The Palestinian Authority has threatened many times to suspend all security cooperation with Israel - but it still does it, albeit quietly.
Ma'an published photos of a joint Israeli-Palestinian civil defense exercise held near Qalqiliya.
One focus of the exercises was to work together in case of road accidents in the territories.
The most surprising image was this one, showing both teams posing together for a photo.
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In July, judges from a pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court ordered a campaign of outreach to Palestinian "victims residing within or outside of Palestine."
With this unprecedented move, the court is openly turning itself into a Palestinian propaganda engine, similar to the UN Human Rights Council, with a regular reporting regime on Palestine and a distinct section of its website devoted to Palestine.
This is curious in light of the fact that the court has yet to decide whether it indeed has any jurisdiction whatsoever regarding the Palestinian complaints, and whether a non-state can indeed be a party to the ICC statute.
Moreover, this measure ignores the basic question whether, pursuant to the ICC statute, a "State of Palestine" can be party when no Palestinian state exists, apart from in a non-binding General Assembly upgrade recommendation, which is far from being a legal ground for acceptance.
All this indicates that the ICC is venturing far beyond its role and is being politically manipulated - or is manipulating itself - against its own better interests.
Israel has lodged a formal protest with the International Criminal Court (ICC) for launching a campaign last month to reach out to “victims of the situation in Palestine,” an unusual step which Jerusalem officials charge casts doubt on the court’s ability to treat the Jewish state fairly.
In a press release issued in July, three judges, who are members of the so-called pretrial chamber dealing with Palestinian complaints of alleged Israeli war crimes, ordered the court’s registry “to establish, as soon as practicable, a system of public information and outreach activities for the benefit of the victims and affected communities in the situation in Palestine.”
Furthermore, the judges required the registry — a neutral organ of the court providing administrative support — to open an “informative page on the Court’s website” geared exclusively to Palestinians, and to report on the progress of its activities every three months.
This despite the fact that ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has not yet decided whether the court has any jurisdiction over matters related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, since it has no jurisdiction over Israel (which is not a member state) and because Palestine is not a state and therefore cannot exercise jurisdiction over the West Bank.
Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda at the International Criminal Court in The Hague (AP Photo/Robin van Lonkhuijsen, Pool)
Bensouda has also not ruled on whether there is a basis to investigate Palestinian claims of war crimes.
“The court’s judges are completely ignoring the fact that the court lacks jurisdiction to deal with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that the court’s prosecutor hasn’t made any decision in her preliminary examination,” a senior Israeli legal official told Hadashot TV news.
“The judges’ eagerness to initiate such an anomalous decision leaves in serious question the court’s ability to fairly deal with matters relating to Israel,” he added.
Chicago experienced one of the most violent weekends in the city's history two weeks ago. It is impossible to escape the context for these killings; one can only try to avoid the problem altogether. But those who are forced to admit the truth say the politically charged policies put in place by the city's progressives are keeping police from dealing with the violence in both the city's South Side and West Side neighborhoods. The spike in the number of shooting deaths in Chicago is directly related to these progressive policies.
A similar approach has been adopted toward terrorism. The aim of some left-wing organizations in Israel and around the world is to create a friendly environment for terrorism, to deter the Israel Defense Forces and provide the terrorists with as much freedom of operation as possible. This system, which has been in development for nearly 20 years, is one of legal warfare. The courts, and in particular the International Criminal Court at The Hague, are turning into political tribunals. "Values" and "rights" take the place of the law.
Instead of the rule of law helping enforce anti-terrorist operations, the rule of law has been eroded by the "human rights" warriors, who have in their sights those same people who defend peace and democracy. Take Peter Beinart, an American Jewish journalist who has become an anti-Israel political activist, and who recently completed a disinformation campaign that could serve to deter Israeli security officials from doing their job in the future.
Sarah Tuttle-Singer, new media editor at the Times of Israel, has 19,000 followers on Facebook who hang on her every word. One imagines they see her as a credible source of information. The sad truth, however, is that her posts are never truthful. She can be depended upon only to defend the Arab narrative in which Israel is always the villain. This is what she had to say, for instance, about the recent demonstration in Rabin Square against Israel’s new Nation State law.
Sarah Tuttle-Singer
August 12 at 1:52 AM ·
Two things.
First, let’s be clear: Thr demonstration organizers IMPLORED the attendees not to wave the Palestinian flag.
Some did.
WOW.
Shocker.
This is the Middle East. I pity the fool who tells anyone how to protest.
Raise your hand if you’ve ever did DAVKA the opposite of what you were told?
Hell, my kids did the opposite of what I told them five times between supper and bedtime, the little punks .
And let’s also remember this: Our government straight up told the Arab citizens of Israel that they’re less equal than Jews and they’re not really part of the Jewish state.
Raise your hand if you’d find that insulting and want to stick that ruling in their eye in a non-violent way.
You’re damn right.
Please.
We have sewn division amongst our own citizenry. What did we expect would happen?
Let’s unpack this, shall we?
First off, it’s not true that the protesters were “implored” not to wave the “Palestinian” flag. Here is a post from Balad, the party that represents Arab nationalist aspirations within the Israeli Knesset. (Can you imagine a Balad counterpart in Jordan? One that represents Jewish nationalist aspirations within Jordan? Ha!)
The demonstration in Tel Aviv is a demonstration by Arab society in conjunction with Jews who oppose the [Nation State] law.
Israeli flags will not be waved at this demonstration and it’s not true that the [Arab] Higher Monitoring committee asked that the Palestinian flag not be waved.
Such declarations and statements do not coincide with the follow-up committee's official stance.
Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s all caps assertion that Arabs were “IMPLORED” not to wave “Palestinian” flags, is demonstrably false. Far from being implored not to wave those flags, the powers that be actually urged Arab and Jewish protesters to wave those flags. And wave them they did as they sang “With blood and spirit we shall redeem Palestine.”
In Tel Aviv now, at a protest against the Nation-State Law, demonstrators waving Palestinian flags and chanting "with blood and spirit, we will redeem Palestine."
The very fact that the protesters waved those flags and nothing bad happened to them proves that Israel is a democracy with freedom of expression the likes of which exists nowhere else in the Middle East. One cannot, for instance, wave an Israeli flag in Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Lebanon, and stay alive. Which is precisely why Israel needs the Nation State Law. The law prevents Israel from becoming the 23rd repressive Arab state in the Middle East.
“This is the Middle East. I pity the fool who tells anyone how to protest,” says Tuttle-Singer. But that’s exactly what Balad, the Arab party, did. It told Arabs and Jew-hating Jews how to protest. And oh boy did they ever acquiesce.
Tuttle-Singer goes on to infantilize the Arab people, comparing them to small rebellious children. She asks us to imagine how we were at that age. “Raise your hand if you’ve ever did DAVKA the opposite of what you were told? Hell, my kids did the opposite of what I told them five times between supper and bedtime, the little punks .”
If I were an Arab, I would find this wildly insulting. She’s basically saying that Arabs are unruly children. I would never label a people in this manner. It’s patronizing, rude, and racist.
Tuttle-Singer finishes up with “We have sewn division amongst our own citizenry. What did we expect would happen?”
Leaving aside an editor who cannot spell, I take great offense at her characterization of the Nation State Law. We have sown no division. We have only said that we are the Jewish State, that Hatikva is our national anthem, and that Hebrew is our national language.
As the Jewish State, we offer freedom of religion to all. Arabs and Jews mingle freely in Israel, except in Arab villages, from which Jews are banned. It is in the Arab states that freedom of religion is not practiced and in which Jews and Arabs are not free to mingle. It is in preserving the Jewish character of our state that we preserve Jewish values like freedom of religion and freedom from bigotry.
“What else do we expect?”
We expect gratitude that Israel does not permit gays to be hung or thrown off buildings. Or how about recognition of the fact that Arabs can sit, unmolested, next to Jews on Israeli buses? Perhaps some appreciation that Arabs are allowed to pray in their holy spaces anywhere in Israel?
We expect thanks for not throwing them out in 1948, for giving them autonomy in their cities and villages, and for expelling our own people from Gaza to give them Judenfrei territory. Why wouldn’t we expect something other than public cries for our blood when we have held out the hand of peace again and again? Why would they not laud us for giving aid to the people of Gaza even as they burn thousands of acres of our farmland and send our children into bomb shelters in the middle of the night? We’d expect that with all the compassion and equality we offer them that Arabs would refrain from calling for Jewish blood in our public squares.
The fact that there are Arab parties in Knesset, Arab doctors treating Jewish patients in Jewish hospitals, Arab journalists criticizing Israel in the media, and Arab judges sitting judgment in Israel’s High Court makes a mockery of Sarah Tuttle-Singer’s crocodile tears for the Arab people.
What is really absent in Tuttle-Singer’s diatribe against her own people is any sense of fellowship with them. Why does she always plead the case of those who are against the State of Israel? Why does she never defend Israel and the rights Israel offers to its Arab population? Why does she plead the case of those who call for Jewish blood and the destruction of Israel? Why does she make apologies for terrorists, but never say a word in defense of their victims?
Why doesn’t Sarah Tuttle-Singer think the Jews have a right to a state of their own, a place where Hebrew is the official language, a place where Hatikva is the national anthem? And why on earth does she think that having these things somehow discriminates against anyone at all, when the proof that Arabs are part of our society is as plain as the nose on her face?
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The official PA Wafa news agency reports that a member of the Executive Committees of Fatah and the Central Committee of Fatah, Azzam Al-Ahmad, described the truce reached between Hamas and Israel a few days ago as "betrayal of the Palestinian people and its national cause . "
I guess Fatah wants to see more Gazans killed.
Good to know how much they care about their people.
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In all likelihood the next Israeli-Iranian confrontation will be a clash with Amidror’s half-threat: the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, Iran’s most effective proxy in the Middle East and perhaps the best armed nonstate military force on earth. Amidror says another round of Israel-Hezbollah fighting is a “very-high-probability” event even if he doesn’t believe it’s inevitable. Israel’s war aims will be narrow. “We should neutralize the military capability of Hezbollah,” he said. “We should not destroy the organization as a political tool. If the Shiites want these people to represent them, it’s their problem.” He anticipates that because of Arab and Western antipathy toward Iran, Israel will have a relatively free hand to prosecute such a war and won’t become an international pariah as a result of the conflict. That’s pretty much where the good news ends.
“It will be a very nasty war,” Amidror said. “A very, very nasty war.” Hezbollah will fire “thousands and thousands” of long-range missiles of improved precision, speed, and range at Israeli population centers, a bombardment larger than Israel’s various layers of missile defense will be able to neutralize in full. “It will be very problematic for us. We don’t have tomorrow morning enough interceptors and they are enhancing their capabilities.”
This will be a blow Israel can withstand. “Israelis will be killed, no question,” Amidror said. “But it’s not going to be catastrophic.” He recalled that during the 2014 war in Gaza, the families of wounded soldiers called on the prime minister to continue the operation from beside their relatives’ hospital beds. “The cabinet didn’t know how to stop the IDF and tell them to retreat back after they destroyed the [Hamas] tunnels because the atmosphere was: Don’t stop, continue.” Amidror’s point was that the Israeli public is willing to withstand even heavy casualties during war if it’s clear the country’s battlefield aims are being achieved.
In Lebanon, the war will inflict unspeakable suffering. Because the interceptors won’t be able to stop the entirety of Hezbollah’s missile barrages, Israel will have to target rockets on the ground before they can be launched—Amidror pointed out that Israel destroyed many of Hezbollah’s Zelzal missiles during the 2006 conflict with the militant group; as a result, none of the rockets was fired at Israel during the war. “Think of about 120,000 rockets and missiles, 50 percent or 80 percent of them stored by the Iranians within populated areas in private houses. Areas will be evaporated. Think about a missile of half a ton, with all the fuel in it, and Israel hits it with only 100 grams of TNT. … Think about what will be damaged just by the stored missiles. Thousands and thousands of Lebanese will be killed and part of Lebanon will be destroyed.” That’s on top of whatever destruction Israel causes when targeting other Hezbollah bases and infrastructure.
Amidror recalled a meeting with Ban Ki-moon during one of the former U.N. secretary-general’s visits to Israel. He showed Ban photos of Hezbollah rockets stored in civilian areas. “Secretary, what should Israel do?” Amidror remembered asking. “These missiles will be launched into Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Afula, everywhere. What is your advice to Israel? And I’m telling you if we will hit these missiles, many Lebanese will be killed. Many of them even don’t know that they are neighboring a missile and are totally innocent. You are the secretary-general of the United Nations. What is your advice? He didn’t know what to say, and he said nothing.”
Israel’s adversaries are doubling down on their success, as I saw recently when I visited the Gaza-Israel border as part of a delegation with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. The night before, Hamas fired dozens of rockets into Israeli communities, including one that landed in front of a kindergarten. I also saw the widespread devastation to Israel in the form of mile after mile of cropland scorched by incendiaries launch from Gaza.
Yet, as with reporting of clashes since March, most headlines downplayed the indiscriminate use of incendiaries and rockets against Israel, in favor of portraying Israel’s retaliation against Hamas military targets as the largest “pummeling” of Gaza since 2014. As in weeks prior, no mention was made of Israel’s graduated responses to these provocations, including its prioritization of non-lethal force whenever possible.
Unsurprisingly, an end to this conflict does not appear close at hand. Indeed, such irresponsible coverage of Israel influences the strategy of terrorist groups, who increasingly buttress their illegal tactics with sophisticated information operations to hypocritically delegitimize Israeli actions.
Israel will survive misperceptions and ill-informed reporting, though at the cost of increased and unnecessary pressure from the outside world to terminate lawful operations in self-defense. But sadly the same prospects for survival will not apply for Arab civilians unless perspectives on the radical differences in how Israel and its adversaries operate become dramatically more objective.
Palestinian 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi, who served eight months in Israeli prison for inciting suicide bombings and for striking Israeli soldiers, was asked by Russian RT TV how she passed the time.
Her descriptions of her daily routine for herself and the entire wing include singing, dancing, reading books, watching TV, even legal studies and matriculation exams, and refute the PA's ongoing lies about the conditions in Israeli prisons.
The following is part of a longer interview on RT TV:
RT TV reporter: "Tell us in detail how you passed the time; what did you do inside the prisons?"
Ahed Tamimi: "As I told you, I did a lot of things: a legal course, we spent a lot of time on that, and matriculation exam studies; I read books; we would sing; we even had joint breakfasts of the entire wing - we would go outside, every room would bring its things, and we would eat together. We also ate lunch together most of the time. We also had parties; we would sit and sing, and dance. There were a lot of things that we did to pass the time: We watched TV, for example we jumped around in the rooms and did silly things; we did a lot of things."
[Russian channel RT TV Arabic, Aug. 1, 2018]
Already a few years ago a released terrorist prisoner described the good life in the male side of prison:
Sometimes we see photos of coins or stamps or currency of British Mandate Palestine being reproduced as "proof" that there was a Palestinian state.
If that is true, and British Mandate Palestine is proof of a Palestinian state, then its first leader was - a Jew!
Herbert Samuel was appointed to the position of High Commissioner of Palestine in 1920.
So if the money and stamps supposedly prove that Palestine existed as an independent entity, then even so the first leader of the Palestinian people after the Ottoman era was Jewish.
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Included in this bill are provisions to authorize $500 million for U.S.-Israel missile defense cooperation and up to $50 million for U.S.-Israel counter-tunnel cooperation. It authorizes funding for both R&D and procurement for the Iron Dome, David’s Sling, Arrow-2 and Arrow-3 missile defense systems. These programs enable Israel to defend its citizens while advancing America’s own missile defense capabilities.
These funds are in addition to the $3.3 billion in security assistance as part of the U.S.-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018 (S. 2497) which passed in the full U.S. Senate two weeks ago.
I admit to mixed feelings about much of the US security assistance to Israel, as we have seen the Obama administration use that as a set of "golden handcuffs" to stop Israel from acting in its own best interests. Israel should set a strategic goal of weaning itself off of much of that aid.
However, cooperation with the US on defense systems that can also help the US in defending itself is a very worthy cause and this story is a reason to celebrate how close the US is to Israel.
The Act itself is some 2,000 pages long but it also includes joint US-Israel projects to find ways to defend against aerial drones and to determine what weapons Israel might need in a future war with Hezbollah.
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Ma'an published an op-ed by Ali Hweidi, a writer and researcher on Palestinian affairs from Lebanon, about the threat of closing down UNRWA.
He starts off saying the truth that UNRWA's supporters in the West vehemently deny.
"The calls for the establishment of alternative institutions to UNRWA are a strategic threat that weakens the political power of the refugee issue and turns it into a humanitarian issue," Hweidi says.
That's exactly it. UNRWA was always meant to be a humanitarian agency, but the Palestinian Arab leaders at the time and the Arab world turned the refugee issue into a political issue - a means to use refugees as pawns to attack Israel and not to actually solve the problem.
The politicization of UNRWA is what makes it an anti-humanitarian agency.
Hweidi goes through the history of UNRWA, not entirely accurately, describing how different it was in the 1950s to today, and by doing so he doesn't quite realize that he is damning the agency.
In 1949, the Agency was given the task of supporting the Palestinian refugees, in addition to providing humanitarian services such as health, education and relief, coordinating with the host countries to integrate refugees into the economies of the region and working to settle those who do not wish to return and reside in host countries in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. These countries were forced to sign armistice agreements with the Israeli occupation between February and July 1949, creating a political climate suitable to begin the process of resettlement without the objection of the host countries and the exploitation of the deteriorating humanitarian situation of the refugees. The refugees themselves stopped this project and promoted awareness of what their perception was being plotted against them.
It was the Arab countries and self-appointed Palestinian "leaders" who fought against UNRWA's original aims, not the refugees themselves, who would have gladly accepted being integrated into Arab countries.
And most of them still would, today. We have documented cases where loopholes opened for Palestinians to become citizens of Egypt and Lebanon, and how tens of thousands of them jumped at the opportunity to do so.
Hweidi describes other failed attempts to integrate Palestinians into the region:
On December 12, 1950, Resolution 393 was issued, under which the United Nations General Assembly entrusted UNRWA with the task of integrating Palestinian refugees into the economies of the region, In 1959, UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld presented a paper to the United Nations General Assembly containing a proposal to expand refugee rehabilitation programs and strengthen their capacity to support themselves, dispense with UNRWA's assistance and settle them in their places of residence, while appealing to Arab countries hosting refugees to cooperate with the agency.
From the start, the Arabs have politicized the Palestinian refugee issue, and that is the entire reason UNRWA exists today - not to solve the problem but to perpetuate and maximize it for the benefit of corrupt Palestinian Arab leaders at the expense of the actual stateless Palestinians.
The more people write about UNRWA, the more it is clear that it must be dismantled, the way it was meant to be from the start, and Arabs of Palestinian descent fully integrated into the countries that they fled to 70 years ago.
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His Labour handlers claimed Corbyn was there to commemorate some four-dozen Palestinian militants killed in an Israeli air strike against a Tunisian PLO base. But hang on: “On a visit to the cemetery this week, the Daily Mail discovered that the monument to the air strike victims is 15 yards from where Mr. Corbyn is pictured—and in a different part of the complex. Instead, he was in front of a plaque that lies beside the graves of Black September members.”
Corbyn himself has described the conference as one “searching for peace,” but the Daily Mail on Monday debunked that apologia, as well. The gabfest—titled the “International Conference on Monitoring the Palestinian Political and Legal Situation in the Light of Israeli Aggression”—featured leading members and ideologues for the Gaza-based terror outfit Hamas. One such leader, Oussama Hamdan, offered a “four-point vision to fight against Israel” and hailed Hamas’ “great success on the military and national levels.”
This comes on top of everything else we know about Corbyn’s Labour: the unreconstructed Stalinist party spokesman, the anti-Semitic outrages from local councilors and top MPs alike, the Labour leader’s stints as a broadcaster for state-run Iranian television, his invitations to Hamas and Hezbollah, which he has called “our friends.” And on and on and on. The noxious ideological fumes wafting from a once-honorable party of the center-left are suffocating.
There was a time when conservatives, including Americans like yours truly, took a certain pleasure in Labour’s Corbynite woes. Corbyn was so extreme, the thinking went, that his hostile takeover of Labour would ensure Tory ascendance for a generation. The man’s goofy manners—his tweed jackets and bad ties, his bicycling and gardening—only added to the fun. But the joke stopped being funny long ago. The Tories under Prime Minister Theresa May are in a shambolic state, Brexit has stalled, the pound sterling is in a downward spiral, and the electorate is deeply polarized. He really could pull it off.
To avert that dreadful prospect, Britons of good will should set aside quotidian policy differences and rally around the “Never Corbyn” standard. The outcome of Brexit, taxes and welfare, immigration and the National Health Service—none of these questions is more important than ensuring that the Jew-baiting, Black September-honoring, Hamas-befriending crank from the People’s Republic of Islington gets nowhere near No. 10 Downing Street.
Prior to his being questioned at Israel’s international airport on Sunday, CNN political commentator and Israel critic Peter Beinart admits to consulting a George Soros-funded radical anti-Israel organization about “what to do if I were detained” upon entering Israel.
Beinart seems to have anticipated that he may be questioned upon landing at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, and claims that he was detained for about an hour and questioned over “my beliefs.”
Beinart wrote in a column at the liberal Forward newspaper that prior to his latest visit to Israel this week, he previously participated in a protest in the West Bank city of Hebron, and that he “become involved in the protest” through the Center for Jewish Nonviolence.
The Center seeks to “bring an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza.” Israel refers to the West Bank, which houses ancient Jewish communities, as disputed and not occupied territory. Eastern Jerusalem includes the Temple Mount, Western Wall, and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.
Liberal American-Jewish commentator Peter Beinart gave a provocative speech on Wednesday, in which he said Israel essentially deserved the wave of Arab terrorism targeting its citizens.
Beinart - who despite his regular attacks on the Jewish state insists he is "pro-Israel" - was speaking at "Beth Chayim Chadashim Progressive synagogue in Los Angeles, which was set up as a "gay-friendly" congregation.
His comments were recorded approvingly by the anti-Israel Mondoweiss website. (h/t steelraptor from Saturn)
Ben Shapiro to Peter Beinart: "Hamas Celebrates When You're on TV"
Islamic Jihad is very proud of its balloon arson unit. It made a video that makes it clear that incendiary balloons are a core terrorist function now, with masked terrorists blowing up balloons and attaching delayed firebombs to start forest fires in Israel.
But there is only one problem.
No matter how much they try to use dramatic music, slow motion and interesting camera angles, it still looks like they are preparing for a child's birthday party.
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When you were a child, what was your favorite color? I
distinctly remember the discussion my first-grade classmates had about favorite
colors. Most of the girls declared that red was their favorite. I had an innate
streak of Israeli davka-ness in me, way before I became an Israeli, was
determined not to be like everyone else so I declared that my favorite was
blue.
In Israel, for many children, red has become an issue – for
very different reasons.
The siren that warns us of incoming missiles is called RED
ALERT. In the north, because our enemies are a little further away, we have a
whole minute to reach a bomb shelter or safe room. Israelis who live near the
border with Gaza have just 15 seconds.
The siren I hear when there are missiles, sounds like this:
In the south, near Gaza, the alert is different. The time it
takes for the siren to increase in volume and for the human ear to register
that the sound it is hearing is a siren are precious seconds the citizens of
southern Israel do not have. That is why the warning for incoming missiles for
southern Israel is different – there, instead of a siren, the words COLOR RED
are blared out:
COLOR RED means RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.
Yes, we have missile defense systems but they do not always
work. A successful missile interception means that the missile exploded in the
air rather than exploding on the ground. This means that also when the defense
system works, burning hot metal is falling from the sky. This can damage,
injure and even kill.
When missiles are incoming, you do NOT want to be outside.
The original siren for the south used the words RED DAWN
(Shachar Adom). The problem with that is that there are children, both boys and
girls who are named Shachar (which means dawn in Hebrew). In consideration of
the trauma and stigma this could create, the army changed the siren to the
words COLOR RED.
How do you think children who grew up hearing this warning
feel about the color red?
When we visited Kibbutz Alumim, social worker Esther Marcus
told us about small children who started avoiding red. They didn’t want to wear
red, use red for coloring or play with red toys. Can you blame them?
It is a horrible feeling to be a grown up, a parent, knowing
that your children have had their innocence stolen away, simply because they
are Jewish and live in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. Children’s
thoughts about colors should not be dictated by a terrorist organization.
Children should be free to play outside, free to walk from their home to visit
a friend, without having to worry about where the closest bomb shelter is.
But that is our reality. So the question then becomes, what
can we do about it?
We want our children to grow up free spirited, with strong
wills and good mental health (who doesn’t?). We want our children to grow up
kind and generous, not fearful, bitter or full of hate – even for the people
trying to kill us.
Israelis go to extraordinary lengths to make this possible
and, in the most part, we succeed.
Israeli children know that Gazan children are raised on hate
but they still hope that one day Gazan children will learn that Israeli
children can be good friends to play with. That’s why many Israeli communities,
on the Gaza border have held kite festivals, flying kites with messages of
peace as their answer to the kites with messages of death and destruction we
receive.
Even if these kites have no effect on our enemies (and they
don’t), they have a positive effect on our children. Instead of allowing this
symbol of childhood innocence to be stolen and completely perverted into a
symbol of violence and war, children learn that it is up to the flyer of the
kite to determine what it will mean.
For this reason, Esther Marcus wrote a children’s story
about the color red. When we visited Kibbutz Alumim, we went to the
kindergarten and she read the story to us with the children. It is both
inspiring and gut-wrenchingly horrifying to witness the effort necessary to
keep our children well balanced.
The story is about colors. Each color has its own qualities
and they all feel happy and self-confident. Only the color red begins to cry,
devastated that everyone is afraid of him. He says: “Even the cats and dogs run
to hide under the bed when they hear my name!” Then the other colors come to
comfort Red: “Wait a minute, said Blue, the opposite is true! You warn them of
the rockets and give them a chance to run to the safe place!”
After the story, the kindergarten teachers asked the kids
what their favorite colors are. Interestingly a number of them said white
(which includes all the colors of the rainbow and in Israel is associated with
purity and often worn on holidays). One girl told us shyly: “pink.” A boy
shouted with confidence: “RED!”
Esther and the teachers then asked the children: “And what is
the most important thing to have when it comes to colors?”
At first, I didn’t understand the question. When I heard the
kids answer and understood what these grown-ups are teaching them, I wanted to
cry.
This is how, in an impossible, unbearable reality, Israeli
children grow up to be kind and good, optimistic rather than being bitter or
hateful, understanding the consequences of a dangerous reality and still hoping
for a better future.
Can you guess what the children answered?
“A rainbow. The best thing is a rainbow.”
If you are interested in buying Tzeva Adom (in Hebrew,
with or without an added English translation) or would like to find out how you
can help the people of Kibbutz Alumim contact Esther Marcus at:
Esthermarcus610@gmail.com
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.
Since the launching of the very first primitive rockets that our leaders dismissed as insignificant, our citizens in the southern area have suffered considerably and been transformed into refugees in their own country. After successive wars that temporarily created a deterrent effect, the situation has now eroded to the point where Hamas disregards our empty threats and bombings of empty buildings.
We have not learned from the past. We are again acting with restraint as the terrorists gauge our response and resolve. After the events of the past few weeks, we should demand that our government display leadership and strength and adjust its policy of restraint instead of accepting a situation where Hamas tactical considerations determine the quality of life for citizens in the south.
Appeasement only emboldens our enemies, who harbor genocidal ambitions against us as their goal. And the absence of deterrence will inevitably, as in the past, lead to war.
All Israelis are willing to make great sacrifices to achieve peace. They would dearly love to live side by side with Palestinians. But the road to peace is not paved with illusions.
We should inform our allies and warn our adversaries that we will no longer engage in restraint and limit our response. We will act like any other nation and employ the full might at our disposal to bring an immediate end to such assaults against our citizens.
We have one of the most powerful armies in the world. If Hamas will not unilaterally cease its terror activities, notwithstanding the difficulties and complications referred to above, we will have no choice but to destroy it.
Failure to act now virtually guarantees a full-scale conflict at a later stage when Hamas will probably be in a better position to inflict greater casualties upon us.
The Trump administration is supposedly considering declassifying a State Department report that tallies up the true number of Palestinian refugees.
If Trump does this, the repercussions could go a long way to settling the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, or UNRWA, classifies refugees unlike any other organization in the world, and in a way that contradicts common sense. Whereas the number of refugees from the original 1948 Arab/Israeli war would likely number in the tens of thousands, the UNRWA also counts people generations removed from the conflict, many of whom are citizens of new countries, in addition to everyone living in their internationally recognized homes of Gaza and the West Bank.
This politically motivated definition raises the number of "refugees" to an estimated 5.3 million. And that number is used by Palestinians to claim a “right of return” to Israel for a number greater than half of Israel's entire population.
Until today, there has been no official acknowledgment of the true number of refugees. Governments and international organizations around the world instead pay lip service to UNRWA’s fiction that the number of refugees has expanded many times over since the 1948 war.
This will change if the Trump administration releases the classified report.
After their failed efforts last year to get Israel booted from FIFA, the world soccer body, the Palestinians have now reportedly set their sights on an even bigger prize: kicking Israel out of the United Nations.
According to a brief report Sunday in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, Palestinian leaders are planning to argue that Israel is in violation of several UN Security Council resolutions and the UN charter. Ramallah will further argue, the report stated, that Israel’s recently passed nation-state law, which declares national rights to be exclusive to Jews, proved Israel is an apartheid state and must therefore be sanctioned.
Palestinian officials did not respond to several requests for comment by The Times of Israel.
Israeli officials were quick to denounce the ostensible plan, even though the chances that Israel would actually be expelled or suspended from the UN are close to zero.
The apartheid accusation, long leveled at Israel by its critics, is particularly noteworthy, because in 1974 South Africa — one of the UN’s 51 founding members in 1945 — was suspended from the UN General Assembly over its racist governing system.
After attempts to kick out South Africa failed due to vetoes by France, Britain and the US, the General Assembly voted to suspend the country, 91-22 with 19 abstentions. South Africa did not lose its seat at the GA but could not make speeches or participate in votes.
The US, the UK, Israel and other Western countries opposed the move, not defending apartheid but saying depriving the country of its seat at the General Assembly was illegal “and could set a dangerous precedent for the future,” The New York Times reported at the time.
It's hard to remember a time when antisemitism on college campuses was not a problem.
This week, I had an opportunity to discuss a different approach to understanding and addressing campus antisemitism with Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a co-founder of AMCHA, whose report "Zionists Off Our Campus! Campus Antisemitism in 2017" came out this month. AMCHA is a group dedicated solely to investigating, documenting, educating about, and combating antisemitism on college campuses.
The campus antisemitism we see today, Rossman-Benjamin points out, has its roots in the Durban Conference in South Africa in 2001. The Durban Declaration did more than claim that Israel was a racist state and provide the basis for the BDS movement - it also provided the impetus for the attacks on Jewish students on college campuses, which have spread and become more virulent. These attacks are not happening in a vacuum.
The ADL has also come out with a report, Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents: Year in Review 2017, which examines not just campus antisemitism, but also threats against K-12 schools, attacks on Jewish cemeteries and bomb threats.
Not All Antisemitism On Campus Is The Same
But a key difference between the 2 reports is the distinction the AMCHA report makes between 2 different kinds of campus harassment faced by Jewish students.
First of all, counting incidences of antisemitism on campus is not enough. A small swastika drawn in a bathroom stall creates a different emotional impact on a student than the same swastika when it is etched into that same Jewish student�s dorm room door. The former is an expression of an offensive opinion, while the latter implies a desire to harass and intimidate.
The harassment of Jewish students goes beyond swastikas. Another example given in the report is:
At University of Houston, protesters disrupted a student group�s event with chants of �Zionists off our campus...Zionists off our Campus...Free, Free, Free Palestine,� and one protester additionally shouted, �F*** Zionists, F*** all you Zionists!� The protesters continued their demonstration outside the event hall, loudly chanting, �Whose campus? Our campus!...Racists off our campus, Zionists off our campus, Islamophobes off our campus! Fists up, fight back!�
This is a different kind of harassment, directed at Jewish students not as Jews but rather as representatives and supporters of Israel. It is also antisemitism but is distinctive from classic antisemitism such as swastikas and anti-Jewish hate speech.
Such attacks tend to be carried out with the intent to suppress pro-Israel expression or to ostracize and exclude pro-Israel individuals from campus life. These kinds of incidents included:
shutting down, disrupting, defacing or other attempts to interfere with Israel-related events, displays, trips, or announcements on the one hand, and the targeting of individual students and student groups for vilification or attempts to exclude them from participating in campus activities, to boycott interaction with them, or even to expel them from campus altogether on the other.
According to Rossman-Benjamin, it is important to be able to distinguish the intentionality behind the attacks. Antisemitic attacks were not necessarily directed at a particular Jewish student on campus, but anti-Zionist incidents were virtually all directed particularly at Jewish students. It was those anti-Zionist attacks that were more likely to affect the campus climate.
While there were more antisemitic incidents (205) than Israel-related ones (71), far more of the Israel-related incidents (67 / 94% vs 48 / 23%) showed an intent to harm Jewish students and contributed more towards creating a hostile environment.
The Israel-related attacks were also more likely to be carried out by more than one person, and those people were more likely to be affiliated with a particular group or organization.
Israel-Related Attacks on Campus Are Bad -- And Getting Worse
While the report has a breakdown of both antisemitic and Israel-related harassment, let's focus on the report's findings related to the latter.
31 of Israel-related incidents (44%) were intended to impede or silence pro-Israel expression. For example:
At Columbia University, an event featuring Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon was disrupted seven times by student protesters, who loudly chanted anti-Israel slogans, including support for BDS, and blocked the entrance to the auditorium, physically preventing people from entering and intimidating those who were able to enter.
At the University of Maryland, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Political Alliance and other student organizations carried out a boycott protest of the Jewish Student Union-sponsored event "IsraelFest," at which they asked people "to turn away from the festival [IsraelFest] and not participate in any of the festivities."
At the University of Texas Austin, Jewish students attempting to table to raise funds for an Israeli non-profit called "Save a Child's Heart" were impeded when two other student groups moved their tables to flank them, began yelling, chanting and waving a flag over the Jewish students� heads, and drowned out their calls for donations. When the Jewish students relocated to another part of the campus square, the disruptors followed them and continued to impede their efforts for two days.
54 of Israel-related incidents (76%) personally targeted pro-Israel individuals or groups for ostracizing and/or exclusion. For example:
At Pomona College, an SJP member posted a photo on Snapchat and Twitter of the Claremont Progressive Jewish Alliance student president with the caption �Her name is Kate ______ and she is a proud racist.' The post was favorited and retweeted by SJP members.
At St. Olaf College, Oles for Justice in Palestine created a petition asking the College to remove an alumnus from the Advisory Board of the Institute for Freedom and Community at St. Olaf College, claiming, "Arne Christenson is a key member of the Apartheid lobby and an outspoken Christian Zionist. He ought to have no position at any institute for "freedom" or "community" and certainly no position at St. Olaf."
At Tufts University, a widely shared student activist-created handbook entitled "Tufts University Disorientation Guide" described Hillel as �an organization that supports a white supremacist state� that �exploit[s] black voices for their own pro-Israel agenda.� The handbook was posted by students on two official Class Facebook pages.
These incidents of ostracizing and excluding pro-Israel Jews have been successful and have been on the rise over the past few years in comparison to merely suppressing speech.
Furthermore, the ostracizing/exclusion is becoming more flagrant:
At New York University, 53 student groups pledged to boycott NYU�s pro-Israel clubs and refuse to co-sponsor events with them. The president of SJP at NYU was quoted in the student newspaper as saying, �Our point is to make being Zionists uncomfortable on the NYU campus.�
The Black Student Union and various other student organizations at California Polytechnic Institute San Luis Obispo issued a list of demands that included �an increase in ASI funding of ALL cultural clubs, with the exception of organizations that are aligned with Zionist ideology.�
The Director of a program at San Francisco State University posted to her program�s Facebook page a message stating that welcoming Zionists to campus is �a declaration of war against Arabs, Muslims, [and] Palestinians.� Soon after her message was posted, numerous flyers and graffiti messages showed up all over campus stating, �Zionists Not Welcome.�
When I spoke with Ms. Rossman-Benjamin, she pointed out that the AMCHA findings, by distinguishing between classic antisemitism and anti-Zionism, reveal a dual attitude on the part of the university campuses.
On the one hand, campuses tended to be more sympathetic to those subjected to antisemitic attacks, but on the other hand, they had little or no sympathy when it came to Israel-related attacks. As a result, many of places where Jewish students would look to for sympathy, such as peers, were actually themselves perpetuating this kind of harassment.
Furthermore, the University administrators did not feel compelled to act to protect Jewish students from Israel-related attacks, because they saw those incidents as political free speech and not as harassment.
Dealing With Anti-Zionism on Campus: A Paradigm Shift
In their report, the ADL's recommendations put the emphasis on taking legal action in order to protect Jews in general and on the education of university staff in particular to address the problem. Public officials would be expected to speak out against such incidents.
AMCHA's approach is different, and Rossman-Benjamin describes the approach as a paradigm shift.
True, one could try to get universities to recognize anti-Zionism harassment as a form of religious or ethnic discrimination. As it is, there are legislative efforts to get the federal government, especially the Department of Education, to see it that way, and make such harassment illegal under federal anti-discrimination law.
She suggests a different approach:
Instead of trying to get the anti-Zionism behavior recognized as discrimination, let's get the anti-Zionism behavior recognized as a behavior which takes away an individual�s freedom of expression and freedom to fully participate in campus life.
The effort to get anti-Zionism recognized on campus as an example of classic antisemitism or a form of discrimination against Jews would take a lot of work and would not necessarily successful. It will take a lot of effort to get anti-Zionism recognized as a special form of discrimination, and going the legal route is time-consuming and not a simple task.
The main concern must be the welfare and safety of Jewish students on college campuses.
If you have to argue that anti-Zionism is a form of classic antisemitism before you can get protection from what is legitimately hurting Jewish students, you are wasting time when you could be just going to the fact that Jew students are getting hurt -- and that is unacceptable, period.
So instead of going to the legislature, AMCHA advocates for going directly to the university itself, and in its report offers these suggestions:
o Issue a public statement assuring all students that they will be equally protected from intolerant behavior that violates their freedom of expression or their right to full participation in campus life;
o Amend university policies to include the prohibition of peer-on-peer harassment that suppresses any student�s freedom of speech, association or assembly, or unduly interferes with any student�s access to educational opportunities or benefits;
o Institute procedures for enforcing the amended policies equitably, without regard to the motivation of the perpetrator or the identity of the victim;
o Develop educational programs to teach about the importance of freedom of expression to university life and to encourage the expression of a wide range of views in a productive and respectful manner. [emphasis added]
The focus of these suggestions is not Jewish students, but rather all students.
And that is the key: Jewish students need to be protected because all students need to be protected from any kind of harassment that takes away from their right to express themselves. Instead of concentrating on the motivation of the perpetrators -- target the behavior and the make the issue freedom of expression.
This is important for all students - not just Jewish students - because it is not just Jewish students who are having this problem now. For Jews, we must have our basic right to speak protected, before we can speak out effectively about classic antisemitism.
In this way, we avoid the quagmire of having to define what qualifies as classic antisemitism and what is political free speech - by not getting into the quagmire to begin with. As a result, we do not have to tangle with groups like Jewish Voice for Peace who claim to know what qualifies as antisemitism when it comes to Israel.
However, that means that everyone gets to express themselves, and that is going to require a certain amount of tolerance. But keep in mind, it is not as if this allows a group like JVP to say what they want, when they want and where they want. Let's
How Do We Get The Universities To Take These Proposals Seriously?
If need be, pressure can be applied to the universities to put these policies into place.
o Students need to call for it o Outside groups need to call for it o Communities need to call for it - and not just Jewish communities either.
There is already movement in state legislatures to ensure that free speech is assured for all students.
Legislative muscle helps, but the first step is to get the universities to say this is important and pledge they are going to do something about it. If they will not put in place policies that guarantee equal rights to free speech, only then bring legislative muscle to bear.
Getting those policies in place would be a huge step forward.
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.
Mahmoud Habbash, who is the Chief Justice of Palestine and President's Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations, is heading a delegation of Palestinian officials to the 7th session of the World Peace Forum (WPF), held in Jakarta, Indonesia in October.
Al-Habbash said that he will discuss ways to protect world peace from collapse and to examine the reasons that threaten the world peace, "especially the occupation that wreaks havoc on the land, and the aggressors to reach the holy sites and the cancerous expansion of settlements and the confiscation of land and the murder of an unarmed people longing for freedom and freedom from the last occupation on earth."
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, the "pro-Israel" J-Street can find nothing bad to say about an organization that teaches its students that they must remain stateless until they "return" to destroy Israel.
Their "myths and facts" could have been written by UNRWA itself, and I think there is a good chance that this was in fact the case.
Literally everything they say in the first section is a lie:
“UNRWA applies a unique standard to refugees, making refugees of their descendants”
A more accurate way of saying what J-Street considers a "myth" would be to re-word it "“UNRWA applies a unique standard to Palestinians, automatically giving refugee status to their descendants with no mechanism to remove them from that status forever."
Here are J-Street's/UNRWA's responses:
● Palestinian refugees are not distinct from other protracted refugee situations in this regard. Under international law, the children of refugees, whether or not the parents are stateless or lacking citizenship in another country, are also considered refugees.
Wrong. Children of refugees under UNHCR have "derivative" status and are absolutely not considered refugees.
● In fact, the majority of the world’s refugees live in protracted refugee situations. UNHCR also registers descending generational refugees including those from: Afghanistan, Angola, Bhutan, Burma, Burundi, Congo/DRC, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Tibet and Western Sahara.
Half-truth. The derivative status is not automatically inherited. And if the parent is no longer classified as a refugee according to UNHCR's many cessation clauses, the children lose that status as well. Refugees are re-evaluated under UNHCR's procedures - but UNRWA has no means to take a refugee off its rolls of "registered Palestine refugees."
● The principle of family unity and keeping families united and together is the reason that refugee parents provide refugee status to their children.
And this should happen automatically, forever? It sure doesn't for any other refugee situation in the world.
● In fact, UNRWA’s definition of a Palestinian refugee is narrower than UNHCR’s definition of a refugee. Under UNHCR’s definition, both women and men can pass on refugee status to their descendants, whereas only male refugees can pass on their status as refugees under UNRWA’s definition. Under UNHCR’s definition, many more Palestinians, located all over the world, would qualify as refugees.
That is complete garbage. Under UNHCR's definition, none of the Palestinians who live in the West Bank or Gaza or most of them in Jordan would be considered refugees, and none of the rest would be considered refugees either unless they are over 70 years old.
● UNRWA’s refugee definition is determined only by the UN General Assembly and cannot be changed by UNRWA.
Again, this is a lie. The UNRWA definition is an "operational definition" of refugee to determine who gets aid. UNRWA alone decided on this definition, not the UN General Assembly.
Later in the document, J-Street says:
● The “right of return” is a fundamental, internationally-recognized human right afforded to ALL refugees everywhere.
Even if this is true, as we have shown nearly none of the UNRWA "refugees" are real refugees. Descendants do not have an automatic right to return. Even the UNGA resolution that is the source for the Palestinian "right to return" does not say this as being automatic - they can accept compensation, they can be integrated into neighboring countries, and the ones who would be allowed to "return" at the time it was written would have had to accept Israel.
There's lots more in J-Street's list of myths, but it is obvious that an organization that states flatly that over 5 million Palestinians have a "right" to "return" to destroy Israel is not a pro-Israel organization.
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.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
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Elder of Ziyon
