suggests A Growing Demand for the Rare American Imam:

But as the first generation of American-born Muslims begins graduating from college in significant numbers, with a swelling tide behind them, some congregations are beginning to seek native imams who can talk about religious and social issues that seem relevant to young people, like dating and drugs. On an even more practical level, they want an imam who can advise them on day-to-day American matters like how to set up a 401(k) plan to funnel the charitable donations known as zakat, which Islam mandates.

That is a solution that Europe has cheated itself out of. By opening the doors wide to Muslim immigrants, the EU may have made the creation of a homegrown Muslim leadership that much harder, especially with little indication that the EU has had any success in acculturating those immigrants and passing on European values.
Oddly enough, in the US there is a problem standing in the way of creating homegrown American imams that Jews can easily identify with:

Experts say the problem is exacerbated because few immigrant parents want their children to become imams.
“Immigrant parents want their children to become doctors, engineers, computer scientists,” Dr. Bazian said. “If you suggested that they might want their kid to study to become an imam, they would hold a funeral procession.”

Apparently, Jewish mothers have nothing on Muslim mothers.

One group confronting the issue is MEMRI, where they do more than just follow what is going on in the Muslim world and translate into English. Mansour Al-Hadj is Director of Reform at MEMRI, where in addition to monitoring, translating and transcribing Jihadi social media accounts, he analyzes Jihadi group publications as well.

He addressed the issue as well:

"The mosque pulpits in America are out of control, because most of the preachers who lead the prayers in these centers embrace the traditional Islamic rhetoric. Most of them are from the Middle East and are considered to be ulema, or people with superior religious understanding. Their problem is that they are traditional, and the traditional discourse has failed in Arab countries. The proof is that in Islamic societies, Islam has failed to unite the citizens and to prevent violence and the rhetoric of hatred. Unfortunately, we suffer from such imams here in America. They bring the traditional religious discourse with them, and spread it in an environment that is entirely different from where they came from."
...I expect – or I hope – that we in America will export [our] Islam to the Middle East. Society here is cohesive, and people respect one another. Schools are open to all, and there is no religious discrimination, or discrimination against people of color or people who uphold a certain faith. The Muslims in America have the ability and the experience to export that kind of Islam, which we need in the Middle East. We need a tolerant Islam, Islam that loves..."

It is a very ambitious plan:

Better than the French approach, that is trying to fit Muslims into a particular mold, Al-Hadj sees the American society as providing the answer to the problems apparent with traditional Muslim society both here and abroad.
Instead of looking for funding in the usual way that The Homeland Security Advisory Council suggests, he sees the Islamic societies in the US as providing the funding - and seeing it in their own self-interest to do so.
Most of all, he sees the possibility of creating an Islam here in the US that can then be exported back to the Middle East and bring with it renewed tolerance.

Now all there is to do is make a beginning.

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Hamas invited the world's Muslims to praise the murder of a rabbi. They came through.

At the Qassam Brigades website of Hamas, its readers from around the world were invited to share their happiness at the murder of Rabbi Raziel Shevach.

And their readers came through.

Dozens of people from around the world praised the murder.

"We are a nation committed to death. We will not be defeated, God willing," said a Moroccan.

An Algerian praised Hamas' "masculinity" as the presumed party behind the murder.

A Saudi prayed for an " increase and strengthening of jihadist operations."

The countries represented by their citizens' love of killing Jews includes Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Tunisia, "Palestine," Iraq, Turkey, Yemen, Sudan, Kuwait, Egypt and Lebanon.

Also, Germany and the Netherlands.

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Here's a tweet from India Today showing incredible enthusiasm for day #4 of Bibi Netanyahu's visit to India:

Modi-Bibi pay homage at Sabarmati ashram. Watch this report on day 4 of Modi-Netanyahu bonhomie.#ShalomNaMoste
LIVE: https://t.co/4fqxBVUizL pic.twitter.com/Vek8BYBMnW
— India Today (@IndiaToday) January 17, 2018

The enthusiasm for Netanyahu has not subsided after four days of massive coverage.

Here is a 20 minute interview with Netanyahu on India Today TV:

Inside this Indian newspaper, a dairy company used the visit to promote its products:

There are Bibi billboards in the streets:

This editorial cartoon also says volumes:

This is clearly more than a state visit. This is a lovefest between the world's second most populous country (and the country with 10% of the world's Muslims), and the Jewish state.

And it is driving the Israel haters insane.

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Abbas: "No respectable Jew in the world accepts the Zionist entity"

I have not yet seen a transcript of what Mahmoud Abbas said at Al Azhar in Cairo on Wednesday, but the small pieces published in Arabic media are enough proof of his extremism.

Egypt's Masrawy reports that Abbas said, "There is no respectable Jew in the world who accepts the Zionist entity....There are Jews who say that Jerusalem is for Muslims and Christians and for the Arabs."

So respectable Jews say that Jerusalem has nothing to do with Judaism. And any Jew who accepts Israel's right to exist is not respectable.

This is interesting for many reasons, but it also shows that even though Abbas still insists that he only wants a state of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza - a position he repeated in Cairo - he does not accept the state of Israel. Which means he never did. "Palestine" isn't an end, but a means to an end - the end of Israel.

By the way, in order to make the Al Azhar conference appear ecumenical, Abbas flew in "rabbi" Dovid Weiss from Neturei Karta to address the Arab audience and tell them that a couple dozen of his sect are the "original Jews" and the millions of others are all fake.

I wonder what Weiss would answer if an Arab asked him if the Temple was built in Jerusalem.

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01/17 Links Pt2: Col. Kemp: The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Why No Peace?; Kontorovich: Unsettled: A Global Study of Settlements in Occupied Territories; Moshe Holtzberg Returns To India

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: The Arab-Israeli Conflict: Why No Peace?

The jihadist aim is to isolate Israel politically; to influence political leaders, public opinion, international institutions and international organizations so that on the day their planned offensive begins, no one will be there to support Israel and the Jews. The Palestinian Authority, the PLO and the Arab/Muslim states will be unhampered to do what Hitler was unable to do in historic Palestine -- make it Judenrein (free of Jews).

Terror is "to achieve Palestinian political goals, to influence Israeli politics, to favor a given Israeli candidate for the post of Prime Minister, to compel the Israeli government to conceal more land, to prevent a final peace settlement by maintaining a state of conflict that could eventually lead to total war, to erode Israeli and American resolve and to demonstrate to Arab population that peace is not an option and that the existence of the Jews on their land cannot be recognized". Some of the attacks occurred just when foreign representatives landed in Israel, "to prevent the revival of the peace talks." Mr. Jason Greenblatt should take that into consideration.

The same jihadist war is also underway against the Americans and all "infidels": Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Hindus, Buddhists, and in a general manner all those who do not believe in the "religion of truth", namely Islam; and against those Muslims who compromise with such so-called infidels.

Eugene Kontorovich: Unsettled: A Global Study of Settlements in Occupied Territories

This Article provides the first comprehensive, global examination of state and international practice bearing on Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which provides that an “Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” This provision is a staple of legal and diplomatic international discussions of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and serves as the basis for criticism of Israeli settlement policy.

Despite its frequent invocation in the Israeli context, scholars have never examined – or even considered – how the norm has been interpreted and applied in any other occupation context in the post-WWII era. For example, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) influential Study on Customary International Humanitarian Law lists 107 instances of national practice and UN practice applying or interpreting the prohibition, and all but two relate to Israel. Many questions exist about the scope and application of Art. 49(6)’s prohibition on “transfer,” but they have generally been answered on purely theoretically.

To better understand what Art. 49(6) does in fact demand, this Article closely examines its application in all other cases in which it could apply. Many of the settlement enterprises studied in this Article have never been discussed or documented. All of these situations involved the movement of settlers into the occupied territory, in numbers ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands. Indeed, perhaps every prolonged occupation of contiguous habitable territory has resulted in significant settlement activity.

Melanie Phillips: Trump derangement, UK culture wars

Let's look at the reasons being given to continue funding UNRWA:

“Given the long, trusted, and historic relationship between the United States and UNRWA, this reduced contribution threatens one of the most successful and innovative human development endeavors in the Middle-East,” UNRWA chief Pierre Krähenbühl said in a statement.
“The reduced contribution also impacts regional security at a time when the Middle East faces multiple risks and threats, notably that of further radicalization.” he said.

UNRWA schools use the same curriculum as their host countries. So how, exactly, does UNRWA reduce radicalization if it is teaching the same thing as everyone else?

“At stake is the access of 525,000 boys and girls in 700 UNRWA schools, and their future,” he said. “At stake is the dignity and human security of millions of Palestine refugees, in need of emergency food assistance and other support in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. At stake is the access of refugees to primary health care, including pre-natal care and other life-saving services. At stake are the rights and dignity of an entire community.”

Emergency food assistance and pre natal care is a small part of UNRWA's budget. The bulk is education. As far as I can tell, the only education system in the world run by the UN is that of UNRWA.

And no one is explaining why that needs to be the case.

As far as dignity is concerned - since when is raising three generations of stateless people dependent on aid "dignified"?

“The US Administration seems to be following Netanyahu’s instructions to gradually dismantle the one agency that was established by the international community to protect the rights of the Palestinian refugees and provide them with essential services,” said Hanan Ashrawi on behalf of the PLO Executive Committee.
“This administration is thereby targeting the most vulnerable segment of the Palestinian people and depriving the refugees of the right to education, health, shelter and a dignified life,” she said.
The PLO official too said that shaving $65 million off the US donation would destabilize the region.

“It is also creating conditions that will generate further instability throughout the region and will demonstrate that it has no compunction in targeting the innocent,” she said, adding that, “Once again the US Administration proves its complicity with the Israeli occupation.”

Ashrawi is falling back on the always popular Arab trope that any change will bring "instability," a code word for terrorism.

As if the region has been the model of stability in the 69 years since UNRWA was established!

No one is saying that people who would starve without UNRWA rations should be cut off. But the idea that the UN should be responsible for the education of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children (about 1/3 of all school kids in the territories) is obviously wrong: UNESCO estimates that 69 million teachers need to be hired worldwide to achieve educational goals by 2030, does anyone say they must be UN employees?

UNRWA services in the territories should be eliminated. Those "refugees" live in their own land, and should be taken care of the PA. And everyone knows it.

UNRWA services in Jordan to Jordanian citizens who are of Palestinian descent must be eliminated as well. Jordan is their country, why create two classes of Jordanian citizens? Why does no one care about this discrimination?

Once those two things are done, then UNRWA can make a case about how it is needed in Syria and Lebanon, where Palestinians are discriminated against. But don't whine about how the UN must provide free schools to Palestinians but no one else in the world.

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Heliocentrism Is Wrong: The World Revolves Around Palestinians, by Mahmoud Abbas (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Heliocentrism Is Wrong: The World Revolves Around Palestinians

By Mahmoud Abbas, President, Palestinian Authority; President, State of Palestine; Chairman, Fatah; Chairman, Palestine Liberation Organization

As a devout Muslim I have always maintained that any model of the universe with the sun at the center of our planetary system must be flawed; our scholars and spiritual leaders have always placed Earth in the center, and a flat Earth at that. But what most of them have neglected to note is the specific center of gravity, as it were, upon that Earth is the Palestinian people.

All conflicts, all injustices, indeed all world events, have their root in our struggle; no campaign may exist unless it acknowledges its links to ours, and its secondary status in relation to ours, for the Palestinian struggle must always remain first in attention, first in sympathy, first in allegiance, but most important of all, first in funding.

Nefarious actors will attempt to sway the public and the decision-makers into believing Palestine has fallen out of favor, that other conflicts demand more urgent focus at the moment, but we must pay them no heed. All the crises in Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Libya, France, Myanmar, Sudan, Qatar, Niger, Venezuela, Nigeria, China, Turkey, Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan, Mali, Afghanistan, Lebanon, the United States, Russia, Jordan, Spain, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Honduras, North Korea, Mexico, Greece, and elsewhere represent either offshoots of our struggle or attempts by our enemies to distract from it. Do not be diverted! Palestine is the central human rights, justice, liberation, geopolitical, and astrophysical issue of all time.

Every movement of every body in the vicinity of Earth, let alone on or near its surface; every wobble of every distant star or exoplanet as it floats about the heavens, owes its path to us, to Palestine. The media, academics, and other sources of "information" who prate on about galactic phenomena as if they bear no connection to Palestine are in the pay of Zionists. Do them violence until they acknowledge the truth, and if they refuse, do them violence until death.

Ignorant or malicious challengers will make every effort to sway you from the axiom that is Palestiniocentricity. Fight them as one fights all evil, with every means at your disposal, so that we may maintain Palestine at the top of the world's set of prior- hey! I'm talking to you! HEY! YOU CAN'T JUST WALK AWAY FROM ME! I REPRESENT THE MOST IMPORTANT CAUSE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND! INFIDEL! TRAITOR! CRIMINAL! WON'T ANYONE LISTEN?

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01/17 Links Pt1: Did Abbas kill the Israeli left?; UNRWA is one of the greatest frauds in history; Abbas Has a Problem With Women

From Ian:

Eli Lake: Palestinian President Shows the World Who He Really Is

There are two ways to understand the two-and-a-half hour rant Sunday from the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in which he called for discarding past agreements with Israel.

The first way is straightforward: He means it. As Maya Angelou famously said, "when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." In the case of Abbas, he has been showing us who he is for a while now.

He defends Palestinian Authority payments for terrorists. He called murderers "heroic brothers" when they were released by Israel in 2013 as a condition for restarting peace talks. In December he urged the Organization of the Islamic Conference to reconsider its recognition of Israel.

So when Abbas gives a Castro-esque speech laced with fake history about Israel being a colonial project of Europeans, it fits a pattern.

The second way of understanding his rant requires some creative accounting. Abbas doesn't really mean it. Abbas has been a patient peace partner now for 15 years, but along comes President Donald Trump, who recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital and asks Saudi Arabia to pressure Abbas to take a deal. What do you expect?

This is the interpretation of J-Street, the Soros-family-funded advocacy group that touts itself as pro-peace and pro-Israel. A J-Street statement on the Abbas speech began with this throat clearing: "Sunday’s speech by President Abbas no doubt reflected his own and the Palestinian people’s deep despair at the ever-deepening occupation and the lack of diplomatic progress toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

J-Street was careful to stipulate that this despair was "no excuse for calling into question either the Jewish connection to, or Palestinian recognition of, the state of Israel." But let's not lose the plot. This group asserts that Abbas would not have delivered his rant "if it were not for President Trump’s inept and disastrous missteps regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

PodCast: Did Abbas kill the Israeli left?

Gil Hoffman speaks to Zionist Union Knesset member Nachman Shai on the impact of Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s anti-Semitic speech and rejection of peace talks on the Israeli Left.

Shai, like Naftali Bennett Monday says the Abbas era is over, but unlike Bennett, Shai says the 2-state-solution is still alive. He also laments Israel’s inability to get out its message when its Foreign Ministry’s funding has been cut again. (h/t Elder Of Lobby)

Israeli official: UNRWA is one of the greatest frauds in history

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Wednesday morning said he expects the US Embassy to move to Jerusalem within the coming year.

"Three things are happening in the US which have never happened before," Netanyahu explained. "My estimation is that the US Embassy move will happen faster than we think. Within the span of a year - that's my educated guess."

"There is a dramatic change regarding Iran, and the President has a time limit, at the end of which the Iran deal will either be fixed or canceled."

Regarding UNRWA, the UN organization created for the purpose of helping "Palestinian refugees," Netanyahu said, "This is the first time they are being challenged. This organization perpetuates the Palestinians' refugee status. This is the first time someone is standing up and challenging that."

A Netanyahu official said he "believes that the the Americans are discussing Israel's proposal to transfer care of the refugees in Judea and Samaria from UNRWA to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)." The many millions of refugees who are not Palestinian Arabs are represented by one organization UNHCR. Only the Palestinian Arabs have an organization of their own.

The US on Wednesday morning cut UNRWA funding from $125 million to $60 million.

Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Office Michael Oren (Kulanu) said, "I congratulate US President Donald Trump on his decision to drastically cut funding to UNRWA. This is a false and corrupt organization, which fabricates millions of refugees in order to receive world funding. UNRWA perpetuates the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by teaching Palestinian youth to hate the State of Israel and to work to erase it. The President's decision is a crucial and vital step to putting an end to one of the greatest frauds in history. UNRWA's fraud has caused great damage to Israel and to the entire Middle East."

The ruined Tiferet Yisrael synagogue, 1949

From the United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine.report from April, 1949:

15. Since the presentation to the General Assembly of the Commission's first report to the Secretary-General, the Special Committee on Jerusalem has continued to work actively. In particular, it has held interviews with representatives of Arab and Jewish central and local authorities. On the basis of new instructions given to it by the Commission, the Committee is endeavouring to formulate, in conformity with the terms of paragraph 8 of the resolution of 11 December 1948, proposals which will at the same time be acceptable to both parties. The Commission is aware that acceptance by the two parties is not mentioned in the terms of reference which it received from the General Assembly on the subject of the international regime for Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the Commission feels that such acceptance would facilitate considerably the establishment and functioning of such a regime. In this connexion, the Commission is happy to report that, during its conversations in Beirut with the Arab delegations, the latter showed themselves, in general, prepared to accept the principle of an international regime for the Jerusalem area, on condition that the United Nations should be in a position to offer the necessary guarantees regarding the stability and permanence of such a regime. On the other hand, the Governments of the Arab States have reserved their right to give their final opinion after they have been acquainted with the text of the proposals which the Commission is to submit to the General Assembly.
16. The religious representatives mentioned above also emphasized to the Commission, during the Beirut meetings, the importance which they attach to the application of those paragraphs of the resolution which concern Jerusalem and the Holy Places. Some of them expressed a further desire to see the international regime extended to cover Nazareth.

Today's Arabs say insist that Jerusalem is wholly Arab, and it is inconceivable that any non-Arab control the city. But in 1949, when Transjordan did control half of Jerusalem and Israel the other half, the other Arab countries liked the idea of an international regime controlling Jerusalem.

And they even wanted to extend that regime to Nazareth, inside Israel.

What has changed between then and now? It is obvious: Nothing. Both then and now, Arabs didn't care about who would administer Jerusalem as long as the people who controlled it weren't Jews. They wanted to reduce, however they could, the amount of land that Jews controlled - hence the absurd idea of not only including Nazareth in the corpus separatum, but also the corridor that would need to be created to travel there from Jerusalem - cutting Israel nearly in half.

There is no rich Arab history in Jerusalem. It was never an Arab capital. The city was a terrible place to live when under Muslim rule.

The only time Muslims showed interest was when either Christians, during the Crusades, or Jews nowadays, controlled the city. Otherwise, the city was all but ignored, with only occasional pilgrims passing through.

The Palestinian Arab obsession with Jerusalem, plastering photos of the Dome of the Rock on every surface, is a new phenomenon. Jerusalem is not even mentioned in the original PLO charter written in 1964!

Trump's speech did not affect the Palestinian claim to Jerusalem one iota. What it did was strengthen Israel's claim to part of Jerusalem. That idea, that Jews have any rights to any part of Jerusalem, is what is behind Mahmoud Abbas' temper tantrum today - and it can be traced back to how the Arab nations looked at Israeli control of the "New City" of Jerusalem in 1949.

The Palestinian Arabs'' true interest is in taking Jerusalem away from the Jews, just as the Arabs wanted to in 1949.

And both times by cynically using international instruments to accomplish that goal.

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YNet reports:

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz's ambitious plan to connect extend the railroad tracks from Beit She'an East to the Sheikh Hussein crossing at the Jordanian border was allocated NIS 15 million in the 2019 budget.

The funds will be invested in planning the extension of the tracks to the border crossing.

Trains are set to carry passengers and cargo between the Israeli Mediterranean coast and Jordan, or more optimistically—if there is a peace agreement between the countries—all the way to Iraq and Saudi Arabia as well.

The main purpose is for freight, not people. The trains should reduce truck traffic that is going today from the port at Haifa to Jordan.

And beyond.

Buried in this Al-Monitor story about the proposed railway as a possible competitor to the Suez Canal we learn:

In the interview [with Arabic newspaper Elaph], Katz explained that the railway will cut freight expenses from Europe to the Gulf countries and indicated that 25% of Turkey’s exports to the Gulf travel through Haifa’s port and pass through Jordan.

That's probably a fair amount of goods that already go to Gulf states through Haifa. I imagine that many products from Europe also reach the Gulf through Haifa.

Part of the honor/shame dynamic is that one is shamed only if what he did is known. Arabs don't mind benefiting from Israel - as long as no one knows.

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J-Street blames Abbas' antisemitism on...Trump (ElderToons)

Is there any more proof needed that J-Street cannot be taken seriously?

Israel's "peace partner" Mahmoud Abbas gives an hour-long rant that denies any connection between Israel and Judaism, that says that Jews chose to stay in Europe during the Holocaust rather than emigrate to Israel, that Ben Gurion was a bigot who hated Jews from Arab lands but ended up making secret agreements to have them persecuted in Arab countries so they would flee to Israel, hints that TWA chose to fly Jews from Yemen to Israel against their will because it is owned by Jews, and other hateful and antisemitic garbage.

J-Street briefly says that Abbas said some unacceptable things without elaborating - and then tells us why he was driven to such despair:

Sunday’s speech by President Abbas no doubt reflected his own and the Palestinian people’s deep despair at the ever-deepening occupation and the lack of diplomatic progress toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That frustration, however, is no excuse for calling into question either the Jewish connection to, or Palestinian recognition of, the state of Israel – or for language and proposals that are justifiably earning widespread condemnation.

This speech – and the undercutting of America’s role as a mediator in this conflict – would not have come about if it were not for President Trump’s inept and disastrous missteps regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By appointing a settlement movement ally as Ambassador to Israel, refusing to endorse the two-state solution and upending longstanding US policy on Jerusalem, the president and his team have taken one step after another to destroy the chances of peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Abbas revealed himself as a blatant antisemite. And not for the first time. His PhD thesis denied the Holocaust, saying that not so many Jews died and that Zionists colluded with Hitler to persecute them. He told the EU Parliament that rabbis encourage Israel to poison Palestinian wells. He said that Jews raise wild boars and dogs just to attack Palestinian farmers.

But to J-Street, Abbas is a moderate peace partner. To them, Abbas' long history of hate and bigotry doesn't exist, and when it is undeniable, they blame...Trump, The Source Of All That Is Evil In This World.

Because they know their audience. And to the J-Street crowd, Trump saying that Jerusalem is Jewish is the ultimate evil, and Abbas saying that Jews preferred to die in gas chambers rather than move to their ancestral homeland is a minor annoyance....that must be blamed on Trump.

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