Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, January 04, 2019

01/04 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The pathological animus of ‘The New York Times’; Corbyn filmed applauding extremist Jew’s speech about ‘dismantling’ Israel

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The pathological animus of ‘The New York Times’

A recent column by Bret Stephens in The New York Times was headlined “Donald Trump is bad for Israel.”

Others may think a more appropriate headline would be: “The New York Times is bad for Israel.”

The paper is regarded as the bible of America’s intellectual classes. Yet for years, its coverage of Israel has been a disgrace.

Of course, it’s entitled to criticize Israel as it would any other country. But it doesn’t treat Israel like any other country. It singles it out for demonization based on falsehoods, distortion and selective reporting which makes no attempt at objectivity, fairness or truth.
Last weekend, it published a 4700-word story on the life and death of Rouzan al-Najjar, a young Gazan female doctor who was killed during the riots on the southern border last June.

The story, by its Jerusalem correspondent David Halbfinger, oozed sympathy for al-Najjar and her cause. It described the rioters as “protesters”, obscuring their leaders’ aim of storming the border to murder Israelis.

It presented Al-Najjar’s death with studied but false equivalence as part of a “cycle of violence” with simplistic “narratives” on either side.

Israelis were then portrayed as trigger-happy killers who “obliged” Hamas’s aim of using bloodshed to win international sympathy and whose snipers – despite the IDF’s stated tactic of aiming at rioters’ legs unless they presented an immediate danger – deliberately shot Gazan civilians in the back.

This included al-Najjar. It was only towards the end that the story revealed she was in fact killed accidentally, when an Israeli bullet struck the ground away from her and ricocheted into her body.

NGO Monitor: Amnesty International Singling Out Jews in 2019

Leaked documents seen by NGO Monitor and an analysis of public statements from NGO officials indicate that Amnesty International will conduct a series of intense campaigns singling out Israel in early 2019.

In this process, Amnesty will delegitimize Jewish historical connections to Jerusalem and elsewhere, as well as promote discriminatory boycotts (BDS) against Israel.

The Campaigns
Amnesty’s 2019 attacks will include at least two components:
Amnesty’s Blacklist: A “new campaign targeting some of the businesses that are profiting from human rights abuses by operating in the illegal Israeli settlements.” This language mirrors that used by UN bureaucrats preparing the UNHRC blacklist. The list is aimed at economically damaging companies that are owned by Jews or do business with Israel, and is ultimately meant to harm the Jewish state. Amnesty’s campaign is timed to bolster this UN blacklist, for which Amnesty has been lobbying intensively, and to serve as an alternative should the UN not publish its list.

Amnesty documents, seen by NGO Monitor, also show the NGO specifically seeks to censure companies that educate the public about Jewish history and historical ties to Jerusalem.

“Ban Israeli settlement goods”: A continuation of a campaign to press governments, in particular the UK, to “to ban Israeli settlement goods from entering your markets, and to stop companies based in your country operating in settlements or trading in their goods.” Amnesty has built dedicated website sections for this purpose. In addition, it has supported legislation in Ireland that, if enacted, will criminalize visiting Jewish historical and holy sites, including Jerusalem’s Old City, and purchasing goods and services from Jews located for whatever reason or duration in Jerusalem and over the 1949 Armistice Lines.

Amnesty’s Antisemitism Problem

Amnesty’s 2019 attacks on the Jewish state come at a time when NGO is facing increased criticism over its own deeply-rooted antisemitism.

In 2018, Amnesty antagonized the British Jewish community by cancelling a debate sponsored by the UK’s Jewish Leadership Council, scheduled to be held at Amnesty’s Human Rights Centre in London. And when Amnesty conducted “an unprecedented large scale analysis of abuse against women on Twitter,” it included sexism and racism against female journalists and politicians, but not antisemitism.

Know How to Answer #8: "Israel is stealing Palestinian lands"

Nearly six years ago I gave a lecture at Yeshiva University on how to answer anti-Israel arguments. Since the lecture was over an hour and twenty minutes, I decided to break it up into 20 sections, one each to answer one popular anti-Israel argument.

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.

01/04 Links Pt1: PMW: On anniversary, Fatah celebrates its violent past and promises a violent future; Bolsonaro confirms Brazil to move embassy to Jerusalem

From Ian:

Evelyn Gordon: Syria is the wrong issue for a pro-Israel fight with Trump

This brings us to the second reason why a pro-Israel fight with Trump over Syria seems counterproductive. Though Israel benefited significantly from the American troop presence in Syria, its most pressing needs are diplomatic support in general and support for its ability to defend itself in particular. And on both, Trump remains a vast improvement over his predecessor.

Granted, Israel hasn’t fought any wars since he took office, so there’s no guarantee of how he would act. But there’s no reason to think that he wouldn’t provide the needed support, given his administration’s staunch defense of Israel at the United Nations to date.

In contrast, Israel did fight a war while Barack Obama was president, so it knows what it’s like to be without American support. During the 2014 Gaza war, Obama’s administration famously refused to resupply Israel with Hellfire missiles. It sought to pressure Israel into a cease-fire agreement that met all of Hamas’s demands and none of Israel’s. It issued an endless stream of condemnations of Israel during the fighting, rather than supporting Israel’s right to self-defense against the thousands of rockets Hamas fired at Israeli cities.

Then, in 2016, Obama also stripped Israel of America’s diplomatic protection. The U.N. Security Council resolution against the settlements, which he allowed to pass, laid the groundwork for international sanctions against Israel and even prosecution at the International Criminal Court.

And that’s without even mentioning the minor detail that it was Obama who abandoned Syria to Iran and Russia to begin with. Tehran financed its massive Syrian intervention with the billions of dollars it reaped from Obama’s flagship act of diplomacy, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. And Moscow entered the Syrian war only after waiting more than three years to make sure that America wasn’t planning to get involved. By the time Trump took office, Russian-Iranian domination of Syria was a fait accompli to which America’s scant 2,000 troops could make little difference.

None of this justifies the Syria withdrawal. It’s a terrible idea, and not only, or even primarily, because Israel benefited from having American troops blocking Iran’s long-desired land route through Syria to Lebanon. It further empowers Russia, Turkey and Iran—none of which wish America (or Israel) well. It also may enable a resurgence of the Islamic State, just as America’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 did. Abandoning the Kurds to Turkey’s tender mercies after they have been America’s best foot soldiers against the Islamic State for years is not only a moral crime, but a strategic one, as it will undermine America’s ability to recruit local allies in the future. And America will save little in terms of either lives or money by ending this low-cost, low-casualty mission.

But from a pro-Israel perspective, none of this changes two basic facts. First, there are things Israel needs from Trump more than troops in Syria. And second, asking America to keep soldiers anywhere for Israel’s sake violates a sine qua non of both the Israeli ethos and the bilateral alliance—that Israel defends itself by itself.

PMW: On anniversary, Fatah celebrates its violent past and promises a violent future

As Abbas' Fatah Movement celebrates its 54th anniversary, its dominant messages to its people are celebration of 54 years of violence together with the promise of more violence in the future. Fatah is declaring to Palestinians once again, similar to what Palestinian Media Watch documented in previous years, that Fatah has not and will never "drop the rifle" or abandon terror - what it euphemistically calls "the armed struggle."

The image of the rifle is the main theme of this year's celebrations. In the picture above, which Fatah posted on its official Facebook page, two young girls holding assault rifles are shown leading a march of uniformed men, who are also holding assault rifles.

This picture also posted by Fatah includes four assault rifles. In addition to the large rifle, one is part of the logo of the 54th anniversary, and two are in Fatah's regular logo in the upper left.

Fatah's posted text promises more violence: "We will not relinquish our right to resist the occupier using all available ways and means." The expression "all ways and means," particularly when accompanied with the rifles is a reiteration of Fatah's promise of continued violence and terror.

Text on image: "The Palestinian National Liberation Movement - Fatah Long live the anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution Jan. 1, 1965" [Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 27, 2018]

Another post which Fatah labeled "The official logo of the 54th anniversary," includes the four most important symbols for the PA and Fatah. The first is the map that includes all of Israel covered by the colors of the Palestinian flag symbolizing future destruction of Israel and Palestinian rule over all the land. The second symbol is once again the rifle in the center. The third symbol is the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The fourth is the key symbolizing the future "return" of Palestinian "refugees" to the homes they claim in Israel. [Official Fatah Facebook page, Dec. 26, 2018]

In the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Which Side Is Really Committing Ethnic Cleansing?

Taking a step back, ethnic cleansing is, generally speaking, an organized attempt by an ethnic or religious group to remove a different ethnic or religious group from a given area or territory through expulsion or murder. The PA forbids the sale of land to Jews, encourages and rewards the murder of Jews, and refuses to accept the existence of a Jewish homeland. It endorses attacks, both physical and political, against Jewish civilian communities in the West Bank (i.e., Israeli settlements), and has refused multiple peace offers from Israel to become a state. The clear logical conclusion is that the PA wants no Jews in a future Palestine. How is this not an attempt at ethnic cleansing?

Accusations of ethnic cleansing against Israel, however, would be laughable if they were not so vile, so full of visceral hatred. Such claims are also obviously false and easily refuted. First, 1.878 million Arabs currently live in Israel, 20.9 percent of the country's total population. These Arabs enjoy full rights as Israeli citizens, living in a thriving democracy. Many even take to the streets to protest Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, without fear of punishment. Moreover, recent polls indicate that the Arabs will again have the third largest party in the next Knesset, Israel's parliament. Ethnic cleansing would mean expelling or killing Arabs, not embracing them.

In the West Bank, Palestinians effectively run and control their own government. Yet many Palestinians still try to work in Israel, where they earn much higher wages. Furthermore, by all estimates, the Arab population in the Palestinian territories has skyrocketed since the founding of Israel in 1948—in other words, literally the exact opposite of ethnic cleaning or genocide. In fact, the Palestinians themselves claim that Arabs will soon outnumber Jews in the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Regardless of the truth of such claims, victims of ethnic cleansing would not make them in the first place.

So next time someone accuses Israel of committing ethnic cleansing, ask a very simple question in response: What about the Palestinians?

Rashida Tlaib Swears In on Thomas Jefferson's Koran -- But Why Did He Have One? (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

This week, Rashida Tlaib will be one of our first 2 Muslim congresswomen. Ilhan Omar is the other. Tlaib's swearing-in will be noteworthy because she will be sworn in using Thomas Jefferson's own copy of the Koran.

Tlaib, of course, will not be the first to use Jefferson's Koran for the swearing-in -- Keith Ellison used it, amidst all kinds of discussion and debate back in 2007. At the time, Ellison said his use of Jefferson's Koran

demonstrates that from the very beginning of our country, we had people who were visionary, who were religiously tolerant, who believed that knowledge and wisdom could be gleaned from any number of sources, including the Koran.

Two volume set of the Koran, translated by George Sale
Snapshot from YouTube video

Yair Rosenberg touches upon the use of Jefferson's Koran, noting the complicated history of Thomas Jefferson’s Koran. The complication is that Jefferson's copy of George Sale's 1734 translation of the Koran has the following introduction:

“Whatever use an impartial version of the Korân may be of in other respects, it is absolutely necessary to undeceive those who, from the ignorant or unfair translations which have appeared, have entertained too favourable an opinion of the original, and also to enable us effectually to expose the imposture.”

According to Rosenberg, this original intent of Sale's edition of the Koran to convert Muslims makes its use "particularly appropriate for this occasion, not in spite of the prejudice within it, but because of it." That is because it serves as a reminder that Islam has been part of American history from its beginning, while on the other hand, Sale’s translation reminds us of the fear and misunderstanding of Muslims.

Fair enough. Islam has been part of US history from the beginning -- but how?
And might there have been any other motivation for Jefferson to own a copy of the Koran?

Joshua E. London, author of the book "Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation" wrote an article back in 2005 about that part of US history in an article, "America’s Earliest Terrorists Lessons from America’s first war against Islamic terror."

Some background from Mr. London:

The Barbary states, modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, are collectively known to the Arab world as the Maghrib (“Land of Sunset”), denoting Islam’s territorial holdings west of Egypt. With the advance of Mohammed’s armies into the Christian Levant in the seventh century, the Mediterranean was slowly transformed into the backwater frontier of the battles between crescent and cross. Battles raged on both land and sea, and religious piracy flourished.

The Maghrib served as a staging ground for Muslim piracy throughout the Mediterranean, and even parts of the Atlantic. America’s struggle with the terror of Muslim piracy from the Barbary states began soon after the 13 colonies declared their independence from Britain in 1776, and continued for roughly four decades, finally ending in 1815.

In 1786, a meeting was arranged in London for Thomas Jefferson and John Adams with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the Tripolitan ambassador to Britain in order to negotiate a peace treaty protecting the US from the threat of Barbary piracy.

During the meeting

These future United States presidents questioned the ambassador as to why his government was so hostile to the new American republic even though America had done nothing to provoke any such animosity. Ambassador Adja answered them, as they reported to the Continental Congress, “that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

London emphasizes that this all happened long before Western colonialism made its way to Muslim lands -- before oil interests drew the US in and long before the re-establishment of Israel.

There is more to that copy of the Koran than an intent to convert Muslims.

Here is 4-minute video with more background on why Jefferson actually read the Koran:

You cannot argue about the Crusades without noting the conquests of the Islamic empire into Northern Europe. Similarly, you cannot properly appreciate the complexity of the symbolism of Jefferson's Koran without noting the history of the Barbary pirates and their jihad against the United States.

You need the balance from both sides of the story in order to appreciate just how complex and multifaceted a symbol Jefferson's Koran really is.

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The two faces of Fatah

Today, in Hebron, the Fatah party headed by Mahmoud Abbas is holding a conference that is being heavily touted in their social media.

Last night, in Nablus, the same Fatah headed by the same Mahmoud Abbas held a parade and rally to mark the 54th anniversary of their first terror attack.

Here's what that looked like:

The world only gets to see the first face.

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The Egyptian army announced on Thursday that 37 tunnels were destroyed on the border with the Gaza Strip in 2018.

The army began a massive operation to destroy tunnels to Gaza in September 2015. The tunnels had been used not only to smuggle weapons and goods to Gaza but also by jihadists in the Sinai to maintain ties with jihadist groups in Gaza.

Egypt used to blame Hamas for much of the ISIS-related activity in the Sinai but lately it has been trying to work for reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, with little luck.

The army statement also said that it caught and arrested nearly 19,000 illegal immigrants from various countries trying to get to Europe via Egypt.

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01/03 Links Pt2: Israeli study: 1/4 of Jews killed in Holocaust murdered in 100 days in 1942; I called out Alice Walker’s Jew-hatred again, and she confirmed it

From Ian:

Israeli study: 1/4 of Jews killed in Holocaust murdered in 100 days in 1942

A new Israeli study claims that almost a quarter of the Jews murdered in the Holocaust were killed during 100 days in 1942, making it the period with the highest killing rate in the 20th century.

The killings between August and October 1942 included Jews murdered in the Auschwitz extermination camp, in Ukraine and as part of the infamous Operation Reinhard — an intense mass-slaughter campaign carried out by Nazi Germany between March 1942 and November 1943 in death camps Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor (that operation alone eventually killed some 1.7 million Polish Jews).

Prof. Lewi Stone of Tel Aviv University made the claim in a study published Wednesday in the Science Advances academic journal, based on his analysis of German train deportation data to the three death camps compiled in the 1980s by Holocaust historian Yitzhak Arad.

The kill and death rate during Operation Reinhard has been “poorly quantified in the past,” Stone contended, noting that most records of the killings were destroyed by the Nazis.

The average death rate of almost 15,000 per day during the “extreme phase of hyperintense killing” — which began after the fuhrer Adolf Hitler ordered the operations “sped up” — is almost three times higher than previous estimations.

Stone argued that the murder rate decreased in November 1942 because “there were relatively few Jews left” in the Nazi-controlled areas in and around occupied Poland, “so the rate of the killing likely subsided because of the difficulty of rounding up victims.”

How Hitler’s ‘fake news’ assault on America came perilously close to succeeding

Not only was president Franklin Roosevelt a war monger and closeted Jew, his real name was Rosenfeld. The war in Poland and Russia was entirely the fault of England, and the American press was bent on bringing the country into war against peaceful Germany. These allegations, according to a new book titled “Hitler’s American Friends,” were some of the key German propaganda messages spread by Nazi spies in the US during the late 1930s and into World War II.

Written by Bradley W. Hart and published in October, the book details Hitler’s “classic disinformation campaign” against the US, along with incidents of “outright espionage.”

“Hitler’s American Friends” is divided into chapters named after the Religious Right, the Businessmen, the Bund, and other groups from which the Nazis drew support. While some of the Nazi supporters are well remembered — such as Father Charles Coughlin and his anti-Jewish radio tirades — the affinity of many “ordinary” Americans for Hitler’s New Germany was largely forgotten after the war, according to Hart.

Hitler was aware of support for National Socialism in the US, and this was the basis for his campaign. An alliance with America was unlikely, but German agents could — at the very least — work to confuse the American public about their government, the press, and other democratic institutions. Throughout the 1930s, Nazi spies operated on Capitol Hill, from church pulpits, and in front of massive crowds at rallies.

In 1937, Congress was compelled to enact the Foreign Agents Registration Act because so many Nazi spies had been caught seeking “to subvert the American democratic system,” wrote Hart. The foresight of the act’s authors helped ensure the American public wasn’t fed pro-Nazi “fake news” during the first two years of Germany’s “war of annihilation” in Europe, before Hitler declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor.

“The American political system survived a series of major existential threats at a moment when the fate of the free world hung in the balance,” wrote Hart, a professor at California State University. With what he describes as “courageous” stands taken by American leaders, “Hitler’s friends never stood much of a chance,” he wrote.

Gil Troy: I called out Alice Walker’s Jew-hatred again, and she confirmed it – again

While it’s legitimate to debate universalism versus particularism, equating an oppressed group with its cruelest killers is evil. Can you imagine calling a mean African-American boss an “overseer” or “plantation owner?” What about calling an abusive wife a “rapist?” I had to override my moral auto-correct even to write these terrible thoughts – which shows how Walker’s meanness replicates and infects like thought cancer cells.

Talk about a big lie. The Nazis pursued a race-based, master-race-oriented, strategy of genocide that shrank European Jewry from 9.5 million in 1933 to 3.5 million in 1950. Zionism is a rival nationalist movement to Palestinian nationalism – no Israeli laws define anyone by race, color or blood. Meanwhile, the Palestinian population grew from 1.1 million in 1947 to between six and seven million in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza today. Palestinian propagandists exaggerate those numbers at their convenience, sometimes overcounting how many have lived, sometimes, how many have died.

Walker and Cohen are free to criticize Israel or Zionism. But Nazifying all Zionists – who simply believe that the Jews are a people, with ties to their ancestral homeland, and have rights to establish a state on that homeland – is so ugly, so categorical, it indicts the abuser not the abused – and her academic enabler.

America is afflicted with a president who leads by abuse, polluting our politics by escalating rhetorically and demonizing those who dare disagree with him. It’s pathological: he cannot see how his vicious counterattacks usually prove his rivals’ points. Watching writers and academics mimic such misanthropy is depressing.

Cohen writes: “By reading the poem you can judge for yourself.” Absolutely! HNN’s editor, Rick Shenkman, cleverly entitled this indefensible defense: “In her own words.”

Fortunately, most HNN respondents judged for themselves: “Professor Cohen, you have proven the counterpoint, not your point,” one person wrote. Another added: “Was this SERIOUSLY an attempt to prove she ISN’T a Jew hater?”

Alice Walker damaged Alice Walker’s reputation in her own words, more than any critic could. Like the president she loathes, encased in the oh-you’re-so-wonderful celebrity bubble since the 1970s, she lost touch with reality. Meantime, Cohen seems equally imprisoned: in the loony Left’s Israel-can-do-no-right-but-we-its-critics-can-do-no-wrong bubble.

Know How to Answer #7: "There are more Palestinian refugees than any other refugee group"

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Vic Rosenthal's Weekly Column

It's my party...

As everyone knows, Israel has way too many political parties. In the last election, ten parties made it past the 3.25% cutoff into the Knesset. In all, twenty-five parties contended for the 120 seats in our parliament, and some of those were alliances of multiple parties pooling their votes to keep from falling below the cutoff (the Joint List, for example, is composed of four primarily Arab parties).

There is a party called Ale Yarok (Green Leaf) which calls for legalization of marijuana and managed to get more than 47,000 votes from members who were not too stoned to find the polls. There is a party called Hapiratim (The Pirates), which belongs to an international movement favoring extremely democratic and open government, and which garnered 895 votes, or 0.02% of the electorate. Arghh! The party with the least amount of votes was the Manhigut Hevratit (Social Leadership) party, which consists of a convicted felon named Yosef Ba-Gad. Apparently he has enough friends and relatives to obtain 223 votes.

In fact, Israel does not need anywhere near this number of parties. I would like to propose a simpler arrangement of only six parties. Here they are, with their platforms:

1.      The Really Religious Party: God is on our side, so give us money, don’t draft us, and keep your immodest women away from us and their pictures off our bus shelters.

2.      The Very Right-Wing Party: Send the Arabs to Jordan and annex the historic homeland of the Jewish people.

3.      The Bibi Party: He knows best. Just be quiet and do what he tells you.

4.      The Cheap Apartments Party: Apartments are too expensive. In fact, everything is too expensive. Make everything cheaper. We are not interested in security and stuff.

5.      The Very Left-Wing Party: End The Occupation. This will bring Peace. The state will use the money it saves on the IDF and Shabak to provide cheap apartments and a free subscription to Ha’aretz for one and all.

6.      The Arab Party: End Zionism. Put us in charge, admit that everything is your fault and apologize for the Nakba and maybe we’ll let you live, which you actually don’t deserve, you dogs.

Right now many of you are saying that it’s impossible to live without Ashkenazic and Sephardic Haredi parties, and indeed without Hassidic and Mitnagdic Ashkenazi Haredi parties. And others are saying that there is a big difference between religious and secular right-wing Zionism, or that we can’t forget the historic difference between Etzel and Lechi, or Mapai and Mapam, Ichud and Meuchad, Betar and B’nai Akiva.

Get a grip.

I am still angry about the Altalena, but I’m willing to be in the same party as anyone who understands the importance of a Jewish state for the Jewish people, who is capable of understanding that the Arabs are not just Jews that go to shul on Fridays, and that someone who wants to kill you or your people is an enemy. My heroes are Jabotinsky and Begin, but I could work with Rabin, despite his big mistake (I’m sure if he were here today, he’d admit that he shouldn’t have allowed himself to be pushed into Oslo).

Right now, in the run-up to the election to be held on April 9, we are watching a depressing spectacle of various public personalities maneuvering here and there in the political spectrum, making and breaking alliances, and positioning themselves to feast on what they think will soon be the political corpse of Binyamin Netanyahu. We have the unpopular Avi Gabbai publically kicking the equally unpopular Tzipi Livni out of his “Zionist Union” movement, which went from 24 Knesset seats in the 2015 election, to 8 or 9 projected seats if the election were today. We have Benny Gantz, whose qualifications are that he was IDF Chief of Staff and is very tall, and who refuses to say anything about his position on any important issue, with 14 projected seats (Netanyahu said, and I agree, that “anyone who won’t say whether he is Left or Right is Left”).

One interesting development is the defection of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked from the religious Zionist Beit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party to create a right-wing party that would truly be a home for both religious and secular people, called Haymin Hehadash (The New Right). I think the name is a little cheesy, but ideologically it’s a good fit for me and many others who found the Zionism of Jewish Home appealing, but were uncomfortable with the degree of social conservatism of some of its members. I’m sure also that Bennett and Shaked understand that an explicitly religious party would never have a chance to lead the government.

Today there is already a party that purports to be right-wing and welcoming to both secular and religious Jews, and that is Netanyahu’s Likud. So probably The New Right will draw its votes from the old Jewish Home and from the Likud, and will cooperate in a coalition with them as well. As long as Netanyahu is more popular than Bennett/Shaked, and the Right maintains its present edge over the Center plus the Left, the governing coalition after the next election will end up looking more or less as it does today.

However, if Netanyahu steps down for any reason, the Likud is likely to lose much of its appeal to security-minded voters (and most Israelis fall into this category). The balance of power on the right might then move to the New Right, and one could imagine a government led by Bennett or Shaked. Bibi certainly doesn’t intend to quit now, but we’ll see what impact the possible criminal indictments (which, in my opinion, are simply political warfare by legal means) will have. And Bennett and Shaked are young, 46 and 42 respectively, while Netanyahu is 69. Their day will come no matter what.

The as-yet undefined party of Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid (There is a Future) party, and other centrists will try to present themselves as hawkish on security to prevent this. The danger is that they might succeed, and we could end up with a Center-Left coalition. Naturally, Bibi is making sure to remind us of this at every opportunity. And I agree with him that letting the Left within 100 km of power would be a disaster. Look what the two Ehuds, Barak and Olmert, almost did when each was Prime Minister.

It’s not possible to reduce the number of parties to six today. Founding political parties seems to be a national pastime here, and the inflated egos of politicians, each one of whom believes that only he or she is qualified to lead a party or the nation, prevents the system from becoming more rational.

Today I am leaning toward voting for The New Right, despite the silly name – unless Bibi convinces me that this will empower the Left. So far, I don’t see it.

Or unless my brother-in-law starts his own party. Then I’d have to vote for him.

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01/03 Links Pt1: Goodbye UNESCO; Elbit rejects HSBC's BDS disclaimer stating: 'We don’t produce cluster bombs'; Europe's New "Munich": Iran

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Goodbye UNESCO

Israel’s decision – along with the US – to leave the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization on January 1 is extraordinary. It represents a loss for UNESCO as well as a global tragedy, demonstrating how world heritage has been manipulated by politics.

According to Israeli officials explaining the decision to leave the global organization, UNESCO is a deeply biased organization that sought to rewrite the history of the Land of Israel. “Israel will not be a member of an organization whose goal is to deliberately act against us, and that has become a tool manipulated by Israel’s enemies,” Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said.

Michael Oren, former ambassador to the US and outgoing Knesset member, applauded the move. “Today is the first day that the State of Israel is outside of UNESCO,” he said. It had joined a list of enemies of Israel, alongside the Assyrians, the Roman Empire and the ayatollahs in Iran, who deny the connection between Jews and Israel’s capital in Jerusalem, he added.

Across the sea, former US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley tweeted on January 1 that “UNESCO is among the most corrupt and politically biased UN agencies. Today the US withdrawal from this cesspool became official.”

The process has been more than a year in the making. The administration of US President Donald Trump made the decision to leave in October 2017 and Israel supported the US move. Since UNESCO granted Palestinians membership as a state in 2011, the organization has become increasingly hostile to Israel. The US and Israel wanted reform, but like too many things at the UN, instead of reforming, the organization has remained stuck in its ways.

Elbit rejects HSBC's BDS disclaimer stating: 'We don’t produce cluster bombs'

Elbit Systems Ltd. does not produce cluster bombs, the Israeli arms company said as it rejected attempts by the international bank HSBC to separate its decision to divest from the company from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that had been waged against the global banking power house.

HSBC’s decision to divest from Elbit last month was first made public in a private email correspondence with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, a British-based non-governmental organization.

The group, which had waged a stiff campaign against HSBC in hopes of persuading it to divest from Israeli arms company, published news of the divestment decision as a BDS victory.

HSBC’s divestment came in the aftermath of its November acquisition of the Israeli arms company IMI Systems Ltd., formerly known as Israel Military Industries or Ta’as. IMI has a history of producing cluster bombs.

Elbit’s vice president David Vaknin said that the bank had not contacted his company prior to making its decision nor had it been in touch with the company since it divested.

“We have not received any notification in this regard from HSBC nor any inquiry as to the facts concerning the nature of our activity or our policies in this area,” Vaknin said.

“As part of the Elbit Systems organization, IMI Systems will not be continuing its prior activities with respect to cluster munitions. All of Elbit Systems activities relating to munitions, including those activities to be continued by IMI Systems, will be conducted in accordance with applicable international conventions or US law,” Vaknin said.

In addition, he said, “Elbit Systems [itself] is not engaged in the production of cluster munitions.”

Jordan is Not the Only Mideast Country the US Refuses to Demand to Hand Over Terrorists From (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

We know that Jordan has failed to extradite the Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi -- the mastermind of the Sbarro massacre -- to the US, despite an extradition treaty that Jordan has honored in the past.

But is the problem just that Jordan refuses to honor its treaties, or is there more to it? Could the US be trying harder and applying more pressure on Jordan if it wanted to?

Just compare the example of Jordan to the US failure to pursue Americans murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

Stephen Flatow, whose daughter was murdered by Palestinian terrorists, questions the apparent immunity Palestinian terrorists have from prosecution. It was one thing when the PLO terrorist entity was in charge -- the US had no leverage to demand that terrorists be handed over. But after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the Palestinian Authority was in charge, there was an actual political entity with which the US formed a relationship.

True, the US has never had an extradition treaty with the Palestinians, but there is still another option:

Either because of U.S. pressure, or because of a general desire to have friendly relations with the U.S., governments frequently agree to “rendition”—that is, to voluntarily hand over terrorists for prosecution in America.

Rendition is so much easier than extradition that Mexico, which does have an extradition treaty with the US, often uses rendition instead.

And yet the US government consistently resists the idea of utilizing this option.

According to Flatow, the US is so reluctant to press for the rendition of Palestinian murderers of US citizens, that it has failed to take advantage of bonafide opportunities. A prime example is Mohammed Abbas, the mastermind in 1985 of the hijacking of the Achille Lauro that resulted in the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, who remained free for years. Over time, Abbas lived in countries from which the US could have demanded extradition, but did not take action. The excuse used was the statute of limitations, despite the fact there is no limitation on murder; the US claimed that Abbas was wanted for hijacking, not murder. In 2003, he was captured by American forces in Iraq while he attempted to escape to Syria. He died in US custody in 2004, the day before he was supposed to be handed over to Italy.

Flatow believes the reason for the failure of the US to pursue Palestinian terrorists who have murdered US citizens over the years boils down to the "fetid swamp of political convenience." Over the years, US administrations have been fixated on the Holy Grail of Middle East peace, and opted for 'the greater good' of having friendly relations with the Palestinians rather than pursue justice for murdered Americans:

Putting a Palestinian terrorist on trial in America would infuriate the PA, which would defend the terrorist as a “hero” and a “martyr.” That would sour America’s relations with the PA, reveal that the PA’s view of terrorists has never changed, and undermine American public sympathy for Palestinian statehood.

This held true during the administrations of Clinton, Bush and Obama.

What about Trump?

President Trump. Public Domain

Watching Trump praise Jordan for its role in fighting terrorism -- while it plays host to the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi -- is a familiar scenario. Foreign policy concerns seem once again to take a priority over justice. The US has an extradition treaty with Jordan and has asked Jordan to turn her over. The US has even posted a reward for her capture, but has stopped short of applying pressure.

On the other hand, Trump has taken steps beyond anything his predecessors have done in applying strong financial pressure on Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.

It could be that he is willing to apply pressure to get things done.

But it could also be that Trump has decided to apply pressure on the Palestinians instead of aid in order to facilitate his version of a Middle East peace -- but will continue to coddle Jordan for the old familiar reasons.

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The academic fraud, and obnoxious editor who defends her lies, in the NY Review of Books

Professor Katherine Franke of Columbia University - whom we have mentioned before - wrote last month about the completely fictional "Pro-Israel Push to Purge US Campus Critics."

The article is riddled with half truths and errors, but one is particularly easy to show.

She writes:

Especially chilling, the US Department of Education recently adopted a new definition of anti-Semitism, one that equates any criticism of Israel with a hatred of Jews.

Is that what the policy says? No, it says the exact opposite. It says, explicitly, "[C]riticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic."

Franke is 100% wrong.

When this was pointed out to the editor of the New York Review of Books, he responded in an astonishing way:

A perfectly reasonable and accurate criticism was leveled at Seaton - and his response was dismissive and derisive.

Is this how editors are supposed to deal with fact checking? By making fun of the number of followers the fact checkers have?

I couldn't resist responding to Seaton:

I just was made aware of this exchange and I am astonished at the lack of ethics of an editor at @nybooks. The tweet is absolutely correct, Franke is 100% wrong in her assertion. Weeks later and there is no correction.

And Matt -I have a LOT more followers than you do, "loser."
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) January 3, 2019

I usually don't use ad hominems in my tweets, but by Seaton's yardstick for how important one is, he indeed is a loser compared to me. Not to mention if one compares how either of us deal with honest fact checkers.

Of course, as of this writing, Seaton hasn't responded. He can't because whatever he says (outside of an abject apology to the original fact checker) would make him look like even more of a "loser."

I don't know if Seaton is the person who edited Franke's inaccurate article and allowed her lies to be published under its name.

But one wonders why the New York Review of Books, which often has the word "prestigious" attached to its name when it is mentioned in the media, would employ someone who is so utterly dismissive of both readers - and of the truth.

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According to the Palestine Times, Israel has changed the area that Gaza fishing boats can go.

It used to be 9 miles out to sea, but (apparently for security reasons) Israel has reduced it to 6 miles in the north and south of Gaza, but to make up for the loss of area it increased the distance for the middle of Gaza to 12 miles.

The Gaza fisherman's union rejected the changes, in protest of the six mile limit at the northern and southern borders.

Which means that they still cannot go further that six miles anyway in the north and south - and they are not taking advantage of the additional three miles newly available to them.

As far as I know, Israel never allowed a 12 mile area to be fished since the blockade was started.

Ironically, last summer when Israel increased the fishing zone in central Gaza from six to nine miles, fishermen complained that the additional area was not suitable for fishing - and they demanded a 12 mile zone.

Now they have it and their own union will not let them use it.

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

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Know How to Answer #6 - "UNGA 194 demands Palestinian right of return"

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01/02 Links Pt2: The deal that disappeared; The threat posed by Jeremy Corbyn; AP Shills For Peace Now; Muslim Antisemitism in Berlin Schools

From Ian:

The deal that disappeared

Historian Kobby Barda has found a lost chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: After World War II, the U.S. gave Israel and Arab nations $1.5 billion to solve the Middle East refugee problem. But only Israel lived up to its end of the deal.

Kobby Barda couldn't believe what he was seeing. While researching the establishment of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee under the auspices of the Ruderman Program for American Jewish Studies at the University of Haifa, Barda found his way to the personal archive of one Isaiah Leo "Si" Kenen, a Canadian-born lawyer, journalist and philanthropist who was one of the founders of the pro-Israel lobby.

Among the many documents that record in detail Kenen's work in the first years of Israel's existence as a state, Barda discovered a lost chapter in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At the start of the 1950s, in addition to pouring money into the Marshall Plan to rehabilitate Europe after World War II, the U.S. decided to provide money to Arab states and Israel so they could find a solution to the refugee problem created by the 1948 War of Independence.

The American aid earmarked to solve the issue of Middle East refugees was supposed to have been split evenly between Israel and the Arab states, with each side receiving $50 million to build infrastructure to absorb refugees. The money to take in the Arab refugees was handed over to the U.N. agency founded to address the issue of Palestinian refugees, and the Americans gave Arab countries another $53 million for "technical cooperation." In effect, the Arab side received double the money given to Israel, even though Israel took in more refugees, including ones from Arab nations – Jews who had been displaced by the regional upheavals. The amount Congress allocated to provide for Middle East refugees – Jewish and Arab – at the request of then-President Harry Truman was equal to $1.5 billion today.

David Collier: The smear tactics of the Jeremy Corbyn cult. A case study.

We all know that the Jeremy Corbyn cult uses smear tactics. It can be well highlighted by this case study. It is a worthwhile exercise to show just how empty and crudely constructed these smears can be.

My website was attacked on the evening of the 22nd December. It was down for several hours and when the server restored the site, it remained unstable as the new security systems were configured. I have ample proof of the attack. For example there are numerous emails from the host company as they attempted to deal with the problem, including one that confirms a DDOS attack. Someone also kindly archived how the website looked at the time of the attack:

The antisemitic mindset of the Corbyn conspiracy cult
Everyone knows there are bad people in the world who pose a danger. But for the antisemite, this does not hold true for the Jews. In the eyes of the antisemite, the Jews *are* what is bad in the world. So when Jews complain they’ve been hacked, they are lying. When they say they are victims of antisemitic abuse, they are conspiring to smear someone, and even when six million of them ‘go missing’, they have somehow deceived the world just to gain power and make money. It does not matter that in some cases the antisemite has replaced the word ‘Jew’ with ‘Zionist’, the seams always show where it has been stitched in.

So through the eyes of the antisemites, the attack on my website could not be real. It did not take long for someone to write up a version that turned the DDOS attack into a conspiracy to smear Jeremy Corbyn supporters, and of course being Jewish, make some money whilst I did it. On 30th December, the Prole Star upload an article that did just that:

The Prole Star and its editor
The Prole Star is a Jeremy Corbyn support media. It self references as a socialist site ‘counteracting mainstream media bias’. The Facebook page has 6000 followers. On Twitter, they have another 10,000. It seems to rely on freelance writers desperately seeking media to publish their articles. The Editor and chief contributor is Maria Roberts. Roberts has been writing for the Pole Star for over two years.

I don’t know much about her. Her Facebook friends include Jacqueline Walker, Tony Greenstein, Piers Corbyn, Jon Lansman and Grahame Morris MP. Beyond her editorial role at the Pole Star, her profile also suggests she is a Director at a Company called ‘Red Letter Ltd‘. Company House has her using the names ‘Jeanne Roberts‘ and ‘Jeanne Maria Roberts‘. She is listed as holding ‘overall control’. The accounts and Confirmation Statement are also both overdue, so if you are reading this Maria – chop-chop.

Alan Dershowitz: Comparing Trump to the Nazis Is Holocaust Denial

Professor Alan Dershowitz joined FOX and Friends on New Year's Day to discuss a new poll that finds most children are completely ignorant of the Jewish Holocaust in World War II. Dershowitz then went on to say that any of the people today who compare the current US political climate to the Nazis are basically Holocaust deniers. (h/t jzaik)