Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
EoZ Trump symposium
Wednesday, March 14, 2018Elder of ZiyonArab League, Death to Israel, Jerusalem, judaization, mImimetic envy, Occupation, Palestinian Authority, Zionist entity
Wednesday, March 14, 2018Elder of ZiyonIsraeli national security officials sat around the same table on Tuesday morning with their counterparts from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, discussing a dire humanitarian situation unfolding in the Gaza Strip.The mainstream media that covered the conference - meaning, as far as I can tell, only Reuters - didn't make this seem historic at all. An almost unprecedented meeting between Israel and so many Arab states was downplayed, and the absence of the Palestinians was highlighted:
The summit on Gaza, called by Jared Kushner, the US president’s son-in-law and senior adviser on Middle East peace, as well as Jason Greenblatt, his special representative for international negotiations, marks an unprecedented moment for Israeli diplomacy, as their dialogue with officials from Arab states is publicly recognized for the first time.
The Trump administration planned the meeting over several weeks and released a list of attendees the morning of the summit, which also included officials from Egypt, Jordan, Canada and various governments of Europe.
Palestinian Authority officials did not attend the meeting.
“We regret that the Palestinian Authority is not here with us today,” Greenblatt said in opening remarks to the conference. “This is not about politics. This is about the health, safety and happiness of the people of Gaza, and of all Palestinians, Israelis and Egyptians.”
Tuesday, March 13, 2018Elder of Ziyon
In a blow to rival Qatar, Israel has announced it will broadcast free coverage of the 2018 Fifa World Cup throughout the region.I assume that companies can buy commercial time on the broadcast. It would be fun to see a Sodastream commercial in Arabic, showing Arab workers making the product, towards an audience that cannot buy it (except for Palestinians.)
Israel will give soccer fans from Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and the Palestinian West Bank territories, a free-pass to watch the Fifa World Cup tournament on Israeli Arabic channel Makan, meaning Qatar’s subscription broadcast monopoly is likely to suffer.
Football fans can now choose between paying for a subscription to watch the games on Qatari channel beIN Sports, or catching it for free on Israel’s dime.
Israel said they will offer a free Arabic broadcast and commentary of the games, after the Israeli Broadcasting Authority paid £5.6 million for the rights to broadcast the tournament.
Doha had previously said it had exclusive rights to broadcast this year’s Fifa World Cup on its beIN Sport channel, available to subscribers in the Middle East for a $45 fee.
Moran Zagar, an expert on Israel-Gulf relations, told Verdict that Israel is hoping to curry favour with football fans in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and with Palestinians:
It put Israel in an optimal position. Millions of people across the Arab World will be watching the games through Israel’s broadcasting in live stream. That’s a lot of power to deliver a hidden and direct message, and it might sway positive public opinion towards [Israel] within those communities.
She added that charging a Jordanian peasant the equivalent of their monthly salary to watch the games was “an own goal for Qatar”.
Israel would take that opportunity with both hands. Sports is always intertwined with politics and this event is no different.
There was only one thing worse than the remarkable revelation of institutionalised antisemitism on the left revealed by David Collier on his website last week. It was the reaction.Pro-Palestinian Group Founder Corroborates Israel’s Version of 2010 Gaza Flotilla Raids
Collier is an indefatigable blogger who spends much of his life immersed in the cesspools of anti-Jewish and Israel-bashing bigotry in British institutions. His aim is to bring the epidemic of open antisemitism to the attention of the wider public. He is positively heroic in subjecting himself to the traumatic effects of wading through all this filth. But last week he took his investigations onto a different level altogether.
His 280-page two-part report, here and here, exposed a secret, pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel Facebook group called Palestine Live, which was created in 2013. Its members included politicians and other members of the Labour party and the left.
Secret forum
Secrecy was paramount: when one member asked “how safe is this group?” its creator, Elleanne Green, replied: “Very…no one is allowed in who is not trusted…I am very very careful…and it is a Secret Group…so it really is as safe as you will be able to find anywhere…”
The reason for such secrecy immediately becomes apparent from Collier’s expose. One of the first posts – and it was typical – referred to the “barbarian part of that [Jewish] tribe that is lording it over every single government in the word and using their untold wealth to control the agenda for all of us in order to further their nefarious aims for the Jewish state and to wipe out the Palestinians in the process”. Another referred to Jews as a “cancer” who “murder Palestinians” so they can “harvest their organs”. Others claimed that the Jew were behind 9/11 and the 2015 Paris terror attacks.
Group members referenced rabid white supremacists, Holocaust deniers and other far-right sites. They claimed that the blood libel and Protocols of the Elders of Zion were true, that the Rothschilds were a world conspiracy stealing people’s money, that the Jews were behind the two world wars and so on. As Collier asks: “At what point did the British Labour party suddenly develop a fetish for white supremacy?
A high-ranking leader of the Free Gaza Movement, a coalition of human rights activists and pro-Palestinian groups formed to challenge the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip, appears to have corroborated Israel's previously challenged version of the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid that resulted in the death of 10 Turkish activists.Melanie Phillips: Left wingers can't see their cesspool of antisemitism
Greta Berlin, a co-founder and spokesperson for the Free Gaza Movement, made comments in a secret British Facebook group that seem to corroborate accounts that members of the Israeli armed services did not open fire until one of the activists attempted to disarm one of the troops, according to the Times of Israel.
The Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a group of three passenger and three cargo ships organized by the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief in an attempt to breach the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Tensions arose when Israel offered to inspect the six civilians ships that had been chartered to carry what the Free Gaza Movement claimed to be humanitarian supplies and construction material to the Gaza Strip. Israel also offered to transport the supplies via land crossings, but the activists turned down the offer. Israeli armed services than conducted a raid on the six ships in an effort to force the flotilla to the port of Ashdod, where it could be inspected.
While attempting to seize control of the flotilla, Israeli defense forces faced resistance on one of the ships, the Mavi Marmara. What exactly occurred on the ship has long been disputed. The Israeli government has alleged that IDF commandos were attacked with clubs, knives, and metal rods while attempting to board the ship. The government has stated it was forced to open fire after a passenger grabbed a weapon from one of the commandos.
A few years later, Berlin seems to have corroborated the Israeli government's report during a heated debate in a private Facebook group comprised of pro-Palestinian activists who had all been approved or invited to join. In her comments, which were written in 2014, Berlin specifically rebuked other social media users in the group who were attempting to absolve one of the activists onboard the ship, Kenneth O'Keefe, from any blame.
For the left, bashing Israel and supporting the Palestinians is a noble cause. So there’s no reason to suspect that anyone associated with it will be anything other than decent. This is to ignore the symbiotic connection between Israel-bashing and antisemitism. No, that does not mean criticism of Israel is antisemitic. It is as legitimate as criticism of any other country. The way in which Israel is treated, however, is totally unlike the treatment of any other country.
We’re talking here about demonisation: a unique campaign based entirely on malicious falsehoods, accusing Israel of crimes of which it is not only innocent but is in fact the victim, employing libellous and incendiary tropes such as deliberate child-killing and presenting it as a global conspiracy and menace to the world. These are all the markers of classic antisemitism through the centuries. So the links to the far right and white supremacists aren’t surprising.
The left, though, believes with perfect faith that it stands only for good things such as conscience and human rights. Accordingly, only the “right” can be antisemitic. The “anti-racist” left believes that it is itself utterly incapable of antisemitism. So it is blind to both its own behaviour and the noxious company it keeps.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018Elder of ZiyonEoZ Trump symposium
Tuesday, March 13, 2018Elder of Ziyon
- 83% of Republicans, 72% of independents and 64% of Democrats view Israel favorably.
- 27% of Democrats, 21% of independents and 12% of Republicans view the Palestinian government favorably.
Beyond party and consistent with Gallup previous findings by age, Israel also receives higher favorable ratings from adults 55 and older (80% favorable) than from those 35 to 54 (72%) or 18 to 34 (65%). Conversely, the Palestinian Authority receives somewhat better ratings from adults 18 to 34 (31% favorable) than from those 35 to 54 (15%) or 55 and older (18%).Looking at the trends, this is higher across the board for all three age groups. Gallup's chart from their 2015 report on support for Israel by age shows this:
Marking the 40th anniversary of the most lethal terror attack in Israel's history in which 12 children and 25 Israeli adult civilians were murdered by Palestinian terrorists, Fatah posted a video celebrating the attack and glorifying the murderers, in particular the leader of the attack, female terrorist Dalal Mughrabi. Palestinians have referred to the hijacked bus in which most of the Israelis were murdered, as "the first Palestinian Republic," because the bus remained under the terrorists' control for a few hours, as they drove from Haifa in the north to the center of the country, while shooting at civilian cars they passed on the way.
Texts in Fatah's video praising Mughrabi focus on the fact that the leader of the attack was a woman, and credit her with being "the president of the first republic":
"The name of the president of the first republic was Dalal Mughrabi.
Heroism has no gender.
Arab men must understand that they don't have a monopoly on the glory of life or the glory of death,
and women can love much more nobly than the way they love, and die in a much more spectacular way than they die"
[Official Fatah Facebook page, March 11, 2018]
Other texts in Fatah's video described the terror attack as "the bravest victory" and portrayed the hijacking of a bus full of Israeli civilians as the establishment of "the Palestinian republic" and of "the temporary capital of the State of Palestine":
The Iran waivers have so far followed a similar pattern. The first time the deal came up for review, Trump issued the requisite certification that Iran was in compliance and that the deal served America’s national interests, but vowed he wouldn’t keep doing so forever. The second time, he formally decertified the deal, but once again signed the waiver that prevents sanctions on Iran from being reinstated. The third time, he signed the waiver once again, but explicitly threatened that this would be the last time.From the Embassy to an Undivided Jerusalem
If it weren’t for the embassy move, this threat would be treated in capitals around the world as so much bluster. Instead, world leaders are forced to take it seriously. True, there’s a chance that Trump is just bluffing. But there’s also a real chance that he’s serious, just as he proved to be on the embassy issue.
This means that European leaders, who initially refused even to discuss any changes to a deal they like just the way it is, are now feeling pressured to offer at least some sop to Trump if only to keep him from blowing the deal up entirely. Last month, for instance, French President Emanuel Macron threw his support behind a plan to impose surveillance and sanctions on Iran’s unfettered ballistic missile program, which is one of several key loopholes the administration wants closed.
The Iran deal didn’t motivate Trump to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. The primary reason to relocate the embassy to Jerusalem was because it was the right thing to do. It’s something Congress decided should be done over 20 years ago, and it’s something presidential candidates from both parties have repeatedly promised but never fulfilled. Above all, it’s because the reality is that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, and it is ludicrous to keep pretending otherwise.
But it just goes to show that the right thing is also sometimes the smart thing. Granted, there’s no guarantee that Trump’s effort to fix the Iran deal will bear fruit; the Europeans are trying hard to fob him off with mere cosmetic tweaks. Yet there would be no chance at all if it weren’t for the credible threat created by the embassy move. And if anything meaningful does come of this effort–even if only a modest improvement, like cracking down on Iran’s ballistic missiles–it will be largely because Trump did the right thing on Jerusalem.
Instead of waiting to build a new embassy, America did the smart thing, and is now simply going to hang a new sign on the facility that currently serves as its consulate in Jerusalem. But it turns out that the building is partially located in what was, from 1949 to 1967, an area designated as No Man’s Land between Israeli West Jerusalem and the part of the city that was illegally occupied by Jordan. Though the embassy sits on only a tiny portion of this territory and has actually been under continuous Israeli use since 1949, as far as the Palestinians and much of the world is concerned, it’s located on “occupied territory.”
But rather than being an unfortunate mistake, the location makes it clear how crazy it would be to try, as many advocates of the peace process insist must happen, to redivide the city. Instead of restructuring a partitioned city, the world should recognize that such a dangerous scheme would only hurt Jerusalem and do nothing to advance the cause of peace.
The reason for the creation of a No Man’s Land was that it was the result of the military stalemate in the city during Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. While the Arab attempt to besiege Jewish Jerusalem failed, the Jordanian army’s invasion caused the fall of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, and the eviction of its Jewish inhabitants and destruction of all of their synagogues. Ultimately, a stable front line that stretched like an ugly scar throughout the city was established.
For 19 years, the holiest of Jewish religious shrines — the Temple Mount and the Western Wall — were effectively rendered Judenrein; Jews only dreamed of ever being able to pray there again.
Thanks to a catastrophic error by Jordan’s King Hussein, the city was unified in 1967. Despite warnings from Israel to stay out of the conflict, Jordan started shelling Jewish Jerusalem in support of Egypt and Syria on the first of the dramatic six days in June that year. When Israeli forces broke through, not only were the Jews reunited with their holy places, but the walls that had rendered Jerusalem a stunted, divided city were also torn down.
In the 50 years since then, new Jewish neighborhoods were built in those parts of the city that were formerly occupied by Jordan. Arab neighborhoods suffered partly from the neglect of the municipality and partly because Palestinians refused to share in the life of the united city, preferring instead to nurture dreams of Israel’s destruction.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, March 13, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Tuesday, March 13, 2018Elder of ZiyonThe Trump administration will convene a conference at the White House on Tuesday aimed at solving the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, with Jared Kushner and National Security Council staff outlining their plan for alleviating suffering in the coastal enclave.That statement is especially comical.
“Solving the situation in Gaza is vital for humanitarian reasons, important for the security of Egypt and Israel and is a necessary step toward reaching a comprehensive peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians, including Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank,” US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt said in a statement Monday.
While the gathering will be dedicated to deteriorating conditions in Gaza, no Palestinian representatives plan to show, a PLO Executive Committee member told Voice of Palestine radio last week.
“The United States knows very well that the cause of the tragedy of the Gaza Strip is the unjust Israeli siege, and what is needed is political treatment of this issue,” said Ahmad Majdalani.
The Egyptian authorities brought in vegetables, fruits and other goods into the Gaza Strip on Feb. 23 through the Saladin gate crossing, in the southern part of Rafah city, instead of using the standard Rafah border crossing as they normally do.
London-based Al-Hayat reported Feb. 23 that Egypt and Hamas had reached new understandings to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza by bringing in goods, vegetables and fuel with Israel’s approval and following coordination with Hamas, even if such understandings were to anger Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas refused to lift the sanctions imposed on Gaza and did not take measures to ease the situation.
Last month, the president of the Netherlands’ Red Cross visited Israel to apologize formally for the organization’s conduct during the German occupation of the country. He was moved to do so by a recent book on the subject written by Regina Grüter, which assembles much evidence to prove what Dutch Jews themselves have long believed, as Ofer Aderet writes. (Free registration may be required.)
At the beginning of 1941, when the order came to stop accepting blood donations from Jews, the Dutch Red Cross accepted the decree . . . and didn’t send a protest letter. In February of that year, when 427 Jews were arrested in Amsterdam and sent to Buchenwald, the Dutch Red Cross sent a letter to the German occupying authorities wondering whether the organization was allowed to send packages to these Jews. The answer was as one would expect: it was forbidden to help Jews. The Red Cross simply accepted the order and sent aid packages only to non-Jewish Dutch political prisoners.
When in late 1941 the Germans ordered that all Jewish volunteers be dropped from the Red Cross, the group [again] followed these orders without a word. And the archives contain not one mention of any attempt to oppose these orders, or any underground attempts by the group to help Jews.
The research also didn’t uncover any evidence of discussions among the group’s leaders about the fate of the Dutch Jews. Grüter’s book leaves the impression that the Red Cross people acted as mere bureaucrats who carried out the Nazi occupiers’ orders to the letter and never tried to make things hard for the Germans—in clear violation of their role as aid workers. . . . “They weren’t anti-Semites, they were simply neutral,” Grüter says.
Seventy years after Israel's founding, at long last a member of the British royal family will visit there. The summer visit of the Duke of Cambridge, HRH Prince William, has been announced.Prince William’s visit may not be too late
This visit is remarkable for only one reason: that there has been no such visit before. Prince Charles attended the funerals of Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, and Prince Philip made an equally brief visit one time to see his mother's grave site. Neither was an "official visit," because such a horrible event was simply not acceptable to the Foreign Office. The change is important. As the great historian Andrew Roberts wrote,
Royal visits have always been a central plank of Britain’s diplomacy over the centuries, and this one is a statement that Israel is no longer going to be treated like the pariah nation it so long has been by the Foreign Office. It is no therefore coincidence that although Her Majesty the Queen has made over 250 official overseas visits to 129 different countries during her reign, neither she nor one single member of the British royal family has ever yet been to Israel on an official visit.
Why now? There are various theories. One is that Prince Charles was the wrong royal to send (see this Spectator story for one of the theories as to why) and time had to pass until someone in the next generation could do it. Another theory is that the Foreign Office simply could no longer maintain the claim that a visit would sour relations with the Arab states when those states are improving their own relations with Israel. Finally it has been argued that the Foreign Office and royal refusal (and it is not clear whether the "no" was over the years really from the bureaucrats or the royals, or both) was based on Zionist violence against British colonial administrators in the pre-1948 years of the Palestinian mandate. That obstacle would seem very odd when the Queen in 2012 was willing to shake the hand of Martin McGuinness, who had been a very senior IRA commander leader in 1979 when the IRA killed Lord Mountbatten, to whom she was close and who was Prince Philip's uncle.
Andrew Roberts is right: this visit is praiseworthy because it treats Israel as a normal nation. In that sense it is very much in line with President Trump's move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, acknowledging that it has the right every other nation has to choose its capital city, and the American effort at the United Nations system to stop the unfair and unequal treatment of Israel. Seventy years is a long time to wait for normal treatment, and of course Israel is far from achieving it even now. But these steps are symbolic of real progress.
The British Foreign Office has its own reasons for sending Prince William to visit Israel. The prince himself is only an excuse. The visit is not intended to boost the young man himself or the Royal Family as a whole, nor to showcase Israel on its 70th anniversary. The real aim is to get Britain back in the engine room of Middle East and world politics. Not necessarily a bad idea in itself, but an exercise in cynicism and humbug. I hope it is not too late.
Britain seems to be feeling increasingly fragile on the world scene. If the British government had been smart it could have claimed a special status in the Middle East by virtue of its (sometimes tortuous) role in 19th and 20th century Zionism, and one might have thought its vaunted friendship with Israel could have been given expression before this. There may be reason to fear that Britain has abdicated to the US the role of special friend.
Many Israelis still need convincing that Britain really is a friend. Those with long memories cannot forget the Mandate period. When my late parents-in-law made aliya in 1965 and said they were from London they saw Israelis physically flinch. Possibly most Israelis today think this is just history and prefer to accentuate the more positive attitudes of Arthur James Balfour and Winston Churchill, but this still does not justify the lack of official visits by British royals. The British way of showing friendship is to send the royals on a visit. They have had sixty-odd years to do this during the queen’s incumbency but the Foreign Office kept dithering – or worse, sneering and using bad language about the Jews.
Over the years there could have been some official fence-mending, but now it will be harder. The queen might have been able to charm Israel but she is no longer so young and energetic after more than 65 years on the throne, making her the longest-serving British monarch. She will presumably keep going until the day she dies. Few people share her concern for dogs and horses, nor is she a warm everyone’s-grandmother type. But she is part of the marketing, like Big Ben and the Thames. She is part of the ethos that makes Britain interesting.
Monday, March 12, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Monday, March 12, 2018Elder of Ziyon
Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, made several critical observations in her address to the AIPAC Policy Conference last week, but one that rang particularly true was her assessment of Israel’s role in the Middle East.
“There are probably 10 major problems facing the Middle East,” Haley said, “and Israel doesn’t have anything to do with any of them.” And yet every month at the UN Security Council’s gathering devoted to the Middle East, the “session becomes an Israel- bashing session.”
Instead of singling out the only Jewish state for obsessive condemnation, Haley suggested the UNSC focus on the real pathologies of the Middle East, such as “Iran or Syria or Hezbollah, Hamas, ISIS [Islamic State], the famine in Yemen.”
Of all the policy myths that have kept us from recognizing the true nature of conflict in the blood-soaked region, one stands out for its fatality and perpetuation: the idea that if only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were solved, all the other deep-rooted quandaries facing the Middle East would magically disappear.
The “Arab Spring” revolt that swept across the region should have destroyed the “linkage” dogma once and for all – what happened in Syria, Libya, Egypt and Tunisia had nothing to do with Israel – and yet the myth that the Arab world resolves around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lives on.
I invite you on a quick tour of the greater Middle East. The industrial-scale killing machine of the Assad regime in Syria, sustained by Iran and Russia? Unrelated to the ailing Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Yemen on the brink of starvation? Nothing to do with the Jewish state. The power struggle between Sunnis and Shi’ites that rips apart entire countries? No. The rise of Islamic State? All unrelated.
“Sisters of Dalal” (Fatah’s women’s committee in Palestinian universities) gave out cards at An-Najah National University:UN Palestinian Refugee Aid Agency Called Out for Hypocrisy of Women’s Rights Tweet
"In honor of March 8 [International Women's Day] And in honor of the soul of the Martyr of March Dalal Mughrabi Surround yourself with great things And ignore those who do not believe in you, As you are half of the universe and even more"
Text on Fatah Shabiba's logo on card: "From the sea of blood of the Martyrs we will create a state"
Shabiba, Fatah’s student movement, and its female students’ committee “Sisters of Dalal,” named after female terrorist murderer Dalal Mughrabi, saw International Women’s Day as an appropriate time to glorify Mughrabi, who led the most lethal attack in Israel's history: The Coastal Road massacre in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 12 children and 25 adult Israeli civilians.
At An-Najah University, the "Sisters of Dalal" gave out cards to female workers and students to celebrate Women's Day. Text on the card honored murderer Mughrabi and encouraged women to believe in themselves:
"In honor of March 8 [International Women's Day] And in honor of the soul of the Martyr of March Dalal Mughrabi Surround yourself with great things And ignore those who do not believe in you, As you are half of the universe and even more"
[Facebook page of the Fatah Shabiba Student Movement at An-Najah National University, March 7, 2018]
The card bore the symbol of Fatah's Shabiba branch at An-Najah University, which Palestinian Media Watch has reported includes text encouraging youth to seek Martyrdom-death:
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was called out on Twitter on Sunday for hypocrisy on the issue of women’s rights.
UNRWA initially tweeted, “In 2017, over 80,000 Palestine refugee community members were engaged in awareness-raising on gender equality and Gender Based Violence through various UNRWA-run activities.”
In 2017, over 80,000 Palestine refugee community members were engaged in awareness-raising on gender equality and Gender Based Violence through various UNRWA-run activities. #IWD2018 #TimeIsNow #DignityIsPriceless #ForPalestineRefugees #FundUNRWA https://t.co/3L9UfR4Jnz pic.twitter.com/Ooy8BNwh8r
— UNRWA (@UNRWA) March 11, 2018
In response, the Geneva-based monitoring NGO UN Watch tweeted:
.@UNRWA If you care about "gender equality" why is your staff filled with members of the misogynistic Hamas? Also: If you support peace, why does your map in this photo erase Israel? https://t.co/jD0lwHK7AK
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) March 11, 2018
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PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
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