Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, May 09, 2018

05/09 Links Pt1: Donald Trump Ends the Obama Mirage; Sohrab Amari: Obama Killed His Own Iran Deal; Palestinians announce embassy move date to be ‘day of rage’

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: A Courageous Trump Call on a Lousy Iran Deal

Apologists also claim that, with Trump’s decision, Tehran will simply restart its enrichment activities on an industrial scale. Maybe it will, forcing a crisis that could end with U.S. or Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites. But that would be stupid, something the regime emphatically isn’t. More likely, it will take symbolic steps to restart enrichment, thereby implying a threat without making good on it. What the regime wants is a renegotiation, not a reckoning.

Why? Even with the sanctions relief, the Iranian economy hangs by a thread: The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported “hundreds of recent outbreaks of labor unrest in Iran, an indication of deepening discord over the nation’s economic troubles.” This week, the rial hit a record low of 67,800 to the dollar; one member of the Iranian Parliament estimated $30 billion of capital outflows in recent months. That’s real money for a country whose gross domestic product barely matches that of Boston.

The regime might calculate that a strategy of confrontation with the West could whip up useful nationalist fervors. But it would have to tread carefully: Ordinary Iranians are already furious that their government has squandered the proceeds of the nuclear deal on propping up the Assad regime. The conditions that led to the so-called Green movement of 2009 are there once again. Nor will it help Iran if it tries to start a war with Israel and comes out badly bloodied.

All this means the administration is in a strong position to negotiate a viable deal. But it missed an opportunity last month when it failed to deliver a crippling blow to Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s puppet in Syria, for his use of chemical weapons. Trump’s appeals in his speech to the Iranian people also sounded hollow from a president who isn’t exactly a tribune of liberalism and has disdained human rights as a tool of U.S. diplomacy. And the U.S. will need to mend fences with its European partners to pursue a coordinated diplomatic approach.

The goal is to put Iran’s rulers to a fundamental choice. They can opt to have a functioning economy, free of sanctions and open to investment, at the price of permanently, verifiably and irreversibly forgoing a nuclear option and abandoning their support for terrorists. Or they can pursue their nuclear ambitions at the cost of economic ruin and possible war. But they are no longer entitled to Barack Obama’s sweetheart deal of getting sanctions lifted first, retaining their nuclear options for later, and sponsoring terrorism throughout.

Trump’s courageous decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal will clarify the stakes for Tehran. Now we’ll see whether the administration is capable of following through.

John Podhoretz: Trump and America’s Centripetal Foreign Policy

With some exceptions (like the elder Bush’s administration in relation to Israel), every element on this list (if in some cases you substitute the Soviet Union for Russia pre-1991 and Libya for Islamist terror) was to some degree at play in American foreign policy from 1981 until 2008. Such has been the powerful logical flow of American foreign policy since the election of Ronald Reagan. This consensus ebbed and flowed depending on the circumstance, of course, and the parallels are not perfect. What Trump has done, and I don’t think strategically or with any grand design, is to place far greater stock in both the unilateralist and the realpolitik aspects of American foreign policy than his predecessors in the Reagan and post-Reagan era. He views enduring alliances more as constraints than grand benefits, which is perhaps the primary way in which he differs from the consensus. But his attacks on those alliances have basically ceased, which is itself a striking change from candidate Trump’s approach.

And what of 2008 to 2016? Barack Obama, schooled in 1970s liberal foreign-policy shibboleths, came at this consensus and flipped it—not entirely on its head, more like about 140 degrees. We went at Israel, we went light on Russia, we sought a concord with Iran, and Obama was celebrated for his acceptance of the monsters of Havana. Most notably, he accepted the left-liberal critique of postwar American foreign policy’s supposedly bad actions in the world and sought to apologize or make implicit amends for them. Viewed in this light, it’s the Obama years that represent the jarring discontinuity from the consensus path and not the election of the X-factor Trump.

We’ll have to see how this North Korea business goes to better understand Trump. (And certainly Trump’s trade practices mark him as very different, though there’s an argument that’s more an economic than a foreign policy.) There’s no reason to believe any of this is conscious or deliberate or designed. There is no Trump Doctrine. But there might be one yet, and it might be more familiar than we had any right to expect.

Sohrab Amari: Obama Killed His Own Iran Deal

He tried to circumvent the Israelis by keeping them in the dark about secret negotiations with the Islamic Republic. For Obama, Arab fears of Iranian expansionism were a tertiary concern, and he was surprised when the most important Sunni powers didn’t show up for a 2015 summit that was supposed to sell them on the deal. He likewise pooh-poohed Iran’s eliminationist anti-Israel rhetoric (“at the margins, where the costs are low, they may pursue policies based on [Jew] hatred as opposed to self-interest,” he told The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg). His aides described a sitting Israeli prime minister as a “chickens—t” (on background, naturally).

He lectured and condescended, and then lectured some more.

On the home front, meanwhile, Obama relied on his signature “pen and phone” methods to ram the deal through. Rather than welcome GOP hawks as good-faith actors seeking to strengthen his hand against an adversary, he treated Republicans as the adversary. He thought his diplomacy pitted him and reasonable Iranians like Javad Zarif against “hard-liners” in Washington and Tehran.

Meanwhile, Obama’s Ben Rhodes-operated media echo chamber swarmed and shouted down journalists and experts who raised concerns about the terms of the accord, not least the fact that it permitted the Iranians to inspect their own military sites and left unaddressed the question of ballistic missiles. The Obama administration never satisfactorily answered critics’ questions about Iran’s refusal to come clean about its prior weaponization activity—the glaring flaw in the deal’s architecture that contributed the most to its undoing this week.

And here we are. The deal’s demise, then, was written into it by its primary author.

Some of the "anti-Zionist" tweets uncovered by ADL study

The ADL released a report showing that over 4.2 million antisemitic tweets were posted last year.

The report was careful not to include tweets that were "only" anti-Zionist, but some of those were so obviously using the word "Zionist" to represent Jew that they had to count them.

Some examples:

Bring these tweets to a Jewish Voice for Peace meeting or to Linda Sarsour and ask if they are antisemitic or not.

You can learn a lot by how they answer.

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The biggest Human Rights Watch lie yet?

From CBS News:

Israel has given a Human Rights Watch director two weeks to leave the country, accusing him of promoting a boycott, in a move the rights group said sought to muzzle criticism. The interior ministry said Tuesday it had terminated the residency permit of HRW's Israel and Palestine director Omar Shakir, a U.S. citizen, over accusations that he supported a boycott of Israel.

"Following the recommendations of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, containing information that Shakir has been a BDS activist for years supporting the boycott of Israel in an active way, the ministry has decided to terminate (his) residence permit," the interior ministry said in a statement.

"This is not about Shakir, but rather about muzzling Human Rights Watch and shutting down criticism of Israel's rights record," HRW said in a statement.

"Neither Human Rights Watch nor its representative, Shakir, promotes boycotts of Israel."

The media is quick to note that HRW has written critical reports of Israel - a fact meant to support the idea that Israel is muzzling critics.

Yet the articles don't bother to check the simple fact that Shakir indeed has explicitly promoted boycotts of Israel.

And HRW is knowingly lying.

These tweets were before Shakir re-joined HRW (he had worked there in 2013 and then returned in October 2016.) But they show that he is an enthusiastic BDS supporter. Much more from an article by Petra Marquardt-Bigman here.

As far as HRW's assertion that it doesn't promote BDS itself, what about this article in Haaretz by Kathleen Peratis, co-chair of the Middle East North Africa Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch and an emerita member of its board of trustees?

This is a full throated and explicit call for support for BDS and giving advice to the movement on tactics.

HRW lies quite a bit. This may be the biggest lie yet.

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The Washington Post published a "fact check" on President Trump's claim that under the JCPOA, Iran can build nuclear weapons in seven years.

The article conflates what the West can stop Iran from doing with what Iran has promised not to do. And that is a fatal mistake.

The worst example is this:

It’s worth noting that as part of the JCPOA, Iran said it was bound by this commitment: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons.”

...Whether the president was referring to “Termination Day” in 2025, or to the portions of the JCPOA that sunset in 2026, Iran has pledged to never develop nuclear weapons. The Non-Proliferation Treaty, the IAEA’s Additional Protocol and other parts of the JCPOA — all of which Iran has committed to — run well past 2025, and key provisions apply indefinitely.

In other words, don't worry: Iran promised!

Let's go back in time to the 1984, when the Ayatollah Khomeini first supposedly issued a fatwa against the building of nuclear weapons. Gareth Porter in Foreign Policy documents the event in an interview with Mohsen Rafighdoost, former minister of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during the Iran/Iraq war:

Rafighdoost prepared a report on all the specialized groups he had formed and went to discuss it with Khomeini, hoping to get his approval for work on chemical and nuclear weapons. "When Khomeini read the report, he reacted to the chemical-biological-nuclear team by asking, ‘What is this?’" Rafighdoost recalled.

Khomeini ruled out development of chemical and biological weapons as inconsistent with Islam.

Rafighdoost also told Khomeini that the group had "a plan to produce nuclear weapons." That could only have been a distant goal in 1984, given the rudimentary state of Iran’s nuclear program. At that point, Iranian nuclear specialists had no knowledge of how to enrich uranium and had no technology with which to do it. But in any case, Khomeini closed the door to such a program. "We don’t want to produce nuclear weapons," Rafighdoost recalls the supreme leader telling him.

That edict from Khomeini ended the idea of seeking nuclear weapons, according to Rafighdoost.

And in December 1987:

Khomeini also repeated his edict forbidding work on nuclear weapons, telling him, "Don’t talk about nuclear weapons at all."

Rafighdoost understood Khomeini’s prohibition on the use or production of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons as a fatwa — a judgment on Islamic jurisprudence by a qualified Islamic scholar. It was never written down or formalized, but that didn’t matter, because it was issued by the "guardian jurist" of the Islamic state — and was therefore legally binding on the entire government. "When Imam said it was haram [forbidden], he didn’t have to say it was fatwa," Rafighdoost explained.

The "famous" Iranian fatwa against nuclear weapons by Khomeini's successor Khamenei, which President Obama noted in a speech at the UN, was actually written in the mid-1990s according to Porter, who then says how supposedly iron clad it was:

The analysis of Khamenei’s fatwa has been flawed not only due to a lack of understanding of the role of the "guardian jurist" in the Iranian political-legal system, but also due to ignorance of the history of Khamenei’s fatwa. A crucial but hitherto unknown fact is that Khamenei had actually issued the anti-nuclear fatwa without any fanfare in the mid-1990s in response to a request from an official for his religious opinion on nuclear weapons. Mousavian recalls seeing the letter in the office of the Supreme National Security Council, where he was head of the Foreign Relations Committee from 1997 to 2005. The Khamenei letter was never released to the public...

Since 2012, the official stance of U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has been to welcome the existence of Khamenei’s anti-nuclear fatwa. Obama even referred to it in his U.N. General Assembly speech in September 2013. But it seems clear that Obama’s advisors still do not understand the fatwa’s full significance: Secretary of State John Kerry told journalists in July, "The fatwa issued by a cleric is an extremely powerful statement about intent," but then added, "It is our need to codify it."

That statement, like most of the commentary on Khamenei’s fatwa against nuclear weapons, has confused fatwas issued by any qualified Muslim scholar with fatwas by the supreme leader on matters of state policy. The former are only relevant to those who follow the scholar’s views; the latter, however, are binding on the state as a whole in Iran’s Shiite Islam-based political system, holding a legal status above mere legislation.

The full story of Khomeini’s wartime fatwa against chemical weapons shows that when the "guardian jurist" of Iran’s Islamic system issues a religious judgment against weapons of mass destruction as forbidden by Islam, it overrides all other political-military considerations.

Yet, as Netanyahu's Mossad revelations confirmed, Iran had an active and specific nuclear program well after these supposed fatwas against nuclear weapons.

If Iran's solemn pledge to never work on nuclear weapons has been proven to be worthless because of the Iranian nuclear weapons program before 2003 (that "everyone" now agrees existed in the wake of Netanyahu's speech,) then why are Iran's solemn pledges to adhere to the JCPOA and the Non-Proliferation Treaty worth any more today?

The fact that so many of Iran's nuclear activities are literally unverifiable under JCPOA is itself the best reason to fix or scrap it. However, Iran's history of lying and covering up its nuclear weapons program, after solemnly pledging tha tsuch activities are against Islamic law, is really what proves that any agreement that supposedly bars Iran from ever building nuclear weapons is worthless.

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The EU loves JCPOA - because of the money made from selling to Iran

High Representative/Vice-President Federica Mogherini criticized the US move to reimpose sanctions on Iran - because Iran has been an economic windfall for the spineless Europeans.

After her boilerplate on how the EU considers the JCPOA to be essential to security, she emphasizes the real reason that Europe was so happy to lift the sanctions on Iran to begin with:

The lifting of nuclear related sanctions is an essential part of the agreement. The European Union has repeatedly stressed that the lifting of nuclear related sanctions has not only a positive impact on trade and economic relations with Iran, but also and mainly crucial benefits for the Iranian people. The European Union is fully committed to ensuring that this continues to be delivered on.

I am particularly worried by the announcement of new sanctions. I will consult with all our partners in the coming hours and days to assess their implications. The European Union is determined to act in accordance with its security interests and to protect its economic investments.

Iranian missiles aren't aimed at Western Europe.

I also love how Mogherini claims that the money going to Iran from European business deals are helping the Iranian people. The money is going towards gassing children to death in Syria and buying thousands more rockets for Hezbollah - all of which accelerated since JCPOA.

The EU purchased some 10 billion euros worth of goods from Iran in 2017.

(h/t Irene)

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05/08 Links Pt2: Trump says US withdrawing from Iran nuclear deal; Walid Shoebat site video calls Judaism a 'satanic religion'; Rabbis on secret visit to Muslim country

From Ian:

Defying world, Trump says US withdrawing from Iran nuclear deal

President Trump announced the US was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal on Tuesday, following through on a campaign promise and defying European allies who implored him to maintain an agreement that international agencies have said Tehran is honoring.

In a highly anticipated address from the White House’s Diplomatic Reception Room, Trump cast the landmark agreement forged under predecessor Barack Obama as ‘defective’ and unable to rein in Iranian behavior or halt the Islamic Republic’s quest to develop a nuclear program.

“I’m announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal,” he said while adding that his administration “will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction.”

Trump said the 2015 agreement, which included Germany, France, and Britain, was a “horrible one-sided deal that should never ever have been made.”

His remarks came ahead of his self-imposed May 12 deadline to walk away from the deal, which is when the president is required to renew waivers on sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program as required under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal is formally called.

Trump announces the U.S. is pulling out of the #IranDeal: "It is clear to me we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement. The Iran deal is defective at its core." pic.twitter.com/hyoPzfrGMe
— Ryan Saavedra 🇺🇸 (@RealSaavedra) May 8, 2018

Netanyahu: Israel ‘fully supports’ Trump’s ‘bold’ pullout from Iran deal

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday led a chorus of effusive Israeli praise for US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and reinstate the “highest level” of US sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

“Israel fully supports President Trump’s bold decision today to reject the disastrous nuclear deal with the terrorist regime in Tehran,” Netanyahu said in a live English-language televised statement from his office, moments after Trump’s announcement.

Trump on Tuesday announced the US withdrawal from what he called the “defective” multinational nuclear deal with Iran, signing a presidential memorandum to reintroduce high-level sanctions on the rogue regime.

Netanyahu said Israel opposed the nuclear deal “from the start,” because, rather than keeping Tehran away from the bomb, “it paves Iran’s path to an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs.”

The lifting of sanctions by world powers since the 2015 accord “has already produced disastrous results,” said the prime minister.

“The deal didn’t push war further away, it actually brought it closer. The deal didn’t reduce Iran’s aggression, it dramatically increased it,” the prime minister said, citing the regime’s military activities across the region.

“Since the deal, we’ve seen Iran’s aggression grow every day — in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Yemen, in Gaza, and most of all, in Syria, where Iran is trying to establish military bases from which to attack Israel.”

Ben Shapiro: WATCH: Trump Just Shredded The Iran Deal. Here Are 5 Reasons He Was Absolutely Right To Do So.

On Tuesday, President Trump announced that the United States would be terminating the Iran deal. He did so on firm footing, to the consternation of the nation’s media as well as European allies who have been itching to do business with the Islamic Republic for decades. Trump explained, correctly, that “the Iranian regime is the leading state sponsor of terror. It exports dangerous missiles, fuels conflicts across the Middle East, and supports terrorist proxies and militias such as Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban and Al Qaeda.” He went on to list the terrorist activities in which the regime has participated, and mentioned that the mullahs have “plunder[ed] the wealth of its own people.”

Then he got into the good stuff.

Trump said that Barack Obama’s Iran deal “was supposed to protect the United States and our allies from the lunacy of an Iranian nuclear bomb,” but that the deal “allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium and – over time – reach the brink of a nuclear breakout.” This is eminently correct. All of the deal’s proponents who suggest that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were curbed by the deal are, quite simply, lying – Iran’s ambitions were merely postponed, with the knowledge that a full nuclear breakout in 2025 would result in zero sanctions of any kind. As Trump stated, “at the point when the United States had maximum leverage, this disastrous deal gave this regime – and it’s a regime of great terror – many billions of dollars, some of it in actual cash – a great embarrassment to me as a citizen and to all citizens of the United States.”

Trump mentioned that Israeli-garnered intelligence showed that Iran had lied repeatedly about its ambitions – that it wanted to develop nuclear weapons all along. The deal, Trump concluded, “didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.” As Trump pointed out, Iran’s military budget “has grown by almost 40 percent,” and the mullahs used the new money “to build its nuclear-capable missiles, support terrorism, and cause havoc throughout the Middle East and beyond.”

5. The Deal Did Not Deter The Quest For Nuclear Weapons. After the Iraq War, Muammar Qaddafi gave up his nuclear program, knowing that there was a serious possibility that the United States would take action. After the Iran nuclear deal, the North Korean regime even more loudly pursued nuclear development, knowing that it would earn goodies from the United States. By pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and making it clear that there are continuing consequences for dictatorships seeking nuclear weapons, Trump has made it obvious to North Korea that their best move here is to disarm, and to do so with credible methods of enforcement.

No, killing the deal won’t lead to US-led war in Iran – Trump has no such desire. But it could and should lead to concerted action by America’s allies, both economic and military, if need be. The false binary presented by the Obama team was always a horrible lie, a propagandistic effort to paint foreign policy hawks into the corner.

The Iran deal was a disaster. Trump is right to kill it.

And the Obama team’s new attempts to curry favor with terrorists in Tehran should tell you everything you need to know about their agenda in the first place.

#Pallywood video of "injured" Gazan getting off of stretcher after cameras are gone

Here's a classic Pallywood moment, where one of those "injured" people who were supposedly shot by Israeli snipers gets up off his stretcher after the group thought all the cameras were off.

No doubt the UN counts this person as one of those shot by Israel.

(h/t Jewish Press Online)

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From Times of Israel:

A series of fires broke out on Monday in southern Israel, apparently as a result of flaming objects flown over the border from the Gaza Strip.

During recent clashes on the Gaza border, Palestinians have adopted a new tactic of sending blazing kites into Israel, sparking fires in nearby agricultural lands.

In a first, helium-filled balloons carrying flaming material were used to start a number of Monday’s blazes, according to Hebrew media reports.

As a result of the fires, hundreds of dunams (dozens of acres) of wheat fields were burned. There were no reports of injuries.

In addition to the flaming balloons sent over the border, a suspected booby trapped kite was reported to have landed near Kibbutz Nahal Oz.

These are not small fires.

According to the Meir Amit ITIC, over 200 incendiary kites have been sent into Israel so far, setting fire to hundreds of dunams of agricultural areas in western Negev communities and causing damage estimated in the hundreds of thousands of shekels.

In the US, deliberately setting a wildire is a felony. Wildfires destroy natural lands as well as buildings. They pollute the air and can cause respiratory problems. Over 50 people have been killed by arson wildfires in the US.

Palestinian media celebrates these fires.

So where is the condemnation from the liberal side of the political spectrum of the specific, deliberate Palestinian policy of setting wildfires in Israel?

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05/08 Links Pt1: Glick: With Hezbollah Calling Shots, Will U.S. Stop Arming Lebanon?; Mahmoud Abbas and the Art of Getting Away With Murder; Paraguay becomes third country to move embassy to Jerusalem

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: With Hezbollah Calling Shots, Will U.S. Stop Arming Lebanon?

Lebanon held elections for its parliament on Sunday for the first time since 2009. Not unexpectedly, Hezbollah was the big winner.

Hezbollah’s representatives and allies now control a majority of the seats in Lebanon’s parliament. Sunni candidates allied with – or rather controlled by – Hezbollah won seats that had been controlled by Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s Future Movement.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun’s party lost several seats, making Aoun more beholden than ever to Hezbollah dictates.

Foreign policy experts will no doubt argue that the election results change nothing on the ground in Lebanon. The Lebanese constitution’s division of power along confessional lines, which reserves the premiership to a Sunni, the presidency to a Christian, and the speakership of Parliament to a Shiite, will force Hezbollah to cooperate with Hariri and Aoun, who are expected to remain in their positions.

This “business as usual” argument bears consideration.

The assumption behind it is that Hezbollah is just a domestic political force. True, it has a relationship with Iran. True, it has its own army. But, the thinking goes, Lebanon is full of sectarian militias, so it makes sense that the Shiites would have one — even one that has an arsenal of 150,000 rockets missiles and constitutes one of the largest, best armed, most powerful, and battle-hardened armies in the region.

Mahmoud Abbas and the Art of Getting Away With Murder

Let’s have fun here: Imagine, for example, that the same liberal-minded cats had raised a righteous racket in September of 2015, when Abbas waxed poetic, saying that the Temple Mount and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—both in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital—are exclusively the property of the Palestinians, warned Jews not to desecrate these holy sites “with their filthy feet,” and promised his listeners that “Every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure, every shahid [martyr] will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God.” Imagine a Times editorial huffing that religious intolerance coupled with clear and direct incitement to violence is reprehensible. Imagine the United Nations calling a meeting to consider a rebuke. Instead, Abbas’s delegates were allowed to fly their flag on Second Avenue a few days later, and the Times editorial board remained silent.

Similar anecdotes abound. There was little outrage when Abbas continued to swear by his pay-for-slay program, which richly rewards the murderers of Jews and makes massacre a far more remunerative career path than, say, civil engineering. (Just last month, a Times reporter alleged that the program, which drove Congress to pass a bipartisan piece of legislation barring payments to Abbas’s Palestinian Authority so long as it continues to support terrorists, was no more than a far-right conspiracy theory.) There was no anger when Abbas, speaking in Istanbul in December of last year, said that the Jews had no real connection to history, adding that “they [Jews] would like to fake this history, they are really masters in this and it is mentioned in the holy Quran they fabricate truth and they try to do that, and they believe in that — but we have been there in this location for thousands of years.” There was hardly a whimper when Abbas, addressing the EU Parliament in the summer of 2016, said that senior rabbis had plotted to poison the Palestinian drinking water, a blood libel favored by the vilest anti-Semites from time immemorial. No European official condemned that statement, and no mainstream American press outlet called for Abbas’s resignation.

Those of us who’ve been reporting on the Palestinian president’s inexcusable bigotry for a while now have abandoned all hope that our deep-seated concerns will be shared by anyone in any position of prominence in the press, the UN, or other bastions of influence favored by progressives. Which is why the current consternation in the Times and elsewhere feels a little bit like a sad joke. Watching Abbas apologize so quickly makes one wonder what might’ve happened had the self-proclaimed champions of peace and human rights bothered to speak up against the petty tyrant from Ramallah much sooner. Abbas’s vile words last week were hardly his first or his vilest, and the time for him to step down as Palestinian leader was long ago. An unbiased press, an international community committed to real reconciliation, a Jewish left less furiously hateful of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and more mistrustful of a long-time, unreconstructed Holocaust denier and champion of violence and terrorism might’ve done a lot of good for Israelis and Palestinians alike. Let’s hope it’s not too late.

Meet Palestine’s Million-Dollar Killers

On October 1, 2015, Eitan Henkin, a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University who also held American citizenship, and Na’ama Henkin, a graphic designer, were traveling in their car with their four young children when four Palestinian terrorists attacked their vehicle, murdering both parents. The Henkins’ killers were arrested by Israel, each sentenced to two life sentences plus an additional 30 years in prison.And thanks to the Palestinian Authority’s pay-for-slay program, the four terrorists, all members of Hamas, are slated to become millionaires.

According to figures released by Israel’s Ministry of Defense earlier this week, the gunman, Karem Lufti Fatahi Razek, will have been paid NIS 11,232,000 ($3.1 million) by the time he turns 80; Zir Ziad Jamal Amar, another leader of the attack, will enjoy NIS 10,056,000 ($2.8 million), while Yahia Muhammad Naif Abdullah Hajj Hamad, another gunman, will receive in NIS 10,080,080 ($2.77 million). No numbers were given for the car’s driver, Samir Zahir Ibrahim Kusah.

The numbers were released ahead of a vote in the Knesset proposing Israel cut some of its payments to the PA until the latter ends its pay-for-slay program. The ministry gave other examples of convicted terrorists who are slated to earn a windfall as a result of murdering Jews. Another example is Omar al-Abed: In July of 2017, al-Abed knocked on the door of the Salomon family, which was busy celebrating the birth of a new grandson. Entering their home with a knife, he murdered Elad, Yosef, and Chaya Salomon, as their spouses and children hid upstairs, terrified. Al-Abed has already been paid NIS 12,200 ($3,370) from the PA, the Defense Ministry claimed, a sum much higher than what average Palestinians earn, and is expected to receive at least NIS 12,604,000 ($3.5 million) by the time he turns 80.

Hamas terrorists may very well have elevated the exploitation of human shields to an art. For years, they have taken advantage of the civilian population in Gaza by hiding among them, while targeting the civilian population of Israel with their rockets.

Now Hamas has done something new. The media would have you believe that Gazans in general, and Hamas in particular, are experimenting for the first time with peaceful protests, reminiscent of Martin Luther King and Selma. In reality, what is new is that Hamas has been using tens of thousands of Gazans -- including children -- as cover while trying to infiltrate Israel, both on land by breaching border fences and by air using kites carrying Molotov cocktails.

Palestinian child throwing rocks at IDF forces and the Gaza security fence during Gaza border riot.
Source: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

Hanan Ashrawi calls on international community to defend PLO payments to terrorists

Times of Israel describes a bill submitted to the Knesset to stop Palestinian payments to terrorists and their families::

Lawmakers pushed forward Monday with a bill allowing the government to hold up money to the Palestinian Authority over its payments to convicted terrorists, a policy critics say encourages terror attacks on Israelis.

The bill, which passed its first reading on a 55-14 vote, would leave the government’s top-level security cabinet with the final say on whether to “freeze” transfer payments to the PA to offset the stipends.

It will now move to committee and must still pass two more Knesset plenum readings before becoming law.

According to the Defense Ministry, the Palestinian Authority in 2017 paid NIS 687 million ($198 million) to the so-called “martyrs’ families fund” and NIS 550 million ($160 million) to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club — some 7 percent of its overall budget.

Palestinian prisoners serving 20-30 year sentences for carrying out terror attacks are eligible for a lifetime NIS 10,000 ($2,772) monthly stipend, the Defense Ministry said, citing PA figures. Those prisoners who receive a 3-5 year sentence get a monthly wage of NIS 2,000 ($554). Palestinian prisoners who are married, have children, live in Jerusalem, or hold Israeli citizenship receive additional payments.

The Defense Ministry on Sunday released figures alleging that some terrorists who killed Israelis will be paid more than NIS 10 million ($2.78 million) each throughout their lifetimes by the PA.

Critics of the current bill have warned it could bankrupt the PA, leading to its collapse.

Palestine Times reports that Hanan Ashrawi wants the international community to protect PLO payments to terrorists. Really.

Member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization Hanan Ashrawi condemned the Knesset vote on the first reading of a bill to deduct the salaries of prisoners and allocations of families of the martyrs of the tax revenues collected by Israel for the Palestinian government, describing it systematic and deliberate looting of the rights of our people.

Ashrawi said in a statement on behalf of the PLO: "The organization considers the legislation that Israel is launching in order to serve its occupation and continue its policy of eliminating the existence of our people on its land to be totally racist and inhuman."

At the end of her statement, Ashrawi called on the international community to take a serious view of Israeli violations and crimes, to stop the policy of disregard and negligence towards its crimes, to take deterrent and punitive measures against it and to hold it accountable for its ongoing crimes and violations and to provide urgent international protection to our unarmed people.

Yes, Hanan Ashrawi is defending paying terrorists as a human right.

It sounds bizarre now, but in a few years the UN General Assembly will probably pass a resolution to protect the Right to Encourage Terrorists to Kill Jews.

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Ma'an reports that Jamal Moheisen, a member of Fatah's Central Committee, called on the Arab countries to implement a resolution of the February Arab summit that called on severing of diplomatic relations with any state that recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moves its embassy to it.

This would, of course, include America.

As usual, the Arabs talk big and have no intention of following through to support their Palestinian brethren. The chances that any Arab nation will halt diplomatic relations with the US over Jerusalem are exactly zero.

Mahmoud Abbas is trying to convince Latin American countries not to follow the US lead, but as far as I can tell, without the naked threats.

The PLO and Palestinian leaders are so intoxicated by the fact that they can call a summit to "protect Jerusalem" on a moment's notice and get useless resolutions of support for their position, that they haven't noticed that the Arab world really doesn't care much about them at all.

Specifically, the Arab world is sick of the Hamas/Fatah infighting and does not want to throw good money after bad to prop up these drama queens.

Al Monitor noted last month:

Khaleel Assali, editor of the East Jerusalem-centric website Akhbar al-Balad, told Al-Monitor, “Jerusalem has become a word that everyone uses to show patriotism. We have heard so much of these words in the past and also millions have been committed in previous summits for Jerusalem, but we have not seen on the ground any changes as a result of these so-called donations.”
On the Akhbar al-Balad website, an unsigned report and undated editorial about the Saudi donation at the Arab Summit said Jerusalemites welcomed the generous gift but expressed skepticism as to whether it will differ from earlier pledges. The article stated, “We estimate that about $3 billion has been pledged to Jerusalem as a total of what has been publicly stated in previous summits, yet only tens of millions have actually reached Jerusalem — and even these amounts were not seen as having made any change in the city.”

And concluded:

Many Palestinians hope that this strong Arab support for Jerusalem will close off any chance that the United States will try to take the holy city “off the table,” a reference to what Trump had boasted about. But having seen this charade before, few if any are confident that this Arab position will not erode and compromises on this essential Arab demand will not be made.

Arab support for Palestinian Arabs has always been a charade, and it is no different today.

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05/07 Links Pt2: Most Israelis Understand That Israel Can Be Right and the Whole World Wrong; Time to Retire the False Palestinian Narrative; Giro d'Italia in Israel: Far more than a cycling race

From Ian:

Most Israelis Understand That Israel Can Be Right and the Whole World Wrong

As the Hamas-led protests at the fence separating Israel from the Gaza Strip become increasingly violent, the Jewish state finds itself in the familiar position of facing worldwide condemnation for minimal efforts to defend itself against its enemies. Yossi Klein Halevi, reflecting on today’s situation and its recent historical precedents, reflects on the dilemma Israel faces:

In 2002, when much of the international community was severely criticizing Israel for its tough military response to the wave of Palestinian suicide bombings known as the second intifada, the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, asked with rhetorical exasperation, “Can Israel be right and the whole world wrong?”

Most Israelis would have surely answered: of course. . . .

Israelis view [the current Gaza] demonstrations as part of a wider assault that includes continual attempts, along every border, to penetrate the country’s defenses—whether through tunnels from Gaza, periodic waves of missiles and rockets fired from Gaza and Lebanon, or, most worrying of all, threats from the growing Iranian military presence in Syria. Those assaults are part of an increasingly successful Iranian plan to surround Israel’s borders with what Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has called “the golden ring in the chain of resistance.” . . . The presence of terrorist enclaves on almost every one of Israel’s borders helps explain the determination of the IDF to prevent demonstrators from trying to break through the fence. . . .

The promise of the state of Israel to the Jewish people was to end its seemingly eternal otherness and restore it to the community of nations. Part of remaining faithful to that vision is to heed the warnings of outsiders, especially friends, and not withdraw in bitter isolation. But no less important for the fulfillment of Israel’s promise is to ensure that those who seek to destroy it are kept from breaching its borders. How to balance those two imperatives defines the challenge facing Israel today.

JPost Editorial: Giro d'Italia in Israel: Far more than a cycling race

The second stage of the Giro d’Italia bicycle race found riders navigating the coastal plain of Israel. They began in Haifa and rode next to the ancient Crusader city of Acre, then headed south, passing Zichron Ya’acov to finish in Tel Aviv. It was 167 km. of easy terrain. The official site of the race described the main obstacles as “roundabouts, traffic islands and sometimes speed bumps.”

On Sunday, the riders continued to the Negev where they zipped passed Sde Boker and the Nabatean city of Avdat, taking in the vistas of the Mitzpe Ramon crater along the way.

Traveling outside of Europe is a first in the 101-year history of the Giro d’Italia. Israeli-Canadian philanthropist Sylvan Adams, co-owner of Israel’s professional Israel Cycling Academy team, played the key role in bringing the competition to Jerusalem. He said he sought to bring the race to Israel to show how beautiful the country is to the billion television viewers who watch cycling.

“Unlike a soccer match or a basketball game, which takes place inside a stadium, cycling takes place outdoors. So for three days, with 16 hours of TV coverage starting in Jerusalem, our beautiful and important national capital, and then going from Acre in the North all the way down to Eilat, they will literally see all the country,” Adams told The Jerusalem Post.

The coverage of the cycling was only one of many positive outcomes. The attendance of UAE Team Emirates and Bahrain-Meridas was another. Although the riders from these teams are not from the Gulf states, their participation was symbolic. It shows that sports can be a form of diplomacy, as well as a way to put Israel on the map as a place removed from news of the conflict that generally drowns out other coverage.

That doesn’t mean the conflict was entirely ignored. The Guardian noted that Israel was “one of the most contested territories in the world” and said the race took place on a “complex political landscape” overshadowed by violence in Gaza. In general, the unprecedented sporting event appears to have emerged unscathed by political controversy. No boycotts or protests interdicted the riders. This is a testament to the work of the organizers and likely symbolic of the overall change in attitudes toward Israel globally.

Israel Unveils the Middle East’s First Velodrome That Meets Olympic Standards

The Sylvan Adams Velodrome in Tel Aviv, touted as the most advanced indoor cycling arena in the Middle East, was unveiled a few days before the Big Start of the Giro d’Italia road-biking race in Israel, scheduled to begin in Jerusalem on May 4 and reach Tel Aviv on May 5.

The arena, still under construction, will meet the Olympic standards of 250 meters in circumference and aims to develop and promote competitive and recreational cycling in Israel.

Professional cyclists from the Israel Cycling Academy did the first test run of the tracks as Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai watched along with Yoni Yarom, chairman of the Israel Cycling Federation, and Sylvan Adams, co-owner of the Israel Cycling Academy and honorary president of Giro’s Big Start in Israel.

Palestinians condemn UAE, Bahrain presence in cycle race in Israel

Palestinians have expressed outrage at teams from the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain for taking part in the opening legs of the Giro d'Italia cycling race in Israel over the weekend, which they say undermined Arab solidarity with their cause.

The presence of the Gulf states' teams in the top cycling race -- which has now moved on to its home territory in Italy -- broke a boycott of Israel in place since the start of the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948.

In an unusually barbed statement to a fellow Arab country, the Palestinian Olympic Committee said their participation was "a stab in the back to the great sacrifices made by the Palestinian people ... and a free service for the occupation."

UAE officials did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment and Bahrain's ministry of information referred questions to the team itself. Neither of the teams immediately responded to emailed inquiries.

None of the cyclists in either of the 8-men teams -- Bahrain–Merida and UAE Team Emirates -- appeared to be Bahraini or Emirati citizens and were almost all European, according to profiles on the event's official website.

One of the things that makes debate over whether BDS is winning or losing so confusing is lack of common agreement regarding what constitutes success and failure.

For example, this year we saw more BDS votes in student government than in previous years, and more of those votes go in favor of the BDSers. Needless to say, a movement like BDS which demands we treat everything (including defeat) as wins for them insists that more student government votes going their way constitutes unstoppable momentum for their cause. And, from our side, it’s difficult to totally dismiss more student votes against Israel as irrelevant.

Yes, school administrations have held the line by condemning and insisting they will never act on the non-binding requests made by this year’s Student Senate. And after two decades of effort, it is relevant to point out that all BDS has to show for itself are some toothless measures passed by transient student leaders through votes often taken behind the backs of constituents (meaning they cannot be said to represent campus opinion).

But this assumes that the goal of the BDS “movement” is to actually cause financial harm to the Jewish state. While that may be an ultimate desire or dream, their main or current goals might be different, requiring us to tease these out before measuring success or failure (or selecting our own strategies and tactics to fight them).

The most obvious goal the boycotters are trying to achieve is to brand Israel as a racist, repressive state akin to South Africa (which, it should be noted, ended its Apartheid system years before most of today’s college students were born). Given this, anything they can do to poison the minds of the young against the Jewish state represents furthering their actual goal. So even if a student government vote does not go their way, the speeches they make and letters in school papers condemning Israel in harsh and unfair terms represent the actual political activity they are engaged in designed to further their real goal of making Israel seem so loathsome that its elimination should be seen as virtuous rather than horrifying.

Another goal was best labeled by William Jacobson at Legal insurrection who described BDS as a “Settler Colonial Ideology” which strives to colonize and dominate the entire Left end of the political spectrum and make anyone who considers themselves left of center subservient to their will.

This goal has received a boost over the last year as anti-Trump “resistance,” coupled with the emergence of the ideology of intersectionality (which insists all progressive causes be linked), provided the most aggressive activists (which tend to be anti-Israel partisans) the opportunity to make demands on those with whom they join in “common cause.”

The scare quotes I just used around “common cause” was meant to illustrate that for a Settler Colonial Ideology like BDS, finding common cause is a one-way street. This is why women and gay groups must sign onto the anti-Israel agenda to be considered intersectional partners in good standing, while those pushing the intersectional agenda will never mention – much less fight for – women and gays repressed throughout the Middle East (including in “Palestine”).

In many ways, ground-level successes – such as the aforementioned student government votes – are a result of the success the BDS colonial project over the last year. And, as we have seen in the UK, the fully colonized anti-Israel/anti-Semitic Left can end up just one election away from obtaining genuine power.

So now that we know what the most important goals of the BDS project really are, how best to fight it? Having our own goals clearly articulated is a first step, a subject I’ll discuss next.

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This seems to have flown completely under the radar.

From Egypt Today, May 1:

President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi received a delegation from the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) on Tuesday in the presence of Abbas Kamel, interim president of Egypt’s intelligence services.

During the meeting, President Sisi expressed Egypt's keenness to be in constant contact with all sects of the American society in order to enhance common understanding and intensify consultations on the diverse challenges facing the region, noting the decades-long strategic relations between the two countries.

For their part, the American attendees stressed the importance of the strategic relations between Egypt and the United States in all fields, expressing appreciation for Egypt’s efforts on various fronts, especially in addressing terrorism in general and the framework of Comprehensive Operation Sinai 2018 in particular.

The delegation also praised Sisi's efforts in countering extremist ideology and realizing economic development through the steps undertaken as part of the country’s economic reform program, stressing that the economy is back to the recovery path.

The president also stressed the importance of supporting the national institutions and working on enabling them to carry out their roles and responsibilities in maintaining security and combating terrorism.

He also reiterated Egypt's support for the international efforts and initiatives aimed at achieving a just and comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian issue, which lies at the heart of priorities for the Arab world.

President Sisi stressed that a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian issue will provide a new reality by shaping public opinion, which will contribute to the stability and security of the region as a whole.

JINSA is a hawkish group, supporting withdrawal from the Iran deal and with seeming unwavering support for Israel.

This visit is not mentioned on their webpage as of this writing. I'm curious why not.

(h/t Michelle)

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