Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, September 27, 2018

Shu'fat Camp UNRWA health center very concerned over - obesity

Here are three posters that can be seen in the Facebook page of the Shu'fat Camp health center.

Shu'fat is the UNRWA camp in Jerusalem that Israel is considering dismantling.

If the biggest problem there is that the residents can't figure out how to choose healthy foods that are readily available, then that is probably a good idea.

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

The World Bank says that the “economy” of the Gaza Strip is collapsing.

This is or should be about as shocking as the discovery that there is gambling at Rick’s café. The word “economy,” which implies at least some productivity, barely fits. Gaza has survived on UNRWA stipends that have supported 1.3 million people with Palestinian refugee status (out of a total population of 1.8 million), on payments from the Palestinian Authority (PA) to its tens of thousands of “employees” (who either do nothing or work for Hamas), and on other donations from Europe, the US, and the Arab world.

The World Bank notes that 70% of young people in Gaza are unemployed, and 54% of the population live below the poverty line (but next door to them live hundreds of Hamas-connected millionaires).

Now the cash spigot is being turned off. Some blame US President Trump, who has cut funds for the special Palestinian-only refugee agency UNRWA, but the underlying reason is the Malthusian fact that the international community can no longer afford to support a geometrically-increasing population of beggars.

The crisis will be discussed at a meeting this week of the “Ad Hoc Liaison Committee” of international donors and other interested parties under UN auspices and chaired by the Norwegian Foreign Minister. The bank “blamed a number of factors, including Israeli restrictions on goods and movement into Gaza and Palestinian Authority sanctions against the Hamas ruled enclave in an attempt to force Hamas to relinquish its authority there.”

Could there be a more blatant and absurd substitution of cause and effect?

Let’s look at the real reasons for the crisis. First there is the structural problem inherent in the “Palestinian Refugee” system set up almost 70 years ago, which guarantees an ever-increasing population of dependents who are kept that way on the chimerical assumption that someday they will “return” to “their homes” in what is today the Jewish state of Israel. They are both paid and educated to this end, and only this end.

Second, there is the political situation in Gaza, ruled by the internationally recognized terrorist organization, Hamas. Of the billions that the US and EU pump into Gaza via UNRWA, the PA, or directly, Hamas officials steal some for their personal use, and divert as much as they can of the rest into preparations for war with Israel, including digging very expensive tunnels which are shored up with concrete and iron imported for civilian purposes, and building rockets to fire at Israeli communities. Instead of working at the jobs that don’t exist, young Gazans participate in riots at the border fence with Israel, try to provoke IDF soldiers into shooting them, and launch incendiary devices into Israel.

Every few years they succeed in provoking a big enough reaction from Israel that whatever infrastructure they have left is severely damaged. Then they are given international aid to rebuild it, which promptly goes into more rockets and tunnels. This is repeated over and over.

The “Ad Hoc Liaison Committee” will doubtless propose new ways of providing aid, but it will not attack the fundamental causes of the problem. It will not propose doing away with UNRWA, abolishing refugee status for “refugees” that have never actually been displaced, resettling refugees in Arab countries, or educating them to aspire to independent lives in place of the dream that someday they will get revenge on the Jews. Neither will it propose replacing the corrupt, evil, Hamas regime. It will, almost certainly, blame Israel – the target of Hamas’ rockets and incendiary devices.

As a matter of fact, Israel is responsible to some extent, but not because it has malevolently strangled Gaza by its “blockade,” which is only an interdiction of militarily-useful goods and is permeable to food, medicine, and so forth. It is responsible – along with the rest of the world – for tolerating the unsustainable situation in Gaza. Israel finds it easier to continue with the status quo, even including the periodic wars to which it gives rise, than to deal with the nasty job of uprooting Hamas. It prefers that UNRWA continue to feed, house, and nurture the delusions of generations of Arabs than to deal with the chaos that would come from ending their dream of “return” once and for all.

This is cruel to both the Jews who are struck by the rockets and firebombs launched by Hamas, and to the Gazans who live under the thumb of the corrupt regime, and as “Palestinian refugees” are doomed to a life of statelessness and dependency.

It is ironic that the honored humanitarian experts of the world’s most humanitarian society ever, the European Union, leads this farce. It is ironic that recent American administrations and Israeli governments have all gone along with it, shouldering the lion’s share of the cost of the great Palestinian refugee scam.

But it is most ironic of all that it took an American president who is considered by those European sophisticates to be so beneath contempt that they would laugh at his General Assembly speech to begin the process of puncturing the sacrosanct Palestinian refugee myth; the same president who was supposedly too naïve to know that moving the American embassy to Jerusalem would “inevitably” lead to an explosion in the Arab world.

That explosion didn’t happen, and similarly there will be no explosion when UNRWA and the special status of “Palestinian refugees” are eliminated.

This may not be a sufficient condition for an end to the conflict between Israel and the Arabs, but it certainly is a necessary one!

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09/27 Links Pt1: 25 years after Oslo, PA and Fatah still don’t recognize Israel; Palestinian Textbooks Claim Entirety of Israel as Arab Land, Call Jews ‘Sinful and Liars’

From Ian:

David Singer: Trump’s PLO Shutdown Paves Way for Jordan-West Bank Reunification

President Trump’s decision to close the PLO mission in Washington, cancel the visas of the Palestinian ambassador and his family and order their bank accounts be closed – mark the PLO’s final humiliation for condemning Trump’s proposed peace plan before its contents have even been published.

Strangely however the United States still maintains that direct negotiations between Israel and the PLO are the only way forward.

The PLO will be fortified by this latest statement – mistakenly believing it:

remains in the box seat to stymie any peace plan Trump wheels out,

can blunt Trump’s reputation as a highly successful deal maker and

reinforces the PLO’s right to continue as sole spokesman for the Palestinian Arabs although Hamas governs Gaza and Jordan exercises sovereignty in 78 per cent of former Palestine.

Direct Israel-PLO negotiations on Trump’s peace proposals are a pipe dream.

Jordan remains the key to resolving – with Israel – Trump’s plans involving the future of the West Bank for the following reasons:

Transjordan occupied the West Bank from 1948 to 1967.

Transjordan and the West Bank were unified in 1950, the new entity was renamed “Jordan” and Jordanian citizenship was extended to the West Bank Arab population

Jordan continued to retain legal and administrative control and extend citizenship between 1967 and 1988 until King Hussein announced Jordan’s termination of its role in the West Bank in the PLO’s favour for the following reasons:

“Lately, it has transpired that there is a general Palestinian and Arab orientation which believes in the need to highlight the Palestinian identity in full in all efforts and activities that are related to the Palestine question and its developments. It has also become clear that there is a general conviction that maintaining the legal and administrative links with the West Bank, and the ensuing Jordanian interaction with our Palestinian brothers under occupation through Jordanian institutions in the occupied territories, contradicts this orientation. It is also viewed that these links hamper the Palestinian struggle to gain international support for the Palestinian cause of a people struggling against foreign occupation.
In view of this line of thought, which is certainly inspired by genuine Palestinian will, and Arab determination to support the Palestinian cause, it becomes our duty to be part of this direction, and to respond to its requirements…” …

PMW: 25 years after Oslo, PA and Fatah still don’t recognize Israel

While PA Chairman Abbas and other Palestinian leaders speak internationally about Israel as an accepted fact, it should be noted that the PA and Abbas' Fatah Movement still have not accepted the most fundamental commitment the PLO made when it signed the Oslo Accords 25 years ago: To recognize Israel's existence. Such a recognition has never happened.

The image above posted by Fatah on Facebook last week, shows a boy with a shirt in the shape and colors of the Palestinian flag, painting the following words across the PA's map of "Palestine" that includes all of Israel together with the PA areas:

"Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea"
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Sept. 20, 2018]

Behind the map are the names of different cities located both in Israel and in the PA areas, among them Israeli cities such as Acre, Jaffa, Be'er Sheva, and Haifa.

The text and image leave no room for the State of Israel in any borders.

For more than two decades, Palestinian Media Watch has documented that neither the PA nor Fatah recognize Israel when addressing their own people. In fact, the opposite is true. Both do their utmost to convince Palestinians that all of Israel was, is, and will remain "Palestine."

It is not surprising that Palestinians deny Israel's existence, since the message that all of Israel is "Palestine" comes from the top. The Palestinian Authority Minister of Education Sabri Saidam recently posed holding a sketch of the PA's map of "Palestine" that likewise presents all of Israel as "Palestine" at an event with NGOs working with the education sector. "Palestine" is written on the map in Arabic and English (on left). Saidam is also Deputy Secretary of Fatah's Central Committee.

Report: Palestinian Textbooks Claim Entirety of Israel as Arab Land, Call Jews ‘Sinful and Liars’

Palestinian Authority textbooks encourage children to view the entirety of Israel as Arab territory, and teach them to seek the land’s liberation even at the cost of martyrdom, according to a new report by a Jerusalem-based research group.

Palestinian nationalist and Islamist ideologies that reject Israel’s basic legitimacy saturate lessons for children as young as six, with various science, math, and humanities exercises all reinforcing this overarching narrative, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) found.

The group studied grade 1–11 textbooks published for the 2017–18 academic year, and grade 12 textbooks that were inaugurated this August, following PA curriculum reforms first implemented in 2016. It released a preliminary review of the grades 5-11 curriculum in October.

“Palestine after the 1948 War.” Geography and Modern History of Palestine, Vol. 2, Grade 10, 2017, p. 8. Photo: IMPACT-se.

Israel is routinely referred to as the “Zionist Occupation” within the curriculum, including in contexts before the 1967 Six-Day War, in which it came to control the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and eastern portions of Jerusalem.

Various areas within Israel are described as Palestinian, with a geography textbook for 12th graders stating that the “Negev Plateau is located in southern Palestine,” while a entrepreneurship textbook for the same grade claims that the Israeli city of Nazareth is located in the “Palestinian North.”

European Parliament committee votes to freeze €15M to PA over inciting textbooks

The European Parliament Budgetary Committee voted to freeze over 15 million Euros from the Palestinian Authority if they do not remove incitement from their textbooks.

"The reserve will be released," the bill reads, "when the Palestinian Authority has committed to reform its school curriculum and textbooks to bring them in line with UNESCO standards standards for peace and tolerance in school education."

The bill, an amendment to the EU's draft budget proposed by Budgetary Committee chairwoman MEP Dr. Ingeborg Grässle, is expected to go to a plenary vote on October 24th.

If the bill passes the plenary vote, the EU will withhold €15,440,597 until the PA changes its textbooks. The European Union is the largest single donor to the Palestinian Authority.

The bill states: "The textbooks published by the PA in 2017, which are financed by the EU...contain, across all subjects, numerous examples of violent depictions, hate speech – in particular against Israel – and glorifications of jihad and martyrdom. As has already been pointed out by Parliament in its resolution on the 2016 budget discharge (par. 272), EU-financed teaching and training programs should reflect common values.”

The Quranic verse that Mahmoud Abbas quoted to Palestinian youth

PA president and dictator for life Mahmoud Abbas wrote a handwritten letter to Palestinian youth on their being steadfast until they control all of Palestine (and, of course, destroy Israel):

In the name of God the Merciful

"O you who believe! If you support Allah, He will support you, and will strengthen your foothold." This is a great truth of Allah.

Generation after generation, we have carried the trust that Allah has placed in our hearts. Generation after a generation, our veins continue to stand by the oath and the oath that we remain the protectors of this beloved homeland, steadfast in it, to preserve its identity and achieve its freedom and independence with the popular resistance in which all our sons and daughters are involved .

We have not been discouraged by sacrifice, but have increased our hardness, determination and resolve to continue our noble path no matter how long it takes.

And with the determination of youth we will raise the flag of Palestine over the walls and minarets of Jerusalem and its churches.

The initial verse is interesting. It comes from the Quran, 47:7.

Here is the context of the Quranic statement:

1. Those who disbelieve and repel from the path of God—He nullifies their works.

2. While those who believe, and work righteousness, and believe in what was sent down to Muhammad—and it is the truth from their Lord—He remits their sins, and relieves their concerns.

3. That is because those who disbelieve follow falsehoods, while those who believe follow the truth from their Lord. God thus cites for the people their examples.

4. When you encounter those who disbelieve, strike at their necks. Then, when you have routed them, bind them firmly. Then, either release them by grace, or by ransom, until war lays down its burdens. Had God willed, He could have defeated them Himself, but He thus tests some of you by means of others. As for those who are killed in the way of God, He will not let their deeds go to waste.

5. He will guide them, and will improve their state of mind.

6. And will admit them into Paradise, which He has identified for them.

7. O you who believe! If you support God, He will support you, and will strengthen your foothold.

8. But as for those who disbelieve, for them is perdition, and He will waste their deeds.

9. That is because they hated what God revealed, so He nullified their deeds.

10. Have they not journeyed through the earth and seen the consequences for those before them? God poured destruction upon them, and for the unbelievers is something comparable.

11. That is because God is the Master of those who believe, while the disbelievers have no master.

This message is anything but peaceful.

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The World Bank issued a series of reports on the dire situation in Gaza - and it reveals some interesting facts in its recommendations.

Restore transfer flows
1. Restore aggregate PA payments to Gaza (these have declined by $30 million per month from 2017). Priority should be given to social assistance payments, medical supplies, and salaries for PA employees who are working.
2. Reverse the decline in donor funding to key service delivery agencies such as UNRWA.

The cuts began around April 2017. $30 million a month since April 2017 comes out to over half a billion dollars!

For some reason, the US withholding funds from the Palestinians is big news. When other countries do it it is no big deal. (International support for the Palestinian budget has gone down by 2/3 since 2008!) And when Palestinian leaders themselves withhold huge amounts from Gaza no one at all reports it until it is buried as a parenthetical statement in a 37 page report.

And it might get much, much worse. The PA still sends $96 million a month to Gaza - and Mahmoud Abbas may cut that entire amount.

(h/t Irene)

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Billboard meant to celebrate Iran's soldiers actually showed Israeli soldiers

A hilarious item from Sputnik News:

In an embarrassing error, a billboard in the Iranian city of Shiraz meant to commemorate the country’s eight-year-long war with Iraq accidentally featured images of soldiers from the Islamic Republic’s more perennial rival: the Israel Defense Forces.

Iran is in the middle of its Sacred Defense Week, a week-long holiday meant to commemorate the Iran-Iraq War, fought between the two countries from 1980 until 1988. Unfortunately, one ad in Shiraz, a city in Fars that is Iran's fifth-largest, purported to show Iranian soldiers gazing out from a mountaintop at the horizon, but instead showed soldiers from Israel, a country revolutionary leader and Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini called "the little satan" (compared to the United States' "big satan").

What's more, the original photo featured a female soldier, who was edited out for the Shiraz billboard, and clouds were put in to replace the original backdrop of a suburban locale. The soldiers' uniforms in the ad don't look like Iranian army uniforms, either.

Once the ad's true nature became known, it was quickly taken down.

Here's the billboard:

And here's the original photo of IDF soldiers who were looking out from a hill near Gush Etzion:

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09/26 Links Pt2: Linda Sarsour’s Blood Libel; Corbyn says UK will immediately recognize Palestinian state if he’s elected; Pat Condell: O Come All Ye Jew Haters

From Ian:

Linda Sarsour’s Blood Libel

When police officers in America shoot unarmed black people, Jewish hands lurk in the background — so says Linda Sarsour, perhaps the most visible Muslim political advocate in the United States. She was a co-chair of the national Women’s March, and is a campaign surrogate for politicians, including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

A program sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that takes American police officials to Israel for a week-long seminar is fueling police brutality, Sarsour said earlier this month at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)’s annual convention.

The ADL, she said in response to a question, “has been a purveyor of Islamophobia against our community,” and complained that the group still enjoys a positive reputation.

ADL officials “positioned themselves as somehow being part of the progressive movement,” she said. “But what they do is, I’ll give you an example of something that they do — if you are part of a criminal justice reform movement, if you believe in the idea of ending police brutality and the misconduct of law enforcement officers across the country, then you do not support an organization that takes police officers from America, funds their trips, takes them to Israel so they can be trained by the Israeli police and military, and then they come back here and do what? Stop and frisk, killing unarmed black people across the country.”

“That [statement] is so horrific,” says Nisi Jacobs. Jacobs is a co-founder of the Women’s March for All, a group that broke away from the national Women’s March because of antisemitism concerns about Sarsour and national co-chair Tamika Mallory. Among its activities, Women’s March for All has circulated a petition calling on Sarsour and Mallory to be replaced.

“It’s [beyond] anti-Semitic,” Jacobs said. “She’s lying to a bunch of gullible, hurt people. She’s like a horrible guru that just lies because she has her own agenda.”

IsraellyCool: The Bolt Report on Ari Fuld Murder and Eurovision Boycott Attempts

The wonderful Andrew Bolt recently spoke to Australian Jewish politician Michael Danby about the murder of Ari Fuld z”l, as well as BDS-hole hypocrisy towards Israel.

As usual, it is worth watching, solely for the fact that it is like watching a current affairs show from an alternate universe, in which Israel is portrayed accurately, and the real bad guys portrayed as bad guys.

Corbyn says UK will immediately recognize Palestinian state if he’s elected

The leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, said Wednesday that he would immediately recognize a Palestinian state if elected to lead the country, while also acknowledging that his party has faced a tough summer grappling with the issue of anti-Semitism.

During his keynote speech at the annual Labour conference in Liverpool, Corbyn protested “the ongoing denial of justice and rights to the Palestinian people” and declared Labour was “united in condemning the shooting of hundreds of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza by Israeli forces and the passing of Israel’s discriminatory nation-state law,” referring to recent Knesset legislation defining Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

“The continuing occupation, the expansion of illegal settlements and the imprisonment of Palestinian children are an outrage,” he said, referring to minors convicted by Israel of terror activities.

According to AP figures, more than 130 Gazans have been killed by Israeli fire since the start of weekly border clashes dubbed the “Great March of Return” at the end of March. Hamas, an Islamist terror group that seized control of Gaza in 2007 and seeks to destroy Israel, has acknowledged that dozens of the fatalities were its members.

What do you do when your beliefs and living where you do places your child in mortal danger? Some people would change their beliefs or move. Others would not, aware in some dim recesses of the mind that others think they are shirking their parental duty and risking the lives of their children. But what if it’s about your principles: about living in Eretz HaKodesh, the Holy Land?

We were proud of our 18-year-old son when he went out and got his first real job without any clout or help from us. But we were surprised to hear he’d gotten a job as a busboy at Greg, a café at Canion Harim, the mall at the Gush Etzion Junction. We’d expected he’d get a job locally, in our town of Efrat, or perhaps something in Jerusalem.

The issue was immediately apparent: how would he get to and from work? Especially when he stayed to close up, late at night? Would his job prove to be a liability, with my husband always driving him there and back, on call for this exclusive purpose?

Because while we feel safe enough at home, the Gush Etzion Junction is a known hotspot for terror. It’s not far from where the three boys were kidnapped and murdered, and Dalia Lemkus stabbed to death. It’s where Ezra Schwartz and my children’s beloved teacher Rabbi Yaakov Don were killed. And it’s where Ari Fuld was murdered only a week ago.

Ari Fuld (HY"D) collided with this glass door during the attack that took his life and it shattered on impact.

There have been other incidents. Stabbings and ramming attacks. And I always know when one is happening, because I can hear the sirens of the multiple ambulances and security vehicles speeding toward the scene. I can hear them in my living room. It’s a trick, something about the way the sound carries. And yet, we live that close, though we might as well be very far away: close enough to hear, far enough away to feel safe from harm.

I have never bought into the idea that the only place Jews are safe is in Eretz Yisrael. On the one hand, I know that statistically, even the Gush Etzion Junction is safer than a New York street corner. But that is cold comfort. The fact is, terror does strike at the Junction and has. On numerous occasions. I’d be a fool to pretend otherwise.

Makeshift memorial to Ari Fuld (HY"D) on the spot of the terror attack that took his life.

But I have always believed that Jews should live in every part of Eretz Yisrael. Use it or lose it. This personal precept was, in fact, something I shared with Ari Fuld, something I mentioned to a colleague who asked me for a personal anecdote about Ari for an article she was writing:

There was a pro-Israel bloggers meet-up last year. It was in "East" Jerusalem and anyway, I don't drive, so I asked if I could get a ride with Ari.
He took a route to Jerusalem that I hadn't taken since maybe the 1st intifada, a road considered "dangerous."
I was surprised and pleased. We talked about that, how important it is to travel in parts of Israel that are even dangerous. We had a meeting of minds on the subject.
I don't have too many friends who get that. So I knew he was the real deal.

I remember some years ago, the same son who took the job at Greg, was invited by a neighbor to take a day trip during the Sukkot festival to see a part of Israel that was off the beaten track. My husband initially said no: it was too dangerous. But when Dov told me about it, he was surprised to hear, after ascertaining that the father who was driving would be armed, that I thought my son should go. My true, deep feeling is that if we don’t own the roads of our land, don’t use them, they will become even more dangerous, so dangerous that it will be as if they no longer belong to us. They will become exclusively Arab.

Makeshift memorial in the shape of a Star of David at the site of Ari Fuld's murder (HY"D)

A hand-lettered sign memorializing Ari Fuld (HY"D) at the site of the murder by the people of Maale Michmash. It says, in part, "The eternal nation is not afraid of the long road ahead."

It is a mitzvah, a commandment, to travel in and see Israel. You get a brownie point for every four cubits you walk within the land. To me, this article of faith is not a myth but a fact. I believe it more deeply than I believe just about anything at all.

The sign on the Gush Etzion Junction felafel shop quoting its propietor.

And now I am being put to the test. Will I tell my son to quit his job, urge him to do so, when all his life I have demonstrated that I believe in traveling to parts of Israel that are even “a little dangerous” as I related in my anecdote about Ari Fuld?

So far, Dov has given our son rides where needed, and a co-worker has been generous enough to give him rides home late at night. My son knows that if he doesn’t have a ride, he can call home and my hardworking husband will get out of bed, get dressed, and go pick him up. I hope my son doesn’t hesitate to do so, worried about awakening his father.

Dov told him that if he becomes nervous, if it becomes too much, he can look for other work, and left it at that. The values with which we raised our son are now being put to the test. At 18, he’s a man. It’s now up to him to assume the mantle. Or not.

Next year he goes into the IDF where he takes with him everything we’ve poured into him to defend our people and our land. I could think of this as a delicate precipice where he leaves the shelter of youth to risk everything for others. Or I could think of it as a continuation of how we’ve always raised him: that security and safety are ephemeral. That what is true and right is our heritage: our God-given right to the land.

(Thanks, Leora Hyman and Dov Epstein for photos)

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Arabs freak over Jews singing Hatikva on Temple Mount

Arab media is upset over some Jews singing the Israeli national anthem while visiting the Temple Mount:

The articles say they were singing it "loudly" but it is apparent that the main singer has his mouth very close to the microphone, and is not singing loudly at all. Certainly the guards do not seem fazed.

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09/26 Links Pt1: Trump: 'We're with Israel 100%'; The Palestinians' Three No's: What They Mean; Fatah TV host anticipates taking Israelis hostage to "release our captives"

From Ian:

The Palestinians' Three No's: What They Mean

When Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad talk about "paying a political price," they are referring to demands that the Palestinian terrorist groups lay down their weapons, halt terrorist attacks on Israel, and abandon their dream of eliminating Israel. These are terms, of course, to which no Palestinian terrorist group could ever afford to agree.

Accepting such conditions would make them look bad in the eyes of their supporters, who would then accuse them of betraying the Arabs and Muslims by failing to fulfill their promise of destroying Israel. As far as these groups are concerned, keeping their weapons is tremendously more important than improving the living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

To be clear: when the Palestinian terrorist groups talk about "resistance," they are referring to terror attacks on Israel. These include suicide bombings, launching rockets towards Israel, and hurling explosive devices and firebombs at Israeli soldiers and civilians. These groups do not believe in any form of peaceful and non-violent protests. For them, there is only one realistic option to achieve their goal of destroying Israel: the armed struggle.

Why are the Palestinian terrorist groups conducting indirect talks with Israel to reach a new truce agreement in the Gaza Strip under the auspices of Egypt and the UN? The answer is simple. They want a truce, or period of calm, so that they can continue preparing for the next war against Israel without having to worry about Israeli military operations.

“UNRWA is not serving Palestinians. It's a political arm that claims to serve Palestinians. We have for two years asked UNRWA to reform itself because it has this ongoing number of refugees that is unsustainable. We can’t sustain—and the world knows.” @NikkiHaley, Sept. 4, 2018 pic.twitter.com/e9Uacg4N3W
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) September 25, 2018

PMW: Fatah TV host anticipates taking Israelis hostage to "release our captives"

Commemorating the anniversary of the capture of 8 Israeli soldiers and holding them hostage in Lebanon in 1982, until Israel released 5,900 Palestinian and Arab terrorists from Israeli prisons, a Fatah TV host expressed his wish for a similar "operation" to "release our captives" - i.e., terrorists and murderers sitting in Israeli prisons.

Interviewing Fatah Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul about the taking of Israelis as hostages in the 1980s, Muwaffaq Matar, host at the Fatah-run Awdah TV, described the 8 Israeli captives as "the hens that would lay golden eggs," because they were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.

Fatah Deputy Chairman Mahmoud Al-Aloul: "They [Fatah fighters] shouted at them [Israeli soldiers] to lay down their weapons... There were six of them. The guys arranged them in one row, took their weapons from them, and ordered them to raise their hands... The two [additional Israeli] soldiers who were behind the hill advanced... laid their weapons on the ground, and raised their hands..."
Fatah-run Awdah TV host Muwaffaq Matar: "We had... 'the hens that would lay golden eggs'... the captives through whom, or through the exchange of whom, about 5,000 Palestinian prisoners were released... We think that this Palestinian wisdom... the Palestinian fighter will undoubtedly bring a new victory and a new quality operation one day. The conditions might have changed, and the means might change, but this hope and this promise will release our prisoners." [Official Fatah Facebook page, Sept. 4, 2018]

Israel’s Nationality Law, UN Resolution 181, and the Arab List

Ever since 1988, when after 40 years of rejection, the PLO feigned acceptance of UN General Assembly Resolution 181 on the partition of mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the resolution has been the document used most frequently by Palestinians to underscore two of their major claims — the right to statehood within borders that were larger by far than those envisaged by the Oslo “peace” process, and the supposed Palestinian “right of return.”

For these reasons, Resolution 181 holds center stage in one of the PLO’s most famous documents — the Palestinian declaration of independence, which was approved by the Palestine National Council (PNC), the PLO’s legislative body, in Algiers in 1988.

It can be self-defeating to cite documents without having read them. And the Palestinians learned this in their attempts to mobilize Resolution 181 behind the Palestinian cause.

One major contradiction concerns Jerusalem. According to the partition resolution, Jerusalem was to be governed by an international regime that was separate from both the Jewish and Arab states. This, of course, directly contradicts the vision of Jerusalem as the Palestinian state’s future capital. (For this and other reasons, the document is never quoted by Israeli officials either.)

Even more blatant is this contradiction: the traditional PLO stance is to reject the existence of Israel as a Jewish state (or the state of the Jewish People), but the partition of Mandatory Palestine was to have been between a Jewish state and an Arab one. It was unproblematic at the time to define the future state with a Jewish majority as the “Jewish state.” The drafters of the document took it for granted that the Jewish state was to be the state of the Jewish people, which may be one of the reasons why the Arab states uniformly rejected the document and its contents.

Continuing from last time, a BDS debate involving South Africa usually follows certain predictable patterns. BDS advocates claim that those involved in the struggle to topple Apartheid in SA see the Arab-Israeli conflict in the same terms with Israelis serving as stand-ins for the Boers. Various names are dropped, but since most Americans are unfamiliar with the cast of characters (and because most students at schools targeted for BDS campaigns weren’t even born when Apartheid existed or ended), the only two names with any resonance are Desmond Tutu and, of course, Nelson Mandela.

Because Reverend Tutu is a four-square champion for BDS, his support for a boycott or divestment program can only be trumped by invoking the name of Mandela whose relationship with Jews and Israel is more ambiguous. One of the reasons an attempt a few years ago to break ties between the University of Johannesburg and Ben-Gurion University in Israel failed was because of Mandela’s involvement in the relationship between the two centers of learning. This is why the endorsement of Mandela is so sought after that BDS advocates are not beyond using fraud to pretend to obtain it.

Like most things, the actual relationship between Israel and South Africa (like the relationship between South Africa and every other country in the world – including Israel’s loudest critics) was a complicated affair. As is usually the case when $$$s mix with global politics, few hands are clean when it comes to international affairs vis-à-vis pre-Mandela SA. And South Africa’s relationship with Israel since Apartheid fell is as multi-faceted as one would expect between two such intense and vibrant societies.

But when BDSers lay down their Tutu card (as they do in nearly every BDS battle) or supporters and opponents of boycotts try to read the Mandela tea leaves, they are taking for granted the assumption that the South African experience gives those that fought against Apartheid unique moral weight in discussion on other topics (notably the Middle East). But, without diminishing the courage and patience of all those involved with the successful overthrow of Apartheid, is this a reasonable assumption?

After all, if suffering and courage lent all who practiced it unquestioned moral authority, why are Jews (who suffered one of history’s greatest mass murders only to revive and build a thriving nation and Diaspora) treated by BDSers as uniquely damaged by these experiences? Apparently, if the South African experience created saints who cannot be criticized in any way (lest critics be banished from decent society), the Holocaust turned Jews into proto-Nazis who learned nothing from the experience other than how to behave like their former tormentors.

This knot can be untangled if you look at the world not through the lens of ideological need, but of actual human experience. As has been pointed out before, the BDS “movement” is part of an “Apartheid Strategy” designed to brand Israel as the inheritor of the mantle of the late 20^th century’s most reviled nation and political system. But on its own, the “Apartheid Strategy” is simply an accusation, one that can be counter by facts and blunted by counter-accusation of the Apartheid-like nature of Israel’s most vocal critics.

Which is why the endorsement of those involved with the original fight against the original Apartheid becomes so critical. And just as importantly, we are asked to take it on faith that any South African endorsing the Israel=Apartheid analogy must be doing so based on nothing more than an unvarnished quest for justice.

But South Africa is a real place containing real people involved with real political (now geopolitical) decision-making. Yes, they won a marvelous victory against a vile and bigoted political system, and projects like Truth and Reconciliation commissions showed the world that there were options other than vengeance when old orders make way for new. But why were the Arabs states who supplied Apartheid with the oil it needed to run its machinery of repression given a unique pass from this Truth and Reconciliation process? Why do South Africa’s leaders, considered saints when they hurl their barbs at the Jewish state, behave with the same mix of vision, patriotism, virtue, venality, greed and hypocrisy seen in every other political leader in human history?

The voice of South Africans with regard to the Middle East (as with any other issue) are many and varied and the motivation behind some South Africans (including Tutu) endorsing BDS projects can and should be subjected to the same scrutiny as any political statement made by any other political leader. No supporter of Israel I have ever met has demanded that all political discussion stop because a Jew (even a Holocaust survivor) has spoken (quite the opposite, in fact). And without in any way diminishing the valor of those who helped bring down the Apartheid system, it is well past time that the same approach be taken with regard to South Africans.

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Video and photos of Gaza children trying to cut Gaza fence. Of course Hamas sends them.

Journalist Joe Truzmah tweets this video:

He also tweeted this photo of a child setting fire to a tire wedged at the fence, meant to weaken it:

Hamas operatives stay hundreds of yards behind the fence and send kids (and other civilians) with the wirecutters and tires to go to the fence - and hopefully be shot by the IDF so they can claim Israel kills innocent kids.

It is a cynical game, and one that journalists fall for every time.

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Lebanon's acting Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil reveals some hypocrisy that the world happily accepts.

In Al Monitor (quoted in The Daily Star):

Caretaker Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said that the U.S.’s decision to cut UNRWA funding will be discussed during meetings at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, and that he didn’t oppose conditioned peace with Israel.

In an interview published Monday with the United States-based Al-Monitor news website, Bassil said that the cuts were one of the ways of preventing the Palestinians in Lebanon from returning to their homeland and staying there.

The cuts “have a very heavy political weight on the idea of keeping the Palestinians in Lebanon because, you know, this is a step forward to, one, deprive them from the right to return and, two, to somehow take the title of refugee and turn them into integrated people in our country,” Bassil said.

But Bassil also has some interesting things to say about Syrian refugees:

As Lebanon's foreign minister, Gebran Bassil has in recent months taken steps to quicken the return of Syrian civilians who in the past seven years crossed the border to flee civil war.

Speaking to The National, Mr Bassil hesitates to call such Syrians refugees, instead describing them as "migrants" and "displaced".

"Lebanon does not accept Syrians to be refugees, not one of them," he said on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

His argument is that Lebanon is not a signatory to the Convention Relating To The Status Of Refugees, a UN multilateral treaty agreed in 1951, and thus is not required to grant refugee status.

He is also sensitive to the need and some public desire for repatriation of the more than one million Syrians in Lebanon because of the war.

"It's stipulated in our constitution, it’s related to the existence of the country that’s based on a certain equilibrium and balance, you cannot all of a sudden introduce 50 per cent of its population to the country."

Lebanon doesn't legally consider Palestinians to be refugees - but it happily calls them refugees when it is convenient.

Isn't it funny that no one is calling Lebanon racist for deciding on its ethnic character in its constitution?

It gets even worse:

On 21 March - Mother’s Day in Lebanon and a little more than a month before the country’s first parliamentary election in nine years - Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil announced he would submit an amendment to the country’s nationality law that would give Lebanese women married to foreign men the right to transfer their nationality to their children.

The initiative “applies the principle of equality between all Lebanese women and men”, Bassil said.

But there is one significant exception in the minister’s proposal: the right would not extend to Lebanese women married to citizens of “neighbouring countries”, meaning Syrians or Palestinians. Bassil said he would also seek to remove the right of Lebanese men to confer citizenship to their Syrian or Palestinian wives and the children of those marriages.

This wonderful paradigm of a liberal foreign minister spoke at Princeton University this week, where he blames ISIS and Israel for forcing Lebanon to have discriminatory citizenship and refugee laws.

Yet rock stars and other artists happily play in Lebanon. There is no BDS movement against Lebanon. Racist laws and accepted as part of the reality and the world shrugs.

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09/25 Links: At UN, Trump hails Israel, urges world to isolate Iran, which sows ‘destruction’; Israel-Russia crisis artificial, driven by anti-Semitism; Tamimi: Our goal is to remove Israel

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Mahmoud Abbas Should Be Barred from Entering the U.S.

The U.S. government should bar Palestinian Authority Chairman and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Mahmoud Abbas from entering the United States on Wednesday for the opening of the United Nations.

In the days that have passed since Queens, New York, native and dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Ari Fuld was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist, we have learned several things about how his murder came about.

Together, they make a compelling case to take action against Abbas when he arrives at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. (Abbas is scheduled to arrive in New York to address the UN General Assembly meeting on Thursday.)

Ari Fuld, a 45-year-old father of four, was stabbed in the back by Palestinian terrorist Khalil Jabarin last Sunday morning outside a shopping center at Gush Etzion Junction in Judea, south of Jerusalem.

On Tuesday, Palestinian journalist Bassem Tawil provided significant evidence that recent statements by Abbas may have encouraged 16-year-old Jabarin to murder Fuld – or any other Jewish person. Jabarin is from Dura, a village about a half hour south of the shopping center – a convenient site for his attack.

Tawil reported that Saturday, the day before the murder, Abbas gave a speech to the PLO’s Executive Committee in Ramallah. In his address, Abbas reportedly “repeated the old libel that Israel was planning to establish special Jewish prayer zones inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” which is on the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism, the site of the Second Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

Report: PA leader aims to undercut US peace plan at UN

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is ‎planning to host a conference of world leaders and ‎high-ranking diplomats on the sidelines of the ‎United Nations General Assembly this week with the ‎expressed intention of undermining U.S. President ‎Donald Trump's regional peace plan, Channel 10 ‎News reported Monday.‎

Relations between Washington and Ramallah have been ‎‎‎particularly strained since U.S. President Donald ‎‎Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's ‎capital last December and subsequently moved the ‎U.S. ‎Embassy there in May. The move outraged ‎Palestinians, who envision east Jerusalem as the ‎capital of a future Palestinian state. ‎

Abbas has ‎since refused ‎to engage with any of ‎Trump's Middle ‎East envoys, saying that the U.S. ‎bias in favor of Israel ‎proves ‎it cannot act as an ‎impartial mediator in ‎‎regional peace talks.‎

The Trump administration has taken ‎several other steps ‎against the Palestinian ‎Authority, including ‎suspending the large U.S. ‎contribution to the U.N. aid ‎agency assisting ‎Palestinian refugees and shuttering ‎the Palestine ‎Liberation Organization's mission in ‎Washington. ‎‎

The United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and ‎‎Germany, as well as diplomats from 40 nations and ‎international organizations, have been invited to the conference ‎scheduled for Wednesday, the ‎report said. ‎

Titled "Salvaging the Two-State ‎Solution, ‎Defending the ‎International Rules-Based ‎System,"‎ the conference is set to take place at the Grand Hyatt ‎hotel in New York.‎

Former envoy: Israel-Russia crisis artificial, driven by anti-Semitism

The crisis between Israel and Russia resulting from a Russian military aircraft being shot down over Syria last week is "calculated and artificial, unrelated to reality or the facts, because the Russians want payment," former Israeli Ambassador to Russia Zvi Magen told Israel Hayom in an interview.

Now a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, Magen underscored that "it doesn't matter what Israel does. From the moment the other side wants a crisis, there's no way of preventing one.

"The media blamed Israel on the day of crisis in a well-timed orchestrated manner, filled with anti-Semitic elements. This wasn't random."

According to Magen's analysis, the Russian defense establishment never changed its stance, even after Israeli Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin visited Moscow to present Israel's findings on the incident.

Anti-Semitism rears its head

A Russian Defense Ministry statement repeating gross accusations about Israel being responsible for shooting down a Russian military plane over Syria last week is a signal that, at least outwardly, Russia is unwilling to turn over a new page and move on from the past.

The inaccurate, unfounded, and even false claims in the ministry's findings should not come as a surprise to anyone. After announcing that Israel was at fault, the Russians have not been able to back down, not even after an Israeli Air Force delegation showed them clear proof that Israel had operated within both nations' coordination guidelines. It goes against the Russian culture of power to publicly admit to a mistake. The Russian government will never let facts confuse its citizens' belief that Russia is always right.

The false accusation against Israel has awakened the ghosts of anti-Semitism that always existed in Russian society and which the ruling powers have made an effort to hide these past few decades. Russian television stations permit themselves to make harsh statements about Israel and a number of speakers, including senior delegates in the Russian parliament, have demanded that military air bases in the Jewish state be bombed in retribution. Until last week's incident, such remarks were effectively prohibited in public in Russia, because officials were certain that the person at the top – President Vladimir Putin – objected to them.

But the new situation in which a major government entity in the form of the Russian Defense Ministry talks about Israel in language reminiscent of the Cold War has unleashed anti-Semitic language in Russia in general.