Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, June 14, 2018

06/14 Links Pt1: The silver lining in the UN’s almost-condemnation of Hamas; Hamas threatens to launch 5,000 fire kites, balloons Friday; Why Abbas Refuses to Ease Sanctions on Gaza

From Ian:

‘Times Are Changing’ at UN: US Wins Plurality of Votes to Condemn Hamas During General Assembly Day of Drama

The 50-year-old reputation of the UN General Assembly as a trusty platform for incitement against the State of Israel acquired its first blemish on Wednesday evening, when a plurality of member states voted in favor of a US-sponsored amendment condemning Hamas for the deadly violence on the border between Israel and Gaza.

“The UN bias against Israel runs very deep, but the fact that the American amendment against Hamas won a voting plurality in the UN General Assembly shows that times are changing,” an official at the US mission to the UN told The Algemeiner after the vote.

The official’s observation followed an afternoon of high drama over a resolution submitted by Arab and Islamic member states that blamed Israel for the Gaza violence, ignored Hamas entirely, and demanded “international protection” for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The US amendment — holding Hamas responsible for rocket attacks against Israel, the destruction of crossing points delivering humanitarian aid from Israel into Gaza, and the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields — won the support of 62 member states, but only after an attempt led by the Algerian delegation to prevent a vote outright failed.

As Miroslav Lajčák, the president of the UN General Assembly, attempted to call a vote on the American amendment, the Algerians, backed by Cuba, the State of Palestine and Venezuela among others, invoked a procedural rule to prevent the vote from taking place at all. Speaking from the floor, US Ambassador Nikki Haley countered that “denying a vote on the US amendment would be the height of this body’s hypocrisy.”

Haley Lambasts U.N. Opposition to Amendment Condemning Hamas

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley called on U.N. member states Wednesday to vote on an amendment condemning the Palestinian terror group Hamas.

Haley touted the U.S. amendment implicating Hamas in the violence and incitement in Gaza to balance the resolution put forward condemning Israel for "excessive violence" in response to the riots. Turkey and Algeria brought the resolution on behalf the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and Haley criticized members who are quick to denounce Israel but scared to oppose Hamas.

"Nothing in our amendment is controversial; it would condemn Hamas for launching rockets, diverting resources to build military infrastructure, and obstructing humanitarian aid," Haley said. "These are issues where we should be united in opposing Hamas. This motion suggests that these issues are not even worthy of a vote in the General Assembly. What are you afraid of to vote on this amendment?"

Later Wednesday afternoon, the General Assembly voted to adopt the non-binding resolution without the U.S. amendment mentioning Hamas. Assembly members voted in favor of the U.S. amendment but fell short of the two-thirds majority needed, so the amendment failed.

Haley has strongly opposed the U.N.’s myriad denunciations of Israel and recently vetoed a similar resolution in the Security Council. The rioting and violence along the border between Israel and Palestinian-controlled Gaza involved attacking Israeli soldiers and resulted in about 120 Palestinians being killed, most of whom were members of terror groups.

She concluded by saying Hamas’ actions worked against the cause of peace.

Netanyahu praises Nikki Haley for strong defense of Israel at U.N.

Even before the U.N. passed a General Assembly condemning Israel for “excessive use of force” in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised US ambassador Nikki Haley for Wednesday night her spirited defense of Israel in the U.N. and her efforts to get an amendment to the resolution added that would condemn Hamas violence.

"Israel appreciates the firm support of the Trump administration in Israel at the United Nations and Ambassador Haley's resolute statement today, which exposed the hypocrisy of the bias against Israel at the U.N.,” he said in a statement

The U.N. resolution condemning Israel passed by a vote of 120-8, with 45 abstentions. Haley's amendment also passed by a simple majority of 62-58, with 42 abstentions, but because of a procedural ruling that a two-third majority was needed, that amendment was not adopted.

“The unceasing focus of the United Nations in Israel shames the organization, it also diverts attention from other burning issues that require the attention of the international community,” Netanyahu said.

Regarding the situation in Gaza, Netanyahu said “Hamas is responsible for the difficult situation there, for the loss of life and suffering resulting from the violent riots it has been waging in recent weeks.”

Netanyahu said that Instead of improving the lives of Gaza residents, “Hamas uses the Palestinian population as a human shield in the ongoing war of terror against Israel. President Abbas only exacerbated the humanitarian distress in Gaza by cutting salaries in Gaza and refusing to pay for the electricity supplied to Gaza.”

UN General Assembly condemns Israel for ‘excessive’ force at Gaza border

With a huge majority, the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution condemning Israel for using “excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate” force during the recent clashes at the Gaza border and calling for an “international protection mechanism” for Palestinian civilians.

The dramatic, down to the wire session saw the United States attempt to add a paragraph condemning Hamas, which was ultimately rejected on procedural grounds though most member states supported it. The resolution, proposed by Algeria and Turkey, then passed with 120 “yes” votes, 8 “no” votes and 45 abstentions.

The eight countries that voted against the resolution were the US, Israel, Australia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Togo and the Solomon Islands.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement issued before the actual voting took place, condemned the resolution, entitled “Protection of the Palestinian civilian population.”

“The UN’s incessant focus on Israel not only brings shame to the organization. It also draws attention away from so many other pressing issues that demand the attention of the international community,” he said.

Andrew Pessin and Doron Ben-Atar have edited Anti-Zionism on Campus, a scary look at the situation on many college campuses today in the US and worldwide.

After an introduction by the authors, the book has 24 chapters written by scholars and other employees at colleges and universities, followed by 7 chapters written by students and alumni, describing their experiences clashing with anti-Israel forces on campus.

The stories by the scholars are almost all depressingly similar. A university employee, usually a professor, encounters an anti-Israel group, usually Students for Justice in Palestine or some other group that advocates the boycott of Israel. The encounter could be because the scholar wanted to sponsor a visit by an Israeli scholar, or he/she wanted to fight against a BDS resolution.

The scholars appear to me to be almost always liberal. They support Palestinian rights. Most are against Israel's settlement policy. Some go out of their way to help Palestinians.

They are stunned when they are confronted with BDS hate.

Nearly all of them try to have a dialogue with the BDSers. They try to have debates, or cosponsor lectures on topics they might have in common. They almost beg the BDSers for the chance to present their side of the story so the students can decide for themselves who makes a stronger case.

In literally every case, the BDSers refuse to have any sort of dialogue. They continue to hammer home the message of Israel and Israelis (and often Jews) being racist and colonialist and violators of human rights. They try to add their venom to the agendas of minority groups.

And in nearly every case, the BDSers viciously attack the liberal, usually Jewish scholar who tried so hard to meet with and discuss things with them. The BDSers accuse the professors of harassment or bias or hate or whatever they can.

The depressing pattern continues: in many cases while the pro-Israel scholar tries to defend him or herself through the proper university channels, following the rules of that institution which often forbids them to say anything publicly about the case and often does not allow them legal representation, the BDSers attack the scholar as a racist in social media, often getting their lies published in Electronic Intifada or similar sites.

The scholars are stunned, upset, and feels their hands are tied. The administration more often than not does not step in to stop the libels. (There were a couple of notable exceptions.) The scholars are concerned about their careers, about their ability to teach with the accusation of racism on their heads, accusations that they cannot fight because they trust the university procedures that the Israel haters happily bypass with impunity.

It is a playbook, but each of the scholars are so caught up in defending themselves and in trying to get an apathetic or hostile administration to listen to their side of the story that they do not realize that they cannot win if they play by the rules.

There are some variants in the story but in almost every case people are attacked, professionally as well as crudely, for a principled position, and the people who are supposed to defend this person end up making their lives hell. There are also a couple of more general essays on BDS and its methods and goals.

The student essays are similar - showing intimidation against them for holding a pro-Israel, or an insufficiently anti-Israel, position.

All the campuses described, from the US to UK to Australia and Canada, are simply not places where it is safe to publicly identify as a Zionist or to say anything pro-Israel because you will be attacked and smeared.

There are other important lessons that can be clearly drawn from the book. The BDS movement claims that they do not target individuals - but this book documents that this is exactly what they do.

The people claiming to want "fairness" or "justice" are against Israel's very existence, and against a two state solution. This is not a position of fairness, it is an extremist position of hate that is not only tolerated but celebrated on campus. They will treat anyone who wants actual peace and two states and Palestinian rights with the exact same attacks and the exact same vitriol as if they were right wing Zionist "settlers." Israel is evil, full stop, and they are infecting a generation of students with that message.

The book is a worthwhile read, if only to understand the macro picture that the writers often miss in their own local academic environment. My only problem with the book is that too often the writers, having been forced to defend themselves in grotesque ways within a system where the cards are stacked against them, go into details of their defenses that are not as fascinating to the reader as the authors might think. Some of the essays are excellent, such as Judea Pearl's.

In every single story, the BDSers are shown to be the most intolerant bigots possible - but since they pretend to be on the side of social justice, our esteemed institutions of higher learning are not willing to label them what they are: hate groups.

That is really the lesson that I get from this book, even though it is emphatically not a lesson that most of the victims of BDS have managed to understand even today. Too many of the authors of the essays still hold on to the fantasy that open debate will solve the problem, that people will eventually reject BDS in the marketplace of ideas.

BDS is hate. SJP is a hate group. It does not want dialogue - it only wants to demonize the Jewish citizens of Israel and anyone who does not follow their BDS manifesto of boycott, divestment and sanctions, purportedly by "Palestinian civil society." The BDSers are bullies, not academics. There is nothing that is beneath the BDSers, including defacing the doors of faculty and threatening them.

The only way to fight BDS is to use their playbook. Just as they want everyone to associate Israel with the words "apartheid" and "racist," we need to associate BDS with hate and bigotry. Not to wait until a person becomes a victim, but to be proactive, the way BDS is. To put "BDS=HATE" stickers on every poster, every "apartheid wall," every flyer. To make sure that every college student, when they see the initials SJP or BDS or whichever anti-Israel organization is on campus, sees the word "HATE."

And these people must be attacked the way they attack the pro-Israel crowd. If they try to silence an Israeli speaker or stop a pro-Israel activity, then they must be charged with bigotry and hate through the proper university channels. Put them on the defensive. Make them waste their time finding lawyers and trying to keep their positions.

Professors, especially the apparently mostly liberal professors writing in this book, are generally loathe to be muscular, pro-active Zionists who defend Israel proudly. That is because they have already accepted a campus that is anti-Israel and they still believe in an ideal campus that hasn't existed since the 1960s.

But if they want to bring campuses back to becoming places that value debate and arguments, then these professors and scholars and students need to push against BDS' Achilles heel, that they refuse to debate. Insist that they want to debate and emphasize that BDS advocates are babies who cannot defend themselves in open debate.

BDS is aggressive and regressive. Zionism is progressive. Zionism needs to be equally proud, equally public, and equally willing to demonize and expose the haters.

Only then will college students gravitate towards the pro-Israel position. People want to be associated with the proud, not the cowering.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Once again, Human Rights Watch has issued a report on how evil Israel is, this time in context of the Gaza riots.

And once again it shows that the point of the organization isn't human rights but attacking Israel.

A careful reading of the report shows that they know they are lying.

For example:

Israeli forces’ repeated use of lethal force in the Gaza Strip since March 30, 2018, against Palestinian demonstrators who posed no imminent threat to life may amount to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. Israeli forces have killed more than 100 protesters in Gaza and wounded thousands with live ammunition.

“Israel’s use of lethal force when there was no imminent threat to life has taken a heavy toll in life and limb,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The international community needs to rip up the old playbook, where Israel conducts investigations that mainly whitewash the conduct of its troops and the US blocks international accountability with its Security Council veto, and instead impose real costs for such blatant disregard for Palestinian lives.”

Yet later on HRW admits that the Israeli Supreme Court has looked at Israel's open fire regulations and decided they were within the law, so this is beyond any supposed "whitewash" by the IDF. So HRW attacks the well-respected court as well:

On May 25 Israel’s supreme court rejected petitions by human rights groups against the military’s live-fire orders without applying the clear standard on the use of lethal force set out in international human rights law, and substantially deferring to the government’s discretion. The court’s unwillingness to apply international law and to challenge a policy that authorizes lethal force even when there is no imminent threat to life highlights the importance of the International Criminal Court prosecutor opening a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine.

Yes, HRW is claiming that the Supreme Court is ignoring the law.

In another place, HRW mentions Israel's legal arguments that were apparently supported by the Supreme Court:

The government response rejected applying human rights law applicable in law enforcement to the demonstrations, and claimed that only international humanitarian law, applicable in fighting in armed conflicts, applies, because the protests were “organized, coordinated and directed by Hamas, a terrorist organization engaged in armed conflict with Israel.”

HRW states as a fact that these demonstrations fall under "human rights law and not the laws of armed conflict. Israel gives a specific reason why this is not true. Israel's Supreme Court agrees with Israel. HRW ignores that and insists that Israel adhere to a standard that they are not required to meet - and HRW condemns Israel on the basis of the false premise of which laws Israel is obligated to meet.

But that isn't enough. HRW says on the one hand that Israel should use the more restrictive human rights laws rather than the laws of war - in its headline it accuses Israel of "war crimes!" This inconsistency is only possible because HRW only has one consistency - find ways to blame Israel no matter what, and change the yardstick to measure Israel against as needed.

HRW quotes Israel's position later, and does not come up with any substantive arguments against it except its own gut instinct that Israel is lying:

Israeli officials argued that Hamas directed protesters to cross the fences so that armed fighters could run through the breach to kill or kidnap Israeli civilians or soldiers. The Israeli military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, said on May 15 that there was “no dilemma” in deciding between “having a lower amount of Palestinian casualties,” and using lethal force in order to “defend Israeli communities immediately behind the [Gaza perimeter fences].” The government’s April 29 court response elaborated that soldiers could use “potentially lethal force” to prevent protesters from breaching the fences and crossing from Gaza to Israel if “the evaluation is that the force is necessary at that time to remove the danger before it is realized, even if the danger itself has not yet become imminent,” and that shooting demonstrators before they reach the fences is justified because if crowds breached them, it would “operationally require live fire on a massive scale.”

...Israeli concerns that members of armed groups would use the protests as cover to fire at Israeli soldiers or plant explosives near the fences do not justify the repeated use of live ammunition, including with apparent lethal intent, against protesters who posed no imminent lethal threat, Human Rights Watch said.

HRW is making guesses on why the IDF targeted who they targeted. They trust Gazans to tell the truth about what the people who were shot were doing. They push the idea that invading another country is not reason to be shot.

Netanyahu referred to a May 15 statement by a Hamas leader, Salah al-Bardawil, that 50 of 62 people killed by Israeli forces on May 14 were Hamas members – “in other words, members of a terrorist organization,” Netanyahu said. Israeli military and political officials also claimed that Hamas “strategically placed [civilians] in harm’s way” because graphic media coverage of their injuries would harm Israel’s image. Hamas’s encouragement of and support for the protests and the participation of Hamas members in the protests do not justify the use of live ammunition against protestors who posed no threat to life.

HRW again is twisting the facts. The Hamas members who were indeed further from the fence were directing civilians to cut the fence and to provide smoke cover for the fence cutters. This is a military operation, and targeting the people who were giving the military orders is perfectly legal in an armed conflict (as is targeting those who are trying to invade your country.)

The fact that the military leaders were wearing civilian clothing, a violation of international law, doesn't bother HRW.

Perhaps most outrageously, HRW implies that even if masses of Gazans poured through a breached fence into Israel, then Israel still wouldn't have the right to defend itself:

In addition to the barbed wire fence separating Gaza and Israel, the two-meter-high fencing with electronic sensors, ditches, and military watchtowers along the Gaza periphery, in 2015 the Israeli military built fences around 12 Israeli communities near Gaza with electronic sensors that detect any contact with the fence and automatically alert the military. This further undercuts the claim that the protesters posed an imminent treat.

How, exactly, would the IDF stop thousands of Gazans who were instructed to attack Jews with knives once they were already in Israel - especially when HRW says that the IDF isn't allowed to shoot them even then?

HRW simply doesn't care about the facts. It wrote the headline of accusing Israel of possible war crimes before it even talked to a single Gazan to support the argument. As always, it judges Israel to be guilty first, and then it looks for facts or half-truths to twist into justifying their initial accusation.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

TOI reports:

Iraq’s representative at the 2017 Miss Universe pageant — whose Instagram photo last year with her Israeli counterpart forced her family to flee the Middle Eastern country — was cheered and hugged this week by shoppers at an iconic Jerusalem market during an extraordinary visit to Israel.

“It actually felt weird — the people look like my people. And the city looks like Damascus, like Syria, and I’ve been there, so everything seems familiar to me,” Sarah Idan said in a TV item aired Tuesday by Hadashot.

While Idan toured the Mahane Yehuda market, she encountered numerous Israelis of Iraqi origin, one of whom told her she would like to go back to Iraq.

“Inshallah,” or God willing, was Idan’s answer.

Idan was showered with praise, with one Israeli woman telling her: “Thank you for being so brave, you are an inspiration to all the women in the world.”

The 26-year-old Iraqi-born contestant lives in the United States, but her family was forced to relocate from the Arab country after a photo she posed for together with Miss Israel Adar Gandelsman went viral last year.

At the time, she withstood considerable pressure and refused to remove the Instagram image.

Here she is in Mahane Yehuda:

Idan spoke at the AJC conference:

Imagine the reaction from an Arab audience at her vision of a future where Jews could visit Arab countries and Arabs could visit Tel Aviv.

She was also interviewed on i24:

Look how enthusiastic the entire country is about the idea of peace with the Arab world, about a vision of normalcy between Israel and its neighbors, about a young woman who risked her life in order to promote peace between ordinary people.

Compare to the uproar in Arab media whenever either an Israeli manages to visit an Arab country, or when some of theirs visits Israel.

With all the demonization of Israel as a violent colonialist regime at the UN, at NGOs and in the media, this episode shows very clearly that the real problem is this: Only Israel, as a nation, wants real peace with the other side.

(h/t Yoel)

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06/13 Links Pt2: Bill to Counter Palestinian Textbooks That ‘Demonize Israel’ Introduced in Congress; The Palestinians’ ‘Kitetifada’ deserves an ignoble prize

From Ian:

Bipartisan Bill to Counter Palestinian Textbooks That ‘Demonize Israel’ Introduced in Congress

Members of Congress have brought forward a bipartisan bill to review textbooks and other materials used in Palestinian schools that have been accused of promoting extremism.

The Palestinian Authority Educational Curriculum Transparency Act — introduced in the House of Representatives on Thursday by Rep. David Young (R-Iowa) — calls on the US State Department to annually verify whether educational resources published by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the United Nations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip continue to encourage “violence or intolerance toward other nations or ethnic groups.”

The bill notes that despite being reformed in 2016 and 2017, Palestinian curriculums for grades 1 through 11 “fail to meet the international standards of peace and tolerance in educational materials established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.”

Textbooks used by the PA and the UN’s Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) likewise “demonize Israel, encourage war, and teach children that Palestinian statehood can be achieved through violence,” it warns.

UNRWA — which has in the past asserted that its textbooks have been rigorously reviewed to ensure they are in line with UN standards — maintains 349 schools in the Palestinian territories, with 240,400 students in Gaza and 50,000 students in the West Bank.

If passed, the State Department will be required to inform Congress whether any US foreign aid was used to fund the inciting materials, and of any steps the PA and UNRWA have taken to address the situation.

False Terminology and the Delegitimization of Israel

Furthermore, when Israel pre-empts attacks, it is the aggressor, when it responds to attacks, its response is disproportionate, when it is attacked, it deserves little sympathy because of the occupation. In effect, the liberal media whitewashes the disproportionality of the Islamic terror onslaught on Israeli Jews as a “natural response” to “settlement growth” or “glimmering hopes of peace”, while requiring Israel to adhere to artificial under-proportionality “norms” when dealing with the homicidal national security threats.

This is not neutral reporting, this a concerted effort to create an anti-Israel bias and resentment, bordering on incitement.

Then there are false clichés and expressions that are used left and right. Take the “peace process”, for example. No sane person would choose war over peace, yet if the “peace process” is in fact a cynical euphemism for Israeli land surrender without enforceable long-term security guarantees, no sane person would support it, unless, like many Western liberals, he believes that the land is stolen in the first place.

Despite the obvious falsity of this claim, it is impossible to fully rebut it as long as one continues to call the land “Palestine” and the Arabs “Palestinians”. The same goes for other liberal mantras, such as the “two-state solution” rather than proposal, the “cycle of violence”, which is equates terrorism with self-defense and security measures, or the “land-for-peace” formula, which has the accuracy of a Russian roulette.

The unravelling of these false myths will not come about until the false terminology is unravelled together with them. All those who value truth and integrity must call these terms for what they are: false euphemisms, misnomers or canards.

Once the anti-Israel jargon is replaced with the historically accurate, logical and balanced terminology, the demonization and delegitimisation of Israel would lose its appeal for the decent but largely ignorant majority, and the unique story of Israel as a nation risen from the ashes of the Holocaust and the two thousand years of exile would give inspiration and hope to people around the world.

The Palestinians’ ‘Kitetifada’ deserves an ignoble prize

With Hamas’s “Kitetifada,” Palestinians are pushing new frontiers in terrorism, again – while giving nationalism a bad name, again.

It’s become a routine surprise to watch the world overlook Palestinians’ assaults on international norms. One day their goons threaten Argentinean soccer stars – and everybody blames Miri Regev for the “Messi mess.” (Even while criticizing her grandstanding, let’s acknowledge that boycotters don’t need her to prompt their thuggishness.) Before and after that debacle, Palestinians violate the Geneva Convention’s ban on attacking foodstuffs or crops, and everybody blames Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu for the American embassy to Jerusalem move.

We should be used to this selective perception and moral prosecution-as-persecution. Still, it’s disappointing that many who renounce nationalism because they dislike Trump’s aggressiveness nevertheless tolerate Palestinians’ violence.

It’s become one of this spring’s big underreported stories. Once again being honest, exposing the “March of Return” as an attempt to destroy its neighbor, Hamas launched hundreds of combustible, often poisonous kites and balloons.

The kites – in a touch no novelist or anti-Palestinian propagandist would dare concoct – were exposed by Adele Raemer of Kibbutz Nirim and other intrepid bloggers as gifts from the Japanese people to Gaza’s children. While Israel’s air defenses have intercepted as many as 500 burning kites, another 300 or so have set more than 270 fires, destroying 2,510 hectares of land, including vast parts of the Be’eri Crater Nature Reserve. Once known for its red carpets of anemones every February, its gazelles, its porcupines, its turtles, the reserve is now scarred by tens of hectares of newly blackened wasteland.

The Geneva Convention’s 1977 protocols proclaim: “It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works... whatever the motive.”

Varda Epstein’s recent review of my book Ten From The Nations: Torah Awakening Among Non-Jews offers me a perfect opportunity to elaborate on how I see the world and why I do what I do. To the best of my knowledge, Varda and I have met exactly once, fleetingly. Nevertheless, we maintain a mutually respectful, professional relationship and admire one another’s work. It’s important to mention that at the outset because, although our viewpoints differ on a number of issues, civility is important to both of us. And I thank Varda for her graciousness in giving me a chance to respond.

I spend a significant amount of time each week building bridges with people from the Nations. Most of them come from Christian backgrounds, although many of the people with whom I interact no longer consider themselves mainstream Christians. A huge part of what distinguishes them from the rest of the 2.2 billion Christians worldwide is their fascination with Israel, with the Torah and with the Jewish people. Although they identify variously as Christian Zionists, as Ephraimites, as Bnei Noach or as gerei toshav, they are united in their understanding that the Jewish people have something to offer them.

I believe we are in an unprecedented time in history when, after 2,000 years of anti-Semitic pogroms, forced conversions and murder of Jews by Christians, there are now Christians who are singing a whole new song to the Jewish people. These are the people whose stories I published in Ten From The Nations and whose spiritual longings to get closer to Israel and to authentic Torah I both admire and work to nurture. In a nutshell, these are not your grandparents’ goyim. These are not the non-Jews you’ve been taught to fear, mistrust and hold at arm’s length.

I was raised to mistrust non-Jews at worst and to see them as irrelevant to my life at best. Since becoming involved in this work, my viewpoint has changed. It took a series of paradigm shifts for me to get to where I am now.

As I see it, Varda and I differ in our understanding about three main issues.

A) Do all Christians have a missionizing agenda?
B) To whom does the Torah belong?
C) Do the Jewish people have any responsibility to non-Jews?

I’ll address these one at a time.

Do all Christians have a missionizing agenda? I believe that the vast majority still do. At the same time, I have personally met hundreds of people coming from Christian backgrounds who actively repent for the sins that have been committed against the Jewish people for 2,000 years. They have put to rest the fallacious and destructive ideas behind Replacement Theology and no longer believe that Christianity replaced Torah and that Christians replaced the Jewish people in God’s eyes. In the main, it was the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel that rocked their theology and caused them to reexamine the most fundamental truths they had been taught. Rather than being the “strange ducks” that Varda suggests, I believe they are spiritual leaders who buck the potent forces of convention to follow Truth.

It has been suggested that only 1% of Christians today have renounced Replacement Theology. On the one hand, 1% is a tiny minority. On the other hand, 1% is 22 million people. And that’s enough to keep me busy for the rest of my life.

I wish to be very clear. I find the proselytizing of Jews odious. I have zero tolerance for it. The relationships I build with people from the Nations are based on mutual respect. We agree to let our differences be settled by God at the End of Days. In the meantime, we inhabit the space where our worldviews overlap – a love of God, a love for Israel, a longing for Torah and a joy at seeing Biblical prophecy fulfilled in our days.

To whom does the Torah belong? I used to believe that Torah was the exclusive property of the Jewish people and its precepts were for us alone. Over time, the words of the Torah itself convinced me that it was intended, from the beginning, to be shared with the Nations. I believe that the Jewish people were tasked with being guardians of the Torah – until the rest of the world was ready for its teachings. Then we were intended to become the teachers of Torah to people from the Nations, while maintaining our unique relationship with God’s Holy texts.

Do the Jewish people have any responsibility to non-Jews? There are dozens of verses in Tanach, and also in our liturgy, even during Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, that speak of a time when the entire world will worship the One True God, the God of Israel. I believe that time has dawned. The shift is already taking place. Just as it says in the Book of Zechariah, people from the Nations are aligning with the Jewish people and begging, “Teach us about God.” This is unprecedented and the exact thing for which we have been preparing for 3,300 years.

Varda wrote, “Being a ‘light unto the nations’ doesn’t mean preaching Torah to them. It means being a good and moral example. No more, no less.” I also used to think exactly as she does. Now I see things differently. Today, I understand that fulfilling our God-given role as Ohr LaGoyim means that, when the Nations are receptive, we are obligated to teach them. Without question, the people I teach are desperately hungry for authentic Torah. It may not yet be the tafkid of the Jewish people as a whole, but I believe that Hashem has given this task to me personally, to serve among the group of Jews who are willing to build bridges with people from the Nations, using Torah as a primary tool.

Varda wrote, “I don’t understand why any Jew wants to help these people, instead of their own people, as a calling. I think that’s bizarre.” Working with non-Jews is an important part of my life, but it is not the only thing I do in life. For me, it’s not “instead of”. Rather it is “in addition to”. We are not all intended to do the same work in the world. Each of us is uniquely qualified for certain tasks. I believe, with all my heart and soul, that Hashem chose this challenging work for me personally. As Varda correctly said, I do indeed see it as holy work.

It would be misleading if I didn’t acknowledge that there are landmines in this work. There are things I see, hear and read that make the Jew in me cringe. All is not sweetness and light. We are building something new and it’s a huge and, oftentimes, messy job. I accept that as part of the process. I see Hashem’s Hand in bringing geula closer by re-aligning the relationship between Jews and people from the Nations. I can be patient.

I realize that, no matter what I say, there are people who will remain unconvinced. I accept that as part of the nature of what I do. If you have questions you’d like to ask me, I can be reached at editor@tenfromthenations.com. I’m happy to conduct a respectful dialogue with anyone who is interested.

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Hamas To Advise Kim On Oppressing Own People For Political Gain (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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Gaza City, June 14 - Openness that many hope will come in the aftermath of a summit between the leaders of the US and North Korea has officials in the Islamist movement that governs Gaza hoping they can provide expertise to the dictator of the latter country in such areas where they have significant experience, such as depriving one's population of essential goods and investing resources instead in near-suicidal, Sisyphean projects for purposes of threatening neighbors.

A spokesman for Hamas told reporters today (Wednesday) that while the long-term outcome of the warming relations between the US and North Korea remains undetermined, Kim Jong-un's administration in Pyongyang could benefit from more than a decade of experience that the organization has accrued since overthrowing Fatah in a violent coup in 2007.

"Mr. Kim has much to learn from us, and we are willing teachers," stated Yahya Sinwar, who leads the movement within the Gaza Strip. "The many parallels between our situations invite collaboration across a range of issues, but most importantly, we have much in common in our preference for conflict over prosperity. Both societies stand to gain from a sharing of information and expertise in that arena."

"Of course our situations differ somewhat, in that non of our people are starving, thanks to the UN, whereas Kim starves his own people," continued Sinwar. "But the principle remains the same. He diverts crucial resources that could feed his people into his nuclear and military programs, whereas we allocate every available dollar to tunnels for attacking Israel and smuggling or hiding weapons for killing Israelis, but overall, we're engaged in the same kind of activity, and I'm sure we can help each other out."

"It's telling that the Trump-Kim summit took place in Singapore," remarked Ismail Haniyeh, whom Sinwar succeeded in Gaza and now heads Hamas's political echelon from Qatar. "It's always Singapore that our critics cite in noting that we have chosen to make fighting Israel our only priority rather than invest in peaceful infrastructure and economic enhancements - that we could be like Singapore if we stopped making jihad our raison d'être. Well, we'd rather be like North Korea, thank you very much. We already have so much in common: an alliance with Iran, ties to Syria, a knack for abusing our own people, taking and holding foreign hostages, and a dream of conquering territory that we have pursued for decades despite that quest condemning our people to prolonged suffering."

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06/13 Links Pt1: Israel has prevented 250 terror attacks in 2018; The "Trump Doctrine" for the Middle East; Israel, UAE Maintained Secret Close Ties Since 1990s

From Ian:

Shin Bet chief reveals Israel has prevented 250 terror attacks in 2018

Using traditional and new big-data abilities, the Shin Bet has prevented 250 terrorist attacks so far in 2018, director Nadav Argaman told a group of visiting interior security ministers Wednesday at a closed session of a Jerusalem international conference on terrorism.

Though Argaman’s presentation was closed to the public, the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) provided a summary to the media.

Argaman said that the agency had succeeded in blocking major terrorist attacks involving suicide bombings, kidnappings and shootings.

The Shin Bet chief said that especially big-data abilities had helped the agency to hone in on lone-wolf attackers in a way that was impossible before Israeli intelligence advanced its abilities in massively tracking postings on social media.

Argaman said that the Shin Bet was striking the right balance between continuing its effective human intelligence collection programs and new cyber intelligence gathering abilities.

One of the flagship issues was to stay ahead of the curve when using technology to fight terrorism. He previously disclosed that under his leadership, the Shin Bet’s technological workforce has jumped from single digits to representing around one-quarter of the work force.

Argaman also emphasized the importance of “strategic cooperation with our international partners in Israel and overseas as well as with the Israeli hi-tech community and other civilian bodies.”

JPost Editorial: Did Trump achieve what Obama couldn't?

During his term of office, US president Barack Obama was roundly slammed by his critics for pushing away traditional allies in favor of new alliances. How could he block out friends like Israel and Saudi Arabia in favor of the radical regime in Iran, they shouted, even if it was aimed at reaching a deal to curb its nuclear ambitions and ultimately make the world safer?

Life is full of irony, as this week we’ve seen Obama’s successor, US President Donald Trump, take more or less the same tack.

Over the weekend, he went on the attack at a Group of Seven summit in Canada in an escalating clash over trade between Washington and some of its closest global partners. He alienated NATO allies, the European Union and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and backed out of a joint communique that attempted to reach a fragile consensus on the trade issue.

Leaving America’s traditional alliances frayed, Trump left the summit early to fly to Singapore ahead of Tuesday’s history-in-the-making summit with Kim Jong Un of North Korea, one of America’s bitterest foes.

And history-making it was. In a stark contrast to the now-famous weekend G7 shot of the US president petulantly staring up at a gaggle of stern-faced world leaders, Trump and the North Korean dictator shook hands with big smiles, while disproving the naysayers who, based upon the summit-on/summit-off seesaw of the past couple weeks, expected something outrageous, dangerous or embarrassing to take place – if the summit went through at all.

After all, Trump boasted that he would be able to ascertain Kim’s motives and sincerity within the first minute of meeting him. Kim must have impressed Trump, because in a substantial move that would have been unthinkable a year ago, the two leaders signed a joint statement pledging to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula while Washington stated its commitment to provide security guarantees for its longtime enemy.

The "Trump Doctrine" for the Middle East

Trump has shown the strength of the United States and restored its credibility in a region where strength and force determine credibility.

Trump more broadly laid the foundation for a new alliance of the United States with the Sunni Arab world, but he put two conditions on it: a cessation of all Sunni Arab support for Islamic terrorism and an openness to the prospect of a regional peace that included Israel.

Secretary of State Pompeo spoke of the "Palestinians", not of the Palestinian Authority, as in Iran, possibly to emphasize the distinction between the people and their leadership, and that the leadership in both situations, may no longer be part of the solution. Hamas, for the US, is clearly not part of any solution.

Netanyahu rightly said that Palestinian leaders, whoever they may be, do not want peace with Israel, but "peace without Israel". What instead could take place would be peace without the Palestinian leaders. What could also take place would be peace without the Iranian mullahs.

I have mentioned many times before that Palestinians aren't interested in building a state, but in destroying one.

The latest evidence for this comes from a new upcoming edition of the Encyclopedia of Palestine.

The author states the purpose of the book in the introduction: "to refute the Jewish claim to their historical right in Palestine."

That's Palestinianism in a nutshell - to deny Jewish history.

Just imagine any other encyclopedia whose introduction says that its purpose isn't to teach the history of the cover subject, but to refute the history of an entirely different group of people.

Of course, the book has to create a fake history where Arabs inhabited Palestine before Jews.

"The right of the Arabs in Palestine is immaculate and true. They are connected to it, and inhabited it since the dawn of its history and before there were Jews in the world," the book is quoted as saying.

Meaning that suddenly the Hittites. Jebusites, Amorites and other Canaanites were somehow all Arab.

Which they weren't.

So we have an entire encyclopedia, purportedly a scholarly work that should be in all Palestinian schools and libraries, that simply makes things up in order to deny Jewish history.

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I reported yesterday that a UN report on gender based violence, ignored by the media, mentioned very matter of factly that Palestinian men systematically abuse their wives, sisters and daughters.

The report noted that Palestinian wives as subject to physical and emotional abuse from their husbands when any source of frustration enters the husbands' lives. Also that many Palestinian women are forced by their families to marry against their will, many of those while still children. And even in cases of the husband dying, the wives are not given the freedom to raise their children as they see fit, and the husband's family forces the widow to act as they desire, sometimes forcing her to marry the brother of the deceased.

This is the everyday reality of Palestinian women that can be seen if one digs deep in UN reports. These details are rarely reported in the West.

Now, right after the UNFP report, comes the news that the UN Economic and Social Council passed a draft resolution on the "situation of and assistance to Palestinian women.'

The resolution, after a long anti-Israel preamble, starts off with a statement that even the UN knows is a lie:

Reaffirms that the Israeli occupation remains the major obstacle for Palestinian women with regard to their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society...

The resolution effectively hurts Palestinian women by ignoring the very real misogyny in Palestinian society and instead instructing the world to only concentrate on Israel's fictional role in their being discriminated against. Palestinian women are forced to remain silent about the real problems they have in fear of retribution for diluting the unified Palestinian message of always blaming Israel for everything, no matter how absurd.

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Abbas bans protests blaming him for Gaza's woes

A couple of days after a demonstration in central Ramallah demanding that Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority lift their sanctions on Gaza, the PA has responded.

By making such demonstrations illegal.

The same group had planned to hold another demonstration tonight, the first day of Eid al Fitr, but the Palestinian Authority issued a statement "prohibiting the granting of permits to organize marches or to establish gatherings that will disrupt the movement of citizens and cause confusion, and affect the course of normal life during the holiday."

Gaza groups saw through the game right away. Two groups, the Mujahadeen Movement and the PFLP, issued statements denouncing the PA and supporting the demonstrators.

The Sunday rally was actually much larger than I had reported. The movement behind the anti-Abbas rallies released this photo:

This is democracy, Palestinian style.

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06/12 Links Pt2: Palestinian Authority: No Place for Gays; Israel: The never-ending Dreyfus affair; City turns blind eye to illegal anti-Israel hatefest — again

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: -Palestinians: No Place for Gays

On June 8, an estimated 250,000 people attended the Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv. Tourists from all around the world came to Israel to watch and participate in the event. The theme of this year's event is "The Community Makes History" -- a reference to the LGBT community in Israel.

Meanwhile, as the Israelis were celebrating tolerance on the streets of Tel Aviv, their Palestinian neighbors were busy doing precisely the opposite: they were demanding that people should be fired for producing a television comedy about gay people in the Gaza Strip.

The controversial program, called "Out of Focus," has drawn strong condemnations from Palestinians, who are now calling for punishing those responsible for "insulting Arab and Islamic values."

In Palestinian and Arab society, homosexuality is denounced and stigmatized. Homosexuality is illegal under Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, and dozens of gay Palestinians have fled to Israel out of fear of persecution and harassment. In the West Bank, the laws of the Palestinian Authority also do not protect the rights of gay Palestinians.

Expert_ Palestine fails international law test for statehood at ICC

Experts need to continue to press back on the International Criminal Court’s recognition of Palestine as a state, because “there is still time and room to counter this,” international law scholar Andrew Tucker told The Jerusalem Post.

Tucker and Matthijs De Blois of The Hague Initiative for International Cooperation held a press conference along with NGO Monitor and its legal expert, Anne Herzberg, on Thursday night to discuss their book Israel on Trial: The Role of the UN and the EU in Lawfare and the Delegitimization of Israel, which advocates for Israeli positions on a range of international law issues, including dropping the ICC war crimes probe of Israelis.

Tucker said while he recognized that the ICC Prosecution and the ICC’s legislative body – the Assembly of State Parties – recognized Palestine as a state in 2015, enabling it to ask the ICC Prosecution to probe alleged Israeli war crimes, he said a party could file a motion with the ICC’s Pretrial Chamber to veto the ICC Prosecution’s acceptance of Palestine as a state.

If Palestine was ruled not to be a state by the ICC Pretrial Chamber, then the ICC Prosecution’s probe of Israelis would likely fall by the wayside.

While Tucker would argue numerous points for why Palestine fails the test of international law for statehood, he emphasized the Palestinian Authority’s inability to effectively govern the West Bank and Gaza as a single state.

Trump's pressure on Iran seems to be working

Haaretz has a fascinating article:

The decision by U.S. President Donald Trump to pull his country out of the Iran nuclear deal has already wreaked widespread economic damage to Iranians. According to intelligence assessments presented to Israeli leaders, the chain reaction of the American decision last month has been more severe than originally forecast.

Some American companies, among them airplane manufacturer Boeing and General Electric, which signed contracts to supply equipment to Iran’s outdated oil industry, are already preparing to halt their investments in the country.

It was reported this week that sports equipment maker Nike canceled at the last minute a delivery of soccer cleats to the Iranian national squad, which is participating in the World Cup starting Friday in Russia. In Europe, British Petroleum announced that it would end its investment partnership with the Iranian oil company in deep-sea drilling off the Scottish coast.

According to Israeli intelligence, Iran had hoped to reap sizeable profits from deals with European and American companies during the coming period. However, now the Tehran regime faces abandonment by companies that already signed contracts, in addition to the negotiations with other companies, because of the American move. Thus, internal pressure on the regime, in the form of frequent demonstrations by the opposition in cities across the country, is also coming into play. Most of the demonstrations focus on the cost of living.

Israeli intelligence officials have the impression that the double economic pressure, domestically and from abroad, is accelerating the division at the top of the regime between the conservative camp and the more moderate one. Part of the dispute involves the question of Iranian foreign aid to terrorist and guerilla organizations across the Middle East. According to various assessments, Tehran disburses nearly $1 billion annually to these clients, including Hezbollah, Shi’ite militias fighting on its behalf for the Assad regime in Syria, Houthi rebels in Yemen and two Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The moderate camp supports cutting these expenditures. Some protesters in Iran have made vocal calls or waved signs condemning the use of government funds for these purposes at the expense of the Iranian people.

Boeing last week said that it will not be delivering any equipment to Iran:

Boeing will not deliver aircraft to Iran in light of US sanctions, effectively aborting a pair of large contracts with Iranian carriers, a Boeing spokesman said on Wednesday.

“We have not delivered any aircraft to Iran, and given we no longer have a license to sell to Iran at this time, we will not be delivering any aircraft,” the Boeing spokesman said.

Peugeot suspended its Iran expansion plans. Mazda and Hyundai suspended deals. And Iran's Mehr news agency lists even more companies pulling out:

South Korea’s Daelim Industrial said on Friday that a contract worth 2.23 trillion won ($2.08 billion) for a refinery project in Iran was canceled amid the fear of sanctions from Trump administration.
The order was canceled as the Esfahan Refinery Upgrading Project failed to procure financing because of economic sanctions imposed on Iran, Daelim said in a regulatory filing.
In recent weeks, European companies such as oil giant Total SA, plane maker Airbus SE and industrial conglomerate Siemens AG have said they were pulling back from Iran opportunities to comply with US sanctions.
General Electric Co. also is closing its office in Tehran due to the US sanctions on Iran. The company is planning to end sales of oil and natural-gas equipment later this year in Iran, people familiar with the matter said

The good news is that Iran is still keeping its end of JCPOA in fear of losing even more business from Europe.

From all indications, all the people who warned that Trump scuttling the deal would be catastrophic have been shown to be 100% wrong.

(h/t Yoel)

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The United Nations Population Fund has written a report about the dangers to Gaza women as a result of the "Great Return March."

The report proves that Palestinian society is pretty sick.

The report identifies four groups of Gaza women who are negatively impacted by the riots.

Mothers with injured children reported increased gender-based violence, especially psychological/emotional violence as mothers were often blamed by their husbands and other family members for ‘allowing’ their children to participate.

So - Gaza women can be beaten for allowing their children to go to a march, or pretty much anything else.

Women whose husbands have been killed or injured during the demonstrations are expected to meet the financial needs of the family, which is difficult in a situation with a high unemployment rate. Moreover, widows and wives who were subjected to forced child marriage often do not have proper education, which makes the job search even more difficult.

Oh, by the way, a significant number of Palestinian women are child brides.

Widowed women are in higher risk of immediate psychological/emotional and economic violence by family members, as some are expected to re-marry, potentially with a brother of the former husband. Additionally, the family of the late husband will often take control over the finances. 83.7 percent of the males killed are between the age of 18-39, which means that many of the women left behind are around the age of thirty, and, therefore, still perceived by society to be able to remarry, thereby risking the custody of their children.

Oh, by the way, many Palestinian women are treated like they have no rights whatsoever. They cannot decide what is best for their families even after the death of their husbands.

Girl children who lost a father or who are expected to have a father with disability are in increased risk of forced child marriage due to reduced income as the father/husband is usually the breadwinner of the family. Marrying off daughters is perceived as a protection mechanism to ensure the livelihood of girl children. In reality, it turns out to be a negative copying mechanism.

And it is not only adult Palestinian women who are treated like garbage, but girls as well.

The report pretty much says that as much as Gaza women's lives already were terrible where they are forced to do whatever their husbands or husband's family says, the riots can make their lives even worse.

But who is actually talking about how bad their lives are to begin with? No that is a taboo topic, because if Israel cannot be blamed for how misogynist Palestinian society is, then the media and world is simply not interested.

(h/t G)

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06/12 Links Pt1: PA: We will continue to support terrorists and their families; Liberman hinges aid for Gaza on Red Cross visits to captive Israelis; What do the North Korean talks mean for Iran?

From Ian:

PA: We will continue to support terrorists and their families

The Palestinian Authority (PA) government in Ramallah sent a defiant message to the United States and Israel on Monday regarding its support for terrorists and their families.

Yusuf al-Mahmoud, spokesman for the PA government, said in this context that "there is no force in the world that can cause us to renounce our prisoners and the martyrs."

He said Israel bore full responsibility for the situation of the Palestinian Arabs and claimed that it was "stealing their money on the pretext of offsetting tax revenues."

Last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu instructed Meir Shabbat, chief of Israel’s National Security Council, to deduct money from the taxes collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in order to pay for the damage from fires caused by Gazan rioter-terrorists sending kites attached to firebombs into Israeli territory.

Last week, Gazan terrorists burned 75 acres in a single day. On Saturday alone, the terror kites sparked 17 fires.

The PA regularly pays terrorists who are imprisoned in Israel, as well as families of dead terrorists who carried out attacks against Israelis. The PA policy of paying higher salaries to terrorists serving longer sentences means that the more heinous the and deadly the terror attack, the more the terrorist is rewarded by the PA for committing murder.

MEMRI: Calls In Palestinian Authority For Arranging Mechanism For Transfer Of Power Following Palestinian Authority President 'Abbas's Hospitalization

On May 20, 2018, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud 'Abbas, who is 83, was rushed to a Ramallah hospital following complications from middle ear surgery five days previously. The international Arab press reported that he had pneumonitis and a high fever, and that he was intubated; these reports were confirmed later in an announcement by Fatah Central Committee secretary Jibril Al-Rajoub.[1]

'Abbas's nine-day hospitalization, and his general health status, prompted a broad discussion in the Palestinian media with regard to how he would be replaced in the event that he becomes incapacitated, in light of his advanced age, the concentration of power in his hands, and the absence of a clear and agreed mechanism for choosing his successor.

The possibility that 'Abbas will become unable to carry out his many roles, in the absence of an agreed-upon successor, sparked expressions in the Palestinian media of fears of chaos and civil war within Fatah, which 'Abbas heads, and also between Fatah and Hamas, along with calls to urgently and legally arrange a legitimate mechanism for succeeding 'Abbas while he is still in office so as to avoid a sudden crisis. At the same time, the official PA and Fatah spokesmen are preferring to deny rumors about 'Abbas's hospitalization and with delegitimizing discussions of possible future scenarios, instead of focusing on who will take his place.

This report will present the public discussion in the PA about scenarios of crises of leadership in the Palestinian arena in the event that 'Abbas becomes incapacitated.

Melanie Phillips: Crazy world G7 v Trump, Hezbollah in London, Brexit agony

Please join me here as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Unwired the latest developments in our crazy world. We talk about the G7/Trump temper tantrum and just how long it will take for the EU and other G7 countries to work out that in a trade war with the US there’s only going to be one winner and it isn’t going to be them. This leads us to discuss Trump’s negotiating strategy and whether it’s a thing of genius or whether he actually has one at all. Plus the odious spectacle of Hezbollah flags parading on the streets of London and Britain’s deepening Brexit agony, which is truly dreadful to behold