Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, February 03, 2018

02/03 Links: EU Report Calls Jewish Development of Jerusalem Historical Sites ‘Touristic Settlement’; The truth about Israeli couscous

From Ian:

While claiming to be investigating Z Street’s funding of terror, the IRS never asked how or where Z Street spent its money. The IRS ultimately granted Z Street’s application, in October 2016, without asking anything about terror, or money, or anything else it hadn’t known in 2010.

As the IRS knew within six weeks of our case being filed, Z Street was sent for special scrutiny by an IRS employee using an outdated list of countries affected by terror. The new list didn’t include Israel. The IRS didn’t resume processing our application after it discovered this error, and it didn’t disclose the error for six years. Because we sued, the IRS froze Z Street’s application. It stayed on ice until August 2016, when a court held the IRS couldn’t get our case thrown out until it processed our application. Two months later we got our exemption.

The “terror” error turns out to have been a pretext. Within weeks of President Obama’s inauguration, IRS and State Department officials began considering whether they could deny or revoke tax-exempt status for organizations that provided material support to Jews living across the Green Line—the nonborder that delineates pre-1967 Israel from the territories Israel acquired in the Six Day War. The theory was that a Jewish presence in those areas is inconsistent with U.S. policy. The IRS drew up lists of such organizations based on information from anti-Israel websites such as Electronic Intifada and MondoWeiss.

The New York Times and the Washington Post ran articles that advanced the policy espoused by the Obama administration and its nonprofit ally, J Street. Unnamed “senior State Department officials” were quoted as saying that Jewish activity over the Green Line isn’t “helpful” to peace efforts. (h/t Esther)

EU Report Calls Jewish Development of Jerusalem Historical Sites ‘Touristic Settlement’

A European Union report leaked to The Guardian newspaper expressed ire over Israeli tourism in and around Jerusalem’s Old City, calling the ongoing development of Jewish infrastructure a form of “touristic settlement.”

The EU Heads of Mission in Jerusalem issued a report warning that the development of Jewish tourism in the ancient City of David, currently located within a heavily populated Palestinian neighborhood, and a planned cable car that would transport tourists from the Western sections of the city to the Western Wall plaza within the Old City, were “a political tool to modify the historical narrative and to support, legitimize, and expand settlements.” The report asserts that the projects promote the “historic continuity of the Jewish presence in the area at the expense of other religions and cultures.”

The cable car, which EU diplomats have dubbed “highly controversial,” is anticipated to be operational by 2020, and is being erected to ease traffic on the narrow streets surrounding Jerusalem’s Old City, and drastically reducing travel time. An estimated 25,000 people are expected to utilize the system per day.

Additionally, the report states that, “critics have described the project as turning the World Heritage site of Jerusalem into a commercial theme park while local Palestinian residents are absent from the narrative being promoted to the visitors.” The further suggested that the cable car project would pose a security threat, as one of the cable car stations would be a little over 420 feet from the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif site administered by the Jordanian Wakf.

Over 30 registered World Heritage sites around the world are accessible via cable car systems.

Why They Didn’t Stand for Jerusalem

Nor can liberals claim that opposition to the recognition of Jerusalem merely puts them on the same page as opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Backing for Trump on this point was a consensus issue in Israel for every party with the exception of the very far left and the anti-Zionist Arab factions. With both Labor and the centrist Yesh Atid backing the president’s gesture, it’s hard for Democrats to say they’re simply being liberal Zionists by refusing to acknowledge that Trump did the right thing on Jerusalem.

In that context, it ought to be possible for Democrats to cheer a move that they would have supported had it come from a president from their own party. But in the bifurcated America of 2018, there is no such thing as a bipartisan issue anymore. Though Trump’s relentless trolling of his opponents on Twitter has exacerbated this trend, Democratic opposition to the president is so deep and bitter that they feel that endorsing anything he does legitimizes his presidency. Since their base is hoping a Democratic win in the November midterms will lead to impeachment, Jerusalem is just one more issue on which they will never give Trump credit, even if many of them don’t disagree with him.

There are reasons why Democrats are drifting away from Israel that have nothing to do with Trump. But the more their leaders send signals that treat pro-Israel gestures as being unacceptable if they mean applauding Trump, the worse it will get.

It was a disconcerting sight when Democrats all sat while Republicans stood to applaud the mention of Jerusalem as well as Trump’s vow to cut off aid to those — like the Palestinians — who oppose US policy. But friends of Israel shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from it. So long as Trump is president, their opposition to his reversal of Obama’s daylight policy is rooted in partisanship and not necessarily animus toward Israel. It will be up to Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — who was one of the few who did stand for Jerusalem — to help their party separate its emotions about Trump from Israel. But so long as Trump is sticking close to Israel, this won’t be the last time that Democrats send the country a message that this is not an issue on which they are prepared to set aside partisan feuds.

Caption contest winners (update)

Last week I asked my readers to come up with captions for this photo:

A protester sits in a chair in front of a barricade during a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, near the West Bank city of Ramallah December 17, 2017. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

The best ones:

One of the many Palestinians that are stuck in wheel-chairs as a consequence of the occupation regime's violence. (DHL)

"No, guys, you go ahead without me. I have to finish this expense report for the Raïs." (Thag)

"Honey, the Mossad stole my desk ... again." (dabney)

UPDATE: A great entry from Twitter:

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02/02 Links Pt2: The UN Makes the Case for an Anti-BDS Law; Melanie Phillips: What that Farrakhan picture tells us about antisemitism; IRS Apologizes to Pro-Israel Group for Biased Treatment

From Ian:

The UN Makes the Case for an Anti-BDS Law

If there were any doubt about the need for Congress to pass the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, it was erased yesterday when the United Nations’ Office for the High Commissioner on Human Rights issued a report about companies doing business in the West Bank. The Geneva-based UN agency said it was examining the activities of 206 companies that are connected to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Though it didn’t name the companies, the intent was clear. The goal of the effort is to establish a list endorsed by the international community that would make it possible to boycott the 143 Israeli and 22 U.S companies cited as well as others.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Prince Zeid bin Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein. Credit: U.N. Photo/Pierre Albouy.

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley was right to denounce the step as a waste of time and evidence of the UN’s anti-Israel obsession. But with this step, Congress’s obligation is also made clear. If it doesn’t pass the bill updating and expanding existing legislation banning discriminatory commercial boycotts of Israel, some Americans will be effectively boxed out of international commerce.

But while this ought to add urgency to the effort to pass a law that will stop the BDS — boycott, divest, sanction — movement from discriminating against Israelis and Jews in this fashion, the campaign on its behalf is bogged down by two deceptive arguments.

The first is the claim that boycotts of the settlements are both legally and morally distinct from boycotts of Israel as a whole.

The second is the assertion that the Anti-Boycott Act is an attempt to prohibit constitutionally protected free speech.

Both are fallacies.

Melanie Phillips: What that Farrakhan picture tells us about antisemitism

The fury was because many don’t accept that antisemitism is utterly deranged. Unspeakably, they believe the bad stuff said about the Jews is actually true and that the Holocaust has unjustly shielded them from rational complaint.

That’s why, when Jews call the anti-Israel madness “the new antisemitism,” they are accused of trying to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel. Their accusers actually think that claims such as the Jews have too much power/manipulate American foreign policy/further their own interests at the expense of others’ lives and so on are merely criticisms of true Jewish characteristics.

It was not enough, however, for other groups just to claim victim status. They had to knock the Jews off their victim perch altogether.

That’s because the Jews really are the world’s ultimate victims. So false “victims” had to deny Jewish victimization order to continue their dishonest leverage of guilt. Those who have made most murderous use of this strategy are of course the “Palestinians.”

So antisemitism, the most lethal bigotry in the world, became the prejudice that dare not speak its name. Those who continued to draw attention to it found themselves either ignored or deplored. Those who connived at or gave cover to it came to dominate the universities and media and culture – and one became president of the United States for eight years.

And now some of those who supported him are shocked – shocked! – to discover that their hero had feet of poisoned clay.

IRS Apologizes to Pro-Israel Group for Biased Treatment

A pro-Israel organization that found its nonprofit status subjected to undue scrutiny by the Obama administration's IRS as a result of its advocacy on the Jewish state's behalf reached a settlement Thursday with the Department of Justice that included a formal apology from the U.S. government for subjecting the group to unfair treatment, according to an announcement.

The Trump administration's DOJ announced Tuesday that it had reached a settlement with Z Street, a conservative pro-Israel advocacy group that sued the government over allegations the Obama administration subjected the organization to unfair scrutiny as a result of its pro-Israel views. Z Street was just one of several conservative organizations to sue the U.S. government.

The case had been locked in court since 2015, when judges rejected the Obama administration's claims that it did not act improperly.

"Z Street alleged that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) applied heightened scrutiny to applications for tax-exempt status received from organizations connected in any way to Israel, and applied this policy to Z Street's application, resulting in delay," the Justice Department announced in a press release. "The settlement agreement includes an apology from the IRS to Z Street for the delayed processing of the group's application for tax-exempt status."

DOJ lawyers issued a formal apology to the group over its unfair treatment and vowed equal treatment for groups of all political stripes.

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, an "anti-Zionist, pro-Palestinian lefty Jew" as described by Mondoweiss, is interviewed by that site and proves the exact opposite of what she intends:

What is your impression of the reaction to Ahed Tamimi’s slapping of an Israeli soldier?

Gottlieb: The response to Ahed Tamimi’s slap by many Jewish people reveals the sexist and racist attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that impact a large portion of the Jewish community. The vile accusations against this child are stunning. Their purpose is to flip the script on Palestinian suffering and blame the victim instead of assuming responsibility.

I wonder: who would not slap a soldier after years of trauma as a result of recurring night invasions, administrative detentions with no possibility for justice or a fair hearing, daily destruction of village houses, and direct assaults, one of which targets your cousin in the head?

If the IDF was indeed an army that had no moral compass, then slapping a soldier should result in an instant fatal gunshot. Hell, no soldier on the planet outside of Israel would stand there and let a young woman physically assault him without reaction. They would defend themselves by hurting or killing the attacker.

The question isn't who wouldn't slap a soldier - but who would slap a soldier? Nobody on Earth except for Palestinians, who can act with such impunity because they know, first hand, that Israeli soldiers do not target civilians even when provoked.

And to say that for the girl to be arrested for assault - captured on tape - is sexist and racist? That is beyond stupid. It is just throwing keywords at the wall and seeing what her leftist buddies will think sticks.

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02/02 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: Time for Greenblatt to walk away; U.S. Shows Beginning of a Response to Muslim Brotherhood; The Burgas Obama nexus

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Time for Greenblatt to walk away

On Tuesday in Bethlehem, the Palestinians demonstrated the choice the Americans now face in their dealings with Fatah – the supposedly moderate PLO faction that controls the Palestinian Authority and the PLO. President Donald Trump and his advisers can play by Fatah’s rules or they can walk away.

On Tuesday a delegation of diplomats from the US Consulate in Jerusalem came to Bethlehem to participate in a meeting of the local chamber of commerce. When they arrived in the city, Fatah members attacked them. Their vehicles with diplomatic license plates were pelted with tomatoes and eggs by a mob of protesters calling out anti-American slogans.

After the Americans entered the hall where the meeting was scheduled to take place, some of the rioters barged in. They held placards condemning America and they shouted, “Americans Out!”

Some of the demonstrators cursed the Palestinians present, accusing them of treason for participating in a meeting with Americans. According to the news reports, the scene became tense and violent. The American officials beat a speedy retreat. As they departed the city, the Fatah rioters continued attacking their cars, kicking them and throwing eggs at them, until they were gone.

The attack on Tuesday was a natural progression.

On Saturday, Fatah members in Bethlehem-area UN camps convened to carry out a very public “people’s tribunal.” Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were tried for “racism” and “bias” against the Palestinians.

The “tribunal” found them guilty and sentenced the president and vice president to death by hanging. Their bodies, the “judges” decided, were to be burned.

In the event, the crowd burned effigies of Trump and Pence.
The implication of the “trial” was clear. Americans like Israelis should be killed.

Bennett-Erekat debate with Christian Amanpour on CNN

Eli Lake: U.S. Shows Beginning of a Response to Muslim Brotherhood

A year ago it looked like Donald Trump was going to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Some of his closest advisers pushed for it. U.S. allies like Egypt quietly made the case too. Many Republicans in Congress also believed the movement that created political Islam should be treated like al Qaeda.

It didn't happen. Trump administration officials tell me the initial proposal last year to designate the entire Muslim Brotherhood, which includes chapters and offshoots in countries all over the world, stalled out. By the time the White House approved its national security strategy in December, it didn't even mention the Muslim Brotherhood by name.

Instead the Trump administration has settled on a more refined approach, seeking to designate violent chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists, but not going after the entire organization. As the national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, told reporters in December: "We will be evaluating each organization on its own terms. The organization is not monolithic or homogenous."

In some ways this approach is not new. The Obama administration managed to reach out to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the Arab Spring in 2011, and nonetheless treat its Palestinian wing, Hamas, as terrorists. There are no plans for the Trump administration to attempt to find common ground with the Muslim Brotherhood, U.S. officials tell me. But the administration is getting more aggressive against the Brotherhood's violent affiliates.

The Burgas Obama nexus

The evidence linking Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah to the 2012 bomb attack in Burgas, Bulgaria, is undeniable.

Yet, astoundingly, the Bulgarian state prosecution does not even mention the word “Hezbollah” in its indictment of the two living men allegedly involved in the attack. Nor does the indictment mention that the bombing, which left five Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver dead and 32 Israelis wounded, was an act of terrorism.

Why would Bulgaria’s prosecutor leave out the terrorist dimension of the attack and omit the involvement of Hezbollah?

Tsvetan Tsvetanov, Bulgaria’s interior minister at the time of the attack, announced in 2012, “We have established that the two [accused] were members of the militant wing of the Hezbollah.” He added, “There is data showing the financing and connection between Hezbollah and the two suspects.” Tsvetanov’s successor made similar comments.

In 2013, then-foreign minister of Bulgaria Nikolay Mladenov said the government would not have issued a statement linking Hezbollah to the Burgas bombing if it did not have evidence.

Europol, which coordinates policing across the 27 European Union states, has linked Hezbollah to the attack. So has the US.
Three Hezbollah terrorists were involved: the bomber, Lebanese-French national Muhammad Hassan El-Husseini, who died in the explosion, and two additional suspects: Lebanese-Australian Meliad Farah and Lebanese-Canadian Hassan El Hajj Hassan, who fled to Lebanon where the country’s political leaders have ignored Bulgaria’s extradition requests.

The Bulgarian prosecutor’s strange unwillingness to implicate Hezbollah in the bombing is reminiscent of a recent Politico report on the Obama administration’s purported intentional obstruction of investigations by the US’s Drug Enforcement Administration into drug trafficking and money laundering by Hezbollah.

According to the Politico report, in its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran and out of a realization that going after Hezbollah at a time when the US was negotiating with its patron might kill the deal, the Obama administration purposely stymied the investigations, which were code-named Project Cassandra.

One gets the impression that Abbas would not last very long on The Apprentice.

After 8 years of the Obama administration, Abbas sat and did nothing, relying on Obama to do the heavy lifting and force concessions out of Netanyahu. Then towards the end of Trump's first year, Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and set in motion plans to move the US embassy in the future. He made it clear that the US was not taking a position on the future of Jerusalem or how it might be shared.

Mahmoud Abbas, from website of the
President of the Russian Federation

On January 14, at a meeting of the Palestinian Central Council in Ramallah, Abbas reacted - badly - with a major tantrum that lasted for over 2 hours. It was televised, yet covered only partially by the western media. Aside from conjuring up a number of historical fabrications undercutting Israel's historical ties and rights to Israel, Abbas went so far as to curse Trump: “May God demolish your house.”

If he was figuring on getting Trump to backtrack or get some other kind of concession, Abbas miscalculated. Instead, there were those who saw the tirade as revealing the growing weakness of the Palestinian Authority.

Daniel Krygier wrote in Mida that

Time has come for Israel and the US to tell PLO that the game is up. With or without Abbas, PLO is a dead man walking and is in no position to demand anything from anyone. Only a mad megalomaniac despot living in fantasyland, issues threats to powerful nations like the US and Israel.

Dr. Mordechai Kedar gave an interview where he saw Abbas's rant as an indication of how lost the Palestinian Authority is:

Kedar said

They [the Palestinian Authority] actually are losing all the direction. They have no idea what to do now because they have no agenda. Everything which they believed in turned out to be actually nothing and this frustration I think will bring the end of the Palestinian Authority.

Roger Cohen, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times and no fan of either Netanyahu or Trump, writes that It’s Time for Mahmoud Abbas to Go. He notes what he considers the intransigence of Netanyahu and the danger of Trump --

But even in this environment, Mahmoud Abbas, the 82-year-old Palestinian president, cannot escape responsibility for failure. His government is now widely seen as a corrupt gerontocracy. It is inept, remote, self-serving and ever more authoritarian. Elected to a four-year term in January 2005, he’s entering the 14th year of a largely unaccountable presidency.

And Bill Maher on his show Real Time flat out agreed with Trump's decision on Jerusalem: "I hate to agree with Donald Trump, but it doesn’t happen often, but I do."

But Trump was just getting started.

Official Portrait of President Donald Trump

On January 16, spokesperson Heather Nauert announced at a department press briefing that the US was cutting back on its funding of UNRWA:

[W]e delivered a letter today to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East – UNRWA. We committed a voluntary contribution of $60 million for 2018 so far. This will be divided into tranches. Sixty million is what we have indicated as the first available tranche. That money is going to sustain schools and health services to ensure that teachers and also health care providers can be paid their salaries. One of the reasons we decided to do this is that we felt that not providing that money would run the risk of having the organization and the people there run out of funds and that those entities would have to be potentially closed down.

...We have people on the ground who take a look at some of the UNRWA activities and things they do, how the money is being spent. And one of the things this administration would like to do, just as we talk about UN reform, is take a look at UNRWA, trying to make sure that the money is best spent and best spent so that people can get the services, whether it’s school or the health care services, that they need.

If Trump's recognition of Jerusalem and promise of an embassy move was not enough, this announcement was yet another indication that change was in the air. Trump was going to back up the things he said. In the Middle East at least, there were going to be consequences -- this time for those who opposed US interests and not for those who were its allies.

Compared with 8 years of Obama, this came across as a novel approach.

At the Middle East Forum, Gregg Roman wrote that Trump Is Right to Cut Funding to UNRWA, but he also saw this as part of actual Trump policy in the Middle East:

Asked about the decision, the State Department said deliberations are ongoing about how to move forward. This presents a tremendous opportunity, but it will take more bold action by the White House. The administration must continue to hold the Palestinians accountable for their rejectionism.

Like Trump's December move on Jerusalem, this represents a bold step that is long overdue. UNRWA, the UN's Palestinian refugee agency, long has needed reform, but with Palestinian leadership unwilling to even feign serious commitment to peace, it's probably time to scrap the agency altogether. It stands in the way of peace.

But Trump was not finished yet.

At Davos on January 25, Trump announced that not only is Jerusalem the capital of Israel - now Trump was going to take the issue of Jerusalem off the table altogether:

Trump said he was removing the issue of Jerusalem as a negotiating point: "They never got past Jerusalem. We took it off the table. We don’t have to talk about it anymore” -- contrary to what he originally said in December.
At the same time, Trump made clear removing Jerusalem from the negotiations would eventually require a concession from the Israeli side. He told Netanyahu, “You won one point, and you’ll give up some other points later on in the negotiation — if it ever takes place. I don’t know that it ever will take place.”
Trump said that the millions the US gives to the Palestinian Authority each year is on the table and would no longer be considered automatic - especially in the face of the Arab refusal to meet with Vice President Pence when he visited Israel.

Then this week, the US became the first country outside of Israel to categorize Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. The US gave this designation to Hamas members Yahya Sinwar and Muhammad Deif back in September 2015. According to Nathan A. Sales, the State Department coordinator for counterterrorism:

All assets belonging to Haniyeh under US jurisdiction will be frozen. This designation allows us to dry up the sources of funding and kick them out of the international financial system. We don’t want to only stop the bomber, but the person who buys the bombs.

And now it seems that Trump may still not be finished yet.

On Wednesday, The Middle East Forum put out a press release, MEF Welcomes Trump's Potential UNRWA Reforms:

The Middle East Forum welcomes reports that the Trump administration might "refuse to accept UNRWA's special status for 'Palestine refugees,'" and suspend all U.S. government funding of the group.

The Forum has long sought the end of U.S. recognition of fake Palestinian refugees who never lived in what is today Israel, removing a source of irredentism and terrorism.

Has any president ever\ tried to "fix" so much in the Middle East in so short a time?
For that matter, has any president so openly criticized aspects of the Palestinian problem and then actually taken steps to try to address it?

Meanwhile, Abbas is taking some unilateral action of his own.

Abbas wanted renewed support from the EU, by way of European High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini. She obliged, reiterating EU support for both the two-state solution and for Jerusalem as a shared capital - claiming "East Jerusalem" for a Palestinian Arab capital. However, on the other hand, Mogherini made clear the EU was not willing to take over and push for the elimination of a US role in future peace talks.

Abbas also turned to the African nations to take a role in peace talks. Speaking this week at the African Union in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, Abbas called for "an international multilateral mechanism under the umbrella of the United Nations." If Abbas cannot eliminate a US role, he seems to want at the very least to minimize and dilute it.

The choice of the African nations is interesting.

Israel has been trying to create stronger ties with Africa, requesting observer status within the African Union. Israel was going to send a delegation last October to a conference there to meet with 54 African countries in an Israel-Africa summit. In September, the summit was canceled, apparently at Abbas's request. In light of the summit cancelation, bringing in the African Union would illustrate that Netanyahu's efforts to forge alliances there still have a ways to go.

Those who claim to see hints of the weakening and deterioration of the Palestinian Authority in Abbas's rant in January may be overlooking something. The Palestinian Authority is perpetually deteriorating. After all, Abbas's term ended back in January 2009, and elections are long overdue. All those Palestinian officials who speak on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, actually have no authority to speak of -- and according to the polls, the Palestinian Arabs know this and resent it.

There are those who say that the Palestinian Arabs need to face the consequences of losing a war. Well, what about facing the consequences of losing an election, or of not even having one. Here too, an artificial situation is being propped up by the EU and others in the West.

Trump is clearly intent in removing those props.
It remains to be seen if he will succeed.

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Record number of antisemitic incidents in Britain

From The Independent:

Antisemitic hate crimes in the UK have hit a record high, new figures show, prompting calls for more “visible and frequent” prosecutions for such incidents.

The Jewish community was targeted at a rate of nearly four times a day last year, according to statistics from the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors antisemitism, which recorded 1,382 antisemitic incidents nationwide in 2017.

This was the highest tally the organisation has registered for a calendar year since it began gathering the data in 1984, with the figure up by 3 per cent compared with 2016 – which had itself been a record annual total.

A breakdown of the crimes shows the number of violent antisemitic assaults increased by more than a third (34 per cent), from 108 in 2016 to 145. Three-quarters of all the antisemitic incidents were recorded in Greater London and Greater Manchester, where the two largest Jewish communities in the UK are located.

The most common single type of incident in 2017 involved verbal abuse randomly directed at Jewish people in public, the figures show.

The report itself notes the motivation of the attackers when known:

Of the 221 antisemitic incidents in 2017 showing ideological motivation or beliefs as well as antisemitism, 140 showed far right motivation or beliefs; 67 showed anti-Israel motivation or beliefs; and 14 showed Islamist motivation or beliefs.

Violent antisemitic assaults increased 34% in one year:

There were 145 violent antisemitic assaults reported to CST in 2017, an increase of 34 per cent from the 108 violent incidents recorded in 2016 and the highest number CST has ever recorded in this category. The previous record high was 121 antisemitic assaults in 2009. A wide spectrum of incidents falls within the category of Assault, from minor acts to more violent ones.

And incidents are significantly under-reported:

It is likely that there is significant under-reporting of antisemitic incidents to both CST and the Police, and that the number of antisemitic incidents that took place is significantly higher than the number recorded in this report. A 2013 survey of Jewish experiences and perceptions of antisemitism in the EU found that 72 per cent of British Jews who had experienced antisemitic harassment over the previous five years had not reported it to the Police or to any other organisation; 57 per cent of British Jews who had experienced antisemitic violence or the threat of violence had not reported it; and 46 per cent of British Jews who had suffered antisemitic vandalism to their home or car had not reported it (despite this, UK reporting rates were the highest of the eight countries polled). The same survey also found that, over the previous 12 months, 21 per cent of British Jews had suffered antisemitic harassment, three per cent had suffered antisemitic violence or the threat of violence and two per cent had experienced antisemitic vandalism to their home or car.

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From AP last week:

Actors Hugh Grant and Viggo Mortensen are among more than 25 celebrities and public figures expressing "horror" over President Donald Trump's decision to cut funding to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, an advocacy group said Thursday.

"The real target of this lethal attack is the Palestinian people themselves," the group said in a joint statement. "It has been launched with the clear aim of dismantling their rights, by dismantling the institution that is charged with protecting them."

Actresses Gillian Anderson, Olivia Wilde, Emma Thompson and Tilda Swinton were also among the signatories.

So rich celebrities, instead of funding UNRWA themselves, insist that you pay for a UN agency whose entire purpose is to encourage statelessness, An agency that does nothing to actually end the "refugee" status of millions of people. An agency that says it must exist until Palestinians are allowed to overrun Israel. An agency that is against turning "refugee camps" into permanent towns with normal infrastructure and housing.

Are they raising a couple hundred million dollars from their rich friends, telling them to commit to spending more every year for the foreseeable future to keep UNRWA alive?

Somehow I think if it was their money, they would suddenly be looking at UNRWA's actions a lot more critically than when they simply say that the US should spend the money.

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Arabs cutting down thousands of trees

Makor Rishon reports that a forest in the area of Gush Etzion, Ya'ar Giv'ot, has been decimated over the years by neighboring Arabs who cut the trees down for firewood.

These photos show the stark contrast between what the area looked like in 1999 and today:

But who even reports when Arabs destroy thousands of trees?

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02/01 Links Pt2: Palestinian Children Are The Child Soldiers No One Is Talking About; Google Partners with Anti-Semitic Islamists; Fencer who survived 1972 Munich massacre passes away

From Ian:

Alan Baker: Trivializing and paying lip service to antisemitism

The annual Holocaust remembrance events, whether in the UN or in individual countries, held on and around the official, international day of remembrance on January 27, have now passed, until next year.

The hollow and disingenuous lip-service payed by international leaders to the greatest tragedy that has befallen the Jewish people, has passed.

The annual “day in the sun” of professors, Holocaust researchers and experts, whether in research centers in Israeli universities or elsewhere, is over until next year.

Life must go on.

The international community can now get back to its routine and regular agenda of political correctness. It can get back to ignoring and sidestepping the most tragic violations of human rights in the centers of conflict in Syria, Africa and elsewhere.

The UN and the EU and their organs can return to adopting meaningless and futile political resolutions, generated by political groupings with specific political agendas that achieve nothing other than to fan the embers of hatred and antisemitism.

The world can now get back to pandering to autocratic regimes, to ayatollahs and to artificial leaders, purveyors of incitement and hatred that seek, through their actions and words, to sow the seeds of the next Holocaust.

Dr. Gerald M. Steinberg: Palestinian Children Are The Child Soldiers No One Is Talking About

[The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.]
Even more disturbing is the role of UNICEF — which was created to help children around the world. In 2013, UNICEF’s “copy and paste” version of the unverifiable and false claims made by NGOs like DCIP (based on “affidavits” that officials cannot understand or verify) gave them a UN seal of approval and significant legitimacy. In 2015, after Israeli officials demonstrated the systematic errors, and the degree to which their treatment of minors involved in illegal activities is consistent with international standards, the UNICEF office in Jerusalem acknowledged the falsehoods in discussions with Israeli officials. But in public, where the propaganda wars are waged, the UN organization and its NGO allies continue to quote the original.

Joining DCIP and UNICEF in this cynical campaign are the American Friends Service Committee, Amnesty International, the so-called Jewish Voice for Peace, and the “Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel” (EAPPI) — which brings activists for three months to “witness” the suffering of Palestinian children and is run by the notoriously anti-Israel World Council of Churches.

In addition to adding its prestige to political warfare that exploits children, and laundering the false allegations targeting Israel, UNICEF funds a number of the organizations in this unholy alliance, including DCI-P and EAPPI. Together, their goal is the get the UN Secretary General to add the IDF to the notorious group of warlords and failed states listed under the Children and Armed Conflict resolution, which includes ISIS and Boko Haram. Although UNICEF officials claim to be uninvolved in this effort, they are the ones who select the NGOs in their “working group” and in provide funding to DCI-P and EAPPI.

As a result of these factors, UNICEF’s reports on Israel are far more bellicose in comparison to other Middle Eastern countries. The allegations of “widespread and systematic abuse” echo the definition of crimes against humanity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. UNICEF does not employ similar language in other conflict situations, sharpening the conclusion that the organization singles out Israel for political, rather than substantive reasons.

Countering the cynical “child mistreatment” propaganda requires highlighting the foundation of lies, and the naming and shaming of the participants, including the NGOs. In parallel, UNICEF officials and donors, including the US, Canadian, Japanese and European governments, must be pressed to review funding and move to end this complicity. The individuals and foundations who give generously to UNICEF under the illusion that unlike other UN bodies, this one actually acts morally, should reconsider. If UNICEF officials are seriously concerned about protecting children like Ahed Tamimi, as well as the Israeli child victims the ongoing terror war, they should keep far away from such exploitation.

How Anti-Semitism’s True Origin Makes It Invisible To The Left

Perhaps as disturbing as the resurgence of anti-Semitism on the hard left is the reluctance of leftists who aren’t anti-Semites to acknowledge it. This reluctance, argues John-Paul Pagano, stems directly from trends in left-wing thinking that have created a special blindness to the hatred of Jews.

[This] erasure of anti-Semitism . . . exposes a huge moral failure at the heart of the modern left. Under the enveloping paradigm of “intersectionality,” people are granularly defined by their various identities—except for white Jews, whose Jewishness is often overwritten by their skin color. . . .

[I]n a key sense, regular racism, [directed] against blacks and Latinos for example, is the opposite of anti-Semitism. [This sort of bigotry] comes from white people believing they are superior to people of [other races]. But the hatred of Jews stems from the belief that Jews are a cabal with supernatural, [or near-supernatural], powers. . . . Whereas the white racist regards blacks as inferior, the anti-Semite imagines that Jews have preternatural power to afflict humankind. . . . If Jews have power, then “punching up” at Jews is a form of “speaking truth to power”—a form of speech of which the left is currently enamored. In other words, it is because anti-Semitism pretends to strike at power that the left cannot see it, and is doomed to erase—and even reproduce—its tropes. . . .

Above all else, anti-Semitism is a conspiracy theory about the maleficent Jewish elite. And it’s this that makes it easy to disguise anti-Semitism as a “politics of liberation,” or at least, to embed it quietly in efforts for social justice. You can see this in the resuscitated efforts of groups like Black4Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace to portray Israel and America as bastions of capitalist white supremacy that collude to brutalize “people of color.” . . .

When the Palestinian Authority’s President Mahmoud Abbas delivered his recent rant of over two hours to assembled Palestinian leaders, he alleged wild conspiracies, . . . [declaring] that “Israel has imported frightening amounts of drugs in order to destroy our younger generation.” In response, the [lobbying] group J Street, after rejecting “the divisive and inflammatory rhetoric used by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,” complained that Donald Trump had provoked Abbas to despair [rather than acknowledging that Abbas has thought and said such things about Jews for his entire career].

When Neturei Karta wear keffiyehs, are they "stealing Palestinian culture"?

In the past, Palestinians and their allies have gotten extremely angry when Israeli Jews would make their own versions of the keffiyeh headdress, or when they would wear patterns based on the keffiyeh, claiming that this is "cultural appropriation" and "theft of Palestinian culture."

For some reason, though, I hear no protests when the tiny number of members of Neturei Karta put on keffiyehs. Why aren't they stealing Palestinian heritage?

Or when Palestinians say that they are against others "stealing" their faux culture, does that only apply to Zionists, and anti-Zionists are free to steal away?

(screenshot from Google Translate of Al Hayat)

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

International Holocaust Remembrance day was observed this week. I suppose it is a good idea to have such a day, if simply to counteract the increasing popularity of Holocaust denial. But some aspects of it are disturbing.

There is the continuing phenomenon of Americans and Europeans who are moved to tears when they contemplate the horrific murders of the Jews of 75 years ago, while at the same time supporting the true heirs of Nazi ideology, the Palestinian Arabs and the Iranian regime (not to mention the crocodile tears shed by politicians like Barack Obama, a true enemy of the Jewish people, who recently had the chutzpah to call himself a “liberal Jew”).

The Germans, who provide massive funding for NGOs working against Israel’s interests everywhere, might behave better if they could forget about the Holocaust. The preferred outlet for their feelings of shame seems to be to try to get people to believe that Israel is worse than their grandfathers who served in the SS.

There are also those who see in the Holocaust a “lesson” that “Jews should not behave like Nazis” and criticize the arrest of terror sympathizer and provocateur Ahed Tamimi as Nazi-like behavior. Some have even compared her to Jewish heroes who were murdered by the Nazis.

This past Shabbat I listened to an Israeli rabbi say in front of his congregation that the arrest and deportation of illegal migrants from Israel is similar to the way the Gestapo rounded up Jews for deportation to extermination camps. “Of course, I am not making a comparison…” he said. But of course he did make the comparison.

We shouldn’t need to denounce this vile inversion of history. It’s odious to compare the besieged Jewish state’s response to the endeavor to destroy her with the almost-successful attempt by the Germans to exterminate the Jews of Europe. It is so wrong, so backwards, that our trying to survive as a people should be compared to that. But apparently, this isn’t obvious to many people, even Jews. Even rabbis.

Then there is the universalization of the Holocaust. I once attended a memorial service in which 11 candles were lit for the “11 million victims of the Holocaust.” I believe the 11 million number came out of thin air, but it is supposed to represent the Jews plus Roma, homosexuals, disabled and mentally ill people, and so forth that were murdered by the Nazis.

But why stop there? The Nazis murdered 100,000 Polish intellectuals, doctors, teachers, officers, members of the upper classes and so forth in order to destroy Polish culture so they could Germanize the parts of Poland that they intended to annex to the Reich. They, too, should be added. And what about the roughly 24 million Soviet citizens (civilians and military) who died in the war? Hitler was responsible for killing them, too.

The uniqueness of the Holocaust is that the Jews were targeted for extermination for their genetic content. The Nazis saw the Jewish people as a species, like the polio virus, and wanted to eradicate us. Their goal was that there would be no more Jews in the world, ever. The thoroughness with which they approached this task was remarkable. Nobody else got that treatment. Not the Poles and not the Roma (among whom the Nazis pardoned individuals of “pure blood” or who “didn’t act like Gypsies” or who had honorable war records). No such exceptions were made for Jews.

I am ambivalent, therefore, about the utility of an international day to remember the Holocaust. But especially for Jews there are clear lessons that can be drawn from history (and one of them is not that Israelis are in danger of becoming Nazis):

The most important lesson is about self-reliance: the world community, even those parts of it that understood what the Nazis were doing and the degree of evil involved, was unwilling to take even small steps – absorbing Jewish refugees fleeing Europe, bombing the tracks to the death camps, allowing Jews to enter the British Mandate of Palestine – that would have made a great difference in the outcome for the Jews of Europe. The Jewish people – and other peoples, like the Kurds today – must understand that their survival depends upon obtaining and deploying the means to protect themselves. They cannot rely on anyone else.

A corollary to that principle is that one needs to have a consciousness of oneself as a member of a people. Don’t think that when they come for you, you can say that you are a “citizen of the world.” Your enemies know what you are, and if you want to defend yourself, you better know too.

Another corollary: know the enemies of your people. They will usually tell you who they are themselves. Understand them and never turn your back on them.

Do not think that the world has progressed morally since 1940. It hasn’t.

Finally, understand that war is not only fought with guns and bombs. The Nazis prepared the way for the Holocaust far in advance by the use of propaganda. They employed the Big Lie technique to demonize and delegitimize a people, just as the enemies of the Jewish state are doing today. Self-defense starts by fighting back against the lies.

Today it seems that the real lessons of the Holocaust have not been learned, even by Jews, despite all the emotional catharsis that takes place on the various Holocaust memorial days.

That is unfortunate, because the consequence of not learning something easily from history is learning it the hard way from current events.

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02/01 Links Pt1: Word to the Palestinians: Grow up!; US puts Hamas chief Haniyeh on terror blacklist; Human rights orgs abandon PA's Arab torture victims

From Ian:

In plain language: Word to the Palestinians: Grow up!

Although the human being is the most sophisticated and capable of all of God’s creations, at our earliest stages we are among the most vulnerable and the most helpless. A newborn giraffe will start walking within an hour of birth; after 10 hours, the baby giraffe will be able to run and keep up with the herd. But it will take years for a human infant to become even partially self-sufficient; until then he will be completely dependent on others for his every need. As a result of this, the child experiences instant gratification; his food will be brought to him, he’ll be bathed and gently tucked in bed, and if he cries, his parents will rush to satisfy his every request.

Responsible parents know there comes a point when the child must learn to fend for himself, when it is permissible – even preferable – to say “No!” Otherwise, that child will likely become a demanding, spoiled, incorrigible brat who will struggle to find his place in society.

This is precisely what has happened to the Palestinians. For 70+ years, through three generations, they have been fed, wet-nursed, coddled and accommodated by a global set of “parents.” Rather than earn their keep and live within their means, they have been handed billions and billions of dollars – much of which has either been stolen by their handlers or illegally used to purchase weapons. Rather than move out of their squalid camps into decent housing – as Israel has offered numerous times – they have been cruelly kept in cramped surroundings by so-called “leaders” who foment their anger and prolong their agony for political and monetary gain. Rather than drop their refugee status and integrate into a variety of countries – as hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern Jews did, and as millions of others are doing today in Europe – they tenaciously cling to their persecution complex as if it were a warm blanket. The misplaced mercy showered upon them has only served to ingrain within them a massive sense of entitlement that is now virtually impossible to eradicate.

So it comes as no surprise that when they finally get a long-overdue “spanking” by a head of state and berated for their atrocious behavior, the Palestinians react like that proverbial spoiled child and throw a tantrum. They threaten, they throw things (stones, Molotov cocktails, etc.), they curse, they break things (like signed agreements and diplomatic relations), they call the president names, they lock themselves in their room or they run and hide under the UN’s and the Europeans’ skirts. In typical infantile behavior, they blame everyone – except themselves – for their problems.

PMW: Abbas’ advisor: “This nation will awaken and uproot evil from its land”

In a recent sermon, Abbas’ advisor stated that “this nation will awaken and uproot evil from its land.”

Mahmoud Abbas' Advisor on Religious and Islamic Affairs and Supreme Shari'ah Judge Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “This nation - I repeat - will awaken together with its clergy, with the religion, with its Quran, with the tradition of its Prophet Muhammad. This nation will awaken and uproot the evil from its land, and it will regain its rights to Jerusalem and Palestine.” [Official PA TV, Jan. 5, 2018]

Although Al-Habbash did not specifically mention Israel in this particular part of his sermon, his prior statements were about Israel and the US’ recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Right before his promise that “evil” will be uprooted, Al-Habbash mocked the US for thinking the world would support his declaration on Jerusalem:

“The entire world has recently had its say in the face of the oppression and arrogance that the American administration is attempting to impose on us and on the world. The world is not for sale or purchase. The world's honor is not for sale... The world said: 'No.' We send our greetings to the peoples of the world that stood with the Palestinian right. We send our greetings to the states, governments, figures, and organizations that stood with the Palestinian right... As for those who have sold themselves cheaply - there is still room on the trash heap of history.”
[Official PA TV, Jan. 5, 2018]

That Al-Habbash refers to Israel as “the evil” is not news. Palestinian Media Watch has exposed that Al-Habbash teaches that Israel is "Satan's project" and believes that Jews represent “evil.”

PMW: Fatah and PA TV hosts question Trump's mental capabilities

Relying on the book Fire and Fury, PA TV hosts question if "a man of this mentality is capable of determining the fate of the world?"

As part of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah's anti-US and anti-Trump rhetoric, which Palestinian Media Watch has documented, Fatah in Lebanon posted the above cartoon, questioning the "mental fitness" of US President Trump.

Headline: "The mental fitness of one who does not recognize the Palestinian people and its legal and historical right in Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, is questionable!"

Text in upper right corner of cartoon: "The publication of a book that casts doubt on Trump's mental fitness."

The cartoon, which refers to the book Fire and Fury (see below) shows an angry Trump saying "I'm a genius." He is holding a lit match to an open book as small Twitter icons are seen rising from the flame. On the page Trump is burning is written: "Mentally deranged." [Falestinona, website of Fatah's Information and Culture Commission in Lebanon, Jan. 20, 2018]

Relying on the book, two hosts on official PA TV similarly cast doubt on Trump's mental capabilities, asking: 'Is a man of this mentality capable of determining the fate of the world... or of Jerusalem?"

Caption contest: The office chair rioter

From Reuters, December 17:

This is just screaming for a good caption.

"Miss Fatima? Please order more 10 centimeter rocks and Molotov cocktails"

"Guys? Do you mind not placing the stones where I can run over them?"

"Pallywood Barricade, take 2! Action!"

I'm sure my readers can do better!

(h/t/ Ghilmeini)

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UNRWA Commissioner-General, Pierre Krӓhebühl, launches the UNRWA Emergency Appeal for Syria, Gaza and the West Bank during a press conference at the UNOG Palais des Nations in Geneva on 30 January 2018.

On Tuesday, UNRWA started a new $800 million fundraising campaign to help make up for the shortfall of funding from the US.

Most critics of UNRWA, correctly, point out that the agency's definition of "refugee" is at odds with the definition of refugee used in every other context. But another argument in the context of this funding crisis is even more cogent.

Half of the funds UNRWA is demanding - $400 million - is earmarked for Palestinian "refugees" who live in "Palestine."

Why is he world paying a dime to "refugees" who live in their own land?

The PLO and the PA have insisted on the "right to return" of millions of descendants of people who lived in British Mandate Palestine to Israel, and they have made it clear over the years that the reason they insist on it is to destroy the Jewish State demographically. Otherwise, how can they say on the one hand that they must have an independent state for their people, and on the other hand insist that millions of those same people should not live in their state but in the state of their enemy?

When UNHRC manages to bring real refugees back to their original countries, it doesn't insist that they move to the exact spot they used to live in. That is absurd and it is not the definition of "refugee." As long as they can integrate into their countries, they are no longer refugees and no longer in need of international assistance.

But UNRWA's official position is that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who live in what the UN call the State of Palestine are not full citizens of their statelet, but instead belong in Israel.

And it is demanding $400 million from the world to help keep this situation of intra-Palestinian apartheid, against "Palestine refugees" in "Palestine," alive.

The US reduction in aid to UNRWA should be explicit about why funding an agency that encourages discrimination against "refugees" inside Palestinian territories is wrong. Europeans should ask why they should fund an agency that is keeping a fake "refugee" issue alive, even in Jordan where the "refugees" are almost all citizens and in "Palestine" where they are literally home. Let UNRWA concentrate, for now, on people in need in Syria and Syrian refugees in Lebanon, where real money is needed even if there is a two-class system for Syrian refugees depending on where their great-grandparents lived.

But to continue to fund UNRWA to provide free food, medicine and education to people who are in "Palestine" and full citizens of Jordan is simply to throw money away.

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