Monday, January 07, 2019
Elder of Ziyon
"pro-Palestinian", 1967, international law, Know How to Answer, land for peace, negotiations, PalArab lies, Six Day War, two-state solution
Monday, January 07, 2019Elder of Ziyonanalysis, Divest This
The biggest losers from this internal bloodletting are the Palestinians living under these leaders in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas-ruled Gaza.
The dispute between Hamas and Fatah is not over who will bring democracy and a better economy to the Palestinians. They are not fighting over who will improve the living conditions of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by building new schools and hospitals. They are not fighting over who will introduce major reforms to the Palestinian government and end financial and administrative corruption. They are not fighting over the need for freedom of expression and a free media.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Hamas leaders correctly argue, is not a rightful or legitimate president. If Abbas were to sign a deal with Israel, people could come along later and say that he lacked the legal authority to do so; they would be right.
In order for any peace process to move forward, the Palestinians first need to stop attacking each other. Then, they need to come up with new leaders who actually give a damn about their people.
The security agency also reportedly claims to have identified an effort to slander and delegitimise its interrogation methods, which it maintains are carried out in accordance with the law and under the supervision of the State Attorney’s office.'Anti-Zionist' Jewish teens allegedly kill Palestinian woman
It is unlikely that Israeli Jewish terror suspects would be treated worse than Palestinian Arab ones. It is unlikely that either group would be handled with kid gloves, but the details the lawyers have revealed of the boys’ treatment, although harsh, hardly amounts to torture:
“’From morning to night (my client) was shackled to a chair, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, in a small cell’… the interrogators had ‘cursed, spit on and even sexually harassed’ his client. He claimed that the Shin Bet agents had even performed a jailhouse informant exercise with cops posing as inmates who pressured the suspects to confess.”
More worryingly, when one of these lawyers, Itamar ben Gvir, was asked why he hadn’t criticised the Shin Bet’s interrogation tactics against Palestinian suspects, he denied that the murder of Aisha Rabi was terrorism at all.
“‘When a Jew throws a rock at a Palestinian, it is not terrorism. When a Palestinian throws a rock at a Jew, it is terrorism because it’s part of a larger effort to wipe us out from our land,’ he argues.”
That is wrong and repellent, hardly mitigated by his lame addendum that the “extreme” tactics used by the Shin Bet against his client should not be used against Palestinian inmates either.
The murder of Aisha Rabi was indeed a foul and murderous act of terrorism – violence against the innocent carried out for political motives. Whether or not it was committed by the boys currently in custody, not only the perpetrators but also those who tried to obstruct justice on their behalf should feel the full force of the law.
Unlike the Arab communities in the disputed territories, where the murder of Jews – whose incitement is institutionalised within Palestinian society – is celebrated with sweets and fireworks by jubilant throngs, Jewish terrorism is rare and is viewed by the vast majority of Jews with horror and revulsion.
But it exists; and however small, it is a foul stain on the Jewish conscience. It must be dealt with.
The five Jewish teenagers from Judea and Samaria who were arrested over the past several days were allegedly involved in the deadly attack that led to the death of a Palestinian woman, Aisha al-Rawbi, in October, Israeli authorities said on Sunday.
The five teens who were arrested are students at a yeshiva in Rechelim, close to where the attack took place, on a road near the community. The attack, investigators say, targeted a Palestinian car, causing it to veer off the road and crash. Al-Rawbi, from the Arab village of Badi and a mother of eight, suffered a fatal head injury. Her husband, Aykube, survived.
It is unclear if all five teens are suspected of being the direct perpetrators of the attack. According to the Shin Bet security agency, the breakthrough in the investigation was made possible in part by intelligence gathered close the scene of the attack. The detective work showed that a day after the attack, during the Jewish Sabbath, a group of settler youth traveled from the community of Yitzhar to Rechelim, where they were briefed on the tactics needed for countering Shin Bet interrogations.
The Shin Bet further said that the evidence collected showed "that the arrested had anti-Zionist and extremist views" that included a video in which some of them burn an Israeli flag. One of the arrested youths had also written "death to the Zionists" and drew a swastika on an Israeli flag.
Monday, January 07, 2019Elder of Ziyon
Monday, January 07, 2019Elder of ZiyonMalaysia will not allow Israel's Paralympics swimming team enter the country to participate in the World Para Swimming Championships in July, despite two months of efforts by the Israel Paralympics Committee.Tomer Ilan pointed out to the World Para Swimming organization that this is a direct violation of their own Code of Ethics:
The event, set to be held in the Malaysian city of Kuching, is a critical one since the results will affect the formulation of 2020 Paralympics in Tokyo. The city will play host to more than 600 swimmers from 70 countries. The fact that there are no diplomatic relations between the Jewish state and Muslim nation is making it hard for the Israeli team to obtain visas.
Monday, January 07, 2019Elder of Ziyon
Normalization, of course, just means treating the Jewish state like any other. You know, peace. The Palestinians are in an absolute panic over the wave of Arab nations who are more and more willing to move their covert ties to Israel to become overt - above the table, as this cartoon shows in "before" and "after" (read left to right:)
Normalization - highest treason
No matter what the occupation does, it will remain a germ in this region, besieged by the immune system (resistance to normalization) in order to destroy it in time.
Normalization is a loss of honor and dignity, a surrender to the occupation
Normalization is to recognize the right thief who stole your brother's house and expelled him and his family to the street, and open your house to steal from you and to expel you and your family later
Normalization with the Zionists and recognizing them as a crime, it is morally treacherous, political suicide, historical falsehood and shame
Normalization with the Zionist entity is a waiver of the sanctities of the nation and the Aqsa Mosque, "the first Muslim qibla."
Normalization is a crime no different than being a traitor to one's religion, Arabism and homeland
Sunday, January 06, 2019Elder of Ziyonlumish |
The Israeli Air Force struck two Hamas positions in the eastern Gaza Strip on Sunday in response to an explosive device that was flown into southern Israel earlier in the day, the army said.
On Sunday morning, a bomb was flown into Israel using a large cluster of balloons and a drone-like glider device, landing in a carrot field in the Sdot Negev region of southern Israel shortly before noon.
In retaliation for the cross-border attack from Gaza, Israeli military helicopters attacked two observation posts east of Khan Younis that are controlled by the coastal enclave’s Hamas rulers, the Israel Defense Forces said.
“IDF attack helicopters struck two military positions belonging to the Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip in response to the balloon-borne explosive device, which was launched by a model drone,” the army said.
In addition to the posts near Khan Younis, Palestinian media reported that the IDF had attacked targets near Jabalia, in northern Gaza, and in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City, in the central Strip. The IDF refused to comment on those reports.
The military did not say who it believed flew the bomb into southern Israel, but said it held Hamas responsible as the rulers of Gaza.
“The IDF will continue to act in defense of the citizens of Israel and against terrorism from the Strip,” the army said.
A drone-shaped device from the Gaza Strip exploded in an agricultural field of an Israeli kibbutz northeast of the coastal enclave on Sunday, causing neither injury nor damage, police said.'LA Times' publishes column excusing antisemitism
Security forces had been sent to the carrot field in the Sdot Negev region where the object landed, the Israel Defense Forces said.
The object was shaped like an unmanned aerial vehicle, with a wingspan of over 1.2 meters (4 feet), and was carried into Israel by dozens of colorful helium balloons. Though similar to a drone in appearance, the device was apparently not capable of flight.
The name of a Gazan engineering college was printed on the side of the drone lookalike.
Police said the device exploded as a bomb disposal robot examined it. The drone lookalike was then carried away.
The Los Angeles Times published a column on Friday evening excusing the charges of antisemitism against the leaders of the Women’s March.
The op-ed, written by the newspaper’s columnist Robin Abcarian was titled, “Can you admire Louis Farrakhan and still advance the cause of women? Maybe so. Life is full of contradictions.”
In the column, Abcarian claimed that she thinks “it is possible to be repulsed by [Farrakhan’s] hateful rhetoric about white people, especially Jews, and still appreciate some of the empowerment work that he has done in the black community.”
Though she criticized the Women’s March organizers for taking too long to respond to accusations of antisemitism, Abcarian wrote that the fruits of the march were so inspirational as to eclipse that.
“While organizers of the Women’s March battled over who said what to whom about Jewish people when, and the merits of a noted antisemite, American women stood up by the millions and changed the country,” Abcarian wrote. “For that, everyone involved in the Women’s March can take a bow.”
But many people – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – were far from moved by Abcarian’s dismissal of antisemitism by both the Women’s March and Farrakhan.
A tweet from the newspaper’s “L.A. Now” Twitter account with a link to the article was subject to what’s known on Twitter as “the ratio.” As of Sunday morning, the tweet had been liked just 294 times, while it had been the subject of close to 2,500 irate replies on the social media platform.
This is the paper that buried the Khalidi Tape, so this is poetic. https://t.co/BN364DuV9D
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) January 5, 2019
Sunday, January 06, 2019Elder of Ziyon"pro-Palestinian", 1967, Egypt, Jordan, Know How to Answer, PalArab lies, Palestinian propaganda, revisionist history, rewriting history, Six Day War, Syria
Sunday, January 06, 2019Elder of Ziyon
Over more than half a century of occupation, Israel has mastered the arts of monitoring and surveilling millions of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel itself. Israel is now packaging and selling this knowledge to governments that admire the country’s ability to suppress and manage resistance. Israel’s occupation has thus gone global. The country’s defense exports reached a record $9.2 billion in 2017, 40 percent higher than in 2016 (in a global arms market that recorded its highest ever sales in 2017 at $398.2 billion). The majority of these sales were in Asia and the Pacific region. Military hardware, such as missiles and aerial defenses, was the largest sector at 31 percent, while intel, cyber, and information systems comprised 5 percent. Israel’s industry is supported by lavish domestic spending: in 2016, defense expenditure represented 5.8 percent of the country’s GDP. By comparison, in 2017, the American defense sector absorbed 3.6 percent of US GDP.The article decries how Israel is making so much money by selling weapons and cybersecurity software that, Loewenstein implies, are solely created to crush Palestinians.
Sunday, January 06, 2019Elder of Ziyon
While Hamas is happy to boast openly about their fighters tearing at the border fences in Gaza and hiding behind civilians to evade Israeli soldiers—the New York Times makes no mention of this. Israeli soldiers are portrayed as faceless killing machines, without a single reference to the fire kites, terror tunnels, rockets or cross border explosive devices utilized by the Palestinians, or to the double war crime of Hamas targeting Israeli civilians by firing rockets from behind Palestinian civilians.The real racism against the Palestinians
These Israeli civilians are not occupiers or usurpers. They live in Israel proper not in occupied or disputed territory. This area was built from scratch by Israelis on barren desert land and the Israelis have a right to be protected from fire bombs and mobs determined to breach the protective fence. How would other nations respond to such threats? Certainly not by treating these dangerous mobs as peaceful protestors merely exercising their freedom of speech and assembly.
The Times's absurd conclusion that the shooter may have committed a "war crime," ignores the law of war crimes.
Contrast what Israel does with how the Palestinians treat terrorists who willfully target and kill Jewish children, women and other civilians. The Palestinian Authority pays their families rewards – in effect bounties -- for their willful acts of murder. Hamas promotes and lionizes terrorists who kill Jews. But you would not know any of that from reading the one-sided New York Times screed....All in all, it is a shockingly irresponsible report.
And we avert our eyes and let them get on with it. To do otherwise would mean confronting awkward facts that might disturb safe certainties. Why talk about the Palestinians jailed for selling land to Jews when we can demand Israel release the Palestinians jailed for killing Jews? Why talk about the stipends paid to the families of terrorists who murder Israelis when we can condemn Israel for the security fence built to stop the terrorists getting in? Why talk about the Palestinians’ insistence that the West Bank be rendered Jew-free before they pledge to accept a state there when we can repudiate Israel’s cunning scheme to ‘Judaise’ Judea? Why talk about Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian president, and his explicit, on-the-record, even book-length distortions of the Holocaust and Zionism when we can decry Netanyahu’s chauvinism and alliances with fellow chauvinists? Why, in short, face up to the real ‘obstacles to peace’ when we can pretend building houses in the West Bank is what’s really holding things back?When hating Jews becomes acceptable by the Far Left
Interrogating Palestinian politics, culture and social attitudes terrifies liberal souls because we might find things we don’t like. Things like Issam Akel’s sentence. Like jihad-themed kindergarten graduations. Like rocket launchers set up in civilian areas. Things that can’t be willed away with a sombre head shake and a plea to ‘both sides’. Things that might lead us to question the Palestinians’ interest in peace. Question our entire approach to the conflict since at least 1967. Question the viability, or even desirability, of a Palestinian state.
I’ve always railed against liberal blindness and hypocrisy on Palestinian extremism as a product of anti-Israel bias. I’m not so sure anymore. I’m starting to wonder if the real bias is against the Palestinians. We expect Israel to operate like Belgium south of Beirut and castigate it for failing to live up to our values (or what we claim to be our values). We expect almost nothing of the Palestinians, and certainly not for them to conduct their affairs as we do (or tell ourselves we do). In Jerusalem, we see Boers; in Ramallah, Zulus. This is not pro-Israel — it is based on the myth of Israel as a white European colonial enterprise — but it is flagrantly anti-Palestinian. Yes, these two cultures are distinct (though there is a deal of crossover). Yes, Palestinian culture has a lot of work to do to catch up on democracy, human rights, minority rights, and much else besides. But none of this is inherent to being Palestinian; these are political and social values and they, and the cultures that espouse them, can change. This, however, is at odds with the underlying assumptions of Western policy on the Middle East in which Israeli misdeeds are aberrations to be condemned and corrected while Palestinian misdeeds are shrugged off, excused or justified. This is just who they are.
The sentiment is sympathy but the logic is pure bigotry. We are not friends of the Palestinians. We are not lending them solidarity by indulging their outrages. We are treating them like a savage tribe from an Edgar Wallace adventure, benighted but noble in their own way, wide-eyed grateful to the white man for understanding their backwards customs. There is your racism. Issam Akel is going to jail for selling land to a Jew and our hearts break for his jailers because they couldn’t possibly know any better.
Talk of antisemitism moving from the margins of American society into the mainstream often centers on white nationalism, that is, Jew hatred from the right. One need look no further than the November elections, in which two Holocaust deniers received 56,000 and 43,000 votes in bids to win Congressional seats in Illinois and California, respectively.
Presumably, many registered Republicans who voted for these antisemitic candidates were ignorant of their extremism and reflexively chose the candidate with an “R” next to their name.
And at least the Jewish community could take comfort in the fact that from the outset, the Republican Party categorically rejected both candidates, each of whom lost by wide margins.
White nationalists, it would seem for now, are still universally denounced and abhorred by all people of conscience.
On the other hand, there’s far too much tolerance for antisemitism on the left, which often masquerades under the cover of anti-Zionism. To make matters worse, it’s sometimes abetted by Jews themselves. All of which brings me to the case of Marc Lamont Hill, a professor of media studies and urban education at Temple University in Philadelphia and former CNN political commentator.
In November, Hill was fired by CNN after appearing at a UN event during which he endorsed a political slogan associated with Palestinian extremists calling for Israel’s destruction. Speaking at the UN’s annual “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” Hill called for “action” to “give us what justice requires…a free Palestine from the river to the sea [emphasis added].” He also stated that Palestinians have a right to “resistance” against Israel without specifically ruling out acts of violence and terrorism.
The question isn’t whether CNN should have fired Hill; rather, it’s this: Why did it take CNN so long to part ways with a contributor with a long history of antisemitism and vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric?
For years, Hill used his appearances on CNN to portray Israel as a contemptible Apartheid state guilty of committing “ethnic cleansing,” a claim he repeated during his UN diatribe. Not surprisingly, he’s a staunch supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and considers BDS founder Omar Barghouti, who rejects Israel’s right to exist, someone “we must stand behind.”
In 2015, merely weeks after he tweeted about fighting antisemitism, Hill traveled to the Israeli Arab city of Nazareth, which he insisted was in “Palestine.” During the visit, he declared that he had come to a land “stolen by greed,” thus reinforcing the ugly antisemitic stereotype of greedy Jews.
In October of that year, Hill wrote an opinion piece in the Huffington Post entitled, “Why Every Black Activist Should Stand with Rasmea Odeh.” In it, he referred to Odeh, a convicted Palestinian terrorist, as a “venerable woman” and “freedom fighter.” As far as Hill is concerned, the murder of two young Israeli Jews in a 1969 bombing planned by Odeh wasn’t a horrific crime – it was an act of “justice.”
None of these troubling issues was enough for CNN (let alone Temple) to fire Hill. Nor, shockingly, was his close association with Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam founder whom the ADL has called the “leading anti-Semite in America.” Farrakhan once called Adolf Hitler “a great man,” and recently, he compared Jews to “termites.” In August 2016, Hill uploaded onto Instagram a picture of the two smiling together. His caption read, “Been blessed to spend the day with Minister Louis Farrakhan. An amazing time of learning, listening, laughing.”
We Jews aren’t laughing. That CNN, which claims to be “the most trusted name in news,” could keep Hill under contract for so many years is indicative of a much larger problem.
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.
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.
Friday, January 04, 2019Elder of Ziyon"pro-Palestinian", Know How to Answer, land grab, PalArab lies, Palestinian propaganda, propaganda
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.PMW: On anniversary, Fatah celebrates its violent past and promises a violent future
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.
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]
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?
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
