Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, March 08, 2018

The poisonously ambiguous concept of “two states” (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

AIPAC CEO Howard Kohr created a stir Sunday when he called for “two states for two peoples: one Jewish with secure and defensible borders and one Palestinian with its own flag and its own future.”

Kohr deliberately echoed the words of Benjamin Netanyahu at Bar-Ilan University in 2009. Netanyahu said then,

In my vision of peace, in this small land of ours, two peoples live freely, side-by-side, in amity and mutual respect. Each will have its own flag, its own national anthem, its own government. Neither will threaten the security or survival of the other. …

I have already stressed the first principle - recognition. Palestinians must clearly and unambiguously recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people.

The second principle is: demilitarization. The territory under Palestinian control must be demilitarized with ironclad security provisions for Israel. …

Regarding the remaining important issues that will be discussed as part of the final settlement, my positions are known: Israel needs defensible borders, and Jerusalem must remain the united capital of Israel with continued religious freedom for all faiths.

Bibi’s statement was a mistake. His enemies on the right pounced on him for giving up his historical opposition to a Palestinian state, while the Arabs and the Left derided him as insincere. He got nothing in return from Obama and lost whatever reputation he still had for principled opposition to concessions for the PLO. Most damaging to Israel was the fact that the Americans and the PLO “pocketed” his statement, making it almost impossible for him or any subsequent Israeli Prime Minister to walk it back. From then on, anyone could say “Israel officially supports a Palestinian state.”

The root of the problem is that the concept of “two states” is poisonously ambiguous. Everyone can understand it to mean something different, up to embracing diametrically opposite ideas.

Bibi’s Palestine would be a less-than sovereign autonomous entity, demilitarized, without control of airspace, borders, electronic communications or the Jordan Valley. It would not be allowed to import weapons or make military pacts with other nations. The PLO would be required to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people (which of course they would never, ever, do).

The Israeli center-left calls for “two states for two peoples,” a formula which, like Bibi’s, implies recognition. In this view, after an Israeli withdrawal from all or part of Judea and Samaria and the creation of an Arab state, “Palestine” would accept the Jewish people’s ownership of the remaining part of Israel as legitimate. There would be no further claims against Israel, and any solution for the descendants of Arab refugees would take place outside of the borders of Israel. This would not fly with the PLO either.

Finally, there is what Mahmoud Abbas means by “two-state solution:” a “Palestine” in which there will be no Jews, which will encompass all of Judea and Samaria (and theoretically, Gaza) with the exception of small land swaps, fully sovereign in every respect. Next to it will be an Israel that will be a “state of its citizens.” It cannot belong to the Jewish people, because in the view of the PLO there is no Jewish people, only a Jewish religion. This “Israel” will accept as many of the millions of Arab “refugees” who wish to “return” to it and grant them full rights. One can only speculate how long and in what condition of civil war this state would exist until it would be absorbed into “Palestine.”

Needless to say, these visions are incompatible. The dishonest J Street organization claims that Abbas accepted the idea of “two states for two peoples,” but in fact he has never added anything about two peoples to the phrase “two states.” Indeed, Abbas’ recent speech (incidentally, one of the most nonsensical orations ever) that J Street refers to as a “Palestinian peace plan” implicitly but clearly calls for a right of return for the Arab “refugees” to Israel.

The best thing that could happen would be for everyone to stop talking about the “two-state solution,” a phrase which has devolved into meaninglessness.

In 2009, Bibi may have been forced to utter the formula by the Obama Administration. But what about AIPAC today? Apparently panicked by a recent poll showing diminishing support for Israel among Democrats, AIPAC is struggling to get them back. The same day that Kohr made his remarks, AIPAC’s president Mort Fridman made it explict:

To my friends in the Progressive community, I want you to know that we are partners in this project. The Progressive narrative for Israel is just as compelling and critical as the conservative one. [Yes, he said that! – vr]

But there are very real forces trying to pull you out of this hall and out of this movement and we cannot let that happen. We will not let that happen.

AIPAC hoped to fend off attacks from J Street and similar groups without weakening its support from pro-Israel elements, by employing the time honored method of political triangulation. By adopting some of the ideas of its opponents on the Left, it hopes to bring them into the fold, while its supporters on the Right will have nowhere else to go.

But this is a poor strategy because the progressives among the Democrats no longer accept AIPAC’s primary objective, which is support for Israel. It’s not that they think, as the Israeli Left does, that “ending the occupation” will be likely to lead to peace, or that their vision of Israel will be more democratic, or that another partition of the Land of Israel will prevent a demographic crisis. They have absorbed the narratives of the international Left and are simply anti-Israel. They are not coming back to AIPAC.

This is especially true of the Jews among them. At some point, the Jewish progressives replaced their connection to am yisrael with one to the oppressed peoples and gender-groups of the world, including of course the Palestinians.

The best thing for AIPAC to do now, in my opinion, is to become unapologetically pro-Israel. The progressives are gone anyway, and it might make the organization more effective.

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03/08 Links Pt1: Pro-Erdogan Newspaper Calls To Form Joint Islamic Army To Fight Israel; To Understand Zionism, Read Herzl Not Mahmoud Abbas; Pal-Arabs are counterfeit

From Ian:

Turkish Newspaper Close To President Erdogan Calls To Form Joint Islamic Army To Fight Israel

On December 12, 2017, ahead of the summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, the Turkish daily Yeni Şafak, which is close to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling AKP party, published an article titled "A Call for Urgent Action," which also appeared on the paper's website under the title “What If an Army of Islam Was Formed against Israel?" The article called on the 57 member states of the OIC to form a joint "Army of Islam" to besiege and attack the state of Israel. It notes that such a joint army will greatly exceed the Israeli army in manpower, equipment and budget, and presents statistics to prove this. It also advocates establishing joint bases for the army's ground, air and naval forces that will arrive from all over the Muslim world to besiege Israel, while noting that Pakistan, as the only nuclear country, has "a special status" among the OIC countries. An interactive map provides information on military forces stationed in various locations and the role they can play in the potential joint Muslim attack on Israel.

The Source Of The Yeni Şafak Article: The SADAT Company Website
The main points of the article are taken from the website of the Turkish SADAT International Defense and Consulting Company, which provides consultancy on defense and warfare, both conventional and unconventional, and on military organization, training and gear. The company has an agenda of promoting pan-Islamic military cooperation. According to its mission statement, it seeks "to establish defense collaboration and defense industry cooperation among Islamic countries, to help the Islamic world take its rightful place among the superpowers by providing... strategic consultancy and training services to the militaries and homeland security forces of Islamic countries."

According to Israeli security sources, the SADAT company is involved in aiding Hamas, and seeks to assist – with funds and military gear – the creation of a "Palestine Army" to fight Israel.

SADAT Founder Adnan Tanrıverdi
The SADAT company was founded by Erdoğan’s senior advisor on military affairs, retired general Adnan Tanrıverdi, and is chaired by his son, Melih Tanrıverdi. Adnan Tanrıverdi (b. 1944) served in the Turkish army's Artillery Corps and headed the Home Front Command in northern Cyprus. He is an expert on assymetric warfare, and was dismissed from the Turkish military in 1996 for his Islamists leadnings. A former Turkish army officer, Ahmet Yavuz, described him as "an enemy of Atatürk" and stated that his dismissal from the army was not surprising.

To Understand Zionism, Read Herzl Not Mahmoud Abbas

We can see the toxic results of this in countless news reports on the conflict with the Palestinians. Israel’s perceived flaws and mistakes are highlighted, but not those of the Palestinians. Settlement building is headline news, but not Palestinian incitement to terror. The Palestinians are helpless victims, an oppressed people not responsible for their actions; infantilised and coddled at every turn, no matter what violence they commit – and no matter that their poverty and despair is as much a result of the corruption and criminality of the Palestinian Authority as it is of Israeli policies.

That’s the narrative, here’s the reality. From the very beginning, the Zionist movement envisaged a democratic Israel. Israel was established as a democracy in 1948, at a time when there were no more than twenty or so democracies on the planet. And unlike almost every other new country that emerged during that epoch of state creation after the collapse of the European empires, it has remained a democracy from day one to the present.

Israel has become a military super-power, but this is nothing to with some inherent Zionist militaristic impulse. Israel has fought multiple wars against states and, more recently, terror organisations, expressly committed to its annihilation. Israel today has Hamas on one border, Hezbollah on another, and the Iran-dominated ruins of what used to be Syria on a third. Each one of these troublesome neighbours sees the destruction of Israel as a religious imperative. When the only way to appease an enemy is to commit suicide, the situation requires sticks not carrots; military might and the willingness to exert it.

I’ll conclude with another recent news story, one that attracted far less coverage than the Abbas speech. This was the revelation that the Israel Defense Forces’ Military Intelligence had helped foil an ISIS terror attack on an Australian passenger plane last summer. European countries that so frequently wag the diplomatic finger at Israel have intelligence services grateful beyond measure for the assistance they receive from the Mossad and the IDF in thwarting terrorist plots. In today’s global conflict between free and open societies, and Islamist terrorists and the states that sponsor them, Israel is not just on the right side of the fight, it is leading the way. Meanwhile, our ‘peace-seeking’ friend Mahmoud Abbas has just increased the annual payment to the families of Palestinian terrorists to $403 million, seven percent of the Palestinian Authority budget.

Abbas and other propagandists will continue to spread lies and disinformation, and far too much of the world will continue to swallow it whole. Israel, approaching its 70th birthday, will continue to do what it must to survive and to thrive as the Jewish and democratic state that Theodore Herzl could only dream of.

Pal-Arabs are counterfeit

Recently, the Holocaust-denying head of Terror, Inc, known as the Palestinian Authority, one Mahmoud Abbas, upped his erstwhile mentor and arch terrorist, Yasser Arafat, by spewing yet another Arabian Nights hallucinatory diatribe at the United Nations Security Council. It went as follows:
“We are the descendants of the Canaanites that lived in the land of Palestine 5,000 years ago and continuously remained there to this day.”

We should remember that the grisly, blood soaked Arafat had claimed that those Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, were descended from the Philistines. But then the followers of the ‘religion of peace’ will tell you that even Adam was a Muslim. Loony tunes for loony people!

But let’s come back to reality and deconstruct the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.

There is no such thing as a Palestinian people; no such thing as a Palestinian history; and no Palestinian language exists.

The present-day so-called ‘Palestinians’ are an Arab people sharing an overwhelmingly Muslim Arab culture, ethnicity and language identical to their fellow Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, with few if any distinctions. They are primarily the descendants of those itinerant Arabs who illegally flooded British Mandatory Palestine from Arab territories as far away as Sudan, Egypt, Syria and what was Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). They were attracted during the early decades of the 20th century by new employment opportunities provided by the Jewish pioneers, whose heroic efforts were turning the desert green again and restoring centuries of neglect that the land had endured under a succession of alien occupations.

J Street has come out with an ad in The New York Times advocating for peace talks, more specifically advocating for "a new proposal for two-state negotiations" by none other than Mahmoud Abbas.

Based on the picture used to illustrate the rest of the ad, J Street is making a not too subtle point:

The J Street ad even makes the point of listing all the people who support a two-state solution:

o US presidents from both parties
o  Veteran US foreign policy leaders
o  The majority of the Israeli security establishment
o  80 percent of Jewish Americans
o  The Arab League
o  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who last month laid out a new proposal for two-state negotiations

That leaves out just 2 groups: the Israelis and Arabs themselves.

J Street does actually claim support for the two-state solution by both Israelis and Palestinians:

Reaching a two-state solution is vital to securing Israel’s future as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people and to advancing overall peace and stability in the region. That’s why it’s long been supported by the majority of Israelis and Palestinians... [emphasis added]

But that is not accurate. According to a poll taken in November of last year into the beginning of December, under 50% of Palestinians, Israeli Jews support the two-state solution - that's 47% of Palestinians and 46% of Israeli Jews, according to the poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research. In a similar poll conducted earlier in June 2017, 52% of Palestinians and 47% of Israeli Jews supported a two-state solution.

To put it simply, the people who are going to have to live with this "solution" are not really in favor of it.

On the other hand, what about the people who are in favor of it? The presidents and policy leaders have successfully proven themselves far from infallible. The Jewish Americans may find the idea of a two-state solution emotionally satisfying, but that is no argument - especially since they need not worry about the consequences. The Arab League? Who knows if their motivation is because they believe the plan will work. As for the Israeli security establishment, their recommendation cannot be rejected out of hand but requires explanation: are they arguing abstractly on the basis of peace being the best kind of security, or do they anticipate specific conditions being fulfilled for that peace to be effective and lasting?

And that brings us to Abbas.

Looking at the record of the man J Street insists is the only man who is pushing for peace, it is clear that J Streets omission of Abbas's spotty record in peace negotiations slants the story.

In 2008, then-Prime Minister Olmert made an offer to Abbas. Years later, in 2015, Abbas admitted he was the one who rejected Olmert's peace plan, an agreement that would have given him nearly all of the land the Palestinian Arabs wanted, an almost total withdrawal from the West Bank, a land link to Gaza, with the Old City in East Jerusalem under international control. Abbas rejected the offer, claiming he was not given an opportunity to study the map that described Israel's offer. Olmert's version is a little different. He says he showed the map to Abbas, who wanted to take it with him. Olmert agreed - on the condition that they both sign the map since Olmert considered this as the final offer and not a basis for future negotiations. Abbas demurred and instead said he would return the next day with experts. Olmert never saw Abbas again.

In 2009, Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl described Abbas's self-described waiting game. Abbas told Diehl his only role was to wait. He would wait for Obama to force Netanyahu to freeze settlements and publicly accept the two-state solution. Abbas basically waited during the 8 years of the Obama administration.

In late 2009, Netanyahu agreed to Obama's request for a 10-month moratorium on building settlements in order to facilitate peace talks. Abbas waited and did nothing until the last month, at which point he demanded an extension of the freeze. When Netanyahu refused, Abbas walked out.

Then came the peace talks in 2013-2014, http://www.thetower.org/0249-graphic-timeline-of-collapsed-peace-talks/as outlined in this infographic from The Israel Project:

Abbas did nothing to support the negotiations, instead failing to condemn a terrorist attack and announcing a unity government with Hamas terrorists.

Now, on February 25, J Street came out with the strangely named post "The Palestinian Peace Plan" -- strangely named because there is no description of the plan. Instead, part of J Street's argument for the plan is an admission of just how bad a peace partner Abbas actually is:

Let’s be clear: We have no illusions that Mahmoud Abbas is the ideal partner. His rhetoric is at times incendiary, and his frequent refusal to acknowledge the Jewish people’s historic connection to Israel or Jerusalem is troubling. His hold on leadership is tenuous and his critics are legion.

Yet we know there will never be a Zionist sitting on the Palestinian side of the negotiating table — and there doesn’t need to be to reach a lasting agreement that will make Israel safer.

As Yitzhak Rabin said, “You don’t make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies.” [emphasis added]

While admitting the problems of Abbas as a peace partner, J Street leaves out:

o Abbas's hold on leadership is more than tenuous - his term as president ended in 2009
o  He has a history of pocketing concessions and then leaving negotiations
o  He incites hatred against Israel, paying stipends to terrorists and naming stadiums after them
o  Palestinians don't support the two-state solution

Even members of the Palestinian government don't support real peace, and say this openly - in Arabic:

This is not an issue of being "unsavory"; the Palestinian government does not support the idea of peace, or even Jewish right to a state, to its own people. That is not unsavory, it is dishonest.

While J Street is quick to credit Abbas with suddenly coming forward with a peace initiative for the first time, it is worth noting that he was happy to sit back and wait during the Obama adminstration and never actively pushed for peace until the Trump administration, which put an end to coddling the Palestinian Arabs.

J Street appears happy to ignore the anti-Israel actions of Abbas and other members of the government.

This is the same J Street that once bragged, “Our No. 1 agenda item is to do whatever we can in Congress to act as the president’s blocking back.”

Apparently they are blocking for Abbas now.

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Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei recently gave a speech in honor of the Syrian minister of religious endowments, a Sunni, that was ostensibly about unity of Islam between different sects. But he divided the Muslim world in a much different way:

We are by Syria's side. Today, Syria stands in the frontlines. It is our responsibility to support Syria's steadfastness. Mr. Bashar al-Assad – the honorable President of Syria – has appeared as a warrior and great resister. He did not let doubt appear in him and he stood firm. This is very important for a nation. The Muslim nations which live with disgrace are not disgraced nations, rather it is their leaders who are disgraced. If a nation has leaders who have a feeling of dignity about Islam and about their identity, that nation will become dear and the enemy will not be able to do a damn thing against such a nation.
...

Another issue is that Islam has promised us that victory belongs to the mujahid believers. If faith does not exist, victory will not be achieved completely. If faith exists without jihad and endeavor, there will not be any result. It is our responsibility to support and defend Islam and the Islamic movement.

One of the requirements for this is that we should put aside these denominational and tribal differences. Well, if we put aside these differences, there are some people who are opposed to this and who do not want to let this happen. They provoke some of us and some of our brothers and as a result, they are forced to speak, act and work against the movement of unity. If those who play this role are not affiliated with global and arrogant policies and if their activities do not stem from these policies, they should be ignored. We should not pay attention to these individuals. However, if like the Saudis and some others, this effort to create discord stems from arrogant policies, they should be confronted in a firm manner.

We do not believe in the kind of Shia which is supported by London. We do not consider those Sunnis who are supported by the US and Israel as Muslims. We do not consider them Muslims in any way. Islam is that which is opposed to kufr, to oppression and to arrogance. These are our common points.

Suddenly, Alawite Bashir Assad is a Muslim - and Saudi leaders aren't.

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Women in Gaza held a protest for International Women's Day.

Were the demanding equal rights with men? An end to honor killings? Perhaps a protest against forced headcoverings in schools?

No - this protest, organized by Hamas, was against Trump recognizing that Jerusalem was the capital of Israel.

The head of the Hamas women's movement, Raja al-Halabi, explained that the Palestinian women celebrate International Women's Day differently from the women of the world. Palestinian women have one form of protest, she explained, "dyed with the blood of the martyrs and the wives of the women and children."

In other words, if you are planning to hold a protest in Gaza, you better make sure that you are protesting something that the rulers allow you to protest. And protesting Israel and the US are always safe bets.

Al Halabi stressed that "the only option in dealing with the Zionist enemy is the armed resistance, not peaceful resistance."

Fatah also tried to use International Women's Day as a means to avoid talking about any possible problems women have in Palestinian society. They instead highlighted how important women have been in being "martyred" for fighting Israel and claim that 15,000 women have been arrested by Israel over the years and that 60 of them remain in prison. The implication is that women should be allowed to attack Jews without any consequences. Because.....women.

And of course another poster on the Fatah Facebook page shows, yet again, that Palestinians intend to destroy Israel.

This is feminism, Palestinian style.

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03/07 Links Pt2: Collier: Jeremy Corbyn with hard-core antisemites, say what about the Mavi Marmara?; The Quiet Radicalization of the Democratic Party

From Ian:

David Collier: Exclusive: Jeremy Corbyn with hard-core antisemites, say what about the Mavi Marmara?

It would be easy to start this blog with Jeremy Corbyn. After all, it seems as if he was part of a rabidly antisemitic Facebook Group, along with Paul Eisen, Gilad Atzmon, numerous other Holocaust Deniers, hard-core antisemites, white supremacists, and all the other wretched political ideologies that gather together to pretend it is about the Palestinians, and not the Jews.

But this has been a long haul, it is 4am, and I haven’t slept properly in weeks. I have been engaged in an exercise to analyse a secret Facebook Group called ‘Palestine Live’. Immersed deeply in an antisemitic soup was disturbing enough, but seeing names there that simply should not ever have stepped foot inside, gave an entirely new, and far darker feel to the entire exercise.

Corbyn was there in late 2014, he may have joined a year earlier, and every indication is, that he stayed in the group until shortly after he became leader of the Labour Party. Jenny Tonge is still a member, David Ward too. Clive Lewis? Go figure. It just shows how blind everyone is to anti-Jewish racism.

I quantified the level of antisemitism within the group, by analysing all those who shared posts over a two week period during February 2018. The level was 64%. When I extracted the Jewish anti-Zionists, the level rose to 73%. Nobody should be able to spend any time at all in that group, without understanding the twisted antisemitism that drives so much of the activity.

The report was so large, I split it into two. The first looks at the founder and admins of the group, it contains Jenny Tonge and David Ward had too. Then there is Greta Berlin, from the ‘Free Gaza Movement‘. She engaged in an argument over Ken O’Keefe, and was clearly upset by the love the group had for him. It was a long exchange, and midway through she said this:

AIPL Antisemitism in Palestine Live – Report Part One Download Link
AIPL Antisemitism in Palestine Live – Report Part Two Download Link

CAA files fresh disciplinary complaint against Jeremy Corbyn over allegations that he actively participated in a secret Facebook group where antisemitism was on brazen display

A document issued today contains screenshots allegedly showing that Jeremy Corbyn was a participating member in a secret Facebook group called “Palestine Live” in which vehement antisemitism was posted, right up until his first weeks as Leader of the Labour Party.

The screenshots, gathered by blogger David Collier, catalogue exchanges which apparently took place within the Facebook group, including discussion of conspiracy myths about the Rothschild family and supposed Israeli involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as well as links to material produced by neo-Nazi groups.

The Facebook group’s membership reportedly includes numerous antisemites and Jew-baiters, including Paul Eisen, Baroness Jenny Tonge and Gilad Atzmon. Some users are said to have shared articles by conspiracy theorist David Icke and David Duke, former grand wizard of the KKK. Other members of the group allegedly include Thomas Suarez and the journalist, Paul Mason.

Among many chilling posts, the screenshots show members of the group discussing whether they prefer the term “ZioNazi” to “JewNazi’. One member is shown commenting: “am reading Mein Kampf [by Adolf Hitler]…everybody should be forced to read it, especially Jews who have their own agenda as to why they were not liked”. The Labour Party’s logo is also proudly displayed in the group, alongside exhortations to join the Party, even as links to articles from far-right websites such as the Daily Stormer and Veterans Today are circulated by group users.

BBC reporter revealed to be member of secret anti-Israel Facebook group

Among the members of that group are several people who have appeared on BBC programmes such as Avner Gvaryahu of ‘Breaking the Silence’, Rebecca Vilkommerson of JVP, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Tony Greenstein, Haim Bresheeth and Glyn Secker.

Additional members of the group featured in other BBC content include Deborah Fink, David Ward, Jenny Tonge and Richard Falk.

However the name of one member of that secret Facebook group where antisemitic material, Holocaust denial and anti-Israel propaganda is regularly posted may come as a surprise (see Pt 2, p. 175).

The item promoted by Green appears to be Knell’s April 23rd 2016 report from Gush Etzion.

Whether or not Yolande Knell’s editors know about her membership in a secret group of anti-Israel activists where discussions are rife with anti-Israel conspiracy theory, gross antisemitism and Holocaust denial is unclear. What is however once again very obvious is that Knell’s position as an ‘impartial’ BBC correspondent reporting from the corporation’s Jerusalem bureau is severely compromised.

By Dnalor 01 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 at (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/at/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

This year, when it came time for my son, the youngest of 12 children, to register for the class trip for Poland, I was ready. I sat Asher down for a talk and explained that he wasn’t going, that even if we had the money for such a trip, even if the school were to give him a full scholarship, he wasn’t going. I wasn’t going to allow my son to become a source of income for a country of antisemites.

And that was that.

Asher understood. More than that, he agreed. At 17, he is politically “woke.” He gets it.

This was before the whole business with Poland’s new legislation became big news. I didn’t need Poland to pass a law to understand which end was up. They don’t want us to connect Poland with the Holocaust? So fine, let us not send our children there to see the remnants of Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto.

So what if the Holocaust couldn’t have happened without Germany, without the Nazis?

Does that whitewash the long history of Polish Jew hatred, the pogroms?

Does it make Poland pure and innocent compared to Bulgaria and Denmark, that did so much to help the Jews?

So what if Poles were killed, too. This too, does not erase the antisemitism that Poles imbibe with their mothers’ milk.

Moreover, why, of all countries, should the Jewish State be propping up Poland’s economy with these trips that have become a rite of passage for Israeli high school students? We’re talking some 30,000 children, spending at the very least, a few thousand shekels each for this “privilege.”

To my mind, this is one thing we can do: not support people who hate us. Just as we shouldn’t be using Israeli tax money to help the PA pay stipends to terrorists who have spilled Jewish blood.

It is exactly the same thing. No reason to reward such people or even give them a living. The latest expressions of Polish antisemitism (see for instance: Antisemitic Images, Cartoons, Flood Polish Press as Holocaust Law Dispute Festers, Polish Jews Reel from Wave of Antisemitism Following Furur Over Country’s New Holocaust Law, Top Polish Educator Blames Jews for Communist Atrocities in Antisemitic Facebook Rant, Polish PM: There Were Jewish Perpetrators of the Holocaust) only serve to reinforce what I already knew in my marrow.

What of the people who say the experience of visiting Poland is moving, and a good way to teach the Holocaust?

I say hogwash. I never traveled there and I have an acute understanding of the Holocaust and so do my children. In fact, I’d say that boycotting the place is every bit as powerful a teacher as going there.

Which is why I was raised to check labels, to not buy items from Germany or Spain or from companies that are known to be owned by antisemites. I was proud to express my heritage in this manner. Always was. Even from a young age.

We are lucky enough to have survivors still among us. Let us bring them into the schools to give testimony to our Israeli children. Let us teach the children about the horrors through books and museums. It was enough for me, and it is enough for them.

A friend very involved in Holocaust education told me that my attitude only reinforces the antisemitic trope that Jews turn everything into a matter of money. My response? Do I really care if by refusing to spend money in their country, I look “Jewy” to the Poles??

I couldn’t care less.

Let me tell you a little story: some years ago, I studied my family tree. Politics were off-topic for all the genealogy forums so I started a little yahoo group for this purpose, for people who wanted to speak about Lithuanian politics, in particular as they pertain to the Jewish people. We weren’t a huge group but we had some really interesting members, for instance, the late Prof. Dov Levin, who was a partisan in Kaunas (Kovno) during the war, and who wrote hundreds of articles and at least 16 books on the subject of the Holocaust.

At the same time, I remained active in various genealogy groups, including one for those researching my ancestral shtetl of Wasiliski (Vashilishok), Belarus, in what used to be Lithuania. Our Vashilishok group was approached to clean up the centuries’ old cemetery, which was in a deplorable condition. It wouldn’t cost very much, we were told, since the locals could be hired dirt cheap to do the job. It would take a few weeks at most to get it done.

My maternal paternal great grandfather Haiman Kopelman in Egypt in 1914. He was born in Wasiliski Belarus.

One of our group was going out there anyway for a roots trip, so he took a look and reported back to us. It seems the locals had plowed under the Jewish cemetery, claiming they were preparing to build a strip mall there. But years had gone by, and nothing had been built. Instead, the residents were grazing their cattle in this spot.

Our landsman looked, but could not find a single legible fragment of stone, so thorough had been the destruction of our ancestors’ final resting place, now a place for cows to eat and crap.

We were essentially being asked to build a fence around the area, using local labor, to keep the cattle out, and to put up a sign marking the site as a Jewish cemetery.

As we discussed this issue in our forum, I found myself really not wanting to do this thing. I knew that more Lithuanian Jews had been murdered by Lithuanians than Nazis during the war. Why would I want to support their descendants? Not to mention, I’d seen recent photos of what used to be the Jewish matzoh factory and was now a school. Covered with antisemitic graffiti.

Nothing had changed.

I sought counsel from a local rabbi on behalf of our group. The rabbi saw nothing wrong with fencing off the cemetery. Nor did he find it to be something we must do. The ball was back in our court.

I was going to see Prof. Levin in his Jerusalem home on a different matter. I figured I might as well ask him what he thought. Prof. Levin’s entire family had been murdered in the Holocaust, including his twin sister. He was from the same country as my ancestors, and like me, had made Aliyah. I figured that if anyone could give us an informed opinion, a response touched with the pain of having lived through the Holocaust, it would be Prof. Levin.

I put my question to him. Prof. Levin said (with some vehemence), “Your ancestors would not want you to spend a single shekel on restoring that cemetery! Save your money and spend it in Israel on a suitable project, where it helps the Jewish people. This is what your ancestors would want you to do.”

I felt relieved and comforted to hear Prof. Levin say this. I knew that our collective conscience could now rest easy not doing this thing. We didn’t have to do it. Moreover, we should NOT do it.

We all of us contributed, instead, to a local project that spoke to us.

And that was the last of that subject.

Now you should know that a lot of pressure was brought to bear on us by the local Belarussian Jewish community to do this thing. But we said no.

And that is as it should be.

The trips to Poland by Israeli high school students must stop. Instead, let us invest our money in their education here in Israel. Because our ancestors would not have wanted us to be sending our youth to Poland. They would want us to be building our own country, the Jewish State, with all our might and resources.

One more small story: back in the 1970’s, it was the fad for Jews to bring blue jeans and matzoh to the Jews of Russia. The refuseniks, in dire straits, could sell the jeans on the black market and have money to live on. The matzoh was for them to eat on Pesach, something unobtainable in that black hole of repression. One couple came back from Russia to tell my youth group about their trip, how they knew their hotel room had been bugged, and how dangerous it had been.

I told my late great uncle, Morris A. Paul, all about it. Uncle Morris was president of the Pittsburgh ZOA for years on end, honorary vice president of the national Executive Committee of the ZOA, and on the national budget and finance committee of the ZOA. He also served on the national Executive Board of State of Israel Bonds. Hearing about this couple’s trip to Russia, Uncle Morris commented, “I don’t know why anyone would go to Russia. I was glad to leave.”

Uncle Morris sent all my cousins to Israel for their 16^th summers. He knew where he wanted to put his consumer dollars. Right in the hands of the State of Israel.

Morris A. Paul, or “Map” as he liked to be called, would never have financed a high school student’s trip to Poland, and he sure as shooting would have been downright irritated to hear about Israeli high school students traipsing off to Auschwitz.

This is something our children do not need. And it is something we should not do.

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Mossad Replaces Shipment Of Iran Missile Components With Anal Lube (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Tehran, March 7 - Officials in Iran's ballistic missile program discovered today that a vessel carrying illegal cargo intended for the Islamic Republic's weapons program had been duped into instead transporting barrels of lotion used to smooth the passage of items into the rectum. The officials blamed Israeli intelligence for the switch.

Iranian customs and counterintelligence facilities went on red alert this morning after cylindrical components offloaded from a North Korean freighter turned out not to be canisters for the delivery of ordnance, as agreed between the regimes, but similarly-shaped containers of anal lubrication ointment. An anonymous source within the weapons program disclosed to PreOccupied Territory that all indications pointed to Mossad involvement.

"The captain's log has clearly been tampered with," explained the source. "On top of that, the ship appears to have disappeared from radar during part of its Indian Ocean journey, and some of the crew display signs of having been drugged. None of them recall anything suspicious, but we have tested some of the rations on board and found traces of sedatives."

In itself, clarified the source, the disappearance from radar represents nothing unusual, as transportation of contraband by North Korean vessels necessitates frequent use of ruses to mask the exact purpose and itinerary of a voyage. However, he noted, the period when the ship could not be tracked also made it vulnerable to the operation in question.

Experts are reserving judgment on the claim of a Mossad operation. "It's certainly poetic, and Mossad have style, so that's a tight fit," conceded Pia Tabaat, an analyst at Jane's. "And it's of a piece with earlier Israeli operations. But all the rest is speculation, so I would caution everyone not to jump to any conclusions."

Inspection of the cargo hold revealed that the original material in the shipment was in fact loaded onto the ship in Wonsan, as attested to by several open containers compatible with the missile components. The ship's manifest includes certification of cargo inspection before departure from North Korea last month, but the identification of the cargo is registered there as "agricultural machinery" to disguise the actual contents of the shipment, and matches neither the desired components nor the large barrels of anal lube.

The episode may prove an embarrassment to authorities in Iran already facing unrest over their

handling of the economy, international relations, and religious coercion. Mention of it has been barred in official media.

Smirking Israeli officials declined to comment.

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03/07 Links Pt1: Glick: Trump's Urgent Lebanon Problem; In historic first, Air India cleared for Israel flights over Saudi Arabia

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Trump's Urgent Lebanon Problem

Since visiting Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon late last month, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been sounding the alarm about the growing danger of a devastating war between Israel and Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

Ahead of his meeting Monday with President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters that Iran and its rapidly expanding regional power, as well as its nuclear program, would be the major focus of their discussions.

Speaking Sunday on Fox News, Graham warned that the U.S. has no policy to push back Iran’s gains in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

Specifically regarding Lebanon, Graham warned, “Southern Lebanon is a nightmare. It makes Gaza look stable. The IDF, the Israel Defense Force, says there are over a hundred thousand rockets and missiles in the hands of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.”

Graham continued, “Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon years ago, the United Nations was supposed to police the area. The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon [UNIFIL] has sat on the sidelines and watched Hezbollah dominate southern Lebanon with missile technology that now threatens every part of Israel. So it’s a matter of time until Israel strikes southern Lebanon.”

Last month, officers in UNIFIL — the 10,300-strong multinational force charged with preventing Hezbollah from deploying in southern Lebanon — told a French newspaper that the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) blocks UNIFIL from fulfilling its mission. The officers explained that in undermining UNIFIL’s operations, the LAF is acting as Hezbollah’s agent.

As the Jerusalem Post reported, speaking to the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, a warrant officer from UNIFIL’s French contingent said, “In the evening we never leave the barracks because the Lebanese forces are not friendly.”

“We are caught in the aggressor’s grip. Doing the bare minimum has become a political choice,” he added.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: The Arabs Do Not Care about Us

The PA leadership is not happy about the interference of Qatar and UAE in the internal affairs of the Palestinians. It is also not happy with the way Egypt seems to have endorsed Dahlan, an arch-enemy of Abbas. The PA sees Arab meddling in Palestinian affairs as harmful and counterproductive. It has yet to recover from the days when each Arab country had endorsed its own Palestinian faction.

The Palestinians are once again being forced to face the unpleasant truth that their Arab brothers are more interested in their own survival than in the Palestinian issue.

This Arab apathy towards the Palestinians is the result of a long-standing belief in the Arab world that the Palestinians are an ungrateful people who do not hesitate to bite the hand that feeds them. Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait -- a country that used to provide the Palestinians with millions of dollars annually -- was the turning point in relations between the Arab countries and the Palestinians. Since then, the Palestinians have been almost entirely dependent on American and EU funding.

When Trump finally does announce his Middle East peace plan, the Palestinians will discover that they are alone in threatening to thwart it. The Palestinians have good reason to believe that the Arab countries are about to leave them to their own devices. And, after half a century of failed and corrupt leadership, the Palestinian devices leave much to be desired.

In historic first, Air India cleared for Israel flights over Saudi Arabia

Air India confirmed plans for a direct route between Tel Aviv and Delhi Wednesday, with the flight being given permission to fly over Saudi airspace, a first.

The ability to fly the route over Saudi Arabia is expected to cut the flight time by nearly two hours, and marks a significant achievement in Israel’s campaign to upgrade its ties with the Gulf.

An Air India spokesman confirmed that the new seven-hour service will begin on March 22 and will see three flights a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Tickets went on sale Wednesday.

The announcement comes days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Monday that the Saudis had given the go-ahead to Air India to fly through its airspace to and from Tel Aviv.

The permission marks a historic turn by the Gulf state, which has not previously allowed flights to or from Israel over its airspace, like many other Middle Eastern countries that do not have relations with Israel.

Israel does not have diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia, but it has been a known secret that the two nations have been working covertly on their shared security concerns regarding Iran in the wake of the 2015 nuclear accord, which both governments’ strongly opposed.

Palestine Today has an article showing a protest by Gaza families of "martyrs" claiming that the PLO-run Foundation for the Care of the Families of the Martyrs and the Injured has not paid them anything from the 2014 war.

The PLO has said in the past that its budget for paying families of terrorists is sacrosanct, and there is much anger (and hilarious justifications for the payments by Israel haters) when the US or EU complains about so much of the PLO budget going to paying prisoners and families of "martyrs."

But just as the PLO has been denying medicines, fuel, power and salaries to Gazans, it has also apparently been denying even this.

Apparently, the PLO hates Gaza even more than it loves to support terrorists and their families.

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Hamas issued a statement on Tuesday that was completely in line with BDS - and then it went ahead and praised the BDS movement itself.

Hamas stated that "normalization"with Israel is an "unforgivable crime" and that "the Palestinian people will not forgive anyone who deals with Israel."

The terror group said that it is following the Arab nations who are warming up to Israel, complaining that it "strengthens the occupation and covers its ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people."

"There is a great and new effort of normalization in which the scandal of the practice of normalization does not embarrass the media, in an attempt to penetrate into the awareness of generations to entrench acceptance of the occupation as a fact that can not be overcome."

This is exactly the BDS philosophy. If Israel is accepted as a fact, then BDS loses. Its purpose is to make the world think that Israel will fall, that it is a temporary blip and it makes no sense to work with it because its disappearance is inevitable. This was the way the Arab world looked at Israel as well until the past decade or so.

Ordinary Palestinians, however, may accept Israel's existence, but poll after poll shows that the ones who support a two state solution only want peace as a tactic towards the eventual destruction of Israel. BDS and Hamas are a little more honest.

In its statement, Hamas praised the role of the BDS movement, "whose goals and strategies have been widely supported worldwide in the face of injustice and the siege of the occupation of the Palestinian people."

You will be hard pressed to find a BDS supporter who does not support Hamas' goals. It would be interesting to ask them if they will distance themselves from a group that openly espouses murdering Jews, just to see them hem and haw and try not to say something that would get them in trouble with either the terrorist supporters or the deluded peaceniks who they try to attract.

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03/06 Links Pt2: Tapper: Some Dems Want Positive ‘Association’ With Farrakhan, Don’t Want to Face Public Scrutiny; 7 House Democrats Have Direct Ties To Farrakhan

From Ian:

Tapper: Some Dems Want Positive ‘Association’ With Farrakhan, Don’t Want to Face Public Scrutiny

CNN's "The Lead" host Jake Tapper called out some on the left for wanting to glean any positive impacts of a relationship with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan but not being willing to face any backlash.

Tapper began the segment on Monday by playing a clip of Farrakhan's recet anti-semitic, homophobic speech in Chicago.

"Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out, turning men into women and women into men," Farrakhan said.

The CNN host noted that "despite the anti-semitism and homophobia inherent in that clip," several leaders of Women's March and members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) have refused to denounce Farrakhan, despite having previously voiced their support for him. Tapper specifically mentioned Rep. Danny Davis (D., Ill.), who told the Daily Caller earlier in February that Farrakhan is an "outstanding human being."

"I don't regard Louis Farrakhan as an aberration or anything; I regard him as an outstanding human being who commands a following of individuals who are learned and articulate. And he plays a big role in the lives of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people," Davis said at the time.

The Illinois Democrat doubled down on those comments over the weekend, saying he "knows" Farrakhan and the "world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question."

Seven House Democrats Have Direct Ties To Notorious Anti-Semite

At least seven House Democrats are known to have direct ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite and racist who has called Jews “satanic” and said white people “deserve to die.”

California Reps. Maxine Waters and Barbara Lee, Illinois Rep. Danny Davis, Indiana Rep. Andre Carson, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks and Texas Rep. Al Green have all attended meetings with Farrakhan while in Congress, according to photos, videos and witness accounts of the meetings reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

With the exception of Davis, the Democratic representatives have ignored repeated requests for comment regarding their relationships with Farrakhan. (RELATED: Here’s What Louis Farrakhan Has Said About Jews, Gays And White People)

Davis has a personal relationship with Farrakhan and is unbothered by Farrakhan’s position on “the Jewish question,” he told TheDCNF on Sunday. Davis called Farrakhan an “outstanding human being” in an interview with The Daily Caller in February and said he has regularly visited with Farrakhan.

Davis’ office released a statement attributed to the congressman on Monday that attacked TheDCNF for accurately covering his comments. The statement, which did not mention Farrakhan, claimed that anti-Semitism is “antithetical to everything I believe and everything that I work for on a daily basis.” Davis’ attack on reporters covering his claims came after the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights organization, blasted the congressman for praising Farrakhan and called on him to denounce the Nation of Islam leader. As of this article, Davis has yet to condemn Farrakhan.

Ellison, the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), repeatedly attended meetings with Farrakhan while in Congress, according to photos and videos reviewed by TheDCNF and Farrakhan’s own statements.

Women’s March Leaders Have An Anti-Semitism Problem — Maybe It’s Time To Leave Them Behind

Last week, current Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan—a well-known anti-Semite—gave a speech where he said “the powerful Jews are my enemy” and that he had “pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew and I'm here to say your time is up, your world is through.” Other previous Farrakhan highlights include saying the Jews were behind 9/11 and calling Adolf Hitler a “very great man.”
That alone is a story. But it doesn’t end there.

Soon after the speech, news broke that Women’s March leader Tamika Mallory was in attendance; she even received a shout out from Farrakhan during his address and posted about the event on social media. Meanwhile, Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour has collaborated with the Nation of Islam in the past, and Carmen Perez defended Farrakhan in the past, telling Amelia Harnish in January that there are “no perfect leaders” and that people need to understand Farrakhan’s contributions to Black and Brown circles.

Understandably, the Jewish community — particularly people who have supported the Women’s March and other social justice causes — wanted answers. We also wanted something that most thought would be pretty simple for a bunch of women who spend their days parading around their intersectionality: We wanted them to denounce anti-Semitism and the words Farrakhan said against Jews. This isn’t a new thing; after all, we ask public figures to denounce awful people and hate speech all the time.

To say we didn’t get that is an understatement. Instead, we got Tamika Mallory posting a bizarre series of tweets calling valid criticisms “bullying” and refusing to apologize for her support of Farrakhan and her lack of denouncement regarding his words. Linda Sarsour suddenly decided that she was very cool with silence and just retweeted one of Mallory’s tweets, as did Bob Bland. Carmen Perez took it one step further, quote-tweeting Mallory and saying something about the national organizers’ “lifetime commitment to liberation.” Missing from that? A condemnation of Farrakhan.

The impending Nor'easter that is supposed to bury NYC has prompted me to arrange to go to Israel a day earlier than I planned, because otherwise I don't know if I could have made it before Shabbat.

I'm still firming up details, but I plan to host two events while I'm in the Land.

One will be an update on the symposium I held last year, called Donald Trump: Good for the Jews? It is planned to be in a nice venue in Jerusalem's Old City, with what I understand is a stunning view, scheduled for 3 PM this coming Sunday. Seating is limited so email me if you are interested and I can send the exact address as soon as I have everything firmed up.

The other event will be the Hasby Awards, this time scheduled to be held on Thursday evening, March 15, at Bar Ilan University. As with last time, the best and the brightest Israel advocates will be together for a gala evening. I'm still working out the logistics but I'll post them here as soon as they are ironed out. (If there are any previous winners who want to attend that I have not yet invited, please email me at elder -at- elderofziyon.com.)

I switched my planned flight from Aeroflot to El Al, which is a good thing, but even El Al doesn't have wi-fi. So I will be suffering from withdrawal symptoms during the flight. I'm fairly certain that lack of wi-fi is a human rights violation under Geneva, and I plan to address this deficiency at the next Elders meeting.

Blogging will be light for the next ten days as I attend to the many things planned for my visit.

See you on the other side!

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Jerusalem is a city of surprises. You never know what you will see, who you will meet, what you will witness or experience.

Sometimes it is the smallest incidents that are the most meaningful.

The last time I was there, it was a child.

It was at the Kotel. Every time we visit Jerusalem, we go to the Kotel. It’s a ritual. (We would ascend the Temple Mount but the visiting hours are so restricted that we often make do with the Kotel instead).

I entered the egalitarian prayer section. There is no separation between men and women, families can pray together, in any way they find appropriate. It’s different than the traditional section, in many ways nicer than the traditional section. There are tables with umbrellas so people holding ceremonies can stand in the shade rather than the sweltering sun. This section of the Kotel has a section with archeological artifacts still left in the places they were found, making it easier to imagine the majesty of what once was there, when the ancient Jewish Temple was still standing.

Usually the egalitarian section of the Kotel is empty but this time there was a family there.

I watched the father explain something to his wife and kids. They were Franco-Moroccan Jews. One of the boys, approximately nine years old was standing off to the side, with tears in his eyes.

I asked the father what had happened to upset the child, assuming that there had been a fight and the boy was pouting.

The father answered me with a soft smile: “Nothing happened, he’s just a little emotional.”

“Why?” I asked.

The father stretched out his hand, with one expansive gesture including the Kotel, the Temple Mount, the city: “Because, Jerusalem.”

In a heartbeat, the honest emotion of a child wiped away all the cynicism of daily life. Two words and the tears of a child summarized the legacy of thousands of years, of trauma and suffering, willpower and hope, arriving but not yet being there in a way that words never could.

I looked at the boy and back again at the father and there were tears in my eyes too.

Because, Jerusalem.

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03/06 Links Pt1: Netanyahu at AIPAC: We must stop Iran. We will stop Iran; Palestinians increase payments to terrorists to $403 million

From Ian:

Netanyahu at AIPAC: We must stop Iran. We will stop Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was welcomed with a resounding ovation Tuesday morning at AIPAC, where he gave a 30 minute speech on the “good, bad and beautiful” in Israel and the region.

Netanyahu steered completely clear of his legal woes piling up at home.

The prime minister, showing no outward signs of the impact of his domestic situation, strolled away from the podium and used slides broadcast on large screens to talk about Israel’s contributions in the spheres of agriculture, water preservation and security, as well as its growing diplomatic standing in the world.

Pointing to the slide which was painted in blue representing all the countries with whom Israel has diplomatic ties, Netanyahu said to a resounding ovation, “There are those who talk about boycotting Israel, we will boycott them.”

While the good news coming out of Israel – regarding its technology and security expertise – is very good and getting better, the bad news, he said, “is that bad things are getting worse and are very bad.”

The overwhelmingly bad thing, he said, is Iran. “We have to deal with this challenge,” he said. “If I have a message today it is simple: We must stop Iran.”

Netanyahu in the Oval Office: U.S.-Israel Alliance Has Never Been Stronger

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday during an Oval Office meeting with President Donald Trump that the U.S.-Israeli relationship has never been stronger.

"Mr. President, I've been here for nearly four decades seeking to build the American-Israel alliance. Under your leadership, it's never been stronger," Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu praised Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

"It's always a pleasure to see you both, but this is the first time we meet in Washington, America's capital, after you declared, Mr. President, Jerusalem as Israel's capital. And this was a historic proclamation followed by your bold decision to move the embassy by our upcoming national independence day," Netanyahu said.

He continued his praise of Trump by saying the Jewish people have long memories and they won't forget Trump's decision.

"We remember the proclamation of the great King, Cyrus the Great, 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon can come back and rebuild our temple in Jerusalem. We remember 100 years ago Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our an ancestral homeland," he said.

"We remember 70 years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago that President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people throughout ages. Others talked about it. You did it. I want to thank you on behalf of the people of Israel," Netanyahu said.

US Ambassador to Israel Friedman decries J Street’s motto as ‘blasphemous’

The U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, decried the phrase “pro-Israel, pro-peace” — a motto closely associated with J Street — as “blasphemous.”

“Pro-Israel and pro-peace sounds like a completely reasonable position,” Friedman said Tuesday addressing the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “My friends, it is not. Using that praise plainly implies that there are people who are pro-Israel and anti-peace.”

Friedman, formerly a lawyer for President Donald Trump, came under fire during his nomination process for having attacked liberal Jews, including his claim that J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East lobby, was “worse than kapos.” He apologized during his testimony, although he ignored J Street requests for a personal apology.

“If you support Israel, then you must by definition support peace with its neighbors,” Friedman said. “It is no less than blasphemous to suggest that any Jew or any Christian is against peace.”

If a state of war persists, Friedman said, “I strongly suggest that we blame someone other than Israel for this predicament.”

J Street’s president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said in response that commitments to peace involved taking action.

“Contra David Friedman, it’s not blasphemous to suggest that the settlement movement and its allies in the Netanyahu and Trump governments are not committed to peace. They have spent years helping to expand and entrench the occupation — undermining the two-state solution and endangering Israel’s future,” Ben-Ami said.

“If Ambassador Friedman wants to defend settlements, demonize Palestinians, oppose the two state-solution and still claim to support peace, that’s his right,” he said. “Meanwhile, the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement will oppose his policies and continue to work to actually promote peace and secure Israel’s future.”

The bulk of Friedman’s speech was devoted to attacking those who use the phrase, which was notable considering how substantially Trump has moved U.S. policy to be more aligned with the policies of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.